The Way Some People Die Page 2

  “I never did know Galley really well,” she said. “Sure, we were in the same class at Los Angeles General and graduated together and all. But you know how some girls are, introverted like. I’m more of an extrovert myself. I like meeting people, in a nice way, you know what I mean. Are you really a detective? I never met a private detective before.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The introverted kind. Mrs. Lawrence said you were Galley’s roommate.”

  “Just for a while, last year. She got a chance at this apartment and I went in on the rent, but after a couple of months I found a place of my own. We agreed to disagree, you know what I mean.”

  “Not exactly.”

  She perched on the edge of the receptionist’s desk and swung one round silk leg. “Well, I mean we got along all right but we didn’t live the same. She ran around a lot and came in all hours of the day and night and it wasn’t so happy-making, me with a regular job, I mean, and a steady boy friend. When Galley was on a case she was spit-and-polish but in between she liked to break loose a bit, and she was crazy for men—I’ve never been myself. I mean, a girl has a right to her own life and she can do what she pleases as far as I’m concerned, only she shouldn’t try to attract a boy that’s going with somebody else.”

  She colored slowly, aware that she’d given herself away. The round eyes in the rosy face were ice-blue, cold with memory. If Audrey Graham was Galley’s best friend, Galley had no friends.

  “Where did you live with her, and when?”

  “August and September, I guess it was—I had my vacation in July. Galley found this little place in Acacia Court, one bedroom. It had twin beds, but that didn’t work out either.” She’d embarrassed herself again, and the flush rose higher, to the roots of the straw-colored hair.

  “What kind of men did she run around with?”

  “All kinds. She had no discrimination, you know what I mean.” The refrain was getting on my nerves. “My boy friend is going to college under the G.I. and you’d think a girl who thinks she’s something special because her father was a doctor, or so she claimed—you’d think she’d watch out who she went out with. Of course she had a couple of doctors on the string but that was married stuff and I never could see it myself. She had boys from the Safeway, a law clerk, a fellow that said he was a writer but I never heard of him, even one that looked like a Mexican once. Italian, anyway.”

  “Know any of their names?”

  “I mostly knew them by their first names, when I knew them. I wouldn’t want to tell you the doctors’ names. If you want my honest opinion, Galley just got sick of this town and ran off with one of her men. Las Vegas or someplace. She was always talking about seeing the world. She set a high opinion on herself. She blew her money on clothes she couldn’t afford and half the time she was eating off of me.”

  There were footsteps in the hall, and the girl slid off the desk. A tall man in a white tunic looked in at the door. His eyes were masked by wide red spectacles. ‘The pyelogram’s on the table, Audrey, be ready in five minutes.” He turned to me. “Are you the barium enema for tomorrow?” I told him that I wasn’t, and he went away.

  “You can be glad you’re not,” the girl said. “I’m afraid I have to go now.”

  “He said five minutes. What about this man Speed, the bullet in the stomach Galley nursed?”

  “Oh, that was Herman Speed. He had peritonitis from lead poisoning or something, she didn’t go out with him. He was on Ward C for three weeks last December, and then he left town. I heard he was run out of town. He promoted the wrestling down at the Arena and there was an editorial in the paper about how he was shot in a gang war or something. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t read it myself, one of the doctors told me.”

  “She didn’t leave town with him?”

  “No, she was still in town after he left. I saw her one night with this Mexican-looking guy, I forget his name. Turpentine or something. I think he worked for Speed. He came to see him a couple of times when he was on Ward C. Tarantula, or something?”

  “That’s a kind of spider.”

  “Yeah. Well, Galley was no fly. Anybody she went with, she had a darn good reason. I’ll say one thing for her, she knew how to have a good time. But what she saw in this guy that worked for Speed—I wouldn’t trust a Mexican or Italian, they have no respect for women.”

  I was getting a little tired of her opinions, and she was repeating herself. I got out of my chair and stood up. “Thanks very much, Miss Graham.”

  “Don’t mention it. If you need any more information, I get off here at half past four.”

  “I may see you then. By the way, did you tell Mrs. Lawrence what you told me?”

  “No, of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t ruin a girl’s reputation with her own mother. I don’t mean that Galley had a really bad reputation or I wouldn’t of lived with her. But you know what I mean.”

  CHAPTER 3: Acacia Court was within easy walking distance of the hospital, on a quiet middle-class street across from a school-ground. It probably wasn’t so quiet when school was out. The court consisted of ten small stucco bungalows ranged five on each side of a gravel driveway that led to the garages at the rear. The first bungalow had a wooden office sign over the door, with a cardboard NO VACANCY sign attached to it. There were two acacia trees in the front yard, blanketed with yellow chenille-like blossoms.

  When I got out of my car a mockingbird swooped from one of the trees and dived for my head. I gave him a hard look and he flew up to a telephone wire and sat there swinging back and forth and laughing at me. The laughter actually came from a red-faced man in dungarees who was sitting in a deck-chair under the tree. His mirth brought on some sort of an attack, probably asthmatic. He coughed and choked and wheezed, and the chair creaked under his weight and his face got redder. When it was over he removed a dirty straw hat and wiped his bare red pate with a handkerchief.

  “Excuse me. The little devil does it all the time. He’s my aerial defense. I think it’s your hair they want, to build a nest. He drives the nurses crazy.”

  I stepped in under the shade of the tree. “Are you Mr. Raisch?”

  “That’s my name. I told them they better wear hats but they never do. Back where I was brought up, in Little Egypt, a lady never went out without a hat, and some of these girls don’t even own one. You wanted to see me? I got no vacancy.” He jerked a large gray thumb at the sign over the door. “Anyway I just take mostly girls from the hospital and a few married couples.”

  I told him I wasn’t a prospective tenant, but that was all I had a chance to tell him.

  “I can afford to pick and choose,” he said. “My place doesn’t look like much from the outside, maybe, but she’s in absolutely tiptop shape. Redecorated the whole thing with my own two hands last year, put in new linoleum, fixed up the plumbing. And I didn’t raise the rents a red cent. No wonder they come to me. What did you want to see me about? I don’t need a thing if you’re selling.”

  “I’m looking for Galley Lawrence. Remember her?”

  “I should say I do.” His blue eyes had narrowed and were appraising me. “I’m not so old and dried up that I’d forget a pretty girl like that one. Even if she had a hump on her back and one glass eye I wouldn’t disremember her. I don’t get the chance; seems that every few days somebody comes around asking after Galley. What do you want with her?”

  “I want to talk with her. What did the others want?”

  “Well, her mother was here a couple of times. You’d think I was in the white-slave traffic the way that biddy talked to me, and all I did was rent her daughter a home. Then there was all her young men calling up—I practically had to have my phone disconnected back around the first of the year. You one of her young men?”

  “No.” But I was grateful for the adjective.

  “Let’s see, you’re from L.A., ain’t you?” The eyes were still appraising me. “You got an L.A. license on your car. These other customers were from L.A., the ones from the pinball company.
You work for the pinball company?”

  “Not me.”

  “You’re carrying a gun. Or maybe you got a tumor under your armpit.”

  I told him I was a private detective, and why I was looking for Galley. “Do you carry a gun if you work for the pinball company?”

  “These customers did, the thin one anyway. He let me know he had a gun, he thought he’d throw a scare into me. I didn’t tell him I was handling firearms before his dam dropped him on the curb and kicked him into the gutter. He wanted to think he was smooth and sharp and I let him go on thinking it.”

  “You’re fairly sharp yourself.”

  The flattery pleased him, and his big red face relaxed into smiles again. He felt the need to express himself some more. “I didn’t get where I am by sitting on my rump waiting for the cash to grow on trees. No sir, I been in every one of the forty-eight states and I watered every one of them with my good sweat. I lost a fortune in Florida and that’s the last time anybody put anything over on me.”

  I sat down tentatively in the canvas camp-chair beside his, and offered him a cigarette.

  He waved it away. “Not for me. Asthma and heart condition. But you go right ahead. The old biddy must be really anxious, hiring detectives and all.”

  I was beginning to think she had reason to be anxious. “You said the pinball boys tried to scare you. Any particular reason?”

  “They thought I might know where Galley Lawrence was. Her and this slob she went away with, some kind of a dago or wop. They said his name was Tarantine, and I told them it sounded like something you put on your hair. The lean one wanted to make something out of that, but the short one thought it was funny. He said this Tarantine was in his hair.”

  “Did he explain what he meant?”

  “He didn’t say very much. Seems that this Tarantine ran off with the collection money, something like that. They wanted to know if Galley left a forwarding address, but she didn’t. I told them try the police and that was another laugh for the little short one. The lean one said they’d handle it themselves. That’s when he showed me the gun, a little black automatic. I told them maybe I should try the police, and the short one made him put it away again.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Pinball merchants, they said. They looked like thugs to me. They didn’t leave their calling cards but I wouldn’t forget them if I saw them again. The one with the automatic, the one that worked for the other one, he was as thin as a rake. When he turned sideways he cast no shadow. Front-ways he had his shoulders built out so his jacket hung on him like a scarecrow. He had a jail complexion, or a lunger’s, and little pinhead eyes and he talked like he thought he was tough. Take his gun away and I could break him in two, even at my age. And I’m old enough to qualify for the pension, if I needed it.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “No sir. I’m a product of individual enterprise. The other one, the boss, was really tough. He walked into my office like he owned it, only when he saw he couldn’t push me around he tried to be friendly-like. I’d just as soon make friends with a scorpion. One of these poolroom cowboys that made his way in the rackets and was trying to dress like a gentleman. Panama hat, cream gabardine double-breasted suit, hand-painted tie, waxy yellow shoes, and he rode up here in a car as long as a fire truck. A black limousine, and I thought the undertaker was coming for me for sure.”

  “You expecting the undertaker?”

  “Any day now, son.” He started to laugh, and then decided against it. “But it’ll take more than an L.A. thief with a innertube on his waistline to kiss me off, I can tell you. The little man was hard, though. He had his own shoulders and you could see on his face that he’d taken his share of beatings. He had a way of looking at you, soft and steady-like, that chilled you off some. And the way he talked about this Tarantine, the man was as good as dead.”

  “What about Galley Lawrence?”

  He shrugged his heavy collapsing shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess the idea was if they found her this Tarantine would be tagging along. I didn’t even tell them I knew him by sight.”

  “You didn’t tell Mrs. Lawrence either. Did you?”

  “Sure I did. Twice. I didn’t like the lady but she had a right to know. I told her when Galley moved out this Tarantine carted her stuff away in his automobile. That was on December the 30th. She was away for a week or ten days and when she came back she said she wanted out. I could have soaked her thirty days’ notice but I thought what the hell, I had people waiting. She drove away with Tarantine and I haven’t seen her since. Didn’t even tell me where she was going—”

  “Mrs. Lawrence didn’t know Tarantine’s name.”

  “Neither did I, till the pinball merchants told me. They only came here two days ago, Saturday it was, and Mrs. Lawrence hasn’t been here for weeks. I thought she gave up.”

  “She didn’t. Can you tell me anything else about Tarantine?”

  “I can tell you his fortune, maybe, and I don’t need a Ouija board. Folsom or San Quentin, if the long and the short of it don’t catch him first. He’s one of these pretty-boy wops, curly black hair that the women want to run their fingers through. Hollywood clothes, fast roadster, poolroom brains. You know the type. You’d think a girl like Galley would show better taste.”

  “Think she married him?”

  “How the hell would I know? I’ve seen pretty young girls like her take up with coyotes and live on carrion for the rest of their lives. I hope she didn’t.”

  “You said he drove a roadster.”

  “That’s right. Prewar Packard with bronze paint and white sidewalls. She hopped into the front seat and tooted away and that was the last of Galley Lawrence. If you find her, you let me know. I liked the girl.”

  “Why?”

  “She was full of vim and vigor. I like a girl with personality. I’ve got a lot of personality myself and when I see somebody else that has it my heart goes out to them.”

  Thanking him, I retreated to the sidewalk. His loud optimistic voice followed me: “But you can’t get by on personality alone, I learned that in the depression. They say there’s another one coming but I don’t worry. I’m sitting pretty, ready for anything.”

  I called back: “You forgot the hydrogen bomb.”

  “The hell I did,” he yelled triumphantly. “I got the bomb outwitted. The doctor says my heart won’t last two years.”

  CHAPTER 4: It took me half an hour to find the Point Arena, though I had a hazy notion where it was. It stood in the lower depths of town, near the railroad tracks. Beyond the tracks the packing-case shanties of a small hobo jungle leaned in the corner of a dusty field. One of the huts had a roof of beaten gas-tins which gleamed like fish scales in the sun. A man lay still as a lizard in its dooryard.

  From the outside the arena looked like an old freight warehouse, except for a kind of box-office at the street entrance, the size of a telephone booth. A dingy yellow billboard over the closed box-office window announced: WRESTLING EVERY TUES., GENERAL .80, RESERVED 1.20, RINGSIDE 1.50, CHILDREN .25. A door to the right of the window was standing open, and I went in.

  The corridor was so dark, after the bright sun, that I could barely see. The only light came from a window high in the left wall. At least it served as a window; it was a square hole cut in the unpainted boards and covered with heavy chicken-wire. Stretching up on my toes I could see into the cubicle on the other side. It contained two straight chairs, a scarred desk bare of everything but a telephone, and an heirloom brass spittoon. The walls were decorated with calendar nudes, telephone numbers scrawled in pencil, publicity photographs of Lord Albert Trompington-Whist the Pride of the British Empire, Basher Baron Flores from the Azores, and other scions of the European aristocracy.

  Somewhere out of sight a punching-bag was rat-tat-tatting on a board. I stepped through a doorless aperture opposite the door I’d come in by, and found myself in the main hall. It was comparatively small, with seats for maybe a thousand rising on four
sides to the girders that held up the roof. An ingot of lead-gray light from a skylight fell through the moted air onto the empty roped square on the central platform. Still no people, but you could tell that people had been there. The same air had hung for months in the windowless building, absorbing the smells of human sweat and breath, roasted peanuts and beer, white and brown cigarettes, Ben Hur perfume and bay rum and hair oil and tired feet. A social researcher with a good nose could have written a Ph.D. thesis about that air.

  The punching-bag kept up an underbeat to the symphony of odors, tum-tee-tum, tum-tee-tum, tum-tee-tum-tee-tum-tee-tum. I moved toward a door with a push-bar marked EXIT, and the beat sounded louder. The door opened into an alley that led to the rear of the building. A colored boy was working on a bag fastened to the corner of the wall. On the other side of the alley a Negro woman was watching him across a board fence. Her black arms rested on the top of the fence and her chin was laid on her arms. Her great dark eyes had swallowed the rest of her face, and looked as if they were ready to swallow the boy.

  “Who runs this place?”

  He went on beating the bag with his left, his back to me and the woman. He was naked to the waist; the rest of him was covered by a pair of faded khakis, and pitiful canvas sneakers that showed half his bare black toes. He switched to his right without breaking the drumming rhythm. The full sun was on him, and the sweat stood out on his back and made it glisten.

  He was light-heavy, I guessed, but he didn’t look more than eighteen, in spite of the G.I. pants. With his height and heavy bone-structure, he’d grow up into a heavyweight. The woman looked as if she could hardly wait.