He Done Her Wrong

CHAPTER 10

I stopped to get gas at a Sinclair station before I left L.A. and got a dirty look from an attendant with a Deep South accent when the Ford only took two gallons.

There was nothing much to take my mind off the pain in my scalp except the light morning traffic and my right-handed playing with the radio. Once I’d cleared town and hit 43, static hummed instead of spitting, and once, I actually got the faint murmur of a station.

A hellfire and dammit-all preacher warned me and the rest of the coast that we’d better mend our ways fast if we were going to have the moral stamina to fight off the Japanese. He pronounced stamina in three distinct syllables: sta-min-nuh. He was all I could get, so I let him keep me company, quoting from the Bible all the way to Corcoran.

I had a chicken sandwich and some war talk at the Elite Roadside Diner. The war talk was depressing, the chicken sandwich decent when washed down with the Elite’s homemade orange drink.

The overtoothed guy who gave me the orange drink asked about my head, and I told him I’d got drunk and tried to ram down a door. This seemed reasonable to him.

Back on the road, the Bible belter deserted me. His voice had begun to give out, and he turned the microphone over to a woman who began to confess her sins to accompanying organ music. Her list was amazingly long and lacking in detail. After twenty miles, somewhere near Selma, the station began to fade, and my head began to crackle with static, which worried me, since I had turned off the radio. The sun was still up, bouncing out towards the ocean beyond the hills. I decided to stop for the night and tackle Winning in the morning. The problem was that I couldn’t find an auto court for another ten miles, and the one I did spot was a series of gray wooden outhouses with a sign saying FREE RADIO. I pulled into the sandy driveway of Rose’s Rodeo Auto Hotel, got out, stretched my legs, and went in to see if there were any vacancies. I expected to have my choice.

Rose herself, a smiling balloon of a woman, sat perched on a little stool in front of the counter.

“Room, beer, information, or gas?” she asked.

“All of them,” I answered. She eased herself off the stool, waddled behind the counter, reached down, and came up with a cold Falstaff. She popped the cap and handed it to me, and I held it away while the foam eased down. It tasted fine.

“You can have cabin four,” she said. “Or one, two, three, or six. Believe it or not, someone’s already in five. Whatever business we get will be coming in later tonight. Going north or south?”

“Up near Clovis,” I said. “Place called the Winning Institute. Heard of it?”

“Think so,” said Rosie, opening her own bottle, which dripped foam over her fat wrist. “Big ugly fella of a place with teeth.”

“Sounds like the fella,” I said, downing some beer, which made my head throb.

“You got a relative up there?” she said.

“No, just some business.”

“Something wrong with your head?” she tried, pointing at my head with her bottle in case I didn’t know where my head was.

“Yeah, but nothing I need a headshrinker for. Had a little accident. I’m a salesman. Sell tongue depressors, bandages, stuff like that. Hard to get the products. Military takes most of it.”

“I can imagine,” said Rose, finishing her beer. “You got luggage?”

“Sure,” I said, finishing off the beer and putting the empty on her desk. “I’ll get it out of the trunk later, and I’ll get my gas in the morning.”

“Cash up front,” she said, holding out the registration book, which she turned toward me. “Nothing personal.”

“Good business,” I said, picking up the pen and signing in as Cornel Wilde.

She looked at the signature upside down.

“You ain’t Cornel Wilde,” she said, stifling a burp.

“Not the actor,” I chuckled. “That’s my real name. Quite a burden for a tongue depressor salesman. People let me in, expecting to see a movie star. I’ve thought of changing my name, but what the hell, I had it first.”

“I get your point. Three bucks cash plus twenty cents for the beer. You want another just to keep me company, it’s free.”

I pulled out my wallet, tried not to look at my dwindling cash supply, and gave her three bucks. I pulled the change out of my pocket and asked her where a good place might be for dinner.

“Not within twenty miles of here, but you’re welcome to eat with me in back about eight, or go four miles down the road to Ed Don’s. He runs a beanery attached to his gas station.”

I gave her a soft look and she laughed.

“There’s no lechery in my heart, son,” she said. “I’m just an old wreck who likes to have someone to talk to on lonely nights. I’ll tell you tales of the logging days up in the hills, or we can listen to the radio, or you can scat back to the cabin. No strings. Hell, I couldn’t pull ’em even if I had them.”

“Rosie, you got a date at eight,” I said. I took the key and went through the screen door. I found cabin four with no trouble. It was right between three and five. I opened the little pop lock and went back to move my car in front of the door. I also wanted my gun and the toothbrush I’d shoved in the glove compartment.

