Convertible Hearse

by William Campbell Gault

  “Not Leo,” I guessed. “Leo will go to a grand. And make it up by padding the charges on the car he’s selling.”

  “I didn’t say that. Leo handles his own financing and his own insurance. He’s entitled to a profit on that, right? He’s not in business for his health.”

  “I guess not,” I agreed. “How long have you worked for him?”

  “Fifteen years. I was with him when he was the most respected Buick dealer in Pasadena.”

  “So what happened in Pasadena?”

  “Even there, they got television. Leo’s customers saw these pitchmen offering thirteen hundred dollars for a 1927 Marmon and they began to wonder if Leo wasn’t rooking them.”

  “Uh-huh. So Leo came down here where he could really rook ‘em?”

  He frowned at me. “Are you a cop, or something?”

  “Just an inquisitive citizen,” I said. “So you get the key and Leo gets the lamb in the office and goes to work on him with a pencil.”

  His face was expressionless. “Leo can handle a pencil with any of them. And remember this, you’ll get no rebuilt wrecks here or repainted cabs. Leo’s got the cleanest stock in town. If you weren’t shopping, you wouldn’t be here; you’d go to your regular dealer. You came here to haggle, right?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “My girl did. Women love bargains.”

  “Everybody loves money,” he said, “and that’s what they’re trying to save by coming here.” He took a breath and handed me the keys. “And believe it or not, it’s been done. Some day when you’ve got a lot of time, come on in and I’ll tell you about some of the reputable dealers I worked for right after the war.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “And quite a few of them lost their franchises when Detroit got wise to them. What happened to Leo’s franchise in Pasadena?”

  “He sold it. Sold the whole kit and caboodle and came down here where the action is. These Johnny-Come-Latelies are sorry to see an old pro like Leo here too, I’ll tell you.”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Hell, yes, I like him. He always treated me okay, better’n these so-called reputable dealers.”

  “He can’t be too much of a crook, then.”

  “Look,” he said wearily, “you’re no punk kid. By this time you should’ve learned everybody’s a crook, one way or another.”

  “You might be right,” I agreed. “Well, I’d better get back to my girl before Leo gets his pencil out.”

  I almost didn’t make it. They were back in the showroom office, now, and Leo already had a pencil in his hand and had just said, “Miss Bonnet, here’s what I’m going to do for you.”

  In Los Angeles or New York or Chicago or even in East Overshoe, Arkansas, when a man arms himself with a pencil and says earnestly, “Here’s what I’m going to do for you,” it is a time to beware.

  I said, “Aren’t you going to wait for the service manager’s report?”

  Leo’s smile was patronizing. “If you insist, Mr. Callahan.”

  Jan sighed. “Gawd! I was hoping you would get caught in a traffic jam.”

  “What kind of a car did you decide on?” I asked.

  The salesman answered for her. “A ‘56 Cad convertible.”

  “Loaded,” Leo added. “Power brakes, power steering, power windows and seat, nylon white-walls and air conditioning.”

  “In this climate,” I said, “you need air conditioning like I need another head.”

  “I need it when I go to Palm Springs,” Jan said, “and what makes you think you don’t need another head?”

  “Honey, let’s not fight in front of strangers. I’ve got an idea we can all agree to.”

  The salesman looked at me doubtfully, Leo appraisingly and Jan resignedly.

  “Leave your car here,” I said, “and we’ll take the Cad home until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll have a mechanic friend of mine check it over and then we can come back and talk business. Fair enough?”

  The salesman still looked doubtful, but Leo’s smile was full of confidence. “Eminently fair, Mr. Callahan. I am forced to admire your realistic approach to a business transaction.” He stood up and waved expansively. “Drive it away, Miss Bonnet. I know you’ll be back tomorrow to sign the papers.”

  Jan rose, and the four of us went out to a silver-gray Cad convertible with black top. It was a dreamboat, all right, designed to impress the Beverly Hills carriage trade.

