The girl went away noiselessly. Dave counted sailboats tilting between the beach and hulking offshore oil-drilling platforms misted by distance. Wood creaked above and behind him and he turned. A tremendous painting that might have been gulls in a storm or simply slashes of white on ultramarine went along the room’s back wall under a gallery. A youth of maybe twenty came along the gallery. Sun had turned him dark brown. A helmet of black hair covered his ears. He wore a tie-dyed shirt in faded yellows and oranges, sleeves torn off at the armholes, baggy surfer trunks. A leather case on a shoulder strap jounced at his hip when he came down stairs that were like a flight of wooden birds.
“Trudy!” he called and saw Dave and stopped, turned his head slightly, mistrustful. “Who are you?”
“Brandstetter,” Dave said.
“It’s about Larry, isn’t it?” the boy said.
“Yes. Who are you?”
The boy laughed without humor. “She thought nobody would find out. I told her they would. A murder. They’re going to find out because they’re going to try. Tom knew it. But not Gail, not Gail.”
“They’re not trying,” Dave said. “I’m trying. They’re willing to settle for Johns. I’m not.”
The boy squinted disbelief. “Not a private eye. They don’t really have those, do they? Cannon? Barnaby Jones? All that fantasy shit on the schlock box?” His laugh was loud and forced. His eyes were watchful.
“Not so far as I know,” Dave said. “I work for an insurance company. Money, not fantasy. You live here? You know Larry Johns?”
“I’m here for the summer. Trudy’s guest. From college. Yeah, I know him. Tom kept sending Trudy drawings and stuff of the house. He never mentioned Larry. I’d have used my plane ticket, only it’s got a forty-day stipulation on it.”
“You didn’t like him?”
The boy worked his mouth as if he’d tasted something rotten. “Did you like Midnight Cowboy? I didn’t.”
Dave cocked an eyebrow. “Was that how you saw him?”
“That’s what he was. Only in the movie, the dude wasn’t any good at peddling his ass. Larry made out.” The boy’s glance measured the soaring room. “Look where he landed.”
“He landed in trouble,” Dave said. “The worst kind. Why did you want to use your plane ticket? This is a big place. Did you have to trip over him?”
“I didn’t,” the boy said sourly. “Trudy did. Sickening. A Texas redneck.” He creased a square forehead above thick black brows. “What have they got, for God sake? I mean, they’re dominating the stupid culture, all of a sudden. Seriously—everything’s country western now. Have you noticed? Even politics. Washington’s wall-to-wall fatback and collard greens. That nauseating down-home twang. Even reporters. It’s like all the TV sets were made in Amarillo, or something. His old man worked in the oil fields, could barely write his name. He bragged about it.”
“You wouldn’t be jealous?” Dave asked.
He narrowed his eyes, flared his nostrils, showed his teeth. “‘Brown eyes,’” he hissed, “‘say, love me, or I keel you.’” He dropped the act. “No. I told her what he was. A hustler. Taking her uncle for all he could get. Didn’t faze her. She felt sorry for him.”
From somewhere beyond wooden bulkheads she called, “Mr. Brandstetter?” Dave took steps, craned to see. She stood by a distant doorway, Vermeer light pouring over her. “Excuse me,” he said and went there. The boy came after him, bare heels thumping.
The light came through a tall gap in the wall above the door. The room beyond the door held a high hospital bed but it was meant for an office, a workroom. Drafting table. T squares, straightedges, triangles. Plywood bins out of which poked rolled blueprints, floor plans, elevations. Half-empty shelving. Tall stools from an unfinished-furniture shop, price tags still hanging off rungs. Roof windows funneled down north light. Low in a corner, a window framed surf breaking on jagged rocks. The tunnel you looked out into was the sun-ribbed shadow of the deck above.
Tom Owens lay in the bed. About thirty-five, long-boned, with long pale-red hair, long pale-red mustache. Yellow wasn’t the accurate word for his eyes. Tawny would probably do it. A bolted framework on the bed foot was strung with weights and pulleys to keep his legs raised. The legs were in bulky plaster casts. The bed was strewn with magazines, paperback books. A man stood at its far side. Chinos, T-shirt, thin red windbreaker jacket—boyish, all new. He was laughing. But sad was the impression he gave. He could have been younger than Owens but life had used him harder. Owens had been smiling at whatever he’d said. Then he turned his head on the pillows, saw Dave and lost the smile. But he held out his hand.