Through the screen door I could see Rosie with a fresh bottle of Falstaff, staring at the desk as if it were a crystal ball that would tell her sad secrets.

The cabin wasn’t bad, not the worst I had seen. It was clean and small. A bed with a green blanket and two pillows. A small dresser painted brown. A shower stall and a night-stand with a little radio. I turned on the radio, pulled the shades on the two windows, locked the door, and watched the road through a thin crack in the shade for whoever had followed me from the second I left Los Olvidados. He or she hadn’t been too good at it, but even if they had been, it would have been a tough job. The car was big and dark and probably a Packard, but I wasn’t sure. It hadn’t come close enough for that.

I put the gun on my lap and kept watching. The car didn’t show up for the first hour. Maybe it had lost me, but I doubted it. After “The Lone Ranger,” I propped a chair in front of the door and under the knob, got undressed with the.38 within reach, and took a shower.

After the shower I checked out the window again. Another car was there, but it was a small Olds. A young couple and a kid were standing next to it, and the kid was crying loud enough so I could hear him. I got on the bed, let the radio keep playing softly, turned on my side, and closed my eyes. I slept. I think I dreamed about Cincinnati. Maybe I didn’t. There was just a flicker of the dream left when I woke up. The sun was down and the room dark except for the glowing face of the radio, which informed me that it was time for Fred Waring.

I threw my pants on, shoved the gun into my jacket, turned off the radio, and went out. A few more cars but no Packard.

Rosie was waiting for me. She had changed her flour-sack dress for another flour-sack dress and put a kid’s barrette in her hair.

“Thought you changed your mind,” she said.

“Slept,” I explained. “Hope I’m not late.”

“Hell, you could have come at midnight and not been late,” she chuckled and led the way beyond the counter into her back room. I followed and found a card table set up with a tablecloth and two place settings. There were two bowls on the table, both big, and a plate of dark bread. While Rosie got a pair of beers, I saw that the bowls were filled with tuna and potato salad.

“Looks great,” I said and meant it.

“Dig in,” she said, and we did.

“How’s business tonight?” I asked innocently.

“Pretty good, still a few left. Might pick up a late one or even two before midnight. Happens sometimes.”

Silence and I tried again.

“Mostly families, I suppose.”

“Mostly, a few loners like you,” she said, filling her fork with tuna. “Why don’t you just come out with it? Who are you expecting?”

I drank some beer, let the burp come, and told her the whole tale. She kept eating through it, her eyes open wide.

“This is better than ‘I Love a Mystery,’” she said. “Beats my logging stories all to hell. Tell the truth, I can’t tell if you’re a crazy or just the kind of guy who gets his rear in a wringer. I think you’re a wringer guy.”

“That’s a fact.” I toasted her and told her some more tales while we drank and ate. Then I listened to her tell me about logging in the old days while we had some chocolate ice cream.

“I better get some sleep,” I said. “This has been great. You have my gratitude.” I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She did a three hundred-pound blush.

“Cornel Wilde,” she chuckled as I walked into the front office. “I’ll keep an eye out for your fella in the Packard.”

“Just call me if he shows up,” I said and let myself out. The screen door banged closed, sending the mosquitoes on it scurrying for a second before they returned. In the darkness, crickets chirped, and far down the road, I couldn’t tell which way, a truck changed gear.

I checked my room before going in, propped the chair up, took off my clothes, and went to sleep on my side, clutching the extra pillow and letting my left hand rest on the cool steel of my.38.

Morning seemed to come in seconds. I felt great again. My gun was there. The chair was still under the knob, and my head hurt less than the day before. Everything was fine until I moved to the basin to brash my teeth and saw the window in the shower stall. It was not very big, but big enough to let someone in, and it was open. It hadn’t been the night before.

There wasn’t any place for someone to hide, and I was still alive. I checked my gun. It was still loaded. I checked my pants. My wallet was missing. Twenty bucks, a driver’s license, and a Dick Tracy badge. I dressed fast and paid a visit to Rosie, who sat out in front of the office her hands folded in her lap, her head back absorbing the sun.

“Rosie,” I said. She opened her eyes and gave me a little smile.

“Morning,” she returned, shifting her bulk in the chair, which creaked beneath her.

“I had a visitor. Someone crawled through the window and took off with my wallet. Did the guy in the Packard show up last night?”

Rosie shook her head and chins with a definite no.

