Potshot (11 page)

‘How did Mr Buckman feel about it?’

‘He didn’t say.’

She drank again and stared into her glass.

‘Well, actually he did,’ she said. ‘He said we should get even with them.’

‘Tit for tat,’ I said just to be saying something though, in the context, the choice of words was unfortunate.

We were silent while she looked into her martini glass.

Finally she said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me if we did?’

‘Only if you want to tell me, Mrs Ratliff.’

‘Nancy,’ she said. ‘And yeah, I want to tell you.’

I smiled happily. She didn’t say anything. I waited. She poured herself some more bad martini from the pitcher where the melting ice would have diluted it by now. She took another sip and held her glass up and looked through it.

‘I like how clear it looks,’ she said.

I nodded helpfully. Friendly guy from the Treasurer’s office. Eager to please. Eager to listen.

‘Yes, we got even,’ she said. ‘In goddamned spades.’

‘And how did Mr Ratliff feel about that?’ I said.

I had no idea where I was going. Except that Ratliff was a name I’d heard before.

‘He left me and went chasing after her.’

‘And Mr Buckman?’

‘He went too.’

‘With his wife?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. I guess so. Maybe they were all doing it. A traveling gangbang.’

She looked at my glass.

‘You’re not drinking,’ she said.

‘I’m savoring it slowly,’ I said. ‘What is your husband’s first name?’

‘Ex-husband. I divorced him. The bastard didn’t even show up to contest the divorce. I took him for everything he had, except he didn’t have anything.’

She drank again.

‘Movie producer,’ she snorted. ‘Sure.’

‘And his first name?’

‘Mark.’

I felt very still for a moment inside and then I took a stab at something.

‘You happen to know anyone named Dean Walker?’ I said.

‘The cop? Yeah, used to live three houses up toward Montana. Moved away eight, nine years ago.’

‘He a friend of the Buckmans?’

‘I guess, yeah, he’d be at parties sometimes. Him and his wife.’

‘You remember her name?’

‘Judy, I think.’

‘He have anything to do with Mrs Buckman?’

‘Dean? I don’t know. She’d have been willing. She was like a bitch in heat. But Dean seemed sort of straightforward. If he was fucking her, I don’t know about it.’

Each time she said
fucking
she said it with relish. As if she liked to say it, as if it were a counterirritant. Like scratching an old itch. Forgive and forget didn’t seem to work for her.

Sara Hunter lived in a faux Tudor three-unit condo in Westwood, a block below Wilshire. She was L.A. serious, which meant a loose-fitting, ankle-length flowered dress, some Native-American jewelry and dark leather sandals. Her blond hair was done in a single long braid that reached nearly to her waist. She wore no makeup and despite her best efforts, she was pretty good-looking.

When she opened the door she kept the chain bolt on. I gave her my card. I introduced myself. I explained what I wanted, and I smiled at her. None of it seemed to make her more welcoming.

‘Why do you want to talk to me about Steve Buckman?’ she said. ‘He’s just somebody I knew at work.’

‘Well, that’s why,’ I said. ‘I was hoping for some of your insights.’

She liked
insights
.

‘Why do you want that?’ she said.

There was never a good way to say it. I’d learned over the years to just say it. Which I did.

‘Steve’s been murdered.’

She looked at me as if I had commented on the dandiness of the weather.

‘What?’

‘We could talk out here on the porch,’ I said, ‘if you’d feel more secure.’

She didn’t speak for a moment, then she closed the door, unchained it, opened it again and stepped out. She was careful to pull the door shut behind her. The porch extended along the front of her condo to form a little veranda and we sat on some wicker chairs out there. Across the street a couple of Mexicans were trimming a hedge, and on the sidewalk below the veranda a shapeless middle-aged woman with bright red hair was walking a small, ugly, possum-y looking dog on a retractable leash.

‘Tell me about Steve,’ I said.

She leaned forward a little, resting her elbows on her thighs, and put her face into her hands.

I waited. She sat. Maybe overreaction was endemic. Or maybe she was a very dramatic person. Or maybe Steve was more than someone she knew at work.

After a while I said, ‘How you doing?’

Without taking her face from her hands, she shook her head.

‘Take your time,’ I said.