“Dave Brandstetter. After your call yesterday, I remembered you.”
Dave shook the hand. “We met at Madge Dunstan’s.”
“How is Madge?” Owens picked up a cigarette pack from a folded newspaper. The Los Santos Tide. RITES FOR MURDERED TAVERN OWNER. “You’ve met my niece, Trudy?” He lit a cigarette. “And Mark Dimond? Her”—he blinked amused bafflement at her—“do they still say ‘fiancé’?”
Trudy shook her head. “‘Lover,’” she said.
“‘Old man,’” Mark Dimond said.
“Right!” Trudy laughed and kissed his nose. She looked at her uncle. “Are you okay? Can I get you anything? I don’t know why Mother’s not back. We want to go tape sea gulls and waves and like that.”
“Go.” Owens smiled. “I’m fine.”
They went. “We’ll take the dogs,” Trudy called back, and Mark Dimond groaned.
Dave said, “Madge is all right but what happened to you?”
“I leaned on the rail of the deck.” He jerked his head up to show which deck he meant. “It wasn’t bolted in place. Temporary nails holding it. A detail Elmo Sands overlooked. My contractor. I wouldn’t have believed it. He doesn’t forget anything. Ever. But—the rail gave and I landed on those rocks. Not gracefully.”
Dave winced and the man on the far side of the bed said, “Listen, Tommy, I better split.” He looked at Dave with soft, long-lashed child eyes. “You’ve got more important things to do.”
“Vern”—Owens reached out, gave the man’s arm a squeeze—“it’s been good. Dave Brandstetter, Vern Taylor. Vern’s just turned up after seventeen years. How about that?” Owens’s eyes smiled at the man. Gently affectionate. As at a backward child.
“We were in high school together. West L.A.” Taylor came around the bed to shake Dave’s hand. “Lived on the same tacky street. Both our dads sold appliances at Sears.” He looked Dave up and down. It gave Dave the feel of being wistfully priced, like candy behind glass. Taylor smiled a sixth-birthday smile that was marred by bad silver dentistry. “Now he’s a big-time architect. Is that what you are too?”
“Insurance,” Dave said. “Claims investigator.”
Something happened to Taylor’s smile. He said guardedly, “Oh? Yeah?” He worked up his euphoria again. “Well, it must seem crazy to a stranger but I’m really excited. Nobody else in our class turned out to amount to a damn. Me especially.” His laugh didn’t even try for irony. “I’ve got failure down to a system. Like my dad. But look at this.” He lifted his hands and let them fall. “Just look at it! Isn’t it great? Last time I saw him, he was stumbling over hurdles in gym, just like the rest of us. And where do I see him next? On a big TV talk show. Magazine color spreads—beach homes for movie stars, swanky town-house condominiums. He’s a celebrity.” He grabbed Owens’s hand and shook it hard. “Listen, Tommy—I’ll come back. But you’re busy. I mean, important people. What time have you got for nobodies like Vern Taylor?” At the room door he turned back. He pleaded, “We had some laughs, though, didn’t we? Talking over old times?”
“It was a good morning,” Owens said. “Do it again.”
“Get better, now.” Taylor lifted a hand, went away.
Owens told Dave, “Sit down.” His voice was heavy. Dave put himself in one of a pair of new director’s chairs—orange canvas, varnished pine. Owens said, �
�So now you’ve found out where he lived. Does it matter? Does it have to matter? He wanted to keep it secret.”
“Wanted to and did,” Dave said. “Why?”
“To protect me,” Owens said. “You’ve probably got an opinion about Larry. Everybody has. The same one. A hustler. No morals. Well, it’s not so.”
“What was he doing in Rick Wendell’s bed?”
Red flared in the taut skin across Owens’s cheekbones. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t know but I know he would have explained it.”
“And you’d have accepted what he said?” Dave asked. “A nice arrangement. For him.”
“I meant he wouldn’t kill anybody. He didn’t have it in him.”
“Why did he go with Wendell?” Dave glanced around. “I’ve seen the Wendell place. Johns was better off here. You kept him, right?”
