HI THERE!! Do you like the story so far? Let me know. In this chapter we meet some of Preston's friends. I wonder if they'll be able to help find him? We'll just have to read and see.
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NOTE: Check out my other stories in the Sci-fi / Fantasy Section Crown Vic to a Parallel World From Whence I Came Stolen Love
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Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik
9 Ellen and Allen Harris
When we got back to the office, I tore a crude city map from the telephone book and used it to mark down the locations of Preston's friends. I put an `X' on the map each time we found a new address. Bea and I went through all the green yearbooks and letters. When we were done, we had a list of eight names and addresses.
Preston knew more than eight people, but we discounted the ones outside the city. Preston had never lived anywhere but his hometown in New Jersey and two small parts of Philadelphia. Even if he was in trouble, he wouldn't be likely to stray very far beyond what he knew. He also didn't have the cash to travel. I reasoned that if he was anywhere, he was in the city.
After I made the eight red `X' marks on the map, I narrowed the list further. Three of Preston's friends were still in school and living on campus. I doubted that a non-student could hide for very long in the small, heavily monitored dormitories, so while I marked their locations, I didn't expect them to be helpful. Three more of Preston's friends were spread across Kensington, North-East Philly, and Fairmount. I dismissed them as well because those were far-flung places for someone who is hard-up and doesn't know the areas.
Of the remaining two friends, one was Simon who lived near the Reading Terminal Market on the other side of Market Street. That was somewhat far, but not too far. The last was Ellen Harris, formerly Ellen Christian, who Preston knew from high school. She lived with her husband near Mifflin Park in the Whitman section of the city. That made her the closest.
I wasn't sure who Preston would be more likely to ask for help, a potentially sympathetic woman, or a one-time lover. When I consulted with Bea, she dug up a letter that recounted the Harris woman's wedding. It was dated March of that year. Preston went on and on about the affair and how thrilled Ellen and her new husband Allen were to receive the pressure cooker he'd given them. I thought that the letter proved recent contact, but nothing more.
There wasn't enough information for or against any of them. I directed Bea to telephone all eight while I enjoyed a cigar. I didn't like the idea of making all those expensive calls, but the calls would be cheaper and much faster than taking the trolley all over the damn city.
Bea got no answer at the first three numbers. "I'm getting nowhere." She complained.
"It's Sunday." I reasoned. "People are at church or out visiting."
Bea accepted my logic with a nod and went back to work. When she was finished, she'd only spoken to three people. One friend from Kensington hadn't spoken to Preston since college, the one in North East Philly said the same. The third friend, Max something-or-other who was still at college, said Preston had called him Thursday a week ago to borrow money. "I offered him ten." Max explained. "Pres said he needed a hundred and that ten wasn't worth a trip to get it. There didn't seem to be much more to say."
"What good is one-hundred dollars?" Bea asked me when she'd finished her call.
"I don't know." I admitted after a moment's consideration. "If one hundred would help, why didn't he ask for it a year ago? Something must have changed. Something changed to make one-hundred dollars urgently important."
I thought that over but didn't get anywhere with it. While I thought, Bea tried again by telephoning the five numbers that hadn't answered. She got no answer the second time either.
"Now what do we do?" She asked.
"Let's go." I mashed my cigar out, heaved myself from the chair, and went outside.
Bea hustled out after me. "Where are we going?" She asked. We were walking vaguely eastward, and she struggled to regulate her pace to mine. Her longer legs and stride were unsuited to my plodding, wedding-march pace. Bea kept pulling ahead and having to slow or stop for me to catch up.
I halted us both, moved inside her space again, and poked her shoulder once to get her attention. "I told you I'm not answering questions. I'm telling you now, if we're going anywhere together, the Arthur Murray dance class has to stop. Figure out how to walk without all the fucking prancing around."
With my instructions given, I set off again. Bea paid more attention to her stride and managed to pace me with some difficulty, but with far less stopping and starting. She also held her tongue until we stood in front of a very plain, brick-front rowhome in a few-block area of very plain, brick-front rowhomes.
"Where are we?" Bea asked sheepishly.
I spread my hands wide and introduced Bea to the neighborhood. "Welcome to Whitman and watch your step. This place might look clean but the longshoreman who live here would just as soon cut your throat as ask you the time of day."
I pointed at the house we stood before, as that was our destination. "We're at the address of one of Preston's friends. It's both the closest to my office and closest to Preston's rooming house. The front window is open, and it looks like someone who didn't answer their phone is home after all. Go knock and ask for Ellen Harris."
