The Zebra-Striped Hearse

7

IT WAS CLEAR late twilight when the jet dropped down over the Peninsula. The lights of its cities were scattered like a broken necklace along the dark rim of the Bay. At its tip stood San Francisco, remote and brilliant as a city of the mind, hawsered to reality by her two great bridges – if Marin and Berkeley were reality.

I took a cab to Redwood City. The deputy on duty on the ground floor of the Hall of Justice was a young man with red chipmunk cheeks and eyes that were neither bright nor stupid. He looked me over noncommittally, waiting to see if I was a citizen or one of the others.

I showed him my license and told him I was interested in a man named Quincy Ralph Simpson. “The Los Angeles D. A.’s office says you reported him missing about two weeks ago.”

He said after a ruminative pause: “Have you spotted him?”

“I may have.”

“Where?”

“In the Los Angeles area. Do you have a picture of Simpson?”

“I’ll see.” He went into the back of the office, rummaged through a drawerful of bulletins and circulars, and came back empty-handed. “I can’t find any, sorry. But I can tell you what he looks like. Medium height, about five-nine or -ten; medium build, one-sixty-five or so; black hair; I don’t know the color of his eyes; no visible scars or other distinguishing marks.”

“Age?”

“About my age. I’m twenty-nine. Is he your man?”

“It’s possible.” Just barely possible. “Is Simpson wanted for anything?”

“Non-support, maybe, but I don’t know of any complaint. What makes you think he’s wanted?”

“The fact that you can describe him.”

“I know him. That is, I’ve seen him around here.”

“Doing what?”

He leaned on the counter with a kind of confidential hostility. “I’m not supposed to talk about what I see around here, friend. You want to know anything about that, you’ll have to take it up with the boys upstairs.”

“Is Captain Royal upstairs?”

“The Captain’s off duty. I wouldn’t want to disturb him at home. You know him well?”

“We worked together on a case.”

“What case was that?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it, friend. Can you give me Mrs. Simpson’s address?”

He reached under the counter and produced a phone book which he pushed in my direction. Q. R. Simpson was listed, at 2160 Marvista Drive. My taxi driver told me that this was in a tract on the far side of Skyline, toward Luna Bay: a five-dollar run.

We drove through darkening hills and eventually turned off the road past a tattered billboard which announced: “No Down Payment. No Closing Costs.” The tract houses were new and small and all alike and already declining into slums. Zigzagging through the grid of streets like motorized rats in a maze, we found the address we were looking for.

It stood between two empty houses, and had a rather abandoned air itself. The tiny plot of grass in front of it looked brown and withered in the headlights. A 1952 Ford convertible with the back window torn out was parked in the carport.

I asked the driver to wait, and rang the doorbell. A young woman answered. The door was warped, and she had some trouble opening it all the way.

She was a striking brunette, very thin and tense, with a red slash of mouth and hungry dark eyes. She had on a short black tight dress which revealed her slender knees and only half concealed her various other attractions.

She was aware of these. “This isn’t free show night. What is it you want?”

“If you’re Mrs. Simpson, I’d like to talk about your husband.”

“Go ahead and talk about him. I’m listening.” She cocked her head in an angry parody of interest.

“You reported him missing.”

“Yes, I reported him missing. I haven’t set eyes on him for two whole months. And that suits me just fine. Who needs him?” Her voice was rough with grief and resentment. She was looking past me across the scraggy untended lawn. “Who’s that in the taxi?”

“Just the driver. I asked him to wait for me.”

“I thought it might be Ralph,” she said in a different tone, “afraid to come in the house and all.”

“It isn’t Ralph. You say he’s been gone a couple of months, but you only reported him missing two weeks ago.”

“I gave him all the leeway I could. He’s taken off before, but never for this long. Mr. Haley at the motel said I ought to clue in the cops. I had to go back to work at the motel. Even with that I can’t keep up the house payments without some help from Ralph. But a lot of good it did telling the cops. They don’t do much unless you can prove foul play or something.” She wrinkled her expressive upper lip. “Are you one?”

