Obedience

by Joseph Hansen

  “If it don’t close us down,” Enid said.

  “Don’t talk crazy. Is it our fault a stray shot from some cockeyed deer hunter way up yonder in the hills hits one of our customers? Accident, like the cops said. Can’t put us out of business. State’s fault, not ours.”

  Enid opened her mouth to argue, but a young man came tramping out of the woods, looking dejected. “Got a cup of coffee for a dead man, Enid?” Pink fluorescent paint had splashed his military camouflage suit. For a moment, Dave mistook the gun that hung from his hand for an Uzi. It wasn’t an Uzi. It was a toy. He pulled off a helmet that had a curved transparent face mask attached to it. Black makeup smeared his face.

  Enid Saddler glanced at a watch on her bony wrist. “It’s Licorice Luke, ain’t it?” she said, and moved away toward a shacky building that was half catering counter, half supply store, beside which other young men and women in camouflage sat on fallen logs, drank out of cans or paper cups, ate, talked, laughed. “You didn’t last long today. Sick or something?” She took his arm and they strolled together across lumpy, leaf-strewn ground toward the shack. Those already there looked up and jeered good-naturedly.

  “Boy-howdy.” Saddler chuckled and rubbed his hands together. “Build us barracks here, showers, mess hall, a real kitchen, serve real food. Be no stopping us after this.”

  Dave said, “The police report says nobody knew him.”

  “He was pretty new. He come regular, but always alone,” Roy said. He gestured at the grubby group around the coffee shack. “You take most of these—they come three, four, five together. Teams. Know each other, know how to play the game together, tactics, strategy, which one is best at this, that, the other, quickest, smartest. But this here Vaughn, he never come with nobody. Just showed up, paid, bought paintballs if he had to, hung around till enough singletons come, or a team that needed another player. Wasn’t long till they seen he was good, and he didn’t have to wait.” Roy pinched a short cigarette from a shirt pocket, lit it with a wooden match that he scratched on the seat of his pants, coughed. “Thing about him was—it wasn’t a game to him.” He cocked his head toward the laughing crowd. “Most of ’em that come don’t take it all that serious.” He looked into Dave’s eyes with his bloodshot ones. “But this little Vaughn kid—he treated it like it was real combat, a matter of life and death.”

  Dave said, “That’s how it turned out, didn’t it?”

  Roy shook his head, snorted. “Freak accident.”

  Dave pointed. Shaggy mountains loomed beyond the woods. “That’s National Forest land, up there?”

  “Full of fucking deer hunters,” Roy said.

  “Maybe you should close down for the season,” Dave said.

  Roy glared. “Don’t go giving nobody else that idea.”

  Dave watched the foggy woods again, where the shadowy make-believe jungle fighters crouched and scurried, the funny guns popped, voices called near and far. “It’s all lighthearted?” he said. “All in the spirit of fun?”

  “Overgrown kids playing war,” Roy said. He looked Dave up and down. “Cowboys and Indians in your time, right?”

  “Cops and robbers,” Dave said. “All my life.”

  Dave didn’t really give a damn about this case—if it was a case. He was going through the motions because Cecil had asked him to. Cecil was worried about him. Dave was taking Max Romano’s death too hard. Hell, Max was eighty when he died. The old restaurateur had had a long, cheerful run for his money, had certainly eaten and drunk his fill. Maybe it was surprising he’d lived so long. In the forty years Dave had known him, he’d always carried a lot of weight around. He’d only been thin once, a couple of years ago, when he’d tried to follow a diet on doctor’s orders. He couldn’t keep it up. It made him too miserable. Better to die fat and happy. Dave guessed Max had, if anybody ever did. At least it had been sudden. And in the surroundings Max loved best—his restaurant, laughing behind the bar.

  But Dave hated his being dead, and hated what was about to happen to the restaurant. He couldn’t tally how many meals he’d eaten at Max’s down the years, how many friends he’d shared them with—some of those friends no longer living. Max had always kept a table for Dave in a far, quiet corner. Dave was having a lot of trouble picturing life without Max’s. He’d be lost. The bright-eyed young nephew from New York had told him on a parched-grass cemetery hillside after the funeral that the restaurant’s dark paneling, padded leather, stained glass were to be ripped out, in favor of white paint, beige carpeting, chrome-and-cane chairs, high walls of curved, clear glass. The rich foods and sauces were going too, to be replaced by the half-raw vegetables and pale, tasteless meats of nouvelle cuisine. The prospect made Dave shudder.

