Troublemaker (3 page)

On the screen boys naked except for cowboy hats, gun belts and tooled boots had sex with each other on what looked like a Baja beach. Some such sunburned place. Sweat stuck sand to their pale city skins. They acted bored. Dave snapped off the projector, opened the curtains, walked around the bed, looking at the floor. A comb, a leather packet of keys, a dime and two pennies. And a pair of Jockey shorts. He picked them up. Size 32. No giant's. He dropped them and something changed the light in the room. He looked at the door.

A giant stood there, a big-boned old man. His thick gray hair needed cutting. His cheap suit needed pressing. The white shirt, the black tie, looked as if they'd just been bought, though. And he'd used a lot of polish to fill the cracks in the uppers of his shoes. Dave smelled Shinola. The man's eyes were pouchy and the skin over his cheekbones and nose was a river map of small broken veins. But a carefully tended mustache said he'd been vain once. He asked, "Who are you?"

"Brandstetter," Dave said. "Medallion Life." He held out his hand. The man folded it in a grip that had long ago given up trying to hold on to anything.

"This is the Wendell house, isn't it?" He licked dry, cracked lips and his bloodshot eyes fidgeted around the room. Looking for something. A drink, probably.

"It's the Wendell house," Dave said. "I'm trying to find out what happened here."

"Thought the police had the son of a bitch locked up." The man turned back into the living room. Dave rounded the bed and went after him. He was opening cabinet doors below the modular shelving. He found a bottle and glasses. "Join me?" He lifted them at Dave. "I'm Billy Wendell. Rick's father. I don't think he'd mind his old man having a blast, do you?"

"It's a little late to ask him," Dave said. "Don't you know?"

"Hadn't seen him for a while." Wendell poured three thick fingers into a glass and handed it to Dave and poured five for himself and set the bottle down. "His mother and I weren't speaking." He jerked his long jaw up in silent ironic laughter. "Not for some years." He drank, studied his glass, looked at Dave. "Insurance, huh? That's a good racket. I was in it once." He made an unamused sound and drank again. "I was in about everything once. But it's
been
used cars lately. Lately? Last twenty years. Now it's dying
under
me. You don't need a gas hog, do you?" He handed
Dave a card, looked
him up and down. "You don't look like money gives you
bad dreams."

"I
drive a company car," Dave said. "You've come back for the funeral, right?"

Wendell nodded. His voice went to pieces. Tears leaked down his face. "My boy. My only son. Jesus
—least I could do. Poor kid. Not forty, years old yet and some crazy pervert murders him." He wagged
his head. "The one thing I could be a little bit proud of
—fine son." He gulped the last of his drink.

"Sure," Dave said. "How did you find out about it? Your wife write
to you?"

"Hell, she wouldn't know where to reach me. No, I saw it on television. The
Times
was where I got the address. Had to look sharp to find it. Guess there are too many murders anymore for it to be news."

"There were always too many," Dave said. "You live in L.A., then?"

"Torrance," Billy Wendell said. "If you could call it living." He set clown the glass where it would make a mark in the finish. "Is there a bathroom?"

Dave jerked his head. Wendell went out, moving his long legs as if they pained him. Dave checked his watch, looked at the phone. It didn't ring. He tasted the whiskey, walked to the bottle and turned it so the label showed. Right. They didn't cart this in by the truckload for the bar. He rummaged his jacket for a cigarette, lit it with a narrow steel butane lighter, and the scuff of clumsy shoes outside turned his head toward the door. Heather Wendell stopped there, the withering geraniums flaring red behind her.

"You see, Mr. Brandstetter, I know about death. It's not the dead we ought to mourn for. It's the living. When my father died, his troubles were over. Mine had only started. I was twenty-five
—a grown woman. But he'd sheltered me like a child. I'd never had to lift a hand. Everything I'd needed or imagined I needed was given me. Then suddenly it was all taken away. I had nothing. And a three-year-old boy to raise."

"You had a husband," Dave said.

She shook her head. "When the money stopped, he left. He was no better equipped to face reality than I was. It was no surprise to me." The corner of her mouth tightened in a kind of smile. "Do you know how I managed? By doing for a living exactly what you found me doing this morning
—cleaning stables, grooming horses. Horses were a
ll I knew. Then came the war and the aircraft factories. They hired women because women were what there were to hire. Whether they knew anything or not. I bucked rivets for four years." The crooked smile tried itself again and failed. "Well, you don't want to hear the rest. I don't want to remember it. At last Rick took hold and my nightmare was over." Her shoulders lifted a little, as if shedding the weight all over again. "Naturally, if I'd had my choice, it wouldn't have been the kind of business it was. But I didn't have my choice, did I? Come to think of it, never once in my life did I choose
—"

The toilet flushed. She frowned puzzlement at the bedroom door. Dave picked up his drink and tasted it again and Billy Wendell came in, zipping a fly that didn't work well. He stopped, blinked. "Heather," he said heavily.

She squinted, head craning forward. "Billy?" She took a step into the room, a hand half held out. "Dear God
—what's happened to
you?"

"Happened?" he said. "I'm sixty-five years old."

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's such a shock is all. Where did you come from?" She looked at him, grieved.

"Not far." He made for his glass like a drowning man for a piece of driftwood. He gulped from it, wiped his mustache with the back of his hand. "You want a drink? It's your booze."

"You mean you've been close by"
—she didn't say it angry, she said it sad—"and never come around, never shown your face?"

"I didn't know where you'd got to."
He bent
creakily for another glass. "Not till
I
read
about Rick in the paper." He
dumped whiskey into the glass, set
the bottle by, carried the glass to her.
"You landed on your feet. Pleasant place
here, nice furnishings." He
tilted his head. "Portrait of you on the wall
in there, with a big dog." He
looked her up and down as he'd done Dave, smiled to
himself
as he walked back to put more whiskey into his glass.
He was wasting
a beautiful bottle in a hurry. "Horses again, eh? You know"
—
he drank
—
"I'm
happy about that. I was afraid you'd never have them anymore. Costs a lot of money to keep horses."

