Troublemaker (18 page)

"He gets hysterical." Bobby Reich came out of the hall and went into the kitchen. He wore the white shorts.

"Oh, you're a real help," Kegan said.

"It's true." Bobby opened cupboards, rattled metal, crockery. "You know it's true. And why do you keep lying, Ace? They know all about
 
it, you can tell."
                                                                               

"Deliver me from my friends!" Ace kicked a medicine ball. It rolled
 
sluggishly a few inches on the thick white carpet. "Okay, I was boiling. And she got in my way. Christ, what football lost when Heather Wendell was born female! I couldn't get past her."

"She waited till you got back into your car," Yoshiba said, "and started the engine."

"But you didn't go home," Dave said. "You drove around back of
 
the property, parked and
—"

Kegan opened his mouth to protest.

"The tire marks are there," Yoshiba said. "Little Pirellis. Brand new."

"Mr. Moto lives." Kegan snorted disgust, wagged his head. "Yeah, little Pirellis. Okay, I parked and got out and went down the hill. Because I was damned if I thought she'd be enough. She might not even try. His sex life scared her. I was going to control my temper and it was going to work out like we planned. Only when I got down there I could see through the back windows. Rick was on the floor by the desk, Heather was holding a gun on the Johns kid and talking on the phone. Saying Rick was dead. There was no way I could help him. I'd only mess myself up. I got my ass out of there."

"Was the gun a surprise to you?" Yoshiba asked.

"I knew he had one. Heather made him get it. She had a fixation about hippies. They're thick up in that canyon and when the big dog died she wanted protection."

"Did you know where he kept it?" Yoshiba asked.

"Desk," Kegan said, "top drawer. He showed me."

"So it didn't shock you too much when you and Mrs. Wendell broke in on his lovemaking and he reached into the desk and came up with a gun. You were ready."

"He was dead on the floor when I got there," Kegan said. "Anyway, he'd never do that. Not to me."

"Never is a big word," Yoshiba said. "You rushed him to get the gun away from him and it went off, right?"

"Wrong," Kegan said. "I didn't even go inside."

"Does that road get a lot of use?" Dave asked. "That loop around in back of the Wendell place?"

"People go too far up the canyon
—it's a way to get back out," Kegan said. "Kids used to park up there—to have sex. Heather used to go up with a big flashlight and try to run them off. But kids have changed. Lately they just laughed at her and went on fucking. So she phoned the police, let them handle it. I guess they did. She hasn't complained about it lately."

"Is that what you thought it was?" Dave wondered. "Necking kids? That car you found parked up there on Monday nigh
t?"

"I did?" Kegan turned, took coffee mugs from Bobby,
came at Yoshiba and Dave with them. He was frowning to himself. "Yeah. I did." He grimaced. "I didn't really notice. My mind was on Rick and Johns and Heather." He handed the mugs to the men
on the couch. He looked at the sky-bright window wall. "But I don't think there was anyone in it. No. Empty." He snapped his fingers. "Wait. They were down below the road. At least, he was." The boxer's broken face cracked a grin. "Yeah, I must have shook him. He ran like a rabbit. Back up to the road, right past me. Jesus!" Bobby came and handed him a steaming mug. He blew at it, chuckling. "What do you think? He left the girl there with her pants down under the trees in the dark?"

"What kind of car was it?" Yoshiba asked.

"Small." Kegan shrugged. "I don't know, didn't pay any attention. Besides, it was dark. I'd driven up with my lights off". So Heather wouldn't see."

"She heard a shot when she was climbing the stairs," Dave said. "You didn't hear it?"

"I might have," Kegan said. "It didn't register. Car isn't exactly quiet. I don't think so."

"Okay." Yoshiba set down his mug among the record albums and magazines on the table. He pushed his hard, square bulk up off the couch. "Thanks for the coffee." He began stepping over the bodybuilding equipment, heading for the door. "I don't think you've got anything to worry about anymore. But keep yourself available. Don't take any sudden trips, okay?"

