The Archer Files

by Ross Macdonald

  “Yes, Mother,” a boy’s voice answered in monotone.

  The mother’s voice lilted back: “You haven’t finished the Debussy, darling. You’ve only practiced two hours.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Nonsense, you can’t be tired. Just keep on playing, and you’ll get your second wind.”

  She listened at the door in tense expectancy until the showers of notes began to fall. They seemed to refresh her with an almost sexual pleasure. There was a hint of ballet in her movement back to me.

  “My son is a genius, you know.” Her voice was bright.

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said under the music. “Now I’d like you to tell me all you can about your husband’s—difficulty. Your letter didn’t go into much detail. I understand he’s a captain of detectives, under suspension for alleged violation of the Health and Safety Code. The Police Commission is going to hold a hearing next week, and if the opposition makes it stick, your husband stands to lose his job and pension rights.”

  “Yes,” she said, “after twenty-four years of service. Alex was due to retire next year, and they’re cutting him off without a nickel.”

  “What are they charging him with?”

  “Selling narcotics, can you imagine? When he’s been fighting the drug traffic with all his heart and soul. He hates it, he’s incapable of going into it himself.”

  “It certainly doesn’t sound like a veteran cop. Do they have any evidence on him?”

  “I suppose they have. Fabricated evidence. You’ll have to ask Alex about that—he’s the expert—if he’ll talk to you.”

  “I’ll try him in a minute. First, who’s the opposition? Who are ‘they’?”

  She wagged her head with a doleful up-from-under look. “Practically everybody in town. You don’t make friends trying to enforce the law in a Godforsaken place like this. Alex has made a lot of enemies.”

  “Who, for instance?”

  “The sheriff, the district attorney. They both work for the clique—the ranchers and oilmen who keep control of the county so their taxes won’t be raised.” Her voice was buzzing with malice, in grotesque counterpoint with the cool clear piano tones. The combination of the woman and the music was getting on my nerves.

  “They started the action, did they?”

  She nodded. “They’re behind it. The chief was the one who suspended him officially, but he’s only a figurehead. Alex has been running the department for years, if you want the truth. Chief Shouder had nothing against him. It’s the sheriff who wants to get him. Roy Stark.”

  “Is this what your husband says?”

  “Ask him yourself. You can go out through the house.”

  She crossed to the sliding doors with sudden hummingbird speed, and opened them. The music came louder for a moment, then ended in a discord which was no part of Debussy. The boy at the Baldwin piano turned his head, his fingers still spread on the keys. His hands were enormous, too large for his arms, which protruded thin and white from the T-shirt he wore. He was a nice-looking boy, though there was too much hair on his head, too little flesh on his face. A frown knit his eyebrows in a furry black knot across the bridge of his nose:

  “Please, Mother. You asked me to practice. Now you’re interrupting as usual.”

  “It’s just for a second, darling. Remember your manners, now. Stand up and say hello to the gentleman. This is my son, Mr. Archer.”

  He stood up, taller than I was, six foot three or four, and said hello. But he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were on the window where a surf of light was beating. He stood there chewing his short upper lip as though he couldn’t stand the sight of an adult male. I could see why when his mother took his hand and caressed it, tittering nervously: “Henry is only sixteen. Isn’t he tall? Imagine little me giving birth to a great big fellow like Henry.”

  He looked down into her upturned smile with a kind of disgusted resignation. If it hadn’t been for his unfinished face and the harsh lines in hers, they almost could have been father and daughter instead of mother and son. She fawned on him like a kitten. He pushed her away, gently:

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Mother.” His bass was still uncertain. “You’re not a little girl—”

  “I’m your little girl,” she said in a falsetto which screeked along my spine. “You’re just embarrassed because you know I’m your girl.”

  The boy’s eyes met mine. They were tragic with pain and understanding. I left the room. Mrs. Wrightson’s footsteps pattered after me. Before we were outside, the piano came to life in a plangent chord repeated loudly and violently. The boy began to replay the prelude he had been working on, this time in boogic tempo, with a terrible left hand prowling and growling down in the deep bass.

