Home is the Sailor (14 page)

I said, “I’ve been drinking. But don’t try to change the subject.”

Corliss said, “I’m not trying to change the subject. You made a statement. I told you I didn’t know what you were talking about. I can also tell you I’m not going to put up with this constant drinking. I won’t. I can’t.”

“Maybe I have reason to drink.”

“Staying drunk won’t bring Wolkowysk back to life.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Wolkowysk.”

“What then?”

“You.”

She snuggled down on the pillow. “Well, if we’re going to, let’s get it over.”

“I thought you had to have love with yours.”

Corliss said, “Oh, for God’s sake.” Exasperated. “Are we a couple of kids in the back seat of a car, or what?” She moved to the edge of the bed and started to get up.

I pushed her back. “I said I wanted to talk to you.”

She folded the spread over her thighs. “You’re crazy, Swede. You must be.”

“Why?”

“You’ve acted like an entirely different man ever since we’ve been married.”

“Maybe I have a reason.”

“What?”

I gave it to her cold turkey. “Are you certain that Wolkowysk
forced
you? Or was it something else?”

Corliss panted, “You’re crazy.”

“You said that before.”

“I mean it.”

I’d had all afternoon and all the night before to think. “All right. Then tell me this.”

“What?”

“How come Wolkowysk’s clothes were folded so neatly on that chair? Why did he spit in your face? Why did he call you a bitch? Why did he say, ‘You would’? Are you sure he wasn’t in your bed by invitation?” I grabbed her bare shoulders and shook her. “Answer me.”

Corliss twisted out of my hands. She crawled to the head of the bed and sat with her back to the wall. “You’re mad. You’re out of your mind, Swede.”

I moved over on the bed with her. She sat even straighter against the headboard. “And tell me this. Why were you so frightened of that drunk in Tijuana? If you couldn’t understand what he was saying, how do you know he was insulting you? Are you certain that background data you gave me is correct? Are you certain you bought this court with money your first husband left you?”

Corliss had difficulty in breathing. “How else could I buy it?”

I told her. “There’s one sure way a girl with your looks can make money. A hundred dollars a night. Almost any amount she names.”

Corliss ran her hands over her breasts. “And that’s what you think I am?”

“At least I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Why?” Corliss said. “Why do you think so?”

“The way you act.”

“How do I act?”

I told her. “Like every tart I’ve ever known. Unless you’re unnaturally aroused, you have the same look in your eyes. The same forced smile. You make the same forced response. You’re a lady until you take off your clothes. The minute they’re off, you revert to type.” I mimicked a water-front blister. “ž’Hello, sailor. Lonely?’ž” That’s what they all say. Is that why Wally and Meek are laughing at me? What have I got into?”

Corliss kicked at me with her bare heels. “I won’t be talked to like that. I won’t be.” She began to cry, hysterically. “Take the car. Take anything you want. But get out of here. Get out of my life. Let’s call it quits. Right now. Tonight.”

I gripped one of the bare feet kicking at me and pulled her down on the bed until I could bend and kiss her without moving.

“That’s the hell of it, baby. I can’t.”

Corliss’ voice was muffled under my lips. “Why can’t you?”

“For two reasons. One, I love you.”

“Love!”

I held her squirming body firmly. “Then there’s Wolkowysk, or Lippy Saltz, or whatever you want to call him.” I pressed my cheek against her hair. “Green wants to talk to me again. He wants to talk to you. We’re tied together now. For life. We don’t dare leave each other.”

The sweetness of her hair, the heat and softness of her flesh excited me. I fondled her.

“Oh, Swede. Swede, my darling,” Corliss sobbed. She responded frenziedly. But only for a moment. Then she squirmed away and stood in the narrow space between the bed and the wall.

Her lower lip thrust out. Her eyes were sullen. She was breathing so hard it was difficult for her to talk.

“No. I’m a — what you called me. I charge a hundred dollars a night. Now leave me alone until I’m showered and dressed. When I am, we’re going up to the bar and get some food in you.” Her eyes filled and spilled over. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Then maybe I can make you understand what you’ve just done to me.”

