One Grave Too Many

by Ron Goulart

“No, I don’t have any idea, as I just told you. Simply because my …” She closed her mouth, turning away from him.

  Easy waited a few seconds before returning to the bedroom. He circled the bed, gathering up two other photos. They, like the picture of the hands, had been pulled out of their frames. The black frames, making lopsided diamond shapes now, were tangled on top of a swirl of T-shirts and shorts. “This one your father?” asked Easy, holding up a tinted photo of a chunky bald man.

  “Yes,” she answered from the threshold. “Gary kept it on his bureau. I think that other one will be of more use to you, though.”

  The second photo was a color blowup of a snapshot. It had been taken at some kind of Western ghost town; false front buildings showed in the background. In the foreground stood four young people, smiling into the sun. “You had a sad smile then,” said Easy.

  “Yes, that’s me on the end.” She came to stand close beside him. “A long time ago, almost ten years. How hopeful and innocent we all look … except for Danny.”

  Easy touched the photo. “Is this Danny, the red-haired girl?”

  “Danny Lansky, yes,” Gay answered “How’d you know … Danny isn’t a usual girl’s name.”

  “You wouldn’t have sounded that way if you were talking about a guy,” he said. “Danny the one your brother’s been seeing again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which one of these guys is your brother, the short dark kid here?”

  “Yes, that’s Gary, the short one. Then he was still hoping he’d grow a few more inches.”

  “Was Danny his girl?”

  “No … well, she wasn’t supposed to be. She was engaged to Bill. That’s Bill standing between Danny and me. He had that sort of clumsy but lovable style some tall men have. Bill Goffman.”

  “Danny’s present husband wouldn’t be this Goffman?”

  Gay took the photo from him, studying it. After a moment she said, “No, Bill’s long gone. Most of us figure he took off for Canada around 1965, a pioneer draft dodger. Nobody’s heard from him since. He and Danny had some kind of big quarrel, I think, and he just took off. Some of the people, most of them really, that I knew back then I never think about … but Bill I wonder about now and then.”

  Gently, Easy retrieved the photo. “Where was this picture taken?”

  “The Thorpe Ranch. You know, they used to shoot a lot of Western TV shows there, over in the San Fernando Valley,” she said. “My father owned it once. Bill worked there summers and weekends, and the rest of us hung around there quite a bit.”

  “Is your brother likely to have gone there?”

  “Now? I don’t see why.” She lowered herself down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Gary’s not particularly nostalgic about the Thorpe Ranch.”

  Easy reached across her tan legs for the photo he’d found earlier. “And why was he sentimental about this?” The picture showed a woman’s hands spreading a pat of margarine on a steaming muffin.

  Gay shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing that before. It’s probably just something from a TV commercial he and Sandy worked on.”

  “Would he be likely to keep advertising mementos in his bedroom? I don’t see anything else like that around.”

  “I really don’t know.”

  Easy unfastened a button on his shirt. “I’ll borrow these pictures.”

  “You don’t need the one of my father,” she said, rising.

  “Even so.” Easy slid them under his shirt. “Okay now, Gay, you’re absolutely sure you don’t know what happened here?”

  “Gary and I are very close; we see each other a good deal, Mr. Easy,” she said. “He never told me he was in any kind of trouble.”

  “Adultery can be trouble,” said Easy. “How long has he been seeing Danny?”

  “A few months,” she said. “Gary mentioned to me when he ran into her again, said she was married now. He didn’t give me any more details. I do know, though, he’s been dating her since then, quite a bit.” She walked into the living room of the cottage. “Would it be all right if I cleaned it up now?”

  “You don’t want the police in?”

  “No.”

  “Then there’s nobody else to show this mess to.” He watched her as she knelt and began gathering up a spill of hardcover books. Absently he read the titles. Digging Up the Past, Archeology From the Earth, Ur of the Chaldees, Still Digging, The Mountains of Pharaoh. “Is archeology a hobby of your brother’s?”

  “No, my father. Gary likes to keep a few of them around.” When she picked up one of the books the pages fell free of the cover. “Someone tore this apart.”

