The Zebra-Striped Hearse

3

IT WAS IN a small isolated settlement north of Malibu. Far down below the highway under the slanting brown bluffs, twelve or fifteen houses huddled together as if for protection against the sea. It was calm enough this morning, at low tide, but the overcast made it grey and menacing.

I turned left off the highway and down an old switchback blacktop to a dead end. Other cars were parked here against a white rail which guarded the final drop to the beach. One of them, a new green Buick Special, was registered to Harriet Blackwell.

A wooden gangway ran from the parking area along the rear of the houses. The ocean glinted dully through the narrow spaces between them. I found the one I was looking for, a grey frame house with a peaked roof, and knocked on the heavy weathered door.

A man’s voice grunted at me from inside. I knocked again, and his grudging footsteps padded across the floorboards.

“Who is it?” he said through the door.

“My name is Archer. I was sent to look at the house.”

He opened the door. “What’s the matter with the house?”

“Nothing, I hope. I’m thinking of renting it.”

“The old man sent you out here, eh?”

“Old man?”

“Colonel Blackwell.” He pronounced the name very distinctly, as if it was a bad word he didn’t want me to miss.

“I wouldn’t know about him. A real-estate office in Malibu put me onto this place. They didn’t say it was occupied.”

“They wouldn’t. They’re bugging me.”

He stood squarely in the doorway, a young man with a ridged washboard stomach and pectorals like breastplates visible under his T-shirt. His black hair, wet or oily, drooped across his forehead and gave him a low-browed appearance. His dark blue eyes were emotional and a bit sullen. They had a potential thrust which he wasn’t using on me.

The over-all effect of his face was that of a boy trying not to be aware of his good looks. Boy wasn’t quite the word. I placed his age around thirty, a fairly experienced thirty.

He had wet paint on his fingers. His face, even his bare feet, had spots of paint on them. His jeans were mottled and stiff with dried paint.

“I guess he has a right, if it comes down to that. I’m moving out any day.” He looked down at his hands, flexing his colored fingers. “I’m only staying on until I finish the painting.”

“You’re painting the house?”

He gave me a faintly contemptuous look. “I’m painting a picture, amigo.”

“I see. You’re an artist.”

“I work at the trade. You might as well come in and look around, since you’re here. What did you say your name was?”

“Archer. You’re very kind.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.” He seemed to be reminding himself of the fact.

Stepping to one side, he let me into the main room. Except for the kitchen partitioned off in the corner to my left, this room took up the whole top floor of the house. It was spacious and lofty, with a raftered ceiling and a pegged oak floor that had been recently polished. The furniture was made of rattan and beige-colored leather. To my right as I went in, a carpeted flight of steps with a wrought iron railing descended to the lower floor. A red brick fireplace faced it across the room.

At the far end, the ocean end, on the inside of the sliding glass doors, an easel with a stretched canvas on it stood on a paint-splashed tarpaulin.

“It’s a nice house,” the young man said. “How much rent do they want from you?”

“Five hundred for the month of August.”

He whistled.

“Isn’t that what you’ve been paying?”

“I’ve been paying nothing. Nada. I’m a guest of the owner.” His sudden wry grin persisted, changing almost imperceptibly to a look of pain. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to work. Take your time, you won’t disturb me.”

He walked the length of the room, moving with careful eagerness like an animal stalking prey, and planted himself in front of the easel. I was a little embarrassed by his casual hospitality. I’d expected something different: another yelling match, or even a show of violence. I could feel the tension in him, as it was, but he was holding it.

A kind of screaming silence radiated from the place where he stood. He was glaring at the canvas as if he was thinking of destroying it. Stooping quickly, he picked up a traylike palette, squizzled a brush in a tangle of color, and with his shoulder muscles bunched, stabbed at the canvas daintily with the brush.

I went through the swinging doors into the kitchen. The gas stove, the refrigerator, the stainless steel sink were all sparkling clean. I inspected the cupboards, which were well stocked with cans of everything from baked beans to truffles. It looked as though Harriet had been playing house, for keeps.

I crossed to the stairway. The man in front of the easel said: “Augh!” He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to his canvas. Stepping softly, I went down the stairs. At their foot a narrow door opened onto outside steps which led down to the beach.

