Country of Old Men (3 page)

“Too right,” Leppard said grimly. “I’ll check with juvenile, but that kind don’t always call.”

“You sound pretty sure Rachel Klein did the shooting.”

“She’s been in trouble with the police before—back in her old life with Cricket. Time and again. Possession. Drunk driving. Aiding in the commission of a liquor store holdup. Domestic vi-o-lence.”

“Never a dull moment. What about her new life?”

“Vickers claims she’s clean, a changed woman. She’s been back at her job for over a year, now—office work, some record company. He believes what she told him about finding Cricket there dead. But he doesn’t know she held back the truth about snatching your buddy Zach. That’s got to look bad, even to him. Especially to him. Like the old Rachel, right? To run and hide—that doesn’t make her look guilty enough. No, no—she has to add kidnapping.”

“Why self-destruct in a small way?” Dave said.

“Vickers would tell you self-destructive types can be turned around,” Leppard said.

“The statistics are against him,” Dave said.

“This one is,” Leppard said. “Look—you’re sure this is a lead? It seems too easy. He really called this woman Rachel, did he?”

“He called her Rachel,” Dave said.

“Right. I’m coming down there. Wait for me.”

“It will take you at least half an hour,” Dave said. “I’ll use the time to drive Zach along the coast road. Maybe he’ll remember which motel it was.”

Madge sat with Zach cuddled against her bony frame in the back of the Jaguar while Dave drove slowly along the shoulder of the coast road. Rocks fallen from the cliff face popped under the tires. Madge kept pointing out the motels to Zach as they hove in view, and in the rearview mirror Dave could see the boy frown, considering them one by one. But each time, he shook his head. It was a good many miles farther on that he said:

“That one. The blue one. With the bird.”

The bird was a neon seagull on a tall pole next to the highway. Dave swung the car onto a gravel driveway-parking area. He found a parking slot and switched off the engine. Madge said, marveling, “You walked all the way from here?”

“I ran.” Zach nodded. “I didn’t want her to catch me again. I didn’t want her to put me in the trunk.”

Dave opened the car door. “How did you remember the seagull?”

“When she let me out of the trunk, I saw it.” He pointed. “There’s real ones on the beach.”

“I’ll be right back.” Dave trudged to the glass door pasted over with the logos of credit card companies, and pushed into an office of simulated wood paneling and plastic plants. A pale youngster on crutches smiled at him from behind a counter. His hair was cut spiky. He wore a long T-shirt with a surfer stenciled on it, and flowered shorts that came an inch below the knee. Dave showed him his private investigator’s license. “Look at your registrations for last night, please?” The kid blinked, sat down clumsily—one of those new rigs that takes the place of the old plaster cast stiffened his right leg—and tapped buttons on a computer keyboard. A list came up on the monitor, green on black. He tapped another button, a printer ground and keened, the kid ripped off a green-lined sheet and laid it in front of Dave. He dug reading glasses from his jacket pocket and peered at the names. Rachel Klein’s was not one of them. But here was an R. Vickers. That would do. He put the reading glasses away and asked the kid, “Were you on duty last night? Three
A.M.?”

“I wondered about her,” the kid said. “You can usually pick up two, three hours’ sleep then, sitting here. Nobody but all-night truckers on the highway, nobody wanting a motel room. And here she came running, knocking at the door. We keep it locked after midnight—want a good look at anybody coming then. Shook up? I thought, ‘Who you running from, babe?’ Good looking, but her hair was all mussed, and her eyes were every place, and she couldn’t catch her breath. If she’d offered a check or a credit card, I’d have told her we were full up, sorry. But she had cash, and the
Vacancy
sign was on outside, and I really couldn’t think of an excuse.”

“And she was pretty,” Dave said.

“Yeah, really.” The kid grinned with glorious teeth. “In a bikini, you’d keel over dead. Sheeh!”

Dave turned for the door. “Room one-eighty?”

“She’s gone. I don’t know when. Before the maids got there. What do you want her for?”

“Kidnapping,” Dave said. “And possibly murder.”

The kid went pale under his sunburn. “Jesus.”

“The little boy got away, and he’s okay,” Dave said. “But the man is definitely dead.”

“Did she have a gun with her?” the kid asked faintly.

“So the little boy says.” Dave smiled. “Maybe the reason you didn’t see it is that she had cash, right?”