  In the barn, behind the house, a power saw was screeching in sympathy. Mrs. Wrightson knocked on a side door. It was opened by a man in sawdust-sprinkled overalls. For the second time in five minutes, I felt a little short. Wrightson’s thick white hair nearly brushed the top of the doorframe. His eyes were deepset and gray, with a red smoldering in them like the ash of a burning cigar. They looked from me to his wife:

  “Who is this, Esther?”

  “Mr. Archer.”

  “I told you not to send that letter.” He had a freshly cut length of white pine two-by-four in his hand. He smacked it into the palm of his other hand. “Another wasted trip.”

  “You need help, Alex.”

  He smiled without parting his lips. There was a three or four days’ beard around his mouth. She plucked at her withering throat as if his grizzled silence frightened her. Shifting to the offensive, she leaned towards him and sniffed with flaring nostrils.

  “Alex. You’ve been drinking. You shouldn’t use the saw when you’ve been drinking.”

  “Shouldn’t I?” He looked up into the sun.

  She tugged at his shirtsleeve. “I didn’t mean to nag,” she said contritely. “What are you making, Alex?”

  “A coffin,” he said to the sun. “I figured I’d need a custom job.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” Her voice jangled out of control.

  “If you don’t like my jokes, don’t listen. Go away. All the way to the edge of the world and jump off. And take your friend here with you. You don’t fit into my plans, either one of you.”

  “Won’t you even talk to him, tell him the facts?”

  “Why should I waste my breath? Nobody can do anything about it.” He looked at me. “So beat it, friend.”

  He turned back into the workshop. His wife said, “Alex. You won’t—do anything to yourself?”

  “Why should I bother?” he said. “It’s being done for me.”

  He closed the door with his elbow. The power saw skirled and screeched. Mrs. Wrightson stood with her mouth open and her eyes closed. For an instant I had the illusion that she was making that noise.

  —

  The flag on the pole in front of the courthouse hung languid in the still air. It was a two-story concrete building with a flat roof. A columned porch masked its bleak facade. A few old men were lounging against the columns, smoking Bull Durham and spitting over the railing. They looked as if they’d been waiting a long time for something lucky or interesting to happen to them: a jury call or a political sinecure or a free drink.

  The corridor had the grimy look and odor of public institutions where nobody lived. I found the sheriff’s office at the rear. The door was standing open, and I could see the big man behind the desk. He wore a black Stetson and a black gabardine shirt, and he was clipping the nails on his pudgy fingers with a pocket clipper. There were pictures of him on the walls, with deer he had killed, fish he had caught, a visiting governor with a man-eating movie smile.

  I tapped on the pebbled glass panel. “Sheriff Stark?”

  “That’s me.”

  He leaned back in the swivel chair which his body overflowed, pushed the Stetson back from his forehead, and went on clipping his nails. I sat down opposite him without being invited
. He showed no surprise. His eyes looked blandly out from under folded and overhanging lids. All his features, which were small for his size, were practically submerged in facial blubber.

  “What’s the complaint?”

  “No complaint. I just drove up from Los Angeles this morning.” I gave him my name, but not my occupation. “I’m a reporter.” I reported my income once a year.

  “On one of the L.A. papers?”

  “No, I’m a freelance. I specialize in true crime for the magazines.”

  “Well. How about that?” He rose cumbrously and offered me his hand and tried to produce a hearty smile. His hand felt like cold Plasticine. His smile was narrow and cruel. “I can tell you right now you came to the right door. Some of my colleagues don’t believe in publicity, but I say it’s the lifeblood of public office. Roy Stark is a servant of the people and my motto is: let the people know.”

  “I’ll go along with that.”

