The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of

by Joseph Hansen

  “I mean,” Lester said slowly and exactly, “I saw that body. I searched through the pockets of that body for that stupid note. I’m going to see that body in my mind for the rest of my life. And there was no tote bag by that body. No tote bag anyplace around there.”

  “Ho,” Dave said softly.

  “I’m into law—was,” Lester said. “And nobody had to tell me the case was shaky. He had a witness. All they had was planted evidence. He could get off. I wasn’t showing my face till he was convicted.”

  “They did all right with planted evidence in your case, and any jury they picked would have seen him promise to kill Ben Orton on TV.” Barker left off trying to dry his pants, sat down, and slapped the soggy brown wad of paper napkins on the table. “Not good enough, Lester. Tell us the rest.”

  The boy slumped in the steel chair and looked old. He sighed. “Yeah. Shit. All right.” He eyed Barker glumly. “I was seen.”

  Barker showed smoky teeth.

  Lester said, “Like I say, I ran. Slipped in the patio—it was wet. I ran up the hill. Fastest way out of there. Drop down the other side, there’s the highway. When I got to the ridge, I looked back. And a woman came out into the patio. It was too soon. No way she didn’t see me.”

  “Has she said so?” Barker asked.

  “Why should she?” Lester said. “Police didn’t take me. They took Kerlee. But if they ever did take me—”

  Dave frowned. “Hold it. What woman? Mrs. Orton?”

  Lester shook his head. “It was pretty far and it was starting to get dark, but it wasn’t Mrs. Orton. Too tall and thin. She had a manila envelope under her arm. And she was carrying a can, like a gasoline can, you know, only it was black. Anyway, she had red hair.”

  16

  ON A SANGRE DE Cristo side street, an orange rubbish truck opened steel jaws and a youth in orange coveralls heaved bulging green plastic bags of trash between the jaws from a grassy curb. Dave stopped the rental car. In hard late-afternoon sun glare, Cecil blinked at him.

  “You don’t make it easy not to ask questions.”

  Dave grinned. “You look great in that hat.” It was yellow, with a broad brim tilted up on one side and a fluffy cerise plume. Dave had bought it for him in Los Angeles, not far from the glass police building. Four hours and twenty-eight minutes ago. Dave flicked the brim of the hat with a finger, opened the car door, and got out.

  The youth in orange coveralls used a clumsily gloved hand to yank down a lever at the side of the truck. Machinery whined, the steel jaws groaned closed, there was crunching and grinding. The youth gave a shrill whistle, the truck lumbered on, he jogged after it. Dave stepped out quickly and caught a greasy sleeve. “May I ask you a question?”

  The boy stopped and tilted his head. “About politics? About products?”

  “About these trucks,” Dave said. “How many are there? How many of you work them?”

  “Two trucks, four of us.” The boy was gold skinned, blue eyed, and well spoken. He should have been playing badminton on a private beach in Malibu. “Except sometimes. Like today. Today one of the trucks has its insides all over the garage floor.” He checked a watch on a grimy wrist. It was an expensive watch. “Means the two of us have to cover two whole districts. That’s why we’re out so late.”

  “When do you study for exams?” Dave asked.

  “On my off days,” the boy said. “This is a good job. There’s a long waiting list for this job. Normally it’s only five, six hours, two, three days a week.”

  From the high cab of the truck another blond youth stuck his head. “Come on, Kevin.” The diesel revved impatiently.

  Kevin waved a glove. “What did you want to know?”

  “Whether you remember picking up a charred gasoline can. About two weeks ago. On Cholla street.”

  The boy in the truck blasted on its horn.

  “I’m coming,” Kevin called. “Yeah. Not me—Paul. It had a police-department stencil on it. Didn’t look any good anymore but we turned it over to them anyway.”

  Cecil came up. Dave asked him, “Do you know her exact address?”

  “Two forty-one,” Cecil said.

  “Along there somewhere.” The boy frowned. “Who are you?”

  “Insurance.” Dave stuck a card into a pocket of the orange coveralls. “It’s evidence in an arson case.”

