Fitz number I got from the phone book.
An old woman came to the door.
“Oh,” she said instead of a greeting.
“Miss Fitz?”
“Who?” she asked instead of replying.
“I’m looking for a Doreen Fitz.”
“No,” she said. “Not me.”
“She moved out,” a man’s voice said from behind me.
I turned to see a tall and elderly white man. He had kind eyes and stooped a bit but still he had the posture of a soldier. His smile was mild. It wasn’t joyous or even happy. The expression was more relief than anything else. Remembering him in the narrow doorway he seemed like he was in a coffin, made up for death.
The door behind me slammed.
“You know Doreen?” I asked.
“Why, yes I do. I tried to help her out when I could.”
“World War One?” I asked him.
“Yes sir,” he replied.
MR. PALMER—that was the veteran’s name—invited me in for coffee. He led me through a living room that was twice the size of a dressing room at the May Company department store, through a transitional space that was so small that it could have no name or purpose, and into a small kitchen that was connected to a screened-in porch.
The porch had two redwood chairs and looked into the boughs of a tall magnolia. It was cool out there and I relaxed.
“… wasn’t a bad girl really,” he was saying about Doreen.
We had been out there for an hour or more. Every once in a while the little white woman from the other apartment would come out onto her little porch to see if I was still there.
Palmer told me about the war and the trenches, about the mustard gas and wild dogs that fed on soldiers who had fallen alone. He had three children, two dead wives, and had come out to California after the war because the war had taken too many friends from his small Iowa town.
I told him about my leaving the South for pretty much the same reasons, except that most of my friends had died in Houston rather than on the battlefield.
It was a nice talk. He was the perfect host; a lonely old man who didn’t worry about race or wildness in girls. I guided him into a discussion about Doreen, telling him that I had a friend who knew her in Santa Maria and who worried that she might have been in trouble because of a guy named Dean.
“It was that Dean who got to her,” Palmer agreed. “He was handsome and drove a motorcycle. Girls like that. They think they want a wild man until they drop their first kid. Then it’s fuddy-duddies like you’n me they want, Mr. Auburn.”
I liked being called a fuddy-duddy.
“My friend wanted me to drop by and see if Doreen had moved back here,” I said.
“No,” Mr. Palmer said. “She never came back. But I send her mail on to an address down in Venice. I think it’s Dean’s brother. Here, I’ll get it for you.”
The veteran weighed no more than a hundred and ten pounds but he had to use all of his strength and a lot of leverage to get up and out of his chair. While he was gone the old lady next door spied on me from her kitchen window.
I felt that I deserved her distrust. There I was lying to the friendly old man. If it wasn’t for Domaque and my blood debt to Mouse I would have left then.
“It’s a place down in Venice,” Palmer said when he returned. “I drove her down there once before the state took my license. They say I can’t see well enough. Anyway, it’s a small place not far from the water. But his brother isn’t a friendly fellow. I wouldn’t go there alone if I were you, Mr. Auburn. If you know what I mean.”
It was his only reference to race. Even then he might have meant I’d have trouble because of my fuddy-duddy status.
I had an extra cup of coffee and swapped a few war stories. He walked me to the door as evening came on.
“Come back and see me again sometime, Jay,” Mr. Palmer said as I left. “It’s nice to talk to somebody smart now and then.”
I DROVE DOWN TO THE ADDRESS Mr. Palmer gave me. It was on a small street a mile or so south of Pico. The house was smaller than the gaping garage, and the lawn was covered with rusting cars and motorcycle parts. I saw three men and one white-blond girl sitting on a bench, drinking whiskey from a quart bottle. One of the men and the girl had been in the photograph I took from the Santa Maria trailer.
The men were a rough-looking lot. They had long greasy hair that came down past where their collars would have been if they wore proper shirts. But they wore T-shirts and leather jackets, dirty jeans and heavy boots.
I drove by quickly and then headed back toward Compton.
I MULLED OVER THE PROBLEM of Dean’s brother’s place all the way. Mr. Palmer was probably right about me walking up there alone. Even in a gesture of friendship those men would have probably shown me the door—with a tire iron. And I didn’t want Doreen or Dean to know I was looking into them, not until I had a plan.
I needed backup but there was only one man I knew who could take that ride. And it scared me to death even to consider his help.
ETTA ANSWERED THE DOOR when I got there. Her
