Fadeout

by Joseph Hansen

  “All right,” Loomis said, “his body should have been in that there wash. It wasn’t. But he never run off. That just plain don’t make sense.”

  “What does make sense?”

  Loomis’s slat shoulders moved inside the buttoned-up sweater that said, as much as anything about him, that he was a sick old man. “Maybe Lloyd Chalmers killed him.”

  Dave narrowed his eyes. “Are you serious?”

  “There’s a new junior college going to be built in Pima. That’ll mean a multimillion-dollar construction contract. Lloyd’ll be due for that, like he’s due for every building job that comes along around here.”

  “Aren’t there sealed bids?”

  “Lloyd’s always turn out to be the lowest.” Loomis’s smile was wry and didn’t last. “There’s a freeway coming through this valley too, one way or another. They’re after me for a strip of my land. . . .” He swiveled the stiff little chair and stared out the window at the staked vine rows slanting up toward the brushy humps of mountain. “But that don’t make no never mind. Wherever they route it, Lloyd’ll get the contract. Provided he’s in charge of things at city hall.”

  “Who would get the contracts if he wasn’t? If Fox Olson had won the election?”

  “No if about it.” The old man faced him, proud. “He had it won. Lloyd knew that. He’s pretty took up with what a great man he is, but he ain’t stupid.”

  “He’d resort to murder?”

  Loomis’s laugh was a crackle of dry twigs, but it didn’t change his face. His forehead furrowed. “Only thing wrong is, if he did, he’d do a good job. No loose ends. He’d never fake a car crash, then take away the driver’s body. Naw . . .” The big dogs sprawled gaunt at Loomis’s feet, flat on their sides, like starvation victims. The old man leaned down and stroked one of them. Regret was in his voice. “I’d like for the son of a bitch to get the gas chamber. But he won’t. Leastways not for this.”

  Dave asked, “Why the deep affection for Lloyd Chalmers?”

  “I’m a dirty, ignorant Okie to him. Was to start with, always will be. The Chalmers clan had been the big power in Pima for seventy years before I come along. Me, Hap Loomis—I’m kind of a bad dream, far as them and the McNeils and their crowd are concerned. They think one of these mornings they’ll wake up and find me gone. Used to be a lot of Japs out here before the war. Never looked down on them like they do on me. Hell, I own half this valley. I could buy and sell the lot of them. But let me show up out at their God damn country club and they scatter like pullets when a skunk gets in the henhouse. . . .” It was a big jug of bitterness but now he tired of pulling at it and set it down. “What was it you asked me?”

  “Why wouldn’t Chalmers get the contracts even if Fox Olson became mayor? Fox wasn’t in the building business.”

  “His son-in-law is. Starting.”

  “Phil Mundy? Is he capable? He’s awfully young.”

  “Twenty-three. But he’s already Chalmers’s chief accountant. Started building an apartment before he even married.”

  “Ambitious,” Dave said. “Do you like him?”

  Loomis’s smile was one-cornered. “I never feel real easy about a man that’s too smart with figures. My granddaughter Gretchen come to me for a loan. I told her no. Not for Phil Mundy.”

  “You didn’t like her marrying him?”

  “You seen that mother of his, that crippled kid?” Loomis snorted. “Feeling sorry for a man’s a piss-poor reason to marry him.”

  “Did she get the loan from her father?”

  “He couldn’t give it to her. Thorne managed the money.”

  “Wouldn’t she lend it?”

  “She wouldn’t even speak to Gretchen. She liked her marrying Phil Mundy the way I liked her marrying Fox Olson. That’s something, ain’t it? Life plays funny tricks.”

  “Sometimes not so funny,” Dave said.

  Loomis’s muddy eyes regarded him wisely. “Them are the ones you got to laugh at hardest.”

  I never will, Dave thought, not about Rod dying. He said, “There was somebody you wanted Thorne to marry. She told me. But she didn’t tell me who.”

  “Hale McNeil. It started when they was in high school. He took her out three, four times. Thorne had to sneak to do it. She was too young, only fifteen. When I found out about it, I told Charlie McNeil unless he stopped Hale I’d horsewhip the boy. McNeil didn’t like it coming from me, but I had right on my side. Hale laid off—”

  “And married someone else,” Dave nodded.

