“His mother seems to have shared that idea. Any particular reason for it?”
“I don’t know. She knows so much about him, more than she’s ever admitted to herself.”
“That’s a hard saying.”
“It’s true. These pre-Freudian women know it all, but they never say it, even in their thoughts. Their whole lives are dressing for dinner in the jungle. That’s my father’s phrase. He teaches philosophy at Brown.”
“Who was this woman, the one Charles ran away with?”
“A tall woman with yellow hair, and very beautiful. That’s all I know about her. They were seen together in the bar at the hotel, the night he left. The parking lot attendant saw them drive away in his car.”
“It doesn’t necessarily mean he ran away with her. It sounds more like a pickup.”
“No. They had been living together all summer. Charles has a mountain cabin on the Sky Route, and the woman was seen there with him nearly every weekend.”
“How do you know?”
“I talked to a friend of Charles’s who lives in the same canyon. Horace Wilding, the painter—you may have heard of him. He was very reticent, but he did tell me that he’d seen the woman there with Charlie. Perhaps if you talked to him? Since you’re a man?”
I turned up the dash-lights and took out my notebook: “Address?”
“Mr. Wilding’s address is 2712 Sky Route, He has no telephone. He said she was beautiful, too.”
I turned to look at Sylvia, and saw that she was crying. Sitting quietly with her hands in her lap and tear-tracks bright on her cheeks. “I never cry!” she said fiercely. And then, not fiercely at all: “I wish I were beautiful, like her. I wish I had yellow hair.”
She looked beautiful to me, and soft enough to put a finger through. Past the gentle outline of her body, I could see the lights of Arroyo Beach. Between the highway neons and the dotted line of lights hemstitching the shore, the spotlit dome of the great hotel swelled like a captive balloon. Beyond it the moon was rising like a smaller white balloon dragging a cable of light across the sea’s surface.
“If you want to be a blonde,” I said, “why don’t you bleach your hair like all the other girls?”
“It wouldn’t do any good. He wouldn’t even notice.”
“You’re in love with Charlie.”
“Of course I am,” as if every young girl in her senses fell in love with Charlie. I waited for her to go on, and she did: “From the first time I saw him. When he came back to Harvard after the war, he spent a weekend with us in Providence. I fell in love with him, not he with me. I was only a child. He was nice to me, though.” Her voice sank to a confidential murmur: “He read Emily Dickinson with me. He told me he wanted to be a poet, and I thought I was Emily, I really did. All through college I let myself imagine that Charles would come for me and marry me. Of course he never did.
“I saw him a few times, once for lunch in Boston, and he was charming to me and that was all. Then he went home, and I never heard from him. Last spring when I graduated, I decided to come west and see him. Mrs. Singleton was looking for a companion, and my father secured the position for me. I thought if I was in the house with Charles he might fall in love with me. Mrs. Singleton rather approved. If Charles had to marry anyone, she preferred someone she could manage.”
I looked into her face and saw that she was perfectly sincere. “You’re a strange girl, Sylvia. Did you really talk it over with Mrs. Singleton?”
“I didn’t have to. She left us together whenever it was possible. I can recognize a fact. Father says that a woman’s chief virtue is the ability to see what is under her nose. And when she tells the truth about what she sees, that is her crowning glory.”
“I take it back. You’re not strange. You’re unique.”
“I think I am. But Charles didn’t. He wasn’t even at home very much, so I had no decent chance to make him fall in love with me by propinquity. He spent most of his time in his cabin, or driving around the state. I didn’t know about the woman then, but I think she fits in with what he was trying to do. He was trying desperately to break away from his mother and her money and create a life of his own. Mrs. Singleton had all the money, you see, even before her husband died. He was the old-fashioned type of rich woman’s husband: yachtsman and polo player, and errand boy for his wife. Charles had different ideas from his father. He believed that he and his class were out of touch with reality. That they had to save their individual souls by going down to the bottom of things and starting all over.”
“Did he?”
“Save his soul, you mean? He tried. It turned out to be harder than he thought. This summer, for instance, he worked as a tomato-picker in the valley. His mother offered him the managership of a ranch, but he wouldn’t take it. Of course he didn’t last very long. He had a fight with a foreman and lost his job, if you could call it a job. Mrs. Singleton almost died when he came home with his face all swollen and blue. I almost died, too. But Charles seemed to take a certain satisfaction from it.”
“When was this?”
“In July, a few weeks after I came. The middle of July.”
“Where did the fight take place?”
“On a ranch near Bakersfield. I don’t know exactly.”
“After that, did he stay here until the first of September?”
“Off and on. He was often away on trips for two or three days at a time.”
“Do you think he’s off on another trip this time?”
“He may be. If he is, I don’t believe he’s coming back this time. Not ever. Not of his own accord.”
“Do you think he’s dead?” The question was blunt, but Sylvia could take it. Under her air of gentle bewilderment, she had strong reserves.
“I’d know it if he were dead. I don’t believe he’s dead. I believe he’s made his final break with his mother, and the money from his great-grandfather’s land grant.”
“Are you sure you want him to come back?”
She hesitated before she spoke: “At least I must know that he’s safe and living a kind of life that won’t destroy him. For a man who shot down enemy planes during the war, he’s such a child, such a dreamer. The wrong woman could break him.” She drew in her breath sharply. “I hope I don’t sound melodramatic.”
“You sound very good to me. But you may be letting your imagination run away with you.” I saw that she wasn’t listening, and stopped.
Her mind was moving on a remote curve that she was trying to plot in words: “He felt so guilty about the money he’d never worked for, and doubly guilty because he was disappointing his mother. Charles wanted to suffer. He saw his whole life as an expiation. He would choose a woman who would make him suffer.”
Against the moonlight her face had a virgin bleakness. The softness of her mouth and chin was broken by angular shadows.
“You know what sort of woman she was, then.”
“Not really. All my information is third-hand. A detective interviewed the bartender at the hotel, and told Mrs. Singleton about the woman. She told me.”
“Come down there with me,” I said. “I’ll buy you a drink. I think you could use a drink.”
“Oh no. I’ve never been in a bar.”
“You’re twenty-one.”
“It isn’t that. I have to go in now. I always read her to sleep. Good night.”
When I leaned across to open the door for her, I could see the tears on her face like spring rain.
CHAPTER 13: A pair of Filipino bell-hops in maroon uniforms gave me an interested look as I went in, and lost interest immediately. Under a Moorish arch opposite the hotel entrance, an assistant manager stood behind the reservations desk like a tuxedoed saint in a niche. Over an arch in the far corner, a neon sign spelled out Cantina in red script. I made my way through the potted-palm formality of the lobby and out to a patio planted with banana trees. Couples loitered in their shade. I crossed to the bar in a hurry.
It was a large L-shaped room decorated
with bullfight posters, blue with smoke, pounding with monkeyhouse din. White female shoulders, dinner jackets black, blue, and plaid, swayed and gesticulated three deep at the long bar. The men had the unnaturally healthy, self-assured faces of sportsmen who had never really had to take a chance. Except perhaps on their women. The women’s bodies looked more conscious than their heads. Somewhere behind the walls, an orchestra started a samba rhythm. Some of the shoulders and dinner jackets were lured away from the bar.
There were two bartenders working, an agile Latin youth and a thin-haired man who kept a sharp eye on the other. I waited until their business had slacked off, and asked the thin-haired man if he was the regular bartender. He gave me the impervious stare of his trade.
“Sure thing. What are you drinking?”
“Rye. I’d like to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead, if you can think of a new one.” His hands went on working of their own accord, filling a shot-glass for me and setting it out on the bar.
I paid him. “About Charles Singleton, Junior. You saw him the night he disappeared?”
“Oh, no.” He glanced up at the ceiling in mock despair. “I tell it to the sheriff. I tell it to the reporters. I tell it to the private dicks.” His eyes returned to my level, gray and opaque. “You a reporter?”
I showed him my identification.
“Another private dick,” he lamented imperturbably. “Why don’t you go back and tell the old lady she’s wasting your time and her money? Junior blew with as stylish a blondie as you could hope to see. So why would he want to come back?”
“Why did he go away?”
“You didn’t see her. The dame had everything.” His hands illustrated his meaning. “That beast and junior are down in Mexico City or Havana having themselves a time, mark my words. Why would he come back?”
“You had a good look at the woman?”
“Sure. She bought a drink from me while she was waiting for junior. Besides, she was in with him a couple of times before.”
“What was her drink?”
“Tom Collins.”
“How was she dressed?”
“Dark suit, nothing flashy. Smart. Not the real class, but the next thing to it. She was a natural blonde. I could say this in my sleep.” He closed his eyes. “Maybe I am.”
“What color were her eyes?”
“Green or blue, or something in between.”
“Turquoise?”
He opened his own eyes. “One question covers a lot of ground in your book, friend. Maybe we should collaborate on a poem, only some other day. You like turquoise, I’ll say turquoise. She looked like one of those Polish kids I used to see in Chicago, but she was a long way off of West Madison, I can tell you that.”
“Does anything ever happen that you miss?”
That bought me another thirty seconds of him. “Not around here it doesn’t.”
“And junior definitely wanted to go with her?”
“Sure. You think she held a gun on him? They were stuck on each other. He couldn’t peel his eyes off of her.”
“How did they leave? By car?”
“So I understand. Ask Dewey in the parking lot. Only you better slip him a little change first. He doesn’t enjoy the sound of his own voice the way I do.” Recognizing a good cue-line, he moved out of my range.
I drank up, and went outside. The hotel faced the sea, across a palm-lined boulevard. The parking lot lay behind a row of small expensive shops on its landward side. Moving along the sidewalk, I passed a display of silver and rawhide pendants, two wax mannequins in peasant skirts, a window full of jade; and was hit between the eyes by the name Denise. It was printed in gold leaf on the plate-glass window of a hat shop. Behind the window a single hat hung on a stand by itself, like a masterpiece of sculpture in a museum. The shop was dark, and after a second’s hesitation, I went on.
Under an arc light at the corner of the parking lot there was a small green-painted shack like a sentry-box. A sign attached to its wall stated: The sole income of attendants consists of tips. I stood beside the sign and held a dollar in the light. From somewhere among the sardined ranks of cars, a little man appeared. He was thin and gray. Under his old Navy turtleneck the shoulder-bones projected like pieces of waterworn driftwood. He moved silently in canvas sneakers, leaning forward as if he were being dragged by the tip of his long sharp nose.
“Make and color? Where’s your ticket, mister?”
“My car’s parked around the corner. I wanted to ask you about another car. I guess you’re Dewey.”
“I guess I am.” He blinked his faded eyes, innocently contemplating his identity. The top of his uncombed gray head was on a level with my shoulder.
“You know a lot about cars, I bet.”
“I bet. People, too. You’re a cop, or I miss my guess. I bet you want to ask me about young Charlie Singleton.”
“A private cop,” I said. “How much do you bet?”
“One buck.”
“You win, Dewey.” I passed the money to him.
He folded it up small and tucked it in the watch pocket of the dirtiest gray flannels in the world. “It’s only fair,” he said earnestly. “You take up my valuable time. I was polishing windshields and I pick up plenty money polishing windshields on a Saturday night.”
“Let’s get it over with, then. You saw the woman he left with?”
“Absotively. She was a pipperoo. I seen her coming and going.”
“Say again.”
“Coming and going,” he repeated. “The blonde lady. She druv up about ten o’clock in a new blue Plymouth station-wagon. I seen her get out in front of the hotel. I was around in front picking up a car. I seen her get out of the station-wagon and go inside the hotel. She was a pipperino.” His gray-stubbled jaw hung slack and he closed his eyes to concentrate on the memory.
