Talk of the town Read online

  “When did all this happen?” I asked.

  “Last November.”

  Seven months of it, I thought. No wonder you sensed that gray ocean of weariness when you looked at her, and had the feeling she was running along the edge of a nervous breakdown.

  “That’ll be one dollar,” he said. “Outside the city limits.” I handed him two. “Come on. I’ll buy you a beer.”

  3

  We went inside to air-conditioned coolness. It was an L-shaped building, the front part being a lunch-room. There were some tables to the left of the doorway, and a counter with a row of stools in the back of the window that looked out on the road. Swinging doors behind the counter led into the kitchen. There were mounted tarpon on the wall on either side of the swinging doors, and another above the doorway on the right that led into the bar. Two truckers were drinking coffee and talking to the waitress.

  The bar was a longer room, running back at right angles and forming the other part of the L. At the rear, towards the left, were a number of tables, a jukebox that had gone silent for the moment, and a telephone box. I glanced at the latter. It could wait.

  At one of the tables, a man in a white cowboy-style hat and a blue shirt sat with his back to me, facing a thin dark splinter of a girl who looked as if she might have Indian blood. Two more men were perched on stools at the end of the bar. They looked up at us as we sat down, and one of them nodded to the taxi driver. There was another mounted tarpon, the largest I’d ever seen, above the bar mirror.

  The bartender came over, glanced idly at me, and nodded to the driver. “Hi, Jake. What’ll it be?”

  “Bottle of Regal, Ollie,” Jake replied.

  I ordered the same. Ollie put it in front of us and went back down the bar to where he’d been polishing glasses. He appeared to be in his middle twenties, and had big shoulders, muscular arms, and a wide tanned face with self-possessed brown eyes.

  I took a sip of the beer and lit a cigarette. “Who was Strader?” I asked.

  At the sound of the name, the bartender and both the men down at the end turned and stared sharply. Even after all this time, I thought.

  Jake looked uncomfortable. “That was the craziest part of it. He was from Miami. And as far as they could ever find out, he didn’t even know Langston.”

  One of the two men put down his glass. He had the sharp, meddlesome eyes of a trouble-maker. “Maybe he didn’t,” he said. “But he could still have been a friend of the family.”

  The bartender glanced at him, but said nothing. The other man merely went on drinking his beer. The ugliness of it hung there for a moment in the silence of the room, but it was something they didn’t even notice any more. They were used to it.

  “I ain’t sayin’ he wasn’t,” Jake protested. “All I’m sayin’ is that they ain’t never been able to prove he knew either one of ‘em.”

  Then what the hell was he doing up here?” the other demanded. “Why was he registered over there in that motel three times in two months? He wasn’t on business, because they never found nobody in town he come to see. Besides, you don’t reckon he’d be crazy enough to try to sell Miami real estate around here, do you?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Jake asked. “A man crazy enough to try to gun Calhoun might do anything.”

  “Nuts. You know as well as I do what he was up here for. He was a ladies’ man, a regular stud. He was a no-good with a big front and a line of baloney, and some woman was supportin’ him half the time.”

  It was a charming little place, I thought sourly. She stood trial for murder every day—over here, and in all the other bars in town, and every time she pushed a basket down the aisles of the supermarket. I wondered why she didn’t sell out and leave. Pride, maybe. There was a lot of it in her face.

  Then I reminded myself that it was none of my business anyway. I didn’t know anything about her; maybe she had killed her husband. Murder had been committed by people who couldn’t even tell a lie without blushing. But for the sordid reasons they were hinting at? It didn’t seem likely.

  “And ain’t she from Miami?” the other went on. The way he said it, you gathered being from Miami was an indictment itself.

  “Dammit, Rupe,” Jake said with sullen defiance, “stop tryin’ to make it look like I was talking for her. Or for Strader. All I’m sayin’ is there’s a lot of difference between knowing something and provin’ it.”

  “Proof!” Rupe said contemptuously. “That’s a lot of bull. They got all the proof they need. Why do you reckon Strader went to all that trouble to try to make it look like an accident?”

  I glanced up. That was deadly. And it reminded me of something that had been bothering me and that I’d intended to ask if I ever had the chance.

  “Was that the reason for the two cars?” I asked Jake.

  I had been momentarily forgotten in their argument, but now abrupt silence dropped over the place, and the chill you could feel had nothing to do with the air-conditioning. Jake gulped the rest of his beer and stood up. “Well, I’d better be hittin’ the road,” he said. “Thanks, mister.” He went out. The others stared at me for a minute, and then returned to their own conversation.

  I ordered another beer. Ollie uncapped it and set it before me. He appeared to be the most intelligent and least unfriendly of the lot. “Why two cars?” I asked.

  He mopped the bar, looked at me appraisingly, and started to say something, but Rupe beat him to it. The shiny black eyes swung around to me, and he asked, “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Chatham,” I said shortly.

  “I don’t mean that, mister. What have you got to do with this.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Why?”

  “You seem to be pretty interested, for it to be none of your put-in.”

  “I’m just studying the native customs,” I said. “Where I grew up, people accused of murder were tried in court, not in barrooms.”

  “You’re new around here?”

  “I’m even luckier than that,” I said. “I’m just passing through.”

  “How come you’re riding a taxi? Just to pump Jake?”

  I was suddenly fed up with him. “Shove it,” I said.

  His eyes filled with quick malice and he made as if to get off the stool. The bartender glanced at him and he settled back. His friend, a much bigger man, studied me with dislike in his eyes, apparently trying to make up his mind whether to buy a piece of it or not. Nothing happened, and in a moment it was past.

  I fished a dime from my pocket and went back to the telephone. The dark girl and the man in the cowboy hat had apparently been paying little attention to us. The girl glanced up now as I went past. I had an impression she was scarcely eighteen, but she looked as if she’d spent twice that long in a furious and dedicated flight from any form of innocence. Her left leg was stretched out under the edge of the table with her skirt hiked up, and the man was grinning slyly as he wrote something on her naked thigh with her lipstick. She met my eyes and shrugged.

  I stepped into the booth, and the instant I closed the door I knew I’d found it. The fan came on with an uneven whirring sound caused by the faulty bearing. I thought swiftly. From the lunch-room in there he could even have seen her drive in when she returned from town; that was the reason he’d called almost immediately. But the maid had said he’d called twice before while she was out. Well, that meant those were from somewhere else and that he was moving round. The chances were a thousand to one against his being one of the three out there now.

  I went through the motions of making a call, and as I left the booth I shot a glance at the literary cowboy. He could have been anywhere between twenty-eight and forty, with a smooth, chubby face like that of an overgrown baby, and the beginnings of a paunch. The shirt, I noted now, wasn’t blue, as I’d thought—at least, not all over. It was light gray in front, with pearl buttons, and flaps on the breast pockets, and was stained in two or three places in front as if he’d spilled food on it. His eyes were china-bl
ue and made you think of a baby’s, apart from the quality of yokel shrewdness and sly humor you could see in them as he patted the dark girl on the leg and invited her to read whatever it was he’d written on it. He was probably known as a card.

  I went back to my beer. From sheer force of habit I sized up Rupe and his friend, but they were as unlikely as the humorist. Rupe was thin, swarthy, and mean-looking, the one you’d always expect to find at the bottom of it any time there was trouble reported in a bar, but he appeared normal enough otherwise. The other was a big man with thinning red-hair and a rugged slab of a face that could probably be tough but wasn’t vicious or depraved. He wore oil-stained khaki, and had black-rimmed fingernails as if he were a mechanic.

  Asking any questions was futile. It had been way over two hours to begin with, and the air of coldness and suspicion the place was saturated with told me I’d get no answers anyway. I pushed back the beer and started to get up.

  “I thought you said you was a stranger around here.” It was Rupe. I scooped up my change. “That’s right.”

  “You must know somebody. You just made a phone call.”

  “So I did.”

  “Without looking up the number.”

  “You don’t mind?” I asked.

  “Where you staying here?”

  I turned and looked at him coldly. “Across the street. Why?”

  “I thought so.”

  Ollie put down the glass he was polishing. “You leaving?” he asked me.

  “I’d started to,” I said.

  “Maybe you’d better.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Simple economics, friend. He’s a regular customer.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But if he’s that valuable, maybe you’d better keep him tied up till I get out.”

  Rupe started to slide off his stool, and the big redhead eyed me speculatively. “Knock it off,” Ollie said quietly to the two of them, and then jerked his head at me. I don’t want to have to call the cops.”

  “Right,” I said. I dropped the change in my pocket, and went out through the lunch-room. The whole thing was petty and stupid, but I had a feeling it was only a hint of what was submerged here, like the surface uneasiness of water where the big tide-rips ran deep and powerful far below, or the sullen smoldering of a fire that was only waiting to break out. I wondered why the feeling against her was so bitter. They seemed convinced she was involved in the murder of her husband; but if there were any evidence in that direction, why hadn’t she been arrested and tried?

  I crossed the highway in the leaden heat of late afternoon, and again was struck by the bleak aspect of the motel grounds as they would appear to the traveler who was considering turning in. The place was going to ruin. Why didn’t she have it landscaped, or sell out? I shrugged. Why didn’t I mind my own business?

  She was in the office, making entries in a couple of big ledgers opened on the desk. She looked up at me with a faint smile, and said, “Paper work.” I was conscious of thinking she was prettier than I had considered her at first, that there was something definitely arresting about the contrast of creamy pallor against the rubber-mahogany gleam of her hair. Some faces were like that, I thought; they revealed themselves to you a little at a time rather than springing at you all at once. Her hands were slender and unutterably feminine, moving gracefully through the confusion of papers.

  I stopped inside the door and lit a cigarette. “He called from the booth in the Silver King,” I said.

  She glanced up, startled, and I realized I had probably only made it worse by telling her he had been that near. “How do you know?” she asked. “I mean, have you been—?”

  I nodded. “The fan. I checked them out around town till I found the noisy one.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “For what?” I said. “I didn’t find him. He’d probably been gone for hours. But you can pass it on to the Sheriff, for what it’s worth.”

