Dating Dead Men

by Harley Jane Kozak

  Joey moved toward the bathroom, gun drawn. A flapping drew my attention to the kitchen, where the ceiling fan rotated at low speed, a spinning ball of color. I flipped the wall switch and watched the spinning ball slow and become bits of fabric. There was something familiar about the fragments. I reached out and touched a piece of stretchy blue silk shaped like a strand of fettuccine. Underwear. All my bikini panties, mutilated. “Yuck,” I said aloud.

  “Weird,” I heard from the bathroom.

  Joey stood looking at the closed toilet seat, upon which sat my own Hummel collection, the small porcelain Bavarian children forming a circle. They were headless. Each plump, decapitated body sported a jagged neckline, revealing hollow insides.

  “What kind of man would behead a Hummel?” I asked, anger awakening in me.

  “Not your average burglar. And not one interested in jewelry,” Joey said, plucking something from the edge of the bathtub. “A perfectly good emerald. Oh, it's a class ring. From . . . 1948?”

  “Uncle Theo's,” I said numbly. “A present when I was ten.”

  “Guess our guy's not into emeralds.”

  “No. It's diamonds he wants,” I said, and proceeded to tell her nearly everything about the events of the last five days.

  BACK IN THE shop an hour later, I changed into the contents of a UPS box from Tiffanie's Trousseau. I couldn't bear to wear anything touched by the Weasel, not until it had been laundered or sterilized or blessed by the Pope. In any case, I had a lunch date later, as surrealistic as it seemed to go on a date under the circumstances. In the back room, I looked down at myself, all six feet of me, in cream-colored jodhpurs and a skin-tight white shirt, and called out, “They've got me dressed for a fox hunt.”

  “It's for some event at the Museum of Flying this afternoon,” Joey said, coming from the shop floor to join me. “Dylan Ellison. Fredreeq's all happy because she can squeeze in a dinner with someone else afterward. No time to schedule the Drive-by, but we're going to let it slide. Come on, let's take the Polaroid.”

  “Joey, look, I'm not up to—”

  “Yes, you are. Chores. Routine. Very therapeutic. You want this jerk bringing your life to a crashing halt? Come on.”

  Joey also agreed it was safe to open the shop. “After all,” she pointed out, grabbing the camera, “why would the Weasel disguise his identity last night, only to show up in broad daylight? This guy's working to keep a low profile, otherwise he'd have confronted you days ago.”

  “I'm not so sure,” I said. “Can we truly predict the actions of a sociopath?”

  “Sure, why not? Smile.”

  I sighed, and struck my sex-kitten pose, feeling overgrown and unconvincing.

  Doc walked in.

  Behind him came Ruby, carrying Margaret's crate. Ruby looked interested, but Doc, taking in the scene, looked incredulous. A black look dropped over his brown eyes.

  “Hi,” Joey said. “I'm Joey and you must be the cousins Fredreeq mentioned.”

  Doc collected himself with an effort. He nodded to Joey, glanced at his shirt on her body, then turned to me. “You, I want to talk to. Alone. Excuse us, everyone.”

  He took me by the arm and steered me around shelves of merchandise. I put up a little resistance, which strengthened his grip, which annoyed me, so I jerked my arm away. Our eyes met, mine no doubt as angry as his. He said, “I'm not in the mood for this,” and walked into the front of the shop. After a moment, I followed.

  “You don't strike me as stupid,” he said, then stopped, taking in my outfit. After a second, he continued. “Is it possible you don't understand how serious this is?”

  “Look, this hasn't been my best morning, and it's not even eight o'clock. Can you just manage not yelling at me until I've had breakfast?”

  He gestured toward the back room. “Your friend—how much does she know?”

  “The whole story, except a few details about you. I thought I owed it to her, as she just spent the last hour with me trying to put my apartment back together.”

  “He broke in?”

  “Yes. You don't seem surprised.”

  “I figured he might. How bad was it?”

  “You figured he might? And it didn't occur to you to tell me? Or to do something about it?”