“Could have come in when I went to sleep around one,” she said. “In this business you sleep on and off, mostly hours when you don’t expect business. Could have been a local through the nearest town, Fowler about ten miles up. Could have been another guest. We get all kinds.”

“Skip it,” I sighed. “You want to buy a.38 automatic?”

She said no.

“How about I leave it with you for the loan of ten bucks and I collect it on the way back with two bucks interest? I’m going to see that client I was telling you about.”

“Got a better idea,” Rosie said, grunting herself up from the chair. “Did some nursing back in Trenton. That’s in Jersey. I’ll change that bandage for you and grubstake you to ten bucks. You can drop it off on your way back through.”

“You married, Rosie?” I said.

She waved for me to follow her into the office.

“Think so,” she said. “Al’s supposed to be cooking for a logging operation up near Portland. Left about a year, year and a half back.”

“Too bad,” I sighed. “I was going to propose.”

“Like so much horse puddles,” she chuckled, turning to sit me down. “You married?”

“Was,” I said. “Not anymore. Her name was Anne.”

“She dead?” asked Rosie, stacking her medical cache on a nearby table.

“No. She’s alive and still Anne.”

“Annie, Annie was the miller’s daughter,” Rosie said, stepping behind me to change my bandage.

“Far she wandered from the singing water,” I continued the song.

“Ain’t it the way,” sighed Rosie gently, tugging at my bandage. “Ain’t it but the way.”

Rose finished patching me, gave me ten singles from a cigar box under the front desk, and filled the Ford with gas, which added a little less than two bucks to my debt.

“Catch the bad guy,” she said, waving me into the morning with a pudgy hand.

And into the north I drove, wondering why anyone would climb through a window where a man with a gun was sleeping and risk getting his face parted for a few bucks.

The rest of the drive was slow, well within the speed limit, since I didn’t have a license and Rosie’s ten-spot couldn’t cover a speed-trap charge for driving too fast without a license.

The radio didn’t help. I gave up trying to listen to a hillbilly wailing on the only station I could pick up through the static. He was singing something about losing his dream in Call-i-for-ni-yuh and wishing he was back in Mizzuruh. Hell, I still felt good. My teeth were clean, I had a new bandage, and somewhere behind me or just up ahead was Ressner in the Packard. Sooner or later one of us would catch up with the other one. Meanwhile, I was leading him back to the Winning Institute.

Fresno came and went. I hit 41, took it to 168 and looked for the road Winning had told me to take. I almost missed it and the double billboard on the rock. I slowed down even more than the crawl I was traveling at and found the road with an enamel sign pointing the way to the Winning Institute. The road was paved, flat and narrow, not wide enough for two cars. Trees leaned down from both sides, their branches occasionally touching the top of the car and tapping a few notes.

About a mile and a half down, an arrow indicated a sharp turn. I took it and found myself in front of the metal fence of the Winning Institute. The fence was about twelve feet high, black iron with spear points at the top.

Beyond the fence about two hundred yards back was a four-story building with a two-story junior partner next to it. Both buildings were dark stone. Both had towers in the corner. It looked a little like Xanadu in Citizen Kane. I stayed on the road till I came to the gate, which was closed and guarded by a young blond guy in a white uniform. He was sitting in front of a little gate shack on a wooden chair, on which he leaned back so that the two front feet of it were off the ground. His back was against the fence and his arms behind his head. A newspaper rested on the ground next to him.

I leaned out of the car and said, “Hi, I’m here to see Dr. Winning.”

The young guy looked over at me, shifted the gum in his mouth, and pushed forward so that all four feet of the chair rested in the dirt.

“Your name?” he said.

“Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters.”

“Yes,” he said, getting up from the chair and pushing open the gate. “Dr. Winning said to look out for you. Drive straight on up. Park where it says ‘Visitors.’”

The guy was smiling the kind of false smile you reserve for those who can’t understand you and have to be tolerated. Considering the residents of the Winning Institute, it might be the attitude everybody in the place eventually adopted.

I thanked him and drove in. In the rearview mirror, I could see him push the gate closed. I drove on. The grounds on both sides were nearly flat, and in a far corner I could see someone in white pushing a mower. One man with one mower might make it a lifetime job to keep the grass of this place trim.

It was about three hundred yards to the front of the institute. Up close, I could see that both buildings were dark stone and constructed to look like castles. The porch or veranda of the larger building, where I parked in a spot with a sign marked VISITORS, threw the illusion off. It was broad, white, and wooden and looked as if it had been grafted on from a retirement hotel.

