Country of Old Men Page 4

  Callahan was blond, with skin like a girl’s. He blushed and gave Amanda a sheepish glance. “We haven’t talked about it yet.”

  “Dave,” Amanda said, “what a question.”

  “Madge found a small runaway boy called Zach Gruber on her stretch of beach this morning. It looks as if his father beats him. I think so, the woman who runs his preschool thinks so. And so does Jeff Leppard, which means little Zach is very likely going to end up in a foster home. And that means a succession of foster homes for years and years. Sometimes that works out. But not often. Today’s world is hard enough to survive in even for kids with parents who stick around and treat them kindly.”

  Amanda was back at the stove. Whatever she’d concocted there filled the air with tantalizing smells. “No—we’re not candidates for adoption. Not yet.”

  Now Dave remembered where he’d glimpsed Callahan. On television. In a series about a daredevil young electronics whiz with an advanced-state helicopter called Icarus that he kept hidden in improbable quarters, slumland warehouse on the outside, magical palace full of winking, beeping electronics on the inside, and which helped him solve crimes, destroy evildoers, and rescue maidens in distress. He said to Callahan, “I expect Zach is a fan of yours.”

  “He’d be disappointed,” Callahan said, “when he looked around my digs and couldn’t find Icarus.” He laughed. “Or even one computer. Hell, I can’t figure out how to hitch up my VCR. Don’t tell anybody, but I can’t even drive a car.”

  Dave laughed. “I didn’t know they hired actors like that. Not anymore. What happened to ‘Cut to the chase’?”

  “I’m no actor,” Callahan said. “I’m somebody big and good-looking that moves when the director says move, and speaks when the writer gives me words, while people who know what they’re doing take my picture and record my voice.”

  Dave liked Callahan. “Don’t let it bother you. An interviewer asked good old Kate Hepburn the other day to explain her success. ‘Cheekbones,’ she said.”

  Callahan laughed. And Cecil came in. His face lit up. “Ah, you’re not out chasing kidnappers.” Then he frowned. “You’re smoking.”

  “Not my fault,” Dave said. “Amanda made martinis. No way can I drink a martini without a cigarette. Cecil Harris, this is Cliff Callahan. I expect it’s only brag, but he claims he’s going to marry our Amanda.”

  “Whoa,” Cecil said with a grin, holding out his hand. “Without my permission? I am her father, you know.”

  Callahan said, “That explains why she’s so tall.”

  “I’m crouching so as not to embarrass you,” she said.

  “I think I’m going to like being part of this family,” Callahan said.

  “Have to be at the studio at six.” Callahan yawned, stretched, got up from the hearth where he’d been sitting. A Scrabble board was on the hearth. The four of them had surrounded it, two in wing chairs, two seated on the bricks, laughing, squabbling, jumping up to check each others’ doubtful spellings in three massive dictionaries that lay open on the long corduroy couch. Callahan found his jacket on the hat tree beside the bar at the shadowy far end of the room. “Sorry to tear you away so early, sweetheart, but that’s the actor’s life.”

  Dave touched Amanda before she could get up, and told Callahan, “I’ll be your chauffeur.” He got to his feet. “It’s a condo at the marina, is it?”

  Callahan came back into the lamplight. “The housebreaker’s garden of earthly delights,” he said.

  “Aren’t you tired?” Cecil looked up at Dave doubtfully. “Don’t you want me to do it?”

  “You stay and outpoint Amanda.” Dave’s jacket lay over an arm of the couch. He picked it up. “You’re the literary gent around here.”

  Cecil scoffed. “I write news copy for TV, and that makes me the literary gent?”

  “The nearest thing our team has got.” Dave felt in his pocket for keys and cigarettes, and headed for the door. “I’ll be back.”

  “I don’t trust you,” Cecil said. “You’re going snooping about that little kid.”

  “Absolutely not.” He was going snooping about the little kid’s parents. He opened the door, stepped out, Callahan after him, and called back, “Scout’s honor.”

  “All you’ve got is an hour,” Cecil shouted. “Then I’ll call the L.A.P.D. to start looking for you.”

  Dave took long strides across the uneven bricks of the courtyard, pretending he hadn’t heard.

