“Oh yeah,” Alice said. “You know, Jay, you could fuck me right here on this couch and Harry wouldn’t even hear it.”
“What if he came downstairs to go to the toilet?”
“He don’t go nowhere without me helpin’ him.”
“I see. Well, maybe in a little while. You see, I need to know about that pistol first.”
“What for?”
“It showed up at a friend’s house and I was wondering if it was stolen.”
“It sure was,” Alice declared. She had a wide mouth and healthy teeth except for the missing one. That made me think that someone had socked her, at least once.
“What happened to it?”
“That girl took it. That whore.” She winked at me even though her words were angry.
“Who was that?”
“Doreen Fitz. Little whore drove Harry out of his mind. She had a boyfriend come up here and beat the shit outta Harry. That’s partly why he’s laid up now. They took all kinds of stuff from him. Rings and money and that old pistol. Harry loved that gun. He liked that it was so fat but hardly had no kick.”
“Are you Harry’s wife?” I asked.
“No. Just his cousin from Arkansas. Just his cousin come to make her fortune by pickin’ his bones. You could share some of it with me if you want.”
“You’re stealing from him?”
“Have you ever seen a sharecropper’s farm, Jay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
I thought about all of the poor black and white people I’d seen straining over hard dirt, going deeper into debt with each passing season. I saw all that pain in her callused hands.
“You wanna go up and see Harry?” she asked.
IT WAS A BRIGHT BEDROOM with a picture window that allowed strong sun to beat down upon the occupant. He was a tall man but slender as a child. Even though he was under the sheet you could see the outline of his skeleton. His eyes were intelligent and the only part of him that moved. When he saw me a worried look crossed those eyes.
“Hey, Harry,” Alice said. “I brought a nigger up to look at ya. I fucked him on your couch. He nearly broke me in two.”
“Mr. Stout, my name is Jay Auburn. I’m looking for the people who stole your Lux-Tiger. Alice is just joking with you. She has some sense of humor.”
Stout was looking deeply into my eyes, pleading with me.
“Did Doreen Fitz take your pistol?”
With a supreme effort Harry Stout nodded.
“She had a boyfriend named Dean?”
Again he made his head move.
“Do you think that they might still be around?”
He didn’t nod that time but it might have been because he was exhausted.
Alice took a drag on her cigarette and coughed.
I went to the window and pulled the drapes closed.
“Hey,” Alice complained. “He needs a little color.”
“Keep the drapes closed and take care of him like you’re supposed to,” I said. “Do that or your free ride’ll be over.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I’m a cop,” I said. “Looking into a murder right now but I’m calling social services the minute I get back to the precinct.”
“You can’t come in here without telling me you’re a cop. That’s against the law.”
“Sue me,” I said. “Tomorrow morning a social services agent, Saul Lynx, will be here. You better either be taking care of this man or be on your way.”
THERE WAS ONLY ONE D. Fitz in the phone book. The number had been disconnected. But I went over to the house anyway. The address was on South Robertson, the left half of a two-family home composed of salmon stucco.
There was a concave entranceway with the doors to both apartments facing each other. I knocked on the D. Fitz number I got from the phone book.
An old woman came to the door.
“Oh,” she said instead of a greeting.
“Miss Fitz?”
“Who?” she asked instead of replying.
“I’m looking for a Doreen Fitz.”
“No,” she said. “Not me.”
“She moved out,” a man’s voice said from behind me.
I turned to see a tall and elderly white man. He had kind eyes and stooped a bit but still he had the posture of a soldier. His smile was mild. It wasn’t joyous or even happy. The expression was more relief than anything else. Remembering him in the narrow doorway he seemed like he was in a coffin, made up for death.
The door behind me slammed.
“You know Doreen?” I asked.
“Why, yes I do. I tried to help her out when I could.”
“World War One?” I asked him.
“Yes sir,” he replied.
MR. PALMER—that was the veteran’s name—invited me in for coffee. He led me through a living room that was twice the size of a dressing room at the May Company department store, through a transitional space that was so small that it could have no name or purpose, and into a small kitchen that was connected to a screened-in porch.
The porch had two redwood chairs and looked into the boughs of a tall magnolia. It was cool out there and I relaxed.
“…wasn’t a bad girl really,” he was saying about Doreen.
We had been out there for an hour or more. Every once in a while the little white woman from the other apartment would come out onto her little porch to see if I was still there.
Palmer told me about the war and the trenches, about the mustard gas and wild dogs that fed on soldiers who had fallen alone. He had three children, two dead wives, and had come out to California after the war because the war had taken too many friends from his small Iowa town.
I told him about my leaving the South for pretty much the same reasons, except that most of my friends had died in Houston rather than on the battlefield.
It was a nice talk. He was the perfect host; a lonely old man who didn’t worry about race or wildness in girls. I guided him into a discussion about Doreen, telling him that I had a friend who knew her in Santa Maria and who worried that she might have been in trouble because of a guy named Dean.
“It was that Dean who got to her,” Palmer agreed. “He was handsome and drove a motorcycle. Girls like that. They think they want a wild man until they drop their first kid. Then it’s fuddy-duddies like you’n me they want, Mr. Auburn.”
I liked being called a fuddy-duddy.
“My friend wanted me to drop by and see if Doreen had moved back here,” I said.
“No,” Mr. Palmer said. “She never came back. But I send her mail on to an address down in Venice. I think it’s Dean’s brother. Here, I’ll get it for you.”
The veteran weighed no more than a hundred and ten pounds but he had to use all of his strength and a lot of leverage to get up and out of his chair. While he was gone the old lady next door spied on me from her kitchen window.
I felt that I deserved her distrust. There I was lying to the friendly old man. If it wasn’t for Domaque and my blood debt to Mouse I would have left then.
“It’s a place down in Venice,” Palmer said when he returned. “I drove her down there once before the state took my license. They say I can’t see well enough. Anyway, it’s a small place not far from the water. But his brother isn’t a friendly fellow. I wouldn’t go there alone if I were you, Mr. Auburn. If you know what I mean.”
It was his only reference to race. Even then he might have meant I’d have trouble because of my fuddy-duddy status.
I had an extra cup of coffee and swapped a few war stories. He walked me to the door as evening came on.
“Come back and see me again sometime, Jay,” Mr. Palmer said as I left. “It’s nice to talk to somebody smart now and then.”
I DROVE DOWN TO THE ADDRESS Mr. Palmer gave me. It was on a small street a mile or so south of Pico. The house was smaller than the gaping garage, and the lawn was covered with rusting cars and motorcycle parts. I saw three men and one white-blond girl sitting on a bench, drinking whiskey from a quart bottle. One of the men and the girl had been in the photograph I took from the Santa Maria trailer.