Little Dog Laughed

by Joseph Hansen

  The woven wire fence had a gate, but it wouldn’t open. It was padlocked. To the woven wire of the gate was fastened a metal sign: NO AGENTS PEDDLERS SOLICITORS. Not BEWARE DOG, but a big white woolly dog jumped at the front window of the house now, and barked. It was a long time since Dave had vaulted a fence. He was going to feel stupid if he didn’t manage it. Raw ends of the steel mesh could rip his clothes. He was getting old, and old bones broke easier than young ones. But he gripped the gritty top bar of the fence that held the wire fabric, bent his knees a couple of times, took a deep breath, and swung up and over the fence.

  He didn’t land gracefully. Still, he was where he wanted to be. He got up a little shakily off the Bermuda grass and brushed at his pants legs with hands that stung where he’d come down on them. He weighed no more today than he had at seventeen. The only time he’d been heavier was in Germany, after the war, a kid lieutenant in Army intelligence, questioning frightened civilians on their political past. None of them had been a Nazi—of course not. And while they scrabbled in the snowy rubble for food, U.S. Army chow was plentiful, and Dave had got up to a hundred-eighty. Duke Summers, his skinny sidekick, had nicknamed him Porky. Before, and since, Dave had weighed one-sixty. So why had he landed so heavily here? Why had he brushed that low fence? With a shake of his head and a glum laugh at himself, he started for the bungalow. The dog left the window and began raving and clawing behind the front door. Dave set a foot on a sagging wooden step, its green paint crackled, and a voice called to him. He paused and looked.

  A young Oriental woman regarded him from the driveway. She was brown-skinned and trimly made, and wore white short-shorts, a man’s shirt knotted under neat breasts, a rice-paddy straw hat, and straw sandals. From her hand hung a woven straw carryall. “Is it really Hunsinger you are looking for?” she said. “People who need Hunsinger put their clothes on backward and can’t tie their shoes.” She smiled.

  “I’m looking for Mike Underhill,” Dave said.

  “Ah.” She seemed cheered up. “You have an appointment?”

  Dave went away from the short green steps, and the dog left off barking and returned to the front window where it stood up with paws on the sill, whimpering, and watching Dave cross the grass to the young woman. Dave told her, “No, I don’t have an appointment. Do I also have the wrong address?”

  “Not quite. People just forget sometimes to add the one-half after the number. It’s the house in the rear. But it doesn’t help if he isn’t coming.” She looked mournfully back along the broken cement strips of the driveway. “He’s gone.”

  “Where to—do you know?” Dave said.

  “I don’t know. I wanted to talk to him about …”—she thought better of that and said instead—“I don’t know him well enough to know where he goes when he isn’t home.”

  “Let me guess,” Dave said. “You wanted to talk to him about Adam Streeter.” Her gaze didn’t deny it. He said, “So do I. It was Adam Streeter you did know well enough to know where he went when he wasn’t home. Is that it?”

  “We were good friends,” she said.

  “You hadn’t quarreled?” Dave said. “That wasn’t why he killed himself?”

  “Why would anyone quarrel with Adam?” she said. “No. He brought me to this country from Cambodia, and set me on my feet. I would never quarrel with Adam. I don’t know why he killed himself. I can’t believe he did. He was brave. And he loved being alive.” She found tissues in her straw bag and dried her eyes. “Excuse me.”

  “If you wanted to talk about him,” Dave said, “why pick Underhill? Why not Chrissie?”

  “He didn’t want me to go there,” she said. “He didn’t want Chrissie to know about me—about us. Or anyone. He was afraid his wife would go to court about it and take Chrissie away from him. And she wasn’t a good mother. She had many problems; drink, drugs.”

  “I know. But she’s got Chrissie now.”

  A wince flickered in the young woman’s smooth face. “Ah, he would hate that. It’s another reason he wouldn’t have killed himself. He wouldn’t abandon Chrissie that way. Not so young and helpless.” She pinched her nose with the tissues, wadded them in her fist, pushed them back into the straw bag. “Who are you?”

  “Dave Brandstetter.” He slipped a card from his wallet and gave it to her. She read it, and looked up at him.

  “Private investigator?” Her mouth fought back a smile. “There really are such people, then? Not just on television?”

  “This one only investigates death claims for insurance companies,” Dave said. “When the death is sudden and violent. Did he own a .357 Magnum automatic pistol?”

  “He owned a gun,” she said, “a handgun. But I think he told me it was”—she frowned and blinked—“what is the name? Something about a horse? A very old American name?”

  “Colt?” Dave said. “Why did he keep it?”

  “He went dangerous places,” she said.

  “They wouldn’t let him take it on airplanes,” Dave said. “Did they let him take you?”

  She shook her head. “There were difficulties about my passport. I am not yet an American citizen.” She watched the street, the cars pulling away. “I wish Mike would come home.”

  “Streeter was going to Central America,” Dave said. “Would your passport let you go there?”

  “He was?” She tilted her head, mouth a little open in surprise. “He never said so to me. When?”

  “He had his bags half packed. You mean you didn’t know about the story he was working on? About the troubles in Los Inocentes? The guerrilla war?”

  She shook her head and said nothing.

  “So why have you come to see Underhill?”

  “He was Adam’s associate. I am alone now, suddenly, without Adam. I have a shop that he bought for me. Flowers.” It was her turn to find a business card and hand it to Dave. It was prettier than his, printed in colors. “In Santa Monica. But it doesn’t always pay its own way, and he helped. I don’t know what will happen now. I have a new delivery van to pay for. I thought Adam might have said something to Mike about me. Maybe Adam made a will. He never mentioned it to me, but if there is a lawyer, perhaps Mike knows his name.”

  “I’ll ask him.” Dave pushed her card into his wallet. “Then you won’t have to wait for him. I have to see him, anyway. You can go back to your flower shop.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Will you do that?”

  “I promise.” Dave smiled. She returned the smile, made a little shy, suddenly, when she had been anything but shy until now. Something had changed between them. Or she thought so. He said, “How do you know so much about Hunsinger?”

  “I lived in the rear house for a while,” she said, “but Adam didn’t like the neighborhood. I was trying not to spend his money foolishly. But he made me move. That’s how I know Hunsinger. He’s a good man, but he’s wasting his time.” She smiled again. “Well, good-bye for now, Mr. Brandstetter. And thank you.” She stepped away from him, walking backward, the straw bag held in front of her at her knees, little-girlish. At the wide driveway gate, she turned. A padlock fastened this gate too. She unlocked it, edged out, closed the gate again, the padlock. Aware of him watching her, she said, “I forgot to return the key when I moved.” She dropped the keys into the bag, turned to the shiny lavender van parked across the driveway, and reached for its door. “Good-bye.”

  “Wait.” Dave went to the driveway gate. “If you kept a key for this, you kept the key to the rear house, too. Did you go inside, just now?”

  She studied him, surprised. “You are like the ones on the television, after all, aren’t you? Yes, I kept them. Yes, I went inside. I wondered why he hadn’t answered his phone all day. I thought he might be ill.”

  “Or dead?” Dave said. “Like Adam?”

  She didn’t answer that. She didn’t blink, either, or show any expression. She said, “I left him a note.” A hint of smile played at the corners of her mouth. “You’ll find it when you go inside. You
’re going to do that, aren’t you? Just like on television?”

  “I don’t know why so much is missing from Streeter’s workroom,” Dave said. “Manuscripts, notes, computer storage disks, cassettes. I want to find them. Chrissie thinks Underhill may have them. What do you think?”

  “I think someone killed Adam,” she said. “Don’t you?” She came back to the gate, rummaging in the straw bag. She took out her key packet and pried one key off its hanger. “This may make it easier for you”—she laid the key gravely in his outstretched palm—“to find out who it was.”

  The house seemed to have saved up stillness. Dave stepped inside and shut the door. The dog had gone through the front house, barking from a series of windows as Dave walked down the driveway. It ended up at the smeared glass of a back door. But its barks came only faintly to the rear house now. Beige wall-to-wall carpet lay under plain upholstered pieces from a bargain department store, plaid couch and two matching chairs in greenish brown, a coffee table, books stacked on it. A pair of brick-red pottery lamps with drum shades waited on end tables. A thirteen-inch television set rested on a low cart in front of a shallow fake fireplace. Stereo speakers and a compact receiver perched on built-in bookcases that divided this room from a dining room that Underhill used as an office.

  A sand-color IBM Selectric sat on the table, Fleur’s card stuck into it, Please call me written on the back. Around the machine lay typed pages, handwritten notes, file cards, photographs, clippings, magazines and books open and shut, pencils, pens, a box of typing paper, a little bottle of Wite-Out. Dave peered through reading glasses at the typing, notes, clippings. All concerned a young woman who acted in a daytime television serial and now was about to star in a motion picture.

  No mention of Los Inocentes. Cardboard cartons on the floor against a wall held more papers, notes, clippings. He crouched and poked around in these. The clippings all dealt with show business—except one. HIGHER REWARDS SOUGHT TO CURB TERRORISM. President Backs Paying Up to $500,000 to Halt Acts Around World. He folded this, tucked it into a pocket. A slip of paper caught his eye. Rafael, and a telephone number. He used Underhill’s phone to ring Ray Lollard. A lifelong friend and top telephone company executive, Ray lived in a restored Adams Boulevard mansion, collected costly antiques, and kept a wild-haired, barefoot potter named Kovaks in a renovated stable-studio out back. Dave told Ray he needed a location on the telephone number after Rafael’s name. “And why don’t you come over next Thursday?” he added. Kovaks was no one to take to a restaurant. He wasn’t a drunk, but he favored marijuana, and even when he didn’t, he was apt to take a notion in the middle of a meal that he was too warm and strip. It didn’t faze Lollard, or Dave either, but it could disconcert strangers. Even Max. “We’ll have drinks and dinner and you can meet Cecil. You’ve never met Cecil, right?”

  “I know I’d love him, but I’m not eating these days.”

  “You were never overweight,” Dave said.

  “Kovaks has a new helper who weighs a hundred twenty-eight pounds. I am determined to weigh a hundred twenty-eight pounds, darling, if it kills me.”

  “Ray, you’re six feet tall,” Dave said. “How big is this clay-smeared elf?”

  “He comes up to Kovaks’s armpit,” Lollard said. “It’s irrelevant. Thin I can get. Short—never.” He gave a small, tremulous falsetto cry of woe. “Not to worry. I’ll locate that telephone for you. It’s south, where the big produce ranches are. Don’t tell me illegals are buying insurance these days.”

  “No, but they’re dying, just the same,” Dave said. “Oh, and Ray, get me an up-to-date phone bill for Adam Streeter, okay?” He gave Lollard the address. “I need to know if he rang that number. And think about Thursday, will you?”

  “How can I help it?” Lollard said. “It involves food.”

  Dave laughed, hung up, and pushed a swing door to Underhill’s kitchen. In the sink lay a dinner plate, salad plate, one each of knife, fork, spoon, a coffee mug, a drinking glass. The stove held a coffee maker, empty. On a counter lay a flat pack of bacon, a wrapped stick of butter, two eggs. He put these into the refrigerator. He left the kitchen.

  The single window of the bedroom looked out at a fence leaned on by lantana, flowers of calico red and yellow. The bed was unmade, an open book lying on it, reading glasses lying on the book. Pajamas on the floor, corduroy slippers. Under a brass lamp, behind a clock radio on a nightstand were stacked four books, jackets faded and chipped around the edges. Biographies of celebrities. By Michael Underhill. Dave eyed them. He seemed to remember that they too were short on facts.

  Sweaters, shirts, underwear, socks lay neatly in drawers. Slacks and jackets hung clean and cared for in a closet. The loafers, Hush Puppies, sandals on the floor were in good shape. This was a man down but not out. But a man also not going anywhere: luggage stood dusty on a high shelf. In the small bathroom, a rumpled towel lay across a closed toilet seat. It was damp. The medicine chest held only expected items—razor, shave cream, toothpaste, and the like. No prescription drugs, no illegal drugs. All correct and dull.

