The Barbarous Coast (20 page)

He stood up and made a wide swashbuckling gesture which carried him sideways all the way to the wall. Dropping the glass, he spread the fingers of both hands against the wall to steady himself. The wall leaned toward him, anyway. His forehead struck the plaster. He jackknifed at the hips and sat down with a thud on the carpeted floor.

He looked up at me, chuckling foolishly. One of his boiled blue eyes was straight, and one had turned outward. It gave him the appearance of mild, ridiculous lunacy.

“There’s a seavy hea running,” he said.

“We’ll hatten down the batches.”

I took him by the arms and set him on his feet and walked him to his chair. He collapsed in it, hands and jaw hanging down. His divided glance came together on the bottle. He reached for it. Five or six ounces of whisky swished around in the bottom. I was afraid that another drink might knock him out, or maybe even kill him. I lifted the bottle out of his hands, corked it, and put it away. The key of the portable bar was in the lock. I turned it and put it in my pocket.

“By what warrant do you sequester the grog?” Working his mouth elaborately around the words, Bassett looked like a camel chewing. “This is illegal—false seizure. I demand a writ of habeas corpus.”

He leaned forward and reached for my glass. I snatched it away. “You’ve had enough, Clarence.”

“Make those decisions myself. Man of decision. Man of distinction. Bottle-a-day man, by God. Drink you under table.”

“I don’t doubt it. Getting back to Simon Graff, you don’t like him much?”

“Hate him,” he said. “Lez be frank. He stole away only woman I ever loved. ’Cept Mother. Stole my maître dee, too. Best maître dee in Southland, Stefan. They offered him double shallery, spirited him away to Las Vegas.”

“Who did?”

“Graff and Stern. Wanted him for their slo-called club.”

“Speaking of Graff and Stern, why would Graff be fronting for a mobster?”

“Sixty-four-dollar question,
I
don’t know the ansher. Wouldn’t tell
you
if did know.
You
don’t like me.”

“Buck up, Clarence. I like you fine.”

“Liar. Cruel and inhuman.” Two tears detached themselves from the corners of his eyes and crawled down his grooved cheeks like little silver slugs. “Won’t give me a
drink. Trying make me talk, withholding my grog. ’Snot fair, ’snot humane.”

“Sorry. No more grog tonight. You don’t want to kill yourself.”

“Why not? All alone in the world. Nobody loves me.” He wept suddenly and copiously, so that his whole face was wet. Transparent liquid streamed from his nose and mouth. Great sobs shook him like waves breaking in his body.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. I started out.

“Don’t leave me,” he said between sobs. “Don’t leave me alone.”

He came around the desk, buckled at the knees as if he’d struck an invisible wire, and lay full-length on the carpet, blind and deaf and dumb. I turned his head sideways so that he wouldn’t smother and went outside.

T
HE
air was turning chilly. Laughter and other party sounds still overflowed the bar, but the music in the court had ceased. A car toiled up the drive to the highway, and then another. The party was breaking up.

There was light in the lifeguard’s room at the end of the row of
cabañas
. I looked in. The young Negro was sitting inside, reading a book. He closed it when he saw me, and stood up. The name of the book was
Elements of Sociology
.

“You’re a late reader.”

“Better late than never.”

“What do you do with Bassett when he passes out?”

“Is he passed out again?”

“On the floor of his office. Does he have a bed around?”

“Yeah, in the back room.” He made a resigned face. “Guess I better put him in it, eh?”

“Need any help?”

“No, thanks, I can handle him myself, I had plenty of practice.” He smiled at me, less automatically than before. “You a friend of Mr. Bassett’s?”

“Not exactly.”

“He give you some kind of a job?”

“You could say that.”

“Working around the Club here?”

“Partly.”

He was too polite to ask what my duties were. “Tell you what, I’ll pour Mr. Bassett in bed, you stick around, I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

“I could use a cup of coffee. The name is Lew Archer, by the way.”

“Joseph Tobias.” His grip was the kind that bends horseshoes. “Kind of an unusual name, isn’t it? You can wait here, if you like.”

