Potshot (10 page)

His office was in the Parker Center now. It was bigger. It had higher partition walls. And the air-conditioning worked.

‘You look the same,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘crying shame isn’t it.’

‘You working with Mary Lou Buckman?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you want to know what I know about her.’

‘And her husband,’ I said.

‘My oldest kid played for him at Fairfax High,’ Samuelson said. ‘That’s how I know him.’

Samuelson had his coat off, and his gun was high on his hip on the right side.

‘He used to ask me to come talk to the kids a few times, warn them to stay out of trouble. Rah-rah them about physical fitness and staying clean. That kind of crap. Bored the shit out of the kids.’

‘What kind of coach was he?’

‘He was a hard-on,’ Samuelson said. ‘He thought he was Vince Lombardi.’

‘Kids like him?’

‘Nobody liked him. Lot of kids quit.’

‘Yours didn’t?’

‘No. Ricky’s good. He couldn’t afford to quit. He was in line for a full ride at San Diego State.’

‘He get the scholarship?’ I said.

‘Yeah. Wide receiver.’

‘Buckman help with that?’

‘Buckman didn’t help with anything. When the college coaches were around, looking at the kids, Buckman was trying so hard to impress them that he got in the way.’

‘Looking for an assistant’s job?’

‘Looking to be head coach, I think.’

‘Too late now,’ I said. ‘He have a temper?’

‘Yeah. I don’t know how real it was. He was one of those guys who thought he ought to have a temper. Liked people to be scared of him, you know? Watch out for Steve, he’s got a temper. He’d been in the Marines. Figured he could chew up a crowbar.’

‘Was he any good?’

‘Oh he could bully the kids okay,’ Samuelson said. ‘And he probably won all the fights in the faculty lounge. But you and me have spent most of our lives with genuine tough guys.’ Samuelson said. ‘Buckman was just another Semper Fi asshole.’

‘How come he left coaching?’

‘Got me,’ Samuelson said. ‘Ricky graduated three years ago. I lost interest.’

‘How about the wife?’

‘I met her a few times. She was okay as far as I knew.’

‘They have any trouble at home?’

Samuelson shrugged.

‘I’m not their pal,’ Samuelson said. ‘When she come in here, told me her husband got clipped in the desert, I wasn’t sure who she was.’

‘You look into it at all?’

Samuelson got up and went to a coffee machine and poured a cup. He looked at me. I shook my head.

‘Yeah, a little. Called a guy I know out there, dick in the Sheriff’s Department named Cawley Dark. He said the case was dry. Said he probably got whacked by a bunch of local thugs, but there was no evidence and no witnesses and nothing that looked like a lead.’

‘So you passed her on to me,’ I said.

‘Always looking to help out,’ Samuelson said.

‘You bet,’ I said.

‘She asked me who could help her. I figured you could make something out of nothing, if it got your attention.’

‘First time I saw you out here, I made nothing out of something,’ I said.

‘You had a bad run. But I liked the way you handled yourself.’

‘Better than I did,’ I said.

‘I’ve fucked a few cases myself,’ Samuelson said.

‘People get killed?’

‘Once or twice.’

I shrugged.

‘Where’d she get the money?’ I said.

‘To pay you?’

‘Yeah. Wife of a high school football coach? How much could she have saved up?’

‘She’s good-looking,’ Samuelson said. ‘Maybe she figured there’d be some way to broker a deal.’

‘It’s a thought,’ I said.

Fairfax High School is located at the corner of Fairfax and Melrose, not very far from cbs and The Farmer’s Market down Fairfax, and excitingly close to the center of black lipstick and body piercing a little further east on Melrose.

The principal looked like a short John Thompson, black, about six-foot-five, and heavy. I introduced myself.

He shook hands. ‘Arthur Atkins.’

He asked to see some ID. I provided some. He read it carefully.

‘You are a
private
investigator,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Well you look like you can handle the job.’

‘You look like you could provide firm guidance yourself,’ I said. ‘To rebellious teenagers.’

‘We got school police with shotguns. They help me.’

‘Are sock hops waning in popularity?’

‘Waning,’ Atkins said. ‘You wanted to talk to me about Steve Buckman?’

‘Yes.’

‘You say he’s been killed?’

‘Yep.’

