Little Dog Laughed

by Joseph Hansen

  “It’s a shame somebody killed her father,” Dave said.

  The elevator doors closed. The elevator started down.

  “If the mother is indicted, and she’s the guardian—”

  “It’s temporary,” Dave said. “By default. Only living relative. She lost custody at the time of the divorce—you know that. She’s a drunk and a chemical dependent.”

  “The County will want custody of the girl,” Leppard said.

  “I’m more interested in what she wants,” Dave said. “She loved her father. She’s bearing up, so far. But I think there’s a limit to how much more she can take. She hasn’t done anything to deserve being in anybody’s custody.”

  “I’ll speak to the DA,” Leppard said. The elevator eased to a stop. The doors opened. “Tomorrow.”

  Cecil’s flame-painted van was not in its place on the bricks of the brush-shadowed yard between the road and the front building. Dave slid the Jaguar into place, switched off its engine, frowned at his watch. Had he forgotten the day of the week? Were they supposed to meet at Romano’s for dinner? He didn’t think so. He opened the car door, stepped out, drew a deep breath, and moved his shoulders to ease their tenseness—he’d fought miles of heavy traffic from downtown. The car door fell closed with heavy gentleness. He locked it, and moved through the gathering dusk around the end of the front building. Grumpy. They’d kept Cecil working late again.

  Then he remembered Chrissie. She’d be here, anyway. He smiled, sorted a key from other keys in the packet, and turned the lock in the front door, a broad door of thick glass panes clinched in wood. It swung inward, he stepped in, but big as the room was, he knew before his eyes could search the shadows that no one was here. He pulled the door shut, glanced for lights at the cookshack. No lights, but Chrissie didn’t need lights, did she? She lived in the dark. He put his head in at the cookshack door. Again no one. He pulled this door shut and crossed under the trailing vine to unlock and open the door of the rear building. He stepped inside and didn’t see her.

  “Chrissie?” His voice went up to the loft where she might be—the new room. But she didn’t answer, didn’t show herself. He lightly rapped the bathroom door. No response. He opened it a crack. Empty. He called into the high raftered silence of the place once more. “Chrissie?” She wasn’t here. Cecil must have taken her with him to his workplace at Channel Three. The room had stored up heat from the sun on its shake roof all day. It smelled of pine sap and, underlying that, the faint recollection of horse, from the days when it was a stable. He opened windows, outside which untrimmed branches crowded. He let the door stand open, shed the light windbreaker he’d worn, went to the bar, and put together a pitcher of martinis.

  He poured one over ice into a deep glass, stowed the pitcher in the small refrigerator back of the bar, and took drink and cigarettes out onto the patio. A broad bench of redwood planks surrounded the trunk of the oak. He set on the bricks three potted plants to make a place for himself, brushed away with a hand dried leaves and fern fronds, sat down, leaned back against the tree trunk with a sigh, and tasted the martini. He lit a cigarette, watched a light breeze take the smoke, and gazed up through the gnarled branches of the oak where the sky was changing colors from blue to green, from pink to flame, from lavender to smoky purple. Before he had finished the martini, the sky was black, and stars showed. He went to the rear building, switched on the lamps there, poured another drink for himself, then crossed to the cookshack.

  He thought about London in 1945, the only time he’d been there, how long the days held on in summer, until almost ten at night. Of course, that winter with Duke Summers in Berlin, night had come at three in the afternoon when snow was threatening. And morning had been morning only according to clocks and watches. Pitch dark, and bone cold. He sliced mushrooms at the sink, melted butter in a small pan to sauté them, heated the grill to make an omelet in which to fold the mushrooms. He tore up crisp lettuce, chopped a tomato, poured oil and vinegar over these on a small plate. Sliced chunks of French bread from a long loaf. Set the table. He had just begun to eat when the phone rang.

  “Mr. Brandstetter, Trinket’s out.”

  “Dan’l?” Dave said. “What do you mean?”

  “The Gernsbachs’ cat. I knew Mr. De Lis would never let her get away from him. It had to be Harry. He’s the one she can always trick.”

  “You mean the Gernsbachs have come home?”

  “Their boat’s back. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Dave’s heart thumped. “Have you seen them, talked to them?”

