Росс Макдональд - The Far Side of the Dollar

“Yeah.” He looked surprised.

“I hear you blow well.”

“Don’t flatter me. I ain’t no J. C. Higginbotham.”

“And I ain’t no Sherlock Holmes. But sooner or later you’re going to tell me when you saw Tommy Hillman last. You’re not going to sit on your raunchy old bed and wait for the television to inform you that they found Tommy’s body in a ditch.”

“Did they?”

“Not yet. It could happen tonight. When did you see him?”

He drew a deep breath. “Yesterday. He was okay.”

“Did he come here?”

“No sir. He never has. He stopped in at The Barroom Floor yesterday afternoon. He came in the back way and only stayed five minutes.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Slacks and a black sweater. He told me once his mother knitted that sweater for him.”

“Did you talk to him yesterday afternoon?”

“I played him a special riff and he came up and thanked me. That was all. I didn’t know he was on the run. Shucks, he even had his girl friend with him.”

“Stella?”

“The other one. The older one.”

“What’s her name?”

“He never told me. I only seen her once or twice before that. Tommy knew I wouldn’t approve of him squiring her around. She’s practically old enough to be his mother.”

“Can you describe her?”

“She’s a bottle blonde, with a lot of hair, you know how they’re wearing it now.”

He swept his hand up from his wrinkled forehead. “Blue eyes, with a lot of eye shadow. It’s hard to tell what she looks like under all that makeup.”

I got out my notebook and made some notes. “What’s her background?”

“Show business, maybe. Like I say, I never talked to her. But she has the looks.”

“I gather she’s attractive.”

“She appears to be to Tom. I guess she’s his first. A lot of young boys start out with an older woman. But,” he added under his breath, “he could do better than that.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirty, anyway. She didn’t show me her birth certificate. She dresses younger-skirts up over her knees. She isn’t a big girl, and maybe in some lights she can get away with the youth act.”

“What was she wearing yesterday?”

“A dark dress, blue satin or something like that, with sequins on it, a neckline down to here.”

He touched his solar plexus. “It grieved me to see Tom with his arm around her.”

“How did she seem to feel about him?”

“You’re asking me more than I can answer. He’s a good-looking boy, and she makes a show of affection. But I don’t need X-ray eyes to know what is in her mind.”

“Would she be a hustler?”

“Could be.”

“Did you ever see her with any other man?”

“I never did. I only saw her once or twice with Tom.”

“Once, or twice?”

He ruminated. “Twice before yesterday. The first time was two weeks ago yesterday. That was a Sunday, he brought her to our jam session that afternoon. The woman had been drinking and first she wanted to sing and then she wanted to dance. We don’t allow dancing at these sessions, you have to pay cabaret tax. Somebody told her that and she got mad and towed the boy away.”

“Who told her not to dance?”

“I disremember. One of the cats sitting around, I guess, they object to dancing. The music we play Sundays isn’t to dance to, anyway. It’s more to the glory of God,” he said surprisingly.

“What about the second time you saw her?”

He hesitated, thinking. “That was ten nights ago, on a Friday. They came in around midnight and had a sandwich. I drifted by their table, at the break, but Tom didn’t introduce me or ask me to sit down. Which was all right with me. They seemed to have things to talk about.”

“Did you overhear any part of their conversation?”

“I did.”

His face hardened. “She needed money, she was telling him, money to get away from her husband.”

“You’re sure you heard that?”

“Sure as I’m sitting here.”

“What was Tom’s attitude?”

“Looked to me like he was fascinated.”

“Had he been drinking?”

“She was. He didn’t drink. They don’t serve drinks to minors at the Floor. No sir. She had him hyped on something worse than drink.”

“Drugs?”

“You know what I mean.”

His hands molded a woman’s figure in the air.

“You used the word ‘hyped’.”

“It was just a manner of speaking,” he said nervously, rubbing his upper arm through the shirt sleeve.

“Are you on the needle?”

“No sir. I’m on the TV,” he said with a sudden downward smile.

“Show me your arms.”

“I don’t have to. You got no right.”

“I want to test your veracity. Okay?”

He unbuttoned his cuffs and pushed his sleeves up his thin yellow arms. The pitted scars in them were old and dry.

“I got out of Lexington seven years ago,” he said, “and I haven’t fallen since, I thank the good Lord.”

He touched his scars with a kind of reverence. They were like tiny extinct volcanoes in his flesh. He covered them up.

“You’re doing all right, Mr. Jackman. With your background, you’d probably know if Tom was on drugs.”

“I probably would. He wasn’t. More than once I lectured him on the subject. Musicians have their temptations. But he took my lectures to heart.”

He shifted his hand to the region of his heart. “I ought to of lectured him on the subject of women.”

“I never heard that it did much good. Did you ever see Tom and the blonde with anyone else?”

“No.”

“Did he introduce her to anyone?”

“I doubt it. He was keeping her to himself. Showing her off, but keeping her to himself.”

“You don’t have any idea what her name is?”

“No. I don’t.”

I got up and thanked him. “I’m sorry if I gave you a rough time.”

“I’ve had rougher.”

DACK’S AUTO COURT was on the edge of the city, in a rather rundown suburb named Ocean View. The twelve or fifteen cottages of the court lay on the flat top of a bluff, below the highway and above the sea. They were made of concrete block and painted an unnatural green. Three or four cars, none of them recent models, were parked on the muddy gravel.

The rain had let up and fresh yellow light slanted in from a hole in the west, as if to provide a special revelation of the ugliness of Dack’s Auto Court. Above the hutch marked “Office”, a single ragged palm tree leaned against the light. I parked beside it and went in.

A hand-painted card taped to the counter instructed me to “Ring for Proprietor.”

I punched the handbell beside it. It didn’t work.

Leaning across the counter, I noticed on the shelf below it a telephone and a metal filing box divided into fifteen numbered sections. The registration card for number seven was dated three weeks before, and indicated that “Mr. and Mrs. Robt. Brown” were paying sixteen dollars a week for that cottage. The spaces provided on the card for home address and license number were empty.

The screen door creaked behind me. A big old man with a naked condor head came flapping into the office. He snatched the card from my fingers and looked at me with hot eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I was only checking.”

“Checking what?”

“To see if some people I know are here. Bob Brown and his wife.”

He held the card up to the light and read it, moving his lips laboriously around the easy words. “They’re here,” he said without joy. “Leastways, they were this morning.”

He gave me a doubtful look. My claim of acquaintanceship with the Browns had done nothing for my status. I tried to improve it. “Do you have a cottage vacant?”