Dave Brandstetter 3 - Troublemaker

by Joseph Hansen

  "What kind of car was it?" Yoshiba asked.

  "Small." Kegan shrugged. "I don't know, didn't pay any attention. Besides, it was dark. I'd driven up with my lights off". So Heather wouldn't see."

  "She heard a shot when she was climbing the stairs," Dave said. "You didn't hear it?"

  "I might have," Kegan said. "It didn't register. Car isn't exactly quiet. I don't think so."

  "Okay." Yoshiba set down his mug among the record albums and magazines on the table. He pushed his hard, square bulk up off the couch. "Thanks for the coffee." He began stepping over the bodybuilding equipment, heading for the door. "I don't think you've got anything to worry about anymore. But keep yourself available. Don't take any sudden trips, okay?"

  On the coast road, aiming back toward the Los Santos Civic Center, sun glinting off the curve of the windshield, Yoshiba said, "You didn't make it better, you made it worse."

  "For Johns." Dave nodded glumly, slouched in the seat, staring without seeing at the flat blue surf. "Yes. I'm ahead of you."

  "The kid is guilty as hell. And Larson's not going to have any trouble proving it. Not now."

  "In his Little League cap?" Dave asked.

  "He could wear a strait jacket," Yoshiba said, "and the jury would believe him. They'd have to. The kid laid down for Wendell for money. Then the money wasn't there. He attacked Wendell. Wendell tried to defend himself with the gun. It went off and Wendell was dead."

  "That's not murder," Dave said.

  "It's manslaughter," Yoshiba said, "and what you get for that is not a pat on the butt."

  "I still don't believe it," Dave said.

  "Fine," Yoshiba said, "but do me a favor, okay? Don't come to me with your doubts anymore. I'm busy, you know? Really busy."

  CHAPTER 13

  BULLDOZERS CHEWED raw dirt flats out of brown-grass summer hillsides where live oaks grew old and green. The tire treads of graders, the cleats of rollers, stirred yellow dust the wind took. Cement trucks climbed dirt trails, tanks turning, turning, like pregnant iron girls in sleep. Lower down the slope, racks of new two-by-fours framed the shapes of houses to come. Under a stand of tall and shaggy eucalypts, bench saws whined and threw arcs of yellow sawdust into the clean blue air. On plank rooftops, young men, shirtless and sunburned, stapled down shingling with guns that made quick, hard slapping sounds. Hammers beat imperfect rhythms in the heat.

  The silver Electra had brought Dave, air conditioned, to the far and still nearly empty end of the San Fernando Valley. He parked the car now next to a long aluminum office trailer that waited this side of the work area. A set of aluminum steps where a lot of boot-scraping had taken place led to an aluminum screen door. He stepped up, rapped the doorframe, spoke to the darkness beyond the screen. No one came. But he heard a scuff of shoes behind him and turned. A bullish man walked toward him in a scarred yellow hard hat.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I'm looking for Elmo Sands." Dave stepped down and held out a card. "It's about Thomas Owens—the accident he had at his house on the beach at Los Santos."

  The man's hands were busy managing blueprints the wind wanted to take away from him. He didn't reach for the card but he read it. It didn't appear to cheer him up. Still, he freed a hand to unlatch the screen door, nodded Dave inside and followed. He laid the blueprints on a long, crowded drafting table under fluorescent tubes in chain-hung flat white enamel reflectors. The blueprints began to curl up. The man stooped to an ice chest.

  "I'm Sands. You want a beer?"

  Dave didn't have a chance to answer. A cold, wet can was in his hand. The contractor hiked his barrel bulk onto a tin stool, thumbed the opener tab on his can and took a long pull at the beer.

  "Ah, that's good. Really work up a thirst in this weather." He lifted off the hard hat and set it on the drawing table. Out of a damp mat of gray hair, sweat trickled down his leathery face. "Insurance, huh? Tom said he'd keep them off me. I told him it wouldn't work. I know insurance companies."

  "They like to pay out money the way anyone else does," Dave said. "That was an expensive accident."

  "Not my fault." Sands yanked a handkerchief from a hip pocket and mopped his face and neck. "That rail was bolted according to specifications. That's how I work—nothing gets overlooked. That's why Tom Owens wants me. I've built every square foot he's designed since he went on his own. It's not that we're friends. He's got nothing but friends in this business."

