Little Dog Laughed Read online

  In the elevator—a cage of wrought-iron tracery with a worn brass plate for the worn brass floor buttons, it shuddered upward on ancient cables that flapped in the hollow shaft—Dave thought about Duke Summers. He had read about him now and then in newspapers and magazines, but decades had passed since he’d seen or spoken to him. Would he recognize him now? The young Army attorney Dave remembered was willowy, pretty, rather than handsome, and frightened by an effeminacy as natural to him as breathing. Duke had planned a career that was not going to allow for that.

  While they had roomed together, served together in intelligence after the war in Germany, Dave had tried to school him out of his girlish mannerisms. But Duke had compulsions he couldn’t control—to paint his face, to dress in women’s clothes—which he concealed from Dave as from everyone else. Until a night of sleet and rain when Dave had to rescue him from a blue-eyed, blond, blackmailing teenage boy in a Darmstadt alley. Which ought to have taught Duke a lesson—it was a near thing; the MPs almost caught them. It didn’t teach him a lesson. It took a far closer call, a few months later, to do that.

  The elevator jerked to an uncertain halt, the young man clattered open the grille gate, pushed the door beyond it, and led Dave down a quiet corridor between fumed oak doors with small brass nameplates. The door he opened for Dave led into a large handsome sitting room. From a good-looking armchair an old man rose, red-faced, jowly, with a white mustache, white eyebrows, a paunch. He wore gray flannel trousers, a dark blue blazer with brass buttons, a raw silk shirt, a silk scarf knotted at the throat, and he came forward with his hand out and a smile of fine dentures.

  “Dave!” He roared a laugh whose masculinity would have shamed John Wayne, seized Dave’s hand in a crushing grip, and pumped it hard. “Dave, I can’t believe it.” He wrapped Dave in a bear hug, chortling. He stood Dave at arm’s length, gripping his shoulders. “My God, how long has it been?” None of this surprised Dave. Right out of the Army, Duke had married, and within six years had produced five sturdy children, and had gone on to shape a career even more remarkable than the one he had dreamed of back in Germany. What disturbed Dave was the film of sweat on the great man’s forehead, and how his eyes in their pouches darted this way and that, never settling on him. “Sit down, man, sit down. This is my aide, Bob Shales.” Summers flapped a hand toward a chair and Dave took it. A handshake with Shales didn’t seem indicated. “What will you drink? This calls for a drink, right?”

  “Jack Daniel’s,” Dave said to Shales, “thank you.”

  Summers swept up a glass of half-melted ice cubes from the table by his chair, handed it to Shales, and settled back as the young man soundlessly left the room. “You look great,” Summers said to Dave. “Done well for yourself, right? Big insurance mogul, isn’t that it? Richest corporations in America. You always did have the smarts.”

  “I was a department head,” Dave said, “death-claims investigations. Now I’m a private investigator—same line. It was my father who was the mogul, Duke.”

  “You look as if you’re doing all right.” The restless unhappy eyes sized up Dave’s clothes. “You arrived in a Jaguar. You buy your clothes at Brooks Brothers. Those are handmade shoes. Your home in Laurel Canyon assesses at a million two hundred thou.”

  “You’ve been checking up,” Dave said. “The house is just a couple of old stables updated. Don’t put too much stock in real estate prices these days.”

  “All right. You’re a poverty case. But your bank account says otherwise. Your portfolios.”

  “Why did you check up on me, Duke?”

  “It’s been forty years. People change. It’s called screening. A routine procedure.” He waved a hand and practiced his avuncular smile. “Don’t feel bad. All kinds of people want me dead. My staff worries about that. I’m like a goddam art masterpiece or something. One that nobody gets to see.”

  “I’m honored,” Dave said.

  Summers made a sour face. “It gets old sometimes. Especially for the family, you know? Wife and kids. There isn’t a photograph of them in existence, did you know that? They can’t even live in this country. We don’t use the mails. Everything goes by diplomatic courier. Christmas cards, anniversary presents, everything.”

  “You wanted to be a great man,” Dave said.

  “The young make a lot of mistakes,” Summers grunted.

  “Lonely at the top?” Dave said.

