Nightwork
Page 19
A sand-color IBM Selectric sat on the table, Fleur’s card stuck into it, Please call me written on the back. Around the machine lay typed pages, handwritten notes, file cards, photographs, clippings, magazines and books open and shut, pencils, pens, a box of typing paper, a little bottle of Wite-Out. Dave peered through reading glasses at the typing, notes, clippings. All concerned a young woman who acted in a daytime television serial and now was about to star in a motion picture.
No mention of Los Inocentes. Cardboard cartons on the floor against a wall held more papers, notes, clippings. He crouched and poked around in these. The clippings all dealt with show business—except one. HIGHER REWARDS SOUGHT TO CURB TERRORISM. President Backs Paying Up to $500,000 to Halt Acts Around World. He folded this, tucked it into a pocket. A slip of paper caught his eye. Rafael, and a telephone number. He used Underhill’s phone to ring Ray Lollard. A lifelong friend and top telephone company executive, Ray lived in a restored Adams Boulevard mansion, collected costly antiques, and kept a wild-haired, barefoot potter named Kovaks in a renovated stable-studio out back. Dave told Ray he needed a location on the telephone number after Rafael’s name. “And why don’t you come over next Thursday?” he added. Kovaks was no one to take to a restaurant. He wasn’t a drunk, but he favored marijuana, and even when he didn’t, he was apt to take a notion in the middle of a meal that he was too warm and strip. It didn’t faze Lollard, or Dave either, but it could disconcert strangers. Even Max. “We’ll have drinks and dinner and you can meet Cecil. You’ve never met Cecil, right?”
“I know I’d love him, but I’m not eating these days.”
“You were never overweight,” Dave said.
“Kovaks has a new helper who weighs a hundred twenty-eight pounds. I am determined to weigh a hundred twenty-eight pounds, darling, if it kills me.”
“Ray, you’re six feet tall,” Dave said. “How big is this clay-smeared elf?”
“He comes up to Kovaks’s armpit,” Lollard said. “It’s irrelevant. Thin I can get. Short—never.” He gave a small, tremulous falsetto cry of woe. “Not to worry. I’ll locate that telephone for you. It’s south, where the big produce ranches are. Don’t tell me illegals are buying insurance these days.”
“No, but they’re dying, just the same,” Dave said. “Oh, and Ray, get me an up-to-date phone bill for Adam Streeter, okay?” He gave Lollard the address. “I need to know if he rang that number. And think about Thursday, will you?”
“How can I help it?” Lollard said. “It involves food.”
Dave laughed, hung up, and pushed a swing door to Underhill’s kitchen. In the sink lay a dinner plate, salad plate, one each of knife, fork, spoon, a coffee mug, a drinking glass. The stove held a coffee maker, empty. On a counter lay a flat pack of bacon, a wrapped stick of butter, two eggs. He put these into the refrigerator. He left the kitchen.
The single window of the bedroom looked out at a fence leaned on by lantana, flowers of calico red and yellow. The bed was unmade, an open book lying on it, reading glasses lying on the book. Pajamas on the floor, corduroy slippers. Under a brass lamp, behind a clock radio on a nightstand were stacked four books, jackets faded and chipped around the edges. Biographies of celebrities. By Michael Underhill. Dave eyed them. He seemed to remember that they too were short on facts.
Sweaters, shirts, underwear, socks lay neatly in drawers. Slacks and jackets hung clean and cared for in a closet. The loafers, Hush Puppies, sandals on the floor were in good shape. This was a man down but not out. But a man also not going anywhere: luggage stood dusty on a high shelf. In the small bathroom, a rumpled towel lay across a closed toilet seat. It was damp. The medicine chest held only expected items—razor, shave cream, toothpaste, and the like. No prescription drugs, no illegal drugs. All correct and dull.
A buzzer rasped in the kitchen. Dave left the bathroom and stepped into a short hall. The front door had a big glass panel, but it was bright outside, dark in here. He took off the reading glasses and tucked them away. The man on the stoop was no one he knew. Aged about forty, he had ginger hair, tightly curled, and a sandy mustache. Under a vest of thin leather his T-shirt was stenciled with a biplane, circling it MCGREGOR FLIES FOR HIRE. His belly was a little bulgy. The belt buckle there was large and tough-looking, the belt wide and sweat-darkened. This was nobody he had to explain his presence to. He went and opened the door.
“Where the hell have you been?” the man exploded. He gave Dave a push in the chest, barged inside, and slammed the door. “You were supposed to meet me in Escondido at ten thirty this morning. I been phoning and phoning. What happened?”
“My name is Brandstetter,” Dave said.
“What?” The man had grown red in the face. Now he turned pale. His voice lost volume. “What are you—a cop?” Dave didn’t answer. He gave the man time to look him over. “No. The clothes are wrong. What is that? Brooks Brothers famous summer poplin, right? Three hundred bucks, right? You’re no cop. Who are you? Where’s Mike Underhill?”
“What was he going to meet you in Escondido about?”
“That’s my business,” the man said, “and his.”
“How can you have business with a man you don’t even know?”
“He was a go-between. It was a cash deal. I didn’t need to know him. I knew the principal.”
“Adam Streeter—right?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Where do you fit in?”
“Streeter is dead. Shot. He won’t be needing that aircraft you were going to sell him. That’s what the deal was, wasn’t it? Underhill was supposed to bring you the purchase price this morning. Why?”
“The seller needed his money fast. That’s why he was letting the plane go so cheap. Shit. What the hell am I going to do now?” He squinted at Dave again. “Shot? Then you are some kind of cop, aren’t you? Somebody killed him.”
“Possibly,” Dave said. “I’m an insurance investigator. And you’re McGregor.” He nodded at the T-shirt. “That says you fly planes. It doesn’t say you sell them.”
“These days, every asshole with too much money, too many cars, boats, houses buys a plane. And once they learn, they fly it a few times and then it sits there. They’re like kids—don’t know what they want. Sometimes I can persuade one of them to get rid of the damned thing. I hate to see a beautiful flying machine sit on the ground. It makes me sick.”
“Only this one’s going cheap, you said. What kind is it? His daughter says Streeter wanted to fly to faraway places with strange-sounding names.”
“He was a foreign correspondent,” McGregor said. “It’s a Cessna 404 twin engine. No, it wouldn’t fly around the bloody world, but he was only going to Tegucigalpa.”
“It’s a model popular with drug smugglers,” Dave said.
McGregor’s face got red again. “I don’t know why the owner wants to unload it. I don’t ask a lot of questions.”
“It’s a way of covering your ass,” Dave said. “Selling hot aircraft could get you into trouble. A hundred thousand?”
McGregor turned for the door. “Yeah, well. It’s zilch, now, isn’t it?”
“Cash, right?” Dave said. “Drug dealers prefer cash—so they tell me on the five o’clock news.”
McGregor opened the door, turned back. “Look, I was only in this like Underhill was. A go-between, understand? A broker. It was nothing to do with me.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Dave said, “and a man is dead.”
“I was way the hell down the coast. Why would I kill him, anyway? I liked the man. We met in Nam. I flew supply helicopters. Afterward, when he was in a rush, he’d have me fly him places. Also teach him to fly. Then he threw this deal my way. He was money in the bank. Why would I kill him? You start worrying about that hundred thousand. Where is it?” He laughed sourly. “Same place as Mike Underhill, right?”
“It looks that way,” Dave said.
But he couldn’t locate him. Using Underhill’s telephone, he rang every number in the man’s thin, l
eather-covered book. But no one who answered had seen Underhill in days.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1984 by Joseph Hansen
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
978-1-4804-1683-3
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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