If Dying Was All

by Ron Goulart

  “You’re sure the diamonds were never mentioned in the papers?”

  “Couldn’t have been, since I didn’t tell the sheriff’s boys until the other day,” explained the old detective. “They’re planning to keep quiet about it. As I hope you will.”

  “For now, yes.”

  “Would you have time to have a little breakfast with me over in Grandmother’s Real Country Kitchen across the way?” the old man asked. “I’m getting tired of eating every day with nobody but old farts to talk to.”

  Easy grinned. “Sure.”

  XII

  EASY FROWNED AT THE coupled paper plates sitting in the center of his desk. He tilted up the topmost plate and called out, “Nan, why is there a corned beef sandwich on my desk?”

  “Hagopian,” answered his broad-shouldered, thirty-six-year-old, blonde secretary in the doorway. “He stopped by an hour ago and brought lunch for all of us.”

  Settling into his swivel chair, Easy picked up half the sandwich and took a bite. “Any calls?”

  “Kuperman phoned,” said Nan, coming into the office.

  “The handwriting man. So what does he think?”

  “You were right. The current batch of Jackie McCleary letters are fake,” said his secretary, wrinkling her broad nose. “A fair forgery, but a forgery.”

  Easy set down the sandwich. “Yes, I know who wrote them,” he said. “Still, I was hoping …”

  “Hoping what? You sound like old McCleary.”

  “I get the impression, Nan, after talking to the surviving members of the San Amaro gang that Jackie might still be alive.”

  “Anything specific you’re basing the impression on?”

  Easy returned to the corned beef sandwich and ate, thoughtfully, for a few moments. “The way most of them talk about her. I have a feeling they don’t believe she’s dead either, most of them.”

  Nan strode across the office and began adjusting the air conditioner knobs. “I wonder if Hagopian has a blood condition. He always turns this way too cold.”

  “Any other calls?”

  “A girl with a very sophisticated voice, Judy Teller. She wants you to phone her.”

  Flicking rye bread crumbs off his tie, Easy said, “I don’t think that has anything to do, directly, with the case.”

  “Is she the one Hagopian saw grabbing your private parts during the TV Look party?”

  “Nan,” said Easy, “hanging around with all those magicians has given you a sleazy outlook. Here I have a reputation for maintaining a plush and resplendent office, and all the while you and Hagopian are sitting around in here chatting about my groin.”

  “That isn’t all we talked about,” said Nan. “Hagopian was upset because somebody put air in his tires.”

  “In his tires?”

  “A reverse prank, he thinks,” said Nan, giving an air conditioner knob one final delicate twist. “Last night someone let the air out of his tires. When he went down this morning to check before calling the 3A, the air was back in.”

  “Why’s he upset then?”

  “He says it unsettles him to think there’s somebody going around Beverly Glen pumping up automobile tires in the dead of night with a bicycle pump.”

  Easy tried the second half of the sandwich. “Any other pertinent calls?”

  “No. Do you really know who sent the letters?”

  “Perry Burley,” said Easy, chewing. “She’s the one who was out in Manzana, with her flamboyant husband.”

  “Can you have them arrested?”

  “For reserving a room under the name of Hollis?” Easy frowned again. “I can’t prove they broke into Jackie’s cottage on the McCleary property, not yet. I can probably get the manager of the Golden Apple Inn and her star-spangled daughter to identify Perry. She went out there wearing a dark wig and played mystery woman, but she didn’t bother to take off her turquoise ring.”

  “It’s tough to get a ring off after a few years,” said Nan. “I had to go to a locksmith after I divorced Cliff. What’s Perry Burley up to?”

  “She and her husband want something valuable they think Jackie left behind.”

  “You sound like you don’t think they found it when they raided McCleary.”

  “No, whatever it is, they’re still anxious to find it.”

  “Would it be the money Booth Graither had?”

  “Might be.” Easy finished up the sandwich. “Or the diamonds he borrowed from his mother.”

  “Why would Jackie have either?”

