The Way Some People Die Read online

  “That makes it worse,” the boy said virtuously. He sounded very virtuous for a night clerk in a waterfront motel. “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Statutory rape, even.”

  The man said without inflection: “I got a daughter at home as old as her. What am I going to do? I got a wife.”

  The virtuous youth said: “You’re remembering a little late. I tell you what I have to do. I have to call the police.”

  “No! You don’t have to call the police. She doesn’t want you to call them, do you? Do you? I paid her money, she won’t testify. Will you?”

  “They’ll make me,” she said glumly. “They’ll send me away. You, too.”

  “This isn’t a call-house, mister,” the boy said. “The manager says if this sort of thing comes up, I got to call the police. I didn’t invite you here.”

  “She did! It’s all her fault. I’m a stranger in town, son. I didn’t realize the situation. I came down here from Portland for the ad convention. I didn’t realize the situation.”

  “Now you do. We let this sort of thing go on, they take away our license. The manager hears about it, I lose my job. And I’m not your son.”

  “You don’t have to get nasty.” The older man’s voice was querulous. “Maybe what you need is a punch in the nose.”

  “Try it on, you old goat. Only button yourself up first.”

  The girl’s voice cut in shrilly: “Talk to him. You won’t get anywhere like that. He’ll tag you for assault along with the rest.”

  “I’m sorry,” the older man said.

  “You’ve got plenty to be sorry about.”

  The girl began to sob mechanically. “They’ll send me away, and you too. Can’t you do anything, mister?”

  “Maybe I could talk to the manager? It isn’t good business if you call the police—”

  “He’s out of town,” the boy said. “Anyway, I can handle this myself.”

  After a pause, the man asked haltingly: “How much money do you make a week?”

  “Forty a week. Why?”

  “I’ll pay you to forget this business. I haven’t got much ready cash—”

  “You’ve got some twenties in your wallet,” the girl said. She had given over sobbing as suddenly as she’d started. “I saw them.”

  “You shut up,” the boy said. “I couldn’t take a bribe, mister. It would mean my job.”

  “I have about eighty-five in cash here. You can have it.”

  The boy laughed flatly. “For contributing and statutory rape? That would be cheap now, wouldn’t it? Jobs are scarce around here.”

  “I have a hundred-dollar traveler’s check.” The man’s voice was brightening. “I’ll give you a hundred and fifty. I got to keep a little to pay my hotel.”

  “I’ll take it,” the boy said. “I don’t like to do it, but I’ll take it.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Come on down to the office, mister. You can use the fountain pen in the office.”

  “Gee, thanks, mister,” the girl said softly. “You saved my life for sure.”

  “Get away from me, you dirty little tart.” His voice was furious.

  “Quiet,” the boy said. “Quiet. Let’s get out of here.”

  I moved back to the sun-porch, and watched them around the corner as they came out. The boy moved briskly ahead, swinging his arms. The older man slouched behind with his hat in his hand. His untied shoelaces dragged on the floor of the gallery.

  CHAPTER 21: I tapped on the door.

  “Who is it?” the girl whispered.

  I tapped on the door again.

  “Is that you, Ronnie?”

  I answered yes. Her bare feet padded across the floor, and the door opened. “He was easy—” she started to say. Then her hand flew up to her mouth, and her eyes darkened at the sight of me. “Augh?”

  She tried to shut the door in my face. I pushed through past her and leaned on the door, closing it behind me. She backed away, the fingers of both hands spread across her red-smeared mouth. She had nothing on but a skirt, and after a moment she remembered this. Her hands slid down to cover her breasts. They were young and small, easy to cover. The bones in her shoulders stood out, puny as a chicken’s. A part of her left arm was pitted like ancient marble by hypo marks.

  “Yours is a keen racket, sister. Can’t you think of anything better to do with your body?”

  She retreated further, as far as the unmade bed in the corner of the room. It was an ugly little room, walled and ceiled with sick green plaster that reminded me of public locker rooms, furnished with one bed, one chair, one peeling veneer dresser and a rug the moths had been at. It was a hutch for quick rabbit-matings, a cell where lonely men could beat themselves to sleep with a dark brown bottle. The girl looked too good for the room, though I knew she wasn’t.

  She picked her sweater off the floor and pulled it over her head. “What business of yours is it, what I do with my body?” Her red-eyed breast looked dully at me for an instant before she covered it. “You get out of here or I’ll call the key-boy.”

  “Good. I want to talk to him.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re a policeman.” There was something peculiar about her eyes.

  “A private cop,” I said. “Does that make you feel any better?”

  “Get out of my room and leave me alone, then I’ll feel better.”

  I moved toward her instead. Her face was pinched thin and white by an internal chill. The peculiar thing about her eyes was that they had no centers. I looked through them into darkness, cold darkness inside her. A tremor started in her hands, moved up her arms to her shoulders and down her body. She sat down on the edge of the bed and gripped her knees with both hands, bracing her limbs against each other to keep them from flying apart. A shadow crossed her face as dark and final as the shadow of death. She looked like a little old woman in a gold wig.

  “How long has it been?” I said.

  “Three days. I’m going crazy.” Her teeth began to chatter. She closed them hard over her lower lip.

  “The bad stuff, kid?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m sorry for you.”

  “A lot of good that does me. I haven’t slept for three nights.”

  “Since Tarantine went away.”

  She straightened up, having repressed the tremor. “Do you know where Joey is? Can you get me some? I’ve got the money to pay for it—”

  “I’m not in the business, kid. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Ruth. Do you know where he is? Do you work for him?”

  “Not me. So far as Joey’s concerned, you’ll have to sweat it out.”

  “I can’t. I’ll die.” And maybe she was right.

  “How long have you been on the kick?”

  “Since last fall. Ronnie started me.”

  “How often?”

  “Once a week, about. Then twice a week. Every day the last couple of months.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. They cut it. It was costing me fifty dollars a day.”

  “Is that why you started shaking down the tourists?”

  “It’s a living.” She raised her heavy eyes. “How do you know so much about me?”

  “I don’t. But I know one thing. You should see a doctor.”

  “What’s the use? They’ll send me away to a Federal hospital, and then I’ll die for certain.”

  “They’ll taper you off.”

  “How do you know, have you had it?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know what you’re talking about. It turns you inside out. I was down on the beach last night and every time a wave slapped the sand it hit me like an earthquake, the end of the world. I lay back and looked straight up and there wasn’t any sky. Nothing but yellow specks in my eyes, and the black. I felt the beach slanting down under me and I slid off in the black. It’s funny, it felt as if I was falling into myself, I was hollow like a well and falling down me.” She touched her stoma
ch. “It’s funny I’m still alive. It was like dying.”

  She lay back on the rumpled bed and looked at the ceiling with her arms under her head, her breasts pulled almost flat, her nose and mouth and chin carved stark by strain. Sweat was darkening her narrow golden temples. The sick-green ceiling was her only sky. “I guess I’ll have to go through it again, though, before I really die.”

  “You’re not going to die, Ruth.” That was my statement. But I felt like a prosecutor cross-questioning a dead girl in the lower courts of hell. “What were you doing on the beach last night?”

  “Nothing.” Her answer was like a memory of an earlier, happier life: “We used to go down to the beach all the time before Dad went away. We had a dog then, a little golden cocker, and he used to chase the birds and we used to take our lunch down to the beach and have a picnic and light a fire and have a lot of fun. Dad always collected seashells for me: we made a real collection.” She propped herself up on her elbows, wrinkling her blank young brow. “I wonder where my seashells are, I don’t know what happened to them.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “I hardly ever see him any more. He went away when my mother left him: they ran a photographer’s studio in town. He got a job as radio operator on a ship, and he’s always way off somewhere, India or Japan. He sends my grandmother money for me, though.” Her tone was defensive. “He writes me letters.”

  “You live with your grandmother, do you?”

  She dropped back flat on the bed. “More or less. She’s a waitress in a truck-stop down the line. She isn’t home at night and she sleeps in the daytime. That was the trouble last night. The house began to breathe around me, in and out, and I got scared and I was all alone. I thought if I went down to the beach, maybe I’d feel better. It always used to make me feel good when I smelled the ocean. It didn’t work. It was worse in the open. I told you about the stars, how they were like holes in my head, and falling into the black. When I woke up from that, I saw the man come out of the sea and I guess I blew my top. I thought he was a merman like the poem we had in English last year. I still don’t know for sure if he was real.”

  “Tell me about the man. Where did you see him?”

  “Mackerel Beach, where they have the barbecue pits: that’s where we always used to have our picnics.” She raised one hand and gestured vaguely southward. “It’s about a mile down the boulevard. I was lying behind one of the wind-shelters on the sand, and I was awful cold.” The recollection made her shiver a little. “The black was gone, though, and I wasn’t falling. I thought the worst was over. There was a little light on the water, and I always feel better in daylight when I can see things. Then this man stood up in the surf and walked out of the water up on the beach. It scared me stiff. I had a crazy idea that he belonged to the sea and was coming to get me. It was still pretty dark, though, and I lay still and he didn’t even see me. He walked into the bushes behind the barbecue pits. I think he had a car parked in the lane back there. I heard a motor starting after a while. He was real enough, I guess. Do you think he was real?”

  “He was a real man, sure. Did he have a bandage on his head?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It wasn’t Mario. Ronnie told me about Mario’s boat getting wrecked, and I thought it might have something to do with Mario’s boat—”

  “Did you see the boat?”

  “No. Maybe I heard it, I don’t know. Half the time if a seagull screams it blasts my ears like a steam whistle and half the time I’m deaf, I can’t hear a thing.” Like most dope addicts she was hypochondriac, more interested in her symptoms than anything else and talented in describing them.

  I said: “What did he look like?”

  “There wasn’t much light. I couldn’t see his face. He was mother-naked, or else he was wearing a light-colored bathing suit. I think he had a bundle around his neck.”

  “Was it anybody you know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Not Joe Tarantine?”

  “It couldn’t have been Joey. I wish it was. I’d have known Joey, mother-naked or not.”

  “He’s your source of supply, I take it.”

  “I’ve got no source of supply,” she said to the ceiling. “For three days now like three years. What would you do in my place, mister? Ronnie’s got weed, but that just makes me sicker. What would you do?”

  “Go to a doctor and taper off.”

  “I can’t do that, I told you. I can’t. You’re from L.A., aren’t you? You know where I can get it in L.A.? I made two hundred dollars the last three nights.”

  I thought of Dowser, who liked blondes. She’d be better sweating it out than going to Dowser, even if Dowser had the stuff to give her. “No, I don’t know.”

  “Ronnie knows a man in San Francisco. Ronnie was a runner for Herman Speed, before old Speed got shot. Do you think I could get some if I went to Frisco? I’ve been waiting for Joey to come back. He doesn’t come. Do you think he’ll ever come?”

  “Joey’s either dead or out of the country now. He won’t come back.”

  “I was afraid he wouldn’t. To hell with waiting for Joey any more. I’m going to Frisco.” She sat up suddenly and began to comb her hair.

  “Who’s the man there Ronnie told you about?”

  “I don’t know his name, they don’t use names. He calls himself Mosquito. He pushed the stuff for Speed last year. Now he’s doing it in Frisco.” She leaned over to pull on her shoes.

  “That’s a big city.”

  “I know where to go, Ronnie told me.” She covered her mouth with her hand in a schoolgirl’s gesture. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I always talk too much when people are nice to me. You’ve been awful nice to me, and I thought you were a policeman.”

  “I used to be,” I said, “but I won’t spoil your chance.”

  She was looking much better, now that she’d made up her mind to travel that night. There was some blood moving under her skin, some meaning in her eyes. But she still looked old enough to be her own mother.

  CHAPTER 22: The door sprang open without warning, as doors were always opening in my life. The boy Ronnie came in. A big nineteen or twenty, he had the face of a juvenile lead instead of a juvenile delinquent, keen and dark with a black brush of hair, a heavy single eyebrow barring his brow. His arms below the T-shirt were tanned and heavy-looking. The right one held a tire-iron.

  I saw this in the instant before he swung at my head. I ducked and moved in on him before he could swing again. The girl was silent behind me. My fingers found the wrist that held the tire-iron. I twisted it away with my other hand and tossed it clanking in a corner of the room. Then I pushed him away, looped an obvious left at his head, to bring up his guard, and put my weight behind a straight right to his center. It was a sucker punch, not on the side of the angels. A single futile blow for the damned.

  He fell turning on his face, and writhed on the floor for air. The girl joined him there, kneeling across him with little cries of love. He’d started her on heroin, given her yellow fever and white death, so she was crazy about him.

  His paralyzed diaphragm began to work again. He drew deep sighing breaths. I stood and watched him sit up, and thought I should have hit him harder.

  The girl’s white face slanted up towards me. “You big bully.”

  “You wait outside, Ruth. I want to talk to Ronnie.”

  “Who are you?” The boy’s words came hard between gulps of air. “What goes on?”

  “He says he’s a private cop.” Her arms were around his shoulders; one of her hands was gently stroking his flank.

  He pushed her away and rose unsteadily. “What do you think you want?” His voice was higher than it had been, as if my blow had reversed his adolescence.

  “Sit down.” I glanced at the single chair standing under the ceiling light. “I want some information.”

  “Not from me you don’t.” But he sat down. A nerve was twitching in his cheek, so that he seemed to be win
king at me gaily again and again.

  “Close the door,” I said to the girl. “Behind you.”

  “I’m staying. I’m not going to let you hurt him any more.”

  The boy’s face screwed up in sudden fury. “Get out of here, God damn you. Sell yourself for dog meat, only get out.” He was talking to the girl, taking out his humiliation on her.

  She answered him soberly: “If you say so, Ronnie,” and went out, dragging her feet.

  “You were a runner for Speed,” I said to the boy.

  Fury took hold of his face again and pulled it sharp and ratty. His ears were unnaturally small and close to his head. “Ruth’s been flapping at the mouth, eh? She’s a real fun person, Ruth is. I’ll have to talk to Ruth.”

  “You’ll lay off her entirely. I’ve got some more punches that you haven’t seen. No girl would look twice at your face again.”

  His light eyes flicked towards the tire-iron in the corner, and quickly away from it. He groped for a boyish and dutiful expression and presented it to me. “I can’t stay here, mister, honest. I got to get out in the office.”

  “There won’t be any more easy marks tonight.”

  He managed to show me crooked teeth in a crooked little smile. “I guess maybe I’m stupid, mister. I don’t get you at all.”

  “A century and a half is a lot of money to earn for five minutes’ fast talking.”

  The cheek twitched, and he winked again. He was the least charming boy I had ever talked to. “You’d never get him to testify,” he said.

  “Don’t kid yourself. He’ll wake up mad tomorrow morning. I can easily find him.”

  “The old goat was asking for it, wasn’t he?”

  “You’re the one that’s asking for it, boy. They don’t like badger games in a tourist town.”

  “I get it. You want a split.” He smiled and winked again.

  “I wouldn’t touch it. Information is what I want.”

  “What kind of information? I got no information.”

  “About Herman Speed. I want to know what happened to him, and why.”

  Without moving his body, he gave the impression of squirming. He ran his hand nervously over his dark brush of hair. “You a State agent, mister? Federal?”