The Barbarous Coast

Chapter 22

THE AIR was turning chilly. Laughter and other party sounds still overflowed the bar, but the music in the court ceased. A car toiled up the drive to the highway, and then another. The party was breaking up.

There was light in the lifeguard’s room at the end of the row of cabañas. I looked in. The young Negro was sitting inside, reading a book. He closed it when he saw me, and stood up. The name of the book was Elements of Sociology.

“You’re a late reader.”

“Better late than never.”

“What do you do with Bassett when he passes out?”

“Is he passed out again?”

“On the floor of his office. Does he have a bed around?”

“Yeah, in the back room.” He made a resigned face. “Guess I better put him in it, eh?”

“Need any help?”

“No, thanks, I can handle him myself, I had plenty of practice.” He smiled at me, less automatically than before. “You a friend of Mr. Bassett’s?”

“Not exactly.”

“He give you some kind of a job?”

“You could say that.”

“Working around the Club here?”

“Partly.”

He was too polite to ask what my duties were. “Tell you what, I’ll pour Mr. Bassett in bed; you stick around, I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

“I could use a cup of coffee. The name is Lew Archer, by the way.”

“Joseph Tobias.” His grip was the kind that bends horseshoes. “Kind of an unusual name, isn’t it? You can wait here, if you like.”

He trotted away. The storeroom was jammed with folded beach umbrellas, piled deckchairs, deflated plastic floats and beach balls. I set up one of the deckchairs for myself and stretched out on it. Tiredness hit me like pentothal. Almost immediately, I went to sleep.

When I woke up, Tobias was standing beside me. He had opened a black iron switchbox on the wall. He pulled a series of switches, and the glimmering night beyond the open door turned charcoal gray. He turned and saw that I was awake.

“Didn’t like to wake you up. You look tired.”

“Don’t you ever get tired?”

“Nope. For some reason I never do. Only time in my life I got tired was in Korea. There I got bone-tired, pushing a jeep through that deep mud they have. You want your coffee now?”

“Lead me to it.”

He led me to a brightly lighted white-walled room with SNACK BAR over the door. Behind the counter, water was bubbling in a glass coffee-maker. An electric clock on the wall was taking spasmodic little bites of time. It was a quarter to four.

I sat on one of the padded stools at the counter. Tobias vaulted over the counter and landed facing me with a deadpan expression.

“Cuchulain the Hound of Ulster,” he said surprisingly. When Cuchulain was weary and exhausted from fighting battles, he’d go down by the riverside and exercise. That was his way of resting. I turned the fire on under the grill in case we wanted eggs. I could use a couple of eggs or three, personally.”

“Me, too.”

“Three?”

“Three.”

“How’s about some tomato juice to start out with? It clarifies the palate.”

“Fine.”

He opened a large can and poured two glasses of tomato juice. I picked up my glass and looked at it. The juice was thick and dark red in the fluorescent light. I put the glass down again.

“Something the matter with the juice?”

“It looks all right to me,” I said unconvincingly.

He was appalled by this flaw in his hospitality. “What is it – dirt in the juice?” He leaned across the counter, his forehead wrinkled with solicitude. “I just opened the can, so if there’s something in it, it must be the cannery. Some of these big corporations think that they can get away with murder, especially now that we have a businessmen’s administration. I’ll open another can.”

“Don’t bother.”

I drank the red stuff down. It tasted like tomato juices.

“Was it all right?”

“It was very good.”

“I was afraid there for a minute that there was something the matter with it.”

“Nothing the matter with it, The matter was with me.”

He took six eggs out of the refrigerator and broke them onto the grill. They sputtered cozily, turning white at the edges. Tobias said over his shoulder: “It doesn’t alter what I said about the big corporations. Mass production and mass marketing do make for some social benefits, but sheer size tends to militate against the human element. We’ve reached the point where we should count the human cost. How do you like your eggs?”

“Over easy.”

“Over easy it is.” He flipped the six eggs with a spatula, and inserted bread in the four-hole toaster. “You want to butter your own toast, or you want me to butter it for you? I have a butter brush. Personally, I prefer that, myself.”

“You butter it for me.”

“Will do. Now how do you like your coffee?”

“At this time in the morning, black. This is a very fine service you have here.”

“We endeavor to please. I used to be a snack-bar bus boy before I switched over to lifeguard. Lifeguard doesn’t pay any better, but it gives me more time to study.”

“You’re a student, are you?”

“Yes, I am.” He dished up our eggs and poured our coffee. “I bet you’re surprised at the facility with which I express myself.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth.”

He beamed with pleasure, and took a bite of toast. When he had chewed and swallowed it, he said: “I don’t generally let the language flow around here. People, the richer they get, the more they dislike to hear a Negro express himself in well-chosen words. I guess they feel there’s no point in being rich unless you can feel superior to somebody. I study English on the college level, but if I talked that way I’d lose my job. People are very sensitive.”

“You go to U.C.L.A.?”

“Junior College. I’m working up to U.C.L.A. Heck,” he said, “I’m only twenty-five, I’ve got plenty of time. ’Course I’d be way ahead of where I am now if I’d of caught on sooner. It took a hitch in the Army to jolt me out of my unthinking complacency.” He rolled the phrase lovingly on his tongue. “I woke up one night on a cold hill on the way back from the Yalu. And suddenly it hit me – wham! – I didn’t know what it was all about.”

“The war?”

“Everything. War and peace. Values in life.” He inserted a forkful of egg into his mouth and munched at me earnestly. “I realized I didn’t know who I was. I wore this kind of mask, you know, over my face and over my mind, this kind of blackface mask, and it got so I didn’t know who I was. I decided I had to find out who I was and be a man. If I could make it. Does that sound like a foolish thing for a person like me to decide?”

“It sounds sensible to me.”

“I thought so at the time. I still do. Another coffee?”

“Not for me, thanks. You have another.”

“No, I’m a one-cup man, too. I share your addiction for moderation.” He smiled at the sound of the words.

“What do you plan to do in the long run?”

“Teach school. Teach and coach.”

“It’s a good life.”

“You bet it is. I’m looking forward to it.” He paused, taking time out to look forward to it. “I love to tell people important things. Especially kids. I love to communicate values, ideas. What do you do, Mr. Archer?”

“I’m a private detective.”

Tobias looked a little disappointed in me. “Isn’t that kind of a dull life? I mean, it doesn’t bring you into contact with ideas very much. Not,” he added quickly, for fear he had hurt my feelings, “not that I place ideas above other values. Emotions. Action. Honorable action.”

“It’s a rough life,” I said. “You see people at their worst. How’s Bassett, by the way?”

“Dead to the world. I put him to bed. He sleeps it off without any trouble, and I don’t mind putting him to bed. He treats me pretty well.

“How long have you worked here?”

“Over three years. I started out in the snack bar here, and shifted over to lifeguard summer before last.

“You knew Gabrielle here, then.”

He answered prefunctorily: “I knew her. I told you that.”

“At the time that she was murdered?”

His face closed up entirely. The brightness left his eyes like something quick and timid retreating into its hole. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Nothing to do with you. Don’t run out on me, Joseph, just because I asked you a couple of questions.”

“I’m not running out.” But his voice was dull and singsong. “I already answered all the questions there are.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, if you’re a detective. When Gabrielle – when Miss Torres was killed, I was the very first one that they arrested. They took me down to the sheriff’s station and questioned me in relays, all day and half the night.”

He hung his head under the weight of the memory. I hated to see him lose his fine élan.

“Why did they pick on you?”

“For no good reason.” He raised his hand and turned it before his eyes. It was burnished black in the fluorescent light.

“Didn’t they question anybody else?”

“Sure, when I proved to them I was at home all night. They picked up some winoes and sex deviates that live around Malibu and up the canyons, and some hoboes passing through. And they asked Miss Campbell some questions.”

