Black Money

by Ross Macdonald

  “I want to see what you wrote about me.” He took a miniature camera out of his pocket and rapped on the window with it, foolishly and frantically. “What did you write about me?”

  It was the kind of situation I liked to avoid, or terminate quickly. As the century wore on—I could feel it wearing on-angry pointless encounters like this one tended more and more to erupt in violence. I got out on the right-hand side and walked around the front of the car toward him.

  As long as I was in my car, he had been yelling at a machine, a Cadillac yelling at a Ford. Now we were both men, and he was shorter and narrower than I was. He stopped yelling. His whole personality changed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if to disclaim the evil spirit that had invaded him and made him yell at me. Self-doubt pulled at his face like a surgically hidden scar.

  “I didn’t do anything out of line, did I? You got no call to write down my license number.”

  “That remains to be seen,” I said in a semi-official tone. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sightseeing. I’m a tourist.” His pale eyes glanced around at the sparsely inhabited hills as if he had never been out in the country before. “This is a public road, isn’t it?”

  “We’ve had a report of a man who was representing himself as a law officer last night.”

  His glance lighted briefly on my face, then jumped away. “It couldn’t be me. I never been here before in my life.”

  “Let’s see your driver’s license.”

  “Listen,” he said, “we can get together on this. I don’t have much with me but I got other resources.” He drew a lonely ten from a worn calfskin billfold and tucked it in the breast pocket of my jacket. “Here. Buy something for the kids. And call me Harry.”

  He smiled with conscious charm. But the charm he was conscious of, if it had ever existed, had dried up and blown away. His front teeth glared at me like a pair of chisels. I removed the ten from my pocket, tore it in half, and gave him back the pieces.

  His face fell apart. “That’s a ten-dollar bill. You must be a kook to tear up money like that.”

  “You can put it together with Scotch tape. Now let me see your license before you commit another felony.”

  “Felony?” He said it the way a sick man pronounces the name of his disease.

  “Bribery and impersonating an officer are felonies, Harry.”

  He looked around at the daylight as if it had betrayed him, again. A little pale moon hung in a corner of the sky, faint as a thumbprint on a windowpane.

  A fiercer light flashed down the canyon above us and almost dazzled me. It seemed to come from the head of a man who was standing with a girl on the terrace of the Bagshaw house. For a second I had the impression that he had great round eyes and that they had emitted the flashing light. Then I realized he was watching us through binoculars.

  The man and the girl with him were as small as figures on a wedding cake. Their height and distance from me gave me a queer feeling, as if they were somehow unattainable, out of reach, out of time.

  Harry Felony scrambled into his car and tried to start the engine. It turned over slowly like a dead man turning over in his grave. I had time to open the far door and get in on the gnawed leather seat.

  “Where are we going, Harry?”

  “Nowhere.” He turned off the ignition and dropped his hands. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  “Because you stopped a young man on this road last night and said you were a detective and asked him a lot of questions.”

  He was silent while his malleable face went through new adjustments. “I am a detective, in a way.”

  “Where’s your badge?”

  He reached into his pocket for something, probably a dime-store badge, then changed his mind. “I don’t have one,” he admitted. “I’m just a kind of amateur dick, you might say, looking into something for a friend. She”—he swallowed the pronoun—“they didn’t say anything about this kind of trouble.”

  “Maybe we can make a deal after all. Let me see your driver’s license.”

  He got out his worn billfold and handed me a photostat.

  HARRY HENDRICKS

  10750 Vanowen, Apt. 12

  Canoga Park, Calif

  SEX M COLOR HAIR brn COLOR EYES blu HEIGHT 5’9” WEIGHT 165 MARRIED no DATE OF BIRTH Apr 12 1928 AGE 38

  From the lower left-hand corner a photograph of Harry grinned at me. I took down the address and the number of the license in my notebook.

  “What do you want all that stuff for?” he said in a worried voice.

  “So I can keep track of you. What do you do for a living, Harry?”

  “Sell cars.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Used cars, on commission,” he said bitterly. “I used to be an insurance adjuster but the little fellows can’t compete with the big boys anymore. I’ve done a lot of things in my time. Name it and I done it.”

  “Ever do time?”

  He gave me a hurt look. “Of course not. You said something about a deal.”

  “I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

  “Hell, you can trust me. I’ve got connections.”

  “In the used car business?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said.

  “And what do your connections want you to do to Martel?”

  “Nothing to him. I’m just supposed to case the joint and find out who he is if I can.”

  “Who is he?”

  Harry spread his hands on top of the steering wheel. “I only been in town less than twenty-four hours, and the local yokels don’t know a thing about him.” He peered at me sideways. “If you’re a cop like you say—”

  “I didn’t say. I’m a private detective. This area is strictly patrolled.” The two facts were true, but unrelated.

  Harry related them. “Then you should be able to get the information. There’s money in it, we could split it two ways.”

  “How much?”

  “A hundred I could promise you.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out. Where are you staying in town?”

  “The Breakwater Hotel. That’s on the waterfront.”

  “And who is the woman who put you up to this?”

  “Nobody said anything about a woman.”

