The Moving Target

by Ross Macdonald

  “You don’t know where Sampson is—”

  “I said I didn’t.”

  “But you know who does.”

  She sat down on the bed. “I don’t know a damn thing. I told you that.”

  “Eddie didn’t do it by himself. He must have had a partner.”

  “He did it by himself. If he didn’t—would you take me for a squealer? Do I go to work for the cops after what they done to Eddie?”

  I sat down in the barrel chair dnd lit a cigarette. “I’ll tell you a funny thing. I was there when Eddie was shot. There wasn’t a cop within two miles, unless you count me.”

  “You killed him?” she said thinly.

  “I did not. He stopped on a side road to pass the money to another car. It was a cream-colored convertible. It had a woman in it. She shot him. Where would that woman be now?”

  Her eyes were glistening like wet brown pebbles. The red tip of her tongue moved across her upper lip and shifted to her lower lip. “Ever since she was on the white stuff,” she said to herself. “They allus hate us vipers.”

  “Are you going to sit and take it, Marcie? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Betty Fraley,” I said.

  After a long silence she repeated: “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  I left her sitting on the bed and drove back to the Corner. I parked in the parking lot and lowered the sun screen over the windshield. She knew my face but not my car.

  For half an hour the road from White Beach was empty. Then a cloud of dust appeared in the distance, towed by a green A-model sedan. Before the car turned south toward Los Angeles I caught a glimpse of a highly painted face, a swirl of gray fur, an aggressively tilted hat with a bright-blue feather. Clothes and cosmetics and half an hour alone had done a lot for Marcie.

  Two or three other cars went by before I turned into the highway. The A model’s top speed was under fifty, and it was easy to keep in sight. Driving slow on a hot day, down a highway I knew too well, the only trouble I had was staying awake. I narrowed the distance between us as we approached Los Angeles and the traffic increased.

  The A model left the highway at Sunset Boulevard and went through Pacific Palisades without a pause. It labored and trailed dark-blue oil smoke on the hills below the Santa Monica Mountains. On the edge of Beverly Hills it left the boulevard suddenly and disappeared.

  I followed it up a winding road lined on both sides with hedges. The A model was parked behind a laurel hedge in the entrance to a gravel drive. In the instant of passing I saw Marcie crossing the lawn toward a deep brick porch screened with oleanders. She seemed to be thrust forward and hustled along by a deadly energy.

  chapter 28 I turned at the next drive and parked on the shoulder of the road, waiting for a signal to break the suburban peace. The seconds piled up precariously like a tower of poker chips.

  I had the car door open and one foot in the road when the Ford engine coughed. I drew in my leg and crouched down behind the wheel. The Ford engine roared and went into gear, then died away. A deeper sound took its place, and the black Buick backed out of the drive. A man I didn’t know was at the wheel. The eyes in his fleshy face were like raisins stuck in unbaked dough. Marcie was beside him in the front seat. Gray hearselike curtains were drawn over the rear windows.

  At the boulevard the Buick turned back toward the sea. I followed as closely as I dared. Between Brentwood and Pacific Palisades it went off to the right, up a climbing road that led into a canyon. I had the feeling that there wasn’t much mileage left in the Sampson case. We were coming into a narrow place for the end.

  The road was cut in the western wall of the canyon. Below its unfenced edge was a tangle of underbrush. Above the road to my left a scattering of houses stood in roughly cleared patches. The houses were new and raw-looking. The opposite slope was scrub-oak wilderness.

  From the top of a rise I caught a glimpse of the Buick climbing over the crest of the next hill. I accelerated on the downhill grade, crossed a narrow stone bridge that spanned a dry barranca, and climbed the hill after it. It was moving slowly down the other side, like a heavy black beetle feeling its way in unfamiliar territory. A rutted lane branched off to the right. The beetle paused and followed it.

