The Far Side of the Dollar (7 page)

“Who said so?”

“One of them.”

Her clear brow puckered. “Then why would Tommy be in any danger from them?”

“If he knows them,” I said, “they’re not likely to let him come home. He could identify them.”

“I see.” Her eyes were enormous, taking in all at once the horror of the world and growing dark with it. “I was
afraid
he was in some awful jam. His mother wouldn’t tell me anything. I thought maybe he’d killed himself and they were keeping it quiet.”

“What made you think that?”

“Tommy did. He called me up and I met him here in the tree house the morning after the accident. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. But you’ve been honest with me. He wanted to see me one more time—just as friends, you know—and say goodbye forever. I asked him if he was going away, or what he planned to do. He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Was he suicidal?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid that that was what it all meant. Not hearing from him since, I got more and more worried. I’m not as worried now as I was before you told me all those
things.” She did a mental double take on one of them. “But why would he deliberately go and stay with criminals?”

“It isn’t clear. He may not have known they were criminals. If you can think of anyone—”

“I’m trying.” She screwed up her face, and finally shook her head again. “I can’t, unless they were the same people he had to see that other Saturday night. When he borrowed our car.”

“Did he tell you anything at all about those people?”

“Just that he was terribly keen about seeing them.”

“Were they men or women?”

“I don’t even know that.”

“What about the Sunday morning, when you met him here? Did he tell you anything at all about the night before?”

“No. He was feeling really low, after the accident and all, and the terrible row with his parents. I didn’t ask him any questions. I guess I should have, shouldn’t I? I always do the wrong thing, either by commission or omission.”

“I think you do the right thing more often than most.”

“Mother doesn’t think so. Neither does Dad.”

“Parents can be mistaken.”

“Are you a parent?” The question reminded me of the sad boys in Laguna Perdida School.

“No, I never have been. My hands are clean.”

“You’re making fun of me,” she said with a glum face.

“Never. Hardly ever.”

She gave me a quick smile. “Gilbert and Sullivan. I didn’t know detectives were like you.”

“Neither do most of the other detectives.” Our rapport, which came and went, was flourishing again. “There’s one other thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, Stella. Your mother seems to believe that Tommy wrecked her car on purpose.”

“I know she does.”

“Could there be any truth in it?”

She considered the question. “I don’t see how. He wouldn’t do it to me,
or
her, unless—” She looked up in dark surmise.

“Go on.”

“Unless he was trying to kill himself, and didn’t care about anything any more.”

“Was her?”

“He may have been. He didn’t want to come home, he told me that much. But he didn’t tell me why.”

“I might learn something from examining the car. Do you know where it is?”

“It’s down in Ringo’s wrecking yard. Mother went to see it the other day.”

“Why?”

“It helps her to stay mad, I guess. Mother’s really crazy about Tommy, at least she used to be, and so was Dad. This business has been terribly hard on them. And I’m not making it any easier staying away from home now.” She got to her feet, stamping them rapidly. “Mother will be calling out the gendarmes. Also she’ll kill me.”

“No she won’t.”

“Yes she will.” But she wasn’t basically afraid for herself. “If you find out anything about Tommy, will you let me know?”

“That might be a little tough to do, in view of your mother’s attitude. Why don’t you get in touch with me when you can? This number will always get me, through my answering service.” I gave her a card.

She climbed down the ladder and flitted away through the trees, one of those youngsters who make you feel like apologizing for the world.

I
MADE MY WAY BACK
to the Hillmans’ house. It resembled a grim white fortress under the lowering sky. I didn’t feel like going in just now and grappling with the heavy, smothering fear that hung in the rooms. Anyway, I finally had a lead. Which Hillman could have given me if he’d wanted to.

Before I got into my car I looked up at the front window of
Tom’s room. The Hillmans were sitting close together in the niche of the window, looking out. Hillman shook his head curtly: no phone call.

I drove into town and turned right off the highway onto the main street. The stucco and frame buildings in this segment of town, between the highway and the railroad tracks, had been here a long time and been allowed to deteriorate. There were tamale parlors and pool halls and rummage stores and bars. The wet pavements were almost empty of people, as they always were when it rained in California.

