Fadeout

by Joseph Hansen

  The smoke from the cigarette hung gray and still in the warm car. She blinked at him through it. “Insurance investigators come around when there’s something wrong,” she said. “You think there’s something wrong about Fox Olson’s death, don’t you?”

  He watched the road. “Do you?”

  “Yes.” She poked the lighter back into its socket. “I think he committed suicide.”

  “Why?” The smoke smelled good. “Light one of those for me, would you?”

  “Because Thorne and Hale are having an affair.” She pushed the lighter and hung the new cigarette in her mouth. All the lipstick was gone. It looked vulnerable as a flower.

  “You think,” he asked, “or you know?”

  “I know.” She lit the cigarette and leaned across and set it carefully in his mouth. “I saw them. Last July. Right out in broad daylight. Naked. By the pool. Disgusting. I mean, how revolting can you get? They’re old enough to be grandparents or something.” She thrust the lighter back into place.

  He grinned. “I have news. We senior citizens have our moments. Thank God.” He glanced at her. “Anyway, I assume they thought they were alone.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be there,” she admitted. “It was my day off. But Sandy and I—Sandy Webb, the one who works at the gas station—we’d had a fight. I didn’t feel like sitting around moping. . . . Where’s the ashtray?”

  “Reach under the dash,” he said. “It tilts out.”

  She found it and tilted it out and put ashes into it.

  “So I thought I’d go up to the studio and work. I didn’t get far. They didn’t see me. I cut out. I was sick. I drove straight to the station—KPIM. Fox was taping two shows that day. He did that on Wednesdays. It was why I had the day off. Maria too. She cooks and keeps house. That was why Thorne and Hale—”

  “Today’s Monday,” Dave said. “I didn’t see Maria.”

  “She moved out when Fox died. She doesn’t like Thorne. It was Fox she liked.” Her smile was crooked and forlorn. “Everybody liked Fox.”

  “Was Thorne hard to work for?”

  “It wasn’t that. She fired Maria. Last Christmas. Well, you just don’t do that to Maria.”

  “What was the reason?”

  “Thorne hired a Japanese houseboy. Through an agency in San Francisco. A Christmas gift to Fox. She said when they were poor back in L. A. and daydreamed about getting successful and having servants, Fox always said a Japanese houseboy was the only kind he’d want. You know?”

  “So what happened to the houseboy?”

  “Oh, he’s still in town. Works at the Pima Motor Inn.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant, why was it he didn’t last?”

  “I don’t know exactly. . . .” She frowned and stubbed out her cigarette. “I remember, the day after Christmas, he was out in a pair of little white trunks, vacuuming the pool. About nine in the morning. When I walked into the studio Fox was standing by the window. He didn’t hear me, didn’t see me, just stood there staring down at Ito for the longest time. Then, suddenly, he turned and without a word ran out of the studio and down the stairs and into the house. Pretty soon Thorne came out and called Ito inside. After that, Fox came back up. But he was very quiet all day. . . . Ito was never around the place after that.”

  “And Maria came back?”

  The girl nodded. “But not speaking to Thorne. Not for quite a while.”

  The rain had brought night early. He switched on the headlights. “I interrupted you,” he said. “You were telling me about what you did after you found Mr. McNeil and Mrs. Olson making out beside the pool.”

  “I drove straight to the station to tell Fox. But when I ran inside and saw him through the studio window, sitting there at the long table with those big, white pillow earphones on, and the mike hanging in front of his face, and the scripts and the music and record sleeves and empty paper cups, with his guitar in his hands, grinning and being funny for the people . . .”

  She bit her lip and turned away to face the darkness. She couldn’t go on for a minute. When she did, when she turned toward him and he glanced at her, her face was wet as if there hadn’t been glass between it and the rain.

  “He was so sweet. Such a dear, kind, gentle guy. I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to hurt him.” She reached for the Kleenex again.

  Dave said, “But he committed suicide anyway?”

  “He found out. Himself. He must have. It was Wednesday night when he died. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I bet he came home when she didn’t expect him. And found them the way I did before.”

  “Not by the pool,” Dave said. “Not in this weather.”

