The Instant Enemy (8 page)

“Do you know who his real parents were, Mrs. Spanner?”

“No, he was just an orphan. Some fieldworker died and left
him in the tules. I found that out from the other man—Fleischer.”

“Did Fleischer say why he was interested in Davy?”

“I didn’t ask him. I was afraid to ask, with Davy on probation and all.” She hesitated, peering into my face. “Do you mind if I ask you the same question?”

Spanner answered for me: “Mrs. Laurel Smith got beat up. I told you that.”

Her eyes widened. “Davy wouldn’t do that to Mrs. Smith. She was the best friend he had.”

“I don’t know what he’d do,” Spanner said morosely. “Remember he hit a high-school teacher and that was the beginning of all our trouble.”

“Was it a woman teacher?” I said.

“No, it was a man. Mr. Langston at the high school. There’s one thing you can’t get away with, and that’s hitting a teacher. They wouldn’t let him back in school after that. We didn’t know what to do with him. He couldn’t get a job. It’s one reason we moved down here. Nothing went right for us after that.” He spoke of the move as if it had been a banishment.

“There was more to it than hitting a teacher,” his wife said. “Henry Langston wasn’t a teacher really. He was what they call a counselor. He was trying to counsel Davy when it happened.”

“Counsel him on what?”

“I never did get that clear.”

Spanner turned to her: “Davy has mental trouble. You never faced up to that. But it’s time you did. He had mental trouble from the time we took him out of the Shelter. He never warmed up to me. He was never a normal boy.”

Slowly she wagged her head from side to side in stubborn negation. “I don’t believe it.”

Their argument had evidently been going on for years. Probably it would last as long as they did. I interrupted it: “You saw him today, Mrs. Spanner. Did he seem to have trouble on his mind?”

“Well, he’s never cheerful. And he seemed to be pretty tense. Any young man is, these days, when he’s getting ready to marry.”

“Were they serious about getting married?”

“I’d say very serious. They could hardly wait.” She turned to her husband: “I didn’t mean to tell you this, but I guess it should all come out. Davy thought that maybe you would marry them. I explained you had no legal right, being just a lay preacher.”

“I wouldn’t marry him to anybody, anyway. I’ve got too much respect for the race of females.”

“Did they say anything more about their plans, Mrs. Spanner? Where did they plan to get married?”

“They didn’t say.”

“And you don’t know where they went after they left here?”

“No, I don’t.” But her eyes seemed to focus inward, as if she was remembering something.

“Didn’t they give you some inkling?”

She hesitated. “You never answered
my
question. Why are you so interested? You don’t really think he beat up Mrs. Smith?”

“No. But people are always surprising me.”

She studied my face, leaning her elbows on the table. “You don’t talk like a policeman. Are you one?”

“I used to be. I’m a private detective now—I’m not trying to pin anything on Davy.”

“What
are
you trying to do?”

“Make sure the girl is safe. Her father hired me for that. She’s only seventeen. She should have been in school today, not bucketing around the countryside.”

No matter how unrewarding their own married lives may be, women seem to love the idea of weddings. Mrs. Spanner’s wedding dream died hard. I watched it die.

“When I was out here in the kitchen making tea for them,” she said, “I heard them talking in the living room. They were reading the wall mottoes out loud and making fun of them.
That wasn’t very nice, but maybe I shouldn’t have been listening to them. Anyway, they made a joke about the Unseen Guest. Davy said that Daddy Warbucks was going to have an unseen guest tonight.”

Spanner exploded: “That’s blasphemy!”

“Was anything else said on the subject?”

“He asked the girl was she sure she could get him in. She said it would be easy, Louis knew her.”

“Louis?” I said. “Or Lupe?”

“It could have been Lupe. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was. Do you know who they were talking about?”

“I’m afraid I do. May I use your telephone?”

“Long as it isn’t long distance,” Spanner said prudently.

I gave him a dollar and called the Hacketts’ number in Malibu. A woman’s voice which I didn’t recognize at first answered the phone. I said:

“Is Stephen Hackett there?”

“Who is calling, please?”

“Lew Archer. Is that Mrs. Marburg?”

