“In the best of all possible worlds?”
Griffin sat behind his desk, watching me with a no-comment expression. Trying to get information out of a Los Angeles lawyer was like opening a can of sardines without a key. I said:
“This Smith doesn’t sound like any bargain. What’s he been doing to these high-type people, to make them want to investigate him?”
“We look to you for an answer to that, Mr. Archer.”
“You mean they don’t know what he’s been doing to them?”
“His intentions are obscure, shall we say. Everything about the man is obscure. If you can throw some light on him and his motives, you’ll be well paid for your trouble.”
“It will cost your client a hundred dollars a day, whether or not I come up with anything.”
“I anticipated that, and I’m prepared to give you a five-hundred-dollar advance now. Will you take the case?”
I didn’t want the case. I didn’t like Griffin. I resented the secrecy with which he was trying to handle it and me. But he had stirred my curiosity. And I could use the money.
“I’ll take it.”
He handed me a check which he had already made out against his firm’s account, and watched me put it away. With a glint of something in his eye that might have been ownership. I didn’t like it.
“Is Smith blackmailing your high-type people?” I said.
Griffin’s eyebrows went up till his forehead resembled brown corduroy. “I have no reason to think so. You must understand, our knowledge of him is minimal. We’re looking to you, Mr. Archer, to maximize it.”
“Okay, let’s get back to Smith’s description. Brown-black eyes, largish broken nose, swarthy complexion, gray streaks in black hair. How big is he?”
I took out my notebook while Griffin consulted his scribbled sheet. “About six feet. His back is slightly stooped, possibly from doing manual work. He’s broad-shouldered, but not too heavy.”
I wrote this down. “How does he dress?”
“In an ordinary dark business suit. It looks new, but it doesn’t fit him too well. He wears a white shirt and a dark tie. No hat. At least he wasn’t wearing one at the time that he was observed.”
“Where and when was this?”
“I don’t know. In fact, you’ve pretty well exhausted my information.”
“You’re not giving me much to go on, Mr. Griffin. There must be a hundred thousand people in La Mesa—”
“But only a few dozen named Smith.”
“Does he have a first name?”
“Presumably, but I don’t know it. The chances are, as I said, that he’s living in a waterfront hotel or motel. You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding him. After that—I believe you understand your instructions.”
“Yes.”
“If and when you uncover anything significant, report to me. Our answering service can put you in touch with me at any hour.”
Griffin rose in a gesture of dismissal.
—
I got to La Mesa in time for lunch, which I ate in a waterfront café. It was late June, and the place was crowded with women in slacks and men in shorts, displaying sunburned knees. From my table by the window, I could see the yacht harbor. Small sailboats were moving out through the channel with that slow grace that only sailboats have. It was a bright day, and the wind was freshening.
Just for fun, I tried Smith’s description on the waitress who brought my Crab Louie. She shook her hennaed head at me:
“I’m sorry. Even if I did see him—I see so many people.”
She limped away.
I had no better luck in the motels. They stretched for half a mile along the waterfront boulevard: expensive stucco layouts with green swimming pools and greener lawns, shaded by palm trees rattling in the wind. They were happy places for happy people who wanted to live for a little while in a postcard paradise. Some of the people were named Smith, and that took time. None of them was the Smith I was looking for.
Four hours later, four hours of legwork and tonguework which got me nothing, I had worked my way to the end of motel row. Like white birds coming home to roost, the sails were turning back towards the harbor, heeling as they tacked into the channel.
I turned back towards the main street, remembering a small hotel I had missed. It stood on a corner a block away from the boulevard. It was a three-story building with a front of dirty white bricks and an old electric sign which mumbled through its missing bulbs that this was the MADISON HOTEL. The lobby was narrow and dank. There was nobody at the desk. Two old men, facing each other across a card table that had been set up by the front window, were playing checkers as if their lives depended on the outcome. One of them had two kings; the other had three.
I asked the lucky one where the desk clerk was.
“I’m taking care of the desk right now,” he said without looking up. “You want a room?”
“I may at that. Is there a Mr. Smith staying here?”
He raised his head. His eyes were time-washed and shrewd. “What you want with him?”
“I ran into him, he said you might have a room. Most of the motels are full.”
“We got plenty of rooms. Mind if I finish the game, mister, and then I’ll fix you up?”
He moved one of his kings, hastily, as if he had lost interest in the game. The other old man took it. My old man took his opponent’s two kings and got up grinning like a dog.
He disappeared through a door at the back and emerged behind the desk, wearing a green eyeshade. “I can give you a room with a private bath if you want to go to five.”
“We’ll talk about that in a minute. I want to be sure that it’s the same Mr. Smith. Is he a dark man with a broken nose?”
“Uh-huh. He’s the only Smith we got.”
“Is he in his room?”
He glanced at the keyboard behind him. “Not right now. I think he went out for a walk. You want a room or don’t you?”
“Yes. Please. With bath.”
