Troublemaker (9 page)

"He doesn't drink," Dave said.

"That's why he passed out," Bobby said. "Look
—what do you want? To stick him for Rick's murder?"

"No. That's up to the police," Dave said. "But I'm uneasy about their present choice. It doesn't make sense. What do you think? You know Ace. Could he have murdered Rick Wendell?"

"Listen." Bobby was shaking and under the saffron mustache his mouth was a bad color. "Get away from me. Will you? Please? Just get away from me."

"Easy," Dave said. "I'm not a cop. And I can't hurt anybody. Not you. Not Ace. It doesn't work that way, Bobby. People hurt themselves. Sometimes their friends can turn that around. Like possibly now."

Bobby said sulkily, "He's got a lousy temper." He hooked the glasses on again, knelt, gathered up his traps. "Now leave me alone, will you? I don't want to talk to you
—all right?" He walked off, dragging the flowered towel. Dave went after him.

"A bad enough temper to shoot somebody?"

"No. Fists are all he knows. He hits people. He's been in court about it." Bobby lengthened his stride toward the apartment deck, where the chrome-plated stem of the punching bag glittered. Dave kept pace.

"Rick had a new lover. Wasn't Ace worried?"

"What?" Bobby turned sharply. The radio fell. A lanky brown dog came from under a faded beach umbrella and sniffed at it. Was it a lunch box? Bobby kicked at the dog and picked up the radio. The dog slunk back to the umbrella, where a mound of old white flesh slept in gingham ruffles. "He never mentioned it. Anyway, he wouldn't hurt Rick. Hell, he was always protecting the big, dumb slob. They were friends. A long time."

"Till death did them part," Dave said.

"Yeah," Bobby said. "Get lost, will you?"

Two miles up the beach from Ace Kegan's, on battered benches in the sun, along a gritty walk that marked off Surfs crumbling ocean-front apartment houses and dim stores from the beach, old men argued with each other in loud Yiddish. Long-haired, bearded boys played guitars and tambourines and grinned while a bowlegged little old woman with a Day-Glo kerchief over her hair did a slow Polish village dance. A pack of breedless dogs ran past, tongues lolling.

The Hang Ten turned a blank stucco face to the scene. Bolted to its door was a wooden surfer, clumsily chiseled in low relief. Wind had piled trash at his feet, greasy burrito wrappers, Big Mac boxes, Styro-foam cups. These crunched under Dave's shoes as he put on his glasses to read a yellowed card tacked at the edge of the door. In faded felt-pen lettering, the bar's hours showed.
 
noon-
2
a.m.
He checked his watch. Noon had passed but the door's three padlocks were clamped.

He found a phone booth and dialed his office. For messages. There'd been half a dozen calls. His secretary told him about them in a thin whimper. A terrified skinny little girl of sixty, Miss Taney had teetered on the edge of nervous collapse all her life. The names of three of the callers meant nothing to Dave. The fourth had been Lieutenant Yoshiba of the Los Santos police, upset about something. The fifth had been Heather Wendell, upset about something. The sixth had been Gail Ewing, Tom Owens's sister
—upset about something.

Yoshiba was out to lunch. At the Wendell house it was the gaunt giant Billy who picked up the receiver. The lost husband and father. Found. Dave estimated it was the phone in his son's rooms he was using. That would put him near the bottles. He sounded as if he'd had one in his hand for a few hours. One or more. He tried to work up indignation. Why didn't Dave leave his wife alone? Wasn't it bad enough to have lost her son? What did Dave mean, telling Ace Kegan he thought she'd killed Rick? He, Billy, had heard Ace say it at the funeral. Where was Heather? At a lawyer's office, that's where.

"I'll get back to her," Dave said.

"You're in trouble," Billy warned him.

"I've got a lot of company," Dave said.

The dogs barked into the phone again at Tom Owens's beautiful beached ark. Gail Ewing said, "I'm extremely unhappy with you for disturbing Tom. He had nothing to do with this horrible business. It was poor judgment on his part to take that boy in. Obviously. But that doesn't mean people like you have the right to harass him."

