Death Claims: A Dave Bran[d]stetter Mystery Read online

  "I live in a God-damn nightmare," Wald said. He went past Dave fast and down the stairs. Dave followed, carrying the dog. He watched Wald paw among unopened bills and letters, magazines still in their mailing wrappers, on a narrow gilt table next to the steps up into the hall. He found a length of braided leather. While the small body wriggled with anxiety, Dave clipped the leash to the collar. He set the dog down and pulled open the door. It tugged him out, claws scrabbling again, with eagerness this time. Dave could understand its wanting out. What he couldn't understand was that after it had relieved itself in the ivy geranium that margined the steps halfway down to the street, it turned and pulled hard on the leather to get back to the house. It pawed the cracked black door frantically to get in. When he let it in, bent and snapped off the leash, it streaked across the littered room and up the short stairs. It was as crazy as the other inhabitants.

  Wald was rattling the Olivetti when Dave got back to him. He'd finished the page. He yanked it out of the machine and laid it on top of the others. He looked at Dave. "Thanks," he said. "I hate going out there looking like this. In daylight."

  It reminded Dave of John Oats swimming at night. "What did Oats want when he telephoned you?" Wald snorted a kind of laugh. "Money. Nobody calls me anymore except for money. Why do people always want what you haven't got?"

  "Obviously he didn't know." Elegant bookcases lined one wall —scroll pediments, pierced fretwork doors, and beyond the fretwork solid shelf after shelf of rich leather bindings that glowed with costliness and care, decades of it. Dave put on the reading glasses and peered. Hallam's History of England, two stout deepgreen volumes, hand-tooled, hand-gilded in flawless tracery. Essays of Elia in cinnamon-brown pebbled leather with a rose motif in gilt between the cords. Symonds's Benvenuto Cellini in glossy black with austere gilt rulings. Dave hunkered down for a took at the lower shelves that were meant to accommodate taller books.

  "He knew," Wald said. "I'd bought a lot of books from him. Then I had to stop. Couple years ago."

  "So you didn't go?" Dave asked.

  "What for? It's all to hell and gone from here." Dave stood up, took off the glasses, pushed them into their pocket, faced Wald. "You're lying," he said. "You went. Maybe not that time, but later. He telephoned you again. And that time you went."

  Wald stared. "Who told you? Nobody was there."

  Dave pointed. "That gap in the shelves tells me. Big enough for three folio volumes. Cook's Voyages, first voyage, first edition, in tree calf. You left them on the coffee table in John Oats's house at Arena Blanca. On the night somebody killed him."

  "Killed!" Wald half stood up. But his legs weren't going to hold him and he knew it. He sank back. "Look," he said, and his voice was hoarse and shaky. "I went, yeah. He did call me again. And —well, hell, I felt sorry for him. No, I didn't have much. But at least I had my health. Poor bastard."

  Dave shook his head. "No, I can't buy it, Wald. You're in financial trouble. But you haven't moved a single book off these shelves—except those three. If you sold this collection, you could live off the proceeds for a long time. But you don't sell. You'd rather write stuff you despise than part with the books."

  "I'd sell her first." Wald jerked his scruffy head toward the archway. "Only nobody'd buy."

  "So why did you take those books to John Oats? I don't know the quote from Book Prices Current, but isn't it high?"

  "Not very. Forty, fifty pounds."

  Dave narrowed his eyes. "A hundred-thirty dollars?"

  "You're quick with figures," Wald said.

  "He was asking more than that," Dave said. "A lot more. And he didn't need books. He had books. He needed cash. For morphine. That's a desperate kind of need, Wald. Why didn't you sell the books and take him the money? In fact, why did you bother with him at all?"

  "I told you—I felt sorry for him."

  "Sorrier than for yourself? You don't convince me."

  "I don't have to convince you," Wald said. "Get out."

  "Give me an innocent reason you were there the night somebody knocked John Oats over the head and dragged him into the surf to drown, and I'll get out. No—don't try. Let me tell you. John Oats had a remarkable memory. He never forgot anything he knew about anybody. Obviously, most of what he knew was harmless. But not all. He knew something that could harm you."

  "Now?" Wald's laugh was bleak. "You're kidding."

  "Oh, things could be worse. You could be in jail."

