If Dying Was All (8 page)

Burley gave Easy another scowl and white, sunburned skin flaked off his forehead. “Okay, Perry. I’ll go take a shower. I’m sorry I lost the God damn tennis match. I’m sorry I disgraced you in front of your peers.”

His pretty wife stroked his sweater arm against the grain. “We’ll be down in the bar, Buddy. If you get over your grump.”

“Bullshit,” said Burley. “I might as well go back out to the studio and work overtime on the God damn bunny rabbits. We can use a little extra dough.” He made a final half-hearted jab in Easy’s direction, turned and tromped away down the wooden stairs.

“You’re not like a policeman, are you?” asked Perry, standing. “You can drink on duty?”

“I have that option, yes.”

She scooped up a straw handbag and a pair of binoculars and, as soon as her husband disappeared into shadows, led Easy below.

On the asphalt court two nearly identical tanned brunettes were playing. “Your husband’s in the animation business?” Easy asked.

“Yes. Do you think that may account for his behavior?” She motioned him down a rubber-matted alleyway. “Bud is somewhat like a big cartoon bear, now that I think about it. He’s usually very nice, though, so long as he’s winning.”

The cocktail lounge was a large, sparsely furnished room, filled with deep shadows and sunlight turned blue by the long, high, tinted windows. The air conditioning had chilled the place. Perry stopped next to a round-topped table and waited for Easy to pull out one of the chairs for her. Easy sat opposite the blonde.

After a few seconds, Perry said, “As I understand it from what your secretary implied, Mr. McCleary is in some kind of trouble. Is that it?”

“He thinks Jackie has come back to life.”

The blonde turned to watch the bar across the chill blue room. The bartender was a hollow-chested man in a red coat a size too large. He had a ladder of three Band-Aids running up the left side of his neck. He was telling a story to a man in tennis clothes and ignoring Perry’s glance. “What do you mean, Mr. Easy. Has he had some kind of breakdown?”

“Jackie wrote him a letter.” Easy stared at the bartender and the man looked over, then came toward their table. “Mailed it in the town of Manzana.”

“I’m not feeling so good today,” explained the bartender. “I had a series of warts removed today.”

“Oh,” said Perry, “that’s too bad, Eddie. Was it painful?”

“No, Mrs. Burley, but it left me an unsightly mess.” Eddie fingered the bandages. “The usual?”

“Yes. Mr. Easy?”

“Draft beer.”

Eddie moved off and Perry said, “I don’t quite understand, Mr. Easy. You mean Jackie’s actually been in communication with her father?”

“Would that be possible, do you think?”

Perry jabbed her right hand into her straw bag and brought out a pack of slim cigarettes. “I really ought to stop. I got Bud to stop, not that it’s helped his game any.” She tapped the pack on the table edge and a cigarette shot out. Rolling it along the tabletop with her fingertip, she said, “Jackie McCleary has been dead since the summer of 1965. I was on the yacht, as I’m sure you know.”

“No one saw her jump.”

“She jumped, though,” said Perry. “The poor kid. No, she’s dead, Mr. Easy. Dead and gone.”

“Why would someone want to make her father think she’s alive?”

“He already thinks she’s alive.” The blonde snapped up the cigarette and put it to her lips. “I’ve kept in touch with him. You know, called him now and then. Sometimes, when he’s been especially down or been drinking overly much, he calls me. Buddy can’t stand that. Calls him an old son of a bitch.” She lit the cigarette for herself and sighed smoke. “I really ought to stop.”

Easy looked from the turquoise ring to Perry’s blue gray eyes. “Suppose somebody wrote McCleary a letter to lure him out of his house for a day or so. What would be in the house, or in Jackie’s cottage, do you think?”

“Mr. McCleary would know better than I do.”

“Would it, maybe, be something Booth Graither gave Jackie before he was killed?”

The pretty blonde inhaled, exhaled, narrowed one eye. “Booth Graither was never one of us, Mr. Easy. Has someone told you he was?”

“I’ve seen pictures. He was close to Jackie, down in San Amaro,” said Easy. The bandaged Eddie brought their drinks.

“Sorry the tray is all bunged up,” he said as he served.

“Are you sure you ought to be working, Eddie?” Perry asked.

“You have to have more than warts removed before they let you have a day off around here.” He went back to the bar and resumed his anecdote.

Easy said, “Do you know the Manzana area?”

Perry replied, “Bud and I spent a few days there once. Years ago.”

“Not since? Not this month around the 21st?”

“No,” she said. “Bud’s been very busy at the studio. And he was out with the flu for a few days. We haven’t had any time for a desert vacation.”

“Did Jackie ever write you letters?”

“You mean lately?”

