The Far Side of the Dollar la-12 Read online

  The Far Side of the Dollar

  ( Lew Archer - 12 )

  Ross Macdonald

  Has Tom Hillman run away from his exclusive reform school, or has he been kidnapped? Are his wealthy parents protecting him or their own guilty secrets? And why does every clue lead Lew Archer to an abandoned Hollywood hotel, where starlets and sailors once rubbed shoulders with grifters--and where the present clientele includes a brand-new corpse.

  The Far Side of the Dollar

  by Ross MacDonald

  1

  IT WAS AUGUST, and it shouldn't have been raining. Perhaps rain was too strong a word for the drizzle that blurred the landscape and kept my windshield wipers going. I was driving south, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.

  The school lay off the highway to my right, in large grounds of its own which stretched along the seashore. Toward the sea I caught the dull sheen of the slough that gave the place its name, Laguna Perdida. A blue heron, tiny in the distance, stood like a figurine at the edge of the ruffled water.

  I entered the grounds through automatic gates, which lifted when my car passed over a treadle. A gray-headed man in a blue serge uniform came out of a kiosk and limped in my direction.

  `You got a pass?'

  `Dr Sponti wants to see me. My name is Archer.'

  `That's right, I got your name here.'

  He took a typewritten list out of the inside breast pocket of his jacket and brandished it as if he was proud of his literacy. `You can park in the lot in front of the administration building. Sponti's office is right inside.'

  He gestured toward a stucco building a hundred yards down the road.

  I thanked him. He started to limp back to his kiosk, then paused and turned and struck himself on the leg. `Bad knee. World War 1'

  'You don't look that old.'

  `I'm not. I was fifteen when I enlisted; told them I was eighteen. Some of the boys in here,' he said with a sudden flashing look around him, `could do with a taste of fire.'

  There were no boys anywhere in sight. The buildings of the school, widely distributed among bare fields and dripping eucalyptus groves, lay under the gray sky like scattered components of an unbuilt city.

  `Do you know the Hillman boy?'

  I said to the guard.

  `I heard about him. He's a troublemaker. He had East Hall all stirred up before he took off: Patch was fit to be tied.'

  `Who's Patch?'

  `Mr. Patch,' he said without affection, `is the supervisor for East Hall. He lives in with the boys, and it plays hell with his nerves.'

  `What did the Hillman boy do?'

  `Tried to start a rebellion, according to Patch. Said the boys in the school had civil rights like anybody else. Which ain't so. They're all minors, and most of them are crazy in the head, besides. You wouldn't believe some of the things I've seen in my fourteen years on this gate.'

  `Did Tommy Hillman go out through the gate?'

  `Naw. He went over the fence. Cut a screen in the boys' dorm and sneaked out in the middle of the night.'

  `Night before last?'

  `That's right. He's probably home by now.'

  He wasn't or I wouldn't have been there.

  Dr Sponti must have seen me parking my car. He was waiting for me in the secretary's enclosure outside the door of his office. He had a glass of buttermilk in his left hand and a dietetic wafer in his right. He popped the wafer into his mouth and shook my hand, munching, `I'm glad to see you.'

  He was dark and florid and stout, with the slightly desperate look of a man who had to lose weight. I guessed that he was an emotional man-he had that liquid tremor of the eye-but one who had learned to keep his feelings under control. He was expensively and conservatively dressed in a dark-pinstripe suit which hung on him a little loosely. His hand was soft and chilly.

  Dr Sponti reminded me of undertakers I had known. Even his office, with its dark mahogany furniture and the gray light at the window, had a funereal look, as if the school and its director were in continuous mourning for its students.

  `Sit down,' he said with a melancholy flourish. `We have a little problem, as I told you on the long-distance telephone. Ordinarily we don't employ private detectives to-ah-persuade our lost boys to come home. But this is a rather special case, I'm afraid.'

  `What makes it special?'

  Sponti sipped his buttermilk, and licked his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. `Forgive me. Can I offer you some lunch?'

  `No thanks.'

  `I don't mean this.'

  Irritably, he jiggled the sluggish liquid in his glass. `I can have something hot sent over from dining commons. Veal scallopini is on the menu today.'

  `No thanks. I'd rather you gave me the information I need and let me get to work. Why did you call me in to pick up a runaway? You must have a lot of runaways.'

  `Not as many as you might think. Most of our boys become quite school-centered in time. We have a rich and varied program for them. But Thomas Hillman had been here less than a week, and he showed very little promise of becoming group-oriented. He's quite a difficult young man.'

  `And that's what makes him special?'

