Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery

by Joseph Hansen

  Anselmo touched him. “Let’s try and see.”

  “I’m not talking about sex. I’m sure that would be fine. But we can’t do that twenty-four hours a day for the rest of our lives. Now, look . . . you said you’d do what I wanted.”

  The boy dropped his hand. “Sí. Okay.” Mournful, he went to sit on the kitchen floor and pull his boots on. Standing, he gave two little stamps of his feet, like a flamenco dancer. Then he looked at Dave. Gravely. “Only I’m not giving up. Sometime you got to let me. Otherwise there’s no point in living.”

  “You’ll find somebody else.” Dave steered him to the front door and stood there in the chill breath of the rain, watching the sad pantomime with the plastic coat, the straddling and kicking to life of the Yamaha. The boy rode it away woodenly, eyes front, down the dim street. Crying? Dave shut the door. The music had stopped. The house was very still, very empty again.

  In the kitchen, he made himself another drink.

  14

  He went to bed stoned. But not stoned enough. He had bad dreams. A giant wasp was trapped in the kitchen. It buzzed, buzzed, hurled itself against the fragile shutter doors. He leaned on them, held them, sweating, horrified. A barbed javelin-size stinger thrust between the slats. He opened his mouth to scream for help but no sound came. Then he was awake and knowing what he heard—the buzz of the doorbell. Insistent. Under a stubborn thumb. He staggered to the closet for the blue corduroy bathrobe and remembered it was still in a grip in the luggage compartment of the car. He dragged the top blanket off the bed, wrapped it around him, and stumbled to the front door and yanked it open.

  Maybe it was morning but it still rained and it was still dark. A big man in a cowboy hat stood there dripping. Dave didn’t know him. But he knew the little man shivering beside him. Kohlmeyer. Black eye sockets, white skull face. The big man moved indoors. He didn’t push, didn’t touch Dave, didn’t need to. Nobody could have stopped him. Dave backed. Kohlmeyer faltered in after the big man and Dave shut the door and switched on a lamp.

  “You’d be Lloyd Chalmers,” he said.

  Chalmers’s voice came down like a load of gravel out of one of his big red trucks. “Kohlmeyer tells me he told you a story about me. I want you to know it was a lie.”

  “But you do know Kohlmeyer,” Dave said. “And there’ll be a record of the check you gave him. At your bank or somewhere.” The thermostat control was on the wall next to the bedroom door. Dave started for it. Chalmers’s hand was massive on his arm, hard as concrete.

  “Where you going?”

  “It’s cold in here. I was going to turn on the heat.”

  “You can go back to bed in a minute,” Chalmers grunted. “What I’ve got to say won’t take long.”

  “But you drove two hundred fifty miles on a rainy night to say it.”

  “I never said it wasn’t important.”

  “You deny you bought photographs from Kohlmeyer? Dirty photographs of your political rival?”

  “Rival, shit!” Chalmers scoffed.

  “He was winning,” Dave said. “Everybody in Pima told me so. Persuading an opponent to quit a race because of an episode in his past is not an unknown tactic among politicians, Mr. Chalmers.”

  “I’m not a politician,” Chalmers said. “I’m a builder. A businessman. And a good one. The town’s kept me in office because they knew I could run things and run things right. Lived in Pima all my life. People know me and trust me. Olson was a jump-up stranger. A clown. They might kid about electing him, but when they got in the polling booth they’d have plunked down their X by Chalmers. Naw. If this idea of yours wasn’t so nasty it’d be laughable.”

  Dave looked at Kohlmeyer. The wrecked little man wore lavender silk pajamas under his topcoat. On his feet, which were blue-veined, thin, and white almost to transparency, were gold-embroidered scarlet Turkish slippers. Soaked. Chalmers had obviously dragged him here straight from bed. Now he racked up a smile. It tried for impudence but the effect was grisly and pathetic. So was the simpering toss of the head. You expected to hear bones rattle.

  “The check was for a painting. By a student.”

  “My wife collects this modernistic junk,” Chalmers growled.

