by Ron Goulart
“But I already memorized the tree swinging part, Mr. Segal,” said the black child. “I was up most of the night preparing, feeling what it would be like. Planning out my movements and reactions.”
“Did you plan to fall on your ass, too?” asked Marylee.
“Kids, kids,” cautioned Ned Segal as he walked carefully down through the tombstones toward Easy. Segal gestured at a pretty Chinese girl who was standing next to one of the cameras with a bundle of scripts clutched to her breasts. “Talk to Marylee, will you, Gina? Explain professionalism to her.”
“I’m John Easy,” Easy said, shaking hands.
“I don’t think I can help you much, Easy,” Segal told him. “Still, as I told your secretary, I’m happy to try. I can’t give you more than ten or fifteen minutes right now. We’re running behind schedule on this commercial.” He was a lean man of thirty, nearly bald, wearing round-framed dark glasses.
Easy watched the frolicking children. “I’m trying to figure out what you’re selling.”
Segal lifted the dark glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “The cemetery itself. I’m doing a minute TV spot for Peaceable Kingdom #2.” He lowered the glasses and called, “Bobby, get off the fountain. Kid actors are a bigger pain than grownup actors.” He walked further downhill and sat on a curb. “As you may have noticed, Easy, this place isn’t doing too well. Only fifteen burials in the five months it’s been in operation. Not that you’re interested, but it’s quite a challenge technically to give the impression you’ve got a crowded popular cemetery when you’ve only fifteen marked graves to play with. Takes a good cameraman to fake it. Larry, I meant it about the tree. Stay on the ground.”
“Why the kids?”
“You probably haven’t thought about the problem, but a cemetery is a tough thing to sell visually, on television,” explained the bald young man. “I can’t come right into your living room and sock you between the eyes with a shot of some poor schmuck being dropped into a grave. No, I’ve got to work some magic, romance the idea. We’ve got more old people in LA than probably anywhere in the country, so there’s a fat market for burials. I’ve got to make that audience prefer Peaceable Kingdom #2, demand it. It’s trickier than making some boob think of my brand of tuna when he’s roaming around the supermarket. No, I’ve got to make the consumer practically ask for Peaceable Kingdom #2 with his dying breath.” He smiled and nodded at the young actors up the hill. “Everybody likes kids. Put them in a cemetery, show them enjoying themselves. What’s more alive than kids? Thousands of little old ladies are going to think Peaceable Kingdom #2 is a nice place.” He lifted the glasses and rubbed at his eyes again. “I’ve only got one real worry.”
“Which is?”
“Earthquakes,” said Segal. “The last big earthquake and part of the hill over there fell down into the ocean. People get funny ideas. They don’t want to be buried someplace where they think an earthquake will come along and dump them in the ocean.” He touched the crystal of his wristwatch without looking at it. “I’m sure you didn’t come out here to talk shop with me.”
Easy seated himself on the curb near Segal. “You knew Jackie McCleary.”
“Yes, very well.” Segal pointed toward the just visible ocean. “I was thinking about her this morning, what with your secretary’s call. Yes, right down there we all used to hang out. Only five years ago. If she’d lived, maybe I’d be hiring her to do a commercial for me. She wanted to act. We all promised each other we’d give all the others jobs when we made it. Kid stuff.”
“You have no doubt about her being dead?”
Segal frowned. “No. Should I?”
“You weren’t on the yacht trip, though.”
“No, I couldn’t go,” said Segal. “Many times since I wish I had. I was pretty close to Jackie. She might have talked to me before she tried anything.”
“Why did she kill herself?”
“You must have read a copy of the note she left behind.”
“She said she was tired of life. Not too specific.”
Segal exhaled and set his clipboard on the grass. “Well, I think mostly it was that damn father of hers. He pressured her a lot, confused her. She was an only child and she grew up feeling anything she wanted to do was somehow wrong.”
Easy asked, “Was there something particular she wanted to do then, something McCleary tried to stop?”
“Not that I know. Why?”
Easy said, “What about Booth Graither?”
