Dave Brandstetter 3 - Troublemaker

by Joseph Hansen

  "That's a Theodore Roethke poem," Dave said. "What kind of boxer are you trying to make?"

  "Boxer! Bobby?" Kegan laughed, shook his head and downed more of the orange-color drink. "That's very funny. No, it's for the Mr. Marvelous contest. Between the gay bars. Each one puts up a beautiful kid. But he's also got to have something in his head, you know? Culture?"

  "Correct his handshake," Dave said. "People with limp handshakes are takers."

  "He only did it not to hurt you," Ace said. "Don't worry about me. Nobody takes Ace Kegan."

  "Somebody took Richard Wendell," Dave said.

  Kegan looked morose. "Yeah. All the way down." He nodded at the doors through which Bobby had vanished. "You think that kid is dumb? You should have known Rick. Only he was big and stubborn and he wasn't any kid. Heather and I did our best to keep him grounded, but . . ." He let it trail away.

  "How do you mean —grounded?" Dave didn't trust the drink. He set it on a low steel-legged glass table where magazines like High Fidelity and The New Yorker jostled comic books—Batman, Creepy —and where the records were Stevie Wonder and a box of four Brahms symphonies. "Was it a question of odds? Did he take home a lot of boys like Larry Johns?"

  "Hah!" Kegan got up and stepped over the exercise equipment to punch a button on a record changer. A German half-gram pickup slowly settled on a record. The same pianist played Erik Satie from four corners of the room at once. Kegan turned back. "That would have been no problem. I tried to get him on the bath circuit. In one night you can get enough sex for a year. I bought him memberships. He wouldn't go."

  "He owned pictures, magazines, slides," Dave said. "Yeah. Dependable. You turn on the projector, they're always the same. That was what he wanted, somebody permanent. Only what he picked —they'd never be. Talk about takers. Jesus—the last one!? " Weights on pulleys were steel-framed against a wall. Kegan began to haul on them, this arm, that arm, thick muscle sliding under the brown skin of his shoulders and upper back. "Mickey Something. I forget his last name. I never called him Mickey. I called him Monkey. That was what he looked like. Took Rick down to his socks. In about six weeks' time. I mean it." The pulleys squeaked. "Damn near wiped Rick out and me with him."

  "When was this?"

  "Three, four years back. Summer. Hot like this one. Long, hot summer. Maybe that was what did it."

  "It might have been simpler," Dave said. "It might have been fifteen hundred dollars." Kegan let the weights crash and turned. Dave held up the brown envelope. "I stopped by the bank on my way here. He drew it on Monday, just before closing time —three."

  "Yeah. Well —" A nerve twitched beside Kegan's eye. He scratched his belly, shifted his feet. "That was for—uh—for the bar. Alterations. Yeah. I forgot about that." He leaned across the table to take the envelope. He turned it over in clumsy fingers, staring at it. "Where's the bread?"

  "That's what I came to ask you," Dave said. "I found the envelope on the desk in his den. Empty except for the straps that had held the bills. Twenties, I'd guess. Why should he get cash in small bills for alterations? Why not a business check?"

  "Mmm." Kegan's tongue pushed at his shut mouth. Then he let go it helpless grin. "Okay. But understand —he was handling it. See, we're lowering the bar. No, raising the floor, really. So what we needed would be chairs, not stools. What we had in mind were barrel chairs on swivels, deep leather, you know? But they cost a lot. He must have got some deal right off the truck, you know? Lost shipment? You'd need cash for that kind of deal."

  "You were his partner," Dave said.

  Kegan looked at him hard and handed back the envelope. "I didn't know anything about it. Who got the money? The Johns kid?"

  "There was a house key, three dollars and change in the pants the police found on Wendell's bedroom floor. A pack of cigarettes and a throwaway lighter in his shirt. The sarape didn't have pockets."

  "What does Heather say?" Kegan picked up his empty glass and Dave's full one and took them to the kitchen. The smack of rubber stripping said he'd opened a refrigerator door. Ice cubes rattled into a glass. The door clapped shut. Kegan stood beside the flowers with what looked like whiskey in an Old Fashioned glass. Tasting it made him wince.

  "She says it must have been for the bar."

  "Yeah, well, like I said . . ." Kegan gave Dave a wan smile on his way to the doors to stand looking out. "Fifteen hundred. That hurts."

  "Maybe Wendell delivered the money." Dave got up from the couch and went to stand by the short man. "Maybe the chairs will show up today."

  Kegan shook his head. "That kind of deal, they get the bread when they turn over the goods." He looked at Dave. "Jesus, I'm a hell of a host. Here. This is for you. I don't even drink." He pushed the glass at Dave. "It's Canadian. All right?" Dave took it to keep it from falling. The breeze off the sea was warm. Sandpipers hemstitched the wet edge of the sand.

  He said, "What happened with Monkey, exactly?"

  "He walked into the bar out of nowhere —the way Savage did before him. Now, you have to understand Rick. Ten thousand guys come and go in our place. The Hang Ten and The Square Circle before that. Out of that number, some are on the hustle. And that big, soft bear —all you had to do was look at him to know he was a mark. And listen to him—talk, talk, talk. No secrets."

  "If the weather was hot," Dave said.

  "Yeah, well —" Kegan watched a gull swoop on a potato chip bag the wind was tumbling along the sparsely populated beach. "He could smile and talk and leave nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine of them strictly alone. Then along would come a Monkey or a Savage and he'd be gone. Right out of his skull. And you never knew when it would be. You had to watch him. Every minute."

  "How did Larry Johns get past?" Dave asked.

  "I never heard of him," Kegan said, "till that night. We were on to Rick. But he was on to us, it looks like. Normally, he'd have yakked on and on about the kid. Not this time. Sneaky."

  " 'We'?" Dave said. "Meaning you and his mother?" Kegan nodded glumly and Dave tried the whiskey. Nice. "Maybe the fifteen hundred was for him —Johns. Another Monkey, another Savage.

  " When was Savage?"

  "Christ, who remembers? Maybe sixty-four, -five. See, years could go by. You could forget about it —what a jackpot Rick could turn into when he saw something he wanted. He gave Monkey a car, a new MG. Savage wanted to jet to Rome. They went together. For a month. For Monkey, Rick damn near sold the house in the canyon. I mean it. Heather would have been out on her ass. Monkey didn't like the place, the horses, the dog—and especially he didn't like Heather." Kegan's smile was wry. "Not that she made it any secret, how she felt about him."

  "What stopped it?" Dave asked.

  "The escrow took too long on the new place," Kegan said. "A condominium. By the marina. Way out of Rick's price class. But like I say, when he was what he called 'in love,' he couldn't count." Kegan lifted his hard shoulders, spread his hands. "Monkey must have just got tired of waiting. He took off in his MG and didn't come back. We lucked out. He'd wasted fifteen, twenty big bills by then —Rick's, mine, Heather's. It could have been thirty and—look, Ma, no business, no house, no partnership, no nothing." He closed flat hands tinder his armpits and shuddered. "Makes me sweat now to think of it; I mean, it was that close."

  "It's that close now for Mrs. Wendell," Dave said. "The bank says he had less than two hundred in his savings account. With those horses to feed —"

  "She's as big a mark as he is." Kegan stepped out on the deck and began tapping the punching bag. "That little paint horse? Came from some ten-year-old girl in the canyon. Her parents said she could have it but only if she looked after it herself. Ten years old." He punched the bag hard. "Crazy. What did they really expect? So —they were going to sell it. But Heather stepped in, said she'd board it at her own expense and the little girl could come ride it when she wanted. Then that big, mud-color horse—"

  "She told me about him," Dave said. "She's going to have to stop. All she's got now
is the twenty-five thousand from Wendell's life insurance. If my company decides he didn't kill himself. Or that she didn't kill him."

  "What!" Kegan stepped back from the lunging bag.

  "Her prints are the only ones on the gun," Dave said. "The defense attorney will hammer on that."

  "Christ." Disgusted, Kegan swung away to lean his fists on the rail. He turned back. "Why? Why would she kill Rick? Why not Johns?"

  Dave shrugged. "Maybe she meant to kill Johns and her son tried to stop her and the gun went off."

  Kegan put his hands on his hips. "Why would she want to kill anybody?"

  "If she thought Johns was going to be another Monkey —to get rid of him. While she still had a roof over her head."

  Mouth tight at one corner, Kegan gave his head a shake and went back to punching the bag. "You've got quite a mind."

  "Will she inherit her son's partnership? That would solve her financial problems."

