Undercurrent

Seven

The coastline south of Cypress Bay was scalloped with jagged cliffs and jutting promontories and deep canyons-the most beautiful coastline in the state, and perhaps on the entire Pacific shore. Monterey cypress trees, native only to this area, their branches and dark-green foliage shaped by the sea winds into grotesquely appealing forms, stood like old, old watchmen atop the bare erosions of rock. The blue-green sea, calm and sunstreaked to the horizon, found a restless energy approaching land and flung itself against the cliffs in a churning froth of foam and spray, as if it harbored a kind of deep-seated resentment for the impassive solidarity of its boundaries. Fat brown pelicans and oyster catchers and pigeon guillemots dotted the headlands and rock islands, and there were glimpses of low-tide beaches teeming with sponges, anemones, crabs, starfish, sea urchins, and beds of golden kelp. It was everything you could want in the way of scenic splendor-or it would have been if there were no oil slicks and garbage dumps and beer cans and toilet paper and cardboard boxes and condoms and litter bags; if humanity had not spread the diseased wastes of its "civilization" like a plague over the land…

Beach Road was a narrow paved lane that turned off Highway 1 six miles below Cypress Bay and dropped on a sharp incline toward the ocean. Three or four bungalows and a small trailer encampment were interspersed among dense stands of pine. Rural mailboxes on wooden poles lined the road, but the largest number was 27 and the phone directory had listed R. Dancer at 31. I drove to the end of the lane-a fifth of a mile from the high-way-and found myself on a sort of convex bluff face, half-mooned at the edge by low white guardrails mounted with reflectors. Over on the left was an old Ford wood sided station wagon, drawn up near the head of a set of wood-railed steps leading down to the sea; the number of the mailbox there was 31.

I parked in the dappled shade of one of the large cypress growing there and walked to the stairs, the clean, pungent smell of salt in my nostrils. Once there, I could see the dwelling built on a long sand-and-rock shelf some fifty feet below; the shelf tapered downward into an irregular-shaped, driftwood-strewn beach bounded on both sides by projections formed of a series of eroded, bird-limed boulders-like natural stone jetties extending into the Pacific. The structure was a kind of shack, heavily weathered, fashioned of redwood shingles and beams that had withstood the elements for a long while, but which would not withstand them a great deal longer. It was raised off the shelf on concrete blocks, with gap-toothed lattice board to cover the open spacing; a tired-looking catwalk was attached to the right wall, leading onto a sort of sun porch across the rear width. There was a short walk in front, log-railed like the catwalk and porch, which led from the bottom of the steps to the shack's door; the property was otherwise unadorned, save for a carpeting of sand and small bits of driftwood that had been blown back against the bluff by the wind.

I went down the wooden steps, hanging onto the handrail and moving carefully. The angle of them was not steep, but there was a thin coating of sand on each, and the boards were old and loose. An exposed network of water piping ran down the side of the bluff alongside the steps, and there were power lines that looped down from overhead. I wondered irrelevantly if Dancer's phone had been disconnected because he could not or would not pay his bill.

When I reached the bottom of the steps and started along the sandy walk, I could hear the steady, rhythmic clacking of typewriter keys from inside the shack. I looked for a doorbell, did not find one, and rapped sharply on the heavy door. The typewriter maintained its rhythm. There was a window beside the door, but jalousied shutters were drawn over it and I could not see inside. I knocked again, loudly this time.

Another ten seconds went by, and I was getting ready to knock a third time; but then the keys fell silent and I could hear steps approaching within. The door opened jerkily, under an irritated hand, and I was looking at a thin guy in his early fifties dressed in an old pullover sweater and blue Levi's and white canvas sneakers. He had a shaggy mane of dust-colored hair, clean-shaven if faintly hollowed cheeks, a wryly crooked mouth, and a long Grecian nose marbled by whiskey veins. His eyes were a liquidy blue-gray under thick dust-colored brows that formed lopsided, inverted V's on his forehead, and they were not particularly friendly at the moment.

He looked me over, decided I was nobody he knew, and said, "Well? What is it?"

"Are you Russell Dancer-the writer?"

"No, I'm Russell Dancer-the hack. There's a hell of a big difference. What do you want?"

"I'd like to talk to you, if you wouldn't mind."

