The Moving Target

by Ross Macdonald

  “Moderately?” She raised her round chin, but her mouth remained doleful.

  “We have some reason to think that your father is alive.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then how do you know he’s alive?”

  “I didn’t say I knew. I said I thought. I talked to one of his kidnappers.”

  She came at me headlong, clutching at my arm. “What did he say?”

  “That your father is alive.”

  Her hand released my arm and took hold of her other hand. Her brown fingers interlocked and strained against each other. The daffodils fell to the floor with broken stems. “But you can’t trust what they say? They’d naturally claim he’s alive. What did they want? Did they phone you?”

  “It was just one of them I talked to. Face to face.”

  “You saw him and let him go?”

  “I didn’t let him go. He’s dead. His name is Alan Taggert.”

  “But that’s impossible. I—” Her lower lip went slack and showed her lower row of teeth.

  “Why is it impossible?” I said.

  “He couldn’t do it. He was decent. He was always honest with me—with us.”

  “Until the big chance came. Then he wanted money more than anything else. He was ready to murder to get it.”

  A question formed in her eyes. “You said Ralph was alive?”

  “Taggert didn’t murder your father. He tried to murder me.”

  “No,” she said. “He wasn’t like that. That woman twisted him. I knew she’d ruin him if he went with her.”

  “Did Taggert tell you about her?”

  “Of course he told me. He told me everything.”

  “And you still loved him?”

  “Did I say I loved him?” Her mouth was firm again and curved with pride.

  “I understood you did.”

  “That stupid gawk? I used him for a while. He served the purpose.”

  “Stop it,” I said violently. “You can’t fool me, and you can’t fool yourself. You’ll tear yourself to pieces.”

  Yet her hands were motionless in each other, her tall body was still. Still as a tree bent out of line and held there by a continuous wind. The wind pushed her against me. Her feet trampled the daffodils. Her mouth closed over mine. Her body held me close from breast to knee, too long and not long enough.

  “Thank you for killing him, Archer.” Her voice was anguished and soft, the kind of voice a wound would have if it could speak.

  I took her by the shoulders and held her off. “You’re wrong. I didn’t kill him.”

  “You said he was dead, that he tried to murder you.”

  “Albert Graves shot him.”

  “Albert?” Her giggle passed back and forth like a quick spark between laughter and hysteria. “Albert did that?”

  “He’s a dead shot—we used to do a lot of target-shooting together,” I said. “If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here with you now.”

  “Do you like being here with me now?”

  “It makes me a little sick. You’re trying to swallow these things without going to pieces, and you can’t get them down.”

  Her glance traveled down my body, and she grinned as much like a monkey as a pretty girl could. “Did it make you sick when I kissed you?”

  “You could tell it didn’t. But it’s confusing to be in a room with five or six competing personalities.”

  “Sick-making, you mean,” she said with her monkey grin.

  “You’ll be the sick one if you don’t settle down. Find out what you feel about this business, and have a good cry, or you’ll end up schizo.”

  “I always was a schizoid type,” she said. “But why should I cry, Herr Doktor?”

  “To see if you can.”

  “You don’t take me seriously, do you, Archer?”

  “I can’t afford to put my hand in a cleft tree.”

  “My God,” she said. “I’m sick-making, I’m schizo, I’m split wood. What do you really think of me?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’d have a better idea if you’ll tell me where you went last night.”

  “Last night? Nowhere.”

  “I understand you did a lot of driving in the red Packard convertible last night.”

  “I did, but I didn’t go anywhere. I was just driving. I wanted to be by myself to make up my mind.”

  “About what?”

  “About what I’m going to do. Do you know what I’m going to do, Archer?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “I want to see Albert,” she said. “Where is he?”

  “In the bathhouse, where it happened. Taggert’s there, too.”

  “Take me to Albert.”

  We found him on the screened veranda sitting over the dead man. The sheriff and the District Attorney were looking at Taggert’s face, which was still uncovered, and listening to Graves’s story. All three stood up for Miranda.

