Country of Old Men (13 page)

As Dave stood studying the shoe, turning it over in his hands, Zach piped in his mind,
There’s lots of good hiding places.
There had only needed to be one, hadn’t there? And close at hand. Reachable in seconds from the place where Jordan Vickers had shot Cricket Shales to keep him from meeting Rachel Klein again. While unseen by him, Rachel bent horrified above the murdered man’s body, Vickers had crouched in here, heart hammering, praying for whoever it was to go away—for just the short time he’d need to make his escape.

Dave closed the locker and headed for Tomorrow House.

When the gap-toothed girl let him in the front door, it struck Dave that he’d come in vain, that Vickers would of course be downtown this morning, trying to help Rachel. Word of her arrest would have been on the TV news. But no—Vickers, shaved skull gleaming, was bending above the steel folding chair of one of his scruffy dependents in the big room to the left of the front hallway. The chairs stood in a ragged circle again. And seven or eight of them were occupied. But this particular child-woman, a baby in her arms, was getting all the attention. Everyone leaned toward her. And she clutched the baby as if they meant to snatch it away, and her eyes were wide and imploring. “No, no,” she wept, “I won’t, I promise I won’t, I swear it. Never again.”

“You jivin’ us,” a black young woman scoffed.

“Jou are lying to jourself.” A breasty Latino girl blinked angry eyes. “Jou got to stop that. Ees no good.”

The girl wailed, “I couldn’t help myself.”

“If you couldn’t help yourself,” Vickers said, “who could help you?”

“You,” the girl cried up at him, “you have to—”

“You are the answer,” Vickers said. “You, baby. You are the one that has to say, ‘I don’t do cocaine anymore. Shooting up is bad for me. If I don’t stop’”—he glanced across the room and saw Dave standing in the doorway—“‘I’ll get busted again, I’ll lose my baby, I’ll get AIDS, or all three.’” He patted her shoulder. “I have to go now.” He freed himself from her hand that clung to his arm. “Tell her what she has to do, who she has to be, who she has to respect.” He smiled gravely at them all, and came away. “I’ll be back soon.” He glowered down at Dave. “Mr. Brandstetter. You’ve been stirring up trouble for me.”

“Lou Squire and I go back a long way,” Dave said. “We have no secrets from each other. You and I ought to try that policy. Lies make for misunderstanding, Mr. Vickers. In this case serious misunderstandings. You weren’t at your desk the night Cricket Shales was killed. Why did you tell me you were?”

“Who says I wasn’t?” Vickers said. Then he noticed the gap-toothed girl watching them. “Come on,” he said, and began striding off down that maze of hallways that led to the back porch. Dave did his best to keep up, halting and wincing. Vickers said, “Where I was had nothing to do with the death of Cricket Shales.” He unlocked the door to his back-porch office and sleeping quarters, and pushed inside.

Dave followed him and closed the door. “The other lie—about not knowing Shales was out of prison and here in L.A.—that had a lot to do with it.”

“All right, I knew.” Vickers sat down back of his desk. The
Boss
cap was perched over the telephone. He picked it up and put it on, tugging the bill down so it shadowed his eyes. “That doesn’t mean I killed him.”

“Maybe not, but piling up lies turns suspicion on the bar. You wanted to know when Shales walked out of prison, so you could protect Rachel Klein from him. You telephoned her at her job the minute Lou Squire gave you the news. And told her to go into hiding.”

“I didn’t lie to you about that,” Vickers said.

Dave shrugged. “Keeping it back amounts to the same thing.” He sat down. “Was it your suggestion she go to Karen Goddard’s place?”

“Please.” Vickers sighed grimly. “No, it was not.”

“You weren’t happy with the idea?”

Vickers’s laugh was brief. “Karen is gay, she’s in love with Rachel and always has been—hell, no, I wasn’t happy, but what could I say? Rachel wouldn’t have been safe here. After Cricket didn’t find her at work, didn’t find her at home, at her father’s, he’d have headed straight here. He knew about Rachel and me. She’d written and told him.”

“At your suggestion, right?”

“To make him see what he’d lost by doing drugs. It didn’t work the way I thought it would. It only made him want to kill me.” From outside came a shriek of rusty nails. A board clattered. Startled, Vickers looked that way. Then he turned Dave a wry smile. “I’m always believing people can be saved. That’s a weakness, but I can’t seem to shake it. Prison didn’t change Cricket Shales, or teach him anything.” Vickers’s big hands lifted, dropped sadly on the desk again. “His pockets were full of crack when they found him dead. He was right back to his old ways, wasn’t he?”

