“You didn’t tell her you were discharged on a Section Eight.”
He winced, flicked ash into a green Bakelite tray. “You know that? How do you know that?… Anyway, it was an honorable discharge. Lot of guys got out on a Section Eight.”
“I know. Me, too.”
That perked him up; I’d made myself a little more likable. “You, too? You’re a vet?”
“Yeah. Marines. I understand you were in the Army Air Corps band.”
“Yeah, yeah, I was. Loved it-I mean, I couldn’t fit in with the Army ways, you know? All that discipline, regimentation.”
“You’re a free spirit.”
“Well, I’m a musician. Sax man.”
“Still?”
“Weekends and such. It’s pretty hard to do as a profession, music-you’ve got to have something special. I’m good, but… not special, not really.”
“What were you doin’, Red, running around on that pretty little wife of yours?”
“How do you know she’s pretty? She’s pretty, all right, but… how do you know?”
“We spoke with her.”
He hung his head, shook it. “Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus.” Now he looked up. “Is she all right?”
“She didn’t break down on us or anything.”
“No… no, she wouldn’t.”
“But, Red-do you figure she’s ‘all right’ with her husband chippying on her?”
He sighed smoke, gestured with the cigarette. “Look… I don’t expect you to understand, but… I was just trying to give myself a little test.”
“A test?”
“Yeah-see if I could resist a good-looking dame like Beth Short. See if I still loved my wife.”
“How did you do?”
He twitched a grimace. “I said you wouldn’t understand. We just had a baby. You married?”
“Yes.”
“Any kids?”
“One on the way.”
“You’ll see, you’ll see. Nobody talks about it-nobody ever talks about it… your wife won’t want to have relations, you know, after she has the baby. Not for a while.”
“It’s called recuperation, Red. Giving birth to a kid is no picnic.”
“I know, I know… and then… when your wife does want to have… relations again… you may find you don’t feel the same.”
“The same?”
“She just didn’t seem… like the same person. Harriet was a real sexy baby, when we dated. But now she’s a… she’s a mom
… A kid came out of her, down there. And the baby, crying all the time, up all night, baby made me… nervous. I got nervous trouble anyway, you know-that’s why I got Sectioned Eight. Don’t think I don’t feel guilty about it. You think I don’t feel like a rat?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, I do. I talked to doctors over at the veterans hospital, a couple times, and they gave me some pills, for my nerves. I told them that putting my… you know, putting it into my wife, after a baby came out of her, made me feel queasy, and they-Aw, shit. I sound like a fucking creep, don’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, fuck you, Charley. You’ll see. There’s a readjustment period, for a guy, after his wife gives birth. And Beth Short…” He shrugged, drew on the cigarette. “… she was just part of my readjustment.”
“She was the test you gave yourself.”
“Yeah. And I didn’t have relations with her, understand? Never! I took her out for dancing and drinks and a few meals, and that was it. Usually this place called the Hacienda Club. This was during about a week when I was in San Diego, seeing my accounts. I’m a hardware salesman-did I tell you that?”
“Palmer’s your boss. You deal in pipe.”
He studied me, trying to find the sarcasm in that; he didn’t look hard enough.
“Anyway,” he said, “I was going back and forth about my marriage-mentally, I mean. Loving my little son, not attracted to my wife anymore. I told the doc at the veterans hospital I thought I was having a nervous breakdown, and he said I was doing fine and gave me some more pills. And also I couldn’t stop thinking about that girl.”
“Beth Short.”
“She was so damn pretty. So different from Harriet… Oh, Harriet’s pretty, real pretty, but Beth was sort of… I don’t know, exotic, with those spooky clear blue eyes and all that black hair and those black clothes and stockings and white flowers in her hair and all. Did you know she was called ‘the Black Dahlia’?”
“I heard that.”
“And Beth seemed so… worldly. So much older than her years. You know, she was in the movies, had all these big friends, like that famous director that was gonna give her a screen test.”
“Did she mention his name? This director?”
“No. She just smiled and laughed and said I’d be amazed, like as if it was gonna turn out to be Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford or something… which is all the movie directors I ever heard of, by the way. So I decided to see her again, when it was time to go back to San Diego, and service my accounts.”
The jokes were just too easy to bother making, with this guy.
“The Frenches don’t have a phone,” he was saying, “so I wired Beth I’d be down. Then when I got there, she said she was wearing her welcome out with the Frenches, and could I drive her back to L.A.?”
“This was on January eighth?”
“I guess. It was last Wednesday, I mean a week ago Wednesday. Was that the eighth?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it was the eighth. I couldn’t take her back that night, ’cause I still had some accounts to see, in San Diego, the next morning. So we went out, again. Funny thing, for all her worldliness and fancy clothes, she was a cheap date. Preferred drive-in joints to posh restaurants.”
“Is that where you took her, that night, a drive-in?”
“To a little burger joint called Sheldon’s, not far from the Frenches. I did take her to the U.S. Grant Hotel-that’s about as fancy as we ever got-’cause they had a hot band playing that night, and I wanted to hear it.”
“But you wound up staying at the Pacific Beach Motor Camp, right?”
“Right. And we did some club-hopping… She drank a little more than usual; she wasn’t really a drinker, got a little sick, a little moody. When we finally landed at the motel, and she got undressed, I noticed something that, you know in retrospect, might be important.”
“Yeah?”
“She had red scratch marks on her arms. Forearms. I asked her about them, and she said she had a jealous boy friend. Which is a disturbing thing to hear a girl undressing in a motel room say.”
“She mention a name?”
“No-just that he was Italian, and ‘cute,’ but ‘not a very nice guy at all.’ ”
“Were these recent scratches?”
“I thought they were, ’cause they were bleeding a little; but she claimed the guy did it, her boy friend, before she came down to San Diego. That she just had a nervous habit of picking at the wounds.”
“And you spent the night?”
“Yeah-but we didn’t sleep together! She was feeling punk, actually. I made a fire-it was a cozy little cabin; it would have been perfect for romance, but it didn’t go that way.”
“What way did it go?”
“She was shivering, like she had the flu or something, coughing. She was sitting in a chair by the fire, bundled up in blankets. I offered her the bed, said I’d sleep in the chair, but she said no.”
“So you took the bed.”
“Yeah, and in the morning when I woke up, she was next to me in bed, or on top of it, pillow propped behind her, wide awake. I asked her if she’d slept at all and she shook her head no. I looked at my watch and saw I was late for my first appointment, and took a powder out of there-advising her to catch a few winks before I got back at noon, which was checkout time.”
“And that’s when you got on the road?”
“My morning calls ran late-we didn’t hit the road till twelve-thirty, quarter to one. I made a few calls on the way back to L.A. She had no objection. In fact, she was real friendly on that drive-wanted to know if she could write me letters, offered to make it sound like business so my wife wouldn’t get wise. Still wanted to get to know me-said I was sweet.”
“How many stops did you make?”
“Three business calls. Once for gas, again for food. She said she was planning to hook up with her married sister, who lived in Berkeley and was coming down to L.A., and that she intended to head home to Boston after that.”