Gravedigger

by Joseph Hansen

  Dave went downstairs and bolted it.

  10

  TWO STEPS FROM WHERE Dave sat in the Triumph, a cliff dropped to the beach. He couldn’t see the ocean. It was midnight and the rain still fell. But he could feel it thud against the cliff, and hear it hiss among rocks when it pulled back to strike again. The rain rustled on the car’s cloth top and sifted against the glass. Charles Westover’s five-by-eight address book Dave held propped open on the steering wheel. He read it by the beam of the penlight. He had passed the letter M and still found no mention of Yucca Canyon.

  He had left the little car’s parking lights on, its taillights, in case one of those juggernaut trucks decided to lay by on this patch of ground. Now headlights glared in the door mirror to his left. But what rolled up beside him was small and toy fire-engine red. A pickup truck. He had a blank second, then remembered. The door of the pickup slammed. Around its front, through the stab of its headlights, Scotty Dekker came at a jog, the rain turning his hair to taffy strings. He bent at Dave’s window. Dave rolled the glass down.

  “Are you all right?” Scotty shouted it so as to be heard above the crashing of the surf. “I recognized your car.” He peered. “You aren’t sick or anything?”

  “Just old,” Dave said with a smile. He took off his glasses. “I’ve been reading. What have you been doing? Surfing?”

  Scotty laughed, looked up at the rain. “Even I’m not that crazy. No, I’ve been up at my aunt’s in Pismo. I’m just getting home. Good surf up there.”

  “That’s why you didn’t call to tell me about Lyle.”

  “Did he come back?” Scotty looked stricken. “Oh, wow. I’m sorry, Mr. Brandstetter.” He wiped rain off his face with a square clean hand. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s all right,” Dave said, “but he doesn’t know what’s happened to his father.” He reached across to open the door on the passenger side. “If we’re going to talk, you better get in out of the rain.”

  “I have to go. My folks were expecting me at six. They’ll be worried.”

  “It’s a bit after six,” Dave said, and shut the door again. “Just one question. Did you ever hear Charles Westover mention Yucca Canyon—anybody he knew up there, any time he spent up there, anything at all?”

  Scotty ran hands over his wet hair and shook his hands and made a face. “No. No, I don’t think so. No, I’m pretty sure not. Yucca Canyon? What would somebody like Mr. Westover want up there? I mean, that’s pretty raunchy, shacks and hippies and grow-your-own marijuana. It’s all weirdos up there. Isn’t it?”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Dave said. “Thanks, Scotty. You better go before it gets any later.”

  “Right.” Scotty smiled, slapped the window ledge, straightened. He said, “I just wanted to be sure you were okay.” He bent again, blinking. “Reading? It’s a funny place to read.”

  “It’s an interesting book.” Dave put his glasses on again.

  “I guess so.” Scotty stood erect again, looked around at the night, the windblown rain, peered in the direction of the pounding surf. He raised baffled eyebrows at Dave. Dave kept a straight face. Scotty gave a little wondering shake to his head, shrugged, said, “Okay, so long,” and ran back through the headlight beams and climbed into the truck. The door slammed again. The horn beeped. The truck rolled away.

  Dave grinned and went on checking addresses.

  Yucca Canyon didn’t appear in the book, and Dave drove back to Sandpiper Lane. The Rolls arrived earlier this morning. The rain had quit, the cloud cover was breaking up. He sighted stars through the windshield. The wind grew colder. He checked his watch. Two-ten. And the big, dark car slid past, showing nothing but its taillights. It halted at the curb in front of the dark Dekker house. The same slight man got out of it who had got out of it yesterday morning. Dave worked the lever of his door. The door opened three inches and struck the curb. He cursed. He ought to have known better than to park on the wrong side of the street. He shouted, “Charles Westover? Hold it, please.”

  The face that jerked in his direction was no more than a pale, featureless blur. The man turned, slipped on the wet paving, came down on one hand, one knee, regained his footing, and lunged inside the Rolls. The next second, it was on its way up the street. Dave yanked his own door shut, started the Triumph, and went after the Rolls. The big car skidded on the street bends. Over the noise of the Triumph’s little engine, Dave could hear the squeal of the big tires. The Triumph hugged the curves, so that he gained on the Rolls, until it reached the straight strip of road that sloped down to the coast, when the Rolls pulled away.

