“One of the first,” Engstrom said proudly, “years ago, when he was just starting up. I came back from Nam, and he grabbed me right away. I was with him a long time. Me and my buddy, Barney Craig. Then he threw me out. I got in a scrape, barroom fight”—Engstrom’s big square shoulders rose and fell—“no big deal. But a month in jail went with it, and he said it was bad for the Movement’s image, and I was out. ‘Image.’” Engstrom snorted. “You should have seen his face when he said it. Looked like a fucking Sunday school teacher. I couldn’t believe he was serious. I was the best instructor he had. After that, he reorganized the whole show army style, by the book, with Barney as his aide de camp.”
Dave raised an eyebrow. “Not Vaughn Thomas?”
“This was years before he showed up,” Engstrom said, then half grinned. “But if he’d been there then with his stinking five thousand bucks, you’re probably right.”
“So you weren’t in Hetzel’s outfit when Thomas came?”
“Naw, but Barney told me about it. We was still friends, then, partners. After Nam, we’d set up in the construction business. Not contractors—journeymen, all right? Down in Winter Creek, it amounts to the same thing. Somebody wanted something built or added onto or even just fixed up—you call Dallas and Barney. Bricklaying, welding, carpentry, electricity, poured concrete—we did it all.”
“And you still had time for Hetzel’s outfit?”
“Wasn’t a lot to it, then.” Engstrom watched two of the Asians from the kitchen come onto the terrace with loads of tablecloths and napkins. They dusted off the tables, and working as a team because of the wind, covered the tables, folded the napkins so they’d stand up with neat points, and arranged the napkins on the cloths. “We passed a lot of time over at Del Mar at the races, down to San Diego for the Padres games. Nights we whooped it up in taverns.” Now the third Asian wheeled a steel cart onto the terrace. On its shelves bottles and glasses jingled. He set the bottles out on a long table. He made three circular clusters of sparkling wine, highball, and cocktail glasses. Engstrom sighed. “Then it changed. Barney got to hanging around more and more with Clarice from the Twin Oaks Café, and after that, things was never the same. I seemed to be alone pretty much of the time.”
“And this was when you met Jemmie?” Dave said.
“Her old man, Charlie Pratt, breeds horses. Nice stock. He used to be a jockey, but not the kind that makes millions, so when he broke his pelvis for the last time and had to retire, he couldn’t afford thoroughbreds, of course. No buyers for thoroughbreds in Winter Creek anyways. But last six, seven years well-heeled people started moving down to Winter Creek, away from L.A.—the drugs, the gangs, the niggers, and the rest of it—and one of the things they hanker for is to own a couple horses, or their kids hanker for horses, right? So business was good for old Charlie, and he asked Barney and me to build him another stable. And when we was working on it, that’s when I met Jemmie.”
“And you got married, and had little Mike, and—”
Engstrom held up a hand. “Whoa. First place, old man Pratt, soon as he saw how it was between us he told Jemmie no way was she to have anything to do with me. I was trash, a jailbird and a drunk. Worse than that, I was one of Hetzel’s bunch—and Pratt’s a communist.”
“Seriously?” Dave said.
“You better believe it. All the time weeping over what Hitler done to the Jews, and how the nation owes it to the niggers to see to it they get an even break, and—oh, I don’t want to repeat it. Makes me sick.” Engstrom pushed angrily to his feet. “You want a drink? That’s what I’m here for, you know—make the guests comfortable.”
Dave read his watch. Too early. “I’ll pass, thanks. Pratt objected, but you did get married.”
“He had a shotgun and a bad temper.” Engstrom went off along the terrace to the drinks table and came back with a bottle of Perrier water. He pried the cap off with his thumb and drank. “I took him serious. Didn’t even look at Jemmie for a week, maybe more. Then one night away late, she’s at my door, crying and begging and carrying on. ‘Let’s go to Vegas and get married,’ she says. ‘I can’t stand life without you no more, Dallas,’ and you know how girls talk, and I’d had about eight beers, and I says, ‘What the hell—why not?’”
“And Pratt didn’t make any trouble?” Dave said.
“I had sheriff’s and lawyers and judges up the ass.” Engstrom laughed. “I figured I’d get three life sentences to San Quentin, the way he took after me. Went on for weeks—I never laid eyes on Jemmie, all that time. He wouldn’t let her out of the house. But then she come up pregnant. And you wouldn’t believe the change in the mean old bastard. Overnight. I don’t mean he was nice to me. But he laid off with the law, and he let her move in with me. Really, Jemmie was the one who was sore. When Mike was born, I says to her she ought to make it up with old Charlie—he’d want to see his grandson, he’d be proud.”
