The Moving Target

by Ross Macdonald

  I took my beer to a table beside the window, from which I could watch the parking lot and the main entrance. After a while the waitress brought my sandwich. She lingered even after I paid and tipped her.

  “Going to leave the money with the boss?”

  “I’m thinking about it. I want to be sure he gets it.”

  “You must be eaten up with honesty, eh?”

  “You know what happens to bookies that don’t pay off.”

  “I sort of thought you was a bookie.” She leaned toward me with sudden urgency. “Listen, mister, I got a girl friend, she goes out with an exercise boy, she says he says Jinx is a cert in the third tomorrow. Would you bet it on the nose or across the board?”

  “Save your money,” I said. “You can’t beat them.”

  “I only bet tip money. This boy, my girl friend’s boy friend, he says Jinx is a cert.”

  “Save it.”

  Her mouth pursed skeptically. “You’re a funny kind of bookie.”

  “All right.” I handed her two ones. “Play Jinx to show.”

  She looked at me with a scowl of surprise. “Gee, thanks, mister—only I wasn’t asking for money.”

  “It’s better than losing your own money,” I said.

  I hadn’t eaten for nearly twelve hours, and the sandwich tasted good. While I was eating it several cars arrived. A party of young people came in laughing and talking, and business picked up at the bar. Then a black sedan rolled into the parking lot, a black Ford sedan with a red police searchlight sticking out like a sore thumb beside the windshield.

  The man who got out wore plain clothes as obvious as a baseball umpire’s suit, with gun wrinkles over the right hip. I saw his face when he came into the circle of light from the entrance. It was the deputy sheriff from Santa Teresa. I got up quickly and went through the door at the end of the bar into the men’s lavatory, locking the door behind me. I lowered the top of the toilet seat and sat down to brood over my lack of foresight. I shouldn’t have left the book matches in Eddie something’s pocket.

  I put in eight or ten minutes reading the inscriptions on the whitewashed walls. “John ‘Rags’ Latino, Winner 120 Hurdles, Dearborn High School, Dearborn, Mich., 1946.” “Franklin P. Schneider, Osage County, Oklahoma, Deaf Mute, Thank you.” The rest of them were the usual washroom graffiti interspersed with primitive line drawings.

  The naked bulb in the ceiling shone in my eyes. My brain skipped a beat, and I went to sleep sitting up. The room was a whitewashed corridor slanting down into the bowels of the earth. I followed it down to the underground river of filth that ran under the city. There was no turning back. I had to wade the excremental river. Fortunately I had my stilts with me. They carried me untainted, wrapped in cellophane, to the landing on the other side. I tossed my stilts away—they were also crutches—and mounted a chrome-plated escalator that gleamed like the jaws of death. Smoothly and surely it lifted me through all the zones of evil to a rose-embowered gate, which a maid in gingham opened for me, singing Home, Sweet Home.

  I stepped out into a stone-paved square, and the gate clanged shut behind me. It was the central square of the city, but I was alone in it. It was very late. Not a streetcar was in sight. A single yellow light shone down on the foot-smoothed pavement. When I moved, my footsteps echoed lonesomely, and on all four sides the hunchbacked tenements muttered like a forest before a storm. The gate clanged shut again, and I opened my eyes.

  Something metallic was pounding on the door.

  “Open up,” the deputy sheriff said. “I know you’re in there.”

  I slipped the bolt and pulled the door wide open. “You in a hurry, officer?”

  “So it’s you. I thought maybe it was you.” His black eyes and heavy lips were bulging with satisfaction. He had a gun in his hand.

  “I knew damn well it was you,” I said. “I didn’t think it was necessary to tell everybody in the place.”

  “Maybe you had a reason for keeping quiet, eh? Maybe you had a reason for hiding in here when I come in? The sheriff thinks it’s an inside job, and he’ll want to know what you’re doing here.”

  “This is the guy,” the bartender said, at his shoulder. “He said Eddie phoned him in Las Vegas.”

  “What you got to say to that?” the deputy demanded. He waggled the gun in my face.

  “Come in and close the door.”