  And this last week, in the hours when Cecil was away at the television station, Dave had slouched emptily around the house in the canyon, trying to read but staring blankly at the page instead, putting on tapes and when the music stopped not even noticing the silence, trying to watch old crime movies on the VCR and not seeing or hearing them. Forgetting to eat. Remembering to drink. Too often. Too much. Which was why Cecil had touted the strange death of Vaughn Thomas to him. To busy him with work. It was the best cure for grieving. Dave had learned that long ago. How Cecil knew it, young as he was, Dave couldn’t say, but he was grateful to him, and now he was out here in the ugly world again, trying to pretend what he was doing mattered.

  He rolled the quietly rumbling brown Jaguar along a tree-shaded street of dignified, well-kept old apartment buildings, looking for an address Cecil had given him. The place Vaughn Thomas had been living. Before that stray bullet had struck him down in the fake fog at the farthest reach of the Combat Zone. If stray bullet it had been. Cecil doubted it.

  “He was keyed up,” he told Dave. “Advertising is down at the end of the hall, but I pass there all the time. When his phone rang, he’d look at it like it was a rattlesnake. Sure, there were accounts out there, but there was something else out there too. And he didn’t want to hear from it, whatever it was. Jumpy? You never saw jumpy till you saw Vaughn Thomas. Not running scared—sitting scared.”

  “You said he was a hater,” Dave said.

  Cecil nodded. “Niggers, Jews, Hispanics, Asians, you name it. Never to anybody’s face. Too many of all those people around him all day long in the television business, the advertising business. But on the quiet, with that creep Kellaher in scheduling—you should hear the so-called jokes. ‘How many blacks does it take to roof a house? Depends on how thin you slice ’em.’ You know the kind.”

  “To my sorrow,” Dave said. It was late at night. They sat on the long corduroy couch in the back building of the Horseshoe Canyon place. Shadows cast by a blaze in the big brick fireplace flickered in the rafters high above. They sat easy, legs stretched out. Dave sipped brandy, smoked, stared into the flames. “But haters make enemies.”

  “Just what I said. Vaughn Thomas dying by accident—I don’t buy it. I don’t care what Lieutenant Leppard says.”

  Dave sighed. “All right. I’ll go with you tomorrow.”

  Now tomorrow was today. After wrapping up at the Combat Zone, Cecil had gone with his crew back to the studios in the hills near Dodger Stadium. Dave had come here to the quiet streets of West L.A. He found a parking place for the Jaguar and stepped along a sidewalk toward an archway into a patio with a mossy fountain, shrubs, ferns, an olive tree. He climbed red-tile steps to a white stucco balcony and rang a doorbell. Its sound suggested the apartment was empty. Maybe Jemmie—that was the only name Cecil could give him for the young woman Vaughn had been living with—maybe she was at the mortuary. He turned away, and went down the steps, where a short, stocky man was sweeping the patio. His hair was gray, his round face pink, pleasant, unlined as a baby’s. He wore a faded Hawaiian shirt, ragged Bermuda shorts, sandals.

  Dave showed him his license and said, “I’m looking for Jemmie.”

  “She is gone.” He had a middle-European accent. “Yesterday, a well-dressed ge
ntleman like you came by at noon, and not more than twenty minutes later, she departed. Suitcase in one hand, little Mike in the other. She had not even changed her clothes or combed her hair. In blue jeans, she left, and one of those bulky sweaters they like to wear. She had phoned for a taxi. It was out there waiting.”

  “Gone for good?” Dave said.

  He blinked up at the apartment door. “She did not say.” He gazed at Dave with brown eyes innocent as a child’s. It crossed Dave’s mind that eyes like that would be worth a lot to a liar. “She took her clothes, and little Mike’s, but not Vaughn’s. I went up to see. His clothes are still there. Maybe she will return for those.” He grunted to himself, wagged his head. “Maybe not. He is dead, poor boy. Dead man’s clothes, what use would she have for these?”

  “She didn’t speak to you when she left?” Dave said.

