77 Sunset Strip

by Roy Huggins

  We didn’t say any more until we arrived at headquarters and were sitting in Farr’s two-by-four office.

  He said, “I don’t think you killed anybody, Bailey. Reporting the murder after you got away with the body would be awful dumb. But I’m going to take a statement from—” His phone rang. He picked it up, said, “Hello,” and listened for a while. He said, “Doc Blair, huh? Get a description? . . . That so? Okay. Report up here.” He hung up and looked at me.

  The gallows was building again. But this time I wasn’t building it myself. Farr was building it, and Blair, and the woman with the bullet eyes, and the long-faced manager, and a little girl with a bruised neck who didn’t want to stay alone. I felt as if I had stopped breathing.

  Farr said, “Never mind the statement. We’ve got a line on the killer. A maniac. A guy named Roark.”

  I stood up. “That’s great. I suppose you’ll want me to stick around town for a few days.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, we’ll want you to do that.” The sarcasm was elaborate. He lowered his eyes and looked past me out into the corridor. He opened his mouth and shouted, “Huffschmidt!”

  A man hurried in. He had a wide, bumpy face, soft brown eyes and a baggy uniform.

  Farr said, “Huffschmidt, vag this man. And nothing goes with him until I say so. By the way, he’s carryin’ a gun.”

  Huffschmidt smiled at me and said, “Come up front and we’ll take care of a couple of details.” The voice was soft and the smile was warm and friendly. I liked Huffschmidt. I was glad Huffschmidt was going to vag me. I had an idea Huffschmidt was too nice a guy to make a really good cop. I had an idea he’d be thinking how to cheer me up instead of whatever it is that the cops with steel minds think about. And I had an idea that I was going to cause Huffschmidt a lot of trouble just because he was a nice, warm, friendly fellow. I stood up and he went over me gently, came up with my .38 and dropped it into his baggy side pocket. We started down the corridor. There was activity there.

  The corridor wouldn’t do at all. We turned into the room with the benches leading to the outside door. There were people in this room. It was a large room, the benches lined up in front of a platform. There were four or five Mexicans there, sitting against one wall with an air of mute and quiet desperation. There was no one else in the room.

  Huffschmidt had a gentle hold on my left arm, and he winked at me and said, “Farr’s not so bad. Don’t let him get you down.”

  I looked back over my shoulder and couldn’t see anyone in the corridor. I winked back at Huffschmidt Then I put out my left foot and pulled. Huffschmidt fell and I followed him down with my knees in his back, fumbled my .38 out of his pocket and brought it down on the back of his head. The gun cut into hat and hair and skin, and jarred against his skull. Huffschmidt lay still on the floor. I looked up. The Mexicans were all staring at me. They smiled their slow sweet smiles, and I went out of there, out the door, up the ramp, across the street, through an alley and up to my car. Huffschmidt. I liked him. He would probably lose his job. Which was all to the good. Huffschmidt would never have been happy as a cop.

  THIRTEEN

  I was on Highway 84 and no one was coming up behind me with screaming sirens. The gas was low, which was just what I wanted. I figured I’d run out in about twelve miles. It actually lasted fifteen. The car choked to a stop, the nose pointed at Los Angeles, and I jumped out and ran back about fifty feet until a car began to show from the southeast where Tucson lay. I turned off to the left and dropped down behind some mesquite. The car whined up and then swept on. I got up and crossed the railroad tracks, crawled under a barbed-wire fence and stumbled out onto the desert floor.

  I bent low and started at a dogtrot away from the highway. The mesquite was low and there was nothing to hide me. I stayed bent and kept on running. I could feel the hot ground on my face. I stumbled once and almost fell, holding myself up by my hands while the desert layer cut into them. The heat was low and heavy and there were no shadows, except the cloud shadows playing cragsman along the Santa Catalina Range ahead of me. I went a long way east before I stopped and slowly straightened up and stood breathing, nose and throat dry and raw with desert pollen, trying to see the place I was going back to: Tucson.

