The Far Side of the Dollar

Chapter 5

I LET MYSELF out the front door, quietly, got a hat and raincoat out of the trunk of my car, and walked down the winding driveway. In the dead leaves under the oak trees the drip made rustling noises, releasing smells and memories. When I was seventeen I spent a summer working on a dude ranch in the foothills of the Sierra. Toward the end of August, when the air was beginning to sharpen, I found a girl, and before the summer was over we met in the woods. Everything since had been slightly anticlimactic.

Growing up seemed to be getting harder. The young people were certainly getting harder to figure out. Maybe Stella Carlson, if I could get to her, could help me understand Tom.

The Carlsons’ mailbox was a couple of hundred yards down the road. It was a miniature replica, complete with shutters, of their green-shuttered white colonial house, and it rubbed me the wrong way, like a tasteless advertisement. I went up the drive to the brick stoop and knocked on the door.

A handsome redheaded woman in a linen dress opened the door and gave me a cool green look.

“Yes?”

I didn’t think I could get past her without lying. “I’m in the insurance–”

“Soliciting is not allowed in El Rancho.”

“I’m not selling, Mrs. Carlson, I’m a claims adjuster.”

I got an old card out of my wallet, which supported the statement. I had worked for insurance companies in my time.

“If it’s about my wrecked car,” she said, “I thought that was all settled last week.”

“We’re interested in the cause of the accident. We keep statistics, you know.”

“I’m not particularly interested in becoming a statistic.”

“Your car already is. I understand it was stolen.”

She hesitated, and glanced behind her, as if there was a witness in the hallway. “Yes,” she said finally. “It was stolen.”

“By some young punk in the neighborhood, is that right?”

She hushed in response to my incitement. “Yes, and I doubt very much that it was an accident. He took my car and wrecked it out of sheer spite.”

The words boiled out as if they had been simmering in her mind for days.

“That’s an interesting hypothesis, Mrs. Carlson. May I come in and talk it over with you?”

“I suppose so.”

She let me into the hallway. I sat at a telephone table and took out my black notebook. She stood over me with one hand on the newel post at the foot of the stairs.

“Do you have anything to support that hypothesis?” I said with my pencil poised.

“You mean that he wrecked the car deliberately?”

“Yes.”

Her white teeth closed on her full red lower lip, and left a brief dent in it.

“It’s something you couldn’t make a statistic out of. The boy – his name is Tom Hillman – was interested in our daughter. He used to be a much nicer boy than he is now. As a matter of fact, he used to spend most of his free time over here. We treated him as if he were our own son. But the relationship went sour. Very sour.”

She sounded both angry and regretful.

“What soured it?”

She made a violent sideways gesture. “I prefer not to discuss it. It’s something an insurance company doesn’t have to know. Or anybody else.”

“Perhaps I could talk to the boy. He lives next door, doesn’t he?”

“His parents do, the Hillmans. I believe they’ve sent him away somewhere. We no longer speak to the Hillmans,” she said stiffly. “They’re decent enough people, I suppose, but they’ve made awful fools of themselves over that boy.”

“Where did they send him?”

“To some kind of reform school, probably. He needed it. He was running out of control.”

“In what way?”

“Every way. He smashed up my car, which probably means he was drinking. I know he was spending time in the bars on lower Main Street.”

“The night before he wrecked your car?”

“All summer. He even tried to teach his bad habits to Stella. That’s what soured the relationship, if you want to know.”

I made a note. “Could you be a little more specific, Mrs. Carlson? We’re interested in the whole social background of these accidents.”

“Well, he actually dragged Stella with him to one of those awful dives. Can you imagine, taking an innocent sixteen-year old girl to a wino joint on lower Main? That was the end of Tom Hillman, as far as we were concerned.”

“What about Stella?”

“She’s a sensible girl.”

She glanced up toward the head of the stairs. “Her father and I made her see that it wasn’t a profitable relationship.”

“So she wasn’t involved in the borrowing of your car?”

“Certainly not.”

A small clear voice said from the head of the stairs: “That isn’t true, Mother, and you know it. I told you–”

“Be quiet, Stella. Go back to bed. If you’re ill enough to stay home from camp, you’re ill enough to stay in bed.”

As she was talking, Mrs. Carlson surged halfway up the stairs. She had very good calves, a trifle muscular. Her daughter came down toward her, a slender girl with lovely eyes that seemed to take up most of her face below the forehead. Her brown hair was pulled back tight. She had on slacks and a high-necked blue wool sweater, which revealed the bud-sharp outlines of her breasts.

“I’m feeling better, thank you,” she said with adolescent iciness. “At least I was, until I heard you lying about Tommy.”

