The Zebra-Striped Hearse

17

THE CABIN STOOD on a wooded point which projected into the lake below the road. I left the car at the top of the lane and told Fawn to stay in it, out of sight. She crouched down in the front seat, peering like a frightened bush-bunny over the edge of the door.

I made my way down the rutted dirt lane, walking quietly, like Natty Bumppo. Starshine filtering down between the black conifers hung in the air like the ghost of light. A ramp of solider light slanted from the window of the cabin.

I approached it from the side and looked in. A man who wasn’t Campion was standing in front of the stone fireplace, in which a low fire burned. He was talking to somebody or something.

“Eat it up, Angelo. Enjoy yourself. We’ve got to keep your weight up, old boy.”

Unless there was someone in the shadowed bunks against the far wall, he seemed to be alone in the room. He was a small man with a dark head and a thin neck like a boy’s. He wore a plaid shirt under a sleeveless red vest.

I saw when he moved that he was holding a young hawk, perched on the knuckles of his gauntleted left hand. The brown bird was tearing with its beak at something red held between the man’s thumb and forefinger.

“Gorge yourself,” he said indulgently. “Daddy wants you to be a big, healthy boy.”

I waited until the bird had finished his red meal. Then I knocked on the door. The small man unlatched it and looked out curiously through rimless spectacles. The hawk’s flecked golden eyes were impassive. I was just another human being.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” I said to both of them. “I was told a man named Bruce Campion lived here at one time.”

His eyes hardened perceptibly behind the glasses. He said in a careful, cultivated voice: “That’s true enough. Last summer before I went to Europe I lent Campion the use of my place. He spent August and part of September here, he told me. Then he got married and moved out.”

“Do you know what happened to him after that?”

“No. I’ve been on my sabbatical, and rather completely out of touch with my friends in this country. I spent the entire year in Europe and the Near East.”

“Campion is a friend of yours?”

“I admire his talent.” He was weighing out his words. “I try to be useful to talent when I can.”

“Have you seen Campion recently?”

The question seemed to disturb him. He looked sideways at the hawk perched on his upright fist, as if the bird might provide an answer or an augury. The bird sat unblinking, its great eyes bright and calm.

“I don’t wish to be rude,” the bird man said. “But I’d certainly feel more comfortable if I knew you had authority to ask me questions.”

“I’m a private detective co-operating with several law-enforcement agencies.” I gave him my name.

“Co-operating in what?”

“The investigation of a pair of murders, possibly three murders.”

He swallowed and grew pale, as though he had swallowed the blood out of his face. “In that case, come in. Don’t mind Michelangelo. He’s completely indifferent to people.”

But the hawk jumped straight up when I entered the room. Held by the leather jesses on its legs, it hung in the air for a moment beating its wings and fanning wind into my face. Then its master thrust his fist up, and the bird returned to its perch.

We sat facing each other with the bird between us.

“I’m Dr. Damis,” he said. “Edmund B. Damis. I teach at Berkeley, in the art department.” He seemed to be marshaling his professional defenses.

“Is that how you happen to know Campion?”

“I met him some years ago, in Chicago. I was a docent at the Art Institute while he was studying there. I admired his painting, as I said, and I’ve kept in touch with him. Or rather he has kept in touch with me.”

It was a cold account. He was preserving his distance from Campion.

“He’s a good painter, I’ve heard. Is he a good man?”

“I wouldn’t care to pass judgment on him. He lives as he can. I took the easy way, myself.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I teach for a living and do my painting, such as it is, on Sundays and on sabbaticals. Campion lives for his work. He cares for nothing else,” he said with some feeling.

“You sound almost as though you envied him.”

“I almost do.”

“It may be a two-way envy, Dr. Damis. Is your middle name Burke, by any chance?”

“It is. My father was an admirer of Edmund Burke.”

“Did you know that Campion’s been using part of your name as an alias? He’s been calling himself Burke Damis.”

He flushed with displeasure. “Blast him, I wish he’d leave me and my things alone.”

“Has he been at your things?”

“I mean this place. He left it like a pigsty when he moved out last fall. I had to spend most of the last week cleaning it up. Frankly, I’ve had enough of Bruce and his messy life and his outré relationships.”

