There was a stealthy knock on my bedroom door, not so stealthy that it failed to wake me.
“Who is it?” I said. “Mrs. Jackson?” Her vacuum cleaner had been going all morning, like the sound of distant bombers threatening my dreams.
“Get up. You’ll never catch no early worm snoring your life away. How you expect me to clean your room with you lying there like a dead man?” Her voice trailed off in obscure Cassandra mutterings.
With some mutterings of my own, I got up and put on a bathrobe and opened the door. Mrs. Jackson was a Negro woman of indeterminate age. She had a seamed brown face and gray hair. At the moment most of her hair was tucked up under a purple scarf which was wrapped around her head like a turban. With the flexible hose of the vacuum cleaner draped around her shoulders, she bore a faint clownish resemblance to a carnival performer taming a python.
I was not amused. “I drove down from Sacramento last night. Got held up for three hours by a multiple smashup on the Grapevine. I got in at six o’clock, two hours before you turned up—”
“Was anybody killed?”
“No.”
“That’s a blessing.”
She smiled. My annoyance with Mrs. Jackson could never survive her smile. It was the smile of a woman who loved the sun:
“Poor man, you’ve had a bad night. Put on some clothes and I’ll fix you some lunch. You look as if you could use it.”
By the time I had showered and shaved, my lunch was waiting on the kitchen table: toasted cheese sandwich, tomato soup out of a can. Mrs. Jackson leaned on the sink and watched me eat. She had been born and raised in the South, and never sat down in my presence unless she was asked to.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” I said.
“I’ll do my eating at home, later. Thank you.”
“Sit down and have some coffee, anyway.”
“Doctor says I shouldn’t drink coffee. It gives me palpitations of the heart. My sister bought me a jar of that kind where they grind the caffeine out. It don’t taste the same, but I’d rather put up with the taste than the palpitations. You’ve heard me speak of my younger sister?”
“No. I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Ruby,” she said. “She’s staying with me for a few weeks till she and her fiancé settle their affairs. Mr. Wilson’s a fine young fellow, works for a bottling company in Compton. A churchgoer, too—goes to my church, which is how my sister met him. Ruby sings contralto in the choir. It pleasures my heart, after all her tribulations, to see Ruby getting herself settled. That first man of hers was no bargain. He made her a lot of big promises and then he left her flat, with the payments on the car and everything. I had to make the payments on the car myself.”
I’d begun to wonder where the talk was leading. Mrs. Jackson was one of those garrulous talkers who never said anything without a reason. Possibly she needed money. In all the years she’d been my cleaning woman, she’d never asked me for an extra cent. Being loaded at the moment, I said:
“If an advance on your pay would help—?”
She pushed the thought away with an awkward sweep of her arm. “I thank you very kindly, Mr. Archer, but I don’t need your money—long as I have the strength in my back to make an honest living, which I have been vouchsafed. Ruby and me have our problems, Lord knows, but money ain’t the problem. And once she can get herself married, there won’t be any problem.”
“Is your sister in trouble?”
“I didn’t say that. Ruby’s a good girl. She’ll make Mr. Wilson a fine wife, once they’re legally married.”
“Are they illegally married?”
“Not yet. She wanted to go ahead and risk it. I wouldn’t let her. I told her it would be doing injustice to Mr. Wilson. He don’t know about the other one. But it would be a terrible thing if he turned up on Ruby’s wedding day: preacher says, does any man know a reason why this couple can’t be united in holy matrimony? And Horace Dickson marches up the aisle and says for all to hear: Ruby Dickson is my lawful wife. I come to claim my bride, after all these years.”
“She’s still married to her first husband,” I said.
Mrs. Jackson looked at me with affectionate pride, the way a fisherman looks at a fish who has accomplished the feat of taking his bait:
“Yes, she’s still married to him. And the worst of it is she don’t know where he is.”
“How long is it since she’s seen him?”
“Two years, close to three. She hasn’t heard from him in all that time.”
“She could divorce him on grounds of desertion.”