  It was sunset before I saw it—a lacework of palo-verdes, a school building, and in the distance an elevated water tank looking like a silver blimp in the sky. I figured that would be Tucson. And then I stopped abruptly. Off to the left, the green sky was crossed with great striations of pink, shade on shade. It was a nice sunset, but it wasn’t right. I got out a handkerchief and wiped my face.

  I was facing southeast, but there on the left was the sunset. So I wasn’t facing southeast. I put the handkerchief away and sat down on the hard earth. I shook my head.

  “It’s this trip, Bailey,” I croaked. “It’s done something to you. Get up, turn around and go back. Don’t hurry. Time doesn’t really matter now. You’ll walk all night, hide the next day; then go in and do what you can. It probably won’t be good.”

  I stood up slowly and turned around. And there it was. An orgy of color laid across the desert sky with a wanton violence so turbulent that its reflection in the eastern sky had seemed as bright as any sunset I had ever seen. I grinned and turned back and walked on toward the city. I went through the school grounds, crossed a paved street and came out on a long, wide, dusty road that pointed thirstily at the water tank in the sky. It was called Geronimo Road, and I had walked about half a mile in the drifting twilight when a car pulled up beside me and a voice said, “Ride?” I hesitated for a brief moment, but there was nothing I could do about it. It would be as bad to say no as it would be to get in and let him have a good look at me. I got in and said, “Thanks.”

  It was a fairly new car and the man at the wheel looked fresh and clean, as if he’d just had a long cool drink of water. I wondered if he’d appreciated it, noticed that it had body and flavor. And then I stopped thinking about water, because the man was looking at me as he drove. He drove slowly so he could do a thorough job.

  He said, “Sorry to stare at you, but when I picked you up, I thought you were a neighbor of mine.”

  I didn’t like it. It didn’t go with the way he’d said, “Ride?” It didn’t go with the way he was looking at me. I wondered why he felt called upon to explain the inspection.

  I said, “We are almost neighbors. I live up by the water tank.”

  “Oh. Been out for a walk?”

  “Yeah.”

  We didn’t say any more. Pretty soon we were at the tank. The man said, “The city did a pretty good job of construction on that, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You can let me out here.”

  “Okay.” He pulled up, and I opened the door and jumped out.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Not at all. Glad to help a neighbor.”

  He pulled out, going fast. I waited till he was out of sight, then hit off to the left. I had gone a few feet past the great steel stilts that held up the tank when something stopped me. I didn’t know what it was. I looked back. There was a rectangle of concrete at the base of the tank with a plaque set in it. I went back and looked at it. The plaque said that the tank had been built by the Works Progress Administration. I got out of there. The man had said the city built it. That spelled a lot of things. The Daring Daylight Jail Break was probably being played up big. Maybe a description had gone out over the air.

  A few blocks down, a cab was letting two old ladies out at a pink Spanish bungalow. I had to get out of that neighborhood. It was important enough to take a chance on the cab. I hailed him and he backed up to me and I hopped in.

  “Pioneer Hotel,” I said.

  He grinned and said, “There’s nothing like getting a fare both ways.”

  It was almost dark now; the street lights were on. I lay back in the shadow and breathed easy. This was all right. He hadn’t looked at me twice. There wasn’t anything to worry about. I got out a cigarette and lit up.
But I didn’t want it. I wanted a drink of water. I put it out. I grinned. Things were okay when all I worried about was a drink of water.

  And then suddenly things stopped being okay. The driver said, “Read about this guy from L.A.?”

  “We take the morning paper.”

  “Don’cha listen to the radio?”

  “Ten o’clock every night. What’s this about?”

  “This guy come into town and killed a dame. The cops caught up with him when he was trying to get out of town, and then he knifed one of them and got away again. Boy! They think he’s a nut.”

  “They’ll get him again.”

  “Don’t be too sure. Paper says he’s on his way back to California.”

  I heard the siren with my stomach first. Then with the muscles across my back, as they crawled and drew the skin at the back of my neck tight. Finally I heard it with my mind, and looked back. The red light was on. It was a half mile behind. I reached for the door handle and then stopped. It was no good that way, ending up cornered in a basement, or running horror-style across a roof, or giving myself up to a trigger-happy cop and getting a hot and fatal belly.

