The Zebra-Striped Hearse (8 page)

“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 cooperation. “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.

I
HAD A DREAM
which I’d been dreaming in variant forms for as long as I could remember. I was back in high school, in my senior year. The girl at the next desk smiled at me snootily.

“Poor Lew. You’ll fail the exams.”

I had to admit to myself that this was likely. The finals loomed up ahead like the impossible slopes of purgatory, guarded by men with books I hadn’t read.

“
I’m
going to college,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

I had no idea. I knew with a part of my dreaming mind that I was a grown man in my forties. There wasn’t anything more that high school could do to me. Yet here I was, back in Mr. Merritt’s classroom, dreading the finals and wondering what I would do when I had failed them.

“You’ll have to learn a trade,” the snooty one said.

So far it was more or less the dream I had always had.
Then something different happened. I said to the girl, rather snootily: “I have a trade, kiddo. I’m a detective, You’ll be reading about me in the papers.”

I woke up with a warm feeling in my chest and the small birds peeping outside the pale grey rectangle of the window. The dream had never ended this way before. Did it mean that I had made it? That didn’t seem likely. You went on making it, or trying to, all your life—working your way up the same old terraced slopes with different street names on them.

The Blackwell case came back on my mind, muffling the bird sounds and draining the last of the warm feeling from my chest There were two cases, really. One belonged to me and one belonged to the authorities, but they were connected. The link between them was small but definite: the airline envelope with Q. R. Simpson’s name on it which Burke Damis, or possibly someone else, had left in the beach house. I wanted to explore the connection further, without too much interference from the police. The possibility existed that Damis had come by the envelope, or even used the name, quite innocently.

It was broad daylight and the birds had finished their matins when I went back to sleep. I slept late into the morning. Perhaps I was hoping for another good dream. More likely I was fixing my schedule so that I wouldn’t have time to report in to Peter Colton.

I had become a great frequenter of airports. Before I set out this time, I dug my birth certificate out of the strongbox in the bedroom closet. I had no definite plan to use it. I just thought it would be nice to have along.

The polite young man at the Mexicana desk greeted me like a long-lost brother. The crew I was interested in had already checked in for their flight, and the steward and stewardess had gone up to the restaurant for coffee. He was tall and dark; she was short and plump and pretty, with red hair. They both had on Mexicana uniforms, and I surely couldn’t miss them.

I picked them out in the murmurous cavern of the restaurant, hunched over coffee cups at one of the long counters. The girl had an empty stool beside her, and I slid onto it. She was certainly pretty, though the red hair that curled from under her overseas-type cap had been dyed. She had melting dark eyes and a stung-cherry mouth. Like American airline hostesses, she had on enough make-up to go on the stage.

She was talking in Spanish with the steward, and I waited for a pause in their conversation.

“Miss Gomez?”

“Yessir, what can I do for you?” she said in a pleasantly accented voice.

“I’m looking for a little information. A week ago yesterday, a man and woman I know took your flight from Guadalajara to Los Angeles. That was Monday, July the tenth. You may remember them, or one of them. The woman is quite tall, about your age, blonde. She often wears dark glasses, and she probably had on expensive clothes. Her name is Harriet Blackwell.”

She nodded her head emphatically. “I remember Miss Blackwell, yes—a very nice lady. The lady across from her was sick—we had some rough air out of Mazatlán—and she took care of the sick lady’s baby for her.” She said to the steward beside her: “You remember the tall lady who was so nice with the baby?”

“Sí.”

“Is Miss Blackwell all right?” she asked me solicitously.

“I think so. Why do you ask?”

“I thought of her afterward, after we landed. And now you are inquiring about her.”

“What did you think about her after you landed?”

“I thought—do you speak Spanish? I express myself better in Spanish.”

“Your English is ten times better than my Spanish will ever be.”

“Gracias, señor
.” She gave me a full dazzling smile. “Well, I saw her after we landed, going through Customs. She looked very—excited. I thought she was going to faint. I approached her and inquired if she was all right. The man with her said that she was all right. He didn’t like—he didn’t want me asking questions, so I went away.”

“Can you describe the man?”

“Yes.” She described Burke Damis. “A very beautiful young man,” she added with a trace of satire in her voice.

“What was his name?”

“I don’t remember.”

She turned to her companion and spoke in rapid Spanish. He shrugged. He didn’t remember either.

“Who would know?”

“You, perhaps,” she said pertly, “You said they were your friends.”

“I said I knew them.”

“I see. Are they in trouble?”

“That’s an interesting question. What brings it up?”

“You,” she said. “You look like trouble for them.”

“For him, not for her. Did they sit together on the plane?”

“Yes. They embarked together at Guadalajara. I noticed them, I thought they were
recién casados
—honeymooners. But they had different names.”

“What was his name?”

“I said I don’t remember. If I can find the passenger list—”

“Try and do that, will you?”

“You are a policeman?”

“An investigator.”

“I see. Where will I see you?”

“On the plane, if they have a seat for me.” I looked at my watch. I had half an hour till flight time.

“We are never crowded in the middle of the week.”

She turned out to be right. I bought a return ticket to Guadalajara from my courteous friend, leaving the date of my
return open. At another desk in the same building I applied for a Mexican tourist card. The hurried clerk who took my application barely glanced at my birth certificate.

“I’ll type up your card
pronto
. Your plane will take off soon.”

In the time I had left, I made the necessary call to Colonel Blackwell. He picked up the phone on the first ring, as if he had been waiting there beside it.

“Mark Blackwell speaking.”

“This is Archer. Have you heard anything from Harriet?”

“No. I don’t expect to.” His voice rose shakily from the depths of depression. “You haven’t either, I take it.”

“No. I have been busy on the case. It took me to the Bay area last night.”

“Is that where they’ve gone?”

“It’s possible, but it’s not why I went up there. To make a long story short, I stumbled on a murder which Damis may be involved in.”

“A murder?” His voice sank almost out of hearing. He said in a rustling whisper: “You’re not trying to tell me that Harriet has been murdered?”

“No. It’s a man named Simpson, icepicked in Citrus Junction two months ago. I’m trying to trace his connection with Damis, and get a line on Damis’s identity and background. The next logical step, as I see it, is to go back to the point where Harriet met him and work forward from there. If it’s all right with you, I intend to fly down to Mexico.”

There was a long silence on the line. Outside the telephone booth, I could hear my flight being announced over the loudspeakers.

“Are you there, Colonel?”

“I’m here. You’re planning to go to Mexico, you say. When?”

“In about five minutes. It’s going to cost you a couple of hundred dollars—”

“Money is no object. By all means go if you think it will help.”

“I can’t guarantee any results, but it’s worth trying. Can you give me your ex-wife’s address in Ajijic?”

“She doesn’t have an address. But any member of the American community should be able to tell you where she lives. Pauline was never one to hide her light under a bushel.”

“Her last name is Hatchen?”

“That is correct. Good luck.” He sounded as though his own had run out.

The plane was barely half full. I had a window seat over the left wing. As the redheaded stewardess placed me in it, I noticed that she looked at me in a peculiar way.

The broken jigsaw of Los Angeles tilted and drifted backward into brownish smog. When the plane had leveled out at cruising altitude, the stewardess slipped into the empty seat beside me. She held a folded newspaper in the hand away from me. Under the make-up, her color wasn’t good.

“I found the seating chart for July—July ten. The man with Miss Blackwell, his name was Simpson, Q. R. Simpson.”