  “Jesus. You really want it all, don't you?” He ran a hand over his dark-stubbled face. “I have my daughter to think about, Wollie, and you, for that matter. What did you have in mind, hand-to-hand combat? Me bringing him down with a dinner fork?”

  “Or a gun. An Astra Falcon, maybe. If you had one, which you don't, because it's gone.”

  His eyebrows went up, then dropped, shadowing his face. “What else is gone?”

  “Eighty dollars in cash. Fourteen bisque porcelain heads. That's all I could tell so far. I'd describe it as a violation, but his phone message gives new meaning to ‘violation.' On the plus side, it was a very tidy break-in.”

  “On the plus side, you're alive,” he said.

  “Joey thinks the Weasel left the message on my machine to give me a chance to leave the diamond and run.”

  He leaned back against the muraled wall. “What else does Joey think?”

  “That your T-shirt is from MIT,” I said. “Which means you probably went to school there, yet you didn't know the dead man in the road, who also went to MIT. Interesting coincidence.”

  “So you suspect me of murdering a man because we shared an alma mater. Interesting motive.”

  “I don't suspect that. I give you the benefit of the doubt. There's always evidence that points to the worst in people, if you look for it. I don't.”

  “A real Mother Teresa, aren't you?” He plucked something from my shirt collar. It was a tender gesture, strange under the circumstances. “Do me a favor,” he said, and took my hand. “Cultivate skepticism. You'll live longer.” He returned the hand, and turned away. I looked at my palm, at a sticker saying “Inspected by number 3439.”

  I was about to ask him how he thought I could turn tricks, lacking skepticism, but the phone rang. I reached for it. Dr. Charlie, my brother's doctor, was on the other end.

  “Wollie,” he said, “P.B.'s eloped.”

  “Eloped?” I said, bewildered. “With whom?”

  “No. Sorry. Hospital speak. It means he's gone. Disappeared, flew the coop.”

  Inside me, blood turned to ice water and I began to shake.

  My first thought was of foul play, P.B. kidnapped by mobsters in Hummers. My next thought was relapse.

  When his illness was dormant, my brother was a real indoor guy, devoted to routine. But gripped by obsession, he would hit the road without warning, without money, impervious to creature comforts, following some inner directive. These episodes were hell for me, not knowing if he was dead or alive, and it was all coming back now, like taking a fast drive through an old neighborhood.

  “. . . the bus,” Dr. Charlie was saying, penetrating my mental trip. “Very embarrassing, but what with all the brouhaha, he apparently just boarded it and—”

  “Bus? What bus?” I asked.

  “The bus to the courthouse.”

  “Courtroom 95? The conservatorship hearings? San Fernando Road?”

  “Yes. P.B. was distressed. We had a—a death here recently. Steven Stendaur, a patient in Unit 18, and a good friend of P.B.'s. When we told P.B. about it this morning, he must've—I tried the bus, but the driver seems to have left his pager at home and—”

  But I was already out the door.

  chapter twenty-four

  “I don't understand how he could just walk out of his room and board a bus,” Doc said, crossing three freeway lanes in twelve seconds, a rush-hour feat. “Even with the Mickey Mouse security they have there.”

  “P.B. has really good transportation karma. Once he got himself on a fishing boat in Alaska. Another time he boarded an Air Maroc flight and made it to Fez. We have no idea how.” I glanced over my shoulder. No Hummer in sight, only hundreds of cars behind me on the 134 east. And, of
course, Ruby and Margaret in the backseat, swaying with the swerving of the Rabbit. “Anyway, it's not a normal bus, it's a little one that shows up at the hospital every Thursday to take patients to the courthouse. The sort of opportunity that has ‘P.B.' written all over it.”

  There was something I'd just said that rang a bell, but I was too distracted to pursue it. I was thinking of P.B. witnessing the murder, too far away to identify the victim, then later, finding out the victim was his friend. At this moment he would be playing the scene over and over in his head, torturing himself.

  We drove in silence, picking up speed as we left L.A. behind and traffic eased. The rain had stopped and the fog was burning off fast.

  After a time, Doc said, “P.B.'s not dangerous, is he?”

