Dave Brandstetter 3 - Troublemaker Page 6

  Dave squinted. "You think he killed someone?"

  "No, no. But I mean, what if he did? He'd get off. People like that can hire expensive lawyers and they know how to delay and delay, and appeal and appeal. They can go right up to the Supreme Court if they have to, you know? And if they still said he was guilty, all he'd get would be a light sentence. He'd be out in a few months, maybe. Poor, you're jailed for months even before your trial can come up." Suddenly he wasn't chattering like a wound-up kid. He sounded bitter. "And then they really nail you."

  At a traffic halt where, on the right, the charred stakes of a collapsed and burned-out amusement pier stuck up through the flat blue slide of surf, Dave swung the Electra left onto Jetty Street. At the corner a chili stand raised a make-believe lighthouse, plaster scaling off it, grimy windows red-framed at the top. In lots with rusty chain-link fences, forgotten boat hulls reared up on scaffolds deep in weeds.

  Auto junkyards shouldered vacant store buildings. Tiller wheels tracked and warped in the fretwork of cottage porches. "Maybe you should read another book," Dave said.

  "Oh?" Taylor pulled a little dime-store notebook from a hip pocket and began patting his jacket for something to write with. "What's the title?"

  "Any title," Dave said. "Just a different book."

  Taylor put the note pad away. "You don't agree? No. You're rich yourself. I mean, psychologically, that would be natural. Just like it's natural for me to believe what the book said. Because I'm poor."

  "Where do you want me to drop you?" Dave said.

  "Oh, turn at the next stop. Cortez. Right. It's down in the middle of the block." On a bleak, sunlit corner, black women in bright headcloths waited in a skirmish of small children outside a brick store building where a cardboard window sign said FOOD STAMPS. Taylor's arm came up stiff. "There." The building he pointed at was square-cornered, pale-brown shiplap, three stories. Rickety outdoor stairs climbed the side and faded lettering crossed a high false front. SEA-VIEW ROOMS WEEKLY RATES. Dave pulled to the curb.

  "It's a lie." Taylor used his silver-filled little-boy smile. "You can't see a square inch of ocean. Not from my room, for sure. The cheap ones are at the back. What I see is oil wells. But it's great being at the beach. I always lived in L.A. before. Listen, thank you very much for the ride. You really rescued me. I hope I didn't take you too far out of your way. It's really nice to have met you." He put out a hand for Dave to shake. "You're the only new friend of Tom's I've met. And you're just what I expected."

  "Yup," Dave said. "I wear three-hundred-dollar suits and drive an eight-thousand-dollar car. Mr. Taylor —stop measuring people that way."

  "It's American," Taylor said defensively.

  "And Nigerian. And Bolivian," Dave said. "It started in Sumer."

  "Don't misunderstand me," Taylor said. "I'm glad about Tom's success. I mean, we started out life together. We were close." His soft eyes looked into Dave's. Too steadily. "Very, very close. One summer, especially." A flush darkened the time-etched skin of his cheekbones. "You understand what I'm saying."

  Dave edged him a smile.

  "Sure you do. I knew you would. So you can understand how happy it makes me that one of us got someplace in life. It's the truth. I couldn't be happier if it had happened to me."

  "Right." Dave pushed his cuff back.

  Taylor read the gesture and fumbled the car door open. "You have to go. You're busy. When people get in your income bracket, they work all the time. Anybody who thinks money lets you take it easy is an idiot. I read. I know." He got out, eased the door shut, crouched so the window framed his used boy face, the wind fluttering his soft hair. "I guess you'll be talking to that contractor now, about that deck rail."

  "Not now," Dave said, "but sooner or later."

  "He'll blame it on some workman," Taylor said. "The poor bastard will get fired."

  "What about your car?" Dave asked.

  Taylor looked doubtful. "I'll figure out something. Have to have a car. Gosh, I have an important appointment today too." He used the ragged smile again. "Besides, I have to get around, catch up on things. Did you know, they've got movies now where they show everything?" His leer was prepubic. "And boys dancing naked in the bars? They call them go-go boys. The bars are having a contest for the most beautiful boy." He patted the window ledge, stood. "Don't want to miss that." He turned away. "And my friends," he said dreamily. "I have to see my friends."

