Dave Brandstetter 3 - Troublemaker

by Joseph Hansen

  When he reached the top of the stairs he went to where the voices were. Doug's room —skylight, easels, a paint-clotted zinc-top table with multiple shallow drawers for paints and brushes, blank canvases, on stretchers leaning against a wall. Kovaks sat on the edge of an open bed, naked —pale urban skin, black stand-up hair, scraggly mustache. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, head hanging, a can of beer in one hand. Doug Sawyer, compact, dark-skinned, gray-haired, stood in the open doorway to a long roof deck where rubber trees rooted. in plank boxes threw shadows on redwood garden chairs. Kovaks raised bloodshot eyes to Dave, gave him a crooked smile and said groggily:

  "Hi, Dave."

  Dave only looked at him and only looked at Doug when Doug; turned to face him. Doug said, "He had lunch and fell asleep. I've been at my mother's." The beaky little woman kept a pet shop on a lost L.A. side street between a bicycle store and a beauty parlor. She'd begun having trouble with her mind lately —forgetfulness, delusions. The doctors said it had to do with poor circulation. Doug was having to spend more and more time looking after her.

  Dave crouched and picked up a shallow bowl of thick bubbly amber glass from a scatter of ash on the floor beside the bed. In it lay the twisted butts of handmade cigarettes, burned down short. Dave held it out toward Doug. "Joints. I make it three."

  "I'm coming down," Kovaks said sullenly, then giggled. "That's what the brew is for." He drank from the steamy can.

  "I didn't ask you," Doug said. "You volunteered, remember? Gung ho. You were going to frame those awful daubs for Mrs. What's-her- name." He walked to a farther room and the rock racket did an audial downcurve and quit. "I didn't expect that, but I did expect you to be there."

  "I was there from nine-thirty to one," Kovaks said. "Then I got hungry. Yeah, I also felt like a low, lazy high afterwards. Then I got sleepy. I was only going to shut my eyes."

  Doug leaned in a doorway and with a sad smile shook his head at Dave. "He was spread out there like smorgasbord."

  "Come on," Kovaks said. "Kosher smorgasbord?"

  "I want a shower," Dave said and passed Doug in the doorway. Doug brushed his ear with a kiss.

  "Whew! You smell like a brewery."

  "I have been interviewing gay-bar owners," Dave said. "It's a long, dull story. I'll tell you later." He went on into his own room, which was the right size and shape to play jai alai in, and began dropping his clothes, hearing Doug say to Kovaks:

  "See these? Cards. Stuck in the door. Madge Dunstan and Ray Lollard. Friends. Both of whom would probably have bought something if the gallery'd been open. They might even have bought one of your pots."

  "Forgive," Kovaks said in a broad and phony Russian accent. "Kovaks bad. Do better next time. He promise." The accent quit. "Oh, God," he moaned, and metal crumpled. "The can's dry. Get me another beer and I'll give you a kiss. Anyplace you name."

  Dave went into a big bathroom that was paved, walled and domed In gaudy flowered Spanish tile. He took three aspirins, cranked the shower handles and stepped under the spray. He'd forgotten Ray Lollard after phoning him at noon from a sun-hot booth of salt crusty glass on Los Santos Pier. He'd gone to the pier, remembering how good the food used to be at a white wooden shack there called The Abalone. He hadn't reached Lollard —out to lunch. And The Abalone's management had changed. For the worse.

  Sand dabs sauteed in butter and sprinkled with sesame seeds had been his favorite. These were uneatable, half cold, half raw. He made the best of the view, the good feel of the slow blue surf shaking the old pier stakes under the floorboards, and a cup of coffee, and laid open the bar magazine to study the addresses of the sponsors of entrants in the Mr. Marvelous contest. He made himself a mental map to follow. With some to-ing and fro-ing, he could hit seven on his way from Los Santos back to L.A. A fair start. He could get to the remainder tonight.

  There'd been a sameness to them that was already blurring the places in his aching mind. Decor ranged from raw plywood (The Bunkhouse) to flocked crimson wallpaper (The Queen and Court). But the sad, aging patrons were interchangeable. So were the tunes on the jukeboxes. And so were the owners —around forty, too fleshy or too bony, in clothes too young and wigs styled sharply for last year —men long in the tooth and chatty. Dave had met five of the contestants too. All gathered at The Rawhide.