  It didn’t stop, didn’t even slow, when it reached the highway. It swung onto the highway in a wide arc, tires throwing fans of water. The turn took it clear across the far traffic lane. It looked as if it almost scraped the crash rail there. It lurched and swerved for a few seconds on the slick paving, then straightened out and settled down to gain speed. Dave checked his own meter. The needle jiggled past seventy, to seventy-five. The red taillights of the Rolls still pulled away. Dave argued the Triumph up to eighty, eighty-five. The Rolls must have been cruising at a hundred. Searching ahead for other traffic, scared that one of those giant trucks would appear, he noticed in the rearview mirror a pair of headlights behind him.

  The canyon road was no good for speed, too many jogs, too many potholes, bigger tonight from the work of the new rains than they’d been last night, deeper, more of them. A good many times, the wheels of the Triumph jounced so hard in them he feared he’d break an axle. The bottom of the car scraped the paving. He was keeping the Rolls in sight, when trees, curves, thrusts of rock didn’t interfere, but he judged the Rolls was going to lose him. Then he saw the headlights back of him again, and felt cold in the pit of his stomach. They were dogging him. They were following with intent. No one simply driving home would keep the speed he and the Rolls were keeping, not on roads like this, not when those roads were wet.

  He wanted to get out of the way but he was on a long stretch here without the option of turnoffs, one of those places where the road had been cut into a cliff that rose sheer on the left and where the canyon yawned black and deep on the right. He risked a little more speed, but had to brake right away. There were too many bends. The lights behind him drew closer, shone harshly in the rearview mirror. For a second, he had the crazy thought that it must be Cecil. But the set of the lights was wrong for a van. Then the lights were upon him. There was a jar that snapped his head back, a crunch of metal, the shattering of glass. The Triumph leaped ahead. He pressed the throttle because there seemed nothing to do but try to get away. He didn’t get away. The car following him swerved to the left, came alongside, veered into him. The lights of the Triumph streaked out over treetops shiny with rain. Dave yanked the door lever. The Triumph soared off the road. Dave threw himself into space.

  “Flames like that?” Cecil said. “No way I could have missed it.”

  The hospital room was sunny. The wall he faced had cheerful paper on it. He had a separated shoulder, some broken ribs, and assorted cuts, scrapes, and bruises. He was groggy from drugs, so he couldn’t make out the pattern of the wallpaper. Cecil’s face was a blur too, but a welcome blur. The drugs had dried Dave’s mouth and made it taste bad. His face was stiff, but he tried for a smile.

  “It’s all that Camp Fire Girl training,” he said.

  “Mine,” Cecil said, “or yours? You hid pretty good too. No bears going to get you in that mess of brush.”

  “It was jump or be barbecued,” Dave said.

  “I didn’t know,” Cecil said. “Climbed down as far as I could. Muddy, sliding on my ass. No use to it. I couldn’t get close. It was too hot. All I could do was stand there and cry and throw up.”

  “You found a phone. You got help,” Dave said.

  “Fire department, ambulance,” Cecil said. “It was them found you. Then it was laugh and cry. I was on the ground, rolling around, howling. They had to give me a shot to get me sane. But I
’m still half crazy. Shut my eyes to try to sleep, there it is down there in the dark and the wet and the trees, burning up, and you’re in there.”

  “I’m not.” Dave reached for his hand. Pain stabbed his shoulder, sharp even through the thick numbness of the drugs. Cecil’s hand closed over his on the bed. Dave said, “As for the car, I was trying to figure a way to get rid of it without chagrin. So that’s one problem solved.”

  Amanda said, “Shall I order the brown Jaguar?”

  He turned in the direction of her voice. He hadn’t known she was here. He hadn’t known much, for how long he wasn’t sure, maybe two days, maybe three. She was a trim little silhouette against a bright window. The tall silhouette beside her was Miles Edwards. Edwards didn’t say anything. Amanda said, “Dave, how did it happen? You’re a good driver.”

  “Somebody else was better,” Dave said. “And meaner. Ran me off the road.”