“I’m a private detective.” I told her my name. “I ran into a man today who could be your missing husband. May I come in?”

“I guess so.”

She moved sideways into her living room, glancing around as if to see it through a visitor’s eyes. It was tiny and clean and poor, furnished with the kind of cheap plastic pieces that you’re still paying installments on when they disintegrate. She turned up the three-way lamp and invited me to sit at one end of the chesterfield. She sat at the other end, hunched forward, her sharp elbows resting on her knees.

“So where did you see him?”

“Malibu.”

I wasn’t paying much attention to what I said. There was a framed oil painting on the wall above the television set. Though it was recognizable as a portrait of Mrs. Simpson, it looked amateurish to me. I went over and examined it more closely.

“That’s supposed to be me,” she said behind me.

“It’s not a bad likeness. Did your husband do it?”

“Yeah. It’s a hobby he has. He wanted to take it up seriously at one time but a man he knew, a real painter, told him he wasn’t good enough. That’s the story of his life, hopeful beginnings and nothing endings. So now he’s living the life of Riley in Malibu while I stay here and work my fingers to the bone. What’s he doing, beachcombing?”

I didn’t answer her question right away. A dog-eared paperback entitled The Art of Detection lay on top of the television set. It was the only book I could see in the room. I picked it up and riffled through the pages. Many of them were heavily underlined; some of them were illustrated with bad cartoons penciled in the margins.

“That was another one of Ralph’s big deals,” she said. “He was going to be a great detective and put us on easy street. Naturally he didn’t get to first base. He never got to first base with any of his big wheels and deals. A man he knows on the cops told him with his record–” She covered her mouth with her hand.

I laid the book down. “Ralph has a record?”

“Not really. That was just a manner of speaking.” Her eyes had hardened defensively. “You didn’t tell me what he was doing in Malibu.”

“I’m not even certain it was your husband I saw there.”

“What did he look like?”

I described Burke Damis, and thought I caught the light of recognition in her eyes. But she said definitely: “It isn’t him.”

“I’d like to be sure about that. Do you have a photograph of Ralph?”

“No. He never had his picture taken.”

“Not even a wedding picture?”

“We had one taken, but Ralph never got around to picking up the copies. We were married in Reno, see, and he couldn’t hold on to the twenty dollars long enough. He can’t keep away from the tables when he’s in Reno.”

“Does he spend much time in Reno?”

“All the time he can get away from work. I used to go along with him, I used to think it was fun. I had another think coming. It’s the reason we never been able to save a nickel.”

I moved across the room and sat beside her. “What does Ralph do for a living, Mrs. Simpson?”

“Anything he can get. He never finished high school, and that makes it tough. He’s a pretty good short-order cook, but he hated the hours. Same with bartending, which he did for a while. He’s had some good-paying houseboy jobs around the Peninsula. But he’s too proud for that kind of work. He hates to take orders from people. Maybe,” she added bitterly, “he’s too proud for any kind of work, and that’s why he ran out on me.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

“Two months ago, I told you that. He left here on the night of May eighteen. He just got back from Nevada that same day, and he took right off for Los Angeles. I think he only came home to try and talk me out of the car. But I told him he wasn’t going to leave me marooned without a car. So he finally broke down and took a bus. I drove him down to the bus station.”

“What was he planning to do in Los Angeles?”

“I don’t know. He told me this story, when he was trying to talk me out of the car, but I didn’t believe it. He said he was doing undercover work. I heard the same story from him before, when he was working in a drive-in on Camino Real. He claimed the cops were paying him to give them tips.”

“Tips about what?”

“Kids smoking reefers, stuff like that. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I thought maybe he was just talking to make himself feel important. He always wanted to be a cop himself.”

“But his record wouldn’t let him.”

“He has no record.”