  Kegan had been right. There was some charm, even some wit among them. The night Rick Wendell was murdered, this bunch had been together at a party in the Hollywood hills, celebrating the completion of a film in which they'd acted —if that was the word. Dave suspected it of being the same kind of film he'd rolled on Rick Wendell's bedside projector this morning. The sponsors of the other two boys said they'd been in the bars that evening, which, if it was true, narrowed down his list. He didn't regret that—not the way the bad beer and the worse bar air had left him feeling now.

  He lathered, let the shower wash him down, first hot, then cold, and decided he'd live. He stepped out of the shower and Kovaks was standing at the toilet. Still naked. He pushed the flush handle, turned, looked Dave up and down. "You've got a nice body for a geriatric case."

  "My heartfelt thanks," Dave said. "Excuse me." He reached past the lanky youth to get down a towel and walked out into the bedroom, using it. He heard, or maybe felt, Kovaks at his back and asked, "Where's Doug?"

  "Down in the gallery." Kovaks blew on the back of Dave's neck and, chuckling softly, ran a hand along his shoulder, down his arm. "We won't be disturbed."

  Dave pushed the towel at him. "You're already disturbed. Hang that up, please, then go get your clothes and drift back to your clay and wattles."

  "There's a wattles shortage." Kovaks fell backward across Dave's bed and dropped the towel over his face. "Every wattles station in L.A. is closed. They paste up signs on the pumps —crooked, faltering, childlike lettering: 'Out of Wattles.' It's a conspiracy on the part of the wattles producers to bring the American economy to its knees."

  In the mirror over the chest where he was poking into drawers after underwear and socks, he saw Kovaks throw off the towel and sit up. His dark, long-lashed eyes went grave and pleading. He held out his hands. "Come on, Dave. Let's make it. I have this need."

  Dave pulled on shorts. "It's all in your mind." Picking up the towel, he went back into the bathroom, rehung it and started brushing his teeth at the basin. In the doorway behind him, Kovaks said:

  "It's a four-letter word for a part of the human anatomy but it's not m-i-n-d."

  Dave spat peppermint suds, rolled his eyes up, said, "Aiee!" and rinsed his mouth. Pushing past Kovaks, he told him, "Try a cold shower." He went back to the chest for denims.

  "I need a warm body," Kovaks said.

  "Sorry." Dave kicked into the pants. "Only one to a customer." He zipped the pants, found his little book in the discarded suit jacket, sat on the bed and picked the phone up from the floor. There wasn't much furniture yet. He and Doug had moved in only six weeks ago and most of their time, energy and money had gone into fitting out the gallery. Up here, things were still bare. He dialed Ray Lollard again. A girl said:

  "He left early, Mr. Brandstetter. I thought he was going to see you."

  "He tried," Dave said. "I missed him. Thanks."

  He hung up, pulled on a light jersey turtleneck, found Kovaks in Doug's room, seated on the bed again, in clay-stained dungarees, buckling warped sandals. He grumbled, "I feel like Bette Davis in The Old Maid."

  "You'll never be an old maid," Dave said. "Not while the role of fifth wheel is open."

  "I don't reject easy." Kovaks yanked a red-and-black-striped tank top over his flat torso. "I belong here somewhere. I know it. It's karma. If you —"

  The street door opened below. A voice called, "Davey?" That had to be Madge Dunstan. She was Dave's oldest friend, a successful designer of textiles and wall coverings, a lean, handsome woman, sharp, tough-minded, good-humored. It always pleased Dave to see her. It pleased him something extra now because he'd had enough of Kovaks. And he didn't wan
t to mishandle him. His pottery was exceptional and about the only thing bringing Doug any business yet. If Kovaks was to be dumped, it was up to Doug. Was Doug up to it?

  Dave gave his head an impatient shake as he crossed the vast open space they'd decided was the living room. Two sets of shoes climbed the stairs. From the hall he looked down. Behind Madge, whose head was bent because she was watching her feet, came Ray Lollard, who smiled and said, "We met at Doug's fast-closed door and decided to bide our time over a drink across the street. You're back, just as I predicted. Both of you."

  Kovaks stood by Dave. "All three," he said.

  Madge's head came up. Lollard's eyebrows came up. And as they reached the stairhead, Dave told them, "This is Kovaks. He's trying to adopt us."

