The Archer Files

by Ross Macdonald

  “I understand he’s worried about his son. What’s the boy been up to?”

  Her curly red mouth straightened. “You’ll have to take that up with Mr. Coulson.”

  I followed her pleasantly switching hips along a tile-floored corridor to a downstairs bedroom. Light flooded it from high windows on the left. A square bed stood against the far wall, so huge that it almost dwarfed its occupant. Not quite. He had been known as Big George Coulson when he was an All-American back before the First World War, and age hadn’t withered him. It had thinned and grayed his hair, though, draped rolls of fat around his middle, and stuck a porous whiskey nose on his face. He was sitting up in bed in white piped black silk pyjamas, his swollen red feet stuck out in front of him. There was a collapsible metal wheelchair just inside the door.

  The nurse moved forward with the air of a lion tamer approaching a difficult beast. “Mr. Archer is here to see you,” she said with a soothing lilt in her voice.

  “I can see that for myself. I’m crippled, not blind.” His voice was a harsh growl.

  Trying to sit up straighter, he winced and groaned. She bent over the bed and lifted his inert mass of flesh. She was strong. He leaned his head against her breast for an instant, breathing hard through the mouth. She didn’t pull away until he moved his head to look at me:

  “Sit down, Archer. You want something to eat? Alice was just about to bring me my lunch.”

  “I’ve already eaten, thanks.”

  “You’re smart, boy. Know what she gives me? Cottage cheese and pineapple and a glass of skim milk.” He grimaced.

  She touched his corrugated forehead, casually. “You want to get back on your feet as soon as possible.”

  “Don’t worry. They can’t keep a good man down.” He winked at me broadly.

  Her hand trailed down his cheek and slapped it lightly. “I’ll get your lunch. Dr. Freestone says if you’re good, you can have a lamb chop for dinner, maybe.”

  “And a drink?”

  “No drink.”

  She left the room. I sat down in a leather armchair beside Coulson’s bed.

  He leaned towards me confidentially, and said as if it was a personal word: “I haven’t had a drink for sixty hours.”

  “Congratulations. Now about your son.”

  “Yeah. My son.” He took a deep breath and blew it out through protruding lips. His big-nosed face was a tragicomic mask. “He hasn’t been home for three nights. I haven’t seen him since Saturday. I don’t want to be overprotective about it—I had some wild times myself when I was in college. But frankly it’s got me down.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Ron’s nineteen. He’s going into his junior year at Stanford. Ron did pretty well in frosh football, and he’s no baby. But I feel an awful sense of responsibility. I promised his mother when she died that I’d see him safely through college. I’ve had to be father and mother both to my boy.” His red-brown eyes became liquid with sentimentality, which seems to grow with the years on aging athletes. “Now that he’s practically grown up, I can’t let him wreck his life.”

  “That’s jumping to conclusions, isn’t it? Has he ever taken off like this before?”

  Coulson wagged his massive head against the pillows. “Never. Ron’s been in training all summer—plenty of sleep, exercise, no drinking. Until he took up with this woman.”

  “So there’s a woman in it.”

  “Hell yes, that’s just the point. If he was off on an ordinary binge with the boys, I wouldn’t worry about him. I could laugh it off. Only you know what can happen when an innocent young fellow takes off for a weekend with a woman. First thing he knows he’s drunk, she drags him off to Vegas for a quickie marriage, and there he is, kaput!”

  “That’s one way of looking at marriage.”

  “The only way, when a boy has a million dollars of his own. Don’t misunderstand me.” He waved a deprecating hand. Swollen and distorted at the knuckles, it resembled a diseased and knotted vegetable. “I’ve got nothing against marriage. I had a good marriage of my own, and I want the same for Ron, when the time comes.”

  “Has he mentioned marriage?”

  “Not to me. He said something to Alice before he left on Saturday—he talks to her more than he does to me. She thought he was joking, so she didn’t bring it up until yesterday.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Something about taking unto himself a wife, and wouldn’t she be surprised. She asked him who the lucky girl was, not taking him seriously.”