  She cried, “Stop laughing. It’s not funny. It’s tragic! I know him. I know how he would have felt. He wouldn’t even tell them.”

  Dave raised his eyebrows. “Hated scenes, did he?”

  “Oh, stop,” she said. “No. You don’t understand him at all.” She turned away sharply. “You probably won’t believe it, but how he’d react would be: “I don’t want to spoil their happiness.’”

  “If you say so,” Dave said. “I didn’t know him.”

  “He turned around and drove back down the canyon and crashed through that bridge. Killed himself.”

  “He loved her that much?”

  “What do you mean? She was his wife.”

  Dave smiled without cheer. “Had been for twenty-odd years. You’ve hardly lived that long. You don’t know how long that can be.” He put out his cigarette.

  “He wouldn’t look at another woman,” she said hotly. “Everything he did was for her.”

  “I see.” Dave nodded ahead. “Here’s Pima.” Through the rain it was a huddled smear of neon reds and blues. “You’ll have to direct me. Where’s this Signal station?”

  She pointed. “Turn right at the traffic light. Gee, I’m grateful, Mr. Brand—what?”

  “Stetter,” he told her again.

  He drove under the gas-station overhang. Sheet metal. The rain rattled on it. A boy came out of the bright glass office. Black slicker open over his tan uniform. Tall, with a child’s face under a mop of reddish hair.

  “It’s me, Sandy.” Terry got out of the car. “I had another flat.”

  He didn’t answer, only stared at her.

  “Mr. Brandstetter gave me a ride. The wheel’s in his trunk.”

  Dave leaned across the seat and held out keys.

  The boy took them with a big hand, grease under the nails. Turning, he said to the girl, “Shit.”

  Dave got out. The boy had the back open.

  “What’s your problem?” Dave said.

  The boy bounced the wheel. It splashed water and mud off the tarmac. He shut the trunk and handed Dave his keys. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll fix it for her.”

  “You’re very gallant,” Dave said.

  “Am I supposed to thank you for picking up my chick?”

  “It was my pleasure.” Dave smiled at the girl.

  “I’ll bet it was,” the boy sneered. “Christ . . .” He turned on the girl. “What is it with you and dirty old men?”

  His shirt was open at the handsome throat. Dave started to reach for it. Terry caught his arm.

  “No, don’t,” she said. “He didn’t mean it. Sandy, why do you act like this?”

  The boy didn’t answer. He glowered.

  Dave took Terry’s elbow. “Come on. You’d better let me drive you home.”

  “Like hell,” the boy said.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Brandstetter. He won’t hurt me. He’s just jealous, is all that’s wrong with him.” She eyed the boy with loving scorn. “Not quite an adult yet.”

  “Shit!” The boy rolled the tire toward the garage.

  Dave folded himself back into his car. “Advise him,” he said to Terry, “that I don’t sing, play the guitar, tell stories or paint pictures. And that I have practically no sense of humor.”

  She blinked wide blue eyes at him.

  “See you
later,” he said and let the car door click shut and tilted the car out into the street. Broad, high-curbed, empty in the rain. The yellow store windows looked bleak. Against the murky dusk, the gaudy signs spelled loneliness.

  5

  Phil Mundy looked at Dave through a bright aluminum screen door that was the only new thing about the shack. Shack was the word. Part bat and board, part tar paper and chicken wire, it squatted in the middle of five weedy acres of dying fruit trees and abandoned chicken coops on the outskirts of Pima. Near the tracks.

  Waiting, muddy-footed, on the sagging wooden stoop, with the night rain leaking cold down the back of his neck, Dave realized that Mundy looked like Fox Olson, the photo in Medallion’s files, the photo distributed now to police departments across the country. Even to the thinning blond hair. Except that Olson had a good mouth. Mundy’s there was something wrong with. A little too small, a little too tight.

  “Who is it, Phil?” A woman’s voice, raucous, the speech slurred. She stood back inside the room, squinting. Not old. Not more than forty-five. But badly worn. Uncombed dyed blond hair. Soiled flower-print kimono. In her puffy hand a glass of oily-looking yellow liquid.

