The Instant Enemy

chapter 25

GERDA HACKETT was in the picture gallery, standing absorbed in front of a painting. It showed a man in a geometrical maze, and seemed to show that the man and the maze were continuous with each other.

“Are you interested in painting, Mrs. Hackett?”

“Yes. Particularly in Klee. I sold this picture to Mr. Hack – to Stephen.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I worked in a gallery in München, a very good gallery.” Her voice was thick with nostalgia. “It was how I met my husband. But if I had a second chance I would stay in Germany.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like it here. Such dreadful things happen to people.”

“At least you got your husband back.”

“Yes.” But this failed to cheer her. She turned to me with a vague ambiguous light in her blue eyes. “I’m very grateful, really. You saved his life and I want to thank you. Vielen Dank.”

She pulled my face down and kissed me. This gesture was unexpected, perhaps even by her. It may have started out as a thank-you kiss, but it turned into something more involved. Her body leaned into me. Her tongue pushed into my mouth like a blind worm looking for a home.

I didn’t like the woman that well. I took her by the arms and released myself. It was like handling a soft statue.

“Am I no good?” she said. “Am I not attractive?”

“You’re very attractive,” I said, stretching the truth a little. “The trouble is, I work for your husband and this is his house.”

“He wouldn’t carel” The ambiguous light in her eyes crystallized in a kind of helpless anger. “Do you know what they’re doing? She’s on the bed beside him feeding him soft-boiled eggs with a spoon.”

“That sounds like an innocent pastime.”

“It’s no jokel She is his mother. He has an Oedipus fixation on her, and she encourages it.”

“Who told you that?”

“I can see it with my own eyes. She is the seductive mother. The soft-boiled eggs are symbolic. Everything is symbolic!”

Gerda was disheveled and close to tears. She was one of those women who dishevel easily, as if the fronts they turned to the world were precarious to begin with. She would never be the equal of her mother-in-law.

But that was not my problem. I changed the subject: “I understand you’re a friend of Sandy Sebastian’s.”

“No more. I helped her with her languages. But she is a little ingrate.”

“Did she spend any time with Lupe?”

“Lupe? Why do you ask?”

“Because it may be important. Did she see much of him?”

“Certainly not, not in the way you mean. He used to go and get her sometimes, and drive her home.”

“How often?”

“Many times. But Lupe isn’t interested in girls.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell.” She flushed. “Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to have a look at Lupe’s room.”

“For what reason?”

“Nothing to do with you. Does he have a room in the house?”

“His apartment is over the main garage. I don’t know if it’s open. Wait, I’ll get our key.”

She was gone for a few minutes. I stood and looked at the Klee, and found that it grew on me. The man was in the maze; the maze was in the man.

Gerda Hackett came back carrying a key with a tab attached: “Garage apt.” I went out to the garage and used the key to open Lupe’s door.

It was what is called a studio apartment, consisting of one large room with a pullman kitchen. It was furnished in bold colors with Mexican fabrics and artifacts. Some pre-Columbian masks hung over the serape-covered bed. If Lupe was a primitive, he was a sophisticated one.

I went through the chest of drawers and found nothing unusual except some pornographic pictures of the handcuff school. The bathroom medicine cabinet yielded only a jar of something labeled Psychedelic Love Balm. But some of the sugar cubes in the bottom of the bowl in the pullman kitchen were amateurishly wrapped in aluminum foil.

There were six wrapped cubes. I took three, tied them in my handkerchief, and put them away in an inside pocket.

I hadn’t heard anyone coming up the stairs, and was mildly surprised by the door opening behind me. It was Sidney Marburg, wearing tennis shoes.

“Gerda said you were out here. What’s with Lupe?”

“Just checking.”

“Checking what?”

“His morals and his manners. He’s no ordinary houseman, is he?”

“You can say that again. Personally I think he’s a creep.” Marburg walked toward me silently. “If you get something on him, I’d like to know about it.”

“Are you serious?”

“You’re bloody right I’m serious. He puts on a show of being interested in art, because my wife is, but she’s the only one that’s taken in.”

“Is there something between the two of them?”

“I think there is. He comes to our house in Bel-Air sometimes when I’m away. Our houseboy keeps me posted.”

“Are they lovers?”

“I don’t know,” Marburg said in pain. “I do know she gives him money, because I’ve seen some of the canceled checks. According to the houseboy, Lupe tells her everything that goes on here in her son’s house. It isn’t a healthy situation, and that’s putting it mildly.”

