Black Money

by Ross Macdonald

  In a bottom drawer I came across a framed photograph of a young Air Force second lieutenant who was almost certainly Roy Fablon. The glass was missing from the frame, and small half-moon-shaped pieces of the photograph had been clumsily punched out. It took me a minute to come to the conclusion that it had been pierced repeatedly by the sharp heel of a woman’s shoe. I wondered if Marietta had stamped on her husband’s picture recently.

  In the same drawer I found a man’s thin wristwatch with four Latin words engraved on the back: Mutuis animis amant amantur. I didn’t know Latin, but ‘amant’ meant something about love.

  I looked at Fablon’s picture again. To my instructed eyes his head was a cruel hollow-looking bronze. He had been dark and dashing, the kind of man a daughter could fall in love with. Though he had been handsome and Martel wasn’t, I imagined I could see some resemblance between them, enough perhaps to account for Ginny’s infatuation with Martel. I put the picture and the watch back in the drawer.

  A light was burning in the sitting room where I had talked to Marietta, and listened to the grinding of her teeth. The cord of the pink telephone had been ripped out of the wall. There were spots of blood on the worn carpet. This was where her crawl had started.

  I could hear a wailing in the distance now, louder than the wind and drearier. It was the sound of a siren, which nearly always came too late. I went outside, leaving the light burning and the door banging behind me.

  The sheriff’s men were in the Jamieson house before I got back to it. I had to explain who I was and show them my photostat and get Peter to vouch for me before they would let me into the house. They refused to let me go back into the kitchen.

  Their failure to co-operate suited me reasonably well. I felt justified in holding back some of the results of my own investigation. But I turned them loose on Martel. By two o’clock the officer in charge, Inspector Harold Olsen, came into the drawing room where I was waiting and told me he’d put out an all-points alarm for Martel. He added:

  “You can go home now, Mr. Archer.”

  “I thought I’d stick around and talk to the coroner.”

  “I’m the coroner,” Olsen said. “I told my deputy, Dr. Wills, not to bother coming out here tonight. He needs his rest. Why don’t you go and get some rest, Mr. Archer?” He moved ponderously toward me, a big slow stubborn Swede who liked his suggestions to be taken as orders. “Relax and take it easy. We won’t be getting autopsy results for a couple of days at least.”

  “Why not?” I said without getting up from my chair.

  “We never do, that’s why.” He was in charge here, and his slightly bulging eyes were watching me for any questioning of his power. He gave the impression that if he had to choose, he would rather own a case than solve it. “There’s no hurry. She was shot in the chest, we know that now, probably through the lung. She bled to death internally.”

  “I’m interested in how her husband died.”

  “He was a suicide. You don’t need Dr. Wills to tell you that. I handled the case myself.” Olsen was watching me more closely. He was sensitive to the possibility that I might question his findings, and already quivering in advance with a faint sense of outrage. “It’s a closed case.”

  “Doesn’t this kind of reopen it?”

  “No. It don’t.” He was retreating angrily into bad grammar. “Fablon committed suicide. He told his wife he was gonna, and he did it. There was no evidence of foul play.”

  “I thought he was badly bunged up.”

  “By sharks, and by the rocks. There’s a lot of wave motion off of there, and it rolled him around on the bottom for ten days.” Olsen made it sound a little like a threat. “But all the damage was done after he drowned. He died of drowning in salt water. Dr. Wills will tell you the same thing.”

  “Where can I find Wills tomorrow?”

  “He’s got an office in the basement of Mercy Hospital. But he can’t tell you any more than I can.”

  Olsen left the room, wrapped in the brooding pride of a master craftsman whose handiwork has been criticized by a journeyman. I waited until I couldn’t hear his footsteps, then made my way to the library. The door was locked, but there was light under it.

  “Who is it?” the housekeeper Vera said through the door.

  “Archer.”

  She let me in. She had on a rayon sunburst kimono. When she sat down on the hassock at Jamieson’s feet, I could see the two black braids hanging down her back like severed cables.

