Build My Gallows High (3 page)

Red didn’t speak to her that night. He wanted to. He wanted to smile at her and move to the chair across the table so that he could see the color of her eyes. He thought they must be blue—pale blue like the sky over the bay.

But they weren’t blue. Red found that out the next night. The loud speaker on the front of the theater was braying and across the plaza some guy was keeping his hands on the horn of an automobile. The horn played three notes. The domino players didn’t mind. One of them was a policeman but he didn’t do anything about the horn.

She came along the sidewalk and this time she didn’t look at anyone. She merely went to the same table and sat down. He heard her low, sweet voice asking the waiter for a brandy and plain water. He caught her eyes and grinned. A ghost of a smile crossed her face. He asked: ’May I?’ She dropped her glance.

The waiter brought her drink. Red beckoned to him, asked for another beer and when it came watched her over the top of the tall glass. The dress she wore tonight was of some soft green stuff, but her hat was the same and her shoes and her bag matched the hat. She took a black notebook from her bag and began writing in it with a tiny gold pencil. As she wrote she pulled her eyebrows together and pursed her full lips. Her lips were very red and made her skin seem paler than it really was.

A ragged boy crossed from the plaza and headed straight for her table. His soft voice begged for just one little centavo—
please senorita, just one.
She smiled at the flat, dirty brown face. Surely, the boy continued in Spanish, the senorita could spare one tiny centavo.

She looked at Red then. She spoke. ‘What does he say?’

‘He wants a cent,’ Red said. Red waved him away—told him to run along before he cut his ears off. The boy laughed and took some lottery tickets from his pocket.

‘The senorita will win a fortune perhaps,’ the boy suggested.

Red got up, moved to her table, gave him a fifty-centavo piece and took one of the tickets.

‘Gracias, senor,’
the boy said.

‘Por nada.’

‘Which means?’ she asked.

‘For nothing,’ Red said, as the boy went away. ‘May I sit down?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Por nada.’
She smiled and a light seemed to go on in her eyes. They were light brown, flecked with bits of gold, and her long lashes made shadows on her fine pale skin.

‘I wanted to speak to you last night,’ Red said.

‘I know.’

‘You looked lonely.’

‘I’m not. Was that why you wanted to speak to me?’

‘No. I wanted to ask you to walk along the beach in the moonlight. I wanted to sit beside you on a hill.’

’You’re the lonely one.’ She smiled again. Red wanted her to keep smiling—she was even lovelier then. ‘I don’t know your name.’

‘Does that matter?’ Red asked.

‘Yes.’

‘They call me Red.’

‘How odd,’ the girl laughed softly. ‘Red what?’

‘Markham. And yours?’

She shook her head.’You wouldn’t believe it. Why are you in Acapulco?’

‘I like it.’

‘Tourist?’

‘Indolent,’ Red said.’This is a fine place to be indolent in.’

‘Even if you’re lonely?’

‘I’m not lonely any more.’ He reached across the table and covered her hand with his own. ‘They have a fine bar at the El Mirador. Shall we walk up the hill and have a drink?’

‘Not tonight.’

‘Tomorrow then?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon. Say four.’

‘You won’t run away?’

‘No.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Por nada.’
She said the words as though she liked the sound and her voice did things to Red’s stomach.

El Mirador made Red think of Carmel—the hotel hanging on the edge of the cliff, the rocks and the sea and the sky. They sat at a table, high above the water. On the cliff below two boys chased an iguana. After a while they caught him and came clambering up the rocks, one of them holding the ugly thing by the tail. The girl shuddered. She asked,’Why?’

‘To eat,’ Red said. He was glad when they were gone. Then there were only the cliffs and the sea gnawing at the rocks far down and two buzzards riding an air current low over the blue-green water. ‘This isn’t Mexico,’ Red said.

’Oh yes.’ She sipped her daiquiri, leaned on the porch railing and nodded at the buzzards wheeling by. ‘They’re Mexico. I’ve seen them by the dozens roosting in the dead trees along the road. I’ve seen them everywhere. They’re always with you, like—’ She cut the sentence off and there was darkness in her eyes.

‘Like what?’

‘Death,’ the girl said, staring across at him.