  "Be serious." Kegan made a face but didn't break the rhythm of his fists. "I need a working partner. You probably saw her in overalls but she's a very classy lady. She wouldn't set foot in the place. Anyway, she's too old. The hours would kill her. Besides, you don't want a woman in a gay bar." He made the bag stop bobbing and came to Dave. Taking away his empty glass, he looked into his eyes. "You know that." He headed for the kitchen.

  "I know that." Dave went after him and leaned in the doorway. "Wendell's door was open. Johns and Mrs. Wendell at least agree on that. Leaving the fifteen hundred out of it for the moment, who could have gone there? Johns says he heard a voice arguing with Wendell. Whose voice was it?" Kegan dropped ice cubes. They ran away from each other across sleek yellow vinyl tiles. "Had Wendell had any fights with anyone? Tried to throw anybody out of The Hang Ten? Made enemies?"

  "Enemies? Rick?" Kegan chuckled, tossing the ice cubes into the sink, opening the fridge for more. "If ever there was a guy you could say it about —that everybody loved him—it was Rick Wendell." He got two cubes safely into Dave's glass and poured bright new whiskey over them. "You be at that funeral. They'll be lined up around the block. He was a sweetheart." He handed Dave the glass.

  Dave took it to the couch and sat there again. "Your sweetheart once," he said. "I saw the inscription on an old photo of you in his desk."

  "Ancient history." Kegan bit into a shiny green apple and talked while he chewed. "Yeah, I was crazy about him. Crazy as I can be, for as long as I can be. I'm a Libra with the moon in the seventh house." He looked wanly toward the sunlit beach. "I can't be what they used to call 'faithful.' I hated hurting him, and believe me, nobody could look hurt the way Rick could. I just couldn't do anything about it. Wrong. I did what I could. I financed The Square Circle. I was a good lightweight." Remembering, he instinctively lightened his stomach muscles. "Well, maybe not so good, but good-looking, you know what I mean. They paid to watch me. And Rick didn't have a dime. So I set up the bar and let him run it for me. I made good bread in the fifties. They televised fights a lot —remember? Bitched it was ruining the fight game. Hell, it didn't hurt me." He left-jabbed an imaginary opponent, and went into the kitchen to get rid of the apple core. "No, if there was anybody to throw out, I'd be the one to do that. He hated confrontations."

  "He was right," Dave said. "The last one was bad for him." He drank again, lit a cigarette. "The fifteen hundred dollars —if he didn't pay off the furniture trucker, then it was in the envelope, right? Who else could have known about it?"

  "I told you." Kegan came, wiping apple juice off his fingers onto his Levi's, to stand facing Dave. "I didn't know about it myself."

  "That's what you told me. And you also didn't know Wendell had jumped the rails over a new boy. You didn't even suspect it?"

  "Second-guessing it, I should have." Kegan lifted a foot and pushed with a brown toe at the crooked stacks of magazines and records. "Soon as I opened at noon, a phone call came, asking for him. Young sounding. Wouldn't leave a name. But shit —that's not too unusual. Kids get it in their mind we're their buddies, you know? It's part of the business—everybody who buys a forty-cent beer is your friend. They choose one or the other of us. Usually Rick—he was so open about himself, easy talker."

  He sighed and put a foot on the floor. "So —they get into scrapes or get depressed, they get on the phone. But when Rick came in at three-thirty, he said, yeah, he'd gotten the call at home. Then he phoned home and, the way it sounded, took up an argument he'd been having with Heather about her not getting out enough. He kept asking her to promise him she'd take in a flick that night, The Sundown Studs. She'd like the horses."

  "She didn't like what they did to them," Dave said.

  "But she went," Kegan said. "He really gave her a hard sell, argued with her for a half hour, telling her what a great movie it was. And I happened to know he'd never seen it. It only opened Friday. He hadn't got a night off to see it. Or an afternoon either. Not on a weekend." He frowned to himself, nodded. "Yeah, I should have figured out what he was up to." He gave Dave a bleak smile. "But frankly, Bobby was on my mind. That damn contest. On looks, he can win it going away. But a couple of dudes in that line-up have got a little intelligence, a lot of charm."

  "When Wendell left early that night," Dave said, "that didn't add it all up for you —that there might be another Monkey in the picture?"

  "No," Kegan said, "and I'll tell you why. It was Monday. Business was slow. We were just standing around. He said he might as well see the flick with her. It was natural."

  Feet thudded on the deck outside. Bobby stood in the door opening. His long, blond muscles were slick with sweat. "Salad?" he panted. "Steak? I don't smell any charcoal."