  The diesel horn shouted down the street again. Dogs began to bark. Kevin ran for the next stack of trash.

  News, or what Channel Ten chose to see as news, kept happening. It was close to six o’clock. The side room in the cinderblock building on top of the mountain was noisy again with typewriters and teletypes, and foggy with cigarette smoke the gale-force air conditioning couldn’t cope with. Telephones rang. Hiked shoulders held receivers to mouths and ears while pencils scribbled on yellow pads. No one paid any attention to Dave and Cecil when they edged their way between the desks. Daisy Flynn was marking copy again with the black felt-tip pen. She didn’t see them either—not right away. When she did, she yanked off her glasses and glared at Cecil.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “They stole my film, didn’t they?” Cecil said.

  “You were supposed to be here at five this morning with an interview tape,” she said. “What? Yes—they stole your film.” She turned Dave a sour green stare. “They’re everywhere, aren’t they—the tentacles of a great insurance corporation?” She looked at Cecil again. “What are you doing with him?”

  “As Scoop Harris of the Hoof and Mouth Bureau,” Cecil said, “nothing. As Cecil Harris, first grader, I’m learning the alphabet. But slowly.”

  “I don’t know what you’re jabbering about.” She fiddled irritably with her digital watch again. “But you are up to your Afro in trouble around here.” She scrambled papers together off the desk. “Naturally, I telephoned your school. They couldn’t find you either, which didn’t make them happy. They phoned your home in San Francisco.” She got to her feet. “Your older brother then got on the horn to me. And if you think I’m overreacting, wait until he gets to you.”

  “I brought everything back,” Cecil said. “Video and audio. They’re outside in my van.”

  “We’ll sort you out later,” she said. “One torn and bleeding limb at a time. Meanwhile, I have a newscast to do.” She started off.

  Dave stepped in front of her. “Give your sidekicks a chance for once. You and I need to talk.”

  She looked him up and down sharply. “What about? You mean I get that interview?” She laid down her script and pulled open a desk drawer. “Channel Ten’s Newsdesk learns at last what you’re doing in the Ben Orton case and why?”

  “You’re kidding,” Dave said. “You didn’t turn Cecil loose on me for Channel Ten’s Newsdesk. You turned him loose to keep me from getting my job done.”

  “I didn’t turn him loose.” She took her little white cassette recorder out of the drawer. “I simply didn’t try to stop him. Why wouldn’t I want you to get your job done?”

  “That’s what we need to talk about,” Dave said. “But I don’t think you’ll want that.” He touched the cold little box. “Because the subject isn’t going to be my part in the Ben Orton case. It’s going to be yours.”

  She stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t want me to say it here.” Dave glanced at the desks that crowded close, the busy staffers at the desks. “Shall we step outdoors?”

  “I’m stepping into the studio.” She dropped the recorder back and slammed the drawer. She snatched up her script.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She walked off.

  He went after her. “I’m talking about a fire-blackened gasoline can marked ‘La Caleta Police’ picked up by the trash collectors around Monday the nineteenth at your address.”

  She halted. He couldn’t tell whether she was pale or not. Her makeup was too thick. But the green eyes that stared at him through a fringe of false lashes were suddenly dull. So was
her voice. “Wait a minute,” she said, and pushed out the door into the hallway. Cecil looked grave and afraid. Dave gave him a one-cornered smile and watched the red hand of a clock on the wall. It wasn’t a minute till she was back. Without script. “Come on,” she said.

  She came to a stop on the packed open ground beyond the cars that angled in a row against the blank wall of the building, whose gray the dropping sun turned copper color. There was silence. The sky was beginning to go green. The hawk hung in it again, high and almost motionless.

  “Now, what’s this about?” She tried to be defiant.

  “You came out here,” Dave said. “You tell me.”

  “I came out here,” she snapped, “because you are talking dangerous nonsense and I want it to stop.”

  “What was dangerous,” Dave said, “was your being at Ben Orton’s the day and hour he was killed.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” She said it with energy and contempt but her long red nails were digging into her palms. “What would I be doing there?”

