The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of

by Joseph Hansen

  Dave went back to his seat. But what came up this time was Daisy Flynn seated in a little blue armchair between Cliff Kerlee, in a jumpsuit, and a gray-haired man Dave thought he knew, who wore a hand-loomed tweed jacket and went to an expensive barber. The camera dollied in on Daisy Flynn. She said, “Today we’re talking with two leaders of the local gay community, Richard T. Nowell, who began his work in 1953, and Cliff Kerlee, founder of Gay Action.” Smile. “Gentlemen, I know your reactions to Police Chief Ben Orton’s statement that we’ve just seen differ. How and why? Dick Nowell, will you start?” Cecil yelped from the booth. The film streaked past.

  Dave lit a cigarette in the dark and groped for and found the flip-up metal lid of a little ashtray in the arm of his seat. The screen took color again. The setting was as he’d remembered it—brown hump hills in the distance, in the foreground half-grown shade trees, plaques in the grass, long lines of uniformed men standing at attention, women in quiet clothes and gloves and hats, seated on metal folding chairs that faced a gunmetal coffin blanketed by a flag. Wreaths on easels. White wicker holders for tall sprays of gladiolus. A rank of rifles raised, jerking puffs of smoke. A bugler wincing into a twist of brass. The long, involved ceremonial folding of the coffin flag, its delivery into the hands of the widow. Uniformed son standing woodenly behind her chair. Tears leaking from under his dark glasses.

  Dave thought, Christ, I don’t even know what he wants. To be buried? Where? Maybe Amanda knows. No. He’d never talk death to Amanda.

  Dave called to Cecil, “Can you stop it there?” It stopped. A blond young woman on a chair next to Louise Orton had lifted her hand, turned her head, raised it slightly. “Now can you roll it very slowly?” It jerked ahead, frame by frame. The young woman’s hand inched upward. It found Jerry Orton’s hand, which rested on his mother’s shoulder. The young woman’s look searched the young man’s face. It was a tender look. “Hold it there, please?” The film stopped, the screen went dark. Cecil came out of the booth. Dave asked him, “That woman—do you know? Was that Anita Orton?”

  Cecil shook his head. “No way.”

  “It’s a big school,” Dave said, “and very white.”

  “That’s how I know. Black, you know all the blacks. I don’t mean know, but know—you know? And year before last, Anita Orton went with a black boy.”

  “Lester,” Dave said.

  “Lester Green,” Cecil said. “He made a mistake. Not a little mistake, a big mistake.”

  “And ended up in prison at Soledad,” Dave said.

  “She was nobody to fool with. Lester said, ‘I’m not fooling.’ Neither was her daddy. Five years for possession. Shit, Lester never blew pot. He wouldn’t stay in a room with it. No, that is not Anita Orton.”

  “I didn’t think it would be.” Dave stood up. “How crazy was he?”

  Cecil twisted his face. “Crazy? Lester? He was so square he couldn’t turn over in bed.”

  “He never wanted to burn it all down?”

  Cecil faked indignation, popped his eyes, flared his nostrils. “‘Listen to me, man—I am a law student.’” He made his mouth very round on the word. “‘The law is it—understand me?’”

  Dave said, “He didn’t know there were two kinds?”

  “One for the rich and one for the poor? He does now,” Cecil said.

  “Maybe it changed him. Where did he live—family?”

  “La Caleta. Mama was all, far as I know. The kind that tied her hair up in a rag and scrubbed white folks’s kitchens so Lester could become Thurgood Marshall.”

  “I appreciate your help.”

  “Any time.” Cecil started for the booth. “He out?”

  “Five years can mean two”—Dave pushed the door—“with good behavior.”

  “Oh, Lester would be good,” Cecil said.

  “And you?” Dave held the door. “Miss Flynn thinks there’s a news story in this. Don’t get her excited.”

  Cecil stood in the projection-booth doorway. The light was behind him but his teeth showed. “If it’s a beat,” he said, “it’s my beat.”

  “It’s not a beat,” Dave said. “Not yet.”