  “But my story,” Kohlmeyer said, “was considerably more amusing, don’t you agree?” He winked. It couldn’t have been more startling if it had happened in a waxworks. “I fear I have something of an impish quality I’ve never been quite able to suppress. These fancies spring to mind and”—the narrow shoulders rose, the hands came up and unfolded like diseased petals—“I just blurt them out. I mean, life’s so relentlessly drab. My little fictions aren’t meant to harm—they’re meant to vivify, is all. I’ve been called malicious.” It hurt him to speak the word. He widened his eyes and blinked. The shutter mechanism was rusty. “I’m not. Truly I’m not. I’m a very loving person. Anything I’ve ever said that’s hurt anyone, I’ve been deeply, deeply sorry for. You must believe that. If I weren’t contrite would I have telephoned Mr. Chalmers about this? I mean, the moment you walked out of the door, I realized I’d been elfin again. Pixie, if you please. I flew after you, but you’d gone.”

  “I’m in the book,” Dave said. “You could have phoned.”

  “I couldn’t remember your name. That happens to me now. I’m not old. It’s the drugs they give me. For the pain.” A tear ran down his face. He did nothing about it. He probably didn’t know what it was. “But I had to shrive myself. I couldn’t apologize to Olson. You said yourself no one knows where he is. I phoned Mr. Chalmers. Desperately. My dialing finger is a mass of bruises. It took hours to reach him.”

  “I was at a dinner for the Governor in Fresno,” Chalmers said. “Didn’t reach home till after eleven. Kohlmeyer was on the phone. I placed who he was talking about.”

  “How?” Dave asked. “We never met.”

  “Pima’s a small town. I heard about you.”

  “And what I was after?”

  Chalmers snorted. “Proof Fox Olson wasn’t dead.”

  “Is he?” Dave asked. “You didn’t have a conversation with him, say on the morning of October eighteenth? You didn’t show him some photographs of himself in a homosexual act? You didn’t suggest it would be better if he withdrew as a candidate for mayor? You didn’t suggest he fake that accident with his car and leave town? For good? You didn’t name a place to him where he could drop out of sight?”

  Chalmers’s face was red. His eyes narrowed. His gravel voice shook. His fists made hammers. “You’re damn lucky I brought a witness with me. Because if you were alone here, I’d take you apart so they’d never be able to figure out which piece came from where.”

  “It’s my job to be suspicious,” Dave said. “Stop taking it personally.”

  “I’ll take it any God damn way I please.”

  “If you stood to lose a hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Dave asked, “how genteel would you be about trying to hang onto it?”

  Chalmers stared, big jaw thrust out.

  “When a man dies,” Dave said, “there’s evidence—his corpse. A smashed automobile doesn’t prove a thing. Olson is alive. But unless I find him, my company’s got to pay. Now . . . he disappeared for a reason. I’ve got a couple of explanations. They haven’t led anyplace. I thought Kohlmeyer’s might. You’ll have to admit it adds up.”

  “Maybe—to a mind like Kohlmeyer’s. I know what’s the matter with him. What’s the matter with you?” Chalmers reached for the door. “You want to watch who you call a blackmailer.” He jerked the door open, pushed Kohlmeyer outside and shot Dave a glare. “I’m not a man to smear, friend. I’m a man to respect and leave alone. Understand me?”

  “I was in Pima for two days talking to people,” Dave said. “I left you alone. I didn’t figure you in this. That was Kohlmeyer’s doing. Settle it with him.”

  “Oh, please . . .” Kohlmeyer fluttered like a tissue-paper kite in the rain. “I’m not a well man. . . .”

  Chalmers grunted and slammed
the door.

  Dave was cold to the bone. A hot shower was what he needed. But there wasn’t time. He dressed, wool slacks, flannel shirt, heavy pullover sweater. He lit a cigarette, set the remains of last night’s coffee on a burner and dialed Pima’s police station. Herrera was going to like being rousted from bed even less than he’d liked missing his Western last night. But it couldn’t be helped. Only Herrera wasn’t in bed. It was 3:25 A.M. but Herrera was on the job.

  “I was going to call you,” he said, “soon as I could.”

  “Look,” Dave said, “get to a judge. On the double. Get warrants. Search Lloyd Chalmers’s offices—city hall, construction company, home, safe-deposit boxes. He’s got those photos. Someplace.”

  Herrera tried to interrupt.

  “He won’t interfere. He’s out of town. Just left my house. With the guy who sold him the pictures. They claim it was all just a bad joke. There are no pictures. Never were. So why bother to tell me? I wasn’t bracing anybody about any pictures. Not yet. Chalmers jumped too soon. He’s guilty as hell. Of something.”

