The Far Side of the Dollar

by Ross Macdonald

  “Yes. I brought it out from the office several hours ago.”

  “Has Hillman been given instructions for delivering it?”

  He shook his head. “We’re still waiting.”

  I found Ralph and Elaine Hillman in the downstairs room where the telephone was. They were sitting close together as if for warmth, on a chesterfield near the front window. The waiting had aged them both.

  The evening light fell like gray paint across their faces. She was knitting something out of red wool. Her hands moved rapidly and precisely as if they had independent life.

  Hillman got to his feet. He had been holding a newspaper-wrapped parcel in his lap, and he laid it down on the chesterfield, gently, like a father handling an infant.

  “Hello, Archer,” he said in a monotone.

  I moved toward him with some idea of comforting him. But the expression in his eyes, hurt and proud and lonely, discouraged me from touching him or saying anything very personal.

  “You’ve had a long hard day.”

  He nodded slowly, once. His wife let out a sound like a dry sob. “Why haven’t we heard anything from that man?”

  “It’s hard to say. He seems to be putting on the screws deliberately.”

  She pushed her knitting to one side, and it fell on the floor unnoticed. Her faded pretty face wrinkled up as if she could feel the physical pressure of torture instruments. “He’s keeping us in hell, in absolute hell. But why?”

  “He’s probably waiting for dark,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll be hearing from him soon. Twenty-five thousand dollars is a powerful attraction.”

  “He’s welcome to the money, five times over. Why doesn’t he simply take it and give us back our boy?” Her hand flung itself out, rattling the newspaper parcel beside her.

  “Don’t fret yourself, Ellie.” Hillman leaned over her and touched her pale gold hair. “There’s no use asking questions that can’t be answered. Remember, this will pass.” His words of comfort sounded hollow and forced.

  “So will I,” she said wryly and bitterly, “if this keeps up much longer.”

  She smoothed her face with both hands and stayed with her hands in a prayerful position at her chin. She was trembling. I was afraid she might snap like a violin string. I said to Hillman:

  “May I speak to you in private? I’ve uncovered some facts you should know.”

  “You can tell me in front of Elaine, and Dick for that matter.”

  I noticed that Leandro was standing just inside the door.

  “I prefer not to.”

  “You’re not calling the shots, however.” It was a curious echo of the man on the telephone. “Let’s have your facts.”

  I let him have them: “Your son has been seen consorting with a married woman named Brown. She’s a blonde, show-business type, a good deal older than he is, and she seems to have been after him for money. The chances are better than even that Mrs. Brown and her husband are involved in this extortion bid. They seem to be on their uppers—”

  Elaine raised her open hands in front of her face, as if too many words were confusing her. “What do you mean, consorting?”

  “He’s been hanging around with the woman, publicly and privately. They were seen together yesterday afternoon.”

  “Where?” Hillman said.

  “At The Barroom Floor.”

  “Who says so?”

  “One of their employees. He’s seen them before, and he referred to Mrs. Brown as Tom’s girl friend, the older one.’ I’ve had corroborating evidence from the man who owns the court where the Browns are living. Tom has been hanging around there, too.”

  “How old is this woman?”

  “Thirty or more. She’s quite an attractive dish, apparently.”

  Elaine Hillman lifted her eyes. There seemed to be real horror in them. “Are you implying that Tom has been having an affair with her?”

  “I’m simply reporting facts.”

  “I don’t believe your facts, not any of them.”

  “Do you think I’m lying to you?”

  “Maybe not deliberately. But there must be some ghastly mistake.”

  “I agree,” Dick Leandro said from the doorway. “Tom has always been a very clean-living boy.”

  Hillman was silent. Perhaps he knew something about his son that the others didn’t. He sat down beside his wife and hugged the paper parcel defensively.

  “His virtue isn’t the main thing right now,” I said. “The question is what kind of people he’s mixed up with and what they’re doing to him. Or possibly what they’re doing to you with his cooperation.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Hillman said.

