The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels

by Charles Alverson

  “You may call standing up on a bar jiggling your tits dancing,” she said sharply, “but I don’t. No, Olga could have been a dancer, but she was too lazy. Bone idle.”

  “Where’d the Dombrowitz come from?”

  “Mr. Dombrowitz,” she said, “was my first husband but one. He was the headwaiter on a boat that used to go up and down the river between Sacramento and San Francisco. He knew every member of the state legislature by his front name. We lived in Pittsburg then, and I used to take Olga down to the dock so that she could wave at her daddy. The captain would do the old ‘Shave and a haircut—two bits’ on the steam whistle for her.”

  “What happened to Mr. Dombrowitz?”

  “World War II. He was too old for the army so the damned fool signed on with the merchant marine. Ran into a torpedo someplace out in the Atlantic, and there wasn’t enough left to send home. That was early in 1943.”

  As sad as the demise of Mr. Dombrowitz was, I couldn’t help noticing something that didn’t seem to jibe. “Nineteen forty-three?” I said. “How—”

  “You’re surprised, aren’t you? How old did you think Olga was?”

  “Twenty-five,” I said, “maybe twenty-six.”

  “Wrong!” she said triumphantly. “Olga would have been thirty-five come this November. The seventeenth. She fooled everyone, she did. Did you see her laying in that fancy coffin at the church?” I said I’d missed that experience.

  “Well, I’m telling you right now she could have passed for a girl of twenty and one. She never looked so good in her life. Whatever that McDavitt did to her, he did the right thing. Downright beautiful. That’s what got me to howling there at the grave. I’m a pretty hard old devil…” She took a sideways look at me to see if I was going to contradict her, then she shrugged. “But when I saw her looking almost as young as she did when she graduated from John C. Fremont Junior High, I just went to pieces.”

  She rummaged through a handbag that had cost the lives of at least two alligators and brought out a tattletale-gray man’s handkerchief just in case she had another attack. But it didn’t come.

  “Mrs. Barton,” I suggested, “why don’t you just go back to the time Tina—somehow, I can’t get used to calling her Olga—graduated from junior high school and take it right up to the present. I’ll ask you a question or two if some occur to me.”

  She wasn’t too happy about me calling the shots, but the old lady wriggled herself into a more comfortable position, took something fuzzy with lint from the bottom of her purse, stuck it in the side of her jaw, and started talking. At the Bay Bridge toll booth she opened the big purse again and dived in for a good rummage until I’d paid the toll, but mostly she just talked. She’d had some practice; I could tell.

  Leaving out the more convoluted subplots and tortured rhetoric, the truth seemed to be that Tina was born on the outskirts of Pittsburg a couple of years before the war. After Mr. Dombrowitz was torpedoed, a series of “stepfathers” came and went. Mrs. Barton seemed to remember most of them and recited their names with some relish: Mr. Roper, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Hufnagel, that son of a bitch Charlie Ramond, Mr. Gilliam. But Tina grew up just like other little girls in the East Bay until she graduated from junior high school.

  That was the extent of her formal education, and it qualified Tina for a choice spot behind the candy counter at Kress’s in Antioch. P. D. Zimmerman, the manager, gave her in fairly rapid sequence a promotion to lipsticks, a ten-cents-an-hour raise, a baby, and enough money to go to San Francisco for an abortion.

  Tina never came back, at least not for any amount of time. Oh, a couple of years later she did come home to stay long enough to have a baby. It seemed that her first experience with an abortionist had put her off that gentle art for life. But then as soon as the stitches were removed and the baby was hooked on the bottle, Tina—she was still calling herself Olga—had gone off again, leaving behind the baby, a hundred and ten dollars in cash, and an expensive pigskin suitcase.

  “What happened to the baby?” I asked, as we drove through the tunnel heading for Orinda.

  “It didn’t live,” she said, taking a good grip on the hanky again. “The poor little bugger. The winter after Olga went back to San Francisco it took down with gastro—gastro-something-or-other and just wasted away. We had the doctor out, but it just got thin like a little skeleton. One morning I found it dead.” She started snuffing in the big handkerchief. “I haven’t thought about that baby in years.”

