The Moving Target

by Ross Macdonald

  “You couldn’t work with a woman. Who’s the man?” She didn’t know that Taggert was dead, and it wasn’t the time to tell her.

  “Forget it. I thought for a minute maybe I could trust you. I must be going soft in the head.”

  “Maybe you are. You haven’t told me where Sampson is. The longer it takes you to tell me, the less I’ll feel like doing anything for you.”

  “He’s in a place on the beach about ten miles north of Buenavista. It used to be the dressing-room of a beach club that folded during the war.”

  “And he’s alive?”

  “He was yesterday. The first day he was sick from the chloroform, but he’s all right now.”

  “He was yesterday, you mean. Is he tied up?”

  “I haven’t seen him. Eddie was the one.”

  “I suppose you left him there to starve to death.”

  “I couldn’t go there. He knew me by sight. Eddie was the one he didn’t know.”

  “And Eddie died by an act of God.”

  “No, I killed him.” She said it almost smugly. “You’ll never be able to prove it, though. I wasn’t thinking of Sampson when I shot Eddie.”

  “You were thinking of money, weren’t you? A two-way cut instead of a three-way cut.”

  “I admit it was partly that, but only partly. Eddie pushed me around all the time I was a kid. When I finally got on my feet and was heading places, he sang me into the pen. I was using the stuff, but he was selling it. He helped the feds to hang conspiracy on me, and got off with a light sentence himself. He didn’t know I knew that, but I promised myself to get him. I got him when he thought he was riding high. Maybe he wasn’t so surprised. He told Marcie where to find me if anything went wrong.”

  “It always does,” I said. “Kidnappings don’t come off. Especially when the kidnappers start murdering each other.”

  I turned onto the boulevard and stopped at the first gas station I came to. She watched me remove the ignition key.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Phone help for Sampson. He may be dying, and it’s going to take us an hour and a half to get there. Has the place got a name?”

  “It used to be the Sunland Beach Club. It’s a long green building. You can see it from the highway, out near the end of a little point.”

  For the first time I was sure she was telling the truth. I called Santa Teresa from the station’s pay telephone while the attendant filled the tank of my car. I could watch Betty Fraley through the window.

  Felix answered the phone. “This is the Sampson residence.”

  “Archer speaking. Is Mr. Graves there?”

  “Yes, sir. I will call him.”

  Graves came to the phone. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Los Angeles. Sampson is alive, or at least he was yesterday. He’s locked up in the dressing-room of a beach club called the Sunland. Know it?”

  “I used to. It’s been out of business for years. I know where it is, north of Buenavista on the highway.”

  “See how fast you can get there with first aid and food. And you better bring a doctor and the sheriff.”

  “Is he in bad shape?”

  “I don’t know. He’s been alone since yesterday. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I hung up on Graves and called Peter Colton. He was still on duty.

  “I’ve got something for you,” I said. “Partly for you and partly for the Department of Justice.”

  “Another migraine headache, no doubt.” He didn’t sound glad to hear from me. “This Sampson case is the mess of the century.”

  “It was. I’m closing it today.”

  His voice dropped a full octave. “Say again, please.”

  “I know where Sampson is, and I’ve got the last of the kidnap gang with me now.”

  “Don’t be coy, for Christ’s sake! Spill it. Where is he?”

  “Out of your territory, in Santa Teresa County. The Santa Teresa sheriff is on his way to him now.”

  “So you called up to brag, you poor narcissistic bastard. I thought you had something for me and the Department of Justice.”

  “I have, but not the kidnapping. Sampson wasn’t carried across the state line, so the F.B.I. is out. The case has byproducts, though. There’s a canyon feeding into Sunset between Brentwood and the Palisades. The road that leads into it is Hopkins Lane. About five miles in, there’s a black Buick sedan in the road, past that a lane leading down to an unpainted pine cottage. There are four people in the cottage. One of them is Troy. Whether it knows it or not, the Department of Justice wants them.”

  “What for?”