"People like me aren't bad compared to the police," Dave said. "I haven't told them the tie-in yet, Mrs. Ewing. From what your brother said, there didn't seem much reason to. He didn't act harassed. But you do. Why? No, let me tell you. You know something your brother doesn't. What is it, Mrs. Ewing? Were you on the extension phone Monday when Larry Johns asked Rick Wendell for fifteen hundred dollars?"

Dave heard her draw a sharp breath.

He said, "That's why you called me
—right? To tell me about it?"

"Yes," she said. "No."

"I can send Lieutenant Yoshiba," he offered.

She said flatly, "Where are you? I don't want to talk here."

"It's lunchtime," he said. "There's a place called the Chardash, near the Los Santos Theater. They make a standout gypsy goulash."

"I'm not hungry," she said, "but I'll be there."

CHAPTER 7

A
campfire violin
wept from a scratched record. Over a small, dark bar at the end of a shadowy room, a giant stein of German beer rippled in an electric sign. Dave sat on a stool with tubular metal legs that creaked and smoked a cigarette, drank gin and tonic, and talked to a stocky, middle-aged woman back of the bar. Sauces smeared her apron. Her round cheeks were flushed from stove heat. No other customers were in the place yet. She'd come out of the kitchen when the spring bell above the street door had jingled with his arrival.

"Monday night," he said. "She's a big old woman." He held out hands to measure Heather Wendell's bulk. "Big as a man. White hair. She cuts it short. It would have been around eight-thirty."

Round black eyes watched him, waiting.

"She'd have been with a small, dark man. Younger than she is. About forty. Black hair, combed forward." He stroked his own forehead. "Broken nose. Muscular." He made fists and revolved them in front of his chin. "A prize fighter, you understand? A boxer?"

"I understand," she said. "Yes, they here. I remember, because they order food and then do not eat. It make my husband angry." She smiled irony. "Not with them. Never with customer, no. But with us. Me. Son. Daughter-in-law. When people will not eat, he become always angry, my husband."

"They talked," Dave said.

"Only talk." She nodded and started for the kitchen swing door. "You will excuse? I am alone."

"Did they leave together?" Dave called.

"I am sorry?" There was a clatter of metal, a hiss of steam. There were gusts of good smells. She reappeared with a deep, heavy saucepan in her hands, a big steel spoon. "What
—I am sorry—you ask?"

"Did they go out together?"

"At the same time," she said. "They do not wait even for check. My daughter-in-law had not time to add up. And no one was at cash register." She nodded at it, glinting in the shadows near the door. "They leave ten-dollar bill and they go out." She twitched a harried smile and turned away again. "Excuse?"

Dave nodded. "Thank you." He stubbed out his cigarette, drank from the tinkling mint-sprigged glass, and the bell over the door jangled again. Sea light streamed in from the street. A bony blond woman in tailored green linen stood in it. The door fell shut and she came to him through the gloom. Her eyes were like her brother's
— almost yellow. Only hers had no warmth in them. Neither had her voice. She said, "You're mistaken that I wanted to keep things from you."

"Mrs. Ewing?" Dave got off the stool. "What will you drink?"

"I won't," she said, "thank you. The reason I called you, Mr. Brandstetter, was to tell you about Larry Johns. That what happened to him was his own doing and had nothing to do with Tom. Nothing."

"You mean the murder?"

She shook her head impatiently. "I don't know anything about that."

With a shrug, Dave tilted his head toward worn leather booths where unlit candles waited on checkered tablecloths. She hesitated, then went stiffly toward one in a corner. Taking his glass, he followed her, slid into the booth opposite her. "What is it you do know about?"

She laid a green handbag on the leather bench beside her, drew off green gloves and folded them on the bag. "I know he had visitors. Larry did."

Dave cocked an eyebrow. "At the beach house?"