  “How did Tina take it?” I asked to get her off the morbid reminiscences and back on the story.

  Mrs. Barton threw back her head and sniffed deeply. “Just like she took everything else,” she said. “Dead easy. She sent me twenty-five bucks to buy a little gravestone with and didn’t bother to come home for six months.”

  She looked at the handkerchief again as if wondering whether to have another go at it, but then stuffed it back into the dead alligator. “You’re certainly a nosy bastard,” she said.

  “It’s my job. After that, did you see much of Tina?”

  “Olga,” she corrected. “She didn’t take the name of Tina D’Oro until maybe five years ago. No, she didn’t come back much. But every so often there she’d be. She was onto something good in those days. She was always dressed smart and driving a new car.”

  “Did she ever tell you his name?” I asked.

  “Whose name?”

  ‘The man who was providing all those smart clothes and new cars. Did she happen to mention who he was?”

  She looked across the front seat at me like a turkey hen that’d been run down in a dusty street by a bread van. “She didn’t tell me,” she said, “but I found out. He was crazy about her, he was, and he couldn’t let her be away for even a couple of days without writing to her.”

  “And you snooped.”

  “Yes, I snooped. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  She had me there. “Are you going to tell me his name?”

  “What are you going to do for me?”

  “I might find out who stabbed your daughter to death, in case you’re interested. Might even get him punished.”

  “How’s that gonna help me?” she demanded. Then she lapsed into a bout of subdued grumbling as we pulled into Walnut Creek.

  The old woman hadn’t seen Tina in nearly a year, and it was pretty clear that she hadn’t any more idea who killed her than I did. Still, if she’d give me the name of old Sugar Daddy, it might lead somewhere. Or nowhere. We drove more or less silently through hilly East Bay country until I saw a sign that said Contra Costa Canal.

  “You’ll have to direct me from here,” I told her. “I’m a stranger in these parts.”

  “Sometimes I wish I was, too,” she said, but she directed me down a dirt and gravel road along the canal bank past a couple of tarpaper shacks. At the sound of my car, occupants of various sizes and sexes emerged into the glaring sunshine to wave Mrs. Barton home like a returning duchess. She acknowledged their greetings with sullen grace.

  “Lot of no-account people live along the canal these days,” she muttered, hinting at genteel days long past.

  We bumped across a railway line which crossed the road at a right angle, turned sharply to follow the canal perhaps fifty yards, and then came to a dead end at a half-submerged pier jutting out into the canal. There, sitting at the end of the line, was an old, red-brown Southern Pacific caboose which had been converted into a house. A line of limp laundry ran down to a pole from the high poop deck at one end. An old geezer dressed in a railman’s striped overalls looked up at the car from his calabash pipe without hostility but with no great enthusiasm, either.

  “You made good time,” he told Mrs. Barton, snapping up the lid on a turnip-sized watch hung on a finely wrought gold chain.

  “This fella’s name is Goodey, Jim,” the old woman said in a completely different tone from the one she’d used with me. “He says he’s some kind of detective looking into Olga’s death.” Then she said to me, “This i
s Mr. Barton,” as if introducing me to the Duke of Earl.

  Barton was a fine-faced old man not far off seventy, with a geometrically precise trainman’s mustache. He had a faint gray powder of beard on his weathered cheeks which left him just short of needing a shave. He’d probably figured out just how long a retired railroad man could go between shaves without looking like a bum. When he did shave it would be with a straight razor. Barton looked me over with fathomless gray eyes that gave away nothing.

  “Have you got anything in the way of credentials, Mr. Goodey?” he asked politely. I came up with the brand-new private operative’s license, and he looked it over with an eye that could spot a phony cargo manifest at fifty feet. He didn’t hurry, but read it all and then handed the card back to me. “You’re new to the game, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I was on the force in San Francisco for nearly fifteen years.” That didn’t make me a forty or forty-five-year man as he’d obviously been with the railroad. But it gave me a bit more credibility in his eyes.

  “I’m Jim Barton,” he said, giving me a tough old hand to shake. “I didn’t know Olga at all. Only met her once just short of a year ago. But what can we do for you out here?”

  “I met Mrs. Barton at the funeral,” I said, “and on the way back here she mentioned that she might know the name of a man Olga lived with in the early years when she first left here for San Francisco. I’d find it useful to have that name.”

  “That right, Maggie?” Barton asked, turning his eyes on her. She wriggled under them like a schoolgirl. I swear she even blushed.

  “I used to know that fella’s name, Jim,” she said, “but it’s been a lot of years since then. If I’ve still got it around, it’ll be in my box.” She didn’t seem to be too eager to produce it.

  “Well,” he said, “you just go up and root through that box until you find it. And while you’re at it, make some tea. I’ll entertain Mr. Goodey while you’re gone.”

  We watched her climb up the iron steps into the main body of the caboose and disappear from sight. Then Barton gestured to a low bench, and we both sat watching rubbish float downstream in the murky brown canal water.

  “You like being a private detective, Mr. Goodey?” Barton asked, relighting his big pipe with a puff of gray smoke.

  “It’s hard to say so soon,” I answered, “but I don’t think I will. There’s too much uncertainty in it.”

  “Well,” he said, “that may be, but let me give you some advice. No matter how much you don’t like your job, it’s better than being retired. When the time comes that somebody wants to retire you, you take that gun of yours—you’re not wearing one, I see, but you’ve got one, I imagine?”

  “Somewhere around,” I said.

  “You take that gun of yours and blow your brains out first before you let them retire you. That’s my advice.” He spat into the slow-moving canal.

  “That’s how much you like being retired, is it?”

  “Yep,” he said. “They gave me a watch, they gave me a fair little pension, and they even gave me this old caboose. But it don’t make up for not having a job. Not half.”

  “And you don’t have a gun?” I felt shamed to ask.

  “I’ve got a gun, all right, a big, hawg-leg thing of a pistol. But I haven’t got the guts to use it. And that’s a hard thing to live with too.”

  “You’ll manage somehow,” I said, “and so will I when the time comes. Let me ask you something, Mr. Barton. What did you think of Olga?”

  “Not much. As I say, she came out here maybe a year ago to see her mother. Seemed to me she was all tits and seventy-five-cent words. Tough as day-old hardtack on the surface and not much softer underneath. One thing stuck in my mind about her.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ambition. She was maybe a hundred and twenty-five pounds of walking, talking ambition. She had the gimme’s and gotta’s so bad she couldn’t sit still. She wasn’t here any more than three hours before she was up and off. Wasn’t any way at all that hanging around this dump was going to get her where she wanted to go.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Somewhere, anywhere. You know, I told you I only met her once, but I’ve seen her since. About six months ago I was in San Francisco, and I found myself down in North Beach. I had some time to kill before I caught the bus, so I went into The Jungle for a drink and a peek at Olga at work. There wasn’t much of a crowd, it being a Tuesday night, so I sat right up at the bar, and some girl with no shirt on took two dollars off of me for a shot of bad rye and a beer chaser. After a while Olga came on.”

  “And?”

  “It wasn’t worth the buck fifty, not even if I was half my age.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “I doubt it. As far as I know, all she could see was herself in those big mirrors.”

  Just then, Maggie Barton came down the steps of the caboose with two mugs of steaming tea balanced on top of a rosewood writing box. She’d changed to an old pair of blue jeans and a checked cotton shirt and looked more like herself.

  Old Barton and I took the mugs and made appreciative noises over the good, strong, milky tea. “Did you find the name?” Barton asked.

  “Yes,” she said, but she wasn’t rushing to give it to me. She had her arms wrapped around the box as if it contained atomic secrets.

  “Well?” said Barton impatiently. I couldn’t have said it better.

  “It does seem to me, Jim,” she said, “that we ought to get something for it. This guy’s probably making a fortune.”

  “Give it to the man, woman,” he said in a voice that didn’t take to argument.

