Country of Old Men (14 page)

“Let me help you.” Dave opened the passenger door.

He drank Bushmills at Erin Go Bragh. The basement place was crowded with men in suits, lawyers, brokers, accountants, eating, drinking, loud-voiced, making deals, making jokes, guffawing, worrying aloud about the wobbly stock market, arguing about a proposed change in the capital gains tax. Dave had a small table where his elbow was jostled by customers passing in and out, by the ancient waiters shuffling past in their long white aprons, and by somebody insistent. Dave looked up from his corned beef and cabbage. Into the red, bug-eyed face of Morse Campbell.

“You saw him,” Campbell said. “What did he say?”

“Sit down,” Dave said. “Have some lunch.”

Campbell made an impatient face, an impatient noise, but he rattled out the old bentwood chair and sat. “I’m not here to eat. I’m here for information.”

“He won’t budge,” Dave said.

“Didn’t you tell him I’d pay?” Campbell yelped.

“Calm down,” Dave said. “He doesn’t need your money. Anyway, he wouldn’t take a bribe. He’s not that kind.”

Campbell snorted. “Every man has his price.”

Dave shrugged, swallowed a bite of food, and looked into those bulging eyes. “Offer him Katherine back, alive and in good health. He’ll jump at that.”

“Don’t talk rubbish,” Morse said. “Did he admit I’m in the damn book?”

“No, he didn’t,” Dave said. “In fact, he gently but firmly refused to tell me who was or was not in it. He said there was no point in worrying us about it, since it looks as if no one wants to publish it anyway.”

Campbell groaned, caught a waiter’s sleeve, and asked for Wild Turkey. “Hedging. He kept that diary.”

“Maybe.” Dave stopped eating and sipped his own drink. The rich peat smoke of Holy Ireland. “He gave me the idea that maybe the diary never existed—that he only put that story around to worry us sinners in our beds at night.”

“And you believe him?”

“I was his best friend. I never saw it, Morse.”

“Not even the outside of it?”

“Not even that.” Dave shook his head and ate another forkful of lunch. It was as good as he remembered it from ages ago. Better. He’d have to bring Cecil here soon.

“Oh, he kept it, all right,” Morse said, and “Ah,” and “Thank you,” to the waiter who tremblingly set down his drink. “He kept it, and put us and every stupid kid thing we ever bragged about into it, and now when he’s ready to fall into his grave, he’s going to shame us all with it.”

“I asked if he’d warn you all if he got a contract.”

“Yes?” Campbell gulped from his glass and leaned forward. “And what did he answer?”

“That there was no need for that, that the names of the characters, the name of the town, the school, streets, cafés, everything had been changed.”

Morse gave his head a shake so his jowls jiggled. “It wouldn’t help. His name would be on the cover.”

Dave smiled. “Just what I told him.”

“And?” Keeping his gaze fixed on Dave, Campbell swigged from his Wild Turkey again. “What did he say to that?”

“That nobody would be interested,” Dave said. “He’s not a celebrity, not a best-selling author. No one would care.”

“Damn.” Campbell finished off his drink, set the glass down with a bang, pushed back his chair. “Stubborn Swede bastard.” He stood up. “Smug, self-righteous—”

“Just a minute,” Dave said. “I don’t know what agency you’ve got tailing him and me, but call them off, Morse. It’s an improper use of government funds. You know that.”

“Tailing?” Campbell pretended incredulity. He wasn’t good at acting. It was why the high school debating team had lost so often. It must have been why he hadn’t lasted as an ambassador. “You’re not serious.”

“I’ll find out for myself, you know,” Dave said.

“Nothing to find out.” And abruptly Campbell turned and made for the door, bulling his way through the noisy standees. He hadn’t offered to pay for his drink, had he? Dave grinned. Another example of how old money got that way.

Dave used one of three pay phones lined against a wall in a dim hallway between darkly varnished restroom doors. At the far end of the wire the phone rang for a long time before it was answered. Celia Yamashita was out of breath.

“Toyland School.”

“Dave Brandstetter,” he said. “I stopped by the Grubers’ this morning. No one was home. Perhaps I can see Mrs. Gruber at work this afternoon. You want me to—?”

She interrupted him. “I don’t think it will be any use. I think they’ve moved.”

“What?” Dave’s heart gave a bump.

“When I didn’t hear from you, I tried to telephone them. The number was, as they say, no longer in service.”

“He was out of work. Maybe they didn’t pay the bill.”

