The Way Some People Die Page 9

  “How did you meet him?”

  “In line of duty, I suppose you’d call it. I had a patient by the name of Speed who used to be Joe’s boss. Joe came to see this Speed in the hospital. Joe is a good-looking man, and I guess I fell.” She was leaning against the padded headboard with her knees turned sideways under her. On the other side of the red chenille desert that lay between us, her thighs rose under the blue skirt like the slopes of blue mountain foothills.

  “This Speed,” I said. “What was the matter with him?”

  “You probably know, or you wouldn’t ask.” The reclining slopes of her body shifted, and my nerves recorded the seismic vibrations. “Mr. Speed had a bullet wound in the stomach.”

  “But that didn’t give you any ideas about Mr. Speed’s employee?”

  “I hate to admit I must have been naïve. Mr. Speed said it was an accident. He shot himself cleaning a gun, at least that was his story.”

  “So you married Joe, who probably shot Speed himself.” I made the suggestion at random, fishing for facts.

  Her eyes widened, black and depthless beneath their amber surfaces. “Oh. Joe and Herman Speed were always good friends. When Joe took over, Mr. Speed gave him pointers about the business—”

  “What business?”

  “The pinball machines and the wrestling contracts and various other things.”

  “All Dowser’s things?”

  “I guess so. I didn’t know Joe’s business. He kept me up here in L.A., you see, and Joe and I weren’t very good friends after the first week. Joe had a pleasant trick of slapping people. That’s why I bought my gun. It cooled him off but I was still afraid of him, and he knew it. It didn’t make for marital confidences.”

  “But you know what Dowser wants him for?”

  “I have a rough idea. He absconded with something valuable of Dowser’s. But Dowser won’t catch him either.” She looked at the watch on her slim brown wrist. “He’s probably in Mexico by now. Over the hills and far away.”

  “You think he went to Mexico?”

  “That’s what it looks like to me. I’ll never see him again,” she added bitterly.

  “Is that going to ruin your life?”

  She sat up straight, her face set in angry planes. “Look what he did. Married me under false pretences, took me for a ride, and now he’s stood me up. Left me to take a beating from Dowser and his dirty rotten crew. The dirty rotten coward.”

  “Tell me where he went last night?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I want to have the pleasure of hitting him over the head with a blackjack. If I bring him in, that will clear you with Dowser, won’t it?”

  “It will if you’re man enough to do it. You weren’t last night.”

  There was no answer to that. “Tell me about last night. I’d like to get it straight. I met your boy friend Dalling in a bar—I think he was expecting me—and he drove me out to Oasis—”

  “Dalling is not my boy friend.”

  “All right, he likes you, though.” I was careful about the tense. “He was worried about you.”

  “Keith is a terrible worrier. What next?”

  “He parked down the road and stayed in his car. Joe slipped out of the house while I was talking to you at the door, and sapped me. Now it’s your turn.”

  “To sap you?”

  “To say what happened after that. Did he see Dalling’s car?”

  “Yes. He went after it, but Keith got away. Joe came back in a rage and told me to pack, we were leaving. We were off in fifteen minutes. You were still unconscious, and I think that saved your life. He made me drive him into Los Angeles though I didn’t want to do it. I suspected he was after Keith for giving away his hideout. I could tell he blamed me for it, because Keith was my friend. Not my boy friend.

  “He was so blind mad he went back to the Casa Loma, that’s where we had our apartment. I told him Dowser’s men would be watching it, but he shut me up. Keith’s car was in the parking lot. Joe told me to stay down there and he went up the back way himself.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Around three, I think.”

  “You got there in a hurry.”

  “Yes, I was hitting ninety and ninety-five. I kind of hoped we’d have a blowout and put an end to the business, but no such luck.” She stroked the side of her face with one hand, her eyes unfocused. “Anyway, Joe came down in a couple of minutes and said Keith wasn’t at home. He made me drive him to Pacific Point and let him out near the yacht basin. That was the last I saw of him. He didn’t even say good-bye to me.” She smiled narrowly. “It might have been smart of him to say good-bye.”

