Troublemaker (6 page)

"I need a warm body," Kovaks said.

"Sorry." Dave kicked into the pants. "Only one to a customer." He zipped the pants, found his little book in the discarded suit jacket, sat on the bed and picked the phone up from the floor. There wasn't much furniture yet. He and Doug had moved in only six weeks ago and most of their time, energy and money had gone into fitting out the gallery. Up here, things were still bare. He dialed Ray Lollard again. A girl said:

"He left early, Mr. Brandstetter. I thought he was going to see you."

"He tried," Dave said. "I missed him. Thanks."

He hung up, pulled on a light jersey turtleneck, found Kovaks in Doug's room, seated on the bed again, in clay-stained dungarees, buckling warped sandals. He grumbled, "I feel like Bette Davis in
The Old Maid.
"

"You'll never be an old maid," Dave said. "Not while the role of fifth wheel is open."

"I don't reject easy." Kovaks yanked a red-and-black-striped tank top over his flat torso. "I belong here somewhere. I know it. It's karma. If you
—"

The street door opened below. A voice called, "Davey?" That had to be Madge Dunstan. She was Dave's oldest friend, a successful designer of textiles and wall coverings, a lean, handsome woman, sharp, tough-minded, good-humored. It always pleased Dave to see her. It pleased him something extra now because he'd had enough of Kovaks. And he didn't want to mishandle him. His pottery was exceptional and about the only thing bringing Doug any business yet. If Kovaks was to be dumped, it was up to Doug. Was Doug up to it?

Dave gave his head an impatient shake as he crossed the vast open space they'd decided was
the
living room. Two sets of shoes climbed the stairs. From the
hall he
looked down. Behind Madge, whose head was bent because she was watching her feet, came Ray Lollard, who smiled and said, "We met at Doug's fast-closed door and decided to bide our time over
a
drink across the street. You're back, just as
I predicted. Both
of you."

Kovaks stood by Dave. "All three," he said.

Madge's head came up. Lollard's eyebrows came up. And as they
reached the
stairhead, Dave told them, "This is Kovaks. He's trying
to adopt us."

"Both of
you?" Madge gave the bushy-haired youth her strong
handshake and her
best warm smile but the tilt of her head told Dave
that Kovaks hadn't
made a new friend. Not yet. "I thought," she said,
"the
menage a trois
went out with Noel Coward."

"It's back." Kovaks showed big white even
teeth. "With ragtime piano
and the John Held look."

"Kovaks,"
Lollard mused. "Then those would be
your ceramics downstairs, no?
Handsome. There's something so
alive about them."

"I'm oversexed,"
Kovaks explained, and shook hands
with Lollard.

"Maybe you'd
better
go
turn down your kiln," Dave
said, and took Lollard's elbow and began
steering him back toward
the kitchen. "Were you able to get me that
name
and
address?"

Lollard moved reluctantly, looking back over his shoulder. "Aren't you lucky," he murmured enviously. "He's
a
dream."

"Of one kind or another," Dave said.
"The
name?"

"What? Oh. Yes. I'm sorry it took so long but it's new and unlisted." He handed Dave a slip of paper.

"Thomas Owens," Dave read aloud.

Kovak's flat soles were slapping down the stairs and Madge joined Dave and Lollard. "What about him?"

In a big old kitchen shiny with flowered tile, Dave began collecting gin, vermouth, pitcher, glasses, ice cubes. "I seem to know the name."

"Of course you do," Madge said. "You've met him at my house. More than once. An architect, remember? Nice guy. Until lately, too damn sad."

"How's that?" Dave made spiral cuts in a lemon rind. "He's the gaunt, kind of intense one with the yellow eyes, right? What was so sad? I forget that."

"We'd all given up on him," Lollard called. He stood at the front windows, peering down at the street, probably hoping for another glimpse of Kovaks. "Professionally, I mean."

Madge said, "He kept getting commissions, then losing them by insisting things would be done either his way or not at all."

