Troublemaker (13 page)

"You like
pottle a la mexicaine?"
Doug, in a faded denim happy coat, mop of gray hair still wet from his shower, went to the refrigerator. "Then don't make faces. I have to puree the pimientos."
            
Dave eyed the little orange-pink storm in the jar atop the infernal machine with its row of color-coded push buttons. "That's pureeing?"

"Among us twentieth-century types." Doug handed him a martini. "It'll be over in just a minute."

Dave grunted, took the martini and, with the paper tucked under his arm, wandered out to crank the painty old latch of the twin French doors to the roof deck. He shouldered them open and started for the redwood chaise, chair, table in the big leaf shadows of the rubber trees. He stopped. At the far end of the deck, something glared in the downing sunlight. Squinting, he went toward it. It was square, about four feet high, maybe a yard wide, forty inches deep
—pale brick sheathed in shiny plate steel, a rectangular opening in the top, steel doors in the front, stumps of lead pipe at the side.

Around this were piled cartons full of big Mason jars, labeled with chemical names, holding colored powders. There was a gathering of plastic trash barrels in dull green dribbled with duller gray. Slip was what they'd held, liquid pottery clay. Under a shelter built of four-by-fours and roofed with rippled sheets of hard opalescent plastic, where plank shelves were meant for potted plants
—a project he and Doug hadn't got to yet—terra-cotta-colored molds for pots and jars waited beside a clay-crusty potter's wheel with a little electric motor under it, trailing a cracked rubber coated cord.

Dave blinked, frowned, worked his teeth together gently. He drank the martini, slowly, smoked the cigarette down. He took it to the ashtray on the table to crush it out. Leaving the paper but taking his empty glass, he went back into the apartment, back into the kitchen. He said very mildly, "Doug?"

Doug, at the stove, wiped sweat from his face with his sleeve. "Something wrong?"

"What does a potter's kiln look like?"

"Kind of like an oven." Doug reached down a can of chicken broth from a cupboard shelf. The electric can opener sang and danced with it. "Brick, I think. Why?"

"There's one on the roof deck." Dave opened the fridge and refilled his glass. Doug's stood cradling a drying olive on the tile counter next to the stove. He floated the olive again and put the pitcher back. "At least I think so. Whatever it is, it must weigh a ton."

Doug emptied the gold-lumped broth into the skillet, where it sizzled gently. He poured in the pimiento puree. "On our roof deck?"

"Yonder." Dave pointed. "You didn't know?"

"How would I know? I've been away since eight-thirty this morning. I hope that old idiot in the bicycle shop is more alert than he looks. I told him to keep an eye on her and let me know." Doug spooned into the skillet yellow-green powder from a small jar. Cumin. He opened his eyes at Dave. "You think I put it there?"

"We both know who put it there," Dave said. "I just had a laughable idea that he might have asked permission. But of course that's ridiculous."

Doug carried the cumin jar and the spoon out of the kitchen, out' the French doors, and down the deck. He stopped, shook his head, said something about
merde.

"He didn't have permission?" Dave asked. "Of course not."

Doug touched the pale brick, the steel sheathing. "My God, how do you suppose he got it up here? Look at the thing."

"At least a ton," Dave said. "And he's moved his whole shop here with it
—molds, wheel, clay, the works."

"It was default," Doug said suddenly. "He told me, Dave. I thought it was fact. It wasn't fact, it was a warning, only I was too dense to take it in. The place where he had his shop is being torn down. Some old warehouse in east Santa Monica. He had to get out."

"Fine," Dave said, "but he didn't ask
—"

"If he'd asked, I'd have asked you," Doug said.

Dave eyed him. "But you'd have considered it."

"Maybe." Doug shrugged. "I don't know. It never crossed my mind." He smiled, touched Dave's face. "What do you think? I don't want Kovaks. I like his work is all. We've been over that."

"He intends to stay," Dave said.

"Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt, would it? I mean, if he wants to work here, there's plenty of space."
                                                  

"You tell him he can work here, and next week he'll be living here. That's all it's about." Dave went back into the hollow rooms, into the shimmer of Haydn's strings, and fetched the pot in its carton from where he'd set it down at the stairhead. Doug was in the kitchen again,
 
Dave showed him the carton, the pot, the card. "The lunatic wants to sleep between us."
                                                                         

"I guess so." Doug frowned while he used a long-handled wooden spoon to move the chunks of chicken around in the thick pale-red sauce with its snippets of green pepper. "I got one too. Yesterday. It came with the rest of the gallery packages. By United Parcel."

"Same card, right?" Dave asked.

"Same card." Kovaks showed his beautiful teeth in the kitchen doorway. "Am I in time for a drink? I'm pooped." He wore dirty white duck shorts. A dirty white yachting cap was stuck on the back of his bushy hair. Sweat greased his pale skin. He held out grimy hands. "Why aren't you cheering?"

"How long did it take to get that kiln up here?"

"Over four hours, a power winch, and three hairy hardhats. Tell you the truth, I didn't think we'd get done before you showed up. They weren't expensive enough. They kept stopping for beers."

"Let me guess," Dave said, "Paying them took your last dime, correct?"

"Absolutely correct. You're uncanny." Kovaks found the martini pitcher in the refrigerator and a frosty glass in the freezer compartment. He filled the glass. "I don't know where I'd have turned to if it wasn't for friends like you."

"Help yourself to a drink," Dave said. "Make yourself right at home. But you look tired and hot. Wouldn't you like a shower? Sure, you would."

Kovaks stood very still, watching him. Doug watched him too. He asked Doug cheerily:

"There's plenty of chicken, isn't there?" He didn't wait for Doug's answer. Doug's jaw looked dislocated. "Sure
—stay for dinner, Kovaks. We'll open some champagne. Go ahead, have that shower. There's time, isn't there, Doug?"

"Oodles." Doug mismanaged a smile.

Kovaks came to Dave and put a hand on the pocket of the terry-cloth robe. The hand was warm. "Cigarette?"

"On my dresser," Dave said. "Help yourself. Find clean clothes in there too." He sized Kovaks up. "I think my stuff will fit you. Anything at all."

Kovaks narrowed his long-lashed eyes, turned his head slightly away, worked his tongue skeptically behind closed lips. Then grinned and shrugged. "Okay
—right, thanks." He walked out.

Doug said, "What are you up to?"

Dave picked up the pot in its carton. "I'll be down in the gallery for a little while," he said. "The packing room."

CHAPTER 10

Ragged plastic pennants
fluttered overhead
—yellow, red, orange —on slack wires between corroded floodlight poles. Dave walked among secondhand cars toward a small wood-and-glass building in the weedy rear corner of a blacktop lot.
pat farrell good used cars,
the tin sign read,
we carry our own contracts.
The cars were filmed with dust. Lettered on their windshields in chalky pink paint were false claims:
low mileage, clean, factory air, all power, stick shift, sharp,
even
cherry
—along with prices the dealer knew better than to expect.

Pat Farrell's was the kind of lot you walked onto with cash if you were smart. You chose what you wanted and didn't listen to why it was worth the three hundred fifty dollars it was marked. You pressed down on the upholstery, frowned under the hood, kicked the tires while the salesman followed you around, talking. Then you waved a hundred-dollar bill under his nose and drove out with twenty-five dollars' worth of scrap steel, cracked plastic, thin rubber, and the pink slip in your pocket.

At the foot of the plank stairs to the sales office was parked a European mini like the one that had died under Vern Taylor on the coast road yesterday morning,
gas saver
was lettered on the glass.
 
Especially when it stalls,
Dave thought, and climbed the steps. The office door stood open because it was another hot morning. Inside, a
'
man sat at a yellow wood desk whose top was covered by the spread-" out classified ad pages of the
Examiner.
The man was circling ads with a felt-tip pen. His suit hung loose on him. A cigar was clenched in his teeth. An electric fan blew from the top of a tin file cabinet in a corner, ruffled his greenish toupee, chased the cigar smoke out; through the glass louvers of a side window. He looked up, dropped the pen, laid the cigar on the desk edge, where earlier burns had made black fluting.