“When she was alive.”

Perry pursed her lips around the tip of the slim cigarette. “I don’t think so. I was very close to her, you know, back then. Stayed overnight at her place. We got to know each other pretty well. I can’t remember she ever went anywhere far enough away to call for sending me a letter.”

“Who got her effects when she died?”

“Her father, of course.”

“Did he go down to San Amaro and gather them up?”

“No,” said Perry. “As a matter of fact, Ned Segal and I got Jackie’s keys and, once we were allowed to, packed up everything and delivered it to Mr. McCleary.” She jabbed the cigarette out in the blue ceramic ashtray. “I really would like to help you, Mr. Easy. Because Jackie was a dear friend of mine and I still feel concern for her father. I’m honestly afraid I don’t have any idea who would play such a cruel joke on an old man.”

Easy was sitting with his wide shoulders narrowed and his chin resting on both fists. He watched her awhile longer. “It’s been very interesting,” he said, “hearing your version of what happened. I’ll be talking to you again.”

“Please do, if you feel you have to,” she replied. “Though I won’t have anything more to tell you.” She shook herself out a new cigarette. “I really ought to quit. By the way, you say Mr. McCleary has no idea what someone might want to steal from him? Granted that theft is what’s behind this cruel trick.”

“No,” said Easy. “I’ve asked him to think about it.”

Perry lowered her head and her voice. “Would you mind paying for the drinks, Mr. Easy? I’d like to treat you, but our tab here is quite enormous already. Bud will growl and snap if it gets too much bigger.”

“Sure.” Easy slid back his chair and reached out his wallet.

“So you’ve been calling on all our old beach crowd. What has five years done to them?”

“The same thing it does to everybody.” Easy stood and went to the bar. He waited until the injured Eddie came to a punch line and paid the tab.

Outside the afternoon had a prickly feel and the sky was blurring from blue to a sooty yellow. Easy strolled to the parking lot and went down a row of cars toward his weathered Volkswagen.

“Hey, you son of a bitch.” The rumbling motor of a sports car had started some place to his right.

When Easy reached an exit lane between rows of country club cars he saw Bud Burley. The red-skinned man was in a tan Triumph TR 6 and coming fast toward him.

Easy backtracked and the bumper of a parked station wagon hit his legs and made them buckle somewhat. He swung out one arm to catch his balance.

Burley’s TR 6 growled straight at him. The big man’s face was contracted with anger and looked like a red fist. At the last instant he swerved his car and missed hitting Easy. “Son of a bitch.” He laughed.

Easy leaped straight out, got hold of Burley and swung himself around and into the passenger seat of the open car. He snapped out a hand and clicked off the ignition.

The TR 6 coughed and kept rolling, its engine silent. Burley tugged at the wheel and footed the brake. Not soon enough to keep from sideswiping the silver grille of a new Mercedes 220S. Both cars made raw scraping sounds, and flecks of gray paint flurried up and spattered Burley. “Stupid bastard, look what you made me do,” he shouted at Easy.

“You really ought to learn to relax,” Easy told him. He drove two short right jabs into Burley’s sun-blotched face.

The big, angry man rocked back, stopped from completing a backward arc by his seat belt. He tilted forward then and slumped against the steering wheel.

Easy got out of the Triumph without opening the door, brushed sports car dust off his trousers and walked off to retrieve his Volkswagen.

T
HE HOUSES IN THIS
block of Burbank were the same color as the late afternoon sky, a dirty tan. The lawns had great dry patches which echoed the murky brown shade. Thick, warm air pressed down on everything, and trees looked as though they’d had a hard time getting completely up out of the ground. Clusters of tiny children ran across lawns and between the low houses, circling fallen tricycles and upturned wagons. Dropped plastic toys, yellow and red, made zigzag trails over the dry grass.

Easy stepped over a lime green hula hoop and turned in at the third house from the corner. Below the bell button a small white on black sign said: Ott, DBA Ottstuff Enterprises. Easy pushed the button and a dog barked inside.

After a moment, the inner door opened wide and a tall, 185-pound woman stood facing Easy, filtered by a rusty screen door. “Hi, I’m Sonya.” Her hair was taffy color, worn long. She was wearing a rayon happy coat that hit her well above her enormous plump knees and she hugged a bristly little terrier tight against her low-hanging breasts. The dog made a yapping sound and Sonya stroked his muzzle. “Be still, Trummy.” She smiled, a plump, dimpled smile at Easy. “I get the impression you haven’t heard of me. Sonya?”

“No,” Easy admitted. “I’m John Easy. Would you be Mrs. Ott?”

“My married name.” She pushed the screen door toward him. “Come on in. Dum Dum is expecting you. He’s back in his studio.”

