Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery

by Joseph Hansen

  “No . . .” Puzzled, she worried her lower plate around. For a bulldog second it stuck out. Then she popped it back into place and shrugged. “Well, there was bound to be a strangeness. Neptune in the eighth—mystery surrounding the mortality, that’s what that means.”

  “Sure,” Dave said. “What about the tribe?”

  “Them? Oh, no.” She laughed and shook her head. “No, they believe in life. Hate death, hate hurting anybody or anything. That much I do know. They’re dirty and noisy and I suppose they smoke that marijuana. And I know it’s sex, sex, sex, morning, noon and night. They don’t care who sees them or much who they do it with. But”—her mouth turned down at the corners—“murder somebody? No.”

  “How did they get along?”

  “With Fox and Doug, you mean? I doubt if they so much as spoke. They’ve got a saying, you know—never trust anybody over thirty. . . . Listen, I’m going to get my swim.”

  “Sure.” Dave smiled. “Thanks. And for the coffee.”

  She went and he turned off the smile and looked at the desk. It was a stingy kneehole type, bought as unpainted furniture a long time ago and stained and varnished—also a long time ago. A green blotter covered its top. A little copper oilcan had made a circle on it. Next to the oilcan lay a smudged handkerchief wrapped around a slim ballpoint pen. The profile of a little Colt’s .32 had soaked into the blotter in oil, looking like a Jasper Johns lithograph.

  There was a pint whiskey bottle, empty. A drinking glass, not quite empty. A crumpled Fritos bag. Pencil, felt pen, typewriter eraser, rubber pad the typewriter had sat on. All new. The drawers held a clear plastic pack of pencils, a little red plastic sharpener, a ream of yellow sheets, three hundred sheets of dime-store white in their torn polyethylene bag, a folder of carbon paper, a dollar booklet with seventeen five-cent stamps, and nine cheap envelopes.

  Not a typed word, not a written word.

  He knelt to examine the wastebasket. Used Kleenex. Pink potato-chip bag, like a collapsed lung. Another empty whiskey pint. The fireplace? Ashes. They had been a thickness of pages. Twenty, thirty? Typed or else why burn them. But they’d been broken up. And the wind kept shuffling the charred fragments. Still, there were experts who could make a lot out of a burned piece of paper. He doubted this case was going to need experts, but he looked around for something to block the fireplace opening.

  A big spiral-bound sketch pad leaned against the side of the desk. It swung open when he picked it up. Only one page had been used. On it were half a dozen quick pencil sketches. Slick, professional. A man stripping and putting on swim trunks. The whole sequence. Accurate, wryly affectionate, sad. The man was slight, but unmistakably middle-aged, no boy. Different from the sex photos taken in this same room twenty-six years ago. Dave closed the sketch pad and propped it in front of the fireplace. It almost covered.

  He looked in the chest of drawers. Empty. In the closet his foot kicked something that rolled into the dark. He stooped for it. The beachball. A Sav-on Drugstore special. Giddy whorls of color. No clothes in the closet. The bed had been slept on, not in. He dropped the ball on the bed and left the room. Going down the hall, he opened doors. The other rooms smelled hot, shut up. Untenanted. No sheets or blankets on the beds.

  The bathroom was at the end of the hall. Old but shiny, except for a rusty circle at the water level of the toilet bowl and a smear of yellow grease in the washbasin. There was nothing in the wastebasket but a twisted, spent tube of Kip. An ointment for burns. Sunburn? He sniffed the basin. Kip. He stood blinking at it for a minute, then opened the medicine chest. Aspirin and Pepto-Bismol, Merthiolate and an unopened box of Band-Aids.

  A tambourine rattled in the hall below. Dave shut the medicine chest. When he reached the top of the stairs, the tribe was leaving. “Can you wait a minute?” he called. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  They turned and stared at him. The boy had dressed. Khaki shirt with the arms torn off and the tails out. Bell-bottom dungarees. Big blue beads and an iron ankh on a thong. The girl had put on beads too, and had washed her face. It was shiny. Some strands of blond hair had got wet and stuck to her cheeks. The baby had the tambourine. He wore midget Levi’s and a little puff-sleeved shirt printed with big purple flowers. There was dried milk on his chin.

