The Way Some People Die

Chapter 2

I drove south through Long Beach to Pacific Point. Crossing the mesa that flanked it to the northwest, you could see the town spread out, from the natural harbor half-enclosed by the curving finger of land that gave the place its name, to the houses on the ridge above the fogline. It rose from sea level in a gentle slope, divided neatly into social tiers, like something a sociologist had built to prove a theory. Tourists and transients lived in hotels and motels along the waterfront. Behind them a belt of slums lay ten blocks deep, where the darker half of the population lived and died. On the other side of the tracks – the tracks were there – the business section wore its old Spanish facades like icing on a stale cake. The people who worked in the stores and offices inhabited the grid of fifty-foot lots that covered the next ten blocks. On the slopes above them the owners and managers enjoyed their patios and barbecue pits. And along the lop of the ridge lived the really wealthy, who had bought their pieds-a-terre in Pacific Point because it reminded them of Juan-les-Pins.

The wife of a client of mine had taken an overdose of sleeping pills in a Pacific Point hotel, so I knew where the hospital was. I made a left turn off the highway and drove through empty afternoon streets to the hospital building. It was a rambling place of bilious yellow plaster, and the sight of it depressed me. My client’s wife had died of the sleeping pills. All that he really wanted was a divorce.

After a good deal of palaver, I found myself in the basement waiting-room of the hospital’s X-ray department, talking to a plump young thing in white nylon. Her arms and shoulders glowed a pleasant pink through this progressive fabric, and her straw-blond hair was cut sleek and short. Her name was Audrey Graham, and she didn’t mind talking at all. I told her the truth – that I was a detective looking for Galley Lawrence because her mother was worried – which was a refreshing change from my usual approach.

“I never did know Galley really well,” she said. “Sure, we were in the same class at Los Angeles General and graduated together and all. But you know how some girls are, introverted like. I’m more of an extrovert myself. I like meeting people, in a nice way, you know what I mean. Are you really a detective? I never met a private detective before.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The introverted kind. Mrs. Lawrence said you were Galley’s roommate.”

“Just for a while, last year. She got a chance at this apartment and I went in on the rent, but after a couple of months I found a place of my own. We agreed to disagree, you know what I mean.”

“Not exactly.”

She perched on the edge of the receptionist’s desk and swung one round silk leg. “Well, I mean we got along all right but we didn’t live the same. She ran around a lot and came in all hours of the day and night and it wasn’t so happy-making, me with a regular job, I mean, and a steady boy friend. When Galley was on a case she was spit-and-polish but in between she liked to break loose a bit, and she was crazy for men – I’ve never been myself. I mean, a girl has a right to her own life and she can do what she pleases as far as I’m concerned, only she shouldn’t try to attract a boy that’s going with somebody else.”

She colored slowly, aware that she’d given herself away. The round eyes in the rosy face were ice-blue, cold with memory. If Audrey Graham was Galley’s best friend, Galley had no friends.

“Where did you live with her, and when?”

“August and September, I guess it was – I had my vacation in July. Galley found this little place in Acacia Court, one bedroom. It had twin beds, but that didn’t work out either.” She’d embarrassed herself again, and the flush rose higher, to the roots of the straw-colored hair.

“What kind of men did she run around with?”

“All kinds. She had no discrimination, you know what I mean.” The refrain was getting on my nerves. “My boy friend is going to college under the G. I. and you’d think a girl who thinks she’s something special because her father was a doctor, or so she claimed – you’d think she’d watch out who she went out with. Of course she had a couple of doctors on the string but that was married stuff and I never could see it myself. She had boys from the Safeway, a law clerk, a fellow that said he was a writer but I never heard of him, even one that looked like a Mexican once. Italian, anyway.”

“You know any of their names?”

“I mostly knew them by their first names, when I knew them. I wouldn’t want to tell you the doctors’ names. If you want my honest opinion, Galley just got sick of this town and ran off with one of her men. Las Vegas or someplace. She was always talking about seeing the world. She set a high opinion on herself. She blew her money on clothes she couldn’t afford and half the time she was eating off of me.”

There were footsteps in the hall, and the girl slid off the desk. A tall man in a white tunic looked in at the door. His eyes were masked by wide red spectacles. “The pyelogram’s on the table, Audrey, be ready in five minutes.” He turned to me. “Are you the barium enema for tomorrow?” I told him that I wasn’t, and he went away.

“You can be glad you’re not,” the girl said. “I’m afraid I have to go now.”

“He said five minutes. What about this man Speed, the bullet in the stomach Galley nursed?”

“Oh, that was Herman Speed. He had peritonitis from lead poisoning or something, she didn’t go out with him. He was on Ward C for three weeks last December, and then he left town. I heard he was run out of town. He promoted the wrestling down at the Arena and there was an editorial in the paper about how he was shot in a gang war or something. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t read it myself, one of the doctors told me.”

“She didn’t leave town with him?”

“No, she was still in town after he left. I saw her one night with this Mexican-looking guy, I forget his name. Turpentine or something. I think he worked for Speed. He came to see him a couple of times when he was on Ward C. Tarantula, or something?”

“That’s a kind of spider.”

“Yeah. Well. Galley was no fly. Anybody she went with, she had a darn good reason. I’ll say one thing for her, she knew how to have a good time. But what she saw in this guy that worked for Speed – I wouldn’t trust a Mexican or Italian, they have no respect for women.”

I was getting a little tired of her opinions, and she was repeating herself. I got out of my chair and stood up.

“Thanks very much, Miss Graham.”

“Don’t mention it. If you need any more information, I get off here at half past four.”

“I may see you then. By the way, did you tell Mrs. Lawrence what you told me?”

“No, of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t ruin a girl’s reputation with her own mother. I don’t mean that Galley had a really bad reputation or I wouldn’t have lived with her. But you know what I mean.”