The Moving Target

18

Mrs. Kromberg was in the kitchen with the cook, a flustered white-haired woman with motherly hips. They both jumped when I opened the door of the pantry.

“I was using the phone,” I said.

Mrs. Kromberg managed a crumpled smile. “I didn’t hear you in there.”

“How many phones are there in the house?”

“Four or five. Five. Two upstairs, three down.”

I gave up the idea of checking the phones. Too many people had access to them. “Where is everybody?”

“Mr. Graves called the staff together in the front room. He wanted to know if anybody saw the car that left the note.”

“Did anybody?”

“No. I heard a car a while back, but I didn’t think anything about it. They’re always coming down here and turning around in the drive. They don’t know it’s dead end.” She moved closer to me and whispered confidentially: “What was in the note, Mr. Archer?”

“They want money,” I said as I went out.

Three other servants passed me in the hallway, too young Mexicans in gardeners’ clothes, walking in single file with their heads down, and Felix bringing up the rear. I raised a hand to him, but he didn’t respond. His eyes were opaque and glittering like lumps of coal.

Graves was squatting in front of the fireplace in the living-room turning a charred log with a pair of tongs.

“What’s the matter with the servants?” I asked him.

He stood up with a grunt and glanced at the door. “They seem to know they’re under suspicion.”

“I wish they didn’t.”

“I didn’t say anything to give them the idea. They got it by osmosis. I simply asked them if they’d seen the car. What I really wanted, of course, was a look at their faces before they could close them up.”

“You think it’s an inside job, Bert?”

“Obviously it’s not entirely one. But whoever put together that letter is too well posted. How did he know, for example, that the money would be ready for a nine-o’clock deadline?” He glanced at his watch. “Seventy minutes from now.”

“Sheer blind faith, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“We won’t argue. You’re probably right that it’s partly an inside job. Did anyone see the car?”

“Mrs. Kromberg heard it. The others played dumb, or are.”

“And nobody gave himself away?”

“No. These Mexicans and Filipinos are hard to read.” He was careful to add: “Not that I’ve any reason to suspect the gardeners, or Felix either.”

“What about Sampson himself?”

He looked at me ironically. “Don’t try to be brilliant, Lew. You never were too strong on intuition.”

“It’s merely a suggestion. If Sampson pays an eighty-percent income tax, he could make himself a quick eighty grand by staging this.”

“I admit it could be done–”

“It has been.”

“But in Sampson’s case it’s fantastic.”

“Don’t tell me he’s honest.”

He picked up the tongs and struck the burning log. The sparks flew up like a swarm of bright wasps. “Not by everybody’s standards. But he hasn’t got the kind of brain for that sort of a setup. It’s too risky. Besides, he doesn’t need the money. His oil properties are valued around five million, but they’re worth more like twenty-five in terms of income. A hundred thousand dollars is small change to Sampson. This kidnapping is the real thing, Lew. You can’t get around it.”

“I’d like to,” I said. “So many kidnappings end up in a murder of convenience.”

“This one doesn’t have to,” he said, in a deep growling voice, “and, by God, it isn’t going to! We’ll pay them their money, and if they don’t come through with Sampson we’ll hunt them down.”

“I’m with you.” But it was easier said than done. “Who delivers the lettuce?”

“Why not you?”

“For one thing, they may know me. And I have something else to do. You do it, Bert. And you’d better take Taggert along.”

“I don’t like him.”

“He’s a sharp kid, and he’s not afraid of a gun. If anything goes wrong, you may need help.”

“Nothing is going to go wrong. But I’ll take him if you say so.”

“I say so.”

Mrs. Kromberg appeared in the hall doorway, nervously pulling at the front of her smock. “Mr. Graves?”

“Well?”

“I wish you’d talk to Miranda, Mr. Graves. I tried to take her up something to eat, and she wouldn’t unlock the door. She wouldn’t even answer.”

“She’ll be all right, I’ll talk to her later. Leave her alone for now.”

“I don’t like it when she acts this way. She’s so emotional.”

“Forget it. Ask Mr. Taggert to meet me in the study, will you? And ask him to bring his pistols – loaded.”

“Yes, sir.” She was on the point of tears, but she compressed her heavy lips and went away.

