The Far Side of the Dollar la-12

by Ross Macdonald

  He stood up, dismissing Bastian. Bastian was unwilling to be dismissed. `I don't think you're well advised to take this attitude, Mr. Hillman. If you purchased this knife from Mr. Botkin, now is the time to say so. Your previous denial need never go out of this room.'

  Bastian looked to me for support. I remembered what Botkin had said to me about The Barroom Floor. It was practically certain that his conversation with Hillman had taken place. It didn't follow necessarily that Hillman had bought the knife, but he probably had.

  I said: `It's time all the facts were laid out on the table, Mr. Hillman.'

  `I can't tell him what isn't so, can I?'

  'No. I wouldn't advise that. Have you thought of talking this over with your attorney?'

  `I'm thinking about it now.'

  Hillman had sobered. Droplets of clear liquid stood on his forehead as if the press of the situation had squeezed the alcohol out of him. He said to Bastian: `I gather you're more or less accusing me of murder.'

  `No, I am not.'

  Bastian added in a formal tone: `You can, of course, stand on your constitutional rights.'

  Hillman shook his head angrily. Some of his fine light hair fell over his forehead. Under it his eyes glittered like metal triangles. He was an extraordinarily handsome man. His unremitting knowledge of this showed in the caressive movement of the hand with which he pushed his hair back into place.

  `Look,' he said, `could we continue this seance in the morning? I've had a hard week, and I'd like a chance to sleep on this business. I've had no real sleep since Monday.'

  `Neither have I,' Bastian said.

  `Maybe you need some sleep, too. This harassing approach isn't really such a good idea.'

  `There was no harassment.'

  `I'll be the judge of that.' Hillman's voice rose. 'You brought that knife into my home and shook it in my face. I have a witness to that,' he added, meaning me.

  I said: `Let's not get bogged down in petty arguments. Lieutenant Bastian and I have some business to discuss.'

  `Anything you say to him you'll have to say in front of me.'

  `All right.'

  `After I talk to the boy,' Bastian said.

  Hillman made a curt gesture with his hand. `You're not talking to him. I don't believe I'll let you talk to him tomorrow, either. There are, after all, medical considerations.'

  `Are you a medical man?'

  `I have medical men at my disposal.'

  'I'm sure you do. So do we.'

  The two men faced each other in quiet fury. They were opposites in many ways. Bastian was a saturnine Puritan, absolutely honest, a stickler for detail, a policeman before he was a man. Hillman's personality was less clear. It had romantic and actorish elements, which often mask deep evasions. His career had been meteoric, but it was the kind of career that sometimes left a man empty-handed in middle life.

  `Do you have something to say to the lieutenant?'

  Hillman asked me. `Before he leaves?'

  `Yes. You may not like this, Mr. Hillman. I don't. Last night a young man driving a late-model blue Chevrolet was seen in the driveway of the Barcelona Hotel. It's where Mike Harley was found stabbed, with that knife.'

  I pointed to the evidence box on the table. `The young man has been tentatively identified as Dick Leandro.'

  `Who made the identification?' Bastian said.

  `Ben Daly, the service-station operator.'

  `The man who killed Sipe.'

  `Yes.'

  `He's either mistaken or lying,' Hillman said. `Dick drives a blue car, but it's a small sports car, a Triumph.'

  `Does he have access to a blue Chevrolet?'

  'Not to my knowledge. You're surely not trying to involve Dick in this mess.'

  `If he's involved, we have to know about it.'

  I said to Bastian: `Maybe you can determine whether he borrowed or rented a blue Chevrolet last night. Or it's barely possible that he stole one.

  'Will do,' Bastian said.

  Hillman said nothing.

  27

  BASTIAN PICKED UP his evidence case and shut it with a click. He walked out without a sign to either of us. He was treating Hillman as if he no longer existed. He was treating me in such a way that I could stay with Hillman.

  Hillman watched him from the entrance to the library until he was safely across the reception hall and out the front door. Then he came back into the room. Instead of returning to the table where I was, he went to the wall of photographs where the squadron on the flight deck hung in green deep-sea light.

  `What goes on around here?' he said. `Somebody took down Dick's picture.'

  `I did, for identification purposes.'

  I got it out of my pocket. Hillman came and took it away from me. The glass was smudged by lingers, and he rubbed it with the sleeve of his jacket.

  `You had no right to take it. What are you trying to do to Dick, anyway?'

  `Get at the truth about him.'

  `There is no mysterious truth about him. He's a perfectly nice ordinary kid.'

  `I hope so.'

  `Look here,' he said, `you've accomplished what I hired you to do. Don't think I'm ungrateful - I'm planning to give you a substantial bonus. But I didn't hire you to investigate those murders.'

  `And I don't get the bonus unless I stop?'

  `I didn't say that.'

  `You didn't have to.'

  He spread his hands on the table and leaned above me, heavy-faced and powerful. `Just how do you get to talk to your betters the way you've been talking to me?'

  `By my betters you mean people with more money?'

  `Roughly, yes.'

  `I'll tell you, Mr. Hillman. I rather like you. I'm trying to talk straight to you because somebody has to. You're headed on a collision course with the law. If you stay on it, you're going to get hurt.'

  His face stiffened and his eyes narrowed. He didn't like to be told anything. He liked to do the telling.

  `I could buy and sell Bastian.'

  `You can't if he's not for sale. You know damn well he isn't.'

  He straightened, raising his head out of the light into the greenish shadow. His face resembled old bronze, except that it was working. After a time he said: `What do you think I ought to do?'

  `Start telling the truth.'

  'Dammit, you imply I haven't been.'

  `I'm doing more than imply it, Mr. Hillman.'

  He turned on me with his fists clenched, ready to hit me. I remained sitting. He walked away and came back. Without whisky, he was getting very jumpy.

  `I suppose you think I killed them.'

  `I'm not doing any speculating. I am morally certain you bought that knife from Botkin.'

  `How can you be certain?'

  `I've talked to the man.'

  `Who authorized you to? I'm not paying you to gather evidence against me.'

  I said, rather wearily: `Couldn't we forget about your wonderful money for a while, and just sit here and talk like a couple of human beings? A couple of human beings in a bind?'

  He considered this. Eventually he said: `You're not in a bind. I am.'

  `Tell me about it. Unless you actually did commit those murders. In which case you should tell your lawyer and nobody else.'

  `I didn't. I almost wish I had.'

  He sat down across from me, slumping forward a little, with his arms resting on the tabletop. `I admit I bought the knife. I don't intend to admit it to anyone else. Botkin will have to be persuaded to change his story.'

  `How?'

  `He can't make anything out of that store of his. I ought to know, my father owned one like it in South Boston. I can give Botkin enough money to retire to Mexico.'

  I was a bit appalled, not so much by the suggestion of crude subornation - I'd often heard it before - as by the fact that Hillman was making it. In the decades since he commanded a squadron at Midway, he must have bumped down quite a few moral steps.

  I said: `You better forget about that approach, Mr. Hillma
n. It's part of the collision course with the law I was talking about. And you'll end up sunk.'

  `I'm sunk now,' he said in an even voice.

  He laid his head down on his arms. His hair spilled forward like a broken white sheaf. I could see the naked pink circle on the crown which was ordinarily hidden. It was like a tonsure of mortality.

  `What did you do with the knife?'

  I said to him. `Did you give it to Dick Leandro?'

  `No.'

  Spreading his hands on the tablecloth, he pushed himself upright. His moist palms slipped and squeaked on the polished surface. `I wish I had.'

  `Was Tom the one you gave it to?'

  He groaned. `I not only gave it to him. I told Botkin I was buying the bloody thing as a gift for him. Bastian must be aware of that, but he's holding it back.'

  'Bastian would,' I said. `It still doesn't follow that Tom used it on his father and mother. He certainly had no reason to kill his mother.'

  `He doesn't need a rational motive. You don't know Tom.'

  `You keep telling me that. At the same time you keep refusing to fill in the picture.'

  `It's a fairly ugly picture.'

  `Something was said tonight about a homicidal attack.'

  `I didn't mean to let that slip out.'

  `Who attacked whom and why?'

  `Tom threatened Elaine with a loaded gun. He wasn't kidding, either.'

  `Was this the Sunday-morning episode you've been sub pressing?'

  He nodded. `I think the accident must have affected his mind. When I got home from the judge's house, he had her in his room He was holding my revolver with the muzzle against her head' Hillman pressed his fingertip into his temple - and he had he down on her knees, begging for mercy. Literally begging. I didn't know whether he was going to give me the gun, either. For a minute he held it on me. I half expected him to shoot me.'

  I could feel the hairs prickling at the nape of my neck. It was an ugly picture, all right. What was worse, it was a classic one: the schizophrenic execution killer.

  `Did he say anything when you took the gun?'

  `Not a word. He handed it over in a rather formal way. He acted like a kind of automaton. He didn't seem to realize what he'd done, or tried to do.'

  `Had he said anything to your wife?'

  `Yes. He said he would kill her if she didn't leave him alone. She'd simply gone to his room to offer him some food, and he went into this silent white rage of his.'