  Kegan looked at his watch. "It's not half an hour," he said. "Okay, okay. Go shower. It'll be ready when you get out." He watched the boy disappear down a dim white hallway, hopping, shedding the little shorts. Between the sun brown of his torso and legs, his butt gleamed white. Kegan sighed and started for the kitchen. "Steak for you?"

  "Thanks but I've got to go," Dave said. "What about the Mr. Marvelous contest? How serious is it?"

  "It's ridiculous." Kegan opened the refrigerator again. From beside the plastic flowers Dave watched him turn, arms loaded with lettuce, scallions, cucumbers, tomatoes, and dump them on a yellow Formica counter. "You mean, how serious do they take it?"

  "You read me," Dave said.

  "Well —it means a lot of free publicity for the bar that wins." Kegan found a paring knife in a drawer and sliced cucumbers. "That is, if they can keep the kid around for a few weeks, which isn't always easy. The kid himself wins clothes, cuff links, sporting goods, maybe a bicycle. You know, stuff put up by local merchants. It was mostly gay businesses at first. Now the straight ones ante up too." He flashed Da ve the sidelong wise grin again. "Pardon the word. And" —he brought a big yellow bowl out of a cupboard and started tearing lettuce leaves up and dropping them into it—"maybe a spot in a fuck film. Plus cash. Not much—whatever the participating taverns chip in. Last year it was maybe four, five hundred."

  Dave said, "How stable are the kids?"

  Kegan laughed. "They're hustlers, from anyplace, everyplace — dropouts, orphans, losers. Pathetic nobodies." He began work on the scallions with the paring knife. "Would-be movie actors who can't even memorize their own names, would-be rock stars who don't know a guitar from a frying pan."

  From the end of the hall came the splash of a shower. Over the noise, Bobby sang in a cracked falsetto, " 'Sunshine on my shoulders makes me hap-peee!' " Dave looked that way and said, "You know, Bobby is the same type as Johns —build, coloring, hair, mustache. Prettier, but the same type. Could somebody have it in for your entry?"

  The knife rattled out of Kegan's fingers. He stared at Dave and he was pale under his tan. "Jesus," he breathed. "I never thought of that." His eyes narrowed. He drove a thick fist into a thick palm. "Yeah. What if one of those sick bastards decided they couldn't go up against Bobby? They could have tried to kill this Johns, thinking it w
as him, and got poor Rick by mistake. Christ —if Rick picked up Johns outside The Hang Ten and they drove off together ..." Kegan looked sick. "Man, there's all kinds of animals around these days."

  "And the other contestants would know Bobby?"

  "Sure. Their pictures are in all the bar magazines." Wiping his hands on the Levi's again, he went past Dave to the coffee table and picked up a slender fold of coated stock. He flapped it open and pushed it into Dave's hand. Bobby was there with his unsure smile and not much else. So were eleven others. Kegan was right. None of them was as handsome as Bobby —unless the photos lied. Kegan said, "Take it along, if it'll help." He blinked up at Dave from under those swollen brow ridges. "You think there's really anything to it?"

  At the hall's end, Bobby sang, " 'Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry.'"

  Dave folded the magazine into a side jacket pocket. "If I were you," he said, "I'd cancel the runs up the beach. Unless you run with him."

  Ace was gazing unhappily down the hall. But he heard. "Yeah," he said faintly. "Thanks."

  CHAPTER 4

  SEVEN DRAFT BEERS and the glare of sunlight off windshields on freeways had given him a headache. He left the car under an old fig tree by someone's board back fence in a corner of the lot where he and Doug had leased spaces, and walked, tie loosened, jacket over arm, up Robertson past awninged shops where worm-eaten rocking horses, wicker dog baskets, brass bedsteads crowded the sidewalk, to ft blue stucco building they'd rented that let Doug's gallery face the street and left the two of them big, ungainly sunlit rooms to echo around in upstairs.

  The gallery doors were a pair, tall, carved, unvarnished and locked. He squinted at his watch. Only a quarter past four. He turned, lifted a tired hand to the portrait of himself, tall and alone in the Spanish arch window, and used a key on a blue door at the building's corner. It opened on narrow, straight stairs, the one feature of the place he disliked. As the door shut behind him and he started to climb, he heard voices. The acoustics in the hall were bad. There was loud rock music. He couldn't make out words.