I registered under my own name, gave him a ten-dollar bill and told him to keep the change.
His jaw dropped, displacing his false teeth slightly. He looked as if he was going to eat the money. “What’s this for?”
“For not telling Mr. Smith that I was asking about him. Pass the word to your friend.”
“Cop?”
I improved on this: “Undercover agent.”
“Did Mr. Smith do something?”
“I don’t know. He may be an innocent victim of the conspiracy. I’ve been assigned to keep an eye on him. I’m telling you this much because you’re obviously a man of experience and you have an honest face.”
“You can trust me,” he said. “Is it the dope traffic? We’ve had a lot of it seeping into town these last few years.”
“Could be. My name is Archer, by the way.”
“Gimpel. Jack Gimpel.” He offered me an arthritic hand. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Archer. I hope there won’t be any trouble, though.”
“I’m here to head off trouble.”
That turned out to be one of my emptier boasts.
WE WENT ON FROM THERE
The original handwritten manuscript of the 1965 Ross Macdonald novel The Far Side of the Dollar ended with a brief final chapter chapter featuring an exchange between protagonist Lew Archer and another of the book’s characters.
Before having his manuscript typed, the author decided not to include that ultimate scene. Above it, he wrote to his typist: “I think leave off this chapter. Yes, disregard it, please.”
29
“She had a dreadful life,” Susanna said, “and a dreadful end. I would have given her access to her sleeping pills.”
“You can say that because you didn’t have the responsibility. I helped a man to die once, in similar circumstances. It still wakes me up in the middle of the night.”
She studied me across the table. She herself had a slightly convalescent look, and she was wearing a gardenia. It wa
s Saturday night; we were about to have dinner in one of the medium-priced places on Restaurant Row; I had just ordered martinis.
“You’re a curious combination,” she said. “Very hard, and quite soft.”
“Most men are. So are most women.”
“It certainly applies to Elaine Hillman. You know, I can almost sympathize with her. Or empathize. He did almost the same thing to me as he did to her—getting me to take care of Carol, without any hint that he was the father of the child she was carrying. He may even have recruited me for that purpose,” she said, making herself wince.
“I don’t think he’s as cold an operator as that.”
“Don’t you?”
“How do you feel about him, Susanna?”
“I have no feeling whatever about him,” she said with feeling. “I’m much more interested in what’s going to happen to the boy. How can he possibly survive such trouble?”
“He’ll survive. He has some choices now. His father is willing to send him away to prep school. Or he may even spend the next year with his grandfather Rob Brown. I introduced them to each other yesterday, and they seemed to get along. He even has a nice girl waiting for him.”
Susanna gave me a bright opaque look, as if she could think of another male with similar advantages. “Stella is a nice girl. I’m sorry I couldn’t or didn’t stay with her the other morning. I felt—” She fumbled with a spoon in some embarrassment.
“You felt Ralph Hillman’s needs were overriding.”
“No. I simply felt he had a right—”
“The droit du seigneur?”
“You’re being unpleasant,” she said. “And I was so looking forward to seeing you.”
“I’m trying to get certain things out of the way. Then we can go on from there.”
“Can we?”
“We can try. You haven’t told me what you and Ralph Hillman talked about at breakfast. Did he know his wife had killed those people?”
“Maybe he did. He didn’t say anything about it.”
“If he knew, it would explain his asking you to marry him, as well as something he did Thursday night. He suddenly told me about his fling with Carol, and the fact that Tom was his son. I think he was feeding me evidence of Elaine’s guilt. He wanted her to be found out, even if it meant that he was found out, too.”
“And then he was going to marry me and live happily ever after.” She looked quite pale and haunted for a moment.
The bar girl brought our martinis, and we went on from there.
TRIAL
It had rained in the canyon during the night. The world had the colored freshness of a butterfly just emerged from the chrysalis stage, and trembling in the sun. Actual butterflies danced in flight across free spaces of air or played a game of tag without any rules among the branches of the trees. At this height there were pines and giant firs among the planted eucalyptus trees.
I parked my car where I usually parked it, in the driveway of the Trumbull estate, just inside the gates. The posts, rather the gates had rusted and fallen from their hinges. Trumbull had died in Europe, and his country house stood empty since the war. It was one reason I visited the canyon: nobody lived there.
Until now, at least. The window of the stone gatehouse which overlooked the driveway had been broken the last time I’d seen it. Now it was patched with cardboard. Through a hole punched in the middle of the cardboard, bright emptiness watched me. A human eye’s bright emptiness.
“Hello.”
My voice was loud in the stillness. A jaybird erupted from a red-berried bush, sailed up to the limb of a tree and yelled back curses at me. A dozen chickadees flew out of the oak and settled in another, more remote. The door of the gatehouse creaked, and a man came out.
He wore faded jeans, a brown horsehide jacket, and a smile. He walked mechanically, as if his body was not at home in the world. The very sound of his feet on the gravel was harsh and clumsy. Perhaps he was used to pavements.
