Little Dog Laughed

by Joseph Hansen

  “Then tell me, please”—Dave paused for a last intake from his cigarette before he flicked it away, sparking red across the bricks—“about one Cortez-Ortiz.”

  “General Cortez-Ortiz.” Cecil stepped around Dave and opened the cookshack door. The light inside was cheerful. The aroma of Max’s cooking was rich in the air. Cecil said, “I’ll tell you while we eat.”

  5

  WHEN DAVE’S FATHER DIED of a heart attack, four or five years ago, while racing his new Bentley along a midnight freeway, he had widowed his ninth wife, a smart, good-looking, very young woman named Amanda. She had wandered dolefully through the enormous rooms of Carl Brandstetter’s showy Beverly Hills house, wondering what to do with her life, until Dave talked her into remodeling this place for him. Lately she’d added a second sleeping loft in the rear building—this after a case Dave worked on had meant housing a family of children with no place else to hide. Added sleeping quarters seemed sensible. Now he had them. The back building still held the tang of freshly sawed lumber.

  But the cookshack Amanda had done on the first go-round. It stood at the near side of the brick courtyard, about twelve by fifteen feet, shingled like the two larger buildings. Those she had modernized—temperately. This one she had turned backward in time. Walls and cupboards she’d stripped to the original pine. The refrigerator-freezer was new in its works, but housed in a gigantic old oaken icebox of many thick doors. The cookstove was a stately farmhouse model of white porcelain panels framed by glittering nickel plate, cunningly fitted out with the latest burners, grille, rotisserie, convection oven. The sink came from a wrecker’s, but was unmarred. Beside it stood a cast-iron hand pump. Amanda’s workmen had uncovered plumbing beneath the building that reached down to a well. The pump now worked, but there were faucets too. To eat their supper, Cecil and Dave sat on plain pine chairs at a heavy old deal table scoured almost white. Cecil said:

  “He was minister of the interior in Los Inocentes. Under the old military junta. And under the new presidente too, after they held those so-called elections so the U.S. would loan them money. But Washington held back on the loans after reporters got down there and proved the guerrillas were right—that El Carnicero was still slaughtering campesinos in the back country—whole villages of them.”

  “El Carnicero—the Butcher.” Dave drank wine from a chilled, misty glass. “That’s Cortez-Ortiz?”

  “Believe it.” Cecil filled his mouth, chewed, swallowed, drank some wine. “Some congressmen got on a plane and went down to see for themselves. And there were the corpses by the roads, in the ditches, in the fields, in the town squares, and they told the State Department they wouldn’t authorize any money for the new democratic Los Inocentes until El Presidente got rid of the Butcher. Cortez-Ortiz had his own army, paid with government funds. Elite troops, all right? Only nobody calls them that. They call them chuchos.”

  “What kind of Spanish is that?” Dave said.

  Cecil shrugged. “I don’t know. It means ‘little dogs.’”

  “And what happened to the Butcher and his little dogs?”

  “He got sent into exile.” Cecil wolfed down another forkful of Max’s special scaloppini and followed it with another swallow of wine. “Not far—only to Honduras, the Guatemalan embassy. The leftists want him tried for genocide. The rightists want him back as interior minister. But El Presidente—he just wants that juicy U.S. loan.”

  “Did he disband the special troops?” Dave said.

  “With a lot of fanfare. But only for the media. They’re still out there murdering people. And disappearing people.”

  “That didn’t used to be a transitive verb,” Dave said.

  “It’s transitive now—one way, no return.” Cecil picked up a slim green bottle, poured wine from it into Dave’s glass, into his. “And not just indios and mestizos, either. They did it to a young yanqui reporter the other day. Twenty-four hours in Los Inocentes. They found his jeep in the mountains. Then they found his body, bullet in the back of his head.”

  “Rue Glendenning,” Dave said. “His name came up this morning. I wondered where I’d heard it before. On the news. He came to Streeter for advice on launching a career.”

  “Must have been some advice,” Cecil said bleakly. “State Department lodged a protest. El Presidente was saddened, but he says the guerrillas did it. The communists, no? Sí.” Cecil moved his head sharply, as if to shake off the memory. He made himself smile. “It’s nice being here with you,” he said.