  “Speak to me? She never thought of me.” He lifted his arm to point with the broom handle and Dave glimpsed a blue tattoo, a concentration camp number. “That is my apartment over there. She could have stopped. I saw her—I see a lot from there. That window is like an extra television set.” He went back to sweeping.

  “She didn’t tell you where she was going?”

  “No, no. She did not even look my way.” The broom whispered, the dry leaves whispered back. “I only learned later what it was about. On the TV news.” He glanced briefly at Dave. “Young Vaughn got shot, killed. The well-dressed gentleman must have brought Jemmie the bad news.”

  “You’d never seen him before?” Dave said.

  “I do not see everything. I have to sleep and eat.”

  “Did Jemmie look frightened?” Dave said.

  The man made a neat pile of the leaves, then moved off to another quarter of the patio to clean up there. Dave followed. “She looked frightened most of the time.”

  “You seem an easy man to talk to, friendly,” Dave said. “Did she ever tell you what she was frightened of?”

  He leaned the broom against the rough gray rim of the fountain and held out his hand. “Kaminsky.” He peered up with those soft, gentle eyes. “And you’d be … ?”

  “Brandstetter. What frightened her, Mr. Kaminsky?”

  “A man named Dallas, that is what I heard her call him.” Kaminsky got the broom again and took up sweeping. “Big tall brute—long hair, looked like he came out of the—the wilderness, what you call the backwoods.”

  Dave put the folder away. “He came here?”

  “Not long after Vaughn and Jemmie moved in.”

  “Had they come from the backwoods too?”

  “I don’t know where they came from, but they were in luck. It is not easy to find nice apartments in L.A. But the people who were going to take it never returned, so I had it empty and waiting the day Vaughn and the girl and her little boy showed up. He claimed they were husband and wife and Mike was his son—but it was a lie. Anyone could see that. Jemmie and Vaughn both had dark hair, dark eyes, delicate bones. You can tell even now—by the size of his hands—that Mike will grow up to be like Dallas, big and rangy. And blond—of course, that he is already.”

  “They weren’t married,” Dave said. “At least, on his job application at Channel Three he marked the ‘single’ box.”

  “Ja, well,” Kaminsky said, “who cares about such details today?” He chuckled, marveling. “What importance we once attached to matters of no meaning.”

  “We still do,” Dave said. “What did this Dallas want?”

  “Jemmie. And Mike. Jemmie came to the door. For a moment, they just talked, then she began to shout at him. And he shouted right back at her. Both of them waving their arms. Very excited.”

  “Particulars?” Dave said.

  “I could not hear.” Now Kaminsky walked away. Out of sight, around a corner. In a minute he was back with a large green plastic bag and a square of cardboard. “One must be discreet.” He knelt, pushed the sweepings onto the cardboard with the broom, and when Dave held the bag open for him, dumped them inside. With a small grunt, he rose and they repeated the process with the other three piles. “People are entitled to their privacy.” He picked up the bulging bag, gathered the opening, and put a spin on it, then wired it shut with a quick twist of his fingers. “But what I saw I saw, and soon Vaughn came to the door. Dripping water. He had been in the shower, no? From down here, with that balcony in the way, he appeared naked. But when Dallas threw him down those stairs”—Kaminsky nodded—“I saw that he had wrapped a towel around his hips. I ran to my door and shouted I was calling the police. And nothing more was required. Dallas gave me one look, ran down the stairs, jumped straight over Vaughn, and was across this patio and gone.”

  “Was Vaughn hurt?” Dave said.

  “Only his dignity.” Kaminsky grinned. “But this was foolish, was it not? I mean, a man of six feet five inches versus one of five feet six? It was no disgrace. But he was disgusted with himself. ‘Shall I call the police?’ I said.”

  “Well, that made him stop swearing. He said, ‘No thank you, Mr. Kaminsky. It was just a misunderstanding, among old friends.’”

  “Was he afraid of the police?” Dave asked.

  “The idea terrified him. That is what I think. I started to ask if Dallas was Jemmie’s husband, Mike’s real father.” Kaminsky picked up the trash bag and started off with it. “But I have managed apartments long enough to know better than to pry.”

  “That’s your guess, is it?” Dave called after him.

