“Hell, I thought he sold reefers,” he said disgustedly. “With the right protection behind him. But hell, that’s a small time racket. A peanut grift.”
“Ever hear of the numbers racket? That’s a small time racket too — if you’re just looking at one piece of it.”
Hemingway turned another corner sharply and shook his heavy head. “Right. And pin ball games and bingo houses and horse parlors. But add them all up and give one guy control and it makes sense.”
“What guy?”
He went wooden on me again. His mouth shut hard and I could see his teeth were biting at each other inside it. We were on Descanso Street and going east. It was a quiet street even in late afternoon. As we got towards Twenty-third, it became in some vague manner less quiet. Two men were studying a palm tree as if figuring out how to move it. A car was parked near Dr. Sondeborg’s place, but nothing showed in it. Halfway down the block a man was reading water meters.
The house was a cheerful spot by daylight. Tea rose begonias made a solid pale mass under the front windows and pansies a blur of color around the base of a white acacia in bloom. A scarlet climbing rose was just opening its buds on a fan-shaped trellis. There was a bed of winter sweet peas and a bronze-green humming bird prodding in them delicately. The house looked like the home of a well-to-do elderly couple who like to garden. The late afternoon sun on it had a hushed and menacing stillness.
Hemingway slid slowly past the house and a tight little smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. His nose sniffed. He turned the next corner, and looked in his rear view mirror and stepped up the speed of the car.
After three blocks he braked at the side of the street again and turned to give me a hard level stare.
“L.A. law,” he said. “One of the guys by the palm tree is called Donnelly. I know him. They got the house covered. So you didn’t tell your pal downtown, huh?”
“I said I didn’t.”
“The Chief’ll love this,” Hemingway snarled. “They come down here and raid a joint and don’t even stop to say hello.”
I said nothing.
“They catch this Moose Malloy?”
I shook my head. “Not so far as I know.”
“How the hell far do you know, buddy?” he asked very softly.
“Not far enough. Is there any connection between Amthor and Sonderborg?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Who runs this town?” Silence.
“I heard a gambler named Laird Brunette put up thirty grand to elect the mayor. I heard he owns the Belvedere Club and both the gambling ships out on the water.”
“Might be,” Hemingway said politely.
“Where can Brunette be found?”
“Why ask me, baby?”
“Where would you make for if you lost your hideout in this town?”
“Mexico.”
I laughed. “Okey, will you do me a big favor?”
“Glad to.”
“Drive me back downtown.”
He started the car away from the curb and tooled it neatly along a shadowed street towards the ocean. The car reached the City Hall and slid around into the police parking zone and I got out.
“Come round and see me some time,” Hemingway said. “I’ll likely be cleaning spittoons.”
He put his big hand out. “No hard feelings?”
“M.R.A.” I said and shook the hand.
He grinned all over. He called me back when I started to walk away. He looked carefully in all directions and leaned his mouth close to my ear.
“Them gambling ships are supposed to be out beyond city and state jurisdiction,” he said. “Panama registry. If it was me that was — “ he stopped dead, and his bleak eyes began to worry.
“I get it,” I said. “I had the same sort of idea. I don’t know why I bothered so much to get you to have it with me. But it wouldn’t work — not for just one man.”
He nodded, and then he smiled. “M.R.A.” he said.
34
I lay on my back on a bed in a waterfront hotel and waited for it to get dark. It was a small front room with a hard bed and a mattress slightly thicker than the cotton blanket that covered it. A spring underneath me was broken and stuck into the left side of my back. I lay there and let it prod me.
The reflection of a red neon light glared on the ceiling. When it made the whole room red it would be dark enough to go out. Outside cars honked along the alley they called the Speedway. Feet slithered on the sidewalks below my window. There was a murmur and mutter of coming and going in the air. The air that seeped in through the rusted screens smelled of stale frying fat. Far off a voice of the kind that could be heard far off was shouting: “Get hungry, foks. Get hungry. Nice hot doggies here. Get hungry.”
It got darker. I thought; and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes. I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blond hair who was afraid and didn’t quite know what he was afraid of, who was sensitive enough to know that something was wrong, and too vain or too dull to guess what it was that was wrong. I thought of beautiful rich women who could be had. I thought of nice slim curious girls who lived alone and could be had too, in a different way. I thought of cops, tough cops that could be greased and yet were not by any means all bad, like Hemingway. Fat prosperous cops with Chamber of Commerce voices, like Chief Wax. Slim, smart and deadly cops like Randall, who for all their smartness and deadliness were not free to do a clean job in a clean way. I thought of sour old goats like Nulty who had given up trying. I though of Indians and psychics and dope doctors.
I thought of lots of things. It got darker. The glare of the red neon sign spread farther and farther across the ceiling. I sat up on the bed and put my feet on the floor and rubbed the back of my neck.
I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
There was no elevator. The hallways smelled and the stairs had grimed rails. I went down them, threw the key on the desk and said I was through. A clerk with a wart on his left eyelid nodded and a Mexican bellhop in a frayed uniform coat came forward from behind the dustiest rubber plant in California to take my bags. I didn’t have any bags, so being a Mexican, he opened the door for me and smiled politely just the same.
Outside the narrow street fumed, the sidewalks swarmed with fat stomachs. Across the street a bingo parlor was going full blast and beside it a couple of sailors with girls were coming out of a photographer’s shop where they had probably been having their photos taken riding on camels. The voice of the hot dog merchant split the dusk like an axe. A big blue bus blared down the street to the little circle where the street car used to turn on a turntable. I walked that way.
After a while there was a faint smell of ocean. Not very much, but as if they had kept this much just to remind people this had once been a clean open beach where the waves came in and creamed and the wind blew and you could smell something besides hot fat and cold sweat.
The little sidewalk car came trundling along the wide concrete walk. I got on it and rode to the end of the line and got off and sat on a bench where it was quiet and cold and there was a big brown heap of kelp almost at my feet. Out to sea they had turned the lights on in the gambling boats. I got back on the sidewalk car the next
