“Fascinating,” I said.
A car came up the driveway, turned the corner of the building and parked beyond the canopy. A slope-shouldered man with a medical bag climbed out.
“Sorry I’m so late,” he said to Callahan. “It was a slow delivery, and then I snatched some supper.”
“The customer’s still waiting.” He turned to me. “This is Dr. McCutcheon. Mr. Archer.”
“How long will it take?” I asked the doctor.
“For what?”
“To determine the cause of death.”
“An hour or two. Depends on the indications.” He glanced inquiringly at Callahan: “I understand he was drowned.”
“Yah, we thought so. Could be a gang murder, though,” Callahan added knowingly. “He ran with the Dowser gang.”
“Take a good look for anything else that might have caused his death,” I said. “If you don’t mind my shoving an oar in.”
He shook his tousled gray head impatiently. “Such as?”
“I wouldn’t know. Blunt instrument, hypo, even a bullet wound.”
“I always make a thorough examination,” McCutcheon stated. Hint ended the conversation.
I left my car parked in front of (he mortuary and walked the two blocks to the main street. I was hungry in spite of the odors that seemed to have soaked into my clothes, of fish and kelp and disinfected death. In spite of the questions asking themselves like a quiz program tuned in to my back fillings, with personal comments on the side.
Callahan had recommended a place called George’s Cafe. It turned out to be a restaurant-bar, lower-middle-class and middle-aged. A bar ran down one side, with a white-capped short-order cook at a gas grill that crowded the front window. There were booths along the other side, and a row of tables covered with red-checked tablecloths down the center. Three or four ceiling fans turned languidly, mixing the smoky air into a uniform blue-gray blur. Everything in the place, including the customers phalanxed at the bar, had the air of having been there for a long time.
As soon as I sat down in one of the empty booths, I felt that way myself. The place had a cozy subterranean quality, like a time capsule buried deep beyond the reach of change and violence. The fairly white-coated waiters, old and young, had a quick slack economy of movement surviving from a dead regretted decade. The potato chips that came with my sizzling steak tasted exactly the same as the chips I ate out of greasy newspaper wrappings when I was in grade school in Oakland in 1920. The scenic photographs that decorated the walls – Route of the Union Pacific – reminded me of a stereopticon I had found in my mother’s great-aunt’s attic. The rush and whirl of bar conversation sounded like history.
I was finishing my second bottle of beer when I caught sight of Galley through the foam-etched side of the glass. She was standing just inside the door, poised on high heels. She had on a black coat, a black hat, black gloves. For an instant she looked unreal, a ghost from the present. Then she saw me and moved toward me, and it was everything else that seemed unreal. Her vitality blew her along like a strong wind. Yet her face was haggard, as if her vitality was something separate from her, feeding on her body.
“Archer!” The ghastly face smiled at me, and the smile came off. “I’m so glad I found you.”
I pulled a chair out for her. “How did you?”
“The deputy sheriff said you were here. Callahan?”
“You’ve seen the body, then.”
“Yes. I saw – him.” Her eyes were as dark as a night without stars. “The doctor was cutting him up.”
“They shouldn’t have let you in.”
“Oh, I wanted to. I had to know. But it’s queer to see a man in pieces after you’ve lived with him. Even if I am a nurse.”
“Have a drink.”
“I will. Thanks. Straight whisky.” She was breathing quickly and shallowly, like a dog on a warm day.
I let her down the drink before I asked her: “What did the doctor say?”
“He thinks it’s drowning.”
“He does, eh?”
“Don’t you?”
“I’m just a floating question-mark, waiting for an answer to hook onto me. Have another drink.”
“I guess I will. They got Dowser, did you hear? Mr. Callahan told me.”
“That’s fine.” I didn’t feel like bragging about my part in it. Dowser had friends, and the friends had guns. “Tell me, Galley.”
“Yes?” There were stars in her eyes again, and no whisky in her shot-glass.
“I’d like a better picture of that weekend you spent with Joe in the desert.”
“It was a lost one, believe me. Joe was wild. It was like being shut up in four rooms with a sick mountain-lion. I was pretty wild myself. He wouldn’t tell me what it was all about, and it drove me crazy.”
“Facts, please. A few objective facts.”
“Those are facts.”
“Not the kind that help much. I want details. What was he wearing, for example?”
“Joe was in his underwear most of the time. Is that important? It was hot out there, in spite of the air-conditioning–”
“Didn’t he have any clothes with him?”
“Of course.”
“Where are they now?”
“I wouldn’t know. He had them in a club-bag when I drove him down here.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Blue work clothes.”
“The same as he has on now?”
“He hadn’t anything on when I saw him. I suppose they’re the same. Why?”
“His brother said he was wearing those clothes Friday night. Was he?”
Her curved brows knitted in concentration. “Yes. He didn’t change when he got home Friday night.”
“And he wore them, when he wasn’t in his underwear, right through to Tuesday morning. It doesn’t fit in with what I’ve heard about Joe.”
“I know. He wasn’t himself. He was in a sort of frenzy. I had dinner waiting for him when he got home – he phoned that he was coming – but he wouldn’t even stop to eat it. I barely had time to pack anything, he was in such a hurry. We rushed out to Oasis, and then we sat and looked at each other for three days.”
“No explanations?”
“He said he was getting out, that we were waiting for money. I thought he had broken with the gang, as I’d been urging him to. I knew he was afraid, and I thought they were hunting him. If I hadn’t believed that, I wouldn’t have gone with him, or stayed. Then when he did go, he went by himself.”
“You wouldn’t want to have gone along, not where he’s gone.”
“Maybe I would at that.” She raised the empty shot-glass in her fist and stared down into its thick bottom like a crystal-gazer rapt in tragic visions.
The waiter, a fat old Greek who moved on casters, appeared beside our booth. “Another drink?”
Galley came out of her trance. “I think I should eat something. I don’t know whether I can.”
“A steak like the gentleman’s?” The waiter molded an imaginary steak with his hands. She nodded absently.
“A beer for me.” When he had gone: “Another detail, Galley.” Her head came up. “You didn’t say a word about Herman Speed.”
“Speed?” Her fine white teeth closed over her lower lip. “I told you I nursed him.”
“That’s the point. You must have recognized him.”
“I don’t know what you mean. When should I have recognized him?”
“Sunday night, when he came to your house in Oasis. You must have known he bought the heroin from Joe.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Didn’t you see him?”
“I wasn’t there Sunday night. I haven’t seen Mr. Speed since he got out of the hospital. I heard he left the country.”
“You heard wrong. Where were you?”
“Sunday? About eight o’clock, Joe told me to get out, not to come back for a couple of hours. He let me take the car. How do you know Speed was there?”