“How dare you? Go to your room.”

“I will if you’ll stop telling lies about Tommy.”

“You shut up.”

Mrs. Carlson ran up the three or four steps that separated them, grabbed Stella by the shoulders, turned her forcibly, and marched her up out of sight. Stella kept repeating the word “Liar,” until a door slammed on her thin clear voice.

Five minutes later Mrs. Carlson came down wearing fresh makeup, a green hat with a feather in it, a plaid coat, and gloves. She walked straight to the door and opened it wide.

“I’m afraid I have to rush now. My hairdresser gets very angry with me when I’m late. We were getting pretty far afield from what you wanted, anyway.”

“On the contrary. I was very interested in your daughter’s remarks.”

She smiled with fierce politeness. “Pay no attention to Stella. She’s feverish and hysterical. The poor child’s been upset ever since the accident.”

“Because she was involved in it?”

“Don’t be silly.”

She rattled the doorknob. “I really have to go now.”

I stepped outside. She followed, and slammed the door hard behind me. She’d probably had a lot of practice slamming doors.

“Where’s your car?” she called after me.

“I parachuted in.”

She stood and watched me until I reached the foot of the driveway. Then she went back into her house. I plodded back to the Hillmans’ mailbox and turned up their private lane. The rustlings in the woods were getting louder. I thought it was a towhee scratching in the undergrowth. But it was Stella.

She appeared suddenly beside the trunk of a tree, wearing a blue ski jacket with the hood pulled up over her head and tied under her chin. She looked about twelve. She beckoned me with the dignity of a full-grown woman, ending the motion with her finger at her lips.

“I better stay out of sight. Mother will be looking for me.”

“I thought she had an appointment with the hairdresser.”

“That was just another lie,” she said crisply. “She’s always lying these days.”

“Why?”

“I guess people get in the habit of it or something. Mother always used to be a very straight talker. So did Dad. But this business about Tommy has sort of thrown them. It’s thrown me, too,” she added, and coughed into her hand.

“You shouldn’t be out in the wet,” I said. “You’re sick.”

“No, really, I mean not physically. I just don’t feel like facing the kids at camp and having to answer their questions.”

“About Tommy?”

She nodded. “I don’t even know where he is. Do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Are you a policeman, or what?”

“I used to be a policeman. Now I’m a what.”

She wrinkled her nose and let out a little giggle. Then she tensed in a listening attitude, like a yearling fawn. She threw off her hood.

“Do you hear her? That’s Mother calling me.”

Far off through the trees I heard a voice calling: “Stella.”

“She’ll kill me,” the girl said. “But somebody has to tell the truth some time. I know, Tommy has a tree house up the slope, I mean he used to have when he was younger. We can talk there.”

I followed her up a half-overgrown foot trail. A little redwood shack with a tar-paper roof sat on a low platform among the spreading branches of an oak. A homemade ladder, weathered gray like the tree house, slanted up to the platform. Stella climbed up first and went inside. A red-capped woodpecker flew out of an unglazed window into the next tree, where he sat and harangued us. Mrs. Carlson’s voice floated up from the foot of the slope. She had a powerful voice, but it was getting hoarse.

“Swiss Family Robinson,” Stella said when I went in. She was sitting on the edge of a built-in cot which had a mattress but no blankets. “Tommy and I used to spend whole days up here, when we were children.”

At sixteen, there was nostalgia in her voice. “Of course when we reached puberty it had to stop. It wouldn’t have been proper.”

“You’re fond of Tommy.”

“Yes. I love him. We’re going to be married. But don’t get the wrong idea about us. We’re not even going steady. We’re not making out and we’re not soldered.”

She wrinkled her nose, as if she didn’t like the smell of the words. “We’ll be married when the time is right, when Tommy’s through college or at least has a good start. We won’t have any money problems, you see.”

I thought she was using me to comfort herself a little with a story, a simple story with a happy ending. “How is that?”

“Tommy’s parents have lots of money.”

“What about your parents? Will they let you marry him?”

“They won’t be able to stop me.”

I believed her, if Tommy survived. She must have seen the “if” cross my eyes like a shadow. She was a perceptive girl.

“Is Tommy all right?” she said in a different tone.

“I hope so.”

She reached up and plucked at my sleeve. “Where is he, Mister–?”

“I don’t know, Stella. My name is Lew Archer. I’m a private detective working on Tommy’s side. And you were going to tell me the truth about the accident.”

“Yes. It was my fault. Mother and Dad seem to think they have to cover up for me, but it only makes things worse for Tommy. I was the one responsible, really.”

