Sleeping Beauty

chapter 15

Before I got on the freeway to Santa Monica, I stopped at the harbor. The plastic boom across the harbor mouth had broken during the night. The floating oil had surged in with the morning tide and covered the surface of the enclosed water, coating the hulls of the boats lying at anchor and splashing the rocks and walls that lined the inner harbor. The black scene was barely relieved by a few white gulls with dirty feet.

It was too early, and the front door of Blanche’s place was locked. There were violent noises somewhere in the back which sounded to my recently sensitized ears like somebody beating somebody else to death.

It turned out to be a man in the kitchen pounding abalone with a wooden mallet. I asked him through the screen door if Blanche was there.

“Blanche never comes in this time in the a.m. She’s generally here by ten.”

“Where does she live?”

He lifted his shoulders. “Don’t ask me. She likes to keep it a secret. She doesn’t give out her telephone number, either. Is it important?”

I didn’t know. It had looked from where I sat the night before as if the younger man accompanying the man in the tweed suit had asked Blanche a question, and she had pointed south along the beach. Possibly she could tell me where they had intended to go.

I thanked the man and turned back toward land. Two cars had stopped in the restaurant parking lot, and several men got out. They wore business suits and hard hats, and they looked like engineers, or like publicity men trying to look like engineers.

One of them was Captain Somerville. His face was closed and harried. I lifted my hand to him, but he didn’t notice me, let alone recognize me. The Captain and his entourage headed past the restaurant to the landing area, where a truck was unloading heavy drums.

On the way to Santa Monica, I listened to the morning news and learned that Lennox Oil was bringing in a wild-well team from Houston and preparing a major attempt to stop the spill. I switched off the radio and enjoyed the silence, broken only by the sounds of my own and other cars.

Traffic was still fairly light, and the day was clear enough to see the mountains rising in the east like the boundaries of an undiscovered country. I lapsed for a while into my freeway daydream: I was mobile and unencumbered, young enough to go where I had never been and clever enough to do new things when I got there.

The fantasy snapped in my face when I got to Santa Monica. It was just another part of the megalopolis which stretched from San Diego to Ventura, and I was a citizen of the endless city.

I found Joseph Sperling’s tailor shop in a side street off Lincoln Boulevard. I remembered it as a pleasant street of shops, but the flow of time and traffic had eroded it. A real-estate office next to the tailor shop was standing empty, with photographs of unsold houses gathering dust in the window.

The door of Joseph Sperling’s shop was locked. A cardboard clock with a movable hand hung inside the window and indicated that he would be in at eight. It was a few minutes before eight. I locked my car and went to a drive-in around the corner for breakfast. With the second cup of coffee, I finally warmed up and stopped shivering.

When I went back to the tailor shop, Joseph Sperling was there. He was a small gentle-looking man with curly gray hair and bright eyes behind rimless spectacles. He looked at me as if he was estimating my measurements and planning a suit.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“Do you know Ralph P. Mungan?”

His eyes widened as if to register trouble, and narrowed down again in defense against it. “I used to know him quite well. Is Ralph in some kind of a jam?”

“The worst kind.”

He leaned on a table, supporting himself on a bolt of fabric. “What does that mean, the worst kind?”

“He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, very sorry.”

“Were you close to him, Mr. Sperling?”

He was shocked into reminiscence. “We haven’t been close in a long time – not really what you could call close. But I knew Ralph in Fresno, where we grew up. I was a few years older than Ralph and Martha, and I came down here to the big city first. By the time they made the move, I owned the building next door as well as this one, and I rented it to them.” He looked a little afraid that I might not believe him.

“Was this recently?”

“Not recently, no. It was over twenty years ago that they first came here. And nearly ten years since they left. What on earth happened to Ralph?”

“He drowned in the sea off Pacific Point.”

Sperling’s face lost its color. “Are you from the police?”

“I’m a private detective.”

“Was it suicide?”

“I doubt it. Would you say Ralph was suicidal?”

