by Fred Zackel
Chapter 21
Smuggler's Cove is a little seacoast town south of the city and west of the airport. Its name goes back fifty years, its buildings almost as far. The houses are mostly wood frame worn by the wind and tired of the ocean. The people who live here have faces like driftwood.
Although it has a primo location along the coast, Smugglers Cove has never developed a Gold Coast. People, like water, seek their own level, and the lowlands were subdivided and civilized a long time ago. The hills were too steep for developers, and the summer fog kept the tourists away. Headlights are no good in a fog that lasts all summer.
Smuggler's Cove had a single shopping center. It wasn't much, a couple of dozen mom-n-pops and a family-owned supermarket. There was no Sears, no K-Mart, no Penney's, no Safeway, not even a Woolworth's. The mall wasn't landscaped, a capital crime in parts of California. Most people didn't bother locking their cars in the lot. The market manager probably kept coat hangers for anyone who did.
The mall was west of the coastal highway between two rugged promontories that stood a thousand feet high. A road circled those two cold rocks and the mall. Behind the mall, it skirted between sand dunes and the apartment building I wanted.
The apartment building wasn't much, either. A quarter of a century ago, someone had hollowed out a solid block of stucco, painted it like a sand castle, then partitioned it into a couple of dozen cave-like units. An outside landing had been tacked onto the second floor like an afterthought.
I took the access road between the apartments and the shopping mall. There were parking stalls on the building's backside. There were no backdoors, so the tenants had to walk around the apartment building to get inside. You could've bought any car in the wooden stalls for five hundred bucks. The majority would've gone for two hundred. Some a junker wouldn't tow for scrap. Only one stall was empty.
I parked curbside by the ocean. Every tenant had a carport, so there was plenty of street parking. The surf echoed against the rocky headlands, there was sand in the street, and the winds blew strong and constant.
A pair of seagulls flew in from the ocean, then flew up and over the roof. I looked over the blue water and white surf. There was a gold sun beyond. Surf on rock made a pleasant sound.
The building had weathered poorly. It looked tired. It faced the ocean as if it knew it was only a windbreak for a shopping center. Its walls were faded and chipped from blowing sand and salt air. There was the suggestion of a lawn, and the grass grew thin like hair on an old man's head. Nobody had plants outside their apartments. There were no hibachis, no briquettes, no bookshelf bricks, no welcome mats. You mind your own business when you live here.
The lobby was open to the public. The mailboxes said Jack Anatole lived in an end unit on the second floor. I started up the staircase, passing a ten-speed bicycle double-chained to the railing. Just another sign of the times.
There were hedges of ivy along the wall. Some leaves were gunmetal grey. Up close, they were plastic, corroded by the salt air. I looked out at the cars in the street. They all had rusted hoods, fenders, grills. The blowing sand and salt air were hell on them, too.
I rapped knuckles on his door. Hollow doors to match hollow hills. There was a decal on the kitchen window. The black horse dancing. There was no answer from inside. I tried the door again, and still no one came. I had a hunch whose carport was empty.
The door wasn't flush against the woodwork. A pushbutton lock and no deadbolt. The windows and the patio door had aluminum frames, pop-out glass and simple latches. Why should a burglar waste time with the ten-speed? From a security standpoint, the staircase was probably the toughest nut to crack.
I wondered how Jack lived. My curiosity got the better of me. After all, Jack belonged to the local Porsche club. I used an expired charge card like a knife, and the door swung free like a noose. Like the banks say, credit cards open new doors.
I had to duck my head entering. The air was stale and heavy drapes kept out the sunlight. The insides were dry and dark, like a desert cave and just like the smokehouse. The landlord had used the same paint inside, and the walls were sand, too. The surf was a pulse-beat beneath my feet.
I guess I expected Dani to pop from the woodwork. When she didn't, I felt stupid. Since I was here, I went from room to room. Maybe some of her belongings were here. Maybe some clue to where she was.
I started in the living room. Furniture from rental and some cobwebs above the drapes. A portable color TV with last Sunday's TV supplement. A fairly expensive AM-FM receiver, some speakers, but no turntable and no record collection.
The kitchen was next. A six-pack and a three dollar bottle of wine in the refrigerator. TV dinners in the freezer and ginger ale in the trash. Instant coffee and coffee cups. Some kitchenware. A few water glasses, but no eggs. A new calendar on the table, though the old one was still on the wall, stuck in the middle of last year. Lines had been drawn through the first few days of December.
I went to the bedroom. There was a kingsize bed with rumpled sheets on one side only. A dresser and a night-stand and a closet. The closet had clothes neat on their hangers. A suit, sportcoats, slacks, jeans, work boots. Some camping gear on the shelf.
The nightstand had a clean ashtray, a clock radio, a fuck book about the last man alive on a planet of women. There was a Car & Driver atop the clock radio. There was a Porsche on the cover of the magazine. I paged through the magazine, came across an 8 x 10 enlargement of Dani, a duplicate to the print I carried. Once again I found myself falling into blue eyes.
I went through the dresser. A pack of condoms. A jackknife. Some stones from the ocean. A stack of photos. I laid them out in a row. Jack or Dani standing or sitting in front of a VW microbus. No other people in any photograph. In some, a small palm tree or a cactus nearby. The Mexican coastline was background for all of them. I shuffled them and replaced them and kept digging.
And what's a bachelor pad without an address book? I paged through it. Jack Anatole was a good-looking guy, a knockout in some crowds, but he lived a cold fish life. There were four names and addresses in the book. Cousin, cousin, brother, grandfather. There were no ladies listed. He had no warm numbers to crawl to at last call.
This was the cleanest bachelor pad I'd ever seen. There were some crumbs around the toaster, some cobwebs above the drapes, but the joint was cleaner than baby teeth. No clothes or shoes or newspapers on the carpet. No dust on the receiver. Not even scratches on the imitation wood chairs.
The cleanliness bothered me. Some folks are compulsive, but the cobwebs above the drapes said Jack Anatole wasn't one of them. A man's home is his castle, and seeing how he lives shows me the man. Jack couldn't be this unimaginative.
There were no posters, no paintings, no bookshelves, no plants, no souvenirs from Vietnam and nothing a cop could call paraphernalia. None of those homey charms people use to indicate they live somewhere. There was no mail, either, not even a Christmas card. Nothing, in fact, to signify the holidays.
There was no personality to this place, as if it were swept clean daily, down to the fingerprints. There was just enough and even less. I couldn't tell if he had nothing or just didn't want to be pinned down.
I couldn't live like this. It was like being in the Army again. A transient barracks. A man getting ready to ship out, or a man waiting for his discharge. A man who hadn't expected to live here this long and hoped he didn't have to live here much longer.
Guys in prison are this neat. Killing time was important to them. Jack had spent time in the stockade. Last year's calendar had days marked off, and Jack wasn't a man to doodle. Maybe, for him, each day was the same. Maybe he had no reason to mark the days any more.
A blur in the corner of my eye banged into the side of my head. It was like being jumped by a brick wall. It knocked me flat on the floor, and I hit it hard.
I lay there a while. I was breathing and I was alive. I couldn't remember how to stand on my own two feet again. It didn't seem that important. I told
myself that if I just stayed still, somebody would find me.
I came back soon enough. Jack Anatole sat on the edge of his bed. My gun was in his hand, and it was pointed at me.
He looked me over. "You're a mess."
I saw a grocery bag with TV dinners and ginger ale. There was a battered clock radio on the bedsheets. Somebody had stepped on it with my head.
"Don't you ever get tired of this shit?"
"All the time." I had spoken too soon. My head echoed like a hall of mirrors. I wondered how my gun had been taken away from me.
He kicked my shin. "Did you have a nice time going through my apartment?"
"I was just returning the favor." I waited until I felt better before going on. "You went through mine last night."
His hand tightened, then relaxed. "Somebody's a liar."