I was near the sea. I could smell it. Not that it made any difference. Corliss had called it quits. We were through.

It hurt to move. My muscles felt as if they’d been pounded with a chipping hammer. My eyes were swollen shut and sealed with mucus. I’d taken a hell of a beating from someone.

I lay waiting for the bunk to stop rocking.

“You can’t talk to me like that, Swede. No man can. I won’t put up with it for one minute. Take the car. Take whatever you want. But you and I are through. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

That had been in the bar, in a booth, with Corliss sitting opposite me, looking cool and fresh and virginal in white, eating prime ribs au jus, urging me to eat; me unable to eat, nursing a fresh bottle of Bacardi.

It began to come back clearer. Both of us had been jumpy, waiting for Green and Sheriff Cooper to show. Corliss had asked if I wanted my rings back. I’d told her not to talk like a fool, that whatever either she or I was, it was us, Swede and Corliss, from now on. Then what?

I sat up on the edge of the bunk and opened one eye, cautiously. The first thing I saw was vitreous china, a washbasin, and a stool without a seat. I was in a four-by-seven cubicle. Three sides of the cubicle were solid steel. There were bars on the fourth side.

I looked through the bars and saw a good-looking colored lad in a cell across the way watching me with interest. “You snapped out of it, huh?” he asked. “You lay so still I thought you were dead.”

I stood up and found my cap on the top bunk. “Where am I?”

The question amused him. “You’re in jail, sailor. In the San Mateo County Jail.”

I considered the information. The San Mateo County line was ninety miles up the coast from the Purple Parrot. And the last thing I remembered was sitting in a booth in the bar with Corliss.

“You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you, fellow?” I asked the lad across the way.

He said, “I wish I had.”

I gripped the bars. “Do I look nuts to you?”

He debated a long time. “N-no,” he decided finally. “You’re so beaten up it’s hard to tell what you look like. But I wouldn’t say you weren’t in your right mind. You look sane enough to me.”

“Were you here when they brought me in? Do you know what I’m charged with?”

He shook his head. “No. You were pounding your ear when they brought me in. But you should have a property receipt, and the charge against you will be listed on that.”

I went through my pockets and found the receipt in my shirt. It read:

Department of Public Safety

DIVISION OF
P
OLICE

San Mateo County, California

DATE
6-20-51
TIME
1:10
CELL NO.
7

NAME
Nelson (NMN) Swen

ALIAS

ADDRESS
1001 Ocean Drive, Palm Grove, Calif. (U.S. 101)

AGE
33
DESCENT
Scandinavian

OCCUPATION
Seaman

HEIGHT
6’2”
WEIGHT
225
BUILD
Husky

HAIR
Yellow
EYES
Blue

OFFENSE
V.C. 502-148 P.C.

WHERE ARRESTED
Topanga Canyon

ARRESTED BY
Thomas & Morton

SEARCHED BY
T. N. Thompson

I asked the lad across the way if he knew what V.C. 502 and 148 P.C. meant.

“You have me there, sailor,” he admitted.

“V.C. Five-o-two,” a sleepy voice from the cell next to mine informed me, “is driving while intoxicated. One-four-eight P.C. is resisting an officer. You woke me up once at two o’clock, still resisting very cheerfully at the top of your goddamn voice. Now it’s five o’clock in the morning. For God’s sake, shut your big mouth and let the rest of us get some sleep.”

I laid the receipt on the bunk and washed my face and head with cold water. The water stung the cuts and contusions, but it made me feel a lot better.

I picked up the receipt again and read on.

P
ROPERTY
R
ECEIPT

1 belt
—
2 pks. cigarettes

1 bottle rum (Bacardi)

1 wrist watch (Lord Elgin)

1 diamond ring (lady’s — approx. 2 carats)

1 wallet — seaman’s papers

CURRENCY
$11,925
SILVER
$4.21

TOTAL
$11,929.21

CAR MAKE
Cadillac
COLOR
Green

TYPE
Con. coupe Ser 62, ’51

PRESENT LOCATION
Police garage
LIC. NO.
8824N

I folded the receipt carefully, put it in my pocket, then washed my face with cold water again.