  I parked behind a tree, which half hid my car from below, and watched the Buick diminish down the lane. When it was no larger than an actual beetle, it stopped in front of a yellow matchbox house. A matchstick woman with a black head came out of the house. Two men and two women got out of the car and surrounded her. All five went into the house like a single insect body with many legs.

  I left my car and climbed down through the underbrush to the dry river bed at the bottom of the canyon. It wound among boulders from which small lizards scampered as I came near. The gnarled trees along the bank hid me from the yellow house until I was directly behind it. It was an unpainted wooden shack with its rear end resting on short fieldstone columns.

  Inside it a woman screamed, very loudly, again and again. The screams raked at my nerves, but I was grateful for them. They covered the noises I made climbing the bank and crawling under the house. The screaming died away after a while. I lay flat and listened to scrabbling movements on the floor above me. The silence under the house seemed to be crouched and waiting for another scream. I smelled new pine, damp earth, my own sour sweat.

  A soft voice began to talk over my head. “You don’t quite understand the circumstances. You seem to feel that our motive is pure sadism or simple revenge. Certainly if we were inclined to harbor vengeful motives, we might feel that your conduct had justified them.”

  “Tie a can to it, for Christ’s sake!” said Mrs. Estabrook’s voice. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “I’ll make my point if you don’t mind. My point is, Betty, that you’ve acted very badly. Without consulting me, you went into business for yourself, a thing I seldom approve in my employees. To make matters worse, you made an incautious choice of enterprise and failed in it. The police are looking for you now, and for me and Fay and Luis as well. Furthermore, you chose a valuable associate of mine as the victim of your wretched little plot. And to cap the climax you showed yourself devoid, not only of esprit de corps, but of sisterly affection. You shot and killed your brother Eddie Lassiter.”

  “We know you swallowed the dictionary,” Fay Estabrook said. “Get on with it, Troy.”

  “I didn’t kill him.” The whine of a hurt cat.

  “You’re a liar,” yapped Marcie.

  Troy raised his voice. “Be quiet, all of you. We’re going to let bygones be bygones, Betty—”

  “I’m going to kill her if you don’t,” Marcie said.

  “Nonsense, Marcie. You’ll do exactly as I say. We have a chance to recoup, and we won’t allow our more primitive passions to destroy it. Which brings us to the occasion of this pleasant little party, doesn’t it, Betty? I don’t know where the money is, but of course I am going to. And when I do, you’ll have bought your absolution, so to speak.”

  “She ain’t fit to live,” Marcie said. “I swear I’ll kill her if you don’t.”

  Fay laughed contemptuously. “You haven’t got the guts, dearie. You wouldn’t have called us in if you had the guts to tackle her yourself.”

  “Hold your tongue, both of you.” Troy lowered his voice to a gentle monotone again. “You know I can handle Marcie, don’t you, Betty? I think you know by now I can handle even you. You might just as well come clean, I think. Otherwise you’ll suffer rather terribly. You may never walk again, in fact. I think I can promise you that you never shall.”

  “I’m not talking,” she said.

  “But if you decide to co-operate,” Troy went on smoothly, “to put the welfare of the group ahead of your selfish interest, I’m sure the group will be glad to help you in turn. We’ll take you out of the country tonight, in fact. You know that Luis and I can do that for you.”

  “You wouldn’t
do it,” she said. “I know you, Troy.”

  “More intimately by the moment, dear. Take off her other shoe, Luis.”

  Her body squirmed on the floor. I could hear its breathing. A dropped shoe rapped the floorboards. I calculated my chances of ending it there. But there were four of them, too many for one gun. And Betty Fraley had to come out alive.

  Troy said: “We’ll test the plantar reflex, I think it’s called.”

  “I don’t like this,” Fay said.

  “Neither do I, my dear. I quite abhor it. But Betty is being most dreadfully obdurate.”

  A moment of silence stretched out like membrane on the point of tearing. The screaming began again. When it ended I found that I had closed my teeth in the earth.

  “Your plantar reaction is very fine,” Troy said. “It’s a pity that your tongue doesn’t work so well.”

