“That’s today. It wasn’t always like that.”
She gave me the address and I pretended to write it down. I knew where she lived in Santa Monica. I had driven by there twice at night just to see the place.
“It’ll take me a while to get there,” I said. “I’ve got to stop off and pick up a report on a client.”
I hung up the phone, got out of the way of the trucker, and stood back to look down at myself while he barked at the operator.
In the next two hours, I borrowed fifty dollars from Gunther and, while Arnie worked on my car, charging me thirty for the inconvenience of having to put aside another job, I found a store and bought a new suit, shirt, and tie, and had my shoes polished.
When Arnie found I didn’t have the cash to pay him and saw that I had just gotten a complete wardrobe, he upped the price by another five.
Car shined, door fixed, sun bright, and new clothes on my back, I took a Doc Hodgdon magic pill, scratched at my itching chest, and headed for Santa Monica.
The house was on the beach, separated from its nearest neighbor by a few hundred yards. A trio of gulls swooped down to greet me as I turned and let my Ford glide down the driveway. I parked next to the three-floor white wooden house and got out to look around and give my ribs one last scratch. It was then I noticed the body on the shore and the man standing over it.
I ran down the slope and through the sand, ruining the shine on my shoes. When I was about thirty yards away I recognized both the corpse and the standing man. The corpse was my ex-wife’s husband, Ralph, and the bewildered man standing over him wearing only a gold bathing suit was the heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Louis.