Her direct upward look, her earnest candor, reminded me of a child saying her prayers.

“Were you driving the car?”

“No. I don’t mean I was with him. But I told him he could take it and I got the key for him out of Mother’s room. It’s really my car, too – I mean, to use.”

“She knows this?”

“Yes. I told her and Dad on Sunday. But they had already talked to the police, and after that they wouldn’t change their story, or let me. They said it didn’t alter the fact that he took it.”

“Why did you let him take it?”

“I admit it wasn’t such a good idea. But he had to go someplace to see somebody and his father wouldn’t let him use one of their cars. He was grounded. Mother and Dad were gone for the evening, and Tommy said he’d be back in a couple of hours. It was only about eight o’clock, and I thought it would be okay. I didn’t know he was going to be out all night.”

She closed her eyes and hugged herself. “I was awake all night, listening for him.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was he after?”

“I don’t know that, either. He said it was the most important thing in his life.”

“Could he have been talking about alcohol?”

“Tommy doesn’t drink. It was somebody he had to see, somebody very important.”

“Like a drug pusher?”

She opened her wonderful eyes. “You’re twisting meanings, the way Dad does when he’s mad at me. Are you mad at me, Mr. Archer?”

“No. I’m grateful to you for being honest.”

“Then why do you keep dragging in crummy meanings?”

“I’m used to questioning crummy people, I guess. And sometimes an addict’s own mother, or own girl, doesn’t know he’s using drugs.”

“I’m sure Tommy wasn’t. He was dead against it. He knew what it had done to some–” She covered her mouth with her hand. Her nails were bitten.

“You were going to say?”

“Nothing.”

Our rapport was breaking down. I did my best to save it. “Listen to me, Stella, I’m not digging dirt for the fun of it. Tommy’s in real danger. If he had contacts with drug users, you should tell me.”

“They were just some of his musician friends,” she mumbled. “They wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”

“They may have friends who would. Who are these people?”

“Just some people he played the piano with this summer, till his father made him quit. Tommy used to sit in on their jam sessions on Sunday afternoon at The Barroom Floor.”

“Is that one of the dives your mother mentioned?”

“It isn’t a dive. He didn’t take me to dives. It was merely a place where they could get together and play their instruments. He wanted me to hear them play.”

“And Tommy played with them?”

She nodded brightly. “He’s a very good pianist, good enough to make his living at it. They even offered him a weekend job.”

“Who did?”

“The combo at The Barroom Floor. His father wouldn’t let him take it, naturally.”

“Tell me about the people in the combo.”

“Sam Jackman is the only one I know. He used to be a locker boy at the beach club. He plays the trombone. Then there was a saxophonist and a trumpeter and a drummer. I don’t remember their names.”

“What did you think of them?”

“I didn’t think they were very good. But Tommy said they were planning to make an album.”

“Every combo is. I mean, what kind of people were they?”

“They were just musicians. Tommy seemed to like them.”

“How much time had he been spending with them?”

“Just Sunday afternoons. He called it his other life.”

“His other life?”

“Uh-huh. You know, at home he had to hit the books and make his parents feel good and all that stuff. The same way I have to do when I’m at home. But it hasn’t been working too well since the accident. Nobody feels good.”

She shivered. A cold wet wind was blowing through the windows of the tree house. Mrs. Carlson’s voice could no longer be heard. I felt uneasy about keeping the girl away from her mother. But I didn’t want to let her go until she had told me everything she could.

I squatted on my heels in front of her. “Stella, do you think Tommy’s appointment that Saturday night had to do with his musician friends?”

“No. He would have told me if it had. It was more of a secret than that.”

“Did he say so?”

“He didn’t have to. It was something secret and terribly important. He was terribly excited.”

“In a good way or a bad way?”

“I don’t know how you tell the difference. He wasn’t afraid, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’m trying to ask you if he was sick.”

“Sick?”

“Emotionally sick.”

“No. I– That’s foolish.”

“Then why did his father have him put away?”

“You mean, put away in a mental hospital?” She leaned toward me, so close I could feel her breath on my face.

“Something like that – Laguna Perdida School. I didn’t mean to tell you, and I’m going to ask you not to tell your parents.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll never tell them anything. So that’s where he is! Those hypocrites!”

Her eyes were fixed and wet. “You said he was in danger. Are they trying to cut out his frontal lobe like in Tennessee Williams?”

“No. He was in no danger where he was. But he escaped from the place, the night before last, and fell into the hands of thieves. Now, I’m not going to load your mind with any more of this. I’m sorry it came out.”

“Don’t be.”

