ROSS MACDONALD
The mystery field had long needed a Proust, and it got it in Kenneth Millar (1915–1983), who wrote under the pseudonym Ross Macdonald. Here was a writer who believed that most truths about the present could be found in the past, and he revealed that idea with incredible grace and style in his novels.
His private eye Lew Archer was an antique dealer of sorts, though instead of objects, he dealt in souls. Macdonald’s version of southern California of the fifties and sixties is comparable to what Nathanael West and Horace McCoy achieved in the thirties. Archer was a refined man in a vulgar time, and yet one sensed that for all his surface calm, he was just as deeply troubled as the people he pursued. The Way Some People Die, The Ivory Grin, and The Far Side of the Dollar are particularly good novels. The Chill is most likely his masterpiece.
Tom Nolan’s biography Ross Macdonald is heartily recommended if you want to know more about this intriguing author.
Guilt-Edged Blonde
(Lew Archer)
A man was waiting for me at the gate at the edge of the runway. He didn’t look like the man I expected to meet. He wore a stained tan windbreaker, baggy slacks, a hat as squashed and dubious as his face. He must have been forty years old, to judge by the gray in his hair and the lines around his eyes. His eyes were dark and evasive, moving here and there as if to avoid getting hurt. He had been hurt often and badly, I guessed.
“You Archer?”
I said I was. I offered him my hand. He didn’t know what to do with it. He regarded it suspiciously, as if I was planning to try a Judo hold on him. He kept his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker.
“I’m Harry Nemo.” His voice was a grudging whine. It cost him an effort to give his name away. “My brother told me to come and pick you up. You ready to go?”
“As soon as I get my luggage.”
I collected my overnight bag at the counter in the empty waiting room. The bag was very heavy for its size. It contained, besides a toothbrush and spare linen, two guns and the ammunition for them. A .38 special for sudden work, and a .32 automatic as a spare.
Harry Nemo took me outside to his car. It was a new seven-passenger custom job, as long and black as death. The windshield and side windows were very thick, and they had the yellowish tinge of bullet-proof glass.
“Are you expecting to be shot at?”
“Not me.” His smile was dismal. “This is Nick’s car.”
“Why didn’t Nick come himself?”
He looked around the deserted field. The plane I had arrived on was a flashing speck in the sky above the red sun. The only human being in sight was the operator in the control tower. But Nemo leaned towards me in the seat, and spoke in a whisper:
“Nick’s a scared pigeon. He’s scared to leave the house. Ever since this morning.”
“What happened this morning?”
“Didn’t he tell you? You talked to him on the phone.”
“He didn’t say very much. He told me he wanted to hire a bodyguard for six days, until his boat sails. He didn’t tell me why.”
“They’re gunning for him, that’s why. He went to the beach this morning. He has a private beach along the back of his ranch, and he went down there by himself for his morning dip. Somebody took a shot at him from the top of the bluff. Five or six shots. He was in the water, see, with no gun handy. He told me the slugs were splashing around him like hailstones. He ducked and swam under water out to sea. Lucky for him he’s a good swimmer, or he wouldn’t of got away. It’s no wonder he’s scared. It means they caught up with him, see.”
“Who are ‘they,’ or is that a family secret?”
Nemo turned from the wheel to peer into my face. His breath was sour, his look incredulous. “Christ, don’t you know who Nick is? Didn’t he tell you?”
“He’s a lemon-grower, isn’t he?”
“He is now.”
“What did he used to be?”
The bitter beaten face closed on itself. “I oughtn’t to be flapping at the mouth. He can tell you himself if he wants to.”
Two hundred horses yanked us away from the curb. I rode with my heavy leather bag on my knees. Nemo drove as if driving was the one thing in life he enjoyed, rapt in silent communion with the engine. It whisked us along the highway, then down a gradual incline between geometrically planted lemon groves. The sunset sea glimmered red at the foot of the slope.
Before we reached it, we turned off the blacktop into a private lane which ran like a straight hair-parting between the dark green trees. Straight for half a mile or more to a low house in a clearing.
The house was flat-roofed, made of concrete and fieldstone, with an attached garage. All of its windows were blinded with heavy draperies. It was surrounded with well-kept shrubbery and lawn, the lawn with a ten-foot wire fence surmounted by barbed wire.
Nemo stopped in front of the closed and padlocked gate, and honked the horn. There was no response. He honked the horn again.
About halfway between the house and the gate, a crawling thing came out of the shrubbery. It was a man, moving very slowly on hands and knees. His head hung down almost to the ground. One side of his head was bright red, as if he had fallen in paint. He left a jagged red trail in the gravel of the driveway.
Harry Nemo said, “Nick!” He scrambled out of the car. “What happened, Nick?”
The crawling man lifted his heavy head and looked at us. Cumbrously, he rose to his feet. He came forward with his legs spraddled and loose, like a huge infant learning to walk. He breathed loudly and horribly, looking at us with a dreadful hopefulness. Then he died on his feet, still walking. I saw the change in his face before it struck the gravel.
Harry Nemo went over the fence like a weary monkey, snagging his slacks on the barbed wire. He knelt beside his brother and turned him over and palmed his chest. He stood up shaking his head.
