Girls in Pink

by Bob Bickford

  The air was warm, but the yard seemed cool. It was probably the overcast sky, and the mood. I wondered if Mrs. Gardiner would let me sit here and pour myself drinks until I got too drunk to feel gloomy, or any other way. I thought she would probably match me, drink for drink.

  “Annie just turned seventeen when she brought him home,” she said. “I don't know where she met him. I felt glad she had a friend. She had reached an age when it wasn't healthy for her to be so isolated.”

  “Brought who home? Sal?”

  “He was her first beau,” she nodded. “He was as handsome as the devil himself. Sea-green eyes, and his clothes always pressed. Never a hair out of place. So young, but so much older than his years. My husband despised him . . . said he'd heard that Sal was involved in criminal things. Annie adored him, right from the start. She told me that she was going to marry him.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened is that one afternoon, he came to the house when I was home alone. He seduced me, or I seduced him.”

  She stared at me, ready to be angry. “Does that surprise you? An old woman like me? I wasn't always old, you know. Most men would have been happy to see me disrobed.”

  “You're a fine-looking woman now,” I said mildly. “I'm sure you're right.”

  “He was unusual, for being still almost a boy,” she said. “He acted both savage and curiously gentle. He knew things about women, maybe more than it's good for a man to know. It became like a drug.”

  “It happened more than once?”

  “It became a habit,” she said. “He escorted my daughter into town to buy ice cream sodas, and undressed me on alternate days. Maybe he undressed her, too. The mother one day, and the daughter the next. Does that shock you?”

  “Nothing much shocks me. I'm a private detective, and a policeman before that. I lost the capacity for shock a long time ago.”

  “I think it's more than that,” she said. “I think there's something good about you. You don't judge.”

  I didn't want to talk about my character, and I steered her back. “How long did the situation go on?”

  “A month or two . . . until I turned up pregnant. I had thought I was too old. A possibility I had never thought of, and no chance it could be my husband's child. We hadn't . . . do you understand?”

  “I understand. You told Sal about his child?”

  “I had an idea that I would marry him, despite the difference in our ages. I begged him to take me away with him. I pleaded. He laughed, and asked me what he would want with a forty-five-year-old woman. He said I was . . . never mind. I was proud of how I looked, and he humiliated me. It didn't stop me from begging, though, and I got on my knees.”

  “What about Annie?” I asked.

  “That was what made it unforgivable, don't you see? Not just the indiscretion. I didn't just betray my daughter, I had been willing to take Sal away from her, and to break her heart. I was ready to both abandon her and to take away somebody she loved.”

  “How did it end?”

  She looked into her glass, into the past. Her face grew bitter. “He beat me,” she murmured. “Sal beat me, and still I begged him not to go. He did leave, though, and my face was marked. I was bruised, and a baby on the way. When my husband came back, I had to tell him. I told him everything. It was another mistake.”

  “Did he go after Cleveland?”

  “He went after me,” she said. “He gave me my second beating of the day.”

  I felt a wave of pity, and then anger. “What did he do about Sal?” I asked. “Or was hitting you enough for him?”

  “He said he would kill Sal, and that I had to leave. If I packed a suitcase right away, he wouldn't tell Annie what I had done. I had a little bit of money that I had put away. He was never any good with money, and I kept it for an emergency.”

  “So you left,” I said. “You didn't see choices. I think I would have done the same.”

  “What was I going to do? I was middle-aged, alone and pregnant. I didn't know anyone here who could help me. I sat for two days in a cheap hotel in Santa Teresa, and then I booked passage back to Hawaii. At least I had family and old friends there. When I got there, someone helped me to find a doctor who could provide a . . . solution.”

  “You couldn't afford to have the baby.”

  “No, I couldn't,” she said. “The doctor I went to was very kind to me.”

  “His name was Gardiner,” I guessed.