  “Oh, shit,” Cecil said. “Highway patrol says it was an accident. Bad curve, one of the worst in that canyon. Specially when it’s wet. Talked to me about fresh skid marks, two sets. Somebody trying to pass, they said. And did I know what you were doing there? I didn’t say, because I wanted to talk to you first.” His voice began to fade. “It was him, wasn’t it? Westover? The Rolls?”

  Dave shook his head against the pillows and remembered another thing that was wrong with him—concussion. His head hurt, and the movement made him feel sick at his stomach. “The Rolls was up ahead.” His own voice sounded faint and far away. “It was a junk car.”

  “Don’t go to sleep,” Cecil said. “Who was driving?”

  “Couldn’t see,” Dave said, and went to sleep.

  “Sometimes you don’t act quite bright,” Salazar said. He sat in the neat hospital armchair and watched Dave eat bland food from a steel tray. His nose was red and peeling around the nostrils but his color was good and his eyes were clear. “We try to teach the public to give the man with the gun the money and keep your life. It’s only twenty-five thousand dollars, Dave. Is Banner Life Insurance going broke if it has to pay for once? Would that be worth dying for? What is Banner Life Insurance—mother, home, and apple pie?”

  “It wasn’t me he was trying to kill,” Dave said.

  “You were the one who was there,” Salazar said.

  “Unhappily,” Dave said. “But it doesn’t make sense. I’m the man who can get him that money he’s so crazy to lay his hands on. Anyway, he’d gone into hiding days before I showed up.” He finished the tasteless vanilla pudding and swung the table away that held the tray. “No, he’s scared of somebody else. Scared to death.”

  “Who’s helping him?” Salazar said. “The son?”

  “No.” Dave explained about Lyle. “There’s a skinny blond girl in the picture. Maybe. I can’t figure it. A kid in a gas station up the canyon says she drove in, in Westover’s Rolls. Sickly-looking, dirty old clothes. But it doesn’t add up. Must have been the wrong Rolls.”

  “Why didn’t Westover pick up some hippie to while away the lonely hours?” Salazar said.

  “If he did, it wouldn’t be a girl,” Dave said. “His ex-wife told me that. Obliquely. It didn’t register until later. Anyway, no frail little girl could handle that ton of scrap metal the way it was handled. It would take a big, strong man.” Suddenly he felt like smiling and he smiled. “Can I have a cigarette, please?”

  “What’s funny?” Salazar rose and held out his pack. The cigarettes were short and brown. He lit Dave’s and his own. He eyed Dave worriedly. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I think I know the answer.” He told Salazar all about Gaillard’s sudden disappearance.

  “But it wasn’t a panel truck that hit you.”

  “Right. And when I tried searching the back roads of that canyon for Westover’s Rolls by daylight, I didn’t see any panel truck. But I couldn’t cover the whole canyon. Not alone. It’s too big. And a lot of it is so overgrown, you can’t see anything from the road. It would take a house-to-house search.”

  “I can’t field that,” Salazar said. “What reason would I give?”

  “Two men missing, linked to each other by a twenty-thousand-dollar loan and an old friendship. Say, thank you for finding Howie O’Rourke. That was neat and quick.”

  “He’s the kind who never stays out of prison long. Very bright guy. Don’t ask me how he can be so stupid.”

  Dave said, “And a third man, linked to the first—bumped off the road and nearly killed.”

  “Half wilderness up there,” Salazar said, “more than half. A lot of roads not even on the map. It’ll be different when the board of supervisors stops squabbling about who pocketed the most payoffs from the land developers and they get their ass in gear and wangle the coastal commission into issuing waivers and permits and the rest of that shit. Civilization up there in no time. Streetlights, sewers. Wish I owned a piece of it, about ten acres. I’d turn in my badge so fast.”

  “They’re distinctive cars,” Dave said, “both of them. Easy to spot. But not by just one man alone.”

  “Look,” Salazar said, “why wasn’t it like the CHP said—slippery road, bad turn? An accident. You didn’t know the car, didn’t see the driver.”

  “It was no accident,” Dave said. “It was on purpose. I know. I was there. Don’t tell me it was an accident.”

