Death Claims (11 page)

"Thank you. What's this about John Oats?" 

"He's dead." Dave scratched a match. 

Ingalls sat forward to get the light. He nodded. "They told me at the bookstore. Drowned. A shame." 

"He was a strong swimmer. My company isn't satisfied it was an accident. Oats and Norwood is a hundred miles from here. You still go there?" 

Ingalls turned down the corners of his mouth. "I telephone occasionally. There's not much point in going anymore. The shop slipped badly after John left." 

"It didn't look prosperous to me," Dave said. "Dusty. Gaps in the shelves. Why?" 

"John was the bookman," Ingalls said. "Norwood really only went into the business out of friendship." Faint smile. "He was selling insurance before." Thoughtful frown. "Oh, he might have managed, I suppose, but buying John out hurt his cash reserves." 

"Do you know the figure?" 

Footsteps thudded on the porch. There was a shrill squeak of little wheels, a jarring of the hollow steps again. Ingalls turned his head toward the sound. Squeak and jolt, squeak and jolt, the dolly with the oxygen tanks went up toward the street. It took a full minute, a long time. Then there was a clatter and bang of metal, the tinny slam of the tailgate on the red truck, its cab doors closing, the splutter and roar of its engine. Ingalls kept listening till there was nothing more to hear. Then he remembered Dave. 

"I'm sorry. What did you say?" 

"Do you know how much Norwood paid Oats?" 

"I only know that the last time I was in the shop"—he squinted at the ceiling—"a month, six weeks ago, Eve Oats was, as my students would put it, chewing Norwood out about it. They were in the back room, hadn't heard me open the front door. She called Norwood a sentimental fool for giving her husband, her ex-husband, too much." 

"It went for medical bills," Dave said. "That and a lot more." 

"Norwood told her that. She said the county hospital was where he belonged. A charity case. Since he owned no part of the business, had no income, he qualified. Money was being wasted, thrown away." 

"Delightful woman," Dave said. 

"She's always been the hardheaded member of the firm. Money is what she understands. A shop like that has to be able to buy when the opportunity arises. Which can happen at any time. Oats and Norwood had a reputation. Fine books, scarce books. Ah, I don't know. . . ." Ingalls sighed, mouth a twist of regret. "Probably even with capital Norwood couldn't have kept things up. John did all the buying." 

"What about Eve?" 

Ingalls shook his head. "She'd know the price to pay. But not what to buy, when, where. You see, it's a talent, an instinct. Either you have it or you don't. John had it. And because neither Eve nor Norwood has, I don't think the shop can last. They used to put out exciting catalogues." 

Squinting in the smoke from the cigarette fastened in a corner of his mouth, he shuffled printed matter, pulled out a saddlestitched white booklet and passed it to Dave. 

OATS & NORWOOD

Ernest Haycox: West-Northwest 

Original serial publications / first editions / autograph letters / holograph manuscripts / typescripts and galleys with author's changes 

"That's the kind of coup John was famous for," Ingalls said. "He did it repeatedly. Not every catalogue had a collection like that. But the individual items were always first-rate. There were catalogues four times a year. Since he left"—Ingalls took the booklet Dave handed back to him and laid it down—"there hasn't been one." 

"They're trying to get something together," Dave said. "I saw a box of file cards by the typewriter in the back room. Books stacked up with slips of paper in them on the desk. Along with bottles." 

"It will have to be a strong list." Ingalls rubbed out his cigarette in the copper bowl. "They've lost ground. People are forgetting." 

"Not you," Dave said. "You went there at least once since Oats left. It was January third, wasn't it? The day he telephoned you?" 

Ingalls's bald head gave a slight turn to the side. He watched Dave narrowly a minute from the corners of his eyes. He moistened his lips. "Why—uh—" He worked at a little uneasy smile. "Yes, I suppose it was. Yes, it was." He nodded a quarter-inch. 

"And before you went to the shop, you saw him. At April Stannard's place in Arena Blanca, right?" 

"I didn't know whose house it was. He was alone there. Yes. At Arena Blanca. April Stannard, you say? She worked at the shop for a while. Pretty girl." 

"She says you never came to see him and it hurt his feelings. He'd thought of you as his friend." 