“It is.” Her voice was thin and dry. “You were a good prophet, Mr. Archer.”

“Has something happened to your son?”

“You’re such a good prophet I wonder if it’s prophecy. Where are you?”

“In West Los Angeles.”

“Come out here right away, will you? I’ll tell my husband to open the gate.”

I left without telling the Spanners where I was going or why. On my way to Malibu I stopped at my apartment to pick up a revolver.

T
HE
H
ACKETTS’ GATE
was standing open. I expected to find police cars in front of the house, but the only car standing under the floodlights was a new blue Mercedes convertible. The young man who went with it came out of the house to meet me.

“Mr. Archer? I’m Sidney Marburg.”

He gave me a hard competitive handshake. On second look he wasn’t so very young. His smile was probably porcelain, and the smile-lines radiating from it could just as well have been worry-lines. His narrow black eyes were opaque in the light.

“What happened, Mr. Marburg?”

“I’m not too clear about it myself, I wasn’t here when it happened. Apparently Stephen’s been kidnapped. A young chick and a boy with a shotgun took him away in their car.”

“Where was Lupe?”

“Lupe was here. He still is—lying down with a bloody head. The boy got out of the trunk of their car and held a sawed-off shotgun on him. The girl hit him over the head with a hammer or a tire iron.”

“The girl did that?”

He nodded. “What makes it even queerer, it seems to be someone the family knows. My wife wants to talk to you.”

Marburg took me into the library where his wife was sitting under a lamp, with a phone and a revolver at her elbow.
She seemed calm, but her face had a look of chilled surprise. She forced a smile.

“Thank you for coming. Sidney’s a charming boy, but he’s not much practical use.” She turned to him. “Now run along and play with your paints or something.”

He stood resentfully between her and the door. His mouth opened and closed.

“Go on now like a good boy. Mr. Archer and I have things to discuss.”

Marburg walked out. I sat on the leather hassock that matched her chair. “Where’s Mrs. Hackett?”

“Gerda went to pieces—par for the course. Fortunately I always carry chloral hydrate. I gave her a couple of capsules and she cried herself to sleep.”

“So everything’s under control.”

“Everything’s busted wide open, and you know it. Are you going to help me put it back together?”

“I have a client.”

She disregarded this. “I can pay you a good deal of money.”

“How much?”

“A hundred thousand.”

“That’s too much.”

She gave me a narrow, probing look. “I saw you turn down twenty dollars today. But nobody ever turned down a hundred grand.”

“It isn’t real money. You’re offering it to me because you think I may be in on an extortion deal. No such luck.”

“Then how did you know about it before it happened?”

“I came across the evidence. They left the map of this place lying around, almost as if they wanted to be stopped. Which doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”

“I know they’re dangerous. I saw them. The two of them came right into the living room and marched Stephen out to their car. In their dark glasses they looked like creatures from another planet.”

“Did you recognize either of them?”

“Gerda recognized the girl right away. She’s been a guest here more than once. Her name is Alexandria Sebastian.”

She turned and looked at me in surmise. I was glad the secret was coming out.

“Keith Sebastian is my client.”

“And he knew about this?”

“He knew his daughter had run away. Then he knew what I told him, which wasn’t much. Let’s not get involved in recriminations. The important thing is to get your son back.”

“I agree. My offer stands. A hundred thousand if Stephen comes home safe.”

“The police do this work for free.”

She pushed the idea away with her hand. “I don’t want them. So often they solve the case and lose the victim. I want my son back alive.”

“I can’t guarantee it.”

“I
know
that,” she said impatiently. “Will you try?” She pressed both hands to her breast, then offered them to me, empty. Her emotion was both theatrical and real.

“I’ll try,” I said. “I think you’re making a mistake, though. You should use the police.”

“I’ve already said I wouldn’t. I don’t trust them.”

“But you trust me?”

“Shouldn’t I? Yes, I do, up to a point.”

“So does Keith Sebastian. I’m going to have to check with him on this.”

“I don’t see why. He’s one of our employees.”

“Not when he’s on his own time. His daughter is missing, remember. He feels about her just as strongly as you do about your son.” Not quite, perhaps, but I gave Sebastian the benefit of the doubt.

