Country of Old Men

by Joseph Hansen

  “I know, it’s been fifty years,” Dave said, “but they’re serious. Morse Campbell most of all.”

  “He always was a pea brain,” Helmers said.

  “And a lifetime of government service has only made him worse. I think when he heard from Libby about your book, Morse called somebody in intelligence—”

  “To see if I was really dead?” Helmers said.

  “And if not, to keep an eye on you, which they did. How else did Morse know you’d paid me a visit, had lunch with me? To Morse this meant we were still on friendly terms, which is why he came to beg me to have you quash the book.”

  The dishes were done. Helmers handed Dave the towel to dry his hands. Dave did this, and hung up the towel. He rolled down his sleeves and fastened the gold nugget cufflinks. These had been his father’s. The nuggets were from Sutter’s Mill—or that’s what Carl always claimed. Dave shrugged into his jacket. “He said he’d be willing to pay you whatever the publishers offered. I think he meant more than the publishers offered. I think he meant the sky was the limit.”

  Helmers guffawed. “Pop-eyed stuffed shirt.” He went at his heavy bear shamble out of the kitchen. Dave followed him, through a dining room still stacked—table, chairs, floor—with yellowing unopened junk mail, magazines, sealed Jiffy bags of books, decaying cartons of wastepaper. “Imagine worrying all your life that the world might find out about you running naked around the high school track at night. Get a permanent crick in your neck, looking over your shoulder.”

  “He wishes you hadn’t kept that notebook.”

  “Haw.” Helmers dropped into an overstuffed chair, its upholstery shredded by the claws of cats. Today, other chairs had appeared from under their mountains of junk, and were available for sitting. Dave chose the one with the fewest dry weeds in it. “He remembers that, does he?”

  “It was a rumor everyone believed,” Dave said.

  “Maybe that’s all it was. Did I ever show it to you?”

  “No,” Dave said, “I don’t think you did.”

  “That’s right,” Helmers said, “and you were my best friend. I sure as hell didn’t show it to anybody else, then, did I? Least of all to Morse Campbell.”

  “But you told me you were writing down in it everything anybody got up to. For your first novel.”

  Helmers chuckled. “Turned out to be my thirty-first, but who’s counting? How much should I bleed old Morse for?”

  “You wouldn’t,” Dave said.

  “No, but it’s a shame. I’d have loved to see his face when I handed him the manuscript and said sweetly, ‘That will cost you a hundred thousand bucks.’ Maybe I’ll do it just for laughs. You want to set up a clandestine meeting for us—at midnight on some lonely stretch of beach?”

  “It always pained him to part with money,” Dave said.

  “I once tried to borrow fifteen cents from him,” Helmers said, “for a gallon of gas for my ’28 Chevy. Jesus, you’d have thought I asked for his eye teeth.”

  “Did he part with the fifteen cents?” Dave said.

  “You did,” Helmers said. “You gave me a buck.”

  “New money,” Dave said. “My old man was an upstart. The Campbells were old money. They knew the value of fifteen cents. Invested in blue-chip stocks, in only a few generations it could buy a whole tankful of gas.”

  Helmers snorted, then looked grave. “I’m sorry I worried Libby Walker, though. Before Charlie’s time, she and I were soulmates for a while, both of us liking books the way we did, poetry, novels. I never said so to her, but I thought we’d get married after school. Then along came Genevieve, and Libby began not having time for me anymore.”

  “Did you understand why?” Dave asked.

  “No. But I was sore, and when she saw that, she told me. Came right out with it. Said she didn’t expect me to understand, because most people couldn’t, and she didn’t hold it against me. She just trusted me not to tell.”

  “And you didn’t?” Dave said.

  “If you mean, is she in the book”—Helmers shifted his bulk in the chair, frowning to himself—“I’m not going to tell you that, Dave. Forgive me, but I think that’s how I’d better handle it for now. I told you, every publisher that’s seen it has turned it down. Maybe it will never be printed. Why worry you?”

  “Me? I’m not worried. But them—are you going to warn them if it’s accepted?”

  “Dave, the characters’ names have been changed, the name of the town, the streets, the school, everything.”

  “I surmised as much,” Dave said. “I even tried to calm old Morse’s fears with that argument. ‘It’s fiction,’ I told him. ‘No one will recognize you.’”

