Free The Instant Enemy by Ross MacDonald Page A

number?”
    “We’re wasting time.”
    “I asked you for his number.”
    I looked it up in my black book. She dialed, and got Sebastianon the first ring. He must have been sitting beside the telephone.
    “Mr. Sebastian? This is Ruth Marburg. Stephen Hackett’s mother. I’m at his Malibu place now, and I’d very much like to see you & Yes, tonight. Immediately, in fact. How soon can you get here? & Very well, I’ll look for you in half an hour. You won’t disappoint me, will you?”
    She hung up and looked at me quietly, almost sweetly. Her hand was still on the phone, as if she was taking Sebastian’s pulse by remote control.
    “He wouldn’t be in on this with his daughter, would he? I know that Stephen isn’t always popular with the hired help.”
    “Is that what we are, Mrs. Marburg?”
    “Don’t change the subject. I asked you a straight question.”
    “The answer is no. Sebastian doesn’t have that kind of guts. Anyway he practically worships your son.”
    “Why?” she asked me bluntly.
    “Money. He has a passion for the stuff.”
    “Are you
sure
he didn’t put the girl up to this?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Then what in hell does she think she’s doing?”
    “She seems to be in revolt, against everyone over thirty. Your son was the biggest target within reach. I doubt that she picked the target, though. Davy Spanner’s probably the main instigator.”
    “What does he want? Money?”
    “I haven’t figured out what he wants. Do you know of any connection between him and your son? This could be a personal thing.”
    She shook her head. “Maybe if you tell me what you know about him.”
    I gave her a quick rundown on Davy Spanner, son of a migrant laborer, orphaned at three or four and institutionalized, then taken by foster parents; a violent dropout from high school, a wandering teen-ager, car thief, jail graduate, candidate for more advanced felonies, possibly somewhat crazy in the head.
    Ruth Marburg listened to me with a suspicious ear. “You sound almost sympathetic.”
    “I almost am,” I said, though my kidneys were still sore. “Davy Spanner didn’t make himself.”
    She answered me with deliberate roughness: “Don’t give me that crap. I know these psychopaths. They’re like dogs biting the hands that feed them.”
    “Has Spanner had previous contact with your family?”
    “No. Not that I know of.”
    “But the girl has.”
    “Not with me. With Gerda, Stephen’s wife. The girl was interested in languages, or pretended to be. Gerda took her under her wing last summer. She’ll know better next time, if the family survives this.”
    I was getting impatient with the conversation. We seemed to have been sitting in the room for a long time. Book-lined, with the windows heavily draped, it was like an underground bunker cut off from the world of life.
    Ruth Marburg must have sensed or shared my feeling. She went to one of the windows and pulled back the drapes. We looked out at the broken necklace of lights along the shore.
    “I still can’t believe it happened,” she said. “Stephen has always been so careful. It’s one reason they don’t have servants.”
    “What’s Lupe?”
    “We hardly think of him as a servant. He’s really the manager of the estate.”
    “A friend of yours?”
    “I wouldn’t say that, exactly. We get along.” Her half-smile, and the way she held her body, gave the words a sexual connotation.
    “May I talk to Lupe?”
    “Not now. He’s a pretty sick man.”
    “Should he have a doctor?”
    “I’m going to get him one.” She turned and faced me, visibly shaken by her own angry force. “You needn’t take responsibility for things you’re not responsible for. I’m hiringyou to get my son back alive.”
    “You haven’t hired me yet.”
    “And I may not.” She turned back to the window. “What’s keeping him?” She clenched her hands and rapped the knuckles together, making a noise which reminded me that she contained a skeleton.
    As