  She looked at me, mildly surprised. “Is being a detective something one learns to do, or is it a matter of intuition? Yes, it was Gardiner, and he eventually married me. He gave up his practice. He could afford to. He brought me back here.”

  “Why did you come back?” I asked. “Your husband and June were gone. Annie had left. Why did you want to be here?”

  She drained her drink and put the tumbler down. Then she reflexively picked it up and sipped at the ice cubes. I got the bottle of gin and splashed some into her glass.

  “Maybe I wanted to be closer to my girls,” she said. “Maybe I had nowhere else to go.”

  “Did you know June's body was in the barn?”

  “Of course I didn't know,” she snapped. “I'm a fool, not a degenerate.”

  “By the time you came back, the trouble at the ranch was already over.”

  “Long since over. My husband was dead, and my youngest daughter lost in the fire. Annie ran away to God knows where. It wasn't until her art began to surface that I had any idea she was alive. She's an astonishing artist, you know. She has paintings on display in museums.”

  “I know. Did you ever find out what happened when the ranch burned?”

  “My husband said he would kill Sal, but that isn't the way it worked out. My husband was in many ways weak, and Sal bent him to his will instead. He put all kinds of pressure on. He used the police, the county government. He had water rights revoked, and other things. He loaned him money that he couldn't possibly pay back. Then he began to use the ranch for business—illegal things that my husband got implicated in. He had violated his daughter and his wife, and in the end he violated my husband just as thoroughly.”

  “Sal took an enemy and turned him into an unwilling partner as a way of breaking him.”

  “Yes, but the point was that my husband had threatened him. Sal Cleveland doesn't allow that sort of disrespect. He could have killed him any time he wanted to. My husband was a farmer, not a gangster. He played with him first, completely humiliated him and when he was absolutely broken, he finally pulled the trigger. Sal likes to play. He knows about women, but he knows about men, too.”

  I had another thought. “Does Sal Cleveland know you're in Santa Teresa?”

  It worried me. None of the women who crossed paths with him did very well.

  “My name is different now,” she said. “Besides that, even if he came face to face with me, he wouldn't recognize me. No one sees an old woman.”

  Mary Raw had been in the Gardiners' house. Sal had told me that she simply had the wrong address while looking for Annie. I hoped it was true. Things were exploding, and I didn't need to worry about Sal exacting some kind of revenge on Mrs. Gardiner.

  “Do you love my daughter?” she asked, breaking into my thoughts.

  “Your daughter is a troubled woman. I don't think love comes into it, in the usual sense.”

  “Do you love her?” she asked again. She leaned forward. Her eyes were watery, and that made her look even older than she was. It felt almost like she was begging me.

  “I don't understand half the things she says to me,” I said. “I watched her kill a man. She surprised him and disabled him with one shot. When he was helpless and begging, she finished him off. It was worse than anything I've ever seen, even in the war. It was absolutely cold-blooded.”

  I looked down into my glass. The melting ice made tiny swirl patterns in the brown liquor. The yard felt breathless.

  “Yes,” I finally said. “I love her.”

  She ha
nded me a piece of paper, folded small.

  “Then this is where she'll meet you,” she said. “Will you take care of her? Will you keep her safe?”

  “I don't know if I can,” I said. “I don't even know if she'll let me. She has some pretty strange ideas about independence. I'm going to try.”

  “Then do try. Do what you have to do,” Mrs. Gardiner said. “And for God's sake don't look down.”

  I liked Cabrillo Boulevard; I always had. It meandered slow and broad along the beach, taking in the sights like it had nowhere that it needed to be in a hurry. The road got separated from the sand and blue water by a wide expanse of grass. Shacks for hot dogs and rented sun umbrellas dotted the boardwalk. A mile-long row of king palms stood and watched the traffic move below them.

  The slip of paper Mrs. Gardiner gave me had an address and a time of day on it, scribbled in Annie's handwriting. When I figured I was close enough to what it said, I checked the rear view mirror carefully. I saw no sign of the black Packard, so I wheeled my coupe to the curb. I got the Browning from the map compartment, stowed it in my pocket and got out. I wanted to walk the rest of the way.

