“Yeah,” I said. “The introverted kind. Mrs. Lawrence said you were Galley’s roommate.”
“Just for a while, last year. She got a chance at this apartment and I went in on the rent, but after a couple of months I found a place of my own. We agreed to disagree, you know what I mean.”
“Not exactly.”
She perched on the edge of the receptionist’s desk and swung one round silk leg. “Well, I mean we got along all right but we didn’t live the same. She ran around a lot and came in all hours of the day and night and it wasn’t so happy-making, me with a regular job, I mean, and a steady boy friend. When Galley was on a case she was spit-and-polish but in between she liked to break loose a bit, and she was crazy for men – I’ve never been myself. I mean, a girl has a right to her own life and she can do what she pleases as far as I’m concerned, only she shouldn’t try to attract a boy that’s going with somebody else.”
She colored slowly, aware that she’d given herself away. The round eyes in the rosy face were ice-blue, cold with memory. If Audrey Graham was Galley’s best friend, Galley had no friends.
“Where did you live with her, and when?”
“August and September, I guess it was – I had my vacation in July. Galley found this little place in Acacia Court, one bedroom. It had twin beds, but that didn’t work out either.” She’d embarrassed herself again, and the flush rose higher, to the roots of the straw-colored hair.
“What kind of men did she run around with?”
“All kinds. She had no discrimination, you know what I mean.” The refrain was getting on my nerves. “My boy friend is going to college under the G. I. and you’d think a girl who thinks she’s something special because her father was a doctor, or so she claimed – you’d think she’d watch out who she went out with. Of course she had a couple of doctors on the string but that was married stuff and I never could see it myself. She had boys from the Safeway, a law clerk, a fellow that said he was a writer but I never heard of him, even one that looked like a Mexican once. Italian, anyway.”
“You know any of their names?”
“I mostly knew them by their first names, when I knew them. I wouldn’t want to tell you the doctors’ names. If you want my honest opinion, Galley just got sick of this town and ran off with one of her men. Las Vegas or someplace. She was always talking about seeing the world. She set a high opinion on herself. She blew her money on clothes she couldn’t afford and half the time she was eating off of me.”
There were footsteps in the hall, and the girl slid off the desk. A tall man in a white tunic looked in at the door. His eyes were masked by wide red spectacles. “The pyelogram’s on the table, Audrey, be ready in five minutes.” He turned to me. “Are you the barium enema for tomorrow?” I told him that I wasn’t, and he went away.
“You can be glad you’re not,” the girl said. “I’m afraid I have to go now.”
“He said five minutes. What about this man Speed, the bullet in the stomach Galley nursed?”
“Oh, that was Herman Speed. He had peritonitis from lead poisoning or something, she didn’t go out with him. He was on Ward C for three weeks last December, and then he left town. I heard he was run out of town. He promoted the wrestling down at the Arena and there was an editorial in the paper about how he was shot in a gang war or something. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t read it myself, one of the doctors told me.”
“She didn’t leave town with him?”
“No, she was still in town after he left. I saw her one night with this Mexican-looking guy, I forget his name. Turpentine or something. I think he worked for Speed. He came to see him a couple of times when he was on Ward C. Tarantula, or something?”
“That’s a kind of spider.”
“Yeah. Well. Galley was no fly. Anybody she went with, she had a darn good reason. I’ll say one thing for her, she knew how to have a good time. But what she saw in this guy that worked for Speed – I wouldn’t trust a Mexican or Italian, they have no respect for women.”
I was getting a little tired of her opinions, and she was repeating herself. I got out of my chair and stood up.
“Thanks very much, Miss Graham.”
“Don’t mention it. If you need any more information, I get off here at half past four.”
“I may see you then. By the way, did you tell Mrs. Lawrence what you told me?”
“No, of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t ruin a girl’s reputation with her own mother. I don’t mean that Galley had a really bad reputation or I wouldn’t have lived with her. But you know what I mean.”
Chapter 3
Acacia Court was within easy walking distance of the hospital, on a quiet middle-class street across from a school-ground. It probably wasn’t so quiet when school was out. The court consisted of ten small stucco bungalows ranged five on each side of a gravel driveway that led to the garages at the rear. The first bungalow had a wooden office sign over the door, with a cardboard NO VACANCY sign attached to it. There were two acacia trees in the front yard, blanketed with yellow chenille-like blossoms.
When I got out of my car a mockingbird swooped from one of the trees and dived for my head. I gave him a hard look and he flew up to a telephone wire and sat there swinging back and forth and laughing at me. The laughter actually came from a red-faced man in dungarees who was sitting in a deck-chair under the tree. His mirth brought on some sort of an attack, probably asthmatic. He coughed and choked and wheezed, and the chair creaked under his weight and his face got redder. When it was over he removed a dirty straw hat and wiped his bare red pate with a handkerchief.
“Excuse me. The little devil does it all the time. He’s my aerial defense. I think it’s your hair they want, to build a nest. He drives the nurses crazy.”
I stepped in under the shade of the tree. “Are you Mr. Raisch?”
“That’s my name. I told them they better wear hats but they never do. Back where I was brought up, in Little Egypt, a lady never went out without a hat, and some of these girls don’t even own one. You wanted to see me? I got no vacancy.” He jerked a large gray thumb at the sign over the door. “Anyway I just take mostly girls from the hospital and a few married couples.”
I told him I wasn’t a prospective tenant, but that was all I had a chance to tell him.
“I can afford to pick and choose,” he said. “My place doesn’t look like much from the outside, maybe, but she’s in absolutely tiptop shape. Redecorated the whole thing with my own two hands last year, and put in new linoleum, fixed up the plumbing. And I didn’t raise the rents a red cent. No wonder they come to me. What did you want to see me about? I don’t need a thing if you’re selling.”
“I’m looking for Galley Lawrence. Remember her?”
“I should say I do.” His blue eyes had narrowed and were appraising me. “I’m not so old and dried up that I’d forget a pretty girl like that one. Even if she had a hump on her back and one glass eye I wouldn’t disremember her. I don’t get the chance; seems that every few days somebody comes around asking after Galley. What do you want with her?”
“I want to talk with her. What did the others want?”
“Well, her mother was here a couple of times. You’d think I was in the whiteslave traffic the way that biddy talked to me, and all I did was rent her daughter a home. Then there was all her young men calling up – I practically had to have my phone disconnected back around the first of the year. You one of her young men?”
“No.” But I was grateful for the adjective.
“Let’s see, you’re from L. A., ain’t you?” The eyes were still appraising me. “You got an L. A. license on your car. These other customers were from L. A., the ones from the pinball company. You work for the pinball company?”