The Barbarous Coast by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online

downward. He made an idiot face. “I’m a punchy bum. My brains don’t think straight. My daughter is dead. My nephew is a crooked
pachuco
. People come and punch me in the nose.”

chapter
7
    A NTON’S windows overlooked the boulevard from the second floor of a stucco building in West Hollywood. The building was fairly new, but it had been painted and scraped and repainted in blotches of color, pink and white and blue, to make it look like something from the left bank of the Seine. You entered it through a court which contained several small arty shops and had a terrazzo fountain in the center. A concrete nymph stood with her feet in its shallow water, covering her pudenda with one hand and beckoning with the other.
    I climbed the outside stairs to the second-floor balcony. Through an open door, I saw a half-dozen girls in leotards stretching their ligaments on barres along the wall. A woman with flat breasts and massive haunches called out orders in a drill-sergeant’s voice:
    “Grand battement, s’il vous plaît. Non, non
, grand
battement.”
    I walked on to the end of the balcony, trailed by the salt-sweet odor of young sweat. Anton was in his office, short and wide behind the desk in a gabardine suit the color of lemon ice cream. His face was sunlamp brown. He rose very lightly, to demonstrate his agelessness. The hand heextended had rings on two of the fingers, a seal ring and a diamond to go with the diamond in his foulard tie. His grip was like a bull lobster’s.
    “Mr. Archer.”
    Anton had been in Hollywood longer than I had, but he still pronounced my name “Meester Arshair.” The accent was probably part of his business front. I liked him in spite of it.
    “I’m surprised you remember my name.”
    “I think of you with gratitude,” he said. “Frequently.”
    “What wife are you on now?”
    “Please, you are very vulgar.” He raised his hands in a fastidious gesture, and while he was at it, examined his manicure. “Number five. We are very happy. You are not needed.”
    “Yet.”
    “But you didn’t come to discuss my marital problems. Why do you come?”
    “Missing girl.”
    “Hester Campbell again?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Are you employed by that big
naïf
of a husband?”
    “You’re psychic.”
    “He is a fool. Any man of his age and weight who runs after a woman in this city is a fool. Why doesn’t he stand still, and they’ll come swarming?”
    “He’s only interested in the one. Now what about her?”
    “What about her?” he repeated, offering his hands palms up to show how clean they were. “She has had some ballet lessons from me, three or four months of lessons. The young ladies come and go. I am not responsible for their private lives.”
    “What do you know about her private life?”
    “Nothing. I wish to know nothing. My friend Paddy Dane in Toronto did me no favor when he sent her here. Thereis a young lady very much on the make. I could see trouble in her.”
    “If you could see all that, why turn her husband loose on Clarence Bassett?”
    His shoulders rose. “I turned him loose on Bassett? I merely answered his questions.”
    “You made him believe that she was living with Bassett. Bassett hasn’t seen her for nearly four months.”
    “What would I know about that?”
    “Don’t kid me, Anton. Did you know Bassett before this?”
    “Pas trop
. He would not remember, probably.”
    He moved to the window and cranked the louvers wider. The sound of traffic rose from the Boulevard. Under it, his voice was sibilant:
    “But I do not forget. Five years ago, I applied for membership in the Channel Club. They refused me, with no reason given. I heard through my sponsor that Bassett never presented my name to the membership committee. He wanted no dancing-masters in his club.”
    “So you thought you’d make trouble for him.”
    “Perhaps.” He looked at me over his shoulder, his eye bright and empty as a bird’s. “Did I succeed?”
    “I stopped it before it