“Divorces take time. And Mr. Wilson, he don’t want to wait. Mr. Wilson is concupiscent, like it says in the Good Book. He’s anxious to get a family started.”
“Your sister will have to tell him the truth. They can arrange a divorce.”
“But Ruby’s afraid to do that. She’s afraid that Mr. Wilson wouldn’t marry a divorced woman. Mr. Wilson is very strict in his conscience. He goes to Bible college, nights.”
“I don’t see how I can help.”
“Ruby thinks you can. Did you enjoy your lunch, Mr. Archer? Here, let me hot up your coffee for you.”
She filled my cup from the percolator. I said: “I fear the Greeks even while bearing gifts.”
“They never bothered me. I knew some very nice Greek people in Pacific Palisades, used to clean for them, but it got too far to drive. I never did like driving in all that traffic. I know just how you feel about that highway accident you went through last night. Now that Ruby’s quit her job to get married, she’s been doing my driving for me. She drove me over here this morning.”
The themes of her monologue were coming together like the themes of a complex piece of music. I was alarmed. This unlikely siren was luring me onto the rocks of her family affairs. I said grimly:
“Is Ruby in this house now?”
“Heavens, no.” But her titter was embarrassed.
“I want an honest answer, Mrs. Jackson. Have you got your sister secreted in my house? Waiting to pounce? Is that why you hauled me out of bed and fed me up like a lamb for the slaughter?”
“I wouldn’t do a thing like that, Mr. Archer. Besides, it isn’t good for a man to sleep his youth away—”
“Youth is the wrong word. I’m forty years old.”
“You certainly don’t look it,” she said with a straight face. “I’m the oldest in my family, but I don’t tell my age. Ruby, now, is the youngest of the flock. She’s only thirty-four, with many happy years to look forward to. If she can just get this trouble straightened out.”
“She’s going to have to straighten it out for herself. I’m not a lawyer.”
“No, but you’re a detective. You know how to find people.”
“Say I found this Horace Dickson. What good would that do? He’d probably want to move right in—”
“He wouldn’t if he’s dead,” Mrs. Jackson said calmly. “Ruby thinks that Horace Dickson probably is dead.”
“Does she have any reason for thinking so? Or is it wish fulfillment?”
She dimmed the bright intelligence of her eyes. “I don’t understand all you say, Mr. Archer. You should talk to Ruby, now. She’s got the education, I put her all the way through high school. You’d enjoy talking to Ruby.”
“Is she waiting outside?”
“No. I’m expecting her, though. She said she’d pick me up at twelve o’clock.”
She glanced up at the brass clock on the wall. My eyes followed her glance. It was two minutes to twelve. Like the closing chord of Mrs. Jackson’s music, the sound of a car engine slowing down reached my ears from the front of the house.
“Ruby’s always on time,” she said serenely. “Now while you’re talking to Ruby I’ll clean your room for you. It surely needs it.”
I opened the front door and watched Ruby come up the walk. She belonged to a different generation from her sister, not only in age. She was smartly and conservatively dressed, in a sharkskin suit and a ha
t. Conscious respectability controlled the natural movements of her body and stiffened her back.
When she stepped up on the porch in her high heels, her eyes were on a level with mine.
“Mrs. Dickson?”
She hesitated. Her soft dark glance slid over my face and past me into the house, where the vacuum cleaner was whining.
“Your sister’s spoken to me about you. Won’t you come in?”
In the living room, she sat tensely on the edge of the chair I indicated, clutching her blue leather purse in her lap:
“It’s kind of you to talk to me. I have to thank you—”
I sat down facing her. “Don’t thank me, I haven’t done anything. I understand your husband is missing, Mrs. Dickson?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind, I don’t use my married name. I’m known as Ruby Smith, professionally. After Horace took off from me, I just let the name carry over into my private life.”
“What’s your profession?”
