Troublemaker (8 page)

"That couldn't include killing people?" Dave said.

"No way," Owens said.

CHAPTER 6

The car was
a ten-year-old mini
—Swedish, French, Italian? The color of dried blood. It stood by the guardrail, a broad steel band bolted to squat posts that divided road shoulder from beach. At the rear of the car a leaf-shaped flap of slatted steel was raised, showing a dirty little motor. Vern Taylor stood staring at it, sea wind flapping his flimsy red jacket. Dave pulled his car onto the gravel and got out. Taylor frowned at him, then smiled.

"Oh, hi. Thanks for stopping. I'm not sure just what's wrong. It suddenly quit." Gulls wheeled screaming overhead. He looked at them as if it were their fault. "Hell, I only bought it a couple weeks ago." His half smile was shamefaced. "No, it didn't cost much. But you'd think it ought to stagger along for a month."

"Just long enough for the dealer to move to another lot and change names." Dave leaned to look at the works. "You've tried everything?"

"I worked in garages for a while but I don't know everything." Taylor had given up. He gave the empty sky a look, the empty hills, the empty sea. "Way out here. Listen, can you give me a lift? Into Surf?"

"No problem." Dave slammed down the tinny engine cover, led the way to the Electra glistening silver in the sun, opened the passenger door, walked around and slid behind the wheel. Taylor got in gingerly, as if afraid he'd soil the new upholstery. He shut the door with soft caution and sat rigid like a child in church. Dave pulled the car back into the coast-road traffic.

"Nice car," Taylor said. "There's a lot of money in insurance, isn't there? I read that somewhere. Richest corporations in the country."

"My father's the corporation," Dave said. "I'm only an employee. It's a company car."

"Medallion," Taylor said. "That's that tall glass-and-steel tower on Wilshire. Beautiful. You know what my father did?"

"Sold appliances at Sears," Dave said.

"Right. I read someplace that if your father was a success, you'd be a success too."

"He worked hard for it," Dave said.

"I guess you'll get it all when he dies." Taylor found a crumpled cigarette in the red jacket and lit it with a paper match. "When my dad died, you know what I got? I got to pay all his bills. I'd made out a little better than he did. No wife and kids to support. I made a liar out of that book. For a while, anyway. Of course, that was quite a while ago." He was holding the burned match. Dave tilted open the ashtray under the dash. Taylor put the match into it carefully. "I was in architecture too, you know? Well, contracting, really. Draftsman. Tom and I took drafting together. Sat right next to each other. Anyway, I had enough to pay what my dad left owing. Then. If he died today, I don't know what I'd do. I'm no draftsman anymore."

"What do you do?" Dave asked.

"Wash dishes," Taylor answered in a thin voice. But when Dave glanced at him, he was smiling. Hard. Like a brave little kid with a skinned knee. "At the marina. They've got a lot of fancy restaurants there. I mean, what I do, really, is load up these big machines. They do the washing. But what they call you is still a dishwasher. I'll bet Tom eats where I wash dishes. How about that for a joke? His dad worked at Sears too. Lived in the same kind of crummy little house right up the block from us."

"He won't be eating in restaurants for a while," Dave said.

"Oh, you mean his legs. Was that why you were there today? Looking into the accident? Boy, that was really careless of that contractor. Imagine
—a beautiful house like that. A hundred thousand dollars, I'll bet. And he couldn't even bolt the porch rail."

"It could have been worse," Dave said. "Owens could have been killed."

"I don't think so," Taylor said.

Dave glanced at him again, brows lifted.

"Seriously. I read in some book how if you've got a lot of money, you rarely have fatal accidents. Or illnesses. Unless you're old, of course. And they don't even age as fast as other people. Isn't that interesting? I mean, there are statistics about it, charts. There's magic in money. It's the magic of our acquisitive society. Protects you from all evil. Nothing can get the better of money. Suppose Tom killed someone."

Dave squinted. "You think he killed someone?"

