Dating Dead Men (19 page)

“. . . the bus,” Dr. Charlie was saying, penetrating my mental trip. “Very embarrassing, but what with all the brouhaha, he apparently just boarded it and—”

“Bus? What bus?” I asked.

“The bus to the courthouse.”

“Courtroom 95? The conservatorship hearings? San Fernando Road?”

“Yes. P.B. was distressed. We had a—a death here recently. Steven Stendaur, a patient in Unit 18, and a good friend of P.B.'s. When we told P.B. about it this morning, he must've—I tried the bus, but the driver seems to have left his pager at home and—”

But I was already out the door.

chapter twenty-four

“I
don't understand how he could just walk out of his room and board a bus,” Doc said, crossing three freeway lanes in twelve seconds, a rush-hour feat. “Even with the Mickey Mouse security they have there.”

“P.B. has really good transportation karma. Once he got himself on a fishing boat in Alaska. Another time he boarded an Air Maroc flight and made it to Fez. We have no idea how.” I glanced over my shoulder. No Hummer in sight, only hundreds of cars behind me on the 134 east. And, of course, Ruby and Margaret in the backseat, swaying with the swerving of the Rabbit. “Anyway, it's not a normal bus, it's a little one that shows up at the hospital every Thursday to take patients to the courthouse. The sort of opportunity that has ‘P.B.' written all over it.”

There was something I'd just said that rang a bell, but I was too distracted to pursue it. I was thinking of P.B. witnessing the murder, too far away to identify the victim, then later, finding out the victim was his friend. At this moment he would be playing the scene over and over in his head, torturing himself.

We drove in silence, picking up speed as we left L.A. behind and traffic eased. The rain had stopped and the fog was burning off fast.

After a time, Doc said, “P.B.'s not dangerous, is he?”

“Not remotely,” I said, “except on very rare occasions when he's worked up about George Bush. Senior. And only then when he's off his medication.”

“What kind of medication?”

“Ziprasidone,” I said. “It's the best thing that ever happened to him and you don't know how lucky he is to be able to get it for free, not to mention live at the hospital.”

“No, I don't know. I thought Ruby was damn lucky to get out.”

“That's because you have no experience with good hospitals versus bad hospitals and bad hospitals versus the street.”

“True enough.”

“Okay then.” I knew I was being petulant. It wasn't Doc's fault that my brother was schizophrenic, but I didn't feel like being emotionally mature at the moment. “It's not some snake pit, out of an old Joan Crawford movie, it's his home. Ordinarily, there aren't dead bodies in the driveway. If P.B.—”

It clicked into place, the image that had been eluding me for days. I saw Doc look at me. “The gun,” I said. “The Swedish guy's gun—there was a marking on it, right in the metal, two letters: P.B. It flashed through my head that it had my brother's name written all over it.”

“Pistol Beretta,” he said. He glanced into the backseat and lowered his voice. “That's probably the murder weapon, the nine-millimeter. Gotta be a way to use all this. I spent two days at the hospital, waiting for Ruby's release, and I got friendly with a rookie in the Ventura County Sheriff's Department. Dambronski. Let me think a minute . . .”

“Think away,” I said. “But that gun really does have P.B.'s name all over it because Olof and Tor are killers, and P.B.'s a witness, and if you have any ideas about finding him so he can identify them, think again. I won't let anyone do that to him.”

Doc reached out and took my hand. It startled me and had the effect of shutting me up, which was something of a relief. I let him hold it, and when he finally let go, I left it sitting there where he placed it.

         

I
T WASN
'
T AN
imposing courthouse; it was actually kind of cozy. I hadn't been there for a few years, since Dr. Charlie had helped P.B. and me through the conservatorship process. There were a dozen people milling around the courtyard of the building, smoking or sitting or talking to themselves, and while some seemed a little odd, most you couldn't identify as anything in particular. They might have been patients or doctors or court personnel. The morning sun beamed down upon them all.

A security guard sat just inside the prewar building, at an ancient school desk functioning as a security checkpoint. He pointed through the doorway to the driver from Rio Pescado, identifying him as “Ned.”

Ned sat under an oak tree, eating Cheetos, and listened with the air of someone prepared to not be responsible, whatever the problem was. “If he was on the bus, he's in one of the holding pens back there, behind 95,” he said, pointing a Cheeto toward one of the courtrooms. “I drive 'em here and I drive 'em back, that's all I know.”

At Courtroom 95, a bailiff barred our way, telling us to return in ten minutes. Nor would he let us into the holding area to see the patients. “No visitors,” he said, in stentorian tones. “Counsel only.”

Doc pulled me aside. “Let's split up for a few minutes. I'm going to have a look around. There's a phone over there; why don't you call home, see if there's any news from the hospital. By the way, what's your brother look like?”

“Tall and skinny with straight blond hair and brown eyes. He looks a lot like me, with messier hair, and his clothes always kind of hang on him like they're a size too big.”
Unlike
me, I thought, realizing I was still dressed for the foxhunt.

Ruby, unexpectedly, chose to stay with me, plopping herself on the floor alongside the pay phone, and burrowing into the stash of comics she'd brought with her. I figured she was angry at her father for making her leave Margaret in the car, albeit in the shade, with windows cracked.

Joey answered at the shop, lowering the background music to report a twelve-dollar sale and four phone calls—Rex and Robert again, one from a new date, confirming dinner tonight, and one from Mr. Bundt, wanting to speak with me ASAP. I used my calling card and dialed Welcome! headquarters in Cincinnati from memory, and was put on hold, giving the butterflies in my stomach a chance to organize themselves into squadrons. Ruby tapped on my jodhpurs and pointed out a man outside Courtroom 93, zipping and unzipping his fly. I watched him until Mr. Bundt got on the line.

“Wollie,” he said, without preamble. “Has your problem resolved itself?”

“I . . . believe so,” I said carefully.

“Good,” he said. “Because when I called earlier, the woman answering the phone did not do so in the approved manner. Moreover, the music in the shop, playing at full volume—Zylocaine, she called it?”

“Zydeco,” I said hastily. “And I'm sure it—”

“It sounded like hogs singing. Good Lord, this, of all weeks, to leave a new, improperly trained employee—”

“It couldn't be helped, Mr. Bundt. I had a—family emergency.” Outside Courtroom 93, the man with the zipper problem began to pee against the wall.

“We do not encourage family emergencies, Wollie. Now that you're back in the shop, I suggest you drill—Miss Rafferty, is it?—on Telephone Greeting Procedures and Easy Listening.”

“Of course.” If Mr. Bundt thought I was calling from the shop, I would not disillusion him. A woman in a fur coat rushed past me toward the peeing man, her arms waving. “Mr. Bundt, did you call for a reason? Is it about the secret inspections?”

“No. My reason for calling is that the Welcome! corporation has decided to divest itself of lower-profit shops. The Sunset Boulevard branch has underperformed for years, a moot point if you win franchise approval. As owner of a Willkommen! Greetings, the headache becomes yours. Should you not be approved”—he paused dramatically—“your shop will be liquidated. Excess inventory will go to the Beverly Hills and Westwood branches and your services as manager will no longer be needed.”

This seemed to call for a response, but my brain had gotten stuck on the word “liquidated” and I could not formulate one, beyond a sort of choking noise.

He let the silence hang, then said, “In a worst-case scenario, Wollie, this phone call is your thirty days' notice.”

         

I
SANK TO
the floor, still unable to speak. Ruby, perhaps sensing a soul mate, offered me a comic book, but I noticed Courtroom 95 had opened. I sprang up and reached for her hand and moved toward it.

Only half a dozen spectators had gathered in the courtroom, in what looked like church pews, so Ruby and I were able to grab a whole row for ourselves, moments before the entrance of the Honorable Judge Randolph Milligan. P.B. was not among the participants, nor was Doc anywhere to be seen, and I was debating going back out in the hall to look for them when the bailiff shut the door decisively. I stayed where I was.

A doctor from Rio Pescado took the stand to testify, her Indian accent so thick the court reporter had to interrupt several times, to ask the judge for clarification. When the judge was stumped, a spectator in the front row piped up with a translation. The bailiff shushed him, but the patient, apparently understanding her own diagnosis for the first time, stood and yelled, “That be total bullshit!” punctuating each word with a shake of the head. The hair on the left side of her head was in cornrows, but the right side stuck out horizontally, as if the beauty parlor had closed up shop halfway through her appointment. Her lawyer, a very young man in a very bad suit, tried valiantly to get her to sit back down, until the patient gave him a good push, throwing him off balance.

Someone slid into the pew next to me and touched my sleeve. I pulled away reflexively until I realized it was Doc, changed into a tie, denim shirt, and glasses.

“Let's go,” he said. “P.B.'s not here, he's headed for Venice.”

         

T
HE FACT THAT
we had no real idea where we were going did not alter Doc's driving style. I grabbed the dashboard for balance, as the Rabbit hurtled along San Fernando Road. Doc was wearing his own clothes once more, having returned the glasses, shirt, and tie to Ned, the bus driver.

“Ties work,” he said. “I went back, told the bailiff I was counsel, and he waved me in. Everyone in the holding area knew P.B., and one woman swears he's headed to Venice. Venice, California, I hope?”

I nodded. “P.B. doesn't believe in Europe.”

We drove in silence for a while, scanning the road. I tried not to think about all the dire things that could happen to him, even without the murderous Swedes, but habit was strong, a vigilance born in childhood, the moment someone had clamped my hand around a squirmy fist and said, “This is your little brother and you're in charge of him.”

“No messages at the shop?” Doc asked.

“Oh, there were messages,” I said, and told him about Mr. Bundt.

“Screw him. You didn't hear that, Ruby,” he said to the rearview mirror. “Seriously, Wollie. You don't need them.”

“Seriously, I do need them.”

“Come on, a low-paying job on a sinking ship? Design cards. That's what you do, isn't it?”

“Not lately,” I said. “No time. And anyway, I can't make a living that way.”

“Have you tried? Full-time?”

“There's not just me to consider,” I said, exasperated. “There's P.B., and Uncle Theo—he's seventy, he can't hang wallpaper forever. And then there's Fredreeq, she's saving for her kids' college funds, and then the Wednesday night poets need—” I stopped, feeling myself start to hyperventilate. “I just want one place in the world we can count on, that's ours, that we can't be thrown out of.”

“You won't find it in corporate America. You're not the type. And look what it's costing you, trying to fit in—this ‘moonlighting,' as you so euphemistically put it. How long do you think you can pull that off?”

Now was the moment to enlighten Doc about the Dating Project, but I was oddly