Death Wore Fins

ONEDON DIEGO on the tourist guidance marker gestured ahead with Castilian courtesy: “Mt. Soledad.” I snapped the Leica at him and drove on up between oleanders and tulip trees and the power-clipped lawns of substantial homes. The going grew steeper, the pavement twisted, and the landscape turned to native brush dotted with estates on all possible building sites. Then it was just brush and the road hugging the canyon rim, climbing to where the millionaires lived. Halfway up, a girl had swung out and parked on one of the curves. Her car was one of those jewel-case pink-and-cream convertibles, with fishtail fenders housing constellations of stop, directional, and backing lights. She stood at the front end, bareheaded, sticking out a sun-tanned arm, a piece of metal flashing in her wigwagging hand. I lost momentum reluctantly. I was driving a Chevie wagon, repainted barn red, with Minnesota plates and a windshield “Press” sticker, and an air-mattress bed on the floor. Back home, I used this bus for fishing and duck-shooting week ends; it really pulled in snow and mud. But the Mt. Soledad road climbs from sea level to almost a thousand feet in less than a mile, and the rebuilt engine sounded like glassware going through the kitchen-sink disposal. I braked the transportation almost alongside the convertible and sat there, holding the pedal down hard. The hand brake works, but it’s hard to unjimmy it. I had expected she’d step over—after all, she was the one flagging down traffic. But she didn’t move an inch, just threw me a look from the front end of her car, and a funny look at that—sort of haughty and defiant. Around this enigmatic expression the wind was whipping strands of hair. She was brunette—make that brown-ette, kind of a toast brown. The object in her hand proved to be a screwdriver, and from the way she gripped it, I got the idea she was on the defensive—the feeling she was sizing me up warily. I wondered what could ail her. “Something wrong?” I hollered. The girl used her screwdriver in a stabbing, annoyed gesture. “Can’t you see I’m stuck?” She was of the spoiled and petulant rich, I saw that right away. A haughty heiress queening it over the common herd. It’s a brand of femininity I’d often seen portrayed on television, but to tell the truth I never believed it existed in actual life. New experience beckoned, however, offering material for the canvas-bound notebook I always carry in the glove compartment—The Journal of Kenneth Svederup—so I hand-shifted and powered ahead in low gear for a couple of car lengths. I dropped a front tire into the cobblestoned gutter, cramped the wheel, shifted into reverse, and set the hand brake. Then I sat still and thought twice. After all, I wasn’t so eager to rush and rescue the stranded Social Registerite. I had on a tropical suit, tailored of “imported Italian pure silk,” as the Minneapolis store ad said. It wasn’t tailored to measure—that would have been an extravagance, since I stand 6-1 and weigh 165 and anything that looks good on a clothes hanger fits me okay. Still, I felt no urge to peel the “luxuriously styled, faultlessly draped” coat and roll the sleeves of my $10.50 fine Danish gingham shirt all in order to tackle some blue-blooded beauty’s battery cable or fuel line. Any other time, maybe, but today I had a date to see H. H. Crossway—or to be seen by him—and after traveling fifteen hundred miles for the interview, I’d as lief not arrive in wrinkles and with motor grease under the fingernails. There were those houses on the way up. The girl could walk to a phone in five minutes and have a tow car on the scene in ten. “Oh, sure, take your time, you scopophiliac,” said she. It was under her breath, but the wind blew from her to me. What in hell was a scopophiliac? Even Miss Florrie Schultz in the public library back home didn’t use words that long. I hinged open the wagon’s door and got out and walked back toward the girl. She still hadn’t made any move and didn’t now even so much as face around in my direction. So I followed the TV scripts and demonstrated she wasn’t necessarily so overwhelmingly interesting to me, either. In a leisurely fashion, I paused and contemplated the view. It was spectacular. The canyon at my feet trenched away deeply down the hillside, with the slopes of dry, desert-looking brush fanning out and framing an eagle’s-eye glimpse of La Jolla, California. I could pick out the world-famed landmarks: The Bishop’s School dome gleaming over the eucalyptus and palm trees, the cliff-sheltered swimming cove, the Surf and Racquet Club, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography pier sticking out from the salt-frothed shore line. I could identify these details from the back number National Geographic article and the Holiday piece Florrie Schultz had dug out of die library file room. What is the sense of going someplace to learn what you could have found out at home? The smart deal is to know the usual tourist lore and go on from there. I’d conned the color-plate illustrations, even to memorizing the pictured faces and matching them with the captioned names. I’d stuffed my mind with data on the Clinic, the Art Center, the Summer Playhouse, and the thirty-five resident millionaires, H. H. Crossway was one of the thirty-five, and not the low man on the local financial tote board. I decided to tell the girl I would do the telephoning for the tow car. “Getting an eyeful?” said she, in what might be described as a polite, or U-turned, snarl. Or in non-U, she suddenly sounded plain crying-out mad. I quit moonily regarding the