Dave Brandstetter 3 - Troublemaker

by Joseph Hansen

  Canaries sang. The little parrots and finches kept up a shrill clamor. Kittens mewed. Pups whined. Gerbils ran in squeaky wheels. Tiny spotted mice pirouetted in the sawdust of glass boxes. Cavies hopped over the backs of stony gopher tortoises munching trampled lettuce.

  Doug Sawyer punched a cash register, blinked at Dave, and went on talking with a woman in pants and hair curlers who held by its leather handle a cat carrier of new plywood and bright screen.

  Doug's little mother, in her flowered smock, peered with her one bright bird eye from the back room. A brown-and-white young rabbit was cradled in her arm. Her free hand held a medicine dropper. She gave Dave a smile of bright false teeth and lifted her chin, summoning him. The back room smelled of wood shavings and alfalfa. Tarnished cages went up the walls—parrots, monkeys, a hunched and scraggly raven, a cross-eyed Siamese cat who paced.

  "I hope you can forgive me," Belle Sawyer said. She kept a hot plate on a shelf and a glass pot of water always simmered for coffee. Bottles of instant mix and powdered cream substitute and a box of cube sugar grew dusty there. A small pan with some glutinous carroty substance covered the second burner now. Into this the pet shop woman dipped the medicine dropper, filled it, edged its tip in at a corner of the young rabbit's mouth. The brown nose twitched. The plush little body struggled. "I'm always keeping Doug." The thick glasses glittered up at Dave. One lens had white cloth neatly pasted inside it. She'd lost an eye to a hawk's talon years ago. "He can't get on with his own life at all. I hope you know I don't mean it." She rubbed the rabbit's fur throat, smiled satisfaction when it swallowed, and murmured comfort to it.

  "Maybe it's over for a while now. It's my circulation. Old age. Too many years on my feet here, I suppose. Whatever, the veins don't let the blood through to my brain." She filled the dropper again and gently squeezed the liquid into the rabbit's mouth. It shook its ears. They made sounds like big moth wings. "There, that's enough for now." She bent, dropped it into a cage, where it crouched in shavings and shredded paper. She clicked the wire door shut. There was a stained and meager sink with a steel tap. The plumbing shuddered when she turned it on to rinse the medicine dropper. „ "Coffee?" She didn't wait for his answer. She used a cracked plastic spoon to dip brown powder into a plastic mug. Pouring in water, she said, "It's so maddening, because it all seems quite serious and normal when I'm going through it. I was President this week—I expect Doug told you. And I really did issue orders, stacks of them, that everything was to be 'all right.' Can you imagine?" She clicked the spoon busily in the mug and handed it to Dave. Her bright eye mocked. "I felt so confident, so secure. I haven't felt that way since Mr. Sawyer was alive." Her mouth turned down in a wry smile. "But of course it was all a delusion. Even the Capitol at Mount Rushmore. You know, where the Presidents are carved in the mountain?"

  "The Black Hills." Dave blew at his sudsy coffee.

  "That's it." She nodded. "I'd moved the government to the Black Hills. For safety. The coasts are sinking into the sea." She laughed.

  "Aren't they?"

  "Hold the thought."

  Dave lit a cigarette. "But it goes away?"

  "Exactly like a dream," she said. "I'm nervous, of course. I must have mailed those presidential orders. I don't have the least idea to whom. I hope I simply made up names and addresses but it seems to me one went to the Queen of England. Dr. Simpson says I probably didn't stamp them—a President doesn't have to. Heavens! The Black Hills. I've never even been there!"

  Doug stood in the doorway. "She's okay," he said.

  "Looks that way," Dave said. "That's good."

  "I'll be all right now." But her chirpiness didn't last. "Oh, dear. I've said that before, haven't I?"

  Doug said, "Don't worry about it. That's the main thing. It's not your fault. And it's not hurting anybody, right?" He put an arm around her shoulders, kissed her frizzy dandelion hair. "Whoo! Glover's dog soap!" He wrinkled his nose, rubbed it with the back of a hand.

  "You know that's what I've always used. Made you use it too, when you were little enough for me to boss you."

  "They barked at me in third grade," Doug said.

  "Nonsense," she said. "It's a good, clean smell. And it's very healthy for the hair."

