“Well …” How was I going to tell her?
“You’re talkin’ about him like he’s gone already. Is he okay?”
“I’m sorry to say no.”
She blanched. “What happened?”
“He was killed in Boston.”
She turned away abruptly and began washing glasses noisily in the sink under the bar. After a few minutes she returned and I saw that her eyes were wet with tears.
“I knew somethin’ happened to him,” she said, “with all those cops around his place.” Her voice was shaky now.
“Anything you can tell me might help.”
“There’s nothin’ much to tell. He wasn’t the same ever since that big slide about a month ago.”
“Slide?”
“We get rock slides up here almost every year. But this one bothered him a lot. He said there was somethin’ funny about the way the rocks fell.”
“Was there?”
“Who knows? He thought so. Then he gets it into his head to go to Boston.” She hung wineglasses in an overhead rack. “How did you know him?”
“College buddies.” I lied.
“Was he gay then, too?”
“I, uh, guess so.” So she knew!
She stopped working and faced me directly. “Were you two lovers?”
“No.” Oh, that I could have answered otherwise!
I made a move to pay for my drink, but she said, “It’s on the house.”
“Thanks,” I said, and left her a tip worth twice the drink.
She leaned real close and spoke low. “You a cop?” I shook my head. Then she hushed her voice even more. “Detective?”
“Kind of.”
“Roger was killed, huh?”
I nodded.
She said, “You know who did it?”
I nodded again with more conviction. “I think so.”
“Are you gonna get him?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good!” she whispered.
I left the lounge and strolled through the lobby. Then I jogged up the stairs to the mezzanine. I crossed a balcony that overlooked the main lobby and beyond that, the tall windows that opened onto the hotel grounds. At the balcony’s end was a door with an engraved brass plate:
MR. LEONARD
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
I pressed a turquoise button mounted in a silver frame on the woodwork. In a moment the door flew open and revealed a tall fleshy man with a headful of red hair styled in a poor imitation of the vibrant mane of the young Lucille Ball. He wore a flouncy caftan of purple and white raw silk. In the seconds that passed, I sensed him sizing me up just as I was doing to him. He sniffed haughtily and spoke with an inhospitable voice, “Can I help you?”
“I’d like to see Mr. Leonard.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I just want to talk with him.”
“You are talking to him!”
“Hello,” I said, and extended my hand, which he ignored. “I’m a friend of Roger Fayerbrock.”
The mans eyes bugged out and he said, “I’m with a client now.”
“No problem. I’ll just wait here till you’re free.”
“That might be inconvenient.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Inconvenient for me!”
He slammed the door in my face.
I was learning a lot about West Coast hospitality. I figured he’d have to come out sooner or later, so I planted myself on a padded bench outside his door and watched the foot traffic in the main lobby. Twenty minutes later a middle-aged man emerged from the door. His curly blond hair had the peculiar greenish tinge that I immediately recognized as ash-toned color applied to bleached hair. Any skilled colorist knows to use neutral tones after bleaching.
Within moments Mr. Leonard’s head slunk out from the partially open door. “Are you still here?”
“I just want a few minutes of your precious time.”
“Oh, all right! Come in! I’m bored anyway.”
I got up and went inside. The afternoon sun shone through two wall-sized windows in his waiting area. A huge woven-grass water jug rested on a hand-loomed rug. Expensive and well-chosen artifacts were placed about the room. The guy sure knew how to spend his money conspicuously. He reclined on a chaise longue and smoked a pungent black cigarette. I half-expected him to hiss like a serpent that had just devoured its monthly meal. But instead he said, “What I want to know …” Then he created a cloud of smoke around himself before finishing, “… is how you found me.”
“I told you, I’m a friend of Roger’s.”
“Yes, you did tell me. But it’s strange I never met you before.”
“I’m from Boston.”
He accidentally swallowed some smoke from his cigarette and tried to subdue a cough that lurked in his throat. He finally croaked, “I see.”
“I came out here to find out why Roger was back East.”
“Since you’re his friend, I should think you’d already know that.”
“I didn’t have a chance to find out before the, uh, accident.”
Mr. Leonard sat up suddenly and nervously stamped out his cigarette in the earthen ashtray, but he failed to extinguish it completely, and a pathetic wisp of smoke rose from the corpse. Nicole would have cringed. “What happened to Roger was no accident!” he exclaimed.
“You know about it, then?”
“I can read! And I’ve talked to the police here. They claim that our dear Roger was in Boston on a drug run for crack and heroin, which is utter nonsense.”
“How do you know?”
He stood up, went to a mirror, and fussed with his hair. “If you knew Roger at all, you’d know that he was obsessed with two things—health and conservation.” He examined a nonexistent blemish on his sagging jowls. “There is no way in the world he was involved with drugs.”
“Maybe he was a police decoy.”
Mr. Leonard turned to me dramatically and lit another cigarette. I thought of Bette Davis. He said, “I should think your East Coast intellectual types could devise easier ways to break a drug syndicate than to import park rangers from Yosemite.”
“Then why do you think Roger went East?”
“Darling,” he said. (The word so charming on Nikki’s lips was smarmy on his.) “I know why.” He sneered and said, “You know, darling, you’re a horrid liar. You don’t know Roger from my anal pore. But you’re bold, and that’s certainly to my liking. I’m going to wager a little bargain with you.”
Here it comes, I thought.
“I’ll tell you why Roger went to New England if you tell me why you’re here.”
A bargain with this guy spelled trouble, but I’d come this far, and there was no turning back. “Okay,” I said. “I told you already, and I’ll tell you again. I knew Roger was in Boston, but we didn’t get a chance to get together before he died, so I never knew why he’d gone there. But I think if I can find that out, I may also find exactly what happened to him. Nothing was turning up in Boston, so I thought I might find some answers out here. It’s as simple as that.”
“My, my! A knight yet lives,” he said, and clucked his tongue. “Well, it’s true that Roger dearest had a penchant for red-haired men. And yours is natural, which gives you the advantage over me. He never would look at me the way I wanted him to. And you’re quite attractive in a strange sort of way.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“Yes, your eyes and your smile.” Mr. Leonard paused and evaluated my bountiful derriere. “And that part of you would certainly have appealed to him. I imagine you and Roger had a great time together.”
“Imagine is all I got to do.”
“I seriously doubt that, but whatever …”
“You can doubt all you want, but now it’s your turn to talk. You tell me why he went East.”
Mr. Leonard took a huge drag on his cigarette. Then, as he let the smoke drift slowly from his mouth, he inhaled some of it back through his nose. He was such a
cliche that I wished I could take a holograph of him back to Nicole. Maybe she’d appreciate me more. “Darling,” he said, “Roger was a rock climber, one of those crazed people who clamber up and down cliffs, exercising their adrenal glands.”
That explained the climber’s chock the police had found in his bag at Calvin’s place, the one mentioned in the reports I’d read in Branco’s office.
Mr. Leonard went on, “The only drug dearest Roger was addicted to was his own goddamn lily-pure adrenaline.”
“So why did he go East?”
“Darling, I’m getting to that.” He puffed nervously now, barely taking the smoke into his lungs but creating a huge cloud around him. “Roger wanted to climb some mountain or other back there, something called the Old Mountain Man.”
“Ol’ Man o’ the Mountain. It’s in New Hampshire.”
“Yes. That one. That’s why he was back East. He’d seen a picture of the mountain and wanted to climb it. Just like your story … very simple.”
If I could sing, Mr. Leonard would have heard an aria di sorbetto. That’s how much I believed that little yarn. I said, “You know where his place is?”
Mr. Leonard nodded.
“I’d like to look around there myself,” I said.
