by Susan Dunlap
I checked behind me, then climbed the steps to the back door and knocked. Inside, in a room beyond, a light went off; I heard footsteps, first clearly, then growing softer, as though someone was moving toward the front door.
Jumping from the step, I ran down the alley, crushing more snails, pushing past the waste cans to the street.
Kleinfeld’s door was shutting. Outside it was a woman in jeans and a hooded ski parka. Was she the married woman Kleinfeld had mentioned? I hesitated.
The woman crossed the sidewalk and climbed into a yellow Triumph.
Making my choice, I remained in the shadows and noted her license plate.
When she pulled away, I walked back to the door and pounded.
It was several minutes and three more poundings before Garrett Kleinfeld opened the door. “It’s after eleven o’clock,” he said.
“It was earlier when I started knocking.” I stepped in.
“Couldn’t this wait till morning? I’ve had a rather long day.”
“I can see.”
He glanced toward the door.
I started to ask if she was the married woman of his alibi but decided not to. No need to tip him; I’d ask her that as soon as the Department of Motor Vehicles traced her. “What exactly is your relationship with Vernon Felcher?”
Kleinfeld sank down into a squat, arms wrapping around his back. “I told you, Bobby was a student—”
“The truth, Mr. Kleinfeld. Bobby may well have been a student of yours. Felcher may even have felt it helped him, but Vernon Felcher wouldn’t be giving you studio space because he thought you were good for Bobby. Now, why is it that you will have the first floor of Felcher’s building?”
Kleinfeld let his rump fall to the floor. His legs spread forward.
“Why?” I insisted.
Forgoing a new pose, he said, “It’s because of our common feelings about Padmasvana and his crew.”
“With that as a basis, Felcher could have filled the building.”
“Let me finish.”
“Okay.” I squatted across from him.
“Because of our common dislike of them, when I discovered that Rexford Braga was having financial problems, I tipped off Felcher and he made an offer for the land.”
“How’d you hear that?”
“On the Avenue. Surely you know how much makes the rounds on Telegraph.”
Kleinfeld could be telling the truth. Among the sizable group of merchants, Berkeley’s street artisans, students and hangers-on, a lot of information was disseminated. “And so, in gratitude, Felcher gave you the first floor?”
Now Kleinfeld bent one leg toward his body and twisted his torso away from it. “No, not free,” he forced out. “I’ll be paying for that space. But before you ask, I won’t be paying as much as someone else would. I am getting that consideration. And, again before you ask, it’s not because Vern Felcher is so filled with gratitude; it’s because that’s what I demanded from him in return for the information.”
Catching his eye, I said, “And that, I suppose, is an example of operating to the fullest of your potential?”
The lines of his face tightened. He released his pose and turned to face me. “Yes, Jill, it is. What I teach here is very important, in many cases vital. It is the difference between letting an old car rust in the driveway and getting it overhauled. And there’s nothing to say that I shouldn’t use my knowledge to remove a danger to the community while at the same time providing a more appealing place for my students.”
I glanced at my watch. I wanted to get back for the end of Pereira’s session with Braga and his books. Time for one more question. “You know Felcher as well as most?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew Bobby.”
“True.”
“Do you think Felcher cared much about Bobby?”
Kleinfeld bent his knee and pulled his foot toward his groin. “In his own way.”
“Which was?”
Kleinfeld began to twist to the left.
“Look,” I said, “I’m quite willing to wait you out. I’m getting paid for my time.”
He sighed, straightening his leg. “Okay. What I’d say is, Felcher did not reach his potential with Bobby.”
“In layman’s terms.”
Kleinfeld started to respond, caught himself and appeared to change verbal gears. “While he was married, Felcher didn’t have much of a relationship with the boy. Then came the Felchers’ divorce and the boy went to live with his mother in the Valley. She couldn’t handle him, either—or so Felcher said. Felcher said she was soft. His standards are not mine. But, coming from him, that was not a compliment. Felcher brought the boy back here. He did try to get him into something constructive. Bobby was his only son, his heir. To a man like Felcher, that means a lot.”
“Enough to kill for?”
“Of course. They let his son die. Now they’re denying him the property. I wouldn’t want to guess which is the greater affront.”
“What do you know about that property?”
“You’d be surprised what I know, like that new law Berkeley has about multiple dwellings—the height limit?”
“Yes.”
“Well, somehow Felcher managed to get a variance for that property.”
“Hmm.” So Felcher not only stood to make a killing on the ashram property, but if he didn’t make it there, that was it. He wouldn’t get another variance. If anything, the zoning laws in Berkeley were becoming stiffer. The city council was definitely in favor of single-family dwellings.
“When you lose your child,” Kleinfeld said, “and then latch on to something, and then the same people threaten to take that away, it could throw you over the edge.”
Interesting, I thought as I stood up. Whatever Felcher and Kleinfeld’s business relations, it certainly didn’t extend to protecting each other from the police. Obviously, Felcher hadn’t bothered to call to warn Kleinfeld I might be coming. He would have had plenty of time to eject his guest before my arrival. And Kleinfeld, for his part, was painting a good background for Felcher as the murderer.
And as I drove back to the temple, I wondered how much the new space meant to Kleinfeld. It appeared his following was dwindling. Certainly his afternoon class was nowhere near the size needed to support him. And Kleinfeld was ambitious, in a sense—rather like a younger, brighter, much more appealing Braga. Doubtless, he envisaged himself running a nationwide Self-Over, and the new location was an important step. The appearance of prosperity was vital to the appearance of legitimacy.
I got out of the car. The temple looked empty, the courtyard dark. Pereira would be downstairs in Braga’s office poring over the books, asking Braga questions he didn’t want to hear. I wished I’d reminded Pereira to keep someone at the door. Braga himself might not be a direct threat, but Chupa-da didn’t fill me with confidence, and the Penlops—their combined juvenile record was longer than I wanted to contemplate.
I quickened my pace as I crossed the courtyard. Even the ashram was dark. My footsteps and the scraping of the jacaranda trees against the temple wall were the only sounds.
The basement door was locked but, as before, that presented no problem. The room beyond was dark, too. No light switch protruded from the wall. No light came from under the stage. The room was black except for the thin slice of light from Braga’s door.
The residue of wariness I had felt in the alley beside Self-Over hung on as I moved toward the door. No voices were audible. I started to call out to Pereira, but stopped, careful to make my footsteps softer.
Stacks of tea boxes loomed.
I reached for the doorknob. Behind me there was a sound.
I stopped, looked around. Nothing moved in the darkness.
I turned the knob, opened the door. The room was empty.
I sighed, smiling at my melodramatic caution. So Pereira had finished quickly. And she’d unnerved Braga sufficiently that he’d forgotten to lock his door.
Was there anything els
e he’d forgotten? Should I take a look around, as long as—The lights in the room went out. I started to turn, reaching for my automatic. “Hold it!” I yelled. But the footsteps came quickly. Then a deeper darkness descended as the cylinder hit my skull.
Chapter 11
THE PHONE WAS RINGING. My head hurt. Vaguely, I knew I was lying on a cement floor and Nat was calling, demanding his Cost Plus stainless. Why was he calling now? Why couldn’t he buy his own stainless?
I shook my head. It seemed to rattle. The phone stopped. I looked around. I was on Braga’s office floor. My head throbbed.
Slowly I pushed myself up. I wished I could see my watch, but my eyes refused to focus. The light was on. Why was the light on now? How much time had passed? Was my assailant still here? I doubted that. But the possibility made me jumpy.
Reaching for the phone, I told the operator to get me the police station.
By the time the backup crew arrived, we searched the temple, I dictated my report on the incident, it was well after midnight. I realized I’d never been unconscious before, and although the time between the blow and the phone’s ringing had seemed long, it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. But that was all I realized. I had no clue as to who my assailant had been. Anyone living at the ashram could have seen me and followed me to Braga’s office. Kleinfeld could have followed me from his studio, Felcher from Comfort Realty. Or someone else might have been in the basement when I arrived. They may not even have realized whom they were hitting. Whoever it was, it was someone who didn’t want to be seen there, probably someone as interested in Braga’s financial records as I was.
Shift had ended nearly two hours ago, but at the station Howard and Pereira were waiting, Howard sitting on my desk, his long legs extending out into the aisle, his shirt wrinkled, and a spot I remembered from yesterday still evident on its front. Pereira, blond hair curled and in place, uniform still starched, paced—partly from concern and partly from the tension of waiting to tell of her interview with Braga.
“I think,” she said, as I finished explaining the lump on my head, “that Mr. Braga was unprepared for us. To begin with, I got to him just before two promising-looking marks were making their way along the receiving line after that big ceremony this evening. Then I asked for the books. He hemmed a little, but—now this is just a guess, of course—he decided I wasn’t much of a threat.”
Howard and I laughed. Connie Pereira, with her suburban-housewife look, had caught a number of suspects off guard. In fact, Connie had rarely even visited the suburbs. She had grown up in Oakland, the oldest child of an alcoholic father. Her mother had been in and out of institutions that offered the only respite available for the poor. Connie Pereira’s goal was to get herself and her two brothers on a sound financial basis. What there was to know about money—accounting, bookkeeping, stocks and bonds—she knew, but she never had enough money left over from helping her brothers and bailing out her parents to try out her knowledge. Professionally, however, she made it come in handy.
“And were you a threat?” Howard asked her.
“Better believe it. It seems what Braga’s books say is that above his own ‘modest’ two-thousand-dollar-a-month salary, the net is fifteen hundred. And what Braga says is that that amount is what the monastery in Bhutan demanded in exchange for Padmasvana.”
“Hmm.”
Pereira paced next to the desk. “Braga gave me this big song and dance about how he made more in his previous important position in L.A., which—I’ll spare you his circumlocution—was doing PR for a bunch of unknowns in the entertainment field. He said he gave that up to devote himself to Padmasvana because he was so distressed at the shallowness of his life—no, wait! It gets better. So Braga signs on with Padmasvana to bring enlightenment—”
“Obviously not enlightenment to L.A.”
