Deadfall (Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  As for snuff bottles and boxes, I knew that they had been painstakingly handmade from any number of substances, the most popular of which were gold, silver, ivory, horn, wood, glass, and tortoise shell; that they were sometimes decorated with precious and semi-precious stones; that they came in myriad sizes and shapes (miniature caskets, for one shape; Napoleon’s hat, for another); that the most valuable ones from an artistic point of view, and therefore the most sought after by collectors, were those created by notable artists that had repoussé or raised patterns engraved or incised on their surfaces, or which were festooned with intricate hand-enameled scenes, or which had been made of plane-tree wood in the Laurancekirk region of Scotland. I knew that the prize creations were bottles done in China by Yip Chung San, who had plied his craft during the Manchu dynasty and whose specialty involved painting scenes on the inside of the bottles, somewhat like mirror writing; and gold, silver, and ivory boxes by such European (and in particular, French) artists as Hainelin, Petitot, Watteau, Fragonard, and the von Blaren-berghes, father and son. And most interestingly of all, from my point of view, I knew that in 1904 a British collector, Sir Joseph Duveen, had paid the equivalent of thirty thousand dollars for what was said to be the rarest of all gold boxes by Hainelin, reputedly made as a special gift from Bonaparte to one of his lieutenants.

  I was just starting on the second library book, to see if it contained any information not covered in the first, when Eberhardt shouldered in. He saw me sitting there with my feet up, reading, and pulled a face. “Look at this,” he said. “I’m out all day busting my hump and here you are, sitting on yours reading a book.”

  “I’m working, Eb.”

  “Yeah. Sure you are.” He sailed his hat on top of one of the hideous mustard-yellow file cabinets and sat down at his desk.

  “How goes the insurance thing?” I asked him.

  “No sweat. Have it wrapped up tomorrow. You got my message, I guess.”

  “Non-message, you mean.”

  “Yeah, well, the whole thing’s kind of involved. You know I’m no good putting words down on paper.”

  “So put ’em out in the air. What did Ed Berg say?”

  He settled back and put his own feet up. “Man, I’m bushed. What say we close up early and go get a beer?”

  “Not tonight, I’ve got things to do. Come on, Eb, talk to me.”

  “Okay, okay.” He got out his little pocket notebook and flipped a few pages. “The Church of the Holy Mission is one of those fundamentalist Christian cults, but not your standard kind; this one’s got some organization and power. Couple of hundred people in the congregation and more joining all the time. They’re starting to make a few waves.”

  “What kind of waves?”

  “This Moral Crusade. Moral Majority stuff, like we figured, only even more hardline—strictly Old Testament, or so they claim. Pro-censorship, anti-freedom of choice, anti-sex, that kind of crap.”

  “Who’s behind it?”

  “Let’s see…. Guy named Dogbreath—”

  “Named what?”

  “Wait a minute.” He squinted more closely at his notebook, turning it a little from side to side. “Can’t even read my own writing.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “Daybreak, that’s it. Clyde T. Daybreak.”

  “That’s not much better, Eb. Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I remember now.”

  “What kind of name is Clyde T. Daybreak?”

  “You’re asking me? I’m only relaying information here.”

  “Well, who is he? Where’d he come from?”

  “Used to be one of those traveling evangelists somewhere down South. Tennessee or somewhere. Came out here about ten years ago, got himself hooked up with the Holy Mission—Ed didn’t know the details—and eventually turned it upside down.”

  “How so?”

  “Church was founded about thirty years ago,” Eberhardt said, “by a dropout from the Rosicrucians. Doctrine back then was half Old Testament and half mysticism, not too appetizing to most people, so they struggled along on a membership of twenty or thirty until this guy Daybreak came along. He took over when the founder died, revamped the doctrine by getting rid of the mystical angle and going the authoritarian route.”

  “Meaning strict obedience to him and his dictates.”

  “Right. It cost him most of the old followers, but it didn’t take him long to line up plenty of new ones—enough so he was able to buy a big Victorian on Lanford Street, not far from downtown San Jose. He and his assistants live there now. They used to hold services in the basement; now they hold ’em in a new wing they built last year.”

  “What’s this about assistants?”

  “Ed didn’t know much about that part of it. Three or four guys that call themselves ‘Reverend’ and no doubt do what Daybreak tells them. He calls himself ‘the Right Reverend.’ Which makes the other guys ‘the Wrong Reverends’?”

  “So Dunston is one of the assistants.”

  “Seems that way. Name wasn’t familiar to Ed.”

  “I wonder how he got involved with Daybreak and the church, coming out of that commune the way he did.”

  Eberhardt shrugged. “Who knows how these types find each other? They just do.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Anything else I ought to know?”

  “Just that Daybreak has been sucking around a couple of those religious cable-TV channels in the Bay Area, trying to go public with the Moral Crusade. Looks like he’s pushing to turn himself into another Falwell. Big noise with a big following.”

  “Not to mention a big bank account.”

  “Well,” Eberhardt said wryly, “that’s God’s work, too. Ask any capitalist.”

