Death Bed

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “I know, I know,” Amber responded.

  “So tell me about him. Tell me about the ‘old days.’”

  There was a pause. “Okay,” Amber said after a moment. She walked back to the bed and sat down. I slid to the floor and propped my back against the wall. Amber and the sheet behind her stared at me from across the room.

  “When did you first meet Karl?”

  “About a century ago. He was a student at Cal and I’d just gotten out of Lowell High. I decided I wanted to check the action over at Berkeley, to see what all the commotion was about, you know? I got a job in a cafeteria, Robbie’s, right on Telegraph Avenue. Karl ate there a lot, and we got to talking. But that’s all it was, at first. Just someone to talk to. He was a big man in Berkeley, you know. Had his name in the Daily Cal every day, it seemed like. A real hero. I was nothing. I could tell he kind of dug me, but we didn’t live together till he got back from Canada.”

  “When did he go to Canada?”

  “About a year after I first saw him. Seventy, seventy-one, along in there.”

  “Why’d he go?”

  “Well, I thought at first he went to avoid the draft, but I guess there was more to it.”

  “How much more?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. There was some kind of trouble, I know that. All of a sudden there were a lot of really creepy-looking guys around asking questions about Karl. And Karl just disappeared. I didn’t see him again for over four years.”

  “What was the trouble about?”

  “I don’t really remember. I was doing a lot of drugs in those days, you know? Acid, mostly. Crystal, too. I don’t remember much about that time. I think someone got hurt and they thought Karl had something to do with it. But Karl never really talked about it, even later.”

  “Did you know any of Karl’s friends while he was in Berkeley?”

  Amber shrugged. “He was always with a bunch of people, but Karl was the only one who paid any attention to me. The rest of them didn’t pay attention to anything but their own bullshit. They were real far out, that’s for sure. Sit for hours over a cup of coffee and do nothing but talk. Wouldn’t tip, either.”

  “What’d they talk about?”

  “The war, mostly. Vietnam.”

  Absurdly, Amber added the last word to make it clear to someone who had lived through more than one of them exactly which war she was talking about. My self-image underwent a slight adjustment.

  “Can you remember any names at all?” I prodded. Amber seemed to be losing interest in me and in the conversation. She hadn’t given me anything I could use yet, and if there was nothing there to get I had a feeling it was going to be a long time before I made the acquaintance of Karl Kottle.

  Her brow furrowed in small, tight tucks. “I don’t … sure. Howard was there, then. I remember Howard. No one else, though. The rest of them were just a bunch of motor mouths to me.”

  “Who’s Howard?”

  “Oh, he’s Karl’s best friend. They went to Canada together and everything. When I saw Karl after they got back, he and Howard were rooming together, out in the Mission.”

  “Twenty-sixth Street?”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “How’d you know?”

  “I’m a detective; I’m supposed to know. What’s Howard’s last name?”

  “Renn. Howard Renn.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “I don’t know for sure. He used to be a poet, I think. At least that’s what he said he was.”

  “Poets are usually something else, too, if they like to eat.”

  “Well, if Howard does anything else I don’t know what it is. Maybe they’re paying for bullshit these days.”

  “They pay premiums for that. Were the cops in Berkeley after Howard, too?”

  “I don’t think so, but I can’t remember for sure.”

  My back started hurting so I shifted position. When I pressed my hand to the floor it felt grit and something else, something warm and sticky. I pulled it away fast. “How did you meet Karl after he came back from Canada?”

  “I just ran into him by accident, out at Stern Grove, at a Ravi Shankar concert. It was weird, you know? Really blew me away.”

  I told her I could imagine how weird it really was. “Did you and Karl start living together then?”

  “Yeah. Howard got married, so I moved in with Karl.”

  “How long did that last?”

  “A couple of years. Till I got so strung out Karl gave up on me.”

  Amber’s eyes glazed, taking on that distinctive aspect of someone looking inside rather than out. I kept trying to pluck memories out of her drug-fuzzed mind. “Strung out on what?” I asked.

  “Speed, mostly. Karl and those people he ran with were so high-energy I just had to have something to help me keep up, you know? I guess I overdid it.” She laughed helplessly. “Amber-dextrous, they used to call me. Dexedrine, you know? Well, one day Karl just moved out. He tried real hard to get me straight, but I just wasn’t together enough.”

  “Where did he move to?”

  “I never knew. That whole bunch he hung out with were kind of underground, you know? I think a few of them were hiding from the law, and a lot more were hiding from drug dealers they’d ripped off at some time or another. A heavy scene, you know? Not mellow at all. They were always very secret about where they crashed and what they were into. Frankly, they were all creeps, except Karl. After he left me, whenever I’d see one of them I’d ask about Karl but they always said they didn’t know where he was. They were lying, I’m sure. They didn’t like me much.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wasn’t into saving the world. I was busy enough trying to save myself, and I was screwing that up as it was.”

  “So you didn’t hang out with Karl again?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then you saw Karl Kottle a week ago?”

  She nodded.

  “Where?”

  “Right here. He came in with Howard and some other people. Just out of the blue. It was wild. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “What happened?”