She laughed bleakly. “Mine, either, not for months. But I didn’t mind. Zach needed someplace to spend his days away from those people.”

“I’ll make another call and get back to you,” Dave said.

The other call was to Shadows. He recognized the voice of the sleek, mustachioed bartender. “No. She didn’t show last night. Phone’s disconnected. I think they skipped town. Mr. Zinneman’s pissed off. She’s into him for over a thousand bucks. Advances on her wages, right?”

“A lot of people are going to be pissed off,” Dave said.

Sergeant Joey Samuels, pale and plump behind his desk, in a room full of detectives busy at desks just like it, hung up his phone, penciled himself a note on a yellow pad, and blinked up at Dave with a faint smile. “Mr. Brandstetter, sir. Sit down. Have you heard the news?”

“I have news”—Dave sat down—“of my own.”

Samuels nodded. “You go first.”

“It looks like the Grubers have skipped town.”

“Oh, boy,” Samuels said. “We need that little kid.”

“Put out an APB,” Dave said. “Now, what’s your news?”

“The bullets they dug out of your rafters last night?”

“What does the lab say?” Dave asked.

“They were fired from Cricket Shales’s S&W thirty-two revolver, all right.” Samuels unwrapped half a sandwich, pastrami on rye. “’Scuse me,” he said, and bit into it hungrily. Mouth full, he said something to the effect that he was starving and had been trying to get to this for an hour. He chewed mightily, swallowed hard, drank Diet Pepsi from a can. “The trouble is, they don’t match the bullets that killed him.”

Dave stared. “How could that be?”

“The gun that Rachel Klein picked up from beside the body—it wasn’t the one that shot him.”

“She thought it was,” Dave said.

“We all thought it was,” Samuels said. “Didn’t we?” He took another big bite of his sandwich. “So we can’t charge her with homicide, can we, only kidnapping—which is why we need Zach Gruber.”

“I can see that.” Dave looked toward a glass-paneled office with Leppard’s name on the door. “Where’s Jeff?”

“Grilling the distinguished liar, Jordan Vickers.”

Dave read his watch. “A long time.”

“It’s interesting,” Samuels said. “And complicated. For instance, he doesn’t seem to give a damn about Rachel Klein anymore.”

“I figured that,” Dave said, “when he wasn’t down here trying to bail her out the minute the news of her arrest came on the radio. Then, at odd moments, I’ve been wondering if it wasn’t part of a pattern that started that night, started the minute Rachel ran out of his office and drove off in a panic with little Zach in the trunk. Why did he snatch up the phone and report her to the police? The woman he’s supposedly in love with. Because he’s a responsible citizen as Leppard said? Or did he have another motive?”

“All he can think about is how dumb he was to leave that shoe at the scene of the crime. And then not to take its mate and bury it someplace it would never be found.” Samuels licked mustard off his fingers, and picked up the other half of the sandwich. “I was sorry to have to tear myself away.”

“Why did you?” Dave said.

Samuels waved at his desktop. It was strewn with files and photographs and forms. “Every few minutes there’s a new homicide. How many, six, eight, since Cricket Shales stepped into the dark by that empty swimming pool.”

Dave got up. “Which interrogation room?”

Samuels told him.

He rapped the door at the same time he opened it and stepped inside. A tall, lean, sulky-looking Vickers slouched in a metal chair at a bare table where three other chairs were empty, except for a jacket hanging over one. Leppard’s. The stocky lieutenant stood leaning against a wall, shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loosened, his arms folded across his chest. The slotted grill of an air-conditioning duct rattled faintly over his head, but the room was warm from body heat and smelled of cologne. Leppard’s eyes flickered somberly over Dave, but when he didn’t tell him to go away, Dave sat down. He’d begun to feel that familiar rush of awful fatigue that seemed to come now every afternoon. But he wanted to be here more than he wanted to be home resting.

“You know Dave Brandstetter,” Leppard told Vickers.

“To my regret,” Vickers said.

Leppard drew breath. “All right. Karen Goddard phoned you and said she’d been asleep and when she woke up Rachel was gone, and she was afraid she’d gone back to her apartment. And you were closer, would you go find her.”

Dave said, “Back for what reason? Had they quarreled?”

“Those two love birds?” Vickers glanced sourly at him and away. “No, Rachel had been fretting about her clothes. She’d gone straight to Karen’s from the Say What? office. Her clothes were all at her apartment.”