He trotted away. The storeroom was jammed with folded beach umbrellas, piled deckchairs, deflated plastic floats and beach balls. I set up one of the deckchairs for myself and stretched out on it. Tiredness hit me like pentothal. Almost immediately, I went to sleep.

When I woke up, Tobias was standing beside me. He had opened a black iron switchbox on the wall. He pulled a series of switches, and the glimmering night beyond the open door turned charcoal gray. He turned and saw that I was awake.

“Didn’t like to wake you up. You look tired.”

“Don’t you ever get tired?”

“Nope. For some reason I never do. Only time in my life I got tired was in Korea. There I got bone-tired, pushing a
jeep through that deep mud they have. You want your coffee now?”

“Lead me to it.”

He led me to a brightly lighted white-walled room with
SNACK
BAR
over the door. Behind the counter, water was bubbling in a glass coffee-maker. An electric clock on the wall was taking spasmodic little bites of time. It was a quarter to four.

I sat on one of the padded stools at the counter. Tobias vaulted over the counter and landed facing me with a deadpan expression.

“Cuchulain the Hound of Ulster,” he said surprisingly. “When Cuchulain was weary and exhausted from fighting battles, he’d go down by the riverside and exercise. That was his way of resting. I turned the fire on under the grill in case we wanted eggs. I could use a couple of eggs, or three, personally.”

“Me, too.”

“Three?”

“Three.”

“How’s about some tomato juice to start out with? It clarifies the palate.”

“Fine.”

He opened a large can and poured two glasses of tomato juice. I picked up my glass and looked at it. The juice was thick and dark red in the fluorescent light. I put the glass down again.

“Something the matter with the juice?”

“It looks all right to me,” I said unconvincingly.

He was appalled by this flaw in his hospitality. “What is it—dirt in the juice?” He leaned across the counter, his forehead wrinkled with solicitude. “I just opened the can, so if there’s something in it, it must be the cannery. Some of these big corporations think that they can get away with murder,
especially now that we have a businessmen’s administration. I’ll open another can.”

“Don’t bother.”

I drank the red stuff down. It tasted like tomato juice.

“Was it all right?”

“It was very good.”

“I was afraid there for a minute that there was something the matter with it.”

“Nothing the matter with it. The matter was with me.”

He took six eggs out of the refrigerator and broke them onto the grill. They sputtered cozily, turning white at the edges. Tobias said over his shoulder:

“It doesn’t alter what I said about the big corporations. Mass production and mass marketing do make for some social benefits, but sheer size tends to militate against the human element. We’ve reached the point where we should count the human cost. How do you like your eggs?”

“Over easy.”

“Over easy it is.” He flipped the six eggs with a spatula, and inserted bread in the four-hole toaster. “You want to butter your own toast, or you want me to butter it for you? I have a butter brush. Personally, I prefer that, myself.”

“You butter it for me.”

“Will do. Now how do you like your coffee?”

“At this time in the morning, black. This is a very fine service you have here.”

“We endeavor to please. I used to be snack-bar bus-boy before I switched over to lifeguard. Lifeguard doesn’t pay any better, but it gives me more time to study.”

“You’re a student, are you?”

“Yes, I am.” He dished up our eggs and poured our coffee. “I bet you’re surprised at the facility with which I express myself.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth.”

He beamed with pleasure, and took a bite of toast. When
he had chewed and swallowed it, he said: “I don’t generally let the language flow around here. People, the richer they get, the more they dislike to hear a Negro express himself in well-chosen words. I guess they feel there’s no point in being rich unless you can feel superior to somebody. I study English on the college level, but if I talked that way I’d lose my job. People are very sensitive.”

“You go to U.C.L.A.?”

“Junior College. I’m working up to U.C.L.A. Heck,” he said, “I’m only twenty-five, I’ve got plenty of time. ’Course I’d be way ahead of where I am now if I’d of caught on sooner. It took a hitch in the Army to jolt me out of my unthinking complacency.” He rolled the phrase lovingly on his tongue. “I woke up one night on a cold hill on the way back from the Yalu. And suddenly it hit me—wham!—I didn’t know what it was all about.”

“The war?”

