If Dying Was All

by Ron Goulart

  “Would I play pimp for a lady TV columnist?” Hagopian dropped the memo, unfolded, onto Easy’s desk. “There’s her private unlisted number. She wants to see you, to talk about Jackie McCleary. I’ve had a lot of experience with untruthful broads, John, and I’d say she’s not fooling around. She phoned me again after Mitch Stammsky’s death was on the news. She sounds to be really worried, frightened. Even a little of her old Long Island accent has come back.”

  “Okay,” said Easy. “First let me call the San Amaro police.” He lifted the black phone and dialed.

  “Did you like the sandwich I left for you?”

  “It was fine.” Into the phone Easy said, “Lt. Frimac, please. John Easy calling. Yeah, I’ll wait.”

  “Good, because I was a little dubious about this particular delicatessen,” said Hagopian, slumping back slightly in his chair. “Because it’s run by Japanese. I guess they really can do anything.”

  “Frimac,” said a burred voice in the phone.

  “John Easy.”

  “Listen, Easy, I’m going to want to talk to you again.”

  “What was Stammsky shot with?”

  “A .32 caliber gun. Just like you and I figured,” answered the San Amaro police lieutenant. “Can you get back down here later this evening?”

  “Did you get the slugs compared yet?”

  “Yes, I did. That’s why you’re going to have to talk to me some more,” said Lt. Frimac. “They match those that killed Booth Graither, fired from the same gun. Now, what I want to talk about is how you knew to suggest trying to match them. Easy?”

  “A hunch.”

  “That’s enough crap. What’s Stammsky got to do with Graither and this dead girl you say you’re looking for?”

  “I’ll come in tomorrow and talk, lieutenant,” Easy said. “Trust me.”

  Frimac said, “Tomorrow early,” and broke the connection.

  “Something?” asked Hagopian as Easy set down the phone.

  “Mitch Stammsky and Booth Graither were killed with the same gun.”

  Wrinkles climbed Hagopian’s high forehead. “Who do you figure’s been using that gun? Jackie McCleary?”

  “No.” Easy took up the phone again and dialed Judy Teller’s private number.

  The phone rang seven times, and then a tentative voice said, “Yes?”

  “Judy, this is John Easy.”

  “Finally,” said the girl. “I was starting to think maybe you were a rat after all.”

  “You want to talk to me.”

  “Yes, can you come over now? Or soon? I’ve got a cottage in Westwood.” She gave him the address.

  “Yes, I can be there in a half hour,” Easy told her. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “I’ve decided I’d better tell you what really happened to Jackie McCleary.”

  XV

  A HOT, DRY WIND pressed branches and dark leaves thick against the windows of the cottage. Judy Teller was sitting in a black butterfly chair next to the small, empty living room fireplace. She was wearing a short, dark skirt and a white shirt-blouse, her knees tucked under her and a half-empty drink glass cradled in both slender hands. “Snug,” said the red-haired girl.

  Easy nodded his head at the beam-ceilinged living room. “Yes,” he agreed. He was leaning back in the middle of a low, stark sofa, watching the small, pretty girl.

  “I don’t see how I could be killed,” she said, after a moment. The warm wind rattled the glass panels in the high, dark window at her back. “Then I suppose Mitch Stammsky felt the same way. Nobody ever expects to die.”

  “Stammsky had some information to sell,” Easy told her. “He must have tried to peddle it to somebody beside me.”

  “We all have the same information,” said Judy. “The whole gang of us. Are you sure you don’t want a drink?”

  “Not now.”

  “Will you fix me another one?”

  Easy stood up and went over to her. “What do you have to tell?”

  The pretty redhead’s hands were chilled from holding the drink. She stroked Easy’s wrist after she gave him her empty glass. “I wasn’t planning on ever telling anyone.”

  At the small, diagonal redwood bar Easy said, “Booth Graither spoiled that.”

  Judy shook her head. “I had nothing to do with Booth being killed. I didn’t know about that until they found him,” she said. “It must all be related, though. That and Mitch.”

  “The same gun killed both of them.”

  “What kind of gun?”

  “A .32 caliber revolver.”

  Judy took the fresh gin and tonic he’d mixed. The ice clattered as she raised it to sip. “Jackie had a gun like that, I think. She used to keep it in her apartment in San Amaro, in the bedroom. Once when I stayed overnight, she showed it to me. You know, her father really worked at making her think she couldn’t make it on her own. I guess she always felt in danger, in jeopardy, when she was alone.” She drank down a third of her new drink. “Could Jackie be the one who killed them both? Mitch and Booth, shot the both of them?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Easy. “You believe she’s still alive?”

  “Of course she is,” said the red-haired girl. “That’s what this whole business is all about.”

  “She never killed herself?”

  “No, she didn’t,” said Judy. “We helped her fake the suicide business.”

  “Why?”

  “Partly out of friendship and partly for money.”

  “Why did Jackie want people to think she was dead?”

  “Not people,” said Judy. “Her father. Her rat of a father. Jackie was convinced he’d simply never let her do what she wanted to do.”

  “She wanted to marry Booth Graither?”

  Judy licked her upper lip. “If not marry at least live with him. See, both Jackie and Booth had similar backgrounds, made up chiefly of ratty parents. Sometimes, you know, people with the same kind of hang-up are attracted to each other. I have a similar habit, which is why you’re one of the few non-rats I know.”

  “Where did Jackie go after the fake suicide?”

  “Mexico,” answered Judy. “At least she was supposed to go to Mexico. She and Booth were supposed to go there. Now it looks as though he never left San Obito. So maybe I don’t know where Jackie went.”

  “The two of them were planning to live in Mexico, to stay there for good?”

  “That was the plan,” said Judy. “Though a restless girl like Jackie, I don’t know if she could have made it. See, Booth had it in his mind to make a final break with his parents. He wanted to disappear for good. Apparently, according to Jackie, he had something like $100,000 in cash. My father was something of a rat himself, but he never left that kind of money lying around.”

  “That was all Booth had?”

  “It’s enough, for Christ sake.”

  “Only money?”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, as far as I heard from Jackie. She talked about the $100,000.”

  “What happened on the yacht trip?”

  Judy finished her second drink. “Booth paid for the whole thing, renting the boat, everything.”

  “Did he go along on the trip?”

  “No, I’m coming to what he did.” She held the glass out. “Fix me just one more?”

  Easy did.

  After she’d sampled it, Judy continued, “Booth stayed behind. So did Ned, Ned Segal. You’ll see why in a minute. The rest of us, including Jackie, went out on the yacht. Jackie made sure she was seen, around Marina Del Rey, boarding the boat. Once we got out to sea, Mitch was in charge of operating the yacht. Once we were out of sight of the shore, we made a slight detour and dropped Jackie off.”

  “On San Obito Island?”

  “That’s right. Jackie knew the island. She used to visit there when she was a kid,” explained the pretty, red-headed girl. “She knew it was completely untenanted. We left her there and picked up our regular, announced route toward Enseñada. Early the next morning we signale
d the Coast Guard and all pretended to be upset, sick, anxious. Jackie had written the suicide note and we showed it to the Coast Guard, and later to the sheriff’s people, and told everybody she must have gone over the side earlier in the night.” She paused to drink her gin and tonic. “The boat was searched and then we were escorted into a harbor. Then they started looking for her body. Of course, they never found it.”

  “Jackie was supposed to be safely off San Obito by the time you people sounded the alarm.”

  “Yes, Ned Segal drove Booth to someplace around Redondo where a friend of his loaned Booth a motor launch. Booth knew how to operate one and, after sundown, he was supposed to go out to the island and pick up Jackie. Then they’d sneak back to the coast and catch a bus to take them down toward the border. Jackie had a wig and dark glasses and she figured nobody’d notice. Once across into Mexico they were going to head for an out of the way town Jackie’d heard about. A place where some artists and writers hung out. All very idyllic.”

