Briarpatch (25 page)

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Authors: Ross Thomas

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Briarpatch
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“It was Strucker,” Hartshorne Junior said. “Chief of Detectives Strucker.”
Hartshorne Senior looked at Dill. “You gonna take it up with him, with Strucker? Maybe ask him why?”
“I might.”
“He's here, you know.”
“Strucker?”
“Yep. Last time I saw him—wasn't more'n half an hour ago—he was heading for a parley with your pal, Jake Spivey. In the library.” The old man looked toward the pool. “That's Mrs. Strucker over there,” he said. “The one in the black suit.”
Dill looked and saw a tall, dark-haired woman poised on the edge of the pool at its deep end. He thought she looked about forty. She dived cleanly into the water. It was an expert dive.
“Fine-lookin' woman,” Hartshorne Senior said. “Her husband and Jake're in there talking politics.”
“We plan to join them later,” Hartshorne Junior said.
“Talk about the chief's future,” his father said and turned to watch Mrs. Strucker climb up out of the pool. He turned back to Dill. “What would you say is the most important thing a wife can bring to a man's political campaign?”
“Money,” Dill said.
The old man nodded his agreement and again turned to look at Mrs. Strucker. “And she's got just about all there is.”
“Some time back,” Dill said, “maybe a year ago, you killed a story Laffter wrote about my sister. He said it was a harmless girl-detective feature. Why'd you kill it—if you did?”
The old man was still staring at Mrs. Strucker. “I reckon you'd better ask the chief about that, too, Mr. Dill.”
The foursome was broken up by the arrival of the Mexican houseman-gardener (and putative butler), who asked Dill if he would please join Señor Spivey in the
biblioteca.
The notion of Jake Spivey having a butler to send with an invitation for a meeting in Senor Spivey's very own library struck Dill as funny, but no one else even smiled, not even Anna Maude Singe, who said she thought she'd go for a swim and started unbuttoning her blouse. Hartshorne Junior said he thought he'd circulate. Hartshorne Senior cawed again and said he thought he'd take a nap as soon as Anna Maude got through shucking off the rest of her clothes.
Dill followed the houseman-gardener. They went past the spot in the garden where the three Mexicans had been digging Friday. Dill now saw that what they had been digging was an immense barbecue pit. A quarter side of beef was roasting over a bed of hickory coals. The spare ribs from at least three or four hogs were cooking on a grill. A big iron pot of sauce simmered off to one side. The chef was an elderly black with white hair who seemed to know what he was doing. The smell of the cooking meat made Dill ravenous.
Just before they entered the house, Dill looked back at the pool. He saw Anna Maude Singe chatting with Mrs. Strucker. A moment later, they were joined by Daphne Owens. Singe, laughing, said something to Mrs. Strucker and then dived into the pool. Dill, who knew something about diving, thought she dived very well.
The outside heat, which already had reached 100 degrees, made it seem almost chilly in the air-conditioned house. After the Mexican slid back the library's twin doors, Dill went into the room, where he found Spivey seated behind the desk and Strucker standing in front of it, as if about to leave. Spivey called to Dill, “How you, Pick?”
“Fine,” Dill said.
“You know the Chief here.”
Dill said yes, and nodded at Strucker, who nodded back and said, “I was just leaving.”
“I'd like to talk to you later,” Dill said.
“Fine,” Strucker said, turned back to Spivey and added, “We can go over all that this afternoon.”
Spivey rose. “We'll work something out.”
“Guess I'd best go mix and mingle,” Strucker said, grinned and left. Spivey thoughtfully watched him go. After Strucker closed the twin sliding doors, Spivey smiled at Dill. “Thinks he'd like to be mayor. That's for starters.”
“What's for afters?”
“Congressman. Or governor. Or senator. One of 'em anyway. The vote bug's done bit him.” Spivey smiled again. “Course, his wife's been egging him on some. You meet her?”
“I saw her.”
“She's something. Rich as greases, like we used to say till you found out who Croesus was.”
“Speaking of money, Jake, I need some. Today.”
Spivey frowned. “Jesus, Pick, it's Sunday. How much you need?”
“A thousand in cash.”
Spivey's frown went away. “Shit, I thought you said money.” He reached into a pocket of his faded jeans and brought out a roll of bills that was bound with a rubber band. He snapped off the band and counted ten one-hundred-dollar bills onto the desk, picked them up, and offered the money to Dill. After Dill accepted it, Spivey snapped the band back around the roll. It was still more than three inches in diameter. Dill took out his checkbook, sat down at the desk, and started writing a check.
“You ain't short, are you?” Spivey asked. “If you're short, just mail it to me sometime.”
“I'm not short,” Dill said, tore out the check, and handed it to Spivey, who folded and tucked it away in the pocket of his blue chambray shirt without looking at it.
“Want a beer?” Spivey asked.
“Sure.”
Spivey sat down, took two cans of Michelob from his desk refrigerator, and handed one to Dill. After opening his beer, Spivey drank several long swallows, smiled with pleasure, and said, “First one today, if you don't count the one I had with breakfast, which I don't.”
“Who're all your pretty new friends?” Dill asked.
Spivey grinned. “You mean the young and the restless out there? Well, sir, lemme tell you who they are. They're all veterans of our recent turbulent past. In sixty-five you'd've found a couple of 'em out in Haight-Ashbury. Or down in Selma. Or in sixty-seven marching with Mailer on the Pentagon. But when all that shit ended they came back home and went back to school, or into daddy's oil company, or his bank, or his construction company, or married somebody who did, and registered independent and
made a pot of money and voted for Reagan, or for old John Anderson anyway, and now that they're forty, or prid near, they figure they're ready to do some real moving and shaking. After all, they got their weight back down, and they're doing aerobics, and they don't smoke dope no more, except maybe a little on Saturday night, and they don't do coke hardly at all and never ever touch hard liquor. So now, by God, they figure it's time they went and did their civic duty and elected somebody to something. Well, I'm kind of their glorified political guru and precinct captain on account of I got the most money except for Dora Lee Strucker, who's got more money'n anybody.”
“And Strucker's your boy?” Dill said.
“Providing the Hartshornes'll go along, which I reckon they will.”
“A law-and-order mayor, right?” Dill said.
Spivey grinned. “You ain't for lawnorder?—which you notice is one word in this house.”
Dill smiled, drank some of his beer, and then gazed up at the ceiling. “You might pull it off, Jake.”
“What I figure I'm really doing is growing my own briarpatch. Grow it high enough and thick enough, there ain't nobody gonna come poking around in it.” He paused. “Except maybe that kid Senator of yours.”
“I talked to him,” Dill said, still staring up at the ceiling.
“And?”
Dill shifted his gaze from the ceiling to Spivey. “I think he's going to fuck you over, Jake.”
Spivey nodded calmly. “He's going with Clyde, huh?”
“I think he thinks he can nail you both.”
“No way he can nail Brattle good without me, and he won't get me unless I get immunity.” Spivey lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “You see my boy on the gate?”
“I saw him.”
“And the kid parking cars?”
“I saw him, too.”
“I figure old Clyde's gonna come after me.”
“Himself?”
“Lord, no. He'll get Harley and Sid to find somebody.” Spivey chuckled. “Maybe they've already run an ad in Soldier of Fortune. Or maybe Sid'll try it himself. Old Sid likes that kinda shit.”
“You want to talk to the Senator?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. He and Dolan are coming in at four.”
“When's he seeing Brattle?”
“At seven.”
“What d'you think, Pick, should I go first or last?”
Dill didn't hesitate. “First.”
“Why?”
“Because maybe I can get you some insurance.”
“What'll it cost me?”
“How much leverage have you got with Strucker?”
Spivey shrugged. “Enough, I reckon. What d'you want?”
“I want him to sit down and tell me the facts.” Dill paused. “Whatever they are.”
“About Felicity?”
Dill nodded.
“I'll see what I can do,” Jake Spivey said.
 
 
Dill did not meet Dora Lee Strucker until after he performed a not quite perfect half gainer off the twelve-foot board. As he went into the water he thought his back could have been a trifle straighter, but he also knew it was still a fairly good dive. Diving was the only sport Dill had ever participated in seriously—probably
because it was essentially a solitary sport. He had pursued it through junior and senior high school, and well into his freshman year in college, when he realized he would never be any better than he was at that instant, which was not quite good enough. He had abandoned it without regret and even with some sense of relief. The only diving he did now was into the pool at the Watergate gym when the mood seized him, as it did fitfully every two weeks or so.