  Wind had strung Bobby's long yellow hair across his face. He lay asleep in the small white trunks on a big towel printed with gaudy flowers. The beach was crowded —surfers, girls in next to nothing, babies in nothing, dogs. But even from the distance of Ace Kegan's deck—no one home in the apartment behind it—Dave had picked the boy out easily. He shone. Dave waded through a wash of guitar discords and bongo drums and sat down next to the towel. He took off a shoe, emptied sand out of it, put it back on. Into Bobby's ear, a battery radio sang in a bright bad-ass voice about soft drinks. Dave tied the shoe and asked: "Didn't Ace tell you it's risky to be out here alone?"

  The boy didn't open his eyes. His beautiful mouth muttered, "Not alone. Five thousand people."

  "Where's Ace?" Dave emptied the other shoe. "I want to ask him a question."

  "He's talking to some lawyer." Bobby used his fingers to rake the hair off his face. He pushed himself up on his elbows, squinting against the brightness of the sky. "Something wrong?"

  "Probably." Dave put the shoe back on and tied it. "Unless it's about remodeling he's seeing that lawyer?"

  "What?" Bobby's face twisted. He switched off the radio. "Remodeling? The Hang Ten?"

  "That's what he told me," Dave said.

  "You must have heard him wrong. They remodeled last year. Did it all over in leather." On the towel lay an empty soft drink can, Kleenex in a little box printed with antique cars, a brown squeeze bottle of suntan lotion, a pack of Marlboros. Bobby groped among them for sunglasses, hooked them on. Polaroids. They mirrored Dave in silver. "Why would they remodel it already? It cost a bundle and it still looks like new."

  "Right." Dave picked up the books, shuffled them. 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. Contemporary American Poetry. A Zen Primer. The Best and the Brightest. "At a guess, you're supposed to be studying."

  "Yeah, well, Christ. I'm tired. I was in that God damn bar till two." Now he probed a cigarette from his pack and worked at lighting paper matches the sea wind blew out. "You know, Ace is great on working you. All energy, you know? He really can't figure somebody it doesn't mean the world to to win that stupid contest."

  Dave brought out his lighter, cupped the flame, held it till Bobby got the light. "It's for your own good," he said.

  "Shee-it." Bobby turned onto his belly, rested his chin on folded arms. The smoke blew away from his mouth along the sand. "Anyway, he doesn't see I can't do three things at once. He wants a bartender, a college student and a body-building freak all in one."

  Dave set the books down. "You tend bar much?"

  "Ace is nervous, runs around like a white rat in one of those labs. He'll phone anytime and say, 'Get your ass over here.' "

  Dave watched surfers crest a long blue swell and vanish in a kick and flail of arms and legs. He said very carefully, "Like Monday?"

  "Yeah, for instance," Bobby said, "All of a sudden, about eight. I mean, he's stacked up operas and symphonies for me to listen to, half a library to read. Not just read, man —memorize, you know? Then he calls and I've got to take over The Hang Ten for the night." He turned onto his back again, onto his elbows. "And at seven the next morning he starts asking questions with my boiled eggs. Big treat, two days a week—boiled eggs. Quizzing me on the music, on the books. How could I read the fucking books? I was working. You slop beer for a hundred faggots all by yourself sometime—you'll know what work is."

  "I'll bet," Dave said. "Did he tell you why he had to go out?"

  "Wait a minute." Bobby sat up. "That was the night Rick was killed." He poked the cigarette into the sa
nd. "Who are you?" He pulled off the sunglasses. "Some kind of cop?" He got to his knees. "Yeah. What else is new? Shit!" He punched the sand with a fist. He looked ready to cry. "Now I've got him in trouble."

  "He was already there." Dave stood up, brushed sand off his suit. "That's probably why he's seeing that lawyer."

  "It's about the partnership," Bobby said loudly. "There's a lot to straighten out, now Rick's dead."

  Dave said, "When did he come back to the bar on Monday night?"

  "He didn't. He was home when I got there. Passed out, if you want to know. He'd killed half a fifth of Canadian Club." His eyes came up suddenly, scared.

  "He doesn't drink," Dave said.

  "That's why he passed out," Bobby said. "Look —what do you want? To stick him for Rick's murder?"

  "No. That's up to the police," Dave said. "But I'm uneasy about their present choice. It doesn't make sense. What do you think? You know Ace. Could he have murdered Rick Wendell?"

  "Listen." Bobby was shaking and under the saffron mustache his mouth was a bad color. "Get away from me. Will you? Please? Just get away from me."

