Country of Old Men Page 13

  “Mr. Brandstetter?” She closed the sketch pad, rose and came to him. She was very pretty. “Madge Dunstan sent me.”

  Dave smiled and nodded. “That’s where we met. You’re Lauren. How could I forget?”

  She laughed. “It wasn’t a long meeting. Only a handshake. Zach was the center of attention right then.”

  Gloom had ridden home with Dave from Ray’s. Her sunniness had broken through it for a moment, but it came back now. “Zach. Yes, I’m worried about him. He’s gone again. His parents have taken him God knows where.” He frowned. “Madge sent you for me? Why?”

  She gave her head a shake. “I’m sorry. I’m not allowed to say. Madge’s orders. She needs you.”

  His heart sank. “She’s not sick.”

  “Oh, no. It’s nothing like that.” Lauren turned to the white car, opened the door, tossed the sketchbook into the rear seat. “She needs your help, your advice.”

  It wasn’t yet noon. It sounded ridiculous, but he had to say it. “I’m tired. I was up early. I’ve had some very bad news. I’ve got to lie down.” He started off toward the courtyard, the rear building, the bed on the loft. It was too abrupt. He stopped, turned back. “Look, I appreciate your coming, but I can’t go with you. I’m sorry, but I simply haven’t got the strength.” He started away again, joints stiff and hurting. “I’ll telephone Madge.”

  “Please come.” Lauren opened the passenger door. “I’ll do the driving. You can sleep on the way.”

  He slept on the way, all the way. Blankly. No dreams of Kovaks. Nothing. The drive had taken only half an hour, but he felt stronger and steadier when Lauren shook him gently awake. Madge came out the front door of the great blocky white house and stood waiting for him. Anxiety and more were written in her horsey, handsome face when she reached to take his hands in hers. All the same Dave said, “You’re coming close to turning friendship into tyranny.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, and drew him indoors, Lauren closing the door behind them. Dave and Madge went up the curving white staircase and along a hall where sun poured down from skylights. Madge opened a door painted with one of those swirls of color that had made her famous. The room beyond was shadowy, just faint streaks of light from shutter slats that wouldn’t quite close. It was enough to show Dave a broad bed covered with the world’s largest and newest patchwork quilt. Nobody’s grandmother had left this behind. This was a creation of Madge’s. He would have known that if he’d come across it in Cairo.

  What startled him was who lay under the quilt. Little Zach Gruber. His small, pale face was battered, one eye closed, a blood-crusty cut at the corner of his swollen mouth. Dave moved to the bed. The shag-headed child didn’t stir. Madge laid a hand on Dave’s arm. “The doctor gave him painkillers,” she said, “and something to make him sleep. He was worn out, poor little ragamuffin.” She led Dave out of the room again, and softly closed the door.

  “Did Len do that?” Dave said. “His father?”

  “This time Zach admits it.” Madge nodded. “I’m going to adopt him, Davey. It’s obviously meant to be. Well, I mean, isn’t it? The way fate keeps throwing us together?”

  “It’s a crazy idea,” Dave said, “and I hope you do it.”

  They went into the great bright studio where long work-tables were heaped with T-squares and French curves, sketches and color renderings, gay and fanciful designs hanging and clashing on every inch of white wall. Madge pushed a tall stool at Dave and sat on one herself. “I’m his pal, somebody he can tell the horrible truth to—at last.”

  “How in the world did he get back here?” Dave said.

  She found a gold-and-white pack on the table at her elbow and lit a long, slim cigarette. “Mr. and Mrs. de Sade drove up the coast road. Out of his one operative eye, Zach saw the seagull sign on that motel. He knew where he was. It wasn’t until miles later they stopped at a filling station, and left him in the car, and he got away. He hid in the brush above the filling station till he saw them drive off, then he headed back down the highway. When he saw the seagull sign again, he cut down to the beach, just as he’d done before. He remembered what this house looked like, and he kept plodding on till he found it, poor tyke.”

  “Why did Len beat him this time?” Dave said.

  “Because Zach didn’t want to leave Los Angeles.” Madge tapped ash off her cigarette. “Specifically, he didn’t want to leave the Toyland School. He slipped out to try to go there and shelter with—what’s her name?—Celia?”

