Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels)

by Bill Pronzini

  “Do you own one?”

  “No. Arletta won’t have a gun in the house. I could buy one, I suppose. . . .”

  “Are you firearms qualified?”

  “If you mean have I ever fired a gun . . . no, never. I never liked them.”

  “Then don’t buy one.”

  “Then how can I protect my wife and myself?”

  “Notify the police, first thing. Stay home as much as you can, doors and windows locked. Keep a weapon handy, but not a gun.”

  “That’s all, for God’s sake?”

  “All that makes good sense, until your brother’s caught.”

  Madison said, “If he’s caught, if he doesn’t kill Arletta and me first,” and broke the connection.

  . . .

  Linkhauser Trucking was a small outfit shoehorned between a couple of larger businesses in an industrial area of Hayward. And none too prosperous, judging from the age of the trucks bearing the company name and the run-down condition of the warehouse building and its two loading bays. Hanging on, like so many small companies in the current economy.

  Bud Linkhauser had returned from his Central Valley run; Runyon had made sure he was on schedule before driving down the Peninsula and taking the Santa Mateo Bridge across the bay. Runyon found him on the loading dock, talking to one of his handful of employees. The two of them went inside the warehouse, into a corner where a forklift stood guard over a stack of empty pallets, to do their talking.

  You tend to think of truckers as big, beefy guys with potbellies and a gruff manner. Linkhauser didn’t fit the stereotype in any of those ways. Short, wiry, losing his hair and compensating for it with a mustache of the same brushy sort Runyon had worn until recently. Soft-spoken and cooperative.

  “Nothing much I can tell you,” Linkhauser said. “I haven’t seen Troy in . . . must be three years now.”

  “Have you been in touch with his brother or sister-in-law recently?”

  “No.”

  “So you didn’t know Troy had been arrested again.”

  “Not until you told me. Damn shame.”

  “But you did know he’s an addict.”

  “Meth user, yeah, that’s why I had to fire him,” Linkhauser said. “He showed up stoned a couple of times, didn’t show at all a few others. Unreliable. I got to have men on the job I can count on.”

  “And you knew he was selling drugs?”

  “Well . . . I heard that’s how he was supporting himself.”

  “How’d you hear?”

  “From Coy. He tried to get me to give Troy another chance to straighten himself out. I was willing, but the first day he was supposed to come back to work he never showed. After that, well, I just wrote him off. Damn shame, like I said. But what else could I do? I got a business to run and times are tough enough as it is.”

  “When was that?”

  “Three years ago. Last time I saw him.”

  Runyon said, “I understand you and the Madisons grew up together.”

  “Down in Bakersfield, right.”

  “Close friends?”

  “I wouldn’t say close,” Linkhauser said. “Hung out together sometimes.”

  “Were the brothers close?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice. Always arguing about something. Coy used to beat up on Troy sometimes.”

  “Coy did? Not the other way around?”

  “Nah. Thing about Troy, he’s a mild guy, you know? Shy, laid-back. Go out of his way to avoid a fight.”

  “And his brother was the opposite?”

  “Well, not exactly opposite. Coy’s okay until something gets him riled up. Got a temper. Piss him off some way, he’d go after you. That’s the way he was as a kid, anyhow.”

  “Troy have a short fuse, too?”

  “No. Real easygoing kid.”

  “Never retaliated when Coy beat on him?”

  “Not that I ever saw.”

  “Was Troy afraid of Coy?”

  “Seemed that way to me.”

  Runyon said, “Coy must care about his brother, if he tried to get you to help him straighten out.”

  “Wasn’t his idea. It was Troy’s.”

  “Is that right? Then why was Coy the one who contacted you?”

  “Troy asked him to,” Linkhauser said. “Too shy and ashamed to come to me himself. This was after one of the times he got busted for possession and I guess he figured it was time to get clean. But he was hooked too deep and it didn’t last. Went right back on the stuff.”

  “Would Coy help him on his own, do you think? If he’s in big trouble like he is now?”

  “Sure, probably.” Linkhauser frowned. “Help him run away, you mean?”