  Wald turned in the chair to reach for his orange-juice mixture. He was clumsy about it. He almost knocked the glass over. Not quite. He got it shakily to his mouth. He drank too fast, choked, had a coughing fit. When it ended and he was wiping his face with his hand, Dave told him:

  "I'm only guessing, but I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong. You see, logically, knowing you were broke, you'd be the last person Oats would ask for help. But you weren't the last. For some reason, you were an early choice. The reason had to be, you couldn't get out of helping. I suppose he thought you'd sell some of your library. You weren't scared enough. You tried to fob him off with Cook's Voyages, not even a very expensive item. Nowhere near the five hundred dollars he needed. Plus which he was in no position to travel around peddling books. He got angry and threatened you with whatever he had on you, and you hit him. What you did after that was stupid. A man wouldn't go swimming in a rainstorm."

  "Now, wait," Wald said. "Just wait, God damn it. I didn't do it. I didn't even know he was dead till you told me. Yes, he had something on me. I guess it adds up to grand theft. See, after I went broke I kept getting books. Not only from Oats and Norwood. From all the good shops. Charging them. Then, when I couldn't pay the bills, they cut off my credit. And you don't know what that is." Tears blurred his eyes, oozed down through the stubble. "I love books. Not books. These, for God's sake, are books!" He grabbed up the paperbacks and slammed them on the floor. "I mean fine books, beautiful books. I don't dream about women, Brandstetter. I dream about bindings. I couldn't quit. I went right on. Only I just didn't—stop off at the cash register."

  "And one day John Oats caught you," Dave said.

  Wald shut his eyes, tightened his mouth, nodded. Opened his eyes, sighed. "He was decent about it. Then one day he stopped here. Said he didn't get to Hollywood often, thought he'd look in. I guess, knowing I was hard up, he thought I might want to sell. But all he asked was to see the books. Naturally. It was our common interest, right? So—he saw Cook's Voyages. He'd heard it was stolen from Stage's. I didn't know then he'd recognized it, didn't know till he told me on the telephone last week. I said I wouldn't go, but I knew I had to. I should have sold something. I couldn't. I got drunk and I got mad. I picked up the Cook's. He'd probably spotted other stolen titles too. There are others—much more valuable. But Cook's Voyages was all he mentioned. I figured to tell him to take it and do what he wanted with it. If necessary, I'd cry. Believe me, these days it wouldn't be acting.

  "But—he wasn't there. I got lost trying to find the place. It's off the map and I was loaded. I didn't get there till long after dark. There were lights inside, but nobody came when I rang the bell. I couldn't stand out in the rain, not with those books. The door was unlocked. I went inside, hollered, looked through the place. He wasn't anywhere. Okay, that suited me fine. I left the books and cleared out. If I'd killed him, would I have left the books?"

  Dave shrugged. "That would depend on how much killing a man upsets you."

  "You're a hard-nosed son of a bitch, aren't you? Well, listen. I didn't kill him. But maybe I wasn't the only one he was putting the arm on. And maybe they had more to lose. Somebody was there just before me."

  "Muddy footprints?" Dave asked.

  "Better than that. While I was driving down that road through the hills to the cove, a car passed me coming up. At a curve. So my headlights caught the driver full in the face. Even in the rain I recognized him. Another old Oats and Norwood customer. I didn't know him personally, but we've spoken in the shop. Bald guy. Prof
essor someplace. Authority on Thomas Wolfe."

  15

  WAITING FOR THE stoplight to turn green at Santa Monica and Western, he fell asleep. Only for a few seconds, but asleep. Those two and a half hours last night, this morning, hadn't been enough. An angry blast of horns back of him woke him with a jerk. He stalled the engine and made mistakes trying to start it over. He didn't manage it before the orange light showed. He got across, but the cars he'd held up didn't. They bawled resentment after him. He muttered contrition and drove the leftover quartermile home sitting extra straight.

  The Ferrari wasn't in the garage. Doug wasn't in the house. Probably helping out at his mother's pet shop again. He walked heavy-footed through the sunset rooms, stripped, stepped into the shower. Wearily he cranked the handles and stood under a hard hot spray, arms out to prop him against the wall, head hanging between them, letting the heat soak in. It took away the muscle ache. In the steam he soaped his boniness, rinsed, then turned the spray cold and needling.

