Nightwork Page 3

  “What kept you?” Dave said.

  “Trying to find an ex-convict called Silencio Ruiz. Paul Myers’s testimony got him convicted of armed robbery year before last. He said he’d kill Myers when he got out. He’s out two days and pow—Myers is killed.”

  Molloy grinned at Dave. “What did I tell you?”

  “That bomb was no amateur effort,” Dave said.

  “He could have paid somebody to make it for him.”

  Dave said, “Why would he bother? Silencio was a street-gang member. Whatever happened to switchblade knives?”

  “He’s disappeared. He was supposed to see his parole officer yesterday. He only slept at his parents’ house his first night. They haven’t seen him since. His gang has a hangout at a liquor store down by the creek. They haven’t seen him either—not since Myers’s so-called accident was on the breakfast news.”

  “What reason would he have to run,” Dave said, “if the whole world believed it was an accident?”

  “When we catch him, we’ll ask him.” Salazar looked out through the open blind. “Did that happen to your car here, this morning?”

  “Gifford Gardens doesn’t have a red carpet,” Dave said.

  Molloy said, “Care for a beer, Lieutenant?”

  “Orange Crush?” Salazar asked wistfully.

  “I’ll look. Maybe she keeps some for the kids.” Molloy went away whistling, pleased with himself.

  Salazar tilted his beautiful head at Dave. “You don’t buy it? You think the wife did it for the insurance money?”

  “She says he beat her. It wasn’t smart to tell me that. It also wasn’t true. She’s scared of whoever beat her. Since he’s dead, that makes no sense. I think whoever beat her also killed him. Why they would do that puzzles me. But if it was to keep her from telling what she knows, it had the desired effect.”

  “If it wasn’t her, what’s left for you to do?”

  “Life insurance can be tricky,” Dave said. “Ever hear of a two-year conditional clause? It lets the company back off if it turns out the insured lied to them. Paul Myers outlined for Pinnacle the kind of cargo he hauled—routine, machine parts, unfinished furniture, clothing. Nothing out of the way. Nothing anybody would want to blow him up for. So maybe he was lying.”

  “If he was—she won’t get anything?”

  “Something. Not a hundred thousand.”

  Molloy came in and held out a frosty purple can. Salazar took a step backward and put his hands behind him. He said in an appalled voice, “Grape?”

  “It’s all there is,” Molloy said.

  “No, thanks,” Salazar said. “Thank you very much.”

  “I’d better go,” Dave said, and went.

  4

  GUAVA STREET HAD NO sidewalks. Little enough remained of its paving—bleached, cracked islands of blacktop that stood inches above the dirt level of the street. The Jaguar rocked and rumbled. Weeds edged the street, seedy, sun-dried. There were a few fences, chainlink, picket, grapestake. The houses, on narrow lots, were smaller here, the stucco sometimes broken away, showing chicken wire and tarpaper. Under untrimmed, drooping pepper trees, the composition roofs were losing their green and silver coatings. Rooflines sagged.

  Small black children, in paper diapers, rompers, jeans, or nothing at all, tottered and squatted, hopped and hollered in dusty yards of pecking chickens, sunflowers, hollyhocks. Auto bodies rusted in a few yards. A rope holding a tire swung from a tree branch. Scruffy dogs lay in patches of shade, tongues hanging. On stoops, on sunny roofs, cats washed themselves or dozed. Other than the children, he saw only occasional women, young and pregnant in cheap bright cotton prints and hair straighteners, or old and bony, or old and fat. No teenage boys.

  Mount Olivet Full Gospel Church might have been a warehouse but for its location in a grove of walnut trees and its stucco steeple. It was built of cinder block. Through a fresh coat of pale yellow paint the ghosts of Spanish graffiti showed. The windows were narrow and sparse. There was no stained glass. Louvers, the pebbled panes amber-colored. A strip of clean concrete lay alongside the church and he followed it in the Jaguar. A typical Gifford Gardens house sat behind the church. He climbed the stoop and pushed a doorbell button, LUTHER PRENTICE, D.D., was on a weather-yellowed business card tacked beneath the bell push.

