Canvas Coffin (4 page)

“I didn’t know what happened. I could go to the gas chamber, not knowing. What kind of a defense would I have?”

She took a deep breath, and didn’t answer. She was stopped for the light, and there was a Caddie alongside. The man behind the wheel was a big lug. He looked at Sally and smiled.

Her face froze, and he continued to smile.

“Even out here, you’re something,” I told her. “I’d go over and pop him, but a boxer’s fists are considered a lethal weapon in this state.”

“What a horrible thing to say,” she said, “after — ”

I’d never even thought of it. I just couldn’t get used to the thought of myself as a murderer. Murderers probably can’t, either.

The light changed, and the Ford jumped. The Caddie turned left. Sally said, “If I didn’t have reason to know better, I’d think you were the coldest man alive.”

“It’s a carry-over from the ring,” I said. “Control. In every fight, I try to hold the control. I figure if I lose that, I’ll lose the fight.”

“It’s hard for you, though? It’s hard for you to stay cool?”

“Yes.”

“All your training has been for the ring. Your attitude toward everything is conditioned by the ring.”

“I suppose.”

“To hit another human being, to hurt him, perhaps permanently.”

“I guess that’s right. One thing, though. Without malice.”

“You like to believe. All of the real fighters had malice enough, all of the hitters. It’s personal, with them.”

“I try not to make it personal.” My hands were trembling. Sally likes to dig at me, sometimes, and it hurts more than it should. “I get the feeling you don’t like me when you talk like that.”

We were moving through Brentwood now. She asked, “Remember anything?”

“Nothing.”

Past the polo field, past the entrance to Will Rogers Park. The sun was hot in a clear sky, and there was quite a lot of traffic going our way, toward the ocean.

To our left now, the Uplifters, and we were going up hill. I thought something stirred in my memory but it was a flash of nothing.

We topped the hill and a small sign at the side of the road read:
Pacific Palisades.
New homes along Sunset, on the left here, and then the theater and the start of the business district.

At the west end of the three-block business district, there was a new supermarket. On the face of this building, there was a bakery trade-mark, a small, revolving Dutch windmill.

“I’ve seen that before,” I said, “that windmill.”

Sally slowed the car. “It’s all over town.”

“Blue, like that,” I added. “But-illuminated.”

“It’s neon tubing; it probably is illuminated at night.” She pulled to the side of the road and stopped. “What else does it bring back?”

“Nothing.”

“Try, Luke. Keep looking at it.”

I said, “It doesn’t bring back anything. But it should prove I was out here.”

“Or any of a thousand other places with a sign like that.” She started the car again, and we were rolling down a grade. A big sign over the Presbyterian Conference Grounds that I’d never seen before, the bright-green hills all around us that I wouldn’t see, at night.

About a mile past the end of town, she swung the convertible in a U-turn and pulled up at the curb on the south side of Sunset. There was a four-unit apartment building here of redwood and pastel-yellow stucco, two stories high and looking brand-new.

“The scene of the crime,” Sally said, “and there’s an apartment to rent, I see. Do you think it could be — ”

“No,” I said. “Nobody’s that bloodthirsty.” I stared at the building, trying to fit it into the void. Nothing, nothing.

Sally said, “Let’s look at the vacant one.”

“Relax,” I said.

“Why not? It might work. They’re probably all alike. Luke, this isn’t as scatterbrained as it may seem.”

She opened the door on her side and looked at me. I got out and together we walked up the three steps to the open entryway.

A large woman in white twill shorts was fishing mail out of one of the boxes in the lobby. Her hair was straw-blond and her eyes a vivid blue.

“Could you tell me if the manager is on the premises?” Sally asked her.

The woman shook her head. “He never is, dearie. Was it about the apartment to let?”

Sally nodded. “That’s as good an excuse as any.”

The woman’s smile was knowing. “Oh? Reporters, are you?”

“More or less,” Sally said. “I want to do a feature on it, for the Sunday magazine section, and one look at the — scene would help an awful, awful lot.”

“I’d like to help,” the woman said, “but I got strict orders from Mr. Creash. He’s the manager and — ”

She stopped talking, looking at the bill in Sally’s hand. It was a twenty-dollar bill.

Sally said, “Who’d ever know?”

“Mr. Creash — ” the woman said, “and those officers will probably be back, and — ” Her eyes never left the bill.

Sally said, “If they come, you can tell them you
thought
you gave us the key to the vacant apartment. You were on the phone, see, honey, and you couldn’t go with us, but you gave us the key. So you’ll be clear.”

