If Dying Was All (9 page)

“Oh, so?”

“I was wondering, being a private eye yourself, if you’d give me your opinion of Jack Shott,” said Ott. “Jack Shott is my tough dick character. I’ve been selling 10,000 copies of each title, which isn’t bad for a hole-in-the-wall light porn operation.” He tossed the book to Easy.

Easy said, “I’ll put it on my bedside reading table. Now …”

Ott grabbed up another copy of
Die
,
Lorna
,
Die
, and he bent it open. “I don’t often get a chance to check my accuracy out on a real pro. Here, listen to this: ‘My gold-handled roscoes screamed death at her exquisite unclothed body in .45 caliber chunks. My slugs danced a tattoo of death across her lovely, milk white body.’ Does that sound authentic?”

“Yep, the last time I shot a naked girl it went about like that.”

Ott chuckled. “No, seriously. I really respect the opinion of an operative like yourself. I even have clippings about you in my swipe files.” He selected a new spot in the book. “Listen. ‘I detached the flimsy wisp of bra from her momentous twin breasts and carefully preserved it for the fingerprint boys.’ Does that ring true? Could you get prints off a bra?”

“If you put your mind to it.” Easy rested his palms on his knees and looked directly at the frail Ott. “What happened on that yachting trip?”

“What trip?”

“The trip to Enseñada.”

“Jackie jumped overboard while we were at sea. It happened in the night,” said Ott, looking down at the pictures of the spread-eagle Japanese girl. “She left a note. It was a crazy thing.”

“What about Booth Graither?”

“He didn’t jump.”

Easy said, “He was on board, though?”

Ott cleared his throat. “No, not … Gaither was it?”

“Graither,” said Easy. “You know he’s dead, too, don’t you?”

“Well, yes. I have the story clippings in my file on bizarre deaths,” said Ott. “Easy, five years ago I was a different person. Shortly after that terrible thing happened to Jackie I changed, settled down. I went into Ottstuff Enterprises and I married Sonya.”

“Who financed you?”

“An uncle gave me a little help,” said Ott. “I’d done pretty well selling porn books to other publishers. Why?”

“Then Graither wasn’t killed on the yacht?”

“I don’t know where he was killed,” said the frail Ott. “He was some guy Jackie was sleeping with. I’m not responsible for every jerk she slept with.”

“Jackie didn’t kill him, did she?”

Ott dropped his book off his knee. “How could that be?”

“Before she took her own life,” said Easy. “Did she kill Graither and then herself?”

“I have no way of knowing. She didn’t put that in her suicide note. It was a very tragic thing.” Ott left his chair and banged his ankle against a filing cabinet. “This isn’t pleasant, digging up the past.”

“Is this the past you’re telling me about?” asked Easy. “Is this really what happened that night on the boat?”

Ott said, “What were you hired for, to shovel up ancient history?”

“I was hired by Frederic McCleary to find out why Jackie wrote him a letter earlier this month.”

Ott cleared his throat. “She did?”

“Somebody did.”

“Well, what did she say? Did she talk about the yacht, about the yacht incident?”

“I can’t tell you what was in the letter,” said Easy. “You can understand the professional ethics of a private investigator.”

Ott said, “I don’t know. How could she be alive?” He stumbled and landed once more in the purple chair. “What did Jackie say about the yacht incident?”

“I can’t tell you until I investigate further.” Ott touched his fingertips together, sneaked a look at the big, wide Easy. “Well, I don’t think there’s any more I have to tell you, Easy. I have an awful lot of editorial work to get on with.”

Easy reached inside his jacket and drew out his wallet. He took out a business card. “Why don’t you call me?”

“About what?”

“About anything you’d care to discuss.” Easy rose and moved to the half-open door.

“Easy,” began Ott.

“Yeah?”

“Maybe I will call you later on, in a day or so.” He stayed in the chair. “Maybe I’ll have some more technical questions. You never can tell.”

Easy said, “Thanks for the complimentary copy,” and left.

T
HE RETIREMENT TOWN HAD
been built to look like a cozy Midwest town of the 1890’s. And it did, except there were no children in its narrow clean streets, no young people, only one dog, and he was a poodle. Instead of buggies and surreys the old residents of Home Town Acres traveled in electric go-carts and the sidewalks had been built to accommodate them, with gentle slopes at each intersection.

