“I don’t know. Are you?”
“No! All we want to do is live in our own way. What’s wrong with that? We don’t see the point in surrounding ourselves with vacuum cleaners and color television sets and a new model car every year-”
She was a small girl, coming up only to Shayne’s shoulder, and in her bare feet she seemed even smaller. She threatened him with her pointed breasts; she was one Jennings Park hippy who was obviously not a boy. Shayne thought she was probably a new arrival. She had the fervor of a recent convert. The others Shayne had talked to had thought it was cooler to ignore him. Loving parents had sent her to an orthodontist, and her teeth were good. Her eyes were warm and emotional.
“I don’t know why I bother,” she said. “You don’t care about our motivation. All you want to do is stand there in your white Anglo-Saxon Protestant superiority, and stare at the animals. The only thing I don’t understand is where’s your Polaroid color camera?”
Shayne grinned at her and took out his photographs. “Have you seen this guy around?”
She still hadn’t replaced her sunglasses, and as she glanced at the pictures Shayne caught the flicker. She handed them back carefully.
“Do I look like the type of person who would cooperate with the enemy?”
“What enemy?”
“You cops are the armed defenders of private property and the status quo, and I hope none of my friends saw me eating that burger. You were right,” she added, putting on the glasses, “it was lousy. The same goes for the coffee.”
She turned abruptly and walked toward the park. Shayne watched her, still grinning, then lost interest abruptly and sauntered away in the opposite direction, his jacket over his shoulder. He entered the park at the opposite end. He stopped to watch a chess game being played by two old men. After a few minutes, when nothing happened, he moved on to listen to a dirge being chanted by a group in dirty gray robes. Meanwhile, he was careful not to lose track of the girl. She spoke to several people in various parts of the park, and they looked at the big red-headed detective, a conspicuous figure in that gathering.
A boy self-consciously offered him a flower. Shayne took it and ran the stem into the buttonhole of his jacket, and walked on. The girl moved around a group of dancers, then turned abruptly, crossed the street and started into Coconut Terrace, which dead-ended two blocks from the park.
Rourke had reported several hippy addresses in the second block. At the next corner she looked back to be sure no one was following, and crossed.
Shayne returned to the chess game and waited till one of the old men finally made a move. Then he looked at his watch and went back to his Buick. As he drove off, he tilted the rear-view mirror and picked up two long-haired youths on the sidewalk, watching him go. He made two right-angle turns in quick succession, parked again, and returned by another route.
The hippy houses on Coconut Terrace were easily identified. They were badly rundown, with blistering paint and broken windows. Shayne went into the first and began trying doors. Few were locked. At this hour most of the occupants were out in the park. In one a boy and girl were in bed together. The girl giggled and asked Shayne to come in. The boy growled, “Outside.”
Henry De Rham was in the next room. He looked around as the door opened. He had shaved off his sideburns, but otherwise he had left his beard alone. It wasn’t as well cared for as it had been in the photographs, but it covered his face in the same way. His hair was very fair, his eyebrows almost colorless. Everything was relaxed about him except his eyes, which were small and hard and went with his old environment.
The girl who had accosted Shayne in the luncheonette was sitting across from him at an unpainted table. There was a second woman on a mattress on the floor. She was breast-feeding a baby and didn’t look up. The girl spat an obscenity at Shayne.
“Never mind,” De Rham said quietly in a high nasal voice. “It’s O.K., H. Who cares, really?”
She pushed back her chair. “I think I’ll step out for a minute.”
“Sit down,” De Rham said. “The trouble with clobbering one cop, he comes back an hour later with fifty cops. So why don’t we all relax? The only thing I’ve done lately is leave my wife. Unless I broke a speed limit getting away I haven’t committed any crimes. Who are you?” he said to Shayne.
“Michael Shayne.” There were only two chairs, both of which were occupied, so he perched on the corner of the table and felt for a cigarette. “Do you want to talk about the money in front of witnesses?”
The girl looked sharply at De Rham, then down at her dirty hands. De Rham smiled.
“Money. I see. What a bitch Dotty is, after all. Let me see your badge.”
Shayne opened his wallet and showed his private investigator’s ticket.
“Shayne-I think I’ve heard about you.” He put a burning cigarette in his mouth and left it there while he talked. “I can’t remember if what I heard was good or bad. What did she hire you to do, bring me back screaming?” He leaned forward and his lips twitched away from his teeth in a sudden snarl. “I’m not going. By that I mean not willingly. You’ve got about fifty pounds on me and as a private detective you probably know all the tricks. You might be able to deliver me, if you could get me out of the building. But this is the second half of the twentieth century. Involuntary servitude hasn’t been legal for over a hundred years. Short of chaining me to the bed-”
Shayne interrupted. “All I’m supposed to do is find you and give you a message.” He swung toward the girl. “What did he say his name was?”
When De Rham nodded she said, “Joe Sealey.”
“That’s close enough,” Shayne said. “Sealey’s his mother’s maiden name. His real name is Henry De Rham. Who’s she?”
He nodded toward the woman on the mattress, who was now burping her baby.
“It’s her room,” De Rham said. “Ursula, this is Mike Shayne, an unidentified flying object from outer space.”
The woman looked up. “He’s not fuzz?”
“Private.”
“He had me scared for a minute, because who’d look after Baby if I got busted?”
She reached under the mattress for a partly-smoked stick, and relighted it with a kitchen match. She took a deep drag, let the smoke out luxuriously, and sat back, putting the baby to her breast again.
“Pot and nursing,” she said dreamily. “It’s so great. One combination a man can’t have.”
De Rham shrugged and looked at his own cigarette, a Chesterfield. “My trouble is, it’s hard to break old habits. Is Paul Brady still around? Not that I give a damn.”
Shayne nodded. “He’s living on the boat, but he tells me he’s getting restless.”
De Rham clucked. “On the same boat. Shocking. Good old Paul. Well, he’s welcome to her. He thinks he’s had domestic troubles. Wait till he’s put in a couple more weeks with Dot.”
“She says she wants you back.”
He blew out his breath scornfully. “Have you ever watched a cat with a baby chipmunk? She doesn’t like to eat it all at once. That wouldn’t be enough fun. So she cuffs it around and watches it and sometimes even lets it get away for a minute-almost. Then she pounces on it again and eats a bit of its tail and plays with it some more. Men are supposed to be the ones with the balls, but I was never under any illusions about my married life. Dotty was the cat. I was the baby chipmunk.”
The girl called H. put her hand on his. “You’re a marvelous man, Seal. A terrific lover. Forget about that castrating bitch.”
“I intend to. All right, Shayne, you’ve delivered the message. Take her a message from me. The air tastes better in this part of town. For the first time in years I feel alive, really alive.” He gestured incoherently, then checked himself. “No, don’t tell her that. I don’t want to wreck her self-esteem, I just don’t want to go back. She can’t help being the way she is.”
He stood up and paced across the room and back. He was smaller than he looked sitting down, probably no taller than his wife. He dropped into the chair again.
“I actually think I loved her at first,” he said in a troubled voice. “Even so I wouldn’t have married her if it hadn’t been for her money. She was already putting me over the jumps. What I want is to break out of the kind of world where money can affect that kind of deeply personal decision. We all have only one life.”
“Did you think of leaving her a letter?”
“I tried to write one but I couldn’t decide what to call her. ‘Dear Dotty?’ Impossible. How is she?”