  “I’ve got a couple of answers,” Dave said, “but I’d rather have them from you.”

  “I wasn’t there,” she said. “Who told you I was?”

  “You know that,” Dave said. “Lester Green.”

  “Lester—” Her voice failed. She wavered on her legs. A bony hand groped out for support. It was Cecil’s arm she found. “But Lester Green is in prison.”

  “He was out that day,” Dave said. “He wanted to see Ben Orton but he got there too late. Orton was dead. Lester lost his head and ran. But at the top of the hill he looked back. And saw you in the patio. With a charred gasoline can in your hand. You know he saw you. You saw him.”

  She looked away at the shadows gathering in the folds of the hills. She breathed in deeply, shoulders rising and dropping. She turned Dave a weary, defenseless look. She nodded. “I saw him.” Her smile was thin and ironic. “I thought he was a workman clearing brush. The way they do when it gets dry like this. Against fires.”

  “Because he was black,” Cecil said. “Well, you’re wrong. Around here, it’s white middle-class boys get the nigger jobs.”

  “I forgot.” She let go of him, crossed the hardpan on wobbly heels, and leaned back against a very small car. The sun struck into her eyes. She shaded them with a hand. “Do you know,” she asked Dave, “who Eddie Suchak was?”

  “He published an underground paper in La Caleta,” Dave said, “until it got burned out. Which is where the gasoline can fits in—right?”

  “I was on vacation that month,” she said, “but the police told our crew it was the wiring. His printing equipment was too much for it. The building was old and run down.”

  “You wrote for him,” Dave said.

  “Not for long,” she answered grimly. “But it did feel nice—freedom.” She smiled to herself a second, then squinted up at him. “May I have a cigarette?”

  Dave held out his pack. Her hand shook but she managed to slip a cigarette out. Then she dropped it. Cecil picked it up and handed it to her, and Dave lit it for her. The air was still and the smoke hung in it. She said, “I believed it—about the wiring. Until two weeks ago. Two weeks? Yes.”

  “When Suchak died,” Dave said, “in a veterans’ hospital up the coast.”

  “Things go wrong with the kidneys,” she said, “when they’re confined to wheelchairs. Kidneys? I don’t know. Something inside. Unless they get regular therapy. And he wouldn’t stay still for it. But it wasn’t only that. He was angry all the time. Stupid wars, greedy corporations, corrupt politics—everything out there.” She nodded vaguely toward the town below in its bowl of brown hills. “It depends on who you are but he was a very delicate mechanism. Not put together to stand it. And then there was—” She broke off. The fingers of a hanging hand had strayed to the car’s license plate and were uselessly tracing the numbers. She looked down at them. Her voice held pity and rage. “He wanted to make love. He couldn’t. Which was pathetic, and he couldn’t bear being pathetic.” She looked up again, tears in her eyes. “It wasn’t paralysis that killed him. It was bitterness.”

  “And you don’t think anymore that it was faulty wiring that burned down his paper,” Dave said.

  “He brought me the can, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. And an envelope. Not here. To my apartment. He left them on the service porch. I suppose it was that same night. ‘To be opened in the event of my death’—that’s what he’d written on them. I didn’t know what it meant, why he’d left whatever they were with me. We hadn’t spoken in months.” She looked at Dave with winter in her face. “I expect you know why. He said he wasn’t a man.” Her soundless laugh was tender and derisive. “He was ten times the man Ben Orton ever was.”

  “But he ran from Ben Orton,” Dave said.

  “Didn’t we all?” She shrugged, dropped the cigarette, stepped on it. “Anyway—it was a day or two after he died that I remembered the package and the envelope.”

  “And in the package,” Dave said, “was the gasoline can left behind by whichever of Ben Orton’s boys likes to play with matches, so there’d be no mistake in Suchak’s mind about who burned him out and why. And in the envelope was a Xerox of the marriage license made out to Anita Orton and Lester Green. Along with Suchak’s story of the tie between the license and Lester’s arrest.”

