Troublemaker (22 page)

". . . Makes you want to vomit, doesn't it? Just hearing about it. Well, I lived it
—two years of it, five months, eleven days. And you know why? Because once you get busted, they never leave you alone. They watch you all the time and they grab you. Make a mistake nobody else would notice and they grab you. Also, you have a record. You can't get a job."

"Vern," Tom Owens said patiently, "I'm sorry. Why didn't you tell me all this the other day? Hand me the phone. I'll get you a job right now."

"It's too late. Anyway, that's not what I wanted from you. I asked you for all I ever wanted from you that summer when we were seventeen. You remember. At the Cahuenga Park pool. To go on the way we had been, Tommy, the way you started us. Don't forget, it was your idea. You were the oldest."

"Vern, it was a long time ago. Forget it. All right, yes. What I did to you was heartless and I'm sorry. But, Vern, I was only a kid."

"Sure, you're sorry," Taylor sneered, "with my gun at your head. Anyway, do you think 'sorry' can wipe out seventeen rotten years? Hell, I didn't care if you took up with Nofziger and those guys with cars and rich parents. Even when they called me fag. Even when you did. All I asked was for you to save a little time for me."

Owens interrupted. For a minute they both talked at once and the echo off the high boards of the hall broke the words and Dave couldn't understand them. Then Taylor was saying:

"I smell like flophouses, cheap bars, public toilets. I can't get clean. And you
—you came out all shining. Let me tell you about this gun. I bought it on Main Street in L. A. From a black guy who hustles TV's —not machines, hustlers that dress like women. He sold it to me for five dollars. I walked out of the Ricketts Hotel after I saw you on the lebby television. I bought a gun to kill you with, Tommy."

Dave put his hand on the doorknob.

Owens said, "But you didn't use it. Instead you drained brake fluid out of the car, hoping I'd crash. Then you took the bolts out of the deck rail, wanting me to fall."

"I remembered bullets can be traced," Taylor said. "But you didn't die. It would have been on the news. It wasn't. So I came back. With the gun. At night. I waited out on the dunes because the lights were on. And then I saw you leaving. Only it wasn't you, just that boy in your clothes, only I didn't know that, it was too dark out there. He got in a car on the road and that big man kissed him and I thought,
 
“I’ll
kill them in bed together.
Can you understand that, Tommy?"

"He was killed with his own gun," Owens said.

"I dropped mine," Taylor said. "He heard it. That was why he came out. And I ran at him and
—"

"So you haven't used your gun," Owens said. "You can't be traced. Why don't you just
—"

"Not shoot you?" Taylor jeered. "Sorry, but I have used it. Tonight. There were a lot of people around that old house. A kid outside the windows with a tape recorder. A big man in a cowboy hat. When he came, the kid ran up in the trees where I was. So close I could smell him sweating. He went after the big man went but there was someone else. A little man with a broken nose. When I ran back up to my car, I almost bumped into him. And he was at that Mr. Marvelous contest tonight. He saw me and he went straight to tell that insurance man, Brandstetter. I had to kill that little man, Tommy."

"But now Brandstetter knows," Owens said. "Vern, it's time you gave up. It's all going wrong."

"It always did," Taylor said. "For me. Everything always went wrong. It didn't seem so bad when I saw in the paper how they were holding that boy for murder. I knew what he must be to you. That's why I came to see you that day, Tommy. To watch you crying for him the way I used to cry for you. But he's out. I saw him tonight. I ought to have known he wouldn't stay locked up. You had money to get him out. Money can buy anything. There was only one way somebody like me could hurt somebody like you. Kill you and
—"

Tires rumbled heavily on the driveway planks.

"What's that?" Taylor asked.

"My family's come home," Owens said. "You can still get away, Vern. Go out by the stairs just around the corner. Out there in the hall."

"No!" Taylor said. "I'll kill them all. They mean something to you. I never could, but they do. Maybe I won't even kill you, Tommy. I'll kill them instead, and you can live the rest of your life knowing you caused it."

Rubber-shod footsteps made the floor shake. Dave let the doorknob go, flattened himself against the dark wall. The door opened. Taylor moved toward the livingroom. Dave moved after him, silent, swift.

Far off, at the foot of the stairs that spiraled wooden down from the gallery, a door opened, brightness streamed out, then the long shadow of Larry Johns in the sarape and hat. "Tom?" he called. "Whose car is that up there? What's the matter with Hans and Fritz? They're out on the dunes and they won't come. They
—" He broke off, ran to the dog, knelt. "Barney! Barney?" He touched the dead body, drew his hand back. "Aw, no, no!" He looked up.

And Taylor lifted a little nickel-plated revolver. Light slipped orange along its barrel. Dave struck Taylor's arm down. The gun spat fire and a bullet drew a groove in a polished floor plank. Taylor half turned. Dave chopped him across the windpipe with the edge of a hand. The gun clattered away. Taylor dropped, making a hoarse, rasping sound, clutching his throat, trying to take bites of air.

Larry Johns stood by the dead dog, staring, while Owens called from the next room, "Larry, are you all right? For Christ sake, Vern, what have you
—?"

"It's all right!" Larry shouted. He came running down the room to Dave, careful to side-step the gun. He eyed the gun as if it were a snake. He looked uncertainly at Dave. "Isn't it all right?"

"As it's ever likely to be," Dave said. "Where did you disappear to at The Big Barn?"

"The men's room," Johns said. "Sorry."

Dave grunted. He touched the twisting, gasping Taylor with a foot. "Find something to tie him up with. He may be on our hands for a while. The police are busy tonight." He retrieved the gun, dropped it into a pocket. "I'll phone them again."

"Brandstetter?" Owens called.

Dave walked into the shiny plank room, picked up the phone from where it had spilled on the floor. "How did this happen?" he asked, and began to dial.

"I must have knocked it off in my sleep. It woke me, making a squawking sound. I couldn't reach it."

"Sorry about that." While at the other end of the line the phone rang and rang, Dave looked at the strung-up casts on Owens's legs. They were painted with flowers, bright primary colors, kindergarten draftsmanship,
love,
in happy, drunken letters. "Was that how you spent the afternoon," he asked, "when you were supposed to be remembering someone you crossed once, someone with a grudge against you?"

The taut skin of Owens's high cheekbones reddened. He gave a sheepish nod. "Larry did it. We were celebrating his being back." He shook his head. "Seriously
—I couldn't think of anyone."

"There's always someone," Dave said.

And officer Zara answered the phone.