  “Booth went out to the island alone?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “Nobody ever doubted your story?”

  “No,” said Judy. “See, Jackie had actually tried to kill herself on two separate occasions. With pills. That was while she was still living at home. It was all on record. The suicide note was really in her handwriting, after all. And we’d all worked out the story of what was supposed to have happened. That was a challenge, an acting sort of thing. We rehearsed what each of us would say, how we’d say it.” She left the chair and walked to the bar to mix another drink. “We all gave quite a bit of thought to our performance, being budding show business people. We were careful to vary what we said and how we reacted. See, if all of us told the same exact story in the same exact words, it would have sounded false. No, we did a good job.”

  “None of you ever considered telling Frederic McCleary what had happened?”

  Judy carried her drink carefully in front of her and sat on the far end of the sofa. “I didn’t. It was a nasty thing to do to him, maybe. He wasn’t, though, a particularly admirable man or father. We were on Jackie’s side. When you’re young, a bunch of you, you do cruel things sometimes. Back then it was all kind of exciting, putting something over on the grownups. I don’t think any of them ever felt that guilty about it. Besides, telling him could have gotten all of us in trouble.”

  “Where did Jackie go?”

  “To Mexico. I told you that.”

  “Where in Mexico?”

  “I don’t think I ever knew the name of the town,” said Judy. “Jackie and Booth kept that to themselves. She didn’t plan to send us any picture postcards either.”

  “You’ve never heard from her since?”

  “Since 1965, no,” said the slender redhead. “I never expected to. She was dropping out of all this.”

  “No one else has ever heard from her?”

  “No one ever told me if they did,” said Judy. “I don’t keep up with all those beach people anymore, since I stopped being Adrienne Grossman. I explained that to you the other night.”

  “You mentioned,” said Easy, “another reason for helping Jackie fake her suicide. Besides friendship.”

  “Booth paid us to do it.” Judy gave a slight shrug. “He had a suitcase of money, after all, according to Jackie.”

  Dry branches crackled against the dark glass. “How much?”

  “$2000 each.” She edged nearer to Easy, watching the hot wind rattle by outside. “That was really the end of all of us as a group, actually. I took my money and had myself redesigned, got rid of the Adrienne Grossman Long Island voice, and even part of the nose she used to talk through. Mitch used his $2000 to buy part of some folknik bar in San Amaro. Eva Lerner bought herself a trip back home to Chicago. Ned Segal used his money to start his own ad shop. I think Perry gave hers to Bud Burley, and he lost it all trying to form an animation service. And so on.”

  “$2000 to help Jackie rig the fake suicide and then keep quiet afterward.”

  “The thing is, I decided I ought to tell you.” She touched his arm. “I decided before I heard about Mitch. I guess at times I feel it was a pretty ratty thing to do, all of it.” Her hand resting on his arm clutched into a fist. “Will she try to kill me, too, John? Like Mitch.”

  “You’re safe,” Easy told her.

  “Would you be able to,” asked the girl “stay with me tonight?”

  “No,” said Easy.

  “Boy, you turn me down with some frequency.”

  Easy said, “I’d like you to help me out with something, though. Tonight.”

  “That’s what all the rats always say to me. Do me a little favor, Judy. Okay, what?”

  “I want you to call some of the members of the old San Amaro gang and tell them a story.”

  “I don’t even know where most of them are.”

  Easy said, “I have their phone numbers.”

  After a few seconds, the girl said, “So what’s the story I give them?”

  “First, the reason you’re calling. I’ve been here and you think I know about the faking of Jackie’s suicide. You’re worried. Ask them if I’ve said anything to them and if they think maybe Mitch told me something before he got killed.”

  Judy nodded. “And second?”

  “You don’t know why I’m so interested in San Obito Island. But I asked you if you knew Jackie used to like to visit the old dance pavilion there often. Her father even told me she had a private hiding place, under the bandstand. I’m planning to go out to San Obito tomorrow afternoon and look around.”

  “That’s supposed to decoy somebody?”

  “Yes.”

  “Actually you’re going out there tonight and wait,” said the girl. “So I have to slip the business about the hiding place in very casually so it won’t look too much like a setup.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve maintained some vestiges of my acting ability. I think I can work it.”

  Easy reached inside his coat and took out a folded sheet of paper. “Here’s who to call,” he said, checking off two names.

  XVI

  IN THE MIDNIGHT HOURS Easy was climbing up a slanting, black hillside of crusty rock. He was wearing dark trousers and a dark, ribbed pullover, his .38 revolver tucked in his waist under the sweater. Below, hidden in among arches of black rock, was the rented motorboat he’d used to come out to San Obito Island. He was on the far side of the island, making his way up from a tiny cove. The pavilion and the other long abandoned resort buildings were a mile or so across San Obito.

  A chill night wind hit Easy as he reached the top of the hillside, bringing with it the smell of burned out trees and brush. Off to his right stretched a forest, tall walnut trees, birches and oaks. Many of them darker than the night would make them. Dozens of trees were leafless, branchless, burned to char by the recent fire. When the wind gusted, dark flakes of ashes flurried and the scent of fresh burning grew stronger.

  Easy cut to his left and eased in among the trees in an unburned stretch of birches. He progressed, quietly, through the dark rows. Unseen birds called far off and small nocturnal animals were scurrying in the underbrush. The wind pulled dry leaves down from the treetops.

  When he was a few minutes closer to the deserted resort area, Easy became aware of a new sound. He stopped still and narrowed his eyes, watching the patches of night between the trees. Metal struck against rock. Easy, crouched, moved toward the noise.

  About a hundred yards ahead of him a dark figure showed between the straight black lines of the pines. Someone was digging there in a small clearing.

  Easy stalked forward. He reached under his sweater and drew out his Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. The figure in the clearing had been digging for quite a while apparently. Easy now could see dirt piled in a two-foot high mound beside a long rectangular hole. Something he made out as rolled up burlap sacking had been tossed down beside the newly dug earth.

  The shovel struck a rock again and spa
rks danced in the darkness. The digger grunted, muttering.

  Thirty yards from the digger now, Easy tried to get even closer. Ten careful steps ahead and dead leaves suddenly erupted in front of him as a startled squirrel went chittering up the side of a dark tree.

  Easy dropped to his knees, listening.

  The digging had stopped and no sound came from the clearing.

  Thorny brush cut off Easy’s view. He lowered himself to his side and carefully circled the brush, his eyes on the area of the digging. There was no one near the grave-size hole, no one showing in the circle of weedy, clear land.

  Easy waited.

  Then, off to his right some ten feet away, another squirrel decided to pop up and skitter into a tree.

  A moment after the noise began a shot flashed out, then one more. The digger was in among the trees at the far side of the little clearing, firing toward the rustling squirrel.

  Easy stayed silent, waiting.

  The dark figure jumped up, showing for an instant, then ran away from the clearing and away from Easy. Branches snapped and leaves crackled, the sound quickly diminishing. Then there was silence again.

  After waiting five full minutes longer, Easy made his way to the clearing. With his gun in his hand he went to the freshly unearthed grave and knelt beside it. His eyes had become used to the night dark and he could see what was down in the hole.

  It was what was left of the body of a woman. Easy stood and moved once again into the woods. He knew he’d found Jackie McCleary.

  The dome of the old dance pavilion was made of hundreds of squares of glass, linked together with a fretwork of ornamental iron. It glistened darkly on the cliffside above the ocean. Twisted cypress trees, knobby and bent, made a sparse wall between the ornate pavilion and the edge of the cliff. Easy, squatting in among the oaks on a knoll above the pavilion, watched. The walls of the domed building were glass above and tile below. Metal flowers and vines twisted up its sides. Within the glass pavilion a light glowed, dim and bobbing. A flashlight.

  Easy, keeping in among the trees, went around the building. He spotted four doorways leading into the vast dance area. The thick doors on two of the entranceways were partially off their hinges, hanging open.