  “And the fire.” She nodded. “Written in pencil. His typewriter was at the paper.” She sighed, pushed away from the little car, dusted her hands together. “So I took the can and the envelope and a lot of rage, and drove up to Ben Orton’s. I was going to put the story on the air but I wanted to confront him with it first. To see his face. Only when I saw it, it was surprised at something else—the last thing that would ever surprise it.”

  “You went in through the patio,” Dave said.

  “It was wet,” she said. “I had an old habit of going in that way—from years before.” Her glance flickered away, flickered back. “And there he lay in his own pig blood with his little pig gun in his hand. I was too angry to be sick. I stood over him and gave the speech I’d worked up on my way there in the car.” Her laugh at herself was harsh and despairing. “As if he could hear me dead when he never once heard me alive. I started to leave the study the way I’d come, and the patio gate squeaked. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. Someone came into the study and I just stood there trembling, praying for them to go away, whoever they were. And they did.”

  “You should have given him more time,” Dave said. “Look—there was a phone there. You knew what to do.”

  She sucked in her cheeks and shook her head at him. “Not a chance. Louise Orton’s deepest longing for twenty-five years has been to punish me. I thought she’d killed him. I still think so. For flaunting that art-gallery woman, Windrow, in her face—bringing her right into La Caleta.”

  “What about Kerlee? Lester says his tote bag wasn’t by the body. You knew that. And you still said nothing.”

  “That was why I was pleased when you showed up. You might be able to save him. I couldn’t. Not without taking his place. I was seen.”

  “That didn’t worry you,” Dave said. “That was only some workman burning weeds.”

  “I don’t mean by him,” she said. “When I got to the foot of Orton’s road in my car, another car was standing there. A 1928 Rolls-Royce, the only one of its kind in this part of the world. Richard T. Nowell’s. And he was in it.”

  17

  IT WAITED, ALMOST HIDDEN by big boulders, off the Coast Road. It stood high, and erect on its big wheels in grassy sand. Its paint was pearl gray with neat coachwork striping in red. Its hood was nickel plated, without a scratch, without so much as a thumb smudge. It had been cared for every day of its life and showed it. Cecil shook his head in awe.

  “How much?” he said.

  “Thirty-five thousand,” Dave said. “But it isn’t happiness. Come on.” He followed footprints between tall rocks. He had to use his hands in order to keep upright. The
n the width was easy only for children. Dave edged through. Behind him, it sounded as if Cecil were in trouble with his heels. The cove was small. The rocks dropped to a space of sand maybe ten feet square. Richard T. Nowell sat on the sand, his back against a boulder. He clutched his knees and watched the surf slide in among rocks, reach for him, and back off again. He wore corduroys and a heavy turtleneck sweater. Dave told him, “It wasn’t Kerlee.”

  He looked up. Distance was in his eyes. It took him a minute to remember where he was. “I always think,” he said, “that when I’m in Sangre de Cristo next, I’ll stop into a bookstore and buy an atlas. I’ll look at a map of the world and put my finger on this spot and run it straight out along whichever parallel it is and know what I’m looking at and not seeing.”

  “It’s the thirty-fifth,” Dave said. “You’re looking at Yokohama. Ben Orton was seen dead by two witnesses before that tote bag appeared.”

  Nowell tossed a pebble into the surf. “Do the police know that?”

  “Not here,” Dave said. “Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. One of those witnesses also saw you.”

  “She must be out of her mind with lust,” Nowell said. “You’re beautiful—but worth risking a life sentence for?”

  “She’s boxed in,” Dave said, “or thinks she is. Someone else saw her. And not just at the foot of Orton’s road. Coming out of his study.”

  Nowell smiled his tight little smile. “I like the inevitability of it. A woman—of course. It had to be.”

  Dave shook his head. “Her motive is feeble. Sentimentality—what takes the place of real feelings when there aren’t any.”

  “Sentimentality? Our Daisy? Over whom?”

  Dave told him about Suchak. “It called for more than a gesture but that was all she had to give it. Which brings us to the other reason she’s not a suspect. It wasn’t any gasoline can that smashed in Ben Orton’s skull.”

  “It was a flowerpot,” Nowell said. “And that means only one person—Cliff Kerlee.”