  “We have to reconsider the possibility that Tom is in on the extortion deal. He was with Mrs. Brown yesterday. The man on the telephone, who may be Brown, said Tom came to them voluntarily.”

  Elaine Hillman peered up into my face as if she was trying to grasp such a possibility. It seemed to be too much for her to accept. She closed her eyes and shook her head so hard that her hair fell untidily over her forehead. Pushing it back with spread fingers, she said in a small voice that sent chills through me:

  “You’re lying, I know my son, he’s an innocent victim. You’re trying to do something terrible, coming to us in our affliction with such a filthy rotten smear.”

  Her husband tried to quiet her against his shoulder. “Hush now, Elaine. Mr. Archer is only trying to help.”

  She pushed him away from her. “We don’t want that kind of help. He has no right. Tom is an innocent victim, and God knows what is happening to him.” Her hand was still at her head, with her pale hair sprouting up between her fingers. “I can’t take any more of this, Ralph—this dreadful man with his dreadful stories.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hillman. I didn’t want you to hear them.”

  “I know. You wanted to malign my son without anyone to defend him.”

  “That’s nonsense, Ellie,” Hillman said. “I think you better come upstairs and let me give you a sedative.”

  He helped her to her feet and walked her out past me, looking at me sorrowfully across her rumpled head. She moved like an invalid leaning on his strength.

  Dick Leandro drifted into the room after they had left it, and sat on the chesterfield to keep the money company. He said in a slightly nagging way:

  “You hit Elaine pretty hard with all that stuff. She’s a sensitive woman, very puritanical about sex and such. And incidentally she’s crazy about Tommy. She won’t listen to a word against him.”

  “Are there words against him?”

  “Not that I know about. But he has been getting into trouble lately. You know, with the car wreck and all. And now you t-tell me he’s been dipping into the fleshpots.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yeah, but I got the message. Where does the g-girl live, anyway? Somebody ought to go and question her.”

  “You’re full of ideas.”

  He had a tin ear for tone. “Well, how about it? I’m game.”

  “You’re doing more good here, guarding the money. How did Hillman happen to pick you to bring the money, by the way? Are you an old family friend?”

  “I guess you could say that. I’ve been crewing for Mr. Hillman since I was yay-high.” He held out his hand at knee level. “Mr. Hillman is a terrific guy. Did you know he made Captain in the Navy? But he won’t let anybody call him Captain except when we’re at sea.”

  “And generous,” the young man said. “As a matter of fact, he helped me through college and got me a job at his broker’s. I owe him a lot. He’s treated me like a father.” He spoke with some emotion, real but intended, like an actor’s. “I’m an orphan, you might say. My family broke up when I was yay-high, and my father left town. He used to work for Mr. Hillman at the plant.”

  “Do you know Tom Hillman well?”

  “Sure. He’s a pretty good kid. But a little too much of an egghead in my book. Which keeps him from being popular. No wonder h
e has his troubles.” Leandro tapped his temple with his knuckles. “Is it true that Mr. Hillman put him in the booby—I mean, in a sanatorium?”

  “Ask him yourself.”

  The young man bored me. I went into the alcove and made myself a drink. Night was closing in. The garish bullfight posters on the walls had faded into darkness like long-forgotten corridas. There were shadows huddling with shadows behind the bar. I raised my glass to them in a gesture I didn’t quite understand, except that there was relief in darkness and silence and whisky.

  I could hear Hillman’s footsteps dragging down the stairs. The telephone on the bar went off like an alarm. Hillman’s descending footsteps became louder. He came trotting into the room as the telephone rang a second time. He elbowed me out of his way.

  I started for the extension phone in the pantry. He called after me:

  “No! I’ll handle this myself.”

  There was command in his voice. I stood and watched him pick up the receiver, hold it to his head like a black scorpion, and listen to what it said.

