The Chill

Chapter 7

I drove downhill through deepening twilight toward the Mariner’s Rest Motel, telling myself in various tones of voice that I had done the right thing. The trouble was, in the scene I had just walked out of, there was no right thing to do – only sins of commission or omission.

A keyboy wearing a gold-braided yachting cap who looked as though he had never set foot on a dock told me that Alex Kincaid had registered and gone out again. I went to the Surf House for dinner. The spotlit front of the big hotel reminded me of Fargo and all the useless pictures I had ordered from him.

He was in the dark room adjoining his little office. When he came out he was wearing rectangular dark glasses against the light. I couldn’t see his eyes, but his mouth was hostile. He picked up a bulky manila envelope from the desk and thrust it at me.

“I thought you were in a hurry for these prints.”

“I was. Things came up. We found her.”

“So now you don’t want ’em? My wife worked in this sweatbox half the afternoon to get ’em ready.”

“I’ll take them. Kincaid will have a use for them if I don’t. How much?”

“Twenty-five dollars including tax. It’s actually $24.96.”

I gave him two tens and a five, and his mouth went through three stages of softening. “Are they getting back together?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Where did you find her?”

“Attending the local college. She has a job driving for an old lady named Bradshaw.”

“The one with the Rolls?”

“Yes. You know her?”

“I wouldn’t say that. She and her son generally eat Sunday buffet lunch in the dining room. She’s quite a character. I took a candid picture of them once, on the chance they’d order some copies, and she threatened to smash my camera with her cane. I felt like telling the old biddy her face was enough to smash it.”

“But you didn’t?”

“I can’t afford such luxuries.” He spread out his chemicalstained hands. “She’s a local institution, and she could get me fired.”

“I understand she’s loaded.”

“Not only that. Her son is a big wheel in educational circles. He seems like a nice enough joe, in spite of the Harvard lahdedah. As a matter of fact he calmed her down when she wanted to smash my Leica. But it’s hard to figure a guy like that, a good-looking guy in his forties, still tied to his old lady’s apron-strings.”

“It happens in the best of families.”

“Yeah, especially in the best. I see a lot of these sad cookies waiting around for the money, and by the time they inherit it’s too late. At least Bradshaw had the guts to go out and make a career for himself.” Fargo looked at his watch. “Speaking of careers, I’ve already put in a twelve-hour day and I’ve got about two hours of developing to do. See you.”

I started toward the hotel coffee shop. Fargo came running after me along the corridor. The rectangular dark glasses lent his face a robotlike calm which went oddly with the movements of his legs and arms.

“I almost forgot to ask you. You get a line on this Begley?”

“I talked to him for quite a while. He didn’t give too much. He’s living with a woman on Shearwater Beach.”

“Who’s the lucky woman?” Fargo said.

“Madge Gerhardi is her name. Do you know her?”

“No, but I think I know who he is. If I could take another look at him–”

“Come over there now.”

“I can’t. I’ll tell you who I think he is under all that seaweed, if you promise not to quote me. There’s such a thing as accidental resemblance, and a libel suit is the last thing I need.”

“I promise not to quote you.”

“See that you don’t.” He took a deep breath like a skin diver getting ready to go for the bottom. “I think he’s a fellow named Thomas McGee who murdered his wife in Indian Springs about ten years ago. I took a picture of McGee when I was a cub reporter on the paper, but they never used the picture. They never play up those Valley cases.”

“You’re sure he murdered his wife?”

“Yeah, it was an open-and-shut case. I don’t have time to go into details, in fact they’re getting pretty hazy at this late date. But most of the people around the courthouse thought he should have been given first degree. Gil Stevens convinced the jury to go for second degree, which explains how he’s out so quick.”

Remembering Begley’s story about his ten years on the other side of the world, the other side of the moon, I thought that ten years wasn’t so very quick.

The fog was dense along Shearwater Beach. It must have been high tide: I could hear the surf roaring up under the cottages and sucking at their pilings. The smell of iodine hung in the chilly air.

Madge Gerhardi answered the door and looked at me rather vaguely. The paint on her eyelids couldn’t hide the fact that they were swollen.

“You’re the detective, aren’t you?”

“Yes. May I come in?”

“Come in if you want. It won’t do any good. He’s gone.”

I’d already guessed it from her orphaned air. I followed her along a musty hallway into the main room, which was high and raftered. Spiders had been busy in the angles of the rafters, which were webbed and blurred as if fog had seeped in at the corners. The rattan furniture was coming apart at the joints. The glasses and empty bottles and half-empty bottles standing around on the tables and the floor suggested that a party had been going on for some days and might erupt again if I wasn’t careful.

