The Far Side of the Dollar

Chapter 7

DACK’S AUTO COURT was on the edge of the city, in a rather rundown suburb named Ocean View. The twelve or fifteen cottages of the court lay on the flat top of a bluff, below the highway and above the sea. They were made of concrete block and painted an unnatural green. Three or four cars, none of them recent models, were parked on the muddy gravel.

The rain had let up and fresh yellow light slanted in from a hole in the west, as if to provide a special revelation of the ugliness of Dack’s Auto Court. Above the hutch marked “Office”, a single ragged palm tree leaned against the light. I parked beside it and went in.

A hand-painted card taped to the counter instructed me to “Ring for Proprietor.”

I punched the handbell beside it. It didn’t work.

Leaning across the counter, I noticed on the shelf below it a telephone and a metal filing box divided into fifteen numbered sections. The registration card for number seven was dated three weeks before, and indicated that “Mr. and Mrs. Robt. Brown” were paying sixteen dollars a week for that cottage. The spaces provided on the card for home address and license number were empty.

The screen door creaked behind me. A big old man with a naked condor head came flapping into the office. He snatched the card from my fingers and looked at me with hot eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I was only checking.”

“Checking what?”

“To see if some people I know are here. Bob Brown and his wife.”

He held the card up to the light and read it, moving his lips laboriously around the easy words. “They’re here,” he said without joy. “Leastways, they were this morning.”

He gave me a doubtful look. My claim of acquaintanceship with the Browns had done nothing for my status. I tried to improve it. “Do you have a cottage vacant?”

“Ten of them. Take your pick.”

“How much?”

“Depends on if you rent by the day or the week. They’re three-fifty a day, sixteen a week.”

“I’d better check with the Browns first, see if they’re planning to stay.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. They been here three weeks.”

He had a flexible worried mouth in conflict with a stupid stubborn chin. He stroked his chin as if to educate it. “I can let you have number eight for twelve a week single. That’s right next door to the Browns’ place.”

“I’ll check with them.”

“I don’t believe they’re there. You can always try.”

I went outside and down the dreary line of cottages. The door of number seven was locked. Nobody answered my repeated rapping.

When I turned away, the old man was standing in front of number eight. He beckoned to me and opened the door with a flourish: “Take a look. I can let you have it for ten if you really like it.”

I stepped inside. The room was cold and cheerless. The inside walls were concrete block, and the same unnatural green as the outside. Through a crack in the drawn blind, yellow light slashed at the hollow bed, the threadbare carpet. I’d spent too many nights in places like it to want to spend another.

“It’s clean,” the old man said.

“I’m sure it is, Mr. Dack.”

“I cleaned it myself. But I’m not Dack, I’m Stanislaus. Dack sold out to me years ago. I just never got around to having the signs changed. What’s the use? They’ll be tearing everything down and putting up high-rise apartments pretty soon.”

He smiled and stroked his bald skull as if it was a kind of golden egg. “Well, you want the cottage?”

“It really depends on Brown’s plans.”

“If I was you,” he said, “I wouldn’t let too much depend on him.”

“How is that, Mr. Stanislaus?”

“He’s kind of a blowtop, ain’t he? I mean, the way he treats that little blonde wife. I always say these things are between a man and his wife. But it rankles me,” he said. “I got a deep respect for women.”

“So have I. I’ve never liked the way he treated women.”

“I’m glad to hear that. A man should treat his wife with love and friendship. I lost my own wife several years ago, and I know what I’m talking about. I tried to tell him that, he told me to mind my own business. I know he’s a friend of yours–”

“He’s not exactly a friend. Is he getting worse?”

“Depends what you mean, worse. This very day he was slapping her around. I felt like kicking him out of my place. Only, how would that help her? And all she did was make a little phone call. He tries to keep her cooped up like she was in jail.”

He paused, listening, as if the word jail had associations for him. “How long have you known this Brown?”

“Not so long,” I said vaguely. “I ran into him in Los Angeles.”

“In Hollywood?”

“Yeah. In Hollywood.”

“Is it true she was in the movies? She mentioned one day she used to be in the movies. He told her to shut up.”

“Their marriage seems to be deteriorating.”

“You can say that again.”

He leaned toward me in the doorway. “I bet you she’s the one you’re interested in. I see a lot of couples, one way and another, and I’m willing to bet you she’s just about had her fill of him. If I was a young fellow like you, I’d be tempted to make her an offer.”

He nudged me; the friction seemed to warm him. “She’s a red-hot little bundle.”

“I’m not young enough.”

“Sure you are.”

He handled my arm, and chuckled. “It’s true she likes’em young. I been seeing her off and on with a teenager, even.”

I produced the photograph of Tom that Elaine Hillman had given me. “This one?”

The old man lifted it to the daylight, at arm’s length. “Yeah. That’s a mighty good picture of him. He’s a good-looking boy.”

He handed the photograph back to me, and fondled his chin. “How do you come to have a picture of him?”

I told him the truth, or part of it: “He’s a runaway from a boarding school. I’m a private detective representing the school.”

The moist gleam of lechery faded out of Stanislaus’s eyes. Something bleaker took its place, a fantasy of punishment perhaps. His whole face underwent a transformation, like quick-setting concrete.

“You can’t make me responsible for what the renters do.”

“Nobody said I could.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “Let’s see that picture again.”

I showed it to him. He shook his head over it. “I made a mistake. My eyes ain’t what they used to be. I never seen him before.”

“You made a positive identification.”

“I take it back. You were talking to me under false pretenses, trying to suck me in and get something on me. Well, you got nothing on me. It’s been tried before,” he said darkly. “And you can march yourself off my property.”

“Aren’t you going to rent me the cottage?”

He hesitated a moment, saying a silent goodbye to the ten dollars. “No sir, I want no spies and peepers in my place.”

“You may be harboring something worse.”

I think he suspected it, and the suspicion was the source of his anger.

“I’ll take my chances. Now you git. If you’re not off my property in one minute, I’m going to call the sheriff.”

That was the last thing I wanted. I’d already done enough to endanger the ransom payment and Tom’s return. I got.