The Archer Files

by Ross Macdonald

  He shot a lizard glance at the boy’s mother, and shrugged. “I’d feel a little more certain that it won’t if we could present a reasonable alternative, you know? I thought suicide, but I don’t know if it’s tenable.”

  “I’m afraid not. You’ve seen the wound?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Guillotine.”

  Mrs. Norris shuddered audibly. She was leaning forward in a rocker with her forearms on her knees, her eyes like dark weights in her head. On the wall behind her a Sunday school motto stated that Christ was a silent listener at every conversation.

  “Mrs. Norris,” I said, “if I could have a look at Lucy’s things—”

  She straightened. “The police sealed up her room, inside and outside. I can’t get in myself, even to clean it up.”

  “You can,” I told Santana.

  “Yes. I’ll need an order.”

  “Isn’t there anything of hers in the rest of the house?”

  Mrs. Norris rose ponderously. “She mostly stayed in her room, but I’ll have a look.”

  As soon as she was gone, Santana moved with short quick steps across the threadbare carpet, and laid a hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t like to speak out in front of her. I talked to Alex this morning, and there was another man. Alex saw him go in by Lucy’s private entrance Tuesday night, night before last. That’s what their fight was about yesterday. He accused her of being a prostitute. Then when he found her dead, he thought he’d forced her to suicide.” He removed his weight from my shoulder and spread his hands. “Poor boy.”

  “Poor girl. Was she one?”

  “Not here. Not in Mrs. Norris’s house. That one is a highly moral woman.”

  “No doubt.” But there was doubt in my mind about Lucy and her orange silk pyjamas. “Could he give you a description of the man?”

  “A very good description.” He took out a small leather notebook and opened it. “He was a white man. Curly black hair and Latin features, more Italian than Spanish. Broad-shouldered, above medium height. Light tan tweed jacket, light gabardine trousers. Two-tone sport shoes, brown and white. Dark red tie. General effect that of a prosperous thug. Discount that last, though. Alex hated the man on sight, for obvious reasons.”

  “You’ve told the police about this?”

  “Alex wouldn’t let me. He made me swear I wouldn’t. The boy’s a poetry-reader, Mr. Archer. He would rather die than cast aspersions publicly on her memory. I’m going to tell them anyway, of course, now that I’ve told you first. Quite soon now. But it would be so much more effective if we could present the man along with the story.”

  “So I’m to pluck him out of the air. This state is lousy with prosperous thugs. Latin and non-Latin.”

  “Is it not?” He scurried back to the mohair chesterfield. “But there is your problem.”

  Mrs. Norris returned, laden with meager booty. A woman’s hat and coat. “These were hers. She kept them in the hall closet.” Toothbrush and toothpaste, a bottle of mouthwash, one of hair oil, assorted cosmetics. “She had her own little cabinet in the bathroom. Oh, and this.”

  She handed me a clinical thermometer. I turned it over and found the mercury column. It registered a temperature of 107. I showed it to Santana. “Lucy was really sick, apparently.”

  “She didn’t die of a fever,” he said.

  Mrs. Norris examined the thermometer. “I don’t believe she was running a temperature like that. She wouldn’t have been able to walk around. What did Dr. Benning say about her?”

  “That she had nothing serious the matter.”

  “Benning?” Santana said. “Was she Benning’s patient?”

  “Not exactly. She went to see him once.”

  “Most people do,” he said dryly.

  “Let’s look at the other things.”

  The items from the bathroom cabinet could have been bought in any city or town in the United States. There was no druggists’s prescription, nothing that could be pinned down to a definite place or person. The coat was equally anonymous. It was a plain black cloth coat, bearing the label of a New York maker who turned out thousands of cheap coats every year.

  I was a little surprised by the hat. It was a soft turban made of black wool yarn interwoven with threads of gold. It was simple enough, but something about its shape suggested money.

  “With your permission,” I said, “I’m going to take this along with me. You’re sure there’s nothing else of hers around, outside of the room?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Who’s the best milliner in town?”

  “Helen,” Santana answered, so quickly that he almost blushed about it. “Her shop is on the Plaza.”