“We’ll get him out here.” Abruptly she reached for the phone. “What’s his number?”

“We’re wasting time.”

“I asked you for his number.”

I looked it up in my black book. She dialed, and got Sebastian
on the first ring. He must have been sitting beside the telephone.

“Mr. Sebastian? This is Ruth Marburg. Stephen Hackett’s mother. I’m at his Malibu place now, and I’d very much like to see you & Yes, tonight. Immediately, in fact. How soon can you get here? & Very well, I’ll look for you in half an hour. You won’t disappoint me, will you?”

She hung up and looked at me quietly, almost sweetly. Her hand was still on the phone, as if she was taking Sebastian’s pulse by remote control.

“He wouldn’t be in on this with his daughter, would he? I know that Stephen isn’t always popular with the hired help.”

“Is that what we are, Mrs. Marburg?”

“Don’t change the subject. I asked you a straight question.”

“The answer is no. Sebastian doesn’t have that kind of guts. Anyway he practically worships your son.”

“Why?” she asked me bluntly.

“Money. He has a passion for the stuff.”

“Are you
sure
he didn’t put the girl up to this?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then what in hell does she think she’s doing?”

“She seems to be in revolt, against everyone over thirty. Your son was the biggest target within reach. I doubt that she picked the target, though. Davy Spanner’s probably the main instigator.”

“What does he want? Money?”

“I haven’t figured out what he wants. Do you know of any connection between him and your son? This could be a personal thing.”

She shook her head. “Maybe if you tell me what you know about him.”

I gave her a quick rundown on Davy Spanner, son of a migrant laborer, orphaned at three or four and institutionalized, then taken by foster parents; a violent dropout from high school, a wandering teen-ager, car thief, jail graduate, candidate for more advanced felonies, possibly somewhat crazy in the head.

Ruth Marburg listened to me with a suspicious ear. “You sound almost sympathetic.”

“I almost am,” I said, though my kidneys were still sore. “Davy Spanner didn’t make himself.”

She answered me with deliberate roughness: “Don’t give me that crap. I know these psychopaths. They’re like dogs biting the hands that feed them.”

“Has Spanner had previous contact with your family?”

“No. Not that I know of.”

“But the girl has.”

“Not with me. With Gerda, Stephen’s wife. The girl was interested in languages, or pretended to be. Gerda took her under her wing last summer. She’ll know better next time, if the family survives this.”

I was getting impatient with the conversation. We seemed to have been sitting in the room for a long time. Book-lined, with the windows heavily draped, it was like an underground bunker cut off from the world of life.

Ruth Marburg must have sensed or shared my feeling. She went to one of the windows and pulled back the drapes. We looked out at the broken necklace of lights along the shore.

“I still can’t believe it happened,” she said. “Stephen has always been so careful. It’s one reason they don’t have servants.”

“What’s Lupe?”

“We hardly think of him as a servant. He’s really the manager of the estate.”

“A friend of yours?”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. We get along.” Her half-smile, and the way she held her body, gave the words a sexual connotation.

“May I talk to Lupe?”

“Not now. He’s a pretty sick man.”

“Should he have a doctor?”

“I’m going to get him one.” She turned and faced me, visibly shaken by her own angry force. “You needn’t take responsibility for things you’re not responsible for. I’m hiring
you to get my son back alive.”

“You haven’t hired me yet.”

“And I may not.” She turned back to the window. “What’s keeping him?” She clenched her hands and rapped the knuckles together, making a noise which reminded me that she contained a skeleton.

As if he’d heard it, or felt her impatient will, Sebastian turned up almost immediately. His big car threw its lights up over the pass, came around the dark lake, and stopped under the floodlights.

“You took your time,” Mrs. Marburg said at the door.

“I’m sorry. I had a phone call as I was leaving. I had to take it.”

Sebastian seemed tremendously excited. He was pale and brilliant-eyed. He looked from the woman to me.

“What’s up?”

Ruth Marburg answered grimly: “Come in, I’ll tell you what’s up.” She led us into the library and closed the door emphatically, like a warder. “Your precious daughter has stolen my son.”