T
HE APARTMENT COMPLEX HAD
seen better days. It took up half a block on a side street between Washington and Jefferson. Cinnamon-brown stucco with black trim, two stories, parking space underneath, gated by heavy steel mesh. The landscaping had grown tall and brushy. The balconies were cluttered with forgotten barbecues, bicycles, bulging plastic sacks. On several, clothes hung over the straight steel railings. Holding Zach’s hands, Dave and Leppard walked into a square patio. The first block of apartments opened off this, ground-floor doors you could walk right up to, second-floor doors you climbed outside stairways and walked to along galleries.

“This where you live?” Leppard asked.

The boy shook his head.

Leppard raised his eyebrows at Dave. “This is where the shooting happened.”

“Here?” Dave looked around for marks on the cement.

“Back there.” Leppard led Dave and the boy across the patio and into a second one. There was a third one to the side through a breezeway. That one had a swimming pool, empty except for needles from a Japanese pine that bent over it. Leppard moved toward the breezeway. “Here,” he said. Chalk outlined the shape of a human form on the paving. The paving needed sweeping and washing down, and there seemed to be a bloodstain. “Where were you?” Leppard asked Zach.

“There.” Zach pointed a stubby finger upwards. To a gallery with apartment doors and windows along it.

“You live up there?” Dave said.

Again Zach shook his head. “I go around at night.” He waved both arms. “Everywhere. There used to be more lights, but now it’s mostly dark. Nobody can see me. I can hide. There’s lots of good places.”

“Why do you want to hide?” Leppard said.

Zach just stared at him.

“Is there somebody you’re afraid of?” Dave said. “The one who hit you and gave you that bruise on your face?”

Zach shook his head. “I fell down. I fall down and hurt myself sometimes.”

“That’s what you get for going around in the dark,” Leppard said. “What were you doing up on that gallery?”

“Going someplace,” Zach said.

“To your apartment?” Dave said. “Is it one of those?”

Zach said, “And then I heard the bangs. Bang, bang, bang. And I came down to see.”

“And Rachel saw you and took you with her in her car.”

Zach nodded. “She brought me a chili dog in the car.” He strayed off to play with a padlock on a lean-to Dave figured probably held gardening tools. “And orange soda.”

“In the trunk?” Leppard said.

“No. Afterward was when she put me in the trunk.” The hasp that held the padlock came loose with a rattle. “She had to talk to somebody.” He swung open the doors of the lean-to and peered inside. “She showed me the gun, and said if I made any noise, she’d come shoot me.”

Leppard said to Dave, “Wouldn’t Vickers love that?”

“So you didn’t make any noise?” Dave called.

Zach looked at him again as if he was a fool.

A sharp voice echoed off the walls and galleries. “Zach. Zach Gruber? Is that you? Where the hell have you been? Len will beat the shit out of you—” A young woman came at a run—brassy dyed hair, too much makeup, too-tight slacks, fake-fur jacket over bulging breasts, bare feet in spike-heeled sandals, toenails brightly painted. Zach had hopped into the lean-to and was pulling the doors shut. She snatched them open, grabbed him, yanked him out. “I been looking all over for you. I was half crazy.” She had him by the arm and was propelling him away, his feet in the new jogging shoes barely touching down, when Leppard called:

“Hold it, please, lady. Police officers.”

She threw them a look as scared as Zach’s had been when he saw her. For a minute, Dave thought she was going to pick Zach up and make a run for it, but she changed her mind. “What for? You brought him home, did you? Where’d you find him? Where’d he get to this time?”

Leppard went to her. “Run away a lot, does he?”

“He—he—” She broke that off, took a breath, worked up a smile. “No, not really. He’s a pretty good kid.” She gave him a hug. He was like a rag doll, letting her hug him if that was what she wanted. He looked away at nothing. “I’ve been frantic, is all. You can understand that, can’t you?” She searched their faces. Dave twitched her a smile.

“It wasn’t his fault this time,” he said.

“You ought to teach him his address and telephone number,” Leppard said. “And his last name. Gruber?” He looked at Zach. “Your father’s last name is Gruber. His full name is Len Gruber. That means your name is Zach Gruber. Now, you’re a big enough boy to remember that, aren’t you?”

Zach pushed at a crushed cigarette pack with his foot.

Tessa Gruber frowned at Dave. “What do you mean, it wasn’t his fault?”

“He didn’t go on his own,” Dave said. “Someone took him.”

