by Bob Bickford
“The woman is involved in this, more deeply than she should be. That's why she doesn't want us to see her eyes. I think she is deeply connected to Sal Cleveland in ways you don't suspect.”
I got impatient. “Sal Cleveland killed her family years ago,” I said. “Annie had the bad luck to see him shoot his wife. She's a witness. She's his albatross, and I think he's finally going to do something about getting rid of her. How could she not be involved?”
“She is a danger to you, amigo, and a danger to herself. If you have feelings for her, send her away until this is done.”
“Where would I send her?”
“I have offered you a safe place, and if you care for her, the offer stands for her, too. Send her to Mexico. You heard her. She loves the country, she speaks the language. I can arrange transport for both of you to Corazón Rosa. Food and a place to stay, as long as you want. If you won't leave, at least get her out of here.”
“She's tougher than you think,” I said. “I don't think she'll run, whether she loves Mexico or not.”
“I don't care if she's tough, amigo. I care that if shooting starts, I don't know if I can trust her or not. I can't identify her. I don't know what she is.” He paused to light a small cigar, and stepped carefully on the match. “We don't need any more fires,” he said. “It pays to be careful.”
“Any news on the fires? This seems to have been going on a while. Too close to the city for comfort.”
He looked at the sky, as if scanning for smoke. “We've had some rain on the coast...actually a lot of rain for this time of year, so I'm not too worried about the city, you know? In the mountains though, these fires play like children in an alley. The bomberos chase fire into a canyon and spend a couple days getting it under control, and then when they think it's out, it runs up an arroyo and now the next valley is on fire. Some of the ranches have a lot to worry about.”
“The news says the firefighters are getting the upper hand.”
“Let me tell you something, amigo. You don't beat these fires. You hope the wind changes and the fire turns back on itself. That's the only way these things end...when the fire gets turned around and burns itself. That's the only way they get beat, when they beat themselves.”
“Then let’s hope they do that.”
He savored the cigar for a minute, turning it in his fingers to appreciate the burn. Then he looked at me, eyes piercing in his wrinkled face. “I'll tell you something else, amigo.” He waggled his fingers. “You aren't as tough as you want to be. You've seen a lot, and it has made you tired, but it isn't the same as tough. You have a good corazón, and that can get you killed. You can't save everyone.”
He left me there. I stared after him, at the place he had been.
You can't save everyone.
It was three o’clock in the morning. I stood on Olive Street, watching the front entrance of the Hi-lo Club. Smack in the middle of a pretty nice block of downtown, it stood out like an infected boil. It was a place where you could get a drink, a little reefer, put down a bet, arrange sex, or have someone beaten up. You could probably do all of it at the same time, as long as you had the money. It was closed for the night, though.
I had no particular reason to be there, but in my experience doing something beat doing nothing. The Raws were dead, as was Virgil Lowen. I didn't know any of the other faces that were around Cleveland. I didn't know how many soldiers he had left, or who would be his right hand now that Mary Raw was gone. There was a lot I didn't know, and it might be better to know some of it before it came to me.
I waited in the doorway of a dentist’s office that was closed, too. Across the street and down a little bit, Woolworth’s was dark, and so was the art museum. In fact, nothing on the street had shifted for almost an hour. It started to rain; just a drop or two at first, and then it spattered the sidewalk. Within a minute the water sound grew to a noisy roar.
A white stone lion stood on the museum steps. I watched him carefully to see if he would make a move to stay dry, but he stayed where he was. He was probably keeping an eye on me, so I shot him with a finger.
“Just you and me,” I murmured. “But somebody’s going to show up, wait and see. I’m a detective and I know things.”
Nothing happened for another twenty minutes, and then a long-nosed car crept out from the next corner, so quiet it was almost invisible. I dropped my cigarette and moved a little deeper into my doorway. It passed in front of me and parked in front of the bar. I recognized the sloped trunk. It was Cleveland's Buick.
A half-block further up, a second car with its headlights out pulled to the curb and stopped. I smiled at the lion. “Told you so,” I whispered.
Three men got out of the first car and stood under the streetlights, looking around. When they were satisfied with that, the group of them went to the door of the Hi-lo. I heard a jingle of keys, and then they disappeared inside. After a minute, they all came back out, trailed by a fourth man. It was hard to be certain in the rainy darkness, but it looked like Cleveland. All of them piled in. The tail lights flashed red, and the car drove away.
I pulled my automatic and held it down by my side as I splashed up the sidewalk to where the other car waited in the dark. I recognized the Mercury, and when I saw Annie Kahlo behind the wheel, I put the gun away. I got into the passenger side.
“You got your car fixed,” I said.
“Good as new,” she said. “It cost a lot to do it. At first, the man at the garage looked at all the bullet holes and said it wasn't worth fixing. I would be better to buy a new car. I'm not interested in another car. I love this one. When I love something, I keep it, no matter what.”
I cracked the window down an inch and lit a cigarette.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I've got a plan to end this,” she said. “I can't tell you yet.”
“You've got a plan?” I asked. “Really? You’re not exactly being careful, if your plan includes surviving. Lopez has men watching the street. That was the whole point—to keep you safe. How did you get off the street without them following you, anyway?”
