The Far Side of the Dollar

Chapter 12

1945 WAS A long time ago, as time went in California. The Barcelona Hotel was still standing, but I seemed to remember hearing that it was closed. I took the long drive down Sunset to the coastal highway on the off-chance of developing my lead to Harold Harley. Also I wanted to take another look at the building where Harley and Carol had lived.

It was a huge old building, Early Hollywood Byzantine, with stucco domes and minarets, and curved verandahs where famous faces of the silent days had sipped their bootleg rum. Now it stood abandoned under the bluff: The bright lights of a service station across the highway showed that its white paint was flaking off and some of the windows were broken.

I parked on the weed-ruptured concrete of the driveway and walked up to the front door. Taped to the glass was a notice of bankruptcy, with an announcement that the building was going to be sold at public auction in September.

I flashed my light through the glass into the lobby. It was still completely furnished, but the furnishings looked as though they hadn’t been replaced in a generation. The carpet was worn threadbare, the chairs were gutted. But the place still had atmosphere, enough of it to summon up a flock of ghosts.

I moved along the curving verandah, picking my way among the rain-warped wicker furniture, and shone my light through a french window into the dining room. The tables were set, complete with cocked-hat napkins, but there was dust lying thick on the napery. A good place for ghosts to feed, I thought, but not for me.

Just for the hell of it, though, and as a way of asserting myself against the numerous past, I went back to the front door and tapped loudly with my flashlight on the glass. Deep inside the building, at the far end of a corridor, a light showed itself. It was a moving light, which came toward me.

The man who was carrying it was big, and he walked as if he had sore feet or legs. I could see his face now in the upward glow of his electric lantern. A crude upturned nose, a bulging forehead, a thirsty mouth. It was the face of a horribly ravaged baby who had never been weaned from the bottle. I could also see that he had a revolver in his other hand.

He pointed it at me and flashed the light in my eyes. “This place is closed. Can’t you read?” he shouted through the glass.

“I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you. Beat it. Amscray.”

He waved the gun at me. I could tell from his voice and look that he had been drinking hard. A drunk with a gun and an excuse to use it can be murder, literally. I made one more attempt: “Do you know a photographer named Harold Harley who used to be here?”

“Never heard of him. Now you get out of here before I blow a hole in you. You’re trespashing.”

He lifted the heavy revolver. I withdrew, as far as the service station across the street. A quick-moving man in stained white coveralls came out from under a car on a hoist and offered to sell me gas.

“It ought to take ten,” I said. “Who’s the character in the Barcelona Hotel? He acts like he was bitten by a bear.”

The man gave me a one-sided smile. “You run into Otto Sipe?”

“If that’s the watchman’s name.”

“Yeah. He worked there so long he thinks he owns the place.”

“How long?”

“Twenty years or more. I been here since the war myself, and he goes back before me. He was their dick.”

“Hotel detective?”

“Yeah. He told me once he used to be an officer of the law. If he was, he didn’t learn much. Check your oil?”

“Don’t bother, I just had it changed. Were you here in 1945?”

“That’s the year I opened. I went into the service early and got out early. Why?”

“I’m a private detective. The name is Archer.”

I offered him my hand.

He wiped his on his coveralls before he took it. “Daly. Ben Daly.”

“A man named Harold Harley used to stay at the Barcelona in 1945. He was a photographer.”

Daly’s face opened. “Yeah. I remember him. He took a picture of me and the wife to pay for his gas bill once. We still have it in the house.”

“You wouldn’t know where he is now?”

“Sorry, I haven’t seen him in ten years.”

“What was the last you saw of him?”

“He had a little studio in Pacific Palisades. I dropped in once or twice to say hello. I don’t think he’s there any more.”

“I gather you liked him.”

“Sure. There’s no harm in Harold.”

Men could change. I showed Carol’s picture to Daly. He didn’t know her.

“You couldn’t pin down the address in Pacific Palisades for me?”

He rubbed the side of his face. It needed retreading, but it was a good face. “I can tell you where it is.”

He told me where it was, on a side street just off Sunset, next door to a short-order restaurant. I thanked him, and paid him for the gas.

The short-order restaurant was easy to find, but the building next door to it was occupied by a paperback bookstore. A young woman wearing pink stockings and a ponytail presided over the cash register. She looked at me pensively through her eye makeup when I asked her about Harold Harley.

“It seems to me I heard there was a photographer in here at one time.”

“Where would he be now?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, honestly. We’ve only been here less than a year ourselves – a year in September.”

“How are you doing?”