  "He said you don't make mistakes." Dave swallowed beer. "I'm willing to believe you both. But you personally can't set every bolt. You have people working for you." He nodded toward the sunny screen door, the sawing and hammering noises, the roar and complaint of machinery up the hills. "They can forget. Or just not give a damn. The facts say it happened. There were only loose nails stitching up that rail."

  "Yup." Sands worked thirstily on his beer again. "I couldn't believe it and I went and looked."

  "So it was your fault," Dave said.

  "I thought so. And I fired the kid. I took him with me and showed him the nails and I fired him. He worshiped Tom. He couldn't face it that his carelessness had hurt the man. He got soaked through in the water around those rocks, trying to find those bolts."

  "But he didn't come up with them," Dave said.

  "He didn't come up with them." Sands took another quick pull at his beer, set the can down, began pawing among the papers and glints of blade and tooth on the drawing table. "He came up with this." He pulled out a thin, square, floppy magazine and held it toward Dave. It was the Home section of a Sunday Los Angeles Times. Even without his glasses, Dave recognized the color photo on the cover. It showed Tom Owens's dune house sharp-angled against a sea sky streaked with sunset. "There's a two-page spread inside," Sands said.

  Dave put on his glasses and turned pages. The stool gave a snap and creak of relief when Sands got off" it to stand next to Dave, smelling of hops and Brut deodorant. Dave found the spread, text and five pictures, three of houses Owens had designed for film and television personalities, and two more of his own house. Sands's thick index finger tapped a small photo in the lower right corner. Tom Owens, gaunt, high-shouldered, and wearing a bright striped sarape and western hat, rested elbows on the deck rail above the tide rocks where he'd fallen and broken both legs. The caption read: Nightly custom: architect Owens watches spectacular sunset from cantilevered outpost.

  Sands said, "Look at the date on that magazine."

  The date was a week before the accident. Dave handed back the section, folded up his glasses, pushed them into a jacket pocket. "You've shown this to Tom?"

  "Haven't found the time," Sands said. "But it wouldn't matter to him. He didn't blame me for what happened. You were the one I kept it for. I knew there'd be an insurance investigator around sooner or later."

  "Actually," Dave said, "he'd be from another outfit—Sequoia. They're the ones sending him checks. I'll save you the bother, though. I'll be talking to them today. I'll tell them about the magazine."

  "Another outfit!" Sands scowled. "Well, then, what the hell are you doing here?"

  "A friend of Tom's has been accused of murder," Dave said. "Tom doesn't think he did it. The dead man was insured by my company. That's where I come in. But none of my leads has gone anywhere. I haven't helped Medallion. I'd begun to think I couldn't help Tom. Coming to you was a long shot."

  "If it's for Tom," Sands said, "I want to help."

  "I think you have." Dave tilted back his head to finish off the beer. By the door a small black-enamel barrel that had once held roofing tar now held trash. He dropped the can into it. "Thanks."

  "It's something about the bolts," Sands said.

  "About the bolts," Dave said, "and about an accident that wasn't an accident and a murder that I'm pretty damn sure was." He unlatched the screen, hinged the bright door outward, stepped down into hammer strokes of sun. He turned back. "I hope you rehired that workman."

  "Hell, yes," Sands said.

  A mile west
of the Medallion tower on Wilshire, a low-slung building of narrow red brick whose flat roof was a rubble of white rock housed Sequoia Accident and Indemnity. A handsomely kept jungle of leather-leaved greenery grew against the walls. Inside, no one sat at the glossy reception room desk where a multibuttoned green telephone winked lights and softly buzzed. Dave went past into a square patio sheltered by a big rubber tree. Glass doors led off the patio into offices.

  Dave found Johnny Delgado in a corner room where open-flap cardboard cartons on the floor suggested departure. The desk was strewn with folders. Delgado, a trim little man who was Sequoia's claims investigator, stood with his back to the door, a foot up on a brick indoor planter, elbow on knee, chin on hand, head bowed as if he were studying the lush greenery. Without turning, he said in a beaten voice:

  "Don't say anything, Marie. Whatever you want, it's yours. I can't fight anymore. Certainly not face to face. Certainly not today. Just go away."

  Dave said, "It's not Marie, Johnny."

  Delgado lifted his head, straightened his back, put the foot down, turned. He didn't look trim anymore. Beard stubble darkened his hollow cheeks. His eyes looked burned out. His suit looked as if he'd slept in it, and nowhere clean. He twisted Dave a wry smile of apology but didn't step around the desk, didn't make an effort to shake hands. He just said, "Christ," to himself and dropped into the chair back of the desk and waved a hand at another chair. Dave took it and Delgado said:

  "When you're a kid, you get the idea there's only one female of the species in the world. You can't wait to marry her. Then you think what she's giving you instead of just the sex anybody's entitled to is her life or something." He laughed without amusement. "Oh, there's giving going on, all right. Only you don't know it. You think you're collecting a home, some money, a future, a comfortable retirement. Then she springs it on you. You've been collecting, all right. But not for the both of you. For her, exclusively for her."

  "It's California," Dave said.

  Delgado grunted, bent to open a drawer, to bring out a bottle. Jack Daniel's. Built into the brick wall over his head were clock hands in black wood. They made the time only minutes past noon. But Delgado, with hands that shook, poured steeply from the bottle into clear plastic throwaway glasses, put the bottle out of sight again, pushed one of the glasses toward Dave, between the clutter of files. "And what's on your mind?" he asked. The tone was meant to be resentful but it was too tired.

  "They're all after you, are they?" Dave asked.

  Delgado drank. "There's a reason." His smile was wan. "I'm not doing any work." He shook his head like a man jarred. "I don't understand it, Dave. We were getting along fine. No change. Not in ten years. I still can't believe it." He shut his eyes and emptied the glass and shuddered. It was probably six straight ounces. "Never could have believed we'd split. And if I could have believed it, I sure as hell wasn't ready for what it's doing to me. I can't function." He pushed savagely at the files. "I can't even read these fucking things. You're just lucky I happened to be here today. I haven't been in this office three hours running, not in a month." He took out the bottle again. His bruised and sorrowing eyes flicked at Dave's glass but Dave hadn't touched it. Delgado refilled his own glass. "I should have knocked her up. That's what my old man says. Keep 'em pregnant and you'll keep 'em. In the old country a woman was fat and ugly after five years of marriage. Nobody else would want her. That was how they did it." He drank again. "Repulsive, right?"

  "Buried there"—Dave nodded at the files—"have you got reports on two accidents to a household on the beach in Los Santos? Owens? Ewing?"

  Delgado squinted, pushed at his thick, expensively cut black hair, hunched forward, began shifting the folders around. He did it sweating, slow, as if they were too heavy for him. He pulled this batch out from under that batch, peered at labels, dropped the first bunch in another place, pulled a second batch. But he grew impatient after half a minute, slammed the last handful down. Papers slithered out of them and lisped to the thick carpet. "Christ, I don't know. When? What's it about?"

  "Gail Ewing, the woman, owned a Vega that her daughter drove." He named the Sunday of the rock festival. "She ended up rolling down a hill into a tree in Topanga Canyon. The brakes had failed. Now . . . I've just come from the police garage. They said you hadn't been there. And I believe them. Because you're good at your job and even if you weren't, you couldn't have missed on this one. Johnny—there wasn't any brake fluid in the master cylinder."

  "A leak?" Delgado frowned, rubbed his stubbly face.

  "No leak," Dave said. "Somebody drained the fluid and didn't replace it."

  "Car been in for repairs before that?"

  Dave said, "Never. It was a new car and nothing had gone wrong with it to warrant a checkup."

  Delgado groaned and finished off his drink.

  "Why don't you stop that?" Dave asked. "Work will do the same thing. And you come out into daylight."

  "Yeah, right." Delgado nodded. "Right, but too late. I'm out. I just got the word. Very kindly, very understandingly, but I'm fired. All I'm in here for is to get my personal stuff and get the hell out."

  "One more thing and I'll leave you to it," Dave said. "This Ewing woman's brother, Thomas Owens, two days after the car accident, fell from a deck of his house that overhangs rocks in the surf and broke both his legs. The bolts that held the deck rail in place had been removed. I have proof."

