Canvas Coffin

by Gault, William Campbell

  Another one of his theatrical pauses. Then, “I don’t know. Patsy’s young and rough and strong. But you’re — you’re a right smart lad. In a ring, anyway.”

  Max said, “Let’s not talk in circles. We don’t fight Giani unless we’re ordered to. The way I see it right now, Luke’s going to retire. Undefeated.”

  “Okay,” Wald said. “Glad to see somebody’s solvent enough to sneer at a big wad of dough. Just an idea I had, Max.” He stood up. “Get home all right, last night?”

  Silence, and then Max’s flat voice: “Why not?”

  “Wondered. The desk clerk tells me you were carrying quite a load.”

  “I’ll have to report him,” Max said evenly, “talking about the guests like that.”

  “Not guests. Guest. He only mentioned you, Max. Well, I’m keeping you boys up, I guess. Good night.”

  “Sleep tight,” Max said. “Dream up another angle, Sam. When did you buy into Giani?”

  “I haven’t yet,” Wald answered. “But he’s a comer, Max. That would be a gilt-edged investment.”

  “So long,” Max said, and I nodded. Neither of us stood up.

  The door closed behind Wald, and Max looked at me. “He was mentioning Giani last night, at the party. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why he threw the party.”

  “We could pack that arena,” I said.

  “Sure. Look, even if I thought you could win, I don’t want Patsy’s friends on top, not in this division. Not while I’m alive.”

  “If I could win, they wouldn’t be on top,” I pointed out.

  “You’re splitting hairs,” Max said. “I wonder if — Oh, who in hell can figure these damned angle-shooters?”

  “You. Who was at the party, Max?”

  “Some pugs, some sports writers, some broads, couple studio slobs. The kind of people Sam would know.”

  “I thought he was one of your friends.”

  “I’ve got millions of friends,” Max said. “Some of them are bound to be heels.”

  “I’ll play gin rummy now.”

  “No. Not now. I’ve got to think, kid. Wheels are turning. You hear that crack he made about the clerk, and about betting? We’re being squeezed, boy.”

  “So I fight Giani, and beat his brains out, and all our problems are solved.”

  “Six years ago,” Max said, “you’d have killed him. But this isn’t six years ago. Go to bed and let me worry this out.”

  I went to bed. Cool guy I am, cold. But I lay awake a long time, listening to the hum of tires on the asphalt and the beat of my heart. Thinking of Sally and the redhead and Sands and Sam Wald, thinking of the battered face.

  Fell asleep and dreamed I was back in the All Saints choir, the boy soprano. Only my voice was changing and they were grooming Patsy Giani to take my place. Patsy looked like an angel in the blue robes and Buster Brown collar, and I screamed at him, “You’re no angel, you’re an angle,” and woke up to the sound of Max’s snoring and the chill clamminess of the perspiration-dampened sheet beneath me.

  No hum of tires, dark in the room. A horn bleated, and silence. Max’s snore turned into a gurgle, and he muttered something in his sleep.

  I looked up into the void overhead, trying to picture a life without the crown, without the big money, without Sally. Tried to look into the void that was last night.

  Nothing. Psychic block, because of conscience — I was a long way from All Saints. Where’s your tambourine? You know, Luke, Sally had once said, these religious fanatics and these ring tigers have a lot in common. Hitler could have been either, given the build or the bent.

  I rolled over, seeking a dryer part of the sheet. If Sally took a plane tomorrow, I’d be on the next one. I’d crawl, crawl, crawl, and beg.

  Max was snoring again, and the rhythm of it got to me, and I went back to sleep.

  Sunlight and the sound of the shower. A bath last night and a shower this morning; Max was getting soap-happy. He must feel dirty.

  I stretched and considered the ceiling and thought of yesterday, which had been bad. Today could be worse if Sally took a plane.

  Max came in, wearing a terry-cloth robe, and the smile was back. “Another beautiful day,” he said.

  He’d dreamed up some answers; he looked ready again, on top of all his problems.

  “I ordered breakfast,” he said. “It’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Better get up.” His smile got cute. “Breakfast for the three of us. Sally phoned she’d be over.”

  “To say good-by?”

  “Who knows? Get off the dime, boy; it’s a beautiful day.”

  Fully dressed and fully composed she was, when she came for breakfast. Black jersey hugging that fine body, civil reserve clothing her warm voice.

  She’d read all the papers, she informed us. The girl had some history. There was a better picture of her in the News than the one I’d seen. Some build, the girl had.

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  Sally nodded, looking at me. I felt like I was on a glass slide.

  Max said, “You think those drinks could have been doctored at Sam’s?” I shook my head.

  Sally looked at him sharply. “Why? What does this — Sam have to do with it?”

  Max looked at me, and I said, “Nothing.” She continued to look at me. I continued to say nothing.

  She asked, “Is he saying there’s a possibility you were maneuvered in some way — framed?”

  “No,” I said. “The lights went out during the fight, not after. Wald may have picked up some information and is trying to use it, but I’m sure he didn’t finagle anything.”

  “And nothing’s come back? Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  Some emotion in her voice now. “Luke, you wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Never, would you?”

  “Never. Not to you, Sally.”

  “And if you should remember, you’d tell me?”

  “I would.” I watched her, waiting for the breakdown, waiting to move in for the big clinch, but her composure was back.

  “I won’t be taking the plane this morning,” she said. Annoyance burned in me; this duchess act could be overworked.

  “I’ll want a car this morning,” she went on. “You and I are going to take a ride, Luke.”

  “Where?”

  “Out to the Palisades, to that place on Sunset.”

  “Place?” I stared at her.

  “The girl’s apartment, where she was killed.”

  “Like hell,” Max said. “The joint will be crawling with cops. How would that look?”

  “It will look like we’re interested. Isn’t it logical for a person who was with the victim the night she was killed to be interested in where she lived, and died?”

  “I don’t know if it’s logical or not,” Max said, “and neither do you. We could ask Luke.”

  “It’s logical,” I said. “Any other questions?”

  Sally ate her grapefruit, Max his eggs, and I my buckwheat cakes. Max looked sour, Sally grave. Nobody said anything for seconds.

  Then Max said, “I wash my hands of the whole thing. Forget I was ever involved.”

  “I will if Sergeant Sands will.”

  Sally said, “They were your friends, Max, not Luke’s.” He nodded, not looking at her.

  Her voice was cool. “You’d be thirty-five-percent involved anyway. Isn’t that your usual cut?”

  Max’s look was ice. “You’re hot at me. But I didn’t introduce that redhead to Luke. Lay off me.”

  Her face was stiff as she held his stare. Then her eyes dropped, and she continued to eat silently.

  I was uncomfortable. They were my two closest friends, and their quarreling embarrassed me. But I couldn’t think of anything helpful to say.

  Max left before we were ready to go. He had some shopping to do, he said.

  Sally said, “I was mean to him, wasn’t I?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m too much in love,” she said. “You can kiss me now.”

/>   I kissed her. No life in her, no response.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should be mourning the girl. I’m only hating her.”

  “Maybe we didn’t even hold hands,” I said. “Nobody knows.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but it’s out of character. Phone for a car, will you?”

  We got a Ford convertible. Sally drove. Through Beverly Hills, the wind of Sunset past the big homes, her eyes quietly on the traffic.

  As the buildings of UCLA appeared to our left, she said, “Anything familiar?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You drove out in her car, didn’t you?”

  “That’s what Max says.”

  “And then how did you get back to the hotel?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, without thinking. And then realized that was a hell of an important question.

  “If,” I said slowly, “she drove me back, I didn’t kill her. And if I took a cab, the cabbie would remember. And if somebody else took me — ”

  “A lot of ‘ifs,’ aren’t there? And you or Max never considered any of them. Max is no help to us, Luke, not in something like this. It would have been better, probably, to tell the police exactly what happened.”

