Death Bed
Page 10
Renn wasn’t trying to be funny, he was trying to be Brecht. I put a stop to it. “Turn it off, Renn. Save it for your next quatrain. I want to know about Karl Kottle. If you don’t talk to me now, the next guy that rings your bell will be a cop. And he may just solicit you and your tummy right down to the Hall of Justice.”
I wasn’t about to call a cop, of course, not at this stage of the game, but Renn didn’t know that. The satiric glint in his eye flew away soundlessly and his eyes narrowed. One hand rose to his chest, balled into a fist, then opened again, a pink and mutant morning glory. His mouth opened and closed as well, fishlike.
I waited. “You are Howard Renn, aren’t you?” I asked finally. “I’d hate to think I put up with all this for nothing.”
Renn hesitated, then nodded.
“You were in school at Berkeley ten years ago?”
“Yes. No. For a while, I mean. Nothing relevant was occurring in the classroom in those days. The only true knowledge was in the streets.” Renn paused, shaking his head. His eyes looked past me. “Have you been there lately?”
“Berkeley?”
“Yes. The streets are empty. Did you notice? People selling belts and tie-dyed underwear. Sproul Plaza groans with the verbs of commerce. I never thought it could happen. I never thought that what we did would disappear so quickly.” Renn laughed hollowly. “I had a girl here the other night. She thought Mario Savio was a varietal wine. I could have strangled her. My God. Karl shed blood on University Avenue. There should be a monument on the spot. Instead they sell strawberry smoothies.”
Renn’s eyes moved away from mine, became glazed exemplars of his dismay at the nation’s terminal inadequacy. When they found me again they were softer, less wary.
“Tell me about Karl,” I said easily.
I had tried to slip in under his defenses but I hadn’t quite made it. He began to pant. His brows jumped simultaneously, again and again, like window wipers. White bubbles gathered at the corners of his mouth. He swiped at them twice with the back of his hand. “Who are you?” he asked.
“My name’s Tanner. I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for Karl Kottle. You know where he is.” I made it a statement, a charge.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
Renn shook his head in a second denial. Suddenly a voice came from somewhere inside the house, somewhere deep and below ground, from the sound of it. “Is that Woody? If not, get rid of her.” Renn turned toward the sound, then back to me. He seemed fearful.
“Leave. Go. I know nothing of Karl Kottle. I write poetry. Sonnets. Laments. Epics. Haiku. I know nothing that would interest a man like you. Please leave.”
“You’re lying. You mentioned Karl just a minute ago, when you were talking about the old days in Berkeley. When did you see him last?”
“I told you. I’ve never seen him. I don’t know who you mean.” His eyes went back to the interior behind him.
“Come on, Renn,” I urged. “You and Kottle are in the history books. You ate at Robbie’s, you orated on the steps at Sproul Hall, you stomped down Telegraph Avenue like moral conquistadors. Kottle was Quixote and you were Sancho Panza. Don’t play games with me.”
In the silence I altered my tone. “There’s nothing to worry about, Renn. I simply want to give Kottle a message. We don’t even have to meet. Just have him call me. Tanner. I’m in the book under ‘Investigators.’ Here’s my card.”
“No,” he said. “No.”
With the flush of panic on his face he knocked the card from my hand and slammed the door. The white card fluttered off the porch and drifted toward the lawn, lurching spastically, a wounded gull over a small green sea. I watched it come to rest on the grass; it landed upside down. I walked back to my car.
Howard Renn was lying. I was so certain of it that I drove down to where Edgewood dead-ended into a eucalyptus grove and turned around and parked again, hoping Renn would rush out and drive off and I could tail him to Karl Kottle, just like in the movies.
It didn’t happen. The eucalyptus choir sang an a cappella canticle as I waited beneath it. Time drifted by, tugging behind it a sky that was a blackboard in need of erasure. The sidewalks and the street were as barren as bread.
I squirmed around, trying to keep warm, then squirmed again. As I did so I looked out the window to my left, directly across the street. A woman was looking at me, a young woman in an old Mustang. A seaman’s watch cap hid her hair and gave her a masculine, Dickensian aspect. With wide blue eyes she examined me frankly, filing my face away in an already bulging file of faces.
I raised my eyebrows in a question. She looked away for a moment, then opened her car door and came over to my own. I rolled down the window.
“She was there, wasn’t she?” the woman asked. The voice was nasal, ill.
“She’s everywhere,” I cracked. “Who are you talking about?”
“I know she’s there. I was late today, but I know she’s in there. She probably spent the night.”
“Lady, who are you?”
She put her hands on her hips, stretching her sweater tautly along her slim body, and thrust her chest forward, challenging me. “You were in Howard’s place. I saw you. You must have seen her. Why won’t you help me?”
Incipient hysteria upped the last question an octave above her normal range. I raised a hand to back her up, then got out of the car. She was shivering, from equal parts cold and anger. Abruptly, she broke into tears. I put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled back for an instant, then sobbed and pressed against me. I put my arms around her and tried to make my chest a comfortable place to be.