She gave me a second glimpse of the woman she was on her way to becoming. “If it’s happening to Tommy, it’s just like it was happening to me.”

Her forefinger tapped through nylon at the bone between her little breasts. “You said he fell into the hands of thieves. Who are they?”

“I’m trying to answer that question, in a hurry. Could they be his friends from The Barroom Floor?”

She shook her head. “Are they holding him prisoner or something?”

“Yes. I’m trying to get to them before they do something worse. If you know of any other contacts he had in his other life, particularly underworld contacts–”

“No. He didn’t have any. He didn’t have another life, really. It was just talk, talk and music.”

Her lips were turning blue. I had a sudden evil image of myself a heavy hunched figure seen from above in the act of tormenting a child who was already tormented. A sense went through me of the appalling ease with which the things you do in a good cause can slip over into bad.

“You’d better go home, Stella.”

She folded her arms. “Not until you tell me everything. I’m not a child.”

“But this is confidential information. I didn’t intend to let any of it out. If it got to the wrong people, it would only make things worse.”

She said with some scorn: “You keep beating around the bush, like Dad. Is Tommy being held for ransom?”

“Yes, but I’m pretty sure it’s no ordinary kidnapping. He’s supposed to have gone to these people of his own free will.”

“Who said so?”

“One of them.”

Her clear brow puckered. “Then why would Tommy be in any danger from them?”

“If he knows them,” I said, “they’re not likely to let him come home. He could identify them.”

“I see.”

Her eyes were enormous, taking in all at once the horror of the world and growing dark with it. “I was afraid he was in some awful jam. His mother wouldn’t tell me anything. I thought maybe he’d killed himself and they were keeping it quiet.”

“What made you think that?”

“Tommy did. He called me up and I met him here in the tree house the morning after the accident. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. But you’ve been honest with me. He wanted to see me one more time – just as friends, you know – and say goodbye forever. I asked him if he was going away, or what he planned to do. He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Was he suicidal?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid that that was what it all meant. Not hearing from him since, I got more and more worried. I’m not as worried now as I was before you told me all those things.”

She did a mental double take on one of them. “But why would he deliberately go and stay with criminals?”

“It isn’t clear. He may not have known they were criminals. If you can think of anyone–”

“I’m trying.” She screwed up her face, and finally shook her head again. “I can’t, unless they were the same people he had to see that other Saturday night. When he borrowed our car.”

“Did he tell you anything at all about those people?”

“Just that he was terribly keen about seeing them.”

“Were they men or women?”

“I don’t even know that.”

“What about the Sunday morning, when you met him here? Did he tell you anything at all about the night before?”

“No. He was feeling really low, after the accident and all, and the terrible row with his parents. I didn’t ask him any questions. I guess I should have, shouldn’t I? I always do the wrong thing, either by commission or omission.”

“I think you do the right thing more often than most.”

“Mother doesn’t think so. Neither does Dad.”

“Parents can be mistaken.”

“Are you a parent?”

The question reminded me of the sad boys in Laguna Perdida School.

“No, I never have been. My hands are clean.”

“You’re making fun of me,” she said with a glum face.

“Never. Hardly ever.”

She gave me a quick smile. “Gilbert and Sullivan. I didn’t know detectives were like you.”

“Neither do most of the other detectives.”

Our rapport, which came and went, was flourishing again. “There’s one other thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, Stella. Your mother seems to believe that Tommy wrecked her car on purpose.”

“I know she does.”

“Could there be any truth in it?”

She considered the question. “I don’t see how. He wouldn’t do it to me, or her, unless–” She looked up in dark surmise.

“Go on.”

“Unless he was trying to kill himself, and didn’t care about anything any more.”

“Was he?”

“He may have been. He didn’t want to come home, he told me that much. But he didn’t tell me why.”

“I might learn something from examining the car. Do you know where it is?”

“It’s down in Ringo’s wrecking yard. Mother went to see it the other day.”

“Why?”

“It helps her to stay mad, I guess. Mother’s really crazy about Tommy, at least she used to be, and so was Dad. This business has been terribly hard on them. And I’m not making it any easier staying away from home now.”

She got to her feet, stamping them rapidly. “Mother will be calling out the gendarmes. Also she’ll kill me.”

“No she won’t.”

“Yes she will.”

But she wasn’t basically afraid for herself. “If you find out anything about Tommy, will you let me know?”

“That might be a little tough to do, in view of your mother’s attitude. Why don’t you get in touch with me when you can? This number will always get me, through my answering service.”

I gave her a card.

She climbed down the ladder and flitted away through the trees, one of those youngsters who make you feel like apologizing for the world.