On the porch sat a quartet of men playing cards with a white-clad nurse standing over them. I got out of the car, walked across the gravel parking lot, and went up the four wooden stairs, which creaked loudly. The card players didn’t look up. The nurse, from behind her glasses, gave me the same kind of tolerant smile as the guard at the gate.

“Play it or lose it,” said one of the card players to another and reached over to slap at the hand of the guy across from him. The nurse turned her attention to the slapper, touched his hand, and put it back on his side of the table. I pushed through the wooden door of the building and stepped into a broad fern-filled lobby with dark wooden floors and walls papered with blue flowers and portraits of contented Winnings of the past.

A nurse was standing inside the door and off to the side. She stepped forward as if she had been waiting for me. She was about average height with brown hair and a poor complexion. Behind her stood a Negro about my height in white. He didn’t give me the tolerant look. His upper body was massive, created by a comic book artist or Michelangelo.

“Mr. Peters?” she said. “I’m Nurse Grace. This is M.C. We’ll take you to Dr. Winning.”

I thanked them and followed her to the left. M.C. walked at my side. I wondered why I needed an armed escort. Maybe they had more reason to fear Ressner than I knew about.

We hiked down a corridor and stopped in front of an unmarked door. Nurse Grace opened it and stepped in before me. I followed her with M.C. behind me.

“Should we wash our hands before I see Dr. Winning?” I said.

“That won’t be necessary,” Miss Grace answered seriously.

The office was big and comfortable with a massive mahogany desk and leather desk chair behind it. There was a matching couch of leather against one wall and several not-quite-as-comfortable chairs. Behind the desk was a huge window looking across the flat grounds of the institute. No trees obstructed the view right to the fence.

I sat in one of the chairs and looked back at Nurse Grace and M.C.

“So,” I tried. “Did you have a bet on the Derby?”

M.C. shook his head negatively. Nurse Grace smiled tolerantly. I touched my bandage. I’d left my hat in the car, so I couldn’t play with it. Somewhere not too far away pans were clanking.

I looked at my watch without bothering to see what it said.

“I’ll bet things really start jumping around here when there’s a full moon,” I said, turning my head to M.C, who stood to my right.

This repartee could have gone on indefinitely, but was unfortunately interrupted by a chunky guy around thirty-five, who stepped into the room through the door we had entered. He had brown unruly hair and a bushy matching moustache. His pants were dark, and he was wearing a white shirt and heavy white wool cardigan sweater with buttons.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said pleasantly. “You must be Mr….”

“Peters,” I said, standing and taking his hand.

“Right,” he smiled, leaning back against the desk and folding his arms. “I think we can be alone now and talk a bit.” He nodded at Nurse Grace, who turned and left the room with M.C. following. M.C. closed the door behind him, and I sat down again to look at the guy in the sweater.

“I’m here to see Dr. Winning,” I said.

“Of course,” he nodded. “We know. It’s about Mr. Ressner, right?”

“That’s right,” I said. “You know something about Ressner?”

“Oh, quite a bit,” he said. “Quite a bit. Mind if I smoke?” He pulled a pipe from his jacket and reached over for the humidor on the big desk before I could answer.

“Please, Mr. Peters, don’t take any offense at this, but we have had some security problems, as you know. Could you show me some identification?”

“My wallet was stolen this morning at Rose’s Rodeo Auto Court,” I said. “I think I’ll just wait and discuss all this with Dr. Winning. That is if he’s not dead.”

“Very much alive,” said the guy, lighting his pipe. “Very much alive. You’ve met Dr. Winning?”

“Yeah,” I said. “In L.A. a few days ago.”

“Of course,” he said, leaning back against the desk and looking at me with the tolerant smile. “Would you do me a favor? Security matter?”

“Maybe,” I said, wondering if this was one of the lunatics on the loose.

“Describe Dr. Winning to me.”

“Security?” I asked.

“Humor me,” he said, with a grin pulling at his pipe.

“About six feet, in his fifties, blue eyes … That enough?”

“Yes, thanks,” said the guy in the sweater, running his hand through his bushy hair and turning to pick up a pencil.

“Mr. Peters, I have some disturbing news for you,” he said seriously. “And I want you to take it calmly.”

“I’ve seen murder, mayhem, and some things you probably haven’t dreamed of,” I said with a delicate touch of sarcasm. “It’ll take some doing to disturb me. What is it? Winning is dead? Ressner killed him last night, right?”

“No, Mr. Peters,” he said, looking at me with sympathetic brown eyes. “Dr. Winning is very much alive, as I should know, since I am Dr. Winning.”