The lady walking her possum turned the corner at Wilshire and disappeared. One of the gardeners across the street was edging the grass now, with a noisy power trimmer.

‘Did he suffer much?’ Sara said finally.

‘He was probably dead before he knew he’d been shot,’ I said.

I didn’t know that, but I saw no reason not to say it.

‘Did she do it?’ Sara said.

She was still in her position of official mourning and as she talked she rocked a little, forward and back.

‘She?’ I said.

‘Mary Lou. Did she kill him?’

‘I don’t know. You think?’

She raised her head.

‘I think that she would do anything.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘You wouldn’t see it. You’re a man.’

‘And you’re a woman,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Just trying to hold up my end of the conversation,’ I said.

‘Well you wouldn’t. She’d fool you. Blue eyes. Cute. Sweet. She’d show you her dimples and ask for your help and you’d be falling over yourself like some big puppy.’

‘Woof,’ I said.

‘You can laugh at me if you want to,’ Sara said, a little pouty. ‘But it’s true.’

‘Probably is,’ I said. ‘Why do you think she might have killed him?’

‘Because she couldn’t control him, though she never stopped trying. She resented authenticity. She was frightened of the untamed self.’

The sky was cloudless. It was 75 and bright. I could smell olive trees.

‘His?’ I said.

‘His, her own…’ Sara made a you-know-what-I-mean gesture and her voice trailed off.

‘How untamed was that?’ I said.

‘As untamed as yours… or mine.’

‘That untamed?’ I said.

‘You’re laughing at me again.’

‘That was just a quizzical smile,’ I said ‘You know this, how?’

‘We were… friends.’

‘Not just someone you knew at work.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was reflexive. I’ve become used to evasion.’

‘The world is too much with us, lately.’

‘My God, a literate detective?’

‘Goes with good-looking,’ I said. ‘You and Steve were close friends.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know if he had any source of income other than Fair-fax High?’

‘Well they ran that camping business out in the desert. She did, really.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘Well Mary Lou is paying me a fair sum to investigate,’ I said. ‘Without complaint. Life insurance?’

‘I suppose so, but I can’t imagine that it was huge… a teacher’s salary. She’s paying you?’

I nodded.

‘Did Mary Lou know you and Steve were good friends?’

‘I don’t know what she knew. She was no trembling virgin herself.’

‘Mary Lou?’

‘See, you’re shocked aren’t you? Any woman could see through her.’

‘Why that untamed vixen,’ I said.

‘It was all right for her, but not for Steve.’

‘Gee that doesn’t sound fair,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said, pouty again. ‘It wasn’t.’

The landscaper finished his power trimming and the sudden quiet was almost intrusive. Then as my ears adjusted I could hear the traffic on Wilshire. I kept at Sara for as long as I could stand to, but I had learned what I was going to learn from her and I finally said good-bye and went back to Beverly Hills.

The hotel room was awash with tissue paper and shopping bags. Amid it all, and somehow above it, Susan was trying on some new duds, and examining them carefully in the mirror.

‘Would you have any interest in exploring my authentic untamed self?’ I said.

‘Your what?’

‘My untamed self,’ I said.

‘God, if I haven’t encountered it yet, I don’t think I want to.’

‘You got something against authenticity?’ I said.

‘No. I’m just afraid I’ll get hurt.’

‘Maybe later when I’ve calmed down,’ I said.

‘Maybe,’ Susan said. ‘What brought on this sudden attack of authenticity?’

I told her about Sara.

‘We assume Sara was having an affair with Steve Buckman?’ Susan said.

‘Yes. But a fully authentic one,’ I said.

‘What would an inauthentic affair be?’ Susan said.

‘One which used a battery-powered device?’

‘Do you like this skirt?’ Susan said.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Better take it off and put it on again.’

‘Is lechery authentic?’ Susan said.

‘You bet,’ I said.

Susan put on a blouse.

‘So if we are to believe What’shername…’

‘Sara.’

‘If we are to believe Sara, then both Steve and Mary Lou were fooling around with other people, and at least from Whosis’s perspective…’

‘Sara,’ I said.

‘From Sara’s perspective Mary Lou was, and perhaps is, a bitch.’

‘Sara’s perspective may be somewhat skewed,’ I said, ‘by her being a nitwit.’