  “It don’t matter,” Herrera said.

  “Maybe not to you,” Dave said. “It sure as hell matters to me. Look, it’s early. You can do it before anybody in town’s awake. Nobody will see you. The mayor will never know. Not if you get a move on—”

  Herrera yelled, “Will you shut up a minute?”

  “All right,” Dave said.

  “Thanks. It don’t matter about the snapshots. It don’t matter about Chalmers. See . . . Olson is dead.”

  It was like a kick in the stomach. “You mean . . . his body’s been found. In the river.”

  “Not in the river. In a place called Bell Beach, San Diego County. On a broken-down amusement pier. With a bloody hole where his heart used to be. Sheriff’s substation there gave us the word. Hour, hour and a half ago. I’d have been in touch with you sooner only I’ve been on the jump. Carrying the bad news. Up to his wife’s, out to his father-in-law’s, over to his daughter’s. It’s the part of this job I hate.”

  “Let me be sure I understand you,” Dave said. “Olson’s been murdered? You mean like lately?”

  “Last night. Between eight and ten, according to the preliminary medical exam. They’ll be more exact about it after an autopsy. Anyway, they didn’t find him till midnight. No identification on him, so it took a while to tag him. We heard from them at two.”

  “Pretty fast work at that,” Dave said mechanically. “Who did it—do they know?”

  “The guy Olson was sharing a room with there for the past week. He’s missing. They’ve issued an all-points bulletin for him.” Herrera’s laugh was short. “With ours, that makes two.”

  “Doug Sawyer,” Dave said. “Right?”

  “Only not in the Ferrari. Now it’s a ‘54 Chevrolet. About two hundred dollars’ worth. You’re sharp, Brandstetter. Any time you want a job, you know where to come.”

  “Thanks.” Dave laughed grimly. “I may just have to do that. Soon.”

  15

  Bell Beach was lost miles from the freeway. Sand lay in the empty, sun-baked streets. Wiry brown grass thrust through the sand. In the grass, gulls and pelicans stood like moth-eaten museum pieces. The buildings were cheap stucco with mad carnival turrets. Gaudy paint had faded and scabbed off. Shingles had curled and turned black. Windows were broken. Where not broken they were boarded up, had been for years: the rust from nailheads had written long, sad farewells down the salt-silvered planks. The corrugated iron roof of a hot-dog stand had slumped in. A metal filling station turned to black lace in the sun. Beyond padlocked grillwork in a crimson-and-gilt barn shadowy carrousel horses kicked through gray curtains of cobweb.

  Dave squinted into the sun. Was everyone dead here?

  Then out of the sun a fat, leather-skinned old man in ragged shorts and a greasy tam-o’-shanter rode a bicycle. A young Negro in cracked sunglasses lounged against a power pole. Bare torso, Levi’s, bare feet. A withered woman in a torn straw hat hobbled out of a grubby grocery store, clutching a sack. Across the street, sitar music droned from a tinny loudspeaker above a shop door. Garish drunken lettering on the windows. A glimpse of beads, books, phosphorescent posters. A squat, swarthy girl with uncombed black hair and a clean new pink-and-orange shift held something shiny to her mouth, blew a stream of bubbles into the air, then disappeared into the dark shop.

  Dave braked the car. Down three side streets so far he had seen only blue ocean. This side street sloped to a pier. And on the pier, above the rubble of sideshow booths, rose a massive scaffold, patches of yellowing white paint still clinging to it. At the foot of its steep, rusty tracks, the bulbs had been smashed out of a horseshoe-shaped sign. The sockets spelled THE CHUTE. But they needn’t have. Dave would have recognized it from Fox Olson’s painting over the fireplace in the canyon house at Pima. He would have recognized it from the sad snapshot of two laughing boys on the seedy counter of Sawyer’s pet shop in L.A.

  Halfway down the street to the pier, a bright new American flag hung above the doorway of a sprawling stucco monstrosity. Through later coats of paint the old sign high on its side still showed—BELL BEACH BATHHOUSE. But a white enamel sign standing on the sidewalk bore a brown six-pointed star that indicated the sheriff’s substation was lost somewhere inside. A dusty estate wagon stood at the curb. Familiar. Dave parked behind it. As he stepped out into the blaze of sun, the door under the flag opened.