  It didn't wake him. It only chilled him. Shivering, dripping, he pushed the white shutter doors, thumbed the thermostat, then toweled himself, flapped into the blue robe and went to the kitchen for a drink. To warm him again, to start him over. Because he had to drive back to Los Collados, back to that beautiful, sad old house. To get an explanation from Dwight Ingalls, an explanation he knew wouldn't be any good. He'd liked Ingalls and felt sorry for him. He didn't want to go.

  Fingers clamped on the cold neck of an Old Crow bottle, he stood glumly eyeing the red telephone against the wall by the swing doors. He could call Campos, unload the miserable job on him. But he knew he wasn't going to. Not first. Only last. He tilted whiskey into a glass, splashed in a little water, drank deep. He shuddered, shut his eyes. He bowed his head and leaned on the counter till he felt the good heat start in his empty belly.

  He thought of John Oats alone in the morning kitchen of April Stannard's shaky pink house on the white beach, belt tight around his scarred upper arm, sliding a needle into a swollen vein, letting loose the belt from his teeth, leaning like this, eyes shut, feeling the relief flood in. At whose expense? A nice man, April Stannard's voice echoed in Dave's head, a beautiful man, all the way through. Sure. Dave nodded, opened his eyes, straightened. Grimly he swallowed another third of the drink. God forgive believers.

  Because he, Dave, could not. That she rejected the ugly truths he told her didn't matter. It was what she'd made herself blind to in those months John Oats sheltered in her house, slept in her bed, ate her food, that Dave couldn't forgive. She had to have noticed something. It was such a small place. Peter must have noticed. It would explain his leaving. It would explain John Oats's refusal to tell the girl why. Which had hurt her, but not beyond overlooking. Like how much else? Dave shook his head in disgust, finished off the drink, went back to the bedroom to dress.

  The chest sounded hollow when he opened it. He frowned, pulled out the next drawer, Doug's. Empty. He crossed the room, bruising his hip on the big bed, and jerked open the closet. His clothes—none of Doug's. The carton with the pictures of Jean- Paul was gone too. In the steamy bathroom he saw now that Doug's razor was missing, his cologne. The living room had turned shadowy. He lit a lamp, squatted, slid back a door of the record cabinet under the stereo components. His albums, Bach, Ligeti—but no Edith Piaf, no Jean Sablon.

  He stood, pivoting. In the ell that led to the glass patio door, the white floor-to-ceiling bookshelves showed gaps. A sleek little white desk was in that ell too. He snapped on its lamp. Nothing. But under it, next to his gray-cased portable typewriter, was a midget wastebasket in bright swirls of red, orange, pink, like the couch cushions—and in its bottom lay torn scraps of paper with Doug's writing on them. Many scraps. He'd failed a lot before giving up. Dave didn't reach for them. He stood and pushed the basket back with his foot. He was going to hear what they said.

  The Sawyer house was on the back of the lot behind the shop, under a pair of big, dark magnolia trees. It was frame, shinglesided, low-roofed and needed paint. The porch was a square of cracked and sinking cement. It got used for storage. Heavy paper sacks of cat sand were piled under a sheet of green plastic tacked with clothespins. On the flat porch rail two cages turned rusty, one with warped perches, the other with a squirrel wheel. Three cracked aquariums collected dust. A black-and-white spotted dog sat, tongue hanging, in a corner. Plastic. An ad for canned food. Dave pushed the bell button.

  Mrs. Sawyer favored flowered smocks when she worked in the shop. It was only a quarter past six, closing time, and she hadn't taken the smock off yet. Short, plump, she peered up at him through thick lenses. One thick lens. The other was carefully pasted over with a circle of white cloth. Years ago a not so tame sparrow hawk had cost her an eye. The other eye was bright enough for two. The way she tilted her head was quick, birdlike. Her voice chirruped.

  "Uh-huh!" she said. "I told him you'd be here. He said not. He doesn't know you, does he?"

  Dave cocked an eyebrow. "How's that?"

  "You never give up. I found that out when you were looking for Fox Olson. Last fall. Seems to me Doug ought to have found it out about the same time." The black, shiny bird eye twinkled. Then she sobered. "You two had a fight, I guess?"

  "Not that I know of," Dave said.

  "Oh, you'd know it." She laughed. "Doug throws things when he gets mad."

  "He didn't throw anything," Dave said. "I'd like to see him."

  "Course." She stepped back, motioned him in, a nursery-rhyme hen. "You can stay for dinner too." Good cooking smells were in the air. "It's what I always used to fix him when he sulked. Ham and scalloped potatoes. His favorite. Cheers him up."

  The furniture in the low-ceilinged living room was 1940s overstuffed, with flowered slipcovers. The window curtains too were flower prints. So was the wallpaper above the white-enameled paneling. On a square mantel over a shallow fireplace that housed a gas heater, an old wood-cased shelf clock ticked comfortably to itself. Underfoot was an oval braided carpet, sturdy, sun-faded. Past a divider of low bookcases that prisoned china birds and animals behind leaded glass doors, the dining room had a round pedestal table with knobby paw feet and a fruit bowl. There was a plate rail. The plates on it were painted with game birds.

  She said, "He's in his room."

  Dave had been here for Christmas. He knew the floor plan. At the rear of the house he knuckled a door. No answer. He turned the knob, looked inside. Dusky. But Doug was there, lying face to the wall on a narrow iron cot that was covered with a patchwork quilt. In the dimness he looked very slight, almost a child. Dave's foot struck an open suitcase on the floor. Doug made a sleepy sound, turned over, groped with a bandaged hand to switch on a lamp.

  It was an old gooseneck, wrapped with friction tape that had gone gray with age. It leaned over a knotty pine table scarred from use. A boy had put together model airplanes on that table, etching it with razor cuts. A school compass had scribed circles deep into it. Vaguely the shapes of stencils from 1930s homemade Christmas cards were outlined in splatters of red and green, bells, fir trees. Murky stains at one end memorialized a try at sculpting in wet clay.

  Dave had heard the story. Doug had been fifteen that summer. He'd wanted to make a male nude. He'd wrapped it in wet cloths when he couldn't work on it. To keep the clay manageable. But also out of delicacy and fear that his parents would see it. Before they had, he'd scrapped it. After all, even if he'd been able to shape it right, a clay boy wasn't what he needed. He'd made a figure of a raccoon instead and given it to his mother for her birthday. For years she'd kept it on view in the shop. Doug didn't know anymore what had become of it. He said it had been pretty bad. Maybe. But he had talent. The watercolors that still hung on the walls showed that. He'd gone on to art school. The war had pointed him a different direction. He'd been in the Air Force.

  He said now, "What did you come for? You've told me how it is and that's how it is."

  "And you won't try to make it different?" Dave shut
the door and leaned against it, hands in pockets. "I'm not worth the effort?"

  "You said that." Doug sat up, swung his feet to the floor. "I didn't say it."

  "You went to some pains to demonstrate it. You didn't leave a thing behind. Nothing to excuse your coming back to pick it up. So we could talk."

  "You mean, so you could talk and I could listen." Doug pushed at his tousled shock of gray hair. Squinting in the light, he picked up his cigarette pack from the scatter of loose change, keys, crumpled bills, comb, matchbook under the lamp. "According to you, the fault's all on my side." He lit a cigarette. The ashtray he dropped the spent match into was makeshift. Doug hadn't smoked when he lived in this room twenty-five years ago. It was a seven-ounce catfood can. On the label a tom in hip boots winked and lifted a plumed cavalier hat. "You're a little short on self-awareness. People who are always exacting right behavior from other people tend to be that way." He blew smoke out of the circle of light, laid the cigarette in the catfood tin, bent for his loafers, slid them onto stockinged feet, small feet. "The mote in the other man's eye."

  "Versus the beam in my own," Dave said. "Right. You want to try to extract it?"

  Doug stood up. "No." He gave Dave a wan little smile and a quick headshake. "Too painful. And I never could believe that 'I'm hurting you for your own good' crap. I can't believe it now. People who talk like that are lying. They may not realize it, but they like to hurt." He'd stacked cartons against the dresser. He lifted folded clothes out of one and knelt to lay them in the suitcase at Dave's feet. "I don't like to hurt. Not anybody. Certainly not you."

  "You're going back overseas," Dave said.

  Doug returned to the shadowy corner, shifted a carton, rummaged in another. There was a wavery oval mirror attached to the dresser. In it Dave saw him nod. "England. I'd have saved myself a lot of grief if I'd gone there in the first place. Straight from France. Never come back here. What the hell was there here?" Something was wrong with his voice. He tried to say it over. "What the hell was there here?"