The Zebra-Striped Hearse

5

I DROVE BACK up to the highway. Diagonally across the intersection, a large fading sign painted on the side of a roadside diner advertised Jumbo Shrimp. I could smell grease before I got out of the car.

The stout woman behind the counter looked as though she had spent her life waiting, but not for me. I sat in a booth by the front window, partly obscured by an unlit neon beer sign. She brought me a knife and fork, a glass of water, and a paper napkin. I was the only customer in the place.

“You want the shrimp special?”

“I’ll just have coffee, thanks.”

“That will cost you twenty cents,” she said severely, “without the food to go with it.”

She picked up the knife and fork and the paper napkin. I sat and nursed the coffee, keeping an eye on the blacktop road that led up from the beach.

The overcast was burning off. A sun like a small watery moon appeared behind it. The muffled horizon gradually cleared, and the sea changed from grey to greyish blue. The surf had begun to thump so hard I could hear it.

Two or three cars had come up from the cluster of beach houses, but there had been no sign of Harriet’s green Buick. I started in on my second cup of coffee. Refills were only ten cents.

A zebra-striped hearse with a broken headlight came in off the highway. It disgorged, from front and rear, four boys and two girls who all looked like siblings. Their hair, bleached by sun and peroxide, was long on the boys and short on the girls so that it was almost uniform. They wore blue sweatshirts over bathing suits. Their faces were brown and closed.

They came in and sat in a row at the counter, ordered six beers, drank them with hero sandwiches which the girls made out of French loaves and other provisions brought in in paper bags. They ate quietly and voraciously. From time to time, between bites, the largest boy, who carried himself like their leader, made a remark about big surf. He might have been talking about a tribal deity.

They rose in unison like a platoon, and marched out to their hearse. Two of the boys got into the front seat. The rest of them sat in the back beside the surfboards. One of the girls, the pretty one, made a face at me through the side window. For no good reason, I made a face back at her. The hearse turned down the blacktop toward the beach.

“Beach bums,” the woman behind the counter said.

She wasn’t talking to me. Having nursed two coffees for an hour, I may have been included in her epithet. The coffee, or the waiting, was beginning to make me nervous. I ordered a therapeutic beer and turned back to the window.

The woman went on talking to herself. “You’d think they’d have more respect, painting a hearse in stripes like that. They got no respect for the living or the dead. How they expect me to make a living, bringing in their own food? I don’t know what the world is coming to.”

Harriet’s car appeared, coming out of a tight curve, halfway up the slope. I saw when it reached the highway that she was driving and that her friend was in the seat beside her. He was wearing his grey suit, with a shirt and tie, and he bore a curious resemblance to those blank-faced dummies you see in the windows of men’s clothing stores. They turned south, toward Los Angeles.

I followed them down the highway. Malibu slowed them, and I was close on their tail as they passed through the shabby fringes of Pacific Palisades. They made a left turn onto Sunset. The light had changed when I reached the corner. By the time it changed in my favor, the Buick was far out of sight. I tried to make up the minutes I had lost, but the squealing curves of the Boulevard kept my speed down.

I remembered that the Blackwells lived in the hills off Sunset. On the chance that Harriet was on her way home, I turned in through the baronial gates of Bel Air. But I couldn’t find the Blackwell house, and had to go back to the hotel to ask directions.

It was visible from the door of the hotel bar. The white-coated barman pointed it out to me: a graceful Spanish mansion which stood at the top of the terraced slope. I gave the barman a dollar of Blackwell’s money and asked him if he knew the Colonel.

“I wouldn’t say I know him. He isn’t one of your talkative drinkers.”

“What kind of a drinker is he?”

“The silent type. My favorite type.”

I went back to my car and up the winding road to the hilltop house. The rose garden in front of it was contained like a conflagration by a clipped boxwood hedge. Harriet’s Buick was standing in the semicircular gravel drive.

I could see her father’s white head over the roof of the car. His voice carried all the way out to the road. I caught isolated words like sneak and scrounger.

When I got nearer I could see that Blackwell was carrying a double-barreled shotgun at the hip. Burke Damis got out of the car and spoke to him. I didn’t hear what he said, but the muzzle of the shotgun came up to the level of his chest. Damis reached for it.

The older man fell back a step. The level gun rested firmly at his shoulder. Damis took a step forward, thrusting out his chest as if he welcomed the threat of the gun.

“Go ahead and shoot me. It would fix you at least.”

“I warn you, you can press me so far and no farther.”

Damis laughed. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, old man.”

These things were being said as I climbed out of my car and walked toward them, slowly. I was afraid of jarring the precarious balance of the scene. It was very still on the hilltop. I could hear the sound of their breathing and other things besides: my feet crunching in the gravel, the low call of a mourning dove from the television antenna on the roof.

Neither Blackwell nor Damis looked at me as I came up beside them. They weren’t in physical contact, but their faces were contorted as though their hands had death grips on each other. The double muzzle of the shotgun dominated the scene like a pair of empty insane eyes.