There were two bedrooms, a large one in front and a smaller one in the rear, with a bathroom between them. There was nothing in the rear bedroom but a pair of twin beds with bare mattresses and pillows. The bathroom contained a pink washbowl and a pink tub with a shower curtain. A worn leather shaving kit with the initials B. C. stamped on it in gold lay on the back of the washbowl. I unzipped it. The razor was still wet from recent use.

The master bedroom in front, like the room above it, had sliding glass doors which opened onto a balcony. The single king-sized bed was covered with a yellow chenille spread on which women’s clothes had been carefully folded: a plaid skirt, a cashmere sweater, underthings. A snakeskin purse with an ornate gold-filled clasp that looked Mexican lay on top of the chest of drawers. I opened it and found a red leather wallet which held several large and small bills and Harriet Blackwell’s driving license.

I looked behind the louvered doors of the closet. There were no women’s clothes hanging in it, and very few men’s. The single lonesome suit was a grey lightweight worsted number which bore the label of a tailor on Calle Juares in Guadalajara. The slacks and jacket beside it had been bought at a chain department store in Los Angeles, and so had the new black shoes on the rack underneath. In the corner of the closet was a scuffed brown Samsonite suitcase with a Mexicana Airlines tag tied to the handle.

The suitcase was locked. I hefted it. It seemed to have nothing inside.

The door at the foot of the stairs opened behind me. A blonde girl wearing a white bathing suit and dark harlequin glasses came in. She failed to see me till she was in the room with me.

“Who are you?” she said in a startled voice.

I was a little startled myself. She was a lot of girl. Though she was wearing flat beach sandals, her hidden eyes were almost on a level with my own. Smiling into the dark glasses, I gave her my apologies and my story.

“Father’s never rented the beach house before.”

“He seems to have changed his mind.”

“Yes, and I know why.” Her voice was high and small for so large a girl.

“Why?”

“It doesn’t concern you.”

She whipped off her glasses, revealing a black scowl, and something else. I saw why her father couldn’t believe that any man would love her truly or permanently. She looked a little too much like him.

She seemed to know this; perhaps the knowledge never left her thoughts. Her silver-tipped fingers went to her brow and smoothed away the scowl. They couldn’t smooth away the harsh bone that rose in a ridge above her eyes and made her not pretty.

I apologized a second time for invading her privacy, and for the unspoken fact that she was not pretty, and went upstairs. Her fiancé, if that is what he was, was using a palette knife to apply cobalt blue to his canvas. He was sweating and oblivious.

I stood behind him and watched him work on his picture. It was one of those paintings concerning which only the painter could tell when it was finished. I had never seen anything quite like it: a cloudy mass like a dark thought in which some areas of brighter color stood out like hope or fear. It must have been very good or very bad, because it gave me a frisson.

He threw down his knife and stood back jostling me. His gymnasium smell was mixed with the sweeter smell of the oils. He turned with a black intensity in his eyes. It faded as I watched.

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were there. Have you finished looking around?”

“Enough for now.”

“Like the place?”

“Very much. When did you say you were moving?”

“I don’t know. It depends.” A troubled expression had taken the place of the singleness that was his working look. “You don’t want it before August, anyway.”

“I might.”

The girl spoke from the head of the stairs in a carrying voice: “Mr. Damis will be out of here by the end of the week.”

He turned to her with his wry, self-mocking smile. “Is that an order, Missy Colonel?”

“Of course not, darling. I never give orders. But you know what our plans are.”

“I know what they’re supposed to be.”

She came toward him in a flurried rush, her plaid skirt swinging, the way a child moves in on a loved adult. “You can’t mean you’ve changed your mind again?”

He lowered his head, and shook it. The troubled expression had spread from his eyes to his mouth.

“Sorry, kid, I have a hard time making decisions, especially now that I’m working. But nothing’s changed.”

“That’s wonderful. You make me happy.”

“You’re easily made happy.”

“You know I love you.”

She had forgotten me, or didn’t care. She tried to put her arms around him. He pushed her back with the heels of his hands, holding his fingers away from her sweater.

“Don’t touch me, I’m dirty.”

“I like you dirty.”

“Silly kid,” he said without much indulgence.

“I like you, love you, eat-you-up, you dirty.”

She leaned toward him, taller in her heels than he was, and kissed him on the mouth. He stood and absorbed her passion, his hands held away from her body. He was looking past her at me. His eyes were wide open and rather sad.