  "Easy," Dave said. "I'm not a cop. And I can't hurt anybody. Not you. Not Ace. It doesn't work that way, Bobby. People hurt themselves. Sometimes their friends can turn that around. Like possibly now."

  Bobby said sulkily, "He's got a lousy temper." He hooked the glasses on again, knelt, gathered up his traps. "Now leave me alone, will you? I don't want to talk to you —all right?" He walked off, dragging the flowered towel. Dave went after him.

  "A bad enough temper to shoot somebody?"

  "No. Fists are all he knows. He hits people. He's been in court about it." Bobby lengthened his stride toward the apartment deck, where the chrome-plated stem of the punching bag glittered. Dave kept pace.

  "Rick had a new lover. Wasn't Ace worried?"

  "What?" Bobby turned sharply. The radio fell. A lanky brown dog came from under a faded beach umbrella and sniffed at it. Was it a lunch box? Bobby kicked at the dog and picked up the radio. The dog slunk back to the umbrella, where a mound of old white flesh slept in gingham ruffles. "He never mentioned it. Anyway, he wouldn't hurt Rick. Hell, he was always protecting the big, dumb slob. They were friends. A long time."

  "Till death did them part," Dave said.

  "Yeah," Bobby said. "Get lost, will you?"

  Two miles up the beach from Ace Kegan's, on battered benches in the sun, along a gritty walk that marked off Surfs crumbling ocean-front apartment houses and dim stores from the beach, old men argued with each other in loud Yiddish. Long-haired, bearded boys played guitars and tambourines and grinned while a bowlegged little old woman with a Day-Glo kerchief over her hair did a slow Polish village dance. A pack of breedless dogs ran past, tongues lolling.

  The Hang Ten turned a blank stucco face to the scene. Bolted to its door was a wooden surfer, clumsily chiseled in low relief. Wind had piled trash at his feet, greasy burrito wrappers, Big Mac boxes, Styro-foam cups. These crunched under Dave's shoes as he put on his glasses to read a yellowed card tacked at the edge of the door. In faded felt-pen lettering, the bar's hours showed. NOON- 2 A.M. He checked his watch. Noon had passed but the door's three padlocks were clamped.

  He found a phone booth and dialed his office. For messages. There'd been half a dozen calls. His secretary told him about them in a thin whimper. A terrified skinny little girl of sixty, Miss Taney had teetered on the edge of nervous collapse all her life. The names of three of the callers meant nothing to Dave. The fourth had been Lieutenant Yoshiba of the Los Santos police, upset about something. The fifth had been Heather Wendell, upset about something. The sixth had been Gail Ewing, Tom Owens's sister —upset about something.

  Yoshiba was out to lunch. At the Wendell house it was the gaunt giant Billy who picked up the receiver. The lost husband and father. Found. Dave estimated it was the phone in his son's rooms he was using. That would put him near the bottles. He sounded as if he'd had one in his hand for a few hours. One or more. He tried to work up indignation. Why didn't Dave leave his wife alone? Wasn't it bad enough to have lost her son? What did Dave mean, telling Ace Kegan he thought she'd killed Rick? He, Billy, had heard Ace say it at the funeral. Where was Heather? At a lawyer's office, that's where.

  "I'll get back to her," Dave said.

  "You're in trouble," Billy warned him.

  "I've got a lot of company," Dave said.

  The dogs barked into the phone again at Tom Owens's beautiful beached ark. Gail Ewing said, "I'm extremely unhappy with you for disturbing Tom. He had nothing to do with this horrible business. It was poor judgment on his part to take that boy in. Obviously. But that doesn't mean people like you have the right to harass him."

  "People like me aren't bad compared to the police," Dave said. "I haven't told them the tie-in yet, Mrs. Ewing. From what your brother said, there didn't seem much reason to. He didn't act harassed. But you do. Why? No, let me tell you. You know something your brother doesn't. What is it, Mrs. Ewing? Were you on the extension phone Monday when Larry Johns asked Rick Wendell for fifteen hundred dollars?"

  Dave heard her draw a sharp breath.

  He said, "That's why you called me —right? To tell me about it?"

  "Yes," she said. "No."

  "I can send Lieutenant Yoshiba," he offered.

  She said flatly, "Where are you? I don't want to talk here."

  "It's lunchtime," he said. "There's a place called the Chardash, near the Los Santos Theater. They make a standout gypsy goulash."

