The Blue Hammer

by Ross Macdonald

  At this point, Gerard Johnson came out onto the porch and staggered down the uneven steps. He looked like a dead man walking blind, but his eyes or his nose or his alcoholic's radar picked me up and dragged him through the weeds in my direction.

  "Are you still here, you bastard?"

  "I'm still here, Mr. Johnson."

  "Don't 'mister' me. I know how you feel. You treat me with disrespect. You think I'm a stinking old drunk. But I'm here to tell you with my last breath that I'm a better man-right here as I stand, I'm a better man than you ever were and I'm ready to prove it."

  I didn't ask him how. I didn't have to. He thrust his right hand into the sagging pocket of his pants and brought it out holding a nickel-plated revolver, the kind cops like to call a "Saturday-night special." I heard the click of the hammer, and dived for Johnson's legs. He went down.

  I climbed rapidly up his recumbent body and took the gun away from him. It was empty. My hands were shaking.

  Gerard Johnson struggled to his feet and began to shout. He shouted at me and at his wife and son as they came out on the porch. The words he used were mostly scatological. He raised his voice and shouted at his house. He shouted at the houses across the road and down the street.

  More lights came on in those houses, but no one appeared at the windows or opened the doors. Perhaps if someone had appeared, Johnson might have felt less lonely.

  It was his son, Fred, who took pity on him. Fred came down off the porch and put his arms around Johnson from behind, encircling his laboring chest.

  "Please act like a human being, Dad."

  Johnson struggled and surged and swore, and gradually left off shouting. Fred's face was wet with tears. The sky tore like a net and the moon swam out.

  Suddenly the night had changed its weather. It was higher and brighter and stranger. Holding Johnson around the shoulders, Fred walked him up the steps and into the house. It was a sad and touching thing to see the lost son fathering his father. There was no real hope for Johnson, but there was still hope for Fred. Lackner agreed. I turned the gun over to him before he drove away in his Toyota.

  Fred had left the front door open, and after a moment Mrs. Johnson came out and down the steps. Her body moved aimlessly, like a stray animal. The light from the sky silvered her uniform.

  "I want to apologize."

  "For what?"

  "Everything."

  She flung out her arm in an awkward sideways gesture, as much a brushing away as an embracing. It seemed to take in the gabled house and everyone and everything in it, her family and the neighbors, and the street, the thick dark olive trees and their darker shadows, the moon that drenched her in its cold light and deeply scored her face.

  "Don't apologize to me," I said. "I chose this job, or it chose me. There's a lot of human pain involved in it, but I'm not looking for another job."

  "I know what you mean. I'm a nurse. I may be an unemployed nurse by tomorrow. I just had to come home on account of Fred getting out, and I walked off my shift. It's about time I walked back on."

  "Can I offer you a lift?"

  She gave me a quick suspicious look, as if I might have designs on her heavy middle-aged body. But she said, "You're very kind, sir. Fred left our car someplace in Arizona. I don't know if it's even worth bringing back."

  I opened the door for her. She reacted as if this hadn't happened to her for some time.

  When we were both in the car, I said, "There's a question I'd like to ask you. You don't have to answer it. But if you do, I don't plan to pass your answer on to anybody."

  She stirred in her seat and turned toward me. "Has somebody been bad-mouthing me?"

  "About those drugs that were missing at the hospital, do you want to discuss it some more?"

  She said, "I admit I took a few sample pills. But I didn't take them for myself, or for any wrong purpose. I wanted to try them out on Gerard, and see if I could get him to cut down on his drinking. I guess they could get me on a technical charge of prescribing medicine without being a doctor. But nearly every nurse I ever knew does that." She gave me an anxious look. "Are they thinking about bringing charges?"

  "Not to my knowledge."

  "Then how did the subject come up?"

  "One of the nurses at the hospital mentioned it. She was explaining why you'd been fired."