  “We sat around, smoked some dope, goofed off.”

  She seemed about to tell me more when someone pounded loudly on the door. The voice behind it was rough and guttural. “Move your ass, baby,” it said.

  Amber leaned toward me and whispered. “If you want to talk some more I’ll need more money.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten, at least. It might be better if you got a camera, too. Then they won’t wonder what we’re doing.”

  I nodded and took two tens out and handed them over. Amber bounced up and trotted out, seeming lighter and even more graceful than before. She shut the door behind her and the room started to close in on me so I shut my eyes and tried to think of other things, but all I could think of was Amber and the sheet.

  When she came back Amber handed me a battered Instamatic with a flash cube on top. I looked it over. Two of the flashes had already been shot, and of the twelve pictures on the roll of film, ten had already been exposed. The last Edward Weston had apparently forgotten to take his negatives with him. I asked Amber for my change.

  “Lila didn’t have change. Lila never has change.”

  I opened my mouth to ask another question when Amber spoke again. “Maybe you better shoot a picture, so they won’t come in here. They look for the flash under the door.”

  I put my hand on the camera and fumbled for the shutter button and pressed it, aiming at nothing in particular. Light slapped my eyes and I blinked and turned away. I’ll probably do the same thing on Judgment Day. “You were telling me what happened when Karl came here to see you,” I reminded her.

  “Like I said, we smoked some dope Howard had with him, real heavy stuff, and everyone got silly, even Karl. Someone got a camera and one guy took off his clothes and everyone else did, too, except Karl. We started taking pictures of each other in various poses. S and M, B and D, all that. Faking it, y
ou know? Then they just left, like they were afraid to stay in one place too long.”

  “Who were the people with him?”

  “The girl they called Woody. I don’t know what the guy’s name was. He didn’t say much. I turned him on, though; I could tell that.”

  “Hey, Amber.” The door took another beating; the rough voice was back. “Luther’s here. Says he doesn’t have much time today.”

  Amber stood up and ran her hand over her hair to smooth it down. “You’ve got to go,” she whispered. “Luther’s a regular. He tips real well, twenty bucks sometimes, and I need the money.” She glanced in the little round mirror that was nailed over the table beside her. “Hey,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t look so hot when Karl was here, but I’m lots better today. Not bad, huh?”

  I agreed she wasn’t bad. She preened before me like she was on the Halston payroll and I was a big buyer in from Des Moines. “Take my picture,” she said. “Give it to Karl when you find him. Tell him it’s a present from me. Tell him I’d sure like to see him again.”

  I did what she asked. The pose she struck was sophisticated and knowing, not like Amber at all. I took the film cartridge from the camera and dropped it into my pocket and told Amber good-bye and left. On the way out I passed Luther. He was old and bald and fat. When I got to the street it was still raining. I raised my face to the clouds and let them wash me off.

  NINE

  It had gotten dark, which meant I should have gone home, but for some reason I didn’t want to. Maybe it was because there wasn’t anything waiting there for me except memories.

  I started walking, ambling slowly, feeling stalwart and brave to be out and about in the elements, alone and unafraid. The street lights turned the raindrops into molten pods, sparks from the anvil-black sky. The puddles seemed momentarily wounded by the drops, but they recovered quickly.

  I was supposed to have a date later that night with a woman I’d seen frequently over the past three months, but I was suddenly uninterested. We weren’t going anywhere, not together, and we both knew it. For various reasons neither of us was willing to expend the energy necessary to shove the relationship out of low gear and into something suitable for a long-range cruise. The price of that kind of energy has gone up lately, too.

  As I sloshed along Montgomery Street I began to consider the impression of Karl Kottle that was forming somewhere to the rear of my retinas. Smart. Idealistic. Energetic. Attractive to women. Leader of men. But not perfect. A kid who took the burden of a rich and famous father into the Berkeley of the sixties and couldn’t think of anything to do with it but toss it in the ditch.

  I didn’t have much trouble imagining what Karl had been like ten years ago as a campus radical. I’d seen a lot of them in those days, usually at the behest of the parents of kids who had climbed on for the ride to glory and had fallen off along the way. What I didn’t know was what Karl Kottle was like now. A lot of things can change in a decade. He might still be an extremist like Dellinger or he might have become a mainstreamer like Hayden or he just might want nothing more than to sell you a little policy of straight life so he could pocket the commission. I didn’t know, but I had a feeling I was going to find out pretty soon. Karl Kottle was still buried, but it had begun to look like a shallow grave.

  I went in the doorway of my building and shook the rain off my back, then walked up to the second floor. There shouldn’t have been a light on in my office, and the door with my name on it shouldn’t have been unlocked, and there shouldn’t have been a beautiful woman waiting all alone to see me at that hour of the evening.

  But there was.

  I hung up my raincoat and turned up the heat and greeted my guest. Her smile dried me off and made me warm before the furnace had a chance.

  “You look like a drowned rat,” she joked. Her eyes sparkled like the rain I had left on the streets outside. At the end of the sentence her voice slid into the lilt of the Deep South.

  “I feel like a stewed tomato. A cold stewed tomato,” I added, “which is the most disgusting thing there is.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me waiting like this. I convinced your secretary I was trustworthy.”

  “You must be a good convincer. Peggy still has doubts about Pope John.”

  “We’ll see,” she said ambiguously.

  I needed a drink and told her so and asked if she’d join me. She shook her head. I poured three fingers of Scotch into a glass that had originally come filled with grape jelly and toasted her silently. Even wet and cold and tired, I was prepared to spend the evening right where I was, as long as she stayed there with me. From behind Peggy’s desk I looked at her over the top of a typewriter.

  As the silence lengthened I saw that she wasn’t as self-assured as she’d originally seemed. As I sipped my drink I watched the jitters break out on her, watched the onset of that uniquely human dread of an encounter with one of its own.

  I was about to move things along when the phone rang. It was Amber. She asked if I was alone and I told her I wasn’t. She asked me to call her when I was, and left a number. I wrote it down and hung up.

  “Who are you?” I asked abruptly.

  The question startled her more than it should have; she must have been someone important. She pulled a Benson & Hedges package from her purse and got one out. She gave me a chance to light it for her, then lit it herself. The smoke she inhaled seemed to go directly to her breasts. “I’m Mrs. Maximilian Kottle,” she said. The words followed a stream of smoke to the ceiling.

  It was my turn to be startled, but I kept my mouth shut and acted like I’d known it all along. I learned how to do that in the courtroom; you never want to look surprised in the courtroom.

  I looked the woman over again, from my new perspective. She was ample, tall and round, but none of her was extra. Her dress was black and wispy, with white at the neck and waist and wrists. A single diamond winked at me from the notch at the base of her throat. Brown hair brushed her shoulders in thick, silken waves. Her forehead was broad and lineless. Her eyes were big enough to hide in till it was safe to come out.

  My inventory hadn’t passed unnoticed. She shifted nervously and reached into her purse again and took out a pair of glasses and put them on. The lenses were rimmed with thin gold wires and gave her a scholastic, pristine air that was belied by the rest of her. She smiled hesitantly and tried to meet my eyes but didn’t. “You expected someone older,” she said. “Everyone does; everyone who knows my husband.”

  It seemed strange that a woman of her position could be shy. Her smile got all tangled up in embarrassment and her glance flitted around the room like a fly that had avoided the first swat. She must have dealt with this a hundred times, starting with the day she told her mother the age of the man she was marrying, but she still wasn’t handling it well. But some issues never get easy: I still feel vaguely felonious whenever someone asks me why I’ve never married.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Kottle?” I asked.

  She leaned toward me, her heavy lashes shading her eyes like black awnings. “I don’t ordinarily care what people think about Max and me, Mr. Tanner. I know what most of them assume, and so does Max, and we think it’s funny, I guess, more than anything. Or maybe pathetic. But just so my position is clear to you, I want you to know that before I married Max I insisted that his lawyer draw up an agreement that said if Max and I ever got divorced, or if he died before me, all I would get would be two hundred thousand dollars, plus support for any children we might have.”

  I nodded to show I was familiar with antenuptial arrangements. They’re kind of tricky to draft. Lots of times they don’t hold up. Lots of times people know that before they sign them. I wasn’t sure it made any difference. “Did you and Kottle have any children?”

  “No. Not that we didn’t try,” she added firmly, a declaration of passion that she seemed compelled to make. “I signed that agreement willingly, Mr. Tanner; I have a copy of it right here, if you want to see it.”

>   I shook my head. “That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Kottle. I believe you. I always believe women at this time of night. It’s later on when I start to have problems.”

  I smiled to show it was a joke, but you’ve got to be careful these days; some women have given up humor till the ERA goes through.

  “I’m glad you know where I stand,” she said. “And you may call me Belinda.”

  “Why are you here, Belinda?”

  “I’m here about my husband, of course.”

  “I guessed as much. What about him?”

  “He told me he’d seen you.”

  “Did he?”

  “He also told me what he’d asked you to do.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes,” she said primly. “He did, Mr. Tanner.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I’m not sure how to put it. I’m here because I want you to be careful.”

  “Of what? Of whom?”

  She paused a moment. “Of Karl, I guess.”

  “Do you know Karl?”

  “No. I’ve never seen him.”

  “Then I don’t understand. Why are you so afraid of him?”

  “I’m not afraid of him. I’m just afraid for Max. For what might happen to him if you find Karl.”

  I let those words tour the room on their own for a while. Belinda Kottle seemed afraid, but then most of the people I see are afraid of something or other. Sometimes they’re afraid of me. “Maybe you’d better tell me exactly what’s bothering you,” I said softly.

  She sighed and leaned against the couch. “I’ll try. Oh, I shouldn’t even be here. Max will be furious. You won’t tell him, will you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Promise?”

  “No promises. Come on, Mrs. Kottle. What’s the problem?”

  She moved her large body this way and that, straining the threads of her dress, causing a hip to be crushed by the arm of her chair. One thigh appeared, round and white and firm, beneath a lacy black tent. I asked if she wanted a drink now. She shook her head. The telephone rang while I was pouring another for myself.