When Graves turned from the door, I saw that she had communicated some of her anxiety to him. One of his cheeks was twitching slightly. His eyes were looking at something beyond the room.

“She’s probably feeling guilty,” he said, half to himself.

“Guilty about what?”

“Nothing tangible. I suppose it’s basically because she hasn’t been able to take her brother’s place. She’s watched the old man going downhill, and she probably feels he wouldn’t have gone down so far and so fast if she could have got closer to him.”

“She isn’t his wife,” I said. “What’s Mrs. Sampson’s reaction? Have you seen her?”

“A few minutes ago. She’s taking it very nicely. Reading a novel, in fact. How do you like that?”

“I don’t. Maybe she’s the one that should be feeling guilty.”

“It wouldn’t help Miranda if she did. Miranda’s a funny girl. She’s very sensitive, but I don’t think she knows it. She’s always sticking her neck out, living beyond her emotional resources.”

“Are you going to marry her, Bert?”

“I will if I can.” He smiled wryly. “I’ve asked her more than once. She hasn’t said no.”

“You could take good care of her. She’s ripe for marriage.”

He looked at me in silence for a moment. His lips continued to smile, but his eyes flashed a hands-off signal. “She said you had quite a talk on your drive this afternoon.”

“I gave her some fatherly advice,” I said. “About driving too fast.”

“As long as you keep it on the paternal level.” Abruptly he changed the subject. “What about this character, Claude? Could he be in on the kidnapping?”

“He could be in on anything. I wouldn’t trust him with a burnt-out match. But I didn’t get anything definite. He claimed he hadn’t seen Sampson for months.”

Straw-yellow fog lamps brushed the side of the house, and a moment later a car door slammed. “That must be the sheriff,” Graves said. “It took him a hell of a long time.”

The sheriff came in with a great show of haste, like a sprinter breasting the tape. He was a big man in a business suit, carrying a wide-brimmed rancher’s hat. Like his clothes, his face was hybrid, half cop and half politician. The sternness of his jaw was denied by the softness of his mouth, a loosely folded mouth that liked women and drink and words.

He thrust out his hand to Graves. “I would have been here sooner, but you asked me to pick up Humphreys.”

The other man, who had followed him quietly into the room, was wearing a tuxedo. “I was at a party,” he said. “How are you, Bert?”

Graves introduced me. The sheriff’s name was Spanner. Humphreys was the District Attorney. He was tall and balding, with the lean face and haunted eyes of an intellectual sharpshooter. He and Graves didn’t shake hands. They were too close for that. Humphreys had been Deputy Prosecutor when Graves was District Attorney. I stood back and let Graves do the talking. He told them what they needed to know and left out what they didn’t need to know.

When he had finished, the sheriff said: “The letter orders you to drive away in a northern direction. That means he’ll be making his getaway in the other direction, toward Los Angeles.”

“That’s what it means,” Graves said.

“Now if we set up a road block down the highway a piece, we should be able to catch him.”

“We can’t do that,” I said in words of one syllable. “If we do, we can kiss good-bye to Sampson.”

“But if we catch the kidnapper, we can make him talk–”

“Hold it, Joe,” Humphreys put in. “We’ve got to assume that there are more than one. If we knock off one of them, the other or others will knock off Sampson. It’s as clear as the nose on your face.”

“And it’s in the letter,” I said. “Have you seen the letter?”

“Andrews has it,” Humphreys said. “He’s my fingerprint man.”

“If he finds anything, you should check with the F. B. I. files.” I sensed that I was making myself unpopular, but I had no time to be tactful and I didn’t trust small-time cops to know their business. I turned to the sheriff: “Are you in touch with the L. A. County authorities?”

“Not yet. I felt I should assess the situation first.”

“All right, this is the situation. Even if we obey instructions to the letter, there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance that Sampson won’t come out alive. He must be able to identify at least one of the gang – the one that picked him up in Burbank. That’s bad for him. You’ll make it worse if you try to trip the money pickup. You’ll have a kidnapper in the county jail, and Sampson lying somewhere with his throat cut. The best thing you can do is get on the wires. Let Graves handle the business at this end.”

Spanner’s face was mottled with anger, his mouth half open to speak.

Humphreys cut him off. “That makes sense, Joe. It’s not good law enforcement, but we’ve got to compromise. The thing is to save Sampson’s life. What say we get back to town now?”