  “Yamashita,” Dave said. “She would have sheltered him, too.”

  “But Len caught up with him and dragged him home, and that was when the beating took place. To teach him to”—her smile was wry—“respect his father.”

  Dave gazed across the wide room at the vast window that showed him a blue ocean, a blue sky. “He didn’t say why Len decided so suddenly to clear out.”

  “No. Will he have to testify against Rachel Klein?”

  “Not for murder. The gun Zach saw her pick up from beside the victim’s body wasn’t the gun that killed Shales.”

  “So she’s not being charged with homicide?”

  “Only child-stealing, flight to avoid prosecution, concealing evidence, little stuff like that. But Shales is still dead, and somebody shot him.”

  “Len Gruber?” Madge asked. “You think he saw the story on the television news, and that was why he ran away?”

  “No.” Dave had been trying to skip smoking. But now he took one of Madge’s cigarettes and lit it with her lighter. “He’d already left by the time the story broke.”

  Madge frowned. “Then his reason doesn’t connect?”

  “It connects. How? Try this. As long as Rachel wasn’t caught, he had nothing to fear. But once they caught her, he knew it would be only a matter of hours till they learned the gun she had with her wasn’t the murder weapon.”

  “Ah. That’s why they didn’t stay at that filling station until they’d found Zach. They were in a panic to put distance between themselves and the police.”

  “Something like that,” Dave said.

  “Why would Len Gruber have wanted to kill this Shales boy? Were they enemies?”

  “They weren’t friends.” Dave told Madge about the fight over Tessa at Shadows. “When we first interviewed Gruber, he denied he knew Shales. That kind of lie doesn’t sit well with the police. Or with me. Still, I find it hard to believe he’d kill Cricket just for prowling around that apartment complex—when Tessa wasn’t even there.”

  “But why run away, then?” Madge said. “Doesn’t that look bad to the police too? Doesn’t that shout guilt?”

  “The Grubers aren’t gifted with brains.” Dave smoked in grim silence for a minute. Then he said, “Maybe he was out that night looking for Zach—I’ve suspected that all along. And he saw the shooting and knows who killed Cricket and is afraid to be a witness for fear he’ll end up dead himself.”

  Madge put out her cigarette. “Or maybe when they catch up to him, the police will find a gun in the car. The gun that did the killing.”

  “Unless he’s thrown it into the ocean.” Dave sighed.

  Madge smiled and slid off the stool. “Come have some lunch,” she said. “Lauren makes the most elegant—”

  Dave missed his footing, getting off the stool. Madge caught his arm. “Are you all right? I’m worried about you, Davey. You’re looking so—frail, lately.”

  14

  THEY LAY IN BED on the dark sleeping loft. The Santa Ana wind had come back. Dave had forgotten, and left the skylight open all day. Bed, stereo equipment, television set, chest of drawers, braided rugs, everything had gotten strewn with dry leaves, twigs, seed pods, pine needles. And a gritty film of dust. Cecil, home from work while Dave napped exhausted at Madge’s, had vacuumed it up. But it didn’t stop. At every house-shaking gust, more of it pattered down. It was hot. The skylight had to be open, so there was nothing to do but ignore it. They ignored it.

  “Ray never said
a word to me,” Dave said. “Or to anyone else, it seems. Madge hadn’t heard.”

  “Explains why they dodged the reopening at Max’s,” Cecil said. “Why he kept making excuses for the two of them not coming over here the way they used to.”

  “Mmm.” Dave lay quiet for a time. “Kovaks was such a wild one. You never knew what he’d do next. He never knew.”

  “It incubates a long, evil time—years,” Cecil said. “Lurks there in the bloodstream, waiting, and you never know. When was it he and Ray started living together?”

  “Longer ago than that,” Dave said. “Before AIDS was ever heard of.”

  “So they weren’t monogamous,” Cecil said.

  “There were those so-called shop assistants.” Dave sighed and turned on his side. “Monogamy is what Ray would have wanted. I know Ray. But could he control Kovaks? Could Kovaks? In a time when not even the sanest of us guessed sex with beautiful strangers could cost us our lives?”