Bea did as I told her to do. "Gimmie a minute!" A harsh voice answered Bea's timid knock. The front door of the house jerked open. A woman with a `this better be important' expression and one hand on her hip stood on the threshold. She was average height but appeared short next to Bea. She had Irish coloring, reddish hair and pale skin, and was dressed to show off her ample curves.
I decided that Ellen Harris was a woman that would attract a lot of attention wherever she went. She would attract it until she opened her mouth. Once she spoke, she'd still get all the attention, but it would be the wrong kind. "Yeah?" She demanded coarsely in a deep, masculine voice.
"Are you Ellen Harris?" Bea asked.
"Whose askin'?"
"I'm Bea Arlott."
The Harris woman's manner softened when Bea spoke her name. "Pres's sister? Sure, ya are, hon. Tall as hell and blonde. Get off the stoop. Come in and flop." She retreated negligently into the yawning door opening.
Bea followed Ellen inside and I followed Bea. We trailed our host to the back of the house where she picked around a cluttered but clean white kitchen. "Ya want coffee or somethin' stronger?" She clinked a pint bottle of whiskey against a plain aluminum percolator. "A little'a both, maybe?"
Ellen looked up at me and shifted her conversational gears without the clutch. "Who're you, big man?"
I introduced myself without bothering to offer my hand or a card. I tried to get right down to business. "Law Edwards, private detective. Preston Arlott is missing. Have you seen him?"
"Missin'? Shit." Ellen threw the bottle and percolator at the counter where they both landed and slid to a stop against the tile backsplash. She dragged a metal chair away from a metal kitchen table, collapsed into it, and lit a king-sized cigarette from a crumpled pack that served as a centerpiece. Nothing more was said about a drink. "Hell of'a thing." Ellen shook her head sadly.
Bea sat carefully. She chose a chair at a right angle to Ellen and perched on the edge of it with excellent posture and her hands in her lap. Ellen sprawled in her seat. She hooked the arm nearest Bea over the back of the chair. That pulled her shoulder back and forced the opposite one forward, like the breast on that side was the one she was most proud of.
I stood just inside the kitchen doorway and faced the back of the house. Directly opposite me was an open window that looked into a very small backyard that was fenced in from its neighbors. An unlatched wooden gate gave onto the alley behind.
"He was here." Ellen announced in her smeared, haphazard version of the English language. "Beginnin' last week. Needed cash. Looked like hell; worn ya know. I told him, gotta ask Al. He makes it, not me. Al came home while we was talkin' and got mad. Said Pres was tryin' ta make me."
Ellen paused and glanced around confidentially. She drew on her cigarette and blew a plume of smoke across the table toward Bea. "Just between us, I would'a let him make me. Always been soft on Pres. Like a statue chiseled outta man. Yes sir." She made a vulgar humming sound in her throat like she was enjoying dessert. "Any old how, Al told Pres to blow, and he blew. Pres never did like a scene. That's it."
I was about to ask a question when an angry, male voice shouted from the back yard. The voice was just as coarse as Ellen's, but slightly better spoken. "Who the fuck are you?" It demanded and stormed into the house through the unlocked back door.
The owner of the voice turned out to be Allen Harris. He was a short man with snow-white skin, fiery red hair, and a fiery red flush in his face. He was dressed in coarse clothes like he'd been at work, but he reeked of booze. "Come home again findin' more men in the house. Who's it this time Ellen? Meter reader?" Allen sneered.
Ellen gave back as good as she got. "Shut your face, Al! See her?" Ellen pointed from Allen to Bea with her cigarette. "Now I'm cheatin' with women?"
The small angry man shook his head, then nodded, and scanned the room with wary eyes. "Well?"
Ellen drew on her cigarette like the smoke was fuel for another attack on Al. I decided that I wasn't going to let her spew more anger around. It's not that I cared if they tore each other to shreds, I just preferred they do it after I left. I introduced myself to try to put a temporary pause on the Harris couple's bickering. "I'm Law Edwards." I announced with as much volume as I thought the little room would hold. "This is Bea Arlott. We're looking for Preston Arlott."
"Him?" Allen demanded as the flush in his face grew to a deeper red. "I tossed his lyin', cheatin' ass outta here over a week ago. Tryin' to make my Ellen. He better stay missing."
"Mister Harris." Bea interrupted Allen's rant with her own precise speech. "My brother wouldn't have tried anything with Ellen, or any woman for that matter. He's a homosexual."
