Read Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) for Free Online Page A

           “White hair, premature, eyes blue or gray. Middle-sized and wiry. Well-dressed. Handsome if you like an aging chorus boy.”
                 “You
know I do. Anybody else?” I couldn’t show him
Sampson’s picture or mention Sampson’s name. He was paid for collecting names
in groups of two. Very badly paid.
                 “Once at least. She had late supper with a fat tourist-type
dressed in ten-dollar bills. He was so squiffed he
had to be helped to the door. That was several months ago. I haven’t seen her
since.”
                 “And
you don’t know where she lives?”
                 “Somewhere out of town. It’s off my beat. Anyway, I’ve given
you a fin’s worth.”
                 “I
won’t deny it, but there’s one more thing. Is Simeon Kuntz working now?”
                 “He’s
doing an independent on the Telepictures lot. She
might be out there. I heard they’re shooting.”
                 I
handed him his bill. He kissed it and pretended to use it to light a cigarette.
His wife snatched it out of his hand. When I left they were chasing each other
around the kitchen, laughing like a couple of amiable maniacs.
                 My
taxi was waiting in front of the apartment house. I took it home and went to
work on the telephone directories for Los Angeles and environs. There was no
Fay Estabrook listed.
                 I
called Telepictures in Universal City and asked for
Fay Estabrook. The operator didn’t know if she was on the lot; she’d have to
make inquiries. On a small lot it meant that Fay was definitely a has-been
where pictures were concerned.
                 The
operator came back to the telephone: “Miss Estabrook is here, but she’s working
just now. Is there a message?”
                 “I’ll
come out. What stage is she on?”
                 “Number
three.”
                 “Is
Simeon Kuntz directing?”
                 “Yes.
You have to have a pass, you know.”
                 “I
have,” I lied.
                 Before
I left I made the mistake of taking off my gun and hanging it away in the hall
closet. Its harness was uncomfortable on a hot day, and I didn’t expect to be
using it. There was a bag of battered golf clubs in the closet. I took them out
to the garage and slung them into the back of my car.
                 Universal
City wore its stucco facades like yellowing paper collars. The Telepictures buildings were newer than the rest, but they
didn’t seem out of place among the rundown bars and seedy restaurants that
lined the boulevard. Their plaster walls had a jerry-built look, as if they
didn’t expect to last.
                 I
parked around the corner in a residential block and lugged my bag of clubs to
the main entrance of the studio. There were ten or twelve people sitting on
straight-backed chairs outside the casting-office, trying to look sought-after
and complacent. A girl in a neat black suit brushed threadbare was taking off
her gloves and putting them on. A grim-faced woman sat with a grim-faced little
girl on her knee, dressed in pink silk and whining. The usual assortment of
displaced actors - fat, thin, bearded, shaven, tuxedoed, sombreroed ,
sick, alcoholic, and senile - sat there with great dignity, waiting for
nothing.
                 I
tore myself away from all that glamour, and went down the dingy hall to the swinging
gate. A middle-aged man with a chin like the butt end of a ham was sitting
beside the gate in a blue guard’s uniform, with a black visored cap on his head and a black holster on his hip. I stopped at the gate, hugging
the golf bag as if it meant a great deal to me. The guard half opened his eyes
and tried to place me.
                 Before
he could ask anything that might arouse his suspicions, I said: