Sleepeasy

by Wright, T. M.

  When Harry arrived in Silver Lake he was wearing a rumpled brown trench coat over a threadbare, double-breasted gray suit. He also carried a snub-nosed .38 in a shoulder holster whose tight leather strap chafed him, so he was constantly rearranging it. A black fedora lay on the seat beside him. He glanced at it as he turned off his monster Buick's ignition. Did he have the chutzpah to wear the fedora? he wondered. He wasn't sure. He left it on the seat.

  Dusk was about to fall. No one was around except a woman sitting on a park bench. She had her back to him and was apparently looking at the lake.

  "The place is deserted," he said out loud, hoping that he wasn't taking her by surprise. 'Where the hell is everyone?"

  "In the lake," she answered, without turning her head toward him.

  She looked comfortable. Her legs were crossed, her face was tilted into the fading light, her bare arms rested on the top of the bench. Her auburn hair was down to her shoulders and her arms and legs had a good, even tan. Nice gams, Harry thought. She's a hot number.

  "Everyone's swimming?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "But I don't see anyone."

  She lifted her arm slightly and pointed to the other side of the small lake. Dusk had turned the water a tarnished silver, though it should have been rust-colored. "There's a beach," she said. "See it?"

  He looked. The lake seemed to be barely a mile across and if there had been a beach, he would have seen it, he thought. But he saw only a narrow band of green, probably a line of trees that were lush with summer foliage. "No," he said. "I don't see it."

  She let her arm drop. "It's there. It's very small." She looked at him. She was wearing sunglasses, but because of the slant of daylight, he could see that her eyes were brown. He thought he had seen those eyes before.

  She gave him a quick once-over and grinned. "What are you supposed to be?" she asked.

  The question took him aback. Wasn't it clear what he was supposed to be?

  She went on, "Aren't you hot in that trench coat?" He shook his head. "I don't get hot. I don't get cold either." What was he saying?

  She grinned again. "Really? That's quite a talent."

  "Yeah," he said. "It's a wild talent." He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat. The shoulder holster strap was chafing again, but he tried to ignore it. "My name's Harry Briggs," he said gruffly. "I'm looking for someone. I'm looking for a woman."

  "Is that right?"

  He nodded once, briskly. "Yeah, that's right."

  "And just who is it you're looking for, Mr. Briggs?" She smiled a little, as if at a private joke.

  Harry took the black and white snapshot out of his pocket and handed it over. "I'm looking for her."

  The woman glanced at the photograph, smiled—again as if at a private joke—and handed it back. "Who is she?"

  "Who is she?"

  "Yes. What's her name?"

  Harry wondered how candid he should be. He mistrusted this woman. He wasn't sure why. It was almost instinctive. He got the discomforting idea that she was playing games with him. "Babs," he said.

  "Babs? What an old-fashioned name. It's a very 1940s kind of name, isn't it?"

  "I'm a 1940s kind of guy."

  She nodded. "Of course you are, Mr. Briggs." She paused, then said, "Babs? That's short for Barbara, isn't it?"

  "Yeah, sure. I guess it is."

  "Babs, then." Another smile. "I'll go along with that. She's your missing person, after all."

  He didn't like her tone. "Listen, sister," he barked, "what I'd appreciate here is some cooperation. This is serious business."

  "Of course it is." She grinned.

  "And what I don't want is a lot of bullshit!"

  "I didn't realize that that was what I was giving you, Mr. Briggs. I apologize."

  He said nothing. He was surprised, and a little embarrassed, by his outburst.

  "Mr. Briggs," she said, "do you think that I'm a nun?"

  "Huh?"

  "You called me 'sister,' so clearly you believe I'm a nun." She paused. "I am most definitely not anun."

  He shrugged. "No, I don't think you're a nun. It was merely a term of salutation…"

  "Salutation. Of course." She grinned again.

  "Sure. Like 'buddy,' or 'mister.' If you don't like it, I won't use it."

  "That would be nice."

  He looked silently at her for a moment. She was a very combative person and he wasn't sure what he thought of that.

  He sat down next to her. The park bench rested on a gray concrete slab ten feet above the shoreline and there were several boat docks below. One of them held a red canoe, the others were empty. "Hell," he chirped, trying to strike an apologetic tone, "you don't look like a nun."

  "I'll take that as a compliment."

  "It was meant to be one." He turned his gaze to the silver lake and went on, "Okay, I'll tell you the truth." It was a lie. "I'm doing someone a favor." He noticed that she smelled slightly of baby oil. "I'm here to do a friend a favor." He leaned forward so his elbows were on his knees and his hands were clasped. Suddenly he felt like talking. This was something new for him. The only people he'd ever felt like talking to—opening up to—before had been his mother, a younger cousin and Barbara. He decided that it wouldn't be wise to indulge this urge to talk. It would also be very much out of character—out of character, at any rate, for a man in a trench coat and shoulder holster. He hurried on, though, unable to stop.

  "That's why friends exist, isn't it? So we can do favors for them. When one friend says to another, for instance, 'Hey, I like your new haircut,' it's a favor, even if the haircut is lousy." He grinned. "Because hair grows back, doesn't it? It's not something someone would say to a stranger. He'd say instead, 'Got a new haircut, huh?' Or we read a friend's short story and tell him it's good, or we put an arm around his shoulder when his cat dies, although we've avoided such physical contact before."

  He glanced at her and she smiled back. He liked her smile now. It was a familiar sort of smile. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm talking too much." He became stone-faced. "I don't usually." He looked at the lake once more. Its bright silver surface seemed illusory. He could have been looking at a mirage.

  "I get it," she said. "You're supposed to be a detective, right?"

  He nodded slowly. "Actually, miss, I'm a PI."

  "Of course you are," she said. "A PI." The whole exchange seemed to be tickling her. "A private dick."

  "Yeah," he whispered hoarsely. "Private dick." He reached inside the trench coat to readjust his shoulder holster. Maybe talcum powder would help the chafing, he thought. His fingers touched the cross-hatched grip of the snub-nosed .38. The gun felt heavy, alien, obscene.

  "My name's Amelia," the woman said. "And if you want to talk to me about this woman you're looking for, that's fine."

  Harry saw that her gaze was on the lake again, that her arms were still on the back of the park bench, her smooth, tanned legs still crossed. She wore a white, sleeveless shirt and white shorts, which set off her tan nicely. He stared at her for a few moments, hoping she'd look at him again, but she didn't.

  "I'm a kind of friend of this woman I'm looking for."

  "A friend of Babs-slash-Barbara, you mean?"

  "Yeah. That's what I mean."

  "And I'd say you were a very good friend, Harry, to have come so far."

  "How do you know how far I've come?" he asked.

  She inclined her head toward the monster Buick and answered, "Your license plates."

  "Oh. Well, actually, I know her husband and he hired me to come down here and find her."

  "And bring her back?"

  "If that's what she wants."

  "Then you really are a detective?"

  He nodded. "It's actually a second profession. I used to ... teach."

  "English?"

  "Philosophy."

  "Camus, Kierkegaard, Sartre?"

  He nodded glumly. "Uh-huh. But they didn't teach me nothin'."


  "So you don't teach anymore?"

  He shook his head and answered tersely, "I investigate."

  "Missing people?"

  "That's right."

  "Like ... Babs?"

  "That's right."

  "Judging from her photograph, Mr. Briggs, I'd say she's a beautiful woman. Does the photograph do her justice?"

  "Not really. She's a real hot number. A classy dame."

  "And a very lucky dame to have as capable a man as you looking for her."

  "That's what friends are for, miss."

  "You can call me Amelia."

  "Sure. Amelia."

  She looked at the lake again.

  Harry looked too. It was a darker silver now, nearly gray, no longer illusory. It looked like cement—he thought he could have walked on it—like the sad gray slab he and the woman were sitting on.

  Amelia said, "Isn't this a lovely spot? I come here almost every night. Sometimes I get in my party boat and go to the other side just before the day ends. The shoreline here looks like it's on fire when the day ends."

  "Do you know Babs?" he asked.

  She looked briefly at him, then at the lake again. "Of course I do, Harry. Everyone here knows her."

  "When I was a child I dreamed about growing up and going off to college and . . ."

  "When I was a child I used to get cardboard boxes and make little houses out of them. I'd cut holes for windows and tape the flaps up for the roofs and I'd get all my dolls—I had a couple dozen dolls—and I'd pretend that they lived in these houses and I was the one they were answerable to. Because I'd put them there, of course I could make them say and do and be precisely what I wanted. They were so malleable. They were like clay."

  "You wanted to be in control, huh?"

  "Of course. Don't all children want to be in control?"

  Chapter Five

  Sam Goodlow had never liked being a stranger. It was a cold and anxious thing to be. Strangers engendered unease, and he wanted to engender warmth, good feeling, kisses.

  "Hello," he said to the naked woman, and she turned her head and smiled at him, but then turned her head away and said nothing.

  He had seen this woman before, he realized. He didn't know her. But he'd seen her. Why was she being so coy?

  He said hello once more, but with the same results.

  He wanted to kiss her, fondle her, be a part of her, because she looked so warm and soft (and wasn't warmth and softness anathema to what existed everywhere else in the universe, and wasn't that what made it so tempting and good?). He stood, made his way across the grass to her, and cupped her butt cheeks in his big hands.

  "I'd like to swim," she said.

  He told her his name, but she didn't tell him hers, and he thought that he didn't need to know it anyway.

  "I'd like to swim," she said again. She wasn't looking at him. "You should see me dive!" she added, and still she wasn't looking at him.

  And he thought that he had seen her dive, but that it had gone badly.

  She remained as still as ice and he felt that he had intruded upon her, was a stranger. And he felt that it was this too—his strangeness—that was engendering her coldness toward him, and was making her no more alive than he was, though her butt cheeks were warmer than his hands, and she smelled of sweat and baby oil and blood.

  Chapter Six

  Amelia stood, went gracefully down a flight of cement steps to the narrow beach and disappeared behind dense underbrush that crowded the shoreline.

  Harry saw her again a minute later. She was piloting a small, gaily colored, flat-bottomed party boat toward the opposite shore. She waved casually at him and he waved back. "Welcome to Silver Lake, Harry," she called, and he watched until she and her colorful boat were lost in the quickly gathering dusk.

  When he'd arrived in the little community, finding a parking space had been difficult. The Buick was as big as a tank and the roadways in Silver Lake weren't designed for such beasts. The other cars he'd seen were small. He had also noticed a few bicycles and several motorcycles, though these, like the cars, looked as if they were in various stages of disrepair.

  When he had found a parking lot, he'd had to use two spaces, otherwise the Buick's rear end would have blocked the roadway.

  He got into the Buick now, started the engine and turned on the headlights. They illuminated the park bench that he and Amelia had shared and, for a moment, he thought he saw her sitting there again, her arms up and her head thrown back slightly. But, he decided, this was only an illusion.

  The white sail of a boat coming in lay in his line of sight, through the slats of the bench. He decided to wait for it to dock so he could talkwith its owners.

  The owners were a couple in their early sixties, very fit-looking, dressed nattily for sailing and they smiled almost constantly. As they talked, an arc lamp above cast a hard green light. It seemed, from where Harry stood, to be the only street lamp burning in the community. It illuminated them, the cement slab and park bench, and fifty or sixty feet of the narrow beach and boat dock area. The silver gunwales of the red canoe caught the light, and Harry had to turn his head to avoid this harsh reflection as he talked with the old couple.

  The man repeated what Harry had already heard from Amelia: "Certainly we know Babs."

  The old man's wife nodded enthusiastically. "Babs is a very pleasant person, Mr. Briggs. Everyone likes her."

  "Sure," he said. "She's a classy dame."

  "As classy as they come," said the old woman, smiling.

  "You know, son," said the old man, "I haven't heard that phrase in years. It's rather archaic, you know."

  Harry shrugged. "Yeah, sure. I know..."

  "It takes me back. I used to talk like that myself once."

  Harry was growing very uncomfortable. The shoulder holster was chafing him, these people were apparently amused by him, Amelia was hiding something from him and his search for Barbara had gotten off to a very uneven start.

  He asked, "Do you have any idea where Babs might be staying?"

  "You mean, 'Where is she shacked up?'" said the old man, smiling toothily.

  The old woman answered, "Well, I'll tell you, young man, she was staying with the Alexanders, but they're no longer with us and I haven't seen her for a few weeks. I used to see her here, in fact. She liked to—"

  "Aren't you hot in that trench coat?" interrupted the woman's husband.

  "No," Harry answered tersely. "I don't get hot."

  "Really?" said the old man. "How interesting." He was bubbling with enthusiasm. "I'd be hotter than a chili pepper in a frying pan. I'd be hotter than a twenty-year-old sailor in Tijuana, hotter than a cat in heat in Haiti. Mr. Briggs, your trench coat and gun are very, very diverting."

  "Gun?" Harry asked.

  "The bulge is obvious," said the old woman.

  "Either it's a gun or you're just happy to see us," said her husband. "But, of course, your genitals would have to be sticking out of your rib cage, wouldn't they?" The old man was enjoying himself immensely.

  "As I was saying," chimed in the old woman, "Babs used to like to come here and look at the lake. All by herself, I mean—when the rest of the community was on the other side." She paused. "She was a loner, Mr. Briggs, just like you." She grinned the way Amelia had, as if at some private joke.

  "Not good to be a loner," the woman's husband said, smiling. "Indeed, look at us. Are we alone? No. We're together!"

  "Yes," Harry said, and then didn't know how to go on. These two were a very odd pair indeed.

  The woman asked, "Where are you staying, Mr. Briggs?"

  Harry moved his hand a little. "A motel."

  "And you've come to our little community specifically to look for Babs?" she continued, incredulously.

  Harry nodded. "Yes. Her husband asked me to come here."

  "What a friendly gesture," she said. "Doing her husband a favor." She paused, then said, "It's a wonderful gesture, Mr. Briggs. Perhaps you are not as alone as you believe."r />
  Her husband turned his head briefly toward the lake and said, "The others will be returning soon. Perhaps they can be more useful." He paused, looking back at the lake. "But Gilly and I have an early day tomorrow, so you'll have to excuse us." He leaned closer, as if to speak to Harry in confidence. "Your private eye schtick, Mr. Briggs, is very entertaining, but I think you may be overdoing it a tad. Loosen up. Private eyes aren't made of stone, you know. Look at Mike Hammer, Sam Spade. They're as human as any of us."

  With that, he and his wife hurried off down a little dead-end street that ran parallel to the lake shore and, like Amelia, were lost in the darkness.

  Amelia's People

  Chapter Seven

  The street lamps in the community blinked on with the arrival of the inhabitants of Silver Lake at the beach and boat docks. Green arc lights lit up everywhere, transforming the darkness into a bizarre kind of daylight. The people themselves—half a hundred of them—were odd to look at in this harsh light. Most of them were dressed in swimsuits, though some had apparently changed into their street clothes, and their skin looked as green as summer grass. Harry looked at his own hand. It had the same cast.

  He waited on the cement slab, in front of the park bench, as people docked their boats, gathered up their little tote bags and polystyrene beer coolers, their towels and inner tubes and swim fins. They seemed very animated—talkative and happy. As he waited, laughter sporadically erupted from various parts of the group. Several people who noticed him nodded and smiled. They didn't seem at all suspicious of the stranger in their midst, and this, oddly, made Harry a little uncomfortable.

  He centered on a dark-haired woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties and shouted, "I'm looking for a someone named Babs."

  A young man dressed in dark green shorts and a yellow short-sleeved shirt came up the cement steps. "I think that Babs is still on the other side," he said.

  "You mean at the beach?" Harry asked.

  The man nodded. "Uh-huh. That's where I saw her last. Sometimes she likes to simply look out at the lake. All by herself. Thinking, I guess. A real dreamer. But then, we all need to dream, Mr. Briggs."