I parked and locked my car in front of a surplus and sporting goods store and asked the proprietor where The Barroom Floor was. He pointed west, toward the ocean:

“I don’t think they’re open, in the daytime. There’s lots of other places open.”

“What about Ringo’s auto yard?”

“Three blocks south on Sanger Street, that’s the first stoplight below the railroad tracks.” I thanked him.

“You’re welcome, I’m sure.” He was a middle-aged man with a sandy moustache, cheerfully carrying a burden of unsuccess. “I can sell you a rainproof cover for your hat.”

“How much?”

“Ninety-eight cents. A dollar-two with tax.”

I bought one. He put it on my hat. “It doesn’t do much for the appearance, but—”

“Beauty is functional.”

He smiled and nodded. “You took the words out of my mouth. I figured you were a smart man. My name’s Botkin, by the way, Joseph Botkin.”

“Lew Archer.” We shook hands.

“My pleasure, Mr. Archer. If I’m not getting too personal, why would a man like you want to do your drinking at The Barroom Floor?”

“What’s the matter with The Barroom Floor?”

“I don’t like the way they handle their business, that’s all. It lowers the whole neighborhood. Which is low enough already, God knows.”

“How do they handle their business?”

“They let young kids hang out there, for one thing—I’m not saying they serve them liquor. But they shouldn’t let them in at all.”

“What do they do for another thing?”

“I’m talking too much.” He squinted at me shrewdly. “And you ask a lot of questions. You wouldn’t be from the Board of Equalization by any chance?”

“No, but I probably wouldn’t tell you if I was. Is The Barroom Floor under investigation?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. I heard there was a complaint put in on them.”

“From a man named Hillman?”

“Yeah. You are from the Board of Equalization, eh? If you want to look the place over for yourself, it opens at five.”

It was twenty past four. I wandered along the street, looking through the windows of pawnshops at the loot of wrecked lives. The Barroom Floor was closed all right. It looked as if it was never going to reopen. Over the red-checked half-curtains at the windows, I peered into the dim interior. Red-checked tables and chairs were grouped around a dime-size dance floor; and farther back in the shadows was a bandstand decorated with gaudy paper. It looked so deserted you’d have thought all the members of the band had hocked their instruments and left town years ago.

I went back to my car and drove down Sanger Street to Ringo’s yard. It was surrounded by a high board fence on which his name was painted in six-foot white letters. I pushed in through the gate. A black German shepherd glided out of the open door of a shack and delicately grasped my right wrist between his large yellow teeth. He didn’t growl or anything. He merely held me, looking up brightly at my face.

A wide fat man, with a medicine ball of stomach badly concealed under his plaid shirt, came to the door of the shack.

“That’s all right, Lion.”

The dog let go of me and went to the fat man.

“His teeth are dirty,” I said. “You should give him bones to chew. I don’t mean wristbones.”

“Sony. We weren’t expecting any customers. But he won’t hurt you, will you, Lion?”

Lion Tolled his eyes and let his tongue hang out about a foot.

“Go ahead, pet him.”

“I’m a dog lover,” I said, “but is he a man lover?”

“Sure. Go ahead and pet him.”

I went ahead and petted him. Lion lay down on his back with his feet in the air, grinning up at me with his fangs.

“What can I do you for, mister?” Ringo said.

“I want to look at a car.”

He waved his hand toward the yard. “I got hundreds of them. But there isn’t a one of them you could drive away. You want one to cannibalize?”

“This is a particular car I want to examine.” I produced my adjuster’s card. “It’s a fairly new Dodge, I think, belonged to a Mrs. Carlson, wrecked a week or so ago.”

“Yeah. I’ll show it to you.”

He put on a black rubber raincoat. Lion and I followed him down a narrow aisle between two lines of wrecked cars. With their crumpled grilles and hoods, shattered windshields, torn fenders, collapsed roofs, disemboweled seats, and blown-out tires, they made me think of some ultimate freeway disaster. Somebody with an eye for detail should make a study of automobile graveyards, I thought, the way they study the ruins and potsherds of vanished civilizations. It could provide a clue as to why our civilization is vanishing.