“There’s a dove on the roof,” I said conversationally. “If you feel like shooting something, Colonel, why don’t you take a shot at it? Or is there a law against it in these parts? I seem to remember something about a law.”

He turned to me with a grimace of rage stamped in the muscles of his face. The gun swung with his movement. I took hold of the double barrel and forced it up toward the unoffending sky. I lifted it out of Blackwell’s hands, and broke open the breach. There was a shell in each chamber. I tore a fingernail unloading them.

“Give me back my shotgun,” he said.

I gave it to him empty. “Shooting never solved a thing. Didn’t you learn that in the war?”

“The fellow insulted me.”

“The way I heard it, insults were traveling in both directions.”

“But you didn’t hear what he said. He made a filthy accusation.”

“So you want big black filthy headlines, and a nice long filthy trial in Superior Court.”

“The filthier the better,” Damis said.

I turned on him. “Shut up.”

His eyes were somber and steady. “You can’t shut me up. Neither can he.”

“He almost did, boy. Twelve-gauge shotgun wounds at this range ruin you for keeps.”

“Tell him. I couldn’t care less.”

Damis looked as though he didn’t care, for himself or anyone. But he seemed to feel exposed under my eyes. He got into the passenger’s seat of Harriet’s car and pulled the door shut. The action, all his actions, had something bold about them and something secretive.

Blackwell turned toward the house and I went along. The veranda was brilliant with fuchsias growing out of hanging redwood tubs. To my slightly jittered vision, they resembled overflowing buckets of blood.

“You came near committing murder, Colonel. You should keep your guns unloaded and locked up.”

“I do.”

“Maybe you ought to throw the key away.”

He looked down at the gun in his hands as if he didn’t remember how it had got there. Sudden pockets had formed under his eyes.

“What led up to this?” I said.

“You know the long-term part of it. He’s been moving in on me and my household, robbing me of my most precious possession–”

“A daughter isn’t exactly a possession.”

“I have to look out for her. Someone has to. She announced a few minutes ago that she was going away to marry the fellow. I tried to reason with her. She accused me of being a little Hitler who had hired a private Gestapo. That accusation hurt, from my own daughter, but the fellow–” he shot an angry glance toward the car “–the fellow made a worse one.”

“What did he say?”

“I wouldn’t repeat it, to anyone. He made a filthy allegation about me. Of course there’s nothing to it. I’ve always been upright in my dealings with others, especially my own daughter.”

“I don’t doubt that. I’m trying to find out what kind of thinking goes on in Damis’s head.”

“He’s a mixed-up young man,” Blackwell said. “I believe he’s dangerous.”

That made two of them, in my opinion.

A screen door slammed, and Harriet appeared behind the hanging red and purple fuchsias. She had changed to a light sharkskin suit and a hat with a little grey veil fluttering from it. The little veil bothered me, perhaps because it short-circuited the distance between brides and widows. She was carrying a blue hatbox and a heavy blue case.

Her father met her on the steps and reached for the blue case. “Let me help with that, dear.”

She swung it away from him. “I can handle it myself, thank you.”

“Is that all you have to say to me?”

“Everything’s been said. We know what you think of us. Burke and I are going away where you won’t be tempted to – harass us.” Her cold young eyes rested on me, and then on the shotgun in her father’s hand. “I don’t even feel physically safe.”

“The gun’s empty,” I said. “Nobody got hurt and nobody’s going to. I wish you’d reconsider this move, Miss Blackwell. Give it a day’s thought, anyway.”

She wouldn’t speak directly to me. “Call off your dogs,” she said to Blackwell. “Burke and I are going to be married and you have no right to stop us. There must be legal limits to what even a father can do.”

“But won’t you listen to me, dear? I have no desire to do anything–”

“Stop doing it then.”

I’d been surprised by his quiet reasonableness. He didn’t have the self-control to sustain it. The sudden yelling demon took possession of him again. “You’ve made your choice, I wash my hands of you. Go off with your filthy little miracle man and roll in the mire with him. I won’t lift a finger to rescue you.”

She said from the height of her pale cold anger: “You’re talking foolishly, Father. What is the matter with you?”

She strode on to the car, swinging her bags like clumsy weapons. Damis took them from her and put them in the trunk, beside his own suitcase.

Isobel Blackwell had come out of the house and down the veranda steps. As she passed between me and her husband, she pressed his shoulder in sympathy and perhaps in admonition. She went up to Harriet.

“I wish you wouldn’t do this to your father.”

“I’m not doing anything to him.”

“He feels it that way. He loves you, you know.”

“I don’t love him.”

“I’m sure you’ll regret saying that, Harriet. When you do, please let him know.”

“Why should I bother? He has you.”

Isobel shrugged, as though the possession of herself was no great boon to anyone. “You’re more important to him than I am. You could break his heart.”

“He’s going to have to get over it then. I’m sorry if you feel badly.” In a quick uprush of feeling, Harriet embraced the older woman. “You’ve been the best to me – better than I deserve.”

Isobel patted her back, looking past her at Damis. He had been watching the two of them like a spectator at a game on which he had placed a moderate bet.