"No, no. But I mean, what if he did? He'd get off. People like that can hire expensive lawyers and they know how to delay and delay, and appeal and appeal. They can go right up to the Supreme Court if they have to, you know? And if they still said he was guilty, all he'd get would be a light sentence. He'd be out in a few months, maybe. Poor, you're jailed for months even before your trial can come up." Suddenly he wasn't chattering like a wound-up kid. He sounded bitter. "And then they really nail you."

At a traffic halt where, on the right, the charred stakes of a collapsed and burned-out amusement pier stuck up through the flat blue slide of surf, Dave swung the Electra left onto Jetty Street. At the corner a chili stand raised a make-believe lighthouse, plaster scaling off it, grimy windows red-framed at the top. In lots with rusty chain-link fences, forgotten boat hulls reared up on scaffolds deep in weeds.

Auto junkyards shouldered vacant store buildings. Tiller wheels tracked and warped in the fretwork of cottage porches. "Maybe you should read another book," Dave said.

"Oh?" Taylor pulled a little dime-store notebook from a hip pocket and began patting his jacket for something to write with. "What's the title?"

"Any title," Dave said. "Just a different book."

Taylor put the note pad away. "You don't agree? No. You're rich yourself. I mean, psychologically, that would be natural. Just like it's natural for me to believe what the book said. Because I'm poor."

"Where do you want me to drop you?" Dave said.

"Oh, turn at the next stop. Cortez. Right. It's down in the middle of the block." On a bleak, sunlit corner, black women in bright headcloths waited in a skirmish of small children outside a brick store building where a cardboard window sign said
food stamps.
Taylor's arm came up stiff. "There." The building he pointed at was square-cornered, pale-brown shiplap, three stories. Rickety outdoor stairs climbed the side and faded lettering crossed a high false front.
SEA
-
view rooms weekly rates.
Dave pulled to the curb.

"It's a lie." Taylor used his silver-filled little-boy smile. "You can't see a square inch of ocean. Not from my room, for sure. The cheap ones are at the back. What I see is oil wells. But it's great being at the beach. I always lived in L.A. before. Listen, thank you very much for the ride. You really rescued me. I hope I didn't take you too far out of your way. It's really nice to have met you." He put out a hand for Dave to shake. "You're the only new friend of Tom's I've met. And you're just what I expected."

"Yup," Dave said. "I wear three-hundred-dollar suits and drive an eight-thousand-dollar car. Mr. Taylor
—stop measuring people that way."

"It's American," Taylor said defensively.

"And Nigerian. And Bolivian," Dave said. "It started in Sumer."

"Don't misunderstand me," Taylor said. "I'm glad about Tom's success. I mean, we started out life together. We were close." His soft eyes looked into Dave's. Too steadily. "Very, very close. One summer, especially." A flush darkened the time-etched skin of his cheekbones. "You understand what I'm saying."

Dave edged him a smile.

"Sure you do. I knew you would. So you can understand how happy it makes me that one of us got someplace in life. It's the truth. I couldn't be happier if it had happened to me."

"Right." Dave pushed his cuff back.

Taylor read the gesture and fumbled the car door open. "You have to go. You're busy. When people get in your income bracket, they work all the time. Anybody who thinks money lets you take it easy is an idiot. I read. I know." He got out, eased the door shut, crouched so the window framed his used boy face, the wind fluttering his soft hair. "I guess you'll be talking to that contractor now, about that deck rail."

"Not now," Dave said, "but sooner or later."

"He'll blame it on some workman," Taylor said. "The poor bastard will get fired."

"What about your car?" Dave asked.

Taylor looked doubtful. "I'll figure out something. Have to have a car. Gosh, I have an important appointment today too." He used the ragged smile again. "Besides, I have to get around, catch up on things. Did you know, they've got movies now where they show everything?" His leer was prepubic. "And boys dancing naked in the bars? They call them go-go boys. The bars are having a contest for the most beautiful boy." He patted the window ledge, stood. "Don't want to miss that." He turned away. "And my friends," he said dreamily. "I have to see my friends."