“All the ones in this line are totaled out,” Ringo said. “This is the Carlson job, second from the end. That Pontiac came in since. Head-on collision, two dead.” He shuddered. “I never go on the highway when I can help it.”

“What caused the accident to the Carlson car?”

“It was taken for a joy ride by one of the neighbors’ kids, a boy name of Hillman. You know how these young squirts are—if it isn’t theirs, they don’t care what happens to it. According to the traffic detail, he missed a curve and went off the road and probably turned it over trying to get back on. He must of rolled over several times and ended up against a tree.”

I walked around the end of the line and looked over the Dart
from all sides. There were deep dents in the roof and hood and all four fenders, as if it had been hit with random sledgehammers. The windshield was gone. The doors were sprung.

Leaning in through the left-hand door, I noticed an oval piece of white plastic, stamped with printing, protruding from the space between the driver’s seat and the back. I reached in and pulled it out. It was a brass door key. The printing on the plastic tab said:
DACK’S AUTO COURT
7.

“Watch the glass in there,” Ringo said behind me. “What are you looking for?”

I put the key in my pocket before I turned around. “I can’t figure out why the boy didn’t get hurt.”

“He had the wheel to hang on to, remember. Lucky for him it didn’t break.”

“Is there any chance he wrecked the car on purpose?”

“Naw. He’d have to be off his rocker to do that. Course you can’t put anything past these kids nowadays. Can you, Lion?” He stooped to touch the dog’s head and went on talking, either to it or to me. “My own son that I brought up in the business went off to college and now he don’t even come home for Christmas some years. I got nobody to take over the business.” He straightened up and looked around at his wrecks with stern affection, like the emperor of a wasteland.

“Could there have been anybody with him in the car?”

“Naw. They would of been really banged up, with no seat belts and nothing to hang on to.” He looked at the sky, and added impatiently: “I don’t mind standing around answering your questions, mister. But if you really want the dope on the accident, talk to the traffic detail. I’m closing up.”

It was ten minutes to five. I made my way back to The Barroom Floor. Somebody had turned on a few lights inside. The front door was still locked. I went back to my car and waited. I took out the Dack’s Auto Court key and looked at it, wondering if it meant anything. It could have meant, among other farfetched possibilities, that the handsome Mrs. Carlson was unfaithful to her husband.

Shortly after five a short dark man in a red jacket unlocked the front door of The Barroom Floor and took up his position
behind the bar. I went in and sat down on a stool opposite him. He seemed much taller behind the bar. I looked over it and saw that he was standing on a wooden platform about a foot off the floor.

“Yeah,” he said, “it keeps me on the level. Without it I can barely see over the bar.” He grinned. “My wife, now, is five foot six and built in proportion. She ought to be here now,” he added in a disciplinary tone, and looked at the wristwatch on his miniature wrist. “What will you have?”

“Whisky sour. You own this place?”

“Me and the wife, we have an interest in it.”

“Nice place,” I said, though it wasn’t particularly nice. It was no cleaner and no more cheerful than the average bar and grill with cabaret pretensions. The old waiter leaning against the wall beside the kitchen door seemed to be sleeping on his feet.

“Thank you. We have plans for it.” As he talked, he made my drink with expert fingers. “You haven’t been in before. I don’t remember your face.”

“I’m from Hollywood. I hear you have a pretty fair jazz combo.”

“Yeah.”

“Will they be playing tonight?”

“They only play Friday and Saturday nights. We don’t get the weekday trade to justify ’em.”

“What about the Sunday jam sessions? Are they still on?”

“Yeah. We had one yesterday. The boys were in great form. Too bad you missed them.” He slid my drink across the bar. “You in the music business?”

“I represent musicians from time to time. I have an office on the Strip.”

“Sam would want to talk to you. He’s the leader.”

“Where can I get in touch with him?”

“I have his address somewhere. Just a minute, please.”

A couple of young men in business suits with rain-sprinkled shoulders had taken seats at the far end of the bar. They were talking in carrying voices about a million-dollar real-estate deal. Apparently it was somebody else’s deal, not theirs, but they seemed to enjoy talking about it.