  Helen’s was one of those shops with a single hat in the window, like a masterpiece of plastic art in a gallery. Helen herself was almost a work of art, a small dark middle-aged woman who tripped towards me like an aging ballet dancer.

  “You are looking for a gift, perhaps?” Her painted mask-like face formed a slight waiting smile.

  “Not exactly. In fact, not at all.” I took the black-and-gold turban out of my jacket pocket and handed it to her. “You wouldn’t know where this came from?”

  Her curved scarlet talons poked and pulled at the hat. “Why?”

  “I’m a detective. A woman was killed. This belonged to her.”

  “Wealth?” She turned it inside out.

  “I hardly think so. It’s a good hat, though, isn’t it?”

  “Very good. French workmanship, I do believe.”

  “You couldn’t hazard a guess as to the maker?”

  “A guess, perhaps. It has Augustin lines. The way it’s folded, you know?” She plucked at the material.

  “Where is Augustin?”

  “Paris.” She pulled the hat on suddenly, struck a pose in front of a mirror on the wall. “Pretty, but not for me. It was made for a blonde. Was your killed woman a blonde?”

  “No.”

  “Then she had bad taste.” She removed the hat and gave it back to me. “Augustin has a Los Angeles outlet, you know. Bertha Mackay on Wilshire. Might that help?”

  I drove to Los Angeles. Bertha Mackay’s hat shop had the hushed solemnity of a funeral chapel. A few handmaidens lazed about in the theatrical light, and paid no attention to me. Tea was being served from a silver service in the rear of the shop. I couldn’t imagine Lucy coming here to buy a hat.

  A stout woman with blonde coroneted braids was pouring for a bevy of spectacularly hatted females. I addressed her: “May I speak to Miss Mackay?”

  “You have that privilege and pleasure.” Her smile conveyed the idea that the hat shop and the tea-pouring were charades, good fun but not to be taken seriously.

  “Privately, if possible.”

  “I’m rather busy just now—”

  “It won’t take a minute.”

  She removed her hand from the teapot and rose sighing. “Now what?” She led me into a corner.

  I had a story ready, which omitted the alarming fact of murder: “I sell cars. A young lady came into the showroom this morning, and asked to try out a new convertible. She went away without leaving her name or address, and left her hat in the car. I’d like to return it to her.”

  “And sell her a car?”

  “If I can. But the hat is worth money, isn’t it?” I showed it to her.

  She looked up sharply. “How did you know I sold it?”

  “A woman who knows hats said it was an Augustin, and that you handled them.”

  “It is worth money. Two hundred dollars, to be exact. I’m not excessively wild about the notion of giving out a customer’s name, though. You know all you want to do is sell her a car.”

  “You sold her a hat.”

  She smiled, but she was suspicious of me. “What did she look like?”

  I took a chance: “She was blonde, a well-groomed blonde.”

  She didn’t deny it. Glancing impatiently towards the tea-party, where the spectacular hats were twittering like birds,
she said: “Oh hell, it was Fern Dee bought it. Only don’t tell her I told you, she might object. Say you went to a fortune-teller, um?”

  “Fern Dee. Where does she live?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I only saw her the one time, last spring. She saw this hat in the window and walked in and paid cash for it and walked out. I recognized her from her pictures.”

  “Her pictures?”

  “In the newspaper. Don’t you read the newspapers? I really must go now.” Brusquely, she turned away.

  I took my sense of frustration to Morris Cramm. Bach on a harpsichord rustled and clanged behind the door of his walkup apartment. He came to the door softly in stocking feet, and waved me in without uttering a word. When the side was finished, he switched the Capehart off and said, “Hello there, Lew.”

  The Capehart was the only valuable thing in the dingy room, apart from Morris’s filing-cabinet brain. He was the nightspot legman for a Hollywood columnist, a small middle-aging man with thick glasses and the inability to forget a fact.

  “I need a small transfusion of information.”

  “You know my terms. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, money for information. The Mosaic law won’t let me turn off good music for nothing.”