Susan examined in the mirror the way some new pants fit her. She smiled. Apparently she was pleased. Me too.

‘That skews a lot of perspectives,’ she said.

‘Present company excluded,’ I said. ‘You wanna eat?’

‘Let’s go someplace I can wear my new clothes,’ she said.

There was always something in her eyes that suggested we’d have more fun than we could imagine, whatever we did.

‘Does this mean I have to cancel the reservation at Fat Burger?’

She said that it did. She also declined Pink’s for a chili dog and we ended up at The Buffalo Club on a dark stretch of Olympic, in Santa Monica. We sat together on the same side of the booth and had a Ketel One martini, or two, and studied the menu. We ordered some oyster shooters and pot roast and ate them. That is, I ate them. Susan had two shooters, and half her pot roast, cutting the other half away before she started and carefully putting one half on her butter plate lest, God forbid, she should eat it by mistake and balloon to 130. I helped. I had her leftover oyster shooters, and the pot roast from her butter plate, and virtuously declined dessert.

Outside I gave the ticket to the valet and held Susan’s hand while we watched the desultory traffic plod by in the dark. A silver Lexus pulled up and two men got out. The valet went forward and the first man shook his head. He looked like a mature surfer. Long blond hair, pale blue eyes, sun-darkened skin, which didn’t fully conceal the broken veins of a boozer on his cheeks. He was wearing a pair of brown slacks, a brown shirt buttoned to the neck, a small diamond stud in his right earlobe and a camelhair jacket. The jacket was unbuttoned. The guy with him was all edges and angles. Small, lean, hard, pale, with spiky hair and a sharp hooked nose. His eyes were like the windows in an empty house. He had on big shorts and a flowered shirt that hung over his belt. The surfer stopped in front of me. He stood very close.

‘How you doing tonight?’ he said.

I nodded slightly. I’d seen these guys before. Maybe not these particular ones, but enough guys just like them so that I was pretty sure what they were. I could feel Susan stiffen slightly beside me. The small guy in the flowered shirt moved a little to my left, balancing off the surfer, who was a little to my right. The valets apparently knew these guys too. They had disappeared.

‘You Spenser?’

I hooded my eyes and spoke through my teeth.

‘Who wants to know?’ I said.

Beside me Susan made a sound that was a little like a snort, but more elegant.

‘She thinks I lack originality,’ I said to the surfer.

‘Very funny,’ the surfer said. ‘You think that’s very funny, Tino?’

‘I think this guy could get very dead,’ the little sharp guy said in a flat voice.

‘Life on the edge,’ I said. ‘You guys want something or is this a cabaret act?’

‘We want to know your interest in the Buckmans.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Fuck why. Answer what I ask you or we’ll mess you up bad. The broad too.’

I looked at Susan.

‘Broad?’ I said.

The surfer was right up against me, which was a mistake. Still looking at Susan, I put my knee hard into the surfer’s groin. He gasped and doubled over and I shoved him back into Tino. Tino almost fell, but he didn’t. He steadied himself and sort of shucked the surfer off of him, and put his hand toward his hip.

‘No,’ I said.

I had my gun out and steady on his navel. He stopped, his hand half under his flowered shirt. The surfer was squatting on the ground, holding his crotch and rocking gently. I could hear him breathing in gasps. Beside me, Susan’s breath was moving in and out a little more quickly than normal. But I’d heard it move faster.

‘Turn around,’ I said.

Tino turned. I stepped forward and took the handgun off his hip and dropped it into the side pocket of my J. Press blue blazer. It felt heavy in there. I didn’t want the jacket to sag, but it was one of the hazards of crime fighting.

‘Get the blond bomber on his feet and into your car and out of my sight,’ I said to Tino. ‘Nothing fancy. I would be pleased to shoot you and watch you die.’

Tino didn’t look scared. But he didn’t look stupid either. He helped the surfer to his feet and into the car that still stood, valet-less, at the curb. He gave me a very sharp look as he went around to get in on the driver’s side.

‘This ain’t over,’ he said.

‘It is for the moment,’ I said.

Tino got in, slammed the door, put the car in gear, and floored it away from the curb, leaving the smell of burnt rubber to linger after the car was gone. I put my gun away. We looked at each other.

‘You do know how to show a girl a good time,’ Susan said.