  “Yeah? Then put your hands on your head.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Put your hands on your head.” The gun poked into my solar plexus. “You carrying a gun?” He started to frisk me with his other hand.

  I stepped back out of his reach. “I’m carrying a gun. You can’t have it.”

  He moved toward me again. The door swung closed behind him. “You know what you’re doing, eh? Resisting an officerinperformancehisduty. I got a good mind to put you under arrest.”

  “You got a good mind, period.”

  “No cracks from you, jerk. All I want to know is what you’re doing here.”

  “Enjoying myself.”

  “So you won’t talk, eh?” he said, like a comic-book cop. He raised his free hand to slap me.

  “Hold it,” I said. “Don’t lay a finger on me.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because I’ve never killed a cop. It would be a blot on my record.”

  Our glances met and deadlocked. His raised hand hung stiff in the air and gradually subsided.

  “Now put your gun away,” I said. “I don’t like being threatened.”

  “Nobody asked you what you liked,” he said, but his fire had gone out. His swarthy face was caught between conflicting emotions: anger and doubt, suspicion and bewilderment.

  “I came here for the same reason you did—officer.” The word came hard, but I managed to get it out. “I found the book matches in Eddie’s pocket—”

  “How come you know his name?” he said alertly.

  “The waitress told me.”

  “Yeah? The bartender said he phoned you in Las Vegas.”

  “I was trying to pump the bartender. Get it? It was a gag. I was trying to be subtle.”

  “Well, what did you find out?”

  “The dead man’s name is Eddie, and he drove a truck. He came in here for drinks sometimes. Three nights ago he phoned Las Vegas from here. Sampson was in Las Vegas three nights ago.”

  “No kidding?”

  “I wouldn’t kid you, officer, even if I could.”

  “Jesus,” he said, “it all fits in, don’t it?”

  “I never thought of that,” I said. “Thank you very much for pointing it out to me.”

  He gave me a queer look, but he put away his gun.

  chapter 20 I drove a half a mile down the highway, turned, drove back again, and parked at the intersection diagonally across from the Corner. The deputy’s car was still in the parking lot.

  The fog was lifting, dissolving into the sky like milk in water, and blowing out to sea. The expanding horizon only reminded me that Ralph Sampson could be a long way from there—anywhere at all. Starving to death in a mountain cabin, drowned at the bottom of the sea, or wearing a hole in the head like Eddie. The cars went by the roadhouse in both directions, headed for home or headed for brighter lights. In the rear-vision mirror my face was ghostly pale, as if I had caught a little death from Eddie. There were circles under my eyes, and I needed a shave.

  A truck came up from the south and passed me slowly. It wheeled into the parking lot of the Corner. The truck was blue and had a closed van. A man jumped down from the cab and shuffled across the asphalt. I knew his rubber-kneed walk, and in the light from the entrance I knew his face. A savage sculptor had hacked it out of stone and smashed it with another stone.

  He stopped with a jerk when he saw the black police car. Stopped and turned and ran back to the blue truck. It backed out with a grinding of gears, and turned down the road towards White Beach. When its tail light had dwindled to a red spark, I followed it. The road chang
ed from black-top to gravel, and finally to sand. For two miles I ate his dust.

  Where the road came down to the beach between two bluffs, another road crossed it. The lights of the truck turned left and climbed the slope. When they were over the rise and out of sight, I followed them. The road was a single track cut into the side of the hill. From the crest I could see the ocean below to my right. There was a traveling moon in the clouds, which were drifting out to sea. Its light on the black water made a dull lead-foil shine.

  The hill flattened out ahead, and the road straightened. I drove on slowly with my lights out. Before I knew it I was abreast of the truck. It was standing in a lane with no lights showing, fifty yards off the road. I kept going.

  The road ended abruptly at the bottom of the hill a quarter mile further on. A lane meandered off toward the ocean on the right, but its entrance was blocked by a wooden gate. I turned my car in the dead end and climbed the hill on foot.