"That can keep an architect poor, yes." Dave loosened ice cubes from a tray and dumped them into the pitcher, which had been living in the freezer and was coated with snow. "It's not the freest of the seven deadly arts, is architecture."

"It's curious too," Madge said. "He's so sweet and giving, so gentle and kind personally. I guess a word might be
yielding.
Everybody loves him. Even other architects. And I don't mean just respect. They've got that too, but tenderness, a kind of sheltering attitude, protective. Everybody wants to help him. That's the mystifying part. Nobody could."

Dave began turning the ice with a glass rod. "Did he ever bring a Larry Johns to your house? Maybe twenty, twenty-one, blond, about five eleven, hundred fifty pounds, long yellow hair and mustache?"

"He never brought anyone." Madge wandered into the hall and out onto the roof garden. Her words drifted in through the open kitchen window. "He lives with a widowed sister he supports, has for years.

But she has a child and they never came. I suspect she'd be uncomfortable in a room not filled with reliably heterosexual matrons. Anyway, his fortunes have changed at last. He's built some stunning beach houses."

Lollard came the long walk back across the living room. "For film people," he said, "show business people. He finally found one too busy with road shows or Las Vegas or something to bother him. What he built was marvelous. After that, everyone wanted one."

"He just lately finished a lovely place for himself, only a couple of miles from me," Madge called. "What's the name of this big, climbing thing with the perforated leaves.
Monstera
something, right?"

"Deliciosa,
" Dave said. "Do you know anybody in the bar, restaurant, hotel supply business, Madge?"

"Any number." Madge came back in with a kite-size green leaf in her hand. She leaned against the refrigerator, holding it up, studying it. "What's on your mind? Yes, this place is big and empty, but surely
—"

"No, no." Dave put a glass into the bony, freckled hand that wasn't busy with the leaf. "What I need to know is if you've heard of any ripoffs lately, like a truckload of padded leather chairs on swivels."

Madge had taken a mouthful of martini. She shook her head and swallowed. "That was last year. A renegade truckdriver sold it for his own profit instead of delivering it where it had been ordered."

"Good." Dave put a glass into Ray Lollard's hand. He asked Madge, "Do you remember who bought it?"

"Well, now, but wait." She frowned. "It wasn't chairs. It was high stools, the big, deep, cushiony kind. Yes
—a gay bar in Surf. What's it called? They were remodeling, raising the bar, putting in walnut paneling, padding everything in leather. Naturally, when the police came around, they gave the stools back. They hadn't known they were stolen."

"The Hang Ten?" Dave asked.

She nodded quickly. "That's the one."

CHAPTER 5

It lay in the dunes
like elegant wreckage. Nearing, he saw that the crazily angled upthrusts of varnished boards were walls and roofs. When he topped the last dune, clumped grasses snagging his pants legs, what had looked to be broken and strewn by accident shaped into a structure. Under wooden wedges of overhang, triangles of smoke-dark glass drank light. The same kind of glass in very tall panes, sill to roof beam, mirrored surf, sky, horizon. A deck of gapped and biased planking reached high out over jagged rocks. Blankness watched from towers bleak as prairie storefronts.

When he climbed wide, shallow board steps, dogs barked indoors. They were assorted. Two small ones clawed the dark panes of a broad wood-frame door. One was slick-haired, pumpkin-colored, with a curled tail. He jumped like a dwarf acrobat. The other bared fierce little fangs. He was ruffed. Behind them, a big one stood square and solemn and barked basso. He was marked like a German shepherd but was lop-eared.

A girl came among them. She wore sunglasses. Her mouth was darkly bruised and swollen. She'd parted her taffy-color hair in the middle and tied it back. The man's shirt she wore had random appliques of peasanty flowers. Its tails hung out over gray bell bottoms. Her feet were bare. She smiled at Dave. Startlingly, her two upper front teeth were missing. In mock despair at the racket of the dogs, she put her hands over her ears. Then she waved them at the big dog, who backed off, looking hurt. She grabbed the collar of the slick little one, the harness of the ruffed one, and dragged them, cringing, over a sleek floor into a place out of Dave's sight, where they stopped barking. When she came back and opened the door she was panting a little and bright pink was in her cheeks. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Brandstetter. I phoned yesterday, remember? To talk to Tom Owens. That didn't work out. I thought I might have better luck in person. Will you tell him I'm here? He'll remember me. We met at Madge Dunstan's."