“We’re making the rent, at least.”

“Who do you pay it to?”

“The man who runs the lunch counter. Mr. Vernon. He ought to give us free meals for what he charges. Only don’t quote me if you talk to him. We’re a month behind now on the rent.”

I bought a book and went next door for dinner. It was a place where I could eat with my hat on. While I was waiting for my steak, I asked the waitress for Mr. Vernon. She turned to the white-hatted short-order cook who had just tossed my steak onto the grill.

“Mr. Vernon, gentleman wants to speak to you.”

He came over to the counter, an unsmiling thin-faced man with glints of gray beard showing on his chin. “You said you wanted it bloody. You’ll get it bloody.”

He brandished his spatula.

“Good. I understand you own the store next door.”

“That and the next one to it.”

The thought encouraged him a little. “You looking for a place to rent?”

“I’m looking for a man, a photographer named Harold Harley.”

“He rented that store for a long time. But he couldn’t quite make a go of it. There’s too many photographers in this town. He held on for seven or eight years after the war and then gave up on it.”

“You don’t know where he is now?”

“No sir, I do not.”

The sizzling of my steak reached a certain intensity, and he heard it. He went and flipped it with his spatula and came back to me. “You want french frieds?”

“All right. What’s the last you saw of Harley?”

“The last I heard of him he moved out to the Valley. That was a good ten years ago. He was trying to run his business out of the front room of his house in Van Nuys. He’s a pretty good photographer – he took a fine picture of my boy’s christening party – but he’s got no head for business. I ought to know, he still owes me three months’ rent.”

Six young people came in and lined up along the counter. They had wind in their hair, sand in their ears, and the word “Surfbirds” stenciled across the backs of their identical yellow sweatshirts. All of them, girls and boys, ordered two hamburgers apiece.

One of the boys put a quarter in the jukebox and played “Surfin’ ain’t no sin.”

Mr. Vernon got twelve hamburger patties out of the refrigerator and lined them up on the grill. He put my steak on a plate with a handful of fried potatoes and brought it to me personally.

“I could look up that Van Nuys address if it’s important. I kept it on account of the rent he owed me.”

“It’s important.”

I showed him Carol’s picture, the young one Harley had taken. “Do you recognize his wife?”

“I didn’t even know he had a wife. I didn’t think he’d rate a girl like that.”

“Why not?”

“He’s no ladies’ man. He never was. Harold’s the quiet type.”

Doubt was slipping in again that I was on the right track. It made my head ache. “Can you describe him to me?”

“He’s just an ordinary-looking fellow, about my size, five foot ten. Kind of a long nose. Blue eyes. Sandy hair. There’s nothing special about him. Of course he’d be older now.”

“How old?”

“Fifty at least. I’m fifty-nine myself, due to retire next year. Excuse me, mister.”

He flipped the twelve hamburger patties over, distributed twelve half-buns on top of them and went out through a swinging door at the back. I ate my steak. Mr. Vernon returned with a slip of paper on which he had written Harley’s Van Nuys address: 956 Elmhurst.

The waitress delivered the hamburgers to the surfbirds. They munched them in time to the music. The song the jukebox was playing as I went out had a refrain about “the day that I caught the big wave and made you my slave.”

I drove up Sunset onto the San Diego Freeway headed north.

Elmhurst was a working-class street of prewar bungalows built too close together. It was a warm night in the Valley, and some people were still out on their porches and lawns. A fat man drinking beer on the porch of 956 told me that Harley had sold him the house in 1960. He had his present address because he was still paying Harley monthly installments on a second trust deed.

That didn’t sound like the Harley I knew. I asked him for a description.

“He’s kind of a sad character,” the fat man said. “One of these guys that wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a goose. He’s had his troubles, I guess.”

“What kind of troubles?”

“Search me. I don’t know him well. I only saw him the twice when I bought the house from him. He wanted out in a hurry, and he gave me a good buy. He had this chance for a job in Long Beach, developing film, and he didn’t want to commute.”

He gave me Harley’s address in Long Beach, which is a long way from Van Nuys. It was close to midnight when I found the house, a tract house near Long Beach Boulevard. It had brown weeds in the front yard, and was lightless, like most of the houses in the street.

I drove past a street light to the end of the block and walked back. The all-night traffic on the boulevard filled the air with a kind of excitement, rough and forlorn. I was raised in Long Beach, and I used to cruise its boulevards in a model-A Ford. Their sound, whining, threatening, rising, fading, spoke to something deep in my mind which I loved and hated. I didn’t want to knock on Harley’s door. I was almost certain I had the wrong man.

