The Blue Hammer

by Ross Macdonald

  I followed a winding road along the edge of the campus, looking for Fred Johnson. There weren't many students in sight. Still the place seemed crowded and jumbled, like something thrown at a map in the hope that it would stick there.

  Academia Village was even more haphazard than the campus proper. Loose dogs and loose students roamed the narrow streets in about equal numbers. The buildings ranged from hamburger stands and tiny cottages and duplexes to giant apartment buildings. The Sherbourne, where Doris Biemeyer lived, was one of the big ones. It was six stories high and occupied most of a block.

  I found a parking place behind a camper painted to simulate a log cabin on wheels. No sign of the old blue Ford. I went into the Sherbourne and took an elevator to the third floor.

  The building was fairly new but its interior smelled old and used. It was crowded with the odors of rapid generations, sweat and perfume and pot and spices. If there were human voices, they were drowned out by the music from several competing sources along the third-floor hallway, which sounded like the voices of the building's own multiple personality.

  I had to knock several times on the door of Apartment 304. The girl who opened the door looked like a smaller version of her mother, prettier but vaguer and less sure of herself.

  "Miss Biemeyer?"

  "Yes?"

  Her eyes looked past me at something just beyond my left shoulder. I sidestepped and looked behind me, half expecting to be hit. But there was nobody there.

  "May I come in and talk to you for a minute?"

  "I'm sorry. I'm meditating."

  "What are you meditating about?"

  "I don't really know." She giggled softly and touched the side of her head, where her light hair hung straight like raw silk. "It hasn't come together yet. It hasn't materialized, you know?"

  She looked as though she hadn't quite materialized, herself. She had the kind of blondness you can almost see through. She swayed gently like a curtain at a window. Then she lost her balance and fell quite hard against the doorframe.

  I took hold of both her arms and pulled her upright. Her hands were cold, and she seemed slightly dazed. I wondered what she had swallowed or sipped or imbibed.

  With one arm around her shoulders, I propelled her into her living room. On its far side a screen door opened on a balcony. The room was almost as bare as a coolie's hut: a few plain chairs, a pallet on a metal frame, a card table, fiber mats. The only decoration was a large butterfly made of spangled red tissue paper on a wire skeleton. It was almost as big as she was, and it hung on a string from the central ceiling fixture and very slowly rotated.

  She sat on one of the floor mats and looked up at the paper butterfly. Under the long cotton gown that seemed to be her only garment, she tried to arrange her legs and feet in the lotus position, and failed.

  "Did you make the butterfly, Doris?"

  She shook her head. "No. I don't make things. It was one of the decorations at the dance when I got out of boarding school. It was my mother's idea to hang it in here. I hate it." Her soft little voice seemed out of sync with the movements of her mouth. "I don't feel very well."

  I went down on one knee beside her. "What have you been taking?"

  "Just some pills to calm my nerves. They help me meditate." She began to struggle again with her feet and knees, trying to force them into position. The soles of her feet were dirty.

  "What kind of pills?"

  "The red ones. Just a couple. The trouble with me is I haven't eaten, not since sometime yesterday. Fred said he'd bring me something to eat from home, but I guess his mother won't let him. She doesn't like me-she wants Fred all to herself." The girl added in her gentle sibilant voice, "She can go to hell and copulate with spiders."

  "What about your own mother, Doris?"

  She let go of her feet. Her legs straightened out in front of her. She pulled her long dress down over them.

  "What about her?" she said.

  "If you need food or any kind of help, can't you get it from her?"

  She shook her head with sudden startling violence. Her hair streamed over her eyes and mouth. She flung it back in an angry two-handed movement, like someone peeling off a rubber mask.

  "I don't want her kind of help. She wants to take away my freedom-lock me up in a nursing home and throw away the key." She got up clumsily onto her knees, so that her blue eyes were on a level with mine. "Are you a shrink?"

  "Not me."