The shadows of the birds slid across the rocks. ‘I know a place where there are only the cliffs and the sea,’ Red said. ‘White sand. White and clean. The rocks shut out everything but the sky and the sea. There’s nothing to make you think of death.’

Mumsie rose. ‘Show it to me,’ she said softly.

Not far away the waves gnawed hungrily at the rocks. They lay in shadow on the warm sand and high above them hung one lost and lonely cloud. Mumsie sat up and watched the water running up the beach, stopping to push the smooth, white pebbles around a bit with cool white fingers, then drawing away. Presently she turned and stared down at Red. His head was pillowed in his hands.

‘When do we go back. Red?’ she asked suddenly.

Red’s glance rested on her face. He took one of her hands. ‘There’s no hurry. He didn’t die.’

‘Oh.’

‘He wants you back.’

‘So you’ll take me?’

‘I’ve been thinking about things.’

With her free hand she made patterns in the sand. Red pulled himself up beside her, slid one arm around her shoulders.

‘I could tell him you hopped a boat,’ Red said.’I could tell him you had lost yourself in Panama or Chile. Anywhere. That I’m not bloodhound enough to pick up your trail.’

‘Would he believe you?’

‘I’ll chance it.’

‘Then what?’

‘You and I,’ Red said softly.

‘He’d find us. You don’t know him like I do. Red.’

Red grinned. ’I don’t want to. What about it?’

‘I can’t go back.’

‘No. And maybe he doesn’t want you back after all. Maybe he wants his fifty-six thousand bucks.’

She threw him a puzzled glance.’Fifty-six thousand? Is that what he said?’ Red nodded. ‘So that’s why you’ll take a chance on me?’

‘We’ll give it back to him. I’ll say I found you and talked you out of the dough but couldn’t persuade you to come back.’

‘I didn’t take that much money,’ Mumsie said. ‘Not anywhere near that much. He lied to you. I took enough to get me here. There’s very little left.’

‘All the better, then.’ His arm tightened about her. ‘You can’t accuse me of being greedy’

‘No. Only of being foolish.’ She shrugged his arm away, stood up and moved down the sand. The waves swept up the beach and drove her back. Without turning she spoke. ‘All you know about me is I lived with a gambler and when he got tired of me I shot him and ran away.’

Red rose to stand beside her. ‘That’s not all.’

‘What else?’

‘A moment.’

‘Is that enough?’

‘Yes.’ He pulled her closer, tilted her face with one forefinger and kissed her. The waves reached out for them, drew back, reached out again. Far above, the tidy wind swept the lonely cloud away behind the hills.

You got over things like life and death. The thought was somehow frightening when you knew that one of these days Ann might get over you. But you couldn’t deny it, couldn’t say, ‘Hell, it won’t happen to us.’

Mumsie had come along the hall and had opened the door a while ago. There was a time when he would have been almost breathless waiting for her to come to him, waiting for her lips, her breasts and her body.

Yes, he had rid himself of desire but he had taken a beating doing it. Love for her was long since dead or, rather, love for the woman he had imagined was dead.

At first he hadn’t loved her. Those weeks in Acapulco—the nights hot and still until a morning wind came along, the days bright with Mexican voices that were like cricket songs—he had wanted her as he had wanted no other woman in his life. But he saw the imperfections—a smallness, a stinginess, a tendency to give grudgingly or not at all of everything but her body.

It was on the boat wallowing amiably north that he had stopped seeing clearly. Mumsie became something he made up—not a beautiful woman who had put a lead slug in Whit Sterling’s belly. It had taken a good kick in the teeth to bring the true picture into focus.

The night was hot, the sea an unruffled inland lake so smooth you could find stars in it. He lay back in his deck chair looking shoreward at the mountain wall that was Mexico’s west coast. Someone ran along the narrow deck and then she was down on her knees beside him, clinging to him, pressing her face against his chest.

‘Oh, Red!’ she cried.

His fingers touched her neck, moved up through the soft mass of her hair. ‘Yes, Mumsie.’

‘I’m afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘You won’t come back. You’ll leave me in Los Angeles and you won’t come back.’

‘Of course I’ll come back.’

