To pay for my journey I decided to try and sell the diamond ring I had bought for a wedding that never quite took place. I hated to do it—take Honey’s only remaining physical link to me and pawn it for the going market price. Those days, pawnshops and jewelry stores were often tossed together. Such was the case of Abe and Golda Sachs on lower Broadway. Don’t ask me why, but Jews seemed to be the money exchangers and merchants of the world. Especially in gold, silver and precious gems, they were not to be bested.
I liked the Sachs. So, this one day I came in with a heavy heart to sell Honey’s ring. The shop was neat but cluttered at the same time. Everything from accordions to banjos hung from the walls. They had a “new” section of rings and neckpieces where I had originally purchased Honey’s ring. I walked in with a semi-smile, trying to make the best out of a rotten situation. “Hello, there…anybody in?” I asked, not seeing a soul stirring about.
Soon a little old lady with intense bright eyes and straggling grey hair came out. “So what is it you want—we’re not buying today. Too much inventory gives my husband a headache!” she said with a very decidedly thick accent. “So you want to buy—or what?”
“No, actually I bought this ring here.” I took the little velvet box out of my pocket, opened it and showed her the ring.
“Nice piece. Oy vey! I remember you, a year or two ago. You’re the handsome policeman, right? What happened? The girl got cold feet—what?”
“No, she died—before we got married.” I said that still not quite believing Honey was gone forever. “I won’t be needing it. I was hoping you could give me something for it. I paid a little over a thousand and paid it off some time ago. You can check your books, to see that I’m paid-in-full. I’m in a kind of tough spot just now—"
“—I believe you! Abe does the books. I think he was happy the day he got your money order to pay off the ring. I remember now, he was scratching his head as to why he gave you nine years to pay the ring off! The wife really could be dead by then!”
Abe Sachs came out. He was stout with wisps of white hair on his temples. The rest of his pate was shiny bald. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and had thin lips and intense blue eyes. “So what’s going on here, Golda?” He looked me over. “Ah, the newlywed policeman, eh? You came to return the ring already? What’s with things not lasting these days? Last week a lady came in to sell her wedding ring. The husband ran off with the housekeeper—you figure—women and men…you’re cursed if you do and you’re cursed if you don’t.”
“So you did, Abe. Are you sorry now? Huh? Such a thing! You should be glad that I stayed all these years to hear you complain.” She looked at me. “He complains about everything—from his lumbago to the property taxes and the guys up there in Washington running the country into the ground, he says.”
“Ya! That’s right! Into the ground! First you work yourself to the bone, making a decent living. Then they come and take it away with taxes? Such a thing I don’t need!”
I felt I had become lost in their conversation. “I—I, uh, would really like you to consider looking at the ring. I’d sell it reasonably—"
They ignored me because I knew they were really into it just about now. “—and another thing—if you don’t feed people and offer them jobs—they die! They die! We knew enough rough times in the old country, why should we come here to live it again?”
Mrs. Sachs seconded her husband’s voice. “Mrs. Beinberg—a nice Jewish lady—runs the shop next door. She and her husband are closing the doors next month.” Then she glanced at the ring. “So how could we afford to pay you anything for the ring—take it out of our life savings?”
“No, I was just hoping—hoping you’d be able to give me some dough to get out of town with. You see, since I’ve seen you last, things have gone pretty rough for me—"
“—who hasn’t got it rough, Policeman—" Abe Sachs interrupted.
“—Denning, Cable Denning’s the name…”
“Mr. Denning. Denning…that’s not a Jewish name—you’re a Mic from the Irish side of the tracks, ya?”
