San Diego Noir

“Don’t look nothing alike. But they’ve always been close. Folks liked to think too close, but it wasn’t ever that way. Just close. They understood each other. They’re both good kids. Their whole point in life was to get outta Center Springs and they done did it. I’m proud of them.”

“What’s his name?”

“Preston.”

“Did they grow up in this trailer?”

“Hell no. We had a home over to Persimmon but it got sold off in the divorce. Hazel went to Little Rock with a tobacco products salesman. The whole story is every bit as dreary as it sounds.”

“When did Farrel and Preston leave?”

“Couple of months ago. The plan was San Diego, then Hollywood. Pretty people with culture and money to spend. They were going to study TV, maybe go start up a show. San Diego was to practice up.”

“The scripts.”

“Got them from the library up at Fayetteville. Made copies of the ones they wanted. Over and over again. Memorizing those scripts and all them words. They went to the Salvation Army stores and bought up lots of old-time kinda clothes. They both did some stage plays at the junior college but they didn’t much care for them. They liked the other kind of stories.”

“What kind of stories?”

“Crime stories. Bad guys. Mafia. That was mainly Preston. Farrel, she can act like anything from the Queen of England to a weather girl and you can’t tell she’s acting.”

“Have they called lately?”

“Been over a week.”

“Where do you think they are?”

“Well, Center Springs is the only place I know they ain’t. I don’t expect to ever see them out this way.”

I did the simple math and the not-so-simple math. Eight grand for two months of work. Farrel dancing for tips. Preston delivering pizza and working his end of the Vic hustle. Vic caught between Farrel’s good acting and his own eager heart. And of course betrayed, finally and fatally, by his own bad temper.

I finished the beer and stood. “Two men died because of them. Eight thousand bucks is what they died for. So the next time you talk to Farrel and Preston, you tell them there’s real blood on their hands. It’s not make-believe blood. You tell her Vic was murdered for taking that eight thousand.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Thanks for your time.”

“I can come up with a couple a hundred. It’s not much, but …”

I saw the orange triangles bouncing in the air between us. I thought about those triangles as I drove away. Orange triangles denote pity and sometimes even empathy. All this for Vic Primeval, as offered by a man he’d never met, from his vinyl chair in his slouching home in the Ozarks. Sometimes you find a little speck of good where you least expect it. A rough diamond down deep. And you realize that the blackness can’t own you for more than one night at a time.

THE HOME FRONT

BY DIANE CLARK & ASTRID BEAR

Sherman Heights

The sailor sat in the wooden chair across from the desk, twisting his white cap. His hair was white-blond, his face tanned to walnut. He was young. They all were. San Diego was full of young sailors in their crisp blue uniforms.

“It’s my sister. She came out to work for Consolidated. They trained her as a riveter. She was real good, just loved it. She shared a house with a bunch of girls but got tired of the noise and late nights, so she moved to a boardinghouse on K Street. About a week later, she didn’t show up for work. No one’s seen her since. I went to the police. They asked around some but couldn’t find out anything. They said there’s no law against someone going missing, but it’s just not like her. Can you help?”

Mike McGowan had called that morning to say he had a case for me. “Sailor. Missing kid sister—probably ran off with a jarhead—let him off easy, okay, Laura? The boy’s shipping out soon and wants to know what happened to her.”

Ever since my husband Bill got called up by the navy and left me in charge of the agency, his friends in the police department had been pretty good about sending work my way. I liked the work, and when Bill came back, I was planning to tell him we needed to change the name to Taylor & Taylor Investigations.

I pulled open a drawer and took out a notebook. The pen was resting in a leather cup, along with some of Bill’s chewed-up pencils. “Okay, Navy, let’s get some details. What’s your name?”

“I’m Joseph Przybilski. My sister’s Magda, but she went by Mary once she came out here.”

“Got a picture?”

He fished a photo out of his jumper pocket, a little crumpled at the corners. It showed a pretty, slight blonde, standing with a dour-looking old man and woman on the steps of an aggressively neat house. “That’s her with our mama and papa—I took that picture on the day I left for the navy. They weren’t too happy with me for going.”

“I see that.” I examined the girl’s face. She looked eager, excited. “Your sister seems happy.”