  “It’s the man from the insurance company,” Phil said without turning. He worked the latch, pushed the screen. “Come in, Mr. Brandstetter. Gretchen will be right back.”

  Dave stepped inside.

  “I’m running out of vino,” the woman giggled at him. Bad teeth. She was trying to flirt. Not trying. It was a reflex. “Gretchen’s gone to get me ‘nother fifth.” Her mouth was poorly painted. She twisted it into a smile that lied. “She always gets me anything I want.”

  “This is my mother,” Mundy said. He shut the front door. It was swollen with damp. He had to shoulder it. “Mom, why don’t you go see if Buddy needs anything?”

  “He’s all right,” she said. “I just gave him his bath. He’s watching the TV.”

  “Well, why don’t you go watch it with him?” Mundy had a gentle, patient voice. He was very young but he acted as if he’d managed her forever.

  Her eyes were big, heavy-lidded, slightly protuberant. They rolled at him sullenly. “Pushed around in my own house,” she grumbled. But she left, remembering to sway her hips even though it made her stagger.

  “Let me take your coat,” Mundy said. “I’m sorry Mom’s like this tonight.” His smile was feeble. “She’s not . . . always. We try to keep her from getting it, but—”

  “Don’t apologize for her,” Dave said.

  Phil winced and his voice went adolescent. “I’m not. I wouldn’t do that. I just want you to understand. . . .”

  “I understand.” Dave made his voice kind.

  “Thanks . . . Well, look, why don’t you sit down?” Mundy took the coat away.

  Dave sat. Somebody had worked hard to make the room cheerful. New cottagey wallpaper. Creamy new paint on the woodwork. Chintz curtains to match the new slipcovers on the lumpy old furniture. The warped floorboards painted and waxed. Throw rugs braided out of bright rags. Fox Olson still lifes on the walls—golden squashes, green peppers, tomatoes. Somebody had worked hard, but too much hopelessness and defeat had shaped the room. It wouldn’t smile.

  Phil came back and stood with his hands in his pockets. “Gretchen didn’t go after wine,” he said. “She wanted to offer you a drink. We’d like one ourselves. But we can’t keep it around.”

  “I understand,” Dave said.

  “It’s awkward, but the only time to buy it is just before the guest arrives.”

  “It’s very kind,” Dave said.

  There was a splash of tires in the muddy yard, steps on the porch, the shudder of the wet front door. Gretchen came in, untying a transparent rain cape, giving it a noisy shake. She slid the bottle out of its damp brown paper sack and set it on the telephone stand. “Hello!” She smiled, crumpling the sack. “I’ll be back in a minim. I hope you like rye.”

  “Fine.” She was damn cheerful for a new orphan. She came back with glasses, ice in a bowl, a pitcher of water. She was small like her mother, and had her mother’s brown hair and eyes. She even wore brown like her mother, brown turtleneck sweater, cable-knit, bulky on her slightness, brown tweed miniskirt, brown tights. But the personality wasn’t Thome’s any more than were the bright orange earrings and loops of crazy beads. This had to be the famous Fox Olson charm.

  “No fit night,” she said, sitting on the couch edge, dropping ice cubes into glasses, “for woman nor beast. Nor, I should think, insurance investigator. What brings you through storm and sleet, Mr. B.?”

  He didn’t smile. He asked, “Do you miss your father?”

  She paused with the jigger in one hand and the flat pint bottle of Old Overholt in the other. Her face sobered. She looked straight at him. “I’m going to miss him every minute of every day for the rest of my life,” she said. “If I weren’t my mother’s daughter, I’d be crying my eyes out right now, I promise you. But Thorne doesn’t cry, doesn’t know how. And neither do I. I wish I did.” She watched him gravely for a few more seconds, then the smile came back and she went on fixing the drinks. She handed him the first.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  Phil Mundy fumbled the glass his wife was handing him and dropped it. His face was the color of putty.

  “Oh, Phil, darling!” Gretchen cried. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no.” Phil was down on his knees after the glass and ice. “My fault. Clumsy.” He stood up. “I’ll . . . get a rag, wipe it up.” He ran out.