  "That was the excuse they used. But I'll tell you why I was fired. There were people in that institution that didn't like me." We were passing the hospital, and she pointed an accusing finger at the great lighted building. "I may not be the easiest person to get along with. But I am a good nurse, and they had no right to fire me. You had no right to bring it up with them, either."

  "I think I had, Mrs. Johnson."

  "What gives you the right?"

  "I'm investigating a couple of murders, as well as the missing picture. You know that."

  "You think I know where the picture is? I don't. Fred doesn't either. We're not thieves. We may have problems in the family, but we're not that kind of people."

  "I never said you were. People can change, though, if they get involved with drugs. It gives other people a handle to use on them."

  "Nobody's got that kind of a handle on me. I took a few pills, I admit it. I gave them to Gerard. And now I'm paying for it. I'll be spending the rest of my working days in understaffed nursing homes. That is, if I'm lucky enough to hold any job at all."

  She fell into a glum silence that lasted most of the way to the La Paloma. Before she left the car, I told her about the women I was looking for, Mildred Mead and Betty Siddon.

  She listened gravely. "I'll do what I can. I won't have much time for phoning on _this_ night shift. But I'll pass the word along to some nurses I know in the other nursing homes." She added haltingly, as if it cost her a moral effort to acknowledge any debt: "Fred told me how you treated him in Arizona. I appreciate that. After all, I'm his mother," she said in something like surprise.

  She stepped out onto the asphalt and moved heavily toward the half-lighted building. Beyond the wall that enclosed the parking lot, cars went by in unceasing flight and pursuit on mourning tires. Mrs. Johnson turned as she reached the doorway and lifted her hand to me.

  A moment after she entered, Mrs. Johnson backed out of the doorway. She was closely followed by two cops. One was in uniform. The other was Captain Mackendrick. I heard her complaining as I approached that they had no right to jump on her in the dark, she was an innocent woman on her way to work.

  Mackendrick scanned her angry frightened face. "You're Mrs. Johnson, aren't you? Fred Johnson's mother?"

  "That is correct," she said coldly. "It doesn't give you any license to scare me out of my wits."

  "I didn't mean to do that, ma'am. I'm sorry."

  "You ought to be sorry." Mrs. Johnson was pressing her advantage. "You have no right to harry me and harass me. We've got a good lawyer working on our behalf, and you'll be hearing from him if you don't look out."

  Mackendrick gazed helplessly at the sky and then at me. "Look, did I do anything wrong? I bumped into a woman accidentally in the dark. I apologized. Do I have to get down on my knees?"

  "Mrs. Johnson is a little nervous tonight."

  She nodded approvingly in my direction. "You bet I am. What are you doing here, anyway, Captain?"

  "We're making a search for a woman."

  "Miss Siddon?"

  "That's correct, ma'am." Mackendrick gave her a sharp inquiring look. "Who told you about Miss Siddon?"

  "Mr. Archer here. He asked me to phone some of my friends in the other nursing homes. I said I would if I got the time, and I will. May I go now?"

  "Please do," Mackendrick said. "Nobody's interfering with your movements in any way, shape, or form. But it may not be a good idea to call the other nursing homes. We'd rather surprise 'em."

  Mrs. Johnson went into the building for a second time, and didn't reappear.

  "She's a tough old babe," Mackendrick said.

  "She's had a to
ugh couple of days. Could you and I have a word in private, Captain?"

  He jerked his head at the man in uniform, who climbed into the police car. We walked to the far corner of the lot, as far as possible from the building and the highway. A native oak that had somehow kept itself alive in this waste of pavement extended its faint moon-shadow to us. I said, "What brought you here?"

  "We got a tip. Someone phoned in and said we should look here for Miss Siddon. That's why I came over myself. We went through the place with a fine-toothed comb and found no trace of her or anybody like her."

  "Who provided the tip?"

  "It was anonymous-evidently some woman trying to stir up trouble. Mrs. Johnson's the kind who makes enemies. She got herself fired from the hospital, you know."