"I'd thought of him the same way," Ingalls said. "But my wife was ill—had been ill for years. Until last spring my daughter lived here and helped me look after her. But when she married, I had most of it to do alone. It was a progressive circulatory ailment. Before it ended, it involved several amputations. Julia grew more and more dependent. I was less and less able to get away. I could hire women to help out, but not full-time. Professors aren't paid fortunes, you know, Mr. Brandstetter. And the operations, the hospitalizations were expensive. Ah, well"—he moved a hand impatiently—"you're not concerned with my personal woes." His eyes shifted for a gray second toward the front door, the porch. "And as you no doubt have guessed, they're ended now. I didn't call the rental people right away. Julia died ten days ago." He held up a quick hand, shut his eyes, shook his head. "No, no. Don't condole. It was inevitable. I was prepared, as prepared as one ever can be. In any case"—he drew a breath and let it out—"I simply wasn't able to get away to visit John Oats in the hospital." 

"But you managed it when he phoned. Why?" 

Ingalls frowned, smoothed a brushy gray eyebrow with a finger, eyeing Dave. "I don't quite understand this interview. Your position or mine. Am I being accused of something? Ought I to call an attorney?" 

"I don't know why you'd think that," Dave said. "John Oats became addicted to morphine in the hospital and failed to break the habit. He had no money, but he was buying the drug. Illegally. Expensively. I wondered if he tried to borrow money from you." 

Ingalls didn't answer right away, but the wariness went out of him. He relaxed. "Yes." His smile was sorrowful, but not a failed attempt this time. "That was what he wanted." 

"Did he get it?" 

"He said he needed five hundred dollars. I couldn't manage that. I went to the College bursar and drew a hundred in advance salary. I gave him that." 

"Did he tell you what it was for?" 

"I didn't ask," Ingalls said. 

Dave got to his feet, smiled. "So April was wrong. He had a friend, after all." He turned away. There was a muffled twang from a spring in Ingall's chair. He went with Dave to the door, swung it open for him. On the porch, Dave asked, "How long had you known him?" 

The light from the yard glanced green off Ingall's naked scalp. He wrinkled his forehead. "Years. 1957? Yes, that's right. I'd published some papers on Thomas Wolfe in scholarly journals. I got a letter from Oats and Norwood, from John. He had a manuscript in Wolfe's handwriting. Was I interested?" His smile at Dave was admonitory. "That, you see, explains why a reader in Los Collados began patronizing a bookshop a hundred miles up the coast in El Molino. Of course I went at once, very excited. When I saw the manuscript—notebooks, actually—I was even more excited. They were the missing eighteen thousand words of the journal Wolfe kept of his trip through the national parks in the West just before his death. Only about twelve thousand words had ever been found, but he'd told several people in letters that he had thirty to fifty thousand words written." 

"You don't have to tell me the rest," Dave said. "I saw your book"—he jerked his head—"on the shelf in there. Handsome book. Must have earned you quite a reputation." 

"It's the kind of thing a scholar prays will happen to him, but never believes can. You understand now that if I'd had five hundred dollars, I'd have given it to John. Gladly." 

"I understand that," Dave said. 

As he climbed the steep stairs to the street, a mockingbird in one of the shaggy pepper trees spilled song, spilled joy. His hand on the gate at the top, Dave glanced back down. Ingalls stood on the porch edge, peering up, but not at him. He was trying to locate the bird. He looked as if the sound gave him pain.

T
HE MEDALLION BUILDING
on Wilshire was a sleek tower of glass and steel. On its tenth floor Dave used a slab door that had his name on it, trapped behind Plexiglas. The office he stepped into was wide. Its far wall was glass. A woven hanging covered another wall—rough, undyed wool yarns, earth colors, Norwegian. The chairs were slices of hide racked on frames of brushed steel. Two of them were goatskin, the fur on, white fur. Those were for visitors. Not that there were many visitors—he wasn't here that much. The chair back of the desk was saddle leather. The desk itself was oiled teak slabs in another brushed-steel framework. 

He liked it to be clear. He even kept the phone in a drawer. Now a stack of papers lay on it. Frowning, he let the door whisper shut behind him, crossed deep tobacco-color carpet to the desk. He sat down, put on the reading glasses, shuffled the papers. No problems. Routine. They only needed his initials. He slid open a silent drawer, took out a pen sheathed in rosewood, slender but heavy, twisted out the ballpoint, signed. This set, the next, the next. Old men dying. Old women dying. A child dying. Seven deaths since he'd been here last, day before yesterday. 

And in that time how many deaths had there been that didn't need his initials, that with all the initials in the world would pay no one in any terms but grief? He thought of Biafra. He thought of Southeast Asia. He thought of Ingalls moving gray and dutiful through that fine old house, to and from a rented hospital bed that held his maimed and fading wife, fetching this, taking that away—days, nights, months, years. Who could number the errands of mercy, the errands of despairing love? To what end? A red truck rattling off with the empty remnants of a life. 

He put the pen back, shut the shallow drawer, opened a deep drawer, took out the telephone. From his wallet he slipped a business card he'd picked up beside a rococo cash register yesterday. He punched a button on the phone and dialed the number on the card, a long number. As the ring signal repeated itself in his ear, the door opened. His father stood there, handsome, erect, white-haired. Dave threw him a quick smile, lifted his chin. Carl Brandstetter came in and moved to a wood-grained metal cabinet where bronze chrysanthemums stood in a flame-colored jar. He took from the cabinet a frosted pitcher, frosted glasses, ice cubes. He shut the top door, opened a lower one for gin, vermouth, olives. His white brows queried Dave. Dave nodded. 

"Oats and Norwood," the phone said in his ear. 

"David Brandstetter, Mrs. Oats," he said. "You were right: John Oats was an addict. I'm in your debt for telling me. He was getting morphine from a hospital orderly. What I need to know now is where the cash came from to pay for it. Prices run high." 

"Well, it certainly didn't come from me. He left me penniless. I always knew he would. Never get mixed up with a charmer, Mr. Brandstetter. It anesthetizes the instinct for self-preservation." 

"Last night you thought he'd left you twenty thousand dollars in life insurance." 

"You're wrong," she said. "I knew he'd written me off and written Peter in. I saw the papers from your company in his room at the hospital. But I never told Charles—I couldn't force myself. That was what upset me last night-the effect the news would have on Charles, the effect it did have. He aged ten years in that hour. All the hope went out of him." 

"I'm sorry," Dave said. "Let me understand this. He thought you'd get the money and invest it in the shop?" 

"He knows the shop is all I have. Twenty-five years of my life are in this shop. There'd have been nothing else for me to do." 

"Could he have been giving John Oats money?" 

Her laugh was harsh and humorless. "Oh, yes—yes, indeed. If he'd had anything left after what he'd paid John for his share in the business. But it so happens that Charles was the same sort of victim I was, Peter was, even April Stannard was—though I'm not about to waste sympathy on her. Charles had given all there was to give right at the start." 

"John Oats asked Dwight Ingalls for money." 

"Who told you?" She asked it sharply. 

"Ingalls. He's got problems of his own-or had at the time. But he gave what he could spare. I found out about him through a telephone bill. Another long-distance number was on that bill. I wonder if you can tell me whose it is." He gave it to her. 

"Sam Wald." She sounded thoughtful. "A writer. Not of books. Films. Television." 

"Thank you," Dave said. "Any word from Peter?" 

"If word comes from Peter, it won't come to me." 

"That's what they all say. All right, Mrs. Oats. Later." He hung up, got out of the chair, took one of the two icy little glasses off the cabinet as he passed, sipped from it as he went to the door, opened the door. "Miss Taney. Find me the address in Hollywood of Sam Wald. If it's not in the book, try the Screen Writers' Guild. Lay on all the credentials. If they still won't give you the address, tell them you've got a big dividend check for him. That will tug at their heartstrings. It always does. Do it now, please." He let the door close. 

"I'd hoped you'd have lunch with me." His father sat easy in one of the goatskin chairs, martini on the floor at his handsomely shod feet. From a flat red-and-white box he took a brown cigarette. He slid the box away and used a gold butane lighter to start the smoke. "I'd like you to meet a very lovely young lady." 

"I'll bet she is," Dave said. "They always are. But I have to see a man about a murder." 

"To serve the ends of logic"—Carl Brandstetter picked up his drink—"it has to have been the son. I've never known you to get sidetracked." 

"The tracks in this case meander. And there are a lot of them." Dave went back to the desk to put the phone away. "But my hunch is that if I follow them far enough they'll all end up at a place called Arena Blanca on a rainy night when a man went into the ocean and didn't come back anymore." He sat on a corner of the desk and lit a cigarette. "Nanette won't spot you at lunch with love's young dream?"