"Where were you last night?"
He played it cool. "Celebrating New Year's Eve."
"Your Porsche." I had trouble swallowing. "Somebody saw it outside my place."
He was amused. "I wasn't driving it last night. Somebody borrowed it. Somebody from work, I think."
"On New Year's Eve?" I shook my head. It rattled. "Oh no, you'd be in it."
"You're pretty good," he admitted.
"I know." My skin felt like a drum being tightened. My pills had fallen from my jacket. I picked them up.
He raised the gun.
"Pills." I pointed to my face. "My face." I got to my feet slowly. "Don't go away." Then I stumbled off towards the bathroom.
He watched me pour a tumbler of water. He found my guts refreshing. "You're tougher than you look."
I swallowed two tabs. "Dumber." I didn't feel brave. Listening hurt my head and talking didn't help. Right now the codeine was more important than a bullet in the back.
He sat on the pot. "You keep a messy place."
"As if you didn't mess it up more." I looked in the mirror. The stitches were where the drum skin had stretched too far. There were still green and purple bruises from my windshield, but I didn't see any new ones. There wasn't even blood on my head. I held the sink for a while to keep it from shaking.
"You got a nice face there," he said.
I couldn't think of anything obscene to say. "Why should you care?" I threw water on my face. "What did you break into my place for?" It seemed like a fair question.
"I wanted to find out who you were."
I frowned. "Who do you think I am?"
He looked down on me. "Once you were a private eye. Now you're a bum collecting unemployment. You're broke. You need dough. That's why you're playing in this shit."
"I coulda told you that," I groused. The needle was back. It echoed like the surf. It had to be my pulse. I covered my face in a towel for a while. "Are you planning on pressing charges?"
He looked around. "What were you looking for?"
"Maybe I was just looking."
"As far as I can tell, nothing's been taken."
I tried to laugh. It hurt. "You got nothing."
He raised my gun again. "You're still looking for Dani." It was an old story. The man with the gun knows all the answers.
"I almost found her yesterday."
"Oh yeah?" He wanted to hear this.
"She's been at her sister's all week." I could talk a bit better now. "But you knew that. You called her after I left the smokehouse."
"I can still talk with my relatives, can't I?"
"You told Catherine Joey Crawford's parents hired me."
He snorted. "Why not?" He looked glum. "It's truer than what you told Alex Symons."
"Why should I tell that yoyo what I want Dani for?"
He jiggled the gun like a man making up his mind. "What do you really want with Dani?"
"Did she call you last night?"
He braked to a halt. "Why was she trying to call me?"
"She needed money. She was leaving town."
"Now you tell me how you knew that."
I made a cluck-cluck sound. "You shoulda called her back."
"What makes you think I didn't? I called her right after I left your place, but there was nobody home."
"And I drove up with a chick."
He aimed the gun at me. "Now you tell me what's going on."
It seemed fair enough. "After Catherine talked with you, Dani found out about it and got scared. She took off running. What do you think she was scared of?"
"You, chump." He had a point to make. "I'm sick of you chasing her. You're worse than a guy puppy-dogging a chick."
I let that pass. "You know of any places she might've gone?"
"A million places. I'm not telling you any of them. Why should I? I don't dog people around, trying to find out what they're up to. It's none of your fucking business where she goes or what she does."
"Where would she go if she thought she were in trouble?"
"She's not here." He was matter of fact.
"If she couldn't reach you?"
"You're a clown," he told me. "How did you ever get suckered into this? Don't you ever investigate your own clients?"
"I told you. Joey Crawford's my client."
"A dead man for a client." He shook his head. "Bullshit."
"He wanted me to find the girl who walked out on him. Find Dani, that was his last wish."
Jack reconsidered everything. "You said last wish. His last wish would be to see her again." That seemed to intensify him. "I can see why they hired you."
This should be good. "Oh yeah? Why?"
"You're stupid." He talked like a probation officer trying to save some punk's life. "You don't know who you're working for. You don't know it's shit you're playing in. You don't even know what's going on."