  A row of eucalyptus trees, ragged against the sky, edged the lane where the truck was standing. I left the road and kept them between me and the truck. The ground was uneven, dotted with clumps of coarse grass. I stumbled more than once. Then space fell open in front of me, and I nearly walked off the edge of the bluff. Far down below, the white surf stroked the beach. The sea looked close enough for a dive, but hard as metal.

  Below me to the right there was a white square of light. I climbed and slid down the side of the hill, holding onto the grass to keep from falling. A small building took shape around the light, a white cottage held in a groin of the bluff.

  The unblinded window gave me a full view of the single room. I felt for the gun in my holster and approached the window on my hands and knees. There were two people in the room. Neither of them was Sampson.

  Puddler was wedged in a chair cut out of a barrel, his broken profile toward me, a bottle of beer in his fist. He was facing a woman on an unmade studio bed against the wall. The gasoline lamp that hung from a rafter in the unplastered ceiling threw a hard white light on her streaked blond hair and her face. It was a thin and harried face, with wide resentful nostrils and a parched mouth. Only the cold brown eyes were lively in it, darting and peering from the puckered skin of their sockets. I moved my head sideways, out of their range.

  The room wasn’t large, but it seemed to be terribly bare. The pine floor was carpetless, slick with grime. A wooden table piled with dirty dishes stood under the light. Beyond it against the far wall were a two-burner oil stove, a sagging icebox, a rust-mottled sink with a tin pail under it to catch the drip.

  The room was so still, the clapboard walls so thin, that I could hear the steady suspiration of the lamp. And Puddler’s voice when he said:

  “I can’t wait here all night, can I? You can’t expect me to wait here all night. I got a job to get back to. And I don’t like that pollice car setting up there at the Corner.”

  “That’s what you said before. That car don’t mean anything.”

  “I’m saying it again. I should of been back at the Piano already; you know that. Mr. Troy was mad when Eddie didn’t show.”

  “Let him get apoplexy.” The woman’s voice was sharp and thin like her face. “If he don’t like the way Eddie does the job, he can stick it.”

  “You ain’t in no position to talk like that.” Puddler looked from side to side of the room. “You didn’t talk like that when Eddie come sucking around for a job when he got out of the pen. When he got out of the pen and come sucking around for a job and Mr. Troy give him one—”

  “For God’s sake! Can’t you stop repeating yourself, dim brain?”

  His scarred face gathered in folds of hurt surprise. He drew in his head, and his thick neck wrinkled up like a turtle’s neck. “That’s no way to talk, Marcie.”

  “You shut your yap about Eddie and the pen.” Her voice bit like a thin knife blade. “How many jails you seen the inside of, dim brain?”

  His answer was a tormented bellow. “Lay off me, hear.”

  “All right then, lay off Eddie.”

  “Where the hell is Eddie, anyway?”

  “I don’t know where he is or why, but I know he’s got a reason.”

  “It better be good when he talks to Mr. Troy.”

  “Mister Troy, Mister Troy. He’s got you hypnotized, hasn’t he? Maybe Eddie won’t be talking to Mr. Troy.”

  His small eyes peered at her, trying to read her meaning in her face, and gave up. “Listen, Marcie,” he said after a pause. “You can drive the truck.”

  “The hell you say! I want no part of that racket.”

  “It’s good enough for me. It’s good enough for Eddie. You’re getting awful fancy-pants since he took you off the street—”

  “Shut up or you’ll be sorry!” she said. “The trouble with you is you’re yellow. You see a patrol car and you wet your pants. So you try to get a woman to take your rap, like any other pimp.”

  He stood up suddenly, brandishing the bottle. “Lay off me, hear. I don’t take nothing from nobody. You was a man, I spoil your face for you, hear.” The beer foamed out on the floor and over her knees.

  She answered very coolly. “You wouldn’t say that in front of Eddie. He’d saw you to pieces, and you know it.”

  “That little monkey!”

  “Yeah, that little monkey! Sit down, Puddler. Everybody knows you’re a powerful battler. I’ll get you another beer.”

  She got up and moved across the room, stepping lightly and furiously like a starved cat. Taking a towel from a nail beside the sink, she dabbed at her beer-stained bathrobe.

