Early Graves

by Joseph Hansen

  “That’s no way to treat a man’s files,” Dave said.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t I know you from someplace? Insurance?”

  “If you’re Murray Berman, you do,” Dave said. “I know one reason you’re here—the family’s at church. What’s the other reason?”

  “I’m looking for something of mine Drew had and I have to have back. It’s no use to him now. And I don’t want to have to hassle with lawyers to get it.” He pushed his hands into the file drawer again.

  Dave said, “Forget it, Murray. It’s not in there.” Dave bent to pick up file folders, spread sheets, manila envelopes from the floor. “Where you know me from is San Pedro, twenty years ago. An alleged warehouse robbery on the docks that turned out to be insurance fraud by a Chinatown importer. Remember? You sold the policy. I was the investigator—on loan to one of your Hartford companies from my company, Medallion.”

  “Right.” Berman nodded, started to smile, changed his mind. “What do you mean, it’s not here?”

  Dave laid a stack of files, envelopes, papers in the short man’s arms. “Put those back, will you?” Mutely, Berman did as he was told. Dave crouched to gather up more of the litter. “You were located in Long Beach in those days. Now you’re in Thousand Oaks, right?” Dave laid his gleanings on the desk to straighten them. “Head of your own agency.” He put the stack into Berman’s hands. “Doing well, are you?”

  “Close to half a million last year,” Berman said. “Investigator. I see.” He nodded, frowning to himself. “You been checking up on me. Why?”

  “Matter of fact, I only began this morning.” Dave was down on hands and knees now, reaching under the desk for papers that had slithered there. “Will you help me pick up this mess, please? You made it.”

  Berman stood where he was. “You’ve got the letter.”

  “I’ve got it.” Shoulder hurting, Dave backed out from under the desk with the papers, climbed to his feet, handed the papers to Berman. “And I’ve read it.”

  “Oh, hell.” Disgusted, Berman let the papers slip loosely from his hands into the drawer. He slammed the drawer shut. He stood, facing nothing for a minute, then drew breath and faced Dave. “Look, it doesn’t mean what it says. I was panicky. I shouldn’t have mailed it. I wouldn’t have except he was always out, never returned my calls.” Berman held out small, plump, begging hands. “Give it back. Forget it. Why do you want to make trouble for me?”

  “What kind of trouble?” Dave said. “You think if the police read it, they’d arrest you for Dodge’s murder?”

  Berman went pale. “I didn’t threaten to kill him. Where’s the letter? Let me show you.”

  “What you threatened,” Dave said, “was to tell all his investors something you alone had found out—that Sears-Roebuck and Safeway supermarkets weren’t coming into the shopping mall. The two biggest tenants Dodge had promised you all when he conned your money out of you had changed their minds. And without them, the mall would never earn you back a thin dime—none of you.”

  “I just wanted my part back,” Berman said. “Drew was short of funds. Contractors and suppliers hadn’t been paid in months. Drew had been sick in the hospital. The project was collapsing. I only wanted what was mine while the getting was good, before he could pull a chapter eleven on us, go bankrupt.” Tears came to Berman’s eyes. “Give me the letter.” He fumbled to bring a checkbook from a hip pocket. “I’ll pay you. Name your price.”

  “You’re a real mensch, Murray,” Dave said. “What did you care what happened to the other little guys like you, shopkeepers, automobile dealers, veterinarians, doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers? Just so long as you got yours.”

  Berman didn’t hear him. He dropped onto the swivel chair, switched on the desk lamp, opened the green leather checkbook folder, pulled the cap off a pen. He peered up at Dave, forehead wrinkled. “Ten thousand?”

  “I don’t want money,” Dave said, “I want the truth.”

  “Wh-what about?” Berman stammered.

  “Begin with what happened after Dodge got your letter.”

  “He phoned me to come see him.” Berman held up the checkbook to Dave and looked pitiable. “Fifteen thousand?”

  “Put it away,” Dave said. “You came to see him, right? And he gave you a lot of sweet talk, didn’t he?”