  “Will you let me go if I give it to you?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Your word!” She sighed horribly.

  “I do wish you’d take it, Betty. I don’t enjoy hurting you, and you can’t possibly enjoy being hurt.”

  “Let me up, then. Let me sit up.”

  “Of course, my dear.”

  “It’s in a locker in the bus station in Buenavista. The key is in my bag.”

  As soon as I was out of sight of the house I began to run. When I reached my car the Buick was still standing at the end of the lane below me. I backed down the hill to the stone bridge and halfway up the grade on the other side. I waited for the Buick with one foot on the clutch and the other on the brake.

  After a long while I heard its motor whining up the other side of the hill. I went into gear and moved ahead in low. Its chromium flashed in the sun at the top of the hill. I held the middle of the road and met it on the bridge. Brakes screeched above the bellow of the horn. The big car came to a stop five feet from my bumper. I was out of my seat before it stopped rolling.

  The man called Luis glared at me over the wheel, his fat face twisted and shiny with anger. I opened the door on his side and showed him my gun. Beside him Fay Estabrook cried out in fury.

  “Out!” I said.

  Luis put one foot down and reached for me. I moved back. “Be careful. Hands on your head.”

  He raised his hands and stepped into the road. An emerald ring flashed green on one of his fingers. His wide hips swayed under his cream gabardine suit.

  “You too, Fay. This side.”

  She came out, teetering on her high heels.

  “Now turn around.”

  They rotated cautiously, watching me over their shoulders. I clubbed the gun and swung it to the base of Luis’s skull. He went down on his knees and collapsed softly on his face. Fay cowered away with her arms protecting her head. Her hat slipped forward dowdily over one eye. On the road her long shadow mocked her movements.

  “Put him in the back seat,” I said.

  “You dirty little sneak!” she said. Then she said other things. The rouge stood out on her cheekbones.

  “Hurry.”

  “I can’t lift him.”

  “You have to.” I took a step toward her.

  She stooped awkwardly over the fallen man. He was inert, and heavy. With her hands in his armpits she raised the upper part of his body and dragged him to the car. I opened the door, and together we slung him into the back seat.

  She stood up gasping for breath, the colors running in her face. The rustic stillness of the sun-filled canyon made a queer setting for what we were doing. I could see the two of us as if from a height, tiny foreshortened figures alone in the sun, with blood and money on our minds.

  “Now give me the key.”

  “The key?” She overdid her puzzled frown, making her face a caricature. “What key?”

  “The key to the locker, Fay. Hurry.”

  “I haven’t got any key.” But her gaze had flickered almost imperceptibly toward the front seat of the Buick.

  There was a black suede purse on the seat. The key was in it. I transferred it to my wallet.

  “Get in,” I said. “No, on the driver’s side. You’re going to do the driving.”

  She did as I said, and I got in behind her. Luis was slumped in the far corner of the back seat. His eyes were partly open, but the pupils were turned up out of sight. His face looked more than ever like dough.

  “I can’t get past your car,” Fay said petulantly.

  “You’re backing up the hill.”

  She went into reverse gear with a jerk.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “If we have an accident you won’t survive it.”

  She cursed me, but she also slowed down. She backed cautiously up the hill and down the other side. At the entrance to the lane I told her to turn and drive down to the cottage.

  “Slow and careful, Fay. No leaning on the horn. You wouldn’t be any good without a spinal column, and Geminis have no heart.”

  I touched the back of her neck with the muzzle of my gun. She winced, and the car leaped forward. I rested my weight on Luis and lowered the rear window on the right side. The lane opened out in a small level clearing in front of the cottage.

  “Turn left,” I said, “and stop in front of the door. Then set the emergency.”

  The door of the cottage began to open inward. I ducked my head. When I raised it again, Troy was in the doorway, with his right hand, knuckles out, resting on the edge of the frame. I sighted and fired. At twenty feet I could see the mark the bullet made, like a fat red insect alighting, between the first and second knuckles of his right hand.