On the coast road, aiming back toward the Los Santos Civic Center, sun glinting off the curve of the windshield, Yoshiba said, "You didn't make it better, you made it worse."

"For Johns." Dave nodded glumly, slouched in the seat, staring without seeing at the flat blue surf. "Yes. I'm ahead of you."

"The kid is guilty as hell. And Larson's not going to have any trouble proving it. Not now."

"In his Little League cap?" Dave asked.

"He could wear a strait jacket," Yoshiba said, "and the jury would believe him. They'd have to. The kid laid down for Wendell for money. Then the money wasn't there. He attacked Wendell. Wendell tried to defend himself with the gun. It went off and Wendell was dead."

"That's not murder," Dave said.

"It's manslaughter," Yoshiba said, "and what you get for that is not a pat on the butt."

"I still don't believe it," Dave said.

"Fine," Yoshiba said, "but do me a favor, okay? Don't come to me with your doubts anymore. I'm busy, you know? Really busy."

CHAPTER 13

Bulldozers chewed
raw dirt flats out of brown-grass summer hillsides where live oaks grew old and green. The tire treads of graders, the cleats of rollers, stirred yellow dust the wind took. Cement trucks climbed dirt trails, tanks turning, turning, like pregnant iron girls in sleep. Lower down the slope, racks of new two-by-fours framed the shapes of houses to come. Under a stand of tall and shaggy eucalypts, bench saws whined and threw arcs of yellow sawdust into the clean blue air. On plank rooftops, young men, shirtless and sunburned, stapled down shingling with guns that made quick, hard slapping sounds. Hammers beat imperfect rhythms in the heat.

The silver Electra had brought Dave, air conditioned, to the far and still nearly empty end of the San Fernando Valley. He parked the car now next to a long aluminum office trailer that waited this side of the work area. A set of aluminum steps where a lot of boot-scraping had taken place led to an aluminum screen door. He stepped up, rapped the doorframe, spoke to the darkness beyond the screen. No one came. But he heard a scuff of shoes behind him and turned. A bullish man walked toward him in a scarred yellow hard hat.

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for Elmo Sands." Dave stepped down and held out a card. "It's about Thomas Owens
—the accident he had at his house on the beach at Los Santos."

The man's hands were busy managing blueprints the wind wanted to take away from him. He didn't reach for the card but he read it. It didn't appear to cheer him up. Still, he freed a hand to unlatch the screen door, nodded Dave inside and followed. He laid the blueprints on a long, crowded drafting table under fluorescent tubes in chain-hung flat white enamel reflectors. The blueprints began to curl up. The man stooped to an ice chest.

"I'm Sands. You want a beer?"

Dave didn't have a chance to answer. A cold, wet can was in his hand. The contractor hiked his barrel bulk onto a tin stool, thumbed the opener tab on his can and took a long pull at the beer.

"Ah, that's good. Really work up a thirst in this weather." He lifted off the hard hat and set it on the drawing table. Out of a damp mat of gray hair, sweat trickled down his leathery face. "Insurance, huh? Tom said he'd keep them off me. I told him it wouldn't work. I know insurance companies."

"They like to pay out money the way anyone else does," Dave said. "That was an expensive accident."

"Not my fault." Sands yanked a handkerchief from a hip pocket and mopped his face and neck. "That rail was bolted according to specifications. That's how I work
—nothing gets overlooked. That's why Tom Owens wants me. I've built every square foot he's designed since he went on his own. It's not that we're friends. He's got nothing but friends in this business."

"He said you don't make mistakes." Dave swallowed beer. "I'm willing to believe you both. But you personally can't set every bolt. You have people working for you." He nodded toward the sunny screen door, the sawing and hammering noises, the roar and complaint of machinery up the hills. "They can forget. Or just not give a damn. The facts say it happened. There were only loose nails stitching up that rail."

"Yup." Sands worked thirstily on his beer again. "I couldn't believe it and I went and looked."

"So it
was
your fault," Dave said.

"I thought so. And I fired the kid. I took him with me and showed him the nails and I fired him. He worshiped Tom. He couldn't face it that his carelessness had hurt the man. He got soaked through in the water around those rocks, trying to find those bolts."

