Jack called out, “You ever been shot at, sister?”
Gertie flashed a quick half-smile. She strutted up the porch steps and took a seat next to Jack. “So, you have been investigating?”
“Talked to a bunch of Wilma’s asshole neighbors. One of them told me you took a bullet for asking too many questions.”
Gertie wore a white knit blouse with alternating red and blue buttons and a red wool coat. She unbuttoned the first blue and the first red, hooked her thumb into the blouse, and pulled the ensemble to the left. She had a .22-size scar on either side of her collarbone, just shy of the shoulder muscle. Jack touched it gently with the pad of his forefinger. Gertie didn’t flinch. “Don’t read too much into it, Jackie.”
Jack stared at the scar. Gertie pulled her blouse back into place and buttoned up. “Who did it? What do you know?”
“Not much. I was leaving Pie Land over on Vermont one night when a Ford sedan swings by. Next thing I know, I’m on the ground and my shoulder’s burning. I passed out and woke up in the hospital. Turned out I was lucky. The gunman was downhill and the bullet went up through me. Didn’t hit anything that mattered. I was back on the Republic lot before the picture I was working on lost any money.”
“And you were shot for looking into Wilma’s death.”
“Murder. Wilma’s murder,” Gertie said. “That’s all I can figure. Either that or someone was gunning for Rita Hayworth and mistook me for her.”
Jack pulled out his notebook and pencil. “Who’s Rita Hayworth? Should I go talk to her?”
Gertie set her hand atop Jack’s pencil. “Easy there, Dick Tracy. It’s just a joke.”
Jack didn’t know what to make of it, so he offered Gertie a cup of coffee. She declined. She said, “Don’t worry too much about that little old bullet. You’re so quick to reach for that heater in your jacket, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
Jack nodded. He picked up The Brain Emporium and spun it around in his hands. “I got my old man’s Model A running again. I’m thinking a drive up to Camarillo isn’t the worst idea in the world.”
Gertie smiled. “Ask for Mr. Hughes. He’ll give you a tour.”
Sometime in the mid-afternoon, Jack found himself deep in the Camarillo strawberry fields that led to the state mental hospital. He pulled over beside a little hog farm on the entrance road to the hospital and pulled himself together. He dipped his comb in his tin of Royal Crown and slicked back his hair. He slid back into his coat and popped his hat back on his head. He took a quick look at himself in the rearview. Everything seemed in order. He couldn’t pass for a swell in this dusty green Ford, but he was clean and clean-shaven and presentable enough. He swung back onto the road and approached the entrance gate.
The guard at the gate waved Jack to a stop. “What’s your business?”
“My wife sent me up to tour the place,” Jack said. “She’s thinking of sending her mother here to dry up.”
“Living the life, aren’t you?”
Jack smiled. “You said it, pal. I’ve been looking for somewhere to send my mother-in-law since I got married.” As he said this, he realized that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. It wasn’t the greatest sin a married man away from home could commit, but it wasn’t what a dutiful husband would do. He casually dropped his left arm from the door. His hand dangled low, in a spot Jack hoped would be out of sight for the guard.
“Who’d you set up an appointment with?”
“A fellow named Hughes.”
The guard nodded. “Sure.” He pointed Jack down the road, told him to take a right and park once he got past the bell tower. Jack gave him a casual salute. The old jalopy sputtered into the hospital grounds.
Jack parked where the guard had told him. He stepped out of the car. Cool breezes floated in from the ocean not too far south and west of here. The midday sun seemed gentle by comparison. Springtime had sprinkled some green on the hills that surrounded the hospital. The administration building was on the north side of hospital grounds. The actual hospital and patients were on the south side. All the buildings on that side seemed to turn their back on the outside world. There must have been grass on the inside, lanais and balconies and windows and recreational facilities. Jack couldn’t know. The south half of the hospital was like a fort.
For all the grass and shade trees Jack could see, there were no people. Steam rose from the boiler plant on the west side. The building next to it looked like a factory, with its long sides and high windows. Jack rolled a smoke and watched a few pigeons perched atop the peak of red tile roof.
