Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

Broadman’s killer. I strongly advise you to take it. If you
don’t, and he’s caught without your help, it won’t be good for our side.”
                 “What
did he do to Hector Broadman?”
                 “Bashed in his head. You don’t want to sit here and let him
get away.”
                 She
fingered her own dark head. She was so preoccupied with the image in her mind
that she rumpled her hair and failed to smooth it down.
                 “You
don’t want it to happen to you, I know. Doesn’t that go for other people, too?
You are a nurse, after all, and I’ll bet a darn good one.”
                 “You
don’t have to flatter me, Mr. Gunnarson. I’m ready to tell you who gave me the
watch and the ring.”
                 “Gus
Donato?”
                 She
didn’t react to the name. “No. His name is Larry Gaines.”
                 “And
he’s the man from San Francisco?”
                 “He’s
a lifeguard at the Foothill Club. There isn’t any man from San Francisco.”
                 This
admission cost her more effort than any of the others. She was so drained that
she couldn’t speak for a minute. I was content to wait, light a cigarette, and
collect my thoughts. Cross-questioning is hard work at the best of times. The
worst kind goes on outside of court, in private, when you have to ram your
clients’ lies down their throats until they choke on them.
                 Ella
had had enough of her lies. She told me the short and not so simple story of
her affair with Larry Gaines.
                 She
had met him through Hector Broadman. Broadman had taken her to Larry’s place
the second time they were out together. Apparently he didn’t feel up to
entertaining her all by himself. Larry was different—so different that she
couldn’t understand how he and Broadman happened to be friends. He was
good-looking, and polite, and only a few years older than she was herself. He
lived in a house in a canyon outside the city limits.
                 It
was an exciting evening, sitting between two men in Larry’s little house,
drinking the Turkish coffee which Larry made, and listening to good records on
his hi-fi. Comparing the two, she made up her mind that Hector Broadman was not
for her.
                 The
second evening the trio spent together, she began to dream that possibly Larry
might be. He let her know that he liked her, in so many ways. They had a
serious talk about life, for example, and he was very interested in her
opinions. Broadman nursed a bottle in a corner.
                 That
night she broke with Broadman. She hated men who drank, anyway. Larry waited
for four days—the longest four days of Ella’s life—and then he phoned her. She
was so grateful that she let him seduce her. She was a virgin, but he was so
gentle and kind.
                 He
didn’t turn on her, either, the way fellows are supposed to. He went right on
being kind, and calling her just about every night of the week. He wanted to
marry her, he said, but he had so little to offer her. They both knew in the
long run a man with his brains and personality was bound to make his mark. But
that took time, or a lucky break. While he was waiting for one, his salary at
the club was barely enough to support him, even with tips added in. Those
wealthy people at the Foothill Club were so tight, he said, you had to use a
chisel to pry a thin dime off their palms.
                 What
made it especially hard for him, he told her, was the fact that he came from a
wealthy family himself: they lost all their money in the crash before he was
born. It drove him crazy, scrounging for nickels and dimes while the members
sat on their fat behinds and the money grew on trees for them.
                 He
wanted a silver-dollar tree of his own, he said, and he