‘You mustn’t. I’m no good. I’ll never be any good. Such a black soul, darling.’

‘Black velvet,’ Red said. ‘Anyway, I like black souls.’

’Right now you do. After a while you’ll start thinking.’

‘Who named you Mumsie?’

‘A man.’

‘Your father?’

‘He called me Harriet. Don’t ask about the other.’

‘I want to ask. I like to pry into your past. It excites me.’

Someday it won’t. Someday you’ll start seeing ghosts. Oh, Red, I’ve a secret for you.’

‘Say it.’

‘I adore you.’

He found her lips and then the dream began.

In the night it rained and he heard the rain hitting the deck. Suddenly the tiny cabin was cool. Mumsie asked: ’Who wrote it?’

‘Wrote what?’

‘You know what. The poem I’m thinking.’

‘I’m not a mind reader,’ Red said sleepily. ’How do I know the poem you’re thinking?’

‘It goes. “When I am dead and over me bright April shakes down her rain-drenched hair.”’

‘Go back to sleep and stop being so cheerful,’ Red said. He turned over away from her and lay there looking at the gray patch that was the window, listening to the rain drop down, listening to the thump of the engines and the slap of the waves against the rusty steel.

‘Teasdale,’ Mumsie said.’That’s who wrote it.’

She put her body tight against his back and he could feel her warm breath on his neck. ‘I wouldn’t like it. I wouldn’t like being dead and having April let her rain-drenched hair down on me. Would you like it. Red?’

‘Go to sleep.’

‘I wouldn’t have you with me. That’s why I wouldn’t like it.’

He turned and held her close. ‘How did you happen to read Sarah Teasdale?’

‘A man read it to me.’

‘The same man who named you Mumsie?’

’No.’

‘My God!’ Red said. ‘What do you do—collect men?’

‘I told you not to pry. Anyway, they don’t matter any more.’

‘That’s heartening.’

‘Do I ask you about all your women?’

‘Want to hear?’

‘No.’

‘Tell me about Whit Sterling.’

‘No.’

‘He read you the Teasdale poem.’

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘The only time I saw him, a guy was reading
North of Boston
aloud to him. He was in bed with a stomach ache. When you get through with me, will you shoot me?’

‘Red!’ The name was a crying protest.

‘I just wanted to make sure,’ Red said. ‘Now let’s go to sleep.’

‘Haven’t we anything better to do?’

‘Yes,’ Red said.

He took bits of her life and put them together—bits whispered to him in the night. Yet there were not enough to round it out. So he made up the rest. He had time enough on that trip up the coast. The old ship didn’t seem to give a damn if it ever rounded the San Pedro breakwater. Nor did he.

An unpleasant job confronted him—leaving Mumsie, heading east and trying to make Whit Sterling swallow a tall tale. Not that he worried much about it. He was too busy finding a soul for Mumsie to worry about anything. Yet, when they left the ship and rode by taxi into the hot, dispirited mediocrity that was Los Angeles he decided to put it off for a while.

There was a little house in Laurel Canyon with a creek in front of it. A footbridge crossed the creek and sometimes, when the boys at the reservoir opened the gates, water ran under the bridge. It was cool and quiet in the canyon. Behind the house a hill rose steeply. You could walk up the creek and then there were no houses—nothing but brown hills on which the Yucca candles were burning out. At night the coyotes howled on the ridge. Mumsie said she used to hate them. That was because they made her lonely. Mumsie said she had forgotten what loneliness was so she didn’t hate them any more.

A week, and then Red started worrying. So she drove him to Pasadena in the car they had bought and cried a little while they waited for the train.

‘I wish you wouldn’t go,’ Mumsie said.

‘I have to,’ Red said.

‘Why?’

‘I’m running out of money,’ Red told her. ‘I want to sell my business to my partner and start another here. And I can’t do it unless I settle up with Sterling.’

Mumsie’s eyes grew thoughtful. She started to speak. Watching her, he felt a sudden sharp distrust. Perhaps— He wouldn’t finish the thought. Her speech went unsaid.

He kissed her and swung up on the steps as the train started moving. Seeing her so small and alone in the fading sun-light, his faith came back.

The last car pulled out of the driveway. Out in the hall there was the mumble of tired voices as Guy Parker’s boys trekked off to bed. Red rolled over on his back, found a cigarette, lighted it and watched the smoke spiral toward the ceiling. Now Mumsie was Guy’s woman. For how long? When she got tired of him would she put a bullet in his stomach? Or give him a sack to hold and walk out on him. That would give Guy and Red something in common, Red thought wryly. He had been left holding the sack. It was still in his hands.

He met Guy two weeks after he came back from New York with ten thousand dollars of Jack Fisher’s money in his pocket. Jack had jumped at the chance to buy him out and Jack hadn’t asked questions. Neither had Whit Sterling.

‘So you couldn’t find her,’ Sterling had said coldly. ‘All right. Run along. When I need you again I’ll look you up.’

That was all there was to it. Either Red’s reputation for truth satisfied Whit or he had lost interest in Mumsie.

Red’s office had been opened a week when Guy walked in one morning, his gold chief’s badge gleaming, his blue uniform so well tailored you hardly thought of him as a copper.

Guy’s hand was thin and hard. ‘Glad to have you around.’ he said.’It’s going to seem odd having an honest private eye-working the town.’

Red gave him a cigar and waited without comment. A police chief didn’t ordinarily drop around to hand out compliments.

‘Heard a lot about you,’ Guy said. ‘All good.’

’That’s fine.’

‘Lined up anything?’

‘Nothing big.’

Guy chewed on the unlighted cigar for a while. He said suddenly, ’Goddamn it, I’ve got to trust you.’

There was no answer to that. Red looked through the window at the garish decorations on the dance hall on the other side of the street.

‘I got a kid,’ Guy said. ‘He’s in a jam and I can’t do anything about it. Some guy’s bleeding him. I want you to find out who and why.’

‘What about your boys?’

Guy laughed. ‘Tell them? Christ. Let a cop in on family secrets? I’d be out in the street. You know how this town is. Full of longhairs just waiting to needle you. Full of guys waiting to help them.’

Business in a new town would be lean unless he had someone to give him a hand. Across the desk was a thin guy who was in a position to throw a lot of cases his way. ‘I’ll take a whirl at it,’ Red said.

Red didn’t see Guy again for a couple of weeks. One night the police chief came across the footbridge and rapped on the door. He handed Red a bundle of dough and said if there was ever anything he could do, just ask. Mumsie was reading in the chair across the room and Guy looked at her through the open door. He said maybe he could stop long enough for a quick one. He stayed for five quick ones and most of the time he gave his attention to Mumsie.

‘He has a yen,’ Red said when Parker went away.

‘I don’t want it.’ Mumsie came over and sat in his lap. ‘I only want your yens.’

‘It might be fun sleeping with a cop.’

‘You’ve an evil mind.’

‘What’s evil about sleeping with cops? They’re limbs of the law. They’re whited sepulchers.’

‘Not that one. Don’t talk about him any more. Tell me a secret, darling.’

‘I adore you,’ Red whispered, and he meant it.

He kept on meaning it through the coldest winter the town had ever known and the wettest spring that followed. Then Jack Fisher showed up to bring his world down around his ears.

The cabin they found on Pyramid Creek, just off the American River road from Lake Tahoe to Placerville, belonged to the man who owned the store at Strawberry. It stood back from the creek a way and the bedroom windows looked up toward Horsetail Falls. At night you could hear the water pouring down the rocks.

A clump of lodgepole pine grew in front of the cabin. If you cut into the bark it smelled like apples. Down the hill was the highway but you couldn’t see it and you couldn’t see the river. But you could see the gorge through which the river ran and you could see the snow-covered peaks off to the right. When the sun dropped low enough the peaks were red for a little while.

They rented the cabin late in the afternoon and bought a lot of canned stuff and put it in the kitchen and cooked supper. They worked together, stopping now and then to look through the window at the dusk filling the canyon. After supper they took a cot out on the porch and lay on it, listening to the creek, with the husk of an old moon looking at them and the ghosts of a million lost worlds.

‘We should have come here right away,’ Mumsie said. ‘We never should have gone to Los Angeles.’ She pressed close to him.