  Thorne Olson came out. Of course. Herrera had sent her to identify the body. She wore black. Smart. Her face was tight and she moved fast. She was at the estate wagon and trying to get into it before Hale McNeil had shut the building door. The car door was locked—KPIM on it in green and blue. She turned sharply to McNeil. He unlocked the door. Her gloved hand snatched it open, she started to get in, and saw Dave. Her eyes widened. She poked McNeil, who swung around. Dave walked to them, sand gritting on the cracked cement under his shoes. Closer, he saw what she needed. A drink. She was trembling. But not her voice.

  She said flatly, “You were right. You’re very clever, aren’t you?”

  “But not quick,” he said. “Not quick enough. I’m sorry. He . . . never mentioned this place to you?”

  “No.” Bitterly. “It appears there was quite a lot he never mentioned to me.”

  McNeil put a hand on her arm. He told Dave, “He’s dead. Doesn’t that close the case as far as you’re concerned? What are you doing here?”

  Dave didn’t know, so he made up a lie. “My company requires its own agent to identify the deceased,” he said.

  He told the same lie to the deputy in charge of the Bell Beach substation, who was young and trusting. He led Dave along a dingy hall. The building still smelled like a bathhouse—sweat, urine, sodden wood. The door the deputy opened was like a refrigerator door. The room beyond was cold. Zinc counters and set tubs, a drain in the center of the cement floor. The body that had belonged to Fox Olson lay under a sheet on a high white enamel table. The deputy folded back the sheet from the face. Olson looked young. Death could do that. Erase years. A gull swung between the sun and the windows. Its shadow flickered across Olson’s face like a remembered pain.

  “Thanks.” Dave turned away. “That’s him.”

  “I don’t get it.” The boy’s voice was hurt, disappointed. “Didn’t anybody like him?”

  “Everybody,” Dave said. “Almost. Why?”

  “His wife. The big guy—his manager. They didn’t bat an eye. They acted like you. Looked at him and said it was him and went away.” He hauled open the heavy door.

  Dave went through. “They thought he was dead a week ago.” He told about the smashed bridge, the smashed Thunderbird. “They’ve already done their crying.”

  Though broken up by head-high partitions, the substation was one enormous room. Roman bath style. Flat fluted columns against the walls. High ceiling a pattern of plaster acanthus leaves. Niches for statues. The pool had been floored over. It echoed hollow underfoot. Dave sat in a
hard wooden armchair. The deputy sat at a brown steel desk and looked new.

  “He couldn’t have picked a better place to disappear to. Nobody comes here anymore.” His smile was wry. He touched his badge. “That’s why we’re in charge. Rookies. It’s a ghost town. Even the hippies leave. They hear about the cheap rent and how nobody bothers you, and they come. But they don’t stay long. It’s too dead.”

  “Yes. What killed it?”

  “A coast road used to run through here. State highway, two-lane. They let it fall to pieces when the freeway got built. Nineteen fifty-five. Town went broke. Yup . . . guy wants to disappear, Bell Beach is the place. Nobody’d look for anybody here.”

  “You included?” Dave nodded at the missing persons dodger with Fox Olson’s picture on the desk. “You’ve had that for days. He must have been around.”

  “I saw him.” Disgusted, the deputy lifted and dropped the paper. “This is what I didn’t see. It went in a file. Johnson or Miles put it away. Neither one of them will admit it though. They work the other shifts. I never saw it, I’ll tell you that. Not till last night, looking to identify him.”

  He yawned, blinked, shook his head. “ ‘Scuse me. This is the time I usually sleep. Got to wait for the coroner and stuff. . . . Yeah, I saw him. Them. Like on the beach. Umbrella, big towels. They had this ball they’d toss. Swim. Read books. Olson had a guitar. Couple guys on vacation. I even knew where they lived. Old lady Kincaid’s.

  “But the room didn’t tell me anything. Sawyer’s stuff was all gone. Olson’s was all new. National brands. Nothing distinctive. Nothing you could trace anywhere. Except maybe the typewriter. But I doubt it. Probably paid cash for it someplace, gave a phony name. Mrs. Kincaid had made the rent receipt to Doug Douglas. She says deceased used the name Edward Fox.”