“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 juices.
“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 a 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 prefunctorily: “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.”