The Barbarous Coast Page 4

  “Does she still live here?”

  “Not to my knowledge. She dropped out of sight years ago. Which didn’t break my heart.”

  “And you don’t know where Hester is, either?”

  “I haven’t laid eyes on the girl since September. She moved out, and that was that. We have some turnover in Malibu, I can tell you.”

  “Where did she move to?” George said.

  “That’s what I’d like to know.” Her gaze shifted to me: “Are you a relative, too?”

  “No, I’m a private detective.”

  She showed no surprise. “All right, I’ll talk to you, then. Come inside and have a cup of coffee. Your friend can wait outside.”

  Wall didn’t argue; he merely looked disgruntled. Mrs. Lamb unhooked her screen door, and I followed her into the tiny white kitchen. The red plaid of the tablecloth was repeated in the curtains over the sink. Coffee was bubbling on an electric plate.

  Mrs. Lamb poured some of it for me in a cup which didn’t match hers, and then some more for herself. She sat at the table, motioned to me to sit opposite.

  “I couldn’t exist without coffee. I developed the habit when I ran the snack bar. Twenty-five cups a day, silly old woman.” But she sounded very tolerant of herself. “I do believe if I cut myself I’d bleed coffee. Mr. Finney—he’s my adviser at the Spiritualist Church—says I should switch to tea, but I say no. Mr. Finney, I told him, the day I have to give up my favorite vice, I’d just as soon lay down and fold my hands around a lily and pass on into another life.”

  “Good for you,” I said. “You were going to tell me something about Hester.”

  “Yes, I was. I hated to say it right out in front of the husband. I had to evict her.”

  “What for?”

  “Carrying on,” she said vaguely. “The girl’s a fool about men. Doesn’t he know that?”

  “It seems to be at the back of his mind. Any particular men?”

  “One particular man.”

  “Not Clarence Bassett?”

  “Mr. Bassett? Heavens, no. I’ve known Mr. Bassett going on ten years—I ran the snack bar at the club until my legs give out—and you can take my word for it, he ain’t the carrying-on type. Mr. Bassett was more like a father to her. I guess he did his best to keep her out of trouble, but his best wasn’t good enough. Mine, either.”

  “What kind of trouble did she get into?”

  “Man trouble, like I said. Nothing that you could put your finger on, maybe, but I could see she was heading for disaster. One of the men she brought here to her house was a regular gangster type. I told Hester if she was going to have bums like him visiting her, spending the night, she’d have to find another house to do it in. I felt I had a right to speak out, knowing her from childhood and all. But she took it the wrong way, said she would look after her affairs and I could look after mine. I told her what she did on my property was my affair. She said, all right, if that’s the way you feel about it she’d get out, said I was an interfering old bag. Which maybe I am, at that, but I don’t take talk like that from any flibberty-gibbet who plays around with gunmen.”

  She paused for breath. An ancient refrigerator throbbed emotionally in the corner of the kitchen. I took a sip of my coffee and looked out the window which overlooked the street. George Wall was sitting in the front seat of my car with a rejected expression on his face. I turned back to Mrs. Lamb:

  “Who was he, do you know?”

  “I never did learn his name. Hester wouldn’t tell me his name. When I took the matter up with her, she said he was her boyfriend’s manager.”

  “Her boyfriend?”

  “The Torres boy. Lance Torres, he calls himself. He was a fairly decent boy at one time, least he put up a nice front when he had his lifeguard job.”

  “Was he a lifeguard at the club?”

  “Used to be, for a couple of summers. His Uncle Tony got him the job. But lifeguard was too slow for Lance, he had to be a big shot. I heard he was a boxer for a while and then he got into some trouble, I think they put him in jail for it last year.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I don’t know, there’s too many good people in the world to make it worth my while to keep track of bums. You could of knocked me over with a brick when Lance turned up here with his gunman friend, sucking around Hester. I thought he had more self-respect.”

  “How do you know he was a gunman?”