“Are you thinking of his relationships with women?”

“I was, yes. We won’t go into them. I’ve long since given up trying to purge those Augean stables.”

“I wish you would go into them.”

“I prefer not to. They’re excessively boring to me. They invariably follow the same sadomasochistic pattern. Bruce has always regarded women as his legitimate prey.”

“Prey is quite a dramatic word. It reminds me of your hawk.”

He nodded, as though I’d paid them both a subtle compliment. The hawk sat still as a figurine on his hand. It occurred to me that this Damis might be attached to Campion and the hawk in similar ways, watching through rimless spectacles as the two predators vaulted into space and took their pleasure.

“It brings up the fact,” I went on, “that Campion’s wife was strangled two months ago. Campion is wanted for the murder. Did you know that, Dr. Damis?”

“I most assuredly did not. I just flew in from Italy last week, and I came directly here.” He was pale as bone now, and almost chattering. “I’ve been utterly out of touch with everyone and everything.”

“But you’ve been in touch with Campion.”

“How do you know that?”

“Call it intuition. You’d talk about him differently if you hadn’t seen him for a year. Now when and where did you see him?”

“This morning,” he said with his eyes on the floor. “Bruce came here this morning. He’d walked halfway around the lake during the night, and he looked perfectly ghastly.”

“What did he come to you for?”

“Refuge, I suppose. He admitted that he was in trouble, but he didn’t say what kind, and I swear he said nothing about his wife. He wanted to stay here with me. I didn’t see that it was possible, or that I owed it to him. He’s always been the taker and I’ve been the giver, as it is. Besides, I’ve reached a crucial stage in training my hawk.” He smoothed the long feathers of its tail.

“When did he leave here?”

“Around noon. I gave him lunch. Naturally I had no idea that I was harboring a fugitive from justice.”

“How did he leave?”

“He took my car,” Damis said miserably.

“By force?”

“I wouldn’t say that. He is bigger than I am, and more – forceful.” He had dropped his pride, and he looked very young without it. “Bruce has an ascendancy over me. I suppose you’re quite right, I’ve secretly envied his life, his success with women–”

“You can stop doing that now. Will you please describe your car – make and model?”

“It’s a 1959 Chevrolet convertible, red, with a checkered red and black top. California license number TKU 37964.” As I was making a note of the number, he added: “Bruce promised I’d have it back within twenty-four hours. He knows I’m stuck out here without transportation.”

“I imagine he couldn’t care less. I’ll see what I can do about getting it back for you. Do you want me to report it as a theft?”

“It wasn’t a theft. I was a fool to do it, but I lent it to him voluntarily.”

“Did he explain why he wanted the car, or where he was going with it?”

“No.” He hesitated. “On second thought, he did give some indication of where he intended to go. He originally proposed that when he was finished with the convertible, he should leave it in Berkeley, in my garage. It certainly suggests that he was headed in that direction.”

“And he was alone when he came here and when he left?”

“Oh yes, definitely.”

“Did Campion say anything about the girl he’d been with?”

“He didn’t mention a girl. As a matter of fact, he did very little talking. Who is she?”

“She is, or was, a tall blonde girl named Harriet Blackwell.”

“I never heard of her, I’m afraid. Has something happened to her?”

“The indications are that she’s in the lake.”

He was shocked, and his feeling communicated itself to the bird on his fist. The hawk spread its wings. Damis calmed it with his hand before he spoke.

“You can’t mean that Bruce drowned her?”

“Something like that. When he came here this morning, were there any signs that he’d been in a struggle? Scratch marks on his face, for instance?”

“Yes, his face was scratched. His clothes were in bad shape, too.”

“Were they wet?”

“They looked as though they had been wet. He looked generally as though he’d had a rough night.”

“He’s in for rougher ones,” I said. “Just in case he does come back this way, we’ll want to station a man here. Is it all right with you?”

“I’d welcome it. I’m no more of a physical coward than the next person, but–” His apprehensive look completed the sentence.

