Little Dog Laughed

by Joseph Hansen

  Leppard went to get a baby-blue jacket off the pole. “But Underhill didn’t complete the deal.” He put the jacket on.

  “You arrested him too soon,” Dave said. “Experts will be examining that plane to find out the cause of the crash. Talk to them. You’ll find it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Oh, please.” Leppard picked up wallet, keys, change from the coffee table, and pushed these into pockets. His Omega was gold, with a gold bracelet. He slipped it onto a thick wrist. “McGregor flew every day of his life. Flying’s not like laying in bed, you know. It’s risky. The law of averages caught up with him, that’s all.”

  “McGregor was Underhill’s only alibi for why he had that money,” Dave said. “Whoever framed him for Streeter’s murder had to get McGregor out of the way. Surely that’s obvious.”

  “Could Hunsinger do it? Does he know aircraft?”

  “I don’t know, but he was away from home all day after you arrested Underhill. He could have driven down the coast and tampered with the plane while McGregor was up here looking for Underhill in Venice.”

  “Not in that van,” Leppard said, “not with those tires. How did he know about McGregor and the Cessna deal, anyway?”

  “Why didn’t Fleur whisper it in his ear? After Streeter whispered it in hers. In the dark. In the very same bed.”

  “You’ve got quite a mind.” Leppard gave his head a wondering shake, and went around the apartment shutting and locking windows. He opened the front door. “You want to let me go and pick up my lady now?” He switched off the lights.

  “McGregor’s plane was sabotaged.” Dave stepped outside, where not much daylight was left now. Lamps on old-fashioned bronze standards lit the staircase at yellow intervals below. “You can bet the farm on it.”

  “Not me.” Leppard pulled the door shut and used a key to double-lock it. “All I own is clothes.”

  10

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT. DAVE sat at his desk in the rear building, no light on in the long, raftered room except here. A mug stood at his elbow. When he tasted the coffee in the mug, it was cold. Cigarette smoke hung in the lamplight. The thick black book lay open in front of him. He had pushed maybe halfway through it, reading each passage Adam Streeter had highlighted in yellow pen, and reading whole pages where the only marker was a slip of paper. He felt gloomy. Reading the sad, bloody history of Los Inocentes would depress anyone, the grisly catalog of butchers like Cortez-Ortiz who had held power there almost from the start. Dave closed the book, rose stiffly from the desk, stretched. The canyon night was quiet. The jangle of the telephone was loud.

  “That was a cold lady,” Leppard said in his ear. “So I had time on my hands all by myself. And I drove around to talk to Hunsinger, and he wasn’t home.”

  “Did his dog bark at you?”

  “Dog wasn’t home, either. Big white dog, right?”

  “Snowy by name. And not friendly.”

  “I saw the dog dish in the kitchen,” Leppard said, “an empty dog food can in the sink, dog bed in a corner of the bedroom, matted with white hair. Warm day. House was shut up. Smelled of dog, but there wasn’t any dog.”

  “You went through the house,” Dave said.

  “Like you went through Underhill’s,” Leppard said. “I’m learning things from you, Mr. Brandstetter. That man is a reading fool. Books stacked all over. Also a writing fool. Never saw so much typing paper with typing already on it.”

  “Is he writing a book?”

  “More like twenty books, it looks like. He’s got this theory about why people do what they do. It isn’t why they think. They don’t know themselves at all. He is into getting us all to know ourselves. When we do that, the world will be paradise, no greed, no crime, nobody seeking power over anyone else, pure water, pure air, love, peace, joy, and vegetarianism. Save the whales, save the muskrats—”

  “I wonder you could tear yourself away.” Dave turned to look at the bar in deep shadow under the new wing of the sleeping loft. He would like a drink to go with this conversation. Leppard was lonely. Who knew how long he would talk? “Did you learn anything else?”

  “That his closet was empty,” Leppard said. “He took his clothes and his dog and left. Also twenty-four tea bags—herb tea. The empty box was on a kitchen counter. With the cellophane the box was wrapped in.”

  “Is marijuana an herb?” Dave said.

  “You got me,” Leppard said. “So I thought about what you said about that busy bed. The one that belongs to the Cambodian lady. Fleur? And I checked the Yellow Pages and drove by her place. She keeps lights on in the yard, but the house was dark. I pictured her and Hunsinger humping in that bed together, and after what I went through tonight, it put me in a bad mood. I stomped up on that porch and kicked that door. I really wanted to interruptus their coitus.”

  “When I did that,” Dave said, “Hunsinger was not philosophical about it. Did he like it better this time?”

  “He wasn’t there,” Leppard said. “His junky old VW bus was in her driveway, but he wasn’t there.”

  “She’s paying for a beautiful lavender van,” Dave said, “so new it still has its paper license plates.”

  “It wasn’t there,” Leppard said. “She wasn’t there. I went inside. Her clothes are missing too. They took the best vehicle, didn’t they, and left together?”

  “It’s a little early to be sure,” Dave said. “But it’s interesting. She has ten thousand dollars coming from Adam Streeter’s will—so his lawyer tells me.”

  “Which means you scared her very much,” Leppard said.

  “Not her.” Dave lifted his head. Cecil’s van rumbled off Horseshoe Canyon Trail into the brick yard of the front building. Dave told Leppard, “When I asked if they owned wire cutters, Hunsinger jumped to deny it. Fleur just told me calmly where to find them. If he murdered Streeter, I don’t think she knows it.”

  “Then why run away with him?” Leppard said.

  “Because she’d believe any excuse he gave her,” Dave said. “She’s a type you run into sometimes.” He saw again the soft change in Fleur’s eyes the other morning in Hunsinger’s overgrown driveway when Dave had offered to get her the name of Streeter’s lawyer from Underhill. “Any man who’ll do a kindness for her, she’s ready to melt in his arms.”

  Leppard grunted. “Type you may run into sometimes. Type I run into hates the color blue, and has no use for a man who pays too much attention to his appearance. Man like that is vain and selfish, and probably impotent.”

  “She didn’t want to investigate that?” Dave said.

  “No way.” Leppard laughed bleakly. “Shit.”

  “You putting out an APB on Hunsinger and Fleur?”

  Cecil came in. Dave raised a hand to him and smiled.

  Leppard said, “I’ll talk it over with the DA in the morning. Maybe he’ll want to link them up with Underhill—part of a conspiracy. What do you think?”

  “I think Hunsinger cut that fence, which is destruction of private property. There must be a law against that.”

  “I’m still in Santa Monica,” Leppard said. “Don’t feel like going home yet. Not far from you. Come out, meet me, and I’ll buy you a drink. We can talk it over.”

  “Sorry,” Dave said. “It’s past my bedtime.”

  “Yeah.” Leppard sighed. “Sleep well.” He hung up.

  Cecil cocked an eyebrow and passed the desk, making for the bar. “Somebody trying to date you behind my back?” Dave laughed. The door of the bar refrigerator slapped. A bottle cap was pried off. Cecil emerged from the shadows with a Heineken and a glass. “I’m sorry I was out when you came by the station. I got a mysterious phone call and went to check on it.” He stopped beside the desk and looked at Dave. “Oh, excuse me. I thought you already had a drink.”

  “I’ll get it, thanks.” Dave went into the shadows and the fresh lumber smell that fell to the bar from the planks above. He rummaged up ice cubes, a glass, the Glenlivet. “How mysterious?” He uncorked the bottle. “Why m
ysterious?”

  “For three reasons.” Cecil switched on a lamp at the near end of the long corduroy couch. “First, the caller spoke English so badly I was surprised the switchboard knew who to put the call through to.” He sat on the raised hearth, leaned forward, poured the glass full of suds and beer. “Second, he said he had seen me at San Feliz the other night asking who shot the kid in the irrigation ditch.” The bottle clinked on the hearth stone. “And third, he could give me the answer.”

  Dave poured whiskey over the ice cubes and recorked the bottle. “And you had to go to him, because he didn’t want to tell you on the phone.”

  “I told you they were scared to death down there.”

  “I remember.” Dave sipped the whiskey, went to the desk to snap off the lamp and pick up cigarettes and lighter. He carried these to the couch and sat down facing Cecil. “And I don’t think you should have gone. To answer this call, I mean. Not without taking me with you.”

  “You worry too much.” Cecil drank some beer. “I’m only a reporter. We don’t threaten anybody.”

  “The truth about a murder does,” Dave said. “Where did he say to meet him?”

  “A bar called El Borracho. Brooklyn Avenue. The east side. You know the kind of place, blind dirty white stucco front with graffiti, half the letters on the neon sign out of gas, a door that looks like nobody passes through without kicking it a few times first. Greasy curtains inside the door. Bad lighting, air full of smoke and beer fumes, disinfectant smell blowing in from the back hall, the restrooms. Jukebox turned up loud with mariachi music, everybody yelling his head off to be heard over it, laughter, arguments, breaking bottles.”

  “The Polo Lounge,” Dave said.

  Cecil grinned. “Something like that.”

  “I shouldn’t joke.” Dave lit a cigarette. “You were foolish to go to a place like that alone. Don’t do it again, all right?” He waited for Cecil to nod. Cecil didn’t nod. He looked stubborn. Dave said, “Was he there?”

  “He must have been waiting outside someplace, watching for me to show up. He came in afterward. He knew who to look for. I didn’t. I was standing, wondering how to get through the crowd to the bar when he bumped me, and when I looked at him he smiled. Now, there were only men in this place, but it was no gay bar. So I figured this must be him, little guy, brown leathery skin, gray hair, bad teeth, funny pale blue eyes. He knew how to get to the bar, and he brought back draft beers and led me out back to the alley.

  “It was dark out there. Somebody was throwing up. When he got through and staggered back inside, this ragged little dude, Porfirio, told me it was gringos who shot the kid—gringos in jungle fatigues and combat boots and berets, all right? They roared up to the irrigation canal in a Cherokee, dragged the kid out, bound and gagged, forced him to his knees in the reeds, and shot him point-blank through the head. Then they yanked the gag out and untied his hands, and dumped his body into the water. They scrambled back into the four-by-four and tore off out of there. People in the shacks heard the shot—it woke them up. But Porfirio was the only one who saw. He was taking a bath in the ditch, under a bridge, where he could hang his clothes and put his soap and towel. The plumbing is kind of primitive down there. He was so close to these killers, he pissed, thinking they’d seen him.”

  “Why didn’t he tell the police when they came?”

  “I asked him the same thing.” Cecil drank off the beer in the glass, and poured what was left in the bottle into the glass, watching it foam. “Maybe he’s more than an illegal. He could be a fugitive. He just said you don’t talk to law enforcement types if you can’t show them a green card. And he didn’t tell anyone until he learned the kid was from Los Inocentes. That’s unusual in San Feliz. And no one in San Feliz is political. They’re refugees from hunger, that’s all. And Porfirio heard that this kid was political, frightened, hiding out. So he thought he’d better tell somebody. And he chose me.”

  “And does he know who the death squad were?”

  Cecil gave his head a glum shake. “Here we get into folklore. There’s this mythic character, El Coronel, okay? No one knows who he is, but he’s said to have a secret army hidden in the mountains. The man who started the legend was named Tamayo. His old car broke down back of nowhere, he went for help, got lost, and stumbled on these young Latinos dressed like Vietnam grunts in some dusty canyon. Guns, grenades, the works. Some of them were running hunched over up a creek bed, and the rest were shooting at them from the trees.”

  “And Tamayo,” Dave said, “isn’t around anymore—right?”

  “Right. Like your flying dude, McGregor,” Cecil said. “His plane crashed. Did you see it on the news?”

  “It’s bad news for Underhill.” Dave smoked, frowning into the shadows. “Will Porfirio let you put him on TV?”

  “Hell, no. And even if he would, I couldn’t, could I? I mean, who knows if what he says is true? He can’t prove it. He was alone in that canal. But if I need him, I have his address—nineteen twenty-two City View. And he’s got my phone number.”

  Dave grunted, drank whiskey, tapped ash off his cigarette. “Why the hell did Hunsinger run?”

  “Say what?” Cecil said. He rose and reached for Dave’s glass, in which only ice remained. He went away into the tall darkness. While Dave outlined for him what he had learned about Hunsinger today, Cecil made the Glenlivet bottle gurgle, its cork squeak going back into place. He got himself another Heineken from the little refrigerator, and brought bottle and Scotch glass back into the light. He put the glass into Dave’s hand. Dave said, “Thank you,” and wound up the Hunsinger log, “But now, with this story of Porfirio’s, I wonder if Hunsinger wasn’t telling the truth, after all.”

  “About the midnight visitors to Underhill’s?”

  “The description jibes.” Dave drank, set the glass under the lamp, stubbed out his cigarette, lit another, and scowled at Cecil through the smoke. “And the dead boy was from Los Inocentes. Among all those Mexican farm workers. Hiding out. Frightened. And Streeter was running. Frightened. By something he’d learned for his story about Los Inocentes—the newsbreak of the decade. You don’t suppose—”

  “I don’t suppose it was this dead boy Streeter went to interview on that long drive he took he wouldn’t tell Chrissie about? I don’t suppose the boy knew who had kidnapped Cortez-Ortiz, and told Streeter the name, and got killed for telling? Is that what you’re asking?”

  “You understand me so well.” Dave coaxed him with a smile. “Why aren’t we working together anymore?”

  “Seems to me we are.” Cecil filled his glass again. “I saw Dr. Scheinwald at County USC Medical Center, like I promised. And there wasn’t any need to drive to Sierra Madre to find the Tom Fraser family. They were right there at the hospital—mother and daughter, anyway. Excuse me.” He rose, and left the lamplight again, this time to cross the wide room. A door closed. After a minute, a toilet flushed. Water ran in the pipes. The door opened. Cecil came back into the light, sat down, took another gulp of beer.

  “Your attachment to dramatic pauses is getting out of hand,” Dave said. “What about Glendenning’s alibi?”

  “Whose what?” Cecil looked bewildered. “Oh, that. He was there with them, just the way he said—all night.”

  “Thank you. That’s nice to know.” Dave frowned at the telephone on the dark desk. “I wonder why Ray Lollard hasn’t got back to me with a location on that phone number I found at Underhill’s. And an up-to-date list of Streeter’s call-outs. Ray never kept me waiting before.”

  “You’re never home,” Cecil said, “and you always forget to activate the answering machine.”

  “I don’t forget. It’s deliberate.” Dave drank the last of his whiskey. “Irrational, but deliberate.” He moved the glass in a circle, listening to the ice rattle. “I’ll phone him in the morning.”

  “You want to know,” Cecil said, “whether Streeter rang somebody in San Feliz?”

  “Somebody named Rafael,” Dave said. �
��Ray told me the number was down among the big produce ranches.”

  “Dave, I can’t drive all the way to San Feliz to ask if anybody saw Streeter there the night the boy was killed. It would take the best part of a day. Donaldson won’t give me the time. Everybody’s on vacation. I’m already working double shifts. You know that.”

  Dave put out his cigarette. “You ready for bed?”

  Cecil sighed. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  11

  FLAT LAND STRETCHED AWAY in every direction to mountains three inches high on the horizon. The earth was yellow-brown, striped with green rows of lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower. Sealed in the air-conditioned Jaguar, Dave smelled the crops, especially the onions when he passed onion fields. The wheels of the Jaguar rattled the rough planks of bridges across irrigation canals. The sluggish water in these ditches mirrored a hard hot sky the blue of steel. Now and then a trail of dust far off across a field showed where a truck carried crates of harvested produce, or piles of empty crates, or a crowd of brown-skinned field hands in ragged straw hats, dusty coveralls, cracked shoes, men, women, children. He saw other workers, stooped, laboring in the fields. Or gathered around an old tanker truck for water to drink.

  San Feliz was a loose scatter of buildings, stucco over frame mostly, some stucco over cement block, some sun-bleached yellow brick. Clumps of pepper trees and ragged-barked eucalyptus trees shadowed them. There were big old date palms sometimes. The shops sold hardware, groceries, clothes. A single bank occupied a corner. The lone motel called itself the Rest E-Z. A middle-aged woman, scrawny in walking shorts and a halter, was turning a garden hose on plantings in front of the straw-color motel units, but the petunias there were wilting anyway. Ed’s Oasis was a tavern in a gaunt frame building whose jigsaw decorations where spooled supports met porch roofs had cracked in the dry heat of decades and sections fallen away. Pickup trucks stood in front of the place, a lumbering Cadillac, rickety RVs, a sports car. Dust coated them all. Dave was thirsty, but he drove past.