  “Yes,” she said, trying to sound optimistic, but I could tell she had little hope they would ever do anything about it. I was filled with a sour disgust towards the whole place. Why didn’t somebody bury it?

  I went across to my room and poured a drink. Taking off my sweaty shirt, I lay down on one of the beds with a cigarette and stared morosely up at the ceiling. I wished now I had belted Frankie while I had the chance. Stranded in this place for at least another thirty-six hours.

  You’re in sad shape, I thought; you can’t stand your own company and you’ve got a grouch on at everybody else. The only thing you can do is keep moving, and that doesn’t solve anything. You’d feel just as lousy in St Petersburg, or Miami—

  There was a light knock on the door.

  “Come in,” I said.

  Mrs. Langston stepped inside, and then paused uncertainly as she saw me stretched out in hairy nakedness from the waist up. I made no move to get up. She probably thought I had the manners of a pig, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  I gestured indifferently towards the armchair. “Sit down.”

  She left the door slightly ajar and crossed to the chair. She sat with her knees pressed together, and nervously pulled down the hem of her dress, apparently ill-at-ease. “I—I wanted to talk to you,” she said, as if uncertain how to begin.

  “What about?” I asked. I raised myself on one elbow and nodded towards the chest. “Whisky there, and cigarettes. Help yourself.”

  You’re doing fine, Chatham; you haven’t completely lost touch with all the little amenities. You can still grunt and point.

  She shook her head. “Thank you, just the same.” She paused, and then went on tentatively, “I believe you said you used to be a policeman, but aren’t any more?”

  That’s right,” I said.

  “Would it be prying if I asked whether you’re doing anything now?”

  “The answer is no,” I said. “On both counts. I have no job at all; I’m just on my way to Miami. The reason escapes me at the moment.”

  She frowned slightly, as if I puzzled her. “Would you be interested in doing something for me, if I could pay you?”

  “Depends on what it is.”

  “I’ll come right to the point. Will you try to find out who that man is?”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Because I got to thinking about the clever way you found out where he called from. You could do it. I can’t stand it much longer, Mr. Chatham. I have to answer the phone, and sometimes when it rings I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind. I don’t know who he is, or where he is, or when he may be looking at me, and when I walk down the street I cringe—”

  I thought of that farcical meat-head, Magruder. Nobody had ever been hurt over a telephone.

  “No,” I said.

  “But why?” she asked helplessly. “I don’t have much, but I would be glad to pay you anything within reason.”

  “In the first place, it’s police work. And I’m not a policeman.”

  “But private detectives—”

  “Are licensed. And operating without a license can get you into plenty of trouble. And in the second place, just identifying him is pointless. The only way to stop him is a conviction that will send him to jail or have him committed to an asylum, and that means proof and an organization willing to prosecute. Which brings you right back to the police and the District Attorney. If they’re dragging their feet, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “I see,” she said wearily. I detested myself for cutting the ground from under her this way. She was a hell of a lot of very fine and sensitive girl taking too much punishment, and I could feel her pulling at me. What she was showed all over her, if you believed in evidence at all. She had courage, and that thing called class, for lack of a better word, but they couldn’t keep her going for ever. She’d crack up. Then I wondered savagely why I was supposed to cry over her troubles. They were nothing to me, were they?

  “Why don’t you sell out
and leave?” I asked.

  “No!” The vehemence of it surprised me. Then she went on, more calmly. “My husband put everything he had left into this place, and I have no intention of selling it at a sacrifice and running like a scared child.”

  “Then why don’t you landscape it? It looks so desolate it drives people away.”

  She stood up. “I know. But I simply don’t have the money.”

  And I had, I thought, and it was the kind of thing I was perhaps subconsciously looking for, but I didn’t want to become involved with her. I didn’t want to become involved with anybody. Period.

  She hesitated at the door. “Then you won’t even consider it?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t like the way she could get through to me, and I wanted to get her and her troubles off my back once and for all. “There’s only one way I could stop him if I did find him. Do you want to hire me to beat up an insane man?”

  She flinched. “No. How awful—”

  I went on roughly, interrupting her. “I’m not sure I could. I was suspended from the San Francisco Police Department for brutality, but at least the man I beat up there was sane. I would assume there is a difference, so let’s drop it.”

  She frowned again, perplexed. “Brutality?”

  “That’s right.”

  She waited a minute for me to add something further, and when I didn’t, she said, “I’m sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Chatham,” and went out and closed the door.

  I returned to studying the ceiling. It was no different from a lot of others I had inspected.

  * * *

  About six I called another cab and went into town. I ate a solitary dinner at the Steak House, bought some magazines, and walked back to the motel in the blue and dust-suspended haze of dusk. There were cars parked in front of only three of the rooms. I was lying on the bed reading about half an hour later when I heard another crunch to a stop on the gravel, and then after a few minutes the sound of voices raised in argument. Or at least, one of them was raised. It was a man’s. The other sounded as if it might be Mrs. Langston. It continued, and the man’s voice grew louder. I got up and looked out.