  I said, “Listen, and don’t get excited. I’m that guy from L.A.” The driver’s head jerked and then stayed where the words had caught it, cocked slightly toward me. “But I didn’t kill anyone, and I didn’t knife a cop. They were booking me on a vagrancy charge, and I hit him with my thirty-eight. I’ve got that thirty-eight in my hand right now, but I don’t intend to use it.” The driver’s head moved a little then.

  “No,” I went on, “I don’t intend to use it, but I’m asking you to stick your neck out for me anyway. There’s a carload of cops coming up. They may stop you. I’m going to.be on the floor. Tell them you just dropped a passenger. If they find me, I’ll say you didn’t know I was here.”

  His head didn’t move.

  The siren was loud now, the red light throwing color into the cab. “It’s up to you,” I said. “You don’t have to do it. I’m putting the thirty-eight away.”

  I slid down onto the floor. This was it. I couldn’t have threatened him. He’d have given me away anyway or he’d have been scared stiff. The cops would have seen it. They’d have searched the cab.

  The police car was next to us now, and the siren gave a final whine, dropped off to a purr, and then silence. Light sprayed into the cab. The cab rolled to a stop.

  A heavy voice said, “No passenger, huh?”

  “Nope. Just dropped two old ladies.”

  “Seen a tall guy lurkin’ around anywhere?”

  “If I do, I’ll tell him you’re lookin’ for him.”

  “Wise guy.”

  A motor roared and left us behind in the midst of silence. I raised up. The driver turned and looked at me. He said, “Brother, I hate cops, but I’ll never know why I did that. Never. Now get going, will you?”

  “I owe you something for the ride.”

  He put up a hand. “You don’t owe me anything but a quick departure. I’ll never know—” I got out. I heard him say, “Boy!” Then the sound of the motor and a grinding of gears as he rolled away.

  I breathed, “We’re even, chum. I’ll never know either.”

  FOURTEEN

  I found a Turkish bath not too near the center of town. I put my wallet and the .38 in the locker, gave the attendant a dollar to give my clothes a good brushing, drank a gallon of water, and lay almost drowning in the thick steam. I thought about the day as if it had begun a very long time ago, and yet with a feeling that there was too little time. It could end now. Someone could walk in and say, “Here he is.” And Farr would probably never move a finger to find the blonde. He couldn’t. He had stirred up too much excitement around me. I was his pigeon. But no matter how crawling fear and sudden shock had twisted Dorothy Hallo-ran’s mind to find menace in a shadow or in a Jim Shaftoe, the blonde was real. She had been at the Desert Inn last night and—for my money—at the Lennox Arms this morning. Yes, and once before . . . The room. It didn’t worry me now. There was some simple explanation . . . And then the denial came, close and confidential, hollowly in my mind: The missing key, chum. She stole it. The blonde got into the room and removed the girl’s body for some reason of her own. The key, get it! If there was any other way into that room, why would she steal a key? Huh, chum? Sure, there’s a simple explanation. You killed the girl, chum. And you’re still hanging around Tucson.

  I had suddenly had enough of the steam bath. I got dressed. And in the middle of it, I was talking to myself again. Then I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. I needed food. I would eat. Then I would find the blonde.

  On a dark side street I found a six-stool lunchroom. I ordered steak and made myself wait until I was through with it and on my second cup of coffee before I asked for a paper. The girl tossed me a few pages with grease marks on them. It was the News for that evening, but I had the wrong section. While I was going through it, a short, thick man came in wearing a wrinkled blue suit and a fixed scowl. He sat down two stools away from me and ordered enchiladas and tacos in a ragged voice. I asked the girl if there wasn’t more of the paper somewhere.

  She was full-blown and soft, with a white, puffed face that looked like something about to be put into the oven. She brought me the rest of the paper and said, “You know, you can buy these for a dime.”

