The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

At home I made a few phone calls—enough of them to learn that none of the small airlines had flights going that evening up to Eureka or Crescent City or even Grant’s Pass in southern Oregon, where I might rent a car and drive the rest of the way up to Gold Beach on the coast and arrive at a reasonable enough hour to still talk to people. I could get to Medford, also in southern Oregon, on one of the larger carriers, but I figured that would put me too far out of reach. From there I’d have to drive on to Grant’s Pass, but since there weren’t any direct roads west through that rugged, southern coastal area of Oregon, I’d only have to dip back down to Crescent City, in California, and take Highway 101 the rest of the way up the coast itself.

  I finally decided just to throw some things into the car and start driving. I could get as close as Eureka by midnight or a little after, provided there wasn’t a lot of fog in the area, and I’d have a fresh start in the morning. I didn’t think much about things on the way up to Eureka. I had a straightforward-enough job. Go up to Oregon, find a man, tell him his only son is dead. Murdered. Straightforward enough.

  I spent the night in a motel on the outskirts of Eureka and started out early again the next morning. It turned out, of course, not to be early enough. I could have tried finding him by telephone, but a part of what Sidjakov wanted me to do was to get Andy Dustin back to the job site. It might take more than a phone call to do that, and if Dustin really was skittish about keeping his whereabouts a secret, he might take off before I could get up there. So I drove into the little community of Gold Beach around nine o’clock in the morning, stopped at a place on the main drag called the Golden Omelet, and had maybe the best breakfast I’d eaten in ten years. Then I asked where the fanciest place to stay in town might be. There were no two opinions; it had to be the Rapids Inn, a couple of miles up the Rogue River. It was eighteen months old, and the locals called it fancy. I drove out there and learned that Andy Dustin and the woman with him had caught that morning’s mailboat with its load of river tourists at the dock out front and wouldn’t be back until the middle of the afternoon.

  Today’s mailboats, long, metal-hulled, open vessels with powerful engines, carried thirty or forty tourists at a time for nearly sixty-five miles up the rugged, white-water river and rapids. Their forerunners, old, slow things, used to chug up-river a couple of times a week carrying mail to the isolated cabins far back in the river canyon. There weren’t any roads. The river still was the only way to get back in there, except for a pasture airstrip above the bluffs behind a small restaurant where the boat passengers stopped to have lunch before starting back. But even if you flew in, if you wanted to go up- or down-river from there, the only way was by water, unless you enjoyed bushwhacking.

  I was out on the river dock at a little after two o’clock when the mailboat nosed in and let off a half-dozen passengers. The others would continue on down to docks at the mouth of the river. Of those getting off here, all three men were of retirement age, and two of their women looked about right for them. I knew which one was Andy Dustin from the woman with him I assumed to be Gloria. She wasn’t half the age of the others, or Andy Dustin, either. She was a full-figured, brunette girl who would have trouble keeping her weight down in years to come. She wore a bit too much lipstick that was a bit too red for her. She seemed concerned for her companion, who walked with a slight stoop. They were a little slow-moving. The other two couples moved quickly on up the dock, as if they wanted to disassociate themselves from the last pair.

  “Mr. Dustin?” I asked.

  He tried to straighten, but winced and shifted one hand to the small of his back. The girl was supporting him by the other arm. She was as tall or taller than he was.

  He looked up at me with irritation on a darkly tanned face that looked as if it’d seen as much as any man. I couldn’t tell if the irritation was for me or for whatever was wrong with his back.

  “What is it?” he growled.

  “I was sent up here by Joe Sidjakov,” I told him. “I have a couple of important things to talk to you about. In private.”

  He stopped a moment and gave me a good look up and down. I couldn’t tell what he thought of what he saw.

  “All right,” he said finally. “But not now. I gotta get up to the room and call a doc who can give me a shot of something. Then I’m gonna sleep for a while. We can talk then.”

  The man obviously was hurting. I put out an arm to offer a little support on the side opposite the girl if he wanted it. He put some weight on me gladly.

  “What happened to you out there?”

  He wheezed something and shook his head as we made our way up to the lodge. “Ever been on one of those things?” he asked, jerking his head toward the river.

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, do it before you get as old as I am. Think I left one of my kidneys on that last stretch of rapids we went through. Like sitting on a metal plate somebody keeps dropping about six feet onto the water. Wham, wham…WHAM! Christ! Hurts me just to think about it. Then the pilots, you know, they’re just as country as can be, same as the boys in any of these rural regions showing the tourists around. They crack corny jokes about every twenty seconds and absolutely delight in screwin’ up the insides of old farts like me coming back down the rapids.”

  “No, they don’t, honey,” said the girl. “I was talking to ours up where we had lunch?” She finished her sentences on a rising note, suggesting she had plenty of country in her herself. “And he said they got to hit those rapids just right, coming down. The right place at the right speed, or they’re apt to punch a hole in the bottom. That scared me, but he said there wasn’t any real danger. If it happens, they just pull into shore and radio down for another boat to come pick everybody up. But it takes longer, and nobody’s happy about losing a boat like that.”

