The Galton Case (Lew Archer #8)

by Ross Macdonald

“Are you married, Archer?” “I have been.” “Then you know what it’s like. They want you with them all the time. I’ve given up yachting. I’ve given up golf. I’ve practically given up living. And still she isn’t satisfied. What do you do with a woman like that?” I’d given up offering advice. Even when people asked for it, they resented getting it. “You’re the lawyer.” I strolled around the room and looked at the pictures on the walls. They were mostly ancestor-worship art: portraits of Spanish dons, ladies in hoop skirts with bare monolithic bosoms, a Civil War officer in blue, and several gentlemen in nineteenth-century suits with sour nineteenth-century pusses between their whiskers. The one I liked best depicted a group of top-hatted tycoons watching a bulldog-faced tycoon hammer a gold spike into a railroad tie. There was a buffalo in the background, looking sullen. The maid returned with a man in Harris tweeds. Sable introduced him as Dr. Howell. He was a big man in his fifties, who carried himself with unconscious authority.

We had an official search made some years ago. He’d already been missing for fourteen years, which is twice the time required by the law to establish presumption of death. Mrs. Galton wouldn’t let me make the petition, however. I think she’s always dreamed of Anthony coming back to claim his inheritance and all that. In the last few weeks it’s become an obsession with her.” “I wouldn’t go that far,” the doctor said. “I still think somebody put a bee in her bonnet, and I can’t help wondering why.” “Who do you have in mind?” “Cassie Hildreth, perhaps. She has a lot of influence on Maria. And speaking of dreams, she had a few of her own when she was a kid. She used to follow Tony around as if he was the light of the world. Which he was far from being, as you know.” Howell’s smile was one-sided and saturnine.

“You understand me?” “I understand you all right,” I said. “Go through the motions but don’t do any real investigating. Isn’t that pretty expensive therapy?” “She can afford it, if that’s what worries you. Maria has more coming in every month than she spends every year.” He regarded me in silence for a moment, stroking his prow of a nose. “I don’t mean you shouldn’t do your job. I wouldn’t ask any man to lie down on a job he’s paid to do. But if you find out anything that might upset Mrs. Galton—” Sable put in quickly: “I’ve already taken that up with Archer. He’ll report to me. I think you know you can rely on my discretion.” “I think I know I can.”

He didn’t inherit the Galton characteristics. He had utter contempt for business of any kind. Tony used to say he wanted to be a writer, but I never saw any evidence of talent. What he was really good at was boozing and fornicating. I gather he ran with a very rough crowd in San Francisco. I’ve always believed myself that one of them killed him for the money in his pockets and threw him in the Bay.” “Was there any indication of that sort of thing?” “Not to my certain knowledge. But San Francisco in the thirties was a dangerous place for a boy to play around in. He must have dredged pretty deep to turn up the girl he married.”

“What might help most,” I said carefully, “would be if you could tell me the exact circumstances of their visit, and their departure. Anything your son said about his plans, anything the girl said, anything you remember about her. Do you remember her name?” “He called her Teddy. I have no idea if that was her name or not. We had very little conversation. I can’t recall what was said. The atmosphere was unpleasant, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. She left a bad taste in my mouth. It was so evident that she was a cheap little gold-digger.” “How do you know?” “I have eyes. I have ears.” Anger had begun to whine in the undertones of her voice. “She was dressed and painted like a woman of the streets, and when she opened her mouth—well, she spoke the language of the streets. She made coarse jokes about the child in her womb, and how”—her voice faded almost out—“it got there. She had no respect for herself as a woman, no moral standards. That girl destroyed my son.” She’d forgotten all about her hope of reconciliation. The angry wheezing in the passages of her head sounded like a ghost in a ruined house.

“Are you sure he took it?” “Unfortunately, yes. It disappeared at the same time he did. It’s why he hid himself away, and never came back to us.” Sable’s glum look deepened. Probably he was thinking the same thing I was: that several thousand dollars in cash, in the slums of San Francisco, in the depths of the depression, were a very likely passport to oblivion. But we couldn’t say it out loud. With her money, and her asthma, and her heart, Mrs. Galton was living at several removes from reality. Apparently that was how it had to be.

