I fingered an inch or so of the twenty out from its hiding place. “Do you think Marcella Harris already knew these people, or do you think they just met one another?”
The barman shook his head. “The cops asked me the same thing, buddy, and it beats me.”
I tried another tack: “Was Marcella Harris a regular here?”
“Not really. She came in once in a while.”
“Was she a pickup? Did she leave with a lot of different men.?”
“Not that I ever noticed.”
“Okay. Was she a talker?”
“Not really.”
“Did you ever talk with her at length?”
“Sometimes. I don’t know, once or twice.”
“I see. What did you discuss?”
“Just small talk. You know . . .”
“Besides that.”
“Well … once she asks me if I’ve got kids. I say yes. She asks me if I ever have trouble with ’em, and I say yeah, the usual stuff. Then she starts tellin’ me about this wild kid she’s got, how she don’t know how to handle him, that she’s read all these books and still don’t know what to do.”
“What was the problem with the kid?” I asked.
The bartender swallowed and shuffled his feet in a little dance of embarrassment. “Aw, come on, mister,” he said.
“No, you come on.” I stuffed the twenty into his shirt pocket.
“Well,” he said, “she said the kid was gettin’ into fights, and talkin’ dirty. . . and. . . exposing himself to all the other little kids.”
“Is that it?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you tell the police about this?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because they never asked me.”
“That’s a good reason,” I said, then thanked the man and walked back outside to my car.
I looked through the L.A. papers I had been collecting and found Marcella Harris’s home address in Monday’s _Mirror_: 467 Maple Avenue, El Monte. It took me only five minutes to get there.
I surveyed El Monte as I drove. The residential streets were unpaved, and the residences that fronted them were ugly cubelike apartment buildings interspersed with subdivided farmhouses and auto courts held over from the not too distant time when this was open country.
I parked on the dirt shoulder at the corner of Claymore and Maple. Number 467 was right there on the corner, directly across from my parking spot. Two small frame houses stood in a large front yard encircled by a shoulder-high stone wall. Both houses looked well cared for, and a beagle puppy cavorted in the yard.
I didn’t want to attempt the landlady–she had probably been frequently questioned by the police on her former tenant–so I just sat in the car and thought. Finally it bit me, and I dug a briefcase out of my trunk and went walking. School had recently let out for the summer, and the kids playing in their dirt front yards looked happy to be free. I waved to them as I walked down Maple, getting slightly suspicious looks in return. My crisp summer suit was obviously not standard El Monte garb.
Maple Avenue dead-ended a hundred yards or so in front of me, where a kids’ softball game was in progress. The kids probably knew the Harris boy, so I decided to brace them.
“Hi, fellows,” I said.
The game stopped abruptly as I walked through their makeshift infield. I got suspicious looks, hostile looks, and curious looks. There were six boys, all of them wearing white T-shirts and blue jeans. One of the boys, standing by home plate, threw the ball to first base. I dropped my briefcase, ran and made a daring leaping catch. I fumbled the ball on purpose and crashed to the pavement. I made a big show of getting to my feet. The kids surrounded me as I brushed off my trousers.
“I guess I’m not Ted Williams, fellows,” I said. “I must be getting old. I used to be a hotshot fielder.”
One of the boys grinned at me. “That was still a pretty swell try, mister,” he said.
“Thanks,” I returned. “Geeze, it’s hot out here. Dusty, too. You guys ever get the chance to go to the beach?”
The boys started jabbering all together: “Naw, but we got the municipal pool.” “The beach is too far and it’s full of beer cans. My dad took us once.” “We play baseball.” “I’m gonna pitch like Bob Lemon.” “Wanna see my fastball?”