  Shales came in with very large, squat glasses of ice and whiskey, held the tray for Dave to take his, set Summers’s down under the lamp beside his chair. “Anything else?” he said. And Summers gave him a very different sort of smile—not the public one he’d given Dave, but a private one, full of affection. “That’s all, Bobby, thanks. Good night.”

  “Good night, Duke,” Shales said, with a new humanity in his own expression, a note of tenderness in his voice. “Mr. Brandstetter? Nice to have met you.”

  “Yes,” Dave said, “good night.” And to Summers, when Shales had gone out and shut the door behind him, “Not so lonely at the top?”

  “You know me so well.” Summers laughed, and picked up his glass and held it high. “To old times,” he said, and drank. “You look young, Dave. I never get time to keep in trim.” He studied Dave. “I don’t believe you’ve gained a pound since Berlin.”

  “Lost a little,” Dave said, and tasted his whiskey. “I never get time to gain.”

  The big manly laugh burst out again. “I often think—do you remember the night we liberated that Bierhalle in the basement on Kreutzer Strasse, and the fat woman—”

  “I remember breaking into the headquarters of the military police and stealing from the files the record of your arrest in that transvestite bar, so they couldn’t drum you out of the service in disgrace. Do you remember that?”

  Some of the claret flush drained from Summers’s bloated face. All the light of laughter left his eyes. The sweat shone on his forehead again. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

  “Do you remember that?” Dave said again.

  Summers worked his mouth a moment without sound. Then he breathed in deeply through his nose and said crossly, “Yes, yes, of course I remember that. I’ve tried to forget it, but life isn’t that long. What about it?”

  “I did it because you were my friend and you needed help. And you were too shattered to do it yourself. You’d given up. Sat there on your cot shivering, drinking. You were done for.”

  Summers sulked. “You took an awful chance.”

  “Someone had to,” Dave said. “It’s why you’re here.”

  Summers peered at him sideways. “You want me to thank you?”

  Dave grinned. “You cried on my shoulder in gratitude.”

  “I was weepy in those days,” Summers grunted. “A regular girl. What do you want, Dave?”

  “Find Colonel Lothrop Zorn, U.S. Marine Corps, retired,” Dave said, “and lock him up.”

  “Good God.” Summers half rose out of his chair. “What have you got to do with Lothrop Zorn?”

  Dave told him the whole story.

  “Fantastic.” Summers waved a hand. “Forget it.”

  “Three murders?” Dave said. “Maybe four. Streeter—”

  “A pain in the ass if ever one lived,” Summers said.

  “And the Inocentes boy, and McGregor, and now Porfirio?”

  Summers studied him. “And you’re next—right?”

  “They’ll get my name out of Porfirio,” Dave said.

  “Come on. You’re not afraid. You were never afraid of anything in your life. You’re up to something. Politics?”

  “No way. I never asked you for anything before,” Dave said. “You owe me, Duke. I’m asking now.”

  Summers pulled down the corners of his mouth and shook his head. “You give me credit for power I haven’t got.”

  “You can do whatever you want,” Dave said. “The CIA takes all the flack, and nobody ever hears of your operation. Congress doesn’t sweat you in front of committees. They don’t
question your budget. You haven’t got one. Your money leaks from other agencies. Don’t tell me you haven’t got the power.”

  “I haven’t got an army, Dave,” Summers said. “Zorn has an army. Near San Gregornio. We know all about him.”

  “That he’s murdering civilians?” Dave said.

  “I don’t know that now. That’s your surmise.”

  “Check it out,” Dave said, “arrest him, question him.”

  “The White House wouldn’t like it. He’s doing what they’d love to do, if only Congress would authorize it—training crack Inocentes troops and getting them down there to drive out the commies.”

  “Who’s funding him?” Dave said. “You?”

  Summers shook his head. “Private money. Old California cronies. But they’ve cooled off. They can’t see any future in it. Zorn is hurting for money.”

  “Then why can’t you move on him?”

  “Because he’s still a fair-haired boy.” Summers raised a hand, palm outward, his smile crooked. “And don’t threaten to expose my dress-up days in Germany, Dave. You won’t do that. You’re too decent. It’s your fatal flaw.”

