Country of Old Men (9 page)

“I haven’t seen it,” Dave said. “He mentioned it, in passing, complained nobody wants to publish it.” Dave smiled at the anxious, red-faced man. “It seems the book world yawns at fifty-year-old gossip from Pasadena.”

“He did finish it, then,” Campbell said. “And that’s what’s in it. Oh, Dave”—his frown was stormy, and he waggled his jowls—“that is very bad news.”

“It’s a novel, Morse, fiction. Jack will have changed the names.” Dave laughed. “To protect the guilty.”

“I don’t know what you think’s so funny,” Campbell said. “You’ll be in it, too. At least I wasn’t—”

“Queer?” Dave said. “No. But people might find those naked footraces out on the athletic field at midnight a little strange—especially considering the trophy.”

“Trophy? I—I don’t know what you mean.”

“Not what—who.” Dave sat down. “Maisie Dwyer, wasn’t it? Only she outran all of you—until the night when Chip Andrews rigged a trip wire, and the winner was—”

“Fables,” Campbell spluttered. “Lies, all of it.”

“And yours and Herb Forman’s cutups in the Fun House at Ocean Park pier. What was the girl’s name? Frances what? Hilarious, the three of you running out of there in your underpants, the night the old tinderbox caught fire. Don’t tell me that’s a fable. I was on the pier. I saw you.”

“Oh, Christ,” Campbell groaned. “And you’re just reciting from memory. Jack Helmers kept that infernal notebook. Never missed a thing. He must still have it. He must have mined it for this damned novel.”

“He’s a recluse,” Dave said. “Never goes anywhere. How did word about the book leak out?”

“Way I hear it, he phoned the Pasadena library to check up on some dates from the old
Star-News
of that time, and Libby Walker took the call, and just conversationally asked him what he was writing this time, and he told her.”

Dave gave a whistle. “She’d hate that.” Libby Walker had been his first lesbian friend. She’d had a lover, then, a dark, mousy little girl called Genevieve—they’d both gone on to be librarians, and had never so far as Dave knew spent a day of their lives apart. But Libby’d been pretty discreet, even in those wild high school times. And most certainly afterward. No gossip had ever gone around about the pair—not where it would do any harm.

“I’d hate it,” Campbell said. “We’d all hate it.”

“Oh, relax, Morse. It was fifty years ago. Everybody’s entitled to act like an adolescent. Compared to today’s kids we were lambs. Even if they guess who we were, readers these days aren’t going to do anything but chuckle.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. The liberals in Washington will drag me behind horses once they sniff out it’s me in that book. I’ve given a few lefty congressmen a very bad time in my day. They’re waiting out there, Dave.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Dave said, “but where do I figure in this? Why come to me?”

“Because you and Jack Helmers were close back then. I don’t know why. Nothing queer about Jack Helmers.”

“Queers have friends, just like other people,” Dave said. “You’re a little old to have to be told that.”

“What they do or don’t do was never of any interest to me.” Campbell held up his glass. “You got any more of that firewater?”

Dave took and filled the glass. “Get a lawyer.”

“You mean to file a restraining order, bring a lawsuit? Are you out of your mind?” Campbell accepted the glass and swallowed half the whiskey in it. “It would be on the six o’clock news coast-to-coast. No. Take him to lunch again, and ask him as friend to friend to suppress the book, forget it, destroy it.” His bulging eyes peered up at Dave. “How’s he fixed for money? I wouldn’t want him to be out of pocket. I could see he got whatever the publishers would pay him.”

“You’re a fool, Morse,” Dave said. “You’re worrying about nothing. I told you—the publishers don’t want it.”

“They’d want it if they knew I was the kid took turns with Herb Forman screwing Frances Preuss in the Fun House.”

“You surprise me,” Dave said. “I heard Frances Preuss gave what they now so discreetly call head.”

“Ho! Did you ever see the whang on Herb Forman?”

“I thought only queers were interested in such things.”

Now Campbell’s fat face turned really red. “Don’t change the subject, damn it. Will you try to talk Jack Helmers out of releasing that book? Please?”

“All right,” Dave said. “For your sake, and Libby’s, and Charlie’s. One of her sons is about to run for state attorney general. I’ll try. But I’d rather read the book.”

L
EPPARD STOOD IN THE
open door of the cookshack where Dave and Cecil were drinking coffee at the big deal table. Leppard wore a summer-weight suit, pale blue, a dark blue shirt, knitted tie the color of raspberries. He looked at Dave, tilting his head. The streak of white in his close-cropped hair above one ear was bright in the morning sunlight. “How you feeling?” he said.

“Fine, thanks,” Dave said. “Come in.”

Cecil wiped his mouth, pushed back his chair. “Coffee?”

“Thank you.” The stocky lieutenant pulled out a chair and sat down. “I interviewed Len Gruber, and he admits he knew Cricket Shales. Like you said—he jumped him one time at that bar, Shadows. Cricket had been laughing and joking with Tessa, and Len didn’t like it. But he says he only got in a couple of punches before the bartender and the drummer in the combo grabbed him, and Cricket got away. He never even came close to killing him.”

Cecil set a mug of steaming coffee in front of Leppard and asked, “Corned beef hash and poached eggs?”

Leppard gave him a look of exaggerated worry. “I don’t know how my stomach will handle a decent breakfast. Eaten sitting down? Going to be a shock.” He smiled. “But I can’t resist. Sounds great. Thank you.”

“Give me five minutes,” Cecil said, took eggs from the giant icebox, cracked them carefully into water simmering in a skillet on the range.

Dave said, “And the other night?”

“He insists he told us the truth. He was in bed asleep when Cricket got shot.”

“Only no one can back that up, can they? Zach was out and about. And Tessa was at work. You confirmed that?”

Testing his coffee, Leppard nodded. “We confirmed it.”

Dave lit a cigarette. “What about Irwin Klein? He adored Cricket Shales. Where was Irwin Klein that night?”

“Quit cigarettes and you’ll feel better,” Leppard said.

At the stove, Cecil whooped and waved a fist in the air.

“Better than what?” Dave said. “If Klein knew Cricket was due to be released, why wasn’t he waiting outside Rachel’s apartment door to intercept him?”

“He was working in his garage, sorting books.”

Dave drank some coffee. “Anyone with him?”

“Alone,” Leppard said. “Dave, he’s a frail old man.”

“Not too frail to pull a trigger,” Dave said.

Cecil brought Leppard a plate heavy with crusty hash and poached eggs. The lieutenant inhaled deeply, and rubbed his hands together. “Now that is what I call a breakfast.”

Dave asked, “Who was Shales’s parole officer?”

“Lou Squire,” Leppard said, and began to eat.

The last time he’d seen Lou Squire was 1975 up in Los Santos, where the man had transferred in the hope of escaping a growing caseload in Los Angeles. Squire had always been skin and bones. But old age had done him a favor. He’d put on some weight. He’d been pale, too, so pale as to look sick. Now there was a little flush to his cheeks. Dave had known him so long he couldn’t even remember the first time they’d met. His hair was white. A good smile lit up his face when Dave walked into his office. His teeth were false, but there was nothing false about the welcome in his eyes.

“Dave Brandstetter.” He stood up and held out his hand across the desk. “Good to see you. Matter of fact, you got here just in time. I’m about to retire.”

Dave shook the hand. “I keep trying, myself,” he said.

“You don’t look old enough,” Squire said. “Sit down.” He started to come around the desk. “I’ll get us coffee.”

Dave held up a staying hand. “I’m awash with coffee. Let me ask you something about Cricket Shales.”

“Now, there’s a retired file,” Squire said, and sat down back of the desk. “He wasn’t out much longer than it took him to get down here from San Francisco, and somebody shot him. Old girlfriend, was it—Rachel Klein?”

“That’s how L.A.P.D. would like it,” Dave said, “but it doesn’t feel right to me. The situation’s complicated. Too many people had it in for him.”

“They found crack in his pockets,” Squire said. “He was dealing in territory somebody else regarded as theirs, and they killed him. Nothing complicated about that.”

“If that was how it was, but it wasn’t. They wouldn’t have left marketable merchandise behind. Who knew he was getting out? Who dropped in here, or called you up to ask if he was in town, where he was living, what his plans were?”

Squire’s eyebrows went up. “You know I wouldn’t give out that information.”

“Not to just anybody, no,” Dave said. “What about somebody with official status?” Dave tilted his head. “Maybe even a friend, somebody you have occasion to work with from time to time?”

“If you mean Jordan Vickers,” Squire said, “he didn’t call—I called him. Yes, he’s helped me out on some cases where the problem was to keep the subject off drugs.”

“And he’d asked you to let him know when and if Cricket Shales showed up in town? Did he tell you why?”

