“It’s you, old man. I saw you from the restaurant window. ‘Howdy-doody.’ I said to myself. Son of a bitch.” The Okie shook with a horrible excitement, then pressed a gun into Thompson’s gut. “Where’s my car? Who you working for?”
It no longer mattered if the history he’d invented for this man were real or imagined. The Okie looked at him hard, then the man’s eyes went soft and watery, otherworldly, just as they had done back at the Hillcrest apartment, before the cops sent him running. The dead girl had seen this look too, no doubt, the swimming in the eyes, in the instant before he strangled her. Alberta called out. The Okie turned his head, shifted his balance, and Alberta came around with her purse. Thompson fell, hitting the ground, rolling to his side, clutching his gut, hearing Alberta yell out as if from a great distance, “Jim! Jim!” but he was plummeting through the darkness once more, forever, it seemed, past the sound of receding footsteps, soles slapping on the pavement, to a depth where there were no more sounds, no words, nothing left to say.
THIRTY
Thompson woke up in the emergency ward, underground, in the cellar of the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. Alberta sat in a metal chair nearby, not looking at Thompson, though, but at the ruddy-faced resident, all in white, who sat in the chair beside her.
“I managed to get in touch with Doctor Rufus, your husband’s regular physician. He tells me there’s a history of alcoholism?”
“Yes,” said Alberta. “But I don’t know if this is related. You see, like I said, a man attacked us on the street. He had a gun. I knocked it loose. He gathered it up, and ran.”
“I understand. The good news, though, is that there are no signs of injury. No external trauma.”
“Did he have a stroke?”
“I’ve seen it happen. An older person gets mugged, their house burns down, something like that, it triggers a stroke. But my feeling, what we have here is nervous exhaustion. Complicated by the alcoholism. Doctor Rufus suspects other underlying problems as well. Ulcerated stomach. Pulmonary deterioration—and these may be related to the collapse.”
“I see.”
“Dr. Rufus thinks it may be time to get your husband into a treatment center. He suggests Mr. Thompson stay overnight for observation. In the morning, we’ll do a thorough check-up. If he’s strong enough—if there isn’t an immediate medical problem—then your husband should go to a sanitarium.”
Thompson didn’t like the idea. He tried to speak. The resident hovered over him, a blur of white, and Thompson got a glimpse of the man’s hand reaching out to adjust the i-v. The resident was still talking, and Alberta said something in response, but their voices sounded far away now, then farther, as if they were talking outside the door, down the hall, the next county over, and pretty soon he no longer heard them at all.
He awoke later in another room, higher up in the building, the curtains drawn, the light around their edges bright and important. Mid-afternoon. Alberta and the resident gone, i-v disconnected. A chair empty by the closed door.
He slept.
The sun crept around the other side of the building. The room went gray and murky. He woke again and stared up into that murk for a long time, then turned his head to the door.
Lieutenant Orville Mann sat in the chair. The atmosphere of the room, the state of his own mind, were both such that Thompson assumed Mann was not actually there. I am dreaming, he thought, moving from one state of consciousness to another.
“They told me I could have a few minutes.”
Thompson touched himself. The way the resident had been talking earlier, he worried he had gone over the edge, into delirium. He’d seen the Okie, though, he was sure of that. Mann, he decided now, was real.
“What happened out on the sidewalk?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have enemies? You know the man who attacked you?”
“No,” Thompson lied.
“We had your wife look through some mug shots. There’s a half dozen strong-arm artists work the streets down in that area.”
“She recognize anyone?”
“No. But we put a description in the neighborhood. Got one call. A lady said she saw someone like your man hitchhiking on the Hollywood on-ramp. Headed north.”
“You think it was him?”
“Can’t say. My guess, whoever it was, he’ll show up in Bakersfield, some damn place. Probably pull the same stunt all over again.” Mann fingered his hat as he spoke. “You know, that’s quite a woman you’ve got there.”
“Uh-hum.”