  Cecil said, “Sex with beautiful strangers? You, Dave?”

  Dave switched to his left side, pushed himself up on his elbow, looked down at the dark elegant shape of Cecil’s head on the white pillow. He was grinning. His teeth showed. Dave said, “You were a beautiful stranger.”

  “So were you,” Cecil said, and raised his head and kissed him. He ran a wistful hand down Dave’s arm. “Seems lately like you’re becoming that again.”

  Dave frowned. “What’s this?”

  “A stranger,” Cecil said. “Come on, admit it—we don’t do a lot of loving anymore, now do we?”

  “If it was every day”—it was Dave’s turn to do the kissing—“it wouldn’t be enough for me.”

  “In your mind.” Cecil laughed. “I know. I can see it in your eyes when you look at me. I’m as narcissistic as the next faggot. I love it. I preen.” The laughter left his voice. He put his arms around Dave and drew him against his nakedness. “But with so many dying”—his breath was warm in Dave’s ear, his voice shaky—“we better love each other for real, and all we can—we’re so lucky to have the chance.”

  The wind had swept the sky clear. The hills stood out sharply as he drove the San Diego Freeway through the pass to the Valley. It was the kind of morning that made him despair. It would draw a hundred thousand new settlers before the week was out. California already had more people than Norway, Sweden, Denmark put together. With weather like this, soon the whole damn country would be moving in. He laughed at himself. What the hell difference did it make now? He’d never live to see it. He pushed a CD into the dash. Ashkenazy played Mozart. And by the time he reached his off-ramp, he was at peace with the world. Almost.

  When he pulled up in front of the Klein house, Irwin Klein was using clippers on the trailing branches of one of the two trees of heaven in the front. His shirt was sweaty. Leafy loppings lay around his feet. He stopped his work and stared at Dave through those thick lenses of his. Dave got out of the Jaguar and walked to him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Klein.”

  “Mr. Brandstetter? What brings you here? I’m cleaning up the place. The sand blasters will be here tomorrow. After that the exterior painters. Already, inside they—”

  “This looks like hard work,” Dave said. “Couldn’t you get a kid from the neighborhood?”

  Klein made a face and turned for the house, waving a hand. “You’re thinking of another day and age. Kids from the neighborhood don’t work for quarters anymore. They want the minimum wage. They want a contract with fringe benefits—Social Security, sick pay, a free trip to Hawaii every summer.” He dropped the clippers, opened the screen door. “Come in. It’s time for a coffee break.”

  Dave stepped into the sad gray living room. “You’re going to sell the house?”

  “Why not? Why fool myself?” Klein led the way through the dining room. “Is my life just beginning? Does the future lie golden before me? Who needs all these rooms? At my age, the law will let me keep the money tax-free and live off it.” He pushed the kitchen swing door. There was a smell of fresh paint. “A bachelor flat will do for me.”

  “This looks very nice,” Dave said.

  “Paint on an old wall works better than paint on an old woman.” Klein got mugs from a cupboard, spooned instant coffee from a jar, poured in water from a kettle on the stove. From the refrigerator he got a small carton of half-and-half. He set this on the table in the breakfast nook. “It only makes a woman look older. It makes a room look brand new.” He set the mugs on the table. “Sit down, Mr. Brandstetter. What brings you back to me?”

  “You had holdups at your shop.” Dave sat down.

  “Only one, but it was enough, thank you. Schvartzahs. Panicky street boys. As out of place in a bookstore as rats at a banquet.” He fetched spoons, then sat down himself, across from Dave. “The minute the bell gave its little jingle and I looked up and saw them”—he poured cream into his coffee and stirred it—“I knew what they’d come for.”

  “Did they get much?” Dave asked.

  Klein waved a small hand. The handles of the clippers had left blisters on his palm. “Who’s counting? They didn’t kill me, didn’t turn me into a vegetable.” He laughed ruefully. “They frightened me, I admit it. It was hours before I stopped shaking. They also made me very angry.” He drank some of his coffee. “It’s so—demeaning to the dignity. Invaded, raped. By the new barbarians. Sacked.”

  “They vandalized the store?”

