The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  She held her near-empty glass to her bosom and mugged it up. “Too skinny for anything. To walk with. To talk with.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “To make mad love with.” She turned and marched back to the sideboard in the next room to pour more liquor into her glass. She returned and stood just in front of me with the tip of one finger resting on her chin. “Well, do you?”

  “No, Miss Anderson, I don’t think you’re too skinny for any of those things. In fact, I don’t look on you as being skinny, period. It’s true you’re not as fleshy as your sister-in-law to be, but that’ll all turn to fat in a few years, and everyone will think it’s your brother’s maid tagging along.”

  That brought a rich peal of laughter. There was hope yet. But then she glided across the room in a stagy stride. She was wearing blue jeans and a man’s blue workshirt, like all the suburban women were wearing that year. At the far end of the room she turned back to me, one hand on her hip. With the other she put down her glass and undid a couple of shirt buttons just above her waist.

  “Do you think I’m seductive?” She flipped open the gap of her shirt to flash her belly button.

  I’m afraid I snorted. Then I swallowed my drink and got up. I was enjoying her performance, but Elliott Fitzmorris had made me want to get along finding out things.

  “I think you could probably be anything you wanted to be, from what you’ve shown me here. I wish I had time to stay around for more. I really do. But unless there was something special you wanted to talk about, I’d better be on my way.”

  “On yer way, guv?” She stood with her feet parted, hands on her spare hips, and her head tilted to one side. “On yer way? Why, the only thing special was to ’ave a bit of comp’ny. ’Tis me birthday, after all. Might even invite you to lie wi’ me, if you’re a good enuf boy. Let you ’ave one on the ’ouse, so to speak. Actually, atop me and the bed, if the truth be known.”

  She walked slowly toward me, the palms of her hands folded in a gesture of prayer in front of her face. She wagged her hands from side to side. As she reached me she turned to retrace her steps, now raising a singsong voice in cadence to her hands.

  “Twould be far better, don’t you see, to make love to an ’andsome stranger than to sit at ’ome celebratin’ alone wi’ a drunk and snorin’ mum, or go along and watch me brother fondle ’is big-titted girl…” Her voice trailed off. At the far end of the room, she paused with her back to me, motionless, with her hands now resting atop her head.

  “Ohhh, Jeeesus Christ!” she wailed, turning back with a contorted face. She was all through playing games. “They are all such shits!” She clamped her eyes shut and stood there, her arms now stiffly at her sides, her hands balled into two small fists. She took a deep breath and held it a moment, then exhaled slowly and opened her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bragg. I haven’t been nice. Look, would you mind awfully taking me…” Her eyes encompassed the room. “Away from here for a little while?”

  “Not at all, Miss Anderson. It’s okay. We all feel that way sometimes.”

  “Call me Terri.”

  “Okay. I’m Pete.”

  “Good, Pete. I’ll get a wrap.”

  FIVE

  We drove back to the highway, then over the hills and across the bridge to San Francisco. It was about a forty-minute drive, but I figured it would do her good to get out of Marin County for a while. We didn’t talk much. She was content to sit quietly and watch the lights go by. Before leaving the house, she’d done more than just get a wrap. She’d also changed into a sky-blue pants suit and white blouse with a yellow scarf at her throat, and had done something with an eye liner that seemed to age her by about five years. This all took her about ten minutes to accomplish. During the drive I congratulated her on it all, and she said she’d had a lot of practice.

  I drove up Nob Hill and parked in a garage a block away from the Fairmont Hotel. Terri didn’t say anything, but she looked around her some. Walking down the street to the hotel, she seemed to perk up a little. When we went through the plush hotel lobby and headed back toward the outside elevator that ran up to the Crown Room, she realized where we were going. She gave me a nice smile and took my arm, and I figured I must be doing okay.

  It’s not a bad place to take a girl for a drink. They don’t cost all that much more than at a lot of places, the service is good, and then there’s that sitting-on-a-mountain view that you get, with lights twinkling for a dozen miles or more in every direction.

  She asked for Scotch, so I ordered her a Black Label and some bourbon for myself. We clinked glasses and sipped.

  “This was a nice idea,” she told me. “I’m glad I quit clowning around and asked you to take me somewhere.”

  “You were a little theatrical. Have you done much of that in school?”

  “No. I usually do it in party situations, to either attract or repel.”

  “Which were you trying to do with me?”

  She looked at me, then lowered her eyes and turned her drink in her hands. “Both, I think, and I’m not sure why.”

  “It doesn’t really matter, but you were pretty bored at the way things were going. I suspect any stranger, especially one of the opposite sex who wasn’t in a wheelchair or coughing up blood, would have gotten your interest. But at the same time, you must have been angry at what apparently was somebody’s bum idea of a birthday celebration.”

  She nodded. “My mother, who else?”

  “I don’t know your family. Is she always like that?”

  Terri nodded, and drained half her drink. “I swear to people I smelled liquor on her breath when she nursed me as a baby, but they never believe me. She always managed to maintain a semblance of form and coherence until the past year or so. But now she’s just blown away, which should be apparent to anybody. But no one seems to take notice.” She looked off into the night. “It’s really quite a despicable family.”

  “You keep saying that in different ways. If they’re so bad, why do you keep hanging around the home?”

  “The best of all reasons. What do you suppose that is?”

  “Money?”

  “Hooray for the detective. In this case it was amassed by my mother’s father, Grandpa Burkette. He was into airplanes and plastics and a lot of other things a restless nature and good brain led him into. He died about fifteen years ago and left—frankly, I don’t know how much. He spread it around the family tree like manure and mulch, and dear Mother got a whopping slice, I dare say, but sly old Grandpa fixed it so it pretty well stays with his side of the family and their offspring, meaning that if she passes away Daddy doesn’t get every last cent that’s left. It’s all handled by the bank. That’s what keeps Daddy slaving away from noon until three or four most every afternoon.

  “Now here comes the exciting part. My brother and I each have a little old trust fund. At last reckoning, they were each worth something in excess of one million four hundred thousand dollars. Is that not neat, detective Peter Bragg?”

  “It’s about as neat as anything I ever heard of. Particularly the part about your grandpa keeping it away from the birds who might regard the estate as a wagon train to be raided.”

  “Yes. Well. There is one little old snag, from my point of view.”

  “You have to be a certain age before you can collect.”

  “I not only have to be a certain age, I have to live in that Christ-awful rotten home until I reach that age, or it’s bye-bye, money. So there it is. Needless to say, for that kind of cash I would commit incest with my powder-puff brother and live in the trees out back.”

  “When is the lucky day?”

  Terri glanced around to make sure the waitress wasn’t nearby. “When I’m twenty-one. Exactly one year from now. Do you think I’m apt to count the days? You can bet your round little sitter-downer I’m going to count the days.” She raised her glass in salute and drained it.

  “And Father,” she continued, “is just going to steam like a pot of clams when it hap
pens. It didn’t bother him so terribly much when Duffy got his, because Duffy is totally lacking in imagination and likes Mom and Pop and thinks everything is fine with the world. But Father knows that I know differently. And he knows that he might think I have a tart tongue now, but that it is nothing to what it shall become one day a year hence.”

  “You intend to make a speech or something?”

  “Not really, but I might voice a comment or two as I’m hauling luggage out the front door. And knowing that day is coming gnaws at him deeply.”

  “Maybe if you didn’t dwell on it so much you’d find life a little easier. You could slip your head into neutral, like your brother, for the next twelve months.”

  “I’m too bright for that; can’t you tell? My mind is too active to allow itself to be subverted. That’s why I don’t care for marijuana, let alone the really hard drugs.”

  “What do you do, go horseback riding and take a lot of cold showers?”

  “I don’t know if you’re kidding and lucky, or kidding and smart. I do ride horseback. Also, I drink a lot. Would you order me another, please?”

