Black Money

11

Ella Strome crossed the corner of the dance floor and came to our table. “I’ve got hold of the photographer for you, Mr. Archer. He’s waiting in the office.”

He was a thin man in a rumpled dark business suit. He had a lot of brown hair, a lumpy Slavic jaw, and sensitive-looking eyes protected by horn-rimmed glasses. Ella introduced him as Eric Malkovsky.

“I’m glad to meet you,” he said, but he wasn’t. He glanced restlessly past me towards the door of the office. “I promised my wife to take her to the Film Society tonight. We have season tickets.”

“I’ll reimburse you.”

“That’s not the point. I hate to disappoint her.”

“This may be more important.”

“Not to me it isn’t.” He was speaking to me, but his real complaint was directed towards Ella. I gathered she had used pressure to get him here. “Anyway, as I told Mrs. Strome, I have no pictures of Mr. Martel. I offered to take some, the way I do with any other guest, but he said no. He was pretty emphatic about it.”

“Unpleasant?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But he certainly didn’t want his picture taken. What is he, a celebrity or something?”

“Something.”

My reticence irritated him, and he colored slightly. “The only reason I asked, another person was after me for a picture of him.”

Ella said: “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I didn’t have a chance to. The woman came to my studio in the Village just before I went home for dinner. When I told her I didn’t have a picture of him, she offered me money to go to his house and take one. I told her I couldn’t do that without Mr. Martel’s permission. At which she got mad and stomped out.”

“I don’t suppose she gave you her name?”

“No, but I can describe her. She’s a redhead, tall, with a gorgeous figure. Aged about thirty. As a matter of fact, I had a feeling that I’ve seen her before.”

’Where?”

“Right here in the club.”

“I don’t remember any such woman,” Ella said.

“It was before your time, at least five years ago.”

Malkovsky screwed up one side of his face as he was squinting through a view finder. “I think I took a picture or two of the woman. In fact I’m pretty sure I did.”

“Would you still have those pictures?” I said.

“Maybe, but it would be a terrible job to find them. I don’t keep files except for the current year and the year before.”

He looked at his wristwatch, dramatically. “I really have to go now. The wife would kill me if she misses the Buñuel. And the club doesn’t pay me overtime for this kind of a deal.”

He tossed a sour look in the direction of Ella, who had gone back to the reception desk.

“I’ll pay you double time for as long as it takes.”

“That would be seven dollars an hour. It could take all night.”

“I know.”

“And there’s no guarantee that I’ll come up with anything. It may be an entirely different woman. If it’s the same woman, she’s changed the color of her hair. The woman I remember was a blonde.”

“Blondes turn into redheads all the time. Tell me about the woman you remember.”

“She was younger then, of course, with the dew still on her. A lovely thing. I remember now. I did take some pictures of her. Her husband wasn’t too crazy about the idea but she wanted it done.”

“Who was her husband?”

“An older guy,” he said. “They stayed in one of the cottages for a couple of weeks.”

“What year were they here?”

“I couldn’t nail it down – maybe six or seven years ago. But if I find those pictures I can tell you. I generally make a note of the date on the back.”

By this time Malkovsky was eager to get to work. Before leaving for the Village, he gave me the address and telephone number of his studio. I said I would check with him there in an hour or so.

I thanked Ella, and went to the parking lot to get my car. An unsteady wind carrying a gritty taste of desert was blowing down from the direction of the mountains. The eucalyptus trees swayed and bowed and waved in the gusts like long-haired madwoman racked by impulse. The night which loomed above the trees and dwarfed them seemed threatening.

I had been concerned about Harry Hendricks ever since I found his car at the roadside near Martel’s house. Harry had no more earned my concern than the alleged rat, which Martel said he had killed. Still I had a foolish yen to see Harry alive.

The road to the harbor cut across the base of the headland where Fablon had taken his final swim, and back to the ocean. As I drove along the windswept boulevard, my mind was so fixed on Harry that when I saw the Cadillac parked at the curb I thought I was dreaming. I braked and backed and parked directly behind it, and got out. It was Harry’s old Caddie, all right, standing there with a cold engine, empty and innocent, as if it had driven itself down from the foothills. The key was in the ignition. It hadn’t been before.

I looked around me. It was a lonely place, especially at this time, with a wind blowing. There was no other car in sight, and nothing across the street but rattling palms and the sighing sea.

On the inland side a tall cypress hedge shielded the boulevard from a view of the railroad tracks and the hobo jungles. Through a hole in the hedge I could see the dark shapes of men crouched around a bonfire which flared and veered.

I went through the hole and approached them. There were three of them drinking dark red wine out of a half-gallon jug, which was nearly empty. Their faces all turned toward me in the firelight: the seamed and gap-toothed face of an aging white man; the flat stubborn planes of a young Negro’s head; a boy with Indian features and an Indian’s stolid apathetic eyes. He wore nothing above the waist but an open black vest.

The Negro got up with five or six feet of two-by-four in his hands. He staggered toward me on the uneven ground.

“Amscray, ’bo. This is a private party.”

“You can answer a civil question. I’m looking for a friend of mine.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about no friends of yours.”

Big and drunk, he leaned on his two-by-four like a warrior on his spear. His tripod shadow wavered on the hedge.

“That’s his car there,” I said quickly. “The Cadillac. He’s a medium-sized man in a checkered jacket. Have you seen him?”

“Naw.”

“Just a minute.”

The white man rose unsteadily. “Maybe I seen him, maybe not. What’s it worth to you?”

He came up close to me so that I could smell his fiery breath and look deep into the glaring hollows of his eyes. They had a feverish brainwashed wino emptiness. He was so far gone that he would never come back.

“It isn’t worth anything to me, old-timer. You’re trying to promote the price of another jug.”

“I seen him, honest I seen him. Little man in a checkered jacket. He gave me four bits, I thanked him very kindly. You don’t forget a citizen like that.”

The breath whistled through the gaps in his teeth.

“Let’s see the four bits.”

He searched elaborately through his jeans. “I must have lost it.

I turned away. He followed me all the way to the car. His gnarled fists drummed on the window.

“Have a heart, for Christ’s sake. Gimme four bits. I told you about your friend.”

“No money for wine,” I said.

“It’s for food. I’m starving. I came down here to pick oranges and they fired me, and I couldn’t do the work.”

“They’ll feed you at the Salvation Army.”

He puckered up his mouth and spat on the window. His saliva ran down the glass between him and me. I started the motor.

“Get away, you might get hurt.”

“I’m hurt already,” he said with his life in his voice.

He staggered back to the hedge, disappearing suddenly through the hole like a man swallowed up by darkness.