  “I saw him shooting, that’s how. I woke up one morning and heard this popping noise down on the beach. It sounded like gunfire. It was. This fellow was out there shooting at beer bottles with a nasty black gun he had. That was the day I said to myself, either she stops messing around with bums or good-by Hester.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I never did learn his name. That nasty snub-nosed gun and the way he handled it was all I needed to know about him. Hester said he was Lance’s manager.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Looked like death to me. Those glassy brown eyes he had, and kind of a flattened-out face, fishbelly color. But I talked right up to him, told him he ought to be ashamed of himself shooting up bottles where people could cut themselves. He didn’t even look at me, just stuck another clip in his gun and went on shooting at the bottles. He’d probably just as soon been shooting at me, least that was how he acted.”

  Remembered anger heightened her color. “I don’t like being brushed off like that—it ain’t human. And I’m touchy about shooting, specially since a friend of mine was shot last year. Right on this very beach, a few miles south of where you’re sitting.”

  “You don’t mean Gabrielle Torres?”

  “I should say I do. You heard about Gabrielle, eh?”

  “A little. So she was a friend of yours.”

  “Sure, she was. Some people would have a prejudice, her being part Mex, but I say if a person is good enough to work with you, a person is good enough to be your friend.” Her monolithic bosom rose and fell under the flowered-cotton wrapper.

  “Nobody knows who shot her, I hear.”

  “Somebody knows. The one that did it.”

  “Do you have any ideas, Mrs. Lamb?”

  Her face was as still as stone for a long moment. She shook her head finally.

  “Her cousin Lance, maybe, or his manager?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past them. But what reason could they have?”

  “You’ve thought about it, then.”

  “How could I help it, with them going in and out of the cottage next door, shooting off guns on the beach? I told Hester the day she left, she should learn a lesson from what happened to her friend.”

  “But she went off with them anyway?”

  “I guess she did. I didn’t see her leave. I don’t know where she went, or who with. That day I made a point of going to visit my married daughter in San Berdoo.”

  chapter 6

  I RELAYED as little as possible of this to George Wall, who showed signs of developing into a nuisance. On the way to Los Angeles, I turned into the drive of the Channel Club. He gave a wild look around, as though I was taking him into an ambush.

  “Why are we coming back here?”

  “I want to talk to the guard. He may be able to give me a lead to your wife. If not, I’ll try Anton.”

  “I don’t see the point of that. I talked to Anton yesterday, I told you all he said.”

  “I may be able to squeeze out some more. I know Anton, did a piece of work for him once.”

  “You think he was holding out on me?”

  “Could be. He hates to give anything away, including information. Now you sit here and see that nobody swipes the hubcaps. I want to get Tony talking, and you have bad associations for him.”

  “What’s the use of my being here at all?” he said sulkily. “I might as well go back to the hotel and get some sleep.”

  “That’s an idea, too.”

  I left him in the car out of sight of the gate, and walked down the curv
ing drive between thick rows of oleanders. Tony heard me coming. He shuffled out of the gatehouse, gold gleaming in the crannies of his smile.

  “What happened to your loco friend? You lose him?”

  “No such luck. You have a nephew, Tony.”

  “Got a lot of nephews.” He spread his arms. “Five-six nephews.”

  “The one that calls himself Lance.”

  He grunted. Nothing changed in his face, except that he wasn’t smiling any more. “What about him?”

  “Can you tell me his legal name?”

  “Manuel,” he said. “Manuel Purificación Torres. The name my brother give him wasn’t good enough for him. He had to go and change it.”

  “Where is he living now, do you know?”

  “No, sir, I don’t know. I don’t have nothing to do with that one no more. He was close to me like a son one time. No more.” He wagged his head from side to side, slowly. The motion shook a question loose: “Is Manuel in trouble again?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure. Who’s his manager, Tony?”

  “He don’t got no manager. They don’t let him fight no more. I was his manager couple years ago, trained him and managed him both. Brought him along slow and easy, gave him a left and taught him the combinations. Kept him living clean, right in my own house: up at six in the morning, skip-the-rope, light and heavy bag, run five miles on the beach. Legs like iron, beautiful. So he had to ruinate it.”

  “How?”

  “Same old story,” Tony said. “I seen it too many times. He wins a couple-three fights, two four-rounders and a six-rounder in San Diego. Right away he’s a bigshot, he thinks he’s a bigshot. Uncle Tony, poor old Uncle Tony, he’s too dumb in the head to tell him his business. Uncle Tony don’t know from nothing, says lay off muscadoodle, lay off dames and reefers, sell your noisy, stinky motycycle before you break your neck, you got a future. Only he wants it now. The whole world, right now.

  “Then something come up between us. He done something I don’t like, I don’t like it at all. I says, you been wanting out from me, now you can get out. We didden have no contract, nothing between us any more, I guess. He clumb on his motycycle and tooted away, back to Los Angeles. There he was, a Main Street bum, and he wasn’t twenty-one years old yet.

  “My sister Desideria blamed me, I should go after him on my hands and knees.” Tony shook his head. “No, I says, Desideria, I been around a long time. So have you, only you’re a woman and don’t see things. A boy gets ants in his pants, you can’t hire no exterminator for that. Let him do it the hard way, we can’t live his life.

  “So one of these crooks he wants to be like—this crook sees Manny working out in the gym. He asks him for a contract and Manny gives it to him. He wins some fights and throws some, makes some dirty money, spends it on dirty things. They caught him with some caps in his car last year, and put him in jail. When he gets out, he’s suspended, no more fights—back where he started in the starvation army.”

  Tony spat dry. “Long ago, I tried to tell him, my father, his grandfather, was bracero. Manny’s father and me, we was born in a chickenhouse in Fresno, nowhere, from nothing. We got two strikes on us already, I says, we got to keep our nose clean. But would he listen to me? No, he got to stick his neck under the chopper.”

  “How much time did he serve?”

  “I guess he was in all last year. I dunno for sure. I got troubles of my own then.”

  His shoulders moved as if they felt the entire weight of the sky. I wanted to ask him about his daughter’s death, but the grief in his face tied my tongue. The scars around his eyes, sharp and deep in the sun, had been left there by crueller things than fists. I asked a different question:

  “Do you know the name of the man that held his contract?”

  “Stern, his last name is.”

  “Carl Stern?”

  “Yeah.” Squinting at my face, he saw the effect of the name on me. “You know him?”

  “I’ve seen him in nightclubs, and heard some stories about him. If ten per cent of them are true, he’s a dangerous character. Is your nephew still with him, Tony?”

  “I dunno. I bet you he is in trouble. I think you know it, only you won’t tell me.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because I seen him last week. He was all dressed up like a movie star and driving one of those sporty cars.” He made a low sweeping motion with his hands. “Where would he get the money? He don’t work, and he can’t fight no more.”

  “Why didn’t you ask him?”

  “Don’t make me laugh, ask him. He wooden say hello to his Uncle Tony. He is too busy riding around with blondes in speedy cars.”

  “He was with a blonde girl?”

  “Sure.”

  “Anybody you know?”

  “Sure. She used to work here last summer. Hester Campbell, her name is. I thought she had more brains, to run around with my nephew Manny.”

  “How long has she been running with him?”

  “I wooden know. I got no crystal ball.”

  “Where did you see them?”

  “Venice Speedway.”

  “Wasn’t the Campbell girl a friend of your daughter’s?”

  His face set hard and dark. “Maybe. What is this all about, mister? First you ask for my nephew, now it’s my daughter.”

  “I just heard about your daughter this morning. She was a friend of the Campbell girl, and I’m interested in the Campbell girl.”

