“Right.” Dave nodded wearily, picked up his napkin, unfolded it deliberately, laid it in his lap.
Cecil said, “See, I do know my job.”
“And you did your job.” Dave picked up his fork. “The public has a right to know—yes?”
“It wasn’t in the Times,” Cecil said.
Dave tasted his supper. “He didn’t go to the Times.”
Cecil peered at him, frowning. “You saying they wouldn’t have printed it?” He laid down his fork. “What? Hernandez sized me up as a stupid kid?”
Dave twitched him a smile. “I think you can expect a handsome present soon.”
Cecil sat straight, offended. “He didn’t offer—”
“A bribe? No, of course not,” Dave said. “But a man like Hernandez scrupulously rewards those who help him.”
Cecil looked stunned. “He used me?”
Dave nodded. “I’m afraid he did.”
“Shit!” Cecil jumped up from his chair so it banged the wall. Tears filled his eyes. “Shit, shit, shit! When am I ever going to stop being a fool?”
“The same time as the rest of us,” Dave said. “When they drop you into the ground. Sit down. What he did to you is nothing to what he’s done to his friend Vickers.”
Cecil didn’t sit. “What do you mean?”
“Until you put him on the air,” Dave said, “only Leppard and I knew he’d seen the man who killed Cricket. He came so close to the two of them fighting in that breezeway, he almost bumped into them. Why didn’t the killer see him? He’s not easy to miss. He couldn’t chase him down then because Rachel was coming, wasn’t she? And the killer had to hide, himself. But now—now the killer has seen Vickers again, hasn’t he, knows his name and where to find him.”
Cecil licked dry lips. “You mean I set Vickers up to be murdered?”
“No more than Vickers did, himself,” Dave said. “He must have sensed after that interview with Leppard that he was a suspect for murder, and it worried him. So he called Hernandez for help—what else are powerful friends for? And he played right into Hernandez’s hands. The councilman advised him to clear himself of the murder charge by taking his story to the court of public opinion. Hernandez would arrange for it himself. He knew someone at Channel Three news who would help him out.”
“Oh, Lord.” Cecil moaned, and looked at the ceiling.
Dave went on, “By telling the viewers of the six o’clock news he saw the killing and the killer, Vickers would change himself from a suspect into a mere witness—or so Hernandez claimed.” Dave took another bite of chicken, while Cecil watched him, agonized. “He suckered Vickers first. Then he suckered you.”
“Why?” Cecil cried this, bewildered, frantic. “Why?”
“Because Vickers knows a dirty Hernandez family secret,” Dave said. “And in Hernandez’s very shrewd judgment, Vickers cracks under the slightest pressure, and the pressure of a murder investigation is in no way slight, not when it focuses on you, and it was beginning to do that to Vickers, wasn’t it? Vickers betrayed Rachel to save his own hide. And she meant a lot more to him than Alejandro Hernandez. If he thought it would help him, wouldn’t Vickers just as easily spill what he learned the night of the murder when Hernandez rang him for help?”
Cecil reached up for the phone, and held it out to Dave. “Get Leppard to give him police protection.”
“I’ll try,” Dave said, and took the phone.
Lying on the couch in the rear building, reading the new mystery Jack Helmers had handed him the other morning, Dave heard the coachwork of Amanda’s red Alfa-Romeo squeak as it zipped down into the yard from Horseshoe Canyon trail. It was a familiar sound and a welcome one. She’d had the car it seemed forever. He hoped she’d never get a new one. It had become in his mind such an extension of herself. He marked his place in Jack’s book with the jacket flap, laid the book under the lamp, laid his reading glasses on top of it, and got up. He was already on his way to the door when her footsteps sounded in the courtyard. He could tell from the click of her heels she was in a testy mood. He opened the door. “Right on time,” he said. “Come in. A drink?”
“Dave, I wish you wouldn’t—” She broke that off, gave him a tight little smile, a quick little peck on the cheek. “Oh, yes, of course, a drink, and then”—she plumped down in one of the red leather wing chairs—“a long, Dutch avuncular lecture to straighten me out.”