“Not for long,” Dave said. “You were out that night. I have a witness.”

“What witness?” More nails gave rusty cries. “Who?” Vickers jumped up, went to the screen door, pushed it open. “Noah—do you have to do this now? Come back later.” He let the door fall shut and went back to his desk.

Dave asked him, “Where were you—following Shales around town, waiting for a chance to jump him in the dark?”

Vickers sat down with an easy smile. “I was out practicing my profession. Drug-abuse counseling. It was an emergency. I get these calls for help.”

“Good. Then you have someone to back up your story.”

“Sorry.” Vickers shook his head. “I’m not dragging them into this. No names. I gave my word.”

Dave sighed, pushed painfully to his feet. “All right. If that’s the way you want it.” He moved to the screen door. “But I think it’s only fair to warn you, you’re going to need all the help you can get.” He opened the screen. The top step was missing. Flinching, he stretched to reach the lower one. “Men called before grand juries always do.”

Vickers looked out the door. “You’re out of your mind.”

“I wish I were,” Dave said, and limped away.

Dave placed the big athletic shoes on the heaps of paperwork on Leppard’s desk, and Leppard blinked at them. He picked one up, peered inside. “Size fourteen?” He wrinkled his nose and put the shoe down again. “Smells wrong. Smells of garbage.”

“I found it a few mornings ago in a dumpster back of Tomorrow House. The other one smells normal. That one I found this morning in an empty wooden storage locker at the apartment complex where Cricket Shales was murdered.”

Leppard’s brows rose. He whistled. “And they belong to Jordan Vickers, right?”

“Do you know anyone else connected to the case who wears a size-fourteen shoe?” Dave said.

“Sit down,” Leppard said, and Dave sat down. Leppard said, “What kind of locker?”

“I suppose for brooms, rakes, clippers, garden hose,” Dave said. “Only empty, not in use—except by Zach Gruber, the first time, and—”

Leppard nodded and held up a hand. “Ah—that locker. He crawled into it to get away from his mother. I remember it, sure.” He frowned and touched the shoe again. “And this morning you found this there?”

“In a corner at the back. Stuck so I had to yank on it hard to get it loose.”

“You saying he hid in there after he shot Shales?” Leppard asked. “When he heard Rachel coming?”

“That’s the way it looks,” Dave said. “Then got out and ran like hell once she’d gone. So the shoe was stuck—he just pulled his foot out of it and left it. Those shots had been heard. Police would be there at any minute.”

Leppard’s brow wrinkled. “But he was at his place, that office of his on the back porch, when Rachel came running to him in a panic about stumbling over Shales’s dead body on her doorstep.”

“You forget she drove around for a long time first,” Dave said, “trying to figure out what to do. She bought Zach a chili dog and something to drink. He had plenty of time to get back to Tomorrow House.”

“Yup.” Leppard blew breath out grimly. “Damn.” He looked up from scowling at the shoes. “You know, I was about ready to believe it was Karen Goddard.”

“She’s a regular Annie Oakley with that thirty-two,” Dave said. “All she had to fire at last night was the sound of my voice. Pitch-dark in there. And she missed my head by inches. But Shales was shot at point-blank range. Anyone could have pulled the trigger. No experience necessary.”

“What if her story’s fake? Rachel was scared of Cricket. She didn’t dare come out of hiding. She’d have told Karen about the gun. Karen would have gone to get it.”

“Rachel got it,” Dave said. “Rachel was there.”

“That doesn’t mean Karen wasn’t. I’ve talked to Rachel—she’s wacko, Dave.” He tapped his head. “I can easily picture her panicking there alone in that town house, scared Karen might run into Cricket and get hurt. So she jumps in her car to try to catch up with Karen and bring her back.”

“Why would Cricket want to hurt Karen?”

With a half smile, half frown, Leppard said, “You’re kidding. You know the answer to that.”

“Jealousy?” Dave said.

“She and Rachel were lovers. No closets for Karen. She doesn’t give a damn who knows it. Told me she and Rachel were living in paradise till Cricket broke it up. They had a fight over Rachel.” Leppard grinned. “I’m talking down and dirty here. Fists, eye-gouging, flying kicks. To hear her tell it, she damn near castrated him.”

“No guns, though,” Dave said.

“Not then. But why didn’t she catch up with him walking out of Rachel’s door, and grab the gun and turn it on him? After last night, I can believe that. But I’ve met Rachel now, and I can’t see Rachel doing it.”