  Delgado for the first time looked out of his eyes, past the blur of pain. "I remember," he said. He glanced at the pile of folders. "They're not here. I signed them, Dave. I signed a lot of stuff. It was the second week. Everything had accumulated, like now. I just signed them all. I walked in here after receiving a very choice letter from my wife's attorney. And I was smashed and I sat down in this chair and I said, 'The hell with it,' and I took 'em all on. I didn't read 'em— I signed 'em, signed 'em all."

  "That's costing Sequoia," Dave said. "Which doesn't much matter. What does matter is that somebody was trying to kill Thomas Owens. Both those times they missed. I think there was a third time. They missed Owens then too. But someone else got a bullet in the chest and died. It wouldn't have happened, Johnny—not if you'd looked at that car, looked at that deck rail."

  Delgado was a bad color. "Get out of here," he said thickly. "Just get out, will you, please?"

  The plank roadway that crossed the dunes to the stiff wooden sails of Tom Owens's house was too narrow for cars to pass on it. So when the Vega came out of the shadow of the port now, Dave braked the Electra and pushed the lever to Reverse. Then he saw Jomay's bright hair through the windshield and shifted to "N" instead and stepped out. Gail Ewing halted her car, tapped the horn, called sharply:

  "We have a plane to catch!"

  He walked to her. Larry Johns was in the cramped rear of the little car, where there was no room for his legs. He sat crossways on the fake leather seat, head pulled down to his shoulders to avoid the low ceiling.

  "Where did you come from?" Dave asked.

  "Tom got his lawyer on my case," Johns said. "Mr. Greenglass. It was only manslaughter if it was anything, he says, and that's not like murder, where they can hold you without bail."

  "Legal technicalities had nothing to do with it," Gail Ewing snapped. "It was Tom's fifty thousand dollars. That was where the judge set bail—which shows you what he thinks of the case."

  "It's not a case yet," Dave said. "And I'm not sure it's ever going to be."

  "Doubt away," Gail Ewing said, "but right now I must ask you to move your car."

  Dave looked across at Jomay. BB lay asleep in the girl's narrow lap, golden head between her little breasts, rosebud mouth drooling on a fresh white blouse, probably one of Trudy's. Dave asked, "Back to Texas?"

  Jomay nodded sulkily. "I give my statement about Huncie to that man in the baseball cap. They had it typed up. I signed it. They don't need for me to stay." She glanced bitterly at Gail. "I would have stayed. Tom—he says I'm more'n welcome."

 
"He gave you the fifteen hundred," Johns said. "That's what you come out here to get, isn't it?"

  Jomay twitched her mouth, tossed her hair.

  Dave asked Johns, "You're going to the airport to say goodbye? I thought you said goodbye in Austin fifteen months ago."

  "I want to see that Delta jet take off," Johns said. "Watch it till it's out of sight."

  Jomay turned sharply on the seat. "It was Mama drove you off," she yelled. "Wasn't that what you said? Makin' you clean up her beauty parlors and never payin' you? Now you talk like it was me you hate."

  He sighed and said gently, "I don't hardly remember you, Jomay. Why don't you try that? Just forget me."

  Jomay picked up the limp baby under its arms and shook it at him. "This here is yours!"

  The baby began to cry and Johns turned his thin child face to look out the rear window.

  "It's good flying weather," Dave told him. "The plane will get off all right. I'm sure Mrs. Ewing here will report back accurately. I need to talk to you. And Tom. There are some developments."

  "For heaven sake!" Gail Ewing threw open the door, got out of the car, yanked the bucket seat forward against the steering wheel. "Get out if you're not going. We've got less than an hour now."

  Johns half crawled, half fell out of the tight little car. Gail slid behind the wheel again, slammed the door, raced the engine. Dave returned to the Electra, backed it along the hollow-sounding planks to the wide place on the coast road shoulder where the drive began, swung it out of the way. The Vega shot past, Jomay's face flushed, BB still wailing. Her cries mingled with those of the gulls wheeling the emotionless blue sky above the dunes.

  Dave rolled the heavy car to where Johns stood waiting, squinting up at the gulls, his hands in the hip pockets of the worn Levi's. They came into the house down stairs into the kitchen, where the dogs jumped and barked around Johns. He dropped his Levi's and the pumpkin-color dog snatched them and the others ran after him barking. Johns wasn't quite naked. He wore very small yellow swim trunks. He peeled off his T-shirt as he led the way along under the gallery to the room at the far house corner, where Tom Owens said from his hospital bed: