The drowning pool

father was dead and my mother couldn’t help me. She was having a hard enough time supporting herself in ’thirty- two. So Maudie and I moved on to the big city. We both knew typing and shorthand and we made a go of it, doing public stenography and typing dissertations. Living was cheap in those days. We paid Mrs. Knudson ten dollars a month for our room, and did our own cooking. We even managed to get to some of our classes.”

“I was around in those days,” I said.

She supped the dregs of her coffee and lit a cigarette, regarding me somberly through the smoke. “They were wonderful sad days. There were lines a mile long at the mission soup-kitchens in San Francisco and Oakland, but we were going to be career girls and set the Bay on fire. I’ve realized since then that it was all my idea. Maudie just went along because I needed her. She had more brains than me, and more goodness. The pure female type, you know? All she really wanted was a husband and a home and a chance to raise some decent kids like herself. So she got herself tangled up with a man who could never marry her as long as he lived. As long as Eleanor Knudson lived, anyway. I watched it happen and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. They were made for each other, Maudie and Ralph, like in the love stories. He was all man and she was all woman and his wife was a frigid bitch. They couldn’t live in the same house without falling in love with each other.”

“And making music together?”

“Damn your eyes!” she spat out suddenly. “You’ve got a lousy attitude. It was the real thing, see. She was twenty and proud, she’d never gone with a man. He was the man for her and she was the woman for him. They were like Adam and Eve; it wasn’t Maudie’s fault he was married already. She went into it blind as a baby, and so did he. It just happened. And it was real,” she insisted. “Look how it lasted.”

“I have been looking.”

She stirred uncomfortably, shredding her cigarette butt in her small hard fingers. “I don’t know why I’m telling you these things. What do they mean to you? Is somebody paying you?”

“Maude gave me two hundred dollars; that’s all gone by now. But once I’m in a case I sort of like to stay through to the end. It’s more than curiosity. She must have died for a reason. I owe it to her or myself to find out the reason, to see the whole thing clear.”

“Ralph Knudson knows the reasons. Eleanor Knudson knows: hell, it was her idea in a way. Maude had to spend her good years with a man she didn’t love, and I guess she simply got sick of it.”

“What do you mean, she had to marry Slocum?”

“You haven’t given me your word,” she said. “About Cathy.”

“You don’t have to worry about Cathy. I feel sorry for the girl. I wouldn’t touch her.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot after all. James Slocum must have known she wasn’t his child. They said she was a seven-months’ baby, but Slocum must have known.”

“Knudson is Cathy’s father then.”

“Who else? When he found out Maude was pregnant he begged his wife for a divorce. He offered her everything he had. No soap. So Knudson left his wife and his job and cleared out. He was crazy to take Maudie with him, but she wouldn’t go. She was scared, and she was thinking about the baby she was carrying. James Slocum wanted to marry her, and she let him.”

“How did he come into the picture?”

“Maude had been typing for him all winter. He was doing graduate work in drama, and he seemed to be well-heeled. That wasn’t really why she married him, though, at least not the only reason. He had a faggot tendency, you know? He claimed he needed her, that she could save him. I don’t know whether she did or not. Chances are she didn’t.”

“She was still trying,” I said. “You should be doing my work, Miss Fleming.”

“You mean I notice things? Yes, I do. But where Maudie was concerned I didn’t have to: we were like sisters. We talked the whole thing out before she gave Slocum her answer. I advised her to marry him. I made a mistake. I often make mistakes.” A bitter smile squeezed her mouth and eyes. “I’m not really a Miss, incidentally. My name is Mrs. Mildred Fleming Kraus Peterson Daniels Woodbury. I’ve been married four times.”

“Congratulations four times.”

“Yeah,” she answered dryly. “As I was saying, I make mistakes. For most of them I take the rap myself. Maude took the rap for this one. She and Slocum left school before the end of the spring semester and went to live with his mother in Nopal Valley. She was determined to be a good wife to him, and a good mother to the kid, and for twelve years she stuck it out. Twelve years.

“In 1946 she came across a picture of Knudson in the Los Angeles Times. He was a police lieutenant in Chicago, and he’d run down some ex-con or other. It suddenly hit Maude that she still loved him, and that she was losing her life. She came down here and told me about it and I told her to beat her way to Chicago if she had to hitchhike. She had some money saved, and she went. Knudson was still living by himself. He hasn’t been since.

“That fall the Chief of Police in Nopal Valley was fired for bribery. Knudson applied for the job and got it. He wanted to be near Maude, and he wanted to see his daughter. So they finally got together, in a way.” She sighed. “I guess Maude couldn’t stand the strain of having a lover. She wasn’t built for intrigue.”

“No. It didn’t work out well.”

“Maude had enough maturity to see what had to be done, if she could do it. She’d have gone away with Knudson this time. But it was too late. She had Cathy to think about. The hell of it was that Cathy didn’t like Knudson. And she was crazy about Slocum.”

“Too crazy,” I said.

“I know what you mean.” The dark sharp eyes veiled themselves, and unveiled. “Of course, she believes Slocum is her father. I think she’d better go on believing that, don’t you?”

“It’s not my problem.”

“Nor mine. I’m glad it isn’t. whatever happens to Cathy, I’m sorry for her. It’s a shame, she’s a wonderful kid. I think I’ll go up and see her over the weekend.—I almost forgot, the funeral. When is the funeral?”

“I wouldn’t know. You better call her house.”

She stood up quickly, and offered me her hand. “I must be going now—some work to finish up. What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Four o’clock.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Archer. Thanks for listening to me.”

“I shouldn’t be thanking you.”

“No. I had to talk to somebody about it. I felt guilty. I still do.”

“Guilty of what?”

“Being alive, I guess.” She flashed me a difficult smile, and darted away.

I sat over a third cup of coffee and thought about Maude Slocum. Hers was one of those stories without villains or heroes. There was no one to admire, no one to blame. Everyone had done wrong for himself and others. Everyone had failed. Everyone had suffered.

Perhaps Cathy Slocum had suffered most of all. My sympathies were shifting from the dead woman to the living girl. Cathy had been born into it innocent. She had been weaned on hatred and schooled in a quiet hell where nothing was real but her love for her father. Who wasn’t really her father.

Chapter 25

The ride to Quinto, on and old bus sardined with weekenders, was long and slow and hot. A girl who exhaled beer fumes and mauve-scented perfume regaled me with stories of her bowling triumphs in the twenty-alley Waikiki Bowl on Figueroa Boulevard. At the Quinto junction I bade her a quick farewell and walked out to the pier.

My car was where I had left it. A parking-ticket was tucked under the windshield wiper. I tore it into eight pieces and tossed them into the ocean one by one. I didn’t intend to come back to Quinto if I could help it.

Over the pass again to Nopal Valley. The central street was choked with late afternoon traffic, and parked cars lined the curbs. One of them pulled out ahead of me and I backed into its place. I walked a block to Antonio’s and took a seat at the end of the crowded bar. Antonio saw me and nodded in recognition.

Without a word spoken he went to his safe and opened it. When he came to take my order, the clumsy