  “Or hide out.”

  “I can’t answer that, man. It’s been three years since I seen either of them, like I said. Who knows what people will do when push comes to shove?”

  “Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Coy did want to hide him out. Any place you know of where he might do that?”

  Linkhauser shook his head.

  Runyon said, “Do you know Jennifer Piper?”

  “Who? Oh, that chick Troy was living with. What he saw in a skank like her I’ll never understand.”

  “You know anything about her? Where she comes from, who her friends are?”

  “Uh-uh. I only met her once and Troy never talked about her.”

  “Know any of his friends?”

  “No. I never saw him with anybody except the skank.” Linkhauser paused, frowning again. “What’ll happen to Troy if you find him? I mean, how much time in prison will he do?”

  “Depends. Three or four years, maximum, if he’s convicted on the dealing charge.”

  “Better that than being a fugitive, getting himself in deeper trouble.”

  “Much better.”

  Linkhauser looked off toward the loading dock. Thinking about something, making up his mind. “If Coy is helping him . . . what happens to him?”

  “Harboring a fugitive is a felony,” Runyon said. “But it doesn’t have to come to that.”

  “You wouldn’t bring charges against him? Coy?”

  “Troy’s the man I’m after, not his brother. The quicker I find him, the better for everybody concerned.”

  “. . . Yeah. Okay, then. Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut, but . . . Coy and his wife own a piece of rental property. Or did, anyway—I think she might’ve inherited it. They let Troy stay there for a few weeks after he first moved up from Bakersfield, until he got a place of his own.”

  “Where’s this property located?”

  “Can’t tell you that. Might’ve been S.F., but I’m not sure. Troy mentioned it once, that’s how I know about it, but I didn’t pay much attention to where it was. For all I know, they could’ve sold it by now.”

  “You did the right thing by telling me about it.”

  “I hope so,” Linkhauser said. “It’s hard to know what’s best for other people, you know? Half the time I don’t even know what’s best for me and my family.”

  16

  Everett Belasco was doing some repair work on his front stoop: down on one knee, a trowel in his right hand and a tray of wet cement beside him. As soon as he saw Helen Alvarez and me coming up his front walk, he put the trowel down and got slowly to his feet.

  He looked at me, at Mrs. Alvarez, back at me. “Back again so soon? How come?”

  “I’ve been out talking to Charley Doyle,” I said.

  “Doyle? Why?”

  “I caught him in a lie. About Mrs. Abbott’s alleged ghost.”

  “You mean what happened last night? You don’t think Charley—?”

  “No, he wasn’t the man in the sheet. But he knew of her fancy about her dead husband’s ghost when I questioned him two days ago. She only had the notion Monday night, and he hadn’t talked to her since he fixed her broken window. Somebody else had to tell him about it.”

  “Who? Helen?”

  “No, not me,” she said. I hadn’t told her why we w
ere going to see Belasco—I wanted her along as a witness—but she was smart, a lot smarter than Doyle. Or Belasco, for that matter. From the hostile look she was directing at him, she’d already put two and two together. “I wouldn’t give that idiot the time of day.”

  I said, “Only one other person besides Mrs. Alvarez and me knew. You, Belasco. She mentioned it when we saw you in your garden Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Me? What about Leonard?”

  “I didn’t tell him until this morning,” Mrs. Alvarez said, “after that sheet nonsense. Or anyone else. Only you.”

  “And you think I told Charley Doyle? Why would I? I haven’t seen or talked to him in weeks.”

  I said, “When I got here this morning, you were on Mrs. Abbott’s porch. Did you go inside the house?”

  The sudden shift in questions bewildered Belasco. “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Just answer the question. Were you inside her house this morning?”

  Mrs. Alvarez answered it for him. “No, he wasn’t. Not while I was here.”

  “Wasn’t any reason for me to go in,” he said.

  “The last time you were in there was when?”

  “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “More than a few days?”

  “A lot longer than that.”

  “Do you own a cat?”

  “A cat?” Now I really had him off balance. “What’s a cat got to do with anything?”