  “I tried to return Trinket,” Dan’l said. “I went around and rang their doorbell, but nobody came. I didn’t see any lights. But if Trinket’s out, they’re there.”

  “Don’t try again,” Dave said. “Let me handle it.”

  “You coming?” Dan’l sounded excited.

  “Right away. Twenty minutes at the longest. Sit tight.”

  “Ouch,” Dan’l said. “Trinket, damn it, that hurts.”

  Dan’l waited for him at the gates. Clara in her starchy uniform, her bulldog jaw set, her bright green knitting needles clicking ferociously, only glanced with her grandmotherly gray eyes at Dave, a look of disapproval, but she worked the switch to set the gates parting, and Dave with cheery thanks drove through. Dan’l got into the Jaguar. He didn’t have Trinket with him.

  “She’s locked in our bathroom,” Dan’l said. “Last time I found her out and put her in there she had toilet paper all over. The whole roll unrolled. Kleenex torn out of the box. All the medicine chest stuff out, piled in the sink, towels on the floor. She’s a demon.”

  Dave parked the Jaguar and they both got out. The night breeze rustled the dark water beyond the ground lights of the place. On the far side, the lights of other condominium windows wavered yellow in the water. The boats rocked at their moorings, the metal clips on ropes clinking against the metal of masts. Dave followed Dan’l along narrow outdoor passages to the Gernsbach place. Dan’l’s Nikes made no sound, nor did Dave’s plimsols. He put a hand on Dan’l’s bony chest to stop the boy in shadow away from the door. He stepped up to the door, put his ear to it, and listened. All was quiet. He used a slip of metal from his wallet to work the lock. It opened as easily for him as had the Streeter lock the other night. The door swung softly inward. Dave raised a cautioning hand to Dan’l, who was a pale thin shape among shadowy shrubs, slipped inside the Gernsbach place, and soundlessly closed the door behind him.

  The layout was a mirror image of the Streeter place. Here too light came in through French doors from the swimming-pool patio. Its wavering glow showed Dave French provincial furniture and eighteenth-century carpets. But the spiral staircase was the same. He went and stood at its foot, looking up into darkness, straining to hear. Maybe he imagined it, but it seemed to him faint sounds came from up there—soft electronic beeps and clicks. He slipped off the plimsols, left them, and cautiously climbed the stairs. On the first gallery level he paused, looking for light at the edge of doors. Nothing. But the sounds were clearer here, and he went up on to the third level, and there light thin as a knife blade shone under a door. He opened the door.

  A big, fiftyish man in rumpled denim pants and jacket, a captain’s cap pushed back on thinning crinkly gray hair, sat at a computer. Except around the eyes, his face was deeply, painfully sunburned. So were the big hands that flew up from the keyboard in surprise and fright. He stood up, and the small typist’s chair he’d sat in wheeled backward and fell over. The man held his hands up as if Dave had a gun trained on him. The hands trembled. The man’s eyes bulged.

  “Who are you? Are you one of them? I swear I saw—”

  “I’m Dave Brandstetter. And you’re Harry Gernsbach, yes?”

  “You are trespassing.” There was the ghost of an accent. Germany, that concentration camp, were long ago. “Get out.”

  Dave showed him a business card, but Gernsbach only goggled at it. Dave said, “I’m a death-claims investigator for i
nsurance companies. I’m looking into the death of your neighbor, Adam Streeter. I’ve been waiting for you to come home, so I could ask you—”

  “That’s all settled,” Gernsbach said. “Mike Underhill murdered him. It has been on television, time and again.”

  “But it’s not true, is it?” Dave said. “If it was Mike Underhill you saw kill Adam Streeter, you’d have phoned the police. You wouldn’t have run away to sea without telling anybody. You wouldn’t have stayed in hiding for days.”

  “Hiding? Hiding?” Gernsbach tried bluster, but not ably. “I have been sailing. Fishing. With my wife.”

  “What brought you back?” Dave said.

  “It is only temporary. Month-end business.” He made a half gesture at the computer. “I am a savings and loan director. It was necessary to review certain accounts.” He broke off. “How did you know I was here?”

