The Moving Target

3

The highway entered Santa Teresa at the bottom of the town near the sea. We drove through a mile of slums: collapsing shacks and storefront tabernacles, dirt paths where sidewalks should have been, black and brown children playing in the dust. Nearer the main street there were a few tourist hotels with neon signs like icing on a cardboard cake, red-painted chili houses, a series of shabby taverns where the rumdums were congregating. Half the men in the street had short Indian bodies and morocco faces. After Cabrillo Canyon I felt like a man from another planet. The Cadillac was a space ship skimming just above the ground.

Felix turned left at the main street, away from the sea. The street changed as we went higher. Men in colored shirts and seersucker suits, women in slacks and midriff dresses displaying various grades of abdomen, moved in and out of California Spanish shops and office buildings. Nobody looked at the mountains standing above the town, but the mountains were there, making them all look silly.

Taggert had been sitting in silence, his handsome face a blank. “How do you like it?” he asked me.

“I don’t have to like it. How about you?”

“It’s pretty dead for my money. People come here to die, like elephants. But then they go on living – call it living.”

“You should have seen it before the war. It’s a hive of activity compared with what it was. There was nothing but the rich old ladies clipping coupons and pinching pennies and cutting the assistant gardener’s wages.”

“I didn’t know you knew the town.”

“I worked on a couple of cases with Bert Graves – when he was District Attorney.”

Felix parked in front of a yellow stucco archway that led into the courtyard of an office building. He opened the glass partition. “Mr. Graves’s office is on the second floor. You can take the elevator.”

“I’ll wait out here,” Taggert said.

Graves’s office was a contrast to the grimy cubicle in the courthouse where he used to prepare his cases. The waiting-room was finished in cool green cloth and bleached wood. A blond receptionist with cool green eyes completed the color scheme and said: “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

“Just tell Mr. Graves it’s Lew Archer.”

“Mr. Graves is busy at the moment.”

“I’ll wait.”

I sat down in an overstuffed chair and thought about Sampson. The blonde’s white fingers danced on her typewriter keys. I was restless and still feeling unreal, hired to look for a man I couldn’t quite imagine. An oil tycoon who consorted with holy men and was drinking himself to death. I pulled his photograph out of my pocket and looked at it again. It looked back at me.

The inner door was opened, and an old lady backed out bobbing and chortling. Her hat was something she’d found washed up on the beach. There were diamonds in the watch that was pinned to her purple silk bosom.

Graves followed her out. She was telling him how clever he was, very clever and helpful. He was pretending to listen. I stood up. When he saw me he winked at me over the hat.

The hat went away, and he came back from the door. “It’s good to see you, Lew.”

He didn’t slap backs, but his grip was as hard as ever. The years had changed him, though. His hairline was creeping back at the temples, his small gray eyes peered out from a network of little wrinkles. The heavy blue-shadowed jaw was drooping at the sides in the beginning of jowls. It was unpleasant to remember that he wasn’t five years older than I was. But Graves had come up the hard way, and that was an aging process.

I told him I was glad to see him. I was. “It must be six or seven years,” he said.

“All of that. You’re not prosecuting any more.”

“I couldn’t afford to.”

“Married?”

“Not yet. Inflation.” He grinned. “How’s Sue?”

“Ask her lawyer. She didn’t like the company I kept.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, Lew.”

“Don’t be.” I changed the subject. “Doing much trial work?”

“Not since the war. It doesn’t pay off in a town like this.”

“Something must.” I looked around the room. The cool blond girl permitted herself to smile.

“This is just my front. I’m still a straggling attorney. But I’m learning to talk to the old ladies.” His smile was wry. “Come inside, Lew.”

The inner office was bigger, cooler, more heavily furnished. There were hunting prints on the two bare walls. The others were lined with books. He looked smaller behind his massive desk.

“What about politics?” I said. “You were going to be Governor, remember?”

“The party’s gone to pieces in California. Anyway, I’ve had my fill of politics. I ran a town in Bavaria for two years. Military Government.”

“Carpetbagger, eh? I was Intelligence. Now what about Ralph Sampson?”

“You talked to Mrs. Sampson?”

“I did. It was quite an experience. But I don’t quite get the point of this job. Do you?”

“I should. I talked her into it.”

“Why?”

“Because Sampson might need protection. A man with five million dollars shouldn’t take the chances he does. He’s an alcoholic, Lew. He’s been getting worse since his boy was killed, and sometimes I’m afraid he’s losing his mind. Did she tell you about Claude, the character he gave the hunting-lodge to?”

“Yeah. The holy man.”

“Claude seems to be harmless, but the next one might not be. I don’t have to tell you about Los Angeles. It isn’t safe for an elderly lush by himself.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me. But Mrs. Sampson seemed to think he’s off on a round of pleasures.”

“I encouraged her to think that. She wouldn’t spend money to protect him.”

“But you would.”

“Her money. I’m just his lawyer. Of course, I rather like the old guy.”

And hope to be his son-in-law, I thought.

“How much is she good for?”

“Whatever you say. Fifty a day and expenses?”

“Make it seventy-five. I don’t like the imponderables in this case.”

“Sixty-five.” He laughed. “I’ve got to protect my client.”

“I won’t argue. There may not even be a case. Sampson could be with friends.”

“I’ve tried them. He didn’t have many friends here. I’ll give you a list of contacts, but I wouldn’t waste time on it except as a last resort. His real friends are in Texas. That’s where he made his money.”

“You’re taking this pretty seriously,” I said. “Why don’t you go one step further and take it to the police?”

“Trying to talk yourself out of a job?”

“Yes.”

“It can’t be done, Lew. If the police found him for me, he’d fire me in a minute. And I can’t be sure he isn’t with a woman. Last year I found him in a fifty-dollar house in San Francisco.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Looking for him.”

“This smells more and more like divorce,” I said. “But Mrs. Sampson insisted that isn’t it. I still don’t get it – or her.”

“You can’t expect to. I’ve known her for years and I don’t understand her. But I can handle her, up to a point. If anything ticklish comes up, bring it to me. She has a few dominant motives, like greed and vanity. You can count on them when you’re dealing with her. And she doesn’t want a divorce. She’d rather wait and inherit all his money – or half of it. Miranda gets the other half.”

“Were those always her dominant motives?”

“Ever since I’ve known her, since she married Sampson. She tried to have a career before that: dancing, painting, dress-designing. No talent. She was Sampson’s mistress for a while, and finally she fell back on him, married him as a last resort. That was six years ago.”

“And what happened to her legs?”

“She fell off a horse she was trying to train, and hit her head on a stone. She hasn’t walked since.”

“Miranda thinks she doesn’t want to walk.”

“Were you talking to Miranda?” His face lit up. “Isn’t she a marvelous kid?”

“She certainly is.” I stood up. “Congratulations.”

He blushed and said nothing. I had never seen Graves blush before. I felt slightly embarrassed.

On the way down in the automatic elevator he asked me: “Did she say anything about me?”

“Not a word. I plucked it out of the air.”

“She’s a marvelous kid,” he repeated. At forty he was drunk on love.

He sobered up in a hurry when we reached the car. Miranda was in the back seat with Alan Taggert. “I followed you in. I decided to fly down to Los Angeles with you. Hello, Bert.”

“Hello, Miranda.”

He gave her a hurt look. She was looking at Taggert. Taggert was looking nowhere in particular. It was a triangle, but not an equilateral one.