The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross MacDonald Page B

the mantel.
    Stacy came back after a while with an armful of dry clothes. His large rubbery face was flushed with generosity and a meantime drink. The flannel slacks he gave me were big in the waist. I cinched them in with my belt and pulled on his blue turtleneck sweater. It had a big monogrammed “S” like a target over the heart, and it smelled of the kind of piny scentthey foist off on men who want to smell masculine.
    “You look very nice,” Stacy declared.
    He stood and watched me in wistful empathy. Perhaps he saw himself with ten pounds shifted from his waistline to his shoulders, and ten lost years regained. He got a bit flustered when I told him I was going out. He may have been looking forward to an intimate conversation by the fire:
And what is your philosophy of life?
    Keep moving, amigo
.
    Stacy knew where the Hatchens lived, and passed the word in rapid Spanish to my driver. We drove to a nameless street. The only sign at the corner had been painted on a wall by an amateur hand:
“Cristianismo sí, Comunismo no.”
A church tower rose on the far side of the wall.
    The Hatchens’ gate was closed for the night. I knocked for some time before I got a response. My knocking wasn’t the only sound in the neighborhood. Up the street a radio was going full blast; hoofs clip-clopped; a burro laughed grotesquely in the darkness; the bell in the church tower rang the three-quarter hour and then repeated it for those who were hard of hearing; a pig squealed.
    A man opened the upper half of the wicket gate and flashed a bright light in my face. “
Quien es?
Are you American?”
    “Yes. My name is Archer. You’re Mr. Hatchen?”
    “Dr. Hatchen. I don’t know you, do I? Is there some troubler?”
    “Nothing immediate. Back in the States, your wife’s daughter, Harriet, has run off with a young man named Burke Damis whom you may know. I came here to investigate him for Colonel Blackwell. Are you and Mrs. Hatchen willing to talk to me?”
    “I suppose we can’t refuse. Come back in the morning, eh?”
    “I may not be here in the morning. If you’ll give me a little time tonight, I’ll try to make it short.”
    “All right.”
    I paid off my driver as Hatchen was opening the lower gate. He led me up a brick walk through an enclosed garden. The flashlight beam jumped along in front of us across the uneven bricks. He was a thin aging man who walked with great strenuosity.
    He paused under an outside light before we entered the house. “Just what do you mean when you say Harriet’s run off with Damis?”
    “She intends to marry him.”
    “Is that bad?”
    “It depends on what I find out about him. I’ve already come across some dubious things.”
    “For instance?” He had a sharp wizened face in which the eyes were bright and quick.
    “Apparently he came here under an alias.”
    “That’s not unusual. The Chapala woods are full of people living incognito. But come in. My wife will be interested.”
    He turned on a light in a screened portico and directed me through it to a further room. A woman was sitting there on a couch in an attitude of conscious elegance. Masses of blondish hair were arranged precariously on her head. Her black formal gown accentuated the white puffiness of her shoulders. The classic lines of her chin and throat were a little blurred by time.
    “This is Mr. Archer, Pauline. My wife,” Hatchen said proudly.
    She took my hand with the air of a displaced queen and held onto it in a subtle kind of Indian wrestling until I was sitting beside her on the couch.
    “Sit down,” she said unnecessarily. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
    “Mr. Archer is an emissary from dear old Mark.”
    “How fascinating. And what has dear old Mark been up tonow? Wait, don’t tell me. Let me guess.” She held a forefinger upright in front of her nose. “He’s worried about Harriet.”
    “You’re a good guesser, Mrs. Hatchen.”
    She smiled thinly. “It’s the same old story. He’s always