  “But he didn’t tell her?”

  “No. It’s what I want you to find out.” He leaned sideways in the bed, his gargoyle face intent. “Find out who she is, and where they are, and whether he married her. If he did, get me the evidence for an annulment. I don’t care how you get it.” His red-blotched hand worked on the sheet, opening and closing.

  “How do you know he’s with a woman at all?”

  “He showed Alice this corsage he bought. She said it looked like about thirty dollars’ worth of cymbidiums. Ron wanted to know if she thought it was suitable. She asked him suitable for what, and that’s when he made his remark about getting married.”

  “You don’t have any idea where they’ve gone?”

  “No. That’s your problem.”

  “Do you have a picture I can take along?”

  “Ask Alice.” He was tiring, his voice had risen querulously. “Tell Ronnie if you see him, his old man’s on his back and worried sick about him. Tell him his old man needs him, eh?”

  “Uh-huh.” But I thought as I left the room that the old man was pretty well provided for.

  I met Alice in the corridor, carrying a tray. I waited for her to come out of the room. She came out smoothing her hair and wearing the feline smile that almost any kind of a pass can produce in a certain kind of woman.

  “Mr. Coulson says you can give me a picture of Ron.”

  “Yes, there’s one in the study.”

  She led me to a high-raftered room lined on three sides with books. The fourth side was a bay window which overlooked a lily pond choked with green slime. A pair of time-pocked Greek marbles, one an unsexed man and one a woman, looked at each other remotely from opposite ends of the pool.

  “Who reads the books? Mr. Coulson?”

  The feline smile widened. “George isn’t the bookish type. I guess Mrs. Coulson used to read ’em.”

  “She long dead?”

  The nurse shrugged. “About fifteen years. She fell off a polo pony and broke her neck.”

  “Too bad. Thinking of taking her place?” She didn’t turn a hair, change color or stop smiling. “It could happen. But don’t get any funny ideas in your head. I like the guy. You’re seeing him when he’s down, but he’s got a lot of stuff for a man his age. He’s full of kicks.”

  “How about Ron?”

  “Him I like, too. They’re nice boys, both of them.” Her cool gaze rested on me. “You’re all right yourself. Drop around some time when I’m Mrs. George Coulson the Second. I’ll pour you a drink.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “Sure enough you are. Too bad the liquor’s locked up.” She went briskly to a mahogany desk in one corner, and came back to me with a silver-framed photograph in her hand. “Here’s your picture of Ronnie. Nice-looking boy.”

  He was. An ordinary good-looking college boy with wide-spaced eyes and a short crewcut and a straight nose. Perhaps the mouth was a little spoiled and feminine, the eyes a little arrogant. The arrogance was tempered by the marks of a worried frown between the eyes, which the retoucher had missed. I wondered if Ronnie was worried about himself.

  I turned to the nurse. “Does he confide in you?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “He showed you some orchids he bought.”

  “Yes, he did. They were luscious.”

  “Who were they for?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Not me.”

  “I understand he said he was getting
married?”

  “In a kidding way. I still think he was kidding.”

  “Uh-huh. You must know something about the woman.”

  “I suppose she has two eyes, and the other accessories.” The color had left the lower part of her face and centered over the cheekbones.

  “You seem to have everything under control, Alice.”

  “Thank you, sir, I try.” She placed the knuckles of one hand under her chin and did a mock curtsy.

  “You don’t run the house by yourself, though?”

  “Right now I do. The Japanese couple are on vacation this month. Not that I do much for the house. I do look after George.”

  “Who looks after Ronnie?”

  “Ronnie looks after himself.” The spots of color over her cheekbones were vivid. She veiled her eyes, and was silent for a moment, nibbling her lower lip. “If I told you something, would you keep it under your hat? Not let on to George about it, I mean?”

  “That’s a promise.”