  “You said ‘she.’ ”

  “I must have been thinking of my wife. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “I can’t believe that. Your drivers license says you aren’t married.”

  “I am married, though.” The point seemed important to him, as if I’d denied him membership in the human race. “That’s a mistake on the license. I forgot I was married that day, I mean—”

  His explanation was interrupted by the smooth mutter of a car coming down the winding driveway above us. It was Martel’s black Bentley. The man behind the wheel wore rectangular dark glasses which covered the upper part of his face like a mask.

  The girl beside him had on dark glasses, too. They almost made her look like any Hollywood blonde.

  Harry got out his miniature camera, which was hardly bigger than a cigarette lighter. He ran across the road and planted himself in the entrance to the driveway, holding the camera concealed in his right hand.

  The driver of the Bentley got out facing him. He was compact and muscular, dressed in English-looking sports clothes, tweeds and brogues, which didn’t go with his own swarthy sleekness. He said in a controlled, faintly accented voice: “Can I help you in any way?”

  “Yeah. Watch the birdie.” Harry raised the camera and took his picture. “Thanks, Mr. Martel.”

  “You are not welcome.” Martel’s fleshy mouth became ugly. “Give me that camera please.”

  “Nuts. It’s worth a hundred and fifty bucks.”

  “It’s worth two hundred to me,” Martel said, “with the film in it. I have a passion for privacy, you see.” He pronounced the word passion with a long nasal ‘o,’ like a Frenchman. But he was dark for a Frenchman.
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br />   I looked at the blonde girl in the car. Though I couldn’t see her eyes, she seemed to be looking back across the road at me. The lower part of her face was immobile, as if she was afraid to react to the situation. It had the dead beauty of marble.

  Harry was calculating in his head, almost audibly. “You can have it for three hundred.”

  “Trés bien, three hundred. That should include a—what is the word?—receipt, with your signature and address.”

  “Uh—uh.” I had a quick impression of Harry’s whole life: he didn’t know how to stop when he was winning.

  The girl leaned out of the open door of the Bentley. “Don’t let him hold you up, Francis.”

  “I have no intention of that.”

  Martel moved suddenly on Harry and plucked the camera out of his hand. He stepped back, dropped it on the asphalt, and ground it under his heel.

  Harry was appalled. “You can’t do that!”

  “But I have. It’s a fait accompli.”

  “I want my money.”

  “No money. Pas d’argent. Rien du tout.”

  Martel got into the black car and slammed the door. Harry followed him yelling:

  “You can’t do that to me! That camera doesn’t belong to me! You’ve got to pay for it.”

  “Pay him, Francis,” the girl said.

  “No. He had his chance.” Martel made another sudden movement. His fist appeared at the window, with the small round eye of a gun peering over his index finger. “Listen to me my friend. I do not like to be bothered by canaille. If you come this way again or trespass on my privacy in any way, I will kill you.” He clicked his tongue.

  Harry backed away from him. He backed to the edge of the driveway, lost his footing, and almost fell. Unimpeded by false shame, he came up like a sprinter and ran for the Cadillac. He got in wheezing and sweating.

  “He almost shot me. You’re a witness to that.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t.”

  “Arrest him. Go ahead. He can’t get away with that. He’s nothing but a cheap crook. That French act he puts on is as queer as a three-dollar bill.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Not right now. But I’m gonna get that dago. He can’t get away with smashing my camera. It’s a valuable camera, and it wasn’t mine, either.” His voice was aggrieved: the world had let him down for the thousandth time. “You wouldn’t just sit there if you were a security cop like you say.”

  The Bentley rolled out of the driveway into the road. One wheel passed over the broken camera and flattened it. Martel drove away sedately toward town.

  “I’ve got to think of something,” Harry said more or less to himself.

  He took off his hat as if it limited the sweep and scope of his mind, and held it on his knees like a begging bowl. The printing on the silk lining said that it came from The Haberdashery in Las Vegas. The gold printing on the leather sweatband said L. Spillman. Harry stole his hat, I thought. Or else he was carrying a false driver’s license.

  He turned to me as if he had heard my unspoken accusation. With carefully rationed hostility, he said: “You don’t have to feel you have to stick around. You’ve been no help.”

  I said I would see him later at the hotel. The prospect didn’t seem to excite him much.

  chapter 3

  LAUREL DRIVE ran deep between hedges like an English lane. An immense green barricade of pitto-sporum hid Mrs. Fablon’s garden from the road. On the far side of the garden a woman who at a distance looked like Ginny’s sister was sitting with a man at an umbrella table, eating lunch.

  The man had a long jaw which hardened when I appeared in the driveway. He stood up wiping his mouth with a napkin. He was tall and erect, and his face was handsome in a bony pugnacious way.

  “I’ll be shoving off,” I heard him say under his breath.

  “Don’t hurry away. I’m not expecting anyone.”

  “Neither was I,” he said shortly.

  He flung his napkin down on top of his half-eaten salmon mayonnaise. Without speaking again, or looking at me, he walked to a Mercedes parked under an oak, got in, and drove out the other side of the semi-circular driveway. He acted like a man who was anxious for an excuse to get away.

  Mrs. Fablon stayed at the table, looking quite composed. “Who on earth are you?”

  “My name is Archer. I’m a private detective.”

  “Does Dr. Sylvester know you?”

  “If he does, I don’t know him. Why?”

  “He rushed off in such a hurry when he saw you.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “You needn’t be. The luncheon was no great success. Don’t tell me Audrey Sylvester is having him followed.”

  “Possibly. Not by me. Should she have?”

  “Certainly not to my doorstep. George Sylvester has been my family doctor for ten years, and the relationship between us is about as highly seasoned as a tongue-depressor.” She smiled at her own elaborate wit. “Do you follow people, Mr. Archer?”

  I looked at her eyes to see if she was kidding. If she was, they didn’t show it. They were pale blue, with a kind of pastel imperviousness. I was interested in her eyes, because I hadn’t seen her daughter’s.

  They were innocent eyes, not youthful but innocent, as if they perceived only pre-selected facts. Such eyes went with the carefully dyed blonde hair whipped like cream on her pretty skull, with the impossibly good figure under her too-youthful dress, and with the guileless way she let me look at her. But under her serenity she was tense.

  “I must be wanted for something,” she said with a half-smile. “Am I wanted for something?”

  I didn’t reply. I was trying to think of a tactful way to broach the subject of Ginny and Martel.

  “I keep asking you questions,” she said, “and you don’t say anything. Is that the way detectives operate?”

  “I have my own ways of working.”

  “Mysterious ways your wonders to perform? I was beginning to suspect as much. Now tell me what wonders you’re bent on performing.”

  “It has to do with your daughter Ginny.”

  “I see.” But her eyes didn’t change. “Sit down if you like.” She indicated the metal chair across from her. “Is Virginia in some kind of trouble? She never has been.”

  “That’s the question I’m trying to answer.”

  “Who put you up to it?” she said rather sharply. “It wasn’t George Sylvester?”

  “What makes you think it was?”

  “The way he ran off just now.” She was watching me carefully. “But it wasn’t George, was it? He’s quite infatuated with Virginia—all the men are—but he wouldn’t expose himself—” She paused.

  “Expose himself?”

  She frowned with her meager out-of-place eyebrows. “You’re drawing me out and making me say things I don’t want to.” She caught her breath. “I know, it must have been Peter. Was it?”

  “I can’t go into that.”

  “If it was Peter, he’s even more helpless than I supposed. It was Peter, wasn’t it? He’s been threatening to hire detectives for some time. Peter is mad with jealousy, but I had no idea he’d go this far.”

  “This isn’t very far. He asked me to look into the background of the man she’s planning to marry. I suppose you know Francis Martel.”

  “I’ve met him, naturally. He’s a fascinating person.”

  “No doubt. But something happened in the last hour which makes it seem worthwhile to investigate him. I saw it happen, in the road below his house. A man tried to take a picture of him. Martel scared him off with a gun. He threatened to kill him.”

  She nodded calmly. “I don’t blame him at all.”

  “Does he make a habit of threatening to murder people?”

  “It wouldn’t be murder, it would be self-protection.” She sounded as if she was quoting somebody else. “There are reasons for what you saw, I’m sure. He doesn’t want his identity to be known.”

  “Do you
know who he is?”

  “I’m pledged to secrecy.” She touched her red lips with a finger tipped with the same red.

  “Who is he,” I said, “the lost Dauphin of France?”

  Without trying, I had succeeded in startling her. She stared at me with her mouth open. Then she remembered that it looked better closed, and closed it.

  “I can’t tell you who he is,” she said after a while. “There could be very serious international repercussions if Francis were discovered here.” Once again she seemed to be reciting. “I’m sure you mean well in what you’re doing—I’m not so sure about Peter—but I’m going to ask you to cease and desist, Mr. Archer.”

  She wasn’t kidding me now. Her voice was grave.

  “Are you trying to tell me Martel is a political figure?”

  “He was. He will be again, when the conditions are ripe. Right now he’s an exile from his native country,” she said dramatically.

  “Francer?”

  “He’s a Frenchman, yes, he makes no secret of that.”

  “But his name isn’t Francis Martel?”

  “He has a right to use it, but it isn’t his actual name.”

  “What is his name?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s one of the great names of France.”

  “Do you have evidence to support all this?”

  “Evidence?” she smiled at me as if she had superior knowledge piped in directly from the infinite. “You don’t ask your friends for evidence.”

  “I do.”

  “Then you probably don’t have many friends. I can see you have a suspicious nature. You and Peter Jamieson make a good pair.”

  “Have you known him long?”

  I meant Martel, but she misunderstood my question, I think deliberately. “Peter has been underfoot in our house for twenty years.” She gestured toward the rambling one-story house behind her. “I swear I’ve been wiping his nose for at least that long. When Peter’s mother died, I sort of took him over for a while. He was just a little boy. But little boys grow up, and when he did he fell in love with Ginny, which he had no right to do. She doesn’t care for Peter in that way, doesn’t and didn’t. He simply wore down her resistance because there was nobody else.”