  “Oh, all right,” she said, opening the box narrowly and throwing a pale-blue envelope in my lap. “This is fifteen years old, and he might not even be alive now.”

  That’s logic for you: try to bargain a good price and then when you fail to get it, knock the merchandise. I picked the envelope out of my lap and saw that it was addressed to Miss Olga Dombrowitz at an address in West Pittsburg. I turned it over and in a fine Italic hand faded to a whispery gray was the name Antonio Scarezza.

  She was right. I didn’t know if Scarezza was still alive, either. But when I was cutting my teeth on a nightstick, he was the biggest man in the dock rackets. Only then he was called Tony Scar.

  14

  It was late afternoon by the time I’d driven back to San Francisco. It seemed just about the right time to go see Doc Irving, the weeping physician. His office wasn’t hard to find. It was in the heart of the Ocean Avenue shopping district in an anonymous, chlorine-green building set back from the sidewalk and guarded by two sick-looking palm trees. A small brass plate next to the bell told me his name was still Fletcher Irving, M.D., and that he saw patients By Appointment Only. That’s all.

  I gave the bell a discreet push, and after a short interval a woman’s fuzzy voice came out of a small grille at about Adam’s apple level: “Yes? Who is it?”

  “The name is Goodey,” I said, stooping slightly. “I have an appointment with Dr. Irving.”

  There, was a short, muffled consultation about that, and then a man’s voice said, “This is Dr. Irving, Mr.—?”

  “Goodey,” I told the grille, “Joe Goodey. I’m the detective you met earlier today at Holy Martyrs Cemetery. You said to come see you.”

  Doc Irving switched off, and I could tell that he was wondering how to get rid of me. He didn’t have a chance.

  “Mr., ah, Goodey,” his voice crackled, “couldn’t you—”

  “No, I couldn’t, Dr. Irving,” I said in a very loud voice, “and there’s a crowd of people out here on the sidewalk beginning to wonder why I’m yelling at your front door.” There really wasn’t much of a crowd, but I could guarantee to get one in a hurry.

  After a short pause for thought, he said, “Very well, come up then.” A buzzer sounded, and the thick, oak-veneer door cracked open.

  The staircase going straight up from the front door was carpeted
in something like cashmere, and the wallpaper was that nubby stuff rich doctors and society matrons seem to favor. The stairway lamp was a discreet fleur-de-lis shape with a soft light which would be flattering to less-than-perfect complexions.

  Standing at the top of the stairs was Dr. Irving. He was wearing a smart, off-white surgical coat and looked considerably improved over the last time I’d seen him. His eyes were only slightly red at the edges, and his homely, youthful face with its cartoon-button nose looked most professional and even suave. He gave me a shy smile. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I gave it back to him.

  “Mr. Goodey,” he said, blocking the door behind him at least semi-intentionally, “what can I do for you?” He put out a hand in a gesture which was half greeting and half stiff-arm. I took his hand, smiled winningly, and, without being too obvious about it, maneuvered it and him through the doorway and into the anteroom of his offices. It looked as plush as the stairs, maybe a little better, and a girl was sitting in it on an expensive leather sofa looking at us.

  She was perhaps twenty-seven years old, dark-haired, and well-built in a modest way. She had the face of a girl who’d lived a lot but hadn’t let it get her down. There was something in her eyes—I couldn’t make out the color in the dead light of the anteroom—that said she knew what she wanted. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I, but I filed her away for future reference.

  Irving didn’t look too happy to have me cluttering up his place, but he didn’t offer to throw me down the stairs, either. So I quietly stood there waiting for his next opening. Pretty soon the tension got to him.

  “What do you want, Mr. Goodey?”

  “I want to know what your relationship was with Tina D’Oro and why you were so broken up at her funeral today. And if she meant so much to you, why didn’t you join us at the graveside instead of lurking out there in the bushes?”

  That was a lot all at once for him, and he reddened up and looked as though he was going to brim over again. But he swallowed instead, raised up on his toes a little and did his best to look me in the eye. That’s not really a very big job, but the doc wasn’t up to his best form.