"That morning. Monday. A man came, a big middle-aged man. In a dreadful purple satin shirt with embroidery. Cowboy outfit of some kind, I suppose. One of those LBJ hats. And the boots
—tooled, you know? He needed a shave, his eyes were red. I didn't like the look of him. I don't approve of shouting in the house but I wouldn't have left him alone for a moment. Larry was with Tom." The corners of her mouth tightened bitterly. "I called his name and waited right there until he appeared. The man grinned all over his ugly face and spoke Larry's name and held out his hand but it was plain to me Larry had never seen him before. He approached with unmistakable caution."

Dave offered her a menu in a limp, fake leather folder. "What did he say?"

She shook her head at the menu. "I didn't wait to hear. I went to see if Tom needed anything. Oh." She lifted and let fall a hand. "I did hear a name. Joe May. No . . ." She frowned to herself. "A single word, I think. Jomay? Yes."

Dave took out his glasses, opened the folder, read the food-spotted mimeographed sheet inside it. "And what happened after that?"

Gail Ewing said, "They went out and walked on the dunes. Right away. Larry obviously wanted the man in the house no more than I did. I watched them. Tom hadn't needed anything. I went upstairs. They argued. It was plain from their gestures. The man kept shaking a finger in Larry's face. At one point they began shouting."

Dave pulled the glasses down his nose, looked at her over the top of the menu. "Shouting what?"

"I can't say. It upset the dogs and they were barking. It's impossible to hear anything once they begin." She drew breath. "Anyway, soon Larry followed the man out to the highway. Not, I'd say, willingly."

Dave set the menu back between the lightless candle chimney and glass salt and pepper shakers. "Out to the highway?"

"There was a camper parked there. Quite grimy. When they got near it, a girl stepped down out of the cab
—a young woman. Larry stopped in his tracks. From that moment on, the only one who seemed to be talking was the man. He gesticulated a good deal. Then the girl went to the back of the camper and opened the door. At which point, Larry turned and started to walk off."

Dave tilted up the last of his drink. "Go on."

"Well, the man lunged after him and caught his arm. Larry jerked free and came running for the house. Out the plank driveway Tom had built over the dunes. The man took half a dozen steps, then stopped and just stood there with Larry's jacket sleeve in his hand. The girl climbed out of the camper. Backward. I'm sure there was someone inside, someone she was coaxing to come out. But then the man went and spoke to her and she got back into the camper and shut the door and in a minute he drove the thing away."

The stout woman loomed out of the brown dimness now, holding an order pad and pencil. She'd left the soiled apron someplace. Dave said to Gail Ewing, "Sure you won't eat?" and at her headshake ordered for himself. The stout woman picked up Dave's empty glass and went away. Dave said, "And that was when Larry Johns called Rick Wendell
—right?"

"I don't know whom he called," she said sharply. "I heard him come into the house by the door from the carport. And when I got downstairs, he was using the kitchen phone. I suppose he'd heard me on the stairs. He lowered his voice. But it was obvious that he was upset and the call was urgent."

"You didn't hear him mention money?"

"I heard him say his own name," she answered. "That's all. He repeated it several times. As if giving it to someone who'd never heard it before. I didn't lurk. The dogs and the children had given the livingroom hard use on Sunday. I went to pick up. When Larry came out of the kitchen and saw me, he begged me not to tell Tom about the man who'd come to see him."

"And you didn't," Dave said. "Why?"

The yellow eyes went hard, the voice went hard. "Because he was in trouble and that was where I wanted him. Tom would only have rescued him. And I didn't want him rescued. I wanted him out."

"Which is also why you took the phone away from Tom when he saw the TV news and wanted to call a lawyer. And why you hung up on me when I phoned."

"People take advantage of Tom."

Dave's smile was thin. "Other people. Not you."

Her eyes widened, then narrowed. She said through clamped teeth, "What do you mean?"

"Why are we talking here? Why not at Tom Owens's house? At Tom Owens's bedside? Because you don't want him to know what you did to him. Not to Larry Johns
—to him, your beloved brother."

She snatched up the gloves and purse. "I've never hurt Tom Owens in my life!" She slid out of the booth and stood, trembling. "Where do you think he'd be today if it weren't for me? You don't know him." Tears leaked down her face. Impatiently she knuckled them away. "He has no common sense, no sense of self-preservation. Without me to protect him
—"