‘How did he die?’ Atkins said.

‘He was murdered.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Atkins said. ‘What do you need to know?’

‘Anything you can tell me,’ I said. ‘I’m just feeling my way around in the dark.’

‘Aren’t we all,’ Atkins said.

‘Was he a good football coach?’

Atkins paused a moment, thought about it, and decided.

‘Not for us,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the NFL. Any coach wants to win. But it’s also about the kids. About learning to work hard, and achieve some self-control, and respect one another and win with grace and lose with dignity and cooperate, and follow directions, and think on their feet, and, for crissake, to have some fun.’

‘Buckman get any of that?’

‘Got the win part, though not the grace part. Got the follow directions part, as long as they were his directions.’

‘Did he leave voluntarily?’

‘No. I fired him.’

‘Any specific reason other than being a jerk?’

‘I don’t even remember the official reason. There always has to be one. But that was the real reason.’

‘How’d he take that?’

‘He said it was a racial thing. Said he was going to kick my ass.’

‘Did he?’

‘He figured he was a pretty tough guy,’ Atkins said. ‘Been in the Marines. Was a running back at Pacific Lutheran.’

‘And?’

‘I been in the Marines and played football.’

‘Where’d you play?’

‘SC.’

‘Offensive tackle?’

‘Very.’

‘So what happened between you and Buckman?’

‘I invited him to the office and offered him the chance to kick my ass.’

‘He take it?’

Atkins smiled.

‘No.’

‘He have any kind of part-time job?’ I said.

‘Most teachers do. I think he was a personal trainer.’

‘At a gym?’

‘No. Takeout. He’d come to your home.’

‘Besides coaching,’ I said, ‘did he teach something?’

Atkins smiled.

‘Typing,’ he said.

‘Could he type?’

‘I don’t think so. But we had to do something with him. We don’t pay enough to hire a coach just to coach.’

‘Know anything about the outfitting business he ran in the desert?’

‘I think that was mostly the wife,’ Atkins said.

‘How about the wife?’

‘Lou,’ he said. ‘He met her in college, I think. She was pleasant, perky at social events. I don’t really know her.’

‘She work as well?’ I asked.

‘I think she worked with the DWP.’

‘Department of Water and Power?’

‘Yep.’

‘Know what she did?’

‘Nope.’

‘Know any of her friends?’

‘No.’

‘They get along?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Anyone who would know?’

‘Woman in our English department,’ Atkins said. ‘She was pretty friendly with Buckman.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Sara Hunter,’ he said. ‘White girl out of Berkeley. Wants to do good. We’re just a tryout for her eventual aim, which is to teach in my old neighborhood.’

‘South Central?’

‘Yep. Work off her upper-middle-class guilt.’

‘She working it off this summer?’

‘Not here,’ Atkins said. ‘She lives in Westwood, I think. I’ll give you her home address.’

He found her card in his Rolodex, and copied her address down on a piece of pink telephone message paper. I tucked it into my shirt pocket.

‘You don’t know much about them,’ I said. ‘Is that typical?’

‘There are people on the faculty I spend time with,’ Atkins said. ‘And people I don’t. I didn’t like Buckman. I didn’t spend time with him.’

Atkins paused and sort of smiled.

‘You really are feeling your way along,’ he said.

‘You bet. I just try to keep you talking and see if something comes up.’

‘Like what?’

‘Got no idea,’ I said. ‘I just hope I’ll know it when I see it. You have any record of where they lived? While they were here?’

‘Maybe,’ Atkins said.

He consulted the Rolodex again.

‘You think the Buckmans weren’t kosher?’

‘I don’t know enough to think anything,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find out.’

Atkins found the address in the Rolodex, copied it down on another piece of message paper and gave it to me. I put it in my shirt pocket with Sara Hunter. Atkins stood, and put out his hand.

‘Good luck,’ he said.

‘Luck is the residue of design,’ I said.

Atkins looked at me blankly for a minute.

‘I’ll bet it is,’ he said.

Steve Buckman had owned a small pink stucco house in Santa Monica, on 16th Street, below Montana. It had a blue front door, a flat roof, and a lemon tree in the front yard.

I rang the front doorbell. Inside a dog barked. I waited. Then a young woman with her dark hair up opened the door a crack. Behind her leg, I could see a dog trying to get a better look at me. I could hear children in the background and a television going.