  `I'll be, frank with you, Mr. Archer,' he said, and hesitated. `This is rather a prickly situation for the school. I accepted Tom Hillman against my better judgment, actually without full knowledge of his history, simply because his father insisted upon it. And now Ralph Hillman blames us for his son's esca - that is, his surreptitious leave-taking. Hillman has threatened to sue if any harm comes to the boy. The suit wouldn't stand up in court-we've had such lawsuits before-but it could do us a great deal of public harm.'

  He added, almost to himself `Patch really was at fault.'

  `What did Patch do?'

  `I'm afraid he was unnecessarily violent. Not that I blame him as man to man. But you'd better talk to Mr. Patch yourself. He can give you all the details of Tom's-ah-departure.'

  `Later, I'd like to talk to him. But you can tell me more about the boy's background.'

  `Not as much as I'd like. We ask the families, or their doctors, to give us a detailed history of our entering students. Mr. Hillman promised to write one, but he hasn't as yet. And I've had great difficulty in getting any facts out of him. He's a very proud and very angry man.'

  `And a wealthy one?'

  `I don't know his Dun and Bradstreet rating. Most of our parents are comfortably fixed,' he added with a quick little smug smile.

  `I'd like to see Hillman. Does he live in town?'

  `Yes, but please don't try to see him, at least not today. He's just been on the phone to me again, and it would only stir him up further.'

  Sponti rose from his desk and moved to the window that overlooked the parking lot. I followed him. The fine rain outside hung like a visible depression in the air.

  `I still need a detailed description of the boy, and everything I can find out about his habits.'

  `Patch can give you that, better than I. He's been in daily contact with him. And you can talk to his housemother, Mrs. Mallow. She's a trained observer.'

  `Let's hope somebody is.'

  I was getting impatient with Sponti. He seemed to feel that the less he told me about the missing boy, the less real his disappearance was. `How old is he, or is that classified material?'

  Sponti's eyes crossed slightly, and his rather pendulous cheeks became faintly mottled. `I object to your tone.'

  `That's your privilege. How old is Tom Hillman?'

  `Seventeen.'

  `Do you have a picture of him?'

  `None was provided by the family, though we ask for one as a matter of routine. I can tell you briefly what he looks like. He's quite a decent-looking
young chap, if you overlook the sullen expression he wears habitually. He's quite big, around six feet, he looks older than his age.'

  `Eyes?'

  `Dark blue, I think. His hair is dark blond. He has what might be called aquiline features, like his father.'

  `Identifying marks?'

  He shrugged his shoulders. `I know of none.'

  `Why was he brought here?'

  `For treatment, of course. But he didn't stay long enough to benefit.'

  `Exactly what's the matter with him? You said he was difficult, but that's a pretty general description.'

  `It was meant to be. It's hard to tell what ails these boys in adolescent storm. Often we help them without knowing how or why. I'm not a medical doctor, in any case.'

  `I thought you were.'

  `No. We have medical doctors associated with our staff, of course, both physicians and psychiatrists. There wouldn't be much point in talking to them. I doubt if Tom was here long enough even to meet his therapist. But there's no doubt he was high.'

  `High?'

  `Emotionally high, running out of control. He was in a bad way when his father brought him here. We gave him tranquilizers, but they don't always work in the same way on different subjects.'

  `Did he cause you a lot of trouble?'

  `He did indeed. Frankly, I doubt if we'll readmit him even if he does come back.'

  `But you're hiring me to find him.'

  `I have no choice.'

  We discussed money matters, and he gave me a check. Then I walked down the road to East Hall. Before I went in to see Mr. Patch, I turned and looked at the mountains on the far side of the valley. They loomed like half-forgotten faces through the overcast. The lonely blue heron rose from the edge of the slough and sailed toward them.

  2

  EAST HALL WAS a sprawling one-story stucco building, which somehow didn't belong on that expansive landscape. Its mean and unprepossessing air had something to do with the high little windows, all of them heavily screened. Or with the related fact that it was a kind of prison which pretended not to be. The spiky pyracantha shrubs bordering the lawn in front of the building were more like barriers than ornaments. The grass looked dispirited even in the rain.

  So did the line of boys who were marching in the front door as I came up. Boys of all ages from twelve to twenty, boys of all shapes and sizes, with only one thing in common: they marched like members of a defeated army. They reminded me of the very young soldiers we captured on the Rhine in the last stages of the last war.

  Two students' leaders kept them in some sort of line. I followed them, into a big lounge furnished with rather dilapidated furniture. The two leaders went straight to a Ping-Pong table that stood in one corner, picked up paddles, and began to play a rapid intense game with a ball that one of them produced from his windbreaker pocket. Six or seven boys began to watch them. Four or five settled down with comic books. Most of the rest of them stood around and watched me.

