The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (72 page)

I smiled a little without meaning to. Not because what she’d been saying was funny, but because I was thinking of the headlines if they did beat the truth out of me, or if I had to tell all to beat the rap.
Chicago Scion in Heroin Murder Case
. Chicago papers please copy.

I saw the hurt look on Billie’s face and straightened mine. “Sorry,” I said. “I was laughing at something else. Go on.”

But the waitress was coming and Billie waited till she’d left. She shoved the ham and eggs and toast in front of me. “Eat,” she said. I ate.

“And that isn’t all, Howie. They’ll frame you on some other charge to hold you. Howie, they might even frame you on the murder rap itself if they don’t find who else did it. They could do it easy, just take a few little things from her room – it had been searched – and claim you had ’em on you or they were in your room. How’d you prove they weren’t? And what’d your word be against a cop’s? They could put you in the little room and gas you, Howie. And there’s something else, too.”

“Something worse that
that
?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean what they’d do to me, Howie. And that’d be for
sure
. A perjury rap, a nice long one. See, I signed a statement after they questioned me, and that’d make it perjury for me if you tell ’em the truth about why you went up to see Mame. And what else could you tell them?”

I put down my knife and fork and stared at her. I hadn’t been
really
worried about the things she’d been telling me. Innocent men, I’d been telling myself, aren’t framed by the cops on murder charges. Not if they’re willing to tell the truth down the line. They might give me a bad time, I thought, but they wouldn’t hold me long if I leveled with them. But if Billie had signed a statement, then telling them the truth was out. Billie was on the wrong side of the law already; they
would
take advantage of perjury to put her away, maybe for several years.

I said, “I’m sorry, Billie. I didn’t realize I’d have to involve you if I had to tell them the truth.”

“Eat, Howie. Eat all that grub. Don’t worry about me; I just mentioned it. You’re in worse trouble than
I
am. But I’m glad you’re talking straight; you sound really awake now. Now you go on eating and I’ll tell you what you’ve got to do.

“First, this milkman’s description. Height, weight and age fairly close but not exact on any, and anyway you can’t change that. But you got to change clothes, buy new ones, because Jesus, the guy got your clothes perfect. Blue denim shirt cut off above elbows, tan work pants, brown loafers. Now first thing when you leave here, buy different clothes, see?”

“All right,” I said. “How else did he describe me?”

“Well, he thought you had blond hair and it’s a little darker than that, not much. Said you needed a shave – you need one worse now – and said you looked like a Fifth Street bum, a wino maybe. That’s all, except he’s sure he could identify you if he ever saw you again. And that’s bad, Howie.”

“It is,” I said.

“Howie, do you want to blow town? I can lend you – well, I’m a little low right now and on account of Karas’ place being watched so close I won’t be able to pick up any extra money for a while, but I can lend you fifty if you want to blow town. Do you?”

“No, Billie,” I said. “I don’t want to blow town. Not unless you want to go with me.”

God, what had made me
say that?
What had I meant by it? What business had I taking Billie away from the district she knew, the place where she could make a living – if I couldn’t – putting her further in a jam for disappearing when she was more or less a witness in a murder case? And when I wanted to be back in Chicago, back working for my father and being respectable, within a few weeks anyway.

What had I meant? I couldn’t take Billie back with me, much as I liked – maybe loved – her. Billie the Kid as the wife of a respectable investment man? It wouldn’t work, for either of us. But if I hadn’t meant that, what the hell
had
I meant?

But Billie was shaking her head. “Howie, it wouldn’t work. Not for us, not right now. If you could quit drinking, straighten out. But I know – I know you can’t. It isn’t your fault and – oh, honey, let’s not talk about that now. Anyway, I’m
glad
you don’t want to lam because – well, because I
am
. But listen –”

“Yes, Billie?”

“You’ve got to change the way you look – just a little. Buy a different colored shirt, see? And different pants, shoes instead of loafers. Get a haircut – you need one anyway so get a short one. Then get a hotel room – off Fifth Street. Main is okay if you stay away from Fifth. And shave – you had a stubble when that milkman saw you. How much money you got left?”