‘He didn’t see you,’ Red said. ‘Anyway, he’s probably forgotten all about you.’

‘He saw you and he doesn’t forget.’

‘That dame who was with him won’t let him remember his past,’ Red said. ’A year is a long time. And he wasn’t in Los Angeles looking for you. He was opening a dog track.’

‘Then why did we run?’

’I don’t like Southern California.’

‘Even with me around?’

‘Even with you around.’

‘What do we do next?’

‘We stay here until snow flies,’ Red said. ‘Then we’ll go to Reno and I’ll open an office and we’ll live on the fat of the land.’

‘Like we did in Los Angeles?’ Mumsie asked skeptically.

‘Los Angeles is no place for a detective. Too much competition from the cops.’

‘You’re not telling the truth,’ Mumsie said. ‘You wouldn’t have left in such a hurry if you weren’t afraid.’

‘I’m not afraid of Sterling,’ Red said. That was true enough. Meeting the man in front of the Biltmore Hotel hadn’t worried him at all. Sterling had expressed surprise at seeing him. They had exchanged pleasantries, then Whit and his blonde friend had climbed into a waiting Cadillac and had driven away. What worried—or rather annoyed—him was a visitor he had had at five o’clock one evening a few days before. Red’s secretary had gone home and Red was alone in the dingy office on the fourth floor of an old building at Fifth and Main streets. He heard footsteps crossing the outer office. His door opened and Jack Fisher stood in the doorway.

‘Surprise,’ Jack Fisher said. He entered, closed the door behind him and stood there grinning at Red. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see your ex-partner, old boy?’

Red got up, came around the desk and they shook hands. ‘What brings you out here?’

‘This and that.’

‘How’s Gertrude?’

Fisher dismissed her with a shrug. ’Gone the way of all flesh.’

‘Working?’

‘Sort of

‘How’s the racket?’

‘Good.’ Fisher looked around him at the tired furniture and the dirty windows. ‘This is funny.’

‘What?’

‘Finding you in a dump. Did you spend it all?’

‘The ten grand you paid me is tucked safely away, Jackson. I’m living on earnings.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the ten grand.’

‘No?’

‘I was talking about a whole lot more. Say fifty-six grand.’

‘Sit down,’ said Red, ‘and stop talking nonsense.’

Fisher sat. He took out a cigar, lighted it and grinned at Red through the fragrant smoke. ‘Whit swallowed that crap,’ he said, ‘because he doesn’t know you like I do.’

‘You working for Whit?’

‘Nope. But I could be.’

‘Why don’t you, then?’

‘I can make more dough keeping my trap shut.’

‘I doubt it.’

“He’d be mighty surprised to know you had an office here.’

‘He knows it. I saw him today.’

“But he doesn’t know about Mumsie.’

Fisher’s grin widened. He flicked ashes on the worn carpet, waiting for a reply that wasn’t forthcoming. ’He doesn’t know you two are living in a house in Laurel Canyon, old boy. Shall I give him your phone number?’

‘You shouldn’t waste that talent on me,’ Red said. ‘You should save it for your clients.’

‘Always the card,’ Fisher grinned. ‘Covering up with a quip. How about it?’

‘Run along.’ Red locked his desk and stood up. Fisher also stood up.

‘Tomorrow night.’ Fisher’s face lost its pleasant look. ’That’s the deadline.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Jackson. Mumsie spent all the dough she took.’

Fisher made a gesture of disbelief. ‘She tell you that?’

Red opened the door, motioned Fisher out.

‘Either you’re a liar or just a plain goddamned fool,’ said Fisher as he passed Red. He threw a sneer over one shoulder, pitched the half-smoked cigar short of the wastebasket and crossed the room.

‘Go home and read some more fairy tales. I’ll see you tomorrow night.’

The door closed. Red went over and picked up the cigar butt, made sure it was out and dropped it in the wastebasket. Then he picked up the phone and dialed a number.

‘Start packing, my darling,’ Red said when Mumsie answered. ‘We’re going fishing.’

The moon slid out of sight behind the trees. Red lay beside Mumsie and thought about Fisher and what Fisher had said. Presently he asked, ‘Did you tell the truth, darling?’