  “It’s not exactly an everyday occurrence anymore,” Dave said. He glanced at a yellow telephone fixed to the end of a cupboard where it could be reached from the table. “I hope they don’t call you.”

  “What will we do to pass the time?” Cecil wondered.

  “We’ll think of something.” Dave finished his food, brooding, puzzling. He rose, gathered up the dishes, carried them to the sink. Coffee was ready on the massive stove, steam curling light and fragrant from a glass maker. He lifted down from a shelf handsome mugs glazed in runny brown, filled these, carried them to the table. Bottles sat glistening on a counter. He lifted from among them a squat one, turned a squeaky cork, poured brandy into small globe glasses, returned to the table with these, and sat down.

  “Who brought up Cortez-Ortiz, anyway?” Cecil said.

  “His name was one of two things Streeter’s daughter knew about the story her father was working on. That’s all she’d heard from him. Overheard when he was talking to Glendenning. Two names. The other was Tegucigalpa.”

  “That figures,” Cecil said. He picked up his coffee mug, blew at it, set it down again. “Four or five days ago, there was some wild shooting at the Guatemalan consulate in Tegucigalpa. When the smoke cleared, and they dragged the bodies off the steps and washed the blood away, Cortez-Ortiz was nowhere to be found.”

  Dave looked at him over his raised mug. “Disappeared?”

  “You got it. And no one knows who shot his guards and took him. Left-wing? Right-wing? All the confusion out front, somebody snatched him out the back.”

  “And what Streeter learned on that long drive of his was who,” Dave said. “Only he was seen. Someone was watching and knew Streeter had the truth. And Streeter knew he knew. Which was why he ran to television. If the story became public right away, there’d be no point in killing him to keep him quiet.”

  Cecil sipped cautiously at the hot coffee, frowning to himself. He set the mug down. “But he shouldn’t have fallen for Dot’s story about Donaldson. He should have stayed at the television station where there were people around, where he’d be safe.”

  Dave shrugged. “He was packing to clear out when they caught up to him. He was using the time.”

  Cecil said bleakly, “Only he’d figured on more time than he had.” He picked up his little globe of brandy. “He should just have given the story to Jimmie and Dot.” He tilted and revolved the snifter slowly, watching the amber fluid slide, clinging to the glass. “What story could be so big it’s worth getting killed for? What amount of money and fame?” He sipped from the glass. “Mmm. If there is one thing in this world as good as sex, it’s brandy.”

  “We’ll see,” Dave said. “Somebody knows what Streeter knew. Nothing on Cortez-Ortiz on the news wires?”

  “Only that he’s still missing,” Cecil said. “Didn’t take but a minute for the pretty talking heads on the anchor desk to say that, and get along to the baseball scores and other really important stuff, did it?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Dave tasted the coffee, the brandy, and the flavors needed tobacco smoke to perfect the blend. He lit a cigarette. “Why kidnap the man, if you don’t ask for ransom—or at least brag about it?”

  “I don’t know.” Cecil watched Dave smoke, and frowned. “Why can’t you quit that? I’d like you around for a while.”

  “I’m down to a pack a day,” Dave said.

  “The Grim Reaper will be furious,” Cecil said.

  Some kind of rattly vehicle jo
unced down the sharp drop from the road to the parking space beyond the front building. Dave kept meaning to have that access fixed—his Jaguar sometimes scraped bottom there. Now he was pleased that he’d left it. It gave advance warning of visitors. He laid his napkin down, pushed back his chair, went to the door that stood open to the night, pushed the screen, and looked out. Silhouetted by the glow of lights that crouched in the shrubbery out front, a lanky man came walking bowlegged over the bricks. He wore a cowboy hat. Dave found a switch and lights came on under the eaves of the buildings, putting light in the courtyard. The man was very fair—white skin, white eyebrows, white eyelashes. He blinked in the sudden light, halted, and studied Dave.

  “Brandstetter? I heard you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Did I?” Dave said. “I don’t remember that.”

  “My dog remembers,” the man said, straight-faced, no hint of mockery in his voice. “He told me you came by my house this afternoon, knocking at the door. He takes messages—but you didn’t have any way of knowing that, did you?”

  “Hunsinger,” Dave said. “Come in.”

  Hunsinger came in. He had a droopy white frontier mustache. His white hair was long, tied in a ponytail with a strip of blue cloth. His Levi pants and jacket were old, the blue almost leached out of them. The heels of his cowboy boots were run over. His blue tanktop had holes in it. Cecil shut the dishwasher and the pine doors that concealed it, dried his hands, shook Hunsinger’s hand. The two of them sat at the table while Dave fetched three mugs of coffee and sat down.

  “I don’t doubt what you say about the dog,” he said, “but I think it was Fleur who told you about me. And not that I wanted to see you. I went to your door by mistake.”

  “That’s all right, if you believe in mistakes.” Hunsinger almost smiled. His eyes were a very pale blue. He took off the cowboy hat, glanced around, saw the row of shiny brass hangers by the door, lofted the hat in that direction with the offhandedness of total confidence. It covered a hanger and stayed. Cecil applauded. Hunsinger said to Dave, “I don’t believe in mistakes. My observation is that whatever people do, there’s a reason for it, whether they know it or not. There are no accidents. There are no mistakes.”

  “And that’s how you help addicts,” Dave said.

  Hunsinger said, “Getting people to recognize that what they do they always do for a reason is not easy.”

  “Fleur says you’re a nice man, but wasting your time.”

  “That’s funny, coming from her. Where would she be now if somebody hadn’t helped her? Has she forgotten?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dave said. “But maybe she doesn’t make the association.”

  “We all need help occasionally,” Hunsinger said. “Adam Streeter helped her. I help my junkies. When they let me.” He shrugged bony shoulders, slurped some coffee. “I’ve had a couple successes. Or they have. Anyway, it’s more useful than teaching basic psychology in a community college—which is what I did. To a bunch of kids ninety percent of whom can barely write their own names. That’s a shuck.”

  “What about basketball?” Cecil said. “Weren’t they after you with scholarships? They were after me, and I can’t shoot the way you shot that hat.”

  Hunsinger almost smiled again. “They were after me, but so was the army. The scholarships dried up while I was in Nam. But basketball doesn’t help anybody, either. I had to get out on the streets. That’s where people are hurting.”

  “So I really did want to see you?” Dave said.

  “I’m sitting here at your kitchen table,” Hunsinger said.

  “Put me in touch”—Dave smiled—“with my hidden motives. Why do I want to see you?”

  “Because you want to know who killed Adam Streeter.”

  Dave reached for the cigarette pack, which lay on the table with his lighter. Cecil was quicker. He put his hand over them. Dave sighed. He told Hunsinger, “I did. But it isn’t my business anymore. The insurance company that hired me has closed the investigation.”

  “Because Underhill killed him?” Hunsinger said. “Well, I don’t think Underhill killed him.” The pale eyes searched Dave’s face. There was great gentleness in those eyes. In another age, Hunsinger would have been a priest, and probably a martyr. “Do you want to know why?”

  “It’s Banner Insurance that’s lost interest,” Dave said. “Not I.” He stood up. “Brandy with that coffee?”

  Hunsinger shook his head. Dave went to get brandy for Cecil and himself, and Hunsinger talked. “I don’t sleep much. After I gave up booze and cigarettes, I found I didn’t need to. At first, I didn’t understand, and I worried. But it was all right. Now I can read, plenty of time for it, not too many interruptions. I get twice the work done I used to. Read and write. Daytimes, it’s people, okay? So, I was awake and I heard somebody passing under my bedroom window.”

  “Didn’t the dog hear them first?” Dave set the little snifters on the table and sat down. “He raved at me.”

  “He doesn’t bark when I’m there,” Hunsinger said. “His ears were up. He heard them all right. My light was on, but the blinds were closed. I switched off the light and opened the blinds. But I didn’t see them. Light’s bad out there at two in the morning. Trees, shrubs, vines. They’d gone on past—gone on toward the back, toward Underhill’s house.”

  “Was he home?” Dave said.

  “His car was out front on the street,” Hunsinger said. “Street’s always parked up. It was a few doors along. A big old Cougar he paid about two hundred dollars for when he got out of jail. He had to be home. It was after the bars close. Where would he be? See, I went out the front door. I mean—I didn’t want to confront whoever was sneaking around. But I wanted a look at them if I could get it.”

  “Why didn’t you phone the police?” Cecil said.

  Hunsinger’s mournful horse face pitied Cecil’s ignorance. He said patiently, “The police are not my friends. They keep claiming I deal drugs. They don’t like the company I keep. They wish I wouldn’t bring drunks and addicts to my house. They want me to buy a business license. They want me to move. I leave them alone, in the hope they’ll leave me alone.”

  “Right,” Cecil said. “Sorry.”

  “And here,” Hunsinger told Dave, “out in the middle of the street with its motor idling is this big four-wheel-drive vehicle up high on its tires, you know? With smoked glass windows. Was somebody inside? I bet on it, but the lights were out in my house so I don’t think he saw me. I stepped down and waited in the yard, and it wasn’t two minutes before these figures came down the driveway, jumped the gate, climbed into the four-wheel and drove off.”

  “What kind of figures?” Dave said. “How many?”

  “Two,” Hunsinger said. “You’re not going to believe this. In camouflage suits, combat boots, berets. Disorienting. I thought I was back in Saigon. I thought it was 1969.”

  “You mean they were Orientals?” Dave said.

  Hunsinger shook his head. “At a guess, Latinos.”

  “Did you go check with Underhill?” Cecil said.

  “I rang his bell. Nobody came. I used my key. I thought they’d done something to him. Went through the whole house, but he wasn’t there.”

  Cecil said, “That’s bad for your idea that Underhill is innocent. It was near that time that Streeter was murdered.”

  “He wouldn’t walk to the marina,” Hunsinger said.

  “It’s possible,” Dave said. “It’s not all that far.”

  “Why would he? The Cougar was there. It runs. It burns a hell of a lot of gas, but it runs.”

  Dave said, “What did the commandos want? Had they searched? Had they taken anything?”

  “They’d been inside. Through the bathroom window. The screen was leaning against the wall under it. But nothing was missing—not that I could see. Certainly nothing big. Anything big—I’d have seen them carry it out, right?”

  “Underhill was home in the morning,” Dave said. He got the cigarette pack this time. C
ecil was staring at Hunsinger, absorbed. He didn’t even notice. Dave got the lighter and lit a cigarette. He laid the lighter down with a click. “You didn’t see him? He didn’t say anything?”

  “I didn’t wake up in time,” Hunsinger said. “I go to sleep around sunup and catch three, maybe four hours. The police woke me, running under my window, with rifles, for God’s sake, surrounding Underhill’s, pounding on his door. I got the hell out of there. I haven’t been back.” He shifted on the chair, dug from a tight pocket a strapless wristwatch with a scratched crystal. “Have to go back soon, though. Have to feed Snowy, let him out in the yard.”

  “If they didn’t take anything,” Cecil said, “then what did they come for? A social call? By the bathroom window?”

  “They knew he was out, probably telephoned and lured him out. Maybe he did have the papers. Maybe that was what they took.” Dave looked at Hunsinger. “Were Fleur and Underhill having an affair?”

  Hunsinger gaped. “Jesus, you ask funny questions. No. I don’t think so. Not at his place. She never came there. And I never saw him at her place.”

  “The flower shop,” Dave said. “You go there often?”

  “Pretty often. It’s a nursery too. I help her out with the heavy work.” A flush appeared under Hunsinger’s very white skin. “Wouldn’t you? She’s a lovely young lady.”

  “But she never gave you any encouragement?”

  “Streeter was a god to her,” Hunsinger said. “I’m a mere mortal. I didn’t stand a chance.”

  Dave smoked for a moment. “What about that Blazer, Bronco, whatever it was—did you get the license number?”

  “It was too dark. But one thing I can tell you”—Hunsinger scraped back his chair, rose, tucked the watch away—“there was a pintle mount bolted to the roof.”

  “Say what?” Cecil looked blank.

  “A mount for a medium-weight machine gun.” Hunsinger walked to get his hat, the heels of the cowboy boots noisy. “That was a combat-ready vehicle.”

  “Go to the police,” Dave said.

  Hunsinger winced.