The Galton Case (8 page)

It was nearly midnight when Bolling left a tableful of admirers and made for the door. I got up to follow him. A large girl with a very hungry face cut in in front of me. She attached herself to Bolling’s arm and began to talk into his ear, bending over because she was taller than he was.

He shook his head. “Sorry, kiddie, I’m a married man. Also I’m old enough to be your father.”

“What are years?” she said. “A woman’s wisdom is ageless.”

“Let’s see you prove it, honey.”

He shook her loose. Tragically clutching the front of her baggy black sweater, she said: “I’m not pretty, am I?”

“You’re beautiful, honey. The Greek navy could use you for launching ships. Take it up with them, why don’t you?”

He reached up and patted her on the head and went out. I caught up with him on the sidewalk as he was hailing a taxi.

“Mr. Bolling, do you have a minute?”

“It depends on what you want.”

“I want to buy you a drink, ask you a few questions.”

“I’ve had a drink. Several, in fact. It’s late. I’m beat. Write me a letter, why don’t you?”

“I can’t write.”

He brightened a little. “You mean to tell me you’re not an unrecognized literary genius? I thought everybody was.”

“I’m a detective. I’m looking for a man. You may have known him at one time.”

His taxi had turned in the street and pulled into the curb. He signaled the driver to wait:

“What’s his name?”

“John Brown.”

“Oh sure, I knew him well at Harper’s Ferry. I’m older than I look.” His empty clowning continued automatically while he sized me up.

“In 1936 you printed a poem of his in a magazine called
Chisel.”

“I’m sorry you brought that up. What a lousy name for a magazine. No wonder it folded.”

“The name of the poem was ‘Luna.’ ”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember it. A lot of words have flowed under the bridge. I did know a John Brown back in the thirties. Whatever happened to John?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Okay, buy me a drink. But not at the Ear, eh? I get tired of the shaves and the shave-nots.”

Bolling dismissed his taxi. We walked about sixty feet to the next bar. A pair of old girls on the two front stools flapped their eyelashes at us as we went in. There was nobody else in the place but a comatose bartender. He roused himself long enough to pour us a couple of drinks.

We sat down in one of the booths, and I showed Bolling my pictures of Tony Galton. “Do you recognize him?”

“I think so. We corresponded for a while, but I only met him once or twice. Twice. He called on us when we were living in Sausalito. And then one Sunday when I was driving down the coast by Luna Bay, I returned the visit.”

“Were they living at Luna Bay?”

“A few miles this side of it, in an old place on the ocean. I had the very devil of a time finding it, in spite of the directions Brown had given me. I remember now, he asked me not to tell anyone else where he was living. I was the only one who knew. I don’t know why he singled me out, except that he was keen to have me visit his home, and see his son. He may have had some sort of father feeling about me, though I wasn’t much older than he was.”

“He had a son?”

“Yes, they had a baby. He’d just been born, and he wasn’t much bigger than my thumb. Little John was the apple of his father’s eye. They were quite a touching little family.”

Bolling’s voice was gentle. Away from the crowd and the music he showed a different personality. Like other performers, he had a public face and a private one. Each of them was slightly phony, but the private face suited him better.

“You met the wife, did you?”

“Certainly. She was sitting on the front porch when I got there, nursing the baby. She had lovely white breasts, and she didn’t in the least mind exposing them. It made quite a picture, there on the bluff above the sea. I tried to get a poem out of her, but it didn’t come off. I never really got to know her.”

“What sort of a girl was she?”

“Very attractive, I’d say, in the visual sense. She didn’t have too much to say for herself. As a matter of fact, she massacred the English language. I suppose she had the fascination of ignorance for Brown. I’ve seen other young writers and artists fall for girls like that. I’ve been guilty of it myself, when I was in my pre-Freudian period.” He added wryly: “That means before I got analyzed.”

“Do you remember her name?”

“Mrs. Brown’s name?” He shook his head. “Sorry. In the poem I botched I called her Stella Maris, star of the sea. But that doesn’t help you, does it?”

“Can you tell me when you were there? It must have been toward the end of the year 1936.”

