The Zebra-Striped Hearse

by Ross Macdonald

  “When did you last see Fawn?”

  “A couple weeks ago, I think it was at the Solitaire. She had some older fellow on the string and they were playing the machines, leastways she was. He kept buying silver dollars for her. Yeah, I’m pretty certain it was the Solitaire.”

  chapter 16

  SHOLTO DEPOSITED ME in front of the club and bumped away in his pickup. The main street of State Line was an unstable blend of small-time frontier settlement and big-time carnival. The lake seemed artificial seen from here: a man-made lake dyed a special shade of blue and surrounded by papier-mâché mountains. In this setting it was hard to believe in death, and life itself was denatured.

  I went inside the club, where the late afternoon crowd were enjoying themselves, if gamblers can be said to enjoy themselves. They wheedled cards or dice like sinners praying to heaven for one small mercy. They pulled convulsively at the handles of one-armed bandits, as if the machines were computers that would answer all their questions. Am I getting old? Have I failed? Am I immature? Does she love me? Why does he hate me? Hit me, jackpot, flood me with life and liberty and happiness.

  A number of men and a few women were hanging around the bar. I waited my turn with one of the overworked bartenders and asked him where the security officer was.

  “I saw Mr. Todd on the floor a minute ago.” He scanned the big room. “There he is, talking to the character in the hat.”

  I made my way down one of the aisles of slot machines. Todd was an athletic-looking man in an open-necked shirt. He had iron-grey hair, iron-grey eyes, a face that had been humanized by punishment. The other man, who wore a white Stetson with a rolled brim, was drunk and fat and furious. He had been robbed, the machines were fixed, he’d see the management, invoke his influence with the governor.

  With gentle firmness Todd steered him to the front door. I stepped out after Todd, away from the din of the gamblers, and showed him my photostat. He smiled as he handed it back.

  “I used to be with the California Highway Patrol. Looking for somebody?”

  “Several people.” I gave him full descriptions of Campion and Harriet.

  “I don’t believe I’ve seen ’em, at least not together, I can’t be certain. The turnover in this place is something for the book. Sometimes I think it’s the bottleneck where the whole country passes through sooner or later.” His eyes were on the drunk, who was weaving across the street through light traffic.

  “Try something easier,” I said. “A girl named Fawn something. She’s a small girl with beautiful brown eyes, I’m told, pale blonde hair. Fawn has been seen in your place.”

  Todd said with more interest: “What do you want with her?”

  “I have some questions to ask her. She knew a man who was murdered in California.”

  “She involved?”

  “I have no reason to think so.”

  “That’s good. She’s a nice kid.”

  “You know her, do you?”

  “Sure. She’s in and out. Her last name’s King, I think, if she hasn’t remarried.”

  “Has she been in today?”

  “Not yet. She probably sleeps in the daytime.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know her that well. She used to work in the beauty parlor down the street. Try there. You’ll see it on the left a couple of blocks from here.”

  He pointed west toward California. I went that way, past gambling houses that resembled supermarkets with nothing to sell. The first effects of night were coming on. Though everything was clearly visible, the fronts of the buildings were stark in their nakedness, as if the light had lost its supportive quality.

  Marie’s Salon de Paris was closed. I knocked on the glass door. After a while a large woman emerged from a room at the back and minced toward me through the twilit shop.

  She turned on a light before she opened the door. Her hair was the color of a spectacular sunset, and she wore it low on her forehead in curled bangs, a dubious advertisement for her trade. Warm air smelling of chemicals and women drifted out past her.

  “I’m looking for a woman named Fawn King.”

  “You’re not the first. I hope you’ll be the last. Mrs. King doesn’t work here any more.”

  “Where can I put my hands on her?”

  It was a bad choice of expression. Her pouched eyes went over me coldly, including my hands. I tried again: “I happen to be a detective—”

  “She in trouble?” Marie said hopefully.

  “A friend of hers is in the worst kind of trouble. He’s dead. Stabbed with an icepick.”

  She brightened up alarmingly. “Why didn’t you say so? Come in. I’ll get you King’s address.”

  Fawn lived in an apartment house a mile or so west on the same road. I started to walk, but on the way I noticed a U-drive sign at a gas station. I rented a new-looking Ford that sounded elderly. The attendant said it was the altitude.

  The apartment house had a temporary atmosphere, like a motel. It was U-shaped and two-storied. The U enclosed the tenants’ parking lot, with its open end facing the street. I drove in and left the Ford in one of the white-marked slots.

  Fawn’s apartment was number twenty-seven on the second floor. I went up the outside steps and along the railed gallery till I found her door. There was music behind it, the sound of a woman singing a blues. It wasn’t quite good enough to be a record, and there was no accompaniment.

  The song broke off when I knocked. She appeared at the door, her face still softened by music. Her brown eyes held a puzzled innocence. Perhaps she was puzzled by her body and its uses. It was full and tender under her sweater, like fruit that has ripened too quickly. She held it for me to look at and said in a semiprofessional voice: “Hello. I was just practicing my blues style.”

  “I heard. You have a nice voice.”

  “So they all tell me. The trouble is, the competition here is terrif. They bring in recording stars, and it isn’t fair to the local talent.”

  “You’re a local girl?”

  “This is my third season. My third fabulous season. Which makes me an old-timer.”

  “And you want to be a singer?”

  “Anything,” she said. “Anything to get out of the rat race. Do you have any suggestions?”

  My usual line was ready, the one I used on aspiring starlets and fledgling nightingales and girls who hoped to model their way into heaven: I was from Hollywood, knew movie people, could help. Her puzzled innocence stopped me.

  “Just keep trying.”

  She regarded me suspiciously, as though I had flubbed my cue. “Did somebody send you?”

  “Ralph Simpson.”

  “What do you know? I haven’t heard from Ralph for it must be at least two months.” She stepped aside in a quick dancer’s movement. “Come in, tell me about him.”

  It was a hot-plate apartment containing a studio bed that hadn’t been made, an open portable record player, a dressing table loaded with cosmetic jars and bottles and a few paperbacked novels with young women like Fawn portrayed on their covers. The calendar on the wall hadn’t been changed since April.

  I sat on the studio bed. “When did you last hear from Ralph?”

  “Couple of months, like I said. He spent the night with me,” she went on routinely, “it must of been sometime around the middle of May. That was when he lost his job and didn’t have no place—any place to go. I lent him bus fare in the morning, haven’t seen him since.”

  “He must be a good friend of yours.”

  “Not in the way you think. It’s a brother-and-sister act between Ralph and me. We batted around together ever since we were kids in South San Francisco. He was like a big brother to me. Anyway, I wouldn’t take a married man away from his wife.”

  But she posed in front of me as if she was testing out her power to do this.

  “I’m not married,” I said.

  “I was wondering.” She sat on the bed beside me, so close I could feel her heat. “You don’t talk li
ke a married man and you don’t look like a bachelor.”

  “I had a wife at one time. She looked something like you.” “What was her name?”

  “I forget.” There was too much pain in the word, and this was no place to deposit it.

  “I don’t believe you. What happened to your wife?” Her brown eyes were attentive on my face. You’d have thought I was about to tell her fortune.

  “Nothing bad happened to her. She left me, but that wasn’t bad for her. It was bad for me. Eventually she married somebody else and had some kids and lived happily ever after.”

  She nodded, as if the story’s happy ending might somehow apply to her. “She left you on account of another woman, I bet.”

  “You’d lose your bet. I treated her badly, but not in that way.” The pain stirred like a Santa Ana wind in the desert back reaches of my mind. I’d begun to talk to the girl because she was there. Now I was there, too, more completely than I wanted to be. “Also,” I said, “she didn’t like my trade. At the moment I’m not too crazy about it myself.”

  “I wouldn’t care what a man did for a living. My ex was just a bookie, but I didn’t care. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  “How interesting.” But her body tensed, and her eyes glazed with distrust.

  “Relax,” I said. “If I was the kind of detective you’re afraid of, I wouldn’t be telling you about it, would I?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Good. You have no reason. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles.”

  “Ralph is interested in that kind of work, too. Is that how you know him?”

  “In a way. Let’s talk about Ralph. Can you tell me anything about that job he lost?”

  “He was a houseboy, more or less. He took jobs like that when he couldn’t get anything else. He worked for a mucky-muck up the lake. He showed me the house one night when the family was out. It was quite a layout.”

  “I’ve seen the Blackwell place.”

  “Blackwell. That was the name.”

  “How long did Ralph work for the Blackwells?”

  “A week or so. I didn’t keep tabs on him.” She smiled in her puzzled way. “I have enough trouble keeping tabs on myself.”

  “Why did they fire him?”

  “He didn’t tell me he was fired. He said he quit because he had what he wanted. Anyway, the family was going back down south.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They closed the lodge and went back to L.A. or wherever they live. Ralph thought they were going to stay longer, but they changed their minds.”

  “I mean I don’t understand about Ralph getting what he wanted.”

  “Neither do I. You know Ralph, he likes to act mysterious. Ralph Simpson, boy detective. It’s kind of cute.”

  “Was Ralph doing some sort of detective work at the Blackwell place?”

  “So he said. I don’t always buy a hundred per cent of what Ralph says. He goes to a lot of movies and sometimes he gets them mixed up with the things he does himself.” She added, with an indulgent glance at the paperbacks on the dressing table: “I do the same thing with stories sometimes. It makes life more exciting.”

  I brought her back to the subject: “Tell me what Ralph said.”

  “I couldn’t—my memory isn’t that good. The way he talked, it was all mixed up with the tragedy that happened to Dolly. That hit Ralph hard. He was very fond of Dolly.”

  “Are you talking about the Dolly who married Bruce Campion?”

  The force of the question pushed her off the bed away from me. She went to the far side of the room, which wasn’t very far, and stood beside the dressing table in a defensive posture.

  “You don’t have to shout at a girl. I have neighbors, remember. The management’s always breathing down my back.”