  “All right, all right.” Salazar cringed in the chair, hands up, hamming fear. “It was on purpose.” He sobered. “Let me tell you about the latest wrinkle, okay? Kids with nothing to do, dropping chunks of cement on cars off freeway bridges? Driving around at night shooting down strangers on the streets? Pouring gasoline over sleeping skid-row bums and setting them on fire? For laughs, Dave, for the hell of it. We see it all the time, now. Used to be, they’d settle for showing their bare ass out the window of a car, or throwing eggs. No more. They see what happened to you on TV all the time—a guy bumps another guy off the road, and the car rolls down the slope and bursts into flame. It’s a movie, right? They don’t know the difference.”

  “Charming,” Dave said. “But I don’t believe in coincidences. Why wasn’t it Gaillard?”

  “He’d seen you, remember?” Salazar said. “He knew you were the nice insurance man, maybe with a check in your pocket that would get him back those life savings of his that Howie blew on the horses.”

  “It was too dark for him to see my face,” Dave said. “And he didn’t know my car. He was protecting Westover, covering his rear.”

  “Only you don’t know from what,” Salazar said.

  “Find him and ask him,” Dave said. “What do I have to do—get killed before you move?”

  “The department might buy that.” Salazar sighed, slapped his knees, got to his feet. His topcoat lay over the foot of the bed. He picked it up. “But I wouldn’t count on it.” He gave a regretful smile. “Get well, all right?” He flapped into the coat and pulled open the door to the hallway. “Keep out of trouble,” he said, and left.

  Cheeks rosy from the cold, Max Romano waddled in. He held an attaché case flat out in front of him. Fat beringed finger to his lips, acting conspiratorial and scared, he laid the case on Dave’s bed and snapped the catches and opened the lid. The lining of the case was aluminum foil. Out of the case rose steam and wonderful smells. “Lasagna,” Max whispered. “I made it myself, the way you always liked it back in the old days.” He meant when the restaurant was in West L.A., with stained-glass windows and big, steel-doored pizza ovens in view of the tables, and the menu was simpler, like the rest of life.

  “Sweet sausage?” Dave said.

  “I didn’t forget.” From his bulky overcoat Max produced forks, napkins, a bottle of wine, even wineglasses. Plates came from under the lasagna. Max chuckled, setting the swivel table.

  Amanda peered in, wide-eyed. She had on a Hans Brinker cap and jacket and kneepants, and a bulky muffler so long it nearly dragged on the floor. “Ready?” she whispered, took a last glance up and down the hallway, and slipped int
o the room. “Doesn’t it smell lovely?”

  Max had time for only a token forkful of lasagna—it made him hum, roll his eyes, and show his dimples—then was on his way back to the restaurant. But Amanda stayed to help Dave polish off the food. It was rich, and he hoped it wouldn’t make him sick, but it tasted too good for him to worry about that. The wine made him pleasantly drunk. The room was softly lamplit. Cecil had left a big, battery-powered, so-called portable radio that sat on the floor in a corner and played quietly. Piano music. Schubert? When the last morsel of food was gone and the wine bottle was empty, Amanda laid bottle and plates, forks and napkins and glasses in the attaché case, and snapped the case shut.

  “I’m going to rattle on my way out,” she said.

  “Don’t hurry off,” he said.

  She looked at her watch. “I’ve got a date—sorry.”

  “Give me a cigarette,” he said. “Sit down, and listen to me. It’s important.”

  She frowned, but she got him a cigarette from a pocket of her Rodeo Drive boutique Dutchboy jacket. She lit the cigarette for him, handed it to him. “You always have cigarettes,” she said. “Are you trying to quit?”

  “Not here, I don’t have them. Maybe Cecil is trying to get me to quit. I ask him to bring me cigarettes. He brings me everything else I ask for. Not cigarettes. Please. Sit down. I’m not going to like this, you’re not going to like it, but I’ll make it quick.”

  “Won’t like what?” She sat on the edge of the chair. “You know I hate being late.”

  “Who’s the date with?” Dave said. “Miles, right?”

  “Yes, of course.” She was impatient. “Dave, what is this?”

  “It’s unpleasant news about Miles,” Dave said, and told her. She tried to interrupt, but he talked through her interruptions. He finished, “If you’d like to see the pictures, they’re in the top drawer of my desk. Help yourself. In fact, I think it would be nice if you were the one to hand them back to him.”