  “Why don’t you tell Dowser about all this? He’ll turn you loose.”

  “I’ll tell you why: Dowser let his gorilla put his paws on me. I wouldn’t tell him which direction was up.”

  I sat and looked at her, waiting for the key to turn in the lock. The more I looked at her proud body and head, the more I liked her, and the more I liked her, the more I felt like a heel.

  I had to remind myself that a man was dead, that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and that anything was fair in love and war and murder. I leaned sideways on one elbow, and sleep came over my head like a gunny sack. Just before I dozed off, I heard a car engine start with a roar somewhere outside the house.

  CHAPTER 16: When I awoke the strip of sunlight had moved to the foot of the bed. It drew a broad bright band diagonally across my body, like the sash of yellow satin that went with a South American decoration. I sat up, feeling my legs constricted, and saw that Galley had pulled the spread across me.

  She stirred sleepily at her end of the bed. “You’ve been dead to the world for two hours. It isn’t very flattering. Besides, you snore.”

  “Sorry. I missed my sleep last night.”

  “I didn’t mind, really. You sounded like my father. My father was quite a guy. He died when I was eight.”

  “And you remember what his snoring sounded like?”

  “I have an excellent memory.” She stretched and yawned. “Do you suppose they’ll ever let us out of here?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” I threw aside the spread and stood up. “Nice of you to tuck me in.”

  “Professional training. Which reminds me, now that Joe is gone, I suppose I’ll have to get myself a job. He didn’t leave me anything but my clothes.”

  I remembered the condition of the clothes in the Casa Loma apartment, and kept quiet on the subject. “You’re giving him up pretty easily, aren’t you?”

  “He won’t be back,” she said flatly. “If he does come back, he won’t survive. And even if he did, I wouldn’t take him back. Not after what he said to me last night.”

  I looked my question.

  “We won’t go into it,” she said.

  She flung herself off the bed and walked to the other end of the room, soft-footed in her stockings. Her narrow high-heeled shoes stood together neatly on the floor. She leaned toward the dressing-table mirror, lifting her hair to examine the bruise on her temple.

  “God damn it, I can’t stand waiting. I think I’ll smash something.” She swung around fiercely.

  “Go ahead.”

  There was a perfume atomizer on the table. She picked it up and hurled it at the door. The perfume splattered, and bits of glass rained down.

  “You’ve made the place smell like a hothouse.”

  “I feel better, anyway. Why don’t you break something?”

  “It takes a skull to satisfy me. Is Joe long-headed or round-headed? Better put on your shoes or you’ll cut your feet.”

  “Round-headed, I guess.” Standing first on one leg and then on the other, she slipped the narrow shoes on. Her legs were beautiful.

  “I like the round-headed ones especially. They’re like cracking walnuts, one of the happiest memories of my childhood.”

  She stood and faced me with her hands on her hips. “You talk a good fi
ght, Archer. Joe can be rough, you know that.”

  “Tell me more.”

  But there were hustling footsteps in the corridor. The key turned in the lock. It was Dowser himself, in beige slacks and a chocolate jacket.

  He jerked his thumb at me. “Out. I want to talk to you.”

  “What about me?” the girl said.

  “Calm down. You can go home as far as I’m concerned. Only don’t try to skip out, I want you around.” He turned to Blaney behind him. “Take her home.”

  Blaney looked disappointed. She called out “Good luck, Archer” as he marched her away.

  I followed Dowser into the big room with the bar. The curly-headed Irishman was shooting practice shots on the snooker table. He straightened up as the boss came in, presenting arms with his cue.

  “I got a job for you, Sullivan,” Dowser said. “You’re going to Ensenada and see Torres. I talked to him on the telephone, so he knows you’re coming. You stick with Torres until Joe shows up.”

  “Is Joe in Ensenada?”

  “There’s a chance he’ll turn up there. The Aztec Queen is gone, and it looks as if he took it. You can have the Lincoln, and make it fast, huh?”