“Hester Campbell?”

“Yes. She was the one that Gabrielle was supposed to be spending the evening with.”

“How do you know?”

“Tony said so.”

“Where did she really spend the evening?”

“How would I know that?”

“I thought you might have some idea.”

“You thought wrong, then.” His gaze, which had been avoiding mine, returned slowly to my face. “Are you reopening that murder case? Is that what Mr. Bassett hired you to do?”

“Not exactly. I started out investigating something else, but it keeps leading me back to Gabrielle. How well did you know her, Joseph?”

He answered carefully: “We worked together. Weekends, she took orders for sandwiches and drinks around the pool and in the cabañas. She was too young to serve the drinks herself, so I did that. Miss Torres was a very nice young lady to work with. I hated to see the thing that happened to her.”

“You saw what happened to her?”

“I don’t mean that. I didn’t see what happened to her when it happened. But I was right here in this room when Tony came up from the beach. Somebody shot her. I guess you know that, shot her and left her lying just below the Club. Tony lived down the shore a piece from here. He expected Gabrielle home by midnight. When she didn’t come home, he phoned the Campbell’s house. They said they hadn’t seen her, so he went out looking for her. He found her in the morning with bullet holes in her, the waves splashing up around her. She was supposed to be helping Mrs. Lamb that day, and Tony came up here first thing to tell Mrs. Lamb about it.”

Tobias licked his dry lips. His eyes looked through me at the past. “He stood right there in front of the counter. For a long time he couldn’t say a word. He couldn’t open his mouth to tell Mrs. Lamb that Gabrielle was dead. She could see that he needed comfort, though. She walked around the end of the counter and put her arms around him and held him for a while like he was a child. Then he told her. Mrs. Lamb sent me to call the police.”

“You called them yourself?”

“I was going to. But Mr. Bassett was in his office. He called them. I went down to the end of the pool and peeked down through the fence. She was lying there in the sand, looking up at the sky. Tony had pulled her up out of the surf. I could see sand in her eyes, I wanted to go down and wipe the sand out of her eyes, but I was afraid to go down there.”

“Why?”

“She had no clothes on. She looked so white. I was afraid they’d come and catch me down there and get a crazy idea about me. They went ahead and got their ideas anyway. They arrested me right that very morning. I was half expecting it.”

“You were?”

“People have to blame somebody. They’ve been blaming us for three hundred years now. I guess I had it coming. I shouldn’t have let myself get – friendly with her. And then, to make it worse, I had this earring belonging to her in my pocket.”

“What earring was that?”

“A little round earring she had, made of mother-of-pearl. It was shaped like a lifesaving belt, with a hole in the middle, and U.S.S. Malibu printed on it. The heck of it was, she was still – the other earring that matched it was still on her ear.”

“How did you happen to have the earring?”

“I just picked it up,” he said, “and I was going to give it back to her. I found it alongside the pool,” he added after a moment.

“That morning?”

“Yes. Before I knew she was dead. That Marfeld and the other cops made a big deal about it. I guess they thought they had it made, until I proved out my alibi.” He made a sound which was half snort and half groan. “As if I’d lay a hand on Gabrielle to hurt her.”

“Were you in love with her, Joseph?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s true, though, isn’t it?”

He rested his elbow on the counter and his chin on his hand, as though to steady his thinking. “I could have been,” he admitted, “if I’d had a chance with her. Only there was no mileage in it. She was only half Spanish-American, and she never really saw me as a human being.”

“That could be a motive for murder.”

I watched his face. It lengthened, but it showed no other sign of emotion. The planes of his cheeks, his broad lips, had the look of a carved and polished mask balanced on his palm. “You didn’t kill her yourself, Joseph?”

He winced, but not with surprise, as though I’d pressed on the scar of an old wound. He shook his head sadly. “I wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head, and you know it.”

“All right. Let it pass.”

“I won’t let it pass. You can take it back or get out of here.”

“All right. I take it back.”