  “That is my guess.” Kaminsky once more disappeared around that corner. Dave waited. Then when he’d decided the interview was at an end, the man reappeared. “And it was not the last of this Dallas, either. He came back. Two or three times I saw him loitering in the neighborhood. Not an easy man to miss. The last time, Mike was out riding his plastic tricycle up and down the sidewalk, and I happened to glance out my front window, and here was Dallas, squatting down, talking to the child. I wasted no time. Immediately I went out there. And as soon as he saw me, he left. He had an old pickup truck with a camper on it. Got in this and rattled off. He did not return again. Not that I know of.”

  “Did you tell Jemmie about it?”

  “Of course, right away. She was in the laundry room. Turned white as the sheet she was folding, and ran out and fetched Mike and his wheels, and after that she never let him outdoors again, not unless she was with him.”

  “Was her last name Dallas?” Dave asked.

  Kaminsky shook his head. “She referred always to herself as Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Vaughn Thomas. She seemed proud of it.” Kaminsky glanced up at the closed door of the Thomas place. “A country girl, you know? Curious match. Vaughn wasn’t like this at all. College boy, rich boy. Spoiled. Sulky much of the time.” Kaminsky snorted. “He did not like me. He did not like my name. Always he sneered it, smirking. ‘Ka-min-sky.’ What do people like that think—that only people named Thomas have a right to be here?”

  “People like that don’t think.” Dave looked toward the archway and the street beyond. “A country girl. But you never asked her where she came from? She never told you?”

  Kaminsky scratched his forehead, thinking. “Horses,” he said at last. “She grew up around horses. That much she did say. And I believed her.” He gave a nod to himself and told Dave, “Girls crazy about horses are different, not just here in America, but all over the world. Did you ever notice that? A little bit—what shall I say—boyish?”

  “Dallas will know where she came from. He came from the same place.” Dave turned away, turned back. “You didn’t happen to get his license number, did you?”

  Kaminsky looked abashed. “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t feel bad.” Dave moved off. “I’ll find him.”

  “Wait.” Kaminsky hurried after him. “It had a bumper sticker. Shocking. A double lightning bolt, faded, peeling. Like the Waffen SS.” He stopped in front of Dave. “The TV news called Vaughn’s death an accident.” Plainly excited about being part of a murder investigation, he was also worri
ed, anxious. “You think Dallas killed him?”

  “I think it would be easy to walk into the Combat Zone carrying a real gun,” Dave said. “No one would notice.”

  2

  NGAWI SMITH UNFOLDED FROM his yellow cab in hinged lengths of white-clad leg that when he was fully upright had him towering over Dave. “No, sah,” he said happily, showing rows of terrific white teeth. He pushed an embroidered African cap back on his neatly barbered head. “I remember her because she was so frightened. She held on to the little boy in the back seat here”—he gestured with a long-fingered hand, as if Jemmie and Mike were still his passengers—“as if someone wanted to snatch him from her, and she kept looking out the rear window every few seconds, afraid we were being followed. ‘No one is following us,’ I told her. I would know, you see.” He bent his knees slightly, and for a moment used a shirttail to polish the mirror fastened to the door. “I always know when that is happening.”

  “Does it happen often?” Dave said. The sun glared off the pale yellow stucco of the Greyhound bus station at the beach and made him squint. Placa had been spray-painted on the stucco, in black, in red, as high as human arms could reach—messages, boasts, threats, in symbols and codes only gang members could read. There had been less of this the last time Dave had passed here. There was so much of it now, it was all tangled up. He expected it would soon be painted over. Again. “Are you followed a lot?”

  “When I am,” the tall black said, “I find a well-lighted place, a shopping mall parking lot maybe, and swing in there, and stop the cab, and get out, and open the door for the passenger, and order him out. I am not getting assassinated for the sake of a cab fare. There is a lot of shooting going on in the streets these days. And with these AK-47s and the other automatic rifles, everyone dies. Not just the target. They cannot really be controlled.”

  “You get a nice class of passenger,” Dave said.

  Smith raised and lowered his shoulders. “They look like anyone else. But their bags do not contain clothing. Drugs perhaps? Bundles of cash? Videotape masters? Who can say? They are almost always on their way to the airport. But if they wish to risk their lives in crime, that is no affair of mine. I dare not be killed or even wounded. I have a family in Nigeria, and it is my plan to save enough money to bring them here. My mother, my wife, my two children.”