  We sat there for a time, not saying anything. Pretty soon I thought to look at my watch, and it was a couple of minutes after five. I got on my feet.

  “Quitting time,” I said to Eberhardt.

  “So it is. You sure you don’t want a beer?”

  “I do want one, but I’ve got to make a stop on the way home. And Kerry’s coming around six-thirty.”

  We put the telephones on the answering machine and closed up. On the way downstairs Eberhardt said, “So what are you going to do? About Dunston, I mean.”

  “I don’t know yet. Kerry and I have to talk it over.”

  “Maybe you ought to go down to San Jose, have a talk with the big cheese himself.”

  “Daybreak? Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

  We split up at the garage down the street, where we had a monthly parking deal worked out, and I drove up to California and then over and up into Pacific Heights. The building where Alex Ozimas lived was on Laguna, across from Lafayette Park— one of the nicest parks in the city. It was newish and not half as attractive, to my taste, as some of the older apartment buildings in the area; but then, a lot of people prefer new to old. I parked illegally in a bus zone—legal parking in that area after five o’clock is next to impossible—and went into the building vestibule to look at the mailboxes.

  Ozimas, I discovered, had the twenty-first and top floor all to himself—the penthouse, no less. The penthouse in a building like this had to go for at least three-quarters of a million. Some Alex Ozimas. Or Alejandro Ozimas, as he was listed on the brass nameplate above his mailbox.

  But I was going to have to wait to get a look at him. I rang his bell three times, the last time for a good fifteen seconds, and nobody answered. Which figured. It had been that kind of day.

  Chapter Nine

  I made one business call when I got home. The maid or housekeeper at the Moss Beach house had told me Alicia Purcell would be back “after five”; it was after six when I hauled the phone out of the bedroom on its long cord, sat down with it on the living room couch, and rang up the Purcell number. A different woman answered this time: the servant apparently didn’t live in and was gone for the day. When I asked for Mrs. Purcell the voice said, “Yes? This is Alicia Purcell.”

  I identif
ied myself and my profession and said that I was investigating the death of her brother-in-law.

  There was a pause. Then she said, “May I ask who is employing you?”

  “Tom Washburn.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, I don’t know how I can help you. I hadn’t seen Leonard for at least two months before he was … before he died. I told that to the police.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I’m following a particular line of inquiry, at Mr. Washburn’s request. I wonder if I could—”

  “What line of inquiry is that?”

  “That there is a connection between what happened to your husband and Leonard’s murder. That maybe your husband’s death wasn’t an accident after all.”

  Silence for about five seconds. “That’s absurd,” she said finally.

  “Maybe so. Mr. Washburn doesn’t think so.”

  “There is no basis for such a supposition. None at all except for a ghastly coincidence—two brothers dying under tragic circumstances six months apart.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said patiently. “But Mr. Washburn wants the possibility checked out. I’d appreciate it if I could count on your cooperation.”

  “I’ve already told you, the idea is preposterous. There is nothing I can do for you.”

  “Well, that’s not quite true. I have some questions—a few details you might help me clear up. If you wouldn’t mind I’d like to stop by sometime tomorrow—”

  “Can’t you ask your questions now?”

  “I’d prefer to ask them in person, Mrs. Purcell.” I also wanted a look at the house and grounds, but I wasn’t about to tell her that over the phone. “What time would be convenient for you?”

  More silence. It could go either way; if she told me to go diddle myself, there wasn’t much I could do about it. But she didn’t tell me to go diddle myself. After about ten seconds she said in a wintry voice, “Oh, all right. I’ll be here all morning. Come when you like.”

  “Thank you. Could you tell me how to get to your house?”

  “Are you familiar with Moss Beach?”

  “A little.”

  “I live on the hill next to the Marine Reserve.”

  “The beach with the tidepools?”

  “Yes. You have the address, I suppose?”

  She gave me just enough time to say, “Yes,” before she hung up on me.

  The Purcells were some family. I wondered if Kenneth’s widow was going to be as unpleasant in person as his daughter had been. Could be. If my luck was running good, though, she wouldn’t have her own version of Richie Dessault to make things even more unpleasant.

  I took the phone back into the bedroom and myself into the kitchen. There were some packaged chicken parts in the refrigerator—I’ d taken them out of the freezer that morning—and a couple of zucchini that weren’t too fresh but not shriveled up so badly you wouldn’t want to eat them. I opened a can of Bud Light, then put the chicken on a broiler pan and sprinkled some spices on each piece. Then I cut the zucchini in half lengthwise, scooped out the innards of each half to form little green-and-white boats, and filled them up with grated parmesan cheese and a couple of dabs of margarine. Not exactly a gourmet feast, but Kerry wouldn’t mind; she didn’t care that I was not the culinary type. If she had wanted gourmet cooking she would have taken up with a male equivalent of Julia Child.

  I put the chicken in the oven to broil, took my beer into the living room, and picked up the 1939 copy of Popular Detective that I had started reading last night. Popular had not been a top-of-the-line pulp, but occasionally you found an issue that contained a diamond in the rough—a “Diamondstone” in the rough, in this case, that being the name of a suave, wealthy magician sleuth created by one of the better pulpsters, G. T. Fleming-Roberts. The Diamondstone story in this issue, “Three Wise Apes,” was pretty good and I got absorbed in it—so absorbed that I almost forgot about the chicken. I remembered just in time to hurry in and turn the pieces over before they started to burn.

  The kitchen clock said 7:20, which startled me somewhat; I hadn’t realized it was that late. I might have begun worrying about Kerry—she was supposed to have gotten there at 6:30—except that I had no sooner gone back into the living room when I heard her key in the lock. She came in looking windblown and wilted at the edges, and trailing wine fumes. She wasn’t drunk, but then again she wasn’t quite sober either. Which started me worrying in a different direction, because she seemed to be drinking a good deal lately: white wine, for the most part, not that that made me any less concerned. The pressures of her job, she said, but I wondered if maybe that was turning into a convenient excuse.

  Ray Dunston had provided her with another good excuse for boozing it up tonight. The first thing she said was, “He came by the agency this morning. Ray. Right after he left your office.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “No. But Donna—the receptionist—said he seemed weird. He left his card and asked her to have me call him.”

  “Did you?”

  “God, no.”

  She shrugged out of her trenchcoat and sank down on the couch next to me. A big curl of her copper-colored hair hung over one eye; the rest of it had been roughed up by the wind. Some other time I would have felt like putting my hands all over her. Not right now, though.

  I said, “Cop friend of Eberhardt’s checked up on the Church of the Holy Mission and the Moral Crusade,” and went on to tell her what Eb had told me.

  She didn’t interrupt or offer any comments; she just sat there looking pained. When I was done she laid her head back, exposing the slim white column of her throat, and closed her eyes and said, “Oh Lord, what am I going to do?”

  “What are we going to do, you mean.”

  “All right, we.”

  “He showed up on my doorstep this morning, remember?”

  “I said all right.”

  “And getting looped isn’t going to help, you know.”

  She opened one eye. “I’m not looped.”

  “Close to it.”

  “Nonsense. You’re not going to start in on me, are you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I only had four glasses of wine,” she said.

  “Only four glasses? That’s a lot of wine.”

  “No, it isn’t. I’m a big girl; I go potty by myself and everything. Besides, I needed it. I had a rotten day. And Jim Carpenter was nice enough to invite me out to MacArthur Park for drinks.”

  “Him, huh?” I said. “Good old Jim.”

  She had both eyes open now and she rolled them in one of those martyred expressions women put on now and then. “We’re not going to start that again, too?”

  “What again?”

  “You being jealous of Jim Carpenter.”

  “Why the hell should I be jealous of him?”

  “That’s a good question. You sure act like you are.”

  “Well I’m not.”

  “I can’t even go out for a couple of glasses of wine—”

  “Four glasses of wine.”

  “—without you getting jealous, for God’s sake.”

  “I told you, I’m not jealous. Screw Jim Carpenter.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re afraid I’m doing? Or will do?”

  “Goddamn it,” I said, and then I couldn’t think of anything else to say. So I sat there with my mouth shut, feeling impotent.

  She was silent, too, for a time. Then she made a face and sniffed the air like a poodle and said, “What’s burning?”

  “Nothing’s burning. That’s the chicken for dinner.”

  “Smells like it’s burning.”

  Kerry got up and went into the kitchen. I followed her. She opened the oven, looked inside, made a face, and shut the thing off. “Charcoal,” she said.

  I took a look for myself. It wasn’t that bad—some of the pieces showed a little black around the edges, that was all. I said as much to her. She said, “Then you eat it,” and closed the oven door and went to the refrigerator.

/>   “What are you looking for in there?”

  “Some wine,” she said. “Isn’t there any damn wine here?”

  “No. You drank it all up two nights ago.”

  “Well, why didn’t you buy some more?”

  “Why didn’t you? I don’t drink that stuff.”

  “Stuff? You make it sound like poison.”

  “It is if you guzzle enough of it.”

  “Here we go again. Guzzle. Hoo boy.”

  “You can’t deny you’ve been drinking a lot lately.”

  “I’ve had a lot of problems lately.”

  “Sure, I know. Pressures at work.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And now there’s your Looney Tunes ex.”

  “That’s right. And then there’s you. ”

  “Me?”

  “You. I hate it when you moralize at me.”

  “I don’t moralize—”

  “Yes you do. You act like a prig sometimes.”

  “. . . Did you say prick?”

  “I said prig. But the other applies just as well.”

  “Now listen, Kerry—”

  “Oh shut up. God, you can be stuffy sometimes.”

  “If it’s too stuffy for you here why don’t you go home?”

  “That’s a good idea. At least I can have a glass of wine at home without a male Carrie Nation looking over my shoulder.”

  “Male Carrie Nation. That’s very funny.”

  “Pretty soon you’ll start quoting the Bible at me. You’re about one long step from joining the Moral Crusade yourself, you know that?”

  “Quit shouting, will you?”

  “I’m not shouting!”