Owens said defensively, “He’d never had a family. Father deserted his mother when he was born. Mother put him in a home, then vanished. He got passed from hand to hand until he was old enough to go out on his own. No education to speak of, no opportunities. I wanted to turn things around for him.”
Dave said, “Every hustler on Hollywood Boulevard tells that story.”
“Maybe it’s true.” Owens was combative. “Maybe that’s why they’re on Hollywood Boulevard.”
Dave grunted, leaned forward, held out his cigarette pack. “Was Wendell a friend of his? Or did he just get lonely for the life, walk out on the highway, stick out his thumb? And Wendell stopped. He was supposedly on his way to see a film with his mother.”
“I don’t know.” Owens had taken a cigarette. He rolled it in long, knuckly fingers, watching it grimly. “If you think I’ve been able to sleep for wondering, you’re wrong.” Dave clicked a slim steel lighter and Owens hung the cigarette in his mouth and turned his head against the pillows for the flame. “Thanks. Maybe the coffee in that thing is still hot.” On a pivot table next to the bed pottery mugs waited beside a stout plastic vessel with a handle. Dave went to it, turned the screw top, poured into two mugs, screwed the top back. Owens worked a button on the bed frame that set a small motor humming and got him into a more upright position. Dave handed him a mug. Owens said, “Wendell owned a gay bar. Larry might have known him.”
“The Hang Ten,” Dave said. “Were you ever there?”
“No. I’ve seen the sign. On the beach in Surf.”
“That’s it. Did Johns ever mention it?”
“Not that I remember.” Owens sipped at the coffee, tightened his mouth, shook his head. “Larry was vague about a lot of things. Including how long he’d been on the scene here. I didn’t pry, I didn’t care. I was too happy to have found him.”
“Let me guess,” Dave said. “He was the first.”
“There were baths, back seats of cars, cheap motels. When it got unbearable.” Owens laughed sadly without sound. “But yes, the first at home. We were in pretty close quarters, Gail and Trudy and I.” He looked at the spacious room. “It seems like a bad dream, remembering. The way we used to live. Mostly on unemployment. I’d get a draftsman’s job. Government projects—county, state, schools, hospitals. I’d last till some so-called architect handed me something too stupid. I wouldn’t say anything. That’s not my style. I’d just walk out and hunt another job. Nights, I kept designing stuff on my own.” He gave a shamed shrug. “Sure, I dreamed of a Larry Johns but it wasn’t rational. I hadn’t the time. To say nothing of money. I had a family to look after.”
“You raised Trudy?” Dave said. “That was kind.”
Owens brushed the words aside. “It was the way things worked out. She was four when her father died in Korea. Not in the war. Afterward—the occupation. Jeep accident. His lieutenant’s pension wasn’t big enough for the two of them to live on. Gail would have had to work. She had no skills. Anyway, there was no one to leave the baby with.”
“Then she wasn’t a baby anymore,” Dave said, “and you had time. And money. And privacy. So there was a Larry Johns, right? Where did you find him?”
Owens flushed again, looked away, mumbled, “Hitching a ride at a freeway on-ramp. I’d been to an AIA dinner. I was smashed.” He looked back. “In the morning it would figure I’d be sorry, wouldn’t it? I wasn’t.”
“Are you sorry now?” Dave asked. “You didn’t exactly jump to help him.”
“I picked up the phone when I saw the eight A.M. news Tuesday.” He eyed a neat television set on one of the empty shelves. “Gail grabbed the phone and set it out of reach. Just as she hung up on you yesterday. She’s always known what was best for me.” He grimaced. “I’ve let her get away with it too long. Over the years it’s become a habit. A bad one. For both of us.”
“She’s trying to protect you,” Dave said. “You respect that in Johns.”
The yellow eyes blinked. “Okay—touché. You’re right. She loves me. In her she-bear way.”
“You were going to phone a lawyer?” Dave asked.
Owens nodded. “All Gail could see was that I’d be smeared. Scandal. Homosexuality. Murder. I didn’t care. I love him. He loves me.”
Dave said, “He went to Wendell.”
“But he loves me.” Owens was stubborn. “The way he kept my name out of it proves that. And day by day—There are things you can’t fake.”
“That depends who’s watching.” Dave turned to the window, drank from the mug. Trudy crouched over the tape deck on the rocks while the dogs wagged around her and Dimond stood in the swirling surf holding a microphone. “Where did he tell you he was going that night?”