“Yeah…that’s right…grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth and a knife in my ribs. That kind of tender loving care…”
“So all of life is a fighting, Mr. Denning. You fight to be born, you fight to stay alive, and sometimes you even fight to die! Such a thing it is. Don’t complain if you can still walk, talk and breathe and you don’t ache all over. What do you expect of life—a golden Cadillac with a mansion overlooking the ocean? Ha! Look at us here, slave labor, day in, day out—and what do we get for it? Old age—that’s what we get! I get lumbago and my wife gets old, ugly and worn out—"
“—Abraham! Why is it all the time you insult me in front of customers? So I’m not perfect—but I’m all you got—don’t forget that. I also gave up my life for you and suffer through every day hearing you complain. It’s too hot in the back, my leg hurts, those damn gentiles, why doesn’t God give me a goddess? How much money I spend on the rent—even if I haven’t bought anything for myself in twenty years! How much do you hear me complain, huh? How much? What am I, the doormat or what?”
Abe Sachs ignored his wife. “So you should want I buy your ring back? And why should I do that? I’m not a good Samaritan, you know. I’m in business for business—the kind that makes money.”
Mrs. Sachs was calmed down a trifle as she looked up into my face. “So you were saying you had tragedy or something in your life? Such a time comes…when you need rest from the world. I listen to the radio to get away from that nudnik over there. Music calms the nerves, opens the heart, you know.” Then she looked at her husband. “He’s a wounded man, my husband, such a thing that he should live to not regret his life and what tradition and every day brings.” She smiled a little at me. “Abe, this man is hurting—needs a kindness—give him something for the ring.”
Abe Sachs gave his wife a dirty look and turned to me. “Supposing Golda has a point—we can’t always be in the game for money—after all, there’s family and possessions, then there’s business and acquiring possessions—and then there’s money—which permits the family and acquiring of possessions! Such a thing I can’t understand in the world—does nobody get it? Money makes the world go ‘round! Without it we might as well be beggars on the street.” He nodded his head vigorously at his wife. “Kindness, now you’re asking…I should be so lucky to have you as my wife” he said, recalling Golda’s earlier statement… “Do you know, Mr. Denning, after forty years she barely cooks and sews? I have to go to Mr. Weiss, a tailor down the street to get my pants to fit. And always, I’m finding dust on the furniture. Look at this place. Look around. The French horn up there—hasn’t been dusted in years!”
“Abe! You should be ashamed for yourself!” said Mrs. Sachs. Then she looked me up and down. “How old are you, Mr. Denning?”
“I’m going to be thirty two in September.”
“You see, Abe, such a young man—he deserves a fresh start.”
“You should worry about a September birthday in April? In Latvia only the girls celebrated birthdays. Boys had to be men—and soon. Take it from a guy who knows, Denning, don’t worry about the birthdays!”
Golda was tapping her foot on the floor. “What about it, Abraham? Forty years and you think I don’t know you?” She winked at me.
Abe Sachs was thinking. “Most I can give you is two-hun—"
“—five hundred!” Mrs. Sachs cut her husband off.
Abe Sachs frowned. “Okay, okay…five hundred but not a penny more—I’m paying here, way above wholesale! I should praise the day I can sell the ring for that. Five hundred dollars in these depression days is like two thousand a couple of years ago.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sachs. I’ll take it. I won’t forget it. If I make it big someday in the private detective business, I’ll come back and double your money. I promise,” I said, trying to be as conciliatory as possible.
“Don’t promise anything…in this life, young man. Nobody wa
nts the burden of something promised weighting down the mind. You should want success? Don’t think about getting rich. Think about getting happy—like me. Abraham and me fight like tooth and nail, I even pushed him once into the street when we were young. But no horse and buggy was coming, so I went out, took his hand, and brought him back home. Then we made love—and everything was okay for another day or two.”
“Golda! What’s with the telling about our love life here? Have a little respect for our private business. Besides, who wants to know about two old Jews making love when they were twenty-five?”
“I’m interested,” I said, enjoying this battling couple. “I’ve always marveled at what keeps a man and woman together so many years.”
“The patience of God,” Golda Sachs responded.
Abe Sachs didn’t reply and went to the back room. He soon returned with a medium-sized black metal box. He opened it and took out a clump of money. He counted out five one hundred dollars bills and tossed them at me across the counter. “Here…sign this receipt for the ring. I gave you money, you gave me the ring, I give you the receipt. Oy vey, I still don’t know how I’m going to sell it for even that amount. You know, Denning, I’m buying back a used item. But it’s in such good condition, maybe I can place it among the new jewelry. Maybe I’ll recover some profit that way…maybe even you’ll get married again some day soon and you’ll buy it back for that special gentile lady. Or have you ever seen a nice Jewish young lady you might fancy? I hear gentiles and Jews sometimes get along better than Jews and Jews.”
