by Ron Goulart
Easy said, “Her husband gave me several things she’d left lying around, clues to what she’s been up to.”
Dr. Jacobs’ head bobbed again. “Yes, that’s Joanna’s way. She isn’t capable, I don’t believe, of doing anyone direct harm. She hurts people in less than overt ways. Leaving incriminating clues for her husband to find, for instance, is a way of hurting him and letting him know she’s being unfaithful. You know, it’s also a plea for help. She’s saying to him, ‘Why in the hell don’t you stop me, now that you know about this?’ ”
Leaning toward the psychiatrist, Easy asked, “Did she leave you any clues, anything to tell where she might be now?”
“Sometimes she talked about going away altogether, leaving the country,” said Dr. Jacobs. “I doubt she would, though, because she really does love her husband.”
“How about Mexico?” said Easy, remembering what Hagopian had told him.
“You’re right,” replied Dr. Jacobs. “Mexico was one of the places she talked of running away to. I think she’s never actually been there, been to any place beyond Tijuana and Baja. She has an idealized view of the simple life in Mexico.”
“Did she have a place picked, a specific spot in Mexico to run to?”
“Not that I … wait now.” The psychiatrist half turned in his mahogany-brown leather desk chair. “There was something which came up during a session, something to do with a place in Mexico.”
“Do you tape your talks with your patients?”
Ticking his middle finger against his temple, Dr. Jacobs answered, “No, I depend on what I can remember. I don’t even take notes. Let me see … I think Joanna met someone at that witchcraft congregation. This person had some link with Mexico. No, I can’t recall anything more.”
“Why did she stop seeing you?”
“I don’t exactly know. That happens. Coming close to some insight into yourself can be as frightening as finding yourself on the brink of a high cliff. You pull back because you’re afraid of falling into an abyss.”
“She hasn’t been in touch with you since she quit coming here?”
“No. I wish she had.”
“Okay.” Easy got up.
“I’ll let you know if I do hear from her of course,” said Dr. Jacobs, rising. “I’d appreciate your letting me know should you locate her. No one can force her to come back and see me. I hope she may want to. I’m still optimistic about Joanna. She can be helped if only …”
“If only?”
“If only she stays still long enough.”
VIII
“I’D LIKE TO FIND her myself,” said Lt. Alvin. He plucked up a pair of fawn-colored panty hose, then let them fall back into the open drawer of the bureau. He reached in, caught up a pair of white lace-trimmed panties, and sniffed at them with his thin sharp nose. “What scent would you say that is?” He waved the wadded panties at Easy.
“Jasmine,” he answered, ignoring the policeman’s hand. He was looking into the deep closet in Phil Moseson’s bedroom. Alongside a row of Moseson’s clothes hung a woman’s heavy tan camel’s hair coat and a woman’s black raincoat. Easy reached into the raincoat pockets.
“Nothing in there but balls of Kleenex,” said Lt. Alvin of the San Ignacio police. He was a thin, weary-looking man at the down end of his forties, wearing a loose gray suit and a rumpled khaki raincoat. He fished a bra out of Moseson’s heavy mission-style bureau. “Small in the knockers, she must be.” He thrust his nose into one lacy cup. “Jasmine, huh?”
“Didn’t you smell everything when you were here last week?” Easy searched through the pockets of the camel’s hair coat. Dropping the bra, Lt. Alvin replied, “Just amusing myself while you poke around, Easy.”
Kneeling carefully on the threshold of the closet, Easy flashed his pencil light around at the marks on the dusty floor. “One suitcase gone, a small one,” he said.
“So we noticed.” The lieutenant sighed, lowering himself down onto the edge of the wide bed. He dug a boney hand into his raincoat pocket for a small thick notebook.
“None of her clothes left here, except for the heavy coats and some lingerie,” said Easy, standing up.
“Could be all she kept here. From what you tell me, she wasn’t anything like a full-time resident.” Lt. Alvin undid the two broad rubber bands which criss-crossed his fat little notebook. He grunted and tugged a ballpoint pen out of a suit pocket. “Joanna Benning, huh?”
