The Ferguson Affair

by Ross Macdonald

  Ella had had enough of her lies. She told me the short and not so simple story of her affair with Larry Gaines.

  She had met him through Hector Broadman. Broadman had taken her to Larry’s place the second time they were out together. Apparently he didn’t feel up to entertaining her all by himself. Larry was different-so different that she couldn’t understand how he and Broadman happened to be friends. He was good-looking, and polite, and only a few years older than she was herself. He lived in a house in a canyon outside the city limits.

  It was an exciting evening, sitting between two men in Larry’s little house, drinking the Turkish coffee which Larry made, and listening to good records on his hi-fi. Comparing the two, she made up her mind that Hector Broadman was not for her.

  The second evening the trio spent together, she began to dream that possibly Larry might be. He let her know that he liked her, in so many ways. They had a serious talk about life, for example, and he was very interested in her opinions. Broadman nursed a bottle in a corner.

  That night she broke with Broadman. She hated men who drank, anyway. Larry waited for four days-the longest four days of Ella’s life-and then he phoned her. She was so grateful that she let him seduce her. She was a virgin, but he was so gentle and kind.

  He didn’t turn on her, either, the way fellows are supposed to. He went right on being kind, and calling her just about every night of the week. He wanted to marry her, he said, but he had so little to offer her. They both knew in the long run a man with his brains and personality was bound to make his mark. But that took time, or a lucky break. While he was waiting for one, his salary at the club was barely enough to support him, even with tips added in. Those wealthy people at the Foothill Club were so tight, he said, you had to use a chisel to pry a thin dime off their palms.

  What made it especially hard for him, he told her, was the fact that he came from a wealthy family himself: they lost all their money in the crash before he was born. It drove him crazy, scrounging for nickels and dimes while the members sat on their fat behinds and the money grew on trees for them.

  He wanted a silver-dollar tree of his own, he said, and he had a plan for getting it. If it worked, they could marry before the year was out and live in comfort for the rest of their lives. But he was going to need her help in carrying out the plan. He needed someone in the hospital to supply him with the names of new patients, especially well-heeled ones in private suites.

  “Did you help him, Ella?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “I certainly did not.”

  “Then how did you get the diamond ring and the watch?”

  “He gave them to me before I broke off with him. I guess he thought it would change my mind. But after I found out about him, I didn’t want any part of him or his plans. A nurse who would take advantage of her patients like that should have her uniform torn right off her back.”

  “But you didn’t tell the police about his plans.”

  “I just couldn’t.” She hung her head. “I was stuck on him, I guess, for a long time after I broke with him. Larry was my first real crush. It made me do crazy things. Like last week-” She interrupted herself again.

  “What happened last week?”

  “I kept reading about these houses and stores being broken into in town. I couldn’t believe Larry was doing it. At the same time I knew he was mixed up in it. I had to do something, settle my mind one way or the other. I borrowed a car from a girl-friend and went out to Larry’s place. I intended to ask him outright if he was the burglar. He wouldn’t tell me the truth, probably, but I wanted to see the look on his face when I asked him. Then I’d know what to do.

  “There was a light in the house. I left the car down the road and sneaked up on it, kind of. I could hear voices inside. He had a woman with him. I knocked on the door-I didn’t care what happened. I saw her when he opened the door. She was sitting on the studio couch, a blonde in a Japanese kimono-the same one I used to wear. It sort of set me off, and I called him a name.

  “Larry stepped outside and closed the door on her. I never saw him mad before. He was so mad it made his teeth chatter. He said if I ever came there again, or bothered him in any way, that he would tell a friend of his to put a knife in my heart. I was scared. My knees were shaking so that I could hardly get back to the car.”

  “Did he mention the friend’s name?”

  “No.”

  “It wasn’t Gus Donato?”

  “I never heard of any Donato. All he said was a friend. Some friends he must have.”

  “You should have gone to the police, Ella.”

  “I know I should. You think I should talk to them now, don’t you?”

  “Decidedly.”

  “You honestly think they’ll let me go if I talk?”

  “It won’t be quite as simple as that, I’m afraid. If you satisfy the District Attorney, he should consent to a lowering of your bail at least. It was set very high.”

  “Yeah, five thousand dollars. I can’t raise that kind of money, and I haven’t got the five hundred to pay a bail bondsman. How low do you think you can get it down?”

  “I won’t make any promises. It depends.”

  “Depends on what?” she said impatiently.

  “On whether or not you’ve told me the whole truth, and tell the same to the police and the prosecutor.”

  “Don’t you believe this is the truth?”

  “I’ll be frank with you, Miss Barker. One or two things about your story bother me. Why did you sell Broadman the ring that Larry gave you?”

  “I wanted Larry to know what I thought of him and his lousy ring. Broadman was a friend of his, and I thought he’d probably tell him.”

  “How would Broadman know where you got the ring?”

  “I told him.”

  “You told Broadman?”

  “Yes.”

  “He knew that Larry gave you the ring?”

  “After I told him, he must have.”

  We sat and looked at each other.

  “You think Larry killed Broadman, don’t you?” the girl said.

