“They’ll tell you,” Phil said in a dead boy voice. He sat down on the hard gray tire of the mixer. “Tomorrow. The state auditors. They wouldn’t have been in for another six weeks. If Lloyd hadn’t been killed.” He hung his head again.
“It made you very sick, didn’t it,” Dave said. “Learning you were going to get caught just after you’d made sure of the money. By killing Fox Olson.”
Phil’s head snapped up. Panic in the blue eyes, dumb panic. “I didn’t. I never did.”
“You intercepted a letter from him meant for Gretchen. I don’t know all that was in it. But one thing I’m sure of. His address was in it . . . his address in Bell Beach. Much as he probably wanted to—I gather he was a goodhearted guy—he couldn’t give you the money living. But dead he was worth fifty thousand dollars to you.”
“No.” Phil stood up. “No. You can’t prove it.”
“There’s a mark on your jacket, where you leaned on the rail of the pier to throw the gun in the water. The paint is old. It’s flaking off. And you tracked sawdust there. Police labs can get you coming and going.”
Phil’s eyes were almost empty now. The hard, sweated muscles hung like meat in a market. The words fell out of a loose mouth. “He was going to kill himself anyway. That was why he had the gun out, cleaning it. He felt good when I came. He thought nobody gave a damn. ‘Let’s get out of this room,’ he said, ‘let’s take a walk,’ and he put a note on the door. I put the gun in my pocket. . . . He was going to kill himself anyway.”
“So that made it all right?”
The intelligence went away. “I didn’t do it.” Then, very fast and very surprisingly, there was a hatchet in his hand. He squatted for it, came up with it and swung it at Dave’s head in the same single motion. Dave ducked, rammed his head into the boy’s belly, grabbed his knees, lifted. Phil’s head slammed back against the mixer barrel. Dave felt him go limp. The little ax dropped. The boy slumped to the ground.
Dave tied him up with surveyor’s twine and went to get Herrera.
22
He reached home at seven, dropped his clothes, fell into bed. He expected nightmares. None came. Maybe because they couldn’t hope to compete with actual persons living and dead. He woke with afternoon sun in his face. He wasn’t alone. Anselmo lay next to him, small, naked, warm. He had wanted twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sleep. He ought to have repossessed that key. Anselmo kissed him with a hungry child’s mouth. He still smelled of incense.
“You need a shave,” he said.
Dave muttered, “Surgery patients get shaved. Not rape victims.” Numb with sleep he turned, took the boy in his arms, returned the kiss. “This is a mistake, Anselmo. I warned you before.”
“I got a very hard head.” Anselmo laughed softly. He propped himself on an elbow and looked down into Dave’s face with black solemn eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I got to do it with you once. I got to. After that you can say no, if you want to.”
“Oh, sure.” Dave nodded gravely. “It will be much easier then.”
“Aw . . .” Anselmo lowered dark lashes. His small finger traced a circle in the hair on Dave’s chest. “I don’t mean to be bad for you.”
“Go ahead.” Dave pulled him down. “Be bad for me.”
Anselmo was in the shower and Dave was shaving when the doorbell buzzed. He was naked. He grabbed a flannel shirt and tucked its tails into old corduroys and went to the door barefooted. It could only be Madge. Her feelings wouldn’t be hurt if he ran her off on some pretext. It was Madge. But not only.
“Davey?” She breezed in, pulling off gloves. Smart in lean Scotch tweed. “It’s cocktail time. And this is Miss Levy.”
Miss Levy was a surprise. She fit exactly Dave’s twenty-year prescription for what ailed Madge. She was past thirty-five, plain and slightly cross-eyed. But she had a nice smile and good taste in clothes and after she’d shaken Dave’s hand her gaze went to the books and records. Knowingly.
“Well . . . uh . . . it’s nice to see you,” Dave said.
Madge cocked a quizzical eyebrow. But Anselmo answered her question. He started singing in the shower. Loud and clear. “ ‘All the lonely people . . . where do they all come from?’ “ Dave looked at the ceiling. But Madge began to talk. Fast. She steered Miss Levy far away to look at the Andy Warhol silk-screen in the dining space. Dave closed the bedroom shutter doors.
“Care to join me in the kitchen while I make magic with gin and things?” He hustled them ahead of him, Madge eyeing him without amusement.
“What a stunning kitchen,” Miss Levy said. “The whole house. It’s like something out of a magazine.”
“Several magazines,” Madge said. “Several times.”
“Rod Fleming designed it.” Dave got ice. “He was a friend of mine.” He rattled cubes into a narrow pitcher and heard the shower stop. “Uh . . . excuse me for a second, will you?” He put the pitcher into Madge’s hands and started past Miss Levy. “If you want to carry on, the gin is down there in—”
Too late. Anselmo came into the kitchen. Running. Naked. “Listen, Dave. Now let’s do it like—” His grin vanished. He tried to stop. He skidded on the wax bricks and sat down, mouth open, water trickling down his smooth brown Aztec face out of his black mop of hair. His eyes got very wide. “Oh, shit,” he whispered. He looked at Madge. He looked at Miss Levy. He looked at Dave. Then he scrambled to his feet and ran.
“Uh . . .” Dave said.
“We appear . . .” Madge set the pitcher down. She spoke lightly but with edge. “. . . to have arrived at an awkward moment. Shall we beat an orderly retreat?”
“Look, Miss Levy,” Dave began. “Into even the best-ordered households—”
But Miss Levy sidled past him and fled.
“Don’t try to explain.” Madge caressed his face in passing. With menace. “I’ll think of something.” She retrieved gloves and bag from a chair. “Though it won’t be easy.” Her look said he was a traitor and a hypocrite. “ ‘Find someone your own age,’” she quoted him. “ ‘Someone of your own background.’ Hah!” She followed Miss Levy into the sunshine. And paused. “Look at that gorgeous car.”
He looked. It came slowly up the street, rumbling like a big cat’s purr. Red. Low slung. A Ferrari. He shut the door and ran for the bedroom. Anselmo was staring out the window, zipping his tight little flowered pants.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. . . .”
“Forget it.” Dave kissed the dark wet hair.
Anselmo hugged him and nipped his throat. “Let’s do it some more.”
Dave laughed. “There’s someone else coming now. We not only can’t do it some more. I’m going to ask you to split.”
“Aw . . .” But he gave a little shrug then and sat on the floor and tugged on the soft fringed boots. He stood and stamped and his eyes were round and solemn. “Anyway . . . thank you for doing it with me once.”
“No, don’t do that. Don’t thank me.”
“It . . . wasn’t good for you too?” Anselmo worried.
“It was very good.” The boy had draped his beads on a lampshade. Dave took them down and hung them around his neck. He turned him by the straight little shoulders, opened the door to the patio. Anselmo didn’t go.
“But him,” he said, “the one with the crazy car. He will be good for you, no? He looks like Rod.”
Dave said, “He looks like Rod. The rest I don’t know yet.” The buzzer sounded. “Adios, querido” He gave the hard little butt a pat. And Anselmo went, small and silent and not looking back. For a bleak moment Dave stared after him. Then he went to open the front door.
“I tried your office,” Doug Sawyer said. “I found a Mr. Brandstetter all right. But he wasn’t you.”
“I’m glad he sent you,” Dave said. “Come in. Drink?”
“Merci.” Sawyer followed him to the kitchen. “According to Captain what’s-his-name—he of the little black cigars —I’d have come to a bad end if it weren’t for you.”
While he poured ice-melt from the pitcher and replaced it with gin and vermouth, Dave said, “When you came in Ma Kincaid’s back door calling his name, I decided you hadn’t killed him. It made me wonder who had.”
Sawyer watched him turn the ice with a glass rod. “You make it sound simple.”
“It was crude”—Dave took glasses from the freezer—“but not simple.” He poured and handed Sawyer a glass. No olive. Rod had hated olives.
“Thanks,” Sawyer said. “May I take you to dinner? It’s not much in the way of repayment for having one’s life saved.”
“It will do for a start,” Dave said.
Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery (Dave Brandstetter Mysteries (University of Wisconsin Press)) Page 16