Bindlestiff (The Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  “Them San Francisco reporters,” the first white guy said. He was over seventy, thin and wizened, and he had a crippled-up look about him, the way people suffering from acute arthritis do. “We wouldn’t talk to ’em.”

  “Well, Bradford talked to them,” I said. “And if he’s still around I need to talk to him.”

  “Cop,” the second white man said. There was so much ground-in dirt on his seamed face that he looked sooty, as if he’d been caught in the middle of a recent fire.

  I sensed that if I admitted my profession it would close them off; hoboes didn’t like cops, and it did not matter if they were public, private, or the railroad variety. I said, “No, I’m not a cop.”

  “I know a cop when I see one.”

  “Do cops offer to buy you a jug of wine?”

  “He got you there, Woody,” the black guy said. He seemed to have relaxed a little. He asked me, “What you want with this Bradford?”

  I told him the same thing I’d told the other tramps. Then I went over to where he sat and extended the clipping.

  He took it, but he didn’t look at it. “The ten bucks first,” he said.

  “Do I get straight answers?”

  “We hoboes, man, not grifters. You get what you pay for.”

  I let him have the money. He put it away in the pocket of his dirty gray shirt and then gave his attention to the photograph. “Which one’s Bradford?”

  “The one on the far left.”

  He studied the photo some more. When he was finished he passed it on to the white guy named Woody, who squinted at it myopically for about five seconds before he handed it to the third tramp.

  I said, “Well? Do any of you know him?”

  “Seen him around,” the black man said. “They call him ‘G-Man’—used to work for the gov’ment.”

  I nodded. “Do you know if he’s still here?”

  “No. Ain’t seen him since the reporters come around.”

  “He’s the one got in the hassle with the streamliner,” Woody said. He glanced at the other white guy. “You remember, Flint. Kid that come off the freight from Sacramento.”

  “Yeah,” Flint said. “Long-haired little bastard. I remember.”

  I said, “What are ‘streamliners’?”

  “Young dudes, mostly,” the black guy said, “not real tramps. They travel without a bedroll, only the clothes they got on they backs. Dopers, most of ‘em; this one was for sure. Runnin’ from something or somebody. Or just plain runnin’.”

  “And Bradford had some trouble with one?”

  “I seen it myself,” Woody said. “Just after them Frisco reporters left. This streamliner come off and tried to mooch some stew G-Man was cooking up.”

  “What happened?”

  “They had them a little push-and-shove. Then the streamliner, he pulled a knife. Couple of the other ‘boes run him off before he could do any cuttin’.”

  “Was that all there was to it?”

  “No,” Flint said. “Kid went over into the yards and come back a while later. I seen him.”

  “I seen him too,” Woody said. “So did G–Man. Three of us was there together. G–Man had him some Cadillac and he didn’t mind sharing it.”

  “‘Cadillac’?”

  Woody grinned; what teeth he had were decayed stumps. But it was the black guy who answered my question. “Bottle of Thunderbird,” he said. “Cadillac of tramp wine.”

  “Did anything happen when the streamliner showed up the second time?”

  “He didn’t know we seen him,” Flint said. “He was headin’ for the road with a signal lantern in one hand and a tool kit in the other. Swiped ’em from one of the sheds.”

  “Prob’ly on his way into town to try sellin’ the stuff for the price of dope,” the black tramp said. He shook his head. “Damn long-hairs give hoboes a bad name. Yard bulls hassle all of us because of ’em.”

  “Just what I says to G–Man,” Woody agreed. “And he says something ought to be done about it and by God, he was goin’ to. I told him why don’t he mind his own business, but he wouldn’t listen. Reckon he was still thinkin’ about the streamliner tryin’ to cut him with that knife.”

  “You mean he chased after the kid?”

  Woody wagged his head. “Nope. Says he’s goin’ to report what the long-hair done; tell the yardmaster or one of the bulls. He went off into the yards. Left the Cadillac with Flint and me. Nice fella, G–Man.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I dunno. Three o’clock, maybe.”

  “Did you see him again?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about the kid?”

  “Nope.”

  “Freight come through since then bound for Pasco?”

  “Yesterday morning,” Flint said.

  “So Bradford—G–Man—could have hopped it.”

  “Could have, but he didn’t. Me and Woody and Toledo was all over there when she pulled in; we seen the tramps that got aboard. G–Man wasn’t one of ’em.”

  “There been any other northbound freight?”

  “Nope,” the black man, Toledo, said. “Next one’s due tomorrow morning.”

  I considered that. Then I asked, “The streamliner happen to mention his name?”

  “Not that I heard,” Flint said, and Woody wagged his head again.

  “What did he look like?”

  “Long hair like all of ’em got. Yellow. Scrawny little bugger; couldn’t of weighed more than a hundred and thirty stripped.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “Levi’s. No shirt, just one of them sheepskin vests—”

  In the distance there was the wailing blast of a locomotive’s air horn. The three old tramps stirred immediately and came to their feet as one. Toledo said to me, “That be the noon southbound out of Medford. She comin’ in to change crews.”

  They started away from me toward the path that led up the gully wall. Trains were their lives, and with one coming in—and my ten dollars’ worth of information just about used up anyway—they had lost interest in me. Flint, the one with the arthritis, had trouble making it up the slope. Toledo hoisted him under one brawny arm, the way you’d pick up a child, and carried him to the top.

  I went up after them. The Medford freight was just clattering into view from the west–a string of maybe thirty cars, most of them boxes and flats. The air horn shattered the hot morning stillness again.

  The three hoboes headed into the yards, toward the siding the freight was shuttling onto. I followed them, but it wasn’t the freight I was interested in. The person I wanted to talk to now was Western Pacific’s day yardmaster.

  Chapter 6

  I found the yardmaster in his office, in the trailer I had noticed earlier near the entrance to the yards. His name was Coleman and he was about sixty, lean and sinewy, wearing an orange hard hat even though he was sitting at his desk. I was honest with him about who I was and what I was doing there; he seemed willing to cooperate. The only problem was, he had nothing to tell me.

  “No,” he said when he was done looking at the newspaper photograph, “I’ve never seen this man before.”

  “But you were here around three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon?”

  “I was. Out by the freight storage shed, as I recall, discussing a shipment of wheel flanges with a local businessman. Nobody who looked like this fellow Bradford came to see me.”

  “Well, maybe he talked to one of the yard security men . . .”

  Coleman shook his head. “If he had, it would have been reported to me. Theft is a serious offense around here and we damned well don’t put up with it. We did miss a signal lantern and a tool kit two days ago; the lock on one of the sheds was forced. But no one owned up to seeing the man who stole them or I’d sure know about it.” He paused. “Who did you say told you about this?”

  “Three oldtimers who live over in the hobo jungle,” I said. “Woody, Flint, and Toledo.”

  “Well, they’ve been around a l
ong time and there’s not much goes on that they don’t know about. They’re as reliable as tramps can be.” Coleman shrugged. “Maybe Bradford changed his mind about reporting the theft. Hoboes don’t want to get involved, as a rule.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe he did.”

  I left the trailer and went back across the yards and the open field to where I had parked my car. I didn’t know what to think now. If Bradford had changed his mind about reporting the streamliner, where had he gone instead? And why hadn’t he hopped the freight for Pasco, as the newspaper article said he’d planned to do?

  I wondered if he might have stopped by the rescue mission. That seemed as good a bet as any, so I drove back there and into the gravel lot. Off to one side of the mustard-yellow building were a couple of gardening sheds and a vegetable patch; drawn up in front was a battered old pickup truck. There was no sign of anybody in the vicinity. And when I got out and went up to the front door I found it locked; a hand-lettered sign taped to it said BACK AT 2:30.

  What now? I thought as I returned to the car. I decided to try canvassing the houses that faced the rail yards, on the chance that one of the residents had seen Bradford on Tuesday and maybe had some knowledge of where he’d gone. I spent an hour doing that, but it got me nothing except a lot of blank looks and doors slammed in my face.

  Was it possible Bradford had gone into town and taken a flop for the night? It didn’t seem likely. But he might still have gone into Oroville for some other reason—and so might the streamliner with his stolen loot; I remembered Toledo saying that the kid had probably done that to sell the stuff for the price of dope. I still had no proof that there was any connection between Bradford’s apparent disappearance and the streamliner, or that the two of them had had any further contact, but it was an angle worth checking out.

  I drove back to Oro Dam Boulevard and then took Myers Street downtown. Oroville wasn’t a very big place; the downtown area was maybe a dozen square blocks of old buildings, some with turn-of-the-century false fronts, and narrow sidewalks that didn’t have many people on them. The part of it that catered to transients and local down-and-outers was a couple of sleazy blocks along Montgomery and Huntoon streets, near the river—and near a green cinder-block structure that housed the Oroville Police Department. It was almost as if the cops had established themselves close by in order to keep an eye on the town’s unsavory elements.

  It occurred to me when I saw the police station that maybe Bradford had been arrested as a vagrant. Hoboes were always being rousted by cops in small railroad towns, particularly if they wandered in among the local gentry. If Bradford had been picked up he might have missed his northbound freight yesterday because he was in jail. I drove up to the green cinder-block building, parked the car in a slot facing the river, and went inside to find out.

  The officer at the desk was a young, flat-faced sergeant with straw-colored hair who gave his name as Huddleston. You have to be careful in how you deal with small-town cops; some of them don’t like private detectives from the big city—a sort of professional hostility, because they think you’re there to stir up trouble on their turf. But Huddleston wasn’t like that. He was polite, if a little reserved, and when I showed him the photostat of my license his face registered nothing more than mild curiosity.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for a man named Charles Bradford,” I said, and spread the Examiner photo on the desk in front of him. “He’s the man wearing the perforated cap.”

  “Yes, I saw this in the paper the other day,” Huddleston said. “Pretty good story, as these things go. Why are you looking for this Bradford?”

  I explained it to him, briefly but without leaving out anything pertinent. I also told him about the streamliner and the rest of what I’d learned at the hobo jungle. “I thought maybe you might have picked Bradford up on a vag charge.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t help you there. We’ve only booked one man in the past couple of days—drunk and disorderly—and he isn’t Bradford.”

  So much for that idea. “I don’t suppose it was the kid, either?”

  “Nope. Local fellow; railroad worker who likes his booze too much and picks fights when he’s in the bag.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll just have to keep poking around. That is, if you have no objections.”

  “None as far as I’m concerned. We’re interested in this streamliner, though; we don’t like thieves in Oroville. Or dopers. If you turn up a lead on him I’d appreciate you letting us know right away.”

  “Sure thing. Thanks for your time, sergeant.”

  “Good luck.”

  I went outside, looked at my car, decided to leave it where it was for the time being, and walked across Montgomery Street. I still had my original idea to check out—that either Bradford or the kid, or both of them, had come into town on Tuesday and ended up down here in the transient area. Even if neither of them was here now, somebody might remember having seen one or the other.

  There were two pawnshops, both on Huntoon Street. The guy who ran the first one had never seen either the streamliner or Charles Bradford, or so he said; but the proprietor of the second place admitted that yes, a young long-hair had come in on Tuesday afternoon, late, and tried to hock a railroad lantern and a box of tools.

  “But I sent him packing,” the pawnbroker said. “Tramps bring stuff they steal from the WP yards in here sometimes. I don’t have nothing to do with ’em.”

  “If you figured the stuff was stolen, why didn’t you report it to the police?”

  His mouth got tight at the corners. “I didn’t know it was stolen. Hell, I got a business to run here. I can’t be calling the police every time somebody comes in with something they want to hock.”

  Uh-huh, I thought. “Do you know any place where the kid might have been able to unload the lantern and tools? Someone who’s not as honest as you are?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “There ain’t nobody like that in Oroville.”

  He was lying; there’s someone like that in every town of this size, and especially a town with the transient population of Oroville. Maybe he didn’t want to confide in me because I was a stranger, or maybe he just didn’t want to get involved. In any case, he was firm about it so there was no point in pressing him.

  The block of Montgomery Street north of Huntoon was jammed with cheap hotels, cafés, bars, and gambling clubs advertising low-ball and draw poker. I started at the near end and worked my way along, giving the newspaper photo and a description of the streamliner to bartenders, waitresses, desk clerks, cardplayers, and bunches of elderly men with vacant eyes and liquor on their breaths. A third of them wouldn’t talk to me, and I didn’t trust half of the rest to give me a straight answer. Nobody knew Bradford, nobody knew the streamliner. Nobody knew anything.

  I had pretty much given up by the time I walked into the Miners’ Hotel—ROOMS BY DAY, WEEK, OR MONTH—near the end of the block. The lobby was small, gloomy, smelled of dust and disinfectant, and had some faded plush furniture that hadn’t been new at the time of the 1906 earthquake; a guy about ninety with a nicotine-stained white mustache was half buried in one of the chairs, unmoving, as if he’d died there and been stuffed as some sort of monument. Behind the desk, a middle-aged rheumy type in an undershirt was watching a soap opera on television. He looked like a character out of a 1930s detective pulp; all that was missing was a green eyeshade and a pair of suspenders.

  Nothing happened in his expression when I showed him the photograph, but when I described the streamliner an immediate flicker of recognition came into his eyes. Then the eyes got crafty. He smelled the prospect of money; you could almost see his nose twitch.

  “Well,” he said, “I dunno. I might know that one. Then again, my memory ain’t what it used to be ...” He shrugged and watched me, licking his lips.

  There was no percentage in playing games with him. If I told him I was a cop he’d ask to see my badge. And if I told him I
was a private detective he’d still want to get paid. So I took a five-dollar bill out of my wallet, laid it on the counter with my hand on it and enough of the numeral showing so he could see it, and said, “How do you know him? Did he come in here?”

  “That’s right,” the clerk said. “Now I remember.” He wasn’t looking at me anymore. His eyes were all over the money; I could feel them like crawling things on the back of my hand. “Fella looked like that come in Tuesday evening and took a room.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “Yeah. Alone.”

  “What name did he register under?”

  The clerk did not have to consult his book. “Smith,” he said. “Mr. Smith, from Sacramento.”

  “Did he just stay the night, or what?”

  “No. Paid two nights in advance.”

  “Then he hasn’t checked out yet?”

  “Far as I know, he’s still up in his room. Far as I know, he ain’t been down since he registered.”

  “What room is he in?”

  “Six. Second floor, rear.”

  “I’m going up for a little talk with Mr. Smith,” I said. “But you don’t know that. So you can’t call up and let him know I’m coming, now can you?”

  “I don’t know nothing,” the clerk said. “I told you, mister, my memory ain’t what it used to be.”

  I took my hand off the fiver and moved toward the stairs at the rear. I didn’t see him snatch up the bill, but I heard him do it and I heard him smack his lips. It was like listening to a carrion bird swoop down on the carcass of a small animal.

  Chapter 7

  The second-floor hallway was dim and quiet and had the same dust-and-disinfectant smell of the lobby. The first door I came to was standing open, and when I passed it I glanced inside automatically, the way you do. A frowsy brunette in her middle thirties was sitting on the end of the bed, clad in an old Hawaiian muu-muu. One foot was propped against a chair, so that the muu-muu bunched up to reveal a lot of flabby white thigh; she was painting her toenails blood-red.