  “I didn’t know what happened. I could go to the gas chamber, not knowing. What kind of a defense would I have?”

  She took a deep breath, and didn’t answer. She was stopped for the light, and there was a Caddie alongside. The man behind the wheel was a big lug. He looked at Sally and smiled.

  Her face froze, and he continued to smile.

  “Even out here, you’re something,” I told her. “I’d go over and pop him, but a boxer’s fists are considered a lethal weapon in this state.”

  “What a horrible thing to say,” she said, “after — ”

  I’d never even thought of it. I just couldn’t get used to the thought of myself as a murderer. Murderers probably can’t, either.

  The light changed, and the Ford jumped. The Caddie turned left. Sally said, “If I didn’t have reason to know better, I’d think you were the coldest man alive.”

  “It’s a carry-over from the ring,” I said. “Control. In every fight, I try to hold the control. I figure if I lose that, I’ll lose the fight.”

  “It’s hard for you, though? It’s hard for you to stay cool?”

  “Yes.”

  “All your training has been for the ring. Your attitude toward everything is conditioned by the ring.”

  “I suppose.”

  “To hit another human being, to hurt him, perhaps permanently.”

  “I guess that’s right. One thing, though. Without malice.”

  “You like to believe. All of the real fighters had malice enough, all of the hitters. It’s personal, with them.”

  “I try not to make it personal.” My hands were trembling. Sally likes to dig at me, sometimes, and it hurts more than it should. “I get the feeling you don’t like me when you talk like that.”

  We were moving through Brentwood now. She asked, “Remember anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  Past the polo field, past the entrance to Will Rogers Park. The sun was hot in a clear sky, and there was quite a lot of traffic going our way, toward the ocean.

  To our left now, the Uplifters, and we were going up hill. I thought something stirred in my memory but it was a flash of nothing.

  We topped the hill and a small sign at the side of the road read: Pacific Palisades. New homes along Sunset, on the left here, and then the theater and the start of the business district.

  At the west end of the three-block business district, there was a new supermarket. On the face of this building, there was a bakery trade-mark, a small, revolving Dutch windmill.

  “I’ve seen that before,” I said, “that windmill.”

  Sally slowed the car. “It’s all over town.”

  “Blue, like that,” I added. “But-illuminated.”

  “It’s neon tubing; it probably is illuminated at night.” She pulled to the side of the road and stopped. “What else does it bring back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Try, Luke. Keep looking at it.”

  I said, “It doesn’t bring back anything. But it should prove I was out here.”

  “Or any of a thousand other places with a sign like that.” She started the car again, and we were rolling down a grade. A big sign over the Presbyterian Conference Grounds that I’d never seen before, the bright-green hills all around us that I wouldn’t see, at night.

  About a mile past the end of town, she swung the convertible in a U-turn and pulled up at the curb on the south side of Sunset. There was a four-unit apartment building here of redwood and pastel-yellow stucco, two stories high and looking brand-new.

  “The scene of the crime,” Sally said, “and there’s an apartment to rent, I see. Do you think it could be — ”

  “No,” I said. “Nobody’s that bloodthirsty.” I stared at the building, trying to fit it into the void. Nothing, nothing.

  Sally said, “Let’s look at the vacant one.”

  “Relax,” I said.

  “Why not? It might work. They’re probably all alike. Luke, this isn’t as scatterbrained as it may seem.”

  She opened the door on her side and looked at me. I got out and together we walked up the three steps to the open entryway.

  A large woman in white twill shorts was fishing mail out of one of the boxes in the lobby. Her hair was straw-blond and her eyes a vivid blue.

  “Could you tell me if the manager is on the premises?” Sally asked her.

  The woman shook her head. “He never is, dearie. Was it about the apartment to let?”

  Sally nodded. “That’s as good an excuse as any.”

  The woman’s smile was knowing. “Oh? Reporters, are you?”

  “More or less,” Sally said. “I want to do a feature on it, for the Sunday magazine section, and one look at the — scene would help an awful, awful lot.”

  “I’d like to help,” the woman said, “but I got strict orders from Mr. Creash. He’s the manager and — ”

  She stopped talking, looking at the bill in Sally’s hand. It was a twenty-dollar bill.

  Sally said, “Who’d ever know?”

  “Mr. Creash — ” the woman said, “and those officers will probably be back, and — ” Her eyes never left the bill.

  Sally said, “If they come, you can tell them you thought you gave us the key to the vacant apartment. You were on the phone, see, honey, and you couldn’t go with us, but you gave us the key. So you’ll be clear.”

  The woman smiled and shook her head. “You writers! I’ll get the key. And then phone my daughter-in-law.”

  It was on the second floor, facing Sunset. The figured drapes were closed, but the room was bright enough, furnished in warm-toned woods and upholstered chairs.

  “Provincial,” Sally said. “So sweet and cozy, B-girl provincial.” Her eyes moved around the living-room scornfully. “Anything click?”

  “Nothing.”

  She walked over to a door and I followed her. It led to a short hall which led to a bedroom. King-sized bed in here with a honey-tone bookcase-headboard and flanking, matching night stands.

  The bed wasn’t made; the sheets were maroon silk. The bed looked like it had known a recent storm. Sally stared at it for seconds.

  Then she said, “If anything should do it, this should.”

  A tremor in her voice, and one tear on her cheek. My gal Sal; a girl dead and all Sal worries about is whether I’d made her. And I’m supposed to be the cold one.

  “It rings no bells with me,” I said.

  She turned. “Damn you. Damn you.”

  “Maybe you’d better take the plane,” I said. “I wasn’t exactly the village virgin when I met you, but I’ve been living the part ever since. You’re probably glad the girl’s dead.”

  She stared at me. And then said finally, “God, Luke, I was. Oh, Luke, what kind of monster am I?”r />
  “I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” I turned and started out, but she grabbed my arm.

  “Luke, I’m sorry. I’ve been a twenty-two-karat bitch.”

  I kissed the top of her gray head and held her shoulders lightly in my hands, saying nothing.

  “We’d better get out of here,” she said. “It was a stupid idea of mine, anyway.”

  “I don’t think it was stupid,” I said, “but we’d better go, all right.”

  We went back to the living-room, and the eyes of the photograph on the mantel seemed to be watching us. Both of us stood there a second, looking at the soft, appealing face of a younger Mary Kostanic.

  “I’ll bet she wasn’t Brenda Vane then,” Sally said. “She was a pretty girl, Luke.”

  “She was, there,” I said. “I wonder how old she was, then?”

  “Eighteen, nineteen.”

  From the doorway behind us, a voice said, “She was a real pretty girl. And look at this place; you can tell she knew good stuff when she saw it. Nothing cheap about Brenda.”

  We turned to face the big woman in the white twill shorts.

  “Was she ever married?” Sally asked.

  “Not that I know of. Would you folks like some coffee? I got a full pot on.”

  I looked at Sally, and she said, “I’d like some.”

  The woman’s apartment was a replica of the one above, but furnished in the four-rooms-for-four-hundred-and-seventy-nine-dollars-name-your-own-terms-including-refriger-ator-stove-and-washing-machine Los Angeles too recent American.

  But she made it warm with her outsize geniality.

  “It better be good coffee,” she said, “at twenty dollars.” She chuckled. “I feel kind of guilty about that, but not guilty enough to give it back. Were you cheated, dearie?”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Sally said. “You make a fine cup of coffee.”

  We were in the bright kitchen, sitting at a Formica-top, chrome-legged table. The woman wore a halter with the shorts and it could have served as a hammock for Max.

  Sally asked her, “Didn’t you hear any racket, any noise that night it — happened? I should think, being right below and all — ”

  “I was visiting my daughter-in-law, in Culver City,” the woman said placidly. “And the Gendrons were out — they’re the people in back on this floor — and it could have been there wasn’t much noise, anyway. But wasn’t it horrible?”