  Squatting next to her Easy quickly went through several piles of books. “Looks like they paid special attention to the ones on archeology. That suggest anything to you?”

  “No, nothing.” She lowered her buttocks until she was sitting on the mat rug. “I think I’ll put off cleaning up till tomorrow. It’s funny, I was only the other day telling Gary I should be getting over here to help him houseclean.” She let the broken book slide from her hands. She began, very quietly, to cry.

  Easy put his hand on her shoulder. “Two days isn’t a very long time.”

  “They can kill you in a minute,” she said. “Someone … someone vicious did all this. No matter what they were searching for, they didn’t have to be this destructive.”

  “They may have been mad at your brother.”

  “He never told me about anyone … hating him.”

  “Could he have taken something from Danny’s husband?”

  “No, he’s not the kind of person who could steal anything.”

  “Suppose he took Danny herself?”

  “Gary’s not impulsive, Mr. Easy. He’s worked six years building up Marks & Feller, using his own money. He wouldn’t run off and throw it all away for the likes of Danny,” she said. “I just don’t know where he is.”

  “Okay,” said Easy, “I’ll find out.”

  CHAPTER 4

  AN OLD LADY ON a motorcycle gave Easy the finger.

  He ignored it and took the parking space anyway, after having cut around the chubby gray-haired woman.

  “Schmuck,” she said before roaring off up Cherokee.

  Easy eased out of his dusty black Volkswagen, commenced walking through the hazy afternoon.

  Two platinum blonde hookers were arguing in front of a narrow store which sold used appliances. Both wore chartreuse body shirts, white Levis and crimson clogs.

  “Dumb cunt,” accused one.

  “Dumb cunt,” replied the other.

  A retired character actor went by, wearing an overcoat and muffler, carrying a chihuahua dog in a brown shopping bag.

  Easy turned down the alley that showed up now on his right. There was a large brownstone warehouse at the alley’s end. In the middle of its highly polished oaken door was a small brass nameplate saying: Hagopian. Easy knocked.

  The door opened, letting out a gnashing grinding sound. “John Easy,” said Hagopian. “Enter, enter.” He was a dark-haired man, the hair tight-curling. His nose was hooked, his eyes underscored with shadowed half circles. In two months he’d be forty.

  “Having some dental work done?”

  Hagopian led him over to the cluster of Victorian furniture and rugs which made a sort of parlor in the midst of the huge high-ceilinged warehouse. Everything beyond was high rows of green metal filing cabinets. “I’m into a whole new way of life,” he said.

  “That makes six so far this year.”

  “Is that fair, John?” said the TV Look writer. “In a town so full of flux I am, by contrast, as steadfast as a … well, I can’t think of anything steadfast, but nevertheless I am.” He walked over to the waist-high refrigerator on the edge of the Oriental carpet. Atop it an oblong white mechanism was whirring and chuffing. From a nozzle, a purplish liquid was sputtering into a glass measuring cup. “I have become a juicer.” He fondly patted the juice maker before snapping the off switch. “Do you
realize all the enzymes you miss by not drinking raw vegetable juice? And do you have any idea what enzymes can do for you?”

  Easy sat down in a bentwood rocker facing his friend. “New girl, huh?”

  Hagopian smiled, causing curving wrinkles to join those already occupying his high forehead. “As a matter of fact, yes. This girl is really terrific, John, and impossibly healthy. Do you know you can even change the color of your nipples through diet. You ought to see Melody’s tits. Know what color her nipples are?”

  “Blue and gold?”

  “You’re exceptionally flippant today.” Hagopian poured the vegetable juice into a Dixie cup. “You’re probably crotchety because Jill’s going away to Spain. Obviously in no mood to discuss the more sacred and profound things of life, like Melody’s tits. Jill really going?”

  “Should be winging her way eastward by now.”

  Holding an empty cup toward Easy, the writer asked, “Join me?”

  “Do you still allow beer in the house?”

  “I hate to admit it, but yes.” He fetched Easy a bottle of German dark beer out of his refrigerator. “Do you have any idea how many additives there are in beer?”

