“Al didn’t tell me that. He didn’t tell me anything, really. But we stopped at her house on the way down here, and I got a look at her face when she came to the door. She’s older now, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same woman.” She considered the question further. “Maybe not, though. It seems to me Al got that clipping from her.”
“You mean the ad?”
“That’s right. It doesn’t make sense, does it? Maybe he was putting me on, or I’m remembering wrong.”
“Can you tell me where her house is?”
“That,” she said, “is worth money.”
“How much do you want?”
“It says in the ad a thousand. If I took less, Al would kill me.”
“Al won’t be coming back here.”
She met my eyes and held them. “You’re telling me he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
She huddled on the edge of the bed, as if the knowledge of Al’s death had chilled her. “I never thought we’d make it to Mexico.” She gave me a cold darting look, like a harmless snake. “Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“The cops?”
“What makes you say that?”
“He was on the run.” She looked around the room. “I’ve got to get out of here.” But she didn’t move.
“Where was he on the run from?”
“He broke out of prison. He talked about it once when he was high. I should have left him when I had the chance.” She stood up and made a frantic gesture. “What happened to my Volkswagen?”
“The cops probably have it by now.”
“I’ve got to get out of here. You take me out of here.”
“No. You can take a bus.”
She called me a few names, which didn’t bother me. But when I moved toward the door, she followed.
“How much money will you give me?”
“Nothing like a thousand.”
“A hundred? That would take me back to Sac.”
“Are you from Sacramento?”
“My parents live there. But they don’t want to see me.”
“What about Al?”
“He has no parents. He came out of an orphanage.”
“Where?”
“Some city north of here. We stopped there on the way down. He pointed out the orphanage to me.”
“You stopped at the orphanage?”
“You’re all mixed up,” she said with condescension. “He showed me the orphanage when we passed it on the highway – we didn’t stop there. We stopped in town to get some money for gas and food.”
“What town?”
“One of those Santa places. Santa Teresa, I think it was.”
“And how did you get the money for gas?”
“Al got it from a little old lady. She gave him twenty dollars. Al’s very big with little old ladies.”
“Can you describe her?”
“I dunno. She was just a little old lady in a little old house on a little old street. It was kind of a pretty street, with purple flowers in the trees.”
“Jacarandas?”
She nodded. “Flowering jacarandas, yeah.”
“Was her name Mrs. Snow?”
“I think that was the name.”
“What about the woman in the ad? Where does she live?”
A look of stupid cunning took hold of her face. “That’s worth money. That’s what it’s all about.”
“I’ll give you fifty.”
“Let me see it.”
I got out my wallet and gave her the fifty-dollar bill that Fran Armistead had tipped me with. I was sort of glad to get rid of it, though here again I was conscious of buying and being sold at the same time, as if I’d made a down payment on the room and its occupant.
She kissed the money. “I can really use it, it’s my ticket out of here.” But she looked around the room as if it was a recurrent nightmare she had.
“You were going to tell me where the woman lives.”
“Was I?” She was stalling, and uncomfortable about it. She forced herself to say: “She lives in this big old house in the woods.”
“You’re making this up.”
“I am not.”
“What woods are you talking about?”
“It’s on the Peninsula someplace. I didn’t pay good attention on the way. I was strung out on an Einstein trip.”
“Einstein trip?”
“When you go all the way out, past the last star, and space loops back on you.”
“Where on the Peninsula?”
She shook her head, the way you shake a watch that has stopped ticking. “I can’t remember. There’s all these little cities strung together. I can’t remember which one.”
“What did the house look like?”
“It was very old, two-storied – three-storied. And it had two little round towers, one on each side.” She erected her thumbs.
“What color?”
“Kind of gray, I think it was. It looked kind of grayish green through the trees.”
“What kind of trees?”
“Oak trees,” she said, “and some pines. But mostly oak trees.”
I waited for a while.
“What else do you remember about the place?”
“That’s about all. I wasn’t really there, you know. I was out around Arcturus, looking down. Oh yeah, there was a dog running around under the trees. A Great Dane. He had a beautiful voice.” She woofed in imitation.
“Did he belong to the house?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. He acted lost, I remember thinking that. Will that help?”
“I don’t know. What day was it?”
“Sunday, I think. I said it was Sunday, didn’t I, that we left Sac?”
“You haven’t given me much for my fifty.”
She was dismayed, and afraid I’d take it back. “You could make love to me if you want.”
Not waiting for my answer, she stood up and dropped the pink robe to the floor. Her body was young, high-breasted, narrow-waisted, almost too slender. But there were bruises on her arms and thighs like the hash-marks of hard service. She was a dilapidated girl.
She looked up into my face. I don’t know what she saw there, but she said: “Al roughed me up quite a bit. He was pretty wild after all that time in prison. I guess you don’t want me, do you?”
“Thanks, I’ve had a hard day.”
“And you won’t take me with you?”
“No.” I gave her my business card and asked her to call me collect if she remembered anything more.
“I doubt I will. I’ve got a mind like a sieve.”
“Or if you need help.”
“I always need help. But you won’t want to hear from me.”
“I think I can stand it.”
Leaning her hands on my shoulders, she raised herself on her toes and brushed my mouth with her sad mouth.
I went outside and folded Stanley Broadhurst’s ad into the green-covered book and locked up both of them in the trunk of my car. Then I drove home to West Los Angeles.
Before I went to bed I called my answering service. Arnie Shipstad had left a message for me. The man whose body I’d found in Stanley Broadhurst’s house was a recent escapee from Folsom named Albert Sweetner, with a record of a dozen or so arrests. His first arrest occurred in Santa Teresa, California.
chapter 16
It was late at night, almost halfway to morning. I knocked myself out with a heavy slug of whisky and went to bed.
In the dream that took over my sleeping mind I was due to arrive someplace in a very short time. But when I went out to my car it had no wheels, not even a steering wheel. I sat in it like a snail in a shell and watched the night world go by.
The light coming through the bedroom blind changed from gray to off-white and woke me. I lay and listened to the early traffic. A few birds peeped. At full dawn the jays began to squawk and divebomb my window.
I’d forgotten the jays. Their sudden raucous reminder turned me cold under the sheet. I threw it off and got up and put on my clothes.