The Moving Target Read online

  FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, MARCH 1998

  Copyright © 1949, copyright renewed 1977 by Ross Macdonald

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1949.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Macdonald, Ross, 1915–

  The moving target / by Ross Macdonald.

  p. cm.—(Vintage crime/Black Lizard)

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77318-0

  1. Archer, Lew (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private

  investigators—California—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3525.I486M67 1998

  813′.52—dc21 97-47422

  Random House Web address: www.randomhouse.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Books by Ross Macdonald

  chapter 1 The cab turned off U.S. 101 in the direction of the sea. The road looped round the base of a brown hill into a canyon lined with scrub oak.

  “This is Cabrillo Canyon,” the driver said.

  There weren’t any houses in sight. “The people live in caves?”

  “Not on your life. The estates are down by the ocean.”

  A minute later I started to smell the sea. We rounded another curve and entered its zone of coolness. A sign beside the road said: “Private Property: Permission to pass over revocable at any time.”

  The scrub oak gave place to ordered palms and Monterey cypress hedges. I caught glimpses of lawns effervescent with sprinklers, deep white porches, roofs of red tile and green copper. A Rolls with a doll at the wheel went by us like a gust of wind, and I felt unreal.

  The light-blue haze in the lower canyon was like a thin smoke from slowly burning money. Even the sea looked precious through it, a solid wedge held in the canyon’s mouth, bright blue and polished like a stone. Private property: color guaranteed fast; will not shrink egos. I had never seen the Pacific look so small.

  We turned up a drive between sentinel yews, cruised round in a private highway network for a while, and came out above the sea stretching deep and wide to Hawaii. The house stood part way down the shoulder of the bluff, with its back to the canyon. It was long and low. Its wings met at an obtuse angle pointed at the sea like a massive white arrowhead. Through screens of shrubbery I caught the white glare of tennis courts, the blue-green shimmer of a pool.

  The driver turned on the fan-shaped drive and stopped beside the garages. “This is where the cavemen live. You want the service entrance?”

  “I’m not proud.”

  “You want me to wait?”

  “I guess so.”

  A heavy woman in a blue linen smock came out on the service porch and watched me climb out of the cab. “Mr. Archer?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Sampson?”

  “Mrs. Kromberg: I’m the housekeeper.” A smile passed over her lined face like sunlight on a plowed field. “You can let your taxi go. Felix can drive you back to town when you’re ready.”

  I paid off the driver and got my bag out of the back. I felt a little embarrassed with it in my hand. I didn’t know whether the job would last an hour or a month.

  “I’ll put your bag in the storeroom,” the housekeeper said. “I don’t think you’ll be needing it.”

  She led me through a chromium-and-porcelain kitchen, down a hall that was cool and vaulted like a cloister, into a cubicle that rose to the second floor when she pressed a button.

  “All the modern conveniences,” I said to her back.

  “They had to put it in when Mrs. Sampson hurt her legs. It cost seven thousand, five hundred dollars.”

  If that was supposed to silence me, it did. She knocked on a door across the hall from the elevator. Nobody answered. After knocking again, she opened the door on a high white room too big and bare to be feminine. Above the massive bed there was a painting of a clock, a map, and a woman’s hat arranged on a dressing-table. Time, space, and sex. It looked like a Kuniyoshi.

  The bed was rumpled but empty. “Mrs. Sampson!” the housekeeper called.

  A cool voice answered her: “I’m on the sun deck. What do you want?”

  “Mr. Archer’s here—the man you sent the wire to.”

  “Tell him to come out. And bring me some more coffee.”

  “You go out through the French windows,” the housekeeper said, and went away.

  Mrs. Sampson looked up from her book when I stepped out. She was half lying on a chaise longue with her back to the late morning sun, a towel draped over her body. There was a wheelchair standing beside her, but she didn’t look like an invalid. She was very lean and brown, tanned so dark that her flesh seemed hard. Her hair was bleached, curled tightly on her narrow head like blobs of whipped cream. Her age was as hard to tell as the age of a figure carved from mahogany.

  She dropped the book on her stomach and offered me her hand. “I’ve heard about you. When Millicent Drew broke with Clyde, she said you were helpful. She didn’t exactly say how.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “And a sordid one.”

  “Millicent and Clyde are dreadfully sordid, don’t you think? These æsthetic men! I’ve always suspected his mistress wasn’t a woman.”

  “I never think about my clients.” With that I offered her my boyish grin, a little the worse for wear.

  “Or talk about them?”

  “Or talk about them. Even with my clients.”

  Her voice was clear and fresh, but the sickness was there in her laugh, a little clatter of bitterness under the trill. I looked down into her eyes, the eyes of something frightened and sick hiding in the fine brown body. She lowered the lids.