“Yeah.” Easy had decided to be relatively open with the San Ignacio pouce, in order to get at whatever they might have on Joanna Benning and her relation to Moseson’s killing. After he’d talked to Alvin for awhile in the murky brownstone police headquarters down by the ocean, the policeman had offered to show him Moseson’s house. Easy paced the big, starkly furnished room, avoiding the marks and stains on the pale gray wall-to-wall carpet.
“I’d like to talk to her.” Lt. Alvin twisted a scrap of blue paper out from between the pages of his notebook and scribbled on it.
“You think she was here when Moseson was killed?”
“Well, I’m not sure,” said the tired policeman. He rotated the slip of paper and jotted again. “Like I told you back in my office, Easy, I’m very happy you wandered in out of the rain today. Because I figured as how Moseson had a lady friend but I didn’t have a clear-cut way to get onto her, though we’ve been fooling with a few angles.”
“You didn’t find any prints?”
Shaking his head, Lt. Alvin said, “Somebody devoted considerable effort to wiping and polishing.”
“That wouldn’t have been Joanna.”
“Probably not,” said the weary lieutenant as he selected another fragment of colored paper from those stuffed among his notebook pages. “Otherwise she’d have been thorough enough to take her coats and undies. We’ve been using the coat labels to give us a lead on her, as a matter of fact. That raincoat, it turns out, is a bestseller.”
Easy crossed to the full-length window. A wide patio, thick with shrubs and dotted with Japanese stone lanterns, stretched away to a high bamboo fence. The rain was falling down hard through the waning day. “You think she was in on the killing?”
Lt. Alvin wrote another message to himself on a strip of brown paper. “Not on the doing end,” he said. “I have an unfortunate feeling she might be another victim.”
“Why?”
“I showed you all those pictures of Moseson, what they did to him,” said the tired policeman. “I think this is a nut’s crime. A completely senseless thing, for fun.”
“Maybe somebody wanted to make him talk.” Easy was still watching the rain fall heavy on the flagstones outside.
“Talk about what? Phil Moseson was a moderately successful guy with a routine job at a respectable accounting firm, Darlington & Sons. Not the kind of guy full of important secrets.”
“Then this doesn’t look like an organized thing, a syndicate thing, to you?”
Lt. Alvin folded the slip of brown paper and stuck it back between the blue-lined pages. “I know up in LA you maybe hear talk about our town being not as clean as it could be. They even spread crap about Mayor Zibelli.” He slapped the thick notebook shut, winding the rubber bands around it. “Well, most of that isn’t true. This is a good clean town, believe me. I know a hood killing when I see one and I know what a nut killing smells like. Trust me, Easy. Moseson was killed by some kind of psychopath.”
Easy turned toward the round-shouldered policeman. “You figure what, she was taken away by the guy who did in Moseson?”
“The guy, the gang. Whoever,” said Lt. Alvin. “Yeah, Easy, I have a sad fretful feeling inside me. She could’ve been here when they worked over Moseson. Maybe they took her away with them for more fun.”
“What are you going on, a hunch?”
“A hunch,” said the lieutenant. “Like I told you, right now I still don’t know who I’m looking for on this one. I’ve been in this business twenty-five years. I can trust my hunches.”
Easy sa
id, “Suppose she was taken. You don’t have anything yet to indicate who?”
“Not yet,” admitted the policeman.
Easy made one more circle of the room. “I’m going to talk to Moseson’s sister next,” he said.
“Be my guest, I won’t object.” Lt. Alvin made an indifferent gesture with the boney hand clutching the fat notebook. “You want a helpful hint, I can give you one. Forget about the sister.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid she’s not much more than a lush,” said Lt. Alvin. “I’ve heard more coherent conversations down on skid row.”
Easy moved to the doorway. “Thanks for the cooperation and the advice.”
“You ought to wear a raincoat,” said Lt. Alvin. “The rain could ruin an expensive jacket like that.”
“I’ve got another one at home,” said Easy.