“Salt of the earth.” The cop was at it again, trying to wear him down, one homily at a time.
“She’s my better half, all right,”
“The wisdom of the world is in a woman’s nod.”
“That’s true. You’ve hit it on the head.”
“Uh-huh.”
“A woman like that,” said Thompson, “she keeps the lead in your pencil.”
The Lieutenant bowed his head. His eyes grew solemn, like a rube who’d glimpsed a woman’s petticoats—and he put the routine away. “They had a memorial service for Jack Lombard today. Half the town was there, including Lombard’s girlfriends. Both of them.”
“Both?”
“Yes, Michele Haze. And Anita Smith. They kissed and hugged.” The cop shook his head, bemused. “Only in Hollywood.”
Anita Smith. Thompson grabbed at the name. People in the business, they seldom called the woman by her real name, but that’s who she was. The Young Lovely wasn’t dead after all; that’s why the initials didn’t match.
But who was the woman in the Cadillac?
“It seems Miss Smith left Hollywood a few days before Lombard’s murder. I’m not telling you anything new here, it’s in the gossip sheets all over town these last few days. I guess they had some kind of lover’s spat.”
“I wasn’t aware.”
“They made up on the phone, long distance. They were going to get married, soon as she got back. Poor girl—but that’s not the end of it. She gets back here, to her place in Topanga Canyon, and it turns out her roommate has disappeared too.”
“Roommate?”
“Another girl, looking for a break in Hollywood. You know how it is, one leaves, another takes her place. This one, though, she didn’t stick around long.”
“What do you mean?”
“Vanished,” Lieutenant Man shrugged. “Miss Smith says that’s not surprising. She’s that kind. Four addresses in the last year and a half. She blows in, she blows out.”
Thompson closed his eyes. It occurred to him now: the Okie had killed the wrong woman.
“Cathy,” said Lieutenant Mann. “Cathy Hanfield. That’s the missing woman. You know her?”
“No.”
He was a fuck-up, the Okie. The loose nut, the wild card, dust in the clockwork. He’d been hired to kill The Young Lovely, but he’d gotten her roommate instead. Delivered her to the wrong address.
“You’re looking a little pale.”
“I’ve had a hard day.”
“I just have a few more questions. You know, they told me, when you checked into the hospital—you had all your identification loose in your pocket. You weren’t carrying a wallet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“My old one fell apart.” Thompson reached for the call button; he wanted to get rid of the cop.
“We found some prints on the murder weapon. We sent them over to the federal print lab, looking for a match.” Lieutenant Mann smiled his country boy smile. “And something else. We found a shoe. A man’s shoe. In the bushes.”
“That right?”
“Yeah. Seems it belonged to a big man. Someone with good size feet.”
Thompson squirmed. My feet, he thought. Big as Jesus, right here, hidden beneath the bed sheets.
Where was the goddamn nurse?
“You know, it’s a shame the way they treat you. These Hollywood people hold out promises, then they pull the string. You ever b
een fingerprinted?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t mind if I do that now, for our records?”
It would be best to co-operate, Thompson figured, but he wasn’t sure what had happened that night in Beverly Hills. For all he knew, Miracle had placed the weapon in his hands while he lay unconscious, transferring the prints.
Thompson didn’t know what to do. His moves were getting fewer, the trap tighter. Then the nurse walked in, a grim redhead—but pretty in her own gloomy way. “Visiting hours are over. Two hours ago.”
“Guilty,” Lieutenant Mann raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I admit it. I overstayed my time.”
“You snuck by the desk?” she demanded.
“I don’t deny it. You know how they say,” he glanced toward Thompson, “if the shoe fits …”
“Go,” the nurse said. She turned to Thompson.
“You pressed the call button?”
“I was just wondering how long before supper.”
“I’ll be bringing it in a few minutes. Along with your evening medication.”