  “Mildred Fisher. Cheap tinsel. Things went all right till the army camp come. She couldn’t keep away. Not from the honky-tonks either. Dozen of them on Main Street then. So . . . Hale shucked her.” Mouth a wide, sad line, Loomis shook his head. “No surprise the boy turned out like he done.”

  “McNeil seems bitter about him,” Dave said. “Why?”

  “Ten, eleven years ago, local doctor got caught with the boy. Sex. Course Hale wanted to believe it was the man’s fault. Wasn’t. Come out at the trial. One high-school kid says Tad serviced the football team regular on the bus coming home nights from out-of-town games. There was half a dozen other stories. Shame of it killed Charlie. Hale—well, you don’t mention Tad to Hale. Pima folks know that. You hear a joke about queers, don’t tell him. He won’t laugh.”

  “What became of Mildred Fisher—McNeil?”

  “Story goes she was pregnant. Softhearted fellow by the name of Vince Mundy married her. He had a little place on the edge of town. Walnuts, some citrus. Real pretty. He’d been all right in time, had a good head on him. But Mildred finished that off. Finally he took to drinking as much as she did. And when that second baby—his own—was born a cripple, he walked out and never come back.”

  Dave blinked. “Then she’s . . . Phil Mundy’s mother?”

  “Not much of a beauty now, is she?” Loomis snorted.

  “No . . . But wait. There’s something I don’t understand. It was after the divorce that Hale McNeil came back for your daughter?”

  Loomis nodded. “Soon as Thorne graduated from high school, he asked her to marry him. She turned him down. I know she liked him. Loved his baby too. It was Pima she hated. When I tried to talk sense to her she flared up about rich men’s sons being no account and a whole lot of horse shit like that. Anyhow”—he shifted his bones and the chair squeaked—“she done what she always done when I give her advice—the opposite. She run off to L.A. and married Fox Olson.”

  “What made McNeil offer Olson the radio job?”

  “He done it for Thome.” Loomis cracked his big knuckles, methodically, thoughtfully, watching them. Then he looked up. “He’s still in love with her.”

  “But why did she accept?”

  Loomis shrugged. “Guess she was fed up with living on hope. When she got a look at how Hale McNeil lived . . .” He stared out the window again. There were runnels of shadow in the mountains now. “Hell, her man had nothing. Past forty years old and nothing to show. The top of the hill has got to be just ahead at forty. But Fox was still at the bottom. He wasn’t going to reach the top pushing a typewriter. Guess she decided he might, pushing a guitar.”

  “How did he react to the offer?”

  “Says thanks but no thanks”—Loomis grinned—“and hung up.”

  “You don’t mean it.”

  “Fact.” Loomis’s eyes laughed, remembering. “Well, Thorne was all over him. It’s the chance of a lifetime, she says, and he better grab it. He stands there with his jaw hanging. He can’t figure it. A while back, when all these coffeehouses started up and all the kids singing and playing what they call folk songs, he wants to give up writing and go out do that. She near killed him. She claims she never, but I kind of guess he told it like it happened.”

  “So they argued about this?”

  “Only till he was sure she meant it. Then he give a shrug and that grin of his and picked up the phone and says to Hale that he’ll give it a try. And I’ll hand it to him. He done fine. I did h
and it to him. We got to be real good friends. And him being my son-in-law, a lot of people that wouldn’t give me the time of day before, they turned real neighborly and respectful all of a sudden. Guess I could have run for mayor myself.” He chuckled sourly, then tilted his head, blinking. “Queer thing, though. About Thorne. She never listened. I did.” He jerked a work-flattened thumb at a radio on the desk, half buried among U.S. Agriculture Department bulletins. “Never missed him on the air. But Thorne—she couldn’t have cared less.”

  9

  She had on a clean cotton housedress today. Starchy. The faded pink cardigan over it had been washed so often it had no more shape left than she had. Her hair was combed and her face scrubbed. No makeup. Instead of a wine bottle there was a Bible in her hand. The big eyes that had been bleary with booze last night were clear now. More than clear. Bright. Too bright. Her smile clicked on. So did her voice, also too bright.