First, he decided, there wasn’t any point in wandering away from the administration building. This place was built to block the view of curious eyes. It didn’t leave much room for casual encounters. If he wanted to see anyone, he needed a guide. He lit his cigarette, took a drag, and walked around to the front entrance of the admin building.
He was greeted by a large woman working the front desk. Any intimidation her size or age may have held was buried under her yellow rayon dress and its sunfish pattern. Jack tucked his left hand into his pants pocket. He offered her a friendly smile when she asked his business.
“I have an appointment with Mr. Hughes,” he said.
The receptionist kept her fingers atop the appointment book without looking inside. “I’ll just get him,” she said. “You can sit in that chair while you wait.”
Jack sat against the wall and finished his cigarette. It didn’t add up. The guard was easy to get past. The receptionist didn’t care that he didn’t really have an appointment. And now here came Mr. Hughes, ready to show him around, a big grin on his mug and a hand out for a shake. These weren’t the type of folks who covered up murders or drew enough water down in Los Angeles to scare Hammond off an investigation. Jack would take the tour with Mr. Hughes, but already he felt like he was wasting both of their time.
It wasn’t until after the tour and Jack was back in his car that he saw something worth a look. He’d been driving around the buildings on the south side of the hospital. In the back, he saw a Mercury parked outside what looked to be a dorm. This couldn’t be a hospital vehicle. It had chrome enough to blind and style enough to brag. It belonged more on the lots of Republic than parked behind a sanitarium.
A man in a seersucker suit led two women in hospital gowns to the car. At first glance, both women looked a mess: wild hair and naked faces. Despite that, the wind pushing up against their gowns showed them to be young and fit and a bath away from being attractive. None of the three had yet looked up and seen Jack. He turned his glance to the green-splattered hills before any of the trio could make eye contact with him. He rode out of the hospital and pulled onto the shoulder of a dairy road just outside hospital grounds. Sure enough, the Mercury whipped past with the patients in back.
Jack rolled another cigarette. These farm roads were long and flat. It was easy to follow from a safe distance. He twisted the ends, lit the smoke, and lurched out about a mile behind the Mercury.
The Mercury turned left on Ventura and headed north. Jack gunned the Model A until he reached the highway, then crept back several car lengths from the Mercury. The women in the backseat kept their heads on a swivel, as if they were trying to see everything, memorize every row crop and strawberry along the way.
After about fifteen minutes, the Mercury pulled into the Hitching Post, a motor court just north of Oxnard. Jack drove past and circled back into the parking lot of a nearby diner. He parked just in time to see the hospital gowns vanish into a back room. The gee in the seersucker came out in no time flat and hopped back into his Mercury.
Jack had a decision to make: follow the car or bust into the motor court. Shit, Jack was bad at this. He’d been a lousy cop, always quick to turn away from trouble and let the troublemakers go with a warning, always most concerned with watching his ass and getting his twenty bucks a week. He’d never investigated anything. He didn’t know which way to turn.
The old man would’ve
known what to do. Jack had been with his father enough times to see the old man bust into places with a shotgun pumped and eyes peeled for an excuse to use it. Or the old man would follow this Mercury to an empty road, pull the driver over, and beat a story out of him.
Jack couldn’t see himself doing either. And now the Mercury was taking a left into oblivion. The motor court was the only choice.
Absent a shotgun or his father’s suicidal impulses, Jack took a stroll behind the diner. A cook sat atop a garbage can smoking a pre-rolled. Jack nodded to him and approached. “Can I bum one of those?”
The cook tossed the pack to Jack. Jack shook one out, lit it with his own lighter, and handed the pack back to the cook. “Know anything about that little motor court next door?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just been driving south since San Luis Obispo,” Jack said. “Ready to pack it in for the day.”
“Where you headed?”
“San Diego.”
“Head south to Oxnard Boulevard and take a right,” the cook said. “It’ll run you through downtown. You’ll catch a nice place to stay there. And you can stick with that road down to the coast in the morning.”
“Appreciate it,” Jack said. He kept walking through the alley.
With the cook watching, it was too tough to follow the fence behind the motor court. Jack cut across the front of the motor court and kept alongside the road. He didn’t even cast a peek at the front office. He went maybe a hundred yards past, then backtracked along a shadow-box fence, stepping carefully over the rugged brush that grew there, keeping his pant legs clear of the thorns on the dried-out bougainvillea. He took a guess on which room the two female patients had entered.
It was tough from the back. The only windows the rooms had on this side were bathroom windows. They were up high. Jack had to stretch just to glimpse over the sill. Inside, he could see a pedestal sink, a claw-foot tub, and a shredded area rug on the floor. He inched to his left in hopes of seeing a sliver of the room through the bathroom door. Just as he got his feet set, he felt a wallop on the back of his head.
Jack turned and raised his right arm to swing at anything behind him. Before he could make out his target, the butt of a gun crashed into his chin and the lights went out.
WILMA, 1943
A MONTH INTO the madhouse and Wilma was settling into a routine. Her job was still in sickbay, but now that she was a veteran, they moved her into rooms that were occupied by patients with tuberculosis. She’d taken to wearing the state-issued dress and hat the hospital provided, saving her own clothes for occasions when spit filled with TB was far less likely to land on her. The hospital also gave her a thin gauze mask to ward away the germs.
Wilma paused, as she did every day, beside the door of one particularly difficult patient named Muriel. Wilma removed her hat and hung it on the end of her mop handle. She paraded the hat in front of the sliver of window at the room’s door. There was no glass in the window. Muriel had busted it out years earlier. Every time the hospital replaced the glass, Muriel busted it back out. The hospital had given up replacing it sometime long before Wilma’s stay. Now the glassless window was Muriel’s only opening to attack the hospital.
When Wilma’s hat loped past, Muriel wasted no time throwing a shoe at it. Wilma darted to the other side of the door. She screamed, “Ow. Hey! That hurts.”
Muriel cackled inside her room. Wilma trotted the hat and mop handle back in front of the window. Muriel threw another shoe. It echoed against the concrete wall of the hallway. Wilma quickly grabbed both shoes.
Since the nurse didn’t want to be bothered with this shoe thrower, she left Wilma to deal with her. Wilma took the key the nurse had given her, unlocked the door, opened it, and flattened herself and her cart against the hallway wall. Muriel raced out of the room as soon as the door was open. Wilma slid inside, dragging the cart behind her. She slammed the door and locked it.
Muriel scurried up and down the hall, looking for the shoes. Wilma started her cleaning. She emptied the bedpan and bucket into a larger bucket she carried on her cart. Muriel returned to the window. “You dirty fucking whore,” she screamed. “You’re like the blood that drips out of my pussy. You’re a yeast infection come to life. Your momma tried to have you aborted. Don’t touch my bed.”
Wilma pulled the old sheets off Muriel’s bed and put fresh linens on. “What else am I, Muriel?” she asked.
“You’re the nits monkeys pull off their asses. You’re a beard of maggots. You’re my next murder victim.”
Wilma scrubbed down the concrete walls. They reeked of the paraldehyde that Muriel spit out every time the psych techs tried to force it down her throat. Wilma idly listened to Muriel’s threats and obscenities. She was too used to them to find them funny or sad or threatening. She cleaned this room three days a week. Every time, it was the same.
When she finished the walls, Wilma started mopping. As soon as Muriel saw the mop, she spit at Wilma. The TB kept Muriel from being able to spit with any real range or vigor. Wilma mopped everywhere Muriel’s lungs couldn’t reach. By the time she was finished, Muriel was out of spit. Wilma held onto the back tip of the handle and pushed the mop gingerly into Muriel’s range. Muriel kept making the sound of spitting. Nothing came out.
When it was time to polish, Wilma said, “You’ve said nothing but nice things about me today, Muriel. I appreciate that.”
Muriel stopped spitting and screamed, “You dirty fucking whore. You’re the worms crawling out of my ears. You’re the corn in my shit.”
Wilma polished the floor to the rhythm of this new torrent. When she was finished, she pushed her cart to the edge of the door’s radius. This was the toughest part of the room cleaning: getting out of the room and getting Muriel back into it. Wilma had tried a few methods. She’d tried reasoning with Muriel, but that was unreasonable. She’d tried treating Muriel like a child. The problem was, Muriel was crazy, not stupid. The little mental games that work with kids didn’t work with her. Once, Wilma had thrown Muriel’s shoes at her. Muriel caught them and whipped them back at Wilma. No good. So Wilma went back to her best method. She unlocked the door and threw it open. Muriel raced into the room. Wilma quick dodged her, then kicked Muriel’s back leg. She tripped and hit the polished floor with a flop. Wilma grabbed her cart and flew out of the room before Muriel could rise and make another pass.
Once the door was locked, Wilma dropped Muriel’s shoes through the glassless window.
She moved on to the next room, the next difficult patient, the next batch of bloody TB spit. The whole routine didn’t feel so oppressive on this day, though, because she knew Gertie was coming for a visit at noon.
The café sat on the far north end of hospital grounds, seemingly a world away from the dorms and the baths and the electroshock tables and the iron entry doors and the TB ward and the rooms that required titanic key rings. Only a select few patients—the drunks or junkies or not-so-nutty nutcases who’d proven that they could get with the program—were allowed to see visitors in the café. Since Wilma had been mopping up after Muriel and even worse on the TB floor without making a stink, she made it into the select few. She lined up with the rest of the nurses’ pets outside the main hospital, and they set off toward the café.
Wilma hadn’t felt sun like this—the kind that lands right on your skin and rubs up against it like a mother’s soft hand on an infant’s belly—since she’d been committed. From the outside, the hospital did seem like a resort. Lawns rolled out in golf-course green. Red tile roofs and golden hills. Four-story palm trees backed by a blue sky. Had she ever appreciated walking two hundred yards so much in her life?
The patients passed the long laundry building. Steam floated out of the high windows. A patient pushed a cart out of one door, down the lanai, and through another door. Wilma watched her. So that’s how it is? The laundry workers get to see these grounds and feel this sun every day. Wilma’s mind started spinning, reeling in schemes to get her reas
signed to the laundry. She walked slowly, drifting to the back of the line, letting the patients run-walking to the café take the lead. Sure, Wilma wanted to see Gertie, to get as much time as possible with her sister. But something about these four minutes in the sun felt rich, like a moment turning into a memory, like nostalgia for the present.
The café itself looked like a restaurant you’d find in downtown LA. And not the Bunker Hill part of downtown. The nice part. Over by the Pacific Building, where men in flannel suits spilled out of offices and bought tuna melts cooked to order. A long counter stretched along the far wall. There were workers behind it, actual paid workers, and not just patients, pulling orders from the window and drawing sodas and—could Wilma be seeing this right?—actual beers from taps. Four-top tables with room enough between them for even the fattest of waitresses to waddle between covered the main dining hall. Red vinyl booths lined the walls.
Gertie stood up from a table in the center of the room when she saw Wilma walk in. Wilma waved back. A month at the hospital had taught her to keep her thoughts inside and her emotions off her face. She strolled to the table as if this whole scene were nothing special, just another lunch at Pie Land in Los Feliz. Gertie moved faster. She met Wilma halfway and wrapped her in a hug. “Christ, Sis,” she said. A warm tear slid down her cheek and landed on the bare skin of Wilma’s neck. Wilma held on as long as she could in front of the prying psych tech eyes.
She let go and wiped Gertie’s cheek. “Don’t go getting soft on me, kid,” she said.
They took a seat. Gertie had already ordered a couple of chicken salad sandwiches. She prattled on about studio gossip while Wilma wolfed down her food. Wilma offered closed-mouthed smiles and head nods for encouragement. She wanted to hold up her end of the conversation, but she couldn’t stop eating. She polished off her sandwich and fries and pickle and Gertie’s sandwich and pickle. When she finished, Gertie pushed her plate across the table. “Take the fries, too.”
Dead Extra Page 6