Sable treated her brusquely, like a servant. “This is Mr. Archer, by the way. He wants to ask you some questions.” “Right now?” “If you can spare the time,” I said. “Mrs. Galton thought you could give me some pictures, perhaps some information.” “Pictures of Tony?” “If you have them.” “I keep them for Mrs. Galton. She likes to look at them when the mood is on her.” “You work for her, do you?” “If you can call it work. I’m a paid companion.” “I call it work.” Our eyes met. Hers were dark ocean blue. Discontent flicked a fin in their depths, but she said dutifully: “She isn’t so bad. She’s not at her best today. It’s hard on her to rake up the past like this.”

You notice the tattoo marks?” “I’d have to be blind to miss them.” “I mean these.” He took the hand away from me, and pointed out four dots arranged in a tiny rectangle between the first and second fingers. “Gang mark. He had it covered up later with a standard tattoo. A lot of old gang members do that. I see them on people we vag.” “What kind of gang?” “I don’t know. This is a Sac or Frisco gang. I’m no expert on the northern California insignia. I wonder if Lawyer Sable knew he had an old gang member working for him.” “We could ask him.”

“When was the last time you heard from Culligan?” “About a year ago. He wrote me a letter from Reno, claimed he’d struck it rich, that he could give me anything I wanted if I’d come back. Pete was always a dreamer. The first while after we were married, I used to believe in his dreams. But they all went blooey, one after another. I caught onto him so many years ago it isn’t funny. I’m not laughing, notice.” “What kind of dreams did he dream?” “Great big ones, the kind that never come off. Like he was going to open a chain of restaurants where food of all nations would be served. He’d hire the best chefs in the country, French, Chinese, Armenian, and so on. At which time he was a short-order cook on lower Market. Then there was the time he worked out a new system to beat the ponies. He took every cent we possessed to try it out. He even hocked my furniture. It took me all that winter to work it off.” Her voice had the driving energy of old anger that had found an outlet. “That was Pete’s idea of a honeymoon, me working and him playing the ponies.”

“What brings you up to the City?” he said when we were inside. To San Franciscans, there’s only one city. “I flew up for a little entertainment.” “I thought Hollywood was the world’s center of entertainment.” “I’m looking for something different,” I said. “Have you heard of a new club called The Listening Ear?” “Yeah, but you wouldn’t like it.” He shook his white head. “I hope you didn’t come all the way up here for that.” “What’s the matter with it?” “It’s a culture cave. One of these bistros where guys read poems to music. It ain’t your speed at all.” “My taste is becoming more elevated.” His grin showed all his remaining teeth. “Don’t kid an old man, eh?” “Ever hear of Chad Bolling?” “Sure. He promotes a lot of publicity for himself.” Coney looked at me anxiously. “You really going in for the poetry kick, Mr. Archer? With music?” “I have long yearned for the finer things.”

What was he doing in Luna Bay, did he tell you?” “He was trying to write a novel. He didn’t seem to have a job, and I can’t imagine what they were living on. They couldn’t have been completely destitute, either. They had a nurse to look after the mother and child.” “A nurse?” “I suppose she was what you’d call a practical nurse. One of those young women who take charge,” he added vaguely. “Do you recall anything about her?” “She had remarkable eyes, I remember. Sharp black eyes which kept watching me. I don’t think she approved of the literary life.” “Did you talk to her at all?” “I may have. I have a distinct impression of her, that she was the only sensible person in the house. Brown and his wife seemed to be living in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.” “How do you mean?” “They were out of touch with the ordinary run of life. I don’t mean that as a criticism. I’ve been out of touch enough in my own life, God knows. I still am.” He gave me his clown grin. “You can’t make a Hamlet without breaking egos. But let’s not talk about me.”

“Don’t you remember either of your parents?” He answered reluctantly: “I remember my mother. She left me in an orphanage in Ohio when I was four. She promised to come back for me, but she never did come back. I spent nearly twelve years in that institution, waiting for her to come back.” His face was dark with emotion. “Then I realized she must be dead. I ran away.” “Where was it?” I said. “What town?” “Crystal Springs, a little place near Cleveland.” “And you say you ran away from there?” “Yes, when I was sixteen. I went to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to get an education. A man named Lindsay took me in. He didn’t adopt me, but he let me use his name. I went to school under the name of John Lindsay.”