  “Or had him killed.”

  chapter 4

  I GOT IN TOUCH with Wills and a Deputy District Attorney named Joe Reach. We convened with Ella Barker in the interrogation room on the first floor of the courthouse. Ella went through her story again. It was recorded on stenotype and wire by an elderly court reporter named Ed Gellhorn.

  There are some quite honest people who make poor witnesses because they can’t tell the same story twice with any degree of conviction. Ella’s story hadn’t been too plausible in the first place. The second time around, told in surges of hysterical assurance with stretches of dismal self-doubt in between, it sounded like something she was making up as she went along. Wills and Reach didn’t believe her. To make matters worse, they assumed that I didn’t, either.

  Wills kept bringing up the name Donato, trying to make her admit that she knew the wanted man. Reach kept insisting that she had been fully aware of Gaines’s activities, and probably accessory to them. You didn’t shack up with a guy-

  I stopped him there. “That’s enough, Joe. Miss Barker has made a full and voluntary statement. You’re trying to twist it around into a confession.”

  “Any twisting that’s being done, I think I know who’s doing it.”

  “What’s this about a blonde woman?” Wills put in. “This one you said you saw at Gaines’s place in the canyon.”

  “I saw her, all right,” Ella said.

  “Can you describe her?”

  She looked around the circle of male faces, half despairing.

  “I said, can you describe her?”

  “Give her a chance to collect her thoughts, Lieutenant.”

  Wills turned on me. “You don’t have to think to describe a subject, not if you’re telling the truth.”

  “Why would I lie about her?” Ella said.

  “Just in case she never existed, for instance. If she existed, d
escribe her to us.”

  “I’m trying to. She was very good-looking. Not so fresh, if you know what I mean, and not a natural blonde, I don’t think, but very good-looking. You ever go to the movies?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “You ever see this new actress they have, name of Holly May? The woman that Larry was smooching with looked like Holly May.”

  Wills and Reach exchanged incredulous glances. Reach said: “What would a movie actress be doing with riffraff like him?”

  “I didn’t say it was her. I said it looked like her.”

  “You’re certain she existed?”

  I got angry at this point, told Ella to say no more, and left the room. Wills and Reach followed me into the anteroom.

  “You’re making a mistake,” the Lieutenant said. “This is a murder case now. That little client of yours is dipping her tootsies into very hot water. You better lay out all your cards on the table.”

  Joe Reach nodded agreement. “You owe it to your client to instruct her to tell the whole truth. I know what it means when a witness starts picking faces off of movie screens. I’ve had a lot more experience-”

  “It hasn’t done you much good. You don’t know the truth when you hear it.”

  “Don’t I? Let her bring that story into court, we’ll punch it full of holes like wet tissue.”

  “The hell you will!”

  Wills laid a restraining hand on my shoulder. “Come on, now, don’t blow your top. Don’t be a hothead all your life. Learn something.”

  “She’s conning you,” Reach said. “You just haven’t got the humility to admit it.”

  I was blind mad by this time, loaded with hot and cold running adrenalin. I turned on my heel and walked out. Neither of them followed me this time.

  The public telephone booth in the corridor stopped me like a sentry box. I stepped inside and phoned home.

  “I knew it was you,” Sally said, “as soon as I heard the phone ring. Now do you believe in ESP?”

  “If you’re so strong on extra-sensory perception, what am I calling about?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re not coming home for dinner?”

  I sidestepped that question. “You go to a lot of movies. Did you ever hear of an actress named Holly May?”

  “Naturally I have. Everybody has.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “That’s because you’re fixated on your work. If you took me to the movies more often, you’d know what’s going on in the world. Not that she’s in the movies any more. She decided to get out of the rat-race before it wrecked her emotional health. That’s a direct quote.”

  “Have you been reading movie magazines again?”

  “No. She told me herself.”

  “You know Holly May?”

  “I met her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I tried to last night, but you weren’t listening. I ran into her in the clinic Monday afternoon. She wanted to know what time it was, and I told her. Then I asked her if she wasn’t Holly May. She admitted that she was, but she said she didn’t want it spread around. She’s trying to stay as incognito as possible.”

  “What’s she doing in town?”

  “I gather she’s living quietly here with her husband. I only talked to her for a couple of minutes, and then Dr. Trench took me. Dr. Trench said I was in wonderful shape for a woman in her ninth month.”

  “Good. Did she mention her husband’s name?”

  “No, but I read it in the columns last summer when she got married. I think she married a Canadian oilman. Let’s see, it was some Scotch name-something like Ballantine. Anyway, she seems to have done all right for herself. She was dripping with mink and things.”

  “What kind of a woman is she?”

  “She seemed nice and down-to-earth for a movie actress. She asked me how long I had to go and such. She’s a stunning creature, but it doesn’t seem to have gone to her head. Why?”

  “Nothing special. Her name came up. I had no idea that she was living in town.”

  “A lot of people live here that you never hear about.” Sally’s voice changed gears, with a faint ominous clash. “There is, for instance, the unknown housewife whose specialty is leg of lamb. She sits in her modest home awaiting recognition-”

  “Are you fixing a leg of lamb?”