‘About what?’ Her voice was sleepy.

‘The money you took from Sterling.’

She pulled away from him and sat up. ’I’m going to bed.’

His hand held her. ’Did you, Mumsie?’

‘That does it.’ Her fingers were gentle as she took his hand away. ‘You talked to him again and now you’re wondering who told the truth. You’ll keep on wondering. So it won’t work any more.’

He wished he could see her face. He wished he could see the expression in her eyes, but the stars gave only enough light to tell him she was standing there above him.

‘It’s been nice,’ Mumsie said.

He got up, slid one arm around her. ’I’m curious, that’s all. I don’t give a damn how much you stole from him. I’ve plenty left and I can work. But I don’t want you laughing at me. I don’t want you saying, “What a sucker he is—what a poor goddamned sucker!”’

‘Stop it!’ she cried out at him.

His arm tightened. ’Why are you so afraid of Whit, Mumsie?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Sit down.’ He forced her back on the cot. Still holding her he told her about Jack Fisher. Mumsie listened and she seemed to be hunting for lost stars. She said, after a while, ‘I don’t blame you for doubting, Red. I don’t blame you a bit. You know too much about me. It doesn’t do to know too much.’

‘I’ll stop doubting,’ Red whispered. Yet he knew he never would.

Mr. Fisher put in an appearance two days later. Red wasn’t surprised to see him because Red had confided in his secretary where he was going. Jack had a way with secretaries—he should have remembered that.

‘Nice country,’ Fisher said, looking up the canyon toward the falls. ‘Wouldn’t mind staying here myself.’ He glanced at Mumsie and added, ‘under the circumstances.’

‘Stick around,’ Red told him. ‘There’s an extra room.’

Fisher pushed past Red into the cabin. He leaned against the table and looked at Mumsie. ‘Where’s the money?’

‘She didn’t take it,’ Red protested, trying to make the protest convincing.

‘That’s what she says. She’s a dirty, lying little bitch.’

Red hit him. Off balance Fisher fell back over the table, lay on the rough boards cursing them both. Painfully he pulled himself up. Red hit at him again. This time Fisher ducked and went for his gun. Red kept on coming. Fisher backed up against the wall and his little eyes were black with fear. He licked his fat lips and pointed the gun at Red. Suddenly they were fighting for the gun. When Fisher pulled the trigger the muzzle was aimed the wrong way.

Mumsie wouldn’t stay in the cabin with Fisher’s body. They went down by the creek and waited for dark and now there was a wall between them. It would be all right, he kept telling himself, because he wanted it to be, because he didn’t want to lose her, because he wanted to stay blind. When you create something, you hate to see it dissolve into nothingness. They’d move on together and the doubt would go and they’d forget Jack Fisher. That wouldn’t be too hard to do.

The canyon filled with darkness. East, the sunlight faded from the range and soon the trees stood out no longer. Soon they were vague shadows on the darkening hills.

Red kissed her. ‘I won’t be long.’ He climbed the path to the cabin.

As he bent to pick up Fisher’s body, a thought occurred to him. In the bedroom he found Mumsie’s purse and tucked in a pocket of the purse was an account book on a Los Angeles Savings bank. He lighted a match and by its feeble flame looked at the figures in the book and then he knew. Mumsie had deposited fifty-one thousand dollars in the bank. All over. The dream ended.

There was a little meadow just off the creek up near the falls and he carried Jack Fisher’s body there and put it on the grass. Then he started digging a grave.

He had stopped to rest when he heard, above the murmur of the creek, the sound of a car starting. Lights swung away from the cabin and down the road to the highway. He watched them disappear. He went back to his digging, not angry with her, not angry with himself for being such a fool.

He’d get over it, he knew. He’d be lonely for a while, lonely for a myth. And Mumsie? With that wad of money she should be very happy. Money was something you could hold and count. Love? Hell, you could pick that up in a Mexican cafe when you needed it.

The sound of Guy’s voice awakened him. Red sat up and rubbed his rough jaw.

‘Feel better?’ Guy asked. ‘Fine,’ Red said.

Guy came over and sat on the bed. ‘Here’s the setup. There’s a girl who works for this Eels. She’s okay. You see her first —’