“You’ve been peeking at the script.” He lifted a hand in the doorway, and after a moment the ground lights in the courtyard went out. He smiled and closed the door. He walked up the room, past his desk and file cabinets, to the dimly lit bar. “Cecil’s out. Brandy?”
“And soda, please.” She wore off-white jeans, a big floppy boy’s cap, oatmeal color, a bulky oatmeal color sweater, a yards-long muffler. The size of the chair made her look tinier than ever, but red was a color that favored her prettiness, though it needed no favors.
“It’s a shame to treat brandy like that,” he said.
“Europe does it,” she said, “and I’m over there so often now, it’s come to seem natural.”
He fixed brandy and soda for her, no ice, and got himself brandy neat in a small bubble glass, and came back to her with these things, gave her what she’d asked for, and sat down on the couch again with his drink.
“He’s a nice straightforward kid,” Dave said. “Forget the others. Don’t pile their faults on him.”
“We had an understanding.” Amanda sipped the brandy and soda. “No show-biz shenanigans. Not for me.”
Dave lit a cigarette. “He doesn’t like them either.”
“Oh, Dave, he’s bought into them,” she said impatiently. “They come with the territory. Actors sign contracts. They don’t control what they do or what’s done to them. I knew that. I don’t know why I didn’t remember it earlier.”
“Because Cliff’s different from the rest of them,” Dave said with a smile, lifting his glass to her. “And you knew that from the start.”
“I was in love and I believed what I wanted to believe.”
“He didn’t do this to you, Amanda.”
“Hah!” She tucked up her feet. “Then who did, pray?”
Dave heard muffled sounds outside, and glanced at the door. “I invited you here tonight to meet him.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Him?”
Dave shrugged. “Him, her. We’ll see in a minute.”
Amanda stood up. “What are you babbling about?”
“I never babble.” Dave got up and went to the door. “Cecil will introduce us.” He pulled the door open.
And through the doorway, propelled by a shove from behind, stumbled a youth, whining and cursing in Italian. His black hair stood up spiky. He was so slight his trendy wide-shoulder jacket looked borrowed. Two cameras hung around his neck. A bulky photo equipment bag bumped his hip. Behind him, Cecil came in, grinning.
“Wasn’t any time at all,” he said, “when I heard him crackling around in the bushes.”
“Who are you?” the youth demanded of Dave. “What do you mean by this—this—assault? I will call the guardi. I will tell them—”
Dave put a hand over his mouth. “Listen a minute. You’ve been following this woman, haven’t you?” He nodded to indicate Amanda, who stood by the fireplace watching in bewilderment. “Well, I will tell that to the guardi, and the guardi won’t like it. You mustn’t do that.”
The youth knocked Dave’s hand away. “I am photographer.” He was panting. He rummaged in the bag. “Here, see? My press credentials.” He waved a creased paper at Dave.
“Good for you. But harassment isn’t covered by this.”
“I’m-a no harass,” the youth said, glaring at Amanda. “She is VIP. Newsworthy. The public—”
“Has a right to know?” Cecil looked irony at Dave and went along the room to get himself a drink. “Forget it.”
Dave said, “You’ve been taking her picture for days now. Isn’t that so?”
The bo
y nodded. “Yes. Why do you object?” He threw Amanda an impudent grin. “She ’as no object.”
“She didn’t know,” Dave said. “I knew.”
The boy looked him up and down. “You? I ’ave never seen you before. ’oo are you?”
“I’m the lady’s relative,” Dave said. “And I knew you existed without having to see you. Somebody was telling the studio that makes ‘Icarus’ all about the lady and Cliff Callahan. It was you, wasn’t it?”
The youth shrugged. “I am professional photographer. They buy my pictures. It is ’ow I live.”
“And one of those pictures showed the lady and Cliff Callahan at the Hall of Records downtown, isn’t that right?”
“You are charlatan,” the youth scoffed.
“You are wrong. I’m a real magician,” Dave said. “Else how did I know you’d turn up here tonight? How did I know to have my friend ready to catch you?”
“This is craziness.” The youth turned and reached for the door. Dave stepped in front of him.
“Just one more minute. Tell me if you took such a picture. What harm can it do?”
The youth eyed him narrowly. “If it can do no ’arm, why are you so excite’ about it?”
Cecil came back. “Because it can do some good,” he said. “There’s been a misunderstanding between the young lady and her fiancé. You don’t want to wreck their love story, do you? I thought Italians were romantic.”
The boy sneered. “You tap dance, I play mandolino.”
Cecil raised a fist in mock threat and grinned.
The youth grinned back. “Sure, I take that picture.”
“And went inside and showed the clerk your press card and asked if the lady and Mr. Callahan had taken out a marriage license, right?”
He shrugged. “I already knew they take blood test.”
Amanda gasped. “What? But doctors’ records—”
“Are sacred?” Dave said, and looked at the youth. “Is nothing sacred?”
“Nothing you can buy for twenty dollars,” the boy said, snatched open the door, and fled into the night.
He left them laughing for a long time.
16
POLICE PATROL CARS STOOD at angles in the street, doors hanging open, lights revolving on their tops, pointless in the early morning sunlight. Dave left the Jaguar at the curb down the street and jogged toward the shingled turrets of Tomorrow House. A black-and-white and an unmarked police car stood in the driveway. Radios crackled from the cars, static jolts interrupted by the voices of female dispatchers. Only two officers were there to hear. Uniformed. They stood by one of the cars, talking, a black, an Asian. Dave showed them his license. Nice-looking kids. Dave wondered when they’d left high school—last week?
He told them, “Lieutenant Leppard sent for me.” They peered at the license. The black one said, “That’s right. Go on in, Mr. Brandstetter.”
The front door stood open, but the gap-toothed girl in coveralls was nowhere to be seen. Nor was anyone else. The television in the big room to the right of the hall played cartoons but no one was there to watch. The metal folding chairs in the other room were empty. A uniform looked at Dave from the end of the hallway beside the staircase. Dave showed him his license and said his piece again, and was waved on. He had a feeling he’d end up on the back porch, and he ended up on the back porch. It was milling with men, but the center of attraction lay dead under a linty brown bullet-punctured blanket on his monkish cot. Jordan Vickers. He was having his picture taken. Cameras flashed.
Leppard appeared beside Dave. “I want you to look at it.” He pushed men aside, taking Dave to the body.
“He was reaching for the phone,” Dave said.
“Looks like it,” Leppard said.
Dave stood looking at bed, body, bedside table, lamp, telephone, clock radio, screened window above the bed. Vickers’s thrift-shop clothes lay over a chair, wallet, loose change, keys. Dave crouched and peered under the bed. Big shoes. The cap with Boss on it. He pushed painfully to his feet, dug out his reading glasses, bent close to the blanket. It smelled of that same cologne he’d breathed the other morning in the interrogation room. He studied the blanket, straightened, tucked the glasses into his jacket pocket.
“Shot at close range,” he said to Leppard, “by what I’d guess was a thirty-two.”
“Three shots, just like Shales,” Leppard said.
“Only this time, he used a pillow for a silencer,” Dave said. He looked around him. “Anybody find that pillow?”
“No sign of it,” Leppard said. “Some more of that lint outside. He must have taken it with him.”
Dave moved between men to the outside door. The screen had been cut, a hand thrust in to work the hook. “For a man with so many chancy acquaintances, he put up a poor defense.”
“Door says it wasn’t one of the inmates,” Leppard said.
“Door to the hallway locked, was it?”
“No. They tell me never.”
Dave gave his head a marveling shake. He glanced toward the desk and files. “Nothing there?”
“Fingerprints will tell us. I doubt it. He came for only one thing—to kill the man that saw him shoot Shales.”
Dave grunted. “One of them. When did it happen?”
“The M.E. will tell us.”
Leppard nodded at a bony man with gray skin, a slack mouth, long teeth—Carlyle, who shambled to the bed with his kit, giving Dave a sour smile as he passed. He hated being kept waiting. He glanced around him as if he couldn’t quite believe his turn had come. Then he uncovered the long lean body on the cot. Jordan had slept naked. Dave turned away.
“Nobody heard the shots?”
Leppard led the way into the hall. “Nobody will admit they heard the shots, heard anybody prowling around, heard squat. And maybe they didn’t, but they’re not types who like talking to the police. They’re types who figure whatever they say, they’ll end up in trouble.”
“Where are they?” Dave said, and walked into the empty rap session room. “The place is usually teeming.”
“They were all packing to leave,” Leppard said. “I ordered them to stay.” He glanced up the stairs. “In their rooms, I hope.” A uniformed officer appeared at the top of the stairs. Another high school type. This one blond and blue-eyed. Leppard called, “Everybody still here?”
“Detective Samuels isn’t through talking to them yet,” the blond boy said. “They’re all still here. But they don’t like it. They don’t call me by my right name.”
Dave lit a cigarette. “What’s his line of questioning?”
“He’s after gossip.” Leppard held out his hand. “You have one of those you can spare?”
Dave’s eyebrows went up. “You, Lieutenant?”
“Never mind that,” Leppard said, took the pack from Dave’s hand, got a cigarette from it, set it in his mouth. “This is a crazy case with no end to it.” Dave lit the cigarette for him. “He’s trying to find out if anybody was sore at Vickers. Nursing a grudge. Whatever.”
“We know who did this,” Dave told him.
Leppard blew smoke away and snorted. “Plain Vanilla?”
Dave said, “Plain Vanilla.”
“Businesslike bastard.” Leppard flicked ashes into the empty fireplace. “Gruber’s lucky to be in jail.”
“But Rachel Klein is out of jail,” Dave said. “I hate to give unwanted advice again—”
“Here it comes,” Leppard said bitterly. “‘I told you so.’ You warned me to protect Vickers and I brushed you off. Never again. I’ve already sent people to watch out for her.”
“She back at her apartment?” Dave said.
“You want to tell your TV buddy? You think that will draw the killer, and my men can bust him when he shows up?”
Dave shrugged. “He sure as hell watches the news.”
“Plain Vanilla.” Shaking his head in disgust, Leppard moved into the hall. “‘Looks like anybody,’ Gruber said.”
Dave followed him. “Wel
l, we know now that Vickers saw Shales’s killer, all right, poor bastard. So did Gruber. And it wasn’t Rachel, it wasn’t Karen Goddard, it wasn’t Irwin Klein. Who does that leave?”
“A drug dealer,” Leppard said. “Who works the area around that apartment complex. The first idea is sometimes the best, right?”
Dave said, “Tessa Gruber said drug-related shootings were common around there. Have you checked them out? Maybe this isn’t Plain Vanilla’s first.”
“Hell, yes, we checked them out.” Leppard glared at Dave and tossed his cigarette off the porch into a flower bed. “No loose ends in any of those.”
“Loose ends enough in this one,” Dave said. “Which reminds me—there’s something I forgot to do.”
“What’s that?” Leppard said.
“Look at Cricket Shales’s personal effects.”
“Help yourself,” Leppard said. “There’s nothing there.”
A uniformed officer, this one no kid, a veteran with a beer belly, on the verge of retirement, looked at Dave through the black-wire mesh of the property department with eyes that had seen too much of the wrong kind of life. Dave remembered him but not well. Siekmeier was the name on the plastic-enclosed identification tag on his shirt pocket. He said, “Brandstetter, isn’t it? Been a long time.”
Dave smiled a little. “I hear that a lot, lately.”
Siekmeier chuckled. “Yeah, me, too.” With a wince and a soft groan he slid his weight off a stool. “What can I do you for?”
“Shales,” Dave said, “Howard Ronald, also known as Cricket. Homicide victim. His worldly goods?”
“Yeah.” Siekmeier went to a steel mesh gate, rattled keys, swung the gate open. “Come in.” Dave did that, and Siekmeier closed the gate again and led him down aisles of green steel shelving piled with cardboard cartons. He peered left and right as he went, then grunted, stopped, hauled down a carton. He nodded. “Table down there.”
Country of Old Men Page 15