“Seven,” I said. “But that ought to do it. I don’t need
new
clothes; I can swap with uncle.”

“You’ll need more than that. Here.” It was a twenty.

“Thanks, Billie. I owe you thirty.” Owe her thirty? Hell, how much did I owe Billie the Kid already, outside of money, things money can’t buy? I said, “And how’ll we get in touch with one another? You say I shouldn’t come to your place. Will you come to mine, tonight?”

“I – I guess they won’t be suspicious if I take a night off, Howie, as long as it wasn’t that first night. Right after the – after what happened to Mame. All right, Howie. You know a place called The Shoebox on Main up across from the court house?”

“I know where it is.”

“I’ll meet you there tonight at eight. And – and stay in your room, wherever you take one, till then. And – and try to stay sober, Howie.”

It shouldn’t be hard, I thought, to stay sober when you’re scared. And I was scared, now.

I stayed on Main Street, away from Fifth, and I did the things Billie had suggested. I bought a tan work shirt, and changed it right in the store where I bought it for the blue one I’d been wearing. I stopped in the barber school place for a fourbit haircut and, while I was at it, a two-bit shave. I had one idea Billie hadn’t thought of; I spent a buck on a used hat. I hadn’t been wearing one and a hat makes a man look different. At a shoe repair shop that handled used shoes I traded in my loafers and a dollar fifty for a pair of used shoes. I decided not to worry about the trousers; their color wasn’t distinctive.

I bought newspapers; I wanted to read for myself everything Billie had told me about the murder, and there might be other details she hadn’t mentioned. Some wine too, but just a pint to sip on. I was going to stay sober, but it would be a long boring day waiting for my eight o’clock date with Billie the Kid.

I registered double at a little walk-up hotel on Market Street around the corner from Main, less than a block from the place of my evening date. She’d be coming with me, of course, since we wouldn’t dare go to her place, and I didn’t want there to be even a chance of trouble in bringing her back with me. Not that trouble would be likely in a place like that but I didn’t want even the minor trouble of having to change the registration from single to double if the clerk saw us coming in, not for fifty cents difference in the price of the room.

I sipped at the wine slowly and read the papers. The
Mirror
gave it the best coverage, with pictures. A picture of Mame that must have been found in her room and that had been taken at least ten years ago – she looked to be in her late teens or early twenties – a flashlight shot of the interior of her room, but taken after her body had been removed, and an exterior of The Best Chance, where she’d worked. But, even from the
Mirror
, I didn’t learn anything Billie hadn’t told me, except Mame’s full name and just how and when the body had been discovered. The time had been 12:05, just about the time Billie was leaving from her room on the floor below. The owner of the building had dropped around, with tools, to fix a dripping faucet Mame (Miss Mamie Gaynor, 29) had complained about the day before. When he’d knocked long enough to decide she wasn’t home he’d let himself in with his duplicate key. The milkman’s story and the description he’d given of me was exactly as Billie had given them.

I paced up and down the little room, walked the worn and shabby carpet, wondering. Was there – short of the sheer accident of my running into that milkman – any danger of my being picked up just from that description? No, surely not. It was accurate as far as it went, but it was too vague, could fit too many men in this district, for anyone to think of me in connection with it. And now, with a change of clothes, a shave, wearing a hat outdoors, I doubted if the milkman would recognize me. I couldn’t remember his face; why would he remember mine? And there was no tie-in otherwise, except through Billie. Nobody but Billie knew that I’d even met Mame. The only two times I’d ever seen her had been in Billie’s place when she’d dropped in while I was there, once for only a few minutes, once for an hour or so. And one other time I’d been up to her room, that time to borrow cigarettes for Billie; it had been very late, after stores and bars were closed.

The fact that I’d disappeared from my room in that block? That would mean nothing. Tomorrow a week’s rent was due; the landlord would come to collect it, find me and my few possessions gone, and rent it again. He’d think nothing of it. Why should he?

No, now that I’d taken the few precautions Billie had suggested, I was safe enough as long as I stayed away from her building.

Why was I hiding here now, then?

The wine was gone and I wanted more. But I knew what shape I’d be in by eight o’clock if I kept on drinking it, starting at this hour of the morning.