“Glad to hear it,” Dave said. “I never could.”

“But we still have to hold her for the kidnapping.”

“Then there’s Jordan Vickers,” Dave said.

“He’s big enough.” Leppard poked thoughtfully with a ballpoint pen at the shoes. “You told him about these?”

Dave gave a short laugh. “I still have some sense left. No, I merely asked him where he was that night. See, one of his charges came to me this morning and said Vickers lied to me earlier—he left his office that night at six-thirty, and didn’t get home till after twelve.”

Leppard whistled, made a note with the pen, looked at Dave. “Name of the witness?”

“Noah,” Dave said. “No last name. Chunky kid with a ponytail. Does the carpentry work around the place.”

“I’ll talk to him.” Leppard wrote the name down. “Also to Vickers. Did he offer you an alibi?”

“Claims some druggie called him in trouble,” Dave said. “He went off on a mission of mercy. But he won’t say who it was—even to free himself of suspicion.”

“Really?” Leppard thought about that, nibbling his lower lip. “To protect some jump-in-the-grave junkie?”

“Why not?” Dave said. “After all, they’re the love of his life, the street people. His reason for being.”

Leppard eyed him closely. “I see,” he breathed at last, and nodded. “You don’t think it was one of those. You think it was somebody, with a capital
S
.”

“The idea leaped to mind,” Dave said.

“Vickers is well-known,” Leppard mused, “reputed to be one of the best in his field. He’s been on a Peter Jennings antidrug TV special, written up in the magazines.”

“And he’s in the phone book,” Dave said.

Leppard made a face. “Some rock star, you think? TV sitcom kid? Athlete? Politician?”

“If,” Dave said, “it was anyone at all. I prefer to think he learned from Lou Squire where Cricket Shales was staying, picked up his trail from there, followed him around until he proved he’d come back for Rachel by stopping at her apartment at midnight, tangled with him—and did him in.”

“Yeah.” Troubled, Leppard rubbed the back of his thick neck. “You shouldn’t have moved these shoes, you know.”

“Tampering with evidence?” Dave reached for the phone. “Shall I call my lawyer?”

“Abe Greenglass?” Leppard yelped. “No, please. Anything but that. No—just—just don’t do it again, okay?”

T
HE WEATHER WAS CHANGING
. A hot dry wind was blowing from the east. In gusts. A Santa Ana. Blinking, hair blowing, he stood surprised for a moment on the broad expanse of white concrete in front of Parker Center, wondering where to eat. He’d asked Leppard to come with him, but Leppard wanted to be in the building when the unit he’d dispatched brought Vickers in. Dave had almost decided on corned beef and cabbage at Erin Go Bragh, where the tablecloths were gingham, the floors strewn with sawdust, and all the waiters seventy-five—a place his father had first taken him to when Dave was six, when it was already a venerable institution. He began to limp toward Fifth Street, when surprise stopped him. Across the street sat Chaim Chernov. In his wheelchair at the curb. Looking up the street. Waiting.

The light was green. Dave hobbled over to him. “Maestro Chernov,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

The old singer squinted up from under the brim of a gray homburg, well brushed but bought long ago. “Who is it?”

“Dave Brandstetter. I came to see you the other day. Looking for Rachel Klein.” He gestured at the sleek marble of the Hall of Justice. “Have you seen her?”

“I came to help if I could. But she has been refused bail.” He snorted. “It is ridiculous.” He looked up the sunstruck street. “A murder charge, they say. An intelligent person has only to look at her to know she is incapable of such a thing.” He peered at Dave again. “Was it you who found her, then? I thought you were an able man.”

“I found her.”

“You’re injured? Not by Rachel, surely not.”

“She has a friend called Karen Goddard,” Dave said.

The old man nodded. “I remember Karen. Rachel lived with her. They were true friends, soulmates. I think Karen would have done anything for Rachel.”

“You’re right,” Dave said. “Last night, she tried to kill me to keep me from telling the police where Rachel was.”

Chernov was aghast. “Tried to kill you?”

“With the same gun that killed Cricket,” Dave said.

“Ah—so that is the reason for the murder charge.” Chernov nodded gravely to himself. “The weapon. Rachel had the weapon when she went to hide at Karen’s.”

“That seems to be it,” Dave said.

An old black Lincoln town car stopped at the curb and Arthur Madden got out. He was neatly dressed, but his forgettable face had an oddly blurred look. His voice sounded far away. “Here we are, Maestro.” He bent to lift the old man from the wheelchair. Across his burden, he eyed Dave blankly. “What do you want?”