  “Smuggling illegal immigrants. I’m in a hurry. Have I said enough?”

  “For the present,” he said. “Hopkins Lane.”

  Betty Fraley looked at me blankly when I went back to the car. Meaning returned to her eyes like a snake coming out of its hole. “Little man, what now?” she said.

  “I did you a favor. I called the police to pick up Troy and the others.”

  “And me?”

  “I’m saving you.” I headed down Sunset towards U.S. 101.

  “I’ll turn state’s evidence against him,” she said.

  “You don’t have to. I can pin it on him myself.”

  “The smuggling rap?”

  “Right. Troy disappointed me. Trucking in Mexicans is a pretty low-grade racket for a gentleman crook. He should be selling Hollywood Bowl to visiting firemen.”

  “It paid him well. He made it pay off double. He took the poor creeps’ money for the ride, then turned them over to the ranches at so much a head. The Mexicans didn’t know it, but they were being used as strikebreakers. That way Troy got protection from some of the local cops. Luis greased the Mexican federals at the other end.”

  “Was Sampson buying strikebreakers from Troy?”

  “He was, but you’d never prove it. Sampson was very careful to keep himself in the clear.”

  “He wasn’t careful enough,” I said. She was silent after that.

  As I turned north on the highway I noticed that her face was ugly with pain. “There’s a pint of whisky in the glove compartment. You can use it to clean your burns and the scratches on your face. Or you can drink it.”

  She followed both suggestions and offered me the open bottle.

  “Not for me.”

  “Because I drank from it first? All my diseases are mental.”

  “Put it away.”

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “Poison isn’t my drink. Not that you don’t have your points. You seem to have some brains, on a low level.”

  “Thanks for nothing, my intellectual friend.”

  “And you’ve been around.”

  “I’m not a virgin, if you’re talking about that. I haven’t been since I was eleven. Eddie saw a chance to turn a dollar. But I never did my living below the belt. The music saved me from that.”

  “It’s too bad it didn’t save you from this.”

  “I took my chance. It didn’t work out. What makes you think I care one way or the other?”

  “You care about this other person. You want him to have the money, no matter what happens to you.”

  “I told you to forget that.” After a pause she said: “You could let me go and keep the money yourself. You’ll never have another crack at a hundred grand.”

  “Neither will you, Betty. Neither will Alan Taggert.”

  She uttered a groan of surprise and shock. When she recovered her voice she said in a hostile tone: “You’ve been kidding me. What do you know about Taggert?”

  “What he told me.”

  “I don’t believe you. He never told you a thing.” She corrected herself. “He doesn’t know anything to tell.”

  “He did.”

  “Did something happen to him?”

  “Death happened to him. He’s got a hole in the head like Eddie.”

  She started to say something, but the words were broken up by a rush of cryi
ng, a high drawn-out whimper giving place to steady dry sobs. After a long time she whispered:

  “Why didn’t you tell me he was dead?”

  “You didn’t ask me. Were you crazy about him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We were crazy about each other.”

  “If you were so crazy about him, why did you drag him into a thing like this?”

  “I didn’t drag him in. He wanted to do it. We were going to go away together.”

  “And live happily ever after.”

  “Keep your cheap cracks to yourself.”

  “I won’t buy love’s young dream from you, Betty. He was a boy, and you’re an old woman, as experience goes. I think you sucked him in. You needed a finger man, and he looked easy.”

  “That’s not the way it was.” Her voice was surprisingly gentle. “We’ve been together for half a year. He came into the Piano with Sampson the week after I opened. I fell, and it was the same with him. But neither of us had anything. We had to have money to make a clean break.”

  “And Sampson was the obvious source. Kidnapping was the obvious method.”

  “You don’t have to waste your sympathy on Sampson. But we had other ideas at first. Alan was going to marry the girl, Sampson’s daughter, and get Sampson to buy him off. Sampson spoilt that himself. He lent Alan his bungalow at the Valerio one night. In the middle of the night we caught Sampson behind the curtains in the bedroom peeping at us. After that Sampson told the girl that if she married Alan he’d cut her off. He was going to fire Alan too, only we knew too much about him.”

