by Ron Goulart
“Yo?” said someone inside.
The receptionist opened the door. “A Mr. John Easy to see you, Mr. Feller. He’s working for Mr. Marks’ sister.”
“Goodo,” said Feller. “Come on in, Easy.” Feller was perched on the edge of a large black metal desk. When the girl had closed the door and departed he said, “Isn’t that the greatest ass you’ve ever seen?”
“Nope.”
Feller was a small man of thirty-one, very tan. He was almost completely bald. He was wearing white bellbottom trousers and a candy-stripe body shirt. “Really? Is it because it’s a Negro ass that you don’t like it?”
“It may be that I’ve seen a lot more than you have and have more to compare it with.”
Feller chuckled, and appeared to be tickling himself in the ribs as he did. “Neato,” he said. He bounced off his desk, went around behind it to sit down. “Listen, Easy, I think all this stuff about Gary being missing is so much crapola.” Behind his head was a vast corkboard rich with clippings, tearsheets, memos, labels and bits of paper.
“I was at his cottage with his sister.” Easy took a chair facing Feller.
“Now she’s got a great ass, too,” said the smiling man. “You’ve got to admit that.” Out of the corner of his eye he was looking at a pinned-up magazine ad showing three girls in bikinis walking out of the surf and away from the camera.
“Somebody,” Easy told him, “tore your partner’s place apart.”
The bald young man’s smile lessened. “I didn’t know that.”
“And it looks like they may have worked him over some.”
“You mean, beat him up?”
“Yeah.”
“Boy, what’s this society coming to? We might as well be living in New York or San Francisco.”
“Can you think of any reason,” asked Easy, “why someone would do what they did?”
“No, I really can’t. When Gay got all excited I didn’t really think too much about it. But now …”
“Did Gary keep a lot of money around his cottage?”
Feller laughed. “I don’t think anybody would go to his digs looking for money,” he said. “Oh, we’ve been doing pretty good with M&E the past couple years, but Gary and I still only take home around $25,000 a year each after all the expenses and sundries get taken care of.” He paused, tapping his fingers on his desktop. “It’s funny; we’ve been planning something like this, our own advertising agency, since we were kids practically. We figured by age thirty we’d both be millionaires. I keep telling my wife it’s harder to become a millionaire than I thought. Gary’s wife couldn’t wait.”
“Where is his ex-wife?”
“Over in England someplace and remarried,” answered Feller. “He didn’t go off to see her, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“You’ve known Gary since you were kids,” said Easy. “Then you also know Danny Lane.”
Turning his back to Easy, Marks brushed at an old college dance bid tacked to his corkboard. “That’s something I’m not too very happy about. When she first walked in here to audition for that margarine thing last winter I thought—Great! Here’s a chance for Danny to do something for us for a change. Here she was, doing commercials for fun, and married to old Goffman. I had visions of our getting a piece of the Goftoy account. That’s a billing of $12,000,000 a year.” He faced Easy again. “Instead Gary falls for her all over again and they start having an affair. Bad business thinking on his part. You shouldn’t lay the wife of an account you’re trying to pitch.”
“Did you know Bill Goffman?”
“Sure, he worked for Gary’s dad. Back then his father, old man Goffman, wasn’t the toy tycoon he is now.”
“And Danny’s married to Bill’s father?”
“Yeah. She seems to collect Goffmans,” said Feller. “Well, no, actually she collects more guys than that. It’s a damn shame, Gary’s getting hung up with her.”
Easy said, “I need her address.”
“She hasn’t seen Gary in a week. I phoned her right after Gay got so upset.”
“I want to talk to her.”
Feller picked a memo off his desk and, without looking at it, crumpled it into a ball. “Look, Easy, if you go right to the Goffman house … that’ll really screw everything up.”
“And if Gary doesn’t turn up soon the cops are going to get in on this. They’re even less subtle than I am.