  “Oh, quite a bit. You don’t own one, do you?”

  “No. I don’t like cats.”

  “Are you left-handed, Mr. Belasco?”

  “. . . What?

  “You heard me. Left-handed.”

  “No. Right-handed. What the hell—?”

  “That bandage on your right hand. This morning you said you cut yourself slicing bacon.”

  “That’s right. So what?”

  “When you’re doing something like that and the knife slips, the cut is almost always on the other hand, the one you’re holding the bacon with. Since when does a right-handed man slice a slab of bacon with the knife in his left hand?”

  Belasco was sweating now, in spite of the cold. “So maybe I’m ambidextrous. What’re you trying to imply?”

  “I’m not implying anything. I’m saying that what’s under that bandage isn’t a knife cut; it’s a bite.” I held out my hand, palm down, so he had a clear look at the shallow iodine-daubed punctures on the webbing between thumb and forefinger. “A cat bite, just like this one.”

  “No, no, you’re wrong—”

  “Take off the bandage and prove it to us.”

  “No!”

  “Doesn’t matter, I don’t need to see it to know it’s a fresh bite, not more than twelve hours old. From the same cat that bit me—Mrs. Abbott’s Spike.”

  Belasco shook his head mutely.

  “Spike is an indoor cat, never allowed outside. And he likes to nip strangers when they aren’t expecting it. Somebody comes into his house in the middle of the night, he goes to investigate; and if the somebody doesn’t like cats, he senses it and does more than just nip the intruder’s hand—he gives it a good chomp. Mrs. Abbott was woken up by Spike yowling and she thought it was because the intruder stepped on him. But the real reason he yowled so loud was you swatting or kicking him after he bit you.”

  “A poor defenseless animal,” Mrs. Alvarez said. “You ought to be kicked yourself, Ev Belasco, in a place that’ll do the most damage.”

  He ignored her. “Even if I was bitten by a cat, you can’t prove it was Spike. A neighborhood stray—”

  “Spike,” I said, “and the police lab can prove it. Test the bites on my hand and yours, match them to Spike’s teeth and saliva. Cat DNA doesn’t lie any more than human DNA does.”

  Belasco shook his head again, but not in denial. He knew he was caught; he’d have to be an idiot like Charley Doyle not to know it.

  “You’re not only the man in the sheet last night,” I said. “You’re the one who’s been harassing Mrs. Abbott all along. You live right here next door. Easiest thing in the world for you to slip over onto her property in the middle of the night. Hardly any risk at all.”

  Belasco said, “What reason would I have for hassling an old lady like Margaret?”

  “The obvious one—money. A cut of the proceeds from the sale of her property after she was dead or declared incompetent.”

  “That don’t make sense. I’m not a relative of hers—”

  “No, but Doyle is,” I said. “And you and Charley are buddies, play poker together regularly, have a few private drinks together. He’s not very bright and just as greedy as you are. Your brainchild, wasn’t it, Belasco? Inspired by that auction fiasco. ‘Hey, Charley, why wait until your aunt dies of natural causes—that might take years. Suppose we give her a heart attack, or drive her into an institution . . . either way you get immediate control of her property, then sell it to the Pattersons or some other real estate speculator for a nice fat profit. And I earn my cut by doing all the dirty work while you work up alibis to keep yourself in the clear.’ ”

  “Bastard!” Mrs. Alvarez said fiercely. “Dirty swine!”

  A trapped look had come into Belasco’s eyes. He stood poised and rigid now, massaging his bandaged hand with the other, as if he were thinking of breaking into a blind run. I hoped he would; I wouldn’t have minded popping him for Margaret Abbott’s sake.

  But he didn’t do it. After a few seconds he went all loose and saggy, as if somebody had cut his strings. He took a stumbling step backward, tripped over the lowest of the stairs, and sat down jarringly on the next one above. Then he put his head in his hands.

  “I never done anything wrong before in my life,” he said. “Never. But the bills been piling up, it’s so goddamn hard to live these days, and they been talking about laying people off where I work and I was afraid I’d lose my house . . . ah, God, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Derisive snort from Helen Alvarez. Nothing from me. I’d heard that kind of self-pitying, self-justifying explanation for criminal behavior too many times before.