“And?” Dave said.
Engstrom thrust out his lower lip, shook his head. “She was as good a hater as he was. No way. Never talked to him from that day till this one.”
“How did she meet Vaughn?” Dave said.
Engstrom turned the little green bottle in his long, knuckly fingers. His mouth twitched bitterly. “Hetzel got this campaign going against a low-cost housing development going up in Winter Creek. Government-funded. Too much affluence. No houses for low-income people. Meaning niggers, of course. Hetzel got on the public access television in Fortuna just about every day, talking against it. Meetings, rallies up and down the county. He got up a petition to send to Sacramento. Had everybody he could find going from door to door, trying to get people to sign their name on it. And mailings. You never seen anything like it. Well, he needed office help, and Barney told Jemmie, and Mike wasn’t so little anymore, and she’d go in and stuff envelopes. George paid her. That’s mostly why she did it. We was broke.”
“What happened to the contracting business?”
“Barney got busier and busier with Hetzel,” Engstrom said, “and I couldn’t handle it alone. Naw, truth is”—he looked ashamed, turned his head aside—“I’d found out there was an easier way to make money.” He stopped talking.
“And how’s that?” Dave prompted.
“Movies,” Engstrom said, and looked at him again, with a wry smile. “Company come down to Winter Creek to do some location shooting, and they hired me and twenty others to be ‘atmosphere people.’ You ever hear of that?”
“I’ve heard of it,” Dave said.
“I never did. And shit, they paid. Day after day. They paid me wild money for sitting on a bar stool with a glass of beer and a bowl of peanuts and a pack of cigarettes and wearing a cowboy hat on the back of my head. Shit.”
“So you thought you’d go to Hollywood?” Dave said.
Engstrom nodded, disgustedly. “Couldn’t think about nothing else—sure as hell not about installing eighty toilets in a housing tract at Lizard Rocks. See—” He leaned toward Dave, an earnest hand held out. “This producer, Lyman Katz, he tells me I’m a standout. I’m photo hygienic, all right? I’m big and rugged and sexy, okay, I’m another Nick Nolte? And if I ever come to L.A., look him up—this Lyman Katz, I mean. So I wasn’t working. I was laying around the house dreaming about being a movie star. And Jemmie went to earn a few bucks from Hetzel to buy groceries with.” Engstrom shook his head. “What a jackass I was.”
“And she met Vaughn Thomas at Hetzel’s?”
“Strutting around like a little rooster, with all these guns strapped to him,” Engstrom said, “and bragging how rich he was, how his old man owns this big business in L.A., and how little Vaughn is going to inherit it all and give it to Hetzel for ARAMMO—the Aryan America Movement.”
“Why didn’t you break it up?” Dave said. “You’re certainly bigger and stronger than he was.”
“I tried. I knew something was going on. Only I had the wrong dude. I thought it was Barney Craig. He and Clarice had broke up, and I thought he was
making out with Jemmie, and I got drunk one night and beat the shit out of Barney at the Old Corral, and then I came home and tried to beat up Jemmie. Only I passed out after about one wild swing, and she took little Mike and ran to Hetzel’s, and when I woke up the next morning they was gone. Her and Mike and Vaughn. Hetzel was mad as hell. He’s a man looks cool all the time, acts cool all the time, but it’s banked fires with old George, you bet. He’s a wounded bear when he gets mad. Makes your skin crawl.”
“You figured they’d come to L.A.,” Dave said, “and you came after them?”
Engstrom nodded glumly. “Couldn’t find them, though, could I? Shit, there’s about ten thousand Thomases in the phone book. This is a big—I mean B-I-G”—he wrote the letters in the air—“town. I finally looked up Lyman Katz and says, ‘Here I am. I decided to take you up on your offer.’ I could see he never expected to see me again, but he asks me in for a drink, and says things are slow right now, sorry. Hell, I’m broke. Does he offer me a loan? No way. But he needs help with the house. It’s huge. In the Hollywood Hills. So what the hell, I’m his houseman, okay? Then somebody breaks in and steals everything, and guess what? Katz tells the police it was me. It wasn’t me, and he knows it, but he was protecting his cocaine supplier.”