Her smile was sweet and dark. I locked eyes with her.
“I'm mostly invisible,” she said. “You know that.”
A small revolver lay on the seat beside her. The lights from outside the car gave it a dull shine. I picked it up and looked at it. It was a snub-nosed .38, not something usual for a lady's purse.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“Someone gave it to me a long time ago,” she said. “It doesn't matter. Also, I hate plans, but now I have one and I won’t be careful.”
She looked out at the street. The rain got harder, and it drummed on the car’s canvas roof and ran down the window glasses. I didn’t have anything else to say, so I pulled the door handle to get back out.
“How about you?” she asked. “You got a plan?”
“Mexico,” I said. “Samoa, Argentina, Hawaii—anywhere you want to go, I’ll take you. I just want to be with you.”
She didn’t answer. We sat quietly for a minute, watching the downpour. I kept my hand on the door handle. A dark-colored cat slinked up the sidewalk, casting left and right. It looked up at me as it passed the car. I had always thought that cats disliked being out in the rain, but this one didn’t seem to mind.
“I may never get anywhere,” she finally said.
“Up to you,” I said, and got out.
I was wet in about three seconds. The rain dripped off my hat brim. I went around the back of the car to cross the street.
“Hey,” she called.
I looked over my shoulder. Her face was a blur in the driver’s open window. She had to raise her voice to be heard.
“I talk to you in my head, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You're always here, and you’re always with me, if that's okay.”
She put the Mercury into gear and rolled away. It was far too late to bother moving to shelter. I watched her tail lights up to the
next corner, where they turned right and were gone.
I stood in the middle of the street and nodded at the place where the car had disappeared.
“That’s okay,” I said.
The gardeners Lopez assigned to guard us worked the street diligently. I knew there were guns secreted under piles of clippings in their wheelbarrows and probably anywhere else they would be instantly at hand. They seemed to be pretty good at gardening, whatever else they did. They did some work in the Gardiner's yard, under the doctor's watchful eye. Annie's masses of flowers had always seemed to me to be tended by elves and fairies, but I saw them there, too.
On the first day, they worked in my yard. The moldering carpet of nut shells that been gathering for years was swept up and disappeared. They trimmed and cut the lower branches from the massive old black walnut trees. When the sun came up in the morning, it poured through the windows and lit up the rooms, probably for the first time in many years. The dog lay on the kitchen floor and basked. He seemed to approve.
They had changed shift at first light. An old red truck had rattled its way up Figueroa Street and brought new guys. They had conferred with the night crew, who took their old blue truck and left. They said Annie hadn't come home last night. They were certain. They hadn't seen her go; she had just slipped away, so I knocked on her door to be sure she hadn't slipped back in. I remembered Earnwood's turn of phrase.
“Bad time to be off the reservation, Annie,” I muttered to myself. “Real bad time.”
She had been in front of the Hi-lo Club at three o'clock, but I didn't know why, or where she had gone from there. I worried. Annie Kahlo wasn't the kind of woman who took orders, but Lopez' men were there to protect her in the main part, and it was pointless if she didn’t stay around to be protected. I didn't know for sure the Gardiners were in any kind of danger, and I had been taking care of myself for a long time.
I would have to try to talk to her.
A blue-gray Packard rolled slowly to a stop against the curb in front of my house. The gardeners, three of them, were working in my yard. One them casually put down his rake and moved to a nearby wheelbarrow. The others sauntered away.
I recognized the car even before Fin waved to me from behind the wheel. I moved across the yard to the opened passenger window, and caught the sickening, cloying odor of marzipan.
“Your men are certainly alert, Mister Crowe. What exactly do you hope to prevent? I would have hoped you would use better soldiers than mere gardeners.”
“Gardeners? These men have been through things that would make you faint.”
I looked at the man standing at the wheelbarrow handles. The other two had melted away, out of sight. I knew they weren't far away, and had their guns trained on the Packard.
“Do not presume to know what would make me faint, or what I may have been through, Mister Crowe.”
It was hard to tell if he was amused, or angry. His pale face stayed blank, so maybe he was neither. Maybe Fin didn't feel emotions.
“They're pretty good gardeners,” I said. “I have to give them that. I never thought my place could look this good.”
He glanced at my yard, disinterested.
“I want to bring you some good news,” he said. “You don't have so much good news lately that you'd turn away a little more, do you? I'm here as a messenger.”
“I don't want to be rude,” I said. “Can you get to the point?”
Fin turned and stared straight ahead through the windscreen glass. Deliberately, delicately, he touched the button on the dashboard, and the Packard's engine went quiet. He placed his hands in his lap. After a long pause, he turned to look at me. Blotches of color had crept into his white complexion, as though he ran a high fever.
“Mister Crowe, you fancy yourself to be on a mission. A cheap, tawdry woman was killed, a rancid life no one will ever miss. You have appointed yourself as her avenging angel, wielding a wooden sword. You have killed several people, and you believe yourself to be justified and protected by your own goodness.”
“I haven't killed anyone.”
