Blood on the Boards
Page 8
It was too cold for anyone to be out in a patio by this time, but Joe was too drunk to realize that. He went out into the cold, clear night.
They were out there and, to his befuddled vision, they seemed to be standing very close. Perhaps for warmth. Joe called, “What the hell’s going on out here?” and saw them turn.
Then it sounded like the man said, “Drop dead,” and Joe headed his way.
Sharon said, “Joe, for heaven’s sake, don’t make a scene here. We were just—”
Joe didn’t catch the rest of it. He was close enough now, and he started a right hand from the ground.
It must have been halfway to its intended target when he caught the blond’s fist right under the left eye. Joe kept coming in and the next punch the blond threw was the finisher. Joe went back and down and out.
• • •
The pounding thunder of a truck seemed to shake the ground and the odor of Sharon’s perfume was strong in his nostrils. Filtered sunlight came through the match-stick bamboo drapes that covered the windows running the length of the wall within his view.
He was on a nine-foot davenport in a bright, warm living-room and his head felt like the pit end of a bowling alley. There was a rhythmic pulsation of pain over his eyes and his lower lip was stiff with dried blood. One eye was puffed nearly shut.
Well, he hadn’t landed in jail. But he didn’t remember coming here. From the fragrance, it must be Sharon’s apartment and he remembered somebody telling him that was in the Santa Monica Canyon. The truck that wakened him, then, could have been coming along the Coast Highway.
He rose slowly, painfully and went to look through the bamboo drapes. There was no highway in sight; this place was deeper into the Canyon. On the street below, his car was parked next to the curb.
He tried to remember anything that had happened after the blond’s Sunday punch last night. It was a blank. But if this was Sharon’s apartment, she had probably driven him here in his car. Though it didn’t seem logical that she could handle him alone.
He found the bathroom and examined his face in the mirror. The flesh around the closed eye was puffed and blue. His lip was encrusted with blood but not badly swollen.
“Fool,” he said to his image. “Drunken bum.” He bathed the lip with warm, soapy water and washed. He rinsed out his mouth and went back to the davenport to lie down again.
The furniture in this room was bright and modern and not cheap. Nor was this a low-rent district. Sharon lived a lot better than her car would indicate. But to her, this was a necessary setting. A car was only transportation, a necessary evil in this town of inadequate public transportation.
Joe rubbed the back of his neck, digging at it, trying to relieve the pain over his eyes.
He heard a sound from the rear of the apartment and then a little later the sound of running water. A few minutes after that, Sharon came into the room.
She was wearing a green flannel robe and mannish slippers. Her lustrous hair was high on her head, and her face looked scrubbed and bright.
“Migawd,” Joe said. “You look like you never had a drink in your life.”
She stood a few feet from the davenport and gazed down at him gravely.
“You were an awful boor last night.”
“I suppose. Who was the blond you were clinching with?”
“We weren’t clinching. He’s a producer at U-I. He was also a boxer at college, if that’s any solace to you.” “It helps. I was drunk. Maybe I’ll meet him again.” “I doubt it.”
Joe rose slowly to a sitting position. “How did I get here? You certainly didn’t carry me.”
“I drove the car. You walked to that, with help. And walked from the car to that davenport with my help.”
Joe’s head was in his hands now, his elbows on his knees. “Who paid the tab?”
“Mr. Crichton, the producer, the one who hit you. Could you drink some coffee, or tomato juice, or something?”
“I can try. I had a look at myself in the bathroom mirror. This Crichton didn’t do that with two punches, did he?”
“He must have. Relax. I’ll call you when the coffee is ready.”
When she called him, there was more than coffee. There were scrambled eggs, light as a cloud, and bacon and spicy tomato cocktail. He discovered he could eat, once the tomato cocktail was down.
By the time he was ready for coffee, he felt almost human again.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “You amaze me. I never figured you for the domestic touch.”
“Don’t try to figure me, Mr. Policeman. I’m too complex for that. I think I have a chance for a part in a picture at U-I.”
“Mmmmm. That’s why you were putting the heat to him last night, eh?”
“Maybe. Were you jealous?”
“I was drunk. Although I’d have been just as annoyed if I’d been sober. But I probably wouldn’t have started trouble.”
“You’d have walked out on me?”
“Probably.”
She smiled at him. “Is it too late to apologize?”
He smiled back at her. “No need to. Now that I know it was strictly business. I was thinking just the other day that it’s a man’s world, and you single girls have a nasty row to hoe.”
She looked at him doubtfully. “Was there a crack in there somewhere?”
He shook his head. “Could I have another spot of coffee?”
She poured it and chuckled. “Norah should see us now. What wouldn’t she think?”
“She wouldn’t think I’d slept in the living-room. By the way, Norah and I aren’t engaged, or anything, you understand.”
“I understand, but does she?” Before Joe could answer, Sharon lifted a hand. “You don’t know her very well. She can’t be casual, not about love. You’re the first man in three years that she’s shown a definite interest in.”
Joe took a breath and said, “She’s a great girl.”
“Would you like something more to eat?”
“No, thanks. What has Alan told you about his questioning? Does he think the police suspect him more than the others?”