“You said he had.”

“You must have been hearing things. Anyway, I’m getting tired. I’ve had enough of this.”

She rose in a sudden thrust of energy and stood by the door, inviting me to leave. I stayed where I was on the plastic chesterfield.

“You might as well leave,” she said. “It isn’t Ralph you saw in Malibu.”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“You can take my word.”

“All right, I take your word.” It doesn’t pay to argue with a source of information. “But I’m still interested in Ralph. Aren’t you?”

“Naturally I am. I’m married to him. At least I’m supposed to be married to him. But I got a funny feeling, here.” Her left hand moved up her body to her breast. “I got a feeling he traded me in on a new model, and that’s the undercover work.”

“Do you know who the other woman might be?”

“No. I just got a feeling. Why would a man go away and not come back?”

I could think of various answers to that, but I didn’t see much point in spelling them out. “When Ralph took the bus south, did he say anything about going to Mexico?”

“Not to me he didn’t.”

“Has he ever been there?”

“I don’t think so. He would of told me if he had.”

“Did he ever talk about leaving the country?”

“Not lately. He used to talk about going back to Japan someday. He spent some time there in the Korean War. Wait a minute, though. He took his birth certificate with him, I think. That could mean he was planning to leave the States, couldn’t it?”

“It could. He took his birth certificate to Los Angeles?”

“I guess he did, but it was a couple of weeks before that he had me looking for it. It took me hours to find it. He wanted to take it along to Nevada with him. He said he needed it to apply for a job.”

“What kind of a job?”

“He didn’t say. He was probably stringing me, anyway.” She moved restlessly and stood over me. “You think he left the country?”

Before I could answer her, a telephone rang in another part of the house. She stiffened, and walked quickly out of the room. I heard her voice: “This is Vicky Simpson speaking.”

There was a long pause.

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

Another pause.

“It can’t be him,” she said. “He can’t be dead.”

I followed the fading sound of her voice into the kitchen. She was leaning on the yellow formica breakfast bar, holding the receiver away from her head as if it was a dangerous yellow bird. The pupils of her eyes had expanded and made her look blind.

“Who is it, Mrs. Simpson?”

Her lips moved, groping for words. “A caw – a policeman down south. He says Ralph is dead. He can’t be.”

“Let me talk to the man.”

She handed me the receiver. I said into the mouthpiece: “This is Lew Archer. I’m a licensed private detective working in co-operation with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.”

“We had a query from them this evening.” The man’s voice was slow and uncertain. “We had this body on our hands, unidentified. Their chief investigator called – fellow named Colton, maybe you know him.”

“I know him. Who am I talking to?”

“Leonard, Sergeant Wesley Leonard. I do the identification work for the sheriff’s department here in Citrus County. We use the L. A. facilities all the time, and we had already asked for their help on this body. Mr. Colton wanted to know if maybe it was this certain Ralph Simpson who is missing. We must have mislaid the original missing report,” he added apologetically, “or maybe we never got it in the first place.”

“It happens all the time.”

“Yeah. Anyway, we’re trying to get a positive identification. What’s the chances of Mrs. Simpson coming down here?”

“Pretty good, I think. Does the body fit the description?”

“It fits all right. Height and weight and coloring and estimated age, all the same.”

“How did he die?”

“That’s a little hard to say. He got pretty banged up when the bulldozer rooted him out.”

“A bulldozer rooted him out?”

“I’ll explain. They’re putting in this new freeway at the west end of town. Quite a few houses got condemned to the state, they were standing vacant you know, and this poor guy was buried in back of one of them. He wasn’t buried very deep. A ’dozer snagged him and brought him up when they razed the houses last week.”

“How long dead?”

“A couple of months, the doc thinks. It’s been dry, and he’s in pretty fair condition. The important thing is who he is. How soon can Mrs. Simpson get down here?”

“Tonight, if I can get her on a plane.”