Trummy, the frizzled dog, snapped tiny teeth at the elbow of Easy’s $150 dollar sport coat, giving off an evil-sounding gargle.

The walls of the hallway were completely covered with framed photos. Mrs. Ott stood back-dropped by dozens of glossy photos of herself. She was naked in all of them. “The reason I asked if you’d heard of me is, Mr. Easy, I have something of a rep in the girlie mag field. One of Dum Dum’s lines is the girlie publishing business. That’s part of what it means about Doing Business As Ottstuff Enterprises. You don’t appear to be the sort of man who reads our mags.
Black Lace Panties
,
Sharp-Heeled Black Shoes
,
Naked Home Companion
,
Black Lace Panties Annual
and so on.” She dimpled and jabbed an enormous, plump thumb in the direction of the nude photos. “I have what girlie photogs refer to, technically, as a
zoftig
figure. That’s Jewish for ample. I’m also acrobatic. See the row of pics there? Except for the feather duster those are classic yoga positions. Then down there are some of my favorites. One of Dum Dum’s pictorial fellation essays. But then I guess you didn’t come to admire my work.” She reclutched the bristly Trummy and started down the dim hall, her bare feet flapping on the worn hardwood. “We were into the American Indian thing in our pics long before they became a fashionable minority.” Mrs. Ott gestured at six pictures of her atop a naked man with a feather in his hair.

They passed through a kitchen smelling of several kinds of Campbell’s soup and out into a utility room filled with tied bundles of paperback books.
Latex Lady
was the title of the novel showing at the top of each bundle. Out in the back yard was a windowless hut surrounded by wild grass and dying creeper vines.

Mrs. Ott stooped, still holding tight to Trummy, and picked a red vinyl boomerang off the dry grass. Flinging it over a raw wood fence in the direction of another low dirty tan house, she said, “One of our major regrets is that we’re childless so far. Of course if we had kids I suppose I’d have to hide the glossies.” She trotted up and banged an enormous, plump fist on the tin door of the hut. “Hey, Dum Dum. Company.”

A thin, gray face showed as the door opened. Lee Ott was a small man of thirty-two with the look and shuffle of a senior citizen. His hair was graying, and he gave the impression he’d spent several long years sitting in a dark corner of a veteran’s hospital. “Easy?” he asked.

“Dum Dum is very sensitive about callers,” Mrs. Ott explained to Easy. “Because the DA and the Burbank pigs don’t like us. You’d think this would be a state where artists like Dum Dum could thrive. Do you want Trummy in there while you talk?”

“No,” said Ott. “How are you …” The felt marker he’d held in his left hand slipped out of his grip and bounced in the dry grass. “Sorry. I got it. How are you, Easy?” He banged his head against the metal door on the way up from his bend. “Sorry.”

“Dum Dum is always nervous around company,” said Mrs. Ott. “Most artists are. Well, I’ll leave you two boys. Can I get you a snort, Mr. Easy?”

“No, thanks.”

Inside the musty hut Ott said, “Sorry,” as he tripped over a footstool. He got himself upright. “I suppose I am nervous. This is nothing serious, is it? Your secretary said routine.”

“There’s nothing to get nervous about,” said Easy. “Is there?”

Ott’s left foot tangled with his right and the small, old-looking young man fell sideways into a fat, purple sofa chair. “No, nothing.”

The little office was low-ceilinged and the air was flecked with dust. Piles of books and magazines rose up everywhere. Sprawls of nude photos, of Mrs. Ott and other naked girls, spread over most of the tables and chairs. Setting a portfolio of pictures of plump Mrs. Ott wrestling with a stuffed snake onto the cement floor, Easy sat on a canvas chair. “You knew Jackie McCleary?”

“Knew, yes. Knew, past tense,” said Ott. “She’s dead. We were friends years ago, a gang of us. We bummed around San Amaro … say, you haven’t read my books by any chance?”

“No.”

Ott reached out and knocked over a gooseneck lamp. “Sorry. Here, I got it.” He picked up a paperback book from his desk top. “This is my prestige line of books, the Ott House imprint. Sort of borderline porno. More good writing and less tits and ass. I write the line myself under the pen name George C. Brand.” Ott held the book toward Easy, and it slid from his hand and fell into a cardboard box full of color photos of a nude Japanese girl being painted blue by a man wearing a blond gorilla suit. Ott snatched up the book. “
Die
,
Lorna
,
Die
is the title of this particular one. As you can see. Others in the series have been
Die
,
Margo
,
Die
and
Die
,
Melinda
,
Die.
It’s a private eye series and the format is in each caper the op knocks off a different broad.”