The Way Some People Die

Chapter 24

She took my arm on the courthouse steps, her fingers gripping me hard but not unpleasantly. “I’m grateful you showed up, Archer. I’ve been answering policemen’s questions for hours and hours, and I feel quite unreal, like a character in a movie. You’re something solid to hold on to, aren’t you?”

“Solid enough. I weigh a hundred and eighty-five.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. All those official faces are like death masks. You have a human face, you’re made of flesh and blood.”

“Flesh and blood and all things nice,” I said. “I used to be a policeman. And I think you’re walking on eggs.”

Her grip on my arm tightened. “Walking on eggs?”

“You heard me. I can’t understand why the L. A. cops haven’t locked you up as a material witness.”

“Why should they put me in jail? I’m perfectly innocent.”

“Maybe you are in deed. Not in the mind. You’re much too smart to be taken in by Tarantine. You couldn’t live with him for over two months without knowing what he was up to.”

She dropped my arm, and hung back when I opened the door of the car for her.

“Get in, Mrs. Tarantine. You asked me to drive you home. Where’s your own car, by the way?”

“I didn’t trust myself to drive tonight. I had a terrible day, and now you’re cross-questioning me.” Her voice broke, whether artificially or naturally I couldn’t tell.

“Get in. I want to hear the story you told the cops.”

“You’ve got no right to speak to me like this. A woman can’t be forced to accuse her husband.” But she got in.

I said: “She can if she’s accessory.”

And slammed the door to punctuate the sentence.

She stayed in the far corner of the seat while I started the engine. “I didn’t even know that Joe was wanted for murder until Mr. Callahan told me. Actually there is no warrant for him. He’s simply wanted for questioning. They found his fingerprints in Keith’s apartment.” Her voice was thin.

“You must have known.” I turned left towards the main street. “As soon as they told you Dalling had been shot, you must have thought about Joe’s visit to Dalling this morning. What did you give Homicide on that?”

“Nothing. I left it out entirely. I said I drove him straight to Pacific Point.”

“And you don’t know what I mean by walking on eggs?”

“I couldn’t tell them,” she whispered. “They’d use it to put him in the gas chamber, if they ever find him.”

I stopped for a flashing red light, and crossed the main street in the direction of the highway. “This afternoon you were strongly anti-Tarantine. What transformed you into the loyal wife?”

“You can save your sarcasm, Archer.” Her spirit was flickering up again. “Joe isn’t a very nice person, but he’s incapable of killing anyone. Besides, I’m married to him.”

“I know it. It didn’t make him incapable of peddling heroin.”

“How did you find that out?”

“The hard way. The point is that I didn’t find out from you.”

“I only knew the last few weeks. I hated it. I’d have left him if I hadn’t been afraid to. Does that make me a criminal?”

“Afraid of what, Galley? Joe wouldn’t hurt a fly, the way you tell it.”

“He didn’t kill Keith,” she cried. “I’m certain he didn’t. He had no reason to.”

“Come off it, you know he had. You won’t admit it, because you’re afraid of getting involved yourself. As if you weren’t up to your neck already.”

“What reason did he have?”

“You gave me one reason this afternoon: Joe was blind mad, you said, because Dalling brought me to the hideout in Oasis. You’ve changed your story, now that the thing’s come real.”

“Keith wasn’t in his apartment. There was no shot. I would have heard the shot.”

“Nobody else heard it, either, but there was one. You want more motives? Joe must have known that you and Dalling were having an affair. Everybody else did.”

“You’re a liar!”

“About what, the fact, or the public knowledge of it?”

“It isn’t a fact. Keith was a friend, and that’s all. What do you think I am?”

“A woman who hated her husband. Call the thing platonic if you want to. Joe isn’t the kind to split hairs. You won’t deny that Dalling was crazy about you.”

“Certainly I deny it. I gave him no encouragement.”

“He didn’t need encouragement. He was a romantic kid. He would have died for you, and perhaps he did. He brought me into the case, you know.”

“I thought you said my mother–”

“Keith persuaded her. He paid a visit to her Sunday night and talked her into hiring me.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She did. And it’s the truth.”

“She didn’t know Keith.”

“She met him Sunday.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The whole thing was a setup, when I met him in Palm Springs. He wanted me to find him there. Keith was afraid to come to me openly on his own, on account of Joe and Dowser. He felt caught in the middle between them. Still, he had guts enough to take me out there. It must have been hard to do, for a tender personality like Keith. And it really meant something.”