“Do not interrupt me. You are insignificant, a character from a children’s book.” He pointed at Annie's house. “Read the cards, if you can. The woman is a player in this, and Mister Cleveland is a player in this. You are an accident, just a misdealt card that has somehow found its way onto the table.”
He took a silver pillbox from his breast pocket, snapped it open and delicately removed a white tablet. He placed it under his tongue and closed his eyes for a moment while it dissolved. He opened them again and looked at me as the sweet odor of poison filled the car.
“You gave up on yourself a long time ago,” he said. “You are putting in your time, drawing one breath after another, until old age and the bottle can finally take you away. Until you can find some peace.”
He put the pillbox away without taking his eyes from mine. The sounds and colors of the street faded, until the world was a study in black-and-white. I only saw Fin's face and listened to his voice. He seemed to be speaking inside my head.
“Your problem, Mister Crowe, is that you see meaning where there is none. You want to believe in love, to believe in good. You trust beauty. You are the worst kind of fool, the kind who knows he is a fool. There is however, one thing that sets you apart from other fools. Do you know what that is?”
I shook my head. The smell of marzipan got stronger, almonds and sugar. It wasn't unpleasant. I wanted to breathe the poison deeper.
“You persist, Mister Crowe. You persist and you persist, and for the life of me I don't know what it is that drives you on, even in the face of your own despair. You cannot save yourself, but you go on with the idea that you can save the secret sister.”
With a long index finger, he indicated Annie's house again.
“You cannot save her, Mister Crowe, any more than you can save yourself. You long for darkness, and peace, and yet you fight your own nature on her behalf. You blaspheme your own self. You cannot save Sister Secret. She is gone to you, as gone as the small girl in pink.”
“What do you want?” I whispered.
“Fig's a dance, Mister Crowe. The wind blows and the wind swings, through sanatoriums and empty bedrooms and bare trees. It blows and it swings, blows and swings. You cannot save the girls in pink, and yet you persist. What can you hope to do?”
“I can die trying,” I said. “I can stay the full nine. I can hope for that.”
He stared at me, startled. The spell lifted, and the day came back into focus.
“You surprise me, Mister Crowe,” he said. “You do, indeed. No one stays the full nine, not even me.”
His pale eyes crawled across my face. I wouldn’t look away.
“Watch me,” I said. “What do you want, Fin?” I asked again.
“It isn't a matter of what I want...this time,” he said. “It's a matter of what you want. Mister Cleveland is offering a meeting. He does not want you to kill any more of his people. He is willing to discuss an accommodation.”
“I wonder what my chances would be of coming out of that meeting alive.”
He looked surprise, and then affected hurt. “You would have my guarantee, Mister Crowe. You would have my personal assurance, as a neutral party.”
“I think I'll pass.”
“Are you going to keep these men here forever? Do you think that if Mister Cleveland brought the full force of his anger to this street that these foreign laborers could stand against it?”
“I'll tell you again, they've been through tougher times than you could imagine,” I said. “I'd stake my life on their competence, anytime.”
“Not tougher than I could imagine, I promise you that.”
He threw his chin up and laughed merrily. The feverish spots of color on his cheeks deepened. I heard him laugh for the first time, and I didn't much like the sound of it.
“And I'll tell you again, you don't want to imagine where I've been or what I've been through, Mister Crowe. It would take you
r imagination far past its breaking point.”
His laughter vanished as quickly as it had come. He peered at me shrewdly. “This might be an alternative to more killing, which will see you yourself killed, sooner or later, by Mister Cleveland, or by the electric chair. Dead is dead, when it comes down to it...it's all wind and would be all the same to you.”
I got suddenly impatient, and deeply tired. This was all catching up with me.
“When and where?” I asked.
“Three o'clock tomorrow morning.” He smiled. “The Star-lite Lounge. The Hi-lo Club has sad associations for Mister Cleveland since the demise of unfortunate Mrs. Raw. Sadly, it is closed and likely to remain closed.”
“Then some good has come out of this,” I said. “I'll be bringing someone with me. I'm not stupid enough to go into that place alone.”
“I will be there,” he said. “You have nothing to fear. Oh, and Mister Crowe, if you're thinking about bringing your Mexican friend, Mister Lopez with you...”
“That's exactly what I thought. Nix that and there won't be a meeting at all. I won't come alone.”
“I started to say, before you interrupted, that we insist you do. The Mexican is involved, as you well know. We insist he be there, too.”
“Three in the morning. Star-lite Lounge.”
“Only you and the Mexican,” he said. “Don't try to deviate. Where there are cards, there are tricks, and we've been playing cards for a long time.”
“No tricks.”
“Fig's a dance, Mister Crowe,” he said. “Good day.”
He reached across and cranked up the window, closing off the intense odor of the poison he carried with him. He looked at the watch strapped to his wrist, looked pleased and nodded to himself. He pressed the starter button and drove off without looking at me again
-Twenty Five-
I couldn't think of anything else to do with myself, so I went downtown to the office.
I wheeled the car to the curb in front of my building and shut it off. I sat for a couple of minutes, looking at nothing and listening to the Ford tick as it cooled down. Then I got my gun from the map compartment. I slipped it into my pocket and got out.