  Before his left hand could move across his body for his gun he was immobile for an instant. Long enough for me to reach him and use the gun butt again. He sat down on the doorstep, with his silver head hanging between his knees.

  The motor of the Buick roared behind me. I went after Fay, caught the car before she could turn it, and pulled her out by the shoulders. She tried to spit at me and slobbered on her chin.

  “We’ll go inside,” I said. “You first.”

  She walked almost drunkenly, stumbling on her heels. Troy had rolled out of the doorway and was curled on the shallow porch, perfectly still. We stepped over him.

  The odor of burned flesh was still in the room. Betty Fraley was on the floor with Marcie at her throat, worrying her like a terrier. I pulled Marcie off. She hissed at me and drummed her heels on the floor, but she didn’t try to get up. I motioned to Fay with the gun to stand in the corner beside her.

  Betty Fraley sat up, the breath whistling in her throat. Across one side of her face, from hairline to jawbone, four parallel scratches dripped blood. The other side of her face was yellowish white.

  “You’re a pretty picture,” I said.

  “Who are you?” Her voice was a flat caw. Her eyes were fixed.

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get out of here before I have to kill these people.”

  “That would be pleasant work,” she said. She tried to stand up and fell forward on hands and knees. “I can’t walk.”

  I lifted her. Her body was light and hard as a dry stick. Her head hung loosely across my arm. I had the feeling that I was holding an evil child. Marcie and Fay were watching me from the corner. It seemed to me then that evil was a female quality, a poison that women secreted and transmitted to men like disease.

  I carried Betty out to the car and sat her down in the front seat. I opened the back door, laid Luis out on the ground. There were suds on his thick blue lips, blown in and out by his shallow breathing.

  “Thank you,” her tiny caw said, as I climbed behind the wheel. “You saved my life, if that’s worth anything.”

  “It isn’t worth much, but you’re going to pay me for it. The price is a hundred thousand—and Ralph Sampson.”

  chapter 29 I parked the Buick in the road at the entrance to the bridge and kept the ignition key. As I lifted Betty Fraley out of the seat her right arm slipped around my shoulders. I could feel her small fingers on the nape of my neck.


  “You’re very strong,” she said. “You’re Archer, aren’t you?” She looked up at me with a sly and feline innocence. She didn’t know about the blood on her face.

  “It’s time you remembered me. Take your hand off me, or I’ll drop you.”

  She lowered her eyelids. When I started to back my car she cried out suddenly:

  “What about them?”

  “We don’t have room for them.”

  “You’re going to let them go?”

  “What do you want me to hold them for? Mayhem?” I found a wide place in the road and turned the car toward Sunset Boulevard.

  Her fingers pinched my arm. “We’ve got to go back.”

  “I told you to keep your hands off me. I don’t like what you did to Eddie any more than they do.”

  “But they’ve got something of mine!”

  “No,” I said. “I have it, and it isn’t yours any more.”

  “The key?”

  “The key.”

  She slumped down in the seat as if her spine had melted. “You can’t let them go,” she said sullenly. “After what they did to me. You let Troy run loose, and he’ll get you for today.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Forget about them and start worrying about yourself.”

  “I haven’t got a future to worry about. Have I?”

  “I want to see Sampson first. Then I’ll decide.”

  “I’ll take you to him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Not very far from home. He’s in a place on the beach about forty miles from Santa Teresa.”

  “This is straight?”

  “The straight stuff, Archer. But you won’t let me go. You won’t take money, will you?”

  “Not from you.”

  “Why should you?” she said nastily. “You’ve got my hundred grand.”

  “I’m working for the Sampsons. They’ll get it back.”

  “They don’t need the money. Why don’t you get smart, Archer? There’s another person in this with me. This other person had nothing to do with Eddie. Why don’t you keep the money and split it with this other person?”

  “Who is he?”

  “I didn’t say it was a man.” Her voice had recovered from the pressure of Marcie’s fingers, and she modulated it girlishly.