"I would mind. I'm working right now."

"It won't take very long."

"You wouldn't be a goddamn bill collector, would you?"

"No," I said. "I'm a private detective."

He stared at me. "A what?"

"A private detective."

"Are you putting me on?"

I got my wallet out of my coat pocket and opened it to the photostat of my license and let him look at it. He read it over twice, ran a prominently veined hand through his shaggy hair, and said, "Well, I'll be damned. You sure as hell don't look like a private dick."

"What does a private dick look like? Rex Hannigan?"

He gave me the stare again. "You remember Rex Hannigan?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"I haven't written a Hannigan story in twenty years."

"I read one a couple of weeks ago."

"Where?"

"In a copy of Dime Detective."

"How did you come across that?"

"I collect pulp magazines."

"A private eye that collects pulp magazines," Dancer said. He shook his head wonderingly, but his eyes were friendlier now. "And the first person I've met in fifteen years who admits to reading the Hannigan stories. Christ, most people won't admit to reading anything I ever wrote; who wants to confess that he wastes his time on hack work?"

"I don't think Hannigan was hack work," I said.

"No? Well, Hannigan was the product of a young snot who thought he had some revolutionary ideas about detective fiction that would shake up the industry. The new Hammett, the new Chandler. Yeah. Then he woke up one morning with the truth in his mouth like the taste of vomit: his ideas were old and imitative, and he was not anywhere near as good as he thought he was. After he got over the shock of that, he sold himself out and he sold out what there was of Hannigan for the almighty dollar. He became a prolific hack and he moved to California-it might have been anywhere in the world-and he lived unhappily thereafter. End of story."

"Well," I said.

"Yeah," he said. His mouth turned wolfish. "So what brings a private eye to an ex-creator of private eyes? Don't tell me my former wife is trying to stir up trouble again? The bitch likes to put the shaft in my behind whenever she can, but this would be going a little far-even for her."

"It's nothing like that."

"You might as well come in and tell me what it is, then. The longer you're here, the longer I'm going to believe you were actually here."

He turned, and I followed him inside and down a short hallway with an open kitchen on one side, and on the other, two closed doors that would lead to a bedroom and a bathroom. The entire rear half of the dwelling was a single room, and its end wall was mostly glass that looked out on the sun porch and the Pacific beyond; on the right, a closed door gave access to the porch. The room itself was chaotic. Unpainted tier-type bookshelves-the kind you put together yourself-covered the right-hand wall, but there were more books and magazines strewn on the floor in front of it and around it than there were on the shelves. Against the other wall was a long, narrow redwood plank mounted on two old-fashioned beer kegs; on the plank was a portable typewriter, a stack of manuscript pages in a wire basket, and a farrago of pens, pencils, sheets of paper, and overflowing ashtrays. The remainder of the room's appointments included an old mohair couch, a wicker armchair with an attached footrest, and a stack of cardboard boxes which seemed to serve as filing cabinets.

Dancer said over his shoulder, "Some place, isn't it? Writers are slobs; not Bohemians, just slobs."

I thought of my own apartment in San Francisco; writers were not the only ones who were slobs. I said, "It's not so bad."

"My ex-wife couldn't stand it. She didn't like anything about this place. To tell you the truth, I don't like it much myself any more. When I bought it in '52, I thought it was arty as hell; you know, the writer living in a beach shack and all that horseshit. Now the sound of the sea gives me a perpetual headache and disturbs my concentration. I'm getting old, I guess-old and tired."

And bitter, I thought. But I could understand some of the way he felt, some of the reasons why. There was a certain loneliness in him, too-the kind that came as the result of vanished dreams and painful understanding of individual limitations-and loneliness is a corroding substance inside a man. I found myself liking him in a kindred sort of way-and because he seemed honest; in a world filled with phonies, you did not meet many honest men.

He asked, "How about a beer?"

"Thanks. I could use one, I think."

"Bottle all right?"

"Sure."

He went down the hallway again and into the kitchen. I wandered over to the writing table, the way you do, and I was looking at one of the manuscript pages lying face up beside the typewriter when Dancer returned with two bottles of Lucky Lager. He handed me one and said, indicating the rough-typed page, "Dancer's answer to The Ox-Bow Incident. I call it Gunsmoke on the Brazos, and I do two a year in the same vein for one of the cheaper paperback houses."