  “You drive the truck?” Puddler said hopefully.

  “Do I have to say everything twice, the same as you? I’m not driving the truck. If you’re afraid, let one of them drive.”

  “Naw, I can’t do that. They don’t know the road; they get knocked off.”

  “You’re wasting time, then, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He moved towards her uncertainly, casting a huge shadow on the floor and wall. “How’s about a little something before I go? A little party. Eddie’s probably in the sack with somebody. I got plenty what it takes.”

  She picked up a bread knife from the table, the kind with a wavy cutting edge. “Take it away with you, Puddler, or I’ll love you up with this.”

  “Come on now, Marcie. We could get along.” He stood still, keeping his distance.

  She gulped to control her rising hysteria, but her voice came out as a scream. “Beat it!” The bread knife moved in the glaring light, pointed at his throat.

  “O.K., Marcie. You don’t have to get mad.” He shrugged his shoulders and turned away with the hurt and helpless look of any rejected lover.

  I left the window and started up the hill. Before I reached the top, a door swung open, projecting an oblong of light on the hillside. I froze on my hands and knees. I could see the shadow of my head on the dry grass in front of my face.

  Then the door closed, drawing darkness over me. Puddler’s shadow came out of the pool of shadows behind the house. He went up the steep lane, scuffing the dust with his feet, and disappeared behind the eucalyptus trees.

  I had to choose between him and the blond woman, Marcie. I chose Puddler. Marcie could wait. She’d wait forever before Eddie something came back.

  chapter 21 A few miles north of Buenavista the blue truck left the highway, turning off to the right. I stopped to let it get well ahead. A sign at the intersection said “Lookout Road.” Before I turned up after it, I switched to my fog lamps. The fog had blown out to sea, but I didn’t want Puddler to see the same headlights behind him all the way.

  All the way was close to seventy miles, two hours of rough driving through mountains. One five-mile stretch, along a ridge so high that my ears hurt, was as bad as any road I’d driven by daylight: two ruts along a black cliff edge, with dark eternity waiting below each curve. The truck highballed along as if it was safe on rails. I let it get out of sight, switched my lights again, and tried to
feel like a new man driving a different car.

  We came by a different route into the valley Miranda and I had crossed in the afternoon. On the straight valley road I turned out my car lights entirely and drove by the light of the moon, eked out by memory. I thought I knew where the truck was going. I had to be certain.

  On the other side of the valley it climbed into the mountains, up the twisting black-top which led to the Temple in the Clouds. I had to use my lights again to follow it. When I reached Claude’s mailbox the wooden gate beside it had been closed. The truck was far above me, a glowworm crawling up the mountain. Higher still, above the jagged black horizon, the cleared sky was salted with stars. The unclouded moon was motionless among them, a round white hole in the night.

  I was tired of waiting, of following people down dark roads and never seeing their faces. So far as I knew, there were only the two of them there, Puddler and Claude. I had a gun—and the advantage of surprise.

  I opened the gate and drove through, up the winding lane to the rim of the mesa, and down toward the Temple. Above its white mass there was a faint glow from an interior light. The truck was standing inside the open wire gate, its back doors swinging wide. I parked at the gate and got out.

  There was nothing inside the truck but crouched shadows, a wooden bench padded with burlap along each side, the pungent odor of men who have sweated and dried in their clothes.

  The ironbound door of the temple creaked open then. Claude came out, a moonlit caricature of a Roman senator. His sandals crunched in the gravel. “Who is that?” he said.

  “Archer. Remember me?”

  I moved from behind the truck and let him see me. He had an electric lantern in his hand. It shone on the gun in mine.

  “What are you doing here?” His beard waggled, but his voice was steady.

  “Still looking for Sampson,” I said.

  As I approached he backed toward the door. “You know he is not here. Was one sacrilege not enough for you?”

  “Skip the mumbo jumbo, Claude. Did it ever fool anybody at all?”

  “Come in if you must, then,” he said. “And I see you must.”

  He held the door for me and closed it after me. Puddler was standing in the center of the court.