But I’d go nuts if I stayed here, doing nothing. I picked up the papers, read the funny sheets, a few other things. Back in the middle of one of them a headline over a short item caught my eye, I don’t know for what reason.
Victim in Alley Slaying Identified
.

Maybe my eye had first caught the name down in the body of the story, Jesus Gonzales. And Mame’s jittery guest of the night before her death had been named Jesus Gonzales.

I read the story. Yesterday morning at dawn the body of a man had been found in an areaway off Winston Street near San Pedro Street. He had been killed with a blunt instrument, probably a blackjack. As he had been robbed of everything he was carrying, no identification had been made at first. Now he had been identified as Jesus Gonzales, 41, of Mexico City, DF. He had arrived in Los Angeles the day before on the SS
Guadalajara
, out of Tokyo. His passport, which had been left in his room at the Berengia Hotel, and other papers left with it, showed that he had been in the Orient on a buying trip for a Mexico City art object importing firm in which he was a partner, and that he was stopping in Los Angeles for a brief vacation on his return trip.

Mame’s Jesus Gonzales? It certainly looked that way. The place and time fitted; less than two blocks from her room. So did the time, the morning after he’d been frightened by that knock at the door and had left unceremoniously via the fire escape.

But why would he have hooked up with Mame? The Berengia is a swank hotel, only people with well-lined pockets stay there. Mame was no prize; at the Berengia he could have done better through his own bellhop.

Or could it be a factor that Mame was a junkie and, stopping in at The Best Chance, he’d recognized her as one and picked her for that reason? He could have been a hype himself, in need of a jolt and in a city where he had no contacts, or – and this seemed even more likely because of his just having landed from Tokyo – he’d smuggled some dope in with him and was looking for a dealer to sell it. The simplest and safest way to find a dealer would be through an addict.

It was just a wild guess, of course, but it wasn’t too wild to be possible. And damn it, Mame’s Jesus Gonzales
had
acted suspiciously and he
had
been afraid of something. Maybe he’d thought somebody was following him, following him and Mame home from The Best Chance. If he was the same Jesus Gonzales who’d just been killed and robbed only two blocks from her place, then he’d been dead right in being careful. He’d made his mistake in assuming that the knocker on Mame’s door was the man who’d followed him and in going down the fire escape. Maybe his
Nemesis
had still been outside the building, probably watching from across the street, and had seen him leave. And on Winston Street
Nemesis
had caught up with him.

Nice going, B.A.S., old boy, I thought. You’re doing fine. It isn’t every Skid-Row pearl-diver who can reconstruct a crime out of nothing. Sheer genius, B.A.S., sheer genius.

But it was something to pass the time, a lot better than staring at the wall and wishing I’d never left Chicago. Better than brooding.

All right, suppose it figured so far – then how did Mame’s death tie in with it? I didn’t see how. I made myself pace and concentrate, trying to work out an answer.

I felt sure Mame had been telling me the truth about Gonzales as far as she knew it, or else she would have had no reason for mentioning it at all. Whatever his ulterior motive in picking her up, whether to buy dope or to find a contact for selling it, he hadn’t yet leveled with Mame before that knock came. Otherwise she wouldn’t have told it casually, as she had, as something amusing.

But the killer wouldn’t have known that. He couldn’t have known that Mame was not an accomplice. If what he was looking for hadn’t been on the person of the man he’d killed he could have figured that it had already changed hands. Why hadn’t he gone back to Mame’s the same night? I didn’t know, but there could have been a reason. Perhaps he had and she’d gone out, locking the door and the fire-escape window. Or maybe by that time she had other company; if he had knocked she might have opened the door on the chain – and I remembered now that there was a chain on her door – and told him so. I couldn’t ask Mame now what she’d done the rest of the night after her jittery caller had left.

But if Gonzales was a stranger in town, just off the boat, how would the killer have known he had brought in heroin? – or opium or cocaine; it could have been any drug worth smuggling. And the killer must have known
something
; if it had been just a robbery kill, for whatever money Gonzales was carrying, then he wouldn’t have gone back and killed Mame, searched her room. He’d have done that only if he’d known something about Gonzales that made him think Mame was his accomplice.