  Shadows was on Venice in Mar Vista, on the ground floor of a two-story stucco business building freshly painted white. He’d expected something shabby. Shadows wasn’t smart, but its sign had all its letters. The banner that read STEAKS LOBSTER ENTERTAINMENT was clean and new. The little arched dark-green-and-white canvas marquee over the sidewalk wasn’t ragged or faded. The parking lot next to the place was mostly empty. The few cars must belong to dawdling diners. The drinkers wouldn’t put in an appearance until later. It was early, nine-thirty. It had to be early.

  Just after dinner, while Cecil, Amanda, and Callahan were washing up the dishes, laughing, singing snatches of songs Dave didn’t know, he had slipped unnoticed over to the rear building to sit at his desk, and telephone the L.A.P.D. Jeff Leppard had left, but Dave arranged with Joey Samuels to haul Tessa and Len Gruber downtown for a talk about Zach. Samuels had agreed, but he couldn’t keep them forever. Tessa worried about losing her job. She’d be back at Shadows, wouldn’t she, as soon as she could break away? And Dave mustn’t be there when she arrived.

  The door was carved, painted forest green, and had a big, bronze handle. He pushed it and went inside. Shadows was the right name. The place specialized in those. There were the expected tables, the expected bar—long enough and equipped with enough bottles to show that booze was the essential business of the place, not food. Diners sat at some far tables, men in dark suits, women in freshly set hair and twinkly necklaces—people who worked nine-to-five jobs, treating themselves to a rare night out—dallying with coffee and liqueurs among crumpled napkins. They seemed happy, a little drunk, and sleepy. They’d be leaving soon, before the music started. That would draw a younger crowd. A baby grand piano, chairs, loudspeakers stood on a little stage draped in dark green velveteen, waiting for the band.

  Dave sat at the bar on a stool deeply cushioned in dark green simulated leather. Leather padding for elbows edged the bar. The bartender was a middle-aged Hispanic of comfortable girth, brisk if easy motions, a ruffled shirt front, green leather vest. Dave ordered Glenlivet and looked around. There seemed no side exit to the parking lot. A distant, dimly lit hallway showed him pay telephones and a discreet sign: Restrooms. There’d be no door to the outside there. He turned his head. Over at the other end of the room glinted the kitchen swinging door. If Tessa arrived before he’d finished here, he’d leave through the kitchen and out the back way. He tilted his head to the bartender, and moved to the other end of the bar. The man brought him his drink, and Dave asked him:

  “Mr. Zinneman in tonight?”

  The bartender studied him. “Something wrong, sir?”

  “I don’t think so.” Dave showed him his license. The bartender took it doubtfully, held it where the tiny lights that sparkled on the back bar bottles lit it up enough for him to read it. He raised his eyebrows, blinked, handed the folder back to Dave. Dave put it away.

  The bartender said, “You sure as hell don’t dress like any private nose I ever saw. That suit’s handmade.”

  “I nose for insurance companies,” Dave said. “Insurance companies are very rich.”

  “What do you do—take a percentage?”

  “Like a jockey,” Dave said. “I just need to ask Mr. Zinneman a few routine questions about Cricket Shales. He used to work here. A musician.”

  The bartender scoffed, “Don’t tell me he had insurance. Who the hell sold it to him? Idiots of Omaha? He’s in trouble again, right?”

  “The worst possible kind.” Dave tried the whiskey. It was not Glenlivet, but he doubte
d it would help to say so. He supposed he was lucky Shadows stocked malt whiskey at all. This was a Jim Beam shop. He said, “He’s dead.”

  “Dead? He was a young guy. What’s he dead from?”

  “Bullets. Does that surprise you?”

  “Excuse me.” The bartender moved off to talk to a small shrunken man whose hatchet nose, thrusting cheekbones, sunken eyes gave him the look of an Egyptian mummy. He had arrived behind the bar from nowhere. Outfitted in a stiff, ill-fitting black suit that could have costumed a small-town deacon in a 1935 movie, he came and shook Dave’s hand and said that he was Zinneman, the owner of this unchurchly place. “I understand Cricket Shales has been murdered. That’s too bad. He was a talented boy.”

  “He had a talent for trouble,” Dave said. “Can I buy you a drink, Mr. Zinneman?”

