“In a moment,” I said, and asked about the third name, the name I wanted to know about.
“I don’t recognize it,” he said. “I suppose I could look it up if I were certain it would serve some important purpose.”
“It might solve a murder,” I said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t destroy any records that might be needed to apprehend a murderer.”
It was quiet in the room while he stared at me. I heard the clack of the typewriter from the outer office and thought I heard that moan from upstairs.
He didn’t say a word.
I said, “I suppose this is a solvent business. It wouldn’t be if Mr. Jaekels should impound your records and throw the whole case to a waiting press, a sensational and eager press. I’m sure the County Medical Society would be leery of you, and what would happen to your consulting staff then? You wouldn’t get a medico within a mile of the joint. Be realistic, Mr. Elgin.”
His face was grave but not fearful. “What a ridiculous spout of hysterical verbiage. What are you trying to say, Mr. Craven?”
“If you don’t know,” I said, “I’ve said too much already. I’ll see Jaekels about it. I have a detective-sergeant outside, and he’ll want to talk to you.” I stood up. “Sorry you—” I shrugged.
I was almost to the door when he said, “You still haven’t stated the nature of your business.”
I turned. “Sergeant Hovde will explain that. There’ll be former patients we can question and get the information we need.”
“What information?”
“If those three were patients here.”
“All three of them could have been. Miss Reynolds was not here at the time Miss Lincoln was here, however, so I don’t see the connection.”
“And the other one you’d have to look up.”
“I would. Would you ask the girl in the outer office to come in, please? And wait? Without frothing at the mouth, if possible.”
Theatrics he was going through now. He either knew the name or didn’t; he wouldn’t forget that one and remember the others. When the girl from the outer office came in, he handed her a slip of paper.
“Would you check that name against the file of our former patients? And the dates of admission and release?”
She took the slip and went out quietly.
He leaned back in his chair and considered his nails. He covered a yawn with the back of his hand. Big, poised, important man. Even without the pocket handkerchief.
A few minutes, while neither of us noticed the other, and then the girl came in again. She had the slip in her hand.
Elgin said, “Give it to Mr. Craven, please, Ethel.” She handed me the slip and went out. There were two dates after the name he’d written on the slip. I stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Elgin,” I said. He nodded, his eyes blank. He didn’t get up. I walked through the carpeted outer office to the carpeted hall and out to the green macadam drive and down to the department car. I was thinking of Lawrence Elgin all the way; he’d made a deep impression on me. I wondered how long he’d live.
I handed Sergeant Hovde the slip of paper. “The dates are the dates of admission and release, as they say. So?”
“So, either it was easy or you’re smarter than you sound.” He put the paper in a pocket. “And now Vicki Lincoln?”
“That’s up to you,” I said. “I’ve done my good deed for the day and got your wise remark as reward. Nobody’s paying me.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said softly. “I didn’t know you were sensitive.” He pressed the starter button.
I told him to blow it out his stacking swivel, and cringed as he missed a truck, pulling out from the curb.
“Tourists,” he said, as the truck cut sharply to the left. “I ought to give him a ticket.”
“He ought to give you a split lip,” I answered. “Why Vicki, Sergeant? Think she’ll break down now?”
“If you rolled your eyes at her she would.” He turned right on Vine. “You wanted to play cop.”
“Not with her, I don’t. That Jake Schuster plays for keeps, I’ll bet.”
“You got away with it last time. Wasn’t it worth it?”
I didn’t answer. The traffic was murder; it was close to five o’clock.
The Sergeant’s voice was thoughtful. “Maybe we ought to let it simmer a while. Maybe a little fretting wouldn’t hurt Miss Vicki Lincoln.”
“Maybe she’ll get out of town, too,” I said. “A trip would be wise for her about now.”
“She won’t leave town.”
“She’s being watched?”
He yawned. We were on Santa Monica, heading west. “What was her vice?” I asked.
“Heroin. What’s yours, Worden? Liquor or women?”
“Women. What’s yours, Sergeant?”
“The piccolo. And the Rams. Think they’ll take the Bears?”
“Stranger things have happened this season. The Rams have the personnel and the Bears have Halas.”
“And I’ve got a bellyache,” he said. “I think I’ll let Miss Lincoln simmer for a while. I’ve seen too many of her kind the last couple days.”
We had no further dialogue of interest all the rest of the way. He parked in front and said, “I’ll come up with you. Just to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“Sure there isn’t somebody waiting with a long knife. Or Mike Kersh with a gun. You did a damned fool thing, fighting with him, I hope you realize.”
“Sergeant,” I said softly, “I didn’t know you cared.”
“I may need a stooge again before this thing is over,” he said. “C’mon, move.”
He came up and there was no one there. He cased the joint like a jealous husband and then said, “I’ll get in touch with you. Keep this door locked.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “So long, Sergeant. Don’t bend your piccolo.”
What a dynamo the guy was. What a work horse. I sat on the studio couch and leafed through the Times. There was a possibility, a spokesman for the industry stated, that all television production might be halted in 1951 because of the military orders in the industry. An ill wind blowing some good.
It was almost six o’clock, and my love would be walking out of Bullock’s soon, her feet aching. She would relish a ride. It was a long haul to Hollywood in our town’s type of public transportation.
There was no parking-space within two blocks of the joint. I left my car in a filling-station, and gave the attendant a half. I told him I’d be back in twenty minutes at the latest, and walked over to Bullock’s.
It was later than I’d thought. The employees were pouring out of the north entrance as I came around the corner from Westwood Boulevard. One of the employees was Ellen. Only she wasn’t heading this way.
She was heading toward a Caddy, double-parked just past the entrance. There was a big man behind the wheel, leaning over to open the door on the side opposite him.
I saw Ellen’s smile, and I saw her step into the Caddy. And I watched them drive off, Nick Arnold and Ellen Gallegher.
Don’t read anything into it, I told myself. Nick’s not for her, despite his millions. Don’t make a play out of an act. Ellen’s not that greedy. It’s just a ride home for a weary girl.
From the filling-station I could see the traffic down on Wilshire, and it was bumper to bumper. I told the attendant to grease the Merc, to check the transmission and differential, and I’d go and eat. It is one of the things I can always do, lovesick or not.
Had to wait for a place to sit at the restaurant, and waiting, looked around at the people, eating and waiting. Nobody seemed to be very happy, not with a real Christmas happiness. Everybody seemed to be waiting, even the ones who were eating. Waiting for the Boom. The economic boom we had with us, but the atomic was yet to make an appearance. Here. The twenties were a boom time, too; but were they this unhappy? I’d been too young to know, but everything I’d read seemed to indicate they were.
Maybe I’d read the wrong people. Outside o
f Saroyan, that is, who is always happy in that sad way of his. And he dealt with the thirties.
At a table for four, where three were already sitting, I finally got a chair. The three were a man of about thirty-five and his wife of some age around thirty and a little girl. The little girl was about seven, with chestnut hair and a sort of Martha-to-be look about her. She smiled at me.
The others smiled, too, but in a kind of reserved way. I didn’t blame them. If you like to talk while you eat, it always seems like you’re on a stage if a stranger is present.
Maybe they liked to talk while they ate.
The little girl said, “What’s your name?”
“Pete,” I said. “What’s yours?”
“Angela. Did you talk to Santa Claus yet?”
“Uh—not yet.”
“Well, you’d better hurry. You should see the line there.”
“I’ll get to him first thing in the morning.”
“Angela, you’re not eating your dinner,” the mother said.
“I’m not hungry,” Angela said, and looked again at me. “Did you pray for all the things you wanted?”
“I don’t want much,” I said. “Men don’t need all the things girls need.”
“Have you a little girl or a little boy?”
“Angela—” her mother said, and looked at her husband.
“Angela—” he said, and frowned.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m always glad to talk to a beautiful girl.” Why didn’t they carry the conversational load? Just because their daughter had manners and they’d lost them, why stifle her?
Angela and I got around to quite a few topics in which we shared a common interest and belief. These included the general, all-around satisfaction of paddle pops, parties where the boys didn’t all stick in the corners, fat Christmas trees as opposed to the high, thin ones, teachers who smiled and those who didn’t, and the thorough obnoxiousness of some relatives.
For really first-rate small talk, it’s hard to beat small fry. I was sorry to see her leave before my coffee came. She said good-by as though it was a sad parting, which it was.
Her parents nodded and looked vague and managed what passed in their circle, probably, for smiles. At their age, and they’d never even learned to say hello. Nor good-by.
People were still waiting for seats when I went out. The Merc was greased and ready and had needed no transmission nor differential lube. It was dark now, and from Santa Monica the searchlights were probing the sky. Advertising searchlights, not anti-aircraft. Yet.
I drove straight south on Westwood, across Wilshire, and I don’t know if I intended to go home or not. When I got about a hundred feet from the apartment, my headlights illuminated a Lincoln parked there, a black Lincoln, and if it wasn’t Nick’s, it was a twin of it. Nobody was behind the wheel, nor any place else in the car I could see.
I drove on. Down to Pico and over to the Ridge Club.
Manny wasn’t there, and Mary wasn’t there. The fat bartender was there and some assorted characters.
I had a glass of beer. I had another, and phoned Ellen. No answer. I had another glass of beer and left.
Drove around and around and around like a sightseeing tourist. Was I afraid to go home? Would you be? Drove all the way out to the Pacific Palisades and saw a movie. It may have been a good movie but there isn’t any part of it I remember.
I came out around eleven. I was a hell of a ways from Hollywood, and only a damned fool would make the trip on the doubtful hope of seeing his love. This was a Saturday night and she wouldn’t be working the next morning; she’d probably stay out late.
It was eleven-thirty when I pulled up in front of the paint store, and there were no lights on upstairs. I rang her doorbell anyway. No answer.
I went back to the Merc and turned on the radio and slouched down into the cushions. Making time with my girl; I’d fix his little red wagon. The radio gave with That Thing and I snapped it off.
I sat, and sat and sat. Headlights swung up off Santa Monica and went by again and again. I turned the radio on again and got a platter program from Long Beach. All Dixieland, brassy and yah-yah, nuts to you music.
Tires screamed from behind and a ‘36 V-8 with solid top came off Santa Monica and went gunning up the hill. Two kids, teen-agers, laughing like idiots. Whitewall oversize tires, and jeweled wheel rims. Looking like a hot rod, but not hotter than planed down heads and bigger jets would make her. With the money he’d put into the tires he could have got Jessup heads, at least.
Even among the rods there are phonies. Though not so many as in other lines of insanity, and none out on the flats. They had the timer there, and who can kid an electric timer?
Mike had had a Rajo overhead on a Model T block. And grown up into a gunman. An uncle of mine had had a Winfield head on a Model A, and grown up into one of the big boys at Los Alamos. Fred Duesenberg had built the finest, most powerful car ever built in America or the world—and gone out of business. As the twig is bent, so is the twig bent. Something else inclines the tree.
My dad had been a Marmon lover, 371 cubic inches of big six, built in Indianapolis. So had the Stutz been built in Indianapolis, and the Duesenberg, in the shadow of the brickyard, you might say. And where were they all today?
Behind me a car stopped. A hundred and sixty horsepower V-8, the pride of G.M.’s Kettering, the Cadillac, originally designed by Henry Leland and sold to anybody who had the money, unfortunately.
I sat where I was and waited.
I heard footsteps, and then Nick stood next to my open window. “Still in a peeve, son? You really worked on Mike.”
I looked away from him over toward the curb where Ellen stood. She was waiting. I looked back at Nick. “Mike was asking for it.”
“Am I next?” His voice light.
“You’ve got all the trouble you can handle without the little I can add, Nick,” I said. I reached in and pulled out my wallet. I took all the money out and held it toward him. “This is what’s left of the three hundred.”
“I don’t want it,” he said. “Quitting the job?”
“Please take it, Nick.”
“Give it to the Salvation Army. Or throw it away. What’s come over you, boy?”
“I’m not here to see you, Nick. I came to see Ellen.”
A silence while he looked at me. Ellen still stood on the curb on the other side of the car. He went over and said something to her, something I didn’t catch.
She came over to the Merc as he went back to the Cad. She opened the door as his starter ground. She came in and closed the door. The Caddy’s lights were on, and then it was going by, Kettering’s pride under Arnold’s hands. Unpoetic injustice.
The money was still in my hand and I shoved it into my jacket pocket.
“We’re unhappy,” she said quietly, dully.
“It’s showdown time,” I said. “Want a cigarette?”
“I guess.”
I lighted a pair of them and handed her one. In the dim glow from the street light she looked tired.
I said, “No business of my own, because there’s no money for it. I’ll have to get a job. It will probably not be much. It will mean a small apartment about the size of the one I now have. Could you take all that?”
“A week ago I could have. Give me some time. Give me at least a couple days. If it’s going to be that way, I can work, too, for a while. But I don’t know what I want right now. Except to get to bed. Alone. Except to get into a tub.”
“Okay. What did Nick want?”
“Company for dinner. What happened between you and Mike?”
“Nothing of importance except an instinctive animosity that flowered. You were—right about John.”
“That doesn’t make me happy. You’ve decided not to work for Nick?”
“Yes. Get up and get your bath. Try to think of me as grown up, if and when you think of me. Do we kiss good night?”
“No. I’m—I don’t want anybody near me.
I feel—smeary. Call me, Pete, but not tomorrow. Tomorrow I want to be alone.”
“Okay,” I said, and heard her open the door.
When I looked over she was on the curb, the handle of the door still in her hand. “Good night,” she said, and closed the door.
She wanted a couple days. She’d waited long enough to hear me pop the question; I guess I could wait a couple days. Some sweet odor lingered in the Merc, neither cigarettes nor any perfume I’d remembered her wearing.
The traffic was fairly heavy. Cow town, Saturday night town. All towns are, it seems, except the little ones, the peaceful ones. Chicago certainly was, and New York.
A thirty-year-old Rolls went by making no sound but the hum of her high-pressure tires. A Buick Roadmaster went by growling. The Merc whimpered, as though impatient, but she knew and I knew what she had. We didn’t have to display it. As Gentleman Jim Corbett said on taking a mug’s insult, “I know I’m the champion of the world; he doesn’t.”
Closer to home, and the thought of the Lincoln came, parked in front. How patient was Mike; how long would he wait? Maybe Nick had joined him by now. Maybe they were waiting together.
If they were, they weren’t in sight.
I put the Merc away and came back to the apartment and started up the steps. Not consumed by fear by any means, but with a certain uneasiness. Most of the lights were out, including mine.
I didn’t pause before opening the door, nor grope hurriedly for the switch. There wasn’t any need to; the apartment was empty. A white envelope stared at me from the floor near the door.
There was a note inside:
Pete: Call me when you come in, no matter what time.
It was signed Jake and a telephone number was included. It was a number I dimly remembered. And then recognized as Vicki’s.
I called it, and it rang and rang and rang. But there was no answer. Maybe they were too busy to answer. Maybe they were reading.
I undressed slowly, my door locked. And lay awake a long time, studying the shadows in the room, thinking of them all and re-examining the idea that had crawled into my mind.
I buttressed it with words and all the action previous and since. It must be a better name than Hovde had originally thought. Because he was sold now, and he was a realist. He was a workingman.
Don't Cry For Me Page 17
