Bindlestiff

Chapter 9

I made an arbitrary decision and turned west out of the library parking lot, toward the downtown area. There were a bunch of industrial establishments, and a couple of restaurants along Lincoln Boulevard in that direction; I wasted forty minutes asking questions and showing the newspaper photo to a dozen people. Nobody had seen Bradford on Tuesday or on any other day. Nobody seemed to give much of a damn about hoboes either.

So I turned around finally and drove back toward Oro Dam Boulevard, past the library to the east. A middle-aged attendant at a service station on the main drag allowed as how he might have seen a guy who looked like Bradford walking by on Tuesday afternoon; he always noticed tramps, he said, because sometimes they came in and tried to mooch a handout. But he’d been busy at the time and he couldn’t be sure it was the same guy in the photograph.

There was another service station across the street; I drove in there and talked to a fat kid with pimples who said he’d also been on the job on Tuesday afternoon. “I think I seen him,” the kid said. “He started in here like he wanted to ask me something, but I was waiting on a customer. So he went on out again.”

“Do you remember which direction he headed?”

“North. Yeah, toward the dam.”

In the next block there were a couple of fast-food places, an auto supply store, a music store, and a combination grocery and liquor retailer. I drew a blank at all of them. But on the corner of the next block after that, I came on a place called the Green Garden Cafe-a small lunchroom with a lot of potted plants in the window and a bunch more decorating the long, narrow room inside.

There was nobody in the cafe when I entered except for a fairly good-looking bleached-blond waitress in her twenties and a burly guy about the same age wearing the uniform of a deliveryman, with his shirt sleeves rolled up so you could see that his arms were covered with tattoos. The two of them were down at the other end of the counter, facing each other across it. The waitress was grinning all over her face and watching the burly guy expectantly. Neither of them seemed to notice I had come in.

“Here’s another one,” the guy was saying. “You’ll love this one, Lynn. How come the Italians don’t have a national fish?”

“How come?”

“They did,” he said, “but it drowned.”

The blonde let out a hoot like a goosed owl and leaned against the counter, giggling. When she got her breath back she cracked him on the arm and said, “God, Bernie, you’re so funny!”

“Yeah,” Bernie said. “Ain’t that a pisser?”

“You make my sides hurt.”

“Yeah,” Bernie said. “So did you hear about the two old ladies walking along the beach one day? They think it’s deserted, see, they’re just out for a little air; but they come around this rock, there’s a guy lying there on a blanket and he’s naked.”

“Naked,” the waitress said, nodding. She had started to giggle again in anticipation.

“Yeah. One of them nudists, you know? So the two old broads stop and one of them points. The guy’s lying on his back so you know what she’s pointing at, right?”

“Right.” More giggles. “Oh, sure.”

“Well, she points and she says to the other old lady, ‘You know,’ she says, ‘life sure is funny. When I was ten I didn’t know that thing existed. When I was twenty I was curious about it. When I was thirty I was enjoying it. When I was forty I was asking for it. When I was fifty I was begging for it. When I was sixty I was paying for it. And now that I’m seventy-’”

“Right, now that she’s seventy…”

“‘Now that I’m seventy,’ she says, ‘when my life is almost over, there it is growing wild.’”

The waitress thought that was the funniest one yet; she let out two hoots this time and convulsed into gales of laughter. Tears rolled down her cheeks. As far as she was concerned, old Bernie was Johnny Carson and Bob Hope and Bob Newhart all rolled up into one.

“Ain’t that a pisser?” Bernie said.

I was leaning against the counter by this time, not ten feet away, but they still didn’t seem to know I was there. I waited until the blonde got herself under control again and then rapped on the formica to get her attention. She looked at me, hiccupped, said, “Just a second, okay?” and went right on giggling.

Bernie had turned on his stool and was grinning at me. “You hear that one?” he said. “Wasn’t that a pisser?”

“Yeah,” I said. “If it was any more of a pisser I’d have wet my pants.”

He didn’t like that; his grin disappeared. Which was all right with me. I don’t like stupid jokes, especially stupid Italian jokes, and I don’t like the kind of people who tell them. Bernie was a jerk. And if he wanted me to, I was more than willing to tell him so.

But it didn’t come to that. Whatever else Bernie was, he wasn’t the belligerent type. All he did was pick up the glass of cola in front of him and mutter, “Some guys got no sense of humor.”

The waitress said, “Bernie, I swear to God, you ought to go on TV. I really mean it.” Then she wiped her face, let him have one more giggle, and came down to where I was. “What’ll it be, mister?”

“Cup of coffee.”

She turned to the hotplate on the back counter and poured the coffee. I had the newspaper photo out, and when she set the cup in front of me I laid the clipping beside it and tapped Charles Bradford’s image with my forefinger. “Did this man happen to come in here on Tuesday afternoon between five and six o’clock?”

She bent close to squint at the photo. Then she frowned and said, “A tramp, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, a tramp did come in here on Tuesday afternoon,” she said. “I think it was this one. It sure looks like him.”

“What did he want?”

“A cup of coffee, same as you. I thought he was panhandling-they come in here and try to get a freebie sometimes-and I told him I had to see his money first. He had it in change, just barely. I made him pay me before I gave him the coffee.”

“Did he want anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Information, maybe?”

“Well, yeah, he did ask directions. How come you’re so interested in this tramp, anyway?”

“I’m trying to find him for his daughter,” I said. “What did he want to know?”

“Where Firth Road was.”

“Firth Road.”

She nodded. “So I told him, and he drank his coffee and left. That’s all.”

“He didn’t say what he wanted on Firth Road?”

“No. He didn’t say anything else.”

“What sort of street is it? A side road, a main thoroughfare, what?”

“It’s only a couple of blocks long,” she said. “A dead-end street.”

“What’s on it? Houses, businesses?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Hey, Bernie, what’s on Firth Road?”

Bernie turned on his stool again. He still seemed a little hurt that I hadn’t properly appreciated his jokes. “Not much on it,” he said in a grudging way. “PG and E substation, couple of business places, and the railroad museum.”

“Railroad museum?” I asked.

“Yeah. Guy named Dallmeyer runs it. It’s a freaking tourist trap.”

“How long has it been there?”

“Who knows? Ten years, maybe.”

“What’re the business places?”

“Electrical outfit-Jorgensen’s,” he said. “And a fruit packing plant.”

“That’s all?”

“Ain’t that enough?”

“How long have those two been operating?”

“How should I know? Do I look like I work for the goddamn Chamber of Commerce?”

The waitress giggled again. Even when he wasn’t telling dumb jokes, Bernie was so funny.

I said, “How do I get to Firth Road?”

“It’s a couple of miles north of here,” the blonde said, “out toward the dam. It branches off the main drag.”

“Oro Dam Boulevard, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

I drank some of my coffee; it wasn’t very good, but at least it was hot. I fished two quarters out of my pocket, set them on the counter, drank a little more coffee, and got up from my stool.

“Hey, Lynn,” Bernie said abruptly. “I got another one for you.”

The waitress said, “Oh God,” and winked at me, and went down to where he was. “Well?”

“So Smokey the Bear gets married,” he said, “but he and his wife never have any sex. You know why?” But he was looking at me as he spoke, not her, and there was a determined expression on his face, as if his reputation as a comedian was on the line and he had to tell one that would make me laugh or lose points.

“No,” the blonde said, “why do Smokey the Bear and his wife never have any sex?”

“Because every time she gets hot, he throws dirt on her and beats her with a shovel.”

That was a one-hooter for the blonde. She said, “Nobody better try’n throw dirt on me when I get hot,” and broke up again.

I just looked at Bernie. Then I turned and started for the door.

“You know how many Polacks it takes to pull off a kidnapping?” he said, a little desperately.

“No,” the waitress said, “how many?”

“Six. One to grab the victim and five to write the ransom note.”

She hooted-and I walked out into the good, clean air and shut the door quietly behind me.