  “You let the cat out,” Dave said, “when you came in. A neighbor saw her, and gave me a phone call.”

  “Scheisse!” Gernsbach picked the chair up and slammed it down on its casters. He stuck out a white-bristled chin at Dave. “I can tell you nothing. Go now. I must work. Then we go to sea again. A long cruise. To the South Pacific.”

  “Uh-huh. They saw you, didn’t they?” Dave said. “That figured. It was the only explanation. The curtains were open in your bedroom, you woke up, and saw them across the way—men in combat gear, crossing the roof, swing down on a rope to the balcony of Streeter’s workroom. You got up and went to the French doors to see better, right? And you saw them shoot him, heard the gun. And before you could duck out of sight, they saw you. That’s why you ran away, and why you’re going away again, for a long time, until Mike Underhill is convicted of that murder—and the real killers know they’re safe.”

  “Streeter courted danger,” Gernsbach said. “He should not have been living here among quiet people. He hungered for violence.” Gernsbach snorted. “What did he know? Had he lived under the Nazis? So—he brought it here. Terrorism.” He found a bottle and glasses in a file cabinet. He rattled them and pushed a long amber drink at Dave with a shaky hand. “In Marina del Rey.” He wagged his head and drank deeply. “The world is turning ugly again. As in Hitler’s time.” He eyed Dave bleakly. “Who are they? Where do they come from?”

  “I’m not sure.” Dave tried the drink—Wild Turkey. “It had to do with a story on Los Inocentes he was writing.”

  Gernsbach snorted. “This government can’t keep out of there, and neither could Adam. I warned him. ‘Political fanatics are all alike; you will end up dead. Then what will become of Chrissie?’ He only grinned at me.”

  “You should have phoned the police,” Dave said.

  “I would have been a corpse by the time they got here,” Gernsbach said. “Terrorists do not let witnesses live.”

  “How many were there?” Dave said.

  “Three. Young, from the way they moved. Strange. They were dressed for combat, but I saw no guns.”

  “Streeter came up with the gun,” Dave said, “which was bad judgment.” He drank off the whiskey and set the glass on the desk. “Call the police now—Jeff Leppard, homicide. You don’t want Mike Underhill to sit on death row for this.”

  “It cannot be helped,” Gernsbach said. “If I show my face, those storm troopers will kill me.”

  He swung the Jaguar in at an almost empty parking lot beside a white clapboard restaurant with a spouting black whale painted on its side. He got out of the car to take down the gritty receiver of a pay phone in a half booth with sea-fogged glass side panels. He rang his house. No one answered. He rang the television station. Cecil had not been in today. He’d said he was going out of town. Dave scowled at that and hung up. He moved away from the phone, turned back, and punched the number of the east side house.

  The sister who cooked so well answered. Had she heard from Porfirio? She answered in Spanish, with tears in her voice, “He has disappeared. She went out to the market, and when she returned he was gone. The neighbors said two men came, in cowboy boots and straw hats, and took him away.”

  “In a four-wheel-drive vehicle?” Dave said.

  “Sí. On big tires. With black glass at the windows. They will kill him, now—no?”

  “Maybe not,” Dave said, cold in his belly.

  “I have been to the church and have lighted a candle for him,” she said. “One also for you, señor.”

  “Gracias,” he said.

  But he would need more help than that. He punched four-one-one, and asked for the number.

  15

  FORTY-ODD YEARS AGO he had crammed German at an army language school in downtown L.A. The hours were long. He always left late. The streets were empty at night then. It had felt eerie—that lonely half-mile walk he’d made each midnight to the trolley barn to catch an almost empty big red car to his barracks in South Pasadena. The walk had taken him through the district called Little Tokyo. But the Japanese had all been rounded up and shipped off to internment camps. The shops that had sold fabrics and vases and beautiful cabbages were vacant. Off the boards that blanked their windows, his steps had echoed block after deserted block, loud and strange to his own ears. He hadn’t felt afraid. Who was there to be afraid of? He had felt that he was alone on earth. He felt that way now. Tall glass buildings glowed that hadn’t been here forty-odd years ago. A remote roar of traffic reached him from the freeways that met, knotted, and untangled themselves here at the city’s heart. But no automobiles drove these streets. He saw no human beings. L.A. was a city of the dead at night.