The woman smiled and shook her head. “You writers! I’ll get the key. And then phone my daughter-in-law.”

It was on the second floor, facing Sunset. The figured drapes were closed, but the room was bright enough, furnished in warm-toned woods and upholstered chairs.

“Provincial,” Sally said. “So sweet and cozy, B-girl provincial.” Her eyes moved around the living-room scornfully. “Anything click?”

“Nothing.”

She walked over to a door and I followed her. It led to a short hall which led to a bedroom. King-sized bed in here with a honey-tone bookcase-headboard and flanking, matching night stands.

The bed wasn’t made; the sheets were maroon silk. The bed looked like it had known a recent storm. Sally stared at it for seconds.

Then she said, “If anything should do it, this should.”

A tremor in her voice, and one tear on her cheek. My gal Sal; a girl dead and all Sal worries about is whether I’d made her. And I’m supposed to be the cold one.

“It rings no bells with me,” I said.

She turned. “Damn you.
Damn
you.”

“Maybe you’d better take the plane,” I said. “I wasn’t exactly the village virgin when I met you, but I’ve been living the part ever since. You’re probably
glad
the girl’s dead.”

She stared at me. And then said finally, “God, Luke, I
was.
Oh, Luke, what kind of monster am I?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” I turned and started out, but she grabbed my arm.

“Luke, I’m sorry. I’ve been a twenty-two-karat bitch.”

I kissed the top of her gray head and held her shoulders lightly in my hands, saying nothing.

“We’d better get out of here,” she said. “It was a stupid idea of mine, anyway.”

“I don’t think it was stupid,” I said, “but we’d better go, all right.”

We went back to the living-room, and the eyes of the photograph on the mantel seemed to be watching us. Both of us stood there a second, looking at the soft, appealing face of a younger Mary Kostanic.

“I’ll bet she wasn’t Brenda Vane then,” Sally said. “She was a pretty girl, Luke.”

“She was, there,” I said. “I wonder how old she was, then?”

“Eighteen, nineteen.”

From the doorway behind us, a voice said, “She was a real pretty girl. And look at this place; you can tell she knew good stuff when she saw it. Nothing cheap about Brenda.”

We turned to face the big woman in the white twill shorts.

“Was she ever married?” Sally asked.

“Not that I know of. Would you folks like some coffee? I got a full pot on.”

I looked at Sally, and she said, “I’d like some.”

The woman’s apartment was a replica of the one above, but furnished in the four-rooms-for-four-hundred-and-seventy-nine-dollars-name-your-own-terms-including-refriger-ator-stove-and-washing-machine Los Angeles too recent American.

But she made it warm with her outsize geniality.

“It better be good coffee,” she said, “at twenty dollars.” She chuckled. “I feel kind of guilty about that, but not guilty enough to give it back. Were you cheated, dearie?”

“No, I wasn’t,” Sally said. “You make a fine cup of coffee.”

We were in the bright kitchen, sitting at a Formica-top, chrome-legged table. The woman wore a halter with the shorts and it could have served as a hammock for Max.

Sally asked her, “Didn’t you hear any racket, any noise that night it — happened? I should think, being right below and all — ”

“I was visiting my daughter-in-law, in Culver City,” the woman said placidly. “And the Gendrons were out — they’re the people in back on this floor — and it could have been there wasn’t much noise, anyway. But wasn’t it horrible?”

Sally nodded. I nodded. She was a woman who wouldn’t need prompting.

“Lived here ever since the building was finished, eight months ago, and never a bit of trouble about the rent or making noise. No dogs, no kids, no parties, a real ideal tenant, Brenda was. I’m sure going to miss her.”

“Must have had plenty of — admirers,” Sally said.

“Not many for overnight,” the woman went on, “though it isn’t a thing I worry about. Wouldn’t mind a man of my own, if you’ll pardon the frankness, and can’t see cooking up a storm about them fortunate enough to — ” She stopped, and clapped a big hand over her mouth. “I forgot about you being reporters; you won’t print that? I’m just too damned mouthy.”

Sally smiled. “I’m not exactly a reporter. This Sunday feature writing is almost as much fiction as fact. It’s the — the human side of the — the subject I’m supposed to write up, and I never, never speak ill of the dead.”

“I’m sure you don’t, dearie. I’m not very often wrong about people, and I liked your looks, right off. Is your hair naturally that color?”

“Since I was eighteen,” Sally said. “Brenda didn’t have any steady boy friend, then?”

“I just didn’t watch that close. I honestly couldn’t say. More coffee?”

Sally rose. “Thanks, no. We have to get back to the office. I wonder if the police have any real leads on this?”

“I don’t think so. That Sergeant Sands has about talked my arm off, and the questions he asks, it don’t seem to me he’s got even the tiniest idea of where to start looking. But, of course, you can’t always tell with them — ”

We were both standing now. We were walking toward the door, and the woman continued to talk. In the open entry, under the stairs that led to the second floor, we stood a moment, while the talk went on. And then she stopped and looked past us.

Three men were coming up the walk. Two of them were carrying things, things that looked like photographic equipment or technical instruments. The third man carried nothing.

The third man was Sergeant Sands.

T
HE SERGEANT’S EYES
were cool. His glance flicked over me, went to Sally, and came back to me. “Well,” he said. “Well,
Champ.”

One of the men said, “You got the key, Tom? We haven’t much time.”

Sands nodded at the big woman. “She has one she’ll give you. I’ll be up later.”

They went on, but the sergeant remained immovable. He said, “What is this?” Then, before I could answer, he looked at Sally. “Who are you?”

“Queen of the May,” my girl said. “What makes it your business?”

I said quickly, “This is Sergeant Sands, Sally. He’s a detective.”

“How do you do?” Sally said, and started past him.

“Just a minute,” Sands said. “Come on down to the car, both of you.”

I thought for a moment Sally was going to refuse, but she followed meekly enough. We sat in the back; he sat in the front, twisted around so he could face us.

He said, “What’s the story, this time?” He was looking at me.

“It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “My girl doesn’t want to believe I didn’t go home with this Brenda Vane night before last.”

He looked at Sally. “Did he? What’d you find out?”

“Nothing.” Sally’s chin was up, and she was wearing the queenly look.

“And where were you, that night?”

“In Chicago. I just got here, by plane, last night.”

“I see.” He had a notebook out now. “Your name, please?”

She gave him that, and there were more questions. Her address in Chicago, and her work and people she’d seen there up to the time she left.

Then he nodded at the apartment. “And how long have you been here?”

“A few minutes. I don’t know exactly.”

He studied us quietly a moment. Then he said, “Sam Wald was over to see you, last night. What did he want?”

“A title fight, for that new arena he’s building, in the Valley.”

“Oh. Who’s the opponent?”

“Patsy Giani.”

His eyes appraised me. “You’ve been ducking Patsy a long time. Wald have a new approach?”

“You’ll have to make that clearer, Sergeant,” I told him evenly.

“Some club, some lever, some angle. The party was at his house; that’s where you met Brenda Vane. The next night he comes over, and you’re going to fight Patsy Giani, you’re going to commit suicide.”

“I didn’t say I was going to fight him, Sergeant. Wald wants me to; it’s probably why he threw the party.” I took a breath. “I’ll overlook the crack about suicide.”

“You going to fight him?”

“If I can talk my manager into it. If I do, and you’ve got some money you want to lose, I’d be glad to cover it.”

“Okay. We’ll forget I hurt your feelings.” His grin was sarcastic. “I thought I’d been playing along too much, as it is. Any reasonable cop would have you in the cooler this second. You were with her; the only person who claims you weren’t with her when she died is your manager. That’s phony enough. Then, two days later, I come out here and find you talking to Mrs. Ketelaar.
Why?”

Sally said softly, “My fault, Sergeant.
All
my fault. I’m crazy about the ape, and crazy jealous.”

“I’ll buy that for now,” he said, after a second. He looked at me. “Even if you are clean on the murder, it’s plain enough to me you’re in the middle of it, one way or another. Maybe you don’t even know it, and that’s why I’m going along, for now.” He got out of the car and held our door open. His dark-blue eyes rested on me gravely. “Publicity on this could just about ruin the fight game. It stinks enough, today. I’m still more cop than fight fan, though, and so’s the chief. Remember that.”

I nodded. Sally nodded. We had no dialogue as we walked to the convertible, as Sally started it, as we moved back Sunset, the way we’d come.

Traffic whizzed by us, the sun glinted off the windshield, the Ford murmured to herself. We went past the turning windmill insignia on the front of the supermarket, and came to a red light against us.

Then Sally looked over at me. “That man gives me the creeps. Relentless, cold, analytical. I thought cops were dumb.”