“I read about this,” Dave said. “I thought your name was familiar. The case against you was dismissed.”
“Not before I spent a week in jail,” Engstrom said. “I’d still be there, but they found the stuff that was stole and busted the Colombian sucker that took it.”
“And that ended your movie career?” Dave said.
“So far,” Engstrom said. “But I’m doing all right.” He smirked. “Swanhilde thinks I’m better than Nick Nolte. She pays me five hundred a week to put on a tuxedo and drive her places and push the photographers off, or get into a white jacket and buzz around with drinks and food at parties. But I sleep a lot”—he wiggled his brows—“and not alone. Every man in America wants to sleep where I sleep.”
The sound of car doors closing out on the street, happy cries of greeting drifted out to the terrace. Dave wondered who in the world Swanhilde was. He’d have to ask Cecil.
“You did find Vaughn,” he said. “How?”
“When I walked out of jail that morning, I stood on the sidewalk taking big breaths of air, to get the stink of the place out of my lungs. And there, right across the street, Jemmie comes out of the Hall of Records. She walks to the curb and stands looking at the cars. She’s waiting to be picked up, right? I’m ready to dodge across the street against the light, but the traffic’s too heavy and moving too fast. Then Vaughn rolls up in that red sports car of his, and she gets in, and they drive away.”
From beyond the open French doors to the terrace came sounds of shoes on stairs, echoing conversation, too bright, too high-pitched, ricochets of merriment.
Engstrom went on. “I flagged a taxi and followed them home. I wanted to talk to Jemmie, apologize to her for not working, drinking all day, getting mean with her—tell her I want her back, her and Mike, the way we was before. But not with Vaughn there. I’d go back the next day.”
“Only Vaughn was still there,” Dave said. “You had a fight with him, and the apartment manager threatened to call the police and you ran off. But you came back and hung around the neighborhood when you could. You talked to little Mike. What about last night? Did you go again last night?”
Engstrom squinted. “Last night—hell no. Why?”
“Somebody went through that apartment, shoving furniture around. Somebody pushed the apartment manager off the balcony. Killed him. I figure you could do both.”
“I was here last night,” Engstrom said, “watching TV in my room. I went to bed early so’s to get up early.”
“Can you prove it?” Dave said.
“Can you prove I wasn’t?” Engstrom said.
Well-dressed people, smiling, suntanned, most of them in dark glasses, began to come out onto the terrace.
“What was she doing at the Hall of Records?” Dave said.
Engstrom made a face. “Filing for divorce.”
“She told you that? At the apartment that day?”
“First thing out of her mouth,” Engstrom said. “We was through, it was all over, she was getting a divorce, and she never wanted to see me or talk to me again.” He blew out air, gloomily, then suddenly stood up. “Jesus. Vaughn’s out of the way, now. I ought to go to her.” He gazed unhappily at the gathering party crowd. “Shit—wouldn’t you know?” His eyes begged Dave. “Can you go there, tell her I’m coming?”
Dave said, “She’s not there. She’s run away, Dallas.”
“No.” He paled. His eyes narrowed. “Jesus—where to?”
“I thought you might be able to tell me.”
“Shit—I don’t know.” He held his arms out, helplessly, and let them drop. “I suppose Winter Creek, wouldn’t she? I mean, it’s where she was raised, went to school, all that. Winter Creek’s all she knows.”
“You say she and her father are estranged,” Dave said. “Has she any other family?”
“Not family. She might go to Barney—only I don’t guess so, now that him and Clarice broke up.” Engstrom’s low brow wrinkled. “Who else—Hetzel? No—I don’t know.” He waved distractedly at some party guests, flashed them a grin, and scowled at Dave. “What do you want with her?”
“She knows who killed Vaughn, or she knows why he was killed, and in either case she’s in danger.”
“I’ll go.” Engstrom set the bottle on the terrace rail. “She’s still my wife. It’s my job to protect her.” He loped off. Dave went after him, against the incoming tide of new arrivals. A glorious tall blonde in white chiffon swept past, white-gloved arms raised, and braying for attention.
Swanhilde? He caught up to her. “Excuse me.” She stopped and stared, at first coldly, then with a hint of warmth. He didn’t know what it meant, but while he had her attention he gave his name, showed his license, and told a half truth. “I’m looking into a missing persons matter. Your houseman, Dallas Engstrom, may be a witness. Now, he tells me he was busy here last Sunday. Helping the caterer. You had a party. Is he remembering correctly?”