  “It’s a dreadful thing,” he said weakly. “What do you make of it, Archer?”

  “It’s too soon to ask me that. Marietta said that lover-boy shot her. Does that have any special meaning to you?”

  “No.”

  “Did she have a lover?”

  “Certainly not to my knowledge.”

  “If she did have a lover, who would it be?”

  “I have no idea. Frankly, I haven’t had too much to do with the Fablons since Roy died, even before that. It’s true we were close friends in college, and for a few years after, but our lives took different turnings. About Marietta’s private life I’m completely ignorant. It does occur to me, though, that she may have meant somebody else’s lover-boy.”

  “Martel, you mean?”

  “It’s the obvious thought, isn’t it?”

  “It’s so obvious I’m afraid of it. But I did come across a peculiar connection between him and Marietta. She’s been drawing some kind of an income from the Bank of New Granada.”

  “Marietta has?”

  “That’s right. It was cut off within the last couple of months.”

  “Who was the source of the income?”

  “That isn’t clear. It may have been Martel, and if it was it suggests a wild possibility. Marietta may have sold her daughter to him.”

  “She wouldn’t do that!” Jamieson was as shocked as his anaesthetized condition would permit.

  “Plenty of other mothers do. They don’t call it selling, but that’s what it boils down to. A debutante ball is the closest thing we have to the Sudanese slave markets.”

  Vera let out a ribald mirthless laugh. Her employer frowned severely at her, and said as if in rebuke:

  “But Marietta is—was devoted to Ginny.”

  “She also knows how important money is. She told me so herself.”

  “Really? She used to throw her money around as if her resources were inexhaustible. I’ve had to bail her—”

  Vera glanced up sharply, and Jamieson decided not to finish the sentence. I said:

  “Maybe her daughter was the only resource she had left.”

  I was trying out the idea, and Jamieson sensed my purpose. “Possibly you could be right. Marietta’s hardened in these last few years, since Roy died. But even assuming that you are right, why would she marry Virginia off to a dubious foreigner? She had my poor son Peter ready and Willing.”

  “I don’t know. The marriage may have been Ginny’s idea after all. And the fact that Marietta and Martel got money from the same Panama bank may be pure coincidence.”

  “You don’t believe it is, though?”

  “No. I’ve lost my faith in pure coincidence. Everything in life tends to hang together in a pattern. Of course the clearest pattern so far in this case is death repeating itself. The fact that Mrs. Fablon was murdered brings up the question of her husband’s death again.”

  “But wasn’t it established that Roy killed himself?”

  Vera frowned, as if he had said something obscene. Unobtrusively she crossed herself.

  “That’s the official story, anyway,” I said. “It’s open to question now. Everything is. I understand you identified his body.”

  “I was one of those who did.”

  “Are you certain it was Roy Fablon?”

  He hesitated, and stirred in his chair uncomfortably. “I was certain at the time. That means I have to be certain now, doesn’t it? It’s not a memory I care to dwell on, frankly. His face was swollen, and terribly cut up.
”

  Jamieson closed his eyes tight. Vera reached for his hand and held it.

  “So you couldn’t be certain it was him?”

  “Not just by looking at him. He’d gone through quite a sea-change. But I had no reason to doubt it was Roy, either. The doctor at the inquest, Dr. Wills, said he had irrefus—” He stumbled over the word—“irrefutable evidence that it was Roy.”

  “Do you recall what it was?”

  “It had to do with X rays of the old fractures in his legs.”

  “That ought to take care of that, then.”

  “Of what?” he said rather irritably.

  “The possibility that it was a faked suicide and that somebody else wore Fablon’s overcoat into the ocean. It’s a possibility worth considering when a man is deep in debt. But what you’ve just told me rules it out.”

  “I should think so.”

  “A minute ago,” I said, “you started to tell me about bailing out Mrs. Fablon.”

