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

“Mr. Kuntz
wants these right away.”
                 The
guards at the majors asked for passports and visas and did everything but probe
the body cavities for concealed hand grenades. The independents were more lax,
and I was taking a chance on that.
                 He
pushed open the gate and waved me through. I emerged in a white-hot concrete
alley like the entrance to a maze and lost myself among the anonymous
buildings. I turned down a dirt road with a sign that said “Western Main
Street,” and went up to a couple of painters who were painting the
weather-warped front of a saloon with a swinging door and no insides.
                 “Stage
three?” I asked them.
                 “Turn
right, then left at the first turn. You’ll see the sign across the street from
New York Tenement.”
                 I
turned right and passed London Street and Pioneer Log Cabin, then left in front of Continental Hotel. The false fronts looked so real from a
distance, so ugly and thin close up, that they made me feel suspicious of my
own reality. I felt like throwing away the golf bag and going into Continental
Hotel for an imitation drink with the other ghosts. But ghosts had no glands,
and I was sweating freely. I should have brought something lighter, like a
badminton racquet.
                 When
I reached stage three the red light was burning and the soundproof doors were
shut. I set the golf bag down against the wall and waited. After a while the
light went out. The door opened, and a herd of chorus girls in bunny costumes
came out and wandered up the street. I held the door for the last pair and
stepped inside.
                 The
interior of the sound stage was a reproduction of a theater, with red plush
orchestra seats and boxes, and gilt rococo decorations. The orchestra pit was
empty and the stage was bare, but there was a small audience grouped in the
first few rows. A young man in shirt sleeves was adjusting an overhead baby
spot. He called for lights, and the baby spot illuminated the head of a woman
sitting in the center of the first row facing a camera. I moved down the side
aisle and recognized Fay before the light went out.
                 The
light came on again, a buzzer sounded, and there was a heavy silence in the
room. It was broken by the woman’s deep voice: “Isn’t he marvelous?”
                 She
turned to a gray-mustached man beside her and gently shook his arm. He smiled
and nodded.
                 “Cut!”
A tired-looking little man with a bald head, beautifully clothed in pale-blue
gabardines, got up from behind the camera and leaned toward Fay Estabrook.
“Look, Fay, you’re his mother. He’s up there on the stage singing his heart out
for you. This is his first big chance; it’s what you’ve hoped and prayed for
all these years.”
                 His
emotional central European voice was so compelling that I glanced at the stage
involuntarily. It was still empty.
                 “Isn’t
he marvelous?” the woman said strenuously.
                 “Better.
Better. But remember the question is not a real question. It is a rhetorical
question. The accent is on the ‘marvelous.’”
                 “Isn’t
he marvelous!” the woman cried.
                 “More
accent. More heart, my dear Fay. Pour out your mother love to your son singing
so gloriously up there behind the footlights. Try again.”
                 “Isn’t
he marvelous!” the woman yelped viciously.
                 “No!
Sophistication is not the line. You must keep your intelligence out of this. Simplicity. Warm, loving simplicity. Do you get it, my dear Fay?”
                 She
looked angry and distraught. Everyone in the room, from assistant director to
prop man, was watching her expectantly. “Isn’t he marvelous?” she