The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator

by Ross Macdonald

  “You swallowed her story whole, then.”

  “I believed her implicitly, at the time. I realize now there was a quality of hysteria in her, in the entire situation, and it infected me. Then, too, I’m a passionate man. I hadn’t touched a woman in a long time, and there she was, half naked in my arms.”

  “Did you make love to her?”

  “I admit that some such thought may have crossed my mind. I repressed it firmly. At that moment I heard the sound of an automobile climbing up the canyon. Almost without conscious thought, I took the rifle down from above the fireplace. It was still fully loaded. When the man knocked on the door, I opened the door to him and showed him the rifle.”

  “Same man?”

  “Yes. He’d taken off his white smock and put on a topcoat. I didn’t like the look of him at all. I told him I would shoot him unless he went away. He laughed in my face, called me an idiot. He said I’d let myself be taken in by an insane woman, a woman out of touch with reality.

  “I didn’t believe him, but I was profoundly uneasy. I could feel the blood pounding at various points in my body; in my groin and head, and in my right forefinger. My finger was on the trigger of the rifle.

  “ ‘Put the gun down, you damn fool,’ he said to me. ‘What story has she been telling you?’

  “ ‘She said that you’ve been holding her, that she’s an actress named Molly Day.’

  “He smiled, showing his teeth. His teeth were bad, and he had a bad breath. It smelled like the odor of corruption. You judge people by little things like that, and by the words they use, sometimes a single word.

  “ ‘That bag?’ he said.

  “I raised the rifle and shot him through the forehead.”

  “Because he called her a bag?”

  “That was one reason. He was clearly no doctor. No professional man would speak of one of his patients—”

  “Did he have a weapon?”

  “I assumed he had. I didn’t look for it.”

  “What happened after you shot him? What was the woman’s reaction?”

  “That was what troubled me. It’s why I came to you. She insisted I mustn’t on any account go to the police. She said that if I did she would kill herself.

  “She picked up the rifle where I’d dropped it, and huddled on the bed with it across her lap. I tried to talk it out of her hands, but she refused to let me come near her. Her wild talk made me suspect that she was beside herself after all. Her very posture was unnerving. She crouched on the bed like a lioness, guarding the blessed telephone.”

  “And she’s still there?”

  “I left her there. What could I do? I drove down to the highway with the idea of telephoning the police. Then I remembered you, Archer.”

  I was sorry he had. It sounded like one of those cases that couldn’t be satisfactorily ended. My client’s medieval moral equipment had already shown signs of breaking down. He belonged in a novel by Walter Scott, not on the front pages of the Los Angeles press.

  “Why did you have to shoot him, Colonel?”

  “I didn’t have to. That’s the hell of it. I could have handled him—there are few men I can’t handle. But I deliberately shot him. I chose to kill him.”

  “Why?”

  His fingers pulled at one side of his long equine face. “Evidently I’m a cold-blooded murderer.”

  —

  The studio hung like a treehouse on the steep slope of the canyon. It had rained up here during the night. The dirt road was wet. Actual butterflies danced in flight across free spaces of air, or played a game of tag without any rules among the branches.

  “Where every prospect pleases,” Ferguson said heavily, “and only man is vile.”

  I grunted at him irritably and parked my car at the edge of the narrow road. A jaybird erupted out of a red-berried bush. He sailed up onto the limb of a fir where he swung like a Christmas tree ornament yelling curses. A dozen chickadees flew out of a nearby oak and settled in one further away from the jaybird. Apart from the redwood studio below the road and the big stone house in the distance, there were no traces of human beings, vile or otherwise.

  “Where’s the car?”

  “What car?”

  “Your victim,” I said nastily, “came in a car, you said. Where is it?”

  He stood in the road and looked around him blankly. “He left it right here by the driveway. It seems to be gone.”

  “What kind of a car was it?”

  “A large car, a sedan painted blue or black, rather old and dirty-looking.” A hectic light came into his eyes. “Do you suppose he isn’t really dead?”

  He trotted down the steep driveway, with me at his heels. The front door was standing open. He went in with his head thrust forward, stalking stiff-legged. I didn’t try to prevent him from going in. If Goldilocks wanted to shoot somebody, it might as well be him. She was his baby.

  Ferguson came back into the doorway. He looked puzzled and relieved. “She’s gone. They’ve both gone.”

  I went in past him. The studio was a single big room with a beamed ceiling slanting up at one end to accommodate the north window. Light poured through it onto Navajo rugs, an unmade studio bed, paintings in various media on the walls. I saw where the rifle had hung over the fireplace.

  “The rifle gone, too?”

  “Yes, by George, it is. Do you suppose she—? No.” He shook his head. “He was a big, heavy man. She couldn’t possibly have lifted him. He must have walked out under his own steam. I couldn’t have hurt him mortally after all.”

  DEATH MASK

  It was a slow week at the end of June, and I was late in getting to the office. The girl was waiting in the upstairs hallway. I got the impression that she had been waiting for some time. Her posture was rigid, and the drawn look on her face was only partly concealed by her dark glasses. With both hands she was clutching a handsome and expensive-looking lizardskin bag.