  “He looked awful—I hardly recognized him.” Berman glumly pushed the pen into its slot in the folder, closed the folder, pushed it back into his hip pocket. “Thin and pale. And weak? Even his voice was weak. Yeah, we talked. Right in this room.”

  “He asked you to wait,” Dave said. “He just knew he could turn Sears and Safeway around if you gave him time, right? Or did he say he’d hooked Montgomery Ward and Von’s instead? What did he say, Murray?”

  “How do you know so much?” Berman said.

  “People have told me how he operated,” Dave said.

  “Yeah, well, I knew him too, by then. And I wasn’t buying. I wanted my money. I got real ugly with him, and he said he’d get it for me. He knew somebody he could hit up for it. He didn’t say who.”

  “I think I know,” Dave said. “Did he say when?”

  “He tried leaving it vague,” Berman said, “but I gave him a deadline.”

  “The night he was killed,” Dave said.

  Berman looked sick. “Who told you that?”

  Dave inched him a smile. “I learned it just now, down on my hands and knees. Tell me how it went. You came at the appointed time. Here?”

  Berman nodded. “By the back way. But not at the appointed time. Early. I didn’t trust him.”

  “And you were right, yes? He was driving away, wasn’t he? He wasn’t going to be there when you arrived.”

  Berman gaped. “You were following me.”

  Dave shook his head. “This is the first time you’ve worn those shoes since that night, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Berman peered at the shoes, frowned up at Dave. “Yeah, I guess it is. What about it?”

  “There are flowers stuck to them,” Dave said. “Yellow once, brown now. From the trees on the street where Dodge was killed. You were sore, and you followed him—sixty miles down the freeway, and clear into East Hollywood. You parked behind him on the street, and braced him for your money.”

  “He didn’t have it, but he had a gun. And I wasn’t getting shot. Not for all the money in the world.”

  “So you ran back to your car and drove off? You didn’t see a skinny teenager confront Dodge in the parking space under the apartments across the street?”

  “My back was turned. I heard the gun go off, and I saw this kid running away. Didn’t see Drew anyplace. Figured he’d scared the kid like he scared me. Why did he go there?”

  “He had a friend in those apartments,” Dave said. “The kid—you didn’t know him? Never saw him before?”

  “What? You mean here, in the valley? His kind don’t show up out here. No, I never saw him before.”

  “What color was his car, did you notice?”

  “Dark—blue, brown?” Berman shrugged. “It was an old wreck from the sixties—Chevette or something.”

  “License number?” Dave said.

  “It was too dark,” Berman said. “Anyway, who cared?”

  Tires crunched the gravel of the drive out front. Berman jumped up. “That’s the family home from the funeral.” Car doors slammed. Women’s voices broke the morning stillness. Shrill. Arguing. “I’m out of here,” Berman said, yanked the den door open, vanished down the hallway. Dave moved after him, taking his time.

  “You are too going,” Kathy Dodge cried.

  “I’m not, and that’s that,” said Gerda Nilson. “I’m not deserting my child when she’s sick and dying.”

  “Mother, you can’t save me.” The house door burst open. The voices were clearer now. “We’ve been all over this. Look at the clock. You’ll miss the plane.”

  “We’ll all stay here together,” Gerda Nilson said.

 
“No. I’m not putting the children through that. The cruelty’s already started at school. Take them to Minneapolis now. You promised. I’ll clear things up here, sell the house, and come along back there as soon as I can.”

  Gerda Nilson’s voice was harsh with tears. “I could kill that man for what he did to you.”

  Dave stepped down into the lanai and pulled the house door shut behind him.

  17

  THE SHADOW OF THE church had turned and shortened. It fell on the cars in the parking lot now, Dave’s brown Jaguar, and the off-white LAPD car. The detective with the moustache stood beside this one, smoking a cigarette, and talking to Tom Owens. Owens had shed the trenchcoat but still wore the Irish hat. Dave parked the BMW, took the keys from the ignition, climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and walked over to the men.

  “They said you were slippery.” The detective pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. “But you shouldn’t have done it to me.” He pushed the handkerchief away. “You shouldn’t have involved Mr. Owens, here. You know that.”