Thompson didn’t want to stay here overnight. He hadn’t had a drink since this morning, and by tomorrow, first light, withdrawal would be on him; he would be clutterheaded, clamoring at the walls. No, he couldn’t go to the sanitarium, not now. Besides, a line of reasoning had begun to form in his head, an avenue of escape.
He had to go back up the hill, to Whitley Terrace.
His stomach churned at the idea, he needed to think it through more clearly, but now the nurse returned with his tray. Alongside his soup, a paper medicine cup. Inside the cup, two yellow pills.
“I’ll need for you to take this medication.”
“What is it?”
“Something to help you sleep.”
Thompson did not resist. He put the pills to his mouth and swallowed and afterwards took a big drink of water. The redhead watched, hands on hips, prettier than before but also more grim, eyes gray and empty-hearted as an Iowa sky. There was no cheering her up, but it did not matter. He remembered the routine from his last time around at the sanitarium, when the attendant had come around with his nightly dose of anabuse. Just like then, when the nurse left, Thompson opened his hand.
The yellow pills lay still in his palm.
THIRTY-ONE
Sometime after midnight, Thompson changed into his street clothes. He waited till the night nurse was on her break, then he sneaked past her desk, down the antiseptic corridors. He saw now why the redhead was so gloomy. They had lodged her—and himself, too—on the floor of hopeless cases. Old ladies with rosary beads, kids without legs. People crushed by coincidence, by the falling moon. A couple of orderlies lazed about in the lobby, but they gave him only the barest of glances. Outside, he grabbed a bus back to Hollywood. Something like pain tickled his gut, also the craving for a drink, but neither sensation was as strong as it might be. The hospital dope, all that stuff they’d pumped into him all day long, to ease him into withdrawal, it was doing its business—but he knew it would wear off before long. He would need the yellow pills.
At the Aztec, he retrieved the cashmere sweater. He hunted out a pocket flashlight at the corner market, also a brand new pint. Halfway up Grace Avenue, he stopped to catch his breath. The lights of the city lurched in the darkness below. His hands shook. He had no taste for what lay ahead. According to Lieutenant Mann, the Okie had left town, and The Young Lovely was still alive. Both these things were to his advantage. Because if The Young Lovely was not dead, Michele Haze could not be implicated in her murder. She was free to tell the police what had really happened that night at Lombard’s.
There was one complication, though. The girl in the Cadillac. If her body were discovered, the whole thing might come unraveled.
Thompson uncorked the flask. The hill crested, and he swiveled along the gravel road, into the dark.
He had to bury the girl.
There were no houses along here, no moon. The eucalyptus grew thickly along the road, blotting out the stars. He came upon the Cadillac suddenly, hulking up out of the darkness, and all but speared himself on the tail fin. He felt along its side until he reached the door. The keys hung in the ignition, just as he had left them.
He went around to the back and popped the trunk. The smell was overpowering, and he retched in the high grass.
He had not used the flashlight earlier, fearing it might call attention. Now he ran the narrow beam over her body, looking for that shovel he had seen that first day. He wriggled it loose and headed down the hill to find the open trench. He lay the shovel down. Went back for the girl.
It was not easy work. Her body was bloated, the skin moist. He reached into the trunk and struggled her free. She had been wearing a skirt when she died, and he gripped her thighs to his chest as he stumbled away from the Cadillac. The smell overcame him again. He lay her down, and went back to the weeds. Then splashed whiskey onto his face, around his nostrils. Wrapped her in the sheet the murderer had left behind, covering her face, her skin, hefting her up now, fireman style, at the same time clutching the flashlight in one hand, the light bobbing wildly as he jerked and stumbled down the path.
He was a big man, she a little woman. If not for that, he might never have managed. He hobbled along the ridge towards the open trench the highway workers had left behind, her arms and legs working their way out of the sheet, swinging stiff. His heart hammered, the blood rushed to his head. You got yourself a stroke in the making, the doctor had told him. Thompson felt its inevitability. He would collapse. Spend the rest of his days unable to pick up a pencil, stare out at the street from his window at the Hillcrest Arms. Perhaps he lay already in that sick bed, this moment struggling up the hill, all these moments, were not real but imagined, images glimpsed from beneath fluttering eyelids, forgotten the second he opened his eyes.
He reached the trench. He went shakily to his knees, lowering his burden. The sheet fell away and she lay in front of him now, arms spread wide, hair in a bouffant, lipstick feathered sloppily about her lips. Her face was swollen and puffy. Her corpse wore the expression of one who had just learned a secret so hideous and awful she yearned to whisper it over and over and never stop. He pushed her into the trench. She tumbled in, down in to the blackness. She landed face up. He threw the embroidered sweater after her and began to cover her with dirt.
It wasn’t just the girl he was burying, he told himself, it was the whole shebang. Miracle and the Okie. Michele Haze. Alberta. Mom and Dad and the state of Oklahoma. All those black pages, three million words. A dream he’d had once upon a time on a hillside, wrapping its legs around him in the velvet night.
Shovel after shovel. Dirt in his nose and the smell of exhaust rising in the canyon. Arduous work for an old man, but he accomplished it somehow. He buried the girl.
Thompson climbed up the hill to the Cadillac. He smoked a cigarette and crushed it in the dirt. He took a drink, then suddenly he was overcome once more.
He retched again.
The girl was an innocent. She had her flaws, no doubt. A big nose, maybe, unrealistic dreams. She’d wanted a role in Hollywood. A moment at the center of things. Well, she’d gotten her wish, more or less.
He started the car and drove down to Watts, to where the riots had raged a few years back. The area was still gutted. The buildings lay in ruins. He kept all the windows open, hoping to get rid of the smell, but it seemed to be in the air itself now. He parked the Caddy on Bleaker Street, not far from the Watts Towers. Then he dropped the keys into a grate and flagged down a taxi.
The Cadillac would be stripped. It would disappear piece by piece. Tires and hubcaps, carburetor, hood ornaments and all. Within days, it would look like the other cars that lined the streets, here in this neighborhood of abandoned cars. Sooner or later, the police would come out to get it, and maybe someone would tell them they’d seen a white man drop it off, but it wouldn’t matter. They’d drag it down to impound, run a trace on the serial. Maybe they�
��d find the owner, maybe they wouldn’t, but either way it would all be settled by the insurance company. Routine case, stolen car, junked and abandoned in Watts. That would be the end of it, or close enough, because they would never trace the car to Michele Haze, or to himself. Because the girl was a nobody. No one was looking for her, not even the cops.
Thompson went back to the Aztec Hotel. The hospital should’ve discovered his absence by now. They would call Alberta, and she would track him here. So he gathered up his typewriter and checked himself a room in the flophouse across the street. He swallowed the sleeping tablets he had palmed at the hospital.
Then he remembered Lussie. It was the night of the dance. He would never see her now. He had known it all along. She would spin around that dance floor without him, fly back to Lincoln.
Lucille Jones. He’d had his chance in New York. The reason he had not taken it was because it was no chance at all. The girl she’d been was dead, and that woman, leaning against the wall, eyes shimmering, knew it as well as he did. Because there had been something else in her eyes that he had not admitted until now.
If he had tried, Lussie would have pushed him away. Same as she had years before. Still, she had been disappointed, he guessed, by the slouch of her evening gown, the jangle of her pearls.
Anyway it was done. He had other things to tend to now. He would call Alberta. He would check into the sanitarium, he told himself, quit drinking, avoid that stroke that lay ahead. First, though, there were loose ends. He had to see Michele Haze. He called her service, left a message. Then he fell into a deep and tumultuous sleep, in which he was an old man, struggling with a corpse of a young woman, dragging her along a hillside, dragging her over and over again. She was beautiful, almost, and she spoke to him, whispering in the language of the gullies, of the weed grass and the oil cans.
Manifesto for the Dead Page 10