IX
THE BIG RADIO HULKED in one twilight corner of the living room, a giant old-fashioned radio in a black wood cabinet. It was playing long-ago dance music, its station selector glowing with a thin orange light. Lana Moseson sat in a lumpy sofa chair, her right side tinted a faint orange by the throw of radio light. “Don’t sit on the monkey,” she said.
Easy felt the seat of the sprung sofa he was lowering himself into. “Monkey?”
Lana Moseson said, “He’s loose again, the little motherfucker.” She was a frail woman of forty, wearing a man’s rayon bathrobe over a full-length flannel nightgown. She looked as though she’d been dropped in her chair from a considerable height. A glass of bourbon with two scarlet cherries bobbing in it quivered her right hand. “A little South American monkey my late brother gave me. A clever little son of a bitch.”
“Your brother or the monkey?” Easy swung out a hand to click on the lace-shaded lamp beside him.
Lana shielded her dim eyes for a few seconds with her free hand. “The monkey. My brother Phil had shit for brains. He knows how to get out of his cage, then he hides under the debris of my cluttered life and shits in the most unlikely places. Though who of us can say what’s an unlikely place for a monkey to dump a load. Would you care for a manhattan?”
“No, thanks.”
“Drink something, you virtuous son of a bitch.”
“Got any beer?”
“Of course I have beer.” She shot up out of her chair, then swayed slightly. “I didn’t even go to my fucking job today. I think I’ve got some kind of bug.”
“There’s a lot of it going around.”
Lana pressed a thin hand against her flat front and went shuffling into the kitchen of her small beachside cottage. “Didn’t Phil tell you about my problem?” she called from the dark kitchen.
“I never met him.”
“Problems, plural, I should say. Funny-looking and flat-chested,” she called out. “And a drunk.”
Easy stayed on the swayback sofa. The wind howled down this close to the ocean, howled and rattled the little brown-shingle cottage. Shutters flapped and creaked, bushes and high weeds scraped at the outside walls.
“Here, Hawkshaw.” Lana was in the kitchen doorway. She flung a complete six-pack of Lucky Lager beer in his direction.
The six-pack hit the round claw-footed coffee table in front of him. One can broke free of the plastic, opened itself and spurted malty foam up into a laundry basket full of dirty sheets sitting on the room’s other chair.
“Got a paper towel?” Easy asked as he jumped away clear of the spewing can.
“Leave it lie,” said Lana. “Cleaning woman’s coming in tomorrow or the next day. There’s still five good ones left, aren’t there? Come on, sit down and drink up.”
The opened can ceased to foam. Easy selected another one. When Phil Moseson’s sister was back in her chair, a fresh drink resting between her wide-spread legs, he walked near her. “Do you know this girl?”
“Open your beer, asshole,” suggested the frail woman. “Then we can talk.” She wouldn’t touch the photo of Joanna he held out to her.
Easy popped the top, took a sip. “Okay, cheers. Now, look at this girl.”
After taking a long drink of her manhattan, Lana said, “Sure, I know her. She’s the bitch who gave Phil the terrific ideas that got him killed.”
“How do you mean?”
Snatching the photo, Lana said, “Look at her, a dumb cunt. A lousy dumb cunt, but you’d pick her over me, too, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t have to make a choice,” said Easy. “Have you seen her since your brother died?”
“I never saw her,” answered Lana. “He showed me pictures. He thought she was hot shit.”
“What sort of ideas did she give your brother?”
“You’re different from the regular cops,” she said, blinking up at his face. “You’re a lot better looking, for one thing. You don’t seem like such a turd.”
“I don’t work for as many people.” He returned to the sofa. “Is there something you didn’t tell the cops?”
“There’s a whole shitpot I didn’t tell them,” said Moseson’s sister. “Phil was my kid brother, you know. I’m … I’m a few years older than he. There’s no reason I should tell the fuzz what an asshole that bitch made of him.”
“What did she do?”
Lana pursed her small mouth, watching the huge radio for a moment. “Did it ever occur to you most of the people in this stupid country are either running away or thinking about running away? It’s the national pasttime, not facing reality. One thing I take pride in, I’ve learned to face reality. I’m a skinny unattractive old bitch and I’m stuck with me.”
“The girl wanted your brother to run away with her?”