  "I'm not hungry," she said, "but I'll be there."

  CHAPTER 7

  A CAMPFIRE VIOLIN wept from a scratched record. Over a small, dark bar at the end of a shadowy room, a giant stein of German beer rippled in an electric sign. Dave sat on a stool with tubular metal legs that creaked and smoked a cigarette, drank gin and tonic, and talked to a stocky, middle-aged woman back of the bar. Sauces smeared her apron. Her round cheeks were flushed from stove heat. No other customers were in the place yet. She'd come out of the kitchen when the spring bell above the street door had jingled with his arrival.

  "Monday night," he said. "She's a big old woman." He held out hands to measure Heather Wendell's bulk. "Big as a man. White hair. She cuts it short. It would have been around eight-thirty."

  Round black eyes watched him, waiting.

  "She'd have been with a small, dark man. Younger than she is. About forty. Black hair, combed forward." He stroked his own forehead. "Broken nose. Muscular." He made fists and revolved them in front of his chin. "A prize fighter, you understand? A boxer?"

  "I understand," she said. "Yes, they here. I remember, because they order food and then do not eat. It make my husband angry." She smiled irony. "Not with them. Never with customer, no. But with us. Me. Son. Daughter-in-law. When people will not eat, he become always angry, my husband."

  "They talked," Dave said.

  "Only talk." She nodded and started for the kitchen swing door. "You will excuse? I am alone."

  "Did they leave together?" Dave called.

  "I am sorry?" There was a clatter of metal, a hiss of steam. There were gusts of good smells. She reappeared with a deep, heavy saucepan in her hands, a big steel spoon. "What —I am sorry—you ask?"

  "Did they go out together?"

  "At the same time," she said. "They do not wait even for check. My daughter-in-law had not time to add up. And no one was at cash register." She nodded at it, glinting in the shadows near the door. "They leave ten-dollar bill and they go out." She twitched a harried smile and turned away again. "Excuse?"

  Dave nodded. "Thank you." He stubbed out his cigarette, drank from the tinkling mint-sprigged glass, and the bell over the door jangled again. Sea light streamed in from the street. A bony blond woman in tailored green linen stood in it. The door fell shut and she came to him through the gloom. Her eyes were like her brother's — almost yellow. Only hers had no warmth in them. Neither had her voice. She said, "You're mistaken that I wante
d to keep things from you."

  "Mrs. Ewing?" Dave got off the stool. "What will you drink?"

  "I won't," she said, "thank you. The reason I called you, Mr. Brandstetter, was to tell you about Larry Johns. That what happened to him was his own doing and had nothing to do with Tom. Nothing."

  "You mean the murder?"

  She shook her head impatiently. "I don't know anything about that."

  With a shrug, Dave tilted his head toward worn leather booths where unlit candles waited on checkered tablecloths. She hesitated, then went stiffly toward one in a corner. Taking his glass, he followed her, slid into the booth opposite her. "What is it you do know about?"

  She laid a green handbag on the leather bench beside her, drew off green gloves and folded them on the bag. "I know he had visitors. Larry did."

  Dave cocked an eyebrow. "At the beach house?"

  "That morning. Monday. A man came, a big middle-aged man. In a dreadful purple satin shirt with embroidery. Cowboy outfit of some kind, I suppose. One of those LBJ hats. And the boots —tooled, you know? He needed a shave, his eyes were red. I didn't like the look of him. I don't approve of shouting in the house but I wouldn't have left him alone for a moment. Larry was with Tom." The corners of her mouth tightened bitterly. "I called his name and waited right there until he appeared. The man grinned all over his ugly face and spoke Larry's name and held out his hand but it was plain to me Larry had never seen him before. He approached with unmistakable caution."

  Dave offered her a menu in a limp, fake leather folder. "What did he say?"

  She shook her head at the menu. "I didn't wait to hear. I went to see if Tom needed anything. Oh." She lifted and let fall a hand. "I did hear a name. Joe May. No . . ." She frowned to herself. "A single word, I think. Jomay? Yes."

  Dave took out his glasses, opened the folder, read the food-spotted mimeographed sheet inside it. "And what happened after that?"

  Gail Ewing said, "They went out and walked on the dunes. Right away. Larry obviously wanted the man in the house no more than I did. I watched them. Tom hadn't needed anything. I went upstairs. They argued. It was plain from their gestures. The man kept shaking a finger in Larry's face. At one point they began shouting."