Obedience (6 page)

Dave turned it left up Guava Street now. He was wrong. There had been changes. A little prosperity had combined with a lot of despair and householders had bolted steel bars over their windows. They were painted black, and bore stingy ornamentation, but they were there to prevent crime. If you somehow had managed to buy a TV set, maybe you could hang onto it, instead of having it vanish to feed some crack addicts habit. If it meant jailing yourself, too bad. Here was Opal Simes’s address.

The house was neatly painted pale green with dark green trim. A big avocado tree bent over the roof. Old ground ivy covered the front yard. A concrete front stoop with wrought-iron railings had pots of begonias standing on it. The effect was peaceful, well-ordered. What spoiled the effect was a ten-foot-high chainlink fence with razor wire on top and a padlock on the gate. A brindle pit bull, heavy in the chest, broad of muzzle and piggy of eye, came around a corner of the house, trotted down the straight strip of walk between the ground ivy, and stood with its nose to the gate wire, looking at him. It didn’t bark. It didn’t growl. It didn’t have to, and it knew it didn’t have to.

He drove away, and found a pay phone in a half booth of cracked glass panes clinched in steel. The phone abutted the white painted brick side of a liquor store, just a step from the sidewalk, in a rutted hardpan parking lot. This had once been a hangout for the GCs. Today, at the alley end of the lot, a Mustang sat, its sandpapered doors hanging open, four young blacks inside, leather jackets, dark glasses, cans of beer. He felt them watching him as he put a quarter into the telephone and punched the gritty steel buttons with Opal Simes’s number. School would start soon. She should be at home. She was.

He told her his name, and that he was working for the San Pedro County Public Defender’s office on a murder case. “Your brother knows me, and that could make trouble for him—if it hasn’t already. I have to reach him right away.”

“Carlton?” She acted surprised. “Why, Carlton isn’t here. I haven’t seen him in weeks. The Arts Festival is on in Los Angeles. He’s working. He’s an entertainer.”

“I’ve been to the boat where he was living,” Dave said. “They told me there he’d gone to your house. He’s in danger, Ms. Simes. It’s really vital that I talk to him.”

“You give me your message,” she said. “And if he does come here, I’ll pass it on to him.”

“Not over the phone,” Dave said. “Come to your gate. I’ll show you my identification. We have to talk privately. There’s nothing private about a telephone.”

She didn’t answer but he heard her breathing. “Well—” she said at last, “you sound awfully serious, Mr. Brandstetter. You come over here, and we’ll see, all right?”

“Thank you.” He hung up the receiver, turned, and the four youths from the Mustang stood around him. From the hand of one hung a tire iron. “Let’s see your ID.”

“You a police officer?” Dave said.

“Police officers don’t come around this part of town. They know better. This our territory. We the Edge, and the Edge be the law here.” He held out the hand not burdened with the tire iron. “Ain’t nobody come here don’t check in with us.” He grinned at his friends. “Right?”

A fat one nodded solemnly. “Too right, man.”

“And pay their taxes.” A scar-faced one leered.

“Fair enough,” Dave said, and reached inside his jacket and brought out a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter semiautomatic. Since he’d bought it, more often than not, he’d forgotten to carry it. Today, knowing Gifford Gardens, he’d remembered. He pointed it at the chest of the youth with the tire iron, and jacked a bullet into the chamber. The eyes of the Edge members opened wide. “This is a Swiss army weapon,” Dave said. “Capable of shooting eighty thousand rounds without jamming. It’s only been fired a few times. So if I were you, I wouldn’t count on its jamming now.”

Tire-iron snorted. “Look like a plastic toy to me.”

Dave bent his knees a little and fired past the kid’s ear. The gun bucked, hurt his hand, the noise made his head ring, but the gesture worked. Tire-iron and company broke and ran for the Mustang—stumbling over each other in panic. Dave stepped around the corner of the liquor store, crossed the sidewalk, slammed the door of the old Valiant, and roared off. His heart hammered. He was too old for this. He sped up pointless streets, back-trailed, dodged through trash-strewn alleys, and didn’t return the gun to its holster until he had parked in front of Opal Simes’s house again and searched side and rear-view mirrors for signs of the Mustang. He tapped the Valiant’s wheezy horn, got out of the car, locked it for whatever good that would do, and stood waiting at the gate again, the pit bull looking patiently up at him.

Opal Simes came out the front door carrying a chain leash. She let Dave slide the folder with his license through the narrow space between steel gate frame and steel fence post. She read the license. She studied his face, his clothes. She gave him back the folder, bent, attached the chain to the dog’s collar, excused herself, and led the dog away around the corner of the house. When she came back she still held the chain. She was tall and slim, and there was no denying she was Cotton’s sister. If in fact she had, as Lindy Willard said, no use for men, it was their loss. She was even more beautiful than Cotton. She used a key on the gate’s padlock, opened the gate, looked up and down the street, let him in, relocked the gate, and led him up the walk. “All these precautions must seem bizarre to you.”

“Not if my car doesn’t seem bizarre to you,” he said.

On the stoop, reaching for the door, she turned and looked him up and down. “It doesn’t match your clothes.” Her smile came and went quickly, as if smiling wasn’t something she did often. “Carlton would call those very expensive threads, man.”

Dave laughed. “He calls me Mr. Brooks Brothers.”

She stuck in a key and opened the door. “Come in.” He followed her into a pleasant, quietly furnished living room. With many bookshelves. He smiled glumly to himself about those. Two twenty-five-inch televisions, one a monitor. Two VCRs. Hundreds of video tapes. The room beyond held a computer with a laser printer, and an office-size copying machine. She noticed him looking at all this. “You see the reason for the fence and the dog?” she said. “The school is trashed so often, it seemed better to bring my office home. It’s supposed to be a secret, but secrets don’t keep when a whole staff has to know. The students are bound to find out, and not all the students love Ms. Simes.”

“You’re the principal,” he said. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.” He frowned. “No electronic security system?”

“Our police don’t jump to respond,” she said. “Too many officers killed. They approach with caution. Time they get to the scene, you’re raped, maimed, murdered, or all three, and the ones who did it are gone with your worldly goods in the trunk of their car.” She read her watch. “It’s almost five.” She started toward the rear of the house. “Would you like a glass of white wine?”

“It’s not necessary,” Dave said. “Your brother knows the faces of two men who have committed four, possibly five murders.” She turned back and stared at him. “If you know where I can find him, it’s important that you tell me. Getting away from the Old Fleet Marina was a smart move, but if he’s still in the L.A. area, he’s in danger.”

She drew a deep breath, blew it out again, came to him, frowning, disturbed. “You have a card?” Her hand shook as she read it. She took it into the room with all the office equipment, tucked it under a corner of a multiline telephone. “I’ll keep it. If he gets in touch with me, I’ll tell him to call you.” Troubled, uncertain, she left him.

The neighborhood, the house, were eerily quiet for a place so menaced. Distantly, he heard her speak, and he tensed. But it wasn’t Cotton’s voice that answered. It was the dog’s. Its bark sounded like a bronchial attack. He heard the click of its claws on what was probably kitchen flooring. He sat down, and noticed again something he’d seen when he entered the place but hadn’t registered. In a corner. An airline bag. With a white smear on it. He jumped up, strode across, unzipped the bag. Inside were black and white tights, black and white ballet shoes, a black glove, a white glove, five balls, three black, two white, black and white bowling pins, black and white cubes, and a draw-string bag of theatrical makeup. That smear was clown white.

“What are you doing?” Opal Simes held glasses of wine.

“Cotton is here,” Dave said. “These things are his.”

“Oh, damn. That five-year-old.” She set the wine glasses down, snatched up the airline bag, and hurled it across the room. “How can I protect such an irresponsible child?” Tears ran down her face. Not sad tears. Tears of vexation. She brushed at the tears with her fingers, and gave Dave a woeful smile. “I’m sorry. I never was any good at lying. I hate it. But he begged me, and I said I would.” Her laugh was self-mocking. “I never could say no to Carlton.” She nodded, shamefaced. “Yes. He’s here.”

Dave moved past here. “Where?”

“Out in the garage. I don’t try to keep a car anymore. Stripped so often, stolen so often. I pay a janitor at the school to drive me to work and home. So the garage isn’t used. I fitted it out as an apartment for Cotton. It’s always here for him.”

Dave looked toward the door in the rear wall of the office room. “Where’s the dog?”

“In the kitchen, eating his supper.” She went to the front door, opened it. “We can go around by the outside.” She started out ahead of him.

He caught her arm. “Wait here, please,” he said.

She looked down at his hand. She raised her eyes, and alarm was in them. “What are you going to do?”

He smiled and shook his head. “If you knew, you might have to lie about it. To some very unpleasant types. And you’re no good at lying, and that could get you killed as well as Cotton. So you’d better not know. Understand?”

“Not really,” she said.

Stepping around the begonias, he went past her down the steps. “I’ll explain it to you later.” He headed for the driveway. “When it’s over. When it’s safe.”

The backyard had grass and a pair of apricot trees, fruit golden among green leaves, branches arched over from the weight of the fruit. He used his knuckles on a side door to the garage. “Cotton, open up. It’s Dave Brandstetter.”

“Who is the last man on earth,” Cotton shouted, “I want to see. Go away. How did you find me, anyhow?”

Dave didn’t want to shout. He spoke close to the door. “It was easy, too easy. You’re not safe here.” He tried the door. It was locked. “Don’t you see—if I could find you, they can find you.”

There was a rattling on the far side of the door. It opened. Cotton was naked except for a towel. Its whiteness made a gleaming contrast to his sleek bronze skin. He was wet, fresh from a shower. He poked his head outdoors, looked quickly this way, that way. “Who you talking about?”

“The ones you call doll-boys,” Dave said.

Cotton grabbed him. “Get in here.” He pulled Dave inside and slammed the door. “I am pissed with you.” It was a double garage. It still smelled of dripped motor oil, gasoline, exhaust fumes, but it was carpeted, and furnished with two neat armchairs, a coffee table, a bed, a chest of drawers, small sink, small stove, refrigerator. In a corner a door stood open on a tiny bathroom where a mirror over a basin was steamy. Cotton took bikini shorts from the chest of drawers. He shed the towel and pulled the shorts up his long legs. “You send that Cecil Harris around, I tell him stuff you know is worth my life—and then when I want us to get it on together, he’s shocked.”

“What did you take me for?” Dave said. “A pimp?”

Cotton pulled on an enormous muslin shirt with many pockets. “You said he’d adore to meet me. Isn’t that what you said?” He sat on the bed and drew up white crew socks over his long feet. “What was I supposed to make of that?”

“I didn’t say he’d sleep with you,” Dave said.

“Oh, please, I talk ignorant because it turns women on and makes the master race feel superior. But it didn’t fool you.” Cotton dragged muslin trousers from a hanger on a nail driven into a stud. “You knew you didn’t have to say it. You knew I’d think it.” He shook out the trousers and kicked into them. They were roomy enough for two of him. “I wouldn’t tell you about the doll-boys and Mr. Le, so you sent a brother, right? A gay brother at that.”

“And he gave you what I promised.” Dave watched Cotton thread a gaudy necktie through the belt loops, knot it at his narrow waist. “A spot on TV. Didn’t you see it?”

“Only the tape when we got to the station.” Cotton sat on the bed again, this time to put on Adidas. “Not the newscast. We was on the freeway by then.” He bent to lace up the shoes. “If it was only you told me it was on, I wouldn’t believe it, but Opal says she saw it, and it was lovely—but Opal, she thinks anything I do on or off TV is lovely.” He grew gloomy. “Wish my lady felt like that.”

Dave said, “She misses you. She told me so.”

“She gets all the loving she need from the folks out in the smoke when she sing.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have told Cecil. Shouldn’t have gone on TV. I knew that, soon as the lights was out and my head was on the pillow.”

“Lindy said you couldn’t sleep.”

Cotton said, “It was her that sent you here.”

“She’d like you to live.” Dave held out a folded paper.

Cotton looked at it as if it were a scorpion, and put his hands behind him. “What’s that—more trouble?”

Dave smiled briefly. “I’ve made you an airline reservation. The name of the airline and the flight number are on there. The ticket is paid for. All you have to do is pick it up and walk aboard. The red-eye for New York. Tonight.”

Cotton took the paper, unfolded it, studied it. He frowned at Dave. “I don’t know anybody in New York.”

“I’m sure you make friends easily,” Dave said.

“Where am I going to sleep?”

“I’ve written the hotel name on there. I’ve reserved you a room. That also is paid for. Stay there until I tell you it’s safe to come back.”

“You’re going after the doll-boys,” Cotton said. “And you think they’ll figure out it was me tipped you about them. Them and those men at the Hoang Pho.”

“They may not know yet that I’m after them, but they will soon. Don’t look so worried. I could be overreacting. You aren’t sure they saw you. Maybe they didn’t.” He used a smile. “Cecil always claims he’s invisible in the dark. Why not you?”