“I hope you’ll take good care of her, Mr. Damis.”

“I can try.”

“Where are you taking her?”

“Away from here.”

“That isn’t very informative.”

“It wasn’t intended to be. This is a big country, also a free one. Let’s go, Harriet.”

She disengaged herself from her stepmother and got into the driver’s seat of her car. Damis climbed in beside her. I made a note of the license number as they drove away. Neither of them looked back.

Blackwell approached us, walking rather uncertainly in the gravel. His body seemed to have shrunk some more in his clothes, while his large face had grown larger.

“You let them go,” he said accusingly.

“I had nothing to stop them with. I can’t use force.”

“You should have followed them.”

“What for? You said you’d washed your hands of them.”

His wife spoke up: “Perhaps it would be better if you did that, Mark. You can’t go on in this fashion, letting the situation drive you crazy. You might as well accept it.”

“I refuse to accept it, and it’s not driving me crazy. I’ve never been saner in my life. I resent the implication that I’m not.”

The ranting rhythm was taking over his voice again. She laid her gentle admonishing hand on his arm.

“Come into the house. You need to relax, after all you’ve been through.”

“Leave me alone.” He flung her hand off and said to me: “I want Damis put in jail, do you hear me?”

“To do that, you’d have to prove that he’s committed a jailable offense.”

“What about taking a girl across a state line for immoral purposes?”

“Has he done that?”

“He transported my daughter from Mexico–”

“But marriage isn’t considered an immoral purpose under the law.”

Isobel Blackwell tittered unexpectedly.

He turned on her. “You think it’s funny, do you?”

“Not particularly. But it’s better to laugh than to weep. And better to marry than to burn. I’m quoting your own words to me, remember?”

Her tone was serious, but there was irony in it. Blackwell stalked toward the house, picking up his shotgun on the way. He slammed the front door so violently that the dove flew up with whistling wings from the television antenna. Isobel Blackwell spread her arms as though a larger bird had escaped from them.

“What am I going to do with him?”

“Give him a tranquilizer.”

“Mark has been eating tranquilizers all week. It doesn’t seem to help his nerves. If he goes on at this rate, I’m afraid he’ll shake himself to pieces.”

“It’s other people I’m worried about.”

“You mean the young man – Damis?”

“I mean anyone who crosses him.”

She touched me lightly on the arm. “You don’t think he’s capable of doing actual harm to anyone?”

“You know him better than I do.”

“I thought I knew Mark very well indeed. But he’s changed in the last year. He’s always been a gentle man. I never thought he belonged in the military profession. The Army came to agree with me, as it happened. They retired him after the war, very much against his will. His first wife, Pauline, divorced him about the same time.”

“Why, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“You’d have to ask her. She went to Nevada one day and got a divorce and married another man – a retired dentist named Keith Hatchen. They’ve lived in Mexico ever since. I suppose Pauline and her dentist have a right to whatever happiness they can muster. But it left poor Mark with nothing to fill his life but his guns and his sports and the Blackwell family history which he has been trying to write for lo these many years.”

“And Harriet,” I said.

“And Harriet.”

“I’m beginning to get the picture. You say he’s changed in the past year. Has anything special happened, besides Harriet’s taking up with Damis?”

“Mark took up with me last fall,” she said with a one-sided smile.

“You don’t strike me as a malign influence.”

“Thank you. I’m not.”

“I had the impression that you’d been married longer than that.” It was partly a question and partly an expression of sympathy.

“Did you now? Of course I’ve been married before. And I’ve known Mark and Harriet for a great many years, practically since she was a babe in arms. You see, my late husband was very close to Mark. Ronald was related to the Blackwells.”

“Then you probably know a lot of things you haven’t told me,” I said.

“Every woman does. Isn’t that your experience, Mr. Archer?”

I liked her dry wit, even if it was cutting me off from further information. I made a gesture that took in the big house and the roses and the gap in the boxwood hedge where Harriet’s car had last been seen.

“Do you think I should go on with this?”

She answered deliberately: “Perhaps you had better. Mark certainly needs another man to guide his hand and advise him – not that he’s terribly good at taking advice. I liked the way you handled this crisis just now. It could have erupted into something terrible.”

“I wish your husband realized that.”

“He does. I’m sure he does, though he won’t admit it.” Her dark eyes were full of feeling. “You’ve done us all a good turn, Mr. Archer, and you’ll do us another by staying with us in this. Find out what you can about Damis. If you can give him a clean bill of health, morally speaking, it should do a lot to reconcile Mark to the marriage.”

“You’re not suggesting a whitewash job on Damis?”

“Of course not. I’m interested in the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. We all are. Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’d better go in and look after my husband. Holding his hand seems to be my function in life these days.”

She wasn’t complaining, exactly, but I detected a note of resignation. As she turned away, very slim in her linen sheath, I caught myself trying to estimate her age. If she had known the Blackwells since Harriet was a baby, and had come to know them through her first husband, she must have married him more than twenty years ago. Which suggested that she was over forty.

Well, so was I.