  He let the door fall shut and went back along the soundproof hallway. She wasn’t at her desk. She was on the air. He watched her through double panes of glass from a dim, narrow room walled with busy picture tubes tended by a man in earphones whose hands moved on switches and slide controls. Out in the studio, the silhouetted floor people, directors, and technicians stood among hulking cameras like marionettes strung with fallen wires. Beyond them, at the curved desk, newscasters sat in shafts of light. The men shuffled papers, smiled at the cameras. Daisy Flynn’s dye job flared. Her face was suddenly on all the monitors. Her voice came out of loudspeakers above Dave’s head. She said:

  “And finally, a Channel Ten Newsdesk exclusive. A new development in the bludgeoning death last week of Police Chief Benjamin J. Orton of La Caleta. Medallion of Los Angeles, the company that insured Chief Orton’s life, is busy today interviewing persons connected with the case. Death-claims investigator David Brandstetter declined to be taped or photographed and told this reporter his inquiries were simply routine. But he did express doubt that Clifford Thomas Kerlee, the gay-activist leader now in jail awaiting trial for Chief Orton’s murder, is guilty of that killing.” She paused, then smiled. “And now, good afternoon from all of us here at Channel Ten’s Newsdesk.”

  The screens showed a blue plastic bottle of detergent, lighted and filmed with reverence. He pushed out of the control room. He yanked open the twin doors to the studio. She came out of the harsh lights into the shadows. She was laughing between the two men. When she saw Dave, she stopped—stopped laughing, stopped walking. The two men glanced at her, at him, and went on past. Dave told her, “I said I wasn’t a story.”

  “I’ve been in this business a long time,” she said. “Don’t you think I know a story when I see it?”

  “Quick enough to kill it,” Dave said.

  “The people have a right to know,” she said.

  “People who murder other people give up a lot of rights,” Dave said. “Someone out there was breathing easy, walking around smiling, sure that Kerlee would get it for what he did. Now what’s he doing?”

  “You’ll get him,” she said. “Or her. I checked you out with the L.A. police. You’re the best in your game.”

  “Except it’s not a game,” Dave said. “Can you find me a photo of Ben Orton?”

  “If I do, will you forgive me?” She said it archly and dropped some of her script. The pages whispered across dusty black vinyl tile. He let them lie there.

  “You’d just do it again,” he said.

  “I’ll do it again”—she stooped for the papers—“in any case.” She rose. “Come with me.”

  The California Adult Authority had offices in a flat-roofed building that smelled new inside, GEORGE ANDERSON was the name cut into a wedge of polished wood on the desk in the office he was sent to. Anderson said, “Lester Green got out on the sixteenth and reported to me. Phoned in a week later. He’s living with his mother in La Caleta.”

  A wide window gave a view of the parking lot. “That’s nice,” Dave said. “Did you see how he got here?”

  “A blond girl brought him,” Anderson said. “A little bit fat. In a brand-new, bright green Gremlin.”

  6

  SHOPFRONTS OF RAW PLANKS faced the bay. A crooked wooden deck followed the curve of the shore and hung over the water. Its railings were two-by-fours painted white. Sets of board steps painted white dropped maybe ten feet to moorings where sail and power pleasurecraft bumped clean gunwales. Farther out on the bright blue water, bigger boats rocked at anchor—slim ketches, scarred fishing boats, launches lofty with superstructure. Under slices of colored sail, skiffs tilted, filled with kids.

  Widows in sunhats and sleeveless dresses sipped chilled white wine and ate sole in cream sauce at shaded tables in front of a restaurant whose sign pictured a cartoon fish in a
sombrero. The place called itself El Pescadero. The sign on the next shop was shaped like a palette and promised ART SUPPLIES, but the door was locked. He rattled it. No one came. He shaded his eyes with his hands and peered through the window. Reflections off the water rippled on the ceiling. Bad seascapes repeated themselves on walls covered with burlap. No one stirred.

  His mouth tightened and he turned away. He’d just come from another locked door. Ophelia R. Green’s, 127 Poppy Street, one of a straggle of shacks under heavy-headed old pepper trees in a tuck of the hills on the far side of the highway. He’d rapped a door that was a flimsy wooden frame for bulging squares of screen. He’d waited on the warped boards of a little stoop in the hot sun. When she hadn’t come, he’d walked around back where the yard went up steeply. Flowers smiled. There were tidy rows of cabbages, onions, tomato plants. A slap-up garage was half dug into the slope. Its door scraped weedy ground when he pulled it open. Bunches of dried flower bulbs hung from the rafters, trailing tatters of brown paper sacking. Underfoot not an oil leak or tire track showed that a car had ever sheltered here. Against a wall leaned a motorcycle covered by a tarp. Dust rose sluggishly and made him cough when he lifted the tarp. The machine was shiny but its tires were flat. He went out into the sunlight again and shut the weary door. A screen porch hung off the back of the house. He climbed three steps and peered inside. A washing machine stood there, the old kind with wringers. Rumpled clothes lay on top of it, jockey shorts, tank tops, jeans. He went down the steps. In the next yard, where tall hollyhocks swayed, a shriveled Mexican woman milked a goat. Dave asked her in Spanish where la Señora Green was. La Negra cleaned the house of someone unknown. She would be home at supper time. La hora de cenar …

  He’d like to have seen her first. But he could use the afternoon. If he could find paints. He went down a passageway into a patio where a jacaranda tree spread feathery shade and strewed the red paving tiles with blue blossom. The shops facing the tree had been fitted with raw wooden fronts too. From their exposed rafter ends fishnets hung in swags. Panchos, serapes, small rugs made color in one window. The framework of a loom rose behind them. In the next window, handcrafted silver set with turquoise lay on artfully crumpled velvet. A third window showed hand-tooled leather goods—sandals, bags, belts.

  In a window in a corner, watercolors hung against a panel covered in monk’s cloth. The subjects were predictable—boats, gulls, rickety piers. He made the locus Monterey. But the drawing and brushwork were better than good and the eye had seen honestly. Above the pictures a signature was brushed large on a card—Tyree Smith. On the window glass, fresh gilt lettering read MONA WINDROW GALLERY. The signboard overhead had been painted out with white but he could see what had been lettered on it: BEACHCOMBER—COMPLETE LINE OF ARTISTS NEEDS. Had been. He shrugged and went inside.

  The walls were freshly painted. Oyster white. On one hung a dozen more Tyree Smiths. On another, Mexican tin masks. The back wall, except where a door broke it, was floor-to-ceiling shelves of shiny new art books, some of them turned to show their front covers. One was the history of Mexican art he’d seen in Ben Orton’s study. The open floorspace was carpeted in oyster white. Big terra-cotta pre-Columbian figures squatted on top of plywood pedestals wrapped in monk’s cloth. Spotlit. He didn’t see any glass counter of art supplies, only a new desk where no one sat. The door in the bookshelf wall opened and a man came out.

  He carried a splintered pine board that looked like part of a crate. A jimmy was in his other hand. Wisps of straw clung to his beard. Dave knew art-gallery types and this man wasn’t one of them. He was strong and hard and his skin wasn’t beach-tanned, it was tanned like leather. His beard might or might not ever have been trimmed. A twisted and knotted bandanna kept his long hair back. He wore a flimsy cotton shirt not made in U.S.A. and jeans not faded by the manufacturer. He didn’t speak. His brows, thick and black and straight above startling blue eyes, did the questioning.

  Dave said, “Did you buy the stock too?”

  “It’s still here.” He jerked his head. “In back.”

  “The shop at the waterfront is closed. I need a couple of tubes of paint and a brush.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” the man said, but he went out and came back with cardboard cartons. He turned one over and paint tubes and little boxes of paint tubes rattled out on the desk. Out of the other he dumped paper-taped clumps of brushes. “Help yourself.” He stood back against the bookshelves and began to make a cigarette out of a Zig-Zag paper and Bugler tobacco. His fingers were thick and the blackness under the nails suggested he worked with machinery. When Dave chose slim tubes of black and white and a small sable brush, he said, “No colors?”

  “What do I owe you?” Dave asked.

  The man didn’t hear. He was staring into the patio where voices were raised. Dave turned. Three of the sunhatted widows crossed under the jacaranda tree, making for the handweaver’s shop. The voices weren’t theirs. They swung around to stare at a pair who had come to a halt just inside the patio. The man was frail and white haired and wore a linen suit yellow with age, and the woman was gypsy-dark, in beads, sandals, a granny dress, hair around her head in thick braids. The man leaned at her, shouting.

  “So I signed a paper. We’re supposed to be friends.”