It was ten in the morning when Easy parked in the visitors’ lot but a rooster was still crowing someplace. Stretching up out of his little car, Easy spotted the bird on a fence railing across the sunny lot. It was screwed to the wood, a mechanical rooster. Walking into the old people’s town, Easy heard the crack of plastic horseshoes and saw a half-dozen, slow-moving old men playing the game on a sawdust field.

He was walking along a tree-lined street of the shopping section when someone hailed him. A small, old man with close-cropped, white hair was sitting up on the wooden porch of a store named Walton’s Old Fashion General Store & Superette. He was in tan shorts and a candy-striped shirt, leaning back in a wicker bottom rocker. “You’d be Easy, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re Bjornsen?” Easy waited at the bottom of the store’s wooden steps.

“I am,” answered the old man. “I figured you must be John Easy, the private investigator. Not much of a deduction, since you’re the only guy under sixty been by all morning.”

“I was on my way over to your cottage to keep our appointment.”

“That dump,” said Bjornsen. “They got it looking like a little, red schoolhouse on the outside. My daughter and two sons helped me pick out this hole to retire to. There’s a good health care setup here in Home Town Acres, and if I fall down again with another heart attack my daughter and two sons figure these are the people to pick me up.” He rubbed his chest under the peppermint-striped shirt. “Got some plastic junk inside here already.” He left the rocker. “Stay there.”

When the old man was next to him on the clean sidewalk, Easy said, “Carlos Denny, the attorney, helped me locate you. He’ll vouch for me.”

“I’ll vouch for you,” said the old man. “I used to hear about you when I was still with the Nolan Detective Agency in LA. Read an article about you in the
Los Angeles Times
awhile back, too.” He took Easy across a street and into a block square park. “Come on, we’ll enjoy Town Square Park. Watch out some old broad in a souped up wheelchair doesn’t knock you on your ass.”

After they’d taken seats on a white park bench near a white latticework bandstand, Easy asked, “You worked on the disappearance of Booth Graither back in 1964?”

“The Nolan Agency handled the thing in LA, when it looked like the boy had headed this way,” said Bjornsen. “You know, the finding of what was left of that boy out on San Obito has brightened my life. I had a nice talk with two simpleminded sheriff’s deputies a few days back. Raised my prestige in Home Town Acres, those guys in uniform paying a call. There were a few who expected I’d be hauled off for some dark crime, but a lot of the old broads around here think a guy who mingles with the law must be romantic.”

Easy unbuttoned the coat of his $200 tan suit and asked, “Do you remember the suicide in 1965 of a girl named Jackie McCleary?”

The old detective said, “Movie writer’s daughter. Jumped off a boat on the way down to Mexico.”

“Did you tie her in with Booth Graither in any way?”

The old man sat up. “No, I didn’t.” He scratched his chin, which had a faint white stubble. “Who are you working for in this?”

“Frederic McCleary, the girl’s father.”

“Why now?”

“He got a couple of letters signed by his daughter.”

“She’s not dead?”

Easy told the old detective what he thought, then asked, “How far did you trace Graither?”

“You’re certain he was involved with the McCleary girl?”

Easy showed him the picture of the San Amaro gang. “There he is, standing next to her.”

Bjornsen took the photo, nodding. “There’s our baby-faced boy, sure enough.” He checked the back of the picture. “When was this taken?”

“Summer of 1965.”

“God damn it,” said the old detective. “You mean this moon-faced idiot was sunbathing all over Southern California for six months and I couldn’t find him?”

“You lost him in 1964, didn’t you?”

“I never found the bastard,” said Bjornsen. “As I recollect I was only officially on the thing for a week or so. His old man’s agency back in Chicago sent word he’d supposedly headed out this way and would we see if we could collar him. He’d been away from home too long and the old man was pulling in the leash. The best I could do was place him in Union Station on December 12, 1964. So I could notify Chicago the boy had definitely come to Los Angeles.” He nodded his head from side to side. “After Booth Graither left the train station he simply vanished. I kept my file open on him. Any time the cops pulled in somebody fitting his description, alive or dead, they’d let me know. None of them was ever him.” He returned the photo to Easy. “Summer of 1965. I had my first heart attack then, in August. Damn it, so he was here all along.”

