Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair by Ross MacDonald Page A

criminal waiting for the executioner to throw the
switch.
                 It
wasn’t purely empathy with Donato: I doubt that there’s such a feeling as pure
empathy. For no clear reason, I’d put myself in the position of withholding
information about a major crime. And the man whose request I was honoring
wasn’t even a client.
                 I
sat there trying to convince myself that Ferguson had been having alcoholic
delusions about his wife. Or that the whole thing was a publicity hoax. Movie
actresses didn’t get themselves kidnapped in Buenavista .
Most of our crimes were done in the lower town, cheap fraud or senseless
violence. But my mind couldn’t evade the connection between the Broadman
killing and the Ferguson case. And I knew in my bowels that the threatening
call at midnight had been no hoax.
                 I
left the ugly eggs on my plate and went to the police station. Wills wasn’t in
yet, but the sergeant on duty at the desk assured me that he would have the men
in the patrol cars keep an eye on my home. By the time I had walked the several
blocks to the office, past the familiar faces of the downtown buildings, I felt
better. Nothing could happen to Sally in Buenavista .
                 My
office was one of a suite of two, with an anteroom between, on the second floor
of an old mustard-colored stucco court behind the post office. In the middle of
the imitation flagstone courtyard there was a fountain, a dry concrete
concavity inhabited by a lead dolphin which had long since emitted its last
watery gasp.
                 I
shared the suite and Mrs. Weinstein with another attorney, a middle-aged man
named Barney Millrace who specialized in tax and probate work. We were not
partners. I was on my way up, I hoped; Barney Millrace was on his way down, I
feared. He was a quiet drinker, so quiet that I sometimes forgot about him for
days.
                 Bella
Weinstein never let me forget her. She was a widow, fortyish, dark, and
intense, who had appointed herself my personal goad. She looked up from her
desk when I walked into the anteroom. Fixing me with her eye, she said in a
congratulatory way: “You’re early this morning, Mr. Gunnarson.”
                 “That’s
because I’ve been up all night. Rampaging and carousing.”
                 “I
bet. You have an appointment at nine-fifteen with Mrs. Al Stabile. I think she
wants a divorce again.”
                 “I’ll
head her off. Did she say why?”
                 “She
didn’t go into the gory details. But I gather Stabile’s been rampaging and
carousing again. You see where it leads. Also, a man named Padilla tried to
reach you.”
                 “How long ago?”
                 “Just a few minutes. He left a number. Shall I call him
back?”
                 “Right away, yes. I’ll take it inside.”
                 I
closed the door of my office and sat down at the ancient golden-oak roll-top
desk which I had imported at great expense from the Pennsylvania town where I
was born. My father had willed it to me, along with the small law library which
took up most of the shelves along one wall.
                 It’s
oddly pleasing to sit at your father’s desk. Diminishing,
too. It’s a long time before you begin to feel that you’re up to it. I
was beginning.
                 Padilla
was on the line when I lifted the receiver. “Mr. Gunnarson? I’m out at Colonel
Ferguson’s. He says I got to make this fast.”
                 “What
is it, Tony?”
                 “I
don’t want to go into it over the phone. Can you come out here?”
                 “Why
don’t you come to my office?”
                 “I
would, but I hate to leave the Colonel. He needs somebody to hold his hand.”
                 “The
hell I do,” I