  "Are you sure? She threatened to turn the shrinks loose on me. I almost wish she would-I could tell them a thing or two." She nodded vengefully, chopping at the air with her soft chin.

  "Like what?"

  "Like the only thing they ever did in their lives was fight and argue. They built themselves that great big hideous house and all they ever did was fight in it. When they weren't giving each other the silent treatment."

  "What were they fighting about?"

  "A woman named Mildred-that was one of the things. But the basic thing was they didn't-they don't love each other, and they blamed each other for that. Also they blamed me, at least they acted that way. I don't remember much of what happened when I was a little girl. But one of the things I do remember is their yelling at each other over my head-yelling like crazy giants without any clothes on, with me in between them. And he was sticking out about a foot. She picked me up and took me into the bathroom and locked the door. He broke the door down with his shoulder. He went around with his arm in a sling for a long time after that. And," she added softly, "I've been going around with my mind in a sling."

  "Downers won't cure that."

  She narrowed her eyes and stuck out her lower lip like a stubborn child on the verge of tears. "Nobody asked you for your advice. You are a shrink, aren't you?" She sniffed. "I can smell the dirt on you, from people's dirty secrets."

  I produced what felt from the inside like a lopsided smile. The girl was young and foolish, perhaps a little addled, by her own admission drugged. But she was young, and had clean hair. I hated to smell dirty to her.

  I stood up and lightly hit my head on the paper butterfly. I went to the screen door and looked out across the balcony. Through the narrow gap between two apartment buildings I could see a strip of bright sea. A trimaran crossed it, running before a light wind.

  The room seemed dim when I turned back to it, a transparent cube of shadow full of obscure life. The paper butterfly seemed to move in some sort of actual flight. The girl rose and stood swaying under it.

  "Did my mother send you here?"

  "Not exactly. I've talked to your mother."

  "And I suppose she told you all the terrible things I've done. What a rotten egg I am. What a rotten ego." She giggled nervously.

  "No. She is worried about you, though."

  "About me and Fred?"

  "I think so."

  She nodded, and her head stayed down. "I'm worried about us, too, but not for the same reason. She thinks that Fred and I are lovers or something. But I don't seem to be able to relate to people. The closer I get to them, the colder I feel."

  "Why?"

  "They scare me. When he-when my father broke down the bathroom door, I climbed into the laundry hamper and pulled the lid down on top of me. I'll never forget the feeling it gave me, like I was dead and buried and safe forever."

  "Safe?"

  "They can't kill you after you're dead."

  "What are you so afraid of, Doris?"

  She looked up at me from under her light brows. "People."

  "Do you feel that way about Fred?"

  "No, I'm not afraid of him. He makes me terribly mad sometimes. He makes me want to-" She bit off the sentence. I could hear her teeth grind together.

  "Makes you want to what?"

  She hesitated, her face taut, listening to the secret life behind it. "Kill him, I was going to say. But I didn't really mean it. Anyway, what would be the use? Poor old Fred is dead and buried already, the way I am."

  I felt an angry desire to disagree,
to tell her that she was too pretty and young to be talking in that way. But she was a witness, and it was best not to argue with her.

  "What happened to Fred?"

  "A lot of things. He comes from a poor family and it took him half his life just to get where he is now, which is practically nowhere. His mother's some kind of a nurse, but she's fixated on her husband. He was crippled in the war and doesn't do much of anything. Fred was meant to be an artist or something like that, but I'm afraid he's never going to make it."

  "Has Fred been in trouble?"

  Her face closed. "I didn't say that."

  "I thought you implied it."

  "Maybe I did. Everybody's been in some kind of trouble."

  "What kind has Fred been in?"

  She shook her head. "I'm not going to tell you. You'd go back to my mother with it."

  "No, I wouldn't."

  "Yes, you would."

  "You care about Fred, don't you?"

  "I've got a right to care about somebody in this world. He's a nice boy-a nice man."