"But he didn't come up with them," Dave said.

"He didn't come up with them." Sands took another quick pull at his beer, set the can down, began pawing among the papers and glints of blade and tooth on the drawing table. "He came up with this." He pulled out a thin, square, floppy magazine and held it toward Dave. It was the
Home
section of a Sunday Los Angeles
Times.
Even without his glasses, Dave recognized the color photo on the cover. It showed Tom Owens's dune house sharp-angled against a sea sky streaked with sunset. "There's a two-page spread inside," Sands said.

Dave put on his glasses and turned pages. The stool gave a snap and creak of relief when Sands got off" it to stand next to Dave, smelling of hops and Brut deodorant. Dave found the spread, text and five pictures, three of houses Owens had designed for film and television personalities, and two more of his own house. Sands's thick index finger tapped a small photo in the lower right corner. Tom Owens, gaunt, high-shouldered, and wearing a bright striped sarape and western hat, rested elbows on the deck rail above the tide rocks where he'd fallen and broken both legs. The caption read:
Nightly custom: architect Owens watches spectacular sunset from cantilevered outpost.

Sands said, "Look at the date on that magazine."

The date was a week before the accident. Dave handed back the section, folded up his glasses, pushed them into a jacket pocket. "You've shown this to Tom?"

"Haven't found the time," Sands said. "But it wouldn't matter to him. He didn't blame me for what happened. You were the one I kept it for. I knew there'd be an insurance investigator around sooner or later."

"Actually," Dave said, "he'd be from another outfit
—Sequoia. They're the ones sending him checks. I'll save you the bother, though. I'll be talking to them today. I'll tell them about the magazine."

"Another outfit!" Sands scowled. "Well, then, what the hell are you doing here?"

"A friend of Tom's has been accused of murder," Dave said. "Tom doesn't think he did it. The dead man was insured by my company. That's where I come in. But none of my leads has gone anywhere. I haven't helped Medallion. I'd begun to think I couldn't help Tom. Coming to you was a long shot."

"If it's for Tom," Sands said, "I want to help."

"I think you have." Dave tilted back his head to finish off the beer. By the door a small black-enamel barrel that had once held roofing tar now held trash. He dropped the can into it. "Thanks."

"It's something about the bolts," Sands said.

"About the bolts," Dave said, "and about an accident that wasn't an accident and a murder that I'm pretty damn sure was." He unlatched the screen, hinged the bright door outward, stepped down into hammer strokes of sun. He turned back. "I hope you rehired that workman."

"Hell, yes," Sands said.

A mile west of the Medallion tower on Wilshire, a low-slung building of narrow red brick whose flat roof was a rubble of white rock housed Sequoia Accident and Indemnity. A handsomely kept jungle of leather-leaved greenery grew against the walls. Inside, no one sat at the glossy reception room desk where a multibuttoned green telephone winked lights and softly buzzed. Dave went past into a square patio sheltered by a big rubber tree. Glass doors led off the patio into offices.

Dave found Johnny Delgado in a corner room where open-flap cardboard cartons on the floor suggested departure. The desk was strewn with folders. Delgado, a trim little man who was Sequoia's claims investigator, stood with his back to the door, a foot up on a brick indoor planter, elbow on knee, chin on hand, head bowed as if he were studying the lush greenery. Without turning, he said in a beaten voice:

"Don't say anything, Marie. Whatever you want, it's yours. I can't fight anymore. Certainly not face to face. Certainly not today. Just go away."

Dave said, "It's not Marie, Johnny."

Delgado lifted his head, straightened his back, put the foot down, turned. He didn't look trim anymore. Beard stubble darkened his hollow cheeks. His eyes looked burned out. His suit looked as if he'd slept in it, and nowhere clean. He twisted Dave a wry smile of apology but didn't step around the desk, didn't make an effort to shake hands. He just said, "Christ," to himself and dropped into the chair back of the desk and waved a hand at another chair. Dave took it and Delgado said: