Fadeout (8 page)

"But you do know about Mayor Chalmers's kidnap plot?" 

"All. And now you come along with something even wilder. Fox cracked up his car to make it look as if he'd been killed, and walked away from everything. Why?" 

"I keep asking," Dave said. "Somebody will tell me." 

"I hope so. Nothing would please me more than to have him back here." McNeil glanced at his watch, pushed a button on his desk. Music came into the room. Fox Olson's guitar, Fox Olson's voice. Another harmless, tuneful, mildly clever little Western. Probably Olson's own. McNeil let it play itself out, then, when an announcer began talking, switched off the speaker. "I can use all of that I can get. You'd know what I mean if you'd seen this place a year ago. Dingy, like downstairs. I mean, we were broadcasting, we were making a profit, but—" 

"Why did you cancel it after the car crash?" 

McNeil's eyes were steady on him. "You know the answer to that. It was a matter of taste." 

"But the listeners didn't figure it that way." 

"As far as they were concerned it was all a dark plot." McNeil laughed soundlessly and shook his head. "Funny as hell, you know. I mean, the old ladies hollering about a Fox Olson blackout on KPIM, the kids with their cheap TV-inspired kidnap plot, and now you. I mean, if you'd known Fox ... He was open and candid as a child. He had no more dark side to him than—than the sun." 

"What about Mayor Chalmers?" Dave wondered. "Does he have a dark side?" 

"Lloyd?" McNeil threw back his head and laughed. It took him a minute to straighten his face. "No, Mr. Brandstetter. I'm afraid not. Lloyd's all shoulders. All"—he thrust out his jaw and made his voice gruff—" 'Let's get the God damn job done!' The type that built the West. Lloyd could no more connive than he could hook doilies. Anyway, he never took Fox's funning against him seriously. I doubt if he even noticed." 

"Did you take it seriously?" 

Amused, McNeil gave a quick headshake. "No. It was a gag to start with. Fox was rambling on one morning on the air about a mayoralty race in Cottonwood Corners—his imaginary small town, you know?" 

Dave nodded. "Mrs. Olson lent me some scripts." 

"Great, aren't they?" McNeil asked it mechanically. "Well, it gave me an idea. Just a promotional idea was all. Why not start a campaign over the station, Fox Olson for mayor?" 

"And it got out of hand?" 

"Did you ever have a kite pull you right off the ground when you were a kid? Then you know the feeling. But . . ." He shrugged. "We decided to go along with the gag. Fox went through the signing-up routines. And for the first time in the memory of a lot of the younger citizens of Pima, Lloyd Chalmers had somebody running against him for his office. His. Believe me. He built half this town. Nobody's going to disabuse him of the idea that he owns it. Not soon." 

"But . . . he didn't take the campaign seriously?" 

"Ask him," McNeil said. "He'll laugh at you." 

"Was anybody going to vote for him? Olson, I mean." 

McNeil chuckled. "Just everybody old enough." 

"And then what? Did he want to be mayor of Pima?" 

"I think he did." McNeil narrowed his eyes, tugged his lower lip. "Yes, I think he got to taking it kind of seriously after a while. But ... " He shook his head, gave a crooked smile and stood up. "How could he?" McNeil walked to a filing cabinet, pulled open a drawer, brought out a fat manila folder. He laid it on the desk in front of Dave. "Look at these." 

Expensive stationery. Lavish multicolored imprints. Dave turned over letter after letter. Radio. Would Fox Olson come and guest for a week with Arthur Godfrey on his morning show, tell some of his hilarious stories, sing a few songs? Television. Would Fox Olson do a segment for Ed Sullivan? Would Fox Olson consider dramatizing the Cottonwood Corners stories for a series, would he star in them himself? Records. Would Fox Olson record a dozen of his songs? Las Vegas. Would Fox Olson appear twice nightly in the Rodeo Room? Concert management firms. Motion picture studios . . . Dave closed the folder and looked up. 

McNeil asked, "Where would he get time to be mayor?" 

"Was he going to do all these things?" Dave tapped the folder. 

"Are you kidding? My Christ, man, Fox Olson had been slaving a lifetime for success. Before he got this program I'd swear he was a man ready to put a bullet through his head. He'd given up. If it wasn't for his wife—" McNeil broke off. "Sorry. The answer is yes, he was going to do all these things. The record contract was already signed. With Dot. The rest of it was waiting till we could figure out a way to find time. See, Fox refused to do anything that would interfere with what he considered his obligation to me. KPIM came first. Hell, he hadn't even taken a vacation in a year and a half." 

