D is for DEADBEAT

by Sue Grafton

  There was a small black-and-white television set perched on a cardboard box, tuned to what looked like the tag end of a prime-time private-eye show. The action was speeding up. A car careened out of control, flipping end over end before it went off a cliff, exploding in midair. The picture cut to two men in an office, one talking on the phone. Neither Billy nor his companion seemed to be watching and the music must have made it impossible for them to hear the dialogue anyway.

  I could feel a cramp forming in my right calf. I cast about for something to stand on to ease the strain. The yard next door was a jungle of overgrown shrubs, the parking space choked with discards. There was a set of detached wooden steps tucked up under the trailer door. I blundered through the bushes, my jeans and boots getting drenched in the process. I was counting on the thunder of music to cover the sound of my labors as I hefted the box steps, tramped back through the shrubs, and set the steps under the window.

  Cautiously, I mounted, peering in again. Billy Polo had a surprisingly boyish face for a man who’d lived his thirty years as a thug. His hair was dark, a curly mass standing out around his face. His nose was small, his mouth generous, and he had a dimple in his chin that looked like a puncture wound. He wasn’t a big man, but he had a wiry musculature that suggested strength. There was something manic about him, a hint of tension in his gestures. His eyes were restless and he tended to stare off to one side when he spoke, as if direct eye contact made him anxious.

  The woman was in her early twenties, with a wide mouth, strong chin, and a pug nose that looked as if it was made of putty. She wore no makeup and her fair hair was dense, a series of tight ripples that she wore shoulder length, brittle and illcut. Her skin was very pale, mottled with freckles. She was wearing a man’s oversized silk bathrobe and apparently nursing a cold.

  She kept a wad of Kleenex in her pocket which she honked into from time to time. She was so close to me I could see the chapping where the frequent blowing had reddened her nose and upper lip. I wondered if she was an old girlfriend of Billy’s. There was no overt sexuality in the way they related to one another, but there was a curious intimacy. An old love affair gone flat perhaps.

  The continuous rock and roll music was driving me nuts. I was never going to hear what they were saying with that stuff booming out all over the place. I got down off the steps and went around the other side of the trailer to the front door. The window to the right was wide open, though the curtains were pinned shut.

  I waited until there was a brief pause between cuts. I took a deep breath and pounded on the door. “Hey! Could you cut the goddamn noise,” I yelled. “We’re tryin’ to get some sleep over here!”

  From inside the trailer, the woman hollered, “Sorry!” The music ceased abruptly and I went back around to the other side to see how much of their conversation I could pick up.

  The quiet was divine. The volume on the television set must have been turned all the way down, because the string of commercials that now appeared was antic with silence and I could actually catch snatches of what they were saying, though they mumbled unmercifully.

  “… course, she’s going to say that. What did you expect?” she said.

  “I don’t like the pressure. I don’t like havin’ her on my back…” He said something else I couldn’t make out.

  “What difference does it make? Nobody forced her. Shit, she’s free, white, and twenty-one… the point is… getting into… just so she doesn’t think… the whole thing, right?”

  Her voice had dropped and when Billy answered, he had one hand across his mouth so I couldn’t understand him at all. He was only half attentive anyway, talking to her with his gaze straying to the television picture. It must have been 11:00 because the local news came on. There was the usual lead-in, a long shot of the news desk with two male newscasters, one black, one white, like a matched set, sitting there in suits. Both looked properly solemn. The camera cut to a head shot of the black man. A photograph of John Daggett appeared briefly behind him. There was a quick shot of the beach. It took me a moment to realize that it must have been the spot where Daggett’s body had been found. In the background, I could see the mouth of the harbor and the dredge.

  Billy jerked upright, grabbing the woman’s arm. She swiveled around to see what he was pointing to. The announcer talked on, smoothly moving the top sheet of paper aside. The camera cut to the co-anchor and the picture shifted to a still shot of a local waste disposal site.

  Billy and the woman traded a long, anxious look. Billy started cracking his knuckles. “Christ!”

  The woman snatched up the paper and tossed it at him. “I told you it was him the minute I read some bum washed up on the beach. Goddamn it, Billy! Everything with you comes down to the same old bullshit. You think you’re so smart. You got all the angles covered. Oh sure. Turns out you don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

  “They don’t even know we knew him. How would they know that?”

  She gave him a scornful look, exasperated that he’d try to defend himself. “Give the cops some credit! They probably identified him by his fingerprints, right? So they know he was up in San Luis. It’s not going to take a genius to figure out you were up there with him. Next thing we know somebody’s coming around knocking at the door. ‘When’d you last see this guy?’ Shit like that.”

  He got up abruptly. He crossed to a kitchen cabinet and opened it. “You got any Black Jack?”

  “No, I don’t have any Black Jack. You drank it all last night.”

  “Get some clothes on. Let’s go over to the Hub.”

  “Billy, I’ve got a cold! I’m not going out at this hour. You go. Why do you need a drink anyway?”

  He reached for his jacket, hunching into it. “You have any cash? All I got on me is a buck.”

  “Get a job. Pay your own way. I’m tired of givin’ you money.”

  “I said you’d get it back. What are you worried about? Come on, come on,” he said, snapping his fingers impatiently.

  She took her time about it, but she did root through her purse, coming up with a crumpled five-dollar bill, which he took without comment.

  “Are you crashing here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet. Probably. Don’t lock up.”

  “Well, just keep it down, okay? I feel like hell and I don’t want to be woke up.”

  He put his hands on her arms. “Hey,” he said. “Cool it. You worry too much.”

  “You know what your problem is? You think all you have to do is say shit like that and it’s all okay. The world doesn’t work that way. It never did.”

  “Yeah, well there’s always a first time. Your problem is you’re a pessimist…”

  At that point, I figured I’d better cut out and head back to my car. I eased down off my perch, debating briefly about whether I should move the steps or leave them there. Better to move them. I hefted them, swiftly pushing through the undergrowth to a cleared space where the junk was stacked up. I set the box down and then took off through the darkened trailer park and out to the street.

  I jogged to my car, started it, and did another U-turn, anticipating that Billy would head back the same way he came. Sure enough, in my rearview mirror I saw the Chevrolet make a left turn onto the main thoroughfare, coming up behind me. He followed me for a block and a half, tailgating, a real A-type. With an impatient toot of the horn, he passed me, squealed into another left-hand turn, and zoomed off toward Milagro. I knew where he was headed so I took my time. There’s a bar called the Hub about three blocks up. I walked into the place maybe ten minutes after he did. He’d already bought his Jack Daniel’s, which he was nursing while he played pool.

  Chapter 9

  *

  The Hub is a bar with all the ambience of a converted warehouse. The space is too vast for camaraderie, the air too chill for relaxation. The ceiling is high, painted black, and covered with a gridwork of pipes and electrical conduits. The tables in the main room are sparse, the walls lined with
old black-and-white photographs of the bar and its various clientele over the years. Through a wide archway is a smaller room with four pool tables. The juke box is massive, outlined in bands of yellow, green, and cherry red, with bubbles blipping through the seams. The place was curiously empty for a Saturday night. A Willie Nelson single was playing, but it wasn’t one I knew.

  I was the only woman in the bar and I could sense the male attention shift to me with a bristling caution. I paused, feeling sniffed at, as if I were a dog in an alien neighborhood. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, and the men with their pool cues were caught in the hazy light, bent above the tables in silhouette. I identified Billy Polo by the great puff of hair around his head. Upright, he was taller than I’d pictured him, with wide, hard shoulders and slim hips. He was playing pool with a Mexican kid, maybe twenty-two, with a gaunt face, tattooed arms, and a strip of pinched-looking chest which was visible in the gap of the Hawaiian shirt he wore unbuttoned to the waist. He sported maybe six chest hairs in a shallow depression in the middle of his sternum.

  I crossed to the table and stood there, waiting for Billy to finish his game. He glanced at me with disinterest and lined up the cue ball with the six ball, which he smacked smartly into a side pocket. He moved around the table without pause, lining up the two ball which he fired like a shot into the corner pocket. He chalked his cue, eyeing the three ball. He tested an angle and rejected it, leaning into the table then with a shot that sent the three ball rocketing into the side pocket, while the five ball glanced off the side, rolled into range of the corner pocket, hung there, and finally dropped in. A trace of a smile crossed Billy’s face, but he didn’t look up.

  Meanwhile, the Mexican kid stood there and grinned at me, leaning on his cue stick. He mouthed, “I love you.” One of his front teeth was rimmed in gold, like a picture frame, and there was a smudge of blue chalk near his chin. Behind him, Billy cleaned up the table and put his cue stick back in the rack on the wall. As he passed, he plucked a twenty from the kid’s shirt pocket and tucked it into his own. Then, with his face averted, he said, “You the chick came looking for me at my mom’s house earlier?”

  “That’s right. I’m a friend of John Daggett’s.”

  He cocked his head, squinting, his right hand cupped behind his ear. “Who?”

  I smiled lazily. We were apparently playing charades. I raised my voice, enunciating. “Daggett. John.”

  “Oh, yeah, him. How’s he doing these days?” He started snapping his fingers lightly to the music, which had switched from Willie Nelson to a George Benson tune.

  “He’s dead.”

  I have to credit him. He did a nice imitation of casual surprise, not overdoing it. “You’re shittin’ me. Daggett’s dead? Too bad. What happened to the dude, heart attack?”

  “Drowned. It just happened last night, down at the marina.” I wagged a thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the beach so he’d know which marina I meant.

  “Here in town? Hey, that’s tough. I didn’t know that. He was in L.A. last I heard.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t see it on the news.”

  “Yeah, well I never pay attention to that shit, you know? Bums me out. I got better things to do with my time.”

  His eyes were all over the place and his body was half turned away. I had to guess that he was busy trying to figure out who I was and what I was up to. He flicked a look at me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Kinsey Millhone.”