  He twitched a thumb towards a photograph on the wall. It showed Stark and a hangdog Mexican in a leather arm-restrainer. “I got a real nice writeup on that one there. The Sepulveda case. The guy stabbed his common-law wife with a greased knife in the guts. He’s on the death row in San Quentin now. ‘Crime of Passion,’ they called it. They put that picture in, and a couple of others. I got a copy in the file if you want to look it over. I don’t remember the fellow’s name that wrote it, but he certainly could sling the language.”

  “I’m interested in something more recent.”

  “Murder? We got a nice juicy murder now.” He sounded like a butcher recommending a cut of meat. “Rigger from Oklahoma shot another Okie at one of these here barn dances. Said he insulted his girl. The killer’s upstairs in the jail if you want to take a look at him. He shot the feller’s face off with a sawed-off shotgun he happened to have in his car. Hell,” Stark added with enthusiasm, “we get plenty of good murders in these parts. The statistics say we have the highest homicide rate in the country. And Roy Stark sees that they pay the penalty. Roy Stark hates lawbreakers, you can tell ’em.”

  He struck a heroic pose with his chins and stomach thrust out and his hand on the butt of his gun. It wasn’t very impressive. I guessed that he was a timid man who had hidden his smallness under layers of fat.

  “What about this cop in town,” I said, “the one who got suspended for selling drugs?”

  A shadow crossed his face. “Wrightson, you mean?”

  “Is that the name? If you could give me a story on that, I might be able to use it. It’s a new twist.”

  “Yeah,” but his enthusiasm had faded. He said without conviction, as though he was quoting an old political speech: “It’s a terrible thing to have happen, when an officer of the law breaks the public trust like that. I can’t stand a renegade cop myself. It casts a reflection on all of us when it happens.”

  He sat down and picked up the clipper from his desk and went back to his nails.

  “What was Wrightson peddling?”

  “Heroin caps.”

  “Where did he get them?”

  Stark shrugged his massive shoulders. “He had it. He claims he took it in a raid, and maybe he did at that. He was the narcotics specialist for the city cops. Anyway, it’s not my baby. The Police Commission and the D.A. are handling it. Talk to them if you want. Only I got better stories than that on tap.” He added in a luring tone: “How about the one we had last spring that killed his poor old mother with an axe? Split her head like a cantaloupe. The killer tried to plead insanity, said he was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and President Wilson ordered him to do it, that she was a spy. But he didn’t fool the jury. We got him.” He made his clipper snick in the air. “Valley folks don’t hold with that psychological crap.”

  “Who did Wrightson sell it to?” I said.

  The sheriff’s eyes lost their blandness. “I wouldn’t know. There’s plenty of addicts in town, in the floating population. But why go into that? There’s nothing interesting in the Wrightson case. No drama, no thrills.”

  “I kind of like it, though. And if Wrightson sold heroin to addicts, the Police Commission must have at least one witness.”

  “Sure they got a witness.”

  “Who?”

  “Take it up with them.” He said in an aggrieved tone: “I thought you wanted me to give you a story. I got no part in the Wrightson case.”

  “Sorry. I heard you had.”

  He leaned across the desk, his belly bulging over its edge. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Around town.”

  “You just got in, you said. Who you been talking to?”

  “People on the street.”

  “What people?” He was worried. His voice had risen, become the voice of the frightened little man behind his fatty barricades.

  “One of them was a cop,” I said.

  “Which one?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Was it Cargill, young guy driving a prowl car?”

  “It could have been. He was on foot when I talked to him. He didn’t mention his name.”

  “Yeah,” the sheriff said to himself. “It was Cargill, all right. The bastard hates my guts.” His eyes were small and bright, half shuttered by drooping lids. “I’ll give you a little piece of friendly advice. Don’t pay no attention to anything Cargill says. He’s a troublemaker in this man’s town, and he was Wrightson’s sidekick. He ain’t gonna last any more than Wrightson did. Hell, he was probably in on this dope racket, if we—I mean if the Commission could get the evidence.”

  “The story gets more interesting every minute.”

