The Way Some People Die Read online

  “About your brother? He’s been getting around. Your boat is gone, but I suppose you know that.”

  “The Aztec Queen?” He leaned toward me, heavy-shouldered, the old davenport creaking under his weight. “Gone where?”

  “To Mexico, perhaps. Wherever Joe’s gone.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” His dark eyes, peering distracted from the ruined face, glanced around the room. His gaze rested on the gilt Christ above the mantel, and dropped. He stood up and moved towards me. “How long has the boat been gone? How do you know Joe took it?”

  “I talked to Galley. She dropped him near the yacht basin early this morning, four or five o’clock. Does Joe have a key to the boat?”

  “The bastard has my keys. You got a car with you? I got to get down there.”

  “I’ll drive you if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “I’m feeling up to it. Wait, I’ll get my shoes on.” He shuffled out of the room in stocking feet, and stamped back wearing boots and a leather jacket. “Let’s go.”

  He noticed that I was looking at the painted schooner on the wall. It wasn’t a lithograph, as I’d thought at first glance, but a mural painted directly on the plaster, with a black frame painted around it. The colors were garish, made worse by an impossible sunset raying the stiff water, and the draftsmanship was wobbly. Still, the leaning ship looked as if it was moving, and that was something.

  “How do you like the picture?” Mario said from the open door. “Joe did it when he was a kid. He wanted to be an artist. Too bad he had to grow up into an all-round heel.”

  I saw then that the painting had a signature, carefully painted in script: Joseph Tarantine, 1934. It had a title, too, probably copied from a calendar: When My Ship Comes In.

  I drove downhill to the palm-lined boulevard that skirted the seashore, and along it to the dock. Mario directed me to a lot at the base of the breakwater, where I parked beside a weatherbeaten Star boat perched on a trailer. A brisk offshore wind was blowing the sand, and tossing puffs of spray across the concrete breakwater. In its lee a hundred boats lay at their moorings, ranging from waterlogged skiffs to seventy-foot sailing yachts with masts like telephone poles.

  Mario looked across the bright water of the basin and groaned out loud. “It’s gone all right. He took my boat.” He sounded ready to cry.

  I followed him up the sand-drifted steps to a gray one-room building marked HARBORMASTER. Its door was locked. We could see through the window that the office was empty.

  An old man in a dinghy with an outboard chugged up to the landing platform below. Mario hailed him. “Where’s the Chief?”

  The old man’s answer was blown away by the wind. We went down the slanting gangway to the platform, which rose and dropped with the swells. “Where’s Chief Schreiber?”

  “He went out on the Coast Guard cutter,” the old man said. “They got a radio call from a San Pedro tuna boat.” He lifted the outboard motor clear of the stern and heaved it onto the dock. “There’s a boat on the rocks at Sanctuary. They said it looks as if it’s breaking up. What happened to your face, chum?”

  “Never mind that.” Mario’s hand closed on the old man’s arm. “Did you catch the name of the boat?”

  The old man pulled away. “Don’t get excited, friend. Just take it easy. The tuna boat didn’t get close enough to read the name. You lose a boat?”

  “You guessed it.”

  “It’s a sport-fishing boat with aluminum outriggers.”

  Mario turned to me urgently: “Drive me out to Sanctuary, how about it?” The ugly bruises around his eyes were livid against his pallor.

  “Don’t you think you better take it easy?”

  “When my boat’s breaking up on the rocks? You don’t want to drive me, I’ll take my motorcycle.”

  “I’ll drive you,” I said. “How far is it?”

  “Less than ten miles. Come on.”

  “Is it your boat?” The old man’s question blew after us like a seagull’s cry, and blew away unanswered.

  We drove down the coast highway in silence. Mario sat glum beside me, glaring down at his skinned knuckles, which he rapped together fiercely time after time. With his bandage-helmeted head and damaged Latin features, he looked like a wounded gladiator. I hoped he wasn’t going to pass out on my hands.

  “Who beat you up, Mario?” I asked him after a while.

  It was some time before he answered. When he did, his voice was thick with remembered anger. “There were three of them. Two of them held me while the other one sloughed me. Who they were is my own business. I’ll take care of them personally, one at a time.”

  He dug into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a dully gleaming object. I took my eyes from the road to glance at it. It was a curved metal bar of aluminum, about five inches long, with four round fingerholes and a taped grip. Mario slipped it over his fingers and smacked his armed right hand in the open palm of his left. “I’ll take care of them personally,” he growled to himself.

  “Put it away,” I said. “It’s a felony to carry knuckles like that. Where did you get it?”

  “Took it away from a customer one time. I used to be a bartender in town.” He kissed the cruel edge of the metal and dropped it back in his pocket. “I thought it might come in handy. I’m glad I kept it.”

  “You’ll get yourself in worse trouble. Why did they beat you, Mario?”

  “It was my lousy brother’s fault,” he said. “He skipped on Friday night and left me holding the bag. They thought I was in it with him. He didn’t even warn me ahead of time. They came aboard the Queen in the middle of the night and dragged me out of my bunk. I couldn’t handle three.”

  “Is that the night you and Joe got back from Ensenada?”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “What about Ensenada? Joe and me went fishing off Catalina Thursday and Friday. We anchored off the island overnight.”

  “Catch anything?”

  “Not a damn thing. What’s this about Ensenada, anyway?”

  “I heard that Dowser has a Mexican branch. Your loyalty to Dowser is very moving, especially after what he did to your face.”

  “I don’t know any Dowser,” he answered unconvincingly. “You wouldn’t be Treasury, would you?”

  “I would not. I told you I’m a private detective.”

  “What’s your angle? You said you talked to Galley, you must of found her.”

  “Your brother slugged me last night. It bothers me, for some reason.” But it was the dead man who lay heavy on my mind.

  “I’ll lend you my knucks when I finish with them,” he said. “Turn down the next side road.”

  It was a rutted lane, meandering across a high meadow to the lip of a sea-cliff. Near the cliff’s edge a grove of eucalyptus, with smooth pink trunks like naked flesh, huddled raggedly in the wind. There were weathered redwood tables for picnickers scattered among the trees. Mario ran down a path toward the edge of the cliff, and I followed him. I could see the moving water through the trees, as bright as mercury, and then the gray Coast Guard cutter a half-mile out from shore. It was headed north, back to Pacific Point.

  The path ended in a sagging wooden barrier beyond which the cliff dropped sheer. A hundred feet below, which looked like a hundred yards, the running surges burst on its rocky base. Mario leaned on the barrier, looking down.

  Where the surf boiled whitest on the jutting black basalt, the boat lay half-capsized. Wave after wave struck it and almost submerged it, pouring in foam-streaked sheets down its slanting deck. The boat rolled with their punches, and its smashed hull groaned on the rocks. The outriggers flopped loose like broken wings. It was a total loss.

  Mario’s body was swaying in sympathy with the boat. I didn’t have to ask if it was his. He groaned when the surf went over it, and his face was wetter than the spray accounted for.

  “I wonder what happened to Joe,” I said.

  “The bastard wrecked my boat. I hope he drowned.”

  A cor
morant flew over the water from north to south like a sharp black soul hell-bent. Mario watched it out of sight.

  CHAPTER 18: We were waiting at the yacht basin when the Coast Guard cutter docked. As the gray hull nudged the truck-tire buffers along the edge of the dock, two men jumped ashore. One was a tanned young Coast Guard lieutenant in working uniform, apparently the commander of the cutter. The other was a gray-bearded man in ancient suntans without insignia. He had the sea-scoured faded eyes, the air of quiet obstinacy and the occupational pot of an old Navy petty officer.

  “The Aztec Queen’s on the rocks at Sanctuary,” he said to Mario.

  “I know it. We just got back from there.”

  “No chance to salvage it,” the Coast Guard lieutenant said. “Even if we could get in close enough, it wouldn’t be worth it now. It’s breaking up.”

  “I know it.”

  “Let’s get inside.” The harbormaster hugged himself. “That’s a cold wind.”

  We followed him to his office on the breakwater at the foot of the dock. I sat in on a conference in the barren cubicle, or stood in on it, because there were only three chairs. They had seen nobody aboard the wreck. The skipper of the tuna boat who had reported it in the first place had seen nobody, either. The question was: how did the Aztec Queen get out of the yacht basin and nine miles down the coast?

  In official company, Mario wasn’t outspoken. He said he had no idea. But he looked at me as if he expected me to do the talking.

  “It’s your boat, isn’t it?” the harbormaster said.

  “Sure it’s my boat. I bought it secondhand from Rassi in January.”

  “Insured?” the lieutenant asked him.

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t afford the premiums.”

  “Tough tiddy. What were you using it for?”

  “Fishing parties, off and on. Mostly off, in this season. You know that, Chief.” He turned to Schreiber, who was leaning back in his chair against the wall. The coastal-waters chart behind his head showed a round grease spot where he had leaned before.

  “Let’s get back on the beam,” he said heavily. “The boat didn’t slip her moorings and steer herself onto the rocks. There must have been somebody aboard her.”

  “I know that,” Mario stirred uneasily in his chair. If talking had to be done, he wanted somebody else to do it for him.

  “Well, it wasn’t Captain Kidd. Didn’t the engine have a lock on it?”

  “Yeah. My brother had the keys, my brother Joe.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Now we’re getting somewhere. Your boat was gone this morning when I come on duty. I thought you took it.”

  “I been laid up,” Mario said. “I was in an accident.”

  “Yeah, I can see. Looks as if your brother got himself in a worse accident. Did you give him permission to take the boat?”

  “He didn’t need permission. He owned an interest in it.”

  “Well, it ain’t worth much now,” Schreiber said sententiously. “About two red cents. Are you sure it was your brother took her out?”

  “How can I be sure? I was home in bed.”

  “Joe was here this morning,” I said. “His wife drove him down before dawn.”

  “Did he say he was going out in the boat?” the lieutenant asked.

  “He didn’t say anything so far as I know.”

  “Where’s his wife now?”

  “She’s staying in Santa Monica with her mother. Mrs. Samuel Lawrence.”

  Schreiber made a note of the name. “I guess we better get in touch with her. It looks as if her husband’s lost at sea.”

  The lieutenant stood up and pulled his visored cap down over his forehead. “I’ll call the sheriff’s office. We’ll have to make a search for him.” He peered through the window across the yacht basin; red sunset streamers were unraveling on the horizon. “It’s getting pretty late to do anything tonight. We can’t get to the boat until low tide.”

  “Better try, though. There’s an off chance he’s still inside the cabin.” Schreiber turned to Mario: “Your brother have heart attacks or anything like that?”

  “Joe isn’t aboard,” Mario answered flatly.

  “How do you know?”

  “I got a feeling.”

  Schreiber rose, shrugging his thick shoulders. “You better go home, boy, and crawl back into the sack. I don’t know how you feel, but you look God-awful.”

  We went back to my car and turned toward the city. It lay serene on its terraced slopes in the last of the sunset, a few lights winking on like early stars. The white African buildings lay in the red air like something seen through rose-colored glasses in memory. Everything was still except the sea, which drummed and groaned behind us to the slow blues-beat of time.

  I was glad enough for once to get out of hearing of the sea. But I didn’t get far. Mario wouldn’t go home.

  He stopped me at a waterfront bar and said he could use a drink. I parked the car and got out. I could use one, too. Below the sea-wall that lined the other side of the boulevard, the surf complained and pounded like a tired heart. The heavy closing door shut out the sound.

  A fat old waiter came to the door, shook hands with Mario, lamented like a mother over his face. He seated us in a booth at the back of the room and lit a bottled red candle on our table. The bottle was thickly crusted with the meltings of other candles, like clotted blood. I thought of Dalling in his blood on the floor. He’d be on a mortuary slab by now, or under white light on an autopsy table, with a butterfly incision in his torso. Dalling seemed very distant and long ago.

  The waiter finished dabbing at the table with the end of a soiled napkin. “Something to eat, gentlemen? Or you want drinks?”

  I ordered a steak and a bottle of beer. Mario wanted a double whisky, straight.

  “Aren’t you going to eat? You’ll knock yourself out.”

  “We got minestrone tonight, Mario,” the waiter said. “It’s pooty good for a change.”

  “I got to save my appetite,” he explained. “Mama is waiting dinner for me.”

  “You want to phone your mama?”

  “Naw, I don’t want to talk to her.”

  The waiter padded away on flat feet.

  “What am I going to tell her?” Mario asked no one in particular. “I lost the boat, that’s bad enough, she never wanted me to buy the boat. I was a damn fool, I let Joe talk me into it. I put up all my cash, and now what have I got? Nothing. I’m on the rocks. And I could of bought an interest in this place, you know that? I tended bar here all last fall and I got on fine with the customers. I got on fine with George, the old guy. He’s getting ready to retire and I could of been sitting pretty instead of on my uppers the way I am.”

  He was falling into the singsong of a man with a grievance, as if the whisky he ordered had hit him in the emotions before he drank it. George brought our drinks, silencing Mario. I looked around the room he might have bought a piece of. It had more decorations than a briefcase general: strings of colored bulbs above the bar, deer heads and stuffed swordfish, photographs of old baseball teams, paintings of cardboard mountains, German bear-mugs. On a platform over the kitchen door, an eagle with glaring glass eyes was attacking a stuffed mountain-lion. All the group needed to complete it was a stuffed taxidermist.

  “The boat is bad enough,” Mario repeated dismally. “What am I going to tell her about Joe? Joe’s always been her favorite, she’ll go nuts if she thinks he’s drowned. She used to drive us crazy when we were kids, worrying about the old man when he was out. It was kind of a relief when the old man died in bed—”

  “You said you had a feeling Joe isn’t aboard. Where do you get that feeling?”

  He drained his double shot-glass and rapped on the table for another. “Joe’s awful smart. Joe would never get caught. He was shoplifting in the stores before he was out of grade school, and he never got caught. He was the bright young brother, see, he had that innocent look. I tried it once and they hauled me off to Juvenile and Mama
said I was disgracing the family. Not Joe.”

  The waiter brought his whisky, and told me that my steak would soon be ready.

  “Besides,” Mario said, “the bastard can swim like a seal. He used to be a lifeguard on the beach. He’s been a lot of things, most of them lousy. I got a pretty good inkling where Joe is. He isn’t on the Queen and he isn’t on the bottom of the sea. He skipped again and left me holding the bag.”

  “How could he skip at sea?”

  “He abandoned the Queen, if you want my opinion. He had five hundred in it, I had fifteen. What did it matter to him, he makes big money. The bastard took her out and ditched her, so it would look as if he drowned himself. He probably made a rendezvous with the guy that has the cabin cruiser in Ensenada—” He cut himself off short, peered anxiously into my face.

  “Torres?” I said as casually as I could.

  His bruises served as a mask for whatever feelings he had. Deliberately, he emptied his second shot-glass, and sipped with fumbling lips at a glass of water. “I don’t know anything about any Torres. I was making it up as I went along, trying to figure how he ditched the boat.”

  “Why would he go to all that trouble?”

  “Take a look at my face and figure it out for yourself. They did this to me because I’m Joey’s brother, that’s all the reason they had. What would they do to him?” He answered his own question in pantomime, twisting his doubled fists in opposing directions, the way you behead a chicken.

  The steak came, and I washed down what I could eat of it with the remnant of my beer. Mario had his third double. He was showing signs of wear, and I decided not to let him have any more. But it turned out that I didn’t have to interfere.

  Customers had been drifting in by ones and twos, most of them heading for the bar at the front, where they perched like roosting chickens in a row. I was trying to catch the waiter’s eye, to signal for my check, when a man opened the front door. He stood with his hand on the knob, scanning the bar-flies, a big man with a ten-gallon hat who looked like a rancher in his Saturday suit. Then his glance caught the back of Mario’s bandaged head, and he strode toward us.