Black Money

by Ross Macdonald

  “Has she been doing that?”

  “Has she? Today she invited him for lunch—I happened to be at the hairdresser’s—and made a sudden pitch for five thousand dollars. We don’t have that kind of ready money in the bank, which is the only way I know about it—he tried to get my signature on the loan. But I said nix.” She paused, and her alcohol-angered face grew suddenly quiet with anxiety. I think her mind was playing back what she had said. “I’ve been telling you my deep dark secrets, haven’t I?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “It isn’t all right if you tell George what I said. You won’t tell George what I said?” She had unloaded her malice but she didn’t want to take the responsibility for it.

  “All right,” I said.

  “You’re nice.” She reached for my hand on the tabletop and pressed it rather hard. She was more worried now than she was drunk, trying to think of something to make herself feel better. “Do you like dancing, Mr. Arch?”

  “Archer,” I said.

  “I love to dance myself.”

  Still holding on to my hand she rose and towed me out onto the dance floor. Round and round we went, with her hair slipping down into both our eyes and her breasts jouncing against me like the special organs of her enthusiasm.

  “My first name is Audrey,” she confided. “What’s your first name, Mr. Arch?”

  “Fallen.”

  Her laughter blasted my right ear-drum. When the music stopped I took her back to the table, and went out to the front office. Ella was still at her post, looking rather wan.

  “Are you tired?” I asked her.

  She glanced at herself in the wall mirror facing her desk. “Not so very. It’s the music. It gets on my nerves when I’m not allowed to dance to it.” She passed her hand over her forehead. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold this job.”

  “How long have you been in it?”

  “Just two years.”

  “What did you do before that?”

  “I was a housewife. Actually I didn’t do much of anything.” She changed the subject: “I saw you dancing with Mrs. Sylvester.”

  “Legwork.”

  “I don’t mean that,” she said, not explaining what ‘that’ was. “Be careful of Audrey Sylvester. She isn’t a drunk exactly, but when she drinks she gets drunk.”

  “What does she do then?”

  “Anything that enters her head. Midnight swim in the ocean. Midnight roll in the hay.”

  “Same midnight?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Can she be believed?”

  “Depends on who and what she’s talking about.”

  “Her.” I got out my picture of Kitty. “She says her name is Ketchel, and her husband was one of Dr. Sylvester’s patients.”

  “I presume she’d know.”

  “Speaking of Dr. Sylvester’s patients, I understand he took Mrs. Fablon home.”

  Ella nodded soberly. “I helped her out to his car. It took two of us.”

  “Was she plastered?”

  “I doubt it. She hardly drinks at all.”

  “Mrs. Sylvester says she was.”

  “Mrs. Sylvester isn’t a reliable witness, especially when she’s drunk herself. Marietta—Mrs. Fablon was more sick than anything else, and upset. She’s much more upset about Ginny than she lets on.”

  “Did she say so?”

  “Not in so many words. But she came down here for reassurance. She wanted someone to tell her that she had done the right thing in encouraging Ginny’s elopement.”

  “She knows about it then?”

  Ella nodded. “Ginny came home tonight. She wanted to pick up a few things and say goodbye. She didn’t stay more than about five minutes. Which is what upset her mother, basically, I think.”

  “When was this?”

  “In the last hour or so.”

  “You’re a good witness. How would you like to join my staff permanently?”

  “It would depend on what I had to witness.”

  We smiled at each other, warily. We had both had unsuccessful marriages.

  I retreated into the records room. Malkovsky was bent over the pulled-out drawer of a cabinet, riffling through file cards.

  “I’m making some progress. I hope. As far as I can see there were seven outside guests, individuals and couples, in September of 1959. I’ve ruled out four of them—people I remember personally, mostly repeaters. That leaves three: the Sandersons, and the de Houvenels, and the Berglunds. But none of the names rings a bell.”

  “Try Ketchel.”

  “Ketchel!” He blinked and smiled. “I believe that’s the name. I couldn’t find it among the guest cards, though.”

  “It could have been taken out.”

  “Or lost,” he said. “These older files are in pretty poor shape. But I’m morally certain Ketchel is the name. Where did you pick it up?”

  “From one of the members.” I got out the negative. “Can you make me some copies of this?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “How long would it take you?”

  “I guess I could have some by tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow morning at eight?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he said: “I can try.”

  I gave him the negative, with a lecture about not losing it, and said goodnight to him at the front door. When he was out of hearing, Ella said dryly:

  “I hope you’re paying him decently. All he makes out of his photography is a bare living. And he has a wife and children.”

  “I’m paying him decently. There’s no record in the files of the Ketchels being guests here.”

  “Mrs. Sylvester could have given you the wrong name.”

  “I doubt it. Eric recognized it. More likely someone took the record out of the files. Are they easily accessible?”

  “I’m afraid they are. People are in and out of the office, and the records room is open a good deal of the time. Is it very important?”

  “It may be. I want to know who sponsored the Ketchels as guests.”

  “Mr. Stoll might remember. But he’s gone off for the night.”

  She directed me to the manager’s cottage. It was closed and dark. The wind whimpered like a lost dog in the shrubbery.

  I went back to the main entrance of the club. Dr. Sylvester still hadn’t returned. I looked in at the bar, saw Mrs. Sylvester slouched over a drink, and retreated before she saw me.

  Ella told me more about her second marriage. Her husband Strome was an attorney in the city, an older man, a widower when she married him. She had been his secretary originally, but being his wife was much more demanding, in subtle ways. Her first husband had been too young; her second was too old. An older man was deeply set in his habits, including his sexual habits.

  I let the conversation go on. Such desultory continuing conversations were one of my best sources of information. Besides I liked the woman, and I was interested in her marriage.

  The story of it blended with the long rough night we were having. She’d stayed with Strome for six years but in the end she couldn’t stick it out. She hadn’t even asked for alimony.

  Some people left the party, and Ella said goodnight to them by name. Others were staying on. Our conversation, or Ella’s monologue, was punctuated by gusts of music, laughter, wind.

  Dr. Sylvester’s arrival brought it to a full stop. He pushed through the door with angry force.

  “Is my wife still here?” he asked Ella.

  “I think so, doctor.”

  “What kind of shape is she in?”

  “She’s still upright,” I said.

  He turned a stony eye on me. “Nobody asked you.” He started off toward the bar, hesitated, and turned back to Ella: “Would you get her for me, Mrs. Strome? I don’t feel like facing that mob again tonight.”

  “I’ll be glad to. How is Mrs. Fablon?”

  “She’ll be all right. I got her calmed down. She’s upset about her daughter, and
it was complicated by barbiturates.”

  “She didn’t try to take too many?”

  “Nothing like that. She took her regular sleeping pills and then decided to come down here to see her friends. Add one drink, and the result was predictable.” He paused, and dropped his professional tone: “Go and get Audrey, will you?”

  Ella hurried away down the lighted corridor. I leaned on the reception desk and watched Dr. Sylvester in the mirror. He lit a cigarette and pretended to forget me, but my presence seemed to make him uncomfortable. He coughed smoke, and said:

  “Look here, what gives you the right to stand there watching me? Are you the new doorman or something?”

  “I’m bucking for the job. The wages are poor but think of the fringe benefits, like getting to know all the best people.”

  “You’re bucking to get thrown out on your ear.” His jaw had converted itself into a blunt instrument. His hands were shaking.

  He was big enough to hit, and unpleasant enough, but everything else about the occasion was wrong. Besides, he was in transit from one troubled woman to another, and it gave him a certain license.

  “Take it easy, doctor. We’re on the same side.”

  “Are we?” He looked at me over his cigarette, smoke crawling on his face. Then, as if its burning tip had touched off his outburst, he threw it down on the marble floor and scotched it under his heel. “I don’t even know what the game is,” he said in a friendlier tone.

  “It’s a new kind of game.” I didn’t have the negative of Kitty and Ketchel, so I described it to him. “The man in the picture, the one with the diamond ring, do you know who he’d be?”

  It was an honesty test, but I didn’t know whose honesty was being tested, his or his wife’s.

  He hedged: “It’s difficult to tell from a verbal description. Does he have a name?”

  “It may be Ketchel. I heard he was your patient.”

  “Ketchel.” He stroked his jaw as if to massage it back into human shape. “I believe I did have a patient of that name once.”

  “In 1959?”

  “It might have been. It might well have been.”

  “Did he stay here?”

  “I believe he did.”

  I showed him Kitty’s picture.

  He nodded. “That’s Mrs. Ketchel. I couldn’t be mistaken about her. She came to my office once, before they left, to get instructions about a salt-free diet. I treated her husband for hypertension. His blood pressure was way up, but I managed to bring it down within the normal range.”

  “Who is he?”

  Sylvester’s face went through the motions of remembering. “A retired man from New York. He told me he got in at the start of the bull market, lucky stiff. He owned a cattle spread somewhere in the Southwest.”

  “In California?”

  “I don’t remember, at this late date.”

  “Nevada?”

  “I doubt it. I’m hardly famous enough to attract out-of-state patients.” The remark seemed forced.

  “Would Ketchel’s address be in the clinic records?”

  “It might, at that. But why are you so interested in Mr. Ketchel?”

  “I don’t know yet. I just am.” I threw him a question from far left field: “Wasn’t it just about then that Roy Fablon committed suicide?”

  The question took him by surprise. For a moment his face was trying on attitudes. It settled on a kind of false boredom behind which his intelligence sat and watched me.

  “Just about when?”

  “The picture of the Ketchels was taken in September 1959. When did Fablon die?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Wasn’t he your patient?”

  “I have a number of patients and, frankly, my chronological memory isn’t so good. I suppose it was around about that time but if you’re suggesting any connection—”

  “I’m asking, not suggesting.”

  “Just what are you asking, again?”

  “Did Ketchel have anything to do with Fablon’s suicide?”

  “I have no reason to think so. Anyway, how would I know?”

  “They were both friends of yours. In a sense you may have been the connection between them.”

  “I was?” But he didn’t argue the point. He didn’t want to go into it at all.

  “I’ve heard it suggested that Fablon didn’t commit suicide. His widow raised the question again tonight. Did she raise it with you?”

  “She did not,” he said without looking at me. “You mean he was drowned by accident?”

  “Or murdered.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear. This place is a hotbed of rumors. People don’t have enough to do, so they make up rumors about their friends and neighbors.”

  “This wasn’t exactly a rumor, Dr. Sylvester. It was an opinion. A friend of Fablon’s told me he wasn’t the sort of man to commit suicide. What’s your opinion?”

  “I have none.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “I don’t think so. Any man is capable of suicide, given sufficient pressure of circumstances.”

  “What were the special circumstances of Fablon’s suicide?”

  “He was at the end of his rope.”

  “Financially, you mean?”

  “And every other way.”

  He didn’t have to explain what he meant. Towed by Ella, his wife hove into view. She had slipped another mental disc and was in a further stage of drunkenness. Her mouth was set in grooves of dull belligerence. Her eyes were fixed.

  “I know where you’ve been. You’ve been in bed with her, haven’t you?”

  “You’re talking nonsense.” He fended her off with his hands. “There’s nothing between me and Marietta. There never has been, Aud.”

  “Except five thousand dollars’ worth of something.”

  “It was supposed to be a loan. I still don’t know why you wouldn’t co-operate.”

  “Because we’d never get it back, any more than the other money you’ve thrown away. It’s my money just as much as yours, remember. I worked for seven years so that you could get your degree. And what did I ever get out of it? The money comes in and the money goes out but I never see any of it.”

  “You get your share.”

  “Marietta gets more than her share.”

  “That’s nonsense. Do you want her to go under?” He looked from me to Ella. Throughout the interchange with his wife, he had been talking to all three of us. Now that his wife was thoroughly discredited, he said: “Don’t you think you better come home? You’ve made enough of a spectacle of yourself for one night.”

  He reached for her arm. She backed away from him grimacing, trying to recover the feel of her anger. But she was entering a fourth, lugubrious stage.

  Still backing away, she bumped into the mirror. She turned around and looked at herself in it. From where I stood I could see her reflected face, swollen with drink and malice, surmounted by a loosened sheaf of hair, with a little trickle of terror in the eyes.

  “I’m getting old and heavy,” she said. “I can’t even afford to take a week in residence at the health farm. But you can afford to gamble our money away.”

  “I haven’t gambled in seven years, and you know it.”

  Roughly he put his arm around her and walked her out. She was tangle-footed, like a heavyweight fighter at the end of a bad round.

  chapter 14

  THERE WERE LIGHTS in the Jamieson house as I passed, and a single light in Marietta Fablon’s. It was after midnight, a poor time for visiting. I went to see Marietta anyway. Her husband’s drowned body seemed to be floating just below the surface of the night.

  She took a long time to answer my knock. When she did, she opened a Judas window set in the door, and peered at me through the grille. She said above the sound of the wind:

  “What do you want?”

  “My name is Archer—”

  She cut in on me sharply: “I remember you. What do you want?”


  “A chance to talk seriously with you.”

  “I couldn’t possibly talk tonight. Come back in the morning.”

  “I think we should talk now. You’re worried about Ginny. So am I.”

  “Who said I was worried?”

  “Dr. Sylvester.”

  “What else did he say about me?”

  “I could tell you better inside.”

  “Very well. This is rather Pyramus and Thisbe, isn’t it?”

  It was a gallant effort to recover her style. I saw when she let me in to the lighted hallway that she was having a bad night. The barbiturates were still playing tricks with her eyes. Her body, uncorseted under a pink quilted robe, seemed to have slumped down on its fine bones. She had a pink silk cap on her head, and under it her face seemed thinner and older.

  “Don’t look at me please. I’m not lookable tonight.”

  She took me into her sitting room. Though she only turned on one lamp I could see that everything in the room, the print-covered chairs and settee and the gay rug and the drapes, was faintly shabby. The only new thing in the room was the pink telephone.

  I started to sit on one of the fragile chairs. She made me sit on another, and took a third herself, by the telephone.

  “Why did you suddenly get concerned about Ginny?” I said.

  “She came home tonight. He was with her. I’m close to my daughter—at least I used to be—and I could sense that she didn’t want to go with him. But she was going anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t understand it.” Her hands fluttered in her lap, like birds, and one of them pecked at the other. “She seems afraid to go, and afraid not to go with him.”

  “Go where?”

  “They wouldn’t say. Ginny promised to get in touch with me eventually.”

  “What was his attitude?”

  “Martel? He was very formal and distant. Aggressively polite. He regretted disturbing me at the late hour, but they’d made a sudden decision to leave.” She paused, and turned her narrow probing face toward me. “Do you really think the French government is after him?”

  “Somebody is.”

  “But you don’t know who.”

  “Not yet. I want to try a name on you, Mrs. Fablon. Ketchel.”

  I spelled it. Her queer eyes widened. Her hands clenched knuckle to knuckle.