  “Sit down, Mr. Archer. You must be wondering why I sent for you. Or don’t you wonder either?”

  I sat on a deck chair beside the chaise. “I wonder. I even conjecture. Most of my work is divorce. I’m a jackal, you see.”

  “You slander yourself, Mr. Archer. And you don’t talk like a detective, do you? I’m glad you mentioned divorce. I want to make it clear at the start that divorce is not what I want. I want my marriage to last. You see, I intend to outlive my husband.”

  I said nothing, waiting for more. When I looked more closely, her brown skin was slightly roughened, slightly withered. The sun was hammering her copper legs, hammering down on my head. Her toenails and her fingernails were painted the same blood color.

  “It mayn’t be survival of the fittest. You probably know I can’t use my legs any more. But I’m twenty years younger than he is, and I’m going to survive him.” The bitterness
had come through into her voice, buzzing like a wasp.

  She heard it and swallowed it at a gulp. “It’s like a furnace out here, isn’t it? It’s not fair that men should have to wear coats. Please take yours off.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You’re very gentlemanly.”

  “I’m wearing a shoulder holster. And still wondering. You mentioned Albert Graves in your telegram.”

  “He recommended you. He’s one of Ralph’s lawyers. You can talk to him after lunch about your pay.”

  “He isn’t D.A. any more?”

  “Not since the war.”

  “I did some work for him in ’40 and ’41. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “He told me. He told me you were good at finding people.” She smiled a white smile, carnivorous and startling in her dark face. “Are you good at finding people, Mr. Archer?”

  “ ‘Missing persons’ is better. Your husband’s missing?”

  “Not missing, exactly. Just gone off by himself, or in company. He’d be frantically angry if I went to the Missing Persons Bureau.”

  “I see. You want me to find him if possible and identify the company. And what then?”

  “Just tell me where he is, and with whom. I’ll do the rest myself.” Sick as I am, said the little whining undertone, legless though I be.

  “When did he go away?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “Where?”

  “Los Angeles. He was in Las Vegas—we have a desert place near there—but he flew to Los Angeles yesterday afternoon with Alan. Alan’s his pilot. Ralph gave him the slip at the airport and went off by himself.”

  “Why?”

  “I suppose because he was drunk.” Her red mouth curved contemptuously. “Alan said he’d been drinking.”

  “You think he’s gone off on a binge. Does he often?”

  “Not often, but totally. He loses his inhibitions when he drinks.”

  “About sex?”

  “All men do, don’t they? But that isn’t what concerns me. He loses his inhibitions about money. He tied one on a few months ago and gave away a mountain.”

  “A mountain?”

  “Complete with hunting-lodge.”

  “Did he give it to a woman?”

  “I almost wish he had. He gave it to a man, but it’s not what you’re thinking. A Los Angeles holy man with a long gray beard.”

  “He sounds like a soft touch.”

  “Ralph? He’d go stark staring mad if you called him that to his face. He started out as a wildcat oil operator. You know the type, half man, half alligator, half bear trap, with a piggy bank where his heart should be. That’s when he’s sober. But alcohol softens him up, at least it has the last few years. A few drinks, and he wants to be a little boy again. He goes looking for a mother type or a father type to blow his nose and dry away his tears and spank him when he’s naughty. Do I sound cruel? I’m simply being objective.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You want me to find him before he gives away another mountain.” Dead or alive, I thought; but I wasn’t her analyst.

  “And if he’s with a woman, naturally I’ll be interested. I’ll want to know all about her, because I couldn’t afford to give away an advantage like that.”

  I wondered who her analyst was.

  “Have you any particular woman in mind?”

  “Ralph doesn’t confide in me—he’s much closer to Miranda than he is to me—and I’m not equipped to spy on him. That’s why I’m hiring you.”

  “To put it bluntly,” I said.

  “I always put things bluntly.”

  chapter 2 A Filipino houseboy in a white jacket appeared at the open French window. “Your coffee, Mrs. Sampson.”

  He set down the silver coffee service on a low table by the chaise. He was little and quick. The hair on his small round head was slick and black like a coating of grease.

  “Thank you, Felix.” She was gracious to her servants or making an impression on me. “Will you have some, Mr. Archer?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Perhaps you’d like a drink.”

  “Not before lunch. I’m the new-type detective.”

  She smiled and sipped her coffee. I got up and walked to the seaward end of the sun deck. Below it the terraces descended in long green steps to the edge of the bluff, which fell sharply down to the shore.

  I heard a splash around the corner of the house and leaned out over the railing. The pool was on the upper terrace, an oval of green water set in blue tile. A girl and a boy were playing tag, cutting the water like seals. The girl was chasing the boy. He let her catch him.