  Zinneman smiled sadly. “Thank you. I have never been a drinker.” He came around and climbed up on the stool next to Dave. “I tried champagne once, at my sister’s wedding, when I was sixteen.” He straightened the creases in his trousers. “It made me dizzy and sick to my stomach.” He brushed imaginary lint off a jacket sleeve. “I decided alcohol was not for me.”

  “That’s an odd confession for a bar owner,” Dave said. “Or perhaps it’s the restaurant side of the business that attracts you?” The man weighed less than a hundred pounds. Dave gave him a little smile. “Love good food, do you?”

  Zinneman laughed. “Borscht and black bread. No, Mr. Bankov, I bought Shadows when I bought the building. I buy and sell buildings. Ordinarily, they are vacant, the businesses that owned them have failed. With Shadows it was different. Shadows had been here a long time. It was prospering. It seemed a shame to close it down. So I became a restaurant owner. I’m not sorry. It has kept me young.”

  Dave looked at his watch. “You know Shales had been in prison? For drug dealing?”

  Zinneman shook his head glumly. “The drug dealing was why I had to fire him. He was selling cocaine, here, in the restaurant. He was a first-rate guitarist, a nice singer. People liked him. He was wonderful for business, but”—he lifted and let fall brown parchment hands—“I could not have law-breaking. I might have lost my liquor license.”

  “You did the right thing,” Dave said. “The law caught up to him. He did eighteen months in San Quentin. When he came out, he headed straight for Rachel Klein’s apartment.”

  “Ah, Rachel.” The old man shook his head. “A tragedy. Such a wonderful voice, you know, beautiful. It was here she met Cricket. It was love at first sight. Everyone saw. And soon he was asking her up on the stage to sing. It thrilled her. A lovely girl, too, such nice manners. But”—he sighed—“in only a few months she was drinking heavily, using drugs, neglecting her looks, her clothes. She grew loud and obscene and abusive. People began leaving when they saw her come in. I had to tell Cricket to keep her away.”

  “They lived together,” Dave said.

  “I suppose so,” Zinneman said. “Young people today—”

  “I’m told he was the one who got her onto drugs.”

  Zinneman said bleakly, “Was that how it was?”

  “It appears he came back to start over with her last night,” Dave said, “and she shot him.”

  Zinneman was horrified. “Rachel? I can’t believe it.”

  “She had a new boyfriend, a new life,” Dave said. “Cricket must have represented a past she didn’t want to be dragged back to. That’s how it looks.”

  “They have her in custody, the police?”

  “They can’t find her. Where would she go to hide? Can you remember any friends she used to come here with?”

  Zinneman frowned to himself. “There was one young woman. Karen? It seems to me they worked together. I believe for some record company.” He nodded. “That was it. ‘Say What?’ That was the name. ‘Say What?’”

  Dave read his watch again. “It’s not proven that she shot Shales, but she did kidnap Zach Gruber.”

  Zinneman looked at him, startled. “Little Zach? Why?”

  Dave told him why. “Later he got away. He’s safe now.”

  “How strange Tessa told me nothing of this.”

  “What excuse did she give for taking time off tonight?”

  Zinneman laughed dryly and waved a hand. “Who listens? Such stories are never the truth. Where is she?”

  “Down at police headquarters,” Dave said, “settling things about Zach. The police suspect his father of abusing him, beating him. You ever hear anything like that?”

  “No, but I am not surprised. I know Len Gruber, and he is a violent man. One night he nearly killed Cricket Shales in here. With his bare hands.”

  “Is that so? What was his reason?”

  “He thought Cricket was having an affair with Tessa.” Zinneman shook his head. “It wasn’t true, of course. I have observed Tessa for years. This was before Rachel, and perhaps Cricket did want Tessa—most men do. But she scarcely notices. She is in love with only one man—her husband. But he is a stupid boy, fiercely jealous, with a temper like a wild animal. I can’t see Rachel killing Cricket. She had loved him too much. But Len Gruber? If he thought Cricket had come back last night for Tessa, he would have killed him in a minute.”

  5

  CECIL SAID, “YOU WERE staggering when you got here.”

  “I only had one drink,” Dave said.

