Little Dog Laughed (11 page)

Dave knew Brenda’s car, a dark red Seville. He had driven her and Chrissie in it to her apartment the other day, Dan’l following in Adam’s black, low-slung, knife-edged sports car. A man got out of the Seville now and opened doors, a youngish man with a mane of oily black curls well down over his collar, dark skin, dark glasses, shirt open, gold neck chains glinting on a muscular chest. His biceps bulged. He closed the car doors—Brenda in the front seat, Chrissie in the back—jogged around the front of the car, got into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and rolled the car away. It was three or four years old, but it shone like new. Maybe he rubbed it down with his hair. Dave said, “Who’s Mr. Universe?”

“Ken Kastouros.” Albright gazed after the car. “Not the chauffeur. The lover. In for the money—right?”

“If Brenda can hang on to Chrissie,” Dave said. “Otherwise there won’t be any money. Can you stop that? It wasn’t what her father wanted—not as I understand it.”

“Chrissie doesn’t get the principal, not from her grandmother’s will or her father’s. Not till she’s twenty-one. Substantial monthly payments, but not millions. Not yet.”

“Chrissie talked about getting married,” Dave said.

“That’s a common mistake. In some legal respects it would make her a woman, but the state would still control the money while she was underage. That’s how it is in California.”

“So with Brenda as her guardian,” Dave said, “Brenda will be in charge of how such money as does come is spent.”

Albright grunted. “It will be spent on Brenda.”

“And Ken,” Dave said. “You can’t prevent that?”

“Brenda won in a walkover—grandma dead, daddy dead, no other living relatives. She’s a drunk and takes too many pills, but she’s not a criminal. You’ll tell Fleur now?”

“It’s on my way home,” Dave said.

Albright pushed back a snowy cuff to read a gold Rolex. “I have a plane to catch in less than an hour.” He nodded at Dave. “Do it. I’ll be grateful. I was going to tell her here. If you’ve got her phone number”—he peered around the cemetery in the sunset light—“I can call her, if I can find a phone”—he looked at the shut-up chapel doors—“anyplace.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Dave said.

The flower shop was a low-roofed, deep-eaved bungalow on a corner lot a few blocks from Sarah Winger’s place. But Winger’s building was new, and the bungalow dated from World War I. Maybe it wasn’t technically a bungalow—it had a single square upstairs room, windows all around. The front yard, picketed with unpainted lath, was a nursery for young plants in wooden flats under redwood beams hung with drooping cheesecloth to temper the sun. The side yard was fenced by six-foot-high planks, but he could see the tops of young trees, Brazilian peppers, Japanese maples, longleaf pines, three kinds of eucalyptus.

He turned onto the side street. The old garage leaned, its roof slumped. On a cracked cement driveway, the new lavender van nosed the garage doors. He pulled in behind it, left the Jaguar there, and pushed a plank gate into a backyard where arbors sheltered more little plants, on the ground, on unpainted wooden tables, on shelves. Ferns and vines trailed from hanging decorator pots. There was a plank workshop and a potting shed walled with lattice. Dave walked along beside the bungalow among the young trees in tubs and breathed the rich dark odor of damp earth.

His shadow fell long and pleated up the porch steps. He climbed the steps. On the porch, racks of bent wire and of doweled wood held new rakes, hoes, cultivators, trowels, cotton gloves, kneeling pads. Coils of green garden hose were stacked beside clear plastic sacks of mulch, paper sacks of fertilizer. Inside a tall oval of glass in the front door hung a
CLOSED
sign in red letters on white cardboard. That was funny. His watch told him it was past five. But these racks had wheels under them. Maybe there weren’t many thieves equipped to steal potted plants. Even if there were a black market for them, it would involve a lot of work for little return. But this stuff on the porch was easily marketable. There were even two power lawnmowers in shiny red enamel, price tags hanging off their handles.

Shielding his eyes with a hand, he turned and looked down the walk to the front gate. There was no lock on it, and the lath pickets weren’t any use at all to keep trespassers out. Fleur would wheel the racks indoors at closing time, the garden hose, the mowers, maybe even heave the fertilizer sacks in there.
CLOSED
? He peered through the glass. Inside was a counter with a cash register, sheets of green wrapping paper for bouquets, buckets of cut gladiolus, carnations, delphiniums behind tall glass refrigerator doors. More hanging ferns. Vases, jars, bowls. But no human beings. The doorbell looked corroded but he thumbed it. Nothing chimed or buzzed in the house. He rapped the glass.