“How long have they known each other?”

“Practically forever. He’s worked here, if you can call it work, as long as I can remember.”

“How long is that?”

“Fifteen – sixteen years.”

“Did you know the Hacketts when Mark was still alive?”

For some reason, the question irritated him. “I did. That’s hardly relevant to what we were talking about. We were talking about Lupe.”

“So we were. What do you suspect him of, besides spying for your wife? Does he mess around with drugs?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Marburg said, a little too readily. “I’ve seen him high more than once. He was either manic or on drugs.”

“Did you ever see him with the Sebastian girl?”

“I never did.”

“I understand he chauffeured her quite a bit.”

“No doubt he did. She spent a lot of time here in the summer.” He paused, and gave me a questioning look. “You think he tampered with her?”

“I haven’t come to any conclusion about it.”

“Boy, if you can get that on him–!”

I didn’t like his eagerness. “Slow down. I’m not going to shove the facts around to suit you.”

“Nobody asked you to.” But he sounded angry. I suspected he was angry with himself for talking to me too freely. “If you’re finished here, I’ll drive you bloody well home.”

“Since you put it so charmingly.”

“I don’t have to be charming. I’m a serious painter, and that’s all I have to be.”

In spite of his lousy manners, I felt a certain liking for Sidney Marburg, or a tolerance bordering on liking. Perhaps he had sold out for money in marrying Ruth, who was nearly twenty years older. But like a shrewd agent he’d held back a percentage of himself.

“That sounds like a declaration of independence,” I said.

His angry grimace changed to a smile, but there was self-deprecation in it. “Come on, let’s go. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.” We went out to his Mercedes. “Where do you live?”

“In West Los Angeles, but I’m not going home. My car’s in Woodland Hills.”

“That’s where the Sebastian girl lives, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the matter with her? Schitzy?”

“I’m trying to find out.”

“More power to you. Excuse my little flareup a minute ago. I’m glad to drive you. But this place has bad associations for me.”

As if he hoped to leave them behind forever, he started the Mercedes’ engine with a roar. We rocketed along the shore of the lake, across the dam, and down the long winding grade to the gate, where Marburg braked the car to a jarring halt.

“Okay,” I said, “you win the Distinguished Flying Cross.”

“Sorry if I alarmed you.”

“I’ve had a rough two days. I was hoping this one would be some improvement.”

“I said I was sorry.”

Marburg drove more carefully down to the coastal highway and turned north. At Malibu Canyon he turned inland again. In a few minutes we were surrounded by the hills.

I said that they would make a pretty picture.

Marburg corrected me. “No. Anything that would make a pretty picture makes a bad picture. The picturesque things have all been done. You have to do something new. Beauty is difficult, as somebody said.”

“That Klee in the gallery, for instance?”

“Yes. I advised Stephen to buy Klee ten years ago.” He added: “Stephen needs advice. His taste is terrible, in everything.”

“Women?”

Marburg groaned. “Poor Gerda. When she came back from Germany with him, she thought she was going to live la vie en rose. She had a rude awakening. They live like recluses, never go anywhere, never see anyone.”

“Why?”

“I think he’s frightened – frightened of life. Money does that to some people. And then of course there’s what happened to his father. It’s strange, for fifteen years Stephen’s been acting as if the same thing was going to happen to him. And it almost did.”

“Almost.”

“You’ve had considerable experience, Mr. Archer. Is it possible for people to bring disaster down on their own heads? You know, by assuming a disaster-prone posture?”

“It’s an interesting idea.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Ask me again when I’ve finished with this case.”

He gave me a swift startled look, during which the car almost left the road. He concentrated on driving for a minute, slowing down.

“I thought you had finished.”

“Not with Spanner still at large, and several unsolved murders.”

“Several?”

I let the question hang. We passed the Probation Camp, off the road to the left. Marburg looked at the buildings in a worried way, as if I might be tricking him into custody.

“Did you say several murders?”

“There are at least two others besides Mark Hackett.”

Marburg drove until we were out of sight of the camp. He found a turnout point, pulled off the road, and stopped the car.

“What about these other murders?”

“One was a woman named Laurel Smith. She owned a small apartment building in the Palisades. She was beaten to death there the day before yesterday.”

“I read about her in this morning’s Times. The police think she was beaten by a kook – some sadist who didn’t even know her.”