When the convulsions stopped I asked her who she was. “I’m Judy Renn,” she stuttered. “Howard’s wife. He’s divorcing me. He has our child. He took her from me. I want her back.”
“He kidnapped her?”
“No, not exactly. He got his lawyer to get some preliminary something-or-other. My lawyer says if I take her they’ll put me in jail.”
“He’s probably right.”
“He says the only thing I can do is prove I’m a fit parent and he isn’t. He says women’s lib has made it harder for women to keep their babies.”
“He’s probably right about that, too.”
“I can’t let Howard win. He’s such a slob. So totally irresponsible. I can’t let him do this to me, not on top of all the rest of it.”
“What’s the rest of it?”
“The years, all the years. We lived on nothing for ages. Howard wrote those stupid poems and spent his nights hanging around bars and coffeehouses, while I worked my tail off. Three different jobs at once, sometimes. Howard never lifted a finger. His art was all. Art. Garbage, is more like it. How could I have been such a fool?”
“Love.”
“I know, I know.” She shook her head miserably.
“But what happened?” I asked. “The place he’s in now isn’t exactly a hovel.”
“His father died. A dentist. Howard inherited everything, including that house.” She laughed quickly at herself. “I was still stupid even then. I planted every one of those damned petunias. Can you believe it?”
“Are you okay now?”
She nodded. “Thanks for the squeeze.”
“Do you come here every day?” I asked, suddenly aware that this woman could help me a little, too.
“When I can.”
“You’re collecting evidence of his unfitness, is that it?”
“Now that he’s got money the fat slob has those Union Street women crawling all over him. I’m making a list and taking pictures. I’ve got to beat him.”
“A detective would do it better.”
“I can’t afford a detective.”
“You’re probably better off, at that.” I took out the picture of Karl Kottle that Max had given me and showed it to her. “You ever see this guy in your husband’s place?”
She took the picture from me and turned it to the streetlight and studied it fo
r a minute. She frowned, then handed it back. “That’s Karl, isn’t it? He’s changed quite a bit, but that’s Karl. Karl Kottle. Isn’t it?”
I nodded. “When did you see him last?”
“I’ve seen him lots. He used to come over for dinner, when I was with Howard. He was so sick, I always liked giving him a good meal.”
“How was he sick?”
“I’m not sure. He just looked real weak and all. I tried to fatten him up, but it didn’t work. I haven’t seen him since I left Howard, though.”
“You know where Karl lives now?”
A siren suddenly squealed into life up at the medical center and Judy Renn started and stepped away from me. “I think I’m getting into something here,” she said suspiciously. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Nobody.”
“Welcome to the club. I don’t think I’d better talk to you anymore, Mister Nobody.”
She turned and walked rapidly toward her car. I yelled for her to wait but she just increased her speed. As she opened the door she thanked me for the shoulder to cry on. The door of the Mustang slammed, squashing my source. She slumped down in the seat, her eyes on the side mirror, spying on her future.
I got back in my car and started the engine. Just then Howard Renn and another man came out and got in a blue Volvo and drove off. I tagged along, just like in the movies.
FOURTEEN
I skulked along behind Renn and his friend as they lurched through the city, trailing taillights through rainy streets the way I used to trail rabbits through snowy fields when I was a kid and my grandfather had a farm and a shotgun and taught me to use them both. Like everything else, it seemed more fun when I was young.
As it turned out, Renn was going my way. After driving to the foot of Mission Street he pulled into a parking lot between Steuart and the Embarcadero and got out. As I watched, the two of them went halfway down Steuart and turned into the back door of a building and disappeared.
I still hadn’t gotten a good look at the guy with Renn. He was big and curly-haired and wore a red lumber jacket and jeans. As far as I could tell he was no one I knew.
I found a place to park and went around to the front and counted off the buildings. The one they’d gone into was Cicero’s, the bar where Karl Kottle used to hang out, according to Amber. Things were heating up.
There were several reasons why I shouldn’t have gone inside, most of them having to do with secrecy and surprise, but there was one good reason why I should: I still didn’t have any idea where Karl Kottle was, and someone in there very likely did. I pushed open the door.
It was dark inside, bar-dark. A line of men sat side by side, each separated from the other by a barstool’s worth of space and time, which in places like Cicero’s is all the space and time there is.
At the far end two women, one young and one old, held hands and whispered over two glasses of headless beer. The bartender stood beneath a Hamm’s sign, polishing a stem glass with a limp cloth. He probably hadn’t poured anything into a stem glass in a decade. High in the back of the room a black-and-white television set showed some people dressed like vegetables jumping up and down and hugging a man wearing a blue suit that was shiny and a condescending grin that wasn’t. If the sound was on I couldn’t hear it.
There were some booths along the wall opposite the bar, and a row of tables in between. Two heads were visible above the backs of the far booth. The one facing me belonged to Howard Renn.
I walked over to the bar. The floor made crackling noises beneath my feet, the cry of shrinking souls. I edged onto a stool. For the next five minutes the only sound I heard was the white noise of despair, made up of a lot of other people’s tones and a few of my own.