  She was a handsome and expensive-looking girl. Not Hollywood, though. Her shoes were lizardskin but sensible. Her brown skirt and beige sweater were conservative. So was her makeup. She was very young, perhaps no more than twenty. I regarded her with aesthetic distance and a little regret:

  “Are you waiting for me?”

  “If you’re Mr. Archer.” Her voice was soft and tentative.

  “I am. Come in, Miss—”

  “Maclish,” she said. “Sandra Maclish.”

  I unlocked the door. She moved across the waiting room with a kind of furtive charm, as if she wanted to be there and not there at the same time. I decided on the spur of the moment to buy a new carpet and have the old green furniture redone in tasteful colors. Like brown and beige.

  I took her into the inner office and yanked up the venetian blind. Light poured in, reflected from the stucco buildings across the boulevard.

  “It’s a beautiful morning,” I said.

  She looked at the morning with something approaching dismay. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “If the light bothers your eyes, I can close the blind again.”

  “Oh, my eyes are all right. Thank you. I’m wearing these glasses because I didn’t want to be seen coming here.”

  “They’re not a very effective disguise. In fact, they might tend to call attention to you. You’re not the type that generally wears dark glasses.”

  “Yes I am. I wear them all the time on the beach. But I’ll take them off if you like.”

  She did so. Handsome wasn’t the word for Miss Maclish. Her eyes were shadowed green lights. In a year or two, when she had gained assurance, or whatever it is that distinguishes women from girls, the word would be beautiful.

  She put the glasses in her bag and sat in the chair I placed for her, facing away from the window. I pulled my swivel chair around to the other side of the desk.

  “Are you being followed, Miss Maclish?”

  This startled her. “No. At least, I hope not. Though I wouldn’t put it past Father. He doesn’t approve of my interes
ting myself in—well, what I’m interested in.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone.”

  Her voice was small and thin. She swallowed, and her throat shimmered. The shadow across her eyes seemed to be cast by an image in the air in front of her. She looked up at the image as if it had a head and eyes of its own. Then she averted her face.

  “I mean,” she said after a while, “I don’t understand it myself. So how can I explain it to you?”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “A friend of mine is.”

  “Trouble with the law?”

  “It hasn’t come to that, yet. In a way, it’s worse than that. But please don’t ask me to talk about it. I can’t give away other people’s confidences.”

  “You’re doing a fine job of not giving anything away.”

  She lit up with a little flare of anger, suppressed it, and produced a small wan smile. “I know. I haven’t been making too much sense, up to now, have I? And I had my whole speech so carefully planned.”

  “How old are you, Miss Maclish?”

  “Twenty-one. Is it important?”

  “It probably is to you.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m old enough to employ a detective on my own responsibility.”

  “Sure you are. I don’t have age limits. Some of my favorite clients have been babes-in-arms. One of them wasn’t even born yet.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “It’s a free country. But what I said is true. I once represented an unborn child whose father was killed in a hunting accident.”

  “All this is very interesting, but we’re not getting anywhere.”

  “I agree. Why don’t you give me the speech that you had so carefully planned?”

  “I can’t. It wouldn’t sound right. I mean, you’re different from what I expected. And so am I. It’s always happening to me.”

  I didn’t ask her what she meant by that. I waited for her to continue. It took some time, but I didn’t mind. I was content to sit across the desk from her while the passing seconds stitched together a kind of silent intimacy. Her voice threaded through it:

  “A man I know, a lawyer in Lamarina, told me that you were one of the best detectives in California. Does that mean you’re frightfully expensive?”

  “I charge a hundred dollars a day.”

  “I see. When you find out things about people—if you do, I mean—do you keep them to yourself?”

  “I try to protect my clients. It isn’t always possible, where there’s crime involved. Is there crime involved?”

  “I don’t know,” she said soberly. “I want you to try and find out for me. Just for me, nobody else. Then I’ll know what to do.”

  For a while she had seemed very young. She seemed much older. Her face had a bony look that reminded me of the tragic skeleton we all contained. The skull beneath the skin.

  “You say you’ve talked to a lawyer in Lamarina. What was his advice?”

  “I didn’t ask Mr. Griffin for his advice. I asked him for the name of a good detective. I haven’t talked to anybody about it.”

  “Not even me.”

  “I know. I’ve been wasting your time, holding back like this. It’s simply that it could be so important, to quite a number of people. Especially me.”

  “Is it a matter of life and death?” I offered helpfully.

  “Maybe. That was part of the speech. I do know it’s a matter of someone’s sanity.”

  “Yours?”

  She closed her eyes. Deprived of their light, her face was like a death mask. “No, not mine.” She opened them and turned them full on my face. “You say you protect your clients, Mr. Archer?”

  “I try to.”

  “What about other people? Say your client had someone dear to her, or him. Would you protect him or her? I mean, if you stumbled over something very unpleasant?”

  “It would depend on the circumstances. I don’t have a lawyer’s right of silence where clients are concerned. Even a lawyer’s right is severely restricted. We all have to live with the law, you know.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything illegal.”