The overhead door of the attached garage was closed but not locked. I opened it quietly. The street light down the block shone on the rear of a dirty white Ford sedan with an Idaho license plate.

I went to the left-hand door of the car and opened it. The dome light came on. The car was registered in the name of Robert Brown with an address in Pocatello. My heart was pounding so hard I could scarcely breathe.

The door from the garage into the house was suddenly outlined up light. The door sprung open. The light slapped me across the eyes and drenched me.

“Mike?” said the voice of a man I didn’t know. He looked around the corner of the door frame. “Is that you, Mike?”

“I saw Mike yesterday.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend.” I didn’t say whose friend. “He left his car for you, I see.”

“That’s between him and I” His defensive tone encouraged me. I moved across the lighted space between us and stepped up into his kitchen, closing the door behind me. He didn’t try to keep me out. He stood barefoot in his pajamas facing me, gray-haired and haggard-faced, with drooping hound eyes.

“My brother didn’t tell me about a partner.”

“Oh? What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. I mean–” He tried to bite his lower lip. His teeth were false, and slipped. Until he sucked them back into place he looked as if I had scared him literally to death. “He didn’t tell me a thing about you or anything. I don’t know why you come to me. That car is mine. I traded him my crate for it.”

“Was that wise?”

“I dunno, maybe not.”

He glanced at the unwashed dishes piled in the sink as if they shared responsibility for his lack of wisdom. “Anyway, it’s none of your business.”

“It’s everybody’s business, Harold. You must know that by now.”

His lips formed the word “Yes” without quite saying it. Tears came into his eyes. It was Harold he mourned for. He named the most terrible fear he could conjure up: “Are you from the FBI?”

“I’m a police agent. We need to have a talk.”

“Here?”

“This is as good a place as any.”

He looked around the dingy little room as if he was seeing it with new eyes. We sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table. The checkered oilcloth that covered it was threadbare in places.

“I didn’t want any part of this,” he said.

“Who would?”

“And it isn’t the first time he got me into trouble, not by a long shot. This has been going on for the last thirty-five years, ever since Mike got old enough to walk and talk. I kid you not.”

“Just what do you mean when you say he’s got you into trouble? This time.”

He shrugged crookedly and raised his open hands as if I should plainly be able to see the stigmata in his palms. “He’s mixed up in a kidnapping, isn’t he?”

“Did he tell you that?”

“He never told me anything straight in his life. But I can read. Since I saw the papers today I’ve been scared to go out of the house. And you know what my wife did? She left me. She took a taxi to the bus station and went back to her mother in Oxnard. She didn’t even wash last night’s dishes.”

“When was your brother here?”

“Last night. He got here around ten-thirty. We were on our way to bed but I got up again. I talked to him right here where we’re sitting. I thought there was something screwy going on. He had that wild look in his eye – but I didn’t know what. He gave me one of his stories, that he won a lot of money in a poker game from some sailors in Dago, and they were after him to take the money back. That’s why he wanted to change cars with me. He said.”

“Why did you agree to it?”

“I dunno. It’s hard to say no when Mike wants something.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“Not in so many words. I knew he had a gun with him. I saw him take it out of his car.”

He lifted his eyes to mine. “You always feel sort of under a threat when Mike has something going. Stand in his way and he’ll clobber you soon as look at you.”

I had reason to believe him. “What was the make and model and license number of your car?”

“1958 Plymouth two-door, license IKT 449.”

“Color?”

“Two-tone blue.”

I made some notes. “I’m going to ask you a very important question. Was the boy with Mike? This boy?”

I showed him Tom’s picture. He shook his head over it. “No sir.”

“Did he say where the boy was?”

“He didn’t mention any boy, and I didn’t know about it, then.”

“Did you know he was coming here last night?”

“In a way. He phoned me from Los Angeles yesterday afternoon. He said he might be dropping by but I wasn’t to tell anybody.”

“Did he say anything about changing cars when he phoned you?”

“No sir.”

“Did you and your brother have any previous agreement to change cars?”

“No sir.”

“And you didn’t know about the kidnapping until you read about it in the paper today?”

“That’s correct. Or the murder either.”

“Do you know who was murdered?”

His head hung forward, moving up and down slightly on the cords of his neck. He covered the back of his neck with his hand as if he feared a blow there from behind. “I guess – it sounded like Carol.”

“It was Carol.”

“I’m sorry to hear about that. She was a good kid, a lot better than he deserved.”

“You should have come forward with information, Harold.”

“I know that. Lila said so. It’s why she left me. She said I was setting myself up for a patsy again.”

“I gather it’s happened before.”

“Not this bad, though. The worst he ever did to me before was when he sold me a camera he stole from the Navy. He turned around and claimed I stole it when I visited him on his ship on visiting day.”

“What was the name of the ship?”

“The Perry Bay. It was one of those jeep carriers. I went aboard her in Dago the last year of the war, but I wisht I never set foot on her. The way they talked to me, I thought I was gonna end up in the federal pen. But they finally took my word that I didn’t know the camera was hot.”

“I’m taking your word now about several things, or have you noticed?”

“I didn’t know what to think.”

“I believe you’re an honest man in a bind, Harold.”

My spoken sympathy was too much for him. It made his eyes water again. He removed his hand from the back of his neck and wiped his eyes with his fingers.

“I’m not the only one you have to convince, of course. But I think you can probably work your way out of this bind by telling the whole truth.”

“You mean in court?”

“Right now.”

“I want to tell the truth,” he said earnestly. “I would have come forward, only I was ascared to. I was ascared they’d send me up for life.”

“And Mike too?”

“It wasn’t him I was worried about,” he said. “I’m through with my brother. When I found out about Carol–” He shook his head.

“Were you fond of her?”

“Sure I was. I didn’t see much of her these last years when they were in Nevada. But Carol and me, we always got along.”

“They were living in Nevada?”

“Yeah. Mike had a job bartending in one of the clubs on the South Shore. Only he lost it. I had to–” His slow mind overtook his words and stopped them.

“You had to–?”

“Nothing. I mean. I had to help him out a little these last few months since he lost his job.”

“How much money did you give them?”

“I dunno. What I could spare. A couple of hundred dollars.”

He looked up guiltily.

“Did Mike pay you back last night by any chance?”

He hung his head. The old refrigerator in the corner behind him woke up and started to throb. Above it I could still hear the sound of the boulevard rising and falling, coming and going.

“No he didn’t,” Harold said.

“How much did he give you?”

“He didn’t give me anything.”

“You mean he was only paying you back?”

“That’s right.”

“How much?”

“He gave me five hundred dollars,” he said in horror.

“Where is it?”

“Under my mattress. You’re welcome to it. I don’t want any part of it.”

I followed him into the bedroom. The room was in disarray, with bureau drawers pulled out, hangers scattered on the floor.

“Lila took off in a hurry,” he said, “soon as she saw the paper. She probably filed suit for divorce already. It wouldn’t be the first time she got a divorce.”

“From you?”

“From the other ones.”

Lila’s picture stood on top of the bureau. Her face was dark and plump and stubborn-looking, and it supported an insubstantial dome of upswept black hair.

Harold stood disconsolately by the unmade bed. I helped him to lift up the mattress. Flattened under it was an oilskin tobacco pouch containing paper money visible through the oilskin. He handed it to me.

“Did you see where this came from, Harold?”

“He got it out of the car. I heard him unwrapping some paper.”

I put the pouch in my pocket without opening it. “And you honestly didn’t know it was hot?”

He sat on the bed. “I guess I knew there was something the matter with it. He couldn’t win that much in a poker game, I mean and keep it. He always keeps trying for the one more pot until he loses his wad. But I didn’t think about kidnapping, for gosh sake.”

He struck himself rather feebly on the knee. “Or murder.”

“Do you think he murdered the boy?”

“I meant poor little Carol.”

“I meant the boy.”

“He wouldn’t do that to a young kid,” Harold said in a small hushed voice. He seemed not to want the statement to be heard, for fear it would be denied.

“Have you searched the car?”

“No sir. Why would I do that?”

“For blood or money. You haven’t opened the trunk?”

“No. I never went near the lousy car.”

He looked sick, as if its mere presence in his garage had infected him with criminality.

“Give me the keys to it.”

He picked up his limp trousers, groped in the pockets, and handed me an old leather holder containing the keys to the car. I advised him to put on his clothes while I went out to the garage.

I found the garage light and turned it on, unlocked the trunk, and with some trepidation, lifted the turtleback. The space inside was empty, except for a rusty jack and a balding spare tire. No body.

But before I closed the trunk I found something in it that I didn’t like. A raveled piece of black yarn was caught in the lock. I remembered Sam Jackman telling me that Tom had been wearing a black sweater on Sunday. I jerked the yarn loose, angrily, and put it away in an envelope in my pocket. I slammed the turtleback down on the possibility which the black yarn suggested to my mind.