Wind had strung Bobby's long yellow hair across his face. He lay asleep in the small white trunks on a big towel printed with gaudy flowers. The beach was crowded
—surfers, girls in next to nothing, babies in nothing, dogs. But even from the distance of Ace Kegan's deck—no one home in the apartment behind it—Dave had picked the
boy out easily. He shone. Dave waded through a wash of guitar discords and bongo drums and sat down next to the towel. He took off a shoe, emptied sand out of it, put it back on. Into Bobby's ear, a battery radio sang in a bright bad-ass voice about soft drinks. Dave tied the shoe and asked: "Didn't Ace tell you it's risky to be out here alone?"

The boy didn't open his eyes. His beautiful mouth muttered, "Not alone. Five thousand people."

"Where's Ace?" Dave emptied the other shoe. "I want to ask him a question."

"He's talking to some lawyer." Bobby used his fingers to rake the hair off his face. He pushed himself up on his elbows, squinting against the brightness of the sky. "Something wrong?"

"Probably." Dave put the shoe back on and tied it. "Unless it's about remodeling he's seeing that lawyer?"

"What?" Bobby's face twisted. He switched off the radio. "Remodeling? The Hang Ten?"

"That's what he told me," Dave said.

"You must have heard him wrong. They remodeled last year. Did it all over in leather." On the towel lay an empty soft drink can, Kleenex in a little box printed with antique cars, a brown squeeze bottle of suntan lotion, a pack of Marlboros. Bobby groped among them for sunglasses, hooked them on. Polaroids. They mirrored Dave in silver. "Why would they remodel it already? It cost a bundle and it still looks like new."

"Right." Dave picked up the books, shuffled them.
30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. Contemporary American Poetry. A Zen Primer. The Best and the Brightest.
"At a guess, you're supposed to be studying."

"Yeah, well, Christ. I'm tired. I was in that God damn bar till two." Now he probed a cigarette from his pack and worked at lighting paper matches the sea wind blew out. "You know, Ace is great on working you. All energy, you know? He really can't figure somebody it doesn't mean the world to to win that stupid contest."

Dave brought out his lighter, cupped the flame, held it till Bobby got the light. "It's for your own good," he said.

"Shee-it." Bobby turned onto his belly, rested his chin on folded arms. The smoke blew away from his mouth along the sand. "Anyway, he doesn't see I can't do three things at once. He wants a bartender, a college student and a body-building freak all in one."

Dave set the books down. "You tend bar much?"

"Ace is nervous, runs around like a white rat in one of those labs. He'll phone anytime and say, 'Get your ass over here.' "

Dave watched surfers crest a long blue swell and vanish in a kick and flail of arms and legs. He said very carefully, "Like Monday?"

"Yeah, for instance," Bobby said, "All of a sudden, about eight. I mean, he's stacked up operas and symphonies for me to listen to, half a library to read. Not just read, man
—memorize, you know? Then he calls and I've got to take over The Hang Ten for the night." He turned onto his back again, onto his elbows. "And at seven the next morning he starts asking questions with my boiled eggs. Big treat, two days a week—boiled eggs. Quizzing me on the music, on the books. How could I read the fucking books? I was working. You slop beer for a hundred faggots all by yourself sometime—you'll know what work is."

"I'll bet," Dave said. "Did he tell you why he had to go out?"

"Wait a minute." Bobby sat up. "That was the night Rick was killed." He poked the cigarette into the sand. "Who are you?" He pulled off the sunglasses. "Some kind of cop?" He got to his knees. "Yeah. What else is new? Shit!" He punched the sand with a fist. He looked ready to cry. "Now I've got him in trouble."

"He was already there." Dave stood up, brushed sand off his suit. "That's probably why he's seeing that lawyer."

"It's about the partnership," Bobby said loudly. "There's a lot to straighten out, now Rick's dead."

Dave said, "When did he come back to the bar on Monday night?"

"He didn't. He was home when I got there. Passed out, if you want to know. He'd killed half a fifth of Canadian Club." His eyes came up suddenly, scared.