“Only the dumb cops.” I turned to look at the Dutch windmill revolving. “Isn’t that a silly thing to stick in my memory?”

“It must have some significance, something beyond just seeing it, possibly some — connection with what happened.”

The light changed, and we went on. “And another thing,” Sally said, “When I lived out here, I used to know one of the detectives. And he told me Homicide men
always
worked in a team, two men.
Always,
he said. This case can’t be too important, with just one sergeant on it.”

“You and Max,” I said, “are determined to look at the bright side, the easy side.” In my mind I saw the windmill going around and around. “Maybe things have changed, or maybe the other cop is working more quietly. Besides, I want to know what happened if — ” I didn’t finish.

“I don’t,” she said. “I thought I did, but I don’t.”

I didn’t say anything to that. There’d be only one reason why she wouldn’t want to know. The windmill went around and around, trying to tell me something.

Past the Will Rogers Ranch Gate. He’d been something, Will Rogers, and now he was only a memory in middle-aged minds. And some day, Luke Pilgrim, you’ll be only ink in a dusty record book. And Brenda Vane, on the threshold of a new career — From B girl to B pictures, the story of Brenda Vane.

Who made it? Even the title, the crown, what the hell was it when you got there? The crown should be something; it sure as hell was when you were a punk, something to look up to. Until you saw what it was made of — a lucky punch here, the right kind of matching, an angle and a wedge and a manager who knew a lot of people.

“What are you thinking of?” Sally asked.

“Oh, nothing much. What’s worth while? Where does a man get any real satisfaction?”

“In bed,” Sally said. “Both asleep and awake, in bed.”

“I’m serious,” I said.

“So am I.”

Brentwood, and the fine homes. What did they think of, these country-club cuties, besides the bed? And breaking eighty and dashing off to Hawaii for the holidays and money, money, money, money, money?

Sally said, “In your trade, you’re at the top. There’s no place to go from where you are. It’s not achievement that keeps a man happy, it’s achieving.” I’d heard that before.

“When I was younger,” she said, “I thought it was love, love, love. With men, I learned, it’s love, love, love for however long it takes and then it’s a stiff drink and seeing some people. So I said to myself, there’s always the memory; relish it while you’re making it, and cherish it when it’s past, lay it in lavender.”

“That’s some rat race,” I said.

“Luke, there’s only
now.”

At All Saints, they’d said there was more than now, but I was eighteen years from All Saints. I was middleweight champion of the world, driving along Sunset with a lovely dish.

“You’re going to have to grow up sometime,” Sally said.

I should grow up? At sixteen I’d broken another kid’s nose. At fourteen I’d learned about women. How long did it take?

“That book you’re reading,” Sally said, “what scene do you remember?”

“The sleeping-bag.”

“Mmmm-hmmm. Mr. Hemingway knows. It’s bulls and sex, war and sex, Africa and sex. And sex.”

And murder and sex,
I thought. But didn’t say. I said, “There’s a chance he doesn’t know everything. Nor anybody else.” The windmill went around and around.

“Well, I’ll work you up to better, to Thomas Mann and some of the giants. You’re going to be well-read, a real civilized gent, fit to share my bed.” She was grinning, not looking at me, squinting at the sun and the traffic.

“Silk sheets,” she said quietly. “Maroon silk sheets. Doesn’t it give you the creeps?”

“No.”

A light, and UCLA spread out to our right front. I said, “Turn here. Let’s get a drink or a cup of coffee.”

“Why here?” she said. “This place has sad memories for me.”

“Why?” I looked at her, but she wasn’t looking at me.

“This is where George and I spent most of our married life, the first eighteen months of it.”

“Turn anyway. I’m hungry.”

She turned. Past the campus to our right and left, past the first of the small shops, and here was a parking-space. She parked and looked around.

“It’s changed.”

“You, too,” I said. I got out and put a nickel in the parking-meter. I waited for her on the sidewalk.

She came over to walk along with me. “Wasn’t that a ridiculous bed, so big and — Hollywoodish?”

“It’s what I’d like.”

“Well, you should know. You probably — ”

“Shut up,” I said. “You’re working yourself into a state again.”

“All right. Doesn’t the thought of George bother you, what he was, and — ”

“No,” I said.

“It would kill me,” she said, “if you’d been married. I’m not very mature, I guess.” She reached over and took my hand.

I said, “What I like about you is your steady, unemotional mind. You’re so reasonable.”

“You shut up.” Her hand tightened on mine. “We don’t want to fight, not today. It’s such a beautiful day.”