  “Maybe she murdered Booth Graither and swiped his money and jewels.”

  “You think so?”

  “Not exactly,” said Easy. “But Perry Burley might think so.”

  “Do you want the dill pickle?” asked Nan, pointing at the paper plate.

  “No.” Easy pushed back from his desk. “I’m going out and talk to McCleary. Then I may stop by Marina’s. I don’t think she has school this afternoon.” He handed his secretary the dish with the pickle and went out the back door to the parking lot.

  Frederic McCleary blew his nose, put the balled Kleenex back into a pocket of his jacket, and asked Easy, “Are these handwriting tests reliable? Might there not be some error?”

  This time Easy was on the brown gold sofa and the old screenwriter sat in the morris chair by the piano. A fallen over can of Diet 7-Up lay near McCleary’s feet and had made a dark, fuzzy circle on the autumnal rug. Easy told the old man, “Kuperman, the guy I used, is an expert. He says the letters are a fake. Copied from a sample of your daughter’s handwriting, not written by her.”

  “They looked so much like Jackie’s handwriting,” insisted McCleary, biting at his spiky, white moustache. “I believe they are from her.”

  “McCleary, the letters were concocted to get you away from here for a day or so,” said Easy. “There’s no possibility your daughter wrote them.”

  “If I come to accept that, you’ll next ask me to accept the possibility she’s dead and lost forever.” He sank back further into dusty shadow, caressing his sharp knees.

  “I think she probably is,” said Easy. “But I’m not sure what’s supposed to have happened on the yachting trip did happen.”

  McCleary asked, “Are you saying Jackie didn’t jump overboard?”

  “I want to dig around some more.”

  “You have evidence someone did something to her, that she did not commit suicide at all?” The old man leaned forward, staring at Easy.

  Not answering, Easy said, “Do you know who Booth Graither is?”

  McCleary shook his head. “No. The name is not familiar.”

  Tuffy, the fat gray cat, came stalking into the living room, cautiously pursuing a shiny black cockroach.

  Easy placed the picture of the San Amaro gang on the coffee table in front of him, pushing aside a half-empty bowl of stale candied popcorn. “He’s the man next to your daughter in this photo.”

  Rising slowly, McCleary weaved over and squinted down at the picture. “No, I don’t know the man. Have you talked to him?”

  “He was killed five years ago. Out on San Obito Island.”

  McCleary suddenly turned and bent, slapping the plump, gray cat against the side of its head. “Leave that bug alone, Tuffy.” He then touched both his freckled hands to his chest. “San Obito? I can’t … I can’t put all this together anymore. All these places from our past keep returning, Easy. Manzana, now the island. I can’t put anything together.”

  “What does San Obito have to do with you and your daughter?”

  “It has to do with all three of us, my late wife as well.” McCleary returned to the chair, touching his chest again. “Years ago my wife and I and Jackie knew the family who acted as caretakers on the island. We weekended there many times, many times. This was all, as I say, many years ago when Jackie was a child. Those people left the island years ago. I don’t believe there’s anyone out there now. Some intricate legal battle about ownership has been dragging on. San Obito. I can’t quite …”<
br />
  “Are you sure you didn’t know Booth Graither?” cut in Easy. “He wasn’t a boyfriend you didn’t approve of, someone you tried to keep your daughter from seeing?”

  McCleary expelled breath, wheezing slightly. “You’ve been talking to those San Amaro young people, as you reported earlier. Yes, they’d be likely to tell you I was too harsh about who Jackie could see and who she couldn’t. Perhaps from a young person’s point of view I was too harsh. You have to understand, as I may have mentioned before, she was such a fine girl. A girl with such a marvelous potential. All I wanted was for her to be certain when she became serious about a man.”

  “Did you tell her to stop seeing Booth Graither?”

  “I never heard of Booth Graither until this moment,” said the old man. “Easy, I know my daughter so very well. I can’t believe she wouldn’t have told me about any young man she was really interested in.”

  Tuffy leaped up and took a poke at Easy’s thigh.