“I don’t think I’ll be marrying anytime soon, Mr. Sachs. But I hope you get your price.” I signed the receipt and started out the door with my five hundred smackers. “Thanks again…” I said.
Golda Sachs followed me out onto the sidewalk. “Young Denning…some lessons come by pain—such a thing we cannot avoid. But keep your eyes straight ahead and they will see the good side of life. There is one, you know. Even after all you’ve lost.” She came to me and hugged me. She was whispering. “Now…if I was one of those young Jewish girls Abe was talking about, I would definitely lift my skirts for you.” She giggled. “Good-bye, Mr. Denning. And good luck.”
I hurried down the street to catch the streetcar back to my office.
CHAPTER 8
CAMBRIAN DREAMS
Captain Nitwit and the Wild Gypsy Woman
After I packed up Adora’s belongings, I delivered them to her mother and sister. Then I called the landlord and told him I had to give up the cottage. I knew in that moment I would more than likely never dwell in a common abode again…that I would live like a vagabond bachelor out of the back of my office, hitching a ride with the stars on balmy nights and listening to that lonely sax wend its way across the city I belonged to.
The other thing I knew was, I had to get out of town for a few days. I gave Zelda an extra key and asked her to watch after my office while I was gone. I knew she wanted to come with me—wherever I decided to go—but she was a smart lady and knew I needed to have some quality time alone to heal the grief that was just now beginning to set in. I was one of those brave types who don’t react to the layers of sorrow up front. The delayed reaction gave me room to function until the worst was over. Eventually, I decided I’d go to the ocean and kill two birds with one stone by dropping by to check on Cassie, Saturnalia’s little alien daughter. She was supposedly now in human form, living in Cambria Pines-by-the-Sea and working behind the counter of a local pharmacy. Elisa Moreno owned a 1924 Ford coupe and she was happy to let me borrow it for my long journey to San Luis Obispo County. And so it came to be that I was to set out on yet another bizarre adventure in the life of Cable Denning, Private Detective.
I got into town late on a Wednesday afternoon. I found a little motel called The Bluebird right on State Route #1, which was Main Street of the tiny hamlet. The layout was a large two-story home where the owners lived, and about a dozen separate little cabins with varying capacities around the perimeter of the area with parking in front of each one. Before settling in, I went outside and found a little trail behind my cabin that led to a charming little creek, called the Santa Rosa. The wonderful smells of vegetation and water filled my nostrils and I could breathe more deeply than back home in the smog-choked metropolis. Around dusk, I ambled over to the office to inquire about Arthur Beatle. Johnny Anderson…Hungarian, energetic, well-built and completely bald, was the owner-proprietor along with his very pretty and slightly plump wife, Barbara. Seems that Art Beatle, sometimes known as Captain Nitwit, was a local pariah, and not the most welcomed citizen of Cambria and its environs. In fact, they told me plenty, maybe more than I needed to know.
His real name was Arthur Beatle. And according to Johnny Anderson, he was a legend in his time. Few said that they had ever met a hardier or more physically powerful man. He wasn’t particularly tall—sinewy and bright-eyed, his face worn where life’s experiences cut their paths. The silver running through his black hair, belied a face that looked smashed against the world, his nose bent to the side, his eyebrows thick, his forehead furrowed, his eyes a twinkling blue. He chewed tobacco and spat accurately, so they say, and his nickname was ‘Spit Beetle.’ Some say he palled around with Jack London in San Francisco in the days when one could ride horseback into town from the Valley of the Moon. He must have been eccentric to begin with, for when I found him, he had built a castle of stone and mortar inset with abalone shells and toilet seats for windows—no glass. The front gate was an ancient bedspring that hung on rusty hinges and moaned when the wind blew too hard. Old water pipes served as railings as one chugged up the steps inlaid with shining abalone and beach pebbles. Some stairways went nowhere, others led into long troughs of spinach or kale in stone beds with local soil thrown in for good measure. Jeffery Pines stood sentinel around the massive monstrosity while a rickety metal stove pipe penetrated the roof of the fourth story where Art lived.
