The Far Side of the Dollar (34 page)

“But I couldn’t die without knowing. I knew my life was empty and meaningless. I had to find out why.”

“And now it’s full and meaningful?”

“It’s over,” she said. “Look, Mr. Archer, I was frank with you today. Give me a
quid pro quo
. All I’m asking for is time to use my pills.”

“No.”

“You owe me something. I helped you as much as I dared this afternoon.”

“You weren’t trying to help me, Mrs. Hillman. You only told me what I already knew, or what I was about to find out. You gave me the fact that Tom was adopted in such a way that it would conceal the more important fact that he was your husband’s natural son. You kept alive the lie that your husband was sterile because it hid your motive for murdering Carol Harley.”

“I’m afraid your reasoning is much too subtle for me.”

“I hardly think so. You’re a subtle woman.”

“I? Subtle? I’m a ninny, a poor booby. The people in the streets, the scum of the earth knew more about my life than I—” She broke off. “So you won’t help me.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. The police are on their way now.”

She regarded me thoughtfully. “There would still be time for me to use the gun.”

“No.”

“You’re very hard.”

“It isn’t me, really, Mrs. Hillman. It’s just reality catching up.”

The sheriff’s car was in the driveway now. I rose and went as far as the sitting-room door and called out to Bastian to come in. Elaine sighed behind me like a woman in passion.

Her passion was a solitary one. She had picked up her knitting in both hands and pressed both steel needles into her breast. She struck them into herself again before I reached her. By the middle of the following day she had succeeded in dying.

THE BARBAROUS COAST

The beautiful, high-diving blonde had Hollywood dreams and stars in her eyes but now she seems to have disappeared without a trace. Hired by her hotheaded husband and her rummy “uncle,” Lew Archer sniffs around Malibu and finds the stink of blackmail, blood money, and murder on every pricey silk shirt. Beset by dirty cops, a bumptious boxer turned silver-screen pretty boy, and a Hollywood mogul with a dark past, Archer discovers the secret of a grisly murder that just won’t stay hidden.

Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27903-3

A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he’s being fed a line, but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts the case. He tracks the wayward maid to a ramshackle motel in a seedy, rundown small town, but finds her dead in her tiny room, with her throat slit ear to ear. Archer digs deeper into the case and discovers a web of deceit and intrigue, with crazed number-runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls, and a golden-boy shipping heir who’s mysteriously gone missing.

Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27899-9

Lew finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands—including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of Nembutal, a six-figure ransom, and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach. Here is Ross Macdonald’s masterful tale of buried memories, the consequences of arrogance, and the anguished relations between parents and their children.

Crime Fiction/978-0-375-70866-4

Hired by Carl Hallman, the desperate-eyed junkie scion of an obscenely wealthy political dynasty, detective Lew Archer investigates the suspicious deaths of Hallman’s parents, Senator Hallman and his wife, Alicia. Arriving in the sleepy town of Purissima, Archer discovers that orange groves may be where the Hallmans made their mint but they’ve been investing heavily in political intimidation and police brutality to shore up their rancid riches. However, after years of dastardly double-crossing and low down dirty dealing, the family seems to be on the receiving end of a karmic death blow. With two already dead and another consigned to the nuthouse, Archer races to crack the secret before another Hallman lands on the slab.

Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27904-0

In a rundown house in Santa Monica, Mrs. Samuel Lawrence presses fifty crumpled bills into Lew Archer’s hand and asks him to find her wandering daughter, Galatea. Described as ‘crazy for men’ and without discrimination, she was last seen driving off with small-time gangster Joe Tarantine, a hophead hood with a rep for violence. Archer traces the hidden trail from San Francisco slum alleys to the luxury of Palm Springs, traveling through an urban wilderness of drugs and viciousness. As the bodies begin to pile up, he finds that even angel faces can mask the blackest of hearts.

Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27898-2

Lew is hired to investigate a burglary at the mission-style mansion mansion of Irene and Larry Chalmers. The prime suspect, their son Nick, has a talent for disappearing, and the Chalmerses are a family with money and memories to burn. As Archer zeros in on Nick, he discovers a troubled blonde, a stash of wartime letters, a mysterious hobo. Then a stiff turns up in a car on an empty beach. And Nick turns up with a Colt .45.

Crime Fiction/978-0-375-70865-7

At first glance, it’s an open-and-shut missing persons case: a headstrong daughter has run off to be with her hothead juvenile delinquent boyfriend. That is until this bush-league Bonnie and Clyde kidnap Stephen Hackett, a local millionaire industrialist. Now, Archer is offered a cool 100 Gs for his safe return by Hachett’s coquettish heiress mother who has her own mysterious ties to this disturbed duo. But the deeper Archer digs, the more he realizes that nothing is as it seems and everything is questionable. Is the boyfriend a psycho ex-con with murder on the brain or a damaged youngster trying to straighten out his twisted family tree? And is the daughter simply his nympho sex-kitten companion in crime or really a fragile kid, trying to block out horrific memories of bad acid and an unspeakable sex crime.

Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27905-7

ALSO AVAILABLE:

Black Money
, 978-0-679-76810-4
The Blue Hammer
, 978-0-679-76810-4
The Chill
, 978-0-679-76807-4
The Drowning Pool
, 978-0-679-76806-7
The Far Side of the Dollar
, 978-0-679-76865-4
Find a Victim
, 978-0-375-70867-1
The Galton Case
, 978-0-679-76864-7
The Wycherly Woman
, 978-0-375-70144-3
The Moving Target
, 978-0-375-70146-7
The Underground Man
, 978-0-679-76808-1
The Zebra-Striped Hearse
, 978-0-375-70145-0

VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com