  Jan got in behind the wheel, and Leo put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “You’ll be back with her, Callahan, to apologize. Good luck with the Rams this year.”

  “I’m no longer with the Rams,” I told him. “I’m a private investigator now.”

  I guess it was a pretty good exit line. They both watched us thoughtfully until we were out of sight.

  TWO

  THE DEAL THEY’D talked about, Jan told me, was eighteen hundred allowance on the Chev against the price of forty-three hundred for the Cadillac.

  “And don’t tell me,” she said, “this isn’t a steal at forty-three hundred dollars.”

  “It’s a steal,” I agreed, “But that’s probably the time price.”

  “I’m not following you, as usual, Brock.”

  “All right — what kind of payments?”

  “A hundred and twenty-five a month.”

  “For how long?”

  “Thirty-six months.”

  “Now, do you see what I mean by time price? The difference between eighteen hundred and forty-three hundred is twenty-five hundred dollars, right?”

  “I guess. I’m not very good at figures.”

  “I’ll buy that. Because you are going to pay him forty-five hundred dollars and your Chev for this at the figure he discussed.”

  “But it includes interest and insurance.”

  “Not two thousand dollars’ worth.”

  “Brock, isn’t it worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month to me to drive this car?”

  “I guess. If my mechanic friend okays it, I’ll give you a better deal. I’ll pay Leo the twenty-five hundred dollars’ difference between the two cars and you can pay me back at a hundred a month for twenty-five months.”

  “You’re a darling,” she said. “I knew you’d come through. Where shall we go in our snazzy Cadillac?”

  “Over to my friend’s garage,” I said. “He might be working this morning.”

  Jan shook her head. “A Sunday morning and a Cadillac convertible and the beach beckoning, but where does Muscles Callahan want to go? To his friend’s garage.”

  “It’s in Venice,” I said, “on Lincoln Boulevard. From there, we can drive up the Coast Highway and have dinner in Santa Barbara. I’ll even pay for the dinner.”

  My friend was working that morning, on his own car. He walked around the Cadillac, shaking his head. “What a bus! How much?”

  “Forty-three hundred.”

  “You’re kidding. It must be hot. Let me check the engine number.”

  “Against what? Have you got a list of hot ones, or something?”

  He shook his head. “But if a number’s been changed by an amateur, it’s easy to spot.” He went to get a flashlight.

  When he came back, we had the hood up. He examined the number for almost a minute and then looked up doubtfully. “It seems to be all right. Of course, they age them with acid and it would take heating or special chemicals to lift the old number. Let’s put her on the rack and see if there’s any indication of a crackup.”

  He put her on the rack and after that he took her out and put her through her paces. And when he came back, he shook his head again.

  “At forty-three hundred, it’s a steal, Brock. Even if he gouges you on the time payments.”

  “I’ll insist on paying cash,” I said.

  He said, “Huh!” Unless he’s advertised it as the cash price, he doesn’t have to accept cash, you know. He has a right to list a time price, too. Why don’t you check this morning’s paper?”

  “That’s an
idea, Ned,” I said. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Three bottles of that Einlicher, next time you buy a case,” he said. “What are those no-good Rams going to do this afternoon?”

  “They’re going to clobber the Eagles. That jinx is licked. I’ll bring the beer over this week.”

  “Okay.” He looked at Jan and at the Cad and shook his head for the third time. “Some guys have all the luck.”

  We pulled out onto Lincoln and Jan headed toward Olympic, which would take us to the sea. “Santa Barbara,” she said happily, “here we come.”

  It was a fine Sunday. The Rams beat the Eagles and Baltimore beat the Bears, who were supposed to be the power in the western half of the League, this year. And the perennial Eastern Division champs, the Browns, were beat by the Cardinals. It was shaping up into a Ram year again.

  We came back from Santa Barbara after the traffic had diminished and there was a full harvest moon and we could see the ocean almost all the way.

  Oxnard was behind and the radio was giving us some Sinatra, when Jan said, “I thought when Mr. Quirk paid you that ten thousand, I thought — well, that you might go into some other business, Brock.”

  “So we could be married? We can be married, anyway. I’m getting some steady accounts. I’m building a reputation in town.”

  “What have you made this year — outside of that ten thousand, I mean?”

  “Enough for any reasonable woman. Not enough to run Cad convertibles on.”

  “I’m an unreasonable woman?”

  “In some ways. Don’t you think marriage would — stifle you?”

  “How? You’re the only man I see. You’re the only man I’ve gone with for …”

  “Weeks,” I said. “You had a date with Les Hartley two weeks ago.”

  “You know what Les Hartley is. He’s a decorator and that was business and you know Les doesn’t like girls.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll get married. Tomorrow.”

  “Not,” she said firmly, “until you get over your Dick Tracy complex.”

  “It’s my job,” I said, “and I like it and now you’re being an unreasonable woman.”

  The moon was still as full and the ocean as shining, but there was a change in the climate. Inside the car, at least.

  Sinatra changed to Como and Como to Eddie Fisher and the big car moved quietly through the night without any words from us.

  Finally, I said, “That was some steak I bought you. I certainly feed you well.”

  Nothing from her.

  “The soup was good, too,” I said.

  Nothing.

  Dean Martin came on, and I said, “Doesn’t that disk jockey have any records of girl singers?” Silence.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “when you go into Loony Leo’s with twenty-five hundred in cash, he is going to be unhappy. Remind me to check the Times, to see if this car is listed. Leo won’t buck the L.A. Times, I tell you, and …”

  “I’m going to take the payments,” she said. “I don’t want your damned money.”

  “Don’t be a child now. Just because you’re temporarily peeved, don’t go committing economic suicide.”

  “I don’t want your damned money and I don’t want to talk about it. Is that clear?”

  “That’s clear enough,” I said. “What are you so hot about — because I called you an unreasonable woman?”

  “That’s only part of it. It started this morning when you gave that salesman at the lot so much trouble. You hate businessmen, don’t you, successful businessmen?”

  “Of course not. That’s absurd. I don’t like crooked businessmen, I’ll admit. And are you under the impression Loony Leo is something I should look up to?”

  “He’s successful.”

  “Honey, so was Stalin and so was Hitler. Is that enough to warrant your admiration, the simple fact of success?”

  “Leo is successful in a competitive business governed by laws.”

  “You never talked this way to me in your Chev,” I said. “You’re getting a Cadillac complex and the car isn’t even yours yet. And won’t be, for three years. And as far as success goes, I could buy this car for cash, right now. And you can’t. What’s your excuse?”

  Silence from her, but the chill in the car seemed to be warming and I thought I could see a red glow beginning to burn over Jan’s light brown hair.

  “I may not be much,” I said, “but I’m my own man. Try to remember that, Jan.”

  “I will,” she said quietly. “You’re your own man, and I hope from now on you’ll be good company for yourself.”

  “Oh, stop being a damned child,” I said. “What brought all this on?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to see you any more, not until you decide to make something of yourself.”

  “So, all right. Kid, this town is loaded with unattached females.”

  “And men, too. Succesful men, men with ambition.”

  “And men like Les Hartley,” I added. “Would you change the station? I want to hear some girl vocalists.”

  She didn’t change the station but the disk jockey changed his format and we had some Roberta Sherwood. No dialogue as we went through Malibu, Topanga and turned up Sunset where it ends at the ocean.

  No dialogue all the way to her little cottage, nestled in the canyon off Beverly Glen. My car was there. I got out of the Cad and looked at her, still behind the wheel.

  She didn’t look at me.

  I came around to her side to say, “Are you sure you don’t want to borrow the money from me?”

  “I’m sure. Good night, Brock. Good-bye!”

  “Good night,” I said. “You might find me difficult to replace.”

  “The Rams didn’t,” she said. “Good-bye.”

  Well, it wasn’t the first time we’d quarreled and we always quarreled about the same thing. She wanted me to be a realtor or insurance agent or something equally dopey. Her friends teased her about her outsized Dick Tracy.

  I went over to my car, and pulled it away from her car port, so she could get the Cad in. But she evidently wasn’t going to stay home. The Cad went by me, blasting, a couple blocks down Beverly Glen.

  The night was young and full of wolves and my love was going out into it in her new convertible. Women….

  My flivver went chugging along in the bright moonlight, sounding faintly like a hot rod because of its burned-out muffler. Cadillacs and Imperials and even two Continentals went by, and I chugged on, annoyed.

  Financial success was the big goal in America. And I guessed Sweden, France, England, Spain, Japan, Argentina and every other place where freedom flourished.

  But in this town of substitute achievement, there was also a substitute goal. Lacking success, men strove for the appearance of success. So we had fifty-thousand-dollar houses with forty-five-thousand-dollar mortgages, and convertibles that only cost you a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month for three years.

  In her business, Jan met these people. I met them, too, in my business, but the angle I saw them from was less appealing than the angle from which Jan saw them.

  I saw the credit reports and the hushed juvenile delinquencies, and the infidelity investigations and the muffled suicides. Los Angeles is no different than any other big city in America, only in Los Angeles it’s more so.

  I thought back on our day and remembered the well-tailored men and beautifully dressed women we had seen in that Santa Barbara restaurant. Had the resentment begun to smolder in Jan there, at the restaurant?

  It was entirely possible. I don’t buy the cheapest clothes in the world, but they’re a long way from Strip tailoring. And because of my rather block-shaped physique, clothes simply don’t hang well on me.

  Jan wears clothes with the show-window perfection of the small and perfectly shaped female. She probably sat at that table looking like something out of Vogue with her new Cad out on the parking lot, wondering how in the world she could explain me if one of her social register clients sho
uld drop in.

  All right, Callahan, you’re guessing. You’re far, far too sensitive for a slant-headed ex-guard. Don’t forget, as you welter in self-pity, that she made the initial play for you, when you met.

  That wasn’t completely true. When I talk to myself, I occasionally lie to myself, and this had been almost a lie. When we met, I made the initial pitch. But after I had withdrawn from the competition, then she had come forward with her play, claiming her car wouldn’t run and she needed a ride home.

  So, to hell with her. This town was loaded with females.

  “But not like Jan, but not like Jan, but not like Jan,” my flivver said. “Chug, chug, chug …”

  At home, in my little Westwood rattrap, I showered and put on a terry-cloth robe and sat by the window with a bottle of Einlicher, the finest beer in the world.

  I could see the Sunset Boulevard traffic and I wondered where Jan was now. Just riding around in that traffic, or had she dropped in at some bar?

  Damn her, damn her, damn her and her decorator-instilled pretentiousness! So big in her big, fat, unpaid-for, used car … I wished I had thought to take the engine number; I would have liked to know the history of that car.

  I was going to the refrigerator for another bottle of beer when my phone rang. It was Randy Roman, who used to play tackle to my guard, and still played tackle without me.

  He said, “Little poker game, Rock. Not for peanuts, though.”

  “So who wants to play for peanuts? I’ll match bank accounts with any of you guys.”

  “Whew! What are you hot about, buddy boy? Usually, we play for peanuts. Tonight, Scooter wants to see blood.”

  “He’ll see it, his own. I’ve got to get dressed, but I’ll be out there in less than an hour.”

  Scooter lived in Malibu, high on a hill and high off the hog. From Southern Methodist and the Rams, he had gone into the theatrical agency dodge and made out. From Stanford and the Rams, I had gone into the private investigation profession and now drove a ‘54 flivver with a burned-out muffler. That’s the way the ball bounces.

  As I came into the den of his big modern joint, less than an hour later, Scooter said, “Fearless Fosdick is here. Now we’ll see some action.”