  "Both of you?" Madge gave the bushy-haired youth her strong handshake and her best warm smile but the tilt of her head told Dave that Kovaks hadn't made a new friend. Not yet. "I thought," she said, "the menage a trois went out with Noel Coward."

  "It's back." Kovaks showed big white even teeth. "With ragtime piano and the John Held look."

  "Kovaks," Lollard mused. "Then those would be your ceramics downstairs, no? Handsome. There's something so alive about them."

  "I'm oversexed," Kovaks explained, and shook hands with Lollard.

  "Maybe you'd better go turn down your kiln," Dave said, and took Lollard's elbow and began steering him back toward the kitchen. "Were you able to get me that name and address?"

  Lollard moved reluctantly, looking back over his shoulder. "Aren't you lucky," he murmured enviously. "He's a dream."

  "Of one kind or another," Dave said. "The name?"

  "What? Oh. Yes. I'm sorry it took so long but it's new and unlisted." He handed Dave a slip of paper.

  "Thomas Owens," Dave read aloud.

  Kovak's flat soles were slapping down the stairs and Madge joined Dave and Lollard. "What about him?"

  In a big old kitchen shiny with flowered tile, Dave began collecting gin, vermouth, pitcher, glasses, ice cubes. "I seem to know the name."

  "Of course you do," Madge said. "You've met him at my house. More than once. An architect, remember? Nice guy. Until lately, too damn sad."

  "How's that?" Dave made spiral cuts in a lemon rind. "He's the gaunt, kind of intense one with the yellow eyes, right? What was so sad? I forget that."

  "We'd all given up on him," Lollard called. He stood at the front windows, peering down at the street, probably hoping for another glimpse of Kovaks. "Professionally, I mean."

  Madge said, "He kept getting commissions, then losing them by insisting things would be done either his way or not at all."

  "That can keep an architect poor, yes." Dave loosened ice cubes from a tray and dumped them into the pitcher, which had been living in the freezer and was coated with snow. "It's not the freest of the seven deadly arts, is architecture."

  "It's curious too," Madge said. "He's so sweet and giving, so gentle and kind personally. I guess a word might be yielding. Everybody loves him. Even other architects. And I don't mean just respect. They've got that too, but tenderness, a kind of sheltering attitude, protective. Everybody wants to help him. That's the mystifying part. Nobody could."

  Dave began turning the ice with a glass rod. "Did he ever bring a Larry Johns to your house? Maybe twenty, twenty-one, blond, about five eleven, hundred fifty pounds, long yellow hair and mustache?"

  "He never brought anyone." Madge wandered into the hall and out onto the roof garden. Her words drifted in through the open kitchen window. "He lives with a widowed sister he supports, has for years.

  But she has a child and they never came. I suspect she'd be uncomfortable in a room not filled with reliably heterosexual matrons. Anyway, his fortunes have changed at last. He's built some stunning beach houses."

  Lollard came the long walk back across the living room. "For film people," he said, "show business people. He finally found one too busy with road shows or Las Vegas or something to bother him. What he built was marvelous. After that, everyone wanted one."

  "He just lately finished a lovely place for himself, only a couple of miles from me," Madge called. "What's the name of this big, climbing thing with the perforated leaves. Monstera something, right?"

  "Deliciosa, " Dave said. "Do you know anybody in the bar, restaurant, hotel supply business, Madge?"

  "Any number." Madge came back in with a kite-size green leaf in her hand. She leaned against the refrigerator, holding it up, studying it. "What's on your mind? Yes, this place is big and empty, but surely —"

  "No, no." Dave put a glass into the bony, freckled hand that wasn't busy with the leaf. "What I need to know is if you've heard of any ripoffs lately, like a truckload of padded leather chairs on swivels."

  Madge had taken a mouthful of martini. She shook her head and swallowed. "That was last year. A renegade truckdriver sold it for his own profit instead of delivering it where it had been ordered."

  "Good." Dave put a glass into Ray Lollard's hand. He asked Madge, "Do you remember who bought it?"

  "Well, now, but wait." She frowned. "It wasn't chairs. It was high stools, the big, deep, cushiony kind. Yes —a gay bar in Surf. What's it called? They were remodeling, raising the bar, putting in walnut paneling, padding everything in leather. Naturally, when the police came around, they gave the stools back. They hadn't known they were stolen."

  "The Hang Ten?" Dave asked.

  She nodded quickly. "That's the one."