Leppard said, “There was a shooting here last night.” He pointed with a thumb toward the breezeway. “There.”

She looked and saw the chalk marks on the ground and winced. “I didn’t know. I work nights.” She looked anxiously at her watch. “And I’m going to be late if I don’t get moving. Listen, thanks for finding him.” She grabbed Zach’s arm roughly and started off with him. “I’ve been out looking for you since breakfast.”

Leppard walked after her. “We found him at the beach. Malibu.” That stopped Tessa. She turned back, surprised. Zach skipped off out of sight. Leppard went on, “A young woman neighbor of yours took Zach down there. After the shooting. He came running here when he heard the shots and he saw her. Her name is Rachel Klein. Zach seems to know her. What about you? Apartment one-oh-seven-two.”

She shook her head. Quickly. Maybe too quickly. “Never heard of her. There’s a lot of apartments in this place, lot of people. Most of them I’ve never even seen.”

“You don’t seem very curious,” Dave said.

“About what?” she said. “If I don’t get to Shadows by four, Mr. Zinneman could fire me. Then there’ll be two of us out of work. What will we eat on? How’ll we pay the God damn fantasy land rent here? Zach, where are you? I haven’t got time to be curious. What am I supposed to be curious about?”

“About who was shot,” Dave said.

She snorted. “People get shot in this neighborhood all the time. It was bound to happen inside here sooner or later. Management won’t fix the outdoor lighting. It’s drugs, isn’t it? He was a crack dealer, right?”

“Right,” Leppard said. “Name of Cricket Shales.”

Dave thought he saw fright in her eyes, but her face was blank, and she said in the steadiest of voices, “Never heard of him. Weird name. Look, I really gotta go now. Zach, you come here, right now.” Zach came, dragging his feet. “We’ll trail along,” Leppard said. “Your husband home?” She glanced wryly over her shoulder as she prodded Zach ahead of her. “You think he’d help me look for the kid? He’s got television to watch. He didn’t watch television”—she climbed stairs—“it would go out of business, wouldn’t it?” She zigzagged past beach balls and spider bikes and skateboards along a balcony to a door she flung open. She pushed Zach inside. “You know where he was? At the fucking beach. Cops brought him home.” Dave and Leppard went along the gallery after her. They heard her say, “No, Len, not now. They’re right behind me. They want to talk to you. I gotta get ready for work.” An inner door banged. Leppard and Dave stepped into a blank-walled room of meaningless furniture and lamps where a muscular, unshaven young man in ragged jeans sat in an easy chair with a beer can and a bag of potato chips, and stared at a noisy television set. The images were of men shooting at each other in a warehouse.

Leppard picked up the remote control from the chair arm and switched off the set. “Your son was kidnapped, Mr. Gruber. By a young woman who lives in these buildings. Her name is Rachel Klein. Do you know her?”

Gruber reached for the remote in Leppard’s hand. “Give me that. You got no right—”

Leppard dropped the remote into his jacket pocket. It was a stunning jacket. The tweed was woven in some tumbledown cottage in the Scots highlands, seeds and grasses still caught in the wool. “I’d like to hear your answers.”

“Hell, I didn’t do nothin’. Ask this Ruby Shine.”

“Rachel Klein. We can’t find her. Where is she?”

“How the hell would I know? I never heard of her.”

“Zach knows her. Young, attractive? A neighbor?”

“Look—I don’t chase women, okay? I got a wife other men would kill themselves to get. And I’d kill them if they tried. I don’t chase women.” He squinted at Leppard. “What did she kidnap Zach for? Shit, we haven’t got any money.”

“He was a witness,” Leppard said. “Your wife was at work. Where were you last night?”

Gruber straightened up in the chair. His feet, bare, the soles dirty, had been up on an ottoman. He put them on the floor. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Only that there was a shooting out there.” Leppard jerked his head. “That’s what Zach was a witness to. I wondered if you heard the shots.”

“I didn’t hear nothin’. What time?”

“Preliminary medical report puts it at midnight.”

“Midnight?” Gruber laughed. “I was in bed asleep. All right, passed out. Three six-packs. Tessa says I’m turning into a pig. Sweet talk, right? Hell, you try being without a job for five months. A man loses his self-respect. I drink too much. That’s my problem.” He put the fascinating subject of himself aside and woke up to what Leppard had said. “Preliminary medical? That don’t mean a shooting. That means the guy was killed, don’t it?”