  “Tyree, shut up, darling. There’s nothing to say. The man wants the pictures. I sold him the pictures. You gave me that right.” She walked off.

  “Not for pennies, I didn’t.” He caught her, turned her. “I came back from the dead to paint those pictures. Two thousand dollars!” He laughed but there was a sob in it. “A baseball player gets more than that for taking a deep breath.” She twisted in his hands. He wouldn’t let go. “You promised me a show. Two years I waited. I lived on that promise.”

  “You lived on vodka.” She jerked free and came for the gallery, the flat soles of the sandals slapping the tiles. He lunged after her. He looked unsteady but she refused to run and he caught her again only steps from the gallery door.

  “Since you didn’t notice,” he snarled, “I wasn’t happy sweeping the floor, swabbing the john, framing daubs for lady tourists.” He saw the widows gaping and stuck out his tongue at them. “I have talent, remember?”

  “I kept my promise.” She tugged a hand loose and waved it at the window where the watercolors hung. “There’s your show for anyone to see. Only no one cares, Tyree. Can’t you get that through your head? No one is buying.”

  “Are you saying they’re bad?” He looked as if she’d knocked the wind out of him. He let her go. His next words begged and had tears in them. “You don’t mean that, Mona.”

  She rubbed her arms where he’d gripped them. She tried to be calm and kind. “I mean they’re too good for this location. That’s why I set up this lunch with Castouros. He can sell them. They’ll hang in nice homes—Santa Barbara, Malibu, Beverly Hills. They’ll be looked at and admired. Tyree, I was doing you a favor. What do you want from me? It’s been a long, long time since you had two thousand dollars in a lump.”

  “He’ll get ten thousand, twenty. That greasy Greek queen. An interior decorator, for God’s sake! Why? What talent has he got? Why should a nothing like that—”

  The bearded man had walked to the gallery door. Now he left it and stood in front of the fragile old man. “Go sober up,” he said.

  Smith shrank a little but he didn’t go. “Franklin. This is your doing. You and your Mexican monstrosities. Do you know what those represent? A religion that cut the hearts out of living men. But of course you know that. That would suit you, Al. Just your style. Where do you keep that boat of yours?” He glanced around as if to find it dry-docked in one of the empty shops. “I’d like to bore a hole in it.”

  “Go sleep it off,” Franklin said. “You’re heading back to Monterey, remember? Those barroom buddies you miss so much? You can’t pull a trailer on the Coast Road drunk.” The woman had already come into the gallery. Al Franklin followed and shut the door. Tyree
Smith stood teetering for a minute, staring after them with unfocused eyes. Then he staggered off. “Sorry about that,” Franklin said to Dave.

  “I’d buy that one.” Dave indicated a sketch of pitted sea rock stippled with lichen, where a crab shell lay bleaching in the sun.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “They’re all sold.”

  “That’s how it sounded.” Dave held out the little paint tubes and the brush. “How much for these?”

  “Take them,” she said, and went out the door in the bookshelf wall. Dave looked at Franklin. Franklin raised the thick eyebrows again. “She’s the boss,” he said.

  Dave glanced at the terra-cottas apologetically. “I doubt that I can afford to buy one of those to make it up to you.”

  Franklin shrugged. “Forget it,” he said.

  The motel was new and hung over the marina. He stood at the glass wall, drying off after a quick shower, and watched sunbrown kids with sunbleached hair topple off little catamarans and clamber aboard again. He hung the red, white, and blue towel up and combed his hair, laid his suitcase on a red, white, and blue bedspread, and took from the suitcase blue denims, which he kicked into. A star-spangled Styrofoam tub of ice cubes had arrived while he showered. He dropped cubes into a clear plastic glass, dug a fifth of Old Crow from the suitcase, and made himself a stiff drink. He lit a cigarette, sat on the bed, and dialed a red, white, and blue telephone. While he waited for the desk nurse to fetch Amanda, he took two long swallows from the glass.

  “He’s the same,” she said. “The doctor says that’s good. It could turn around, Dave. It could.”

  “Hold the thought,” he said. She was very young. He told her where to reach him, reading the number off the dial plaque. “It looks as if I’ll be here a while. The situation is extremely phony. Unless you need me. It will be just as phony when I get back to it.”