The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of by Joseph Hansen Read Free Book Online

sombrero. The place called itself El Pescadero. The sign on the next shop was shaped like a palette and promised ART SUPPLIES , but the door was locked. He rattled it. No one came. He shaded his eyes with his hands and peered through the window. Reflections off the water rippled on the ceiling. Bad seascapes repeated themselves on walls covered with burlap. No one stirred.
    His mouth tightened and he turned away. He’d just come from another locked door. Ophelia R. Green’s, 127 Poppy Street, one of a straggle of shacks under heavy-headed old pepper trees in a tuck of the hills on the far side of the highway. He’d rapped a door that was a flimsy wooden frame for bulging squares of screen. He’d waited on the warped boards of a little stoop in the hot sun. When she hadn’t come, he’d walked around back where the yard went up steeply. Flowers smiled. There were tidy rows of cabbages, onions, tomato plants. A slap-up garage was half dug into the slope. Its door scraped weedy ground when he pulled it open. Bunches of dried flower bulbs hung from the rafters, trailing tatters of brown paper sacking. Underfoot not an oil leak or tire track showed that a car had ever sheltered here. Against a wall leaned a motorcycle covered by a tarp. Dust rose sluggishly and made him cough when he lifted the tarp. The machine was shiny but its tires were flat. He went out into the sunlight again and shut the weary door. A screen porch hung off the back of the house. He climbed three steps and peered inside. A washing machine stood there, the old kind with wringers. Rumpled clothes lay on top of it, jockey shorts, tank tops, jeans. He went down the steps. In the next yard, where tall hollyhocks swayed, a shriveled Mexican woman milked a goat. Dave asked her in Spanish where la Señora Green was. La Negra cleaned the house of someone unknown. She would be home at supper time. La hora de cenar …
    He’d like to have seen her first. But he could use the afternoon. If he could find paints. He went down a passageway into a patio where a jacaranda tree spread feathery shade and strewed the red paving tiles with blue blossom. The shops facing the tree had been fitted with raw wooden fronts too. From their exposed rafter ends fishnets hung in swags. Panchos, serapes, small rugs made color in one window. The framework of a loom rose behind them. In the next window, handcrafted silver set with turquoise lay on artfully crumpled velvet. A third window showed hand-tooled leather goods—sandals, bags, belts.
    In a window in a corner, watercolors hung against a panel covered in monk’s cloth. The subjects were predictable—boats, gulls, rickety piers. He made the locus Monterey. But the drawing and brushwork were better than good and the eye had seen honestly. Above the pictures a signature was brushed large on a card— Tyree Smith. On the window glass, fresh gilt lettering read MONA WINDROW GALLERY . The signboard overhead had been painted out with white but he could see what had been lettered on it: BEACHCOMBER — COMPLETE LINE OF ARTISTS NEEDS . Had been. He shrugged and went inside.
    The walls were freshly painted. Oyster white. On one hung a dozen more Tyree Smiths. On another, Mexican tin masks. The back wall, except where a door broke it, was floor-to-ceiling shelves of shiny new art books, some of them turned to show their front covers. One was the history of Mexican art he’d seen in Ben Orton’s study. The open floorspace was carpeted in oyster white. Big terra-cotta pre-Columbian figures squatted on top of plywood pedestals wrapped in monk’s cloth. Spotlit. He didn’t see any glass counter of art supplies, only a new desk where no one sat. The door in the bookshelf wall opened and a man came out.
    He carried a splintered pine board that looked like part of a crate. A jimmy was in his other hand. Wisps of straw clung to his beard. Dave knew art-gallery types and this man wasn’t one of them. He was strong and hard and his skin