What was I doing with Corliss’ ring and car? What was I doing in San Mateo? I
had
to be with Corliss when Green questioned her. One slip of her tongue, one moment of hysteria could mean the gas chamber for me.

There was the hollow bang of an opened steel door in the distance. Feet scuffed down the cement. A uniformed officer peered in through the bars of my cell.

“You come to yet, Nelson?”

I gripped the bars. “And perfectly cold sober. Look, Jack. How are the chances of speaking to the officers who arrested me?”

He unlocked the door of my cell. “As it happens, they’re good. Straight down the corridor, Nelson. To where you see that open door.”

There was a second officer standing in the open doorway. When I reached him he snapped a pair of handcuffs on my wrists. “Just a matter of precaution.”

I said, “I’m not going to run away.”

“I know you’re not,” he assured me. He walked behind me, dangling a sap from his wrist. “Just keep on going until you come to a door with ‘Captain of Detectives’ printed on the glass.”

When I came to the door I opened it and walked in.

A pleasant-faced white-haired man was sitting back of a desk talking to a younger man. The faces of the two uniformed policemen standing against the wall were vaguely familiar.

“Not so tough now, eh, Nelson?” one of them asked.

The white-haired man introduced himself. “I’m Captain Marks.” He nodded at the younger man. “This is Assistant District Attorney Flagle. I believe you’ve met officers Morton and Thomas.”

I looked at the cops standing against the wall. If they were the officers I’d resisted, they were good at their trade. Neither of them had a mark.

Flagle motioned me to a chair. “Feeling pretty rocky?”

I realized I was wearing my cap and took it off. “That’s right.”

“Give him a drink,” Flagle said. “A good stiff drink.”

The white-haired man who’d said his name was Captain Marks took a bottle of bonded whisky from the bottom drawer of his desk. He poured a water glass a quarter full and handed it to me.

I drank it and returned the glass. “Thanks.”

“Some water?”

“No. That will do fine.”

The whisky spread out in my stomach in little warming fingers. I didn’t feel too bad. I balanced my white cap on my knee and waited, wary. Whenever a cop buys you a drink, especially in a station house, he wants something in return.

Still friendly, Flagle said, “Been on a bit of a bender, eh, Nelson?”

“So it would seem,” I admitted.

The whisky glow began to fade. Captains of detectives and assistant district attorneys didn’t climb out of bed before dawn to put drunken drivers through the mill. There was only one thing it could be. Green had questioned Corliss. Corliss had got hysterical and talked.

Still, that didn’t explain what I was doing with her car and ring ninety miles up the coast from the Purple Parrot.

Captain Marks fingered some papers on his desk. “Is this address correct, Nelson? You live at Ten-o-one Ocean Drive in Palm Grove?”

“Yes, sir.”

He said, “That’s rather an unusual address. Just what sort of place is it, Nelson?”

I said, “A twenty-unit motor court, restaurant, and bar called the Purple Parrot.”

Flagle took a package of cigarettes from his pocket. I hoped he would offer me one. He didn’t. “The Purple Parrot, eh? That’s rather an attractive name for a court. You own this court, Nelson?”

I shook my head, and wished I hadn’t, “No, sir. My wife owns it.”

“Mrs. Swen Nelson.”

“That’s right.”

Flagle lighted a cigarette and looked at me as if I were a slug of some kind. All four men felt the same way about me. I could sense it. To them I was so much dirt.

I stood the silence as long as I could. The walls of the office seemed to be closing in. I’d had the same feeling before. Down twenty fathom in diving dress, with my air hose fouled. “Look,” I said. “What’s this all about? What’s the charge? You fellows aren’t going to believe this, but I haven’t the least idea how I got up here from the Purple Parrot. The last I remember, I was sitting in a booth in the bar, drinking supper with my wife.”

“Don’t try to be funny,” Flagle said.

“I’m not trying to be funny,” I said.