“Okay, okay.” Feller sat motionless for nearly a half minute, then he picked up a ballpoint pen and scribbled an address on a slip of paper. “Here you go. You might ask Danny what happened to the pitch reel I gave her to show her husband.”
CHAPTER 6
“WAIT A MINUTE,” SAID the man with the scythe.
Easy was stretching up out of his dusty VW, which he’d just parked on a wide circle of gravel in front of the four-car garage.
The man was as big as Easy, heavier with a belly hanging over the waistband of his beltless khakis. He wore an old man’s grey sweater and a grey cap. When he got closer Easy could smell the earth and manure clinging to him.
Gesturing with the shorthandle scythe, the gardener said, “Get your butt back in the car.”
“I’ve come calling on Mrs. Goffman.”
The Goffman house was a huge place, looking something like three or four English country inns shoved together. It sat at the crest of a dozen sloping acres. Far below, through the trees and over the high brick wall, you could see the Pacific. The color of the afternoon was beginning to thin.
“You ain’t got an appointment.”
Easy walked toward him. “How’d you know that?”
“I get a list every morning. And there’s no big stud in a beat-up old Volkswagen on the list for today,” the man answered. He absently honed the blade of the scythe on the leg of his trousers. “Besides the old guy would never allow a big stud like you to visit her when he ain’t around. Not at all.”
“Mrs. Goffman is home?”
“Sure. She’s almost always at home, but you ain’t going to see her,” said the gardener. “How’d you get by the gatekeeper anyhow?”
“That’s an interesting question,” said Easy. “He was even more belligerent than you.”
“He’s a tough bastard, if that’s what you mean.”
“Not the kind of guy you can bribe to let you in.”
“Right. Everybody’s loyal to the old guy around here, he pays us to be. So how’d you get by the gatekeeper?”
“I knocked him on his ass,” explained Easy. “And if you don’t go back to cropping your lawn I’m going to do the same thing to you.”
“Bullshit you are.”
“That will be quite enough, Mullin,” said a soft throaty voice. “Please tend to your gardening duties and don’t annoy my friends.” A slender redhaired girl had come out of the big house. She wore a brand new pair of white bellbottoms and a peppermint stripe shirt. There was gin on her breath.
“Trouble,” said Mullin. “This is going to get people in trouble, Mrs. Goff …”
“Go away, Mullin,” she told him. “And the next time you step in cowshit clean your shoes afterwards.” She smiled at Easy. “You wished to see me, Mr. …?”
“John Easy,” said Easy.
“Come into the house,” Danny Goffman invited. “There are fewer goons inside.” She put a warm hand on Easy’s, led him along the gravel to an oaken doorway with a brass lionhead knocker.
Mullin stayed near Easy’s car, muttering, “Stupid bitch,” over and over to himself.
Danny pushed the door open, pulling Easy into an immense dark-paneled hallway. “I was just fixing myself a sundown cocktail,” she said. “Care for a martini?”
“No,” he said.
The redhaired girl drifted into a living room full of dark, heavy furniture. One wall was entirely made up of long, high windows which looked toward the sea. “Prefer scotch?”
“A beer will do.”
Danny gave a small shrug. “You in training?”
Easy said nothing.
At a curving bar in the corner of the room the girl bent down. “We’ve got anything you can think of to drink, including Portuguese anise and carob brandy. Yeah, here’s some Tuborg. Will that suffice?”
“Fine.”
“I myself don’t see any sense in not drinking,” said Danny. “I enjoy it, so I do it. Do you ever think about death?”
“Mine or somebody else’s?”
“Yours, mine, anybody’s.” The girl uncapped his beer. “Sometimes when I’m out driving, on the occasions when I can sneak off the premises without a hassle, I get to looking at the people on the streets. Or when I’m down at Malibu sometimes on the beach and there are hundreds of people there … men, women, little kids. I suddenly feel very sad because not one of them is going to escape. They’ll all die. It’s a lousy thing to try to get used to.”