Dave’s brows went up. “Karen Goddard told us it was Cricket’s gun she went for. A cop show on TV reminded her about the gun. That’s how Rachel explained it to Karen.”

“When Karen talked to me,” Vickers said sullenly, “she said it was clothes.”

Dave said, “When exactly did she talk to you?”

“Eleven-forty. The phone was ringing when I got back from seeing—my patient.”

“My witness says you drove in after twelve.”

“That was the second time. He must have been asleep at eleven-forty,” Vickers said. “You mean Noah, don’t you?”

Dave only said, “We can check Karen’s phone records.”

“It had to be Noah,” Vickers said. “He’s left us. Not a word to me, not a word to anybody, cleared off. Wrong biblical name. Should have been Judas.”

“He said something to that effect,” Dave answered.

Leppard said, “So you responded to Karen’s alarm and rushed over to Rachel’s place just in time to find two men fighting in that breezeway. You almost ran into them.” He took a step and leaned on the chair back that held his jacket. He bent across the table so his face was close to Vickers’s. “But you can’t tell me what the killer looked like?”

“It was too dark,” Vickers said.

“Two ground lights work in the swimming pool patio,” Leppard said. “That backlit them, at least. Had to.”

“Not enough.” Vickers shook his head helplessly.

Dave said, “Try this. Close your eyes.”

Vickers scowled at him, but after a second’s wait, maybe only from professional curiosity, did as he was told.

Dave said, “Now, recall the emotion that you felt. The surprise, the fear, the impulse to run away—whatever it was. Get that back, and you’ll see what you saw that night. It works every time.”

Vickers sat still for a minute, breathing slowly, frowning in concentration. Then his long body gave a slight jerk, he grunted surprise, his frown cleared, he opened his eyes, looked awed at Dave, and told Leppard, “Mid-thirties, medium build, five foot ten, white.”

“Wearing anything special?”

Vickers made a face. “I don’t—yeah, flight jacket. Leather. Couldn’t see the color.”

“Identifying marks, beard, long hair?”

Vickers shook his head. “Plain vanilla,” he said.

“You didn’t try to break up the fight?” Dave said.

“The gun went off. When guns start going off, I dive for cover. Bullets don’t care who they hit.”

“The killer got away. How? Did he run past that locker where you were hiding?”

“I didn’t hear him. When it was all silence, I started to get out. Somebody had to call the police. Then I heard footsteps coming. I was the only one around. They’d think I was the killer.” He glanced at Leppard. “Isn’t the black man always the killer?”

“You tell me,” Leppard said.

“I stayed where I was,” Vickers said glumly. “If I’d known it was Rachel, I’d have jumped out, and none of this would be happening.”

“Scares me when you sleep like that,” Cecil said. He stood over Dave, who sat groggily on the side of the bed. Dave hadn’t switched on the lamp, but the clock’s red numerals glowed. It was nine-twenty-five. “I came and spoke to you at five-thirty, at six, seven, eight. Last time, I even shook you. You were snoring. You never snore.”

Dave sketched him a smile. “I’m too refined.” He reached up and took Cecil’s hand. “I’m sorry I worried you. I kept going too long again today. Can’t break the habit.”

“Try,” Cecil said, “Please?” He returned the pressure of Dave’s grip, let his hand go, swung back for the stairs. “Drink? Dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.” Dave pushed stiffly to his feet. “I will visit the bathroom.” He fumbled the red-and-white pack and his lighter from the bedside table and lit a cigarette. “You pour me a drink, please.” He put on his blue corduroy robe and hobbled wincing downstairs. “And we’ll see.”

When he came out of the bathroom, Cecil was sitting on the couch with brandy in a large bubble glass, swirling it slowly, staring down into it, brooding. Dave picked up his whiskey from under the lamp and, moving with pain, stretched out on the couch and laid his head in Cecil’s lap.

“What kept you going?” Cecil said.

Dave told him all about his day. It took a long time. “Vickers denies he owns a gun.”

“Wouldn’t be too smart, I guess,” Cecil said, “with all those druggies around there.”

“Ex-druggies,” Dave said, “reformed characters.”

Cecil said, “What’s the backslider rate—five to one?”

“You’re right,” Dave said, “but Leppard is going to tear up that rackety old place of his, searching for it. Because Vickers isn’t smart, or he wouldn’t have been so careless about those shoes. He also wouldn’t have told so many lies. If he was innocent, he wouldn’t have pointed the police at Rachel that night, he’d have come forward as a witness. He knew then it wasn’t Rachel who killed Cricket Shales.”