"I don't," I agreed. "Why don't you tell me?"
He edged forward. "You're a pawn in this mess," he said. "A pawn for the muscle. Your clients aren't playing straight with you, Brennen, and they're using you to get to us. If you knew who they were, you'd sooner kiss shit."
"Okay. I give up. Who're my clients?"
"Organized crime. Or working for them."
"What would they want that you got?"
"You really don't know," he marvelled.
"I don't even know why I'm talking to you."
He had a face like a fortune-teller. "They're gonna do you just like they did Joey Crawford." To him, the future was a rock so big even God couldn't budge it.
"Dead, you mean."
"Real dead." Vietnam was in his eyes. The VA hospital was filled with eyes like that. Superman could only see through walls.
"You don't think Joey's death was an accident, do you?"
He was patient. "They killed him and they'll kill you. My advice is to lay off this mess. Stay out of it."
"Is that why you called me last night?"
"I don't want you hurt. Stay out of this."
I got curious. "Are you threatening me?"
"Jesus, where do you get your lines? If you're standing in their way, they're gonna blow you away, so you better stay out of this. Tell your clients, too. They better stay away. They're muscling in where they don't belong. If they try anything, I will kill them."
"Is that why you got Davey out of Jardin's Saloon?"
He thought I was smarter. "Davey's no match for you."
"You sandbagged me, you sonovabitch."
His GI smile said sorry, Charlie. "I had no choice. I had to get him away from you. He's got a big mouth when he's drunk."
"Is that why you worked him over? To sober him up?"
He didn't understand. "When was this?"
"He had black and blue marks on his face."
"I didn't do anything to him. I'm not the Mob and I don't play by their rules. Go ask him yourself. Yeah, why don't you?" He had a better idea. "You're the private eye. Why don't you find out who did it to him?"
"Davey was a real pain, wasn't he?"
He was catching on. "Okay, Brennen, you're going to tell me what's going on." He knew my gun was a great persuader.
>
"He's dead. Heart failure."
He flinched, came close to pulling the trigger. "Heart failure? A heart attack? Don't bullshit me, Brennen."
"He ODed on coke this morning."
"I don't believe you." He almost laughed. "You don't die from doing coke."
"That's what happened."
He lost himself in thought. "I can't imagine him dead. Nobody dies from coke." He found no comfort in those truths.
"You were the last one who saw him alive."
He caught up. His face curled. "I oughta kill you for that." He sighted my gun at my heart. "Like putting you outta your misery." He sounded like a volcano finding a perfect excuse.
I figured I was dead. How do you save your life in twenty-five words or less?
"You're talking just like the Mob. Don't play by their rules."
"You stupid shit." His hand dropped. "Get outta here." He wasn't even looking down at me. "Right now." He had seen too much of me.
"You got my gun."
He tossed it over. "Blow your brains out."
"Thanks for the advice," I told him. "I'll be sure to follow it someday." I stopped by the door. "By the way, where is Dani?"
"Fuck off, Brennen. She's not here."
Chapter 22
Baytown is a city of fifty thousand people south of the airport. A few years ago only Jesus could have walked these streets between the freeway and the bay. That's because the whole suburb is a manmade island built by developers.
They were already scarring the nearby hills with their tract homes, but what they wanted was their own island where they could sculpt in stucco and not have to deal with the law.
They bulldozed the dirt from the hills, trucked and dumped it on the marshlands below. Then prefab buildings were snapped into place atop the packed dirt. The law came to town after the last lot was sold.
Each developer left behind his own vision of the future. They clustered their tract homes together in little bulls-eyes and gave each bulls-eye poetic names like Sea Breeze and Sea Haven and Shoreview and Vista Mar.
But the pride of Baytown was Marina Riviera. Its two hundred townhouses were easily the most expensive, the most futuristic. They weren't along the shoreline, either, but at the center of the island, as if San Francisco Bay paled beside this developer's dream.