"Oh?" She made her mouth small, half apologetic, half resentful. "You didn't say that on the phone."

"I didn't have his name at the time," Dave said. "Only his number. Can I see him?"

"Well..." Her forehead puckered. She glanced over her shoulder. "He's got somebody with him now. Vern Something. An old school buddy." Her mouth turned down. "They act like they never graduated. People don't get old, do they? On the inside, I mean. They're, like, sixteen all their lives."

"We try to keep it secret," he said. "I'll wait." He stepped toward her. She wasn't as good at blocking off a door as she was at blocking off a phone. She stepped back. "Well
—okay."

The room he came into was long and lofty and full of sea light. Raw wicker furniture with sailcloth cushions was grouped around a black cowl fireplace in a corner. A long wicker couch with a long, low deal table in front of it looked at the beach. A fastness of glossy plank floorboards was islanded by Navajo rugs, big ones and good. They were bringing scary prices now. He knew. In the shop full of silver and turquoise and Polynesian feathered masks under the old L.A. Museum, he and Doug had priced rugs like these. Priced them and given up.

The girl went away noiselessly. Dave counted sailboats tilting between the beach and hulking offshore oil-drilling platforms misted by distance. Wood creaked above and behind him and he turned. A tremendous painting that might have been gulls in a storm or simply slashes of white on ultramarine went along the room's back wall under a gallery. A youth of maybe twenty came along the gallery. Sun had turned him dark brown. A helmet of black hair covered his ears. He wore a tie-dyed shirt in faded yellows and oranges, sleeves torn off at the armholes, baggy surfer trunks. A leather case on a shoulder strap jounced at his hip when he came down stairs that were like a flight of wooden birds.

"Trudy!" he called and saw Dave and stopped, turned his head slightly, mistrustful. "Who are you?"

"Brandstetter," Dave said.

"It's about Larry, isn't it?" the boy said.

"Yes. Who are you?"

The boy laughed without humor. "She thought nobody would find out. I told her they would. A murder. They're going to find out because they're going to try. Tom knew it. But not Gail, not Gail."

"They're not trying," Dave said. "I'm trying. They're willing to settle for Johns. I'm not."

The boy squinted disbelief. "Not a private eye. They don't really have those, do they? Cannon? Barnaby Jones? All that fantasy shit on the schlock box?" His laugh was loud and forced. His eyes were watchful.

"Not so far as I know," Dave said. "I work for an insurance company. Money, not fantasy. You live here? You know Larry Johns?"

"I'm here for the summer. Trudy's guest. From college. Yeah, I know him. Tom kept sending Trudy drawings and stuff of the house. He never mentioned Larry. I'd have used my plane ticket, only it's got a forty-day stipulation on it."

"You didn't like him?"

The boy worked his mouth as if he'd tasted something rotten. "Did you like
Midnight Cowboy?
I didn't."

Dave cocked an eyebrow. "Was that how you saw him?"

"That's what he was. Only in the movie, the dude wasn't any good at peddling his ass. Larry made out." The boy's glance measured the soaring room. "Look where he landed."

"He landed in trouble," Dave said. "The worst kind. Why did you want to use your plane ticket? This is a big place. Did you have to trip over him?"

"I didn't," the boy said sourly. "Trudy did. Sickening. A Texas redneck." He creased a square forehead above thick black brows. "What have they got, for God sake? I mean, they're dominating the stupid culture, all of a sudden. Seriously
—everything's country western now. Have you noticed? Even politics. Washington's wall-to-wall fatback and collard greens. That nauseating down-home twang. Even reporters. It's like all the TV sets were made in Amarillo, or something. His old man worked in the oil fields, could barely write his name. He bragged about it."