He stood up. The sheriff followed him out.

“Can we trust Spanner not to make his own arrangements?”

“I think so,” Graves said slowly. “Humphreys will keep an eye on him.”

“Humphreys sounds like a good head.”

“The best. I worked with him for seven-odd years, and I never caught him in a bad mistake. I got him the appointment when I resigned.” There was some regret in his voice.

“You should have stuck with the work,” I said. “You got a lot of satisfaction out of it.”

“And damned little money! I stuck with it for ten years, and I ended up in debt.” He gave me a sly look. “Why did you quit the Long Beach force, Lew?”

“The money wasn’t the main thing. I couldn’t stand podex osculation. And I didn’t like dirty politics. Anyway, I didn’t quit, I was fired.”

“All right, you win.”

He glanced at his watch again. It was nearly eight thirty. “Time to get on our horse.”

Alan Taggert was in the study, in a tan trench coat that bunched at the waist and made his shoulders look huge. He brought his hands out of his pockets with a gun in each fist. Graves took one, and Taggert kept the other. They were .32 target pistols with slender blue-steel snouts and prominent sights.

“Remember,” I said, for Taggert’s benefit, “no shooting unless you’re shot at.”

“Aren’t you coming along?”

“No.” I said to Graves: “You know the corner at Fryers Road?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no cover around?”

“Not a thing. The open beach on one side, and the cut-bank on the other.”

“There wouldn’t be. You go ahead in your car. I’ll tag along behind and park a mile or so down the highway.”

“You’re not going to try a fast one?”

“Not me. I just want to see him go by. I’ll meet you at the filling station at the city limits afterward. The Last Chance.”

“Right.” Graves twirled the knobs of the wall safe.

From the city limits to Fryers Road the highway was four-lane, a mile-long shelf cut into the bluffs that stood along the shore. It was divided in the middle by a strip of turf between concrete curbs. At the intersection with Fryers Road the turf ended and the highway narrowed to three lanes. Graves’s Studebaker made a quick U turn at the intersection and parked with its lights burning on the shoulder of the highway.

It was a good place for the purpose, a bare corner rimmed on the right by a line of white posts. The entrance to Fryers Road was a gray-black hole in the side of the bluff. There wasn’t a house in sight, or a tree. The cars on the highway were few and far between.

It was ten minutes to nine by my dashboard clock. I waved to Taggert and Graves and drove on past them. It was seven tenths of a mile to the next side road. I checked it on my mileage. Two hundred yards beyond this side road a parking space for sightseers had been built up over the beach on the right side of the highway. I turned off and parked with the lights out and the nose of the car pointed south. It was seven minutes to nine. If everything went on schedule, the pay-off car should pass me in ten minutes.

The fog closed around the car when it stopped, rising from the shore like an impossible gray tide. A few pairs of headlights went north through the fog like the eyes of deep-sea fish. Below the guardrail the sea breathed and gargled in the darkness. At two minutes after nine the rushing headlights came around the curve from the direction of Fryers Road.

The plunging car wheeled sharply before it reached me and turned up the side road to the left. I couldn’t see its color or shape but I heard it losing rubber. The driver’s technique seemed familiar.

Leaving my lights out, I drove across the highway and along its shoulder to the side road. Before I reached it I heard three sounds, remote and muffled by the fog. The banshee wail of brakes, the sound of a shot, the ascending roar of a motor picking up speed.

The trough of the side road was filled with diffused white light. I stopped my car a few feet short of the intersection. Another car came out of the side road and turned left in front of me toward Los Angeles. It was a long-nosed convertible painted light cream. I couldn’t see the driver through the blurred side window, but I thought I saw a dark mass of woman’s hair. I wasn’t in position to give chase, and I couldn’t have anyway.

I switched on my fog lamps and turned up the road. A few hundred yards from the highway a car was standing with two of its wheels in the ditch. I parked behind it and got out with the gun in my hand. It was a black limousine, a pre-war Lincoln custom job. The engine was idling and the lights were on. The license number was 62 S 895. I opened the front door with my left hand, my gun cocked in my right.

A little man leaned toward me, peering into the fog with intent dead eyes. I caught him before he fell out. I’d been feeling death in my bones for twenty-four hours.