“Swell. Ask for me at the courthouse in Citrus Junction. Sergeant Wesley Leonard.”

She said when I hung up: “Oh no you don’t, I’m staying here.”

She retreated across the kitchen, shocked and stumbling, and stood in a corner beside the refrigerator.

“Ralph may be dead, Vicky.”

“I don’t believe it. I don’t want to see him if he is.”

“Somebody has to identify him.”

“You identify him.”

“I don’t know him. You do.”

Her mascara had started to dissolve. She dashed murky tears from her eyes. “I don’t want to see him dead. I never saw anybody dead before.”

“Dead people won’t hurt you. It’s the live ones that hurt you.”

I touched her goosefleshed arm. She jerked it away from me.

“You’ll feel better if you have a drink,” I said. “Do you have anything to drink in the house?”

“I don’t drink.”

I opened a cupboard and found a glass and filled it at the tap. Some of it spilled down her chin. She scrubbed at it angrily with a dish towel.

“I don’t want to go. It’ll only make me sick.”

But after a while she agreed to get ready while I phoned the coastal airlines. There was room for us on a ten-thirty flight to Los Angeles. By midnight we were approaching Citrus Junction in the car I had left at International Airport.

The road was walled on each side by thick orange groves. It emerged into a desolate area rimmed with houses, where highway construction had been under way. Earth movers hulked in the darkness like sleeping saurians.

The road became the main street of the town. It was a back-country town, in spite of its proximity to Los Angeles. Everything was closed for the night, except for a couple of bars. A few men in working clothes wandered along the empty pavements, staggering under the twin burdens of alcohol and loneliness.

“I don’t like it here,” Vicky said. “It looks like hicksville.”

“You won’t have to stay long.”

“How long? I’m stony until payday.”

“The police will probably make arrangements for you. Let’s wait and see how it falls.”

The metal cupola of the courthouse swelled like a tarnished bubble under the stars. The building’s dark interior smelled mustily of human lives, like the inside of an old trunk. I found the duty deputy in an office on the first floor. He told me that Sergeant Leonard was at the mortuary, just around the corner.

It was a three-storied white colonial building with a sign on the lawn in front of it: “Norton’s Funeral Parlors.” Vicky hung back when we got out of the car. I took her arm and walked her down a hall through the odor of carnations to a lighted doorway at the end of the hall and through it into the odor of formaldehyde.

She dragged on my arm. “I can’t go through with it.”

“You have to. It may not be Ralph.”

“Then what am I doing here?”

“It may be Ralph.”

She looked wildly around the room. It was bare except for a grey coffin standing on trestles against the wall.

“Is he in that?”

“No. Get yourself under control, Vicky. It will only take a minute and then it will be over.”

“But what am I going to do afterward?”

It was a question I couldn’t attempt to answer. A further door opened, and a deputy with sergeant’s stripes on his arm came through toward us. He was a middle-aged man with a belly overlapping his gunbelt, and slow friendly eyes that went with his voice on the telephone.

“I’m Leonard.”

“Archer. This is Mrs. Simpson.”

He bowed with exaggerated courtliness. “I’m pleased to know you, ma’am. It was good of you to make the journey.”

“I had to, I guess. Where is he?”

“The doctor’s working on him.”

“You mean he’s still alive?”

“He’s long dead, ma’am. I’m sorry. Dr. White is working on his internal organs, trying to find out what killed him.”

She started to sit down on the floor. I caught her under the arms. Leonard and I helped her into an adjoining room where a night light burned and the smell of carnations was strong. She half lay on an upholstered settee, with her spike heels tucked under her.

“If you don’t mind waiting a little, ma’am, Doc White will get him ready for your inspection.” Leonard’s voice had taken on unctuous intonations from the surroundings. He hovered over her. “Maybe I could get you a drink. What would you like to drink?”

“Embalming fluid.”

He made a shocked noise at the back of his palate.

“Just go away and leave me alone. I’m all right.”