She nodded. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. They don’t confide in me.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant—do you suspect him more than the others?”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t suspect anyone, yet.” He stood up. “Murder isn’t my business any more. Well, I’d better get out of here before all your neighbors are up.”
“They’re all up now,” Sharon said. “It’s ten o’clock.”
The doorbell rang at that moment, and Sharon rose. Joe started to pick up the dishes.
From the other room, he heard Sharon say, “Well, this is a surprise. Come on back and have a cup of coffee.”
Joe had turned and was facing the doorway by the time they got there. It was Norah.
Her face was white, and she looked at the dishes still on the table, and then at Joe. He had left his jacket in the living-room; the table was set for two. A girl would need to be very naïve to believe anything good about this tableau.
Norah said quietly, “I saw the car in front, as I was going by. I just wanted to find out for myself.”
She turned and went out. The front door slammed.
CHAPTER SIX
SHARON SIGHED and shook her head. “Now you know. And how innocent it was.”
“As it happened,” Joe qualified. “Lord, she looked stricken. I can’t mean that much to her, not in a few days. She’s dramatizing it.”
“Maybe. You with your jacket off and I in a robe, breakfast for two—what must the girl think of you?” Sharon paused. “And particularly right after I walked in on the same thing, yesterday. I can understand a tomcat like you, you see. Norah might not.”
“I’m not a tomcat, Miss Cassidy. I had some tomcat ideas last night, I’ll admit. But generally, I’m a real clean kid. Well, thanks for the breakfast.”
“You’re welcome.” She walked with him into the livin
g-room. “Sorry things worked out as they did.”
He chucked her under the chin. “I’ll bet you are. See you.”
Outside, it was a bright, hot day without wind. He took Channel to the Coast Highway, and the bathers were already parked solidly along here.
At home, he took a hot shower and put on swimming trunks and went out to the patio. There, he connected up the record player and relaxed on a pad in the sun.
The remembrance of Norah’s scorn came to him, annoyed him, and disturbed him. Annoyed him, because it implied she had strings on him. And disturbed him because he liked her well enough to value her opinion of him.
She had come into Sharon’s place deliberately to spy, which wasn’t like her. And Sharon had brought her right back to the kitchen, which was like her. Joe smiled. That had been a nasty trick of Sharon’s, but he couldn’t hate the girl like the rest of them did. She was fighting her own battles, without allies. And without whimpering.
His doorbell rang, and he went around to the side of the house to call out, “I’m in the back. Come on back, whoever you are.”
It was Alan Dysart. He came along the stepping-stones of the side yard without looking up, watching his footing a little self-consciously, Joe thought.
When he came to the gate, he looked up, and his face was grimly serious.
“Are you alone?”
Joe opened the gate. “All alone. Something troubling you, Alan?”
“A number of things.”
“Come on in and let down your hair. Drink?” “I don’t drink.”
Joe indicated a redwood bench and sat down on the pad. “You should try it sometime. Great relaxing influence. You look all wound up.”
“I am. I’ve been accused of being a murderer and a Communist and practically a queer. And then I drive past Sharon’s and see your car there, early this morning, and—” He sat on the redwood bench, leaning forward, his young face taut. “God—”
“Some of the penalties of being artistic,” Joe consoled him. “Sharon and I did nothing wrong. Not that I owe you that explanation, but only to keep the record straight. You were kind of pinko in college, weren’t you?”
“Who wasn’t, in college? I’m a Democrat, now.”
“Well, to most of the local papers, that’s the same as being a Commie. Who called you queer?”
“Nobody directly. But the police had me before a psychiatrist and he kept bringing up the woman angle in what he probably thought was subtle interrogation.”
“That’s standard with artistic people,” Joe explained. “It’s a compliment, really.”
“Not to me. And there’s one thing more. How come Larry Puma doesn’t get any special attention from the police? He came late; his car was parked on the curve, right next to the slope, there. Larry’s never late for rehearsal.”
“Nobody’s being overlooked, Alan. I can guarantee you that. Are you sure you couldn’t use a beer? I could.”
“Oh, all right—I’m not a teetotaler, exactly. I just don’t believe in dulling what intelligence I have.”
“One beer won’t hurt it much. Drink it from the can?”
Alan nodded, and removed the horn-rimmed glasses. He bent forward over the table, cradling his head in his arms.
When Joe came out with the beer, Alan was sitting erect again, polishing his glasses with a piece of Kleenex. For a non-drinker, he took a healthy first swallow of beer.
Joe sat on the bench on the opposite side of the table. “I understand you’re the heir.”
“I’m not sure. Who told you? Sharon?”
Joe nodded. “About last night—we went out and had some liquor, and I had too much. Tangled with one of Sharon’s friends, and he did this to me.” Joe pointed toward his face. “Knocked me cold. I woke up on Sharon’s davenport this morning. That’s the word on that.”
Alan ran a finger along the crimped top of the beer can. “It wasn’t any of my business, anyway. I know what she is. It doesn’t stop the way I feel about her, but I should know enough not to expect better treatment.”
“She’s for you, eh?”
The youth nodded. “She is. I fixed up that date with my uncle for her, too. Sharon uses me. She uses everybody.”
“But you still love her?”
Alan nodded, and took another sip of beer. “That’s not very bright, is it?”
“Brighter men have had softer spots. What have you got against Larry Puma?”
Alan looked up quickly. “Not a damned thing. I wasn’t speaking maliciously. The point I was trying to make was that Larry had just as good a chance as I did to kill my uncle. And yet he went out with you and Norah, that night, even before the police had finished investigating.”
“It was the mud on your shoes, for one thing,” Joe explained. “And you were related and you had to sound off. Nobody likes a loud-mouth.”
“No cop, you mean, if you’ll pardon the frankness.”
“If you’ll pardon this frankness—if I were back behind the badge, and you sounded off like you did, I’d have done exactly as Sergeant Krivick did. Who else had a motive?”
“I don’t know. My uncle had enemies, plenty of them. He helped to clean out the Reds in two of the Guilds out here. He was an active man and opinionated.” Alan took a breath. “And rich.”
Joe smiled at him. “Another beer? You killed that one in a hurry.”
Alan managed a smile of his own. “Okay. You’re not such a bad guy.”
“We rich bastards have to stick together,” Joe said. “Soon as you get the estate, you’ll be voting Republican, too. What country club you going to join?”
“If I’m the heir,” Alan said, “I know exactly what I’m going to do with part of the money.”
“I’ll get the beer,” Joe said. “You can tell me about it when I come back.”
He came back with the beer and sat down to a one-hour monologue on the function of truly experimental theater in the current commercial world. Joe understood very little of it, though Alan was plainly trying to phrase it in layman’s terms. It still wasn’t boring; the intensity of Alan’s clear dedication came through better than the words.
When he finally paused for breath, Joe asked, “And you want to establish it out here?”
Alan nodded. “In that house the Players always talk about buying. It would convert beautifully.”
“And where will your audience come from? You say only one person in a thousand would appreciate this kind of theater. That gives you an audience of seven people from the Palisades.”
Alan took off his glasses as though about to make some important pronouncement. Only his intensity saved the next words from sounding like a pompous absurdity. “If it’s as good as I plan it to be, I intend to draw my audience from all of Southern California.”
Joe thought of Leonard Smith at that moment, bright, fat little Leonard who wanted to make some small sound before he died. Alan and Leonard, brothers under the skin.
And the rest of them, what motivated them? Working all day, rehear ing all night, receiving not one cent in compensation. Working for a clap of the hand, for a laugh or an appreciative audience murmur? Or something beyond that? Or only infantile exhibitionism?
This wasn’t the only area where they struggled or flourished. There wasn’t a state in the union that didn’t have its quota of amateur theaters. Bright spots in the dark night, interpreting or dulling life, offering barbs or barbiturates, according to the audiences and the aims of each group.
From the bicycle act to the Bard, they were brothers and sisters with one goal—communication with the people at whatever level they could share.
Alan said, “You’re mighty quiet. Digesting my polemics?”
Joe stood up. “No. I was thinking of Leonard Smith. He told me he wanted to make some small sound before he died. I was thinking your world is a world of small sounds.”
Alan’s thin nose twitched and he looked at Joe thoughtfully. “That wasn’t bad for a stinking cop. I like that.”
“I’d like one, thank you.”
“And one thing more,” Joe said. “The way you feel about the theater, that’s the way I feel about cops. So kind of lay off the cracks, right?”
Alan was quiet a moment. Then: “Right. I’m sorry, Joe. Right.”
They were eating when the phone rang. It was Jessup, the cop and part-time realtor. His voice was complaining. “Who’s that dame you got climbing in my hair, Joe, this Payne woman?”
“A realtor with a sense of justice,” Joe told him. “What’s your beef?”
“She threatens to send me up in front of the Board. I don’t get it, Joe.”
“I could do worse than that,” Joe told him. “I could bring you up in front of the Commission. Or come down and kick your fat face in. I hate a crooked cop, Jessup, even after working hours.”
“All right. No need to get hot. I’ll send you a check. This isn’t the first time this has happened out there, Joe.”
“It’s the first time it’s happened to me,” Joe said, and hung up.
Back in the kitchen, Alan was smiling. “If you’ll pardon the cliché, I couldn’t help but overhear. Didn’t you call him a ‘crooked cop’? Are there such things?” Behind his glasses, his eyes were mocking.
“There are crooked cops,” Joe admitted. “And crooked lawyers and doctors and actors and priests. Next question?”
“You’ve answered them all. Well, I’ve got to run. I enjoyed talking to you, Joe.”
“I enjoyed listening. You’ll be hanging around the Players, I suppose, as long as Sharon is?”
“I suppose. And you?”
“She’s nothing to me,” Joe said. “Yet.”
“I hope she never is,” Alan said earnestly. “For your sake, and mine.”
Joe went back out to the patio and the pad. It seemed quieter than it had before Alan came but he couldn’t relax. He listened to the record player for a while, and then went in and phoned the Point Realty Company.
Norah was in the office, and he told her, “I wanted to thank you for getting after Jessup. He just phoned.”
“You’re welcome.” Her voice cold.