  “Rap,” the boy told Dave in a flat voice. “We’ll listen.”

  “Did you know the men upstairs?”

  “Fags,” the girl said.

  The boy sighed disgust at her. He told Dave, “We didn’t know them. One of them split Sunday night. The other one got himself shot last night. That’s all we know. Who are you?”

  Dave told them. And about Fox’s disappearance.

  The boy’s teeth showed in the beard. White teeth. Big ones. Very straight. “Yeah? Wow, what a trip! Insure yourself, drop out and collect. If he’d stayed alive and you hadn’t found him, you’d have had to pay, right?”

  Dave smiled. “After some maneuvering.”

  “How much bread?”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Shit!” The boy laughed. “Shit!”

  The baby had been dancing in a circle on the porch, crouched over, rattling the tambourine above his head. He stopped and came back and stood beside his father, giving Dave a steady blue stare.

  Dave asked the parents, “You didn’t hear anything last night? Douglas—the man who’d left—you didn’t see him again? He didn’t come back?”

  With a twist of smile, the boy put a hand in front of his eyes. “See no evil,” he said.

  The girl covered her ears. “Hear no evil,” she said.

  “Speak no evil,” the baby said, and put his hand over his mouth.

  “You’ve practiced,” Dave said. “I can tell.”

  “Yeah,” the boy said, “but it’s our only number. No encore.”

  And they turned and left.

  There was a pay telephone screwed to the wall at the foot of the stairs. The Smithsonian should be told. It had to be the first model after the invention of the dial. But it still worked. A printed label was pasted to its coin box. Emergency numbers. Chipped at by fingernails, but still readable. He rang the sheriff’s substation. He wanted the medical examiner. The deputy wasn’t the one he had talked to, but he put the fat man on and Dave identified himself. The fat man grunted.

  “Two questions,” Dave said. “First, were there any burns on the body?”

  “Sunburn. Scalp—deceased was going bald—back of the neck, entire back except for the buttocks, backs of the legs, soles of the feet. Not severe.”

  The tribe had left its door open. Dave could see through the dim room to a bright side window. The roof of a blue car slid past it. He heard the engine, a six with loose tappets. An old car.

  “But no burns from fire? Say on the hands?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “The preliminary . . .” Dave heard the car brake at the back of the house, the engine die. “The preliminary gave the time of death as between eight and ten. . . .”A car door slammed. “Any reason to change that?”

  “Contents of the stomach,” the fat man droned, “indicate about three hours after eating. . . .” Footsteps thudded on hollow wood. “Officer’s report says deceased ate at a café here about six o’clock. Digestive process stopped around nine.”

  A screen door flapped shut at the rear of the house. A voice called, “Fox? Fox, I’m back.” Footsteps came on, running.

  “Thanks,” Dave told the phone and hung up.

  When he turned, a man was racing up the stairs two at a time. Canvas shoes, seedy tweed jacket, a small man, very light build, like a kid, and with a kid’s shock of straight brown hair. Like a kid, he grabbed the post at the top of the stairs and pivoted himself toward the front bedroom. Grinning. No kid though. Gray at the temples, gray in a four-day stubble of beard.

  Dave sighed and went up after him.

  18

  He stood bewildered in the middle of the room. The jacket was not Ame
rican made. Nor the bulky sweater under it. Nor the slacks. They’d all been slept in. On pine needles. He turned, and Dave felt shock in the pit of his stomach. The eyes were shiny opaque, like stones in a stream bed. Rod’s eyes. He was the same size and build as Rod, same dark color, same long head. Another man, but like, very like. Even to the voice.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Where’s Fox?”

  “I’ve been looking for him for days,” Dave said. “My name’s Brandstetter. I’m an investigator for the company that insured his life. Medallion.”

  “Oh . . .” Sawyer said it hollowly.

  “And for you,” Dave said, “since I learned you were in Pima the night he disappeared.”

  “Then”—Sawyer’s smile was wan—“ze jeeg is op?”

  “Or words to that effect. I’d like the answers to a few questions.” Dave tilted his head at the bed. “Sit down.”