“Yes. It was around Christmas, just before Christmas—I took along some bauble for the child. Young Brown was very pleased that I did.” Bolling pulled at his chin, lengthening his face. “It’s queer I never heard from him after that.”

“Did you ever try to get in touch with him?”

“No, I didn’t. He may have felt I’d brushed him off. Perhaps I did, without intending to. The woods were full of young writers; it was hard to keep track of them all. I was doing valid work in those days, and a lot of them came to me. Frankly, I’ve hardly thought of Brown from that day to this. Is he still living on the coast?”

“I don’t know. What was he doing in Luna Bay, did he tell you?”

“He was trying to write a novel. He didn’t seem to have a job, and I can’t imagine what they were living on. They couldn’t have been completely destitute, either. They had a nurse to look after the mother and child.”

“A nurse?”

“I suppose she was what you’d call a practical nurse. One of those young women who take charge,” he added vaguely.

“Do you recall anything about her?”

“She had remarkable eyes, I remember. Sharp black eyes which kept watching me. I don’t think she approved of the literary life.”

“Did you talk to her at all?”

“I may have. I have a distinct impression of her, that she was the only sensible person in the house. Brown and his wife seemed to be living in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.”

“How do you mean?”

“They were out of touch with the ordinary run of life. I
don’t mean that as a criticism. I’ve been out of touch enough in my own life, God knows. I still am.” He gave me his clown grin. “You can’t make a Hamlet without breaking egos. But let’s not talk about me.”

“Getting back to the nurse, do you think you can remember her name?”

“I know perfectly well I can’t.”

“Would you recognize it if I said it?”

“That I doubt. But try me.”

“Marian Culligan,” I said. “C-u-l-l-i-g-a-n.”

“It rings no bell with me. Sorry.”

Bolling finished his drink and looked around the bar as if he expected something to happen. I guessed that most of the things that can happen to a man had already happened to him. He changed expressions like rubber masks, but between the masks I could see dismay in his face.

“We might as well have another drink,” he said. “This one will be on me. I’m loaded. I just made a hundred smackers at the Ear.” Even his commercialism sounded phony.

While I lit a fire under the bartender, Bolling studied the photographs I’d left on the table:

“That’s John all right. A nice boy, and perhaps a talented one, but out of this world. All the way out of this world. Where did he get the money for horses and tennis?”

“From his family. They’re heavily loaded.”

“Good Lord, don’t tell me he’s the missing heir. Is that why you’re making a search for him?”

“That’s why.”

“They waited long enough.”

“You can say that again. Can you tell me how to get to the house the Browns were living in when you visited them?”

“I’m afraid not. I might be able to
show
you, though.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning if you like.”

“That’s good of you.”

“Not at all. I
liked
John Brown. Besides, I haven’t been to Luna Bay for years. Eons. Maybe I’ll rediscover my lost youth.”

“Maybe.” But I didn’t think it likely.

Neither did he.

I
N THE
morning I picked up Bolling at his Telegraph Hill apartment. It was one of those sparkling days that make up for all the fog in San Francisco. An onshore wind had swept the air clear and tessellated the blue surface of the Bay. A white ship cutting a white furrow was headed out toward the Golden Gate. White gulls hung above her on the air.

Bolling looked at all this with a fishy eye. He was frowsy and gray and shivering with hangover. He crawled into the back seat and snored all the way to our destination. It was a dingy, formless town sprawling along the coast highway. Its low buildings were dwarfed by the hills rising behind it, the broad sea spreading out in front.

I stopped beside a filling-station where the inland road met Highway 1, and told Bolling to wake up.

“Wha’ for?” he mumbled from the depths of sleep. “Wha’ happen?”

“Nothing yet. Where do we go from here?”

He groaned and sat up and looked around. The glare from the ocean made his eyes water. He shaded them with his hand. “Where are we?”

“Luna Bay.”

“It doesn’t look the same,” he complained. “I’m not sure whether I can find the place or not. Anyway, we turn north here. Just drive along slowly, and I’ll try to spot the road.”