  "So she was telling me. You don't need my opinion, Captain, but I'll give it to you anyway. I think I gave you a bum steer on this search of the nursing homes. I'm not suggesting you call it off entirely. But I think it's time to concentrate your own energies on something else."

  Mackendrick was slow to answer. "You mean Mrs. Chantry, don't you?"

  "She seems to be at the center of this case."

  "We don't know that."

  "I think we do."

  "What you think isn't good enough, Archer. I can't move against that woman without enough evidence to sink her."

  XXXIII

  I parked at the head of Mrs. Chantry's street and walked down to her house. Fog was crawling up the barranca behind it. On the hill above, the Biemeyers' place was full of cold light. But Mrs. Chantry's house was dark and still.

  I knocked on the front door. I must have half expected to find her dead, or gone, because her immediate response took me by surprise.

  As if she'd been waiting there all night, she said through the door, "Who is that? Rico?"

  I didn't answer her. We stood on opposite sides of the door in a long waiting silence. It was unevenly filled by the noise of the waves that mounted the beach like giant blundering footsteps and then slid back again.

  "Who is that?" she said on a rising note.

  "Archer."

  "Go away."

  "Should I go and get Captain Mackendrick?"

  There was another silence, measured by the thumping, slumping footsteps of the sea. Then she unlocked the door and opened it.

  There were no lights in the hallway or, so far as I could see, in the house. Against the interior darkness, her hair and her face were the same silvery color. She had on a high-necked dark dress, which suggested that she was a widow and made me wonder if she was.

  "Come in if you must," she said in a small cold voice.

  I followed her into the main room where her party had been held. She switched on a floor lamp above an armchair and stood beside it waiting. We faced each other in dead silence. Her party had left no echoes in the room.

  Finally she said, "I know your type. You're one of these self-elected experts who can't keep his sharp little nose out of other people's business. You just can't bear to see them live their lives without your horning in, can you?"

  She flushed, perhaps partly in anger. But what she was saying seemed to have other pressures behind it, too.

  I said, "You call this a life that you're living? Covering up a murder for a man you haven't seen in twenty-five years. Sleeping with a boy-man like Rico to keep him quiet."

  As if the lighting in the room had changed drastically, the color left her face and her eyes darkened.

  "Nobody talks to me like that."

  "You might as well get used to it. When the D.A.'s men make their case in Superior Court, they won't be mincing their words."

  "The case will never get to court. There is no case." But her eyes were strained and questioning, trying to see over the sharp edge of the present.

  "Come off it, Mrs. Chantry. Twenty-five years ago, a man was killed in this house. I don't know who he was but you probably do. Rico buried him in the greenhouse. Tonight, with some help from you, he dug up his bones and put them in a weighted sack. Unfortunately for both of you, I caught him before he threw them in the sea. Do you want to know where they are now?"

  She turned her face away. She didn't want to know. Suddenly, as if her legs had collapsed, she sat down in the armchair. She covered her face with her hands and appeared to be trying to cry.

  I stood and listened to her painful noises. Handsome as she was, and deep in trouble, I couldn't feel much sympathy for her. She had built her life on a dead man's bones, and death had taken partial possession of her.

  As if our minds had been tracking each other, she said, "Where are the bones now?"

  "Captain Mackendrick has them. He has your friend Rico, too. And Rico's been talking."

  She sat and absorbed the knowledge. It seemed to make her physically smaller. But the hard intelligence in her eyes didn't fade.

  "I think I can handle Mackendrick. He's ambitious. I'm not so sure about you. But you do work for money, don't you?"

  "I have all the money I need."

  She leaned forward, her ringed fists on her knees. "I'm thinking about quite a lot of money. More than you can ever accumulate in a lifetime. Enough to retire on."

  "I like my work."

  She made a bitter face, and succeeded in looking quite ugly. She struck her knees with her fists. "Don't play with me. I'm serious."