  `He had a lot of things on his mind,' I said, `and he'd been up all night. He told me something about it. You might say it was the crucial night of his young life. He met his real father for the first time'-Hillman grimaced-`which must have been a fairly shattering experience. You might say he was lost between two worlds, and blaming you and your wife for not preparing him. You should have, you know. You had no right to cheat him of the facts, whether you liked them or not. When the facts finally hit him, it was more than he could handle. He deliberately turned the car over that morning.'

  `You mean he attempted suicide?'

  Hillman said. `He made a stab at it. I think it was more a signal that his life was out of control. He didn't let go of the steering wheel, and he wasn't badly hurt. Nobody got hurt in the gun incident, either.'

  `You've got to take it seriously, though. He was in dead earnest.'

  `Maybe. I'm not trying to brush it off. Have you talked it over with a psychiatrist?'

  `I have not. There are certain things you don't let out of the family.'

  `That depends on the family.'

  `Look,' he said, `I was afraid they wouldn't admit him to the school if they knew he was that violent.'

  `Would that have been such a tragedy?'

  `I had to do something with him. I don't know what I'm going to do with him now.'

  He bowed his disheveled head.

  `You need better advice than I can give you, legal and psychiatric.'

  `You're assuming he killed those two people.'

  `Not necessarily. Why don't you ask Dr Weintraub to recommend somebody?'

  Hillman jerked himself upright. `That old woman?'

  `I understood he was an old friend of yours, and he knows something about psychiatry.'

  `Weinie has a worm's-eye knowledge, I suppose.'

  His voice rasped with contempt. `He had a nervous breakdown after Midway. We had to send him stateside to recuperate, while men were dying. While men were dying,' Hillman repeated. Then he seemed to surround himself with silence.

  He sat in a listening attitude. I waited. His angry face became smooth and his voice changed with it. `Jesus, that was a day. We lost more than half of our TBD's. The Zekes took them like sitting ducks. I couldn't bring them back. I don't blame Weinie for breaking down, so many men died on him.'

  His voice was hushed. His eyes were distant. He didn't even seem aware of my presence. His mind was over the edge of the world where his men had died, and he had died more than a little.

  `The hell of it is,' he was saying, `I love Tom. We haven't been close for years, and he's been hard to handle. But he's my son, and I love him.'

  `I'm sure you do. But maybe you want more than Tom can give you. He can't give you back your dead pilots.'

  Hillman didn't understand me. He seemed bewildered. His gray eyes were clouded.

  `What did you say?'

  `Perhaps you were expecting too much from the boy.'

  `In what way?'

  `Forget it,' I said.

  Hillman was hurt. `You think I expect too much? I've been getting damn little. And look what I'm willing to give him.'

  He spread his arms again, to embrace the house and everything he owned. `Why, he can have every nickel I possess for his defense. We'll get him off and go to another country to live.'

  `You're away ahead of yourself, Mr. Hillman. He hasn't been charged with anything yet.'

  `He will be.'

  His voice sounded both fatalistic and defiant.

  `Maybe. Let's consider the possibilities. The only evidence against him is the knife, and that's pretty dubious if you think about it. He didn't take it with him, surely, when you put him in Laguna Perdida.'

  `He may have. I didn't search him.'

  `I'm willing to bet they did.'

  Hillman narrowed his eyes until they were just a glitter between the folded lids. `You're right, Archer. He didn't have the knife when he left the house. I remember seeing it afterwards, that same 'day.'

  `Where was it?'

  `In his room, in one of the chests of drawers.'

  `And you left it in the drawer?'

  `There was no reason not to.'

  `Then anybody with access to the house could have got hold of it?'

  `Yes. Unfortunately that includes Tom. He could have sneaked in after he escaped from the school.'

  `It also includes Dick Leandro, who wouldn't have had to sneak in. He's in and out of the house all the time, isn't he?'

  `I suppose he is. That doesn't prove anything.'

  `No, but when you put it together with the fact that Dick was probably seen at the Barcelona Hotel last night, it starts you thinking about him. There's still something missing in this case, you know. The equations don't balance.'

  `Dick isn't your missing quantity,' he said hastily.

  `You're quite protective about Dick.'

  `I'm fond of him. Why shouldn't I be? He's a nice boy, and I've been able to help him. Dammit, Archer.'

  His voice deepened. `When a fellow reaches a certain age, he needs to pass on what he knows, or part of it, to a younger fellow.'

  `Are you thinking of passing on some money, too?'

  `We may eventually. It will depend on Elaine. She controls the main money. But I can assure you it couldn't matter to Dick.'

  `It matters to everybody. I think it matters very much to Dick. He's a pleaser.'

  `What is that supposed to mean?'

  `You know what it means. He lives by pleasing people, mainly you. Tell me this. Does Di
ck know about the gun incident in Tom's room?'