The woman kicked over an empty bottle on the way to the settee, where she flung herself down.

“It’s your fault he’s gone,” she complained. “He started to pack right after you were here this afternoon.”

I sat on a rattan chair facing her. “Did Begley say where he was going?”

“Not to me he didn’t. He did say I wasn’t to expect him back, that it was all off. Why did you have to scare him, anyway? Chuck never did anybody any harm.”

“He scares very easily.”

“Chuck is sensitive. He’s had a great deal of trouble. Many’s the time he told me that all he wanted was a quiet nook where he could write about his experiences. He’s writing an autobiographical novel about his experiences.”

“His experiences in New Caledonia?”

She said with surprising candor: “I don’t think Chuck ever set foot in New Caledonia. He got that business about the chrome mine out of an old National Geographic magazine. I don’t believe he ever left this country.”

“Where has he been?”

“In the pen,” she said. “You know that, or you wouldn’t be after him. I think it’s a dirty crying shame, when a man has paid his debt to society and proved that he can rehabilitate himself–”

It was Begley she was quoting, Begley’s anger she was expressing, but she couldn’t sustain the anger or remember the end of the quotation. She looked around the wreckage of the room in dim alarm, as if she had begun to suspect that his rehabilitation was not complete.

“Did he tell you what he was in for, Mrs. Gerhardi?”

“Not in so many words. He read me a piece from his book the other night. This character in the book was in the pen and he was thinking about the past and how they framed him for a murder he didn’t commit. I asked him if the character stood for him. He wouldn’t say. He went into one of his deep dark silences.”

She went into one of her own. I could feel the floor trembling under my feet. The sea was surging among the pilings like the blithe mindless forces of dissolution. The woman said:

“Was Chuck in the pen for murder?”

“I was told tonight that he murdered his wife ten years ago. I haven’t confirmed it. Can you?”

She shook her head. Her face had lengthened as if by its own weight, like unbaked dough. “It must be a mistake.”

“I hope so. I was also told that his real name is Thomas McGee. Did he ever use that name?”

“No.”

“It does tie in with another fact,” I said, thinking aloud. “The girl he went to visit at the Surf House had the same name before she was married. He said the girl resembled his daughter. I think she is his daughter. Did he ever talk about her?”

“Never.”

“Or bring her here?”

“No. If she’s his daughter, he wouldn’t bring her here.” She reached for the empty bottle she had kicked over, set it on its base, and slumped back onto the settee, as if morally exhausted by the effort.

“How long did Begley, or McGee, live here with you?”

“A couple of weeks is all. We were going to be married. It’s lonely living here without a man.”

“I can imagine.”

She drew a little life from the sympathy in my voice: “They just don’t stay with me. I try to make things nice for them, but they don’t stay. I should have stuck with my first husband.” Her eyes were far away and long ago. “He treated me like a queen but I was young and foolish. I didn’t know any better than to leave him.”

We listened to the water under the house.

“Do you think Chuck went away with this girl you call his daughter?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “How did he leave here, Mrs. Gerhardi? By car?”

“He wouldn’t let me drive him. He said he was going up to the corner and catch the L.A. bus. It stops at the corner if you signal it. He walked up the road with his suitcase and out of sight.” She sounded both regretful and relieved.

“About what time?”

“Around three o’clock.”

“Did he have any money?”

“He must have had some for the bus fare. He couldn’t have had much. I’ve been giving him a little money, but he would only take what he needed from me, and then it always had to be a loan. Which he said he would pay back when he got his book of experiences on the market. But I don’t care if he never pays me back. He was nice to have around.”

“Really?”

“Really he was. Chuck is a smart man. I don’t care what he’s done in the course of his life. A man can change for the better. He never gave me a bad time once.” She made a further breakthrough into candor: “I was the one who gave him the bad times. I have a drinking problem. He only drank with me to be sociable. He didn’t want me to drink alone.” She blinked her gin-colored eyes. “Would you like a drink?”

“No thanks. I have to be on my way.” I got up and stood over her. “You’re sure he didn’t tell you where he was going?”

“Los Angeles is all I know. He promised I’d hear from him but I don’t expect it. It’s over.”

“If he should write or phone will you let me know?”

She nodded. I gave her my card, and told her where I was staying. When I went out, the fog had moved inland as far as the highway.