  The sky was an orange haze, flaring bright as the sun sank below the horizon, tinted by the fires burning outside the city. I could smell the smoke mixed in with the odors of salt water and sugar taffy. It didn't seem to bother the beach-goers any. Skin shiny with coconut oil, they slapped sandals along the sidewalk as they passed. Their sunglasses looked right through me. Next door to the pier, the roller coaster rattled and shrieked around its track, just like it did every other day.

  Over the water, a silver biplane flew in low. It banked, belched and dropped. For a moment it looked like serious trouble, but then it straightened and roared along the surf line, trailing a long banner over the bathers' heads. I had time to read something about aftershave, and then it was gone again, circling out to sea.

  I kept walking. In the next few blocks, the pedestrian traffic thinned, the hotels and restaurants faded, and I came to the sign for Ocean Lane, the street I wanted. I stopped on the corner, turned and bent to light a cigarette. Looking over the match at the sidewalk behind me, I didn't see anyone who looked like one of the Star-lite gang, so I turned the corner and walked up Ocean.

  It was a dark street, even in the daytime. Narrow, not much more than an alley, it was closed to car traffic. There were stucco walls crowded close on either side of it. Something pale moved over my head, and I looked up. Six blouses were hung to dry on a metal railing over my head. They moved very slightly in unseen air currents, stirring like a group of complaining ghosts who wondered why I was there.

  A phonograph played from an upstairs window. The last notes from “I Love You Madly” trailed off, and then the saxophone fell silent.

  At the top of a flight of stone stairs, the lane opened up. The sun was just about gone, and the air turned sapphire. It was the rare kind of light, just at the end of the day and in just the right place that doesn't need neon to make it glow.

  Ahead of me, I saw a plastered wall covered with bougainvillea vines that were flourishing, even in the low light. I headed toward it, and saw Annie in the doorway of a shop, browsing a rack of colored post cards. The sign over the door said Hush, and nothing else.

  I looked over my shoulder again and went to join her.

  “Hush?” I smiled, when I came close. “That's what they call it? What else do they sell here? Peace and quiet?”

  “Just post cards,” she said.

  Her face was serious and composed. She wore something loose and white. The tiny bits of turquoise and gold at her throat and ears played with the color of her skin.

  “Is that why we're here? To buy post cards?”

  “I'm looking for a card for June.” She thought for a moment. “If I can find the right one, I'll send it to her. Sometimes there isn't one she'd like, so I don't buy anything. I want to send her one now. I might not get a chance later.”

  She went back to flipping through the cards. Her fingers were lovely, strong and slender, walking and sorting and looking. Her nails were cut short.

  “June is dead, Annie,” I said. I kept my voice gentle. “She's been dead for a long time. How can you send her anything?”

  “In the mail, of course,” she said. “How else do you send things to people?”

  I didn't have any kind of answer for that, so I waited quietly and watched her while she searched the racks. Her look was serene, and her fingers were deft as they moved the colored cards. I realized that I was trying to memorize her eyes and her brow, the shape of her mouth and the hair that fell across her shoulder. I had no way to keep her voice, no way to save her laugh, or to remember all the improbable things she had said.

  I couldn't turn back the clock and change any of what had happened, and I couldn't change what was going to happen. It was too late to stop any of the things that were in motion, and if I tried to, it would mean losing her faster than I was going to lose her anyway.

  She paid for something at the cash register, and took my hand when she came back.

  “Let's walk,” she said.

  We went back the way I had come, all the way to Cabrillo, and then we strolled and looked at the ocean and the hotels, the cars and people. I watched for prowl cars. I didn't pay a lot of attention to the traffic otherwise. I figured Cleveland would be keeping his men close and letting the cops look for Annie. I stayed conscious of the weight of the Browning in my pocket. I didn't want that kind of trouble, but I couldn’t bear to watch Annie gunned down, either.