  “Not remotely,” I said, “except on very rare occasions when he's worked up about George Bush. Senior. And only then when he's off his medication.”

  “What kind of medication?”

  “Ziprasidone,” I said. “It's the best thing that ever happened to him and you don't know how lucky he is to be able to get it for free, not to mention live at the hospital.”

  “No, I don't know. I thought Ruby was damn lucky to get out.”

  “That's because you have no experience with good hospitals versus bad hospitals and bad hospitals versus the street.”

  “True enough.”

  “Okay then.” I knew I was being petulant. It wasn't Doc's fault that my brother was schizophrenic, but I didn't feel like being emotionally mature at the moment. “It's not some snake pit, out of an old Joan Crawford movie, it's his home. Ordinarily, there aren't dead bodies in the driveway. If P.B.—”

  It clicked into place, the image that had been eluding me for days. I saw Doc look at me. “The gun,” I said. “The Swedish guy's gun—there was a marking on it, right in the metal, two letters: P.B. It flashed through my head that it had my brother's name written all over it.”

  “Pistol Beretta,” he said. He glanced into the backseat and lowered his voice. “That's probably the murder weapon, the nine-millimeter. Gotta be a way to use all this. I spent two days at the hospital, waiting for Ruby's release, and I got friendly with a rookie in the Ventura County Sheriff's Department. Dambronski. Let me think a minute . . .”

  “Think away,” I said. “But that gun really does have P.B.'s name all over it because Olof and Tor are killers, and P.B.'s a witness, and if you have any ideas about finding him so he can identify them, think again. I won't let anyone do that to him.”

  Doc reached out and took my hand. It startled me and had the effect of shutting me up, which was something of a relief. I let him hold it, and when he finally let go, I left it sitting there where he placed it.

  IT WASN'T AN imposing courthouse; it was actually kind of cozy. I hadn't been there for a few years, since Dr. Charlie had helped P.B. and me through the conservatorship process. There were a dozen people milling around the courtyard of the building, smoking or sitting or talking to themselves, and while some seemed a little odd, most you couldn't identify as anything in particular. They might have been patients or doctors or court personnel. The morning sun beamed down upon them all.

  A security guard sat just inside the prewar building, at an ancient school desk functioning as a security checkpoint. He pointed through the doorway to the driver from Rio Pescado, identifying him as “Ned.”

  Ned sat under an oak tree, eating Cheetos, and listened with the air of someone prepared to not be responsible, whatever the problem was. “If he was on the bus, he's in one of the holding pens back there, behind 95,” he said, pointing a Cheeto toward one of the courtrooms. “I drive 'em here and I drive 'em back, that's all I know.”

  At Courtroom 95, a bailiff barred our way, telling us to return in ten minutes. Nor would he let us into the holding area to see the patients. “No visitors,” he said, in stentorian tones. “Counsel only.”

  Doc pulled me aside. “Let's split up for a few minutes. I'm going to have a look around. There's a phone over there; why don't you call home, see if there's any news from the hospital. By the way, what's your brother look like?”

  “Tall and skinny with straight blond hair and brown eyes. He looks a lot like me, with messier hair, and his clothes always kind of hang on him like they're a size too big.” Unlike me, I thought, realizing I was still dressed for the foxhunt.

  Ruby, unexpectedly, chose to stay with me, plopping herself on the floor alongside the pay phone, and burrowing into the stash of comics she'd brought with her. I figured she was angry at her father for making her leave Margaret in the car, albeit in the shade, with windows cracked.

  Joey answered at the shop, lowering the background music to report a twelve-dollar sale and four phone calls—Rex and Robert again, one from a new date, confirming dinner tonight, and one from Mr. Bundt, wanting to speak with me ASAP. I used my calling card and dialed Welcome! headquarters in Cincinnati from memory, and was put on hold, giving the butterflies in my stomach a chance to organize themselves into squadrons. Ruby tapped on my jodhpurs and pointed out a man outside Courtroom 93, zipping and unzipping his fly. I watched him until Mr. Bundt got on the line.

  “Wollie,” he said, without preamble. “Has your problem resolved itself?”

  “I . . . believe so,” I said carefully.

  “Good,” he said. “Because when I called earlier, the woman answering the phone did not do so in the approved manner. Moreover, the music in the shop, playing at full volume—Zylocaine, she called it?”

  “Zydeco,” I said hastily. “And I'm sure it—”

  “It sounded like hogs singing. Good Lord, this, of all weeks, to leave a new, improperly trained employee—”

  “It couldn't be helped, Mr. Bundt. I had a—family emergency.” Outside Courtroom 93, the man with the zipper problem began to pee against the wall.

  “We do not encourage family emergencies, Wollie. Now that you're back in the shop, I suggest you drill—Miss Rafferty, is it?—on Telephone Greeting Procedures and Easy Listening.”

  “Of course.” If Mr. Bundt thought I was calling from the shop, I would not disillusion him. A woman in a fur coat rushed past me toward the peeing man, her arms waving. “Mr. Bundt, did you call for a reason? Is it about the secret inspections?”

  “No. My reason for calling is that the Welcome! corporation has decided to divest itself of lower-profit shops. The Sunset Boulevard branch has underperformed for years, a moot point if you win franchise approval. As owner of a Willkommen! Greetings, the headache becomes yours. Should you not be approved”—he paused dramatically—“your shop will be liquidated. Excess inventory will go to the Beverly Hills and Westwood branches and your services as manager will no longer be needed.”

  This seemed to call for a response, but my brain had gotten stuck on the word “liquidated” and I could not formulate one, beyond a sort of choking noise.

  He let the silence hang, then said, “In a worst-case scenario, Wollie, this phone call is your thirty days' notice.”

  I SANK TO the floor, still unable to speak. Ruby, perhaps sensing a soul mate, offered me a comic book, but I noticed Courtroom 95 had opened. I sprang up and reached for her hand and moved toward it.

  Only half a dozen spectators had gathered in the courtroom, in what looked like church pews, so Ruby and I were able to grab a whole row for ourselves, moments before the entrance of the Honorable Judge Randolph Milligan. P.B. was not among the participants, nor was Doc anywhere to be seen, and I was debating going back out in the hall to look for them when the bailiff shut the door decisively. I stayed where I was.

  A doctor from Rio Pescado took the stand to testify, her Indian accent so thick the court reporter had to interrupt several times, to ask the judge for clarification. When the judge was stumped, a spectator in the front row piped up with a translation. The bailiff shushed him, but the patient, apparently understanding her own diagnosis for the first time, stood and yelled, “That be total bullshit!” punctuating each word with a s
hake of the head. The hair on the left side of her head was in cornrows, but the right side stuck out horizontally, as if the beauty parlor had closed up shop halfway through her appointment. Her lawyer, a very young man in a very bad suit, tried valiantly to get her to sit back down, until the patient gave him a good push, throwing him off balance.

  Someone slid into the pew next to me and touched my sleeve. I pulled away reflexively until I realized it was Doc, changed into a tie, denim shirt, and glasses.

  “Let's go,” he said. “P.B.'s not here, he's headed for Venice.”

  THE FACT THAT we had no real idea where we were going did not alter Doc's driving style. I grabbed the dashboard for balance, as the Rabbit hurtled along San Fernando Road. Doc was wearing his own clothes once more, having returned the glasses, shirt, and tie to Ned, the bus driver.

  “Ties work,” he said. “I went back, told the bailiff I was counsel, and he waved me in. Everyone in the holding area knew P.B., and one woman swears he's headed to Venice. Venice, California, I hope?”

  I nodded. “P.B. doesn't believe in Europe.”

  We drove in silence for a while, scanning the road. I tried not to think about all the dire things that could happen to him, even without the murderous Swedes, but habit was strong, a vigilance born in childhood, the moment someone had clamped my hand around a squirmy fist and said, “This is your little brother and you're in charge of him.”

  “No messages at the shop?” Doc asked.

  “Oh, there were messages,” I said, and told him about Mr. Bundt.

  “Screw him. You didn't hear that, Ruby,” he said to the rearview mirror. “Seriously, Wollie. You don't need them.”

  “Seriously, I do need them.”