“I don’t think so. Laurel Smith was once married to a man named Jasper Blevins. He died under a train fifteen years ago – just a few days after Mark Hackett was killed. As far as I can make out, Laurel Smith and Jasper Blevins were Davy Spanner’s parents. I think all these crimes, including the one against Stephen, are tied together.”

Without moving, except for his fingers drumming on the wheel, Marburg gave the impression of squirming. His eyes came up to mine and gave me a quick unguarded look, like a spurt of darkness. “Am I being paranoid, or are you accusing me of something?”

“Maybe I am. What am I accusing you of?”

“It isn’t so funny,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been accused of something I didn’t do. The cops gave me a really bad time after Mark was killed. They took me down to the station and questioned me most of the night. I had a perfectly good alibi, but to them it looked like one of those open-and-shut cases – you know, the standard triangle. I don’t deny, and I didn’t deny then, that Ruth and I were very close and I adore her passionately,” he said in a rather perfunctory way. “But the fact is she was planning to divorce Mark.”

“And marry you?”

“And marry me. So I had nothing to gain by Mark’s death.”

“Ruth had.”

“Not really. He left her as little as he legally could. Mark changed his will, on account of me, shortly before he died, and left the bulk of his estate to Stephen. Anyway, Ruth had a perfectly good alibi, just as I had, and I resent your imputation for both of us.”

But there was no real force in Marburg’s anger. Like his passion, it belonged to the part of himself he had sold. He was watching me and talking carefully, like a hired advocate for himself.

“Tell me about the alibis, just for fun.”

“I don’t have to, but I will. Gladly. At the time that Mark was killed, Ruth and I were having dinner with some friends in Montecito. It was a large dinner party, with over twenty guests.”

“Why didn’t the police accept your alibi?”

“They did when they got around to checking it out. But that wasn’t until the next day. They wanted me to be guilty, I know how their minds work. They were afraid to tackle Ruth directly, but they thought they could get at her through me.”

“Whose side was Stephen on?”

“He was out of the country, had been for several years. At the time of his father’s death he was studying economics at the London School. I’d never even met him at that time. But he was close to his father, and Mark’s death hit him hard. He actually broke down and wept on the transatlantic phone. That was about the last time I ever knew him to show any real emotion.”

“When was this?”

“Ruth called him immediately after Lupe phoned her, before we left her friends’ house in Montecito. As a matter of fact I put in the call to London for her, and then she took it on another extension. The news came as a terrible blow to Stephen. Frankly, I felt sorry for him.”

“How did he feel about you?”

“I don’t think Stephen even knew I existed, at that time. And I kept out of sight for nearly a year afterwards. That was Ruth’s idea, and it was a good one.”

“Why? Because she’s financially dependent on Stephen?”

“That may have played a part in it. But the fact is she’s very fond of him. She wanted to arrange her life so she could have us both, and that’s what she’s done.” Marburg spoke of his wife as if she was some kind of natural force, a demiurge or deity. “She gave me a – well, a kind of personal scholarship, at San Miguel de Allende. A few minutes after Stephen flew in from London, I flew out for Mexico City. Ruth kept us separate at the airport, but I caught a glimpse of Stephen when he got off the plane. He was a lot less conventional in those days. He wore a beard and a mustache and had let his hair grow long. By the time I finally met him he’d stiffened up a good deal – money ages a man.”

“How long were you gone?”

“Nearly a year, as I said. Actually that year was the making of me. I’d never had any decent instruction before, or painted from a model, or had a chance to talk to genuine painters. I loved the light in Mexico, and the colors. And I learned to paint them.” The part of Marburg that belonged to himself was talking to me now. “I changed from a Sunday painter into an artist. And Ruth made it possible for me.”

“What did you do before you became an artist?”

“I was a geological draftsman. I worked for a – an oil company. It was dull work.”

“Corpus Christi Oil and Gas?”

“That’s right, I worked for Mark Hackett. It’s how I met Ruth.” He paused, and hung his head in depression. “So you have been researching me?”

I answered him with another question; “How do you and Stephen get along?”

“Fine. We follow our separate courses.”

“Night before last, you suggested it would be nice if he never came back. You’d own his art collection then, you said.”

“I was joking. Don’t you recognize black humor?” When I failed to reply, he peered into my face. “You don’t think I had anything to do with what happened to Stephen?”

I still didn’t answer him. He sulked the rest of the way to Woodland Hills.