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

said
throatily.
                 “Much,
much better,” said the little man. He called for lights and camera.
                 “Isn’t
he marvelous?” she said again. The gray-mustached man smiled and nodded some
more. He put his hand over hers, and they smiled into each other’s eyes.
                 “Cut!”
                 The
smiles faded into weary boredom. The lights went out. The little director
called for number seventy-seven. “You may go, Fay. Tomorrow
at eight. And try to get a good night’s sleep, darling.” The way he said
it sounded very unpleasant.
                 She
didn’t answer. While a new group of actors was forming in the wings of the
theater stage and a camera rolled toward them, she rose and walked up the
central aisle. I followed her out of the gloomy warehouse-like building into
the sun.
                 I
stood in the doorway as she walked away, not quickly, with movements a little
random and purposeless. In her dowdy costume - black hat with a widow’s veil
and plain black coat - her big, handsome body looked awkward and ungainly. It
may have been the sun in my eyes or simple romanticism, but I had the feeling
that the evil which hung in studio air like an odorless gas was concentrated in
that heavy black figure wandering up the empty factitious street.
                 When
she was out of sight around the Continental Hotel corner, I picked up the golf
bag and followed her. I started to sweat again, and I felt like an aging caddy,
the kind that never quite became a pro.
                 She
had joined a group of half a dozen women of all ages and shapes which was
headed for the main entrance. Before they got there, they turned off into an
alley. I trotted after them and saw them disappearing under a stucco arch
labeled “Dressing Rooms.”
                 I
pushed open the swinging gate beside the guard and started out. He remembered
me and the golf clubs: “Didn’t he want them?”
                 “He’s
going to play badminton instead.”

  6
                 I
was waiting when she came out, parked with my motor idling at a yellow curb
near the entrance. She turned up the sidewalk in the other direction. She had changed
to a well-cut dark suit, a small slanted hat. Will or foundation garments had
drawn her body erect. From the rear she looked ten years younger.
                 Half
a block from me she stopped by a black sedan, unlocked it and got in. I eased
out into the traffic and let her slide into the lane ahead of me. The sedan was
a new Buick. I wasn’t concerned about her noticing my car. Los Angeles County
was crawling with blue convertibles, and the traffic on the boulevard was a
kaleidoscope being shaken.
                 She
added her personal touch to the pattern, cutting in and out of lanes, driving
furiously and well. In the overpass I had to touch seventy to keep her in
sight. I didn’t think she was aware of me; she was doing it for fun. She went
down Sunset at a steady fifty, headed for the sea. Fifty-five
and sixty on the curves in Beverly Hills. Her heavy car was burning
rubber. In my lighter car I was gambling at even odds with centrifugal force.
My tires screeched and shuddered.
                 On
the long, looping final grade sloping down to Pacific Palisades I let her go
away from me and almost lost her. I caught her again in the straightaway a
minute before she turned off the boulevard to the right.
                 I
followed her up a road marked “Woodlawn Lane,” which wound along the hillside.
A hundred yards ahead of me as I came out of a curve she swung wide and turned
into a driveway. I stopped my car where I was and parked under a eucalyptus
tree.
                 Through
the japonica hedge that lined the sidewalk I saw her climb the steps to the
door of a white house. She unlocked it and went in. The house