“He didn’t. I’d taken pills.” He nodded at his casts. “The itching can drive you crazy. When I woke, he wasn’t with me. Wasn’t in the house at all. Trudy was home. I had her look for him.”
“What happened to Trudy’s face?”
“She smashed up her mother’s car. A Vega, less than six months old, never given a bit of trouble. Then—the brakes failed. She and Mark were up the canyon, headed for a rock festival. Totaled the car but they got off. He cracked some ribs, she lost those teeth, blacked her eyes. But considering—”
Dave frowned. “When was this?”
“Week ago Sunday. Two days later, I fell.” Owens finished off his coffee. “I’d had a lot of luck. Suddenly it reversed itself. Still—I’m alive, the kids are alive. Gail might have been driving. She’s alive. Sequoia Insurance paid up without any questions. We’re all right. Then came this thing about Larry. They say bad luck runs in threes. I’m hoping it’s over.”
“Not for him,” Dave said. “It’s only started. The police and the district attorney don’t share your blind faith. They want him locked up forever.”
“And you?” Owens studied him. “What do you want?”
“To find out what really happened. No insurance company likes a murder. Not with so much wrong with it. For instance, did Johns need fifteen hundred dollars?”
Owens was stubbing out his cigarette in a brown pottery ashtray on a stack of magazines. His head jerked up. “The news reports didn’t mention robbery.”
“And he hadn’t asked you for money?”
“Not then or ever,” Owens said. “Which makes him a pretty strange kind of hustler, doesn’t it?” He gave a short laugh, then frowned. “What would he want with fifteen hundred dollars?”
“I don’t know and he didn’t get it.” Dave bent to put out his cigarette. “But Wendell had drawn it from his bank on his way to work and the empty envelope was on his desk at home and I’ve been lied to about what the money was for.” Reminded of Ace Kegan, he read his watch, gave Owens his hand to shake. “I’ve got to go. I’m sorry if this has been tiring.”
Owens kept hold of the hand for a moment. “You can help him, can’t you? Madge says you’re tops in your field. You find answers when the police don’t.”
“Only if the answers are there.” Dave went to the door with the upreach of open wall above it. Hand on the knob, he turned. “Is he stable? Emotionally? Does he
have hangups?”
“You mean, would he have gone out of his head and killed Wendell for making a pass at him? No. He’s easy and uncomplicated. There was a catch phrase a while back that sums up his attitude pretty accurately: ‘If it feels good, do it.’”
“That couldn’t include killing people?” Dave said.
“No way,” Owens said.
6
THE CAR WAS A ten-year-old mini—Swedish, French, Italian? The color of dried blood. It stood by the guardrail, a broad steel band bolted to squat posts that divided road shoulder from beach. At the rear of the car a leaf-shaped flap of slatted steel was raised, showing a dirty little motor. Vern Taylor stood staring at it, sea wind flapping his flimsy red jacket. Dave pulled his car onto the gravel and got out. Taylor frowned at him, then smiled.
“Oh, hi. Thanks for stopping. I’m not sure just what’s wrong. It suddenly quit.” Gulls wheeled screaming overhead. He looked at them as if it were their fault. “Hell, I only bought it a couple weeks ago.” His half smile was shamefaced. “No, it didn’t cost much. But you’d think it ought to stagger along for a month.”
“Just long enough for the dealer to move to another lot and change names.” Dave leaned to look at the works. “You’ve tried everything?”
“I worked in garages for a while but I don’t know everything.” Taylor had given up. He gave the empty sky a look, the empty hills, the empty sea. “Way out here. Listen, can you give me a lift? Into Surf?”
“No problem.” Dave slammed down the tinny engine cover, led the way to the Electra glistening silver in the sun, opened the passenger door, walked around and slid behind the wheel. Taylor got in gingerly, as if afraid he’d soil the new upholstery. He shut the door with soft caution and sat rigid like a child in church. Dave pulled the car back into the coast-road traffic.
“Nice car,” Taylor said. “There’s a lot of money in insurance, isn’t there? I read that somewhere. Richest corporations in the country.”
“My father’s the corporation,” Dave said. “I’m only an employee. It’s a company car.”
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