  Then they were a man and a woman, and the moving scene froze in the sun. Only the water moved, and the girl’s hands. She was standing behind him with her arms around his waist. Her fingers moved over his ribs gently as a harpist’s, clenched in the tuft of hair in the center of his chest. Her face was hidden against his back. His face held pride and anger like a blind bronze.

  He pushed her hands down and stepped away. Her face was naked then and terribly vulnerable. Her arms hung down as if they had lost their purpose. She sat down on the edge of the pool and dangled her feet in the water.

  The dark young man did a flip and a half from the spring-board. She didn’t look. The drops fell off the tips of her hair like tears and ran down into her bosom.

  Mrs. Sampson called me by name. “You haven’t had lunch?”

  “No.”

  “Lunch for three in the patio, then, Felix. I’ll eat up here as usual.”

  Felix bowed slightly and started away. She called him back. “Bring the photo of Mr. Sampson from my dressing-room. You’ll have to know what he looks like, won’t you, Mr. Archer?”

  The face in the leather folder was fat, with thin gray hair and a troubled mouth. The thick nose tried to be bold and succeeded in being obstinate. The smile that folded the puffed eyelids and creased the sagging cheeks was fixed and forced. I’d seen such smiles in mortuaries on the false face of death. It reminded me that I was going to grow old and die.

  “A poor thing, but mine own,” said Mrs. Sampson.

  Felix let out a little sound that could have been a snicker, grunt, or sigh. I couldn’t think of anything to add to his comment.

  He served lunch in the patio, a red-tiled triangle between the house and the hillside. Above the masonry retaining wall the slope was planted with ground cover, ageratum, and trailing lobelia in an unbreaking blue-green wave.

  The dark young man was there when Felix led me out. He had laid away his anger and his pride, changed to a fresh light suit, and looked at ease. He was tall enough when he stood up to make me feel slightly undersized—six foot three or four. His grip was hard.

  “Alan Taggert’s my name. I pilot Sampson’s plane.”

  “Lew Archer.”

  He rotated a small drink in his left hand. “What are you drinking?”

  “Milk.”

  “No kidding? I thought you were a detective.”

  “Fermented mare’s milk, that is.”

  He had a pleasant white smile. “Mine’s gin and bitters. I picked up the habit at Port Moresby.”

  “Done a good deal of flying?”

  “Fifty-five missions. And a couple of thousand hours.”

  “Where?”

  “Mostly in the Carolines. I had a P-38.”

  He said it with loving nostalgia, like a girl’s name.

  The girl came out then, wearing a black-striped dress, narrow in the right places, full in the others. Her dark-red hair, brushed and dried, bubbled around her head. Her wide green eyes were dazzling and strange in her brown face, like light eyes in an Indian.

  Taggert introduced her. She was Sampson’s daughter Miranda. She seated us at a metal table under a canvas umbrella that grew out of the table’s center on an iron stem. I watched her over my salmon mayonnaise; a tall girl whose movements had a certain awkward charm, the kind who developed slowly and was worth waiting for. Puberty around fi
fteen, first marriage or affair at twenty or twenty-one. A few hard years out-growing romance and changing from girl to woman; then the complete fine woman at twenty-eight or thirty. She was about twenty-one, a little too old to be Mrs. Sampson’s daughter.

  “My stepmother—” she said, as if I’d been thinking aloud —“my stepmother is always going to extremes.”

  “Do you mean me, Miss Sampson? I’m a very moderate type.”

  “Not you, especially. Everything she does is extreme. Other people fall off horses without being paralyzed from the waist down. But not Elaine. I think it’s psychological. She isn’t the raving beauty she used to be, so she retired from competition. Falling off the horse gave her a chance to do it. For all I know, she deliberately fell off.”

  Taggert laughed shortly. “Come off it, Miranda. You’ve been reading a book.”

  She looked at him haughtily. “You’ll never be accused of that.”

  “Is there a psychological explanation for my being here?” I said.

  “I’m not exactly sure why you’re here. Is it to track Ralph down, or something like that?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I suppose she wants to get something on him. You have to admit it’s pretty extreme to call in a detective because a man stays away overnight.”

  “I’m discreet, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

  “Nothing’s worrying me,” she said sweetly. “I merely made a psychological observation.”

  The Filipino servant moved unobtrusively across the patio. Felix’s steady smile was a mask behind which his personality waited in isolation, peeping furtively from the depths of his bruised-looking black eyes. I had the feeling that his pointed ears heard everything I said, counted my breathing, and could pick up the beat of my heart on a clear day.

  Taggert had been looking uncomfortable, and changed the subject abruptly. “I don’t think I ever met a real-life detective before.”