Legend has it that he was a construction foreman in 1918 during the fiasco they called the war to end all wars in Europe. I hope they were right, but I doubt it. Humans always find a way to aggress on their neighbor’s real estate or want something they have. Anyway, already in his mid-thirties, Arthur emigrates to San Francisco after World War I and becomes a fry cook in some dump on Mission Street. There he meets Maria Contelli…a fiery young gypsy woman. Pretty soon they get together and Arthur tells the completely uncontrollable hot-tempered babe that he bought a few lots near the ocean on the Central California coast and is building a ‘honeymoon’ cottage near the top on a flat postage stamp of land. So Beatle builds the edifice where no electricity, indoor plumbing or running water exist and invites Maria to come visit. She loves the pine tree forests with a hint of fog and sunshine. The passionate twosome quit their San Francisco jobs and she moves in with him. But soon ominous signs betray the fact that both of them are highly tempered individuals and after the ‘honeymoon’, things get pretty rough as Maria begins to get cabin-fever, starts throwing things at her dearly beloved and adding salt to the wound, takes up with a younger, hard-drinking friend of Arthur’s!
Now the plot thickens as Arthur’s Genevieve betrays his trust and leaves the happy nest he had provided her with. In a rage of unparalleled madness, Arthur destroys the cabin, board-by-board, tile by tile, tossing whatever furniture there was out into the thickets and busting up anything that might remind him of ‘that woman.’ Then one day Maria Contelli leaves town, never to be heard from again.
Venting his pent up hurt and anger, Arthur Beatle begins his gargantuan project. Using only his hand shovel, a makeshift wheelbarrow, and willpower second to none, stone by stone, nail by nail pounded into the used wood edifice, the four-story fairy tale rises from the ground. Nitwit Ridge will never be finished and the emotional pain he feels can only find solace in ceaseless labor, bent on forgetting what might have been and glossing over the possible reality that the couple was never compatible in the first place. In a way that reminded me of Joe Lorena, an alien who
fell in love with a human woman and lost her. And that…was the legend of one Arthur Beatle, known to many as Captain Nitwit, philosopher extraordinaire!
It was hard for me to figure this guy as an alien, though. And Saturnalia’s lovely young daughter was living with him? Some of it didn’t make sense, but who could figure these damn aliens? If Cassie was anything like her mother, I’ll bet she was a dish. As Mr. Anderson finished his story, I inquired about a young woman who might be living in his home. “Shambles is more like it,” he said. “How could any attractive young lady like Cassie Olson live in that filth and disarray? Of course, there is rumor that she lives in sin with Art Beatle. I couldn’t say. But I know she never goes to church.” I was wondering how she got the last name “Olson” when I knew that Saturnalia had no last name. Maybe she made it up.
“Well, thanks, Mr. Anderson—Mrs. Anderson…I’m going to turn in, it’s a long drive from L.A. to your little paradise here by the sea.”
“Oh, you must visit the ocean, down by the community park there are lots of rocks to climb at low tide.” Then he studied my face. “May I ask what it is you do, Mr. Denning—I mean, professionally?”
“I’m a private dick—you know, a private investigator. I used to be a cop but moved up in the world.”
“Is Cassie in any kind of trouble? Despite her horrible living situation with Art Beatle up at Nitwit Ridge, I would say she’s a wholesome and beauteous young thing.”
“No…I’m here strictly for pleasure. I promised her mother I’d drop in on her—make sure she’s okay.”
“Maybe okay, but look out for Jane Slaughter.”
“And who, may I ask, is Jane Slaughter?”
“A bad influence, I’d say. A reckless young woman without scruples, no visible means of income—and sleeps until all hours.”
Love Me or Kill Me (The Cable Denning Mystery Series Book 2) Page 19