  “Don't you worry about being seen?” I asked.

  “I'm invisible, mostly.” Her smile was an enigma. “I'll let them see me when it's the right time.”

  The sun had touched down into the ocean. The day was leaving fast, and the beaches were emptying. The waterfront would take on a different life in the next hour as it got dark. The smell of suntan oil would be replaced by perfume, and down the strand, the sparkle of sun on water would give way to the lights of the Ferris wheel.

  Annie took my arm and stopped me. I turned to face her.

  “I'm leaving,” she said.

  The quiet became absolute. The noise of the street went away completely. There was only the hush, and only her face.

  “I know,” I said. “I guess I've always known. You don't have a choice now. Where will you go?”

  “Even if I know, I can't say. Not now.”

  The pain came then, and stretched the moment out. All of the things I finally wanted to say seemed pointless now.

  “I played so long,” she said. “I need to rest.”

  She stood on the sidewalk and looked at me. She was very, very still.

  “Will you come back?” I asked.

  The twilight painted us blue; signs and windows were lit softly behind her. It was how I mostly remembered it later, the other colors mixed gently into all of that blue. I suppose there were traffic noises, and perhaps drifts of music. There must have been the smells of a dry summer, bougainvillea, vanilla, hibiscus, and the ocean underneath all of it. I don’t remember any of it; I only see the watercolor evening.

  She pressed something into my hand. I knew without looking down that I held a playing card.

  “If I can find my way, I will,” she said. “It’s mostly crumbs, but a pebble, just in case.”

  I stood there, afterward, watching the place she had been. The skin on my face stayed warm for a long time where she had kissed it. It was the end, but I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know yet that everything perfect begins with an ending.

  -Thirty-

  For the next two days and nights, nothing happened. Sometimes it felt empty, like everything had already happened. Other times, it felt like everything was about to start, and I found myself pacing from room to room and looking out the front window. The police stayed busy at the Kahlo house next door for most of the time, but eventually they couldn't find anything else to be busy about, and they packed up and left. The last of the ne
wshounds that had been loitering at the curb packed up their pencils and went with them.

  No news came about Annie. She didn't contact me, and no one spotted the Mercury. She didn't kill anyone else.

  The Gardiners stayed inside. I thought a couple of times about going over for a drink, and decided I wouldn’t be good company and didn't. The apartment house across the street looked deserted. Mothers kept their children inside, as though what had happened might still be hanging around. At first, there was a lot more traffic on the street than normal. A stream of cars drove slowly by to check the address from the front page news, but it died to a trickle on the second day. There were other headlines, and there wasn't much to see.

  I stayed relieved that my own name hadn't made it into the papers, and I hated my own sense of relief. There was no reason it should have been, really, but I was in the thing up to my neck. It was strange to be left out of it in the lurid newspaper accounts. I told myself it would be terrible for my business to have that exposure, but I still hated my own sense of relief.

  They ran Annie's picture with the stories. She looked absolutely beautiful, and I knew it added to the drama. I wondered where they had gotten the photograph. It was strange to see someone whose hair you had touched and whose jokes you had laughed at portrayed for the public to see.

  I kept the radio in the living room turned on. I listened with half an ear, hoping I didn't hear news of a shootout.

  My telephone rang on two occasions. I jumped at it both times, hoping it would be Annie. Rex Raines called once to ask me how I was. I thought he wanted to be sure that I hadn't left town. I also thought he cared how I did, and I was grateful. I couldn't talk to him, though. He was chasing Annie, and that made him my enemy.

  He had disturbing questions for me.

  “What if she's after you, now?” he asked. “What if you're next on her list? Am I going to find you dead?”

  “Why should she want to kill me?”

  “Did you do what she asked you to? You said she hired you to bring Sal Cleveland to some kind of justice. Did you do that? Maybe in her mind, if you had she wouldn't have had to do all this killing.”