I had my bag unzipped and my hand on the revolver. I went to the gate. “Open up, Harry.”
Harry was saying, “They got him,” over and over. He crossed himself several times. “The dirty bastards.”
“Open up,” I said.
He found a key ring in the dead man’s pocket and opened the padlocked gate. Our dragging footsteps crunched the gravel. I looked down at the specks of gravel in Nicky Nemo’s eyes, the bullet hole in the temple.
“Who got him, Harry?”
“I dunno. Fats Jordan, or Artie Castola, or Faronese. It must have been one of them.”
“The Purple Gang.”
“You called it. Nicky was their treasurer back in the thirties. He was the one that didn’t get into the papers. He handled the payoff, see. When the heat went on and the gang got busted up, he had some money in a safe deposit box. He was the only one that got away.”
“How much money?”
“Nicky never told me. All I know, he come out here before the war and bought a thousand acres of lemon land. It took them fifteen years to catch up with him. He always knew they were gonna, though. He knew it.”
“Artie Castola got off the Rock last spring.”
“You’re telling me. That’s when Nicky bought himself the bullet-proof car and put up the fence.”
“Are they gunning for you?”
He looked around at the darkening groves and the sky. The sky was streaked with running red, as if the sun had died a violent death.
“I dunno,” he answered nervously. “They got no reason to. I’m as clean as soap. I never been in the rackets. Not since I was young, anyway. The wife made me go straight, see?”
I said: “We better get into the house and call the police.”
The front door was standing a few inches ajar. I could see at the edge that it was sheathed with quarter-inch steel plate. Harry put my thoughts into words.
“Why in hell would he go outside? He was safe as houses as long as he stayed inside.”
“Did he live alone?”
“More or less alone.”
“What does that mean?”
>
He pretended not to hear me, but I got some kind of an answer. Looking through the doorless arch into the living room, I saw a leopardskin coat folded across the back of the chesterfield. There were redtipped cigarette butts mingled with chair butts in the ash trays.
“Nicky was married?”
“Not exactly.”
“You know the woman?”
“Naw.” But he was lying.
Somewhere behind the thick walls of the house, there was a creak of springs, a crashing bump, the broken roar of a cold engine, grinding of tires in gravel. I got to the door in time to see a cerise convertible hurtling down the driveway. The top was down, and a yellow-haired girl was small and intent at the wheel. She swerved around Nick’s body and got through the gate somehow, with her tires screaming. I aimed at the right rear tire, and missed. Harry came up behind me. He pushed my gun-arm down before I could fire again. The convertible disappeared in the direction of the highway.
“Let her go,” he said.
“Who is she?”
He thought about it, his slow brain clicking almost audibly. “I dunno. Some pig that Nicky picked up some place. Her name is Flossie or Florrie or something. She didn’t shoot him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You know her pretty well, do you?”
“The hell I do. I don’t mess with Nicky’s dames.” He tried to work up a rage to go with the strong words, but he didn’t have the makings. The best he could produce was petulance: “Listen, mister, why should you hang around? The guy that hired you is dead.”
“I haven’t been paid, for one thing.”
“I’ll fix that.”
He trotted across the lawn to the body and came back with an alligator billfold. It was thick with money.
“How much?”
“A hundred will do it.”
He handed me a hundred-dollar bill. “Now how about you amscray, bud, before the law gets here?”
“I need transportation.”
“Take Nicky’s car. He won’t be using it. You can park it at the airport and leave the key with the agent.”
“I can, eh?”
“Sure, I’m telling you you can.”
“Aren’t you getting a little free with your brother’s property?”
“It’s my property now, bud.” A bright thought struck him, disorganizing his face. “Incidentally, how would you like to get off my land?”
“I’m staying, Harry. I like this place. I always say it’s people that make a place.”
The gun was still in my hand. He looked down at it.
“Get on the telephone, Harry. Call the police.”
“Who do you think you are, ordering me around? I took my last order from anybody, see?” He glanced over his shoulder at the dark and shapeless object on the gravel, and spat venomously.
“I’m a citizen, working for Nicky. Not for you.”
He changed his tune very suddenly. “How much to go to work for me?”
“Depends on the line of work.”
He manipulated the alligator wallet. “Here’s another hundred. If you got to hang around, keep the lip buttoned down about the dame, eh? Is it a deal?”
I didn’t answer, but I took the money. I put it in a separate pocket by itself. Harry telephoned the county sheriff.
He emptied the ash trays before the sheriff’s men arrived, and stuffed the leopardskin coat into the woodbox. I sat and watched him.
We spent the next two hours with loud-mouthed deputies. They were angry with the dead man for having the kind of past that attracted bullets. They were angry with Harry for being his brother. They were secretly angry with themselves for being inexperienced and incompetent. They didn’t even uncover the leopardskin coat.
Harry Nemo left for the courthouse first. I waited for him to leave, and followed him home, on foot.
Where a leaning palm tree reared its ragged head above the pavements, there was a court lined with jerry-built frame cottages. Harry turned up the walk between them and entered the first cottage. Light flashed on his face from inside. I heard a woman’s voice say something to him. Then light and sound were cut off by the closing door.