  Doug looked at his watch and at Dave. "Four forty-five. You want to finish that?"

  "There's no need," Belle Sawyer said. "I know it's terrible stuff." She reached for the mug and Dave let her take it because she was right, it was terrible.

  Doug crouched by the rabbit cage. "How's he doing?"

  "Who can say? They're so delicate." She touched his shoulder. "You run along. I'll close up. I feel absolutely sane." She smiled at Dave. "It's not as much fun as being President." She frowned to herself. "I don't think I even had a Congress. Just me, in the oval office, signing orders. And everything was going to be just fine."

  They left her standing in the shop doorway, a small hand lifted, and smiling wistfully at nothing.

  The stereo components sat on the bare floor in the big, empty front room. From them echoed the heartbreak of the Haydn Symphony 93 largo cantabile. The old gent had been homesick in the London of 1791 and mocked his loneliness with that wry bassoon honk at the end. Dave smiled at it when he came out of the shower and shrugged into his terry-cloth robe. He lit a cigarette, picked up from the floor beside the bed this week's New York Review and headed for the kitchen. Before he got there, the whine of the blender motor cut through the music. Wincing, he walked into the good onion, garlic, fried chicken smells of the high, tiled room.

  "You like pottle a la mexicaine?" Doug, in a faded denim happy coat, mop of gray hair still wet from his shower, went to the refrigerator. "Then don't make faces. I have to puree the pimientos." Dave eyed the little orange-pink storm in the jar atop the infernal machine with its row of color-coded push buttons. "That's pureeing?"

  "Among us twentieth-century types." Doug handed him a martini. "It'll be over in just a minute."

  Dave grunted, took the martini and, with the paper tucked under his arm, wandered out to crank the painty old latch of the twin French doors to the roof deck. He shouldered them open and started for the redwood chaise, chair, table in the big leaf shadows of the rubber trees. He stopped. At the far end of the deck, something glared in the downing sunlight. Squinting, he went toward it. It was square, about four feet high, maybe a yard wide, forty inches deep—pale brick sheathed in shiny plate steel, a rectangular opening in the top, steel doors in the front, stumps of lead pipe at the side.

  Around this were piled cartons full of big Mason jars, labeled with chemical names, holding colored powders. There was a gathering of plastic trash barrels in dull green dribbled with duller gray. Slip was what they'd held, liquid pottery clay. Under a shelter built of four-by-fours and roofed with rippled sheets of hard opalescent plastic, where plank shelves were meant for potted plants—a project he and Doug hadn't got to yet—terra-cotta-colored molds for pots and jars waited beside a clay-crusty potter's wheel with a little electric motor under it, trailing a cracked rubber coated cord.

  Dave blinked, frowned, worked his teeth together gently. He drank the martini, slowly, smoked the cigarette down. He took it to the ashtray on the table to crush it out. Leaving the paper but taking his empty glass, he went back into the apartment, back into the kitchen. He said very mildly, "Doug?"

  Doug, at the stove, wiped sweat from his face with his sleeve. "Something wrong?"

  "What does a potter's kiln look like?"

  "Kind of like an oven." Doug reached down a can of chicken broth from a cupboard shelf. The electric can opener sang and danced with it. "Brick, I think. Why?"

  "There's one on the roof deck." Dave opened the fridge and refilled his glass. Doug's stood cradling a drying olive on the tile counter next to the stove. He floated the olive again and put the pitcher back. "At least I think so. Whatever it is, it must weigh a ton."

  Doug emptied the gold-lumped broth into the skillet, where it sizzled gently. He poured in t
he pimiento puree. "On our roof deck?"

  "Yonder." Dave pointed. "You didn't know?"

  "How would I know? I've been away since eight-thirty this morning. I hope that old idiot in the bicycle shop is more alert than he looks. I told him to keep an eye on her and let me know." Doug spooned into the skillet yellow-green powder from a small jar. Cumin. He opened his eyes at Dave. "You think I put it there?"

  "We both know who put it there," Dave said. "I just had a laughable idea that he might have asked permission. But of course that's ridiculous."

  Doug carried the cumin jar and the spoon out of the kitchen, out' the French doors, and down the deck. He stopped, shook his head, said something about merde.

  "He didn't have permission?" Dave asked. "Of course not."