“What is this, anyway?” “Don’t get excited,” I said. “I’m not excited.” He was trembling all over. “You come here and ask me a bunch of questions and tell me you knew my father. Naturally I want to know what it means.” Bolling moved toward him and laid an impulsive hand on his arm. “It could mean a great deal to you, John. Your father belonged to a wealthy family.” The boy brushed him off. He was young for his age in some ways. “I don’t care about that. I want to see my father.” “Why is it so important?” Bolling said. “I never had a father.” His working face was naked to the light. Tears ran down his cheeks. He shook them off angrily.

Mungan nodded gravely. “Doc Dineen filled you in, eh? I’ve been thinking about that head myself. A young fellow came in here a few weeks ago, claimed to be John Brown’s son.” “Don’t you think he is?” “He acted like it. He got pretty upset when I showed him the bones. Unfortunately, he didn’t know any more about his father than I do. Which is nil, absolutely nil. We know this John Brown lived out on the old Bluff Road for a couple of months in 1936, and that’s the sum-total of it. On top of that, the boy doesn’t believe these are his father’s bones. And he could just be right. I’ve been doing some thinking, as I said. “This business about the head, now. We assumed when the body was first turned up, that he was killed by having his head cut off.” Mungan made a snicking sound between tongue and palate, and sheared the air with the edge of his huge hand.

You ever hear of the Red Horse Inn?” “No.” “It stood on the coast about a mile south of where we found the skeleton. They tore it down a couple of years ago, after we put the stopper on it. That was a place with a history. It used to be a resort hotel for well-heeled people from the City and the Peninsula. The rum-runners took it over in the twenties. They converted it into a three-way operation: liquor warehouse in the basement, bars and gaming on the first floor, women upstairs. The reason I know so much about it, I had my first drink there back about 1930. And my first woman.” “You don’t look that old.” “I was sixteen at the time. I

The larger bones had been labeled: left femur, left fibula, and so on. Mungan picked out a heavy bone about a foot long; it was marked “right humerus.” “This is the bone of the upper arm,” he said in a lecturer’s tone. “Come along on over to the window here. I want to show you something.” He held the bone to the light. Close to one knobbed end, I made out a thin line filled and surrounded by deposits of calcium.

He went to the switchboard and relayed the message. “Mrs. Lemberg says come right on up. It’s three-eleven. You can take the elevator.” The elevator jerked me up to the third floor. At the end of the dust-colored hallway, a blonde in a pink robe gleamed like a mirage. Closer up, her luster was dimmer. She had darkness at the roots of her hair, and a slightly desperate smile. She waited until I was practically standing on her feet; then she yawned and stretched elastically. She had wine and sleep on her breath. But her figure was very good, lush-breasted and narrow-waisted. I wondered if it was for sale or simply on exhibition by the owner.

“Did Schwartz send you to tell me this?” “Who?” “You needn’t play dumb. Otto Schwartz.” He gargled the words. “If he sent you, you can take a message back for me. Tell him to take a running jump in the Truckee River and do us all a favor.” I got up. Instinctively, one of Lemberg’s arms rose to guard his face. The gesture told a lot about him and his background. “Your brother’s in very bad trouble. So are you. He drove down south to do a murder yesterday. You provided the car. “I didn’t know whah—” His jaw hung open, and then clicked shut. “Who are you?”

The woman groaned. “Don’t be an idiot all your life. What did he ever do for you, Roy?” “He’s my brother.” “Do you expect to hear from him?” I said. “I hope so.” “If you do, will you let me know?” “Sure I will,” he lied. I went down in the elevator and laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter in front of the room clerk. He raised a languid eyebrow: “What’s this for? You want to check in?” “Not today, thanks. It’s your certificate of membership in the junior G-men society. Tomorrow you get your intermediate certificate.” “Another ten?” “You catch on fast.” “What do I have to do for it?” “Keep track of Lemberg’s visitors, if he has any. And any telephone calls, especially long-distance calls.” “Can do.” His hand moved quickly, flicking the bill out of sight. “What about her visitors?”