  “Don’t trouble Bobby.” Dave set down his drink and stood. “I can find my own way out.”

  16

  IT WAS NEAR MIDNIGHT. He was tired and disgusted, and he drove past the point where narrow, crooked Horseshoe Canyon Trail spurred up off Sagebrush Road. Why was it so dark? He braked the Jaguar, reversed, rolled backward to the crossroads, and understood why he had missed it. Light was supposed to shine down here through the trees. The light was out. He put his hand on the shift lever but didn’t move it to drive. He sat frowning. The night was very still. It seemed to him he could hear his heart beat. Thud would be the exact word.

  He probed the glove box, found a flashlight, lowered the window, put his head out, shone the light upward. The light fixture was at the end of a long armature that stretched from a splintery power pole. The glass that shielded the bulb was smashed. He set the gears to park, pulled the handbrake, and got out. Broken glass glinted at his feet. He heard a sound and beamed his light up the road. It showed him Hilda Vosper and her raggedy dog. She stopped and winced in the light. She fumbled for a flashlight in the pocket of her windbreaker and shone it on him.

  “Oh, Mr. Brandstetter.” She smiled and came on, the dog tugging at its leash. “Something’s happened to the streetlight. I noticed it earlier. That’s why I brought this.”

  “Some kid with a rock,” Dave said.

  Hilda Vosper tugged the dog back from the broken glass on the pavement—aged blacktop, gray, cracked, potholed. “Careful, sweetheart.” The beam of her light and the beam of Dave’s were enough for him to see the bright blue of her eyes. “Not a rock,” she said, “a gun. I heard a shot—oh, when? About two hours ago. Told myself it was a backfire. You know how those monster trucks labor up the main road.”

  “I know,” Dave said. He shone his light upward again, but it wasn’t a strong light, and the leafage of the trees threw shadows that wouldn’t let him see if there was a bullet hole in the metal hood of the lamp. “I’ll settle for the rock,” he said, “and the backfire. I’ll call Water and Power in the morning.”

  “They have a night number,” she said. “And a good thing too. There’s little enough street lighting up here as it is. I phoned them. There’s a truck parked up above my place, but no sign of a repairman. They move in mysterious ways.” With a little laugh and a lift of her hand, she padded in her tennis shoes on down Sagebrush Road, the flashlight beam swinging ahead of her, the dog darting in and out of it. “Good night.” Her voice drifted back, musical and brave.

  “Good night.” Dave got wearily into the Jaguar and drove it a hundred yards up the trail to the sharp drop on the right, down into his brick-paved yard. The many small panes of the row of French doors that walled the front building gave back crooked reflections of the Jaguar’s headlights. No sign of Cecil’s van. Dave scowled. It had been eighteen hours. Where the hell was he? Out of town. What did that mean? It wasn’t like him not to leave a note. Was Chrissie with him? He hoped so. He didn’t like to think of her out on her own. No, they were together. Had to be.

  He stepped out of the car, closed the door, locked it. It was dark as the bottom of a pocket here. In his rush to get to Harry Gernsbach, he’d forgotten to switch on the yard lights. It was all right. He knew his way. He blew out a long breath, trudged around the end of the front building and crossed the bumpy courtyard in the massive shadow of the oak. He wanted the rear building. That was where the bed was. And he was ready to drop. He fitted the key into the door and turned the key. Shoes scraped the bricks behind him. He half turned. And something struck him hard on the back of the skull.

  He had a bad headache, the worst he could remember. His hands were tied. So were his ankles. Web belts bit in. That his hands were behind him made the way he sat awkward and cramping. Unconscious, he had settled at an angle, head resting against the window glass. The vehicle smelled of newness. The gloss of the fake leather seat felt new. They were traveling fast on a paved road but the suspension was stiff. His skull vibrated against the glass. He figured it would hurt less if that stopped, and he straightened on the seat.