“Everything. War and peace. Values in life.” He inserted a forkful of egg into his mouth and munched at me earnestly. “I realized I didn’t know who
I
was. I wore this kind of mask, you know, over my face and over my mind, this kind of blackface mask, and it got so I didn’t know who I was. I decided I had to find out who I was and be a man. If I could make it. Does that sound like a foolish thing for a person like me to decide?”

“It sounds sensible to me.”

“I thought so at the time. I still do. Another coffee?”

“Not for me, thanks. You have another.”

“No, I’m a one-cup man, too. I share your addiction for moderation.” He smiled at the sound of the words.

“What do you plan to do in the long run?”

“Teach school. Teach and coach.”

“It’s a good life.”

“You bet it is. I’m looking forward to it.” He paused, taking time out to look forward to it. “I love to tell people important
things. Especially kids. I love to communicate values, ideas. What do you do, Mr. Archer?”

“I’m a private detective.”

Tobias looked a little disappointed in me. “Isn’t that kind of a dull life? I mean, it doesn’t bring you into contact with ideas very much. Not,” he added quickly, for fear he had hurt my feelings, “not that I place
ideas
above other values. Emotions. Action. Honorable action.”

“It’s a rough life,” I said. “You see people at their worst. How’s Bassett, by the way?”

“Dead to the world. I put him to bed. He sleeps it off without any trouble, and
I
don’t mind putting him to bed. He treats me pretty well.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Over three years. I started out in the snack bar here, and shifted over to lifeguard summer before last.”

“You knew Gabrielle here, then.”

He answered perfunctorily: “I knew her. I told you that.”

“At the time that she was murdered?”

His face closed up entirely. The brightness left his eyes like something quick and timid retreating into its hole. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Nothing to do with you. Don’t run out on me, Joseph, just because I ask you a couple of questions.”

“I’m not running out.” But his voice was dull and singsong. “I already answered all the questions there are.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, if you’re a detective. When Gabrielle—when Miss Torres was killed, I was the very first one that they arrested. They took me down to the sheriff’s station and questioned me in relays, all day and half the night.”

He hung his head under the weight of the memory. I hated to see him lose his fine
élan
.

“Why did they pick on you?”

“For no good reason.” He raised his hand and turned it before his eyes. It was burnished black in the fluorescent light.

“Didn’t they question anybody else?”

“Sure, when I proved to them I was at home all night. They picked up some winoes and sex deviates that live around Malibu and up the canyons, and some hoboes passing through. And they asked Miss Campbell some questions.”

“Hester Campbell?”

“Yes. She was the one that Gabrielle was supposed to be spending the evening with.”

“How do you know?”

“Tony said so.”

“Where did she really spend the evening?”

“How would I know that?”

“I thought you might have some idea.”

“You thought wrong, then.” His gaze, which had been avoiding mine, returned slowly to my face. “Are you reopening that murder case? Is that what Mr. Bassett hired you to do?”

“Not exactly. I started out investigating something else, but it keeps leading me back to Gabrielle. How well did you know her, Joseph?”

He answered carefully: “We worked together. Weekends, she took orders for sandwiches and drinks around the pool and in the
cabañas
. She was too young to serve the drinks herself, so I did that. Miss Torres was a very nice young lady to work with. I hated to see the thing that happened to her.”

“You saw what happened to her?”

“I don’t mean that. I didn’t see what happened to her when it happened. But I was right here in this room when Tony came up from the beach. Somebody shot her, I guess
you know that, shot her and left her lying just below the Club. Tony lived down the shore a piece from here. He expected Gabrielle home by midnight. When she didn’t come home, he phoned the Campbells’ house. They said they hadn’t seen her, so he went out looking for her. He found her in the morning with bulletholes in her, the waves splashing up around her. She was supposed to be helping Mrs. Lamb that day, and Tony came up here first thing to tell Mrs. Lamb about it.”

Tobias licked his dry lips. His eyes looked through me at the past. “He stood right there in front of the counter. For a long time he couldn’t say a word. He couldn’t open his mouth to tell Mrs. Lamb that Gabrielle was dead. She could see that he needed comfort, though. She walked around the end of the counter and put her arms around him and held him for a while like he was a child. Then he told her. Mrs. Lamb sent me to call the police.”