  “What are you asking me to do? It’s about time we got to that, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. I just want your word that you won’t go running to people with what I tell you, or what you find out on your own.”

  “You have my word on that. I’m the closest-mouthed man you ever met. And you’re the closest-mouthed girl I ever met. Tell me one thing. Has there been a crime?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you suspect one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Murder?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. No, it wouldn’t be murder.” She twisted her mouth. “It’s a terrible word, isn’t it?”

  “A terrible fact. Now who is involved in this non-murder?”

  She looked at me as if she hated me. The unobtrusive lipstick on her mouth came out bright red against her pallor. She fumbled at the catch of her bag, produced the dark glasses, put them on. I was afraid that she was going to leave.

  I didn’t want her to. I wanted her to stay and share her trouble with me. Call it romanticism—the late romanticism that boils up sometimes in middle age and spills a kind of luster on certain faces. But my impulse was more paternal than anything else. It stayed that way.

  “I have a suggestion, Miss Maclish. If you want better security, you can employ me through your lawyer friend in Lamarina. Then anything I find out, anything I’m told, has the same legal status as information confided to a lawyer. What did you say his name was? Griffith?”

  “Griffin. But I can’t do that. He’d have to know all about it if I did that. Sooner or later he’d go to Father with it. Mr. Griffin is one of Father’s attorneys.”

  CHANGE OF VENUE

  I got into the Garvin case late, when it was just about all over but the gas chamber. Garvin was due to be shipped to San Quentin in the morning. He seemed already to be holding his breath.

  He let it out in a sigh. “No, Mr. Archer. I don’t want any private detective work done on the case. I don’t want you or anyone else raking over the mess I’ve made of my life.”

  “It’s been thoroughly raked over in the newspapers.”

  “That’s the point. I’ve had enough.”

  He looked at me bleakly, his head between his hands. He was still a young man, but his hair was gray. His very skin was gray, and hung slack on his face. The long trial after months of waiting had carved him down to the bone.

  The third man in the interview room spoke. He was Alexander Stillman, Garvin’s defense lawyer. And Garvin’s personal friend as well, I gathered:

  “I know you’re tired, Larry. But you can’t give up.”

  “Why not? I do. I have.”

  “But surely not in the ultimate sense. You want to go on living.”

  “I wouldn’t have taken the sleeping pills if I’d wanted to go on living. I see nothing to live for now.”

  “There’s Sylvia,” Stillman said.

  “She’ll be better off without me.”

  “That’s not true, Larry, and you know it. Sylvia loves you deeply and passionately.”

  “Leave it on the cob where it belongs,” Garvin said harshly. “Are you trying to break my heart?”

  “I’m trying to save your life.” Stillman’s bulldog face was fierce with intensity. “Even if you don’t value it, there’s more than one man’s life involved in this. There’s principle involved. I’m not going to let a man who isn’t guilty go to the gas chamber.”

  “I must be guilty. Twelve good men and true found me guilty.”

  “Eight of the twelve were women, Larry. The jury was carried away by the idea of a high school teacher mur—doing what you were alleged to have done. The whole town was carried away. I did everything within the realm of possibility to obtain a change of venue—”

  Garvin’s sharp voice cut in on th
e lawyer’s orotund one: “I know all this. You don’t have to rehash it.”

  Lawyer and client glared at each other across the steel table. They were sick and tired of each other. The trial had been like a long illness which they had shared. Which threatened to end in the death of one of them.

  I said to Stillman: “Could I possibly talk to Mr. Garvin alone?”

  “I have nothing to say to you, Mr. Archer. And I’m expecting a visit from my wife.”

  “She isn’t here yet,” Stillman said. He got up heavily and tapped on the battleship-gray door. A guard in deputy’s suntans let him out.

  DO YOUR OWN TIME

  It was a dead-end street in Malibu. The blue emptiness of the sea glared through the narrow gap between the houses. The one I was looking for needed paint, and leaned on its pilings like a man on crutches.

  Nothing happened when I pressed the bell-push. I knocked on the door. Slowly, like twin bodies being dragged, footsteps approached the other side of it.

  “Yes?” a man’s voice said. “Who is it?”

  “Archer. You called me yesterday.”

  “So I did.” He opened the door and leaned through the opening. “I call you yesterday, you keep me waiting all night. What kind of a way is that to do business? I been sitting here biting on the nail.”

  He meant it literally. The fingers holding the edge of the door were bitten down to the quick. He saw me looking at them and curled them into a fist, more defensive than aggressive. He was a man of fifty-five or so wearing an open-necked white shirt from which his head jutted like a weathered statue. The sunlight struck metallic glints from his gray-white eyes.

  “I been waiting twenty years. You had to keep me waiting one more day, didn’t you?” His voice was a groan modulating into a low yell: “What have you got to say for yourself?”

  Goodbye was the first thing I thought of. I thought again. Another ten years and a face like his, aggressive and defensive, might be peering at me out of the bathroom mirror. Men got old. I said with all the tact I could muster: