The Instant Enemy by Ross MacDonald Page B

the rocks.”
    “That will suit me.”
    She padded out of the room and come back with lowball glasses full of ice and gin.
    I sipped at mine. “Cheers.”
    “Here, have a seat.” She indicated a slip-covered davenport and sat down crowding me. “You were going to tell me what Jack is up to.”
    “I don’t know all the ramifications. He seems to be doing an investigative job—”
    She shut me off impatiently. “Don’t let him fool you. And don’t you cover up for him, either. There’s a woman in it, isn’t there? He’s got another place in L.A. and that woman is living with him again. Isn’t that right?”
    “You know him better than I do.”
    “You bet I do. We’ve been married for thirty years, and for half of those thirty years he’s been chasing the same skirt.”She leaned toward me with an avid mouth. “Have you seen the woman?”
    “I’ve seen her.”
    “Say I show you a picture of her,” she said, “are you willing to tell me if it’s the same woman?”
    “If you’ll help me locate Jack.”
    She gave my question serious thought. “He’s headed for the Bay area, God knows why. I thought at least he’d be staying overnight. But he took a shower and changed his clothes and ate the dinner I cooked for him, and then he was off again.”
    “Where in the Bay area?”
    “The Peninsula. I heard him call Palo Alto before he left. He made a reservation at the Sandman Motor Hotel. That’s all I know. He doesn’t tell me anything any more, and I know why. He’s after that piece of skirt again. He had that light in his eye.” Her voice buzzed with resentment, like a hornet caught in a web. She drowned it with gin. “I’ll show you her picture.”
    She set down her empty glass on a table inset with polished bits of stone, left the room and came back. She thrust a small photograph at me, and turned up the three-way lamp.
    “That’s her, isn’t it?”
    It was a full-face picture of Laurel Smith, taken when she was a dark-haired girl in her twenties. Even in this small and carelessly printed photograph, her beauty showed through. I remembered her beaten face as they lifted her into the ambulance, and I had a delayed shock, a sense of something valuable being destroyed by time and violence.
    Mrs. Fleischer repeated her question. I answered her carefully: “I
think
it is. Where did you get this picture?”
    “I got it out of Jack’s wallet while he was taking his shower. He started carrying it again. It’s an old picture he’s had for a long time.”
    “How long?”
    “Let’s see.” She counted on her fingers. “Fifteen years. It was fifteen years ago he picked her up. He kept her in Rodeo City, claimed she was a witness, that everything he did wasstrictly business. But the only crime
she
ever witnessed was Deputy Jack Fleischer taking off his pants.”
    There was sly satisfaction in her eyes. She was betraying her husband to me just as completely as he had betrayed her. And as an old cop’s wife, she was betraying herself.
    She took the picture and laid it on the table and picked up her glass. “Drink up. We’ll have another.”
    I didn’t argue. Cases break in different ways. This case was opening, not like a door or even a grave, certainly not like a rose or any flower, but opening like an old sad blonde with darkness at her core.
    I emptied my glass, and she took it out to the kitchen for a refill. I think while she was out of the room she sneaked an extra drink for herself. Coming back she bumped the doorframe of the living room and spilled gin on her hands.
    I took both glasses from her and set them down on the stony table. She swayed in front of me, her eyes unfocused. She forced them back into focus, the cobweb of fine lines surrounding them cutting deep into her flesh.
    “It’s the same woman, isn’t it?” she said.
    “I’m pretty sure it is. Do you know her name?”
    “She called herself Laurel Smith in Rodeo City.”
    “She still does.”
    “Jack’s living with