“He didn’t. But since Cricket was an addict, I—”

“Vickers was sleeping with Rachel Klein, and he was afraid Shales would try to reclaim her.”

“He’s a healer,” Squire protested. “Not a killer.”

“Not if he was really home in bed,” Dave said.

The apartment was in one of those staunch old buildings vaguely Spanish in style, washed in pale pinks and yellows and blues, that stand in long rows on side streets below Wilshire Boulevard, thick walls, spacious rooms, tenants still affluent, mostly Jewish. The man who opened the door was forty, beginning to lose his hair, but trim and flat-bellied. He was thin-lipped, otherwise neither good looking nor ugly. No one would remember his face. Not even his mother. In some pursuits Dave knew about, this could be an asset. So could being clean-shaven, which this man was. His eyes were gray and gave nothing away. He looked at Dave coldly. “Yes?”

“Is Mr. Chernov in?” Dave had the folder that held his private investigator’s license in his hand. He let it fall open for the man to read. “I’d like to see him, please?”

“He’s ill,” the man said. “He doesn’t see visitors.”

“I’m assisting the police in searching for Rachel Klein. She used to be a student of Mr. Chernov.”

“She’s not here,” the man said, and started to close the heavy old door. Dave stepped across the threshold so he couldn’t do that. “He doesn’t teach anymore. You’re wasting your time. Please.” The man pushed at the door.

“Rachel Klein is in serious trouble,” Dave said. “She had a high regard for Mr. Chernov. I thought she might have come here for his advice.”

“She didn’t come here.” The man was irritated. “If she’d come here, I’d have known it. And I wouldn’t have let her in, any more than I’m letting you in.”

A voice came from behind him. “Arthur, who is there?”

Arthur was surprised and turned away for a second. It was all the time Dave needed to step past him. An old man in a shiny, motorized wheelchair sat framed in a far archway. He wore a gray jogging suit. He was totally bald, and was struggling to pull up the hood. His movements were feeble, hands shaky. Arthur hurried to him. Dave closed the door and followed, crossing soft Persian carpets among handsome antiques and gilt-framed French Impressionist paintings, in a room dominated by a Bechstein concert grand piano.

“Maestro, you shouldn’t be out here before noon,” Arthur scolded. He pulled up the hood, tied its drawstring, then hurried away, his voice trailing back, querulous. “It’s too cold in here in the mornings. You know that.”

“Ya, ya,” Chaim Chernov said. It was hard to see in this wreck of a man the straight-backed confident figure Dave remembered on the stage that long-ago night, hard to believe his labored, husky voice had once been that clear, powerful tenor. It was hard, but not impossible. There was still a vestige of command about Chaim Chernov. His blue eyes peered up at Dave as if the light was poor. “Who are you, sir?”

Dave gave his name and told his story.

“Rachel would never shoot anyone,” Chernov said. “She was a gentle girl.” He gave a sad little laugh. “That was not a good thing entirely for her, you know. For her career. A singer must have fire. Especially a mezzo. Carmen, Amneris.”

“She oughtn’t to have run,” Dave said, “she oughtn’t to have tried to steal the little boy. She shouldn’t be hiding. Maybe you’re right, but you can understand why the police think she’s guilty.”

“He had a nice voice himself, you know,” Chernov said.

Dave squinted. “Who do you mean? Cricket?”

Arthur came back with a woolen lap robe and fussily tucked it around the old man’s wasted legs.

“Very sweet,” Chernov nodded. Tears ran down his sunken parchment cheeks. “I hate to think of such a sweet voice stilled forever.” His shaky fingers dabbed at the tears. “So young, so young.”

Arthur glared at Dave. “Now see what you’ve done? You’ve upset him.” He pushed Chernov’s hands away and took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the tears himself. “Don’t cry, Maestro. Everything is just fine.”

“It’s not I who am crying,” the old man said. He looked at Dave. “It’s the medication. My bloodstream these days flows with a dozen pharmaceuticals. Some of them make me cry. It’s embarrassing. A grown man, weeping at the slightest thing, like a hysterical girl. Forgive me.”

“Did Rachel come here the day after the shooting?”

Chernov craned to see Dave again. “What day was it?”

“Maestro,” Arthur said impatiently, “it doesn’t matter what day it was. Rachel Klein has never been here. Not since I’ve been looking after you.”

“You are not here every minute.” Chernov was looking into the distance. “It’s a pity Viennese operetta no longer plays in this country.” He wheeled himself toward the piano.

“Maestro!” Arthur yelped. “Where are you going?”