  The man next to him stirred but didn’t waken. He wore an open-weave straw hat with the brim crimped the way they favored south of the border. He was the bigger of the two men Dave had glimpsed on that sunset street corner down the block from Porfirio’s sister’s house in Boyle Heights. The men he’d been afraid might get on board the bus with Porfirio. The men who had come for Porfirio in this Bronco, Blazer, Cherokee on its high tires at his other sister’s house in Guadalupe. The man’s chin was on his chest. He was dark, and had a hatchet profile. In the dim glow that reached back here from the dashboard, his loose lower lip glistened. He snored. If he had a gun, Dave couldn’t see it.

  Two men sat in the front seat—the thick-necked driver with a straw hat identical to this man’s, and a passenger slouched down so Dave could see only his dirty gray hair. Porfirio. Not murdered. Not yet. I have been to the church and lighted a candle for him. Dave smiled bleakly to himself. And for you, also, señor. He hoped they were long-burning candles. He looked out at empty fields and hills, black under a black, star-strewn sky. The road went straight, and the headlights reached out, following the road. He glanced at the rearview mirror. And met the driver’s eyes. They were like agates, shiny and cold.

  “You are awake,” the driver said in Spanish. “Your head must be giving you pain. I regret that. If you can swallow them without water, I can give you aspirin tablets.”

  “I prefer whiskey to water,” Dave said. “I will wait for some of El Coronel’s whiskey. Is Porfirio all right?”

  “We gave him something to make him sleep.”

  “And your partner, here?” The man’s chin joggled on his chest with the movement of the car. The hat slowly slipped down over his eyes. He still snored.

  “He is simply tired. He has driven hundreds of miles in the last two days. First to Los Angeles, then to Guadalupe, then back to Los Angeles. For you.”

  “He needn’t have bothered,” Dave said.

  The man laughed. “It was no trouble, señor.”

  “What took you so long to get to me?” Dave said.

  “Your name. Sheriff Dobbs in San Feliz had your name wrong. He called you Bannerman. But there is no insurance investigator of that name.”

  “But Porfirio had the name right?” Dave said.

  “It is a difficult name,” the driver said, “but, sí, he had it right. It was then simple to locate your house. I regret that it was necessary to hit you.”

  “It beats being shot,” Dave said.

  “We are not assassins,” the man said. “Life is precious.”

  “Mine, but not Adam Streeter’s?” Dave said.

  “He made a foolish mistake.” The driver lit a cigarette. The smell of the smoke was sweet. A Mexican cigarette. It took Dave back to trips he’d made
as a kid with his father to Baja. A brown, dry, sunstruck land, empty, silent. The driver said, “He took a pistol from a drawer and tried to kill us. We were not even armed. We had only come to take him as we took you. His death was an accident. Regrettable.”

  “All right,” Dave said, “but what about Rafael? He was executed. What did you think you were doing in the middle of the night—playing commandos? Disgusting. You are trigger-happy. Shooting out that streetlamp tonight. Are you children? You have a gun, you have to shoot it?”

  “Do not make me angry,” the driver said. “That is foolish. You are at my mercy. For your own sake, be quiet.”

  “It might have warned me you were waiting,” Dave said. “A neighbor met me and said this truck was parked up the road. She thought it was a repair truck from the city. But if I hadn’t been so tired, I might have gone to look at it, and I would have known whose truck it was. You were stupid.”

  “Not so stupid as you,” the driver said. “You were not warned by the broken light. You did not go look at this truck. You are my prisoner. So which of us is stupid?”

  “I was like your partner,” Dave said. “All I could think of was sleep.”

  “Then sleep now,” the driver said. “I am weary of the sound of your voice. And we still have a long way to travel.”

  “Rafael was one of you, wasn’t he?” Dave said. “A soldier from Los Inocentes, training under El Coronel to return and spearhead the overthrow of the new government, and restore Cortez-Ortiz to power. You are all chuchos—little dogs.”

  “Rafael was a spy and a traitor,” the driver said. “If you will not sleep of your own accord, señor, I will waken my partner, and we will give you the same kind of shot that we gave Porfirio, and make you sleep.”

  “Your war is your business,” Dave said, “but not when you do your killing in this country. What you did was plain murder, three times over—to Rafael, to Adam Streeter, and to the pilot, McGregor. For this you will go to prison. I mean to see to that.”