Ross Macdonald - Black Money

Ross Macdonalds real name was Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Millar returned to the U.S. as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award, as well as the Mystery Writers of Great Britains Silver Dagger Award. He died in 1983.

The Dark Tunnel
Trouble Follows Me
Blue City
The Three Roads
The Moving Target
The Drowning Pool
The Way Some People Die
The Ivory Grin
Meet Me at the Morgue
Find a Victim
The Name Is Archer
The Barbarous Coast
The Doomsters
The Galton Case
The Ferguson Affair
The Wycherly Woman
The Zebra-Striped Hearse
The Chill
Black Money
The Far Side of the Dollar
The Instant Enemy
The Goodbye Look
The Underground Man
Sleeping Beauty
The Blue Hammer

FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, MAY 1996

Copyright 1965 by Ross Macdonald
Copyright renewed 1993 by Margaret Millar

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1965.

A condensed version of this novel appeared in Cosmopolitan under the title The Demon Lover.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
L.C. catalog card number: 66-10031
Vintage eISBN: 978-0-307-75956-6

Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

v3.1

To Robert Easton

The people and events in this novel are all imaginary, and do not refer to any actual people and events. R.M.

I D BEEN HEARING about the Tennis Club for years, but Id never been inside of it. Its courts and bungalows, its swimming pool and cabanas and pavilions, were disposed around a cove of the Pacific a few miles south of the Los Angeles County border. Just parking my Ford in the asphalt lot beside the tennis courts made me feel like less of a dropout from the affluent society.

The carefully groomed woman at the front desk of the main building told me that Peter Jamieson was probably in the snack bar. I walked around the end of the fifty-meter pool, which was enclosed on three sides by cabanas. On the fourth side the sea gleamed through a ten-foot wire fence like a blue fish alive in a net. A few dry bathers were lying around as if the yellow eye of the sun had hypnotized them.

When I saw my prospective client, in the sunny courtyard outside the snack bar, I recognized him instinctively. He looked like money about three generations removed from its source. Though he couldnt have been out of his early twenties, his face was puffy and apologetic, the face of a middle-aged boy. Under his carefully tailored Ivy League suit he wore a layer of fat like easily penetrable armor. He had the kind of soft brown eyes which are very often short-sighted.

When I approached his table he got up quickly, almost knocking over his double malted. You must be Mr. Archer.

I acknowledged that I was.

Im glad to see you, He let me feel his large amorphous hand. Let me get you something. The Monday hot lunch is New England boiled dinner.

Thanks, I had lunch before I left Los Angeles. A cup of coffee, maybe.

He went and got it for me. In the creeping fig that covered one wall of the court, a pair of house finches were discussing family matters. The male, which had a splash of red on its front, took off on an errand. My eye followed him across the framed blue sky, then out of the frame.

Its a beautiful day, I said to Peter Jamieson. Also this coffee is good.

Yes, they make good coffee. He sipped dolefully at his malted, then said abruptly: Can you get her back for me?

I cant make your girl come back if she doesnt want to. I told you that on the phone.

I know. I put it wrong. Even assuming she doesnt come back to me, we can still save her from ruining her life. He rested his arms on the table and leaned towards me, trying to imbue me with crusading fervor. We cant let her marry this man. And Im not talking out of jealousy. Even if I cant have her, I want to protect her.

From the other man.

Im serious, Mr. Archer. This man is apparently wanted by the police. He claims to be a Frenchman, a French aristocrat no less, but nobody really knows who he is or where he comes from. He may not even be Caucasian.

Where did you get that idea?

Hes so dark. And Ginny is so fair. It nauseates me to see her with him.

But it doesnt nauseate her.

No. Of course she doesnt know what I know about him. Hes a wanted man, probably some kind of a criminal.

How did you find that out?

From a detective. He caught meI mean, I was watching the house last night, waiting to see if Ginny came home with him.

Do you make a practice of watching Martels house?

Just this last weekend. I didnt know if they were coming back from the weekend.

She went away for the weekend with him?

He nodded dismally. Before she left she gave me back my engagement ring. She said she had no further use for it. Or me.

He fumbled in his watch pocket and produced the ring, as if it was evidence. In a way it was. The diamonds that encrusted the platinum band must have been worth several thousand dollars. Its return meant that Ginny was serious about Martel.

What did the man say?

Peter didnt seem to hear me. He was absorbed in the ring. He turned it slowly so that the diamonds caught and refracted the light from the sky. He winced, as if their cold fire had burned his fingers.

What did the detective say about Martel?

He didnt actually say anything outright He asked me what I was doing there sitting in my car, and I told him I was waiting for Martel. He wanted to know where Martel came from, how long hed been in Montevista, where he got his money

Martel has money?

He seems to have. He certainly flings it around. But as I told the man, I dont know where it came from or where he came from. Then he tried to ask me some questions about Ginnyhe must have seen her with Martel. I refused to discuss her, and he let me go.

Was he a local detective?

I dont know. He showed me some kind of a badge, but I couldnt see it in the dark. He got in the car beside me all of a sudden and started talking. He was a very fast talker.

Describe him. Young or old?

In between, around thirty-five or so. He had on some kind of a tweed jacket, and a light gray hat pulled down over his eyes. He was about my size, I thinkIm five-foot-tenbut not so heavy. I really cant describe his face, but I didnt like the sound of him. I thought at first he was some kind of crook trying to hold me up.

Did he have a gun?

If he had, I didnt see it. When he finished asking me questions, he told me to be on my way. That was when I decided to buy a detective of my own.