  The Grovers was stepped terraces outside, and inside was fumed oak, deep-buttoned leather, thick old mirrors. The light from crystal chandeliers was subdued. The carpets on marble floors and staircases were old, thick, handsome. Palms grew large in brass pots in corners. All sound was muted, the whisper of shuffling cards, the click of billiard balls, the rustle of Wall Street Journal pages in the hands of readers in wing chairs, even the rare laughter from the throats of judges, corporate lawyers, millionaire brokers, top management executives, retired generals, celebrated surgeons, overpaid officials and bureaucrats from City Hall, County Courthouse, Federal Building. And from Sacramento—the governor was a member of the Grovers.

  Carl Brandstetter had joined in the late 1920s, when Medallion, his life insurance company, had rocketed to success. In 1947, when Dave came back from Europe to join the company, his father had put in his name for membership. He was accepted, but he had scarcely set foot in the place since. A lunch now and then with his father had been the sum of it. Money and power were all they talked about, thought about, cared about here. Not Dave’s subjects. Not then. Not now. Now he was here to call in a marker.

  The bar hadn’t changed—dark paneling, dark leathers, a brass foot rail polished to a high sheen. Very old black men tended the long bar. These old men wore white jackets, just as always in the past. How many hundred such jackets had they worn out in their long lifetimes here? He read his watch and hiked himself onto a stool, and one of the old men came creakily to serve him. He had better go on with American whiskey. But not Wild Turkey—the proof was too high. He wanted his wits. It was a very old marker. And he had to drive home afterward. He asked for Jack Daniel’s black.

  The bartender peered at him with eyes whose whites were the dulled hue of very old porcelain. “It would be Mr. Brandstetter, is that right? Been a long time since we seen you here, sir.”

  “You’re thinking of my father,” Dave said. “He’s no longer living.”

  “Oh.” The creases in the black face deepened. “I’m sorry to hear that. Then you’d be—let me see can I remember—David?”

  Dave smiled. “You have a wonderful memory.”

  “So they tell me,” the bartender said, “but you look a good deal like your father. He was a fine man.” The bartender moved away, and with the studied motions of the very old chose a short sturdy glass of cut Waterford. He dropped ice into this. Then with respect for painful joints and a bri
ttle spine he stooped to lift the square whiskey bottle from its place on a softly lighted glass shelf. He measured whiskey into the glass not with a jigger but by practiced eye. The small paper napkin he laid on the bar was imprinted with the black silhouette of an orange tree that was the emblem of the Grovers and, with all deliberate speed, he set the glass down on the napkin in front of Dave. “Your father was a Scotch drinker,” he said.

  “Johnnie Walker,” Dave said. “Rough and tough.”

  “I don’t drink myself,” the bartender said, “never did. But I guess each brand is a little different, ain’t it?”

  “Very different.” Dave lifted his glass. “Thank you.”

  “Nice to have you here.” The old man gave a little bow of his darkly polished bald head with its fringe of white hair, and moved rheumatically away.

  It was past dinnertime. Behind him round tables drowsed in candlelight under snowy, heavy linen cloths. In a farther room men played cards at game tables, or sat talking in groups, or reading. In a room farther off still, men bent over billiard tables. Cigar smoke tinged the air. Dave smiled to himself. The aroma was unmistakable—Havana. The members of the Grovers might hate Dr. Castro and all his works, but there was a limit to self-sacrifice. Dave snubbed out his cigarette in a small glass ashtray with the Grovers orange tree stenciled on its bottom, and checked his watch again. He lit another cigarette and slowly finished off the Jack Daniel’s. A light hand touched his shoulder.

  “Mr. Brandstetter.” The speaker was a trim young man with a haircut so neat it looked painted on. His clothes were neat, new, and fitted him, but he stood stiffly in them. His face was stiff. His eyes, of no special color, held no special expression, either. He might have been a store-window dummy, except that when Dave nodded he spoke again, politely, but without expression. “Director Summers will see you now. If you’ll come with me, please?” Dave left his cigarette, got off the stool, and followed him past the grand staircase to the elevators. He read his watch again, and smiled. It was precisely ten thirty.