The Goodbye Look

chapter 5

It was one of the older buildings on the Pacific Point waterfront, two-storied and solidly constructed of red brick. In the harbor across the boulevard, sailboats lay in their slips like birds with their wings folded. A few Capris and Seashells were scudding down the channel before the January wind.

I parked in front of the motor hotel and went into the office. The gray-haired woman behind the desk gave me a bland experienced glance that took in my age and weight, my probable income and credit rating, and whether I was married.

She said she was Mrs. Delong. When I asked for Sidney Harrow, I could see my credit rating slip in the ledger of her eyes.

“Mr. Harrow has left us.”

“When?”

“Last night. In the course of the night.”

“Without paying his bill?”

Her look sharpened. “You know Mr. Harrow, do you?”

“Just by reputation.”

“Do you know where I can get in touch with him? He gave us a San Diego business address. But he only worked part-time for them, they said, and they wouldn’t assume any responsibility or give me his home address – if he has a home.” She paused for breath. “If I knew where he lived I could get the police after him.”

“I may be able to help you.”

“How is that?” she said with some suspicion.

“I’m a private detective, and I’m looking for Harrow, too. Has his room been cleaned?”

“Not yet. He left his Do Not Disturb card out, which he did most of the time anyway. It was just a little while ago I noticed his car was gone and used my master key. You want to look over the room?”

“It might be a good idea. While we think of it, Mrs. Delong, what’s his car license number?”

She looked it up in her file. “KIT 994. It’s an old convertible, tan-colored, with the back window torn out. What’s Harrow wanted for?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Are you sure you’re a detective?”

I showed her my photostat, and it satisfied her. She made a careful note of my name and address, and handed me the key to Harrow’s room. “It’s number twenty-one on the second floor at the back.”

I climbed the outside stairs and went along the alley toward the rear. The windows of number twenty-one were closely draped. I unlocked the door and opened it. The room was dim, and sour with old smoke. I opened the drapes and let the light sluice in.

The bed had apparently not been slept in. The spread was rumpled, though, and several pillows were squashed against the headboard. A half-empty fifth of rye stood on the bedside table on top of a girlie magazine. I was a little surprised that Harrow had left behind a bottle with whisky in it.

He had also left, in the bathroom cabinet, a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, a three-dollar razor, a jar of hair grease, and a spray can of a spicy scent called Swingeroo. It looked as if Harrow had planned to come back, or had left in a great hurry.

The second possibility seemed more likely when I found an unmatched shoe in the darkest corner of the closet. It was a new pointed black Italian shoe for the left foot. Along with the shoe for the right foot it would have been worth at least twenty-five dollars. But I couldn’t find the right shoe anywhere in the room.

In the course of looking for it I did find, on the high shelf of the closet under spare blankets, a brown envelope containing a small-size graduation picture. The smiling young man in the picture resembled Irene Chalmers and was probably, I decided, her son Nick.

My guess was pretty well confirmed when I found the Chalmerses’ address, 2124 Pacific Street, penciled on the back of the envelope. I slid the picture back into the envelope and put it in my inside pocket and took it away with me.

After reporting the general situation to Mrs. Delong, I crossed the street to the harbor. The boats caught in the maze of floating docks rocked and smacked the water. I felt like getting into one of them and sailing out to sea.

My brief dip into Sidney Harrow’s life had left a stain on my nerves. Perhaps it reminded me too strongly of my own life. Depression threatened me like a sour smoke drifting in behind my eyes.

The ocean wind blew it away, as it nearly always could. I walked the length of the harbor and crossed the asphalt desert of the parking lots toward the beach. The waves were collapsing like walls there, and I felt like a man escaping from his life.

You can’t, of course. An old tan Ford convertible with a torn-out rear window was waiting for me at the end of my short walk. It was parked by itself in a drift of sand at the far edge of the asphalt. I looked in through the rear window and saw the dead man huddled on the back seat with dark blood masking his face.

I could smell whisky and the spicy odor of Swingeroo. The doors of the convertible weren’t locked, and I could see the keys in the ignition. I was tempted to use them to open the trunk.

Instead I did the right thing, for prudential reasons. I was outside of Los Angeles County, and the local police had a very strong sense of territory. I found the nearest telephone, in a bait and tackle shop at the foot of the breakwater, and called the police. Then I went back to the convertible to wait for them.

The wind spat sand in my face and the sea had a shaggy green threatening look. High above it, gulls and terns were wheeling like a complex mobile suspended from the sky. A city police car crossed the parking lot and skidded to a stop beside me.

Two uniformed officers got out. They looked at me, at the dead man in the car, at me again. They were young men, with few discernible differences except that one was dark, one fair. Both had heavy shoulders and jaws, unmoved eyes, conspicuous guns in their holsters, and hands ready.

“Who is he?” said the blue-eyed one.

“I don’t know.”

“Who are you?”

I told them my name, and handed over my identification.

“You’re a private detective?”

“That’s right.”

“But you don’t know who this is in the car?”

I hesitated. If I told them it was Sidney Harrow, as I guessed, I’d have to explain how I found that out and would probably end up telling them everything I knew.

“No,” I said.

“How did you happen to find him?”

“I was passing by.”

“Passing by to where?”

“The beach. I was going to take a walk on the beach.”

“That’s a funny place to take a walk on a day like this,” said the fair one.

I was ready to agree. The place had changed. The dead man had bled it of life and color. The men in uniform had changed its meaning. It was a dreary official kind of place with a cold draft blowing.

“Where you from?” the dark one asked me.

“Los Angeles. My address is on my photostat. I want it back, by the way.”

“You’ll get it back when we’re finished with you. You got a car, or you come to town by public carrier?”

“Car.”

“Where is your car?”

It hit me then, in a reaction that had been delayed by the shock of finding Harrow, if that’s who he was. My car was parked in front of the Sunset Motor Hotel. Whether I told them about it or not, the police would find it there. They’d talk to Mrs. Delong and learn that I’d been on Harrow’s trail.

That was what happened. I told them where my car was, and before long I was in an interrogation room in police headquarters being questioned by two sergeants. I asked several times for a lawyer, specifically the lawyer who had brought me to town.

They got up and left me alone in the room. It was an airless cubicle whose dirty gray plaster walls had been scribbled with names. I passed the time reading the inscriptions. Duke the Dude from Dallas had been there on a bum rap. Joe Hespeler had been there, and Handy Andy Oliphant, and Fast Phil Larrabee.

The sergeants came back and regretted to say that they hadn’t been able to get in touch with Truttwell. But they wouldn’t let me try to phone him myself. In a way this breach of my rights encouraged me: it meant that I wasn’t a serious suspect.

They were on a fishing expedition, hoping I’d done their work for them. I sat and let them do some of mine. The dead man was Sidney Harrow, without much question: his thumbprint matched the thumbprint on his driver’s license. He’d been shot in the head, once, and been dead for at least twelve hours. That placed the time of death no later than last midnight, when I had been at home in my apartment in West Los Angeles.

I explained this to the sergeants. They weren’t interested. They wanted to know what I was doing in their county, and what my interest in Harrow was. They wheedled and begged and coaxed and pleaded and threatened me and made jokes. It gave me a queer feeling, which I didn’t mention to them, that I had indeed inherited Sidney Harrow’s life.