  “It’s Mr. Brandstetter, isn’t it?”

  She pushed open the screen. He stepped in. She didn’t wear perfume. The smell was of some kind of medicinal soap.

  “We met last night,” he said.

  “Yes.” He knew now what the trouble was: the eyes didn’t blink. The voice went on, a recorded message. “I’m an alcoholic. It’s a sickness. But I’m winning. Prayer helps me. God helps me.” She glanced down at the Bible and then laid it on the telephone stand.

  “And your children?” he said.

  “They’re wonderful.” Her smile was a rictus that belonged with a scream. “Aren’t they wonderful? My beautiful boys. I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

  “And your daughter-in-law? Is she beautiful too?”

  “I’m so proud of her,” Mildred Mundy said. “I couldn’t have wished for a finer girl for my Phil.”

  “And so rich too,” Dave said.

  The eyes still didn’t blink. The mouth made a big O. The tongue clucked. “Why, Gretchen’s not rich. Her grandfather, sure. But she works for a living, typist at the United Growers. Money’s not the important thing in this life. Love is.” For a second the eyes and voice came humanly, bitterly alive. “I know. I was married to a rich man once.” She didn’t go on.

  “Money seemed important to you last night. You followed me into a hard rain after that fifty thousand dollars Fox Olson left Gretchen.”

  “I wasn’t myself last night.” The eyes stared blank at him again. A puffy hand groped for the Bible and touched it like base. Then she started along the hall. “Buddy’s waiting for you. You’re nice to come play chess with him. Now that Phil’s got his own building business along with his job and Fox is dead, Buddy gets lonesome.”

  “I get lonesome too.” Dave followed her, the warped floor tilting under his feet. “And I don’t get to play chess often.” He said it loud and clear because the door to Buddy’s room was shut.

  Mildred Mundy opened it. Her voice had the terrible fake cheerfulness of a death ward nurse, a bad echo in Dave’s mind “Mr. Brandstetter’s here, Buddy. Isn’t that nice?”

  “That’s . . . nice.” Buddy’s smile was better than the human average. He sat in his steel tubular wheelchair, the chessboard in front of him, the wooden men in ranks. He wore a red sweatshirt and white corduroy pants and tennis shoes. Wore is the wrong word. They hung on him as if on a small, broken drying rack. Last night, wet from his bath, his hair had looked dark. It was fair, a shock of wheat. The eyes were still the color of rain. “Hi . . . Mr. . . . Brand . . . stetter.” The name made for a lot of agonizing jaw work.

  “Make it Dave.” Dave smiled and sat down on the kitchen chair facing the boy. The chair was newly painted but the rungs were wired and it wobbled.

  “Just call me if you want anything.” Mildred Mundy went out and shut the door.

  “Th . . . anks . . . Mama.”

  “I hope four was a good time.” Dave glanced at the television set. “There isn’t something you want to watch? I just picked my own time. That wasn’t very considerate.”

  The boy’s fine head did its slow, neck-straining roll while the unexpectedly deep voice spasmed and his mouth labored at shaping the speech. Chess was preferable to TV. Though he was grateful to Fox Olson for giving him the set, he didn’t watch it much. It was moronic for the most part. He enjoyed reading. And KPIM played good music in the evenings.

  “Good music? What about Mr. Olson’s music? You don’t like that?”

  Buddy meant Bach and Bartok. Sure, he liked Fox’s music. Fox used to bring his guitar here and sing. It was better that way than on the radio, like cheerful conversation. But Fox hadn’t taken it seriously himself. He liked Mozart and Mahler.

  “Did he come here often?” But the boy was eyeing the chessmen. Dave reached for a pawn of each color so they could draw for white. But the white men were ranked on his side and Buddy said:

  “Be . . . my guest.”

  Dave pushed his king’s pawn and the boy countered the move. It took time because the small clean hand kept twisting out of control. But Dave waited, judging that if Buddy wanted help he would ask for it. Chess was no game to hurry anyway. Yes, Fox Olson had spent a lot of time in this room, had taken Buddy to films, driven him to his physical therapy sessions at the hospital, replaced his clumsy old wooden wheelchair with this flash one, a standard-model typewriter with the electric that was better for writing because you could think about words instead of motions. What did he write? Haiku. . . . He took Dave’s knight with a bishop from a far corner.

