“No loss, no. But he peddled narcotics, from one-buck reefers to the finest snow. It’s a trade any decent man would despise and any decent citizen help to break up.”
“You’re saying Nick deals in this—stuff?”
“Not any more, and I don’t know if he ever did. Calvano didn’t work for Nick, and how he got to that party I don’t know. Maybe Nick’s trying to go legitimate, but his old friends won’t let him. It doesn’t matter about that. But there must be things you know you haven’t told us.”
“I’m trying to think if there is, but I honestly can’t, Sergeant.”
“Jake Schuster invited you to the party?”
“That’s right. Miss Gallegher and I met him in Tony’s, right off Sunset, there. He was with a—Vicki Lincoln.”
“I know the girl. Another marijuana lass. How about Jake?”
“If you mean as a murderer, I can’t see it. He phoned me that morning to warn me Calvano was gunning for me. And he phoned Nick.”
“And Nick sent Mike Kersh and the two of you found Calvano here in that chair.”
I studied him before nodding. I said, “Did I just tell you that or did you know Mike Kersh was with me?”
“I knew it. But getting back to Jake, if his girl had sworn off the weed, say, and then Calvano peddled her some more, Jake would be a hot Charlie, right?”
“I don’t think she means that much to him. To Jake, a woman is just something you hop into the hay with.”
“And you?”
“Let’s stay with the murder, Sergeant. What’s my attitude got to do with it?”
“Just wondered.” He smiled, and for the moment looked less weary. “So we’ll figure the killer came here with Calvano. Or else knew Calvano was heading here. Now we’ve got to find a man like that—” He paused. “Or woman.”
“Vicki Lincoln—” I suggested.
“Or the Gallegher girl.”
I shook my head. “That’s really stretching, Sergeant. Her I know, and would bond.”
“You’re young,” Sergeant Hovde said. “When you get to be my age, you’ll realize the only thing consistent about people is their ability to amaze you. I’m not counting her out. She was shopping at the time, according to her, but there are some gaps in her story.”
I didn’t argue with him.
“Any more of that coffee?”
There was a half cup which I poured for him.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Take the first half of that theory, that the two of them came here together. There’d be a chance, with that, that somebody in the building might have seen them come, or one of them leave. Or, even if they didn’t come together, they might have seen the killer. I’m leaving some pictures with you. I’ve shown them to everybody but that poet next door. He was only home once, and I didn’t have the pictures then.”
“Poet?” I asked. “You mean Tommy Lister?”
“That’s it, Lister. He said he was the only poet in America nobody understood.”
I didn’t smile.
Hovde rose. “I’ll be seeing you again. Thanks for the coffee.” At the door, with fine ? picture timing, he turned. “I’ll say nothing to my boy about your working for Arnold. Not until it’s definite.”
“It’s definite,” I said. “Luck, Sergeant.”
What had Jake said about him? He’s tough and smart and a worker and he can’t be bought—
I made the bed and did the dishes and turned on my fine four-tube, ten-dollar radio. I looked at the pictures he had left behind.
Vicki Lincoln, Jake Schuster, Nick Arnold, Mike Kersh, Al Calvano, three assorted mugs. But no shot of Ellen Gallegher. Would she ever amaze me?
I had a little over a hundred dollars left of the six hundred and ninety-eight. And no money due from John. Let young Hovde take down the picture from his bedroom wall, a man has to eat.
Was it my fault they made a cult out of a game, those kids? All the kids from ten to fifty, from the idol-worshipers to the coach-crucifiers; they weren’t any relatives of mine. I’d had no publicity agent; the fans and the scribes had built my image. Let the kid put some real heroes on his wall. God knows there were enough of them, and none of them could throw a football.
And I realized it was the image Nick wanted, the image the papers had made with their ridiculous ink. Like the studios, Nick wasn’t buying the product; he was buying the publicity.
He’d pay for the image, but I’d be spending the money, so that balanced out. Try to be realistic, jerk.
The upholstered chair said nothing, standing quietly in the dreary room, outlined by the gray day behind it. Lister, it had held in its lap, and my love, and Al Calvano, and even John. The upholstered chair had no politics, no favorites, no animosities, no frustrations. It had spots, some of which could have been the blood of Al Calvano.
My phone rang and it was Jake Schuster. “Wright’s Widow in the fourth at Vista Meadows, a mortal lock.”
“The boat race, huh?” I said.
“The boat race. Everything you can borrow, beg, or steal, Pally, right on her nose.”
“A filly, Jake?”
“A mare. What can you raise in cash?”
“I can go for a hundred. I’ve got peanuts above that. You want to pick it up?”
“A hundred? Take it to Manny over at the Ridge Club. He’s not one of Nick’s boys.”
“Okay. Thanks, Jake. What’s the gimmick?”
“How’s that?”
“Why this softening of the heart? If we’re lodge brothers I never noticed it up to now.”
“If you can take it away from somebody else, there’ll be that much more for me. Because I can always take it from you.” He chuckled. “Maybe I like you. Maybe I’m a real soft guy underneath.”
“Pardon my ghoulish laughter,” I said. “Anyway, thanks, Jake.”
Money in the bank. I counted the money in my wallet once again. I had a hundred and twelve dollars. I looked up Wright’s Widow in the Times, in the fourth at Vista Meadows.
Nobody thought much of the mare; the probable odds were quoted at twelve to one. The play would decide the final line, of course, but what difference did it make? It was a cinch. I’d never had a cinch. In this uncertain world my first cinch had to come from Jake Schuster.
The Ridge Club was a bar and semi-brothel on Pico, not too far from here. It was now ten o’clock and my four-tube radio was bringing me the news from around the world. I turned it off before I went in to shave.
It was still a dull day as I drove over to Pico. The Ridge Club had a big barroom and a small dance area off that. It had a fat and jovial bartender and a smaller man in a small office that led off the end of the bar.
The small man’s name was Manny and I gave him the hundred. I said, “Wright’s Widow, on the nose, the fourth at Vista Meadows.”
“You’ve got it,” he said. “Haven’t been seeing much of you, Mr. Worden.”
“I haven’t been betting much,” I lied.
“This isn’t a boat race?”
“Give me the hundred,” I said. “I don’t have to bet here.”
He smiled. “Kidding. You’ve got it. Wright’s Widow in the fourth at Vista Meadows on the nose.”
I went back into the bar and ordered a beer. There was a mirror behind this bar and I could see the room behind me. I could see the girl at the table reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee.
Black hair and olive complexion. A full, ripe figure, what I could see of it, and I could remember the rest. From high school. We’d lived in Santa Monica from 1934 to 1939 and I’d gone to high school there. This girl had been in my freshman English class and my sophomore geometry class and my junior economics class and my senior physics class. And in too many of my adolescent dreams.
This girl I’d only looked at and dreamed of and trembled over. Because I was a snot named Worden. And her name was Mary Gonzales.
I turned and took my beer over to the table, and she looked up. I said, “Hello, Mary G
onzales.”
“Hello, Peter Worden,” she said. “I wondered if you’d notice me. You never did in high school.”
I sat down across from her. “Like hell I didn’t.”
“But you never said hello.”
“I know. I was young and stupid. Hello, Mary.”
“I’ve read about you since,” she said. “Learn anything, quarterback?”
“Nothing. Except to say hello. You’re still as beautiful as ever, Mary.”
Tears? Not in Mary Gonzales. Some mistiness, maybe, but no tears. “Against Inglewood,” she said. “The way you ran and passed. What a god you were, fast and bright. And what a snob.”
I said nothing.
“Is it too late, Peter?” she asked. “Is it too late to go upstairs?”
“I’m still in high school,” I said. “Aren’t you, Mary?”
“No. But maybe it isn’t too late.”
I thought of Ellen briefly, and thought of Hovde’s saying, And you haven’t any loyalties, so that’s working barren ground—
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said.
For love or money there is in some a capacity to please. But there’d been too many years since high school for her; she couldn’t get back. She held me tight and whispered my name and I tried in my mind to build the illusion, to make this something beyond what the snivelers claim it is. There was no sense of communication, no infinite cadence, no flame, no intimation of immortality.
She was just a well-shaped girl in a dreary room, and I was the slob on top.
I knew what the boys meant now, it’s no good unless it’s free. Name me something free today. Even if it’s air you want, they get hot if you don’t buy your gas there.
“It wasn’t any good, was it?” she asked.
“Let’s not talk about it, Mary. Remember Miss Einrie, the freshman English teacher? What a honey, huh?”
“You ought to look her up. They can’t all be bad.”
“Don’t talk like that, Mary.”
“All right. Let’s go down and have a drink. Or are you hungry? We’ve got the best chili in town here.”
I was hungry and the chili was good. I had a couple of drinks and so did Mary.
She said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have gone past the hello.”
“Don’t needle me. Or yourself. Whatever happened to your little brother, to Manuel?”
“He booked your bet,” she said. “You didn’t remember him, did you?”
“No,” I said, “and he doesn’t remember me. I’ve booked with him before, and he never mentioned high school.”
“Why should he? It wouldn’t change the odds. What are you doing now, Peter?”
“The same as I did in high school. Nothing. I’m—thinking of taking a job.”
“It must be nice to be rich,” she said.
“Rich? I’ve got twelve dollars in my pocket, and I won’t have that when I leave here. If that horse comes home, I’ll be rich. I’ll have a big hatful of your brother’s money.”
She shook her head. “Horses. Horses and football and what else do you know?”
“I know when I’m getting needled. We still aren’t friends, are we?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What are you hanging around for? We’re friends. I’m sorry we couldn’t get together, but we’re friends. Damn it, what are you dragging it out for? Why don’t you go?”
“All right,” I said and stood up. “So long, Mary. Take care of yourself.”
I paid my bill and the bartender looked at Mary, but she must have shaken her head. Because I was charged only for the food and the drinks. I didn’t look back.
The grayness was lifting and I wondered if the afternoon would bring that damned dry wind again. It clears the air, but it’s too steady and too dry. It will drive you batty if it stays around long enough.
Pico to Westwood, and Westwood home. Nothing to do there but read or listen to the radio. I read for a while and listened to the radio for a while and knew there was something missing, but couldn’t figure what it was.
It had to do with this place, but what the hell was it?
And then I remembered what it was. Tommy’s typewriter. I hadn’t heard it for some time. And I remembered the pictures Hovde had left behind.
If Tommy’s typewriter wasn’t pounding, he wasn’t home generally. At his word rate he has to keep hammering it. Well, when I heard the clatter I’d take the pictures over. Maybe he had a doll he didn’t want me to see.
Adam’s Joy won the first at Vista Meadows. The favorite, and paid 3.40 for a two-dollar ticket my radio informed me. I left it on that station.
I took a shower. I spent a lot of time in there, and then put on the toweling robe and stretched out on the studio couch. What a fancy name for a double-purpose bed, a studio couch. Though all beds are double purpose, I thought to myself, in my vulgar way.
Sleepy, I felt, but couldn’t doze. I was waiting for the fourth at Vista Meadows. After that I’d doze.
The money horses in the second were announced, no names I knew.
I thought of Mary Gonzales and then of Ellen, and wondered if she’d be civil if I called.
I got up and called, but there was no answer. Maybe Ellen was out, or maybe Nick was there.
Don’t be so scummy, Worden. Don’t judge others by yourself. I went over to stand next to the window.
The radio squealed, squawked, and died.
What sweet timing. Sinatra it could bring me, but not the results of the fourth at Vista Meadows. I knocked it and prodded a tube here and there and looked for any loose wires inside. Then I checked the plug and the cord.
It was dead, and there wasn’t anything I could do about that.
Tommy had a radio. I went next door to knock, but there was no answer. Maybe he was home and didn’t want to be disturbed, but this was important business.
I tried the knob and the door opened. I stepped in and started toward his radio near the desk that held his typewriter. And then almost stumbled over him.
The pulps might be immortal, but this contributor was not. Tommy Lister stared at me from the floor. Tommy Lister was dead.
Take off your hats, you bastards.
CHAPTER SIX
A KNIFE, AGAIN. A knife I didn’t know this time, looked like the bone handle of a hunting-knife.
He stared, and I stared, and this time it was different. This time I could mourn.
The same killer because Tommy had known him had recognized him? Tommy didn’t read the local papers. But did the killer know it? I was no cop, and I was reading things into it. He was dead; there’d be no fact as important as that.
He was dead, my near-friend, and I was sick and couldn’t move. His typewriter silent, his brown eyes staring, blood soaking the whole front of his white cotton shirt.
Dead, and he never got beyond pulp. Dead in this lonely room next to mine. I wondered how long he’d been dead.
I called the police and went back to my place to put on some clothes. I was dressed when the sirens wailed, when they came.
Cops and flash bulbs and neighbors and reporters and yackety, yackety, yackety, yak. Bedlam I was only half aware of, thinking of Tommy, thinking of that hammering machine now silent, and thinking I killed him.
I hit a man and the man comes for me and is killed. And Tommy sees the killer and is killed. Proximity caused your death, Tommy Lister; I lived next door.
Hovde came after the fuss had died down. He came into my apartment and wrinkled his nose.
“I’ve been vomiting,” I said.
He inclined his head in the direction of Tommy’s apartment. “Did you show him the pictures?”
“Never got a chance to. I didn’t think he was home. I wouldn’t have gone in there but my radio went phooey and I had a horse in the fourth at Vista Meadows.”
He sat on the studio couch. His Scandinavian face was as hard as glass. “Still going to work for Nick?”
“No.”
“Want to pretend you’re goin
g to?”
“No.”
“Not even to nail the man who killed that sad sack next door, that innocent bystander, that—poet?”
“No.”
“You’re as bad as the rest of them,” he said. “Nick’s not going to crack or spring any leaks in the organization. But—”
“There must have been some leak, or you wouldn’t have got the phone call the first time,” I said. “But I can’t work the way you suggested. I can’t believe the end justifies the means.”
“What’s the means—to keep your eyes and ears open, to squeal only if you learn who killed your neighbor. I’m not asking for any more than that.”
“I’m not going to work for Nick. The man next door was more than a neighbor, Sergeant. He was a friend. And I feel that if I hadn’t hit Calvano, Lister would still be alive. That I’ve got to live with.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the rug. “Nothing works with Arnold,” he said quietly. “Pigeons or rivals or hoses or deals. Nothing works with that organization. He’s solid. He picks his boys carefully, boys with old loyalties and no ambitions of their own. Nick’s kind of a freak in his world; he can think. The others just hire smart shysters to think for them.”
“And Nick,” I said, “doesn’t know who killed Al Calvano.”
The Sergeant stared at me. “What are you trying to give me?”
“The gospel according to Mike. That knife’s given Mike the shivers. He can’t understand that kind of kill. And Jake told me Nick’s going crazy on it.”
The Sergeant was still rubbing the back of his neck, a habit of his. “Well,” he said. “So— Damn it, it doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what the Arnold organization is saying,” I agreed.
“That brings it back to you,” he said. “That puts you right in the middle again.”
“Lucky Pierre,” I said, “always in the middle. Sergeant, I’m no killer.”
He stood up and went to the can. In a minute he came back and went over to look at my radio. He plugged it in and snapped it on and nothing came forth.
He turned to face me. “What horse did you have?”
“Wright’s Widow in the fourth at Vista Meadows.”
Don't Cry For Me Page 8