An old gabled house with boarded-up windows stood opposite the court. I crossed the street and settled down in the shadows of its veranda to watch Harry Nemo’s cottage. Three cigarettes later, a tall woman in a dark hat and a light coat came out of the cottage and walked briskly to the corner and out of sight. Two cigarettes after that, she reappeared at the corner on my side of the street, still walking briskly. I noticed that she had a large straw handbag under her arm. Her face long and stony under the streetlight.
Leaving the street, she marched up the broken sidewalk to the veranda where I was leaning against the shadowed wall. The stairs groaned under her decisive footsteps. I put my hand on the gun in my pocket, and waited. With the rigid assurance of a WAC corporal marching at the head of her platoon, she crossed the veranda to me, a thin high-shouldered silhouette against the light from the corner. Her hand was in her straw bag, and the end of the bag was pointed at my stomach. Her shadowed face was a gleam of eyes, a glint of teeth.
“I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” she said. “I have a gun here, and the safety is off, and I know how to shoot it, mister.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m not joking.” Her deep contralto rose a notch. “Rapid fire used to be my specialty. So you better take your hands out of your pockets.”
I showed her my hands, empty. Moving very quickly, she relieved my pocket of the weight of my gun, and frisked me for other weapons.
“Who are you, mister?” she said as she stepped back. “You can’t be Arturo Castola, you’re not old enough.”
“Are you a policewoman?”
“I’ll ask the questions. What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for a friend.”
“You’re a liar. You’ve been watching my house for an hour and a half. I tabbed you through the window.”
“So you went and bought yourself a gun?”
“I did. You followed Harry home. I’m Mrs. Nemo, and I want to know why.”
“Harry’s the friend I’m waiting for.”
“You’re a double liar. Harry’s afraid of you. You’re no friend of his.”
“That depends on Harry. I’m a detective.”
She snorted. “Very likely. Where’s your buzzer?”
“I’m a private detective,” I said. “I have identification in my wallet.”
“Show me. And don’t try any tricks.”
I produced my photostat. She held it up to the light from the street, and handed it back to me. “So you’re a detective. You better do something about your tailing technique. It’s obvious.”
“I didn’t know I was dealing with a cop.”
“I was a cop,” she said. “Not any more.”
“Then give me back my .38. It cost me seventy dollars.”
“First tell me, what’s your interest in my husband? Who hired you?”
“Nick, your brother-in-law. He called me in Los Angeles today, said he needed a bodyguard for a week. Didn’t Harry tell you?”
She didn’t answer.
“By the time I got to Nick, he didn’t need a bodyguard, or anything. But I thought I’d stick around and see what I could find out about his death. He was a client, after all.”
“You should pick your clients more carefully.”
“What about picking brothers-in-law?”
She took her head stiffly. The hair that escaped from under her hat was almost white. “I’m not responsible for Nick or anything about him. Harry is my responsibility. I met him in line of duty and I straightened him out, understand? I tore him loose from Detroit and the rackets, and I brought him out here. I couldn’t cut him off from his brother entirely. But he hasn’t been in trouble since I married him. Not once.”
“Until now.”
“Harry isn’t in trouble now.”
“Not yet. Not offic
ially.”
“What do you mean?”
“Give me my gun, and put yours down. I can’t talk into iron.”
She hesitated, a grim and anxious woman under pressure. I wondered what quirk of fate or psychology had married her to a hood, and decided it must have been love. Only love would send a woman across a dark street to face down an unknown gunman. Mrs. Nemo was horse-faced and aging and not pretty, but she had courage.
She handed me my gun. Its butt was soothing to the palm of my hand. I dropped in into my pocket. A gang of Negro boys at loose ends went by in the street, hooting and whistling purposelessly.
She leaned towards me, almost as tall as I was. Her voice was a low sibilance forced between her teeth:
“Harry had nothing to do with his brother’s death. You’re crazy if you think so.”
“What makes you so sure, Mrs. Nemo?”
“Harry couldn’t, that’s all. I know Harry, I can read him like a book. Even if he had the guts, which he hasn’t, he wouldn’t dare to think of killing Nick. Nick was his older brother, understand, the successful one in the family.” Her voice rasped contemptuously. “In spite of everything I could do or say, Harry worshipped Nick right up to the end.”
“Those brotherly feelings sometimes cut two ways. And Harry had a lot to gain.”
“Not a cent. Nothing.”
“He’s Nick’s heir, isn’t he?”
“Not as long as he stays married to me. I wouldn’t let him touch a cent of Nick Nemo’s filthy money. Is that clear?”
“It’s clear to me. But is it clear to Harry?”
“I made it clear to him, many times. Anyway, this is ridiculous. Harry wouldn’t lay a finger on that precious brother of his.”
“Maybe he didn’t do it himself. He could have had it done for him. I know he’s covering for somebody.”
“Who?”
“A blonde girl left the house after we arrived. She got away in a cherry-colored convertible. Harry recognized her.”
“A cherry-colored convertible?”
“Yes. Does that mean something to you?”
A Century of Noir Page 23