  Sullivan started out and paused, fingering his black bowtie: “What do I do with Joe?”

  “Give him my best regards. You take orders from Torres.”

  Dowser turned to me, the big executive with more responsibility on his shoulders than one man should rightly have to bear. But always a genial host: “Want a drink?”

  “Not on an empty stomach.”

  “Something to eat?”

  “Most jails provide board for the prisoners.”

  He gave me a hurt look, and beat on the floor with the butt of the abandoned cue. “You’re not my prisoner, baby, you’re my guest. You can leave whenever you want.”

  “How about now?”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry.” He hammered the floor still harder, and raised his voice: “Where the hell is everybody around here? I pay them double wages so they leave me stranded in the middle of the day. Hey! Fenton!”

  “You should have a bell to ring.”

  An old man answered the summons at a limping run. “I was lying down, Mr. Dowser. You want something?” His eyes were bleared with sleep.

  “Get Archer here something to eat. A couple of ham sandwiches, and some buttermilk for me. Hurry.”

  The old man ran out of the room, his shirtsleeved elbows flapping, the long white hair on his head ruffled by his own wind.

  “He’s the butler,” Dowser said with satisfaction. “He’s English, he used to work for a producer in Bel-Air. I should of made him talk for you, you ought to hear him talk. I’ll make him talk when he comes back, huh? Ten-dollar words!”

  “I’m afraid I have to leave,” I said.

  “Stick around, baby. I might have plenty of use for a man like you. That was the straight dope you got from the girl. I went to the Point and checked it personally. The bastard lammed in his brother’s boat all right.”

  “Did you have to keep me locked up until you checked?”

  “Come on, boy, I was doing you a favor. Don’t tell me you didn’t make out?” He leaned over the green table and sank a long shot in one of the far pockets. “How about a game of snooker, huh? A dollar a point, and I’ll spot you twenty. You’ll make money off me.”

  I was getting restless. The friendlier Dowser grew, the less I liked him. On the other hand, I didn’t want to offend him. An idea for taking care of Dowser was forming at the back of my head, where it hurt, and I wanted to be able to come back to his house. I said that he was probably a shark and that I hadn’t played the game for years. But I took a cue from the rack at the end of the bar.

  I hardly got a chance to use my cue. Dowser made a series of brilliant runs, and took me for thirty dollars in ten minutes.

  “You know,” he said reminiscently, chalking his cue, “I made my living at this game for three years when I was a kid. I was going to be another Willie Hoppe. Then I found out I could fight: there’s quicker money in fighting. I come up the hard way.” He touched his rosebud ear with chalk-greened fingers. “How about another?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll have to be shoving off.”

  But then the butler came back with the sandwiches. He was wearing a black coat now, and had brushed his hair. “Do you wish to eat at the bar, sir?”

  “Yeah. Fenton, say a ten-dollar word for Archer here.”

  The old man answered him with a straight face: “Anti-disestablishmentarianism. Will that do, sir? It was one of Mr. Gladstone’s coinages, I believe.”

  “How about that?” Dowser said to me. “This Gladstone was one of those English big shots, a lord or something.”

  “He was Prime Minister, sir.”

  “Prime Minister, that’s it. You can go now, Fenton.”

  Dowser insisted that I share the buttermilk, on the grounds that it was good for the digestion. We sat side by side at the bar and drank it from chilled metal mugs. He became vivacious over his. He could tell that I was an honest man, and he liked me for it. He wanted to do things for me. Before he finished, he had offered me a job at four hundred dollars a week, and showed me the money-clip twice. I told him I liked working for myself.

  “You can’t make twenty thousand a year working for yourself.”

  “I do all right. Besides, I have a future.”

  I had touched a sore spot. “What do you mean by that?” His eyes seemed to swell like leeches sucking blood from his face.

  “You don’t last so long in the rackets. If you’re lucky, you last as long as a pitcher or a fighter—”

  “I run a legitimate business,” he said with intensity. “I used to handle bets, sure, but that’s over and done. I hardly ever break a law any more.”