Almost two miles north of Luna Bay, the highway cut inland across the base of a promontory. On the far side of the promontory, a new-looking asphalt road turned off toward the sea. A billboard stood at the intersection: “Marvista Manor. Three bedrooms and rumpus room. Tile bathrooms. Built-in kitchens. All utilities in. See our model home.”

Bolling tapped my shoulder. “This is the place, I think.”

I backed up and made a left turn. The road ran straight for several hundred yards up a gentle slope. We passed a rectangle of bare adobe as big as a football field, where earth-movers were working. A wooden sign at the roadside explained their activity: “Site of the Marvista Shopping Center.”

From the crest of the slope we looked down over the roof-tops of a hundred or more houses. They stood along the hillside on raw earth terraces which were only just beginning to sprout grass. Driving along the winding street between them, I could see that most of the houses were occupied. There were curtains at the windows, children playing in the yards, clothes drying on the lines. The houses were painted different colors, which only seemed to emphasize their sameness.

The street unwound itself at the foot of the slope, paralleling the edge of the bluffs. I stopped the car and turned to look at Bolling.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s changed so much, I can’t be certain this is the place. There were some clapboard bungalows, five or six of them, scattered along the bluff. The Browns lived in one of them, if memory serves me.”

We got out and walked toward the edge of the bluff. A
couple of hundred feet below, the sea wrinkled like blue metal against its base, and burst in periodic white explosions. A mile to the south, under the shelter of the promontory, a cove of quiet water lay in a brown rind of beach.

Bolling pointed toward the cove. “This has to be the place. I remember Brown telling me that inlet was used as a harbor by rum-runners in the old Prohibition days. There used to be an old hotel on the bluff above it. You could see it from the Browns’ front porch. Their bungalow must have stood quite near here.”

“They probably tore it down when they put in the road. It wouldn’t have done me much good to see it, anyway. I was hoping I’d run across a neighbor who remembered the Browns.”

“I suppose you could canvass the tradesmen in Luna Bay.”

“I could.”

“Oh well, it’s nice to get out in the country.”

Bolling wandered off along the edge of the bluff. Suddenly he said: “Whee!” in a high voice like a gull’s screak. He began to flap his arms.

I ran toward him. “What’s the matter?”

“Whee!” he said again, and let out a childish laugh. “I was just imagining that I was a bird.”

“How did you like it?”

“Very much.” He flapped his arms some more. “I can fly! I breast the windy currents of the sky. I soar like Icarus toward the sun. The wax melts. I fall from a great height into the sea. Mother Thalassa.”

“Mother who?”

“Thalassa, the sea, the Homeric sea. We could build another Athens. I used to think we could do it in San Francisco, build a new city of man on the great hills. A city measured with forgiveness. Oh, well.”

His mood sank again. I pulled him away from the edge.
He was so unpredictable I thought he might take a flying leap into space, and I was beginning to like him.

“Speaking of mothers,” I said, “if John Browns wife had just had a baby, she must have been going to a doctor. Did they happen to mention where the baby was born?”

“Yes. Right in their house. The nearest hospital is in Redwood City, and Brown didn’t want to take his wife there. The chances are she had a local doctor.”

“Let’s hope he’s still around.”

I drove back through the housing-tract until I saw a young woman walking a pram. She shied like a filly when I pulled up beside her. In the daytime the tract was reserved for women and children; unknown men in cars were probably kidnappers. I got out and approached her, smiling as innocuously as I could.

“I’m looking for a doctor.”

“Oh. Is somebody sick?”

“My friend’s wife is going to have a baby. They’re thinking of moving into Marvista Manor, and they thought they’d better check on the medical situation.”

“Dr. Meyers is very good,” she said. “I go to him myself.”

“In Luna Bay?”

“That’s right.”

“How long has he practiced there?”

“I wouldn’t know. We just moved out from Richmond month before last.”

“How old is Dr. Meyers?”

“Thirty, thirty-five, I dunno.”

“Too young,” I said.

“If your friend will feel safer with an older man, I think there is one in town. I don’t remember his name, though. Personally I like a young doctor, they know all the latest wonder drugs and all.”