Finally the bartender walked down toward where I was sitting. He was tall and slim and his skin was as white as a cueball just out of the box. He had the air of haughty aloofness bartenders learn about the same time they learn how to mix a Tequila Sunrise without looking it up. “What’ll it be?” he asked casually.
“Beer. In the bottle.”
“We wash our glasses.”
“I’ll still take the bottle.”
“Bud?”
“Fine.”
He went back to the Hamm’s sign and bent down and came back up with a tall brown bottle and flipped off the cap and set it on the bar. I pretended not to get the hint that he wanted me to come and get it. He swore under his breath and grabbed the bottle and came back to my end and banged it down in front of me. I handed him a ten and told him he could keep it all if he’d give me a couple of minutes of his time.
He glanced quickly down the bar. When he didn’t see anything that hadn’t been there for at least an hour he folded his arms and leaned against the counter across from me. The bottle of Galliano behind him made him seem pinheaded.
“My name’s Tanner,” I began quietly.
“Phil.”
“Nice place, Phil.”
“It’s okay.”
“You own it?”
“Nope.”
“Been working here long?”
“Nine years next month.”
“Who’s the owner?”
“You a cop?”
“No.”
“Health Department?”
“No.”
“Beverage Control?”
“Private investigator.”
“No kidding.”
“No kidding.”
He unfolded his arms. “Who you after?”
“Guy named Kottle. Know him?”
His eyes boiled hard, then rolled toward the back of the room and then rolled back to me. “Kottle. Never heard of him. Any reason I should?”
I shrugged. “I heard he used to hang out here.”
“Why you want him?”
“If he’s the Kottle I think he is, he’s going to come into some money. Rich aunt died up in Red Bluff. Executor hired me to find her heirs.”
The barman laughed, loudly and without humor. “How many times a month you figure I hear that line? Huh? Christ, you collection guys are all alike.”
I smiled. “Okay. No rich aunt. I’m not a collection agent, though. I think Kottle would want to talk to me. Where can I find him?”
“Beats me, buddy. Thanks for the ten.”
The bill slipped out of sight beneath his palm and he walked back down the bar, chuckling to himself. The line of men didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t breathe, didn’t exist. The barman poured some cheap bar whisky into a cheap shot glass and set it in front of the third man from the end. The man stared at it the way people stare at their own blood.
I stayed where I was and drank my beer. The two women slid off their stools and moved to the door, still whispering and still holding hands. By the time they got outside the older woman was crying. A while later a kid in a gray sweat shirt and jeans came in, looked around, and took the stool the old woman had vacated. A while later another man came in and sat in a booth facing me. He stared my way for a minute, his gaze parting the gloom like a comb. He was young, thirties, with blond hair and bright blue eyes, the left seeming larger than the right. His face was thin, his neck long, his shoulders narrow and sloped. He could have been Karl Kottle in disguise and he could have been someone I would never see again or want to.
I drained the bottle. An old woman shuffled in, a different one, scraping her soles in the grit, muttering to herself every step of the way. She didn’t sit anywhere, but stood in the middle of the room, staring at the floor, her hair matted and caked, her chin wet with spittle. No one paid any attention to her and no one paid any attention to me. When she left she took my interest with her.
“Think it over,” I called down to the bartender, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the place. “I know Kottle comes in here. It’s worth money for a lead to him. Good money. Pass the word. The name’s Tanner.”
If anyone heard what I said they didn’t show it. I looked in the mirror behind the bar, at the reflection of Renn and his frie
nd, but didn’t get either the reaction or the glimpse of the friend I was hoping for. I was about to go over and sit down with them, to pour a little salt on whatever open wound I could find, when suddenly Renn stood up and waved his arms back and forth. “Split!” he yelled. “Take off!”
I spun around on my stool and almost fell off it. Over in the doorway a short blond girl and a taller black-haired man were running outside, their backs to me, the man tugging the girl along behind him like a kite he was trying to get airborne.
I took off after them, stumbling a bit as my foot caught in the stool next to me. “How about the beer?” the bartender yelled after me. I told him to take it out of the ten. He told me what to do to myself.
By the time I got to the street the man wasn’t in sight. I could have gone looking for him, and I probably would have, if I hadn’t spotted the girl climbing into a little white Triumph that was parked next to a freeway piling. I waited until I saw her pull out into the Embarcadero heading north, then ran to my car. I drove after her, hoping the traffic would hold her up enough so that I could catch her. By the time she turned west on Bay Street I had.
The rush-hour traffic stuttered along beside me like a flock of palsied sheep, bleating regularly but hopelessly, oblivious of their fate. The air inside my car grew noxious, making my nose itch. The people in the cars around me did this every day. If you asked them why, they’d have a reason.
All of a sudden I felt lonely. My home was just above me, on Telegraph Hill. I wanted to go up there and slip into something warm and comfortable, like a Marquand novel or a rerun of “The Rockford Files.” I blinked and kept on driving.
It was slow going. When she turned onto Marina Boulevard I figured we were heading over the Golden Gate, and I was right. Twenty minutes later, when she took the Sausalito exit, I figured she was going somewhere I had been before. I was right about that, too.