  “Better the damn boat than my back,” Dustin told her as the three of us struggled through the swinging glass doors that led into a big lobby area.

  I helped him over to an elevator. It was a three-story building, and they had the largest suite on the top floor, the girl bragged to me. When the elevator door opened, Dustin told me he’d see me in a couple of hours. I told him I’d be around, and after he’d started up I went into the restaurant to drink some coffee.

  It was a little after five o’clock when the girl wandered through looking for me. She had been wearing outdoor clothes before, but now she’d changed into a pink, lacy gown that rode well on her. It hung from her in a way that didn’t call too much attention to the fullness of her figure. I’d expected something a bit more vulgar, somehow. She wore high heels and carried a little sequined bag. Her hair was tied back fetchingly in a long stream of ringlets down her back. She’d changed her face, and now was wearing a muted, pink shade of lipstick, but there still was a kiss too much of it.

  When she saw me, she walked over. “Hi. I’m Gloria, by the way.”

  I stood up and briefly took the hand she offered. “My name’s Pete. Is Mr. Dustin in better shape now?”

  “Is he ever, if you know what I mean.” She had a little-girl giggle that seemed oddly out of place in such a large-boned woman. “To use his own words, I left him in fine fettle. Actually, he’s a tough old bird. Most times, he’s still raring to go when I’m ready to drop. He said to tell you he’ll see you now.”

  I thanked her. She gave me the room number, and I watched her drift off in the direction of the cocktail lounge. I went on up.

  After I introduced myself, Dustin gave me a brief tour through the suite. He had a large sitting room, a large bedroom off that and not one, but two bathrooms, one of them with a makeup table and a mirror ringed in lights. He wanted to show me something on the way back through the bedroom. He looked bigger, now that he wasn’t all humped over with the crippled back. He looked assured and self-possessed.

  He pointed out a large skylight in the ceiling over the bed, where a person could look up at the stars at night. But then he showed that by flicking a switch beside the bed that did someth
ing with the lights, the skylight turned into a reflecting mirror.

  He led me back to the sitting room, chuckling gently. “I’ve seen the mirrors-over-the-bed trick before. This is the first joint I’ve been in that gave you a choice.”

  He went to a small bar in the corner and asked what I would like to drink. I told him a bourbon on ice with a dash of water. He poured me one, and a Scotch for himself. We sat across from each other on a couple of comfortable, new-looking leather chairs. He pulled over a small hassock and stuck his feet up.

  “Do me a favor, Bragg?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell me a little about yourself.”

  “What for?”

  He shrugged. “You said we had some important things to talk about. I like to know a little bit about the man I discuss important matters with. Were you in the army?”

  “No. Navy. Actually, a reserve squadron from the old Naval Air Station in Seattle. We were activated during Korea. I was a little young for your war.”

  “Did you get overseas?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of war did you have?”

  “So-so. I came back in one piece, at least. I was in a plane that was shot down over country that didn’t really belong to anybody just then, right after the Chinese came into it. Lucky for me, I stumbled into a group of marines fighting their way out.”

  “Were you in fighting?”

  “Yes. It was a lousy way to learn how to be in the infantry.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Every joyous step of the way.”

  He gestured with his glass. “Relax; that’s behind you now.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d tensed up. I leaned back in the chair and had some of the bourbon. He waited a moment more.

  “How’d you get into what you’re doing now?”

  “I was a reporter in a few different places over a number of years. I was in San Francisco when my marriage broke up. I quit the paper about the same time and tended bar for a while. Then I started doing chores for a lawyer friend. Researching things. Finding witnesses. One thing led to another. I finally decided to get serious about it and got a state license. Been running ever since.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “The detective work?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve made some bum decisions about people from time to time. Been snookered a few times.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean regrets about doing what you’re doing, rather than something else.”

  I had some more of the bourbon and thought about it a moment. “No, I don’t think so. It’s satisfying, when things go well. I don’t have as much time to myself as I’d like, but when you’re in business for yourself…”

  He chuckled and raised his glass in toast. I drank along with him.

  “I’m glad Joe hired you, so long as he felt he had to hire somebody. You’re in a position to be able to explain to him why I’ve stayed away for so long.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Because I’m enjoying myself. And it’s the first time I’ve been able to say that, the selfish way, not having anything to do with my work, in over thirty-five years.”

  He took another sip of his Scotch. “I came out of the Seabees in 1945, brawny and smart, full of piss and vinegar, raring to go. I’d saved my money in the War, both what Uncle Sam gave me and what I picked up in crap games here and there along the way. I spent the first couple of years as a foreman with one of those big construction outfits down in San Diego, working my butt off during the day, going to school at night, learning what I felt I needed to about architecture and engineering and cash flow, so I’d be able to start my own outfit. To do that, I moved up to San Francisco, but inside of five years we were all over the place, putting up a shopping center in Portland, a library in Tucson, a big complex of shops and offices over in Bakersfield. I worked as hard as any man I’ve ever known. Along the way I got married, had a couple of kids—God, I was into everything.