“Hello. Anybody here?”

No one answered. He tried the latch. Locked. Her van was back there. What had she done? Walked to the supermarket to buy supper? Was there a shopping center near that he didn’t know about? It was possible. They kept building new ones every month. He went down the stairs and followed the path to the front gate, meaning to look up and down the street for her. But a window latch clacked and he stopped and turned back. All the windows he could see reflected red sunset light. Except one in the big-square room upstairs. That one was wide open and framed in it was Hunsinger. His upper half. The long white hair, white Buffalo Bill mustache, chalk-white skin. He was shirtless.

“We’re closed,” he called. “Come back tomorrow.”

“It’s Brandstetter,” Dave said. “I have news for Fleur. She wanted me to find Adam Streeter’s lawyer and I found him.”

“Oh, shit,” Hunsinger said, and left the window.

Dave returned to the porch and heard Hunsinger’s footfalls thump stairs someplace inside. Or maybe felt them. The porch boards caught the vibrations. Dry rot had probably got into the house supports. Or termites. Or both. Hunsinger appeared framed by the oval glass. He zipped up his ragged Levis and pulled open the door. He still had a partial erection. It was making a damp place in the thin fabric.

“God is dead, right?” Dave said.

Hunsinger’s white flat cheeks flushed pink. “She’s lonely. They buried him today. I was only trying to comfort her.”

“She is here, then,” Dave said. “Will she come down?”

“Did he leave her any money?” Hunsinger asked.

“I had you all wrong,” Dave said, “didn’t I? That makes me feel bad.” Fleur came through a door beside the tall glass refrigerators. She wore sandals and jeans with earth stains at the knees, and was buttoning a cambric shirt with a sleeve pulled loose at the shoulder. Her face was smooth, impassive, but worry was bright in her eyes. Dave said, “I like to think I know people. It’s important in my line of work. I slipped with you. I’m getting old. I’d better quit.”

“You’re not making sense,” Hunsinger said.

Dave said, “You know he left her money. She told you he was going to. This between you isn’t new. You’ve been sleeping together since she lived in the rear house at your place. That was why Adam Streeter moved her out. He suspected, if he didn’t know. It wasn’t because the neighborhood was dangerous.”

“He knew,” Fleur said, and came forward to stand next to Hunsinger. His gaunt height made her look even tinier than she was. “I swore to Adam I would stop seeing Hunsinger, and I did stop. We did stop.” She took Hunsinger’s bony arm in both her small hands and gazed up at him adoringly. “It was very difficult. But Adam was kind and generous to me. I had to obey him. Still, he was upset. And I wondered if, perhaps, after all, there would be anything for me when he died.”

Dave said stiffly, “The lawyer’s name is Charles Albright.” He found Albright’s card in his side jacket pocket and held it out to Fleur. “He’s out of town right now. You can phone him next week for the particulars. But he authorized me to tell you Streeter left you ten thousand dollars.”

Hunsinger yelped, “That won’t even pay for the van.”

“Darling, don’t,” Fleur pleaded. “It’s all right. It was”—she looked solemnly at Dave—“very generous of him. He was always so thoughtful of me, so protective.”

“You were his wife—same as,” Hunsinger said. He told Dave, waving his arms, “His live-in companion. I mean, they fucked up there in that bed all the time. Whenever he was in town. He lived here. I can show you his clothes in her closet. She can sue. She should get all the money.” He put a skinny arm around her and dragged her hard against him. “She gave him everything. Ten thousand dollars? Shit, man.”

Dave said, “Chrissie gets the bulk of the estate. His daughter. She’s blind, Hunsinger. You want to go into court to take money away from a blind girl?”

The Adam’s apple pumped in Hunsinger’s long throat. He flushed pink again. He sulked. “It’s not fair,” he said.

“You counted on more, didn’t you?” Dave said. “Otherwise you’d have dropped her. You certainly wouldn’t have waited around practicing chastity. For how long?”

“Three years,” Hunsinger grumbled.

“That’s a long time,” Dave said. “Was it your limit? If so, wasn’t it lucky for you he died when he did?” Dave glanced at Fleur. “For both of you?”

“I wasn’t waiting for his money,” Hunsinger said. “We love each other. He had her trapped by her own sense of gratitude. Making her feel she owed him because he got her out of Cambodia. Tying her up in business debts she could never meet without his help. I wanted to marry her. Did he? Shit, he didn’t give a damn for her. All he cared about was himself. He used her like a whore.”