  “I’m on the side of the angels this time. You should take that into account. I’m trying to clear a Negro boy of a pending murder charge. I don’t even know if I’ll be paid.”

  “You’ll be paid. Moi aussi.”

  I screwed up a five-dollar bill and tossed it to him. “Money-grubber.”

  “Scavenger. Go ahead.”

  “I want to talk to a woman. Name is Fern Dee. You’ve heard of her, probably. Everyone else has.”

  “Except you, eh? She Superchiefed from Chicago last year with Angel Durano. I saw them on the Strip every night for a while. I don’t know where or what she came up out of. Claimed to be a dancer, but he backed her in a revue and she flopped, dismally. Do you still want to talk to her?”

  “Very much.”

  “You know who Durano is, don’t you? The name for him back east is the Enforcer. When the Syndicate got tired of playing footsie with Mickey, they sent Durano out to finish him. In a business way, you understand. Nothing violent, unless it becomes essential.” He took off his spectacles and wiped them. “Charming place and time we live in. Charming people.”

  “Where are these particular charming people?”

  “I haven’t seen them lately. Durano has himself a place in the desert, and they could be living there, though it’s hardly the season. They could be back in Chicago, but I doubt it. Durano is running this territory permanently.” He clicked his teeth. “That’s a nice fat five dollar’s worth.”

  “It’s pretty hot in the desert this time of year.”

  “Heat doesn’t seem to bother Durano. He’s got ice water in his veins. I saw him in the Springs in the middle of August. It was close to 110 in the shade, and he was wearing a topcoat.”

  “Is that where his place is—Palm Springs?”

  “It’s a few miles beyond Palm Springs, towards Indio. Everybody out there knows him. Better be nice to him, Lew, if you get that far. He was indicted for homicide once, even in Chicago.”

  I said that I was always nice to people. The harpsichord drowned me out.

  —

  The sun was low when I reached Palm Springs, glowing dull red like a cigar-butt balanced on the rim of the horizon. The tall sky rose above it, blue-gray like a column of smoke. Beyond the town, which was miniatured by space, the chameleon desert burned red in the sun’s reflection. It was hot.

  I stopped at a highway gas-station and ordered a tankful. Paying the attendant, I mentioned casually that Mr. Durano had invited me to dinner.

  “Mr. Angel Durano?”

  “That’s the one. Know him?”

  His manner changed perceptibly, became a little contemptuous and a little obsequious. “I don’t know him, no. He bought some gas here once, at least his chauffeur did. He was in the car.” He eyed me curiously.

  “It’s a lovely doll he travels with,” I said. “You see her, too? The blonde?”

  “I didn’t see her. Here’s your change, sir.”

  “Keep it. You don’t know where he lives, do you? They gave me full instructions how to find it, but this is new country to me.”

  “Sure, sir. He lives on Canyon Road. Take the second turn to the right and you can’t miss it. It’s a great big place with round towers. Used to be a gambling casino in the old days.”

  It stood by itself on a slight rise like somebody’s idea of a castle in Spain. The last rays of the sun washed its stucco walls in purple light. Its acreage was surrounded by an eight-foot wire fence, barbed along the top. The single gate was closed and guarded.

  The guard wore riding breeches, a Stetson, and a suede windbreaker bulky enough to hide a gun. When I stopped in front of the gate, he waved me on. I got out and approached him. “Is this Durano’s place?”

  “Beat it, mac. This is private property.”

  “I didn’t think it was a national park. I’m looking for Mr. Durano.”

  “Keep right on looking.” He took a step towards me, left foot first, right foot coming up behind. In the shadow of his hat, his face was thick with scar tissue. “Someplace else.”

  I spoke soothingly: “Why don’t you ask Mr. Durano if he’ll see me? My name is Lew Archer.”

  “Mr. Durano ain’t here. Now amscray, mac. I mean it.” He acted out his meaning, advancing his left shoulder and balling his right fist.

  “Miss Dee, then. Fern Dee. Can I talk to her?”

  The name had an effect on him, interrupting his preparations to hit me. “You know Miss Dee?”

  “I have something of hers.” I reached for the turban.