  “I’m not, and I don’t know nothing. It’s no use asking me. What do I know?” His mood had swung heavily downward. He made an idiot face. “I’m a punchy bum. My brains don’t think straight. My daughter is dead. My nephew is a crooked pachuco. People come and punch me in the nose.”

  chapter 7

  ANTON’S windows overlooked the boulevard from the second floor of a stucco building in West Hollywood. The building was fairly new, but it had been painted and scraped and repainted in blotches of color, pink and white and blue, to make it look like something from the left bank of the Seine. You entered it through a court which contained several small arty shops and had a terrazzo fountain in the center. A concrete nymph stood with her feet in its shallow water, covering her pudenda with one hand and beckoning with the other.

  I climbed the outside stairs to the second-floor balcony. Through an open door, I saw a half-dozen girls in leotards stretching their ligaments on barres along the wall. A woman with flat breasts and massive haunches called out orders in a drill-sergeant’s voice:

  “Grand battement, s’il vous plaît. Non, non, grand battement.”

  I walked on to the end of the balcony, trailed by the salt-sweet odor of young sweat. Anton was in his office, short and wide behind the desk in a gabardine suit the color of lemon ice cream. His face was sunlamp brown. He rose very lightly, to demonstrate his agelessness. The hand he extended had rings on two of the fingers, a seal ring and a diamond to go with the diamond in his foulard tie. His grip was like a bull lobster’s.

  “Mr. Archer.”

  Anton had been in Hollywood longer than I had, but he still pronounced my name “Meester Arshair.” The accent was probably part of his business front. I liked him in spite of it.

  “I’m surprised you remember my name.”

  “I think of you with gratitude,” he said. “Frequently.”

  “What wife are you on now?”

  “Please, you are very vulgar.” He raised his hands in a fastidious gesture, and while he was at it, examined his manicure. “Number five. We are very happy. You are not needed.”

  “Yet.”

  “But you didn’t come to discuss my marital problems. Why do you come?”

  “Missing girl.”

  “Hester Campbell again?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you employed by that big naïf of a husband?”

  “You’re psychic.”

  “He is a fool. Any man of his age and weight who runs after a woman in this city is a fool. Why doesn
’t he stand still, and they’ll come swarming?”

  “He’s only interested in the one. Now what about her?”

  “What about her?” he repeated, offering his hands palms up to show how clean they were. “She has had some ballet lessons from me, three or four months of lessons. The young ladies come and go. I am not responsible for their private lives.”

  “What do you know about her private life?”

  “Nothing. I wish to know nothing. My friend Paddy Dane in Toronto did me no favor when he sent her here. There is a young lady very much on the make. I could see trouble in her.”

  “If you could see all that, why turn her husband loose on Clarence Bassett?”

  His shoulders rose. “I turned him loose on Bassett? I merely answered his questions.”

  “You made him believe that she was living with Bassett. Bassett hasn’t seen her for nearly four months.”

  “What would I know about that?”

  “Don’t kid me, Anton. Did you know Bassett before this?”

  “Pas trop. He would not remember, probably.”

  He moved to the window and cranked the louvers wider. The sound of traffic rose from the Boulevard. Under it, his voice was sibilant:

  “But I do not forget. Five years ago, I applied for membership in the Channel Club. They refused me, with no reason given. I heard through my sponsor that Bassett never presented my name to the membership committee. He wanted no dancing-masters in his club.”

  “So you thought you’d make trouble for him.”

  “Perhaps.” He looked at me over his shoulder, his eye bright and empty as a bird’s. “Did I succeed?”

  “I stopped it before it happened. But you could have triggered a murder.”

  “Nonsense.” He turned and came toward me, stepping with feline softness on the carpet. “The husband is a nothing, a hysterical boy. There is no danger in him.”

  “I wonder. He’s big and strong, and crazy about his wife.”

  “Is he rich?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Then tell him to forget her. I have seen many like her, in love with themselves. They think they aspire to an art, acting or dancing or music. But all they really aspire to is money and clothes. A man comes along who can give them these things, and there is the end of aspiration.” His hands went through the motions of liberating a bird and throwing it a good-by kiss.