“I’m not surprised you weren’t at the funeral,” Dave said.

“Anybody that was didn’t know him.” Hunsinger’s laugh was sour. “They thought he was the all-American charm-boy, didn’t they? And so fucking brave, barging in wherever the bullets were flying.” He snorted. “And all the time he’s keeping a helpless, bewildered little Cambodian waif his body slave.” Hunsinger bent and kissed her forehead. “He was a coward, Brandstetter, a coward and a bully.”

“It’s over now,” Dave said. “Somebody saw to that. Somebody with no higher opinion of him than you.” He turned and crossed the porch. At the foot of the steps, he paused and looked back. “Do you happen to own a pair of wire cutters?”

“No,” Hunsinger said sharply. “Why would we?”

“In the shed in back,” Fleur said.

Dave found them there, on a workbench, beside a big wooden spool of thick smooth wire. They used the wire to fashion hangers for pots with plants in them. Dave picked up the cutters. Scraps of wire lay on the bench. He snipped one in half. Easily. He laid the cutters down, stepped out of the shed into dying daylight, and closed the door behind him.

Leppard’s living quarters were at the top of a block-long cement staircase in the hills off Glendale Boulevard. The houses were of old rough gray stucco, with stingy windows. They climbed the hill close on either side of the endless stairs. Dave caught glimpses of women in bright kitchens. Smells and sounds of frying hamburger and onions came out because it was a warm evening and the windows were open. He saw families at supper around K-Mart dining tables, or behind trays in small living rooms where they watched the evening news. Once, pausing to catch his breath, he thought he heard Cecil’s voice for a few seconds, but here shutters prevented his seeing a screen. He climbed again, and loud rock music came from a bedroom where a teenage girl in a straw-color ponytail and faded pink exercise tights danced by herself in front of a mirror.

Winded, Dave stood at Leppard’s door for a minute before he pushed the bell. Leppard hadn’t bought shutters. Roller shades covered his windows, but the evening breeze moved them a little, and light showed around their edges. The familiar voices of newscasters came out to Dave. He didn’t try the bell again. He rattled a loose little black knocker in the center of the door. Waited. Rattled it again. And Leppard jerked the door open. Annoyed, and knotting a white towel at his waist. Shaving cream smeared his face, white as the streak in his hair.

“What the fuck—?” he said. Then, “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

“To correct a mistake,” Dave said.

“Come in,” Leppard said. “I have a date, and I’m in a hurry.” When Dave stepped inside past him, he shut the door again, and crossed the room to a door that was open and showed a bathroom. He picked up a Bic razor there, and standing at a washbasin and gazing into a mirror steamy except for a circle in the middle he’d made with a hand, shaved. “What mistake?” he said, and cranked a faucet. Water splashed.

“I told you I had reason to believe a witness.” Dave looked at the small room. The double doors with mirrors to his left plainly held a drop-down bed. An alcove housed a tiny refrigerator and a tiny stove. A cheap fake Oriental carpet covered the floor. There were two meager upholstered chairs and a coffee table. A bridge lamp made of glazed plaster with a white nick in it. Television set on the floor. Nothing else. Except clothes. Leppard had rigged poles along the side of the room, and the poles sagged with clothes enough to stock a small men’s store. A very expensive men’s store. Some of the clothes were sacked in plastic, but some were not, and the richness of the material and the tailoring were easy to see. “The witness,” Dave said, “who told me about the men who came to Underhill’s in the early morning.”

“The ones in combat camouflage?” The water splashed in the basin again. The razor clicked on the chipped porcelain. Leppard used a blue washcloth to rinse away the lather from his face, dried his face on a towel that hung crooked off a rack, and came out of the bathroom again. He crouched by a stack of orange crates and picked out blue bikini undershorts, stood, let the towel fall, stepped into the shorts. “The ones with the four-by-four, the Bronco with the pintle mount on the roof? It never happened?” Leppard snapped the tight little shorts and grinned mockery at Dave. “You surprise me.”

“The witness is sleeping with Streeter’s Cambodian girlfriend,” Dave said, “for the money he thought Streeter was going to leave her.”

Leppard took a shirt down from a hanger on one of the poles, studied it critically, hung it back, chose another, and put it on. “And you think he dreamed up this story about the night raiders so you wouldn’t suspect him?”