  “But he didn’t buy it,” Helmers said.

  “And I think I’ve figured out why,” Dave said.

  Helmers cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

  “Because your name won’t be changed,” Dave said.

  “Oh, yes, it will. I call myself Buck Norman.”

  “Not on the cover,” Dave said. “On the cover it will be Jack Helmers, big as life. And that’s all any good investigative reporter will need to unmask the others.”

  “What would a reporter care?” Helmers scoffed. “Dave, I don’t write best-sellers.”

  “There’s always a first time,” Dave said. “Why isn’t this it? For decades, now, you’ve been building up a readership. You told Cecil twenty of your books are still in print. Maybe that’s not a record, but we both know ninety percent of mysteries vanish like the rose.”

  Helmers snorted. “Dave, I’m not a celebrity.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re a veteran writer, a hell of a lot of readers know your name, and reviewers are going to recognize an autobiographical novel when they see it. And the people who love your books are going to want to read it. And they’re naturally going to be curious about who the real people are behind the names you’ve given them. And some magazine editor is going to sense a story in that, and then Morse is in trouble, and Charlie Norton, and Libby, too.”

  Helmers opened his mouth to protest, and a voice called from outside in the hot dry grasshopper buzz of the canyon afternoon. Footsteps sounded on the steps, the deck. “Mr. Helmers? What in the world’s going on?”

  Helmers made a face. “Goodman?” He pushed up out of his chair, started for the door. “Is that you?”

  The screen door opened and a young man came in, the dogs barking, jumping happily on him, circling his feet the way they’d done to Dave. “Have you been trying to clean up here all by yourself?” He wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a tie. The jacket of his seersucker suit lay over his arm. He had a little mustache and thinning blond hair and his eyes were blue and concerned. “You shouldn’t have done that. Why didn’t you call me? I told you to let me know if I could be of any help, any help at all.”

  “No reason you should,” Helmers growled. “I’m not going to sell this place, Goodman, and I can’t allow you to get me into your debt and soften me up that way.”

  “Whether you let me put your house on the market or not,” Goodman said, “I’m a neighbor. I’m young and strong. We’re here on earth to help each other.” He hung the jacket over a chair back, saw Dave, held out his hand. “I’m Steve Goodman.” Dave rose, gave his name, shook the hand. Goodman said, “Can you talk Mr. Helmers out of being so stubborn?”

  “I doubt it,” Dave said.

  “So proud, then? Everybody needs help, sometimes.” Newspapers and magazines were still heaped high behind Dave’s chair. Goodman stepped around there now, squatted, picked up a heavy armload. “We can’t do everything alone.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Helmers said.

  Grunting with the weight he was carrying, Goodman said cheerfully, “I’ve got—nothing else to do—today. You sit and—enjoy your visit.” He pushed out the screen door.

  Dave watched Helmers gazing after him, and idly wondered who had reported his old friend to the fire department.

  10

&nb
sp; HE’D DRIVEN TOO FAR today. He was dog-tired again. Frowning to himself, shaking off a sinking feeling that maybe Cecil was right, and there was something seriously wrong with him, he was relieved, as the Jaguar scraped bottom, lurching down into the bricked area in front of his house, that no cars were parked there now. No glum visitors with troubles, no friendly visitors come to ease the boredom and loneliness of his retirement days. He needed to rest if he was going out tonight. And he was going out tonight. To drive back down to those town houses where the marshlands used to be. To talk to Rachel Klein. He stripped, showered, wearily climbed the steps to the sunbaked loft that smelled of pine sap. He pulled the chain to open the skylight to catch what cooling breeze there was. With aching arms, he folded back the bedspread and was asleep as soon as he dropped onto the bed.

  He woke in darkness. “Cecil?” No answer. There wouldn’t be. Cecil was doubling shifts tonight at the television studio. A stair step creaked. He knew the one—the fifth. Someone was sneaking up here. Heart thudding, he swung his feet to the floor, stepped softly to the pine chest, cautiously slid open a drawer, eased the Sig-Sauer from under T-shirts and briefs, worked the slide to jack a bullet into the chamber. Gripping the machine in both hands, arms out stiffly, he stood at the top of the steps and said:

  “Hold it right there, friend.”