"I see," Dave said. Then, "What about the man from France? What kind of an offer was that?" 

"How?" McNeil looked blank. 

"Olson spoke to a man from France a couple of weeks ago. Somebody who'd come here to see him. Stayed at the Pima Motor Inn. Olson talked to him there. He didn't say anything to you about it?" 

"Not that I remember." McNeil's phone rang and he reached for it. "Excuse me." 

"I'll go," Dave said. And went.

The sun was hot. On a flat, smooth stretch of lawn a gaunt old man threw his cane. Hard and a long way. Two dogs chased it, big lean dogs, hounds of some kind. Rough blue-gray coats. They moved clumsily, like rusty machines. But fast. One of them got the cane and came back with it to the old man. It was a heavy cane but in the dog's jaws it looked fragile. The other dog stood where the cane had been and made a hoarse, rumbling sound that was supposed to be barking. The old man took the cane from the first dog and grabbed its collar. He heaved the cane to the other dog. Holding the collar hampered his throw so the cane didn't go as far this time. The free dog shambled to it, picked it up, came back with it. 

Dave had been following the housekeeper, a middle-aged Mexican woman, square-built, the color and hardness of mahogany. There was flour on her hands, her apron, a streak of it in her hair, and when they came through the kitchen there was the smell of baking. Now as they neared the old man Dave could hear him breathing hard. The Mexican woman said, "The cane is to help you walk. You will kill yourself, throwing—" 

"Oh, go back in the house." The old man spoke without even glancing at her. "Leave me be." He bent and took the cane from the second dog. "God damned rain kept me penned up inside for ten days. Man's got to have exercise. Dogs got to have exercise." He threw the cane again. It cut the air with a whining sound. The dogs creaked after it. The old man turned, grinning like a kid, a sick kid. "Hell, Carmelita, I never felt better in my—" He saw Dave. His face kept the smile the wayan old barn keeps a sign. "Howdy?" It was a question. 

Dave told him who he was and what he wanted. 

Loomis's eyes went prairie flat. "Clear off," he said. "Git. Go home and tell your outfit my son-in-law is dead." 

"If he's dead," Dave said, "where's his body?" 

Loomis's leather mouth opened but it said nothing. He shut it with a click of false teeth and sourly held out his hand. It was bone and gristle, very big, a plow hand. One of the dogs brought back the cane. It had a brown rubber tip. The old man took it, leaned on it and headed for the house, which was ugly Spanish colonial, fierce white in the sun. The cold bare room he called his office had only one decoration on the wall. A shotgun in a rack. He sat at a blank-looking green metal desk in a metal posture chair that squeaked. He nodded at a metal straight chair. Dave sat on that. 

"All right," Loomis said, "his body should have been in that there wash. It wasn't. But he never run off. That just plain don't make sense." 

"What does make sense?" 

Loomis's slat shoulders moved inside the buttoned-up sweater that said, as much as anything about him, that he was a sick old man. "Maybe Lloyd Chalmers killed him." 

Dave narrowed his eyes. "Are you serious?" 

"There's a new junior college going to be built in Pima. That'll mean a multimillion-dollar construction contract. Lloyd'll be due for that, like he's due for every building job that comes along around here." 

"Aren't there sealed bids?" 

"Lloyd's always turn out to be the lowest." Loomis's smile was wry and didn't last. "There's a freeway coming through this valley too, one way or another. They're after me for a strip of my land. . . ." He swiveledthe stiff little chair and stared out the window at the staked vine rows slanting up toward the brushy humps of mountain. "But that don't make no never mind. Wherever they route it, Lloyd'll get the contract. Provided he's in charge of things at city hall." 

"Who would get the contracts if he wasn't? If Fox Olson had won the election?" 

"No
if
about it." The old man faced him, proud. "He had it won. Lloyd knew that. He's pretty took up with what a great man he is, but he ain't stupid." 

"He'd resort to murder?" 

Loomis's laugh was a crackle of dry twigs, but it didn't change his face. His forehead furrowed. "Only thing wrong is, if he did, he'd do a good job. No loose ends. He'd never fake a car crash, then take away the driver's body. Naw ... " The big dogs sprawled gaunt at Loomis's feet, flat on their sides, like starvation victims. The old man leaned down and stroked one of them. Regret was in his voice. "I'd like for the son of a bitch to get the gas chamber. But he won't. Leastways not for this." 