“Here.” I tossed him the ball. He carried it out as if it was made of iron. The door closed behind him. “He’s a likely boy.” “A lot you care, coming here to badger me. I talked to the police this morning. I don’t have to talk to you.” “I think you want to, though.” “I can’t. My husband—he doesn’t know.” “What doesn’t he know?” “Please.” She moved toward me rapidly, heavily, almost as though she was falling, and grasped my arm. “Ron will be coming in any minute. You won’t force me to talk in front of him?” “Send him away.” “How can I? He wants his dinner.” “You need something from the store.” “But we just came from the store.” “Think of something else.” Her eyes narrowed to two black glittering slits.

She nodded resignedly. “I recognize him. It’s Mr. Brown.” “And you worked for him, didn’t you?” “So what? Working for a person is no crime.” “Murder is the crime we’re talking about. Who killed him, Marian? Was it Culligan?” “Who says anybody killed him? He pulled up stakes and went away. The whole family did.” “Brown didn’t go very far, just a foot or two underground. They dug him up last spring, all but his head. His head was missing. Who cut it off, Marian?” The ugliness rose like smoke in the room, spreading to its far corners, fouling the light at the window. The ugliness entered the woman and stained her eyes. Her lips moved, trying to find the words that would exorcise it. I said: “I’ll make a bargain with you, and keep it if I can. I don’t want to hurt your boy. I’ve got nothing against you or your husband. I suspect you’re material witness to a murder. Maybe the law would call it accessory—” “No.” She shook her head jerkily. “I had nothing to do with it.”

I was the one responsible for the whole thing. I’ve lived with it on my conscience for over twenty years. It was all my fault for not keeping my loud mouth shut.” She gave me an up-from-under look, her eyes burning with pain: “Maybe I ought to be keeping it shut now.” “How were you responsible?” She hung her head still lower. Her eyes sank out of sight under her black brows. “I told Culligan about the money,” she said. “Mr. Brown kept it in a steel box in his room. I saw it when he paid me. There must have been thousands of dollars. And I had to go and mention it to my hus—to Culligan. I would have done better to go and cut my tongue out instead.” She raised her head, slowly, as if she was balancing a weight. “So there you have it.”

“Mr. Brown was a gentleman, at least he started out to be a gentleman. Until he married that wife of his. I don’t know what he saw in her outside of a pretty face. She didn’t know from nothing, if you ask me. But he knew plenty, he could talk your head off.” She gasped. The enormity of the image struck her. “God! They cut his head off?” She wasn’t asking me. She was asking the dark memories flooding up from the basement of her life.

Mungan spread his hands on the desk-top and stood up, wagging his big head slowly from side to side. “If all you got is a hunch, you can’t use official channels to test it out for you.” “I thought we were co-operating.” “I am. You’re not. I’ve been doing the talking, you’ve been doing the listening. And this has been going on for quite some time.” “I told you Nelson’s probably our killer. That’s a fairly big mouthful.” “By itself, it doesn’t do anything for me.” “It could if you let it. Try querying Sacramento.” “What’s your source of information?” “I can’t tell you.” “Like that, eh?” “I’m afraid so.” Mungan looked down at me in a disappointed way. Not surprised, just disappointed. We had had the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but I had proved unworthy.

“What was the name of the orphanage?” “Crystal Springs. It’s near Cleveland. They didn’t call it an orphanage. They called it a Home. Which didn’t make it any more homelike.” “You say your mother put you there?” I said. “When I was four.” “Do you remember your mother?” “Of course. I remember her face, especially. She was very pale and thin, with blue eyes. I think she must have been sick. She had a bad cough. Her voice was husky, very low and soft. I remember the last thing she ever said to me: Your daddy’s name was John Brown, too, and you were born in California.’ I didn’t know what or where California was, but I held on to the word. You can see why I had to come here, finally.” His voice seemed to have the resonance of his life behind it.