picturesque village and instead looked at her. I hadn’t before, per script. I had missed a lot. She stood there up tight against her car’s front bumper grill, her skirt hiked up over the knee of the leg I could see best, the other, inner leg showing as much above that knee as below it. The pulled-tight skirt did a contour hug of her thighs and buttocks, went on up from there, and was swallowed inside the convertible’s hood. I would really have liked to take the Leica from the wagon and grab a snap for the record. Naturally, though, I didn’t. Naturally, I voiced the uppermost question in my mind; “What happened?” I asked. “The horn jammed,” she explained shortly—too shortly to explain much. “Yuh?” I said. “It jammed and kept on blasting like all bedlam. So I stopped and went under the hood”—she brandished the screwdriver—“to disconnect it. And just as I reached and slammed down the hood, along came a swirl of wind that blew up my darned dress.” “You couldn’t raise the hood again?” “No, it has to be released at the dash panel.” I began to understand that her petulance originated in acute embarrassment. She’s been had by a freak accident that possessed its ludicrous side just because it was freakish. I could see she felt more or less ridiculous, and it bothered her more than putting on the leg show. After all, she had nothing to blush for in the leg department. “You got bear-trapped by modern technology,” I remarked consolingly. “Let’s face it, ours is a press-the-button age, and sometimes the button can’t be reached or is out of order for reasons beyond the individual’s control.” “It’s a thought.” “For instance,” I said, “with my old wagon it couldn’t have happened. And fifty years ago the horn would have been a Klaxon, operated by squeezing the rubber bulb. The trouble is that life keeps getting complicated to the point where the average person can’t cope with it.” There were dubious depths in her eyes. “I wouldn’t say we’ve quite reached that point,” she said. “The button’s right there on the dash, and I should think anybody of average intelligence could cope with it … If you don’t mind trying.” “Oh. Yuh, sure.” I ranged up for a look-see into this nest of leather, chromium, and plastic. The seat upholstery was of cream leather, and on the cushion lay a transparent gadget bag that contained a swimmer’s glass-faced mask and a snorkel tube—the kind with a ping-pong-ball valve at the upper bend. “It’s next to the post,” the girl called. My glance ran down the steering post and found a plastic-faced envelope enclosing a State of California vehicle registration slip; the law requires such a slip in plain sight, I guess to simplify things for the private d***s. This one said “Avalon Gage” and “555 Ynez Terrace.” I pushed the button, and the convertible’s hood made with an alligator yawn. “Better let me put it down this time, Miss Gage,” I called. Of course it might have been Mrs. Gage, and I sort of waited to be corrected there. But apparently she hadn’t noticed. “I guess you think I’m an awful dope, getting hung up like that.” She was peering down and brushing her hands over a grime stain that only a good dry cleaner had a chance of removing. “No, I don’t. I think you’re one woman in a million to even know how to begin to disconnect a horn, Miss Gage.” There was no wedding ring on her hand, at least. “I was engaged to a hot-rodder once,” she said. “Put in an entire summer hanging around a garage and passing him valve-lifters and things.” No engagement ring, either. I hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about the hood. She reached past me and banged it down. “Thanks so much …” She tossed that briskly—or was it brusquely?—and slid past, inserting herself under the convertible’s wheel. She looked different there—relaxed, smiling a competent smile. Brisk or brusque, it spelled brush-off. One of the prettiest girls I’d ever met, too, even if filthy rich. Probably nothing to do but loll on the beach and sport around in her five-to-six-thousand dollars’ worth of dreamboat. “Been a pleasure. I enjoyed it, Miss Gage.” “Mrs. Gage,” watching to see how I took the news. I pulled a long face—not for any personal reason, fundamentally; it was just that it’s a matter of professional advancement that I train myself to make accurate observations and correct inferences. “Ava runs the Gage Travel Agency. I work for her. And I’ve got to r****d some unused air transportation, get back before the banks close, too. So long, thanks again.” The convertible pulled past me, without breaking any glassware. I watched it take the curve ahead like the easy-gliding swoop of a tropical, exotically plumaged bird. She worked for a living. Pounded keyboards, answered phones, ran errands. Well, I had known those TV hoity-toities were to be taken like the commercials. Then I noticed the screwdriver on the pavement. The girl had dropped it, most likely while trying to brush the grime from her skirt, and afterward had been in too much of a rush to remember. So I plodded to the wagon and opened the glove compartment and drew out the canvas-bound notebook. “Gage Travel Agency,” I jotted. There was something else to make a note of, and after frowning a second I recalled what—scopophiliac. I meant to look it up the first crack I got at a dictionary. Just as I had feared, the hand brake stuck, and I had to uncoat and up-sleeves to work on it. The girl came tearing back down the hill about the time I finished. As she came near I stuck out my arm and waved the screwdriver at her. She must not have noticed; she probably took the gesture as a friendly parting wave.