  “What did you say?” Gretchen frowned, two little upright lines between her brows, like her mother.

  “I asked if you think your father is dead.”

  “Don’t you?” Blank bewilderment. “Isn’t he?”

  “His body can’t be found. That’s the reason my company sent me here. To learn why.”

  “Why what?” She gave a little laugh but she was troubled. “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why almost anything.” Dave shrugged. “Why, for example, would he want to make it look as if he were dead?”

  “Well, I—” She shook her head impatiently. “No, he wouldn’t. I mean-—what for? He was busy and happy and successful. That was why I felt free to marry Phil. Fox didn’t need me anymore.”

  Phil came back with a damp cloth and sopped up the spilled whiskey. “You trying to say Mr. Olson isn’t dead?”

  “Captain Herrera, the sheriff’s office, the forestry department tell me the body should have been found Friday in the arroyo,” Dave said. “It wasn’t. It looks as if, for some reason, he disappeared.”

  “Ridiculous.” Phil stood up, both hands cradling the wet rag to keep it from dripping. “I mean, excuse me. I don’t mean to be rude. But he’s got to be dead. Sure. After the storm’s over, they’ll find him down the river somewhere. . . . Look, I’ll be back.” He carried off the rag.

  “You said your father didn’t need you anymore,” Dave said to Gretchen. “What does that mean?”

  She looked away and gave a little shrug. “His life was full now. I mean, twenty-five hours a day. There weren’t any sad, empty times. When he and Thorne sat and blamed each other.”

  “They fought?”

  Her brown eyes reproached him. “They’re a little fine for that, don’t you think?”

  He said, “I never met your father. I saw your mother this afternoon, only for a couple of hours.”

  She said, “No, it wasn’t spoken. It was silent. And terrible. She was so sorry for him. She was so angry at the world that wouldn’t pay any attention to him. So angry at him because he’d stopped believing in himself. He was going through the motions anymore just to ... please her, show her he hadn’t given up. But he’d given up. And she knew it. And that made it all the more terrible. The silences . . .”

  “So you”—Dave smiled—“broke up the silences?”

  “Whenever I could. He and I are a lot alike. Were. We’d kid around. Funny voices, vaudeville accents, G
erman, Japanese, hicks. The bits, you know. And sing. He taught me to sing before I could walk. And the guitar, naturally, as soon as I could hold one.” He had noticed it standing in the corner. “Toward the end in L.A., he’d never sing anymore unless I’d start and sucker him into showing me chords, teaching me the words of songs—something like that.”

  Dave shifted in the butt-sprung chair. “Your mother doesn’t like music much, does she?”

  Gretchen looked at him sideways. “What makes you say that?”

  “There’s no sound system in the house. It’s all out in your father’s studio. No records. No musical instruments . . .”

  “You’re right.” She smiled. “You should be an insurance investigator.”

  “I may take it up,” he said. “Was he a good writer?”

  She frowned into her glass. “Yes . . . in a sense. A good craftsman. I mean, inevitably. He’d read everything. He’d written millions of words. He was intelligent. He had taste.” She chewed her lip, doubting. “He was a . . . good writer. But something was missing. I don’t know what. Something, though. It was always as if he was talking about the wrong thing.”

  “How?” Dave tilted his glass up for a last swallow.

  “Not what was really on his mind.” She shook her head, with a little puzzled smile. “As if there was something else he ought to be talking about instead. Is that clear?”

  He grinned and lifted his glass at her. “That was very good. And it was very good of you to drive off through the rain to fetch it for me.”

  She laughed. “Okay, so I’m not a literary critic. . . . As to Old Overshoe—I might have offered you coffee. But that’s so dispiriting when you’re dying for booze.” She held out her hand. “Let me fix you another.”

  He gave her the glass. “Was your father drinking a lot?”

  Hands busy, she glanced at him. “Well . . . yes, I suppose so. The expensive people in Pima Valley do drink a lot. Like the rural rich everywhere in the West, I gather. Fox and Thorne were running with a merry group. And he was working hard. It helped him relax.” She handed Dave the fresh drink. “But he certainly wasn’t an alcoholic.”