  “Keep your hands away from your pockets.” He moved up close to me and patted me down, then jerked the hat out of my jacket pocket. “Where did you get ahold of this?”

  “I’ll tell Miss Dee.”

  “That’s what you think,” he said in brilliant repartee. “You better come on inside.”

  The man who guarded the front door relieved him at the gate. Durano received me in the great hall. It was a large rectangular room with a high roof supported by black oak beams, crowded with stiff old Spanish furniture, carpeted with Oriental rugs. A baronial room, built for giants.

  Durano was a tired-looking little man. He might have been a moderately successful grocer or barkeep who had come to California for his health. Clearly his health was poor. Even in the stifling heat of the room he looked pale and chilly, as if he had caught a slight case of chronic death from one of his victims.

  He had been playing solitaire on one end of a refectory table. He rose and advanced towards me, his legs shuffling feebly in wrinkled blue trousers that bagged at the knees. The upper part of his body was swathed in a heavy turtleneck sweater. He had two days’ beard on his chin, like motheaten gray plush.

  “Mr. Durano?” I said. “My name is Lew Archer.”

  The guard spoke up behind me: “He brung this little hat with him, Mr. Durano. Said it belongs to Fern—Miss Dee.”

  Durano took the hat from him, and turned it over in his blue hands. His eyes were like thin stab-wounds filled with watery blood. “Where did you get this, Mr. Archer?”

  “I sort of thought I’d like to tell the owner where I got it.”

  “You sort of thought.” He smiled at me quite pleasantly, and pressed his toe into the center of the rug that he was standing on. Two more men entered the room.

  Durano nodded to the guard behind me, who reached to pin my arms. I turned on him, landed one punch, and took a very hard counter in the neck. One of the men behind me hit my kidneys like a heavy truck-bumper. I turned on him and kneed him, catching his companion with an elbow under the chin. The original guard delivered a rabbit-punch that made my head ring like a gong. Under that clangor, Durano was saying quietly:

  “Where did you get the hat?”

  I
didn’t say. The two men held me upright by the arms while the guard employed my face and body as punching bags. At intervals Durano asked me politely to tell him about the hat. After a while he shook his head. My handlers deposited me in a chair which swung on a wire from the ceiling in great circles. It swung out over the desert into black space.

  When I came to, a young man was standing over me. He had curly black hair, Mediterranean features and coloring, light tan jacket, red tie. Alex’s description had been excellent. There was an empty waterglass in his hand, and my face was dripping.

  “Did you get the hat from Lucy?” he said.

  “Lucy?” My mouth was numb, and I lisped. “I don’t know any Lucy.”

  “Sure you do.” He shattered the glass on the arm of my chair, and held the jagged base up close to my eyes. “You tell me all about it like a nice fella.”

  “Nix, Gino,” the old man said. “I got a better idea as usual.”

  They conferred in low voices, and the younger man left the room. He returned with a photograph in a silver frame, which he held in front of my face. It was a studio portrait, of the kind intended for use as publicity cheesecake. Against a black velvet background, a young blonde half-reclined in a gossamer sort of robe that was split to show one bent leg. Though she was adequately stacked and pretty in a rather dull, corn-fed way, her best feature was her long pull-taffy hair. The picture was signed in a childish hand: “To my Angel, with love and everything. Fern.”

  “You know the dame?” Gino demanded. “Ever seen her before?” I thought I had, and said I hadn’t.

  “You’re sure?” The shard of glass was still in his other hand.

  “I see a lot of blondes. How can I be sure?”

  “Where did you get the hat, then?”

  “I won it in a raffle.”

  Gino’s face thickened, and his eyes almost crossed. Durano stepped in front of him. “Leave him alone, leave him go. There is heat on, remember. We keep our hands clean.” He scoured his thin blue hands with each other. They sounded like sticks rubbing together.

  Gino backed away, joining the three others who stood in a semicircle behind Durano. The old man leaned towards me:

  “Mr. Detective, I don’t know who you work for, I don’t care. You took a nice good look at the lady in the picture? You ever see her, come back and visit me. I promise a nicer reception.”