"I didn't know you wrote westerns," I said.

"I write anything they'll pay me to write. Crime stuff, westerns, Gothics, confession stories, juvenile sports novels, an occasional soft-core porno when the cupboard gets especially bare. I stay alive because after thirty years in the business, I'm like a machine-I can turn out fiction in any field, with any style and slant. The poor bastards who've really got something to say can't say it because the markets are glutted with stuff by guys like me-guys who haven't had anything worthwhile to say for too goddamn many years. But that's not the really tragic thing; the really tragic thing is that literature, fiction, printed matter itself is dying. It's being phased out by television and computers and space-age thinking; the writer, and especially the professional writer, is a vanishing breed-like the kit fox and the bison. In twenty years or so, we'll be in a class with hansom cabs and surreys and buggy-whip manufacturers. I hope to Christ I never live to see it."

I was not sure I went along with that kind of thinking, but then he was in a position to know more about it than me; it was a depressing theory, anyway. I said as much-and then I said, "If this were some other time, some other day, I'd be damned interested in why you think the way you do on the subject, Mr. Dancer; but right now, I'd better get to the point of my visit." I was thinking about Judith Paige again.

"Sure, I understand," he said, and shrugged.

"It has to do with one of your books."

"Yeah? Which one?"

"The Dead and the Dying."

He drank some of his beer, frowned, and shook his head. "I've written maybe sixty novels, and I can remember the titles of about six, offhand. That's not one of them. It sounds like a crime thing, but I haven't done a crime novel in more than five years. How far back does it go?"

"It was published in '54, by Onyx Books."

"I sold Onyx a lot of stuff, as I recall. That was one of the reasons they went broke in the late fifties. The Dead and the Dying. Well, why would a book published in '54 bring a private detective to see me?"

"There was a killing in Cypress Bay last night," I said. "Did you hear about that?"

"A killing-you mean a murder?"

"Yes."

"No, I didn't hear about it," Dancer said. "I'm coming on the end of the western, and I haven't been out of here in two days; and when I'm working I don't listen to the radio. What does a book of mine have to do with a murder?"

"It was found in the dead man's overnight bag."

"The hell you say!" Dancer was incredulous. "What's this guy's name?"

"Walter Paige."

"Paige-Walter Paige." He rubbed his free hand over the back of his neck, frowning. "Well, I don't know. I knew a guy named Walt Paige once, about five or six years ago."

I released the breath I had been holding. "Where?"

"Cypress Bay."

"How well did you know him?"

"Not very. He was a kind of drinking companion. We used to make the rounds together, along with a bunch of other regulars at the Mount Royal Bar-a place near Carmel Highlands. That's where I met him, at the Mount Royal. He was a smooth, glib bastard, one of these Errol Flynn types with the women. I didn't like him much."

I described Walter Paige. "Is that the guy you knew?"

"It sounds like him, all right," Dancer said.

So we've got a connection now, I thought; but what else have we got? I said, "Did Paige know you were a writer?"

"Sure. But he didn't seem particularly interested. All he cared about, as far as I could see, was pussy and money."

"Then you don't have any idea why he would have one of your old books?"

"Christ no-not one that was written twelve years or so before I ever knew him."

"What about the others in this group you mentioned?" I asked. "Did you know any of them back in '53 or '54?"

"No. This was a pretty young crowd, aside from me."

I pulled at my beer reflectively. There didn't seem to be anything of import in the copy of The Dead and the Dying itself-and yet it had thus far led to a tie-up with the author, Russell Dancer, and a link six years in the past between Walter Paige and Cypress Bay. I said, "How long was Paige in this area originally?"

"Six or seven months, I think."

"What kind of job did he have?"

"None, that I knew of. But he was always flush."

"Like that, huh?"

"Like that," Dancer agreed.

"Where did he live?"

"Cypress Bay somewhere, I think."

"Why did he leave, do you know?"

Dancer shrugged. "They come and they go."

"Any idea where Paige went?"

"Seems to me somebody said he'd headed south."

"To Santa Barbara maybe?"

"Could be. Does Paige tie up there?"

"Uh-huh. He took a fall for burglary and spent four years in San Quentin. He got out five months ago."