  She had to step over Taggert in order to reach Albert Graves. She did this without a downward glance at the uncovered face. She took one of Graves’s hands between hers and raised it to her lips. It was his right hand she kissed, the one that had fired the gun.

  “I’ll marry you now,” she said.

  Whether Graves knew it or not, he’d had his reason for shooting Alan Taggert through the head.

  chapter 26 For half a minute nobody spoke. The lovers stood together above the body. The others stood and watched them.

  “We’d better get out of here, Miranda,” Graves said finally. He glanced at the District Attorney. “If you’ll excuse us? Mrs. Sampson will have to be told about this.”

  “Go ahead, Bert,” Humphreys said.

  While a man from his office took notes, and another photographed the body on the floor, Humphreys questioned me. His questions covered the ground quickly and thoroughly. I told him who Taggert was, how he died, and why he had to die. Sheriff Spanner listened restlessly, biting a cigar to shreds.

  “There will have to be an inquest,” Humphreys said. “You and Bert are in the clear, of course. Taggert had a deadly weapon in his hand and was obviously intending to use it. Unfortunately this shooting leaves us worse off than before. We have practically no leads.”

  “You’re forgetting Betty Fraley.”

  “I’m not forgetting her. But we haven’t caught her, and even if we do, we can’t be certain that she knows where Sampson is. The problem hasn’t changed, and we’re no nearer to its solution than we were yesterday. The problem is to find Sampson.”

  “And the hundred thousand dollars,” Spanner said.

  Humphreys looked up impatiently. “The money is secondary, I think.”

  “Secondary, yes, but a hundred thousand in cash is always important.” He tugged at his elastic lower lip. His gray eyes shifted to me. “If you’re finished with Archer here, I want to have a talk with him.”

  “Take him,” Humphreys said coldly. “I’ve got to get back to town.” He took the body with him.

  When we were alone the sheriff got up heavily and stood over me.

  “Well?” I said. “What’s the trouble, Sheriff?”

  “Maybe you can tell me.” He folded his thick arms across his chest.

  “I’ve told you what I know.”

  “Maybe so. You didn’t tell me everything you should of last night. I heard from your friend Colton this morning. He told me about the limousine this Lassiter was driving: it came from a car-rental in Pasadena, and you knew it.” He raised his voice suddenly, as if he hoped to startle me into a confession. “You didn’t tell me you saw it before, when the ransom note was delivered.”

  “I saw one like it. I didn’t know it was the same car.”

  “But you guessed it was. You told Colton it was. You gave the information to an officer that couldn’t use it because he’s got no jurisdiction in this county. But you didn’t tell me, did you? If you had, we could have taken him. We could have stopped the shooting and saved the money—”


  “But not Sampson,” I said.

  “You’re not the judge of that.” His face was bursting at the seams with angry blood. “You took things in your own hands and interfered with my duty. You withheld information. Right after Lassiter got shot, you disappeared. You were the only witness, and you disappeared. A hundred thousand dollars disappeared at the same time.”

  “I don’t like the implication.” I stood up. He was a big man, and our eyes were level.

  “You don’t like it. How do you think I like it? I’m not saying you took the money—that remains to be seen. I’m not saying you shot Lassiter. I’m saying you could have. I want your gun, and I want to know what you were doing when my deputy caught up with you down south. And I want to know what you were doing after that.”

  “I was looking for Sampson.”

  “You were looking for Sampson,” he said, with heavy irony. “You expect me to take your word for that.”

  “You don’t have to take my word. I’m not working for you.”

  He leaned toward me with his hands on his hips. “If I wanted to be ugly, I could put you away this minute.”

  My patience broke. “Don’t look now,” I said, “but you are ugly.”

  “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

  “A sheriff. A sheriff with a tough case on his hands, and no ideas. So you’re looking for a goat.”