  “My wife died a few years ago. That hurt plenty, and for a long time after. Decided the only way I’d ever get over that would be to work a little bit harder. Which I did. I’m not going to bore you, reciting all the stuff I’ve built—just take my word for it. Anything that needed putting up, Andy Dustin Construction put her up.”

  He went over to the bar to freshen his drink. I indicated that my own was still okay. He went back to his chair and took a cigar out of a humidor on the table beside him. He lit a match, got the cigar going and waved the match in the air beside him until it went out.

  “You know, Bragg, I am sixty-three years old this year. Last summer there was a little backyard barbecue given by an associate, Paul Anderson.”

  “I’ve met him, and heard about the barbecue.”

  He gave me a puzzled look, but let it pass. “That’s where I met Glory.” He winked.

  “The woman downstairs?”

  “You’re being polite, Bragg; she’s barely more than a girl. But yeah. Her name’s Gloria. I call her Glory, and if you’d had the times with her that I’ve had, you’d call her that yourself. To my mind she’s a combination of Jane Russell and Ava Gardner. A dynamite package to a guy who’s been around as long as I have. The day I met and started going out with Glory—well sir, it opened a whole new dimension of things to me.”

  He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Bragg, we went to bed and—she showed me things I never knew the human body was capable of, and hell, I’m old enough to be her granddaddy.”

  He leaned back and worked on the cigar some. “And I have just been having a ball with that girl ever since. It finally got so work was getting in the way of my fun. And you know, it was the first time in my whole life, it seemed, that I was ready for anything to get in the way of my work. So after we got the groundwork all squared away—that’s a whopping part of most jobs, anyhow—I just decided to take Glory and go out into the world and leave my cares behind. And we’ve been doing that for weeks on end. Hell, I got a good crew. They can get along without me at this stage. It’s been the first time in my whole goddam life I’ve just kicked back and had fun, not worrying about business.”

  He leaned forward again. “And you know what, Bragg? We’re good for each other, that girl and me. We’re learning things together, things she’s never had the opportunity to do, things I’ve never had the time to do. Did some deep sea fishing down off Florida. God, that’s pretty territory down there. Reminded me of the Pacific, without all the Japs and shooting.”

  He stopped himself and got up to pace around the room. “Aw hell, you don’t want to hear all this. I’m only telling you so you might get some idea of what’s behind what I’m doing.”

  “I think I do,” I told him, though I probably had a different idea of what was behind it than he did.

  He paused to stare at the glass in his hand, still with a little smile on his face. “You know, I don’t talk to Glory about this. She’s a little young yet to understand what these things mean to a man who’s done the things I’ve done. You know what I was thinking one night? Lying in bed staring at the ceiling with Glory asleep beside me, I thought about it, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It always goes back to the War years, where it all started. There was a lot of building to be done out in those islands, and never enough time to do it. More than once our battalions went in right after the marines. Sometimes damned near alongside them. We’d fight back the Japs, then start tearing down jungle and laying out airstrips. We went into places no American soldier or sailor had ever been before, and beat the Japs—good fighters—and beat the jungles and did it time after time, and came home with the feeling we’d really accomplished something.”

  He looked over at me with a little frown on his face. “And now I have a grown daughter who chides me for eating filet beef and consuming commercially raised fruit and vegetables.”

  He shook his head and came over to get my glass. “And that’s enough of all that. Let me fix us a couple more dr
inks and you can tell me what you came to tell me.” He crossed to the bar. When he returned he handed me my glass, but stayed on his feet. I gestured casually with one hand, suggesting he sit.

  “No, I want to hear this standing up. Whatever it is, it’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “Some of it is.”

  “That’s what I figured. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Okay. The first part’s pretty simple. Sidjakov wants you back on the job. Maybe it’s something you could take care of in a day or so. But he figures only you can handle it. Paul Anderson has been mandating changes in the original specifications of the Shores project. Nobody knows why he’s doing it, or what’s going on, but it’s being changed from what it was going to be when you left.”

  He thought about it for a minute, then dismissed it with a shake of his head. “Maybe I can straighten it out with a phone call. Can’t be anything all that important. It was too tied together when I left there.”

  “Sidjakov seems to think it is important. While I was at the site yesterday, Anderson brought by a new set of drawings. Something to do with the plumbing in the main convention center. They’d been drawn up by a firm in the city. Your men said they were an all right firm, but you had your own architects you always used. And there was a kind of hard-looking guy with Anderson. I’d seen him before, over at Elliott Fitzmorris’s home.”

  “Elliott Fitzmorris?”

  “Yeah. He’s financing the project, isn’t he?”

  “Only a damn small part of it. He’s somebody Anderson wanted to bring in on it. As a favor, he said.”

  “According to a man I spoke with in the County Planning Department yesterday, Fitzmorris is now providing all financing. Whatever was arranged for previously has been dropped.”

  Dustin took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at me in a funny way.

  “Sidjakov said there’d been one or two of these people from the Fitzmorris place tagging along with Anderson every time he comes around the job site.”

  “Anderson’s making regular visits to the job?”