  He studied me fleetingly. “I thought my mom said the name was Charlene.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know where she got that.”

  “And you do what?”

  “Basic research. I free-lance. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “You don’t look like a friend of Daggett’s. He was kind of a lowlife. You got too much class for a scumbag like him.”

  “I didn’t say we were close. I met him recently through a friend of a friend.”

  “Why tell me about it? I don’t give a damn.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Daggett said if anything happened to him, I should talk to you.”

  “Me? Naww,” he said with disbelief. “That’s fuckin’ weird. You must have got me mixed up with somebody else. I mean, I knew Daggett, but I didn’t know him, you dig?”

  “That’s funny. He told me you were the best of friends.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Old Daggett gave you a bum steer, baby doll. I don’t know nothin’ about it. I don’t even remember when I saw him last. Long time.”

  “What was the occasion?”

  He glanced at the Mexican kid who was eavesdropping shamelessly. “Catch you later, man,” he said to him. Then under his breath, with contempt, he said, “Paco.” Apparently, this was a generic insult that applied to all Hispanics.

  He touched my elbow, steering me into the other room. “These beaners are all the same,” he confided. “Think they know how to play pool, but they can’t do shit. I don’t like talking personal in front of spics. Can I buy you a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  He indicated an empty table and held a chair out for me. I hung my slicker over the back and sat down. He caught the bartender’s eye and held up two fingers. The bartender pulled out two bottles of beer which he opened and set on the bar.

  Billy said, “You want anything else? Potato chips? They make real nice french fries. Kinda greasy, but good.”

  I shook my head, watching him with interest. At close range, he had a curious charisma… a crude sexuality that he probably wasn’t even aware of. I meet men like that occasionally and I’m always startled by the phenomenon.

  He ambled over and picked up the beers, dropping a couple of crumpled bills on the bar. He said something to the bartender and then waited while the guy placed a glass upside down on each bottle, shooting a smirk in my direction.

  He came back to the table and sat down. “Jesus, ask for a glass in this place and they act like you’re puttin’ on airs. Bunch of bohunks. I only hang out here because I got a sister works here three nights a week.”

  Ah, I thought, the woman in the trailer.

  He poured one of the beers and pushed it over to me, taking his time then as he poured his own. His eyes were deepset, and he had dimples that formed a crease on either side of his mouth. “Look,” he said, “I can see you got your mind made up I know something I don’t. The truth is, I didn’t like Daggett much and I don’t think he liked me. Where you got this yarn about me bein’ some pal of his, I don’t know, but it wasn’t from him.”

  “You called him Monday morning, didn’t you?”

  “Nuh-uh. Not me. Why would I call him?”

  I went on as though he hadn’t said anything. “I don’t know what you told him, but he was scared.”

  “Sorry I can’t help you out. Must have been somebody else. What was he doin’ up here anyway?”

  “I don’t know. His body washed up in the surf this morning. I thought maybe you could fill me in on the rest. Do you have any idea where he was last night?”

  “Nope. Not a clue.” He’d gotten interested in a speck of dust in the foam on his beer and he had to pick that out.

  “When did you see him last? I don’t think you said.”

  His tone became facetious. “Geez, I don’t have my Day-Timer with me. Otherwise, I could pin it down. We might’ve had lunch at some little out of the way place, just him and me.”

  “San Luis perhaps?”

  There was a slight pause and his smile dimmed a couple of watts. “I was at San Luis with him,” he said, cautiously. “Me and thirty-seven hundred other guys. So what?”

  “I thought maybe you’d kept in touch.”

  “I can tell you didn’t know Daggett too good. Being with him is like walking around with dog-do on your shoe, you know? It’s not something you’d seek out.”

  “Who else did he know here in town?”

  “Can’t help you there. It’s not my week to k
eep track.”

  “What about your sister? Did he know her?”

  “Coral? No way. She don’t hang out with bums like that. I’d break her neck. I don’t get why you’re goin’ on and on about this. I told you I don’t know nothin’. I didn’t see him, didn’t hear from him. Why can’t you just take my word for it?”

  “Because I don’t think you’re telling the truth.”

  “Says who? I mean, you came lookin’ for me, remember? I don’t have to talk to you. I’m doin’ you a favor. I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know what the fuck you’re up to.”

  I shook my head, smiling slightly. “God, Billy. Such foul talk. I didn’t think you dealt with women that way. I’m shocked.”

  “Now you’re makin’ fun of me, right?” He scrutinized my face. “You some kind of cop?”

  I ran my thumbnail down the bottle, snagging an accordion strip of label, which I picked off. “Actually I am.”

  He snorted. Now he’d heard everything. “Come on. Like what,” he said.

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s a fact.”

  He tipped back in his chair, amused that I’d try to lay such a line on him. “Jesus, you’re too much. Who do you think you’re talkin’ to? I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I know the private eyes around town and you ain’t one, so try somethin’ else.”