Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery (Dave Brandstetter Mysteries (University of Wisconsin Press))

by Joseph Hansen

  Dave followed. “He paid you. Right?”

  “I’m dying, Mr. Brandstetter. Of cancer.” The mouth twitched bleakly. “That can be very expensive. . . . Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m pressed for time.”

  “Just one more thing,” Dave said. “The man’s name. This writer.”

  “He introduced himself as Smith,” Kohlmeyer said. “But on his check it said Chalmers. Lloyd Chalmers.”

  Dave came in by the back door and used the extension phone on the kitchen wall. There was no sound in the empty house but the drip of rain from his coat onto the waxed brick floor, while the desk sergeant in Pima connected him to Herrera’s home phone. When the police captain picked up the receiver Dave heard television gunshots and the rattle of hoofs. Herrera sounded sore at being interrupted. And he evidently could see the set from where his phone was, because he gave something his attention besides Dave. Until Dave got the story out. Then he said:

  “It’s wrong. Some kind of lie. Chalmers is a big man, a busy man. He wouldn’t go nosing around L. A. for dirt. He’d hire somebody.”

  “He wouldn’t be so big or so busy if he lost the election. And he was losing it. A couple million bucks in building contracts. Junior college. Freeway. It was too important to trust to some slimy professional. What would keep the professional from turning around and blackmailing Chalmers, then, for the way he’d won?”

  “Yeah . . .” Herrera didn’t like it but he bought it. “Yeah, you put it that way, it makes sense.”

  “Ask Chalmers,” Dave said. “Ask him if he didn’t tell Olson to quit the race for mayor or he’d wreck him.”

  “With some twenty-six-year-old snapshots of a couple teen-age boys blowing each other on a beach?”

  “You’re a law-enforcement agent,” Dave said. “You don’t shock. Olson’s radio audience would be shocked. Or Olson thought so, which is what matters.”

  “Shit!” Herrera was unhappy. “Look, I don’t see what you expect to get. You want to find Olson. Do you think he’d tell Chalmers where he was going?”

  “Maybe Chalmers told him where to go.”

  “Yeah. To hell.” Herrera’s laugh was short and not a success. He obviously didn’t feel funny. He felt trapped. “Look, Brandstetter, I can’t go to a man like Lloyd Chalmers and accuse him of blackmail. He’s—he’s the mayor of this town, for Christ sake.”

  “Yeah,” Dave said quietly. “Sure. Okay. I’ll handle it myself. Tomorrow. I’ll bring Kohlmeyer. If he lives. All I ask of you is to be around when Chalmers explains.” He hung up.

  13

  He hung up the wet coat on the dark service porch, mopped up the rain puddle with a big pink cellulose sponge, then made himself a drink, lit a cigarette and stood telling himself he had to eat. He didn’t feel like driving to Romano’s. Too far in the drizzle. He opened the big copper-toned refrigerator. The white emptiness inside was dazzling. He looked into cupboards. A dusty can of artichoke hearts. He’d shut himself up here too long with his grief. Nothing left to eat. He closed the cupboard.

  Behind him a voice said, “There’s a place that barbecues chickens on Melrose. You want me to go?”

  The only light burning in the kitchen was a dim fluorescent tube over a built-in range deck. An edge of the brick chimney kept it from touching whoever it was who had parted the shutter doors from the dining space. But it was a very young voice. With a trace of Mexican. He knew it.

  “Anselmo?” he said.

  The boy stepped grinning into the light. Mop of black hair. Face round, brown, smooth as an Aztec pot. Five feet six. Hip-hugger pants of cream corduroy, printed with tiny pink and blue flowers. Fringed yellow calfskin boots to the knees. Puff-sleeved paisley shirt open damn near to the navel. Single gold crescent earring. Loops of beads. A strong and dusky smell of incense.

  “I got my Yamaha outside.”

  “Your Yamaha will rust,” Dave said. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you get in?”

  “Madge Dunstan was in the shop today. She told my mom you were making the scene again. I wanted to see you. I been wanting to ever since . . . a long time. I tried to call you at your office but the line was always busy. They said leave a number but I didn’t have no number to leave. I was all over. I have this gig, delivering stuff. Then I thought I’ll just come here and wait for you. Rod gave me a key one time, you know, to get something for him for the shop—”

  “And you forgot to give it back?”