  A buzzer rasped in the kitchen. Dave left the bathroom and stepped into a short hall. The front door had a big glass panel, but it was bright outside, dark in here. He took off the reading glasses and tucked them away. The man on the stoop was no one he knew. Aged about forty, he had ginger hair, tightly curled, and a sandy mustache. Under a vest of thin leather his T-shirt was stenciled with a biplane, circling it MCGREGOR FLIES FOR HIRE. His belly was a little bulgy. The belt buckle there was large and tough-looking, the belt wide and sweat-darkened. This was nobody he had to explain his presence to. He went and opened the door.

  “Where the hell have you been?” the man exploded. He gave Dave a push in the chest, barged inside, and slammed the door. “You were supposed to meet me in Escondido at ten thirty this morning. I been phoning and phoning. What happened?”

  “My name is Brandstetter,” Dave said.

  “What?” The man had grown red in the face. Now he turned pale. His voice lost volume. “What are you—a cop?” Dave didn’t answer. He gave the man time to look him over. “No. The clothes are wrong. What is that? Brooks Brothers famous summer poplin, right? Three hundred bucks, right? You’re no cop. Who are you? Where’s Mike Underhill?”

  “What was he going to meet you in Escondido about?”

  “That’s my business,” the man said, “and his.”

  “How can you have business with a man you don’t even know?”

  “He was a go-between. It was a cash deal. I didn’t need to know him. I knew the principal.”

  “Adam Streeter—right?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Where do you fit in?”

  “Streeter is dead. Shot. He won’t be needing that aircraft you were going to sell him. That’s what the deal was, wasn’t it? Underhill was supposed to bring you the purchase price this morning. Why?”

  “The seller needed his money fast. That’s why he was letting the plane go so cheap. Shit. What the hell am I going to do now?” He squinted at Dave again. “Shot? Then you are some kind of cop, aren’t you? Somebody killed him.”

  “Possibly,” Dave said. “I’m an insurance investigator. And you’re McGregor.” He nodded at the T-shirt. “That says you fly planes. It doesn’t say you sell them.”

  “These days, every asshole with too much money, too many cars, boats, houses buys a plane. And once they learn, they fly it a few times and then it sits there. They’re like kids—don’t know what they want. Sometimes I can persuade one of them to get rid of the damned thing. I hate to see a beautiful flying machine sit on the ground. It makes me sick.”

  “Only this one’s going cheap, you said. What kind is it? His daughter says Streeter wanted to fly to faraway places with strange-sounding names.”

  “He was a foreign correspondent,” McGregor said. “It’s a Cessna 404 twin engine. No, it wouldn’t fly around the bloody world, but he was only going to Tegucigalpa.”

  “It’
s a model popular with drug smugglers,” Dave said.

  McGregor’s face got red again. “I don’t know why the owner wants to unload it. I don’t ask a lot of questions.”

  “It’s a way of covering your ass,” Dave said. “Selling hot aircraft could get you into trouble. A hundred thousand?”

  McGregor turned for the door. “Yeah, well. It’s zilch, now, isn’t it?”

  “Cash, right?” Dave said. “Drug dealers prefer cash—so they tell me on the five o’clock news.”

  McGregor opened the door, turned back. “Look, I was only in this like Underhill was. A go-between, understand? A broker. It was nothing to do with me.”

  “It’s a lot of money,” Dave said, “and a man is dead.”

  “I was way the hell down the coast. Why would I kill him, anyway? I liked the man. We met in Nam. I flew supply helicopters. Afterward, when he was in a rush, he’d have me fly him places. Also teach him to fly. Then he threw this deal my way. He was money in the bank. Why would I kill him? You start worrying about that hundred thousand. Where is it?” He laughed sourly. “Same place as Mike Underhill, right?”

  “It looks that way,” Dave said.

  But he couldn’t locate him. Using Underhill’s telephone, he rang every number in the man’s thin, leather-covered book. But no one who answered had seen Underhill in days.

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