My mind heard what Bea had said, but it couldn't believe that she'd said it. I assumed that the Harris couple were about the worst people Bea could have confided Preston's secret in. I further assumed that I was about to be in a fight, and I wasn't looking forward to it. I rubbed my frustration across my face while I waited for the two ignorant people to comprehend what the long word meant. They didn't need as much time as I thought they would.
The pair erupted into vile shouts. "Filthy fuckin' faggot!" Allen spat. Ellen expressed her distaste with a shouted and very drawn out "dis-gust-ting."
The word `faggot' set me off. I hated that word even though I tended to use it. I decided I was going to teach Allen Harris not to say it anymore. I planned to do the teaching with my fists. I took a long, rapid step across the small kitchen and booted Allen's feet from under him. He dropped flat on his back, hit his head on the linoleum, and got his bell rung. I rounded on Ellen to put her down before Allen managed to get up. Ellen was out of her chair. She was scrambling to grab the handle of a cast iron frying pan that was on the edge of the counter. I knew I had to stop her from getting her hands on a weapon. I lunged in Ellen's direction and almost had my hands on her when Bea shouted.
"ENOUGH!" Bea's voice boomed in the tiny kitchen.
We all stopped, except for Allen, who finished pushing himself off the floor before he came to rest. The three of us stared our surprise at Bea. She was still seated in her chair at the kitchen table, her face scrunched into an angry scowl that she seemed to split between the three of us. "Mister Edwards," she said calmly, "go outside."
Something about the smoldering intensity of Bea's gaze made me do as I was told. I stepped around Allen, went through the back door, and leaned on the fence with my hands in my pockets.
I heard Ellen's voice through the open window. "Who do ya think you are?" She bawled at Bea.
"SHUT UP!" Bea shouted. To my surprise, the Harris couple did as they were told. Bea filled the silence with her deliberate, angry voice. She read them off like a pro. "You two are disgusting. My brother brought a gift to your wedding while he was in the middle of the saddest and poorest time of his life. How dare you judge him, you stupid...loud...ASSHOLES! Rot in hell...both of you."
A chair scraped on linoleum and rapid footfalls preceded Bea out the back door of the house. She burst through the door and down the steps. Her long legs took the steps two at a time. She crossed the yard in three paces and plunged through the gate into the alley. I got myself moving and followed her out. I had to chase her down the alley and into the next street.
"Miss Arlott. Miss Arlott!" I called.
She stopped and whirled on me like she planned to strike me. "WHY ARE THEY LIKE THAT?" Bea shouted in my face.
I answered her the only way I knew how. "Because people like your brother and me are different."
"THAT'S HORRIBLE!" She shouted.
"Yes, it is." I agreed, then I shrugged helplessly. "What can you do though? Come on, let's get back to the office and see what's next."
I started to walk, and Bea fell in step next to me. We'd gone a half a block when she broke the silence between us. "Mister Edwards, can I ask a question?"
I didn't want to start a precedent, but I figured the way she ticked off the Harris couple had earned her at least a question. "Shoot."
"What would you have done to them if I hadn't shouted?"
I answered Bea honestly. "I would have incapacitated Ellen any way I had to, probably with a punch, then I would have beat Al unconscious."
My honesty seemed to unsettle Bea. She wanted to know more. "You would have beaten them up for calling my brother names?"
"No, I would have done it because they called all of us names. An insult, directed at any type of person, insults everyone who is that type. When I used those Italian slurs yesterday, I insulted the group, not an individual. Allen and Ellen didn't attack your brother, they attacked his homosexuality, which means they attacked all homosexuals, including me. Your brother wasn't there to defend himself, so I hit back for both of us, for all of us."
"Do you think that's right?" Bea asked with little girl innocence. "Is it right to strike someone for something they say?"
I shook my head. "No, it's not right but often, it's necessary."
Bea didn't respond. She and I quieted while we walked a while. I had to admit to myself that Bea had impressed me. Her presence still bothered me, but she'd handled herself well in a difficult situation. I thought she deserved a little praise. "You did well in there."
Bea's long face lifted for a moment, long enough to say "thanks," before it fell again. "Is it always like that, when people find out?" She asked.
"A lot of the time, but not always."
She shook her head at the ground. "I shouldn't have told them."
"Probably not." I agreed. "It wasn't your secret to tell, but it's done now."
Bea sighed deeply and was silent for the rest of the walk back.