  “I’m sorry, Fawn. The question is important.”

  “I bet you’re working on Dolly’s murder, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Was Ralph?”

  “I guess he thought he was. But Ralph is no great operator. It’s time somebody with something on the ball did something. Dolly was a sweet kid. She didn’t deserve to die.”

  She looked up at the low ceiling, as if Dolly’s epitaph was also a prayer for herself. Tentatively, almost unconsciously, she drifted back across the room, stood over me with eyes like brimming pools.

  “It’s a terrible world.”

  “There are terrible people in it, anyway. Do you know Bruce Campion?”

  “I wouldn’t say I know him. Ralph took me out to their place once, when Dolly was living with him. She was crazy about him at that time. She followed him around like a little poodle.”

  “How did Campion treat her?”

  “All right. Actually he didn’t pay too much attention to her. I think he kept her around because he needed a model. He wanted me to model for him, too. I told him I hadn’t sunk that low yet, to pose for dirty pictures.”

  “He painted dirty pictures?”

  “It sounded like it to me. Dolly said he made her take her clothes off.” Her nostrils flared with righteous indignation. “I only know one good reason a girl should uncover herself in front of a man.”

  “Why did Campion marry her if all he wanted was a model?”

  “Oh, he wanted more. They always do. Anyway, he had to marry her. He got her pregnant.”

  “Did Dolly tell you this?”

  “She didn’t have to tell me. I could see it already when Ralph and I were out there.”

  “Do you remember when that was?”

  “It was along toward the end of last summer, late August or early September. They weren’t married yet, but they were talking about it, at least she was. Ralph brought along a bottle, and we drank a toast to their happiness. It didn’t do much good, did it? She’s dead, and he’s on the run.” She touched my shoulder. “Did he really kill her?”

  “All the evidence seems to point to him.”

  “Ralph said that isn’t so. He said there was other evidence, but the cops held back on it. He may have been telling the truth, or having one of his movie spells. You never can tell about Ralph, ’specially where one of his friends is concerned.” She drew a deep breath.

  “When did Ralph say these things to you?”

  Using her hand on my shoulder as a pivot, she sat down beside me. “The last night he was here. We sat up talking, after I got in.”

  “Did he tell you what the other evidence was?”

  “No. He kept his lips buttoned. The man of mystery.”

  “Did he show you anything?”

  “No.”

  “What did he have with him when he left here?”

  “Just the clothes that he stood up in. When he came up here he wasn’t planning to stay, but then he got this job.” She hesitated. “I almost forgot the bundle. He dropped this bundle off with me a day or two before his job folded. I wasn’t supposed to open it, he said. I felt it, though. It felt like it had clothes in it.”

  “What kind of clothes?”

  “I wouldn’t know. It was a great big bundle.” She opened her arms. “I tried to ask Ralph about it, but he wasn’t talking.”

  “Was it stolen goods, do you think?”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. Ralph’s no thief.”

  “What sort of a man is he?”

  “I thought you knew him.”

  “Not as well as you do.”

  She answered after a little thought: “I like Ralph. I don’t want to criticize him. He has a lot of good ideas. The trouble is, he never follows through on them. He keeps changing, because he can’t make up his mind what he wants to be. I can remember, when we were kids, Ralph was always talking about how he was going to be a big criminal lawyer. But then he never even made it through high school. It’s been like that all his life.”

  “How long has he known Campion?”

  “It goes ’way back,” she said. “Ten years or more. I think they were Army budd
ies in Korea. They did some talking about Korea the day Ralph took me out to the cabin.”

  “I’m interested in that cabin. Do you think you could find it again?”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  She looked at the leatherette-covered traveling clock on the dressing table. “I have a date. He’s due here any time.”

  “Stand him up.”

  “I got rent to pay, mister. Anyway, you won’t find Bruce Campion there. He only had the cabin for a while last summer. Somebody lent him the use of it.”

  “I still want to see it.”

  “Tomorrow. Buy me brunch tomorrow, and I’ll show you where it is. It’s real wild on that side of the lake. Buy some sandwiches and we’ll have a picnic.”

  “I like night picnics.”

  “But I have a date.”

  “How much do you expect to make out of him?”

  She frowned. “I don’t think of it that way. They give me money to gamble, that’s their business. Nobody says I have to throw it all away.”

  “I’m asking you how much a couple of hours of your time is worth.”

  She blinked her innocent eyes. “Twenty?” she said. “And dinner?”

  We set out in the rented Ford, along a road which branched north off the highway through thickening timber. Above the broken dark lines of the trees there were almost as many stars as I had seen in Mexico. The night was turning colder, and the girl moved over against me.

  “Turn on the heater, will you, mister? I don’t even know your name.”

  “Lew Archer.” I switched on the blower.

  “That’s a nice name. Is it your real one?”

  “Naturally not. My real name is Natty Bumpo.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Is there any such person as Natty What’shisname?”

  “Bumpo. He’s a character in a book. He was a great rifleman and a great tracker.”

  “Are you?”

  “I can shoot a rifle but as for tracking, I do my best work in cities.”