  The blood went out of his face, leaving it haggard with rage. “They’ll hear about this in Sacramento,” he stuttered. “When your license comes up—”

  “I’ve heard that one before. I’m still in business, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve got a clean record, and I don’t push people around until they start to push me.”

  “So you’re threatening me!” His right hand fumbled for the holster on his hip. “You’re under arrest, Archer.”

  I sat down and crossed my legs. “Take it easy, Sheriff. Sit down and relax. We’ve got some things to talk over.”

  “I’ll talk to you at the courthouse.”

  “No,” I said. “Here. Unless you want to take me to the immigrant inspector.”

  “What’s he got to do with it?” He wrinkled up his eyelids in an effort to look shrewd, and succeeded in looking puzzled. “You’re not an alien?”

  “I’m a native son,” I said. “Is there an immigrant inspector in town?”

  “Not in Santa Teresa. The nearest ones are at the federal office in Ventura. Why?”

  “Do you do much work with them?”

  “A fair amount. When I pick up an illegal alien I turn him over. You trying to kid me, Archer?”

  “Sit down,” I said again. “I didn’t find what I was looking for last night, but I found something else. It should make you and the inspectors very happy. I’m offering it to you as a free gift, no strings.”

  He lowered his haunches into the canvas chair. His anger had passed off suddenly, and curiosity had taken its place. “What is it? It better be good.”

  I told him about the closed blue truck, the brown men at the Temple, Troy and Eddie and Claude. “Troy is the head of the gang, I’m pretty sure. The others work for him. They’ve been running an underground railway on a regular schedule between the Mexican border and the Bakersfield area. The southern end is probably at Calexico.”

  “Yeah,” Spanner said. “That’s an easy place to cross the border. I took a trip down there with the border guard a couple of months ago. All they got to do is crawl through a wire fence from one road to the other.”

  “And Troy’s truck would be waiting to pick them up. They used the Temple in the Clouds as a receiving station for illegal immigrants. God knows how many have passed through there. There were twelve or more last night.”

  “Are they still there?”

  “They’re in Bakersfield by now, but they shouldn’t be hard to round up. If you get hold of Claude I’m pretty sure he’ll talk.”

  “Jesus!” Spanner said. “If they brought over twelve a night, that’s three hundred and sixty a month. Do you know how much they pay to get smuggled in?”

  “No.”

  “A hundred bucks apiece. This Troy has been making big money.”

  “Dirty money,” I said. “Trucking in a bunch of poor Indians, taking their savings away, and turning them loose to be migrant laborers.”

  He looked at me a little queerly. “They’re breaking the law, too, don’t forget. We don’t prosecute, though, unless they got criminal records. We just ship them back to the border and let them go. But Troy and his gang are another matter. What they been doing is good for thirty years.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “You don’t know where he hangs out in Los Angeles?”

  “He runs a place called the Wild Piano, but he won’t be showing there. I’ve told you what I know.” With two exceptions: the man I had killed, and the blond woman who would still be waiting for Eddie.

  “You seem to be on the level,” the sheriff said slowly. “You can forget what I said about arrest. But if this turns out to be a song-and-dance you gave me, I’ll remember it again.”

  I hadn’t expected to be thanked, and I wasn’t disappointed.

  chapter 27 I parked in the lane under the eucalyptus trees. The marks of the truck tires were still visible in the dust. Further down the lane a green A-model sedan, acned with rust, was backed against a fence post. On the registration card strapped to the steering gear I read the name, “Mrs. Marcella Finch.”

  The moonlight had been kind to the white cottage. It was ugly and mean and dilapidated in the noon sun, a dingy blot against the blue field of the sea. Nothing in sight lived or moved, except the sea itself and a few weak puffs of wind in the withered grass on the hillside. I felt for my gun butt. The dry dust muffled my footsteps.

  The door creaked partly open when I knocked.

  A woman’s voice said dully: “Who’s that?”

  I stood aside and waited, in case she had a gun. She raised her voice. “Is somebody there?”