Quite a change from breakfast.

“George is back in this town,” she said. “He has a big job with Sears now. Maybe I should look him up.”

“Maybe you should,” I agreed. “I don’t see any place to get a drink. Let’s eat something.”

“I’m not hungry. Isn’t this wonderful, for February I never should have moved to Chicago.”

“You should have seen it a week ago, thirteen inches of rain.”

“You should have seen Chicago, five inches of snow and seven inches of soot. And twelve below zero. And you out of town.” She stopped. “Look at that dress! Isn’t it terrific?”

There were two dresses in the window. One was blue silk.

“That blue silk taffeta,” Sally went on. “I’m going in. C’mon, I want to see how I look in it.” She was back to normal.

The dress wasn’t for her, nor half a dozen others the salesgirl showed her. I got her safely past the next shop and into a restaurant.

We had steak sandwiches and malts. It was near the lunch hour and the place was full of UCLA guys and gals. Chatter, chatter, chatter, yak, yak, yak. Sweater men and sweater girls.

“They’ll never again have it so good,” I said. “I wish I’d gone to college.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Background.”

“I went. Is my background showing?”

“It shows. You know it shows. You can mix anywhere.”

“Light?” she asked, a cigarette in her hand.

I held a light for her, and then she was smiling at me. “You’re all right the way you are, Champ. I wouldn’t want you any way but the way you are.”

“There’s been a change in the last couple hours, hasn’t there? Even if maybe I am a — ”

“Don’t,” she interrupted quickly. “Don’t say it, now.”

We went back to the car and she climbed behind the Wheel again. Past Wilshire, just idly driving and here was another supermarket and another of those revolving Dutch windmills and for a part of a second, something seemed to break through the surface of my mind and then it went away as quickly.

“Damn it,” I said.

“Now what?”

“I thought something was going to come back, for a second. But it went away.”

“The windmill again?”

“I suppose. Yes.”

“Maybe that’s where she dropped you, on the way out. Maybe you got fresh and she got indignant. No, that wouldn’t be it.”

“Stop being nasty,” I said. “You were doing fine, up to that crack.”

“All right. Luke, I don’t want to go back to the hotel, do you?”

“I don’t care.”

“Luke, do you know what I’m saying?”

I looked at her and knew. “But where?” I asked. “No luggage, the middle of the day. What the hell would a motel think?”

“Motels don’t think. And the manager can think what he damn pleases. Luke, it’s been a long time.”

It had been two weeks. I said, “Turn back to Wilshire. Wilshire’s loaded with motels.”

Fine. A girl with no inhibitions, with the body and the mind for it, with the fire and desire.

Tires hummed on Wilshire and a radio played in the next unit. Her body was smooth and her artist’s hands, strong, her body was firm and active and finally calm.

I heard the shower above the hum of the tires but below the blare of the radio next door. I lay on my side on the double bed, at peace with the world.

Ranch-type furniture, with the insignia of the motel branded into the chairs, the bedstead, the dresser, the end tables. Western living, under the neon sign. Navajo rugs and Western prints and charcoal-broiled steaks in the grille. Howdy, podner, we even got television.

The shower hiss stopped, and Sally called, “Would you get my back, Champ?”

I went in to scrub her back.

We went from there to the Coast Highway and drove out that past Malibu, soaking up the February sun. Coming back, she parked where there was a view of the ocean, just south of where Sunset ends.

Sea gulls walked the beach below us and a few bathers lay on the sand beneath the ledge.

I told her about Sam Wald’s visit the night before, and added, “It’s been bothering me. He knows Max and I left with the girl, and he must have found out from the hotel clerk that Max came home alone.”

“If he knows, the police know,” Sally said, “and you wouldn’t be sitting here if the police knew. Wald was guessing.”

“I don’t think so. If he was going to guess, he’d guess the other way, that Max went home with the girl.”

“When you were making the play for her at the party?”

“I don’t know that I was. And how do you know?”

“By the way Max told the story. Who else was at the party?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll ask Max.”

“Why?”

“Maybe we can learn something.”

I smiled at her. “Something the police can’t?”

“That’s not so silly. The kind of people Max knows don’t usually confide in the police, even when they’ve nothing to hide. We might be able to confide in the police for them.”

“A couple of stool pigeons?”

“Don’t be adolescent. Luke, I want to know now. Don’t you?”

“I always did. And if I should learn I had committed murder, I’d want the police to know.” I studied her. “Would you?”