  Belasco lifted his head, aimed a moist, beseeching look at my client. “I never meant for Margaret to die, Helen. You got to believe that. Just force her out of there so Charley could take over the house, that’s all. I like her, she’s been a good neighbor. I never meant to hurt her.”

  Mrs. Alvarez wasn’t buying any of that. She called him a couple more names, one of which surprised me and made him cringe. He hid his face in his hands again.

  Another small mind at work. Half-wits and knaves, fools and assholes—more of each than ever before, proliferating like weeds in what had started out as a pristine garden. It’s a hell of a world we live in, I thought. A hell of a mess we’re making of the garden.

  Helen Alvarez and I left Belasco sitting there on his stoop—he wasn’t going anywhere; he had no place to go and he knew it—and went in to gently break the news to Margaret Abbott. I thought it might be a difficult job, that she’d be shocked and upset hearing that her nephew and a longtime neighbor had both betrayed her trust, but she took it better than I’d expected. I guess maybe you get philosophical about most things, even the evils in the world, when you’re eighty-five. Mrs. Alvarez had been and still was considerably more outraged than Mrs. Abbott.

  While we were talking, Spike came into the room and hopped up on Mrs. Abbott’s lap. She said, stroking him, “You’re a hero, dear. Yes, you are.” Then she sighed and asked me, “Will both Charley and Everett go to prison?”

  “If you press charges against them, they’ll probably get some jail time.”

  “For how long?”

  “Breaking and entering, trespassing, malicious destruction of property, intent to defraud, intent to inflict bodily harm . . . with a strict judge, they could each get three years or more.”

  “Oh. That seems like a long time.”

  “Not long enough, if you ask me,” Helen Alvarez said. “Not nearly long enough.”
r />   “Do I have to press charges against them?”

  The question surprised Mrs. Alvarez. She said, “Of course you do, Margaret. After what they put you through? How could you not press charges?”

  “I don’t know. Three years behind bars . . .”

  “Margaret, listen to me; you can’t just let them walk away from this. What if they try something like it again? They could, you know. They’re just stupid and venal enough, both of them.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But still . . .”

  My cell phone, with its burbling ringtone, interrupted the discussion. Inconvenient as usual, but at least this time I wasn’t in the car driving.

  Tamara. “I’ve got that name you asked for this morning. Z.U. at Whitney Middle School.”

  “Hold on a minute.” I excused myself, went out onto the front porch. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Zachary Ullman. He’s the only Z.U. at the school.”

  “What’s his record like?”

  “Clean,” she said. “Never been in trouble. Not even so much as a parking ticket.”

  “Parking ticket? A middle school student can’t be old enough to drive.”

  “He’s not a student. Is that what you thought?”

  “What is he, then?”

  “He’s a teacher,” Tamara said. “History and social studies. Been at Whitney eleven years.”

  My God. The tin box, the cocaine . . . one of Emily’s teachers!

  17

  TAMARA

  Third time roaming around the Western Addition was the charm.

  One light brown five-year-old Buick LeSabre parked on Steiner Street a block and a half from Psychic Readings by Alisha.

  She’d left work early, headed over to the neighborhood again—compulsive about it now—and her figuring had finally paid off. Fresh excitement made her thump the steering wheel with her fist. She hunted up a parking space for the Toyota, hurried back to the Buick. The right front fender hadn’t been visible when she drove by, but she knew it would be scraped and dinged, and it was. No question this was Lucas’s car.

  She looked both ways along the street. A few pedestrians, but no familiar black face. First thing, she noted the license plate number and quickly wrote it down. Then, casually, as if she owned the damn thing, she tried the passenger side door. Locked. She bent to peer through the window. Front seat: empty. Backseat: empty except for a light jacket that she didn’t recognize. Another check of the passersby, and around to the driver’s door. Also locked. So no chance at whatever ID items, such as an insurance card, he might keep in the dash compartment.