  “And I apologize,” Dave said. “But let’s count our blessings—I wasn’t shot and I wasn’t stabbed.” He brought out the letters—both typewritten on crisp stationery—and peered at them. The one with Berman’s letterhead he passed to the detective. “Call Lieutenant Leppard about this man. He’ll want to question him.”

  The detective sneezed. “Damn. I think I’m getting a cold.” He got the handkerchief out again, sneezed again, blew his nose, put the handkerchief away. He dropped his cigarette, stepped on it, read the letter and blinked at Dave, tilting his head. “Where did you get this?”

  “You don’t want the to answer that,” Dave said. “Berman came after it himself. I got it just in time.”

  “I’m sketchy on the case,” the detective said. “What does it mean?” Dave told him what it meant, and added, “He may be lying about the boy. He may have hired the boy to scare Dodge. And the gun made it turn out wrong.”

  “I’ll go myself,” the detective said. He shook Dave’s hand. “Morales,” he said. He walked around to the driver side of the car, opened the door, paused. “Where do I catch up with you?”

  “The Oaktree Inn. I’ll light there sometime.”

  Morales nodded. “I’ll spot your car. There aren’t a lot like it. Be careful, now, all right?”

  “Arrest Berman, why don’t you?” Dave said. “The scare might do him good. Witnesses to murder are supposed to come forward. Aren’t they?”

  “I can’t arrest him,” Morales said. “Wrong jurisdiction. I’ll turn him over to the local authority, whoever that is.”

  “County sheriff,” Dave said. “The station faces the town square. On the west side.”

  “Thanks.” Morales got into his car. The motor thrashed raggedly to life. He backed out of the parking slot, clanked the gears, rolled onto the empty highway.

  “I thought you’d never come back,” Tom Owens said.

  “I’m sorry to have worried you,” Dave said. “I hope Morales didn’t get too unpleasant.”

  “Only with himself.” Owens grinned. “Nobody likes to be made a fool of. He cussed himself out. Spanish is not invariably the loving tongue.” He passed the hat back to Dave, ran fingers through his hair. “Where did you go?”

  Dave told him. “Dodge gave his wife AIDS.”

  “Dear God,” Owens said. “He can’t have meant to. Can he?” The yellow eyes pleaded for an assurance no one could give. “It’s easy to have it and not know. That’s what’s so horrible about it.”

  “One of the things that’s so horrible about it.” Dave laid the BMW keys in Owens’s hand. “Thanks for your help. It was even more important than I thought.”

  “You’re not coming back with me to the beach?”

  “I’d like that,” Dave said. “Thanks. But there’s another of Dodge’s victims I have to talk to.”

  “You really going to put up at a motel?” Owens gazed around him at the valley, the green hills hemming it in, the emptiness. “With television for company?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Dave said. “Tell Larry to mat those watercolors of his he’s got in the workroom. I want to buy them.”

  Owens’s face lit up. “He’ll be thrilled.” He moved off to the BMW and got inside. “That’s a nice gesture.”

  “It’s no gesture.” Dave walked to him, fitting on the hat. “When I got home, I’d regret I hadn’t brought them along. Didn’t you ever see anything, and know you couldn’t be happy without it?”

  “Yes—Larry.” Owens laughed, closed the car door, then rolled the window down, stuck out a hand. “Almost forgot your keys. We’ll see you then, on your way home?”

  “I like to think so.” Dave took the keys, backed away from the BMW. Smiling, Owens started it up, reversed it, guided it out of the silent parking lot onto the empty highway. It headed south after Morales. Dave watched it diminish, then went to a telephone sheltered by an open-sided glass-and-steel box next to the rear door of the church. He put in a collect call to Amanda at her busy shop on Rodeo Drive, and after that to Cecil at the apartment in Mar Vista. To tell them where he was, so they wouldn’t worry if they found the place on Horseshoe Canyon Trail empty. They asked for explanations. He didn’t explain. “But I think it’s nearly over. You develop a sense about these things, after a while. I’m getting close.”

  “Be careful,” Amanda said. “Are the police with you?”

  “Detective Morales,” Dave said. “Don’t worry.”

  “How do I get there?” Cecil said. “Wait for me. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m glad you realize that,” Dave said, and hung up.