  “Sure.” I signaled the waitress and lit the cigarette Terri had taken from her handbag. “That thing about living at home until you’re twenty-one sounds a little old-fashioned.”

  “Grandpa Burkette was an old-fashioned gentleman. And a dear. He was still living when the Beat Generation settled into North Beach. That scared him some, because he didn’t grasp how the world he knew was changing. He had made his fortune the good-guy way. He didn’t plunder or trample people in the process. So he couldn’t see the need for intellectual rebellion against what the country was becoming, or at least what some people perceived it as becoming. So he had to reject those who rebelled. And he made the trust funds read the way they did so that no grandchild of his would be about to rush headlong into any sort of counterculture. And he was right. It worked. I’m just glad he didn’t live to witness the blossoming of the Flower Children and their subsequent dingy deflowering. I think he would have made a large bonfire and burned his money, rather than leave it behind for a couple of pill-popping hippies. Do I bore you?”

  “God no. It’s all I can do to keep up.” Our drinks came. We touched glasses and sipped. “What is it about your dad that makes it so hard for the two of you to get along?”

  “He’s third-rate. Always has been; always will be. All flash, no sparkle. He’s never had the courage or the know-how to step out and do something on his own. The one thing he does well is understand the leverage of money and the institutions that deal in it. Borrow a little, build a lot. But he always has to be in league with somebody who’s stronger than he is. For a long time up to now it was his partner, Andy Dustin.”

  “Partner?”

  “Sort of. At least they team up on a lot of developments, but I don’t really know all that much about Andy. Except he’s an ex-Seabee who probably was born with a shovel in his hands and could put up anything or knock down anything in the whole goddam world, and can be gruff and hearty and funny all at the same time and is exactly what I wish I had for a father.”

  Her voice choked off, and she went to her bag for a tissue. She was almost bawling, and I left her alone for a few moments. She sniffed and dabbed at her nose, then tucked away the tissue and tossed her head with a brief little smile of apology and drained her Scotch. I signaled for another one.

  “I get that way sometimes about other people, when I realize what sterling stuff the human species can be compared with the dry rot in my own family. Anyhow, Andy sailed away on a cruise ship several weeks ago, and whenever I ask my father about it he mumbles something vague about Andy maybe retiring to a villa in Spain or someplace. That, by the way, is apt to be my first bit of business when I turn twenty-one—go rent myself a villa in Spain and poke around looking for Andy, if he’s still there.”

  “Think you’d like it that far away?”

  “For a while, I would. I’d have to get that far away from everything I’ve come to know and loathe around here to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”

  “What have you thought about doing?”

  She made a gesture with her shoulders. “Buy a stud farm in Kentucky. Put together a cosmetics line. Go into politics. Get married and raise a bunch of kids with runny noses. You name it, I’ve thought about doing it. But I can’t think seriously about any of those things while I’m this close to everything that’s gone on up to now.”

  “That makes sense. It’s just that Spain seems like a long way off. You might get lonely.”

  “I want to spend a while alone. That’s not being lonely. I don’t have any really close friends around here. If I did, I’d be out with them instead of with you. And besides, how lonely do you think a young girl with nearly a million and a half dollars is apt to be? For instance, I think I like you. You’re a good listener, even if it is something you do for a living. You have a sense of humor and the other kind of sense as well. Don’t you suppose that if one day a year or so from now you received a plane ticket in the mail from little old me you couldn’t arrange to take off a week at my expense and spend it sitting around in the sun drinking rum punch and taking in the bullfights and nipping on down for a swim in the Mediterranean, or wherever?”

  I nodded. “Sounds like something a guy could do.”

  Terri gave me a very secure smile.

  “How about your brother Duffy? If he’s already got his money, why does he still live at home?”

  “The twit likes it there. He’s very slow about some things. He plans to move after he and Melody get married, but if he didn’t plan to get married, I don’t think he’d ever leave. Some day he might wake up and see the enormity of that farce he’s in the middle of. Maybe.”