  Below him, a gun spurted flame, a bullet whined past his ear, and plunked into a rafter. He flung himself away from the stair head, flat on the floor. He expected a second shot. There was no second shot. Instead, a voice said, “Oh, God,” and hurried heels rattled down the stairs, across bare floorboards, across Navajo rugs. His would-be killer was racing for the front door. He scrambled to his feet, stood at the stair head again, aimed the Sig-Sauer.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” he said.

  The front door opened. By some freak, the hopeless timer switch on the ground lights in the courtyard had worked tonight. The doorway glowed, but too dimly to show him more than a figure in silhouette, average height, slender, young from the way it moved. It swung around, crouched, the gun spurted flame again, another bullet stirred Dave’s hair. He squeezed the trigger of the Sig-Sauer. The gun kicked, the noise made his ears ring, but he’d fired too late—the door frame was empty. He heard his target running away across the courtyard under the oak. He started down the stairs. Too fast. He lost his footing, the Sig-Sauer went flying. He grabbed for the rail, missed, and pitched headlong down the stairs. He had a split second in which to wonder where Samuels was. Then the darkness was inside his head.

  He came to with brandy burning his throat. He coughed. His head hurt. He groaned and tried to move. He was wrapped in something. He hadn’t been wrapped in anything, had he? Buck naked he’d slept, buck naked he’d fallen down the damn stairs. Amanda said, “Dave? Oh, thank God. He’s awake.” To prove her right, he opened his eyes. Every lamp in the room was alight. Amanda was kneeling beside him on the floor. He freed his arms from the blanket and made to sit up. She put a small hand on his chest. “Don’t move.”

  “The paramedics are coming.” It was Cliff Callahan. He loomed blond and tall and muscular behind Amanda, his blue eyes worried. “And the police. Where are you shot?”

  “I’m not shot,” Dave said. “Just bruised.”

  “We heard shots,” Amanda said.

  “And she came running out of here,” Callahan said, “right into my arms.”

  “She?” Dave said, and now he did sit up. He was banged up. Nothing localized. Just everywhere. The blanket slipped down to his waist. He clutched it and tottered to his feet. And saw, seated in his desk chair, tied to his desk chair hand and foot, the manly young woman from Say What? Records—Karen Goddard. Her smooth, short-cropped hair was ruffled. Fury was in her eyes.

  Dave took the brandy snifter from Amanda and walked over to Karen. “What did you want to kill me for? What harm did I ever do you?”

  “I want a lawyer,” she said sullenly.

  “You’ll need a lawyer.” Dave looked at the door. Had he left it open when he came home this afternoon? He could be careless when he got so tired. “How did you get in?”

  “You left a window open.” She lifted her eyes to study Callahan and gave a bleak little laugh. “When I looked up and saw him, I thought, ‘My God, this isn’t really happening. I better get up and turn off the TV.’ Only where’s Icarus? Where’s his helicopter?”

  In the distance, police sirens sounded.

  “Rachel Klein was at your house this morning,” Dave said. “She saw me, is that right? And when you got home this evening she told you I’d been there?”

  “You knew she was there when you left my office,” Karen Goddard said bitterly. “I ought to have gotten her out sooner.”

  “You never should have hidden her,” Dave said. “A fugitive wanted for homicide and kidnapping? You’re an intelligent woman. What happened to your judgment?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “She didn’t do it.”

  “Maybe not, but she was on the scene. Why? She knew Shales was out of prison and in L.A. Jordan Vickers had told her. It’s the reason she asked you to hide her, right?”

  Karen Goddard looked at the floor. “She didn’t ask. I volunteered. Where I live now—it’s a new place. Cricket wouldn’t know about it. She’d be safe there.”

  “So why did she return to her own apartment, the one she and Shales had shared, the first place he’d look for her? At midnight, of all things. Alone?”

  The police sirens grew nearer, louder.

  “I never would have let her go alone. She always needs someone. She can’t think for herself. She’s sweet, and I love her”—tears made her eyes shine—“but she’s got no sense of self-preservation. Jordan Vickers calls it a death wish. I call it innocence.”

  “You’re both right,” Dave said.

  She sighed, licked tears from her upper lip, sniffed, and said shakily, “Anyway, I was asleep and she didn’t wake me. She was too upset to sleep, and something she saw on late television reminded her that Cricket had hidden his gun in that apartment. She knew he’d come back for it. She was afraid of what he’d do if he got his hands on it—to her, to Jordan Vickers, to me. She was sure he still had his key. She crept out without my knowing a thing about it, and drove off to get the gun before he could find it.”

  “A few minutes too late,” Dave said.

  Karen Goddard was staring at the floor again, but she nodded. “That was the gun that killed him.” She looked up. “But it wasn’t Rachel who fired it. She heard the shots as she was parking her car. She—”

  “And she didn’t see the killer?” Dave said.

  “Only the little boy. And she thought he’d get the story wrong. She was afraid she’d get the blame. After all, she’d helped send Cricket to jail—”

  Three uniformed L.A.P.D. officers came through the open door. A pair of green-clad paramedics, carrying a kit. And Jeff Leppard. He looked Dave up and down. Bruises. The blanket. “I thought you didn’t need Samuels,” he said.

  “I said he’d get shot,” Dave said, “and he would have.”

  Leppard tilted his head at Karen Goddard. “This the lethal lady?”

  “Here’s her gun.” In true TV cop show tradition, Callahan handed him the weapon wrapped in a handkerchief.

  Startled, Leppard looked from him to Dave. “Am I supposed to believe this man is really who he looks like?”

  Dave said, “We storybook heroes all know each other. Lieutenant Jefferson Leppard, Cliff Callahan.” The two men shook hands. Dave pointed upward, pain grabbing his arm. “Your lab men will find matching bullets for that revolver stuck up there in the rafters.”

  Leppard’s eyebrows rose. “More than one?”

  “Two,” Dave said, and looked at Karen Goddard, as a uniform unroped her from his desk chair. “She didn’t want me telling you where to find Rachel Klein.”

  Leppard looked at the .32. “This Klein’s gun?”

  “Shales’s, at a guess. The one that
killed him.”

  One of the uniforms touched Callahan’s arm. “My kid sure would like your autograph. For once, I’d come home a hero.”

  Callahan laughed, took the cop’s ballpoint pen, and scrawled his name across the back of a ticket.

  Leppard asked Dave, “So where do I find Rachel Klein?”

  Dave watched the cop handcuff Karen Goddard and lead her out into the night. “One seven five eight Boatwright Lane. A new development. Where the wetlands used to be.”

  “Thank you.” Leppard started off. “I’ll send a unit down there to bring her in.” He dodged. “Hey!”

  “Dave!” Cecil came in the door at a run and nearly bowled the stocky detective over. Cecil’s eyes were wide with alarm. “What happened?” He folded Dave in his long, lean arms. “Jesus, are you all right?”

  “I slightly fell down stairs,” Dave said.

  “Ah, no. Dave, if you—” Cecil let the protest go, let Dave go, walked down the room, and picked something up from the floor. The Sig-Sauer. He knew how to use it, had used it once, killed a man with it, to save Dave’s life. He still hated guns. He sniffed the barrel and frowned. “You fired it.” He looked toward the door. “Who at—that girl?”

  “It was her idea.” Dave hitched up the blanket. “You want to get me some clothes, please?”

  The next morning, he was sore in many places. He sat on the edge of the bed and drank the coffee Cecil had left for him. Then he tottered to his feet and found he moved like a cripple, wincing at every step. All the same, he switched on music. He needed to hear music. The CD happened to be Haydn piano sonatas. Just right. Clutching the rail, he limped downstairs. There was a large black-and-blue mark on his forehead, a dull red graze along his jaw. As he faced the bathroom mirror, shaving, he was reminded of little Zach Gruber.

  It was painful to climb the stairs again, to make the moves necessary to get dressed. Then, coffee mug in hand, he limped through the leaf-dappled shadow of the old oak, across the uneven brick paving to the cookshack. When he came in the door, Cecil was at the stove and at the table sat a chunky boy in a Levi’s jacket with the arms torn off, and army fatigue pants. He was drinking coffee from one of the yellow mugs. His sun-streaked brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail fastened with a rubber band, and he hadn’t shaved for a few days. Dave had seen him before. Where?