  “Yes, this is Mr. Hillman. Just a minute.” He brought a business envelope and a ballpoint pen out of his inside pocket, turned on an overhead light, and got ready to write on the bar. “Go ahead.”

  For about half a minute he listened and wrote. Then he said: “I think so. Aren’t there steps going down to the beach?”

  He listened and wrote. “Where shall I walk to?” He turned the envelope over and wrote some more. “Yes,” he said. “I park two blocks away, at Seneca, and approach the steps on foot. I put the money under the right side of the top step. Then I go down to the beach for half an hour. Is that all?”

  There was a little more. He listened to it. Finally he said: “Yes. But the deal is very much on as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be there at nine sharp.”

  There was a pathetic note in his voice, the note of a salesman trying to nail down an appointment with a refractory client.

  “Wait,” he said, and groaned into the dead receiver.

  Dick Leandro, moving like a cat, was in the alcove ahead of me. “What is it, Mr. Hillman? What’s the trouble?”

  “I wanted to ask about Tom. He didn’t give me a chance.” He lifted his face to the plaster ceiling. “I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”

  “They wouldn’t kill him, would they?” the young man said. He sounded as though he’d had a first frightening hint of his own mortality.

  “I don’t know, Dick. I don’t know.” Hillman’s head rolled from one side to the other.

  The young man put his arm around his shoulder. “Take it easy now, Skipper. We’ll get him back.”

  Hillman poured himself a heavy slug of bourbon and tossed it down. It brought a little color into his face. I said:

  “Same man?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he told you where to make the money-drop.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want company?”

  “I have to go there alone. He said he’d be watching.”

  “Where are you to go?”

  Hillman looked at each of our faces in turn, lingeringly, as if he was saying goodbye. “I’ll keep that to myself. I don’t want anything to wreck the arrangements.”

  “Somebody should know about them, though, in case anything does go wrong. You’re taking a chance.”

  “I’d rather take a chance with my own life than my son’s.” He said it as if he meant it, and the words seemed to renew his courage. He glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s twenty-five to nine. It will take me up to twenty minutes to get there. He didn’t give me much leeway.”

  “Can you drive okay?” Leandro said.

  “Yes. I’m all right. I’ll just go up and tell Ellie that I’m leaving. You stay in the house with her, won’t you, Dick?”

  “I’ll be glad to.”

  Hillman went upstairs, still clutching his scribbled-over envelope. I said to Leandro: “Where is Seneca Street?”

  “Seneca Road. In Ocean View.”

  “Are there steps going down to the beach anywhere near there?”

  “Yeah, but you’re not supposed to go there. You heard Mr. Hillman.”

  “I heard him.”

  Hillman came down and took the parcel of money out of Leandro’s hands. He thanked the young man, and his voice was deep and gentle as well as melancholy.

  We stood on the flagstone steps and watched him drive away into the darkness under the trees. In the hole in the dark west a little light still persisted, like the last light there was ever going to be.

  Chapter 9

  I WENT THROUGH THE HOUSE to the kitchen and asked Mrs. Perez to make me a plain cheese sandwich. She grumbled, but she made it. I ate it leaning against the refrigerator. Mrs. Perez wouldn’t talk about the trouble in the family. She seemed to have a superstitious feeling that trouble was only amplified by words. When I tried to question her about Tom’s habits, she gradually lost her ability to understand my English.

  Dick Leandro had gone upstairs to sit with Elaine. He seemed more at home than Tom appeared to have been with his own family. I went out through the reception hall. It was nine o’clock, and I couldn’t wait any longer.

  Driving along the highway to Ocean View, I argued jesuitically with myself that I had stayed clear of the money-drop, I wasn’t double-dealing with Hillman, who wasn’t my client in any case, and besides I had no proof that Mrs. Brown and her husband were connected with the extortion attempt.

  It was deep night over the sea, moonless and starless. I left my car at a view-point near Dack’s Auto Court. The sea was a hollow presence with a voice. I hiked down the access road to the court, not using the flashlight that I carried with me.