  “Melody is somebody else I don’t quite understand. She’s a pretty girl and all, but she is black. Isn’t he afraid that might cause complications? Or has it?”

  “It hasn’t, and isn’t ever apt to, especially around San Francisco. And remember the million-plus bucks. With that sort of money, he could marry the neighbor’s cocker spaniel and nobody would be apt to raise an eyebrow for too long, except the cocker spaniel.”

  “What sort of people do they run with?”

  “Young and rich, for the most part. They’re just slumming tonight, going into Sausalito. It works out fine. My brother belongs to some clubs and has the banal conversation appropriate to that life, and is into sailing and is learning to be a stock broker down on Montgomery Street and is, all in all, inoffensive to the point of a deep yawn. And Melody can be fun, though I think she’s phony as a padded bra.”

  “What makes you feel that?”

  “My eyes, ears, nose, throat and brain. It doesn’t bother me. Like I said, she can be good fun; she’s smart; she has a sensational body, and probably is terrific in bed, and there’s no reason why Duffy can’t be very happy with her. But I think her rapturous love act is just that. I think she’s marrying my brother because he’s a very rich young man. But if that’s important to her, I don’t see why they can’t have a successful marriage on that basis. And lord knows it’s all very chummy, with her uncle being in bed with Popsy on this Marinship Shores project.”

  “What’s her father do for a living?”

  She hesitated a moment. “Some sort of import business, I think. Funny, we’ve never all met.”

  “Does Melody have a circle of friends of her own?”

  “Not that I know of. She and Duffy met while going to school over in Berkeley. It happened quite independently of the business association between Arthur Moss and my father. Apparently Melody was into a very integrated—read that mostly white—crowd. Why not? The boys like to look at her, and the girls—those who still need that sort of thing—have the pretty house nigger to trot out at parties and things.” Terri finished her drink and stubbed out her cigarette. “Do you have any Scotch at your place?”

  “I think there’s some. Why?”

  “I want to go the
re. To spend the night.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to sleep with you,” she said, sticking things away into her bag. “It’s my birthday. That can be your present.”

  “Afraid not. I’ll buy you a rose instead.”

  She stared at me coolly. “There isn’t a physical reason, is there?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then why not? I’ve wanted you since about three minutes after you came into the house this evening. You look like you could go anywhere and take care of yourself and the people with you, like Andy Dustin. You’re everything my brother and father aren’t. I don’t come right out and ask like this very often.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, and I’m flattered all to hell. But you’ve been drinking enough so your judgment could be faulty. You might feel badly about it in the morning.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “There are other reasons. I can’t even go into them now.”

  The kid leaned back and leveled a stare at me. I tried to hold her gaze, but finally had to look away.

  “You haven’t been honest with me—with any of us, have you?”

  I looked back at her. “You think I’ve lied to you?”

  “Maybe not. The things you’ve said might all be true, but the truth might not be the things you’ve said. You’re working, aren’t you? There’s something about my family you want to know that’s quite apart from this Cookie Poole person, and the murdered man you found. Aren’t I right?”

  “If you are, Terri, like I said, I can’t go into it just now.”

  “You don’t even have to. I told you, I’m bright.”

  “For a twenty-year-old kid, you’re also tough.”

  “For a twenty-year-old kid, I have to be. Let me tell you something else. Whatever it is you’re really working on, it isn’t any large concern of mine. Unless it might mean I somehow don’t get the million-plus dollars a year from now. It doesn’t mean that, does it?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good, Pete. I’m glad to hear it. Then whatever you’re working on doesn’t matter to me, because I can’t get that worked up over the rest of the family. None of them. I have no dark little secrets of my own. No hidden vices. I drink openly. No secret crimes. I have been completely honest with you. So you don’t have to worry about professional ethics. You don’t even have to tell me. I simply want to go to bed and to hold onto somebody I like and with whom I think I could have a substantial—friendship. I haven’t had much of that lately.”