  Slowly pushing the large cat over the edge of the sofa, Easy said, “Mr. McCleary, I’d like to work on this case a day or two longer. I’m fairly certain who wrote those letters and I think I know why. Right now though, there isn’t much I can prove.”

  “You and your handwriting expert are absolutely sure it can’t be Jackie?”

  “Yes.”

  “One of the other young people?”

  “Yes,” answered Easy. “In another day or so I should be able to give you a complete report. Not only about the letters, but about the yacht trip.”

  McCleary said, “Keep at it, of course. Another few hundred dollars doesn’t matter to me.” He paused and a new expression touched his face, a look of surprised pain.

  Easy said, “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m not ill, don’t worry.” McCleary touched his chest, exhaled. “No, I simply just had a strong premonition that what you’re going to find out will break my heart.”

  After a silence Easy said, “It may.”

  Sighing, the old man said, “The island. I can still see it very clearly. Jackie loved the weekends we hired a boat and went out to San Obito. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight then. Such a lovely, coltish little thing, so straight and dark and smiling. She was a lovely child, Easy.” He rubbed a tired hand across the lower part of his face. “Her favorite spot was the abandoned dance pavilion. You knew San Obito was once quite a fashionable resort. I spent some frantic days there in the early 1930’s when it was still operating.”

  “Where’s the dance pavilion?”

  “It’s an enormous glass-domed building up on a cliff overlooking the sea. Built in a pseudo-Victorian style. Wonderful place for an imaginative child to play,” said the old man. “What does that have to do with what you’re working on?”

  Easy didn’t answer.

  XIII

  MARINA WAS SITTING IN a bentwood chair with her long legs straight out and her bare feet resting on a squat, antique apple barrel. She was wearing a white half-slip and reading a paperback book on ecology.

  Easy came wandering in out of the hazy afternoon. “Why don’t you lock your doors? Suppose I was the Black Dahlia killer.”

  The long, tan girl steepled the book on her lap. “You’d be an old man if you were. He did most of his work back in the forties, didn’t he?”

  “Some of those old guys are tough.” Easy was carrying his coat over his shoulder and he hung it now on an eagle-headed clothes pole. “I had breakfast with one.”

  “With an old killer?”

  “An old detective.”

  “Speaking of food, do you want me to fix you a late lunch?”

  “No, Hagopian donated me a sandwich. How’s school?”

  “Crowded,” said the auburn-haired girl. “We really have to do something about zero population growth.”

  Easy stopped a few feet from her. “And you shouldn’t sit around without your clothes off. A gorilla might break in here and paint you blue.”

  “Is there a wave of that going on?”

  “According to the head of Ottstuff Enterprises,” said Easy. “He had some very interesting photos to document his charges.”

  Marina reached up and tangled her left hand in her hair. Her left breast ticked up and down. “Sometimes I think I’m too honest and forthright.”

  Easy had placed his palm over the bobbing breast. “How so?”

  “Because I’m going to tell you your secretary called about a half hour ago and said it was very important.”

  The left nipple poked erect between his spread fingers. “Important, but not urgent?”

  “I think she mentioned urgent, too.” Marina caught hold of him and pressed herself up against him. After she’d kissed him, she asked, “Are you torn between love and duty?”

  Easy grimaced. “I hate to admit it, but I am.” He made a grunting sound. “Okay, this will be my contribution to zero population growth.” He let go of the lovely, tan girl and moved to the antique sideboard which served as a phone table. He dialed his office.

  “Easy & Associates, Detective Services.”

  “Hi, Nan. What’s urgent?”

  His secretary said, “Mitch Stammsky. He called twice, right after you left to see McCleary. I think he has some information to sell you. He sounded very anxious.”

  “Yeah, okay. Where is he?”

  “At his club, in San Amaro. He said he’ll be waiting there the next couple hours and he’ll let you in.

  “Was he at all specific?”

  “Something to do with what really happened to Jackie.”

  “I’ll drive down there now. Anything else happening?”

  “Carlos Denny called and says he’s free for lunch next Tuesday.”