  “Eddie,” I whispered. Eddie had no further use for his name, but it was a hard thing to say.

  “Eddie?” A hushed and wondering word.

  I waited. Her sibilant feet crossed the floor. Before I could see her face in the dim interior, her right hand grasped the edge of the door. Under the peeling scarlet polish, her fingernails were dirty. I took hold of her hand.

  “Eddie!” The face that looked around the door was blind with the sun and a desperate hopefulness. Then she blinked and saw I wasn’t Eddie.

  She had aged rapidly in twelve hours. She was puffed around the eyes, drawn at the mouth, drooping at the chin. Waiting for Eddie had drained away her life. A kind of galvanic fury took its place.

  Her nails bit into my hand like parrot’s claws. She squawked like a parrot: “Dirty liar!”

  The name hit me hard, but not as hard as a bullet. I caught her other wrist and forced her back into the house, slamming the door with my heel. She tried to knee me, then to bite my neck. I pushed her down on the bed.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Marcie.”

  From a round open mouth she screamed up into my face. The scream broke down in dry hiccuping. She flung herself sideways, burrowing under the covers. Her body moved in a rhythmic orgasm of grief. I stood above her and listened to the dry hiccuping.

  Filtered through dirty windows, reflected from rain-stained walls and shabby furniture, the light in the room was gray. On top of an old battery radio beside the bed there were a handful of matches and a pack of cigarettes. She sat up after a while and lit a brown cigarette, dragging deep. Her bathrobe gaped open as if her slack breasts didn’t matter any more.

  The voice that came out with the smoke was contemptuous and flat. “I should stage a crying jag to give a copper his kicks.”

  “I’m no copper.”

  “You know my name. I been waiting all morning to hear from the law” She looked at me with cold interest. “How low can you bastards get? You blow Eddie down when he ain’t even heeled. Th
en you come and tell me you’re Eddie at the door. For a minute you make me think the newscast was wrong or you bastards was bluffing again. Can you get any lower than that?”

  “Not much,” I said. “I thought you might answer the door with a gun.”

  “I got no gun. I never carried a gun, nor Eddie neither. You wouldn’t be walking around if Eddie was heeled last night. Jumping for joy on his grave.” The flat voice broke again. “Maybe I’ll waltz on yours, copper.”

  “Be quiet for a minute. Listen to me.”

  “Gladly, gladly.” The voice recaptured its tinny quality. “You’ll be doing all the talking from now on. You can lock me up and throw away the key. You won’t get nothing out of me.”

  “Douse the muggles, Marcie. I want you to talk some sense.”

  She laughed and blew smoke in my face. I took the half-burned cigarette from her fingers and ground it under my heel. The scarlet claws reached for my face. I stepped back, and she lapsed onto the bed.

  “You must have been in on it, Marcie. You knew what Eddie was doing?”

  “I deny everything. He had a job driving a truck. He trucked beans from the Imperial Valley.” She stood up suddenly and threw off her bathrobe. “Take me down to headquarters and get it over. I’ll deny everything formal.”

  “I don’t belong to headquarters.”

  When she raised her arms to pull a dress over her head, her body drew itself up, the breasts erect, the belly taut and white. The hair on her body was black.

  “Like it?” she said. She pulled the dress down with a vicious gesture and fumbled with the buttons at the neck. Her streaked blond hair was down around her face.

  “Sit down,” I said. “We’re not going anywhere. I came here to tell you a thing.”

  “Aren’t you a copper?”

  “You repeat yourself like Puddler. Listen to me. I want Sampson. I’m a private cop hired to find him. He’s all I want—do you understand? If you can give him to me, I’ll keep you in the clear.”

  “You’re a dirty liar,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust a cop, private or any other kind. Anyway, I don’t know where Sampson is.”

  I looked hard into her bird-brown eyes. They were shallow and meaningless. I couldn’t tell from them if she was lying.