“I was giving you the benefit, that you got in over your head without knowing. What’s going to happen, you go on like this, talk about murder, crazy stuff like that?” He wagged his head solemnly from side to side. “Lake Tahoe is very deep. You could take a long dive, no Aqualung, concrete on the legs.” “You could sit in a hot seat, no cushion, electrodes on the bald head.” The big man took a step toward me, watching Schwartz with a doggy eye, and lunged around with his big shoulders. Schwartz surprised me by laughing, rather tinnily: “You are a brave young man. I like you. I wish you no harm. What do you suggest? A little money, and that’s that?” “A little murder. Murder everybody. Then you can be the bigshot of the world.” “I am a bigshot, don’t ever doubt it.” His mouth pursed suddenly and curiously, like a wrinkled old wound: “I take insults from nobody! And nobody steals from me.”

” “You’re not suggesting he’s a foreigner?” “I am, though. National differences in speech have always interested me, and it happens I’ve spent some time in central Canada. Have you ever listened to a Canadian pronounce the word ‘about’?” “If I did, I never noticed. ‘About’?” “You say aba-oot, more or less. A Canadian pronounces the word more like ‘aboat.’ And that’s the way John Brown pronounces it.” “Are you certain?” “Of course I’m certain.”

I handed him the letter. He studied it with growing signs of excitement. “I was right, by God!” “What do you mean?” “The dirty little hypocrite is a Canadian. Look here.” He put the letter on the table between us, and speared at it with his forefinger. “He spells the word ‘labor’ l, a, b, o, u, r. It’s the British spelling, still current in Canada. He isn’t even American. He’s an impostor.” “It’s going to take more than this to prove it.” “I realize that. Get busy, man.” “If you don’t mind, I’ll finish my lunch first.”

“Your son’s an ambitious boy.” “Oh, he always had an ambition, if that’s what you want to call it. Is that what he learned in college, how to cheat people?” “He learned that someplace else.” Perhaps in this room, I thought, where Culligan spun his fantasies and laid a long-shot bet on an accidental resemblance to a dead man. The room had Culligan’s taint on it. The woman stirred uncomfortably, as if I’d made a subtle accusation: “I don’t claim we were good parents to him. He wanted more than we could give him. He always had a dream of himself, like.”

He held his brother’s head possessively against his shoulder. In the light of the stars they seemed like twins, mirror images of each other. Roy looked at Tommy in a puzzled way, as if he couldn’t tell which was the real man and which was the reflection. Or which was the possessor and which was the possessed. Footfalls thudded in the dust behind me. It was Mrs. Fredericks, wearing a bathrobe and carrying a pan of water. “Here,” was all she said. She handed me the pan and went back into the house. She wanted no part of the trouble in the street. Her house was well supplied with trouble.

“She’s crazier than she ever was,” Sable said. “If you think you can use this against me, you’re crazier than she is. Don’t forget I’m a lawyer—” “Is that what you are—a lawyer?” Howell turned his back on Sable and spoke to his wife: “Come on, Alice, we’ll put a bandage on that cut and you can get some clothes on. Then we’ll take a little ride, back to the nice place with the other ladies.” “It isn’t a nice place,” she said. Howell smiled down at her. “That’s the spirit. Keep saying what you really think and know, and we’ll get you out of there to stay. But not for a while yet, eh?”

chapter 31 THEY dropped me at the airport, and I got aboard a plane. It was the same two-engine bucket, on the same flight, that had taken me north three weeks ago. Even the stewardess was the same. Somehow she looked younger and more innocent. Time had stood still for her while it had been rushing me along into premature middle age.

“Did he explain his interest in the rubies?” “He didn’t explain anything. He got up and left in a hurry, and they rocketed off in that little red car of his. They didn’t even wait to drink the coffee I was brewing.” “Were they friendly?” “To me, you mean? Very friendly. The girl was lovely to me. She confided they were going to get married as soon as her young man worked his way out of the darkness.” “What did she mean by the darkness?” “I don’t know, that was just the phrase she used.” But she squinted at the sunlight filtering through the drapes, like someone who understood what darkness meant.