  “You think so? I think you’re wasting your time if you try to write it up.”

  “Why?”

  He considered the question. “You’re gonna run into difficulty getting information—information you can depend on.”

  “What about the public hearing?”

  “Sure, there’s gonna be a hearing sometime, maybe in a month or a couple of months. You don’t want to wait for that.”

  “I could come back.”

  “Naw, save yourself the trouble. Drop in again after lunch and I’ll open the files to you, give you a nice bloody murder. How about it? You cooperate with Roy Stark, Roy Stark cooperates with you.”

  I disregarded the implied threat. “Fair enough.”

  —

  I drove down the long main street. My tires shuddered on the pitted pavement. Dungareed field hands, high-heeled cowpokes out of a job, swaggered aimlessly through the bright and empty noon, past Chinese restaurants and Mexican movie houses, in and out of liquor stores and bars. I stopped for a red light which flared weakly against the fiercer light from the sky, and saw the City Hall in the side street to my left.

  The police department was in the basement. The desk sergeant told me that Cargill was off duty. I’d probably find him, at this time of day, in the bar of the Walter House on the corner of Main.

  I walked half a block to the hotel. An old earthquake crack climbed like a ghostly flight of stairs along its white brick side. The lobby was dim and deserted, but the bar at its rear was loud as a monkeyhouse. It was a big square room papered with posters for old rodeos and cattle sales. A semicircular bar arced out from one wall. The booths along the opposite wall were full, and the bar was jammed with eating and drinking men. No women. Most of the customers looked like ranchers and businessmen. There was one uniformed cop sitting alone in a booth and washing a corned beef sandwich down with a glass of beer.

  I sat down opposite him. “Do you mind?”

  He minded. His face had a sullen Indian look, high-cheekboned, leather-colored from the sun. Black enamel eyes riveted it to its bones. They flicked at me and down at his sandwich. He went on eating.

  “Cargill?”

  He took another bite, chewed it and swallowed it. “My name’s Cargill.”

  I told him mine. “You’re a friend of Alex Wrightson’s, they tell me.”

  “Is that what they tell you?” He gu
lped the last of his beer and started to slide out of the seat. “Excuse me, I got an appointment.”

  “Wait a minute, Cargill.”

  “What for? I don’t know you.”

  “Give me a chance.”

  “All right, say your piece.” He was poised on the end of the seat, his shoulder muscles bulging under his blouse. “You from the State Narcotics Bureau?”

  “Not me.” I studied his lean hard-bitten face. The fact that the sheriff disliked him was a big point in his favor. I decided to plunge on his honesty: “I’m working for Wrightson.”

  “How?”

  “Investigating the charges. You can help.”

  “How?”

  “Tell me what they’ve got on him. He won’t talk to me.”

  “That’s funny, you said you’re working for him.”

  “Mrs. Wrightson hired me.”

  “To work for him, or against him?”

  “She’s with him. So am I.”

  “I hear you telling me.” His voice was flat and hostile.

  I handed him the letter she had sent me, gracefully written on blue notepaper with little colored flowers in the corners. His lips moved as he read. When he had finished, he moved back into the corner of the booth and lit a cigarette and offered me one. I lit one of my own.

  “So Esther’s sticking with him after all.”

  “A hundred percent,” I said. “Why shouldn’t she?” “We won’t go into that. Okay.” He took a deep drag and blew it out through his nose in twin plumes. “What do you want to know?”

  “Names and dates and places. I can’t do much to break down a case until I know what it is.”

  “You think you can break down this one?”

  “I can try. Unless he’s guilty.”

  “Wrightson isn’t guilty. He was framed, by experts.”

  “Who?”

  “I’ll tell you the facts. You can figure the rest out yourself.” He looked around, and over the back of the booth. Nobody was paying any attention to us. “About a month ago,” he said, “the sixth of June it was, Alex and me were eating right here in this bar…”

  THE STROME TRAGEDY