“Beauty operator. I’m not working right now, but I have some money saved up.” She opened and closed her hands on her purse, as if it contained her savings. “I can afford to pay—”
“We can go into that later. Tell me something about your husband: what sort of a person he is, the circumstances of his leaving, and so on.”
“A fly-by-night.” She took a long breath, like an inaudible sigh, and her voice deepened. “Horace was a natural born fly-by-night. He was a good mechanic, but he wouldn’t settle for that. He wanted to be an entertainer, a star. He was always looking for something he didn’t have. Far fields were always greener. That was the basic trouble between him and me—him and I.”
“You had trouble in your marriage?”
“More trouble than marriage,” she said bitterly. “I went into it with high hopes. I thought he was a young man with a future. I wanted a decent home where I could bring up children. And I was willing to work for it, willing and able. But Horace had different ideas.”
“What did he want?”
“I never could figure that out. Maybe if I could of figured him out—only he was so much smarter. Horace was so smart that it made him stupid.” She paused, and touched her mouth, as if she distrusted what it was going to say. “Horace wanted to be a white man. He thought that that would solve his problems for him. I told him it would only make more problems, and what about me?”
Unconsciously, her manicured fingertips moved from the corner of her mouth to her high bronze cheekbone. Her whole palm flattened out against her cheek:
“I didn’t mean to say that. It was on my mind and it came out.”
“I take it he’s light enough to pass.”
“Yes. I know he is.”
“Do you think he’s passing now, and that’s why you haven’t heard from him?”
“I think he tried it, and got himself into trouble.”
“You must have a reason for thinking so.”
“I got—I have plenty of reasons. He could never say no to trouble. He was always sticking his neck out for the chopper. And he stuck it out once too often, that’s my opinion. He tried to stand too tall, and they cut him down.”
“This isn’t Mississippi.”
“No. It’s California. Maybe you think nothing happens in California. There are sections in this very town where a colored person can’t take a walk without they pick him up.”
“Did Horace often get picked up?”
“Not for anything bad. He used to talk to people, and get involved, like in bars. In some of his moods, nobody could look at him, he’d snap right back. Then there would be a fight, and even when he didn’t start it, it was too bad for him.”
“You mean he got beaten?”
“No. That was the trouble. He did some fighting in the Navy, and after that he had some professional fights. That was before I married him, I made him give it up. But he had no right to go picking fights with civilians. It kept him in and out of jail, and once a man starts the habit of going to jail, I—” Her voice broke, into a lower register: “I couldn’t keep him steady. He turned himself into a hater. A hater and a dreamer, with his dancing act and his crazy names. Lorenzo Granada. Big man.”
“He had an alias?”
The anger withdrew from her eyes, leaving them cautious. “Not like you think, I don’t mean that. He got this job out Ventura Boulevard at this dancing academy. Spanish type. He could pass for a Spanish type. He got this job under this Spanish name, I guess it’s Spanish. And he was ashamed to tell me about it, I guess. He knew what I thought about a man who wouldn’t stick with his own—”
“You were telling me about his job, Miss Smith.”
“Yes. He had this job, but he didn’t let on to me. He acted like he was planning to ditch me. I got scared, and jealous. He’d come home late at night with the smell of women on him. So one night I took it on myself to follow him out to the place on Ventura. He walked in bold as you please. I watched him through the window, dancing with them.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? Walk in and tell the people who he was, and that I was his wife? I drove on home and went to bed. When Horace got in, I told him what I thought. That he was a crazy fool crossing over, taking the risk of his life. He said that he was glad I found out. He didn’t want to hurt me, but this was it. He was starting his big new career, and I didn’t fit in with his plans. So goodbye Ruby. He packed up his suitcase, and walked out, and I never saw him again.”
“What sort of career was he planning?”
“He didn’t say, but it was easy to guess. He had this dancing-instructor job, and dancing was what was on his mind for years. He couldn’t sing, he couldn’t act, he couldn’t play an instrument. But he had to be somebody. So he was going to be a great tap dancer.” She added with a wry small smile: “He couldn’t dance, either, not by professional standards.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t planning to try something else?”
“Go back to grinding valves? He was too big to work with his hands. He wanted more than there was.”
“How far was he willing to go for it?”
“I’m not sure I understand you, Mr. Archer.”
“Don’t be offended if I spell it out. He was working under an alias. You said yourself that he was a hater and a dreamer. He’d been in and out of jail.”
“For assault. He wasn’t a criminal. I wouldn’t marry no—any criminal.”
“How long were you married to him?”
“Ten years, off and on.”
“People can change in ten years. Are you sure he wasn’t planning some criminal activity when he left you?”
“I’m sure he wasn’t.” But her eyes were guarded.
“You suggested yourself that Horace was in trouble.”
“Yes.” She nodded soberly. “I think—” She touched her mouth again, in distrust. The sound of the vacuum cleaner had stopped, and she seemed afraid to speak out into naked silence.
“You think he’s dead, Miss Smith? Your sister said something along that line.”
“Yes. I think he’s dead and buried, long ago. I’ve thought it ever since that picture came out in the newspaper.”
“A picture of Horace?”
“I’m certain it was him, yes. And it said underneath: ‘Have you seen this man?’ ”
“When did the picture come out?”
“Three years ago, almost. A few weeks after he left me. It said if anybody saw him, they should contact the police.”
“Did you?”
“No. Why should I? I didn’t see him.”
“That’s right,” her sister said from the doorway. “You didn’t see him. And you don’t know that it was Horace in the picture. It was just a picture, not a snap. You shouldn’t waste Mr. Archer’s time with it.”
“It said the man’s name was Larry Granada. That was the name Horace used.”
“It don’t prove nothing,” Mrs. Jackson said lightly. “Must be lots of Larry Granadas or whatever their name is.
”
“You know it was Horace,” Ruby Smith said. “And that he’s dead and missing. You thought so at the time.”
“Maybe you thought so. I thought so. I don’t say all I know.” Mrs. Jackson’s voice went into a sibylline muttering, about the desirability of letting sleeping dogs lie.
I stood up, looking from one woman to the other. “Let them lie. It suits me.”
Mrs. Jackson looked relieved. She’d come this far, and lost her courage. But Ruby Smith shook her head determinedly, angrily. She wanted a home, and children, and a husband who was willing to give them to her.
“Don’t listen to her.”
She opened her purse. I thought she was going to press money on me, but it was a small bundle of newspaper clippings. Collecting them, I gathered this information:
STOLEN WOMAN
The sound of breathing woke me. I opened my eyes and saw the first pale light filtering through the matchstick blinds. I closed my eyes and deliberately rolled over with my face to the wall, telling myself that it was just the sea. I’d been in the beach house for less than a week, and I wasn’t used to the constant sound of it.
But this was a different sound, quicker and somehow more urgent. Under it and behind it, I could hear the longer lapses of the surf. Somebody was breathing at me through the french door. I sat up in bed and made out his shadowy outline through the blind. His trench coat and snap-brim hat were vaguely familiar.
I got out of bed and opened the glass door:
“Colonel Ferguson?”
“I hesitated to wake you. I’ve been standing here in the corner for some time, trying to decide…” He let the sentence trail off.
“Decide to do what?”
“Ask your advice. It hardly seems fair to ask you to share my burden. But I’m very badly in need of advice from someone. I know hardly anyone in California, and you mentioned the other day that you had had some experience in crim—in these matters.”
“Criminal matters?”
His head dropped like a tired horse’s. “I’m afraid that is the case.”
I looked him over, putting together the few things I knew about him. I’d met him on the beach two days before. I think I spoke to him because he looked out of place. In fact, he looked totally lost, too civilized for the landscape and at the same time too provincial. He told me that he was a Canadian army officer visiting California for the first time, a colonel with the Canadian division of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. I asked him in for a drink, because it seemed the pukka thing to do. Over Scotch on the rocks, he became quite interesting, in a solemn way. He told a story well.
The Archer Files Page 48