  But it was a reedy, butter-colored woman in an apron who opened the door. Good cooking smells rushed out at Dave through the screen. The woman dried her hands on the apron. Her hair was abundant, soft, and white. She gave him a quizzical smile, blinking, tilting her head a little. “Yes. Good morning.” Beyond him she saw the Jaguar and her soft brown gaze rested on it a moment. “How can I help you?” He told her who he was, and offered his card. Like Gene Molloy earlier, she took it gingerly through a narrow opening between screen and doorframe. She read it and said, “I’m afraid we have all the insurance we need.”

  “I’m not selling it,” Dave said. “I’m a death-claims investigator. I’m looking into the death of Paul Myers.”

  She frowned a little. “Was he a member of this congregation? I don’t remember the name.”

  “He was a friend of a member of this congregation.” Beyond her, Dave glimpsed movement in a room dark by contrast to the blazing sunlight outdoors. “Ossie Bishop. I’m told he died recently too. I’d like to talk to his wife, Louella, but I hear she’s moved.”

  A tall, lean old man, very black, bald, with a fringe of springy white hair, appeared beside the woman. He took off horn-rimmed spectacles and peered at Dave. “She and her children left right after the funeral—I’d say it was more than just leaving. I’d call it running away.”

  “You men talk,” the woman said. “I’ve got chickens and a whole lot of ribs to barbecue.” She faded from sight. Her tall, straight old husband pushed open the screen door. He said, “Come in and sit down. Perhaps you’d enjoy to have a little iced tea.” As Dave went indoors past him, the man peered, squinting, at the blazing morning. He too saw the Jaguar and was quiet for a moment. He closed the screen door and latched it. “I hope the damage to your car didn’t happen here.”

  “It was my own fault.” Dave waited among folding chairs in a room surprisingly large. Walls had been knocked out, hadn’t they? This place had to do as parish house as well as rectory. The good cooking smells were strong here. A pair of long, fold-down tables rested against a side wall. He had glimpsed others set out in the walnut grove. There was going to be a picnic today or tonight. Luther Prentice, D.D., closed the wooden house door and said, “There is going to be a church picnic tonight at six.” He smiled. “You’re welcome to come.” He motioned with a long hand whose nails were large and pink and whose palm was pale. “Please sit down. These are not comfortable chairs, but they are what we have, and we are thankful for them.”

  “I appreciate the invitation to the picnic.” Dave sat. The chair was steel, with a thin seat cushion. The metal of the back made a cold band below his shoulder blades where jacket and shirt were sweaty. “But the Sheriff’s men advise me not to drive that car here anymore. They cite the high unemployment rate in Gifford Gardens as responsible for the risk to property.”

  “It is a beautiful car.” Prentice’s smile was slight as he sat down. He wore dark suit trousers and a neat plaid cotton shirt, buttoned below a large larynx that made his voice deep. “Beauty is so often mankind’s undoing. The Sheriff was right. It is too bad he couldn’t have warned you before the damage was done.”

  “Perhaps then I wouldn’t have taken him seriously. Reverend Prentice, do you know where Louella Bishop ran away to? It’s vital that I talk to her.”

  “I’ll get you the address,” Prentice said. “But I don’t know that talking to her will be of any use. She is a frightened woman. Her husband’s death frightened her. Ah, I’m forgetting the iced tea.” He got to his feet, went as stiffly as a man on stilts down the long room, and pushed open a swing door. Dave rose and opened the front door so he could watch the Jaguar. He couldn’t be sure who, f
rom inside what house, had seen him driving here. He saw no one now. Off to the west, the curved glass of the towers of the Gifford place sparked sunlight above their treetops. Dave heard Prentice returning. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It appears to be lemonade today.”

  “That’s fine.” Dave smiled and took the icy glass.

  “Here is Louella Bishop’s address.” Prentice had written it in an old-fashioned angular hand on a slip of paper. Dave glanced at it and pushed it into a pocket. Halcon. A small town in a valley of boulder-strewn hills inland from Escondido. Avocado country, he seemed to remember. Citrus too. Hard blue skies. Prentice said, “A family she used to work for. Please—sit down.”

  “Thank you.” Dave sat. So did the tall old man. “Paul Myers died in a truck crash. His wife says he was a good friend of Ossie Bishop. It was when Bishop died so suddenly that Paul took out life insurance. Did you know Bishop well? You conducted the funeral, am I right?” Prentice nodded. Dave said, “What can you tell me about the reason for his death?”

  “Very little. It was sudden—that was all. He was here in church with her on Sunday. By Friday he was dead. Before sunrise. I know he was working hard, because she said so. Working day and night. But he was a robust man. She said it was a heart attack brought on by overwork. It’s possible, I suppose.”

  Frowning thoughtfully, he paused and sipped his lemonade. Dave tried his. Nothing frozen about it. It was what it was supposed to be, and it was not too sweet.

  Prentice said, “Sometimes those that look the strongest are really frail. To survive in this world, a black man has to start working early in life, and sometimes they burn out early.” He gave his glossy bald head a worried shake. “But she was afraid to talk about what took place that Thursday night. It wasn’t like her. She was talkative as a rule, open and easy.” He smiled to himself. “Always could find something to laugh about, didn’t matter what. She was a great help here at the church, and she lifted all our spirits with her gift of laughter. We already miss her sorely. However, she was normally a slow-moving woman, and she moved as if the Devil himself was after her when it came to leaving Gifford Gardens once Ossie was in the ground. Funeral was Monday morning. She was on her way south with the children and her worldly goods by nightfall.”

  “That didn’t give her much time to sell the house,” Dave said. “Or did she only rent? What about his truck?”

  “House wouldn’t be a problem. People around here dying for a roof to get in under that they can afford.” Prentice furrowed his brow. “As to the truck, most likely the boy drove it, the oldest, Melvil. His father hoped for him to be a driver too, once he finished high school. It would be a means of livelihood for the family, wouldn’t it, now that the father is gone? The investment in one of those big trucks must be considerable.”

  “In the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars, these days,” Dave said.

  “Speaking of Melvil reminds me.” Prentice lifted his glass to take a final swallow from it. “He said something to his mother at the graveside. That she called the wrong doctor. He seemed angry with her, though he spoke low.”

  “Who would have been the right doctor?”

  “Most of us around here go to Dr. Hobart. He is a member of this congregation. Most Christian man I know.”

  “Did Melvil name the doctor his mother called?”

  “He was something to do with the trucking business.” Prentice took off his glasses and wiped them with a white, sharply creased handkerchief. “That’s all Melvil said. And white. Melvil didn’t like that.” Prentice looked sorrowful, putting his spectacles on again, pushing away the handkerchief. “I regret it very much when youngsters feel that way, but so many do now. ‘A new commandment I give unto you—that ye love one another.’ That’s what the Lord Jesus told us. That’s what I preach, is love. But the young men don’t come.” He stared forlornly past Dave at the door Dave had left standing open. “Those come that don’t need the sermon. But the young men don’t come.” He sighed. “It’s why we’re having this barbecue, you know. There won’t be any preaching. There’ll just be food. They are hungry, most of them.” He shook his head. “They take it out in hatred. Enmity between the races—it’s brought nothing but grief and sorrow and loss. But they are hating now more than ever. These gangs—black against brown. I don’t know where it’s going to end. We’re located here, where we are sitting now, right in the middle of it. Next block”—he held up a long black thumb—“you won’t hear anything but Spanish spoken. They come at night and paint their marks all over the walls. Obscenities too. But that’s not the worst.” He eyed Dave bleakly. “They are killing each other. Killing. And the innocent too. Children. They drive by and shoot, and it could be anybody gets hit. The police, they try to stop it, but they get killed too. We are in the last days, it appears.”

  Dave set down his glass. “Who was the undertaker?”

  “Wrightwood.” Prentice got up when Dave did. “This Paul Myers—why are you investigating his death?”

  Dave told him, and the minister’s eyes widened. He said, “Then Louella Bishop was frightened. I was right.”

  “I don’t know.” Dave started for the sun-bright doorway. “Paul Myers was murdered, so perhaps it’s natural that his widow should be frightened. But what frightened Louella Bishop? If her husband died of natural causes, why did she run so far, so fast?” He held out his hand. “Thank you for the address.”