  “No, no. All they wanted was the money, for drugs, I suppose. They ran as soon as they had it. But I felt so—so—outraged. And the police?” He rolled his eyes behind their distorting lenses. “They acted it as if it were the most ordinary event. It was a half hour before they strolled in. And they didn’t bother to conceal how boring was my little robbery, my loss of a few hundred dollars.” He shook his head and sipped his coffee again. “And would I ever get it back? They doubted it. They advised me not to keep the shop open at night.” He snorted disgust. “So now they’re business experts? My best trade was at night.”

  “And so you bought a gun,” Dave said. “A thirty-two caliber revolver—isn’t that right?”

  Klein paled. He stared. He worked his mouth but no words came. He gulped from his mug and the coffee went down the wrong way. He had a coughing fit. Gasping, he finally said, “No. What gave you such an idea?” He slid out of the breakfast nook to find a box of tissues on a counter, and dry his eyes. He put the glasses back on and sat at the table again. “A gun? I have a horror of guns.”

  “So have I,” Dave said. “But I own one.”

  Klein gave a couple of small residual coughs, drank again, and said, “What made you think such a thing?”

  “After they’ve been held up,” Dave said, “shopkeepers often decide to buy guns.”

  “Someone said, ‘Buy a dog. Schvartzahs are deathly afraid of dogs.’” Klein smiled wanly. “But so am I.”

  Dave tried the coffee. It was unspeakable. “Have you heard the good news?” he said. “The district attorney has dropped the murder charge against Rachel.”

  “Ah.” Klein’s face lit up. “That’s wonderful. Of course, I knew she would never do such a thing, but what others would do—police and law courts—who can say? It would not be the first time an innocent—” He tilted his head, warily. “Why? Why did they drop the murder charge?”

  “Because the gun she had wasn’t the one that killed Shales,” Dave said. Klein said nothing, he simply stared. “When Jordan Vickers telephoned Rachel at her workplace to warn her Shales was out of prison and in Los Angeles, she left the record company right away, and went into hiding at Karen Goddard’s apartment—a town house near the marina. Later, she remembered that Shales had left his gun hidden at her apartment before he went to jail. She was afraid if he got it again, he’d use it on her, or on Vickers, or Karen. So in the middle of the night, when Karen was asleep, Rachel drove to West L.A. to try to get the gun before he could get it. And you know what happened after that.”

  “The police told
me,” Klein said. “The television.”

  “Not the whole story, though, did they?” Dave said. “You know more about it than they do.”

  “I? I?” Klein sat back sharply, laid a hand on his chest. “What are you talking about?”

  “Telephone company records,” Dave said, “show that Karen Goddard telephoned you that night at seventeen minutes past eleven.” Klein grew red in the face, and started to deny it, and Dave held up a hand. “Don’t tell me you were in the garage sorting books and didn’t hear the phone ring. You took the call. It lasted almost four minutes.”

  Klein seemed to shrink in his place. At last, he raised his brows, blew out air, opened his hands. “What can I say? She called. She was frantic that Rachel would go there and run into Cricket. She said she’d been trying to reach Vickers but no one answered. She begged me to go head Rachel off, protect her, do whatever I could.”

  “And she’s your daughter, and no matter how she’s hurt you, you love her. So you went. And took your gun along.”

  “I’m an old man,” Klein said. “Cricket Shales is not the Incredible Hulk, but he’s young and strong. Yes, I took the gun—what did you expect?”

  “That’s what I expected.” Dave smiled and slid out of the booth. “You want to show it to me, please?”

  “What?” Klein goggled up at him. “Why, no, that is—”

  “You haven’t got it—is that what you’re saying?”

  “I haven’t got it.” He stared at his hands. His voice was small. “I’m no Rambo. It was dark in those patios. I took out the gun and tiptoed toward Rachel’s apartment. I was trembling, I was sure Cricket would jump out at me at any minute. Instead”—he laughed dolefully—“someone crept up behind me, put an arm around my throat, and choked me till I lost consciousness. When I woke I was lying on my face on cement and the gun was gone. All I could think of was Rachel. I started for her door, and here was Cricket lying dead. I heard sirens. The police were coming. I was sure it was my gun that had shot him. I was afraid they’d arrest me. I ran—past the swimming pool and out the back.”