  “I didn’t say drunk. Exhausted. Dave—you didn’t know where you were.” He set a Mexican tin tray on the bedside table. On the tray coffee steamed in big brown pottery mugs. Glasses of orange juice stood beside these. In a basket, a yellow napkin covered what Dave’s nose told him were cornmeal muffins. “You didn’t know who I was. Or Amanda, either.”

  “Kept going too long yesterday.” Dave sat up groggily in the broad bed on the sleeping loft. The leaf-strewn skylight was open. The sky beyond it was blue. Warm air came in. He stretched cautiously, feeling reminders in his muscles of old injuries that would never quite heal. He squinted at the red LED numerals of the clock. “Jesus—noon already? How come you’re not at work?”

  “I’ll hang around here today.” Cecil said this too casually. In stone-washed blue jeans with many pockets, and a fragment of a white tank top, cut off just at the sternum line, he wandered around to the far side of the bed, and switched on the stereo. Horowitz played Scriabin études. Horowitz had died the other day, and for now radio was forgetting that there had ever been another pianist. “Nothing pressing at Channel Three. Keep an eye on you.”

  “Good Lord.” Dave swung his feet to the floor. “I’m all right.” He pushed to his feet, flapped into his blue corduroy robe. “I don’t need around-the-clock nursing.” He started down the stairs. But he felt feeble, and held onto the raw pine two-by-four that was the banister. “Not yet. I’m old, but not that old.”

  “Just take it easy today,” Cecil called after him. “That’s all I ask. Tomorrow, we’ll see how you feel.”

  Dave grunted, went into the bathroom, shut the door.

  When he came out, Cecil was sitting in one of the wing chairs, a long lean leg hooked over the arm, reading the morning L.A. Times. He had brought the tray to the coffee table between the couch and the fireplace. Dave sat on the couch, swallowed the orange juice, tried the coffee. “Can I ask you to get my cigarettes?”

  “I’m not helping you kill yourself,” Cecil said.

  “Climbing the stairs could kill me quicker,” Dave said.

  Cecil threw down the paper and climbed the stairs and brought back cigarettes and Dave’s slim steel lighter. He laid them down with great carefulness to show that he was keeping his temper. He picked up the paper, sat down, and said, “You better see a doctor.”

  “I promise to obey you. Today, anyway.” Dave gave him a smile through blue smoke. “But no doctor, okay?”

  “Your father died of a heart attack,” Cecil said. “It runs in families. You getting tired this way—it doesn’t sound good, it’s ominous, all right? There are procedures they can use now on hear
ts that try shutting down.”

  “Balloons belong in the hands of children at circuses,” Dave said, “not shoved up old men’s arteries.”

  Cecil opened his mouth, closed it again firmly, looked away. He laid the paper on the hearth, picked up his coffee mug and drank from it. He leaned forward in the chair. “Dave—I’m sorry Max died. And all the others in your life that aren’t here anymore. But, damn it, grieving won’t bring them back. And I’m here, Dave. And I love you. Doesn’t that matter?” Tears brightened his eyes. “You can’t die on me. What kind of life would I have then?”

  “A heart attack can be neat,” Dave said. “I’d hate wasting away, being bedridden, a wheelchair case. I can tell you for sure that looking after a foul-tempered old man being eaten up by cancer is not the kind of life I want for you.”

  “Jesus, what a morning.” Cecil jumped up and went to one of the windows box-framed by the bookshelves. It stood open. A branch from one of the untrimmed shrubs outside reached in. He snatched a handful of leaves. “If you can feel better and live a normal life by going to a doctor and getting your heart patched up, why, why, why do you act this way? Hate me. That’s all I can see in it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a bad morning,” Dave said. “We can change the subject. I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with my heart to be fixed. That’s your idea.”

  “You didn’t see yourself last night.”

  Dave took a warm, buttery cornmeal muffin from the basket and held it out. “Come eat this. Comfort food. Isn’t that why you made it?”

  Cecil dropped the leaves out the window, came back, took the muffin, studied it. “I made it because I have figured out something science doesn’t yet know.” He sat down, bit into the muffin, hummed happily, licked his fingers, drank some coffee. “That corn doesn’t damage the heart the way wheat does. North Americans eat wheat flour. Aztecs ate cornmeal, masa. You ever see those pyramids they built in the jungles down there? A hundred feet high? Steps all the way to the top? No bad hearts among those people.”