  Dark lashes lowered, head lowered, voice lowered. “I didn’t exactly forget.”

  “No? Look, what’s this all about, Anselmo? I’m kind of tired tonight.” He was. It had been a long, discouraging day. He felt old. Yet now, inside him, something young and very alert got to its feet. He knew why, and was surprised and not pleased. “Some other time?”

  “Aw . . .” The black eyes begged. “You got to eat. You’re hungry. I’m hungry. I been waiting here a long time. If I get the chicken, we can talk while we eat.”

  Dave sighed. It was a mistake and he knew it was a mistake but he took bills from his wallet and laid them in the small, brown, not very clean hand. “You win. Get french fries too, and anything else you think might taste good.”

  “Sí. Okay. Ten minutes, I’ll be back.”

  The boots went away soft and quick. The front door closed. Outside, the motorbike spluttered into life and snarled off. Then there was only the whisper of the rain. For a moment Dave frowned at the place where the boy had stood. Then he finished his drink in a long swallow, set the glass down, and began assembling the coffeemaker. . . .

  Anselmo’s mother had worked for Rod for a long time. A scrawny little woman with a bad temper, who refused to speak English, she could do anything with a power sewing machine. Fast and right. Sometime she’d had a husband. And six kids. All were gone now except Anselmo, a late arrival, his mother old enough to be his grandmother. She brought him with her to the shop, where he would spend the day dressing himself up in scraps of bright cloth. He’d been four, five, six then. Big-eyed, solemn. His mother had rattled Spanish abuse at him when he got underfoot. Rod had ignored him. It wasn’t that Rod disliked children. He never saw them. They didn’t exist.

  In those days, ten, twelve years ago, Dave had enjoyed dropping in at the shop. It was a fine place to be. Rod’s ideas had begun to catch on. There was excitement, happiness, promise in the air. There began to be more hired hands too, and Dave had felt sorry for the little kid lost in the turmoil. He’d made it a habit to take him down to the corner for an orange drink or an ice cream bar, to bring him small puzzles in cellophane from supermarket racks, crayons, a coloring book. They became friends.

  Then Anselmo started school and they met less often. But now and then Dave would find him at the shop late afternoons. Reading comic books. Dave kept him supplied. On his eighth birthday he took him to a Dodgers game, on his ninth to Disneyland. Then the shop moved to glossy new quarters. Assurance took the place of excitement. Dave stopped going. Now and then Rod spoke of Anselmo. Mostly about trouble between the boy and his mother.

  Then he appeared. At a party Rod threw for his staff. At a place with green lawns and a blue pool and low white buildings. Twelve, maybe thirteen, Anselmo had been by then, a dark smudge along his childish upper lip, his voice deepening. He had stuck close by Dave that afternoon. Very close. Dave had all but forgotten. The cabana by the pool. Himself under the shower. The boy lurking by the lockers, staring and pretending not to stare. Meaningless at that age . . .

  The Yamaha came back. Dave set the tone arm on Bach partitas played by Glenn Gould and crossed the room and pulled open the front door. Under the wide roof overhang the boy shed a hooded plastic raincoat, draped it across the glinting little machine and came toward Dave, grinning and holding out a wet brown paper sack.

  “Thanks. That was quick.” Dave turned inside.

  Anselmo stopped in the doorway. “My boots are wet.”

  “Take them off and bring them out here.” Dave slid plates from t
he warming oven. The sack held two small chickens, brown and varnished-looking, swathed in cellophane; a waxed-paper box of french fries; and four soft, leaky little paper cups of orange-colored sauce. He fixed the plates. Anselmo padded in in child-size white gym socks and set the boots by the oven. Dave looked at him. “Does your generation drink beer?”

  “My generation smokes grass,” Anselmo said. “The table looks nice. Like a picture. What’s the music?”

  “Would you believe the Rolling Stones?” Dave handed him the plates. “Go sit down. I’ll open myself a beer.” When he reached the table the boy had a chicken in both hands and half demolished. He grinned at Dave, chewing.

  “The Rolling Stones,” he scoffed.