“What happened to the station-wagon?”
“The other one druv it away.”
“Other one?”
“The other one that was driving the station-wagon. The dark-complected one that dropped the blonde lady off. She druv it away.”
“Was she a colored woman?”
“The one that was driving the station wagon? Maybe she was. She was dark-complected. I didn’t get a good look at her. I was watching the blonde lady. Then I come back here, and Charlie Singleton druv in after a while. He went inside and come out with the blonde lady and then they druv away.”
“In his car?”
“Yessir. 1948 Buick sedan, two-tone green.”
“You’re very observant, Dewey.”
“Shucks, I often seen young Charlie riding around in his car. I know cars. Druv my first car back in 1911 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
“When they left here, which way did they go?”
“Sorry, chum, I can’t say. I didn’t see. That’s what I told the other lady when she asked me, and she got mad and didn’t give me no tip.”
“What other lady was that?”
His faded eyes surveyed me, blinking slow signals to the faded brain behind them. “I got to get back to those windshields. My time is valuable on a Saturday night.”
“I bet you can’t remember about the other lady.”
“How much you want to bet?”
“A dollar?”
“Double it?”
“Two dollars.”
“Taken. She come blowing in a few minutes after they left, driving that blue Plymouth station-wagon.”
“The dark-complected one?”
“Naw, this was another one, older. Wearing a leopardskin coat. I seen her around here before. She asked me about the blonde lady and young Charlie Singleton, which way they went. I said I didn’t see. She called me a iggoramus and left. She looked like she was hopping mad.”
“Was anybody with her?”
“Naw. I don’t remember.”
“The woman live around here?”
“I seen her before. I don’t know where she lives.”
I
put two ones in his hand. “Thanks, Dewey. One more thing. When Charlie drove away with the blonde, did he seem to be happy about it?”
“I dunno. He tipped me a buck. Anybody would be happy, going off with that blonde lady.” A one-sided grin pulled at his wrinkled mouth. “Me, f’r instance. I ain’t had nothing to do with female flesh since I left my old lady in the depression. Twenty years is a long time, chum.”
“It certainly is. Good night.”
Sniffing lonesomely, Dewey pointed his nose toward the rank of cars and followed it out of sight.
CHAPTER 14: I went back to the hotel and found a public telephone. According to the directory, the Denise Hat Shop was run by a Mrs. Denise Grinker whose residence was at 124 Jacaranda Lane. I called her home number, got an answer, and hung up.
The street twisted like a cowpath between the highway and the shore. Jacaranda and cypress trees darkened the road and obscured the houses along it. I drove slowly, in second gear, turning my flashlight on the house-fronts. It was a middle-class neighborhood subsiding into bohemian defeat. Weeds were rampant in the yards. Signs in dingy window corners advertised Handmade Pottery, Antiques, Typing: We Specialize in Manuscripts. The numerals 124 were painted in a vertical row, by hand, on the doorpost of a graying redwood bungalow.
I parked, and walked in under a shaggy eugenia arch. There was a rusty bicycle leaning against the wall on the front porch. The porch light came on when I knocked, and the door opened. A large woman wrapped in a flannel bathrobe appeared in the opening, one hip out. Because her hair was caught up in metal curlers, her face looked naked and very broad. In spite of that, it was a pleasant face. I could feel my frozen smile thaw into something more comfortable.
“Mrs. Grinker? My name is Archer.”
“Hello,” she said good-humoredly, looking me over with large brown eyes a little the worse for wear. “I didn’t leave the darn shop unlocked again, touch wood?”
“I hope not.”
“Aren’t you a policeman?”
“More or less. It shows when I’m tired.”
“Wait a minute.” She brought a leather case out of the pocket of her bathrobe and put on tortoise-shell spectacles. “I don’t know you, do I?”
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