“There’s nothing wrong with his memory.” She laughed and turned away. “But he’s a little weak on truth-telling.” Her amazing cobalt blue eyes studied Dave again. As if he were edible. “The party was on a Sunday, all right, but not last Sunday. It was the Sunday before, Mr.—”
“Brandstetter,” he said.
“Brandstetter.” She smiled again, touched her lips with her tongue, and winked. “I’ll remember that.” Then she was off, shouting, “Dallas, where’s the fucking quartet?”
6
LAUREL CANYON BOULEVARD CLIMBS and does a lot of bending too—like the road to the Combat Zone. But though it’s not that much wider, it’s a hell of a lot busier, and the traffic held his attention. He was trying to move fast, without success. He had to figure Dallas Engstrom, not a regular commuter to Los Angeles, would take the obvious route to Winter Creek—the San Diego Freeway, busiest of them all, where traffic often slowed to a crawl, sometimes halted altogether. Dave remembered back roads that would cut forty-five, fifty minutes off the time. He didn’t want to lose that advantage by stopping at home, but it couldn’t be helped.
He had swung in at Horseshoe Canyon Trail, shifted into first, and set the Jaguar nosing upward when he saw the flash of yellow surfer trunks at a crossroads. He braked the Jaguar so the tires squealed. He pulled the car onto a tilted road shoulder, killed the engine, yanked the brake, jumped out. “Hey,” he shouted, and ran down the road toward the kid, who threw him a startled look, saw who he was, turned, and took to his dirty naked heels, not down the road, but through brushy yards, tree-grown vacant lots, into a ravine thick with scrub oak, pine, and fern. He was gone in seconds. Dave stood panting on the wooden walk to somebody’s house, unsound in wind and limb, too old to follow.
Minutes later, he eased the car down
into the brick yard where Cecil’s van stood nearest the French windows of the front building. He pulled in beside it, hurried around the shingled end to cross the patio, and found Cecil sitting on the bench that clasped the oak. He sat bent double, arms folded across his flat belly. Dave went to him, crouched, touched his hanging head.
“What’s wrong? Shall I call an ambulance?”
“No.” Cecil groaned and shook his head miserably. “Son of a bitch.” He lifted his head, grimacing. “Street kids. Been away too long. I wasn’t ready. Kicked me right in the balls. Oh, shit. I liked to die here.”
“The one in the yellow trunks,” Dave said.
“That one.” Cecil nodded miserably. Slowly, painfully, he sat straight, drew in a shaky breath, tenderly clasped his crotch. His white jeans were dirty from the fall he’d taken. He rocked forward and backward, hoping to ease the ache. “I got back from seeing Neil O’Neil just in time to find this kid fooling with the mailbox out by the road. I yelled at him, he ran in here, and I followed him. I wanted to catch him for you. A mistake. A bad mistake.” Now he bent with a whimper of pain, and from under the bench picked up Dave’s wallet, and handed it to him.
“He brought it back?” Dave opened it. The cash was gone. But the credit cards were all in place. Driver’s license, Medicare card, gun permit, everything. A slip of paper fluttered to the bricks. He picked it up. The handwriting was bad, the ballpoint pen was nearly dry of ink, but by squinting he could read it. The lady with the little kid you was asking about she bought a ticket to Winter Creek. Dave laughed.
“What’s funny?” Cecil said.
“A day late.” Dave helped Cecil up off the bench, and supporting him along, helped him cross the humpy, leaf-strewn bricks to the cookshack. “And five hundred dollars short.” He opened the screen, unlocked the solid door. “He hangs around that bus station. I guess he sees everything that goes on there.” Dave eased Cecil down on a chair at the table, went to the counter, where twenty bottles gleamed, and poured him a stiff brandy. “He knew where Jemmie went, but instead of telling me, he stole my wallet. Now he returns it, and doesn’t forget to give me the information I wanted. When I’ve chased all over the map to find it for myself.” He set the blister glass in front of Cecil, who sat with his face on his arms on the deal table. “Drink that.” He probed a cupboard. “Here’s codeine left over from that last bout I had with the dentist.” He popped the cover of the little amber container, shook a fat white pill into Cecil’s mutely outstretched hand. “Together, they should kill the pain.”
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning: 11 (The Dave Brandstetter Mysteries) Page 6