  CHAPTER 5

  IT LAY IN THE DUNES like elegant wreckage. Nearing, he saw that the crazily angled upthrusts of varnished boards were walls and roofs. When he topped the last dune, clumped grasses snagging his pants legs, what had looked to be broken and strewn by accident shaped into a structure. Under wooden wedges of overhang, triangles of smoke-dark glass drank light. The same kind of glass in very tall panes, sill to roof beam, mirrored surf, sky, horizon. A deck of gapped and biased planking reached high out over jagged rocks. Blankness watched from towers bleak as prairie storefronts.

  When he climbed wide, shallow board steps, dogs barked indoors. They were assorted. Two small ones clawed the dark panes of a broad wood-frame door. One was slick-haired, pumpkin-colored, with a curled tail. He jumped like a dwarf acrobat. The other bared fierce little fangs. He was ruffed. Behind them, a big one stood square and solemn and barked basso. He was marked like a German shepherd but was lop-eared.

  A girl came among them. She wore sunglasses. Her mouth was darkly bruised and swollen. She'd parted her taffy-color hair in the middle and tied it back. The man's shirt she wore had random appliques of peasanty flowers. Its tails hung out over gray bell bottoms. Her feet were bare. She smiled at Dave. Startlingly, her two upper front teeth were missing. In mock despair at the racket of the dogs, she put her hands over her ears. Then she waved them at the big dog, who backed off, looking hurt. She grabbed the collar of the slick little one, the harness of the ruffed one, and dragged them, cringing, over a sleek floor into a place out of Dave's sight, where they stopped barking. When she came back and opened the door she was panting a little and bright pink was in her cheeks. "What can I do for you?"

  "I'm Brandstetter. I phoned yesterday, remember? To talk to Tom Owens. That didn't work out. I thought I might have better luck in person. Will you tell him I'm here? He'll remember me. We met at Madge Dunstan's."

  "Oh?" She made her mouth small, half apologetic, half resentful. "You didn't say that on the phone."

  "I didn't have his name at the time," Dave said. "Only his number. Can I see him?"

  "Well..." Her forehead puckered. She glanced over her shoulder. "He's got somebody with him now. Vern Something. An old school buddy." Her mouth turned down. "They act like they never graduated. People don't get old, do they? On the inside, I mean. They're, like, sixteen all their lives."

  "We try to keep it secret," he said. "I'll wait." He stepped toward her. She wasn't as good at blocking off a door as she was at blocking off a phone. She stepped back. "Wel
l —okay."

  The room he came into was long and lofty and full of sea light. Raw wicker furniture with sailcloth cushions was grouped around a black cowl fireplace in a corner. A long wicker couch with a long, low deal table in front of it looked at the beach. A fastness of glossy plank floorboards was islanded by Navajo rugs, big ones and good. They were bringing scary prices now. He knew. In the shop full of silver and turquoise and Polynesian feathered masks under the old L.A. Museum, he and Doug had priced rugs like these. Priced them and given up.

  The girl went away noiselessly. Dave counted sailboats tilting between the beach and hulking offshore oil-drilling platforms misted by distance. Wood creaked above and behind him and he turned. A tremendous painting that might have been gulls in a storm or simply slashes of white on ultramarine went along the room's back wall under a gallery. A youth of maybe twenty came along the gallery. Sun had turned him dark brown. A helmet of black hair covered his ears. He wore a tie-dyed shirt in faded yellows and oranges, sleeves torn off at the armholes, baggy surfer trunks. A leather case on a shoulder strap jounced at his hip when he came down stairs that were like a flight of wooden birds.

  "Trudy!" he called and saw Dave and stopped, turned his head slightly, mistrustful. "Who are you?"

  "Brandstetter," Dave said.

  "It's about Larry, isn't it?" the boy said.

  "Yes. Who are you?"

  The boy laughed without humor. "She thought nobody would find out. I told her they would. A murder. They're going to find out because they're going to try. Tom knew it. But not Gail, not Gail."

  "They're not trying," Dave said. "I'm trying. They're willing to settle for Johns. I'm not."

  The boy squinted disbelief. "Not a private eye. They don't really have those, do they? Cannon? Barnaby Jones? All that fantasy shit on the schlock box?" His laugh was loud and forced. His eyes were watchful.

  "Not so far as I know," Dave said. "I work for an insurance company. Money, not fantasy. You live here? You know Larry Johns?"