  The office was lighted and had a neon “Vacancy” sign above the door. Avoiding the spill of light from it, I went straight to cottage number seven. It was dark. I knocked, and got no answer. I let myself in with the key I had and closed the self-locking door behind me.

  Mrs. Brown was waiting. I stumbled over her foot and almost fell on top of her before I switched on my flashlight. She lay in her winking sequined gown under the jittery beam. Blood was tangled like tar in her bright hair. Her face was mottled with bruises, and misshappen. She looked as though she had been beaten to death.

  I touched her hand. She was cold. I turned the light away from her lopsided grin.

  The beam jumped around the green walls, the newspaper-littered floor. It found a large strapped canvas suitcase standing at the foot of the bed with two paper bags beside it. One of the bags contained a bottle of cheap wine, the other sandwiches that were drying out.

  I unstrapped the suitcase and opened it. An odor rose from its contents like sour regret. Men’s and women’s things were bundled indiscriminately together, dirty shirts and soiled slips, a rusting safety razor and a dabbled jar of cold cream and a bottle of mascara, a couple of dresses and some lingerie, a man’s worn blue suit with a chain-store label and nothing in the pockets but tobacco powder and, tucked far down in the outer breast pocket, a creased yellow business card poorly printed on cheap paper:

  HAROLD “HAR” HARLEY

  Application Photos Our Specialty

  I found the woman’s imitation snakeskin purse on a chair by the side window. It contained a jumble of cosmetics and some frayed blue chip stamps. No wallet, no identification, no money except for a single silver dollar in the bottom of the bag. There were also a pack of cards, slick with the oil of human hands, and a dice which came up six all three times I rolled it.

  I heard a car approaching, and headlights swept the window on the far side. I switched off my flashlight. The wheels of the car crunched in the gravel and came to a halt directly in front of the cottage. Someone got out of the car and turned the cottage doorknob. When the door refused to open, a man’s voice said:

  “Let me in.”

  It was the slightly wheezing, whining voice I’d heard that afternoon on Hillman’s phone. I moved toward the door with the dark flashlight ra
ised in my hand. The man outside rattled the knob.

  “I know you’re in there, I saw the light. This is no time to carry a grudge, hon.”

  The woman lay in her deep waiting silence. I stepped around her and stood against the wall beside the door. I shifted the flash to my left hand and fumbled for the spring lock with my right.

  “I hear you, damn you. You want another taste of what you had today?” He waited, and then said: “If you won’t open the door, I’ll shoot the lock out.”

  I heard the click of a hammer. I stayed where I was beside the door, holding the flashlight like a club. But he didn’t fire.

  “On the other hand,” he said, “there’s nothing in there I need, including you. You can stay here on your can if you want to. Make up your mind right now.”

  He waited. He couldn’t outwait her.

  “This is your last chance. I’ll count to three. If you don’t open up, I’m traveling alone.” He counted, one, two, three, but it would take bigger magic to reach her. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” he said.

  His footsteps moved away on the stones. The car door creaked. I couldn’t let him go.

  I snapped back the lock and opened the door and rushed him. His shadowy hatted figure was halfway into his car, with one foot on the ground. He whirled. The gun was still in his hand. It gave out a hot little flame. I could feel it sear me.

  I staggered across the gravel and got hold of his twisting body. He hammered my hands loose with the butt of his gun. I had blood in my eyes, and I couldn’t avoid the gun butt when it smashed into my skull. A kind of chandelier lit up in my head and then crashed down into darkness.

  Next thing I was a V. I. P. traveling with a police guard in the back of a chauffered car. The turban I could feel on my head suggested to the joggled brain under it that I was a rajah or a maharajah. We turned into a driveway under a red light, which excited me. Perhaps I was being taken to see one of my various concubines.

  I raised the question with the uniformed men sitting on either side of me. Gently but firmly, they helped me out of the patrol car and walked me through swinging doors, which a man in white held open, into a glaring place that smelled of disinfectants.