When he climbed out of the pool, Anna Maude Singe clapped mockingly three times and said, “Show-off.” She was wearing a dark-red swimsuit consisting of two small triangles up above and a mere suggestion of something down below.
If she took everything off, Dill thought, she would look a lot less naked. He said, “I just wanted to see if the brain could still tell the body what to do.”
“I don't think you've met Mrs. Strucker, have you?” Singe said and turned to the woman in the one-piece black suit. “Ben Dill.”
Mrs. Strucker held out a hand. Dill found she had a firm strong grip and a firm strong voice that said, “I thought it was a beautiful dive.”
Dill thanked her and sat down next to Singe, who was seated crosslegged on a large towel. Mrs. Strucker was in a chair made out of aluminum tubes and plastic webbing. She had long tanned solid-looking legs, not quite heavy hips, a very small waist, large firm-looking breasts, and magnificent shoulders. An abundance of ink-black hair was piled up on top of her head. Below it was a bold face: high-cheekboned and black-eyed and wide-mouthed. There was also a touch of the hawk in her nose, an attractive touch, and Dill wondered if she'd had some Indian ancestors and how she had come to be so rich. He guessed her age at forty-three, although she could easily shave five years off that should the need arise. Chief of Detectives Strucker, he decided, had married well.
Singe said, “I was telling Mrs. Strucker—”
Mrs. Strucker interrupted. “Dora Lee, please.”
“Right. I was telling Dora Lee here how you and Jake Spivey go back years.”
“Eons,” Dill said.
Singe grinned. “How long's an eon anyway?”
“Two or more eras, I believe,” Mrs. Strucker said, and since that had a faintly geological ring to it, Dill decided she must have made her money in oil. Or her ex-husband had. Or her father. Or somebody. She smiled and added, “Which is quite a while.”
“That's about how long I've known Jake,” Dill said. “Quite a while.”
“Has he always been so—well, so damned optimistic?” Mrs. Strucker asked.
Dill made a small gesture that took in the pool and the house and the grounds. “Maybe he's got good reason to be,” he said with a smile. “It's the Micawber syndrome. Something's bound to turn up, and for Jake it always does and always has.”
“You don't sound in the least envious, Mr. Dill—or Ben, if you don't mind sudden old-pal familiarity.”
“Not at all,” Dill said. “I mean, I'm not at all jealous of Jake and I don't at all mind being called Ben.”
“I've noticed,” she said, “that one old friend's good fortune is sometimes another old friend's despair.”
“You're probably right,” Dill said. “When somebody you know fails, your immediate reaction is, Thank God it's him and not me. But when somebody you know succeeds, it's, Why him, Lord, and not me? But as for Jake—well, I think of Jake as sort of a walking miracle: you don't quite believe it, but you sure as hell hope it's true.”
“You're very fond of him, aren't you?”
“Of Jake? Let's say Jake and I understand each other and always have. It goes a little beyond fondness.”
“Johnny—that's my husband—says Jake Spivey's the smartest man he ever met.”
“I'm not sure what your husband means by smart. I think Jake may be the shrewdest man I ever met, the most cunning, the most—”
“Wily?” Singe suggested.
“And the most wily.”
Mrs. Strucker examined Dill carefully, a half-smile on her lips. “I also have the feeling that you trust him implicitly.”
Before Dill could tell her she was dead wrong, Jake Spivey's voice boomed from twenty feet away. “Who's that pretty little half-naked thing there that nobody's introduced me to yet?”
Dill turned and said, “She's not so little.”
When Spivey reached them, he grinned down at Anna Maude Singe and said, “By God, you're right, Pick, she ain't.”
“Jake Spivey,” Dill said, “meet Anna Maude Singe, my sweetie.”
“Sweetie!” Spivey said. “Damned if you don't use old-timey words.” He was still grinning down at Singe. “You know what he calls me sometimes? He calls me a brick, except you gotta listen real close to make sure how he's pronouncing it.” Spivey shifted his grin to Mrs. Strucker. “How you doing, Dora Lee?”

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