  Dave smiled, sat down, poured Dos Equis, took a gulp of it and was suddenly hungry. The chicken tasted machine-made. The potatoes were limp and greasy. He had no faith in the Chalmers gambit. He was afraid he’d lost Olson—$150,000 worth. But he ate very nearly as ravenously as Anselmo, who, while he savaged the chicken, watched Dave across the table, steadily, unblinking, with big, dark, liquid, animal eyes. Then the skeletons were on the plates and Dave took them away and came back with coffee, and the boy said:

  “I sleep with it under my pillow.”

  Dave blinked. “What’s that?”

  “The key. Can I have a cigarette?”

  Dave slid the pack to him. “The key to this house? Why?” He lit a match.

  “Because you are here.” A flush darkened the brown, smooth face as the boy leaned to get the flame. When he sat back his eyes were anxious. “Does that bug you?”

  Dave stared. The match burned his fingers. He shook it out. “I . . . guess you’d better explain.”

  “Do you know what a love-in is? In the park, where the hippies go to do their thing? And they got rock bands make a lot of noise. And people wear”—he glanced down at himself and brought up a small smile—“what they want to. Lots of color. It feels good—”

  “It looks good,” Dave said, nodding.

  “And people give flowers to each other and feed each other and play drums and dance, you know?”

  “I’ve read about it,” Dave said.

  “And everybody says, ‘You’re beautiful,’ and you say it back. It don’t mean how your face is made or like that. It means how you are inside, man, you know? Loving, loving everybody and everything, feeling good about flowers and birds and babies and like that, about everything . . . You understand?”

  “I’ll have to go to the next one,” Dave said.

  “No.” Anselmo scowled. “No. It’s a fake. Don’t go. They think all this—what I told you—is the way it is. But it ain’t. Oh, maybe for a few people. But mostly they’re freaks there. Like fat, pimply girls. They might give you flowers and smile but it’s not love-in love they want. They want to be balled. Nobody in their school or anyplace will ball them. They’re too much dogs. They come alone because nobody will bring them. And they tell you, like everybody, ‘You’re beautiful,’ and all that. But if you hang around them, pretty soon they grab your hand and put it under their shirt or up their crotch. It is sad. They don’t know nothing about love like what a love-in is supposed to be.” He picked up his cup of coffee and set it down again and looked at Dave and said, “You do. You’re the only one I know. It’s kind. And giving. And it don’t try to get nothing.”

  “The Pauline ideal,” Dave said. “You should be a priest, Anselmo.”

  “Shit,” Anselmo said. “They fake it too. I know them. It’s money they want. And to run people. Anyway, I like sex. I like it a lot. But not like I’ve got a faucet and somebody’s thirsty so they turn it on and drink and then turn it off and walk away. Like this cat in Venice Beach. I’m down there goofing and he takes me to this pad where they got mattresses and pillows all over the floor and everybody is laying around naked and blowing pot and, like, stroking each other. Real gentle, you know?”

  He sat forward and the beads rattled against the table. “Kerista, love by touching. It feels good. And everybody there is real cool. Only not me. I’m not hip to the scene. Right away my cock is up. And then he’s doing it to me. Well, he’s a nice guy. Beautiful. I want to do it to him too. Only he won’t let me. So . . . I come and he goes. I went back to Venice four, five times looking for him. Noplace. Then I ran into him in a head shop on Fairfax. He tried to duck out but when he knew I saw him he gave me this shit-eating grin and split. He was with this chick. It made me feel bad. . . .

  “Almost as bad as the woman I went with first. My first time. She was on this bus I used to ride home from school, and she had this house and these little kids, and she took me there and laid me. But good. And it went on. And then one time there’s this man there when I come. And she runs me off. Says it’s her husband. I’m fourteen. I believe her. Then I find out he’s just a new stud. She has new studs every couple months. It made me feel bad. . . .”

  The music stopped. Dave rose and turned the record. Numbly. He brought coffee from the kitchen, refilled the cups, sat down, gave Anselmo another cigarette, lit it for him, lit one for himself. The boy went on:

  “It happens to me all the time. I met this guy on Hollywood Boulevard. Not a kid. A man, like you. Nice. I went with him because I liked him. And afterward, he tried to give me money. Five dollars. Shit!” Despair twisted the childish mouth. “I cry. Every time. Lay on my bed with my face in the pillow and cry like a little kid. And do you know what I keep saying when I’m crying? I never even knew I was doing it at first. ‘Dave,’ I say, ‘Dave.’ “

  “Anselmo, if this is a put-on . . .” Dave began.