  I thought of a couple of neat answers for that, but I just told them to myself. The man with the scowl looked at me across his nose until the girl brought him his food.

  It was on page 1. Los Angeles man escapes arrest. After reporting a murder in which he implicated himself, the suspect, using the names Roark and Bailey, hit Officer Carl Huffschmidt on the back of the head with a piece of lead pipe. Confederates had aided in the escape, and the police were holding five men for questioning. Although no body had been found, police were searching for the body of a young San Francisco woman in whose apartment the suspect was known to have spent the night. It was reported by Dr. G. E. Slocum that the woman had failed to keep an appointment with him for four o’clock this afternoon. Bailey, or Roark, was believed to be dangerous, but police declared there was no cause for alarm in Tucson. Evidence gathered by police indicated the escaped man was attempting to make his way back to Los Angeles. Police described Roark as being a fairly tall man, dark hair, about 180 pounds, in his early thirties, and wearing gray flannels.

  I got my check, laid down a little more than enough to cover it, and stood up. The short man said, “Hey, lemme see that paper.” He was looking at me in a way I didn’t like. I told myself that he probably looked at everybody like that. I pushed the paper at him and walked out. It wasn’t a main street, but there were people on it. I got off it, hoping a cruising cab might come by, and knowing they wouldn’t be cruising down dark streets, I turned up another street toward Congress. At Congress I found a friendly shadow to stand in. Cabs went by now and then, but they had people in them. I waited. I could walk out there. No, no, I couldn’t. Walking was bad and it was a long way out to the Desert Inn. People passed me, and now and then hard eyes would look me over. If they were male eyes, the lights would seem suddenly brighter and my ears would sing. After a while the muscles in my back and across my belly and in my arms began to ache.

  And then a cab pulled up at the comer and dropped two girls in, black skirts and molded sweaters, with mouths that were bright red smears.

  I stepped out and said, “Want a passenger?”

  “Sure thing.”

  I got in back, and there was deep comfortable shadow there. The girls had left an odor. It seemed good. I said, “Desert Inn.”

  He drove me there without talk, without looking at me. He took my money and drove away. For all he knew, I was sixty years old and wearing Bermuda shorts. I felt good. I walked into the lobby and on through as if I paid my fifty dollars every morning at eight. The dining room was closed. There were five elderly people in the lounge. I went to the bar. This part was hard to do. The aching muscles knotted up. I st
ood in the entryway and looked the place over. They weren’t there. I went back and out through the glass doors into the patio. That way I wouldn’t be beating a path through the lobby. I walked back among the cottages. At the rear I found a stone bench. It was hard and cold, and the ground was uneven, so that the bench tipped back and forth. It reminded me of Captain Farr. I sat and nurtured thoughts that were frail and cold and without comfort. The sky was clear and icy, with stars that hung breathlessly near, and. pretty soon I found myself counting them. That kept me busy for a long time. Then I got up and went back into the bar.

  I didn’t see her at first, because I was looking for a couple. But there she sat, in a corner and all alone. I went to the bar. The thin man was on duty, but he had help tonight. I sat at the end of the bar where the help was operating. He was young, red-cheeked, with wispy blond hair that probably got into the drinks regularly. I ordered a scotch. When he brought it over, I had a dollar bill laid out for him.

  I leered appropriately and said, “See the blonde all alone behind me?”

  He peered over my shoulder. “Uh-huh,” he drawled. I held out the dollar. “Would you know the lady’s name?”

  “Why?”

  I improved the leer. “Need you ask?”

  He took the dollar, grinned and said, “I’m taking your money on account of all the trouble I’m saving you. She’s married and she’s here with her husband.” He went away. I finished the drink and turned around. She was still alone and she had the time-drags-on look of someone waiting for someone else. I walked over and sat down in the corner with her.

  I said, “I’ve been sitting at the bar trying to remember where we’ve met.”

  She smiled. Her teeth had a dry whiteness about them, and she wore her soft blond hair like a golden cloud. “My,” she said, “now I know what happened to that bromide. It came to Tucson for its health. Lived to a ripe old age too.”