  “Well. I told you a little white lie a minute ago. I do know who she is, at least I’m pretty certain. I introduced her to Ronnie. I had no way of knowing she’d go all out for him.”

  “A million dollars is quite an attraction. Who is she?”

  “Claire Devon, her name is. She’s Dr. Freestone’s office nurse. Claire and me—Claire and I trained together at Los Angeles General.”

  “Nice girl?”

  “I always thought so. She never showed much interest in men, but she’s got a good personality. Sort of the reserved type, only with a sense of humor. She’s good for a lot of laughs.”

  “How old?”

  “About my age. Twenty-three or four—too old for Ronnie. I wouldn’t have brought them together if I’d thought it was going to turn into a thing.” One side of her mouth turned up. “Maybe Claire wants to be a mother to him.”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  “Just this last month. She came out here to play tennis with me one day—I’m the only one that uses the court—and Ronnie was hanging around and he got interested. Claire’s got gorgeous red hair, and she’s a pretty stunning girl if you like the bony type.” She rotated her body, which belonged to a different type, in the light from the window. “They’ve been seeing each other since.”

  “And now you think they’ve eloped?”

  “Maybe. It’s hard to believe. I tried to call Claire at her office yesterday, and Dr. Freestone said she didn’t come to work. I called her apartment. No answer.”

  “Freestone is Mr. Coulson’s doctor, right?”

  “One of them. That’s the trouble. I couldn’t tell him what it was all about. You see, I wouldn’t hurt Claire for anything in the world. She got me this job.”

  “And you don’t want to lose the job, you mean?”

  “It’s the chance of a lifetime,” she said. “Remember, you promised not to quote me to anybody.”

  Dr. Freestone had a cottage in a professional court on the other side of Santa Monica Boulevard. His waiting room was furnished in white leatherette and black masonite, with a sheaf of this week’s magazines on a table. A small aquarium kaleidoscopic with tropical fish divided the public space from the receptionist’s alcove.

  A pale woman rose behind the counter, looking at me down her high-bridged nose. He eyes were large and dark, accentuated by eye shadow. She had black hair, clipped very short and curled like karakul. Her jersey dress was black as a widow’s weeds. Under it, her breasts were small and sharp. Her total effect was ugly but interesting.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” Her voice was low, with unusual overtones, suggesting that the things she was capable of doing for me were many and varied.

  “I’d like to see Dr. Freestone.”

  “Sorry, the doctor is busy at the moment. You don’t have an appointment, do you?”

  “No, I’m not a patient.”

  “What is it you wish to see him about?”

  “A private matter.”

  The temperature sank, glazing her eyes with a film of ice. “I’m afraid the doctor has a full schedule this afternoon.”

  LITTLE WOMAN

  It was one of those dusty Valley cities through which big money flowed year after year and, like an underground river, left only a trace of green. The men who controlled the land and the water rights spent their money in other places, in San Francisco and Las Vegas and Los Angeles. I saw their private airfields as I drove up to the city from the south, their Palominos and Black Angus herds, and their vast cotton acreage. I also saw the paintless huts and barracks and trailer camps where the migrant workers lived, in worse conditions than the animals. Animals cost money.

  The address I’d been given was an old two-story frame with a mansard roof. Beyond it a housing tract, a hundred stucco cottages which differed only in color from each other, stretched to the western limits of the city. Beyond these, irregular formations of oil derricks struggled across the valley towards the mountains. The mountains surrounded everything like the ruins of an ancient adobe wall which merged with the dust-colored distance.

  The lawn in front of the house was unmowed and unwatered. There was alkali dust like dingy frost on the grass, and on the leaves of the trumpet vine which writhed among the wires of the front fence. I pushed open the gate and said hello to a blasé cocker spaniel and knocked on the screen door. Somewhere behind it someone was playing a piano, and playing it well. Tinkling notes rained on the parched air. When I knocked a second time, it stopped.

  A short thin blonde woman opened the inner door, and peered at me through the screen. She had once been pretty. Her movements showed that she had not forgotten it. Her hand went to her fading straw-colored hair, which was drawn back almost cruelly from her forehead. Then it went to her mouth and plucked at her dry lower lip. Her head was big for her body, which gave everything she did a childish air.

  “Mrs. Wrightson?”

  She gave me a queer look, as if I had reminded her of her identity. Her eyes were blue and strained and slightly bulging. There were blue pockets of grief under them and sun-cracks at the corners. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Wrightson.”

  “My name is Archer. You wrote me a letter.”

  “Oh. Yes. You got here sooner than I expected.” She looked down at her frilly gingham apron, started to take it off, then changed her mind. “I’m afraid I—the house is a mess. But won’t you come in?”

  She unhooked the screen, and led me under a deer head into the living room. Old-fashioned sliding double doors cut it off from the rest of the house. Though the windows were heavily blinded against the sun, I could see that the room and everything in it was very neat and clean. The dark red broadloom carpet was immaculate. Even the stones of the fireplace looked as if they had been scrubbed. But the woman ran from one side to the other, picking up a magazine from the davenport, a newspaper from the floor beside it, and placing them precisely on a library table. She came back towards me smoothing down her apron and muttering something inarticulate about living in a pigsty.

  “Sit down if you can find a clear space,” she said unsmilingly.

  I sat on the bare davenport. She sat beside me hugging her knees and cocked her head at me, birdlike. She seemed hardly bigger than a bird, so light she barely depressed the cushions, and she had the girlish mannerisms which small women never outgrow. Though there was a foot or more of air between us, she gave the impression of leaning on me. I was younger than she was, and had never seen her before, but I had become her daddy and confessor.

  She clenched her hands and rapped her knuckles together in quick rhythm. “I’m so relieved you’ve come. It’s been just terrible these last few days, since it happened. I’ve had nobody to talk to about it, nobody. I thought I had friends in this town, but I was wrong. I’ve always stood for the better things, you see.” She glanced at a shelf of Book of the Month selections beside the fireplace, as if to reassure herself. “They can’t forgive me for that. I’ve found out I have no friends, none I can count on. And
even Alex—Captain Wrightson hardly ever shows his face in the house. We haven’t exchanged ten words in the last week.”

  “Didn’t he give you my name?”

  “That’s right, he remembered you from that case in Bella City a few years ago. Lieutenant Gorman is a friend of his, at least he was before this awful thing. I suppose every other officer in the Valley has turned against my husband.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Out back in the barn. He has a workshop there, and he’s practically lived there since he was suspended. If I didn’t know he was innocent—” She bit the sentence in half. “I mean, he sits and broods and he won’t see anyone. I’m afraid he’ll lose his mind if he keeps it up. I know he’s drinking.” She added in a whisper: “His father was alcoholic.”

  “Unless he’s alcoholic, too, a little drinking won’t hurt him.”

  “Oh? Are you a medical man?” Her whole face wrinkled in a hostile smile.

  “You know what I am.”

  “Yes, and I know how men hang together where drinking is concerned. I know what drinking can do.”

  I could feel the hard will underlying her girlish air. “We won’t argue, Mrs. Wrightson. About this letter of yours, did you tell your husband you were writing me?”

  “Yes, I did. He didn’t want me to. He said it was a waste of money, and we’re hard up as it is. He said they’re out to get him, and nothing would do any good. We had quite an argument about that letter. I sent it anyway. Alex needs outside help, no matter how much it costs.”

  “Fifty a day and expenses.”

  “I can pay it, for a few days. We’ve never been able to save out of Alex’s salary, but I have a little savings of my own. I taught music until a few years ago.”

  “Piano?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes rolled wistfully. “I might have become a concert pianist if I had had the teachers, and the hands. My hands were too small.” She held them up for me to see, tiny but muscular, the knuckles swollen from housework. She said with earnest force: “Thank God Henry inherited his father’s hands. And my talent.”

  She rose suddenly, like a puppet jerked by a wire, and went to the closed double doors. “Henry! Are you in there?”