  “No!” The boy shouted it, meant it. “I been in love with you from six years old. Sure, I didn’t know it was love. I didn’t know what it was. Just a feeling like you were the best, you know? The greatest. I used to wait for you to come to the shop. And then after a while you didn’t come no more. But I didn’t forget. And when Rod threw that party and my mom told me you’d be there, I begged her to take me. To see you. I had to ditch school and she didn’t like it. But she let me go because I bugged her so. And then I knew I was in love with you. That day.” His eyes were accusing. “I bet you don’t even remember.”

  “I remember,” Dave said.

  “You took a shower. You were beautiful, naked. I wanted to get in with you.” Anselmo shrugged. “I didn’t know nothing. Like what to do. I just wanted to be with you and put my arms around you and kiss you. Little-kid stuff. I mean, I was jacking off all the time, by then, but I didn’t connect it up. Sex. With love, with what people in love did. Anyway, there was Rod.”

  “You understood about that?”

  “Not too good. My mom told me. She put it pretty vague and I was dumb. I didn’t really understand, but I knew you don’t bust up somebody’s thing, dig? So I just said to myself, ‘Forget it,’ and looked for somebody else. But they were all bad trips, freak-outs. And I kept remembering you. I couldn’t help it. Then Rod gave me the key that time and I came in here. Just walked in. My heart was beating loud and I was shaking, scared. I had it in my head you’d be here. I was like fifteen then and I didn’t have no control. It would have been wrong. Because of Rod. I understood by then. But I was out of my head wanting you. It had to happen. Only”—Anselmo laughed at himself, softly—“you weren’t here.” He watched his small, chicken-greasy fingers turn the cigarette in the ashtray. He shook his head, shamed. “You know what I did? Took off my clothes and got in your bed and pretended you were there. Kids do crazy things.”

  “One of them is doing a crazy thing right now.”

  Anselmo didn’t hear. “I came back and did it every time I could for a while,” he said. “Then—I don’t know—it only made me feel worse. But I kept the key. . . .” He drank coffee and set down the cup. “Then Rod died. The funeral was the first time I got to see you in years. You were still very beautiful to me. But you were hurting too bad. I couldn’t say nothing to you then. So I waited as long as I could and then I tried to call you but you didn’t
answer the phone. I came here and knocked but you didn’t open up. I used the key. It was very dusty in here. And you were laying on the bed in your clothes and you looked right at me and you didn’t even see me. I said hello, or something, and you didn’t say nothing. It was scary.”

  “I don’t remember,” Dave said, “but I’m sorry.”

  “No. I was a jerk. I thought I knew what it was to be sad. I didn’t know.”

  “Try not to find out,” Dave said.

  “But today, when Madge said you were okay and working again and all that, I came back. You got to have somebody.” He was solemn. His eyes were wide. “I want it to be me.”

  Dave drew a deep breath. “How old are you, Anselmo?”

  Pride. “I’ll be eighteen my next birthday.”

  “And I’ll be forty-five. Look . . . you’re very beautiful. You must know that. I want you. You must also know that. But I’m not going to bed with you. Because there’s something I know that you don’t. It would be another bad trip for you. Maybe the worst.”

  “Why? You mean because I’m a dumb kid? You’d get tired of me?”

  “You’d get tired of me first. My books, my music. And I’m a morose bastard. Rod used to say so. He was right. Find somebody young, Anselmo. If you’ll forget me, that won’t be so hard. Somebody to keep you laughing and happy, the way you should be at eighteen.”

  “I won’t be happy.” The boy stood up, shaking his head. “Not without you. I’d rather have you for just one time than anybody else forever. Because . . . I don’t know what is this ‘morose,’ but you are good and kind and . . . there isn’t nobody else like you in the whole world and I’ve wanted you for . . . all my life. I don’t need to laugh a lot. I’ll listen to your music. I’ll read your books. . . .” He came around the table and stood beside Dave’s chair. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Dave looked away. “I want you to go home.”

  “Why? The law? You think I’d fink on you?”