The Way Some People Die

Chapter 23

The lighted clock on the tower of the county courthouse said that it was only five minutes after eleven. I didn’t believe it. I had a post-midnight feeling. My tongue was already furred with the dregs of a long bad evening. A criminal catechism ran on like a screechy record in my head. What? Blood. Where? There. When? Then. Why? Who knows. Who? Him. They. She. It. Us. Especially us.

I parked in front of the wing of the courthouse that held the county jail. The windows of the second and third floors were barred with ornamental ironwork, to appeal to the aesthetic sense of the thieves and muggers and prostitutes behind them. Part of the first floor of this wing was occupied by the sheriffs office, whose windows showed the only lights in the building below the tower clock.

The tall black oak door stood open, and I walked in under white flourescent light. Behind the counter that divided the anteroom in two, a fat young man was talking into a telephone. No, he said, the chief wasn’t there. He couldn’t give out his private number. Anyway, he was probably in bed. Is that right, he was very sorry to hear it. He’d bring it to the chief deputy’s attention in the morning.

He set the receiver down and sighed with relief. “A nut,” he said to me. “We hear from her every day or two. She thinks she can receive radio waves, and foreign agents are bombarding her nervous system with propaganda. Next time I’m going to tell her to get her tubes adjusted so she can receive television.”

He left his desk and lumbered to the counter: “What can I do for you, sir?” He had the friendly manner of a corner grocer, dispensing justice instead of bread and potatoes.

“I don’t suppose the chief is here?”

“Not since supper. Anything I can do?”

“One of the deputies is working on a disappearance case: Joe Tarantine.”

“One of the deputies, hell. There’s three or four working on it.” He buried his eyes in a smile.

“Let me talk to one of them.”

“They’re pretty busy. You a reporter?” I showed him my photostat. “The one I was talking to is a big man in a ten-gallon hat, or do they all wear ten-gallon hats?”

“Just Callahan. He’s in there with Mrs. Tarantine just now.” He jerked his thumb towards an inner door. “You want to wait?”

“Which Mrs. Tarantine, mother or wife?”

“The young one. If I was Tarantine, I wouldn’t run out on a bundle of goodies like that one.” A leer started in his eyes and moved across his face in sluggish ripples.

I swallowed my irritation. “Is that the official view, that Tarantine ran out? Maybe you’ve got some inside dope that he can walk on water, or maybe a Russian sub was waiting to pick him up.”

“Maybe.” He fanned his face with his hand. “You and the old lady should get together. She says the voices in her head talk with a Russian accent. Matter of fact, there ain’t no official view, won’t be until we complete our investigation.”

“Did they get aboard the Aztec Queen?”

“Yeah, it’s all broken up on the rocks. Nobody in the cabin. What’s your interest, if I may ask, Mister–?”

“Archer. I have some information for Callahan.”

“He should be out any minute. They been in there nearly an hour.” Casting an envious glance at the inner door, he meandered back to his desk and inserted his hips between the arms of the swivel chair.

I had time to smoke a cigarette, almost my first of the day. I sat on a hard bench against the wall. The minute hand of the electric clock on the opposite wall inched round in little nervous jumps to eleven thirty. The deputy on duty was yawning over a news magazine.

The latch of the inner door clicked finally, and Callahan appeared in the doorway. His big hat was in his hand, exposing a sun-freckled pate to the inclement light. He stood back awkwardly to let Galley precede him, smiling down at her as if he owned her.

She looked as trim and vital as she had in the afternoon. She was wearing a dark brown suit and a dark hat, their suggestion of widow’s weeds denied by a lime-green blouse under her jacket. Only the bluish crescents under her eyes gave me an idea of what she had been through.

I stood up and she paused, one knee forward and bent in an uncompleted step. “Why, Mr. Archer! I didn’t expect to run into you tonight.” She completed the step and gave me her gloved hand. Even through the leather, it felt cold.

“I thought I might run into you. If you don’t mind waiting a minute, I want to see Callahan.”

“Of course I’ll wait.”

She sat down on the bench. Callahan hung over her and thanked her profusely for her aid. Her smile was a little strained. The fat young man leaned across the counter, his fleshbound eyes regarding her hungrily.

The big man put on his hat as he turned to me. “What’s the story, mac? Let’s see, you were with Mario down on the waterfront. You a friend of his?”

“A private detective, looking for Joe Tarantine. The name is Archer.”

“For her?” He cocked his head towards Galley.

“Her mother.” I walked him to the other end of the counter. “A girl I’ve been talking to saw something this morning that ought to interest you. She was lying behind a wind-shelter on Mackerel Beach at dawn, all by herself.”

“All by herself?” Perplexity or amusement corrugated the skin around his eyes.

“She says all by herself. A man swam in to shore with a bundle around his neck, probably clothes because he had nothing on. She saw him cross the beach and then she heard a car start up in the grove of trees behind the barbecue pits.”

“So that’s what happened to Tarantine,” he drawled.

“It wasn’t Joe, according to her, and it wasn’t Mario either. She knows both of them–”

“Who is this girl? Where is she?”

“I met her at the wrestling match. I tried to bring her in but she ran out on me.”

“What does she look like?”

“Blonde and thin.”

“Hell, half the girls in town are blondies nowadays. When did you say she saw this guy?”

“Shortly before dawn. It was still too dark to see him very clearly.”

“She wouldn’t be having delusions?” he muttered. “Any girl that was lying on the beach by herself at that time.”

“I don’t think so.” But perhaps he had something. There were better witnesses than Ruth, a hundred and fifty million of them roughly.

He turned to Galley, removing his hat again. Even his voice changed when he spoke to her, as if he had a separate personality for each sex: “Oh, Mrs. Tarantine. What time did you say you drove your husband down here?”

She rose and came toward us, walking with precision. “I don’t know the time exactly. About four a. m., I think it was.”

“Before dawn, though?”

“At least an hour before dawn. It wasn’t fully daylight when I got back to Santa Monica.”

“That’s what I thought you told me.”

“Is it important?”

He answered her with solemnity: “Everything is important in a murder case.”

“You think he was murdered?” I said.

“Tarantine? No telling what happened to him. We’ll start dragging operations in the morning.”

“But you mentioned murder.”

“Tarantine is wanted for murder,” he said. “L. A. has an all-points out for him. Didn’t you hear about the Dalling killing?”

I glanced at Galley. Her head moved in a barely perceptible negative. I said: “Oh, that.”

“I’m horribly tired,” she said. “I’m going to ask Mr. Archer to drive me home.”

I said I’d be glad to.