“He talked about it sometimes, especially when he was drinking. Ralph was bitterly disappointed in his life – it hadn’t worked out the way he hoped. I don’t mean to insult the memory of a dead man, but Ralph did a lot of drinking in his day. He and his wife, Martha, used to drink and fight, fight and drink. Sometimes when I was sewing in the back–” he waved his hand toward an area behind a hanging green curtain “–I could hear them through two thicknesses of wall.”

“I’d like to talk to his wife. Have you seen her recently?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t. I haven’t seen either of them in years. Anyway, I heard they went their separate ways.”

“Divorced?”

“So I heard. Still, Martha will have to be told about this. I’d rather you told her than have to do it myself. Or does she know?”

“I doubt it. It just happened last night or early this morning. I pulled him out of the water myself.”

He gave me a sympathetic look. “I noticed you were a little blue around the gills. Why don’t you sit down? I’ll see if I can find her number for you.”

He pulled out a chair for me and left the room. The green curtain fell into place behind him. I sat and listened to the whisper and whir and stutter and roar of the boulevard.

Sperling came back after a while with a memo pad in his hand. He tore off the top sheet and handed it to me.

“Martha’s phone isn’t listed, and neither is Ralph’s. But I got his number and address from a mutual friend in the realestate business. Ralph lives in Beverly Hills now – I mean he did live there. It looks as if he finally made it, after all.”

I doubted it. The little old hairless man in Blanche’s Restaurant had looked as if he had never made it anywhere. But the address on the slip of paper was Bottlebrush Drive, an expensive street in a very expensive city.

“I suppose you could call his house,” Sperling said. “There may be somebody there who should be told. For all I know, Ralph may have married again. Some of us do and some of us don’t. But Ralph was the type who would, if you want my opinion.”

Still I hesitated to place the phone call. I had the feeling that I had made a mistake, or was about to make one.

“Can you tell me a little more about Ralph, Mr. Sperling?”

“What sort of thing do you mean?”

“Well, you made him a suit in 1955.”

“That’s right, I did. He couldn’t really afford it, but I gave it to him at cost for a birthday present.” He fell silent, and his sensitive eyes registered the implications of what I had said. “Was he wearing my suit when you found him?”

“Yes, he was.”

“He must have lost weight. The last time I set eyes on him, he was much too large in the waistline to get into that suit. We had a little joke about it at the time. He was too fat for his own good, but he still was a fine-looking man.”

“Fine-looking?”

“I always thought so. So did Mrs. Sperling, when she was alive.”

“How did he get the burns on his face and head?”

“Burns?”

“Yes. He was pretty badly disfigured.”

“That must have happened since I saw him.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A couple of years at least, more like three. I ran into him in Century Plaza. He was in a hurry, and we didn’t spend much time together. But he certainly had no burn marks on his head. I noticed what a fine head of hair he still had.”

“Can you describe him for me, Mr. Sperling?”

“Well, he’s – he was middle-aged – he’d be about fifty or so, with a tendency to stoutness, but Ralph was always light and fast on his feet. And always cheerful, except when he was drinking and down in the dumps.” He looked past me at the light coming through the front window. “It’s hard to believe that Ralph is dead.”

I didn’t believe it myself. It was clear that there had been a mistake. I asked Sperling to let me use his phone. He took me into his back room, where suits in various stages of completion hung like the makings of artificial men; then he delicately withdrew as I dialed the Beverly Hills number.

A sedate woman’s voice answered: “This is the Mungan residence.”

“May I speak to Mr. Mungan, please?”

“Who shall I tell him is calling?”

I gave her my name and occupation. After a minute’s wait, he came to the phone. “Ralph Mungan speaking. My wife’s housekeeper says you’re a detective.”

“A private detective cooperating with the Orange County police. The body of a man came in with the tide this morning off Pacific Point.”

“What man?”

“He was wearing a suit with your name sewn into it.”

Mungan was silent for a moment. “I don’t like that. It makes me feel as if somebody walked on my grave. How could a thing like that happen?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to come and discuss it with you.”

“Why? Is it somebody I know?”

“That’s possible. In any case, you may be able to help me identify him. May I come over, Mr. Mungan? I won’t take much of your time.”

Reluctantly, he agreed. I left Sperling looking more cheerful.