“Yes, it meant something.” I thought she added under her breath: “Poor fool.” She was quiet then.

We were on the open highway, headed north toward Long Beach. A strong wind was blowing across it, and I reduced my speed to keep the car from weaving. I caught occasional glimpses of the sea, white-capped and desolate under a driving sky. The unsteady wind whined in the corners of the cut-banks and fell off in unexpected silences. In one of the silences, under the drive of the motor, I heard Galley crying to herself. The lights of Long Beach angered the moving sky ahead of us. The wind rose and fell and rose, and the woman’s crying continued through strata of peace and violence. She moved against me gently and leaned her head on my shoulder. I drove left-handed so as not to disturb her.

“Did you love him, Galley?”

“I don’t know, he was sweet to me.” She sighed in the corners of her grief; her breath tickled my neck. “It was too late when I met him. I was married to Joe, and Keith was going to marry another woman. I took him away from her, but it couldn’t work out. He wasn’t quite a man, except when he was loaded. Then he was worse than a man.”

“He’s finished now.”

“Everything’s finished,” she said. “Everything’s on its last legs. I wish I had had a blowout when I was driving Joe in from Oasis. There wouldn’t be all these loose ends to gather up and live with, would there?”

“You didn’t strike me as the kind of a girl who wants an easy out.”

“There are no easy outs, I guess. I thought I was taking an easy out when I married Joe. I was sick of taking hospital orders, fighting off internes in the linen room, waiting for something good to happen to me. Joe looked like something good for a little while. He wasn’t.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I told you that, this afternoon. It seems like years ago, doesn’t it?”

“Tell me again.”

“There are things I’d rather talk about, but I will if you insist. I was on twenty-four hour duty with Mr. Speed for over two weeks. Joe came to see him nearly every day. He was running the Arena for him.”

“Who shot Speed?”

“One of Dowser’s men, Blaney I think. I didn’t dare speak out this afternoon. They might have been listening.”

“Did Speed tell you that?”

“No, he never admitted anything about the shooting. When the police questioned him in the hospital, he claimed he shot himself by accident. I suppose he was afraid they’d finish him off if he talked. It was Joe told me, after we were married. I promised him I’d never tell a soul, but I guess my promises to Joe are canceled now. He’s gone away without caring what happens to me.

“Gone where? Surely he gave you a hint.”

“I only know what I told you,” she said. “I believe he took Mario’s boat.”

“The Aztec Queen didn’t get very far.”

“Joe might have been covering his tracks. He could have had another boat waiting at sea for him.”

“His brother had the same idea.”

“Mario? Mario would know, better than I. Joe has friends in Ensenada–”

“I wonder. He may have business connections, but they really belong to Dowser. If Joe’s as sharp as he sounds, he’ll be running in the opposite direction – Did anybody meet him at the yacht basin?”

“I didn’t see anyone, no. I heard what you told Mr. Callahan about the man on the beach. It might have been Joe, mightn’t it, in spite of what the girl said?”

“It might. I think it was somebody else.”

“Who?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“What do you think happened to Joe?”

“God knows. He may be in Los Angeles or San Francisco. He may have flown to Cleveland or New York. He may be at the bottom of the sea.”

“I almost hope he is.”

“What was he carrying, Galley?”

“He didn’t tell me, but I can guess that it was heroin. It’s what he deals in.”

“Does he take it himself?”

“Not Joe. I’ve seen some of his customers, and that’s when I started to hate him. I didn’t even like his money after that.”

“He ran out with Dowser’s shipment, is that it?”

“Evidently. I didn’t dare to ask him.”

“How much?”

“I couldn’t even guess.”

“Where did he keep it?”

“I don’t know that, either.” Her body turned inward to me, and she sighed. “Please stop talking like a policeman. I really can’t stand it any longer.”

The traffic was still fairly heavy in the Long Beach area, and I concentrated on my driving. On both sides of the road, the oilfield derricks marched like platoons of iron men across the suburban wilderness. I felt as if I were passing through dream country, trying to remember the dream that went along with the landscape and not being able to. Galley removed her hat and lay heavy and still against me until I stopped the car in front of her mother’s house.

“Wake up,” I said. “You’re home.”