  Doug touched the pale brick, the steel sheathing. "My God, how do you suppose he got it up here? Look at the thing."

  "At least a ton," Dave said. "And he's moved his whole shop here with it—molds, wheel, clay, the works."

  "It was default," Doug said suddenly. "He told me, Dave. I thought it was fact. It wasn't fact, it was a warning, only I was too dense to take it in. The place where he had his shop is being torn down. Some old warehouse in east Santa Monica. He had to get out."

  "Fine," Dave said, "but he didn't ask—"

  "If he'd asked, I'd have asked you," Doug said.

  Dave eyed him. "But you'd have considered it."

  "Maybe." Doug shrugged. "I don't know. It never crossed my mind." He smiled, touched Dave's face. "What do you think? I don't want Kovaks. I like his work is all. We've been over that."

  "He intends to stay," Dave said.

  "Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt, would it? I mean, if he wants to work here, there's plenty of space."

  "You tell him he can work here, and next week he'll be living here. That's all it's about." Dave went back into the hollow rooms, into the shimmer of Haydn's strings, and fetched the pot in its carton from where he'd set it down at the stairhead. Doug was in the kitchen again, Dave showed him the carton, the pot, the card. "The lunatic wants to sleep between us."

  "I guess so." Doug frowned while he used a long-handled wooden spoon to move the chunks of chicken around in the thick pale-red sauce with its snippets of green pepper. "I got one too. Yesterday. It came with the rest of the gallery packages. By United Parcel."

  "Same card, right?" Dave asked.

  "Same card." Kovaks showed his beautiful teeth in the kitchen doorway. "Am I in time for a drink? I'm pooped." He wore dirty white duck shorts. A dirty white yachting cap was stuck on the back of his bushy hair. Sweat greased his pale skin. He held out grimy hands. "Why aren't you cheering?"

  "How long did it take to get that kiln up here?"

  "Over four hours, a power winch, and three hairy hardhats. Tell you the truth, I didn't think we'd get done before you showed up. They weren't expensive enough. They kept stopping for beers."

  "Let me guess," Dave said, "Paying them took your last dime, correct?"

  "Absolutely correct. You're uncanny." Kovaks found the martini pitcher in the refrigerator and a frosty glass in the freezer compartment. He filled the glass. "I don't know where I'd have turned to if it wasn't for friends like you."

  "Help yourself to a drink," Dave said. "Make yourself right at home. But you look tired and hot. Wouldn't you like a shower? Sure, you would."

  Kovaks stood very still, watching him. Doug watched him too. He asked Doug cheerily:

  "There's plenty of chicken, isn't there?" He didn't wait for Doug's answer. Doug's jaw looked dislocated. "Sure—stay for dinner, Kovaks. We'll open some champagne. Go ahead, have that shower. There's time, isn't there, Doug?"

  "Oodles." Doug mismanaged a smile.

  Kovaks came to Dave and put a hand on the pocket of the terry-cloth robe. The hand was warm. "Cigarette?"

  "On my dresser," Dave said. "Help yourself. Find clean clothes in there too." He sized Kovaks up. "I think my stuff will fit you. Anything at all."

  Kovaks narrowed his long-lashed eyes, turned his head slightly away, worked his tongue skeptically behind closed lips. Then grinned and shrugged. "Okay—right, thanks." He walked out.

  Doug said, "What are you up to?"

  Dave picked up the pot in its carton. "I'll be down in the gallery for a little while," he said. "The packing room."

  CHAPTER 10

  RAGGED PLASTIC PENNANTS fluttered overhead—yellow, red, orange —on slack wires between corroded floodlight poles. Dave walked among secondhand cars toward a small wood-and-glass building in the weedy rear corner of a blacktop lot. PAT FARRELL GOOD USED CARS, the tin sign read, WE CARRY OUR OWN CONTRACTS. The cars were filmed with dust. Lettered on their windshields in chalky pink paint were false claims: LOW MILEAGE, CLEAN, FACTORY AIR, ALL POWER, STICK SHIFT, SHARP, even CHERRY—along with prices the dealer knew better than to expect.