Lana finished her manhattan and poked a stained finger at the bright cherries in the bottom of the glass. “She filled him up with a lot of romantic bullshit. She got him really turned around with it. They were going to run away together, just the two of them, and start a new and wonderful life somewhere else. Very Utopian.” She chuckled, biting at the rim of her glass. “I told him what she’d do to him.”
“Kill him?”
“Her kind of cunt never kills you outright. I told Phil right now she might be slipping around on her husband to see him. Eventually she’d be slipping around on him and screwing the next guy in line. You can’t ever change a woman like that and all the bullshit about starting life over south of the border isn’t going to help one bit.”
“They were planning to run away to Mexico?”
Lana nodded. “To live an idyllic life among the peons. I need another one. You?”
“I’ve still got four more.”
“Back in a minute.”
Easy noticed a new sound outside, a faint scuffling crackling sound. He left the sprung sofa, and crossed to the window which looked out on the overgrown side garden. He pushed aside the brittle dusty lace curtain, frowning at the rainy dusk.
“What’s the matter?” asked Lana.
“Heard something out here.” There was no sign of anyone out in the weedy near-darkness.
“Jesus, I hope it’s not that schmuck of a monkey.” She pushed by Easy, handed him her drink and grabbed at the window frame. She got it two inches up. Squatting, she shouted, “Is that you out there, Hernando? Get yourself on inside, you offensive little prick.”
The monkey, if he was out there in the rain, did not respond.
“The chief trouble with monkeys, outside of their bathroom habits, is they catch cold so readily. I’d hate to see poor little Hernando catch pneumonia.” She put her mouth to the opening to shout once more. “Get your little hairy ass in here, Hernando.” Shrugging, she shuffled back to her chair.
Easy took her manhattan to her. “How were they going to finance it, their escape?”
Moseson’s gaunt sister gulped down half of her drink. For a moment her face went completely expressionless, then it began to give way. Her mouth first and then her eyes. “That bitch, that terrible rotten bitch.” Lana caught at Easy’s arm, pulled him toward her and began sobbing against
his chest. “That bitch made Phil do it, she worried him and she worried him.”
Easy stroked her narrow back with one big gnarled hand. Through the rayon and the flannel her bones felt as though they had no flesh on them. “He stole money from Darlington & Sons, from his accounting job?”
Lana took two breaths in through her mouth, sniffling. “No, it wasn’t money. Money would have been clean and simple compared.”
“Compared to what?”
The thin woman pressed her head harder against Easy. “I don’t have all the details. Somebody in the government … I mean our local government here in San Ignacio … someone had the unfortunate habit of writing memos about everything. Phil somehow when he was doing an accounting job for Darlington found this file of memos and related matters. It … it was enough Phil said to make a lot of trouble for Mayor Zibelli and a lot of other people in town. Only one little file drawer of carbon copies was going to be worth maybe as much as a quarter of a million bucks to him.”
“Your brother was going to sell it back to the mayor?”
“I’m not sure who exactly he contacted,” said Lana. “Even your stupid kid brother won’t confide everything.”
“He didn’t plan to give the material to the DA or to the newspapers?”
Crying still, Lana said, “Not with that bitch around. You don’t know what a nice kid Phil once was. He was in the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts and he made sergeant in the army. Then, I don’t know, he all of a sudden got to be thirty. After that, I don’t know, he …”
“Where did your brother keep the stuff he’d taken?”
“Not at home,” answered Lana. She sank back away from him, remembering her drink. “He wouldn’t tell me where he had it concealed. I bet he told that stupid cunt, though.”
Easy said, “That’s why he was killed then.”
“What do you think? All this crapola in the papers about psychopaths is just that,” said Moseson’s sister. “There are still a lot more plain everyday crooks around here than crazed hippies.” She sucked in more of the bourbon. “Whoever it was, they beat Phil to make him tell where he hid that file drawer. I’m fairly certain of that. The poor asshole was new at blackmail, didn’t handle it at all the right way probably. He had a bad heart, you know. Something that got going in his thirties. Maybe they didn’t know about it, maybe they didn’t want to kill him at all.”