“He was here in the summer of ’65 to get killed,” said Easy. “And long enough before that to get to know Jackie McCleary.”

“Well, you can’t find everybody,” said Bjornsen. “Though I suppose if I’d found him, he’d still be alive. Well, that’s his God damn problem.”

“What,” asked Easy, “about the money he was supposed to have?”

“$120,000 in cash, unlisted bills,” said Bjornsen. “His old man was up to his ass in dough, still is. Kept the stuff all over the house, in safes mostly. He and the baby-faced boy played some kind of wacky game. Booth would borrow a suitcase full of cash and run away, to become independent maybe. He’d always come back. Except the last time.”

“Whoever killed him then,” said Easy, “probably got the money.”

“The sheriff’s boys say they didn’t find any hundred thou in the cave with the poor guy,” said the old detective. “They didn’t find the stones either.”

“Stones?”

“Diamonds, brilliant cut diamonds in a platinum setting,” said Bjornsen. “Worth roughly $200,000. The boy grabbed them from his mother, a little extra something to pack in with the cash. Did I mention they were something of a wacky family?”

“I didn’t see anything about diamonds in the paper.”

“The newspapers don’t know,” replied the old detective. “You know and the sheriff’s boys know, because I’m telling you. The family wanted the diamonds kept quiet. This was something new for the boy to do, and they didn’t want any word spread until they saw what exactly he was up to. One reason why his old man was especially anxious was those diamonds. That added to his parental concern, added about $200,000.”

“And the stones have never shown up?”

“Not from what I’ve heard.”

“Booth Graither had never borrowed jewelry before?”

“First time,” said Bjornsen. “What I figure is, that last runaway he was hoping to stay clear of home for good, wanted a bigger nut to operate on.”

“Was there any special reason for his coming to California?”

“Nothing the Chicago agency men knew of,” said Bjornsen. “Maybe he knew he was going to die. That’s what most of the old farts around here came for, to die in the sunshine.”

“You’re sure the diamonds were never mentioned in the papers?”

“Couldn’t have been, since I didn’t tell the sheriff’s boys until the other day,” explained the old detective. “They’re planning to keep quiet about it. As I hope you will.”

“For now, yes.”

“Would you have time to have a little breakfast with me over in Grandmother’s Real Country Kitchen across the way?” the old man asked. “I’m getting tired of eating every day with nobody but old farts to talk to.”

Easy grinned. “Sure.”

E
ASY FROWNED AT THE
coupled paper plates sitting in the center of his desk. He tilted up the topmost plate and called out, “Nan, why is there a corned beef sandwich on my desk?”

“Hagopian,” answered his broad-shouldered, thirty-six-year-old, blonde secretary in the doorway. “He stopped by an hour ago and brought lunch for all of us.”

Settling into his swivel chair, Easy picked up half the sandwich and took a bite. “Any calls?”

“Kuperman phoned,” said Nan, coming into the office.

“The handwriting man. So what does he think?”

“You were right. The current batch of Jackie McCleary letters are fake,” said his secretary, wrinkling her broad nose. “A fair forgery, but a forgery.”

Easy set down the sandwich. “Yes, I know who wrote them,” he said. “Still, I was hoping …”

“Hoping what? You sound like old McCleary.”

“I get the impression, Nan, after talking to the surviving members of the San Amaro gang that Jackie might still be alive.”

“Anything specific you’re basing the impression on?”

Easy returned to the corned beef sandwich and ate, thoughtfully, for a few moments. “The way most of them talk about her. I have a feeling they don’t believe she’s dead either, most of them.”

Nan strode across the office and began adjusting the air conditioner knobs. “I wonder if Hagopian has a blood condition. He always turns this way too cold.”

“Any other calls?”

“A girl with a very sophisticated voice, Judy Teller. She wants you to phone her.”

Flicking rye bread crumbs off his tie, Easy said, “I don’t think that has anything to do, directly, with the case.”

“Is she the one Hagopian saw grabbing your private parts during the
TV Look
party?”

“Nan,” said Easy, “hanging around with all those magicians has given you a sleazy outlook. Here I have a reputation for maintaining a plush and resplendent office, and all the while you and Hagopian are sitting around in here chatting about my groin.”

“That isn’t all we talked about,” said Nan. “Hagopian was upset because somebody put air in his tires.”