  “It’s already fixed. With mint jelly. I know it’s an extravagance, Bill, but I wanted to make you something special for a change. I spend so much time dreaming lately, I haven’t been doing my duty by you. You will be home for dinner, won’t you?”

  “As soon as I can make it. Keep it warm.”

  “But you can’t keep a leg of lamb warm. It dries out.”

  “I enjoy it that way. Like pemmican.”

  Sally hung up on me, and there I was again with the adrenalin singing in my veins. I decided to walk it off. Something that was not ESP pushed me down the long slope of Main Street to the lower town.

  chapter 5

  THERE WAS A POLICE SEAL on the front door of Broadman’s store. I peered through the dusty pane. The evening light fell slanting across the furniture and bric-à-brac which Broadman had laid up against hard times, before time stopped for him.

  I became aware of voices next door, a woman’s voice raised high, and a man’s growling under it. I strolled over and looked in through the window of the tamale shop. The man in the white hat was arguing across the counter with a black-haired woman. Her hands gripped the edge of the counter as if it was a high ledge from which she would fall to her death if she let go.

  “But they will kill him,” she cried.

  “Let them. He asked for it.”

  “What will I do if they kill him?”

  “You’ll be better off.”

  His eyes were brown liquid slits under his white hat. They widened when they saw me through the glass door. I tried it. It was locked.

  He shook his head curtly, and waved me away. The movement of his arm was jerky, like a semaphore’s. I pointed at a sign in the window which said: OPEN 7 A.M. TO MIDNIGHT. He came around the counter, opened the door about a foot, and thrust his nose out. His nose was longer and sharper than it had appeared in the afternoon.

  “I’m closed, I’m sorry. There’s a good place around the corner on Main Street.” Then he gave me a second look. “Are you a policeman? I saw you with Mr. Granada this afternoon.”

  “I’m a lawyer, William Gunnarson. Could I talk to you a little, Mr. Donato?”

  “I have already talked about my brother, to the police.”

  The woman had crowded up behind him. She was a young pretty woman, but her face was puffed and dissolute with trouble. She said with one hand in her tangled licorice hair:

  “Tell him nothing!”

  “Be quiet, Secundina. You are a fool.” He turned back to me, trying to control his feelings. Their pressure forced the flesh of his face into stark shapes, like cracked clay. “I see, you have heard that my brother is wanted by the police. You want to offer your services?”

  “That wasn’t my idea. I want to talk about your neighbor Broadman. Your ex-neighbor.”

  Donato didn’t seem to hear me. “I have no need for a lawyer. I have no money to pay a lawyer.” I guessed he was using me to continue his argument with the woman. “If I had money I would go and buy a nice new rope and hang myself.”

  “Liar,” she said. “You have a savings account. And he is your only brother.”

  “I am his only brother, too. What has he done for me?”

  “He worked for you.”

  “He broke dishes. He mopped the floor and left it dirty. But I paid him, I kept you eating.”

  “Big shot!” Her mouth curled.

  “Gus is the big shot. He throws his weight, and I pick up the pieces. This time there’s one big piece, a dead man. I can’t pick it up.”

  “But he is innocent.”

  “Like the Devil himself, innocent.”

  Her teeth flashed.
“Dirty liar, you must not say that.”

  “And Gus is the one who tells the truth? I tell you, I am finished with Gus. He’s not my brother. He can live or die, I don’t want to know about it.” He turned to me. “Go away, Mister, eh?”

  “Where is your brother?”

  “Out in the tules someplace. How do I know? If I knew, I’d go out and bring him in. He took my pickup.”

  “He borrowed it,” Mrs. Donato said. “He wants to bring it back. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Have you seen him, Mrs. Donato?”

  Her face closed up. “I didn’t say that.”

  “I must have misunderstood you. Can we go someplace and talk? I have some questions I’d very much like to ask you.”

  “What about?”

  “People you may have heard of. There’s a man named Larry Gaines, for instance, who works as a lifeguard at the Foothill Club.”

  Her eyes became hard and dim and dusty, like the glass eyes you see in deer heads. “I never been there in my life. I don’t know nobody out there.”

  “You know Tony Padilla,” her brother-in-law said. He looked at her significantly.

  “Who’s he, Mr. Donato?”

  “Fellow tends bar at the Foothill Club.”

  “What’s he got to do with this?”

  “Nothing,” he said impassively. “We don’t, neither. Excuse us now, Mister, how about it? You see what family trouble I got. This is a bad time to visit.”

  Gently and firmly, he shut the door in my face.

  I took a taxi to the Foothill Club and told the driver not to wait. There was a police Mercury with undercover plates among the Cadillacs and sports cars in the tree-shaded parking lot. I was in no mood to talk to policemen. I leaned against the trunk of one of the trees, as far as possible from the Mercury, and waited for Wills’s detectives to come out.

  The mere idea of detectives at the Foothill Club was incongruous. It was one of those monumentally unpretentious places where you could still imagine that the sun had never set on the international set. It cost five thousand dollars to join, and membership was limited to three hundred. Even if you had the five thousand, you had to wait for one of the members to die. And then take a blood test, for blueness.