  Tall, blond, gangly, a figure in white tennis shorts, white short-sleeved shirt, lobbed a fuzzy yellow ball across a green net. Rubber soles squeaked on the composition surface of the court. The player on the far side was a boy of maybe thirteen, blond also, cream-skinned, blue-eyed, but he hadn’t got his growth yet, nor lost his baby fat. The hair of the tall one was long and straight and held by a headband. When little brother ignored the ball, let it bounce past him to the tall hedge that backed the yard, and pointed his racket at Dave, she turned. It was a she. Maybe seventeen. She squinted in the sun glare.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Senator Bud Hollywell,” Dave said. “I telephoned his office in Sacramento. They said he was at home.”

  “He’s talking to a businessmen’s luncheon,” she said, “in Agoura Hills.” She read a tiny gold watch on a skinny wrist. “He won’t be home for hours.”

  Dave took out his wallet, thumbed a card from it, handed it to her. “Give him this, will you please? Tell him to expect me back. When? Around dinnertime?”

  “I guess so,” she said, shook back her hair, gave him a smile of straight, white teeth. She wore no makeup, her chest was flat, her hips narrow. In jeans, she could pass herself off as a boy with no trouble. “I’ll give it to him,” she said. “What’s it about?”

  “The death of Drew Dodge,” Dave said.

  Her face clouded. She glanced over her shoulder. Her brother was poking around the roots of the hedge, looking for the ball. She said softly to Dave, “Did you know he was gay? He had AIDS?”

  “If I hadn’t already known it,” Dave said, “I’d have guessed it at the funeral. Nobody came.”

  “My father had this luncheon meeting. It’s a long drive. There wasn’t time.”

  “Do you know if he’d seen Mr. Dodge lately?” Dave said. “After Dodge got out of the hospital—just before he was killed? Had he come here to see your father? On business?”

  “It would have had to be on business,” she said. “They weren’t friends or anything.” She stressed this. She didn’t want a stranger getting wrong ideas about her father. “I don’t think he came here. I didn’t see him.”

  “Do you go down to Los Angeles a lot?” Dave said.

  “What for?” She made a face. “The smog?”

  “I just had an idea I’d seen you
in Los Angeles lately.”

  “Not me.” She gave her head a firm shake. Her long hair swung. “We moved here years ago to get away from all that. This is lovely. I’ll never go back.”

  “Ma-til-da!” Her brother had found the tennis ball, and stood bouncing it with his racket. “Are we playing tennis or what? I can always go back to my computer, you know.”

  “Just a minute,” she called.

  “You like sports,” Dave said. “Do you take any defense training, karate, that kind of thing?”

  “I’m too tall for my age group,” she said. “You have to be the right size to match up with the other kids. I’m never the right size. For anything.”

  “What about knife fighting?” Dave looked away, at treetops, at the sky. “Anyone around here teach that?”

  “Knife fighting?” She gave an audible shudder. “No. I never heard of anything like that. Not in this valley.”

  “It’s cattle country,” Dave said. “Knives are standard equipment in cattle country.”

  “No. I never did any knife fighting. Who are you, anyway? What kind of question is that?”

  “If you don’t know”—Dave smiled at her—“then I’m sorry for asking.” He turned to leave, turned back. “But it’s important I see your father. He wrote a letter to Drew Dodge. He’ll want to explain it.”

  “My father is a fine man,” she flared. “A wonderful man. Don’t you go making any trouble for him.”

  “I’ll be back around five.” Dave walked away.

  The slow pock, pock of the tennis ball took up again behind him.

  The name of the paper was lettered in Gothic inside a plate of glass that fronted the offices, THE WEATHERVANE. The lettering formed an arc over a drawing in black and gold of a weathervane. Nothing like spelling things out for the folks. The office was a storefront that faced the town square. Across the square, beyond the big dark old trees and the seesaws, swings, jungle gyms, beyond the boys teetering on skateboards around the lacy steel band pavilion, rose the hardware store, Drew Dodge’s lifeless offices above it. To Dave’s left, catty corner, the sheriff’s substation was housed in brown brick.