  “Whatever I can do.” Prentice shook Dave’s hand. His face changed. He lunged past Dave and flung open the screen door. “Get away from there!” He went down the steps. “You hear me? Drop those things!”

  Two black kids raced off down the driveway, hubcaps flashing in their hands. Prentice ran after them at an old man’s run. Dave passed him. The car the boys piled into was another Mustang, its rear end smashed in. The bent trunk lid flapped high as the car careened away up Guava Street, a door still hanging open, legs kicking from the open door, laughter shouting from the open door. Dave halted on the grass in front of the church. Prentice came panting up to him.

  Dave said, “Where did they get that name—The Edge?”

  Prentice wiped his face with the neat handkerchief. “From a song—‘Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge, trying not to lose my head.’” He gazed dismally off up the street. He told Dave, “I am so terribly sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Dave said.

  5

  THE HIGH WALL AROUND The grounds of the Gifford place was almost invisible under matted honeysuckle vine. So were the pillars that held the tall iron gates. It took time to locate an intercom outlet among the leafage. The outlet looked new. It probably had to be replaced fairly often. He pressed a rectangular white plastic button. From here, because the trees were large and shaggy, he couldn’t see the cupola where he supposed De Witt Gifford sat. Beyond the gates, the grounds were neglected. Oleanders tall as trees crowded the drive, dropping the last of their blossoms, pink, white. Roses bloomed blowsy on long canes in flowerbeds rank with wild oats and milkweed. Dark ivy covered the ground and climbed the tree trunks. The intercom speaker crackled.

  “I’m busy.” The voice was an old man’s, brittle. “Who are you? What do you want?” Dave told him. The snappish-ness went out of the voice. “Oh, yes, of course. How very—gentlemanly of you to come. Please wait.”

  The wait was a long one. Dave spent it in the car. That seemed the best way to guard the car. The sun beat down. He lit a cigarette, but it tasted dry, and he put it out. He wished for a fresh glass of Mrs. Prentice’s lemonade, Below him lay the roofs of Gifford Gardens, drab gray, drab green, drab red, under a drab brown sky. He located the big rubber tree that marked the Kilgore School, the walnut grove where the church steeple rose, the pepper trees on Guava Street. Elsewhere in Gifford Gardens, trees were scarce. The developers in 1946 had bulldozed the oaks. Now dogs began to bark—big dogs, by the sound of them. Dave got out of the car.

  Down the drive beyond the gates came a motoriz
ed invalid’s chair. The wire spokes of its wheels glittered in the darts of sunlight through the oleanders. In the wheelchair rode an old party in a tattered picture hat. Across blanketed knees lay a rifle. The picture hat was a woman’s, faded purple, decorated with bunches of wax grapes and cloth grape leaves, but the rider in the chair had a long white beard and long white hair.

  “Mr. Brandstetter?” He twitched a smile of white dentures through the whiskers. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.” He stopped the chair, peered fearfully through the gates, up and down the street, then set the rifle aside and began, with a rattle of keys, to undo padlocks that held thick chains in place where the two gates came together. “I have no one to help me right now. The television tells me constantly that unemployment today is a national disaster, yet no one seems to want to work.”

  “How much do you want to pay?” Dave asked.

  “Ah-ha! You’ve put your finger on it, haven’t you?” The last of the chains rattled and hung loose. “They think I’m rich.” He scraped a key around on the lockplate of the gates. The hand that held the key was bones under dry, brown-spotted skin, and the hand was not steady. “They want ten dollars an hour, don’t they? And if they can’t have ten dollars an hour, they’d rather steal, thank you.” Gifford cranked the key around in the lock. “I’m talking about the blacks, of course. The Hispanics already have jobs. They know what real hunger is. There are no food stamps in Mexico.” Gifford caused the chair to move a couple of feet. His breath came in gasps as he dragged at something inside the gates. A bar. The sound of it said it was thick and heavy. “There, now.” Gifford picked up the rifle and backed the chair out of the way. “Just push, please.”