  “May I bum a cigarette first? I ran out yesterday. I thought I’d taken plenty, but I smoked more than usual.”

  Dave gave him a cigarette, took one himself, lit both. Sawyer dragged in the smoke gratefully and dropped onto the edge of the bed. Dave sat in the armchair. “Taken plenty where?” he asked.

  “The mountains.” Sawyer got up, glanced into the closet, came back, sat down. “I needed to think. Hard.”

  “Which mountains? What town?”

  “No town. I kept to back roads. Slept out.” He rubbed his stubble. “Water was a problem.”

  “Wasn’t food a problem? Didn’t you have to buy gas?”

  “No, as a matter of fact.” Now Sawyer went to the chest, opened and closed the drawers. “Fox and I had bought a lot of canned stuff. In L.A., when we changed cars. Our original plan was to hole up in Baja. . . .” He knelt to pick up books, shut them, stack them on the chest. “But we’d loved this place as kids, and when we saw how deserted it was, we decided it was safe. We stayed. So . . . the food was still in the car.” He came back to the bed and sat down. “Plus extra gas. Two five-gallon cans.”

  “Then nobody saw you? Not after Sunday night?”

  “I passed cars on the road, naturally. Deer hunters were in the woods. I heard them, never saw them. I doubt that they saw me. I certainly didn’t speak to anyone.”

  “Then there’s no proof you were where you say you were.”

  Sawyer blinked worry. “No . . . Should there be?”

  Dave got up and walked to the window and stared at the ocean. It was blue here. So was the sky. But fog was building a gray wall at the horizon. He said, “It would help.” He turned. “Why did you leave? What was the fight about?”

  Sawyer laughed chagrin. “The wreckage makes it look worse than it was. I throw things when I lose my temper.”

  “It was bad,” Dave said, “or you wouldn’t have stayed away four days.”

  Sawyer looked at the floor.

  Dave went back and sat down. He said, “Maybe it will be easier for you if I tell you something first. . . .”It was awkward and it hurt. But he told about himself and Rod. All of it, from the beginning in the furniture store, December 1945, to the end in the nightmare hospital, September 1967.

  Sawyer stared. “I’m sorry,” he said stiffly, “but I don’t see what—”

  “Oh, come on,” Dave said. “A man named Kohlmeyer —what remains of him—has some photographs of you and Fox Olson, made in this room in the summer of 1941.”

  “Oh . . .” Sawyer breathed.

  “It was those photographs Lloyd Chalmers used to drive Olson out of Pima, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Frowning, Sawyer stretched to grind his cigarette out in the china seashell ashtray on the bedside stand. “You could put it that way and be right. But . . .”He shrugged, troubled. “It’s not that simple. The photos were a reason to leave, yes. They were also an excuse.”

  “Because you turned up?”

  Sawyer’s look was direct. “You’ve seen those pictures. You know how it was with us.”

  Dave quoted Anselmo. “Kids do crazy things.”

  “We meant what we did,” Sawyer said gravely.

  “Taking pictures of it?” Dave asked.

  “Oh, that.” Sawyer’s laugh was short and rueful. “No, we knew that was a mistake when we went back to the darkroom and the negatives were gone. We were sick. Then Pearl Harbor came and we had other things to worry about.”

  “What happened?” Dave asked. “Why didn’t Fox go?”

  “Because we both thought I’d be rejected. I’d had rheumatic fever as a kid. Supposedly my heart was damaged. There was nothing wrong with Fox. But we’d heard the services wouldn’t take you if you were homosexual. He told the truth at the induction center and they made him 4-F.”

  “But they took you.”

  “Air Force. I deliberately picked them because their physical requirements were the toughest.” His mouth tightened at one corner. “I passed with flying colors.” He shut his eyes for a second in pained remembrance. “Christ, what a shock!”

  “And you didn’t see each other again for twenty-five years?”

  “Not till I saw his name in the Times. Six weeks ago. You see . . .” Pain dulled Sawyer’s eyes. “I’d lost my friend. Like you. A French boy. Man. We’d been together . . . almost exactly as long. Since 1945. He was killed in July. He . . .” It was Sawyer’s turn to walk to the window. “He was bound to be killed, of course. He was a racing driver. He’d cracked up a dozen times, spent months in hospitals. So I knew, or thought I knew. But it was bad, all the same.” Sawyer sighed, rubbed a hand down over his whiskery face, turned. “I would have stayed in France. But that was over too. They assigned me to England but I didn’t want England. Only place to come was home. It was no good. I only sat and stared at television, like a corpse the undertaker’s forgotten to pick up. Then . . .” With a wondering smile, he lifted and dropped his hands. “There was Fox. I ran to him.”

  “You hadn’t tried to find him in all those years.”

  “That’s not so,” Sawyer said. “When our camp was liberated, in my first letter, I asked my mother. She said she’d lost track of him. He and Thorne couldn’t afford a phone so they weren’t in the book. And Mom didn’t think of the register of voters. My father was dying. She didn’t have time to hunt. . . . Then I found Jean-Paul.” Sawyer came from the window. “I’m sorry, can you spare another smoke?”

  Dave handed him the pack and matches. “So what happened when you got to Pima?”

  “I phoned the radio station and he was there and he came right over. He walked in the door of that motel room and we looked at each other, and it was as if there hadn’t been any years between. Not for me. Not for him, either.”

  “But,” Dave said dryly, “you went back to L.A.”

  Sawyer narrowed his eyes and studied Dave through the smoke. “You know the answers to all these questions, don’t you?”

  “Not all,” Dave said. “For example—what about Ito, the Japanese houseboy? What happened between him and Fox?”

  “Nothing,” Sawyer said. “But Fox was afraid it would, afraid he’d make a mistake. He almost did make one that first night. Ito was beautiful.”

  “I’ve seen him.” Dave nodded. “He was. Is.”

  “Well, he was standing there naked when Fox went to his room to thank him for making it a good day. That’s like Fox. But it was Christmas and he was more than a little smashed. He almost couldn’t keep his hands off.” Sawyer’s smile was thin. “I suppose that’s the answer to your other question too—why he sent me back to L.A.”

  “He’d always fought it?”

  “For Thorne. But he hadn’t always won. There’d been a couple of sorry little affairs. In the bookstores, after closing. Brief, a night, two nights. Then some boy in the film plant. But they only made things worse. And things didn’t need worsening. Those were bad years.”

  Dave said, “His wife told me.”

  “She was everything to him. Cheered him on, gave him reasons to work, live, hope. Gave him a child he loved.
Finally gave him a career and wealth and popularity and a future like Disneyland.” Sawyer shook his head. “And stopped loving him.”

  “He knew about the affair with Hale McNeil?”

  “He found out. Which told him McNeil had only given him the break on his radio station to get next to Thorne. It didn’t matter. Fox didn’t let it matter. Thorne had wanted this. He owed her for all those years of nothing. And whatever McNeil’s motives, Fox couldn’t deny the debt. Didn’t try. He knocked himself out to make good. For them. Went around grinning, clowning, to show them how happy they’d made him. It began taking more and more booze to make the act convincing. . . .”

  Sawyer drove a fist into his palm, rose, walked to the window again. “She’d say, ‘You always wanted first editions,’ so he’d buy first editions. Fancy microphones, electric typewriters, the kind of piano he’d admired in some store window when they were first married. She’d been eating her heart out for him to have all those shiny symbols of success. That junky, pretentious white car . . .”

  Dave squinted. “He didn’t want any of it?”

  Sawyer swung around. “He wanted one thing. To write great novels.”

  “Why didn’t he do it?” Dave asked. “He had years.”

  Sawyer shook his head impatiently. “Wasted. Look at it this way. Suppose Dostoevsky had never mentioned his epilepsy, his compulsive gambling. How far would he have gotten?”

  Dave said, “He was going to have a book.”

  “A comic book,” Sawyer snorted. “Cartoons and funny sayings. That made him sickest of all.”

  Dave heard footsteps crunching on the sand outside, the murmur of male voices.

  “Then Chalmers came along with those old snapshots.”

  “To make Fox stop running against him. That was all.” Sawyer began carefully breaking slivers of glass from the window frame. “I think he could have. He says he couldn’t. Too awkward to explain. That’s what I meant by an excuse. To clear out. He was fed up anyway.”