  "So am I. I don't want your money. But you could try bribing me with information."

  "Bribe you to do what, exactly?"

  "Give you an even break if you've got one coming."

  "All you want to do is play God, right?"

  "Not exactly. I would like to understand why a woman like you, with everything going for her, would try to cover up a lousy murder."

  "It wasn't a murder. It was an accident."

  "Who committed the accident?"

  "You don't believe me, do you?"

  "You haven't given me anything to believe, or not to believe. All I know is that you and Rico dug up a dead man's bones; then you sent Rico to sink them in the sea. That was a foolish thing to do, Mrs. Chantry. You should have left them underground in the greenhouse."

  "I don't think so. My mistake was getting Rico to handle it. I should have disposed of the body myself."

  "Whose body was it, Mrs. Chantry?"

  She shook her head as if the past were swarming like bees around her. "He was a stranger to me. He came to the house asking to see my husband. Richard shouldn't have seen him, and normally wouldn't have. But evidently the man's name meant something to him. He told Rico to send the man into his studio. And when I saw the man again, he was dead."

  "What was the dead man's name?"

  "I don't remember."

  "Were you there when the dead man talked to Rico?"

  "Yes, at least part of the time."

  "And later when Rico buried the body?"

  "I knew what was being done. I didn't participate in the burial."

  "Rico said you ordered it."

  "I suppose I did, in a sense. I was relaying my husband's wish."

  "Where was your husband at the time of the burial?"

  "He was in his studio, writing his farewell letter. It's a strange thing," she added after a moment. "He'd often spoken of taking off in that way. Dropping everything, starting a new, unencumbered life. And then the occasion came up, and he did just that."

  "Do you know where he went?"

  "No. I haven't heard from him since. Neither has anyone else, to my knowledge."

  "Do you think he's dead?"

  "I hope he isn't. He was-he is a great man, after all."

  She let herself cry a little. She seemed to be trying to regain lost emotional ground, rebuilding the Chantry myth with the materials that came to hand, partly old and partly new.

  "Why did he kill the man in the brown suit?"

  "I don't know that he did. It may have been an accident."

  "Did your husband claim it was an accident?"

  "I don't know. We didn't talk abou
t it. He wrote his letter and went."

  "You have no idea how or why the man was killed?"

  "None whatever."

  "Your husband gave you no explanation at all?"

  "No. Richard left in such a hurry there was no time for explanations."

  "That isn't the way I heard it, Mrs. Chantry. According to Rico, you and your husband and the man in the brown suit did some talking in the studio. What were you talking about?"

  "I don't remember that," she said.

  "Rico does."

  "He's a liar."

  "Most men are, when they get into real trouble. So are most women."

  She was losing her self-assurance, and anger seemed to be taking its place again. "Could you possibly spare me your generalizations? I've been through quite a lot in the last twenty-four hours and I don't have the strength to listen to a cheap private detective mouthing moral maxims."

  Her voice was high, and she looked tormented.

  I said, "You've been through quite a lot in the last twenty-five years. It'll go on and get worse unless you do something to end it."

  She sat in silence for a while, her gaze turned inward on the unburied past. "End it how?" she said finally.

  "Tell me what actually happened, and why."

  "I have been."

  "Not really, Mrs. Chantry. You've left out some of the most important things. Who the man in the brown suit was, and why he came here. The fact that he came here twice, and when he came here the second time-the time that he was killed-he had a woman and a small boy with him. The fact that you told Rico the man had a stroke and died more or less by accident."

  She sat and absorbed this, too, like someone undergoing a rapid aging process. She didn't try to evade it or push it away. In a sense, it appeared to be what she had been waiting for.

  "So Rico did a lot of talking," she said.

  "All he had time for. You picked a lousy co-conspirator."

  "I didn't pick him. He simply happened to be here." She looked me over carefully, as if perhaps I might be used to take Rico's place in her life. "I had no choice."