Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“She in trouble?” Marie said hopefully.

“A friend of hers is in the worst kind of trouble. He’s dead. Stabbed with an icepick.”

She brightened up alarmingly. “Why didn’t you say so? Come in. I’ll get you King’s address.”

Fawn lived in an apartment house a mile or so west on the same road. I started to walk, but on the way I noticed a U-drive sign at a gas station. I rented a new-looking Ford that sounded elderly. The attendant said it was the altitude.

The apartment house had a temporary atmosphere, like a motel. It was U-shaped and two-storied. The U enclosed the tenants’ parking lot, with its open end facing the street. I drove in and left the Ford in one of the white-marked slots.

Fawn’s apartment was number twenty-seven on the second floor. I went up the outside steps and along the railed gallery till I found her door. There was music behind it, the sound of a woman singing a blues. It wasn’t quite good enough to be a record, and there was no accompaniment.

The song broke off when I knocked. She appeared at the door, her face still softened by music. Her brown eyes held a puzzled innocence. Perhaps she was puzzled by her body and its uses. It was full and tender under her sweater, like fruit that has ripened too quickly. She held it for me to look at and said in a semiprofessional voice: “Hello. I was just practicing my blues style.”

“I heard. You have a nice voice.”

“So they all tell me. The trouble is, the competition here is terrif. They bring in recording stars, and it isn’t fair to the local talent.”

“You’re a local girl?”

“This is my third season. My third fabulous season. Which makes me an old-timer.”

“And you want to be a singer?”

“Anything,” she said. “Anything to get out of the rat race. Do you have any suggestions?”

My usual line was ready, the one I used on aspiring starlets and fledgling nightingales and girls who hoped to model their way into heaven: I was from Hollywood, knew movie people, could help. Her puzzled innocence stopped me.

“Just keep trying.”

She regarded me suspiciously, as though I had flubbed my cue. “Did somebody send you?”

“Ralph Simpson.”

“What do you know? I haven’t heard from Ralph for it must be at least two months.” She stepped aside in a quick dancer’s movement. “Come in, tell me about him.”

It was a hot-plate apartment containing a studio bed that hadn’t been made, an open portable record player, a dressing table loaded with cosmetic jars and bottles and a few paperbacked novels with young women like Fawn portrayed on their covers. The calendar on the wall hadn’t been changed since April.

I sat on the studio bed. “When did you last hear from Ralph?”

“Couple of months, like I said. He spent the night with me,” she went on routinely, “it must of been sometime around the middle of May. That was when he lost his job and didn’t have no place – any place to go. I lent him bus fare in the morning, haven’t seen him since.”

“He must be a good friend of yours.”

“Not in the way you think. It’s a brother-and-sister act between Ralph and me. We batted around together ever since we were kids in South San Francisco. He was like a big brother to me. Anyway, I wouldn’t take a married man away from his wife.”

But she posed in front of me as if she was testing out her power to do this.

“I’m not married,” I said.

“I was wondering.” She sat on the bed beside me, so close I could feel her heat. “You don’t talk like a married man and you don’t look like a bachelor.”

“I had a wife at one time. She looked something like you.”

“What was her name?”

“I forget.” There was too much pain in the word, and this was no place to deposit it.

“I don’t believe you. What happened to your wife?” Her brown eyes were attentive on my face. You’d have thought I was about to tell her fortune.

“Nothing bad happened to her. She left me, but that wasn’t bad for her. It was bad for me. Eventually she married somebody else and had some kids and lived happily ever after.”

She nodded, as if the story’s happy ending might somehow apply to her. “She left you on account of another woman, I bet.”

“You’d lose your bet. I treated her badly, but not in that way.” The pain stirred like a Santa Ana wind in the desert back reaches of my mind. I’d begun to talk to the girl because she was there. Now I was there, too, more completely than I wanted to be. “Also,” I said, “she didn’t like my trade. At the moment I’m not too crazy about it myself.”

“I wouldn’t care what a man did for a living. My ex was just a bookie, but I didn’t care. What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a detective.”

“How interesting.” But her body tensed, and her eyes glazed with distrust.

“Relax,” I said. “If I was the kind of detective you’re afraid of, I wouldn’t be telling you about it, would I?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Good. You have no reason. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles.”

“Ralph is interested in that kind of work, too. Is that how you know him?”

“In a way. Let’s talk about Ralph. Can you tell me anything about that job he lost?”

“He was a houseboy, more or less. He took jobs like that when he couldn’t get anything else. He worked for a mucky-muck up the lake. He showed me the house one night when the family was out. It was quite a layout.”

“I’ve seen the Blackwell place.”

“Blackwell. That was the name.”

“How long did Ralph work for the Blackwells?”

“A week or so. I didn’t keep tabs on him.” She smiled in her puzzled way. “I have enough trouble keeping tabs on myself.”

“Why did they fire him?”

“He didn’t tell me he was fired. He said he quit because he had what he wanted. Anyway, the family was going back down south.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They closed the lodge and went back to L. A. or wherever they live. Ralph thought they were going to stay longer, but they changed their minds.”

“I mean I don’t understand about Ralph getting what he wanted.”

“Neither do I. You know Ralph, he likes to act mysterious. Ralph Simpson, boy detective. It’s kind of cute.”

“Was Ralph doing some sort of detective work at the Blackwell place?”

“So he said. I don’t always buy a hundred per cent of what Ralph says. He goes to a lot of movies and sometimes he gets them mixed up with the things he does himself.” She added, with an indulgent glance at the paperbacks on the dressing table: “I do the same thing with stories sometimes. It makes life more exciting.”

I brought her back to the subject: “Tell me what Ralph said.”

“I couldn’t – my memory isn’t that good. The way he talked, it was all mixed up with the tragedy that happened to Dolly. That hit Ralph hard. He was very fond of Dolly.”

“Are you talking about the Dolly who married Bruce Campion?”

The force of the question pushed her off the bed away from me. She went to the far side of the room, which wasn’t very far, and stood beside the dressing table in a defensive posture.

“You don’t have to shout at a girl. I have neighbors, remember. The management’s always breathing down my back.”

“I’m sorry, Fawn. The question is important.”

“I bet you’re working on Dolly’s murder, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Was Ralph?”

“I guess he thought he was. But Ralph is no great operator. It’s time somebody with something on the ball did something. Dolly was a sweet kid. She didn’t deserve to die.”

She looked up at the low ceiling, as if Dolly’s epitaph was also a prayer for herself. Tentatively, almost unconsciously, she drifted back across the room, stood over me with eyes like brimming pools.