  "Sure he is. Did the nice man steal the nice picture from your nice parents?"

  "You don't have to get sarcastic."

  "But I do sometimes. It comes from everybody being so nice. You haven't answered my question, Doris. Did Fred steal the picture?"

  She shook her head. "It wasn't stolen."

  "You mean it climbed down off the wall and walked away?"

  "No. I don't mean that." Tears overflowed her eyes and ran down her face. "I took it."

  "Why?"

  "Fred told me-Fred asked me to."

  "Did he give a reason?"

  "He had a good reason."

  "What reason?"

  "He told me not to tell anybody."

  "Did Fred keep the picture?"

  "I guess he did. He hasn't brought it back yet."

  "Did he say he was going to bring it back?"

  "Yes, and he will, too. He wanted to make an examination of it, he said."

  "An examination for what?"

  "To see if it was genuine."

  "Did he think it was a fake?"

  "He wanted to find out."

  "Did he have to steal it to do that?"

  "He didn't steal it. I let him take it. And you're not very nice."

  VI

  I was beginning to agree with her. I left her and walked down the stairs and out to my car. For over an hour, while the afternoon shadows of the buildings lengthened across me, I sat and watched the main entrance of the Sherbourne.

  There was a natureburger place in a geodesic dome up the block, and now and then the uncertain wind brought me the smell of food. Eventually I went and had a nature-burger. The atmosphere in the place was dim and inert. The bearded young customers made me think of early cave men waiting for the ice age to end.

  I was back in my car when Fred Johnson finally came. He parked his blue Ford directly behind me and looked up and down the street. He went into the Sherbourne and took the elevator up. I took the stairs, fast. We met in the third-floor hallway. He was wearing a green suit and a wide yellow tie.

  He tried to retreat into the elevator, but its door closed in his face and it started down. He turned to face me. He was pale and wide-eyed.

  "What do you want?"

  "The picture you took from the Biemeyers."

  "What picture?"

  "You know what picture. The Chantry."

  "I didn't take it."

  "Maybe not. But it came into your hands."

  He looked past me down the hall toward the girl's room. "Did Doris tell you that?"

  "We could leave Doris out of this. She's in enough trouble now, with her parents and with herself."

  He nodded as if he understood and agreed. But his eyes had a separate life of their own, and were searching for a way out. He looked to me like one of those tired boys who go from youth to middle age without passing through manhood.

  "Who are you, anyway?"

  "I'm a private detective." I told him my name. "The Biemeyers hired me to reclaim their picture. Where is it, Fred?"

  "I don't know."

  He wagged his head despondently. As if I had taken hold of his head and squeezed it with my hands, clear drops of sweat stood out on his forehead.

  "What happened to it, Fred?"

  "I took it home, I admit that. I had no intention of stealing it. I only wanted to study it."

  "When did you take it home?"

  "Yesterday."

  "Where is it now?"

  "I don't know. Honestly. Somebody must have stolen it from my room."

  "From the house on Olive Street?"

  "Yes, sir. Somebody broke into the house and stole it while I was sleeping. It was there when I went to bed and when I woke up it was gone."

  "You must be a heavy sleeper."

  "I guess I am."

  "Or a heavy liar."

  His slender body was shaken by a flurry of shame or anger. I thought he was going to take a swing at me, and I set myself for that. But he made a dash for the stairs. I was too slow to head him off. By the time I got down to the street, he was driving away in his old blue Ford.

  I bought a natureburger in a paper bag and took the elevator back up to the third floor. Doris let me into her apartment, looking disappointed that it was me.

  I handed her the sandwich. "Here's something to eat."

  "I'm not hungry. Fred promised to bring me something, anyway."

  "You better eat that. Fred may not be coming today."

  "But he said he would."

  "He may be in trouble, Doris, about that picture." Her hand closed, squeezing the sandwich in the bag. "Are my parents trying to get him?"

  "I wouldn't put it that strongly."

  "You don't know my parents. They'll make him lose his job at the museum. He'll never become a college graduate. And all because he tried to do them a favor."

  "I don't quite follow that."

  She nodded her head emphatically. "He was trying to authenticate their painting. He wanted to examine the paint for age. If it was fresh paint, it would probably mean that it wasn't genuine."

  "Wasn't a genuine Chantry?"

  "That's correct. Fred thought when he first looked at it that it wasn't genuine. At least he wasn't sure. And he doesn't trust the man my parents bought it from."

  "Grimes?"

  "That's right. Fred said he has a bad reputation in art circles."

  I wondered what kind of a reputation Fred was going to have, now that the picture had been stolen. But there was no use worrying the girl about it. The meaning of her face was still as diffuse as a cloud. I left her with her dilapidated sandwich and drove back down along the freeway to the lower town.

  The door of Paul Grimes's shop was locked. I knocked and got no answer. I rattled the knob and raised my voice. No answer. Peering into the dim interior, I could see nothing but emptiness and shadows.

  I went into the liquor store and asked the black man if he had seen Paola.

  "She was out in front an hour or so ago, loading some pictures into her van. As a matter of fact, I helped her."

  "What kind of pictures?"

  "Framed pictures. Weird junk, gobs of color. I like a picture to look like something real. No wonder they couldn't sell 'em."

  "How do you know they couldn't sell 'em?"

  "It stands to reason. She said they were giving up on the shop."

  "Was Paul Grimes with her-the man with the beard?"

  "Nope, he didn't show. I haven't seen him since I saw you."

  "Did Paola say where she was going?"

  "I didn't ask. She took off in the direction of Montevista." He pointed southwest with his thumb. "What kind of a van is she driving?"

  "Old yellow Volkswagen. Is she in some kind of trouble?"

  "No. I wanted to talk to her about a picture."

  "To buy?"

  "Maybe."

  He looked at me incredulously, "you like that kind of stuff?"

  "Sometime
s."

  "Too bad. If they knew they had a buyer, they might of stayed in business to accommodate you."

  "They might. Will you sell me two half-pints of Tennessee whisky?"

  "Why not a whole pint? It's cheaper that way."

  "Two half-pints are better."

  VII

  On my way uptown I stopped at the art museum, intending to ask for Fred. But the place was closed for the night.

  I drove on up to Olive Street. Darkness had spread like a branching tree across the lawns and yards, and lights were coming on in the old houses. The hospital was a great pierced box of light. I parked near the gabled house where the Johnsons lived and made my way up its broken steps to the front door.

  Fred's father must have been listening on the other side of the door. He spoke before I had a chance to knock: "Who is that?"

  "Archer. I was here earlier today, looking for Fred."

  "That's right. I remember." He sounded proud of the feat.

  "May I come in and talk to you for a minute, Mr. Johnson?"

  "Sorry, no can do. My wife locked the door."

  "Where's the key?"

  "Sarah took it with her to the hospital. She's afraid I'll go out in the street and get run over. But the fact is I'm completely sober. I'm so sober that it's making me physically sick. She's supposed to be a nurse, but little does she care." His voice was fogged with self-pity.

  "Is there any way you can let me in? Through a window, maybe?"

  "She'd crucify me."

  "How would she know? I've got some whisky with me. Could you use a couple of snorts?"

  His tone brightened. "Could I not. But how are you going to get in?"

  "I have some keys."

  It was a simple old lock, and the second key that I tried opened it. I closed the door behind me, moving into the cramped hallway with some difficulty. Johnson's thick body crowded mine. In the light of a dim overhead bulb, I could see that his face was working with excitement.

  "You said you had some whisky for me."

  "Hold on for a minute."

  "But I'm sick. You can see that I'm sick."

  I opened one of my half-pint bottles. He drained it in one continuous shuddering swallow, and licked the mouth of the empty bottle.