‘I’m looking for Mr and Mrs Buckman.’

‘Excuse the door,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want the dog to get out.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Are you Mrs Buckman?’

‘Oh God no. I’m Sharon Costin. The Buckmans don’t live here anymore.’

‘Did you know them when they did?’ I said.

‘Just when we bought the house from them.’

‘How about some of the other neighbors?’ I said. ‘Would they know the Buckmans, you think?’

‘People next door,’ the woman said. ‘Why you want to know?’

‘I’m from the State Treasurer’s Office,’ I said. ‘Division of Abandoned Property. We have some money for them.’

In the background I could hear some children fighting. One of them started to cry. The dog wasn’t a quitter. He kept trying to squeeze by her leg.

‘Talk to the people in the next house,’ she said. ‘Name’s Lewin.’

She shut the door.

I said ‘thank you’ politely to the door, and went next door. A woman wearing tennis whites opened the door. She had long, blond hair, good legs and a nice tan.

‘I saw you next door,’ she said. ‘You selling something?’

I smiled my open, friendly smile. And told my lie about abandoned property.

‘Oh, sure, Steve and Lou Buckman. Mary Lou.’

‘You know them?’

‘Knew them. We lived next door for, what? I was pregnant with my first when we moved here, so nine years.’

‘What can you tell me about them?’

‘They moved out east someplace,’ she said. ‘Town with a funny name.’

‘Potshot,’ I said.

‘Yes. That’s it. They had some sort of business out there.’

‘They get along?’

‘Well as anybody, I guess. What’s that got to do with abandoned property?’

‘Nothing,’ I said with a big sincere smile. ‘I just heard that he fooled around.’

The woman laughed.

‘Oh, hell,’ she said. ‘They both did. I think my ex may have had a little fling with Lou.’

‘Lotta that going around,’ I said. ‘You know what business they had in Potshot?’

‘I don’t know. Something to do with camping. You should talk to Nancy Ratliff. She and her ex were pretty tight with the Buckmans.’

‘Where would I find her?’

‘She’s still here,’ the woman said, and nodded at a small white house with blue trim. ‘Across the street.’

‘And your ex husband?’

She laughed sourly.

‘Mr Hot Pants,’ she said. ‘Don’t know. Don’t care.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘I don’t want to tell you your job,’ the woman said, ‘but if I were you I’d lose that abandoned property story.’

I grinned at her.

‘It’s gotten me this far,’ I said.

She shrugged. I walked across the street and rang the Ratliff bell and the door opened at once. I had caused a neighborhood alert.

‘Mrs Ratliff?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m from the Bureau of Abandoned Property.’

I was glad the blonde across the street couldn’t hear me.

‘What the hell is that?’ Mrs Ratliff said. She was petite, with thick black hair and sharp features.

‘State Treasurer’s Office,’ I said. ‘We have some money for Mr and Mrs Buckman.’

‘Lucky them,’ the woman said. ‘You want to come in?’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

I sometimes wished I wore a hat so when I went into a woman’s house I could impress them by taking it off in a gentlemanly way. I settled for removing my sunglasses.

The front door opened immediately to her living room, which was done in Indian rugs and hand-hewn furniture that was too big for the room. There was a little gray stone fireplace with gas jets on the end wall. There was a pitcher of martinis on the glass-topped coffee table that took up too much of the room.

‘I’m having a cocktail,’ she said. ‘Would you care to join me?’

It was 3:30.

‘Sure,’ I said.

She went through an archway to the small dining room and came back with a martini glass in which there were two olives. She poured me a martini.

‘Stirred, not shaken,’ she said.

I smiled. She picked up her glass and gestured toward me with it.

‘Chink, chink,’ she said.

I touched her glass with mine and we each took a drink. The martini was dreadful. Not cold enough and far too much vermouth.

‘So,’ Nancy Ratliff said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Tell me about Steven and Mary Lou Buckman.’

‘Well, she was a bitch. Still is I’m sure.’

‘How so?’ I said.

Nancy Ratliff took another drink. She didn’t appear to know that the martini was dreadful. Or maybe she knew and didn’t care.

‘Well, for one thing she was fucking my husband.’

‘How nice for them,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well, not so nice for me.’