Dave asked, "Why the deep affection for Lloyd Chalmers?" 

"I'm a dirty, ignorant Okie to him. Was to start with, always will be. The Chalmers clan had been the big power in Pima for seventy years before I come, along. Me, Hap Loomis—I'm kind of a bad dream, far as them and the McNeils and their crowd are concerned. They think one of these mornings they'll wake up and find me gone. Used to be a lot of Japs out here before the war. Never looked down on them like they do on me. Hell, I own half this valley. I could buy and sell the lot of them. But let me show up out at their God damn country club and they scatter like pullets when a skunk gets in the henhouse. . . ." It was a big jug of bitterness but now he tired of pulling at it and set it down. "What was it you asked me?" 

"Why wouldn't Chalmers get the contracts even if Fox Olson became mayor? Fox wasn't in the building business." 

"His son-in-law is. Starting." 

"Phil Mundy? Is he capable? He's awfully young." 

"Twenty-three. But he's already Chalmers's chief accountant. Started building an apartment before he even married." 

"Ambitious," Dave said. "Do you like him?" 

Loomis's smile was one-cornered. "I never feel real easy about a man that's too smart with figures. My granddaughter Gretchen come to me for a loan. I told her no. Not for Phil Mundy." 

"You didn't like her marrying him?" 

"You seen that mother of his, that crippled kid?" Loomis snorted. "Feeling sorry for a man's a piss-poor reason to marry him." 

"Did she get the loan from her father?" 

"He couldn't give it to her. Thorne managed the money." 

"Wouldn't she lend it?" 

"She wouldn't even speak to Gretchen. She liked her marrying Phil Mundy the way I liked her marrying Fox Olson. That's something, ain't it? Life plays funny tricks." 

"Sometimes not so funny," Dave said. 

Loomis's muddy eyes regarded him wisely. "Them are the ones you got to laugh at hardest." 

I never will
, Dave thought,
not about Rod dying
. He said, "There was somebody you wanted Thorne to marry. She told me. But she didn't tell me who." 

"Hale McNeil. It started when they was in high school. He took her out three, four times. Thorne had to sneak to do it. She was too young, only fifteen. When I found out about it, I told Charlie McNeil unless he stopped Hale I'd horsewhip the boy. McNeil didn't like it coming from me, but I had right on my side. Hale laid off—" 

"And married someone else," Dave nodded. 

"Mildred Fisher. Cheap tinsel. Things went all right till the army camp come. She couldn't keep away. Not from the honky-tonks either. Dozen of them on Main Street then. So ... Hale shucked her." Mouth a wide, sad line, Loomis shook his head. "No surprise the boy turned out like he done." 

"McNeil seems bitter about him," Dave said. "Why?" 

"Ten, eleven years ago, local doctor got caught with the boy. Sex. Course Hale wanted to believe it was the man's fault. Wasn't. Come out at the trial. One high-school kid says Tad serviced the football team regular on the bus com.. ing home nights from out-of-town games. There was half a dozen other stories. Shame of it killed Charlie. Hale—well, you don't mention Tad to Hale. Pima folks know that. You hear a joke about queers, don't tell him. He won't laugh." "What became of Mildred Fisher—McNeil?" 

"Story goes she was pregnant. Softhearted fellow by the name of Vince Mundy married her. He had a little place on the edge of town. Walnuts, some citrus. Real pretty. He'd been all right in time, had a good head on him. But Mildred finished that off. Finally he took to drinking as much as she did. And when that second baby—his own—was born a cripple, he walked out and never come back." 

Dave blinked. "Then she's . . . Phil Mundy's mother?" 

"Not much of a beauty now, is she?" Loomis snorted. 

"No ... But wait. There's something I don't understand. It was after the divorce that Hale McNeil came back for your daughter?" 

Loomis nodded. "Soon as Thorne graduated from high school, he asked her to marry him. She turned him down. I know she liked him. Loved his baby too. It was Pima she hated. When I tried to talk sense to her she flared up about rich men's sons being no account and a whole lot of horse shit like that. Anyhow"—he shifted his bones and the chair squeaked—"she done what she always done when I give her advice—the opposite. She run off to L.A. and married Fox Olson." 

"What made McNeil offer Olson the radio job?" 

"He done it for Thorne." Loomis cracked his big knuckles, methodically, thoughtfully, watching them. Then he looked up. "He's still in love with her."