Night Lady

by William Campbell Gault

  He went away stiffly and Deborah looked at me sadly. “High school fullback at his first party. Adolescent.”

  “Yes’m. I don’t like to be patronized by servants.”

  “You and Sheila Gallegan,” she said. “You two are your own worst enemies.”

  “Possibly. Neither of us has been driven to a headshrinker’s couch, yet, though.” She colored and looked away.

  I said quickly, “I apologize. That was a cruel and stupid thing to say and I wish you were a man so you could hit me for it.”

  “I’ll think of something,” she promised. “Do you want anything to eat?”

  “I could use a sandwich. How about you?”

  “Cold turkey,” she said. “I phoned Greg this time, to break the date.”

  I frowned. “You mean you had a date with him tonight, too?”

  She nodded, studying me.

  I said, “Greg has sent me quite a lot of work in the past. You fixed me.”

  “I have a number of friends,” she said, “who occasionally have need of a man of your unique talents. They’ll more than make up any losses you’ll suffer through Gregory Harvest.”

  “You said you were lonely,” I reminded her “and now I learn you already had a date when you told me that.”

  “Being with Greg can be lonelier. We’re fighting again, Joe.”

  I ordered a pair of turkey sandwiches and coffee. We had finished that and were working on some whiskey sours when Greg Harvest came in. There was a blonde with him, a girl in a white sheath dress and a mink stole.

  I looked over to find Deborah watching me. I said, “The mink would be cerulean, I suppose. And you staged this, didn’t you?”

  Her stare was perplexed. “Are you crazy? Staged what?”

  “Greg bringing the blonde, dressed like that. A little trick you two cooked up to heckle me.”

  “Greg …?” She looked around the room and saw him. She took a deep breath and looked back at me. “I swear to you I had nothing to do with Greg and his girl.”

  “Murder is nothing to base a gag on,” I said.

  “Of course not. How monstrous do you think I am? Damn you, Joe Puma, apologize!”

  “I apologize,” I said quietly. “But I’ll bet it was his idea of a gag. Is that the shade of mink that’s called cerulean?”

  She nodded. “It’s cerulean. He’s coming over.”

  I turned to see him heading our way. He had left the blonde at the table. His cherubic face was genial and his curly hair looked as though it had just been washed. The All-American boy.

  “Well, well,” he said jovially. “Business, I hope?”

  I nodded. Deborah asked, “Who’s the blonde?”

  “Isn’t she striking? She’s a model for Regal Furs. Certainly you’re not jealous, Deb?”

  “A little,” she said. “You mean a lot to me, Greg. And I mean a lot to you, don’t I? Thousands.”

  His face stiffened.

  I asked him, “A gag, Greg? If it is, it’s in horrible taste.”

  He looked at me blankly. “Gag — ?”

  “The white sheath dress and the cerulean mink stole,” I explained. “Was that all for me? Or perhaps a publicity gag?”

  I thought I saw sudden perspiration on his forehead. He said earnestly, “Believe me, I never even thought of it. My God, it’s not that uncommon a combination.”

  There was a moment of embarrassed silence all around. Then Deborah said, “I guess we — jumped to the wrong conclusion, Greg. It was nice seeing you.”

  That last sentence had been a clear dismissal. He stared at her sickly and glared at me. He mumbled something and went back to his table.

  “Doesn’t it give you a wonderful sense of power?” I asked her.

  She didn’t answer. She looked past me at the blonde and sipped her drink.

  And then Alden Poltice came on and he was good for both of us. He had an off-beat sense of humor, never vulgar, occasionally beyond me, timely, satirical and beautifully venomous.

  When he had finished, I was almost human again, and the well-washed and delicately perfumed people around me looked human, too. That was what the world needed, more humorists and fewer nuclear physicists.

  I had told Deborah about my losing fight on the drive over. I had told her everything else I had learned today. There was no reason for us to prolong the evening.

  I asked, “Ready to go?”

  “Aren’t we going to dance?”

  “On that postage stamp floor? When I dance, I want room. The Palladium, that’s my kind of floor.”

  “Let’s go,” she suggested. “I’ve never been there.”

  “Of course you haven’t. That’s for common people. It’s a dance hall, Deborah.”

  “I know what it is,” she said. “Les Green is there. Please, Joe?”

  So that’s where we went, to the workingman’s Ciro’s, and Les Green had never been better and Deborah danced like a dream and for a few hours I could almost believe it was just another enjoyable Saturday night with one of my girls, this one a little more attractive than the rest.

  What was left of the illusion died as I drove her up past the Lombardy poplars to the front door. The maid was there to open the door, and I said good-night without kissing her, and she told me gravely that she had never had a better time and couldn’t I come for dinner tomorrow? They usually ate Sunday dinner around four o’clock.

  I hesitated, hating to be rude.

  “Forget your terrible pride and your inverse snobbery,” she asked softly. “Please, Joe?”

  “You deserve better company,” I said, “but I’ll be here.”

  “Come early,” she said. “We can swim. In the morning, if you want to.”

  “I’ll come around one o’clock,” I promised. “I’m going to sleep in the morning.”

  I parked in the garage tonight, and walked along through the open court toward the steps that led to my apartment. There was a woman sitting in the big canvas chair in the court. She was dozing, stirring in her sleep.

  It was two-thirty in the morning and I wondered if she was drunk. There was only one bulb in the court, a small, yellow, insect-repellent light.

  She must have heard my steps on the concrete of the court, for she sat up quickly and I saw who it was. It was Mike Petalious’ woman.

  I walked closer. People were sleeping in the apartments all around us, so I whispered, “Were you waiting for me?”

  She whispered back, “That’s right. You got Mike in trouble, didn’t you? Why?”

  “I didn’t get him in trouble, Miss Quintana,” I said.

  “Yes you did, nosing around. You even learned my name, I see. The police are holding Mike. Why? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Ask them,” I said, “not me.”

  “What did he ever do to you? To anybody?”

  “He broke Adonis’ arm. What does a guy have to do these days to get four duplexes and two triplexes? Whatever it is, Mike did it. And I would bet he sent those two slobs that worked me over, not being man enough to come himself.”

  “You talk like you hate him,” she said. “Why?”

  “I don’t hate him. Why did you come here? What do you want from me?”

  “I want to know what it’s all about. Mike and I never had any trouble before. Mike wrestled and the fans loved it and the police weren’t interested in us or in wrestling. And now they are. And it started with you, you and Adonis. And Adonis could be cutting his own throat, having the police look into wrestling.”

  “Anything crooked is going to be looked into from time to time,” I said. “It will blow over and you’ll have your Mike back. Just sit it out.”

  “Maybe it won’t blow over,” she said. “I want to know who’s behind you. Everything was comfortable and fun before you came along.”

  “The law is behind me,” I said. “The Los Angeles Police Department. You ask Sergeant Macrae about that.”

  A window opened somewhere and a feminine voice said, “Fo
r heaven’s sakes, it’s two-thirty in the morning. Can’t you find a better place to talk?”

  Mike’s woman glared at me and I looked at her. I whispered, “Go home and get some sleep. If Mike isn’t involved in the murder, he’ll be released. There’s nothing I can do for you.”

  She called me something then, but I didn’t understand it. It sounded like Spanish and it was probably a good thing I didn’t understand Spanish. She stood up, and reached out to slap my face.

  ‘That’s right, sister, somebody called. “Don’t let him get away with anything. He’s got a wife and three kids.”

  She stalked off through the front of the court, toward the street and I went up to my apartment. Women….

  She sits there in that cold court until two-thirty in the morning so she can slap my face. The fat and easy life hadn’t been threatened; with two triplexes and four duplexes, did Mike need wrestling any more? What had bothered her?

  His being in jail, probably. A Quintana bedded down with a wrestler was bad enough, but now Mike was in the clink and her relatives would read about that. That would make the newspapers. The other things he had done hadn’t been in the newspapers, not the wrong things.

  I warmed some milk and drank it. My face was still red from where she had slapped me and my ribs were still red from where the hoodlums had kicked me. I was too tired to hate any of them. I went right to sleep.

  I got out of bed at ten and looked out the window to see that the overcast was just starting to get burned off by the sun.

  I scrambled four eggs with cream, toasted some raisin bread and made a full pot of coffee to go with the Sunday paper. The paper was the Times. The Los Angeles Times. They do love to compare themselves to The New York Times but they are to The New York Times what Elmer Kenilstube is to Dizzy Dean. In case you never heard of Elmer Kenilstube, he pitched for Elkville in the Dakota League and set a record, losing sixteen consecutive games.

  So a lousy paper, but still the best in this town and the coffee was good. My time wasn’t completely wasted. They had increased their total book coverage from one to a generous two pages and it wasn’t the football season, so the sport pages were almost readable. During the football season, eighty percent of the sport page coverage is devoted to UCLA and SC and why they are overlooked by the eastern writers.

  On the murder, there was nothing I didn’t know, except I hadn’t known a photographer had taken a picture of me when I was unconscious on that empty lot. There was a picture of Sheila Gallegan crying too, and a statement from Sergeant Macrae that encouraging progress was being made on the case.

  Encouraging to whom? The killer?

  I turned to the drama section and read about the stars, the feminine stars. I do love to read about them and imagine myself in their lives, dancing and like that. On the stars, the Times does an adequate job. American stars, I mean, and the skinny Italian ones. Those big Italian stars you can have, all tits and guts.

  The sun was completely through the overcast by the time I finished the Sunday paper and the thought of Huntington’s pool was pleasant. And some Huntington chow; I didn’t have it so bad. She was kind of a star. She’d had some good bits.

  Curt Huntington was in the pool when I got there. He was slim but beautifully muscled, tanned and lithe and he swam like a champion. Which I later learned he had been, a collegiate champion.

  Deborah in her suit was no surprise; I had seen her in less than that. I could understand why Gregory Harvest could get adolescent about her. All that and money, too; it would be enough of a loss to break the hearts of stronger men than pretty Gregory Harvest.

  Like rich people should, we idled the hours away, drinking gimlets, smoking, lolling, swimming, yacking. And being with her like that, against this background, it was hard to believe about her the things a man simply had to believe.

  I’d had personal experience with her beyond the hearsay. And I am not young enough to believe that a girl who succumbs too quickly to me hasn’t succumbed as quickly dozens of times before.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t a sin. Who am I to judge? But when it gets to be a compulsion it is sure as hell as much of a degradation as any other compulsion, including overeating.

  She had to go to the kitchen to tell the cook something about dinner and her brother said, “I think she’s going to be all right, don’t you? Duncan was very close to us, and I was afraid she would take his death too hard.”

  “I think she’s going to be all right,” I answered.

  He took a breath and stared at the still water in the pool. “She’s essentially innocent, Deborah is. She’s a wonderful girl.”

  “I’m beginning to get along with her,” I said. “She sure as hell can be charming when she wants to be, can’t she?”

  He nodded. “She doesn’t want to be, often. We grew up with some very dull friends and almost any kind of charm is wasted on them.” He lighted a cigarette. “She likes you. She likes you a lot.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I know my place.”

  “I like you, too,” he said, “and I can make you a new place any time you ask me to. You’d be good for Deborah.”

  “Whoa!” I said. “Back up, Mr. Huntington. Jesus, this isn’t my league at all.”

  “You underrate yourself,” he said mildly. “You’re intelligent and more literate than you like to admit, and kind and strong and extremely amiable when you want to be.”

  I grinned. “All that I admit. But I am also lower middle class and proud of it, and I’m my own man and proud of it. I couldn’t ever live on anyone’s money but my own.”

  “You wouldn’t have to. You’re thinking emotionally, Joe. And that’s a bad habit. It has stymied millions of men, men of ability. It’s what distinguishes the lions from the lambs.”

  I stretched out and said nothing. I looked at the big house and the beautiful grounds all around and the bright sky overhead. Had he ever talked like this to Greg Harvest, I wondered?

  I said, “That Gregory Harvest certainly carries the torch, doesn’t he? He’s almost pathetic.”

  “He’s just pathetic enough to frighten me,” Curt said, “if you know what I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean, because he scares me, too.”

  Then Deborah was back and she asked, “Who scares you? This is a man I want to see.”

  “Mike Petalious,” I said. “The man who broke Adonis Devines arm. His girl friend was waiting for me when I got home last night.”

  Deborah’s voice was cool. “Oh?”

  I told them about it, including the remarks from the audience.

  Deborah said, ‘Wasn’t she a Quintana?”

  “She still is,” Curt answered. “Mike hasn’t gotten around to marrying her, yet.”

  “Juanita,” Deborah said thoughtfully, “Juanita Quintana. She went to Lindsay Hall. Tall girl.”

  “Big girl,” I said, “but beautifully proportioned. Girl would be the wrong word for her; she’s all woman.”

  “I’m sure you’d know,” Deborah said. “It’s time to get ready for dinner. We — don’t eat in our swimming clothes, Joe.”

  Curt winked at me and I kept a straight face. “Yes, Miss Huntington. Thank you. I have to be cued in on the mores of the upper classes.”

  She didn’t smile. “How long did she stay?”

  “Long enough,” I said. “Let’s get dressed.”

  It was absurd. It was like a high school crush. I had known her three days. What kind of compulsion was this? It wasn’t as though she needed to grab any man who came along. Even if she hadn’t had money, she wouldn’t have to push. She had the figure, the face, the charm, the lure. Add a few millions to that, and what would she need Joe Puma for?

  Not that I’m repulsive, but even at the Palladium I had never made out like this. Of course, at the Palladium, they don’t care if you’re big and strong and arrogant. Those skinny, little, smooth guys make out even better at the Palladium.

  Juanita Quintana…. Had she found t
he Lindsay Hall girls dull, too? And the rest of her childhood friends? What did Mike Petalious have that her friends had lacked? I had known a number of rich people and a distressing majority of them were dull, but so were most middle and lower class citizens. If you have to be bored, money would be more help than hindrance, I should think. I’d be willing to try it, anyway. If you can afford good booze, who can bore you?

  Dinner was guinea hen and wild rice; the salad dressing had a number of ingredients I couldn’t identify and the salad itself had two, but it was all heavenly.

  We were on the cognac when Curt was called to the telephone. He came back to tell me, “I’ve got the name you asked me to get for you now — Arnold Giampolo. Recognize it?”

  “Vaguely. Owned a couple fighters, didn’t he?”

  Curt smiled. “And a few oil wells and some buildings downtown.”

  “Did you get an address?”

  He smiled, and handed me a slip of paper. “It’s all there, courtesy of Attorney Gregory Harvest.”

  “And where did he get it?”

  “He didn’t say. I can call him back and ask him, if you want.”

  “No. I guess it isn’t important. I can always ask him later, in case this Giampolo plays it dumb.”

  “Tell me,” Curt said wonderingly, “what do you do when you go up against a man of that stature? You certainly can’t walk in cold and call him a crook.”

  “I’ll have to feel my way,” I answered. “To tell you the truth, it will be the first time I went up against a man that big. Financially, I mean. I’ll just have to fish and wait for a reaction.”

  Curt said, “The reaction could be delayed and violent, too, couldn’t it?”

  I nodded. “That’s my only excuse for charging a hundred dollars a day. On an efficiency basis, I’d never get that much.”

  He didn’t say any more about that. They couldn’t understand a job like mine, and I have friends who feel the same way about it. The whole profession has a bad smell to outsiders and it’s loaded with discredited cops and seniority-soured FBI men.

  Greg Harvest came after dinner and some other people, and it gave me an excuse to leave. Deborah gave me a little argument about that, but not too much. I had a feeling she didn’t seriously care whether I was there or not so long as we couldn’t be alone.