“It’s unlikely that he will come back,” I told him reassuringly. “Assuming he doesn’t, I’d like to have your ideas on where to look for him. Also, I want your Berkeley address, in case he follows through on his original plan.”

“Couldn’t we skip the Berkeley address? My mother lives there with me, and I don’t wish her to be alarmed unnecessarily. I’m sure that she’s in no danger from him.”

“Does she know Campion?”

“Very slightly. Minimally. We had him to dinner, once, a couple of years ago. Mother didn’t like him at all – she said he had a dark aura. At that time, though Mother didn’t know it, he was living with some black-stockinged tramp in Sausalito. He’d previously lived in Carmel, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Los Angeles, and probably a number of other places. I wouldn’t know where to start looking for him. Unless,” he added after some thought, “he’s gone to his sister.”

“Campion has a sister?”

“He has, but it’s far from likely that he’s with her. She’s a very stuffy Peninsula type, he told me. They don’t get along.”

“Where does she live on the Peninsula, and what’s her name?”

“I’d have to look it up. I’ve never met the woman. I only happen to have her address because Campion used it as a mailing address when he was moving around.”

Carrying the hawk with him, Damis went to a table in the corner of the room. He opened a drawer and got out a shabby brown leather address book. I stood beside him as he flipped the pages to the C’s.

Bruce Campion was the first name on the page. Scribbled under and around it were addresses in the various cities Damis had mentioned. They were all scratched out except for a Menlo Park address – c/o Mrs. Thor Jurgensen, 401 Schoolhouse Road – which I made a note of.

“I used to think we were good friends,” Damis was saying. His eyes were fixed on the hawk, as though it was feeding him his lines by mental telepathy. “But over the years I caught on to the pattern of our relationship. I heard from Bruce only when he wanted something – a loan or a recommendation or the use of something I owned. I’m heartily sick of the man. I hope I never see him again.”

I made no comment. He said to the hawk: “Are you hungry, Angelo? How about another sparrow wing?”

I left him communing with the silent bird and drove Fawn into State Line. We had filets mignons, carelessly served in one of the gambling clubs. The fat drunk in the white Stetson was balanced precariously on a stool at the bar. He seemed to have shifted gears under his load. His imperfectly focused eyes were watching the girls in the place, especially Fawn.

She had some wine with her meat, and it set her talking about Ralph again. He used to take her fishing at Luna Bay when she was in her early teens and he was in his late ones. Once he rescued her from the San Gregorio surf. Her memories had a dreamlike quality, and I began to wonder if she had dreamed them in the first place. But she ended by saying: “I can’t take your twenty dollars. It’s the least I can do for Ralph.”

“You might as well take it–”

“No. There has to be something I won’t do for money. I mean it.”

“You’re a good girl.”

“He said as she lifted his wallet. The hustler with the heart of gold – cold and yellow.”

“You’re being hard on yourself, Fawn.”

“And don’t keep calling me Fawn. It isn’t my name.”

“What do you want me to call you?”

“Don’t call me anything.”

“Tell me your real name.”

“I hate my real name.” Her face was as blank as a wall.

“What is it, though?”

“Mabel,” she said with disgust. “My parents had to give me the most unglamorous name in the world.”

“Where are your parents, by the way?”

“I put them out for adoption.”

“Before or after you changed your name to Fawn?”

“If you have to know,” she said, “I changed my name the night King went AWOL on me and left me in this hole. The funny thing is, I’m getting sick of calling myself Fawn. I used to think it was glamorous, but now it just sounds like nothing. I’m getting ready to change my name again. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Not on the spur of the moment.”

She leaned toward me, smiling intensely and nudging the edge of the table with her papillae. “Let’s go to my place and have another drink and talk about it.”

“Thanks, but I have work to do.”

“It can wait, can’t it? I stood up my date for you.”

“Also, you’re too young for me.”

“I don’t get it,” she said with her puzzled frown. “You’re not old.”

“I’m getting older fast.” I rose and laid some money on the table. “Do you want me to drop you anywhere?”

“I’ll stay here. It’s as good a place as any.”

Before I reached the door, the drunk was moving in on her with his white Stetson in his hand and his bald head glowing.