Read Online Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) by Ross MacDonald - Free Book Online

said.
                 “What
I’m telling you is the truth.”
                 “You
should do it professionally. There’s money in it for a smooth operator with a
convincing spiel.”
                 Her
candid eyes narrowed to two dark slits like peepholes in a fort. She studied me
through them, made a tactical decision, and opened them wide again. They were
dark pools of innocence, like poisoned wells.
                 “Oh,
no,” she said. “I never do this professionally. It’s a talent I have, a gift -
Cancer is frequently psychic - and I feel it’s my duty to use it. But not for money - only for my friends.”
                 “You’re
lucky to have an independent income.”
                 Her
thin-stemmed glass twirled out of her fingers and broke in two pieces on the
table. “That’s Gemini for you,” she said. “Always looking for
facts.”
                 I
felt a slight twinge of doubt and shrugged it off. She’d fired at random and
hit the target by accident. “I didn’t mean to be curious,” I said.
                 “Oh,
I know that.” She rose suddenly, and I felt the weight of her body standing
over me. “Let’s get out of here, Archer. I’m starting to drop things again.
Let’s go some place we can talk.”
                 “Why not?”
                 She
left an unbroken bill on the table and walked out with heavy dignity. I
followed her, pleased with my startling success but feeling a little like a
male spider about to be eaten by a female spider.
                 Russell
was at his table with his head in his arms. Timothy was yelping at the captain
of waiters like a terrier who has cornered some small defenseless animal. The
captain of waiters was explaining that the au gratin potatoes would be ready in
fifteen minutes.

  8
                 In
the Hollywood Roosevelt bar she complained of the air and said she felt
wretched and old. Nonsense, I told her, but we moved to the Zebra Room. She had
shifted to Irish whisky, which she drank straight. In the Zebra Room she
accused a man at the next table of looking at her contemptuously. I suggested
more air. She drove down Wilshire as if she was trying to break through into
another dimension. I had to park the Buick for her at the Ambassador. I’d left
my car at Swift’s.
                 She
quarreled with the Ambassador barman on the grounds that he laughed at her when
he turned his back. I took her to the downstairs bar at the Huntoon Park, which wasn’t often crowded. Wherever we went, there were people who
recognized her, but nobody joined us or stood up. Not even the waiters made a
fuss over her. She was on her way out.
                 Except
for a couple leaning together at the other end of the bar, the Huntoon Park was deserted. The thickly carpeted, softly
lighted basement was a funeral parlor where the evening we had killed was laid
out. Mrs. Estabrook was pale as a corpse, but she was vertical, able to see,
talk, drink, and possibly even think.
                 I
was steering her in the direction of the Valerio ,
hoping that she’d name it. A few more drinks, and I could take the risk of
suggesting it myself. I was drinking with her, but not enough to affect me. I
made inane conversation, and she didn’t notice the difference. I was waiting. I
wanted her far enough gone to say whatever came into her head. Archer the
heavenly twin and midwife to oblivion.
                 I
looked at my face in the mirror behind the bar and didn’t like it too well. It
was getting thin and predatory-looking. My nose was too narrow, my ears were too close to my head. My eyelids were the kind that overlapped at
the outside corners and made my eyes look triangular in a way that I usually
liked. Tonight my eyes were like tiny stone wedges hammered between the lids.
                 She
leaned