  “Why didn’t you blackmail him? That would be more your line.”

  “We thought of that, but he was too big for us to handle and he has the best lawyers in the state. We knew plenty about him, but he would be hard to pin down. This Temple in the Clouds, for example. How could we prove that Sampson knew what Troy and Claude and Fay were using it for?”

  “If you know so much about Sampson,” I said, “what makes him tick?”

  “That’s a hard one. I used to think maybe he had some faggot blood, but I don’t know. He’s getting old, and I guess he felt washed up. He was looking for anything that would make him feel like a man again: astrology or funny kinds of sex, anything at all. The only thing he cares about is his daughter. I think he caught on that she was stuck on Alan, and never forgave Alan.”

  “Taggert should have stuck to her,” I said.

  “You think so?” Her voice cracked. It was humble and small when she spoke again. “I didn’t do him any good. I know that, you don’t have to tell me. I couldn’t help myself, and neither could he. How did he die, Archer?”

  “He got into a tight corner and tried to push out with a gun. Somebody else shot first. A man called Graves.”

  “I’d like to meet that man. You said before that Alan talked. He didn’t do that?”

  “Not about you.”

  “I’m glad of that,” she said. “Where is he now?”

  “In the morgue in Santa Teresa.”

  “I wish I could see him—once more.”

  The words came softly out of a dark dream. In the silence that followed, the dream spread beyond her mind and cast a shadow as long as the shadows thrown by the setting sun.

  chapter 30 When I slowed down for Buenavista, twilight was softening the ugliness of the buildings and the lights were going on along the main street. I noticed the neon greyhound at the bus station but didn’t stop. A few miles beyond the town the highway converged with the shore line again, winding along the bluffs above the uninhabited beaches. The last gray shreds of daylight clung to the surface of the sea and were slowly absorbed.

  “This is it,” Betty Fraley said. She had been so still I’d almost forgotten she was in the seat beside me.

  I stopped on the asphalt shoulder of the highway, just short of a crossroads. On the ocean side the road slanted down to the beach. A weather-faded sign at the corner advertised a desirable beach development, but there were no houses in sight. I could see the old beach club, though, a mass of buildings two hundred yards below the highway, long and low and neutral-colored against the glimmering whiteness of the surf.

  “You can’t drive down,” she said. “The road’s washed out at the bottom.”

  “I thought you hadn’t been down there.”

  “Not since last week. I looked it over with Eddie when he found it. Sampson’s in one of the little rooms on the men’s side of the dressing-rooms.”

  “He better be.”

  I took the ignition key and left her in the car. As I went down, the road narrowed to a humped clay pathway with deeply eroded ditches on both sides. The wooden platform in front of the first building was warped, and I could feel the clumps of grass growing up through the cracks under my feet. The windows were high under the eaves, and dark.

  I turned my flashlight on the twin doors in the middle, and saw the stencilled signs: “Gentlemen” on one, “Ladies” on the other. The one on the right, for “Gentlemen,” was hanging partly open. I pulled it wide, but not very hopefully. The place seemed empty and dead. Except for the restless water, there was no sign of life in it or around it.

  No sign of Sampson, and no sign of Graves. I looked at my watch, which said a quarter to seven. It was well over an hour since I’d called Graves. He’d had plenty of time to drive the forty-five miles from Cabrillo Canyon. I wondered what had happened to him and the sheriff.

  I shot my flashlight beam across the floor, which was covered with blown sand and the detritus of years. Opposite me was a row of closed doors in a plywood partition. I took a step toward the row of doors. The movement behind me was so lizard-quick I had no time to turn. “Ambush” was the last word that flashed across my consciousness before it faded out.

  “Sucker” was the first word when consciousness returned. The cyclops eye of an electric lantern stared down at me like the ghastly eye of conscience. My impulse was to get up and fight. The deep voice of Albert Graves inhibited the impulse:

  “What happened to you?”

  “Turn the lantern away.” Its light went through my eye sockets like swords and out at the back of my skull.

  He set the lantern down and kneeled beside me. “Can you get up, Lew?”

  “I can get up.” But I stayed where I was on the floor. “You’re late.”

  “I had some trouble finding the place in the dark.”

  “Where’s the sheriff? Couldn’t you find him either?”

  “He was out on a case, committing a paranoiac to the county hospital. I left word for him to follow me down and bring a doctor. I didn’t want to waste time.”

  “It looks to me as if you’ve wasted a lot of time.”

  “I thought I knew the place, but I must have missed it. I drove on nearly to Buenavista before I realized it. Then when I came back I couldn’t find it.”

  “Didn’t you see my car?”

  “Where?”

  I sat up. A swaying sickness moved back and forth like a pendulum in my head. “At the corner just above here.”

  “That’s where I parked. I didn’t see your car.”

  I felt for my car keys. They were in my pocket. “You’re sure? They didn’t take my car keys.”

  “Your car isn’t there, Lew. Who are they?”

  “Betty Fraley and whoever sapped me. There must have been a fourth member of the gang guarding Sampson.” I told him how I had come there.

  “It wasn’t smart to leave her in the car,” he said.

  “Three sappings in two days are making Jack a dull boy.”

  I got to my feet and found that my legs were weak. He offered his shoulder for me to lean on. I leaned against the wall.

  He raised the lantern. “Let me look at your head.” The broad planes of his face in the moving light were furrowed by anxiety. He looked heavy and old.

  “Later,” I said.

  I picked up my flashlight and crossed to the row of doors. Sampson was waiting behind the second one, a fat old man slumped on
a bench against the rear wall of the cubicle. His head was wedged upright in the corner. His open eyes were suffused with blood.

  Graves crowded in behind me and said: “God!”

  I handed him the flashlight and bent over Sampson. His hands and ankles were bound together with quarter-inch rope, one end of which was strung through a staple in the wall. The other end of the rope was sunk in Sampson’s neck and tied under his left ear in a hard knot. I reached behind the body for one of the bound wrists. It wasn’t cold, but the pulse was gone. The pupils of the red eyeballs were asymmetric. There was something pathetic about the bright plaid socks, yellow and red and green, on the thick dead ankles.

  Graves’s breath came out. “Is he dead?”

  “Yes.” I felt a terrific letdown, which was followed by inertia. “He must have been alive when I got here. How long was I out?”

  “It’s a quarter after seven now.”

  “I got here about a quarter to. They’ve had a half-hour’s start. We’ve got to move.”

  “And leave Sampson here?”

  “Yes. The police will want him this way.”

  We left him in the dark. I drew on my last reserve to get up the hill. My car was gone. Graves’s Studebaker was parked at the other side of the intersection.

  “Which way?” he said, as he climbed behind the wheel.

  “Buenavista. We’ll go to the highway patrol.”

  I looked in my wallet, expecting the locker key to be gone. But it was there, tucked in the card compartment. Whoever sapped me hadn’t had a chance to compare notes with Betty Fraley. Or they decided to make their getaway and let the money go. Somehow that didn’t seem likely.

  I said to Graves, as we passed the town limits: “Drop me at the bus station.”

  “Why?”

  I told him why, and added: “If the money’s there, they may be back for it. If it isn’t, it probably means they came this way and broke open the locker. You go to the highway patrol and pick me up later.”

  He let me out at the red curb in front of the bus station. I stood outside the glass door and looked into the big square waiting-room. Three or four men in overalls were slouched on the scarred benches reading newspapers. A few old men, ancient-looking in the fluorescent lights, were leaning against the poster-papered walls and talking among themselves. A Mexican family in one corner, father and mother and several children, formed a solid unit like a six-man football team. The ticket booth under the clock at the back of the room was occupied by a pimply youth in a flowered Hawaiian shirt. There was a doughnut counter to the left, a fat blond woman in uniform behind it. The bank of green metal lockers was against the wall to the right.