  Dave groaned. “I told you I was a potzer.”

  “You aren’t. You’re think . . . ing.” In the straining, tormented young face, the eyes were steady. “About Fox.” Gretchen had told Buddy why Dave was in Pima, that he didn’t believe Fox was dead but had only run away.

  “What about you?” Dave asked. “What do you think?”

  “May . . . be. If I . . . could I . . . would.” Buddy glanced at the ceiling, the rows of bright license plates.

  “That how you travel?” Dave asked.

  Buddy gave his loud bray of laughter but the eyes were sad. It was how he traveled. He lay in bed and thought about the places the license plates came from. He knew a lot about them from reading the National Geographies. He had plates from every state, including Alaska and Hawaii. Phil had got them for him over the years. The boy named Sandy, at the Signal station—whose girl friend worked for Fox—had contributed a couple. Including Mexico. Buddy’s first foreign one. The second Fox had brought. Dave saw it in the ceiling corner, a long black rectangle with white numerals. France. He looked at the boy.

  “Where did he get it?”

  About two weeks ago, Fox had come here with a stranger. They had driven into the Mundys’ yard under the walnut trees in the man’s car. A Ferrari. With French license plates. Fox had introduced the man to Buddy as an old friend, simply as Doug, no last name. Anyway, the man wasn’t French. He was American. Only he had lived in France for a long time. Something to do with NATO. He was nice. He’d taken Buddy for a ride. They’d driven out the highway. It was the first sports car the boy had ever ridden in. His eyes shone, remembering. On the straightaway Doug had opened it up. The speedometer needle had passed 120 before traffic had slowed them down. When they got back here, Doug, at Fox’s suggestion, had given Buddy the license plate. . . . He pushed a rook. Dave’s king was in check.

  “Maybe . . .” Buddy said, “Fox went... to Fr . . . ance.”

  Dave blinked. “Why would he go to France?”

  “He was . . . hap . . . py . . . with Doug.” Buddy watched his hand moving like a slow, stunned, naked little animal, setting the white pieces back in place. “I told . . . Phil . . . I nev . . . er saw Fox . . . laugh the way . . . he did . . . that day.”

  A smoldering Valentino in white riding breeches ought to have been waiting in the motel office. It was a silent-movie set. Slot windows in deep white walls, guarded by grilles of black iron. Black carved beams, black iron chandelier. Floor of square red tiles. Tapestry-backed chairs with brass s
tuds and gold fringe. But it wasn’t Valentino. It was Ito in a tidy white jacket.

  He took a registration card out of a green file box and laid it on the counter top, which was inlaid with painted tiles. The name was lettered on the card with a black felt-tip pen. Dashing. Douglas Sawyer. Los Angeles.

  Ito said, “It was a Ferrari. Red.” Red, dying sunlight slanted into his eyes and he narrowed them, watching Dave copy the address and license number. “A car like that must cost a bundle.”

  “Around fifteen thousand dollars,” Dave said.

  Ito whistled softly. “Who was this cat? Somebody important?”

  “Possibly. At least to me.” Dave laid a dime on the counter. “May I make a local call?”

  “Sure.” Ito slid the phone toward him.

  While Dave checked a number in his address book, he asked Ito, “Do you know whether anybody else saw him while he was here?”

  “You mean came to see him?”

  Dave dialed. “I mean just what I said.”

  “Well . . .” Ito shrugged. “Sandy Webb, the kid at the Signal station. He saw him. I heard him raving about the car at the bowling alley one night. Sawyer bought gas from him.”

  Dave smiled thanks and Thorne Olson answered the phone. “I’m just checking on my memory,” he told her. “Didn’t you tell me your husband once had a friend named Sawyer, Doug Sawyer?”

  “Is this Mr. Brandstetter?”

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said.

  “Yes.” Her voice was chilly, impatient. “The answer to your question is yes. They were very close friends. They attended art school together. The Provence School.”

  “And didn’t you say Sawyer was a flier in the war?”