Easy accepted the beer she’d poured for him. “I’ll tell you why I’m here,” he said.
“Who gives a rat’s ass.” She walked to a marble-topped coffee table to pick up a crystal pitcher of martinis. “You’re somebody to talk to. I don’t see why I can’t talk to anyone I so please. What difference is it going to make! Have you ever thought about how very short a time you’re alive and how long a time you’re dead?”
“Late at night,” answered Easy.
“Really? I’m surprised you admit it. Nobody around here will, including my venerable patriarch of a husband,” Danny said. “There’s really no reason not to sleep with whoever you want. You know, there’s no heaven and there’s no burning hell or anything. There’s only … I don’t know, only nothing. Somebody else’s husband, somebody else’s wife … what can that really mean? It’s simply an arbitrary game, a let’s pretend thing.” She poured herself a fresh martini and drank it. “Why are you here?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Jesus H. Christ.” Danny refilled her glass. “Did old Santa Claus hire you?”
“No, I was hired by Gay Holland to find her brother Gary.”
“Names out of the past. Whatever-happened-to sort of people.” She carried the glass and the pitcher to the high windows. “What’s Gary up to these days?”
“Can you tell me?”
“I haven’t seen him for years and years.”
“Not even when you worked for him in those margarine commercials?”
“I’d forgotten about that.”
“He’s been missing two days. Somebody tore his cottage apart looking for something.”
“I only know Gary Marks in a business sense.”
Easy moved around the coffee table and stopped a few feet behind her slim back. “Why not tell the truth? Doesn’t that fit in with your philosophy?”
“Despite everything,” she said, talking not to him but toward the distant sea, “I don’t want to blow what I’ve got here. There’s nothing else I can tell you, Mr. Easy.”
“If,” he said, “I don’t locate Gary in another day or so, I’m going to advise Gay to go to the police.”
“Do,” said the girl. “A man in my husband’s position, he can talk to cops or he can tell them to shove it.”
“San Amaro cops maybe. But not LA cops, or the FBI.”
Danny snickered. “Oh, Jesus, Easy. You can buy any cop who ever lived. And the FBI … don’t you read the papers?”
“Maybe so,” said Easy. “Okay, just worry about me then. I’m going to keep looking until …”
“What the hell is this?” came a booming voice from the doorway.
“You’re home early, Jake,” said Danny without turning.
“Who’s this bastard? What’s he doing here?” Jacob Goffman came stalking across the room, a thickset man with short-cropped grey hair. He had his suit jacket over his arm, was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a wide scarlet tie. “One of your new lovers?”
The girl faced her husband. “Jacob Goffman, John Easy,” she said. “John Easy, Jacob Goffman.”
Ignoring Easy, the old man strode straight to Danny and grabbed the pitcher from her. “Boozing it up in the middle of the day.”
“It’s the cocktail hour, Jake.”
He threw the pitcher from him with a disgusted growl. It trailed gin and smashed against a Flemish painting on the wall. “You,” he said to Easy, “get out before I mop the floor with you.”
“Famous thoughts of famous men,” said Danny, putting the rim of the glass to her lips.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” roared the old man. He slapped the glass out of her hand.
It went splashing into the window.
Easy reached out and took hold of Goffman’s arm. “Don’t do that anymore,” he advised.
“You trying to tell me …” The pressure on his arm began to bother him. “Okay, okay. But you just better get the hell out of here now, whoever you are.”
Easy let go of him. To Danny he said, “Call me if you think of anything I ought to know. My office’s in Hollywood, on the Strip.”
He walked out of the room, down the long hall and outside to his car. He climbed in and drove out through the still open gates. There was a new man in the gate house.
CHAPTER 7
EASY WENT FROM THE air conditioner back to the cornbeef sandwich. It was sitting in a paper plate on the exact center of his desk blotter. He sat down in his swivel chair, unbuttoned his $200 sport coat and picked up a half of the sandwich. Next to it on the plate were three potato chips, a half a dill pickle and a raw carrot. A memo beside the plate explained, “The carrot is from Hagopian when he dropped by to say ‘Hello.’”