He got up and walked to the window and gazed out wistfully. “The police have already gone through everything, and then some. All of poor Roger’s carefully guarded secret life was thrown into the blazing light of the law.” He tried to look sad but he sounded gleeful.
I said, “Just tell me where it is.”
“Of course, darling.” He turned to face me. “But I must exact a small favor from you.”
I smirked. “We just finished a round of that game.”
“Face it,” he said smugly. “I have what you want.”
I could see that this guy was going to wield his petty power to the limit. “All right,” I said. “One more time. Now what?”
“You are to join me for dinner this evening in my penthouse.”
“I don’t dine with strangers.”
“But I am so seldom titillated here in the wilderness.”
“I’m sure you get plenty of opportunity in a place like this.”
“Yes, but there’s an edge about you that I like.”
I thought a moment, then said, “Okay, you tell me where Roger lives. If it’s the truth, I’ll have lunch with you, in the hotel dining room, tomorrow.”
He smashed out his second cigarette. “You are a hard man!”
“Just tell me where he lives.”
“Lived, darling, lived. He is dead. We are alive.”
I wanted to smash his flabby bottle-bronzed face. I moved toward him, clenched my left fist, and yelled, “Just tell me, damn you!” It was macho travesty, but it worked.
Relief appeared on Mr. Leonard’s face, as though he’d been awaiting the threat of violence. He answered quietly. “It’s a small cabin near Mirror Lake. But it’s all futile, darling. I told you, the police have already been there.”
“They might have missed something.”
Nervously he stuck yet another cigarette between his lips. As he spoke, it wagged there, waiting to be lit. “Just beware of the little dog. It bites.”
“His dog is still there?”
“You’ll see what I mean.”
I left the salon and the hotel feeling dirty after my chat with Mr. Leonard. Poor Roger, to be ardently pursued by that! A hot shower was in order, but it was already after four o’clock, and searching Roger’s cabin was more urgent. I headed toward the village to find my way to Mirror Lake.
11
THE LITTLE DOG THAT BITES
WHEN I STOPPED IN YOSEMITE VILLAGE for directions to Mirror Lake, I learned that there was no road to get there, only hiking trails and bike paths. I’m not exactly a Sierra Club type, but I had no choice, so I rented a bike and pedaled my way. As it turned out, riding the bike immersed me into the quiet power of the valley, which I’d missed while driving the rented red whorehouse on wheels. I got to feel the cold, clean air rush across my face, and smell the trees, and hear peaceful forest sounds.
It was after five o’clock when I found Roger’s place. It was the only dwelling on the lake, a small log cabin that was a perfect fairy-tale cottage tucked among the trees. A narrow covered porch ran along the front of the cabin and up the two sides. Each side had its own spectacular view, the names of which I learned later: Half Dome to the east, Mount Watkins to the north in front of the cabin, and Washington Column to the west. There were no police lines around the cabin, which surprised me. Perhaps the natural beauty of the valley was more important to the local officers than regulations about police lines.
I’m not sure what I expected to find in there, but I was certain of one thing—I had to get inside. I hoped to learn firsthand, with my own senses, who Roger was, and why he’d come to Boston. I stepped up onto the porch but didn’t even bother trying the front door. Instead, I went around to the back of the cabin to try a window, but was quickly foiled by a huge picture window that made up most of the back wall of the cabin. Short of smashing the whole thing, I certainly wasn’t going to get into the cabin that way. I peered through the glass, but a heavy opaque fabric hung inside, blocking any view.
I wandered around to the east-side porch, which was cast in shadow by the setting sun. Both windows there were also blocked with heavy cloth, but one had a chink through which I could see a bit of the cabins dark interior. All I could make out was a bed. The sheets and blankets were thrown back, as though someone had recently slept there. I wondered whether Roger, like me, had left on a cross-country trip without making his bed.
The west side of the cabin glowed in amber light from the sunset. That’s where I got lucky and found a window that hadn’t been locked. I wondered if the cops had forgotten to secure it after their search, or maybe they’d never even noticed. Whatever the reason, I was grateful, and though a little voice warned me not to, I climbed through the window.
Once inside, I stood quietly still a few moments while my eyes adjusted to the dimness. The furniture was simple: a bed, a small nightstand, a square pine kitchen table with three straight-backed pine chairs around it, and a writing desk with yet another of the pine chairs. I searched the desk drawers and found nothing, no letters, no bills, no checkbook, nothing but unused stationery, some scissors, and an unopened package of imported liquorice toffee.
An enormous old armoire of darkened oak functioned as the only closet. I opened the door and the pungent smell of cedar rushed into my face. The armoire had been completely lined with strips of cedarwood, a natural moth repellent. The scent reminded me of Lieutenant Branco, and I wondered what he was doing at that very moment back in Boston. He was probably reading the mangled threat note I’d forwarded to him.
Hanging inside the armoire were twelve identical khaki-colored uniforms. Each shirt had a sewn-on patch with the insignia of Yosemite National Park, a mountain vertically sliced in half by a prehistoric glacier. Five gray neckties were all the type that clipped onto a shirt over the top collar button. I wondered a moment about the ties, then guessed that a clip-on necktie would release itself if an assailant happened to grab on to it, unlike a regular necktie, which could offer an attacker a good stranglehold.
Roger’s record collection showed an inclination to jazz and country-western music. His books included biographies, collected essays, and ecological studies, along with some recent thrillers and romances. There was certainly more to Roger Fayerbrock than the handsome lug who’d visited the shop a few days ago, but still no clue as to why he’d gone to Boston.
I was gazing at an orderly stack of neatly wound ropes lying under a window near the small kitchen stove when I felt the floor move. I bristled in reflex and turned, but a monstrous weight was already on my back and shoulders, surrounding me and pressing me toward the floor. A strong arm slithered around my neck. Bear, I thought. Bear! But I realized it was only the scratchy sleeve of a wool jacket. Then
a deep and ugly pressure appeared on the back of my neck, just below the skull, immobilizing me. It intensified until the setting sun flared brightly like manganese, then faded to nothing as my legs crumpled.
I felt a heavy nudge against my shoulder and heard a voice growl. “Hey! Wake up!” I opened my eyes and saw him leaning over me, his face inches from my own. His Asian eyes and features were dark against a tawny, youthful complexion. He stared at me uncertainly, then said, “Who are you?”
I shook my head, trying to clear it. “What happened?”
“I put you out for a little while.” A faint scent of anise lingered from his breath. “Just tell me who you are.” He was so close I could have kissed him. Instead I lurched to get up and run, but my hands and feet were bound. I felt no pain, though, so I guess he hadn’t slugged me.
He smiled contentedly and said, “You’re not going anywhere, so you might as well tell me what you want here.”
His speech had the contrived informality of people who learn English from the Brits but who pick up their vernacular in the States.
“I was just looking around,” I explained innocently.
“For what?”
“Nothing. Just being a nosy tourist.”
He moved back and sat on the floor next to me. He was young, around twenty-one, with a compact, powerful body like a miniature sumo wrestlers, but without the fat. He had the face of a young warrior, and his short black hair shone with a bluish cast. His exotic dark eyes stared at me.
“You’re lying,” he said. “I already checked your pockets.”
“Find anything you like?” I asked.
His eyes brightened slightly and divulged a certain inclination. He said, “Your name is Stan and you’re from Boston. What happened to Roger?”
“Who’s Roger?” I asked naively.
In a second he jumped onto me again, this time straddling my chest and gripping my collar. Through clenched teeth he snarled, “Where is he! What did you do with him?”
Though he was trying to frighten me with physical violence, I sensed that it was really all defensive bluster. I stupidly assumed that he was too cute to be dangerous, and that he was probably afraid of something, perhaps me.
A Body To Dye For (Stan Kraychik Book 1) Page 14