  “Not even the murder laws?” I was getting very impatient, and it made me indiscreet.

  But the question appealed to his vanity in some way. “I never even been indicted,” he said.

  “How many men have you lost in the last five years?”

  “How the hell should I know? I got a rapid turnover, sure, it’s the nature of the business. I got to protect myself from competition, I got to protect my friends.” He slid off his stool and began to pace the floor: “I’ll tell you one thing, Archer, I’m going to live a long time. I come from a long-lived family. My grandfather’s still living, believe it or not, he’s over ninety years old. I keep myself in shape, by God, and I’m going to live to be a hundred. What do you think of that?” He punched himself in the stomach, easily.

  I thought that Dowser was afraid to die, and I realized why he couldn’t bear to be left alone. I didn’t answer him.

  “I’m going to live to be a hundred,” he repeated, like a man talking in his sleep.

  I heard the front door open and close. Blaney appeared in the hallway.

  “Did you take her home?” Dowser asked him.

  “I dropped her off at the corner. There was a patrol car in front of the house.”

  “Cops? What do cops want with her?”

  “A man named Dalling was killed this morning,” I said, looking from one to the other.

  Apparently the name meant nothing to Dowser. “Who’s he?”

  “A friend of Galley’s. The cops will be asking her a lot of questions.”

  “She better not answer too many.” He sounded unworried. “What happened to the guy?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Good-bye.”

  “Gimme a rumble if you hear anything.” And he gave me his private number.

  Now that Blaney was back, Dowser lost interest in me. I walked to the door unescorted and let myself out. But I didn’t entirely relax until I was back on the highway.

  CHAPTER 17: I had questions I wanted to ask Galley Lawrence in private, but the police had got to her first. I always believed in giving the police an official priority, when they got there first. So I stayed on the highway and drove south through Santa Monica.

  It w
as after four o’clock when I reached the Pacific Point Hospital. I passed up the information desk and went straight upstairs to Room 204. Mario Tarantine’s bed was empty. The other bed in the room was occupied by a small boy reading a comic book.

  I checked on the room number again, and went down the corridor to the nurse’s station. A gimlet-eyed head nurse looked up from a chart: “Visiting hours are over. We can’t run a hospital if visitors don’t obey regulations.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “Did Mr. Tarantine go home?”

  “Mr. who?”

  “Tarantine, in 204. Where is he?”

  Her sharp little angled face expressed stern disapproval. “Yes, he did go home. Against his doctor’s orders and his own best interests, he put on his clothes last night and walked out of the hospital. I suppose you’re a friend of his?”

  “I know him.”

  “Well, you can tell him that if he has a relapse, on his own head be it. We can’t run a hospital if patients won’t co-operate.” The waspish buzzing followed me down the corridor.

  I drove across town to the end of Sanedres Street, and parked in front of Mrs. Tarantine’s cottage. The late afternoon sun shining through the laurels in the front yard made gold filigree patterns on the worn lawn. I tapped on the glass door and a man’s voice called: “Come in.”

  I turned the knob and stepped directly into a small dim living-room. The air in the room smelled of spices and scrubbed floors and rotting flowers. The plaster wall opposite the door was almost covered with a crude painting of a four-masted schooner in full sail. Above the warped mantelpiece a tarnished gold Christ writhed on a dark wood cross.

  In front of the dead fireplace, Mario Tarantine was sitting with his legs up on a time-eaten mohair davenport, a white pillow behind his bandaged head. “You again,” was all he said when he saw me.

  “Me again. I tried the hospital first. Are you all right?”

  “Now that I’m getting some decent food I’m all right. You know what they tried to feed me in that hospital? Chicken broth. Fruit salad. Cottage cheese.” His swollen mouth spat out the words as if he could taste their flavor. “How can I get my strength back on cottage cheese? I just sent Mama down to the butcher shop for the biggest steak she can find.” He smiled painfully, showing his broken front teeth. “What’s the word?”