  “I’ve already given up cigarettes, coffee and hard liquor.” Easy got up to find himself a glass. “If I cut out beer I won’t have any vices left at all. As it is, my parish priest yawns during my confessions.”

  “You really were a Catholic once, weren’t you?”

  “I was even an altar boy,” answered Easy, pouring the dark beer.

  “Really? So was I. The real reason I got into that line of work was that in the rec hall behind the church they had the only pool table in our part of Fresno.” He took a sip of his juice. “Too much turnip.”

  Easy reached inside his shirt. “Know who this is?” He tossed the glossy photo of the pair of hands toward Hagopian.

  The picture did one spin through the air-conditioned air and then the circle-eyed writer caught it. “Yum yum,” he said after studying it. “This is what you call an appetite shot.” He squinted. “Yeah, that’s a carton of Bascom’s Margarine in the background there, the newest package. Sure, this must be Danny Lane. She’s a hand model now, specializing in hand shots for commercials. You know, some girls have nifty tits, others have pretty photogenic hands. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to be whacked off by a hand model, but I …”

  “Did Marks & Feller do that particular commercial?”

  “Hey, John, you’re getting to be very knowledgeable about show business and peripheral show business as it is practiced in this wacky town. Yeah, M&F did this.”

  Easy reached into his shirt again. “Would this redhead be Danny Lane, too?” He got up, handed his friend the ten year old enlargement.

  After trying a little more of his juice, Hagopian took the photo. “Sure, that’s Danny. Notice her smile, half wistful and half bitchy. Those are the kind of broads to avoid. I know, I’ve had to avoid about two dozen of them in the last year alone. She’s got sharp pointy tits, too, always a bad sign.” He scanned the picture further. “There’s Marks himself, looking even more boyish than he does today. Who’s the big Sophia Lorenesque girl here?”

  “My client, Gary Marks’ sister.”

  New circles formed beneath Hagopian’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Marks seems to be missing.”

  “A missing guy, that’s a switch for you. Usually you’re bringing back lost girls,” observed Hagopian. “It’s not too much turnip, it’s too much radish.” Setting the paper cup aside he tapped the photo. “Does this zoftig sister of his think perhaps he’s run off with Danny?”

  “It’s one possibility.” Easy returned to the rocker. “Know who she’s married to?”

  “Let me think.” He ran a thumb along a wrinkle on his forehead. “Oh, sure, to Goffman.”

  “Huh? That’s Goffman in the picture. He’s supposed to be hiding out in Canada.”

  “No, no, not this young a Goffman. I mean the rich old Goffman, the guy who owns Goftoys down in Hawthorne.”

  Easy rocked back and forth once, frowning. Then he took out the third picture. “My client is reluctant to talk about her late father. His name is vaguely familiar to me,” he said. “Vincent Marquetti.”

  Hagopian smiled, walking toward his rows of filing cabinets. “Marquetti was one of the better known swindlers in these parts a few years back,” he said as he walked into the lane between two rows of files. “When you consider how much competition there is in LA, you know a guy has to be damn good to move to the top of the swindler trade.”

  Following the writer, Easy asked, “What was Marquetti’s dodge?”

  “He pulled a deal like Bobby Baker and the salad oil king and such. Got a lot of loans on assets which turned out to be less than he pretended. He netted several million bucks before they caught on to him.” He halted before a drawer, pulled it half way out. “Since I have the largest private collection of news clippings in this entire wacky area I can give you more background on Marquetti than even the LA Times morgue.”

  “And they don’t serve beer.” Easy flipped through the newspaper and magazine clippings in the manila folder Hagopian handed him. “Yeah, I remember Marquetti now. What happened to all the dough?”

  “Marquetti gave some of it back when they grabbed him, but a couple of million just got frittered away apparently.”

  Easy studied a few more of the clippings. “He went to prison roughly nine years ago.”

  “Yeah, and died there four, five years ago.” Hagopian poked a hand in among the news items. “Yeah, here it is. ‘Convicted Swindler Suffers Stroke in Prison.’”

  “Here they all are in the obit. ‘… survived by a son, Gary Marquetti of Santa Monica; a daughter, Mrs. Gay Holland, and a sister, Mrs. Theresa Costello of Manzana.’ That must be the aunt in the desert.”

  “So Gary Marks is Gary Marquetti. I didn’t remember that.”

  Easy gave him back the folder. “Got anything on Danny and her husband?”

  Shoving the drawer shut, Hagopian wandered on. “Around this bend.” He entered a new lane between file cabinets. “I put her in the same drawer with the old man.” He stopped in front of a chest-high drawer marked GE-GO. “You’re not interested in this cheesecake stuff she did before she got sedate?”

  “As long as you have it to hand.” Easy took the dozen large photos. “Yeah, sharp and pointed, just like you said.”

  “I never forget a tit.”

  “They airbrushed everything in those days.”

  Hagopian cocked his head to look at the pictures along with the detective. “No, she shaved it. That was a fad with some skin models around then.” He produced another folder. “Here’s the old guy, Jacob Goffman.”

  Easy went through the material on the girl’s husband. “People keep handing him things.”

  “Local paper photographers, even on the edges of the glamour capital, don’t have much in the upstairs. ‘Stand there and smile when they hand you the certificate, Mr. Goffman.’ That’s a spooky smile, by the way. He looks like a mean son-of-a-bitch.”

  “You didn’t like Danny’s smile either.” He put the folder away. “Got an address on her?”

  “Not a current one. I don’t imagine a prominent industrialist like Goffman is listed in the phone book, but I can dig up her address,” promised Hagopian. “Thing is, I can’t do it until after sundown. Right now I’ve got to run over to the Me & Jesus Commune.”

  “Which is?”

  “John, if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t know anything about the main currents of life in LA and environs,” said Hagopian. “TV Look wants me to interview a new pea-brained and sparse-titted starlet and at the moment she happens to be a Jesus freak, living out in the Valley with a clutch of Jesus freaks who call themselves the Me & Jesus Commune.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll have a pool table.” Easy headed for the door.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE MAN NEAREST THE door was barking. The man
next to him on the low black sofa shook his head. “Pretty piss poor,” he said. “It’s no wonder you haven’t been getting many calls. You got no believability. Like this …” He wrinkled his nose and commenced yelping and howling.

  Easy walked by them, and by the other five actors waiting in the outer office of Marks & Feller. It was a black and white room, chill, with high walls of eggshell white, black chairs and sofa. He stopped before the white desk and asked the black receptionist, “Is Feller in?”

  The slim black girl looked up at him. “Let’s hear you bark.”

  “Woof,” he said.

  She frowned, poking one long finger into her afro. “That’s godawful,” she decided. “And yet there’s a kind of zany downbeat quality about it … it’s so rotten it’s almost good. Do it again, will you?”

  “I won’t bark any more unless I get some money in front,” said Easy. “Meanwhile, would you tell Feller John Easy’d like to see him. I’m a private investigator, working for …”

  “Shit,” said the receptionist, “you mean you ain’t a voice man?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you aren’t here to audition for our Kane’s Kanned Kanine Burgers spots?”

  “I’m looking for Gary Marks, his sister hired me to find him.”

  The girl poked all five fingers of her left hand into her hair. “You think something bad’s really happened to Mr. Marks?”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk to Feller about.”

  The black girl got up from behind her desk. She was nearly six feet high. “It would be grotesque if Mr. Marks were lying dead somewhere and us here doing a dog food commercial. Come on, I’ll take you to Mr. Feller’s officer.”

  Glancing at the girl’s extremely long bare legs, Easy followed her into a black and white hallway. “What makes you think he might be dead?”

  “Mr. Marks is so gung ho about this outfit … he’d have to be dead or dying to stay away,” she answered. “He’s usually here day and night.”

  “I hear he’s been taking some time off to see one of your television spot girls.”

  The receptionist said, in a very flat voice, “I wouldn’t know about that.” They reached a white door with six STP stickers and a picture of a plaster hot dog stuck on it. The black girl knocked.