  “Pencil him in.” Easy hung up.

  Marina was there with his coat. “Can you get back tonight?”

  “Depends on what kind of information this guy wants to sell me,” Easy replied and kissed her.

  Thin, gray mist was forming over the Pacific and tumbling in toward Blind Joe Death’s. A single, brownish gull came flying in low with the mist. In a second floor apartment down the block a television set was talking sadly, and around the corner someone was starting a motorbike.

  Easy knocked on the padlocked door of Mitch Stammsky’s club.

  The smog-colored gull landed on the rutted sidewalk near him and began picking at an orange rind.

  Knocking again, Easy called out, “Hey, Stammsky. It’s John Easy.”

  The gull had one eye and a crippled foot. After sniping up the orange peel it flapped up and circled away into the mist.

  There was only silence beyond the closed doors of Blind Joe Death’s.

  Easy walked to the alley running between Stammsky’s place and the defunct Mexican grocery store next to it. He cut into the alley, opening his jacket. The passway was rich with wine bottles, cigarette ends, balls of waxed paper and the tiny, white cardboard coins from sacks of tobacco.

  Easy slowed as he neared the end of the alley. Glancing upward, he got the impression he was roofed in by fog.

  The rear of the folk club was ringed with blackened garbage cans and cardboard boxes that had been there since the last heavy rains. Three sooty sparrows hopped in the thin grass.

  The rear door was wooden, its green paint chipping away in large egg-shaped patches. The door stood about five inches open.

  Resting his hand on his shoulder holster, Easy jumped ahead and kicked the door full open. Flat against the rear wall, he waited.

  There was no sound from inside and he moved, stepping across the threshold.

  Cases of gallon jugs of red table wine were stacked in the hallway. To the left was a small kitchen, dominated by a fat white porcelain stove. A peststrip hung from the chain of the overhead light. The room was empty.

  So was the rest room, which smelled of sweet disinfectant.

  Stammsky was in the main room of the club, where Easy had talked to him two nights before. The blue overhead spotlight was on and the small,
tanned man was stretched out on the floor in its circle of dim light. He was newly dead, fallen on his back. He’d been shot, close up, in the chest and face.

  Before he went to the dead Stammsky, Easy checked the room. There was no one else there and no sign of who’d been here with Stammsky. The gun that had shot him was not there.

  Kneeling next to the body, Easy carefully searched the small man. He found his own business card but nothing to indicate what Stammsky had wanted to tell him.

  Easy located the phone behind the bar and called the San Amaro police.

  XIV

  THERE WAS A MODEST CRASH out in the twilight. Nan Alonzo left off tuning the air conditioner and narrowed her eyes to look out at the little parking lot behind Easy’s Sunset Strip office. “There’s Hagopian with a truck full of trees.”

  Easy had his hand on the phone, about to make a call. “Trees?”

  “Well, shrubs actually,” clarified his secretary. “Here he comes.”

  There were three quick raps on the rear door and then Hagopian entered, fast and sideways. “I saw your lights and decided to stop in.”

  “Why,” asked Nan, “do you have a pickup truck full of shrubs?”

  “They’re not mine,” explained the hawk-nosed interviewer. “They belong to the tree man. So does the truck.”

  “And what happened to the tree man?”

  Rings formed under Hagopian’s eyes. “He’s at Disneyland with Pam. They took my Jaguar and left a note saying I was free to use his truck. He was putting in these shrubs at a place up the hill from me when Pam met him this afternoon.” He circled Easy’s desk and took the client’s chair. “I might buy a truck like that. It handles better than the XKE.”

  “The shrubs make good ballast,” said Easy.

  “I heard over KNX that you found one of the San Amaro gang dead,” said Hagopian.

  “Yeah, I was just going to check back with the San Amaro cops now.”

  Hagopian knifed two fingers into his pants pocket and produced a folded slip of memo paper. “Call Judy Teller.”

  Easy studied the writer’s wrinkling face. “Does this have anything to do with the case?”