  A hairy-faced young fellow who ought to have started to shave came up to me smiling. His smile was brilliant, but it faded like an optical illusion. He came so close that his shoulder nudged my arm. Some dogs will nudge you like that, to test your friendliness.

  `Are you the new supervisor?'

  `No. I thought Mr. Patch was the supervisor.'

  `He won't last.'

  A few of the younger boys giggled. The hairy one responded like a successful comedian. `This is the violent ward. They never last.'

  `It doesn't look so violent to me. Where is Mr. Patch?'

  `Over at dining commons. He'll be here in a minute. Then we have organized fun.'

  `You sound pretty cynical for your age. How old are you?'

  `Ninety-nine.'

  His audience murmured encouragingly. `Mr. Patch is only forty-nine. It makes it hard for him to be my father-image.'

  `Maybe I could talk to Mrs. Mallow.'

  `She's in her room drinking her lunch. Mrs. Mallow always drinks her lunch.'

  The bright malice in his eyes alternated with a darker feeling. `Are you a father?'

  `No.'

  In the background the Ping-Pong ball was clicking back and forth like mindless conversation.

  A member of the audience spoke up. `He's not a father.'

  `Maybe he's a mother,' said the hairy boy. `Are you a mother?'

  `He doesn't look like a mother. He has no bosoms.'

  `My mother has no bosoms,' said a third one. `That's why I feel rejected.'

  `Come off it, boys.'

  The hell of it was, they wished I was a father, or even a mother, one of theirs, and the wish stood in their eyes. `You don't want me to feel rejected, do you?'

  Nobody answered. The hairy boy smiled up at me. It lasted a little longer than his first smile. `What's your name? I'm Frederick Tyndal the Third.'

  `I'm Lew Archer the First.'

  I drew the boy away from his audience. He pulled back from my touch, but he came along and sat down with me on a cracked leather couch. Some of the younger boys had put an overplayed record on a player. Two of them began to dance together to the raucous self-parodying song. 'Surfin' ain't no sin,' was the refrain.

  `Did you know Tom Hillman, Fred?'

  `A little. Are you his father?'

  `No. I said I wasn't a father.'

  `Adults don't necessarily tell you the truth.'

  He plucked at the hairs on his chin as if he hated the signs of growing up. `My father said he was sending me away to military school. He's a big shot in the government,' he added flatly, without pride, and then, in a different tone: `Tom Hillman didn't get along with his father, either. So he got railroaded here. The Monorail to the Magic Kingdom.'

  He produced a fierce ecstatic hopeless grin.

  `Did Tom talk to you about it?'

  `A little. He wasn't here long. Five days. Six. He came in Sunday night and took off Saturday night.'

  He squirmed uneasily on the creaking leather. `Are you a cop?'

  `No.'

  'I just wondered. You ask questions like a cop.'

  `Did Tom do something that would interest the cops?'

  `We all do, don't we?'

  His hot and cold running glance went around the room, pausing on the forlorn antics of the dancing boys. `You don't qualify for East Hall unless you're a juvie. I was a criminal mastermind myself. I forged the big shot's name on a fifty-dollar check and went to San Francisco for the weekend.'

  `What did Tom do?'

  `Stole a car, I guess. It was a first offense, he said, and he would of got probation easy. But his father didn't want the publicity, so he put him in here. Also, I guess Tom had a fight with his father.'

  `I see.'

  `Why are you so fascinated in Tom?'

  `I'm supposed to find him, Fred.'

  `And bring him back here?'

  `I doubt that they'll readmit him.'

  `He's lucky.'

  More or less unconsciously, he moved against me again. I could smell the untended odor of his hair and body, and sense his desolation. `I'd break out of here myself if I had a place to go. But the big shot would turn me over to the Youth Authority. It would save him money, besides.'

  `Did Tom have a place to go?'

  He jerked upright and looked at my eyes from the corners of his. `I didn't say that.'

  `I'm asking you.'

  `He wouldn't tell me if he had.'

  `Who was closest to him in the school?'

  `He wasn't close to anybody. He was so upset when he came in, they put him in a room by himself. I went in and talked to him one night, but he didn't say much to me.'

  `Nothing about where he planned to go?'

  `He didn't plan anything. He tried to start a riot Saturday night but the rest of us were chicken. So he took off. He seemed to be very excited.'

  `Was he emotionally disturbed?'

  `Aren't we all?'

  He tapped his own temple and made an insane face. `You ought to see my Rorschach.'

&
nbsp; `Some other time.'

  `Be my guest.'

  `This is important, Fred. Tom is very young, and excited, as you said. He's been missing for two nights now, and he could get into very serious trouble.'