  “That was in the distant past. I helped out both of them on occasion. In a way I felt responsible for Roy.”

  Vera stirred angrily. “You gave her the house.”

  “What house?”

  Jamieson answered me: “The one she’s living in—was living in. I didn’t exactly give it to her. She had the use of it. After all, she was kind to my poor son. And so was Roy in his time.”

  “Did he hit you for much?”

  “A few thousand. It would have been more, but most of my capital was tied up in trust funds. Roy was desperate for money in his last days. He was gambling, with money that he didn’t have.”

  “Gambling with a man named Ketchel?”

  “Yes, that was his name.”

  “Did you know Ketchel?”

  “I never met him, no. I heard about him.”

  “From whom?”

  “From Marietta. During the ten or eleven days that Roy was missing, before his body came up, Marietta did quite a lot of talking about Ketchel. She seemed to suspect him of murdering Roy. But she had no evidence, and I dissuaded her from going to the police. After the fact of suicide was established, she dropped the idea.”

  Vera moved uneasily and tugged at Jamieson’s hand, as if the dead woman was her subtle rival. “Come to bed, you’re a crazy man sitting up all night.”

  The special proprieties of the house seemed to have broken down. I rose to go. Vera looked up with relief.

  Jamieson said past her: “I assumed at the time that Marietta was fantasying about murder, simply because it was hard for her to face the fact of suicide. You don’t suppose she had something after all?”

  “Perhaps she did. Inspector Olsen tells me that Fablon definitely died by drowning in salt water. It could be a method of committing murder, though in this case it isn’t a likely one. But I’d still like to talk to Ketchel. I don’t suppose you know where I can find him?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. He’s just a name to me.”

  Vera’s eyes were on me, pushing me out.

  The cops were still in the kitchen. Marietta wasn’t. Neither was Peter. The big room had taken on an air of grimy official desolation which was familiar to me. I had once been a cop myself, on the Long Beach force, hardly more than a howitzer-throw from here.

  chapter 17

  I DROVE BACK toward the harbor by way of the ocean boulevard, to spend what was left of the night at the Breakwater Hotel. One or both of the Hendrickses might turn up there, though I didn’t expect them to.

  I found myself slowing down as I came near the hobo jungle. It was just as well as I did, or I might not have noticed Harry’s Cadillac. It was on the strip of grass on the ocean side, nosed into the trunk of a palm tree.

  There had been a violent impact. The base of the tree was gashed. The Cadillac’s heavy bumper had been forced back into the radiator. The shatterproof windshield was blurred in one place by a head mark. I found some spatterings of blood on the front seat.

  Whoever had taken and wrecked the car had left the keys in the ignition. I did what I should have done before: used them to open the trunk.

  Harry lay there with his back to me. I put my hand under his head and turned up his face. He had been badly beaten. Until he moaned I thought he might be dead.

  I got my arms under his shoulders and legs and lifted him out. It was like delivering a big inert baby from an iron womb. I laid him out on the grass and looked around for help.

  The wind hissed in the dry palm fronds overhead. There was nothing human in sight. But I didn’t want to leave Harry. Somebody might steal him again.

  I walked across the beach to wet my handkerchief in the water and got one of my feet wet, to no avail. Harry moaned when I wiped his face with the wet cloth, but he didn’t come to. When I lifted one of his eyelids, all I could see was white.

  I calculated that he had been unconscious in the trunk for six or seven hours: there wasn’t much doubt in my mind that the blood on Martel’s heel was Harry’s blood: and I decided to get him to a hospital. I heaved him up in my arms again.

  I was halfway to my car when a city patrol car with a red light on the roof drifted into sight. It stopped and an officer got out.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “This man was in an accident. I’m taking him to a hospital.”

  “We’ll do that.”

  He was a young officer, with a keen edge on his voice. He lifted Harry out of my clutches and deposited him on the back seat of the patrol car. Then he turned back to me with his hand on his gun butt.

  “Looks to me like he was beaten.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s see your hands. Come around in the headlights.”

  I showed him my hands under the white beam. A second officer got out of the driver’s seat and came up behind me.

  “I didn’t beat him. You can see for yourself.”

  “Who did?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” I didn’t feel like going into the subject of Martel. “I saw the wrecked car and opened up the trunk and he was in it. It’s his car. I think it was stolen.”

  “You know him?”

  “Slightly. His name is Harry Hendricks. We’re both staying at the Breakwater Hotel. You can reach me there later if you want to.” I told them who I was. “Right now you better get him to a hospital.”

  “Don’t worry. We will.”

  “Which hospital?”

  “It’ll be County, unless you want to pay for him. Mercy asks for a one-day deposit.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty bucks, on the ward.”

  I gave him twenty of Peter’s dollars. The officer said his name was Ward Rasmussen, and he would bring me a receipt from the hospital.

  The lobby of the Breakwater Hotel was empty except for the ancient bellhop asleep on a settee. I touched him. He started and called out:

  “Martha?”

  “Who’s Martha?”

  He rubbed his bleared eyes. “I knew a girl Martha. Did I say Martha?”

  “Yep.”

  “Must have been dreaming about her. I knew her in Red Bluff. Martha Truitt. I was born and raised in Red Bluff. That was a long time ago.”

  Eye-deep in time he trudged around behind the desk and let me register and gave me the key to room 28, which I asked for. The electric clock over his head said it was five minutes past three.

  I asked the old man if the red-headed woman, Mrs. Hendricks, had come back to the hotel. He didn’t remember. I left him shaking his head over Martha Truitt.

  I fell into bed and dreamed about nothing at all. The wind died just before dawn. I heard the quiet and woke up wondering what was missing. Gray light fogged the window. I could hear the sea thumping like a beggar at the bottom of the town. I turned over and dropped back to sleep.

  The telephone woke me. The desk said a policeman wanted to see me. It was full morning, a quarter to eight by my watch.

  While I thought of it, I phoned Eric Malkovsky’s studio. He was there.
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  “Have you been up all night, Eric?”

  “I get up early. I made some enlargements of that negative. Something came out on them that I want to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d rather you saw them for yourself and drew your own conclusions.”

  “Can you bring them to the Breakwater Hotel?”

  He said he could.

  “I’ll either be in room 28 or in the coffee shop.”

  I pulled on my clothes and went down to the lobby. The young officer, Rasmussen, was carrying Harry’s pearl-gray hat. He handed me a receipt for twenty dollars.

  “I hate to get you up so early,” he said, “but I’m going off duty.”

  “It’s time I was up. How’s Harry?”

  “He’s coming out of it. They’ll be shunting him off to County unless you deposit more money today.”

  “Does that make sense?”

  “It’s the way the hospital runs its business. I’ve seen people die on the way between Mercy and County. I don’t mean that your friend is liable to die,” he added carefully. “The doctor says he’ll be okay.”

  “He isn’t my friend, exactly.”

  “He must be twenty dollars’ worth of a friend. Incidentally, if you’re going out to the hospital you can give him his hat. I took it out of his car before the wreckers towed it away. It’s a good hat, and he’ll want it back.”

  He gave me the hat. I didn’t bother pointing out that it had the wrong name in it. I was wondering who L. Spillman was, and how Harry got his hat.

  “The car’s totaled out,” Rasmussen said. “It wasn’t worth much, but auto theft is auto theft. We picked up three suspects, by the way. They made it easy for us. One of them got a cut head in the accident, and his buddies brought him to the emergency ward.”

  “The orange-pickers?”

  “Pardon?”

  “A white man and a couple of darker brothers?”

  “You saw them, did you?” Rasmussen said.

  “I saw them. What are you going to do with them?”

  “It depends on what they did. I haven’t figured it out yet. If they locked your friend in the trunk and drove him someplace, it’s technically kidnapping.”