“True. And now, with Padma’s death, the temple will have to stumble along with Chupa-da until Braga can get the monastery to turn loose another guru, and”—she forestalled our comments—“that will be somewhat difficult for Mr. Braga because he says he doesn’t know the name of the monastery. He says Chupa-da handles all the correspondence. The best he could do was to give me this piece of paper with what he thought was the name of the place, in Bhutanese.”
I glanced at it. “We’ll have to check it with the Indian Consulate. What’d Braga say about Preston, the baby, being the next guru?”
“He laughed.”
“What’d you think of his story?”
“About the same as he thought of Preston.”
Howard stood up. “You might also be interested in my findings about the temple and Garrett Kleinfeld’s operation. My suggestion is that we retire to some quiet place where our beaten colleague”—he glanced at the bruise on my forehead—“can relax. Like her place.”
My head still ached, but the prospect of having it ache at home over a beer was appealing. “Sure, Howard. Connie, you know where it is.”
“Yeah, but I have to call back Walden at LAPD. He said he’d give me the dope on Braga when he got back from assignment.” She glanced at her watch. “That should be in ten minutes.”
“Good, that’ll give me time to check my in box and shovel out the mess at home.”
“I guess, then, it would be a show of wisdom for me to come with Connie,” Howard said. “You are okay to drive, aren’t you, Jill?”
“Yeah. It’s just a little headache now. More humiliating than painful.” But Howard’s concern was nice. Maybe I had been overly suspicious about his interest in my case. I picked up the papers from my box, glancing through them, putting a couple in the out box with okays, putting most back in the in box to consider tomorrow, and tossing one, a message to call Nat, in the waste can. On my way out I left the license number of Kleinfeld’s woman friend with the clerk, to be called into the DMV first thing in the morning.
By the time I got home, my head felt like the snails I’d crushed in Kleinfeld’s alley. I took three aspirins and looked around the room in amazement. I didn’t think I’d been home enough to create this. Picking up my sleeping bag, I began to stuff the day’s clutter into the closet, wash up the dishes that had been in the sink the night before and clear off room on the table for our drinks. No wonder Howard’s wrinkled, spotted clothes appealed to me. I sympathized with Nat—for a finicky person, living with me must have been torture.
Still, if he could see this, he’d know why I couldn’t find the Cost Plus stainless. Strange, I thought, as I straightened a pile of books on the floor, when we were deciding on the divorce, the end of our marriage had been devastating and now, not a year later, it had come to this triviality. Maybe the stainless was symbolic of more. Maybe I was too involved in the murder to see. Maybe it was best to keep it trivial. Maybe … But Howard and Pereira were at the door.
Howard held out a six-pack as he entered. As I took three glasses from the drain board, Pereira sat down and glanced around in silence. She had been here before, when I had first moved in. I had the feeling that she would like to have been able to say something nice about what I’d done with the apartment.
What she did say, “I caught Walden just as he was leaving. They had to drag him back from the parking lot. It took a while. That’s why we were so long getting here.”
My apartment must have been messier than even I’d realized. It hadn’t occurred to me that they were late.
Howard took a swallow of beer. “Always good.”
I nodded.
Pereira said, “According to Walden, Braga was known to the cops around the Strip. Seems he was something of a small time promoter, always hanging around kids who were trying to break into the business.”
“Not impressive, but hardly illegal,” I said.
“No. But Braga was marginally connected with a few payola rings. There was never proof but over a five-year period there were three complaints from kids he handled.”
“Three complaints isn’t that much.” Howard took a healthy swallow
of beer.
“That’s what I thought,” Pereira said, “but according to Walden, people in the business, particularly green kids, don’t like to make police reports. And the last thing a kid wants to do is turn in the person who might help him make it.”
“But payola’s a way of life there, Connie. I can’t imagine anyone complaining—not when they’re just starting out,” I said.
Pereira leaned back. “The complaints were about skimming over and above the payola.” Noticing our questioning expressions, she added, “The kids felt that Braga was taking an extra cut for himself.”
“Like the monastery in Bhutan.”
“Exactly, Jill.”
“What happened to the complaints?” Howard asked.
“Dropped. Suddenly the complainants would have nothing to do with the police.”
“A touch of the heavy hand from Braga?” I asked.
“Probably. To LAPD, Braga was a small-time nuisance, one of hundreds. ‘A mere pimple amid the warts of LA. crime,’ to quote Walden.”
I took a drink to wash down Walden’s observation. “So Braga was scraping by in L.A. Probably things were getting thinner and thinner. Braga’s no fool. He must have realized that sooner or later there would be a kid he couldn’t intimidate and he’d end up in court. So while he’s pondering, he comes across Bhutanese Buddhism and somehow finds Padmasvana and brings him to this country and success is just around the corner.”
“But after all those years in the entertainment industry, thinking in terms of stars and star managers, would being Padmasvana’s assistant be enough?” Howard asked.
“Padmasvana’s associate,” I corrected him.