Dancer pursed his lips sardonically. "Nice company I used to keep."

"Have you heard anything from him or about him since he left those six years ago?"

"Not a word. I'd forgotten all about him. Hell, why would he come back after all these years?"

"It might have been for a woman. There were indications."

"I can imagine what they were," Dancer said. "You figure this woman did for him?"

"Possibly."

"Well, if so, she probably had plenty of provocation."

"Yeah," I said. "Were there any females in this group you and Paige were part of?"

"Sure. It was pretty free-wheeling."

"Some were more regular than others, though?"

"A kind of nucleus, you mean?"

"More or less."

"Two, I guess."

"Was Paige involved with either of them?"

Dancer shrugged again. "If so, they weren't talking and neither was he. I'll say this for Paige-he didn't brag up his conquests."

"Is the group still active?"

"No, not for a long time. You know how those things go."

"Do the two women still live in Cypress Bay?"

He nodded. "But I don't see either one committing murder."

"Maybe not, but they might be able to offer a lead."

"I suppose so."

"Can you give me their names?"

"Robin Tolliver is one. She married an artichoke heir named Jason Lomax, not long after Paige left. They've got an estate on Cypress Point. Robin was never any dummy."

I wrote the names on the note pad I carry.

Dancer said, "The other girl is Bev Winestock. I saw her a few weeks ago. She's still single and still a looker, and still living with her brother in an old place in the town proper. The brother, Brad, used to join the group once in a while."

"Were there any other regulars-people who might have known Paige fairly well?"

"A guy named Ben Simms, but he was killed in a boating accident about five years ago. And Rose Davis got married and moved east maybe three years back. Keith Tarrant is still around, though. He's Cypress Bay's largest realtor now, and owns a sweet pad over in Carmel Valley. When I knew him, he was still struggling for a toehold. The demand for land in this area, and some smart maneuvering on Tarrant's part, put him where he is today. His wife, Bianca, used to come with him sometimes, too. That's about all, except for occasionals, and I can't remember any of them offhand. I've got a lousy memory, anyway."

I wrote the Winestocks and the Tarrants into my notebook. Dancer said then, "Listen, how do you fit in with Paige and his murder?"

"He married a young girl from Idaho in San Francisco a few months ago," I said. "Then he started leaving her alone on weekends, and she figured he'd found another woman. She hired me to follow him. I tailed him down to Cypress Bay yesterday and camped in a cottage across from his at the Beachwood motel. But this woman he had-and the killer, if it wasn't the woman-came in through the rear entrance. I found the body a little later."

"Pleasant little story."

"Isn't it."

"But it doesn't surprise me much. So you're working with the local cops then?"

"Not exactly."

"Lone-wolfing for the wife?"

"Not that either," I told him. "I just had a hunch about The Dead and the Dying, and I decided to follow it through. Chief Quartermain is handling the investigation, and I'll turn what you've told me over to him."

"Sure," Dancer said. "You know, Paige having one of my books is going to bug hell out of me. I can figure most of the story, from what I knew of him, but I can't figure the book. You really think it ties in somehow?"

"I don't know," I said honestly.

"Well, if you find out, give me the word, would you?"

"I'll tell Quartermain to give you the word. I'll be going back to San Francisco with Mrs. Paige-probably tonight."

"She's a nice kid, this Mrs. Paige?"

"Yeah," I said. "She's a nice kid."

"And you're not going to follow through?"

"It's out of my hands and out of my league."

"Well, you live and learn," Dancer said. "This is my day to learn about private dicks."

I finished my beer and thanked him for his help, and we went out to the front walk. We shook hands there, and he said, "If you're ever in this area again, drop in and say hello. We could break a couple of six-packs and talk about the pulps. I knew quite a few pulp editors and writers in New York in the forties."

There was a kind of wistfulness in his voice, a nebulous request, of which Dancer himself might not have been consciously aware. You knew Rex Hannigan, his eyes said to me, you liked him, you remembered-and even though the plots and the characters and the words themselves were mere echoes now, all but forgotten by Russell Dancer and by the world at large, there was somebody who remembered and somebody who cared, and that was somehow very important. Deep down where a man lives, he did not want to lose his newly discovered, and perhaps final, touch with the old dream.

I said, "I'll do that," and I meant the words sincerely.