“You shouldn’t have said it in the first place. She was my friend. I thought you were my friend.”

“I’m sorry, Joseph. I have to ask these questions.”

“Why do you have to? Who makes you? You should be careful what you say about who did what around here. Do you know what Tony Torres would do if he thought I killed his girl?”

“Kill you.”

“That’s right. He threatened to kill me when the police turned me loose. It was all I could do to talk him out of it. He gets these fixed ideas in his head, and they stick there like a bur. And he’s got a lot of violence in him yet.”

“So do we all.”

“I know it, Mr. Archer. I know it in myself. Tony’s got more than most. He killed a man with his fists once, when he was young.”

“In the ring?”

“Not in the ring, and it wasn’t an accident. It was over a woman, and he meant to do it. He asked me down to his room one night and got drunk on muscatel and told me all about it.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of months ago. I guess it was really eating him up. Gabrielle’s mother was the woman, you see. He killed the man that she was running with, and she left him. The other man had a knife, so the judge in Fresno called it self-defense, but Tony blamed himself. He connected it up with Gabrielle, said that what happened to her was God’s punishment on him. Tony’s very superstitious.”

“You know his nephew Lance?”

“I know him.” Joseph’s tone defined his attitude. It was negative. “He used to have the job I have a few years back, when I started in the snack bar. I heard he’s a big wheel now, it’s hard to believe. He was so bone lazy he couldn’t even hold a lifeguard job without his uncle filling in for him. Tony used to do his clean-up work while Lance practiced fancy diving.”

“How does Tony feel about him now?”

Joseph scratched his tight hair. “He finally caught on to him. I’d say he almost hates him.”

“Enough to kill him?”

“What’s all this talk about killing, Mr. Archer? Did somebody get killed?”

“I’ll tell you, if you can keep a secret.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“See that you do. Your friend Lance was shot last night.”

He didn’t lift his eyes from the counter. “He was no friend of mine. He was nothing in my life.”

“He was in Tony’s.”

He shook his head slowly from side to side. “I shouldn’t have told you what I did about Tony. He did something once when he was young and crazy. He wouldn’t do a thing like that again. He wouldn’t hurt a flea, unless it was biting him.”

“You can’t have it both ways at once, Joseph. You said he hated Lance.”

“I said almost.”

“Why did he hate him?”

“He had good reason.”

“Tell me.”

“Not if you’re going to turn it against Tony. That Lance isn’t fit to tie his shoelaces for him.”

“You think yourself that Tony may have shot him.”

“I’m not saying what I think, I don’t think anything.”

“You said he had good reason. What was the reason?”

“Gabrielle,” he said to the floor. “Lance was the first one she went with, back when she was just a kid in high school. She told me that. He started her drinking, he taught her all the ways of doing it. If Tony shot that pachuco, he did a good service to the world.”

“Maybe, but not to himself. You say Gabrielle told you all these things?”

He nodded, and his black, despondent shadow nodded with him.

“Were you intimate with her?”

“I never was, not if you mean what I think you mean. She treated me like I had no human feelings. She used to torture me with these things she told me – the things he taught her to do.” His voice was choked. “I guess she didn’t know she was torturing me. She just didn’t know I had feelings.”

“You’ve got too many feelings.”

“Yes, I have. They break me up inside sometimes. Like when she told me what he wanted her to do. He wanted her to go to L.A. with him and live in a hotel, and he would get her dates with men. I blew my top on that one, and went to Tony with it. That was when he broke off with Lance, got him fired from here and kicked him out of the house.”

“Did Gabrielle go with him?”

“No, she didn’t. I thought with him out of the way, maybe she’d straighten out. But it turned out to be too late for her. She was already gone.”

“What happened to her after that?”

“Listen, Mr. Archer,” he said in a tight voice. “You could get me in trouble. Spying on the members is no part of my job.”

“What’s a job?”

“It isn’t the job. I could get another job. I mean really bad trouble.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I thought you wanted to be serviceable.”