"You worried about me?" What she wanted in her smile was disbelief but her damp eyes showed she was touched. "I worried about you, Billy."

"You had a right," he grunted. Back to her, he opened the top magazine in a stack on a shelf. Dave caught a glimpse of naked male bodies. In color. Billy Wendell shut the magazine fast. He turned to face his wife. "I didn't land on my feet. Charm and good looks weren't in a seller's market in those days. By the time they were, I was an old wreck."

"No," she protested gently. "Ah, Billy. There's so much to talk about." She glanced back at the open door, the morning light. "Will you come with me? To the stable up the hill?"

Dave said, "In a minute, Mrs. Wendell." He picked up his jacket, dug out the flattened paper straps. "These were in that empty envelope on the desk. From the bank." He laid them in her hand. "What do they mean? Where's the fifteen hundred?"

She frowned at the straps, then at him. "Fifteen
—" She paled, then
reddened. "That damned boy!"

"He was naked, remember?" Dave said and took back the straps. "Each of these held twenty-five twenty-dollar bills. They'd make a bulge even if he'd had pockets."

"Then
—" She looked at her hand as if surprised to find the glass there. She drank from it. Her blue eyes on Dave's were uncertain. "It —it must have gone with Rick to the bar. Of course." "Out of the envelope?" Dave said. "Obviously," she said.

"All right." Dave shrugged into the jacket. "Thanks for your help." He went to the desk for the envelope, tucked the straps into it, held it up. "I'll take this if it won't inconvenience you."

For a moment she looked doubtful. Then she shrugged. "Why not?"

"Why not?" Billy Wendell said. Loudly but to himself, rattling bottle against glass. Then softly. "Why not? That's what I say. What does anything matter now? Rick's dead. My son's dead." He turned toward his wife and the tears were streaming now.

"Billy, Billy!" She went toward him with her arms held out. Big strong arms he'd made a mistake ever to leave. They embraced him, held him.

Dave went out into the sun.

CHAPTER 3

Ace Kegan said,
"It's a hassle to change names."

The years had taken the curl and most of the black out of his hair and there wasn't a lot of it left. What there was he combed forward into bangs. His waist had thickened but he still looked hard and muscular. He stood shirtless and barefoot in faded Levi's and watched through open glass slide doors while outside on a slatted deck a slender suntanned kid of maybe eighteen in very short shorts fisted a punching bag on a shiny spring-steel pole. His shoulder-length yellow hair flopped. He had a silky yellow mandarin mustache. Backgrounding him, the Pacific wrote white scribbles to itself on a blue slate under a wide smile of sky. The surf lipped pale sand beyond a stagger of red dune fences.

Kegan went on, "I'd have liked to take The Square Circle with me when we bought the place. But what the hell, who knows boxing down here? Down here it's surfing. And the Hang Ten sign was already there and neon costs like you wouldn't believe. Anyway, fags aren't into prize fighting." His sidelong grin at Dave showed chipped teeth that were very white. His nose was mashed. Scar tissue was thick over his eyes. An ear was crumpled. He still managed to be handsome. Dave let himself grin back.

"Are they into surfing?"

"Into surfers"
—Kegan laughed—"they wish." He raised his sandpaper voice. "Bobby, come in here and make the man and me a drink." He took Dave's elbow and steered him among barbells, a rowing machine, an Exercycle, to a couch that was long and low and covered in white fake fur. "Sit down, Mr. Brandstetter. What did you want to know?"

Dave said, "What excuse did Richard Wendell give you for not being at work that night
—Monday?"

"He
was
at work," Kegan said. "Half an hour early: three-thirty. He didn't split till nearly eight." He told the boy, "On the double, Bobby, please," and dropped onto the other end of the couch. "What'll you have to drink?"

"Whatever you're having," Dave said, hoping for coffee. But what
the boy
brought from the kitchen beyond a chest-high room divider
banked
with plastic flowers was a tall, thick, creamy mixture colored
orange. Kegan
took a long gulp of his and smacked his lips. Dave
watched him,
doubtful. "Go ahead, try it. Every vitamin and mineral
you can name. One
glass and you can go fifteen stand-up rounds."
Bobby stood in
front of them, straddling barbells and staring at Dave's
glass with willful, empty
brown eyes. Kegan asked him, "Right,
baby?"

"Aw, shit," Bobby said. "A piece
of dry toast and black coffee for
breakfast. I'm hungry, Ace."

"Yeah, and you're also a lard collector.
You know what it does to you. Bobby
Reich, shake hands with David
Brandstetter. Check his build. I'll bet he
doesn't even eat breakfast." Ace
turned over a thick wrist to check a multidialed watch. "Go run for half an hour. But when you get to the pier, keep away from the chili dogs, right? I got you looking like Apollo Belvedere now. Don't wreck it before the big night." ,

"Yeah, okay." Bobby headed eagerly for the door.

"And no Cokes, either. None of that lousy sugar water. When you get back here, I'll build you a salad, broil you a steak."

"Gee, thanks." Bobby made a six-year-old's face.

"You'll thank me when you walk off with all the marbles," Ace said. "You got T. S. Eliot this afternoon, remember? Before we hit the funeral. And
La Boheme
after. Did you read about Puccini last night, like I said?"

"I fell asleep," Bobby answered.

"Yeah," Ace said. " 'I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.' Recite that on your way."

"Jesus!" the blond youth said and left.

"That's a Theodore Roethke poem," Dave said. "What kind of boxer are you trying to make?"