The Ferguson Affair

chapter 7

PADILLA KNEW WHERE Ferguson lived. He said that he had driven his blue Imperial home before. I went along for the ride, and the answers to some questions.

“Were you acquainted with Larry Gaines?”

“Used-to-be lifeguard? Sure. I figured him for a no-good, but it was not my business. I had a call-down with him first week he was here, back in September. He tried to buy a drink for a sixteen-year-old girl. I told him, get out of my bar and stay out.”

Padilla pressed a button which opened the left front window of the car. He spat into the night air and closed the window again, glancing over his shoulder at Ferguson. “Don’t want to give him wind in his face. Might bring him to. That man’s got a capacity on him, I tell you.”

I looked back at Ferguson. He was sleeping peacefully.

“I suppose you know Mrs. Ferguson.”

“Sure thing. She’s a damn fine woman. Always nice to the help, can hold her liquor, a real lady in my book. I’ve seen a lot of these Hollywood people when I was at the Oasis Club in Palm Springs. Most of them, they get their front feet in the trough, and bingo, they think they’re the kings of the world. But not Holly-Mrs. Ferguson.”

“You call her Holly?”

“Sure. She called me Tony, I called her Holly, in the bar, you know. You can’t make anything out of that. She’s democratic. Her parents were working people, she told me so herself.”

“Was she democratic with Larry Gaines?”

“So I hear.” He sounded disappointed, in Holly, perhaps in me. “I never saw them together. He stayed out of my territory. Something was going on there, but I’ll lay you odds it ain’t what people think. I saw a lot of her in the last six months, over the bar, and that’s when you see people plain. I’ve seen her handle a lot of heavy passes, some of them from experts. But she wasn’t having any. She isn’t that type at all.”

“I heard different.”

Padilla said aggressively: “I know there’s people don’t like her. So what? I didn’t say she was perfect. I said she isn’t the type to play around. If you ask me, I’d say she loved her husband. He isn’t much to look at, but the old boy must have his points. She always lit up like a candle when he came into the room.”

“Then why did she walk out on him?”

“I don’t think she did, Mr. Gunnarson. I think something happened to her. There she was, the life of the party one minute, and the next minute she was gone.”

“Where did she go?”

“I dunno. I had my hands full at the bar. I didn’t see her leave. All I know is, she left and didn’t come back. And her husband’s damned worried about her. If you ask me, that’s what’s driving him crazy.”

“What could have happened to her?”

Padilla sighed. “You don’t know this town like I do, Mr. Gunnarson. I was born and brought up here, right down at the end of Pelly Street. There’s people who will knock you off for the change in your pockets. And Holly-Mrs. Ferguson-was wearing fifty grand in diamonds last night.”

“How do you know what her jewels were worth?”

“Don’t get suspicious of me now. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of that lady’s head. Show me the bum that would, and I’ll beat him within an inch of his life.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“About the diamond brooch? Hell, she told me. Her husband gave it to her, and she was kind of bragging. I warned her to shut up about it. Even at the Foothill Club, you don’t want to broadcast-Hey!” The car swerved under the pressure of his hands. “You think that Gaines was after her jewels?”

“It’s possible.” Two versions of Holly May were forming in my mind, but they refused to combine into a single understandable woman. “Have you spoken to anybody about your suspicions?”

“Just to Frankie, he’s my helper. I tried to talk to Mr. Bidwell, but he didn’t want to hear it. And the Colonel had enough on his mind already.”

“Does he believe his wife has met with foul play?”

“I think he does, in a way. Only he won’t admit it to himself. He keeps pretending she ran off with a guy, so he can be mad about it, instead of-scared.”

“You’re quite a psychologist, Tony.”

“Yeah. That will be twenty-five dollars, please.” But there was no laughter in his voice. He’d succeeded in frightening himself, as well as me.

We had crossed the ridge that walled off the valley from the coastal shelf. I could smell the sea, and sense its dark immensity opening below us. The rotating beam of a lighthouse scanned the night. It flashed along a line of trees standing on a bluff, on the flat roof of a solitary house, then seaward on a bank of fog which absorbed it like cotton batting.

Padilla turned down a hedged lane, a green trench carved out of darkness. We emerged in a turnaround at the rear of the flat-roofed house on the bluff. Parking as close to the door as possible, Padilla plucked Ferguson’s key ring from the ignition, opened the house, and turned on inside and outside lights.

We wrestled Ferguson out of the car and carried him through the house into a bedroom. He was as limp as a rag doll, but as heavy as though his bones were made of iron. I was beginning to be worried about him. I switched on the bed lamp and looked at his closed face. It was propped on the pillow like a dead man’s in a coffin.

“He’s okay,” Padilla said reassuringly. “He’s just sleeping now.”

“You don’t think he needs a doctor? I hit him pretty hard.”

“It’s easy enough to find out.”

He went into the adjoining bathroom and came back with a plastic tumbler full of water. He poured a little of it on Ferguson. The water splashed on his forehead and ran down into his hollow temples, wetting his thin hair. His eyes snapped open. He sat up on the bed and said distinctly: “What’s the trouble, boys? Is the dugout leaking again?”

“Yeah. It’s raining whisky,” Padilla said. “How you feeling, Colonel?”

Ferguson sat leaning on his arms, his high shoulders up around his ears, and permitted himself to realize how he was feeling. “I’m drunk. Drunk as a skunk. My God, but I’m drunk.” He thrust a hairy fist in one eye and focused the other eye on Padilla’s face. “Why didn’t you cut me off, Padilla?”

“You’re a hard man to say no to, Colonel. The hardest.”

“No matter, cut me off.”

Ferguson swung his heavy legs over the edge of the bed, got up on them like a man mounting rubber stilts, and staggered across the room to the bathroom door. “Got to take a cold shower, clear the old brain. Mustn’t let Holly see me like this.”

He walked into the stall shower fully clothed and turned on the water. He was in there for what seemed a long time, snorting and swearing. Padilla kept a protective eye on him.

I looked around the room. It was a woman’s bedroom, the kind that used to be called a boudoir, luxuriously furnished in silk and padded satin. A pink clock and a pink telephone shared the top of the bedside table. It was five minutes to ten. The thought of Sally went through me like a pang.

I reached for the telephone. It rang in my hand, as if I had closed a connection. I picked up the receiver and said: “This is the Ferguson residence.”

“Colonel Ferguson, please.”

“Sorry, the Colonel is busy.”

“Who is that speaking, please?” It was a man’s voice, quiet and careful and rather impersonal.

“A friend.”

“Is the Colonel there?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, he’s taking a bath.”

“Get him on the line,” the voice said less impersonally. “In a hurry, friend.”

I was tempted to argue, but I sensed an urgency here which tied my tongue. I went to the door of the bathroom. Padilla was helping Ferguson to take off his soggy tweeds. Ferguson was shivering so hard that I could feel the vibrations through my feet.

He looked at me without recognition. “What do you want? Padilla, what does he want?”

“You’re wanted on the telephone, Colonel. Can you make it all right?”

Padilla helped him across the room.

Ferguson sat on the bed and lifted the receiver to his ear. He was naked to the waist, goose-pimpled and white except for the iron-gray hair matted on his chest. He listened with his eyes half shut and his face growing longer and slacker. I would have supposed he was passing out again if he hadn’t said, several times, “Yes,” and finally: “Yes, I will. You can depend on that. I’m sorry we didn’t make contact until now.”

He replaced the receiver, fumblingly, and stood up. He looked at Padilla, then at me, from under heavy eyelids. “Make me some coffee, will you, Padilla?”

“Sure.” Padilla trotted cheerfully out of the room.

Ferguson turned to me. “Are you an FBI man?”

“Nothing like that. I’m an attorney. William Gunnarson is my name.”

“You answered the telephone?”

“Yes.”

“What was said to you?”

“The man who called said he wanted to speak to you. In a hurry.”

“Did he say why?”

“No.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’m certain.”

His tone was insulting, but I went on humoring him. I didn’t know how sober he was, or how rational.

“And you’re not an officer of the law?”

“In a sense, I am. I’m an officer of the court, but enforcement is not my business. What’s this all about, Colonel?”

“It’s a personal matter,” he said shortly. “May I ask what you’re doing in my wife’s room?”

“I helped Padilla to bring you home from the Foothill Club. You were out.”

“I see. Thank you. Now do you mind leaving?”

“When Tony Padilla is ready. We used your car.”

“I see. Thank you again, Mr. Gunnarson.”

He’d lost interest in me. His eyes moved restlessly around the walls. He uttered one word in a tearing voice: “Holly.” Then he said: “A fine time to get stinking drunk.”

He walked across the room to a dressing table, and leaned to examine his face in the mirror above it. The sight of his face must have displeased him. He smashed the mirror with one blow of his fist.

“Knock it off,” I said in my sergeant voice.

He turned, and answered meekly enough. “You’re right. This is no time for childishness.”

Padilla looked through the doorway. “More trouble?”

“No trouble,” Ferguson said. “I merely shattered a mirror. I’ll buy my wife another in the morning. How about that coffee, Tony?”

“Coming right up. You better put on something dry, Colonel. You don’t want to catch pneumonia.”

Padilla seemed to be fond of the man. I could hardly share his feeling, and yet I stayed around. The phone call, and Ferguson’s reaction to it, puzzled me. It had left the atmosphere heavy and charged.

Padilla served coffee in the living room. It was a huge room with windows on two sides, and teak paneling in a faintly nautical style. The lap of the surf below, the intermittent sweep of the lighthouse beam, contributed to the illusion that we were in the glassed-in deckhouse of a ship.

Ferguson drank about a quart of coffee. As the effects of alcohol wore off, he seemed to grow constantly more tense. Wrapped in a terrycloth robe, he bore a queer resemblance to a Himalayan holy man on the verge of having a mystical experience.

He finally rose and went into another room. I could see through the archway, when he switched on the light, that it contained a white concert grand piano and a draped harp. A photograph of a woman, framed in silver, stood on the piano.