  Pat Farrell's was the kind of lot you walked onto with cash if you were smart. You chose what you wanted and didn't listen to why it was worth the three hundred fifty dollars it was marked. You pressed down on the upholstery, frowned under the hood, kicked the tires while the salesman followed you around, talking. Then you waved a hundred-dollar bill under his nose and drove out with twenty-five dollars' worth of scrap steel, cracked plastic, thin rubber, and the pink slip in your pocket.

  At the foot of the plank stairs to the sales office was parked a European mini like the one that had died under Vern Taylor on the coast road yesterday morning, GAS SAVER was lettered on the glass. Especially when it stalls, Dave thought, and climbed the steps. The office door stood open because it was another hot morning. Inside, a' man sat at a yellow wood desk whose top was covered by the spread-" out classified ad pages of the Examiner. The man was circling ads with a felt-tip pen. His suit hung loose on him. A cigar was clenched in his teeth. An electric fan blew from the top of a tin file cabinet in a corner, ruffled his greenish toupee, chased the cigar smoke out; through the glass louvers of a side window. He looked up, dropped the pen, laid the cigar on the desk edge, where earlier burns had made black fluting.

  "Morning." He stood up, held out a hand. Where thick flesh must have padded out his cheeks once, a smile gathered back loose folds on either side of his mouth. The show of teeth was tobacco dingy. But the voice had warmth and a high gloss. "Pat Farrell. What can I do for you, sir?" Eyes like cheap green glass measured Dave and the smile died. "No—you don't want a car from me."

  Dave laid a business card on the gray-print pages. It was the card Billy Wendell had given him day before yesterday. "When will he be in?"

  "He won't be." Farrell dropped into his creaky swivel chair again. Above his head a flyspecked sign read YOUR CREDIT IS GOOD WITH us. "I fired him last week. That's not the way to put it. Makes me look bad. He fired himself. I warned him a dozen times, if he came on the lot drunk again, he had to go. But"—shoulder bones moved inside the bulky suit—"you feel sorry for them. Hell, Billy knows this business. He's good when he's sober."

  "And when would that be?" Dave asked.

  "Yeah." Farrell breathed a sour laugh. "Well, I just hoped the shock might help him. I hated to do it. He's old. Nobody else is going to take him on. Everybody in the business knows him. I was his last chance. And I put up with a lot for a long time. I'll take him back too. Told him so. If he'll quit the bottle. Nobody can do that for him. Man's got to do that for himself. Look at me." He put fingers inside his shirt collar to show how loose it was. "I know what I'm talking about. Not drink; no. Food. Loved to eat. Doc told me it was killing me. Either I lost a hundred pounds or I could plan on dropping dead here one of these days."

  "You lost the weight," Dave said.

  "Congratulations." Farrell wagged his head. "Haven't lost it all yet. That's why I'm wearing my old clothes. Looks like I borrowed this suit from somebody, doesn't it?" He plucked at an ample sleeve, laughed, picked up the cigar, clamped it in his teeth again. "I'm just waiting till I get down to one sixty-five. Then I'll buy new duds."

&nbs
p; "I need Wendell's home address," Dave said.

  "Don't think he's there." Farrell stood up again. "I went over there yesterday. To try to find out a little more about a contract he wrote that somebody skipped on. His landlady thinks he took a runout."

  "She could check with his ex-wife," Dave said.

  Farrell's eyebrows went up. "Never knew he had one. He never said anything about her."

  "Their son died," Dave said. "He saw the notice in the paper. He hadn't known where they were, so he says. Close to forty years. He went to the funeral."

  "Never mentioned them." Farrell opened a file drawer, brought a manila folder to the desk, sat down and copied an address on a note pad. He tore off the slip, pushed it across the open newspaper to Dave. "That's the dump where he was living. Always made me feel bad when I saw it. I mean, I was paying the man a decent wage. He didn't have to live like that."

  "Liquor is expensive." Dave folded the paper and pushed it into a pocket. "Thank you."

  "What's your interest in Billy?" Farrell followed Dave to the door. "You're not a cop. You're not a bill collector. What's your line?"

  "Insurance," Dave said. "Death claims."

  Farrell squinted. "Something wrong about the boy's death?"

  "Everything." Dave started down the steps, turned. "Did Billy Wendell owe you money?"

  Farrell turned down the corners of his mouth. "I advanced him twenty here, fifty there. Never kept count."

  "You weren't pressing him hard for fifteen hundred dollars?"