I followed Leonard into the autopsy room. The dead man lay on an enameled table. I won’t describe him. His time in the earth, and on the table, had altered him for the worse. He bore no great resemblance to Burke Damis, and never had.

Dr. White was closing a butterfly incision in the body. His rubber-gloved hands looked like artificial hands. He was a bald-headed man with hound jowls drooping from under a tobacco-stained mustache. He had a burning cigarette in his mouth, and wagged his head slowly from side to side to keep the smoke out of his eyes. The smoke coiled and drifted in the brilliant overhead light.

I waited until he had finished what he was doing and had drawn a rubberized sheet up to the dead man’s chin.

“What did you find out, Doctor?”

“Heart puncture, in the left ventricle. Looks like an icepick wound.” He stripped off his rubber gloves and moved to the sink, saying above the noise of running water: “Those contusions on the head were inflicted after death, in my opinion – a long time after death.”

“By the bulldozer?”

“I assume so.”

“Just when was he dug up?”

“Friday, wasn’t it, Wesley?”

The Sergeant nodded. “Friday afternoon.”

“Did you make a preliminary examination then?”

Dr. White turned from the sink, drying his hands and arms. “None was ordered. The D. A. and the Sheriff, who’s also Coroner, are both in Sacramento at a convention.”

“Besides,” Leonard put in, eager to save face, “the icepick wound didn’t show from the outside hardly at all. It was just a little nick under the left breast.”

It wasn’t for me to tell them their business. I wanted co-operation. “Did you find the icepick?”

Leonard spread his hands loosely. “You couldn’t find anything out there after the ’dozers went through. Maybe you saw the mess on your way into town?”

“I saw it. Are you ready for Mrs. Simpson now?”

I was talking to the doctor and the Sergeant, but the question hung in the air as though it belonged to the dead man on the table. I even had a feeling that he might answer me. The room was getting me down.

I brought Vicky Simpson into it. The time by herself had calmed her. She had strength enough to walk across the room and stand by the table and look down at the ruined head for a minute, for minutes on end.

“It’s him. It’s Ralph.”

She proved it by stroking his dusty hair.

She looked up at Leonard. “What happened to him?”

“He was icepicked, ma’am, a couple of months ago.”

“You mean he’s been dead all this time?”

“A couple of months.”

The two months of waiting seemed to rush across her eyes like dizzy film. She turned blindly. I took her back to the room where the night light burned.

“Do you know who killed him, Vicky?”

“How would I know? I’ve never even been in Citrus Junction – is that what they call this hole?”

“You mentioned that Ralph was paid by the police to gather information.”

“That’s what he said. I don’t know if it was true or not. Anyway, it was a long time ago.”

“Did Ralph have criminal connections?”

“No. He wasn’t that kind of a man.”

“You said he had a record.”

She shook her head.

“You might as well tell me, Vicky. It can’t hurt him now.”

“It didn’t amount to anything,” she said. “He was just a kid. He got in with a bad crowd in high school and they got caught smoking reefers one time and they all got sent to Juvie. That was all the record Ralph had.”

“You’re certain?”

“I’m not lying.”

“Did he ever speak of a man named Burke Damis?”

“Burke Damis?”

“Damis is the man I met in Malibu, the one I described to you. He’s an artist, a painter, who apparently has been using your husband’s name.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Perhaps because he’s ashamed of his own name. I believe he used Ralph’s name to cross the border from Mexico last week. You’re sure the name Burke Damis rings no bell?”

“I’m sure.”

“And you don’t recognize the description?”

“No. At this point I wouldn’t recognize my own brother if he walked in the door. Aren’t you ever going to leave me alone?”

Leonard came into the room. I suspected that he had been listening outside the door, and chose this moment to break up the interview. He was a kind man, and he said that he and his wife would look after Vicky for the balance of the night.

I drove home to Los Angeles, home to a hot shower and a cold drink and a dark bed.