Ferguson picked it up and studied it. He clasped it to his chest. A paroxysm went through him, making his ugly face uglier. He looked as if he was weeping, dry-eyed, in silence.

“Poor guy,” Padilla said.

He went as far as the archway, and paused there, deterred by the privacy of grief. I wasn’t so sensitive. I went in past him. “Ferguson, was that phone call about your wife?”

He nodded.

“Is she dead?”

“They claim not. I don’t know.”

“ ‘They’?”

“Her abductors. Holly has been abducted.”

“Kidnapped?”

“Yes. They demand two hundred thousand dollars for her return.”

Padilla whistled softly behind me.

“Have they called you before?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t home. I haven’t been here much in the past day.”

“This phone call was your first communication from them?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say so at the time? We might have had some chance of tracing the call.”

“I don’t want anything done along those lines. I didn’t even intend to tell you and Padilla. I’m sorry now that I did.”

“You can’t handle a thing like this all by yourself.”

“Why not? I have the cash. They’re welcome to it if they give Holly back to me.”

“You have two hundred thousand dollars in cash?”

“I have more than that. I had it transferred to the local Bank of America because I’ve been intending to buy some property here. I can draw it out when the bank opens in the morning.”

“When and where are you supposed to pay them?”

“He said I was to wait for further instructions.”

“Did you recognize his voice on the telephone?”

“No.”

“Then it wasn’t Larry Gaines?”

“It wasn’t Gaines, no. It wouldn’t make any difference to me if it was. They have her. I’m willing to pay for her.”

“It may not be quite that simple. I hate to say this, Colonel, but this could be a shakedown. Some petty crook may have heard that your wife is missing, and is trying to cash in on the fact.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” The thought sat heavy on him for a moment. Then he shook it off. “But it can’t be the case. Even if it were, I’d have to go ahead with it.”

He was still holding the photograph against his chest. He polished its glass with his sleeve and held it up to the light, gazing at it almost reverently. The pictured woman was a blonde in her middle twenties.

Ferguson set the picture on the piano, very carefully, as if it were an icon whose exact position might somehow affect his wife’s fate. I took a closer look at it, and remembered seeing the same face on movie marquees and in the newspapers.

It had the standard perfections of her trade, but it had an individual cast as well. It was a face which had known trouble, and smiled back at it. The smile was a little too bold for comfort. The knowledge in the eyes was a little too definite. Holly May would be interesting to know, but perhaps not easy to live with.

“It’s a good picture of her,” Padilla said at my shoulder. “You ever see her?”

“Not in the flesh.”

“Christ, I hope she’s all right. I was afraid that something happened to her, I told you that. But I didn’t think it could be a snatch.”

Ferguson moved between us and the picture. Perhaps he was jealous of our stares. I could understand why jealousy of Gaines had been eating him. He was at least twice his wife’s age, and not nearly so pretty. An unlikely match, in spite of all the money he had, or was supposed to have.

“I want you men to keep this affair to yourselves,” Ferguson said. “It’s of the utmost importance that you do. If the authorities get wind of it, it will put her life in danger.”

“The dirty crumbs,” Padilla growled. “Is that what they said on the telephone?”

“Yes. He said that they are in a position to know every move the police make. If I call in the police, they will kill my wife.”

I said: “This may not be the way to save her, Colonel. You’ve had a hard day, and you may not be thinking as straight as usual. In a situation like this, you need all the help you can get. You should take the local police into your confidence. The chief detective, Wills, is a friend of mine. He can advise you about contacting the FBI-”

Ferguson cut me short. “It’s absolutely out of the question. I want your solemn word that you won’t go to the police, or anyone else!”

“You should listen to the man,” Padilla said. “Like he was saying, you’ve had a lot to drink. Maybe you could use a little advice.”

“I know what I have to do. No amount of advice will change the facts. I’m bound and determined to do my part.”

“Let’s hope that they do theirs, Ferguson. I think you’re handling it wrong. But it’s your wife.”

“I’ll trust you to remember that. I don’t want either of you to endanger Holly by going to the police. The criminals have a friend on the force, apparently-”

“That I doubt.”

“I know something about American police. If the RCMP was available, I’d gladly go to them.”

The man’s naïveté would have been funny under other circumstances. I made one last attempt. “Listen to me, Ferguson. I urge you to discuss this matter with someone. Do you have a lawyer you trust?”

“I have in Calgary, Alberta. If you think I’m going to hire you to give me advice I don’t want and won’t take-”

“I’m not trying to get myself hired.”

“That’s good, because I know you American lawyers. I had dealings with some of your breed when Holly was trying to get free from that wretched studio.” He paused, and gave me a canny look. “Of course, if a small retainer will keep you quiet-you can have a couple of hundred.”

“Keep it.”

He smiled grimly, as if an angry atmosphere suited him. “We’re mutually agreed then. Can I trust you to respect my confidence?”

“Naturally.” I realized, a second too late, that I had been manipulated-maneuvered into a dubious position.

“What about you, Padilla?”

“You can trust me, Colonel.”