“Graither? The guy they found the other day out on San Obito?”
Easy showed Segal the photo of the San Amaro gang. “There he is next to Jackie.”
Segal flipped up his glasses and squinted at the picture. “Hey, look at the hair I had then.” He stroked his bare scalp. “In only five years it went. Everybody in my family is like that, even one of my aunts went bald. Graither? Yeah, I remember him.”
“What was his relationship with Jackie?”
“I suppose she was dating him,” said Segal. “Jackie was sort of promiscuous, in a way. Girls with fathers like hers often are. I ought to know, I had a wife like that for nearly two years. I suppose she was dating him in a casual way.” He shook his head several times. “Easy, I doubt she’d spend too much time with an embezzler and a jewel thief like Graither.”
“Embezzler and jewel thief?”
“Isn’t that what Graither was, more or less? According to the Times.”
“More or less,” said Easy. “Someone has written to Frederic McCleary. Someone claiming to be Jackie.”
“What the hell for?”
“I’m trying to find that out. Has anyone been in touch with you?”
“No. I don’t keep up with the old gang much at all. I’ve been married twice since then. I started my own small advertising shop, specializing in television commercials, about four years back. No, I haven’t seen any of them really. Everybody changes. At twenty-five you’re one thing, at thirty something else.”
“Who might be pretending to be Jackie?”
“You haven’t told me why they’re doing it.”
“To get McCleary out of his house for a day probably. There may be more to it. More to come.”
“They wrote what? Letters, in handwriting?”
“Right. I’m having the handwriting checked now.”
Segal said, That’s funny. It just occurred to me. Could Jackie be alive? I guess they never found her body. I never heard they did.”
“They didn’t.”
Segal took his round-rimmed glasses completely off and dropped them on the grass next to the clipboard. “That would be funny. Jackie alive. Alive all this time.” He looked directly at Easy. “I take it you’re working for Jackie’s father.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I’m still trying to find out who sent the letters.”
“All that exists is letters really. No one has seen Jackie?”
“No one I’ve talked to yet.”
Segal put his dark glasses back on and picked up the clipboard. “It’s all something to think about, Easy,” he said. “Right at the moment, though, I don’t think I know a darn thing that would help you. You can be sure I’m going to keep thinking. I’ll communicate anything that occurs to me. A promise.” He stood up. “Gina, don’t let them push the tombstones like that. Bobby, you knocked the thing all lopsided. Now it won’t match the other shots. Gina, get that damn tombstone straight.” He smiled absently at Easy. “I’d better go back to work.”
Easy watched Segal hurry back uphill to the cameras and the cockeyed tombstone.
IX
THE BIG, SUNBURNED MAN poked his tennis racket toward Easy, aiming for his stomach. “What is it you want?” He was in white shorts and a white pullover, and he had splotchy freckles and sun blisters speckling his broad face. His racket was in a wood and metal press, and he smelled as though he’d just finished playing.
“Win your match?” Easy asked. They were both st
anding in an aisle of bleachers above the courts of the Floradena Community Country Club.
“What business is it of yours?”
The tall blonde sitting in the aisle seat said, “He lost. 6-0, 6-2.”
The sunburned man made another jab at Easy with the racket and one of the nuts on the press made a small rip in Easy’s jacket. “Just shut up, Perry. Just shut up.” He scowled at Easy. “I asked you who you were. Are you that son of a bitch private eye?”
“I’m a private investigator,” Easy said. “Which son of a bitch did you have in mind?”
“We don’t want to talk to anybody,” said the sweating man. “I’ve got enough problems. Taking a whole day off from the studio to play in this tournament and then getting trounced by some, I don’t know, some chicano.”
“He’ll probably turn into,” said the blonde, “another Pancho Gonzales, Bud. Someday you’ll be able to brag about this.” “Keep your nose out, Perry.”
To the seated blonde Easy said, “I’m John Easy. My secretary set up an interview. I can talk to you later if you’d like.”
“Why don’t you take a running jump for yourself?” said Bud Burley.
Perry Burley reached out and caught her angry husband’s sleeve. “Buddy hates to lose. Relax, Bud. I can talk to you now, Mr. Easy.” The silver setting of her turquoise ring sparkled once in the early afternoon sun.
Burley gave Easy another scowl and white, sunburned skin flaked off his forehead. “Okay, Perry. I’ll go take a shower. I’m sorry I lost the God damn tennis match. I’m sorry I disgraced you in front of your peers.”
His pretty wife stroked his sweater arm against the grain. “We’ll be down in the bar, Buddy. If you get over your grump.”
“Bullshit,” said Burley. “I might as well go back out to the studio and work overtime on the God damn bunny rabbits. We can use a little extra dough.” He made a final half-hearted jab in Easy’s direction, turned and tromped away down the wooden stairs.
“You’re not like a policeman, are you?” asked Perry, standing. “You can drink on duty?”
“I have that option, yes.”
She scooped up a straw handbag and a pair of binoculars and, as soon as her husband disappeared into shadows, led Easy below.
On the asphalt court two nearly identical tanned brunettes were playing. “Your husband’s in the animation business?” Easy asked.
“Yes. Do you think that may account for his behavior?” She motioned him down a rubber-matted alleyway. “Bud is somewhat like a big cartoon bear, now that I think about it. He’s usually very nice, though, so long as he’s winning.”
The cocktail lounge was a large, sparsely furnished room, filled with deep shadows and sunlight turned blue by the long, high, tinted windows. The air conditioning had chilled the place. Perry stopped next to a round-topped table and waited for Easy to pull out one of the chairs for her. Easy sat opposite the blonde.
After a few seconds, Perry said, “As I understand it from what your secretary implied, Mr. McCleary is in some kind of trouble. Is that it?”
“He thinks Jackie has come back to life.”
The blonde turned to watch the bar across the chill blue room. The bartender was a hollow-chested man in a red coat a size too large. He had a ladder of three Band-Aids running up the left side of his neck. He was telling a story to a man in tennis clothes and ignoring Perry’s glance. “What do you mean, Mr. Easy. Has he had some kind of breakdown?”
“Jackie wrote him a letter.” Easy stared at the bartender and the man looked over, then came toward their table. “Mailed it in the town of Manzana.”
“I’m not feeling so good today,” explained the bartender. “I had a series of warts removed today.”
“Oh,” said Perry, “that’s too bad, Eddie. Was it painful?”
“No, Mrs. Burley, but it left me an unsightly mess.” Eddie fingered the bandages. “The usual?”
“Yes. Mr. Easy?”
“Draft beer.”
Eddie moved off and Perry said, “I don’t quite understand, Mr. Easy. You mean Jackie’s actually been in communication with her father?”
“Would that be possible, do you think?”
Perry jabbed her right hand into her straw bag and brought out a pack of slim cigarettes. “I really ought to stop. I got Bud to stop, not that it’s helped his game any.” She tapped the pack on the table edge and a cigarette shot out. Rolling it along the tabletop with her fingertip, she said, “Jackie McCleary has been dead since the summer of 1965. I was on the yacht, as I’m sure you know.”
“No one saw her jump.”
“She jumped, though,” said Perry. “The poor kid. No, she’s dead, Mr. Easy. Dead and gone.”
“Why would someone want to make her father think she’s alive?”
“He already thinks she’s alive.” The blonde snapped up the cigarette and put it to her lips. “I’ve kept in touch with him. You know, called him now and then. Sometimes, when he’s been especially down or been drinking overly much, he calls me. Buddy can’t stand that. Calls him an old son of a bitch.” She lit the cigarette for herself and sighed smoke. “I really ought to stop.”
Easy looked from the turquoise ring to Perry’s blue gray eyes. “Suppose somebody wrote McCleary a letter to lure him out of his house for a day or so. What would be in the house, or in Jackie’s cottage, do you think?”
“Mr. McCleary would know better than I do.”
“Would it, maybe, be something Booth Graither gave Jackie before he was killed?”
The pretty blonde inhaled, exhaled, narrowed one eye. “Booth Graither was never one of us, Mr. Easy. Has someone told you he was?”
“I’ve seen pictures. He was close to Jackie, down in San Amaro,” said Easy. The bandaged Eddie brought their drinks.
“Sorry the tray is all bunged up,” he said as he served.
“Are you sure you ought to be working, Eddie?” Perry asked.
“You have to have more than warts removed before they let you have a day off around here.” He went back to the bar and resumed his anecdote.
Easy said, “Do you know the Manzana area?”
Perry replied, “Bud and I spent a few days there once. Years ago.”
“Not since? Not this month around the 21st?”
“No,” she said. “Bud’s been very busy at the studio. And he was out with the flu for a few days. We haven’t had any time for a desert vacation.”
“Did Jackie ever write you letters?”
“You mean lately?”
“When she was alive.”
Perry pursed her lips around the tip of the slim cigarette. “I don’t think so. I was very close to her, you know, back then. Stayed overnight at her place. We got to know each other pretty well. I can’t remember she ever went anywhere far enough away to call for sending me a letter.”
“Who got her effects when she died?”
“Her father, of course.”
“Did he go down to San Amaro and gather them up?”
“No,” said Perry. “As a matter of fact, Ned Segal and I got Jackie’s keys and, once we were allowed to, packed up everything and delivered it to Mr. McCleary.” She jabbed the cigarette out in the blue ceramic ashtray. “I really would like to help you, Mr. Easy. Because Jackie was a dear friend of mine and I still feel concern for her father. I’m honestly afraid I don’t have any idea who would play such a cruel joke on an old man.”
Easy was sitting with his wide shoulders narrowed and his chin resting on both fists. He watched her awhile longer. “It’s been very interesting,” he said, “hearing your version of what happened. I’ll be talking to you again.”
“Please do, if you feel you have to,” she replied. “Though I won’t have anything more to tell you.” She shook herself out a new cigarette. “I really ought to quit. By the way, you say Mr. McCleary has no idea what someone might want to steal from him? Granted that theft is what’s behind this cruel trick.”
“No,” said Easy. “I�
�ve asked him to think about it.”
Perry lowered her head and her voice. “Would you mind paying for the drinks, Mr. Easy? I’d like to treat you, but our tab here is quite enormous already. Bud will growl and snap if it gets too much bigger.”
“Sure.” Easy slid back his chair and reached out his wallet.
“So you’ve been calling on all our old beach crowd. What has five years done to them?”
“The same thing it does to everybody.” Easy stood and went to the bar. He waited until the injured Eddie came to a punch line and paid the tab.
Outside the afternoon had a prickly feel and the sky was blurring from blue to a sooty yellow. Easy strolled to the parking lot and went down a row of cars toward his weathered Volkswagen.
“Hey, you son of a bitch.” The rumbling motor of a sports car had started some place to his right.
When Easy reached an exit lane between rows of country club cars he saw Bud Burley. The red-skinned man was in a tan Triumph TR 6 and coming fast toward him.
Easy backtracked and the bumper of a parked station wagon hit his legs and made them buckle somewhat. He swung out one arm to catch his balance.
Burley’s TR 6 growled straight at him. The big man’s face was contracted with anger and looked like a red fist. At the last instant he swerved his car and missed hitting Easy. “Son of a bitch.” He laughed.
Easy leaped straight out, got hold of Burley and swung himself around and into the passenger seat of the open car. He snapped out a hand and clicked off the ignition.
The TR 6 coughed and kept rolling, its engine silent. Burley tugged at the wheel and footed the brake. Not soon enough to keep from sideswiping the silver grille of a new Mercedes 220S. Both cars made raw scraping sounds, and flecks of gray paint flurried up and spattered Burley. “Stupid bastard, look what you made me do,” he shouted at Easy.
“You really ought to learn to relax,” Easy told him. He drove two short right jabs into Burley’s sun-blotched face.
The big, angry man rocked back, stopped from completing a backward arc by his seat belt. He tilted forward then and slumped against the steering wheel.