“Hello,” I said again.
He came right up to me without answering. I saw that his smile was not a greeting, or any kind of a smile that you could respond to. It was the stretched blind grimace of a man who hated the sun. His bright and empty eyes looked at me as if he hated me because I was under the sun.
But all he said was: “Bud, you can’t park here. This driveway is in use.”
“Who’s using it?”
He shrugged awkwardly. One of his hands was in his jacket pocket. His other arm hung stiff as a board at his side:
“I got no instructions to answer questions. The question is, what you think you’re doing here? This is private property, all the way down to the highway. You’re trespassing.”
“I know that. I knew the Trumbulls at one time. Miss Trumbull sold the property?”
“Looks like it, don’t it?”
“To you?”
“Not to me. Listen, bud, you admit you’re trespassing. Why don’t you beat it now?”
I was on the point of complying. I had no right there, though over the years I’d established what I thought of as squatter’s rights. But he said one word too many:
“Beat it before I get rough.”
The hair on the back of my neck hadn’t bristled since the war. I could feel it rise like iron filings magnetized by his smile.
WINNIPEG, 1929
Editor’s Preface
Kenneth Millar, raised in Canada, moved to Southern California in 1946. There, for two and a half decades, under the pseudonym Ross Macdonald, he wrote books involving California detective Lew Archer—books that reached the bestseller lists in 1969.
Macdonald’s popular breakthrough coincided with a re-newed interest by Canadians in their heritage and identity, and a renaissance in Canadian letters. New voices from up north (Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Alice Munro) were being heard down in the States and around the world.
Ross Macdonald’s was a Canadian voice, too. Ken Millar though Lew Archer, like his author, looked at California through Canadian eyes. The Archer books were filled with Canadian references; some even had Canadian content.
In the 1970s, Millar yearned to write a book (whether fiction or nonfiction) that would deal explicitly with his Canadian background. He mulled an autobiographical family history that would trace the Millar roots from Galashiels, Scotland, to southern Ontario, to Southern California. He worked on a couple of novel plots set in or near Winnipeg in the 1920s, where he’d attended private school. Millar even considered having Lew Archer discover that the detective himself had been born in Canada.
Reluctance to deal in print with still-painful personal memories, many pressing distractions, and finally illness prevented Macdonald from writing any of those books.
Winnipeg, 1929 is two tantalizing fragments of one such work that might have been. Penned in ballpoint in one of Millar’s notebooks, these give a fictional glimpse—drawn closely from life—of a smart and vulnerable lad much like the young Ken Millar, who also journeyed alone by train to Manitoba in the 1920s, to be placed in the care of an aunt and uncle he’d never met.
I
The streetcar ride from the school to my aunt’s apartment on Broadway was like a journey from one planet to another, from Mars to Venus, say. The school was partly religious and partly military. Aunt Lola’s apartment was neither. There were pictures on the walls of her big dining room, not all of them reproductions, some of them nudes. Lola herself wore deep rich autumn colors most of the time. Most of the time her face had a cold look, as if she anticipated a hard and early winter. Once or twice in the short period I had been with her, her eyes had thawed and I could see the flickering heat behind them.
One of those times had occurred the week before, on the day I arrived in Winnipeg from the east. She was waiting for me when I stepped off the train. Uncle Ned took my solitary suitcase, and Aunt Lola put her arm around me. Then she held my face between her hands. Her eyes were dark and bright.
“You’re your father’
s boy, aren’t you? Did you know your father’s coming to Winnipeg to see you?”
“No.”
“How long is it since you’ve seen your father?”
“I don’t remember, Aunt Lola.”
“Has it been so long?”
“I don’t remember.”
There was a squeak of protest in my voice. I tried to swallow it. Adults liked happy thoughts and smiling faces.
Lola slapped me lightly with her gloved hand. “Don’t keep repeating yourself. I heard you the first time. How old are you now?”
“Thirteen.”
She drew her face together in a grimace which made her look a little like a bulldog and made me wonder if she was in pain. “That’s an unlucky number, Robert. If anybody asks you, say you’re fourteen.”
“Even at school?”
“We’re not talking about school. We’re talking about when you’re with me. The number between twelve and fourteen has always brought me bad luck. Isn’t that right, Ned?”
“I guess so.”
“You know damn well so.”
Uncle Ned let out a short angry laugh. “I know that we were married in nineteen thirteen, if that’s what you’re talking about.”
“That isn’t funny,” she said.
Her voice was quiet, barely audible among the station noises. Its effect on Uncle Ned surprised me. He hung his head and looked down at the platform.
“I want you to take it back,” she said.
“There’s nothing to take back. I was thinking about my bad luck when they sent me over to France.”
Lola accepted his obscure apology, though it sounded far-fetched to me. I had had some experience of broken marriages, and it made me wonder what was happening to theirs. And I made a sudden inarticulate decision to avoid the middle ground between them if I could. This marriage was the kind of game that nobody won, but it fed like gang war on the spectators.
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