"Morning." He stood up, held out a hand. Where thick flesh must have padded out his cheeks once, a smile gathered back loose folds on either side of his mouth. The show of teeth was tobacco dingy. But the voice had warmth and a high gloss. "Pat Farrell. What can I do for you, sir?" Eyes like cheap green glass measured Dave and the smile died. "No
—you don't want a car from me."

Dave laid a business card on the gray-print pages. It was the card Billy Wendell had given him day before yesterday. "When will he be in?"

"He won't be." Farrell dropped into his creaky swivel chair again. Above his head a flyspecked sign read
your credit is good with
us. "I fired him last week. That's not the way to put it. Makes me look bad. He fired himself. I warned him a dozen times, if he came on the lot drunk again, he had to go. But"
—shoulder bones moved inside the bulky suit—"you feel sorry for them. Hell, Billy knows this business. He's good when he's sober."

"And when would that be?" Dave asked.

"Yeah." Farrell breathed a sour laugh. "Well, I just hoped the shock might help him. I hated to do it. He's old. Nobody else is going to take him on. Everybody in the business knows him. I was his last chance. And I put up with a lot for a long time. I'll take him back too. Told him so. If he'll quit the bottle. Nobody can do that for him. Man's got to do that for himself. Look at me." He put fingers inside his shirt collar to show how loose it was. "I know what I'm talking about. Not drink; no. Food. Loved to eat. Doc told me it was killing me. Either I lost a hundred pounds or I could plan on dropping dead here one of these days."

"You lost the weight," Dave said.

"Congratulations." Farrell wagged his head. "Haven't lost it all yet. That's why I'm wearing my old clothes. Looks like I borrowed this suit from somebody, doesn't it?" He plucked at an ample sleeve, laughed, picked up the cigar, clamped it in his teeth again. "I'm just waiting till I get down to one sixty-five. Then I'll buy new duds."

"I need Wendell's home address," Dave said.

"Don't think he's there." Farrell stood up again. "I went over there yesterday. To try to find out a little more about a contract he wrote that somebody skipped on. His landlady thinks he took a runout."

"She could check with his ex-wife," Dave said.

Farrell's eyebrows went up. "Never knew he had one. He never said anything about her."

"Their son died," Dave said. "He saw the notice in the paper. He hadn't known where they were, so he says. Close to forty years. He went to the funeral."

"Never mentioned them." Farrell opened a file drawer, brought a manila folder to the desk, sat down and copied an address on a note pad. He tore off the slip, pushed it across the open newspaper to Dave. "That's the dump where he was living. Always made me feel bad when I saw it. I mean, I was paying the man a decent wage. He didn't have to live like that."

"Liquor is expensive." Dave folded the paper and pushed it into a pocket. "Thank you."

"What's your interest in Billy?" Farrell followed Dave to the door. "You're not a cop. You're not a bill collector. What's your line?"

"Insurance," Dave said. "Death claims."

Farrell squinted. "Something wrong about the boy's death?"

"Everything." Dave started down the steps, turned. "Did Billy Wendell owe you money?"

Farrell turned down the corners of his mouth. "I advanced him twenty here, fifty there. Never kept count."

"You weren't pressing him hard for fifteen hundred dollars?"

The skin-crumpling smile again. It looked ghastly in the bright sunlight. "I'm good-hearted but I'm no fool. It's been thirty years since I let a drunk get into me for that kind of loot. No
—maybe a hundred, two hundred at the outside. I kissed it goodbye when I gave it to him. You seen him?"

Lighting a cigarette, Dave nodded.

"Then you know a man wouldn't expect loans back from Billy Wendell. He'd work overtime for me when the wife and I had a date or went to Vegas for the weekend or whatever. I got it back that way
—when he was sober enough to trust."