Easy took a bite of the sandwich, watching the ceiling of his office. The tiny alarm clock at the edge of his desk was ticking loudly. Frowning at it, he tried to calculate if Jill was in Spain.
Someone knocked cautiously on the rear door.
Rising, Easy called out, “Yeah?” From habit he stood clear of the door.
“I want to see you.”
He unlocked the door.
Danny Goffman, a tan carcoat over her shoulders, was standing out there in the dark. “I didn’t see any lights out front so I came around back to the parking lot. You ought to take better care of your car.”
“I’m planning to have it washed.”
She circled his office, pulling the coat tighter. “You keep it awfully cold in here.”
“My secretary has trained the air conditioner to keep everything always icebox crisp.” Easy nodded at the client’s chair. “Sit down.”
She ignored him, moved to the sofa against the wall. She dropped down onto that. “Don’t let me interrupt your dinner.”
Easy pushed the sandwich aside. “You have something to tell me?”
“My husband’s quite pissed off at you, not to mention curious,” she said. “Ennis has a nice black and blue spot right here.”
“Ennis is the gatekeeper?”
“Uh-huh.” She shrugged out of the coat. You’re in pretty good shape for somebody who lives on deli food.”
“It’s the raw vegetables that do it,” he said. “Where’s Gary Marks?”
The redhaired girl sat for a half minute watching him. “I really don’t know.”
“You have an idea, though.”
“I wanted to see you again,” said Danny. “Isn’t that enough reason for coming?”
“Is it?”
She looked away from Easy. “They took him away from me.”
“Who? People from your husband?”
“No, Jake doesn’t know I’m seeing Gary again,” she said. “Besides, if he had something to do with this he’d be bragging to me by now. No, I don’t know who they were.”
“They took him from the cottage in Westwood?”
“Yes, they were waiting at Gary’s place when we got there after dinner Monday. They seemed to know all about Gary, even about me.”
“How many of them?”
“Two,” replied Danny. “One was a little odd-looking guy with kinky blond hair, the other
was a really fat spade. He seemed a little gay to me.”
“Did Gary know them—know who they were?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure he didn’t.”
“Was the house torn up when you got there?”
“Yes, that was the first thing we saw when we walked in.” She rubbed her palms along the legs of her white trousers. “Then the little kinky one came out of the bedroom with a goddamn gun. They told me they wanted to talk to Gary alone, that I could go home to my old man.”
“Did you?”
“You know I did, Easy,” she answered. “I couldn’t get involved with any trouble, with cops or anything. They knew that. Little trouble with Jake I have most of the time, but big ones I want to avoid. So I drove myself home and kept my damn mouth shut. Until now.”
“What else did these guys say?” asked Easy. “How do you know they took Gary away?”
Danny began rubbing her wrist. “Well, the little blond guy made a couple jokes about being old friends of the family, of Gary’s family. I guess you know about his father.”
“Yeah, what else?”
“The fat spade kept giggling. He said something about if they couldn’t get what they wanted they might have to go see the old witch in the desert,” said Danny. Remembering made her frown. “The kinky blond told him not to talk so much. Then I left. I went straight home to San Amaro and left Gary there with them. Not very brave at all.”
Easy crossed to her. “Okay, I’m going to go look for Gary.” He took hold of her hand, pulling her up from the sofa.
“Right this minute?” she said. “Couldn’t you stay here awhile with me? I’m pretty down tonight and …”
“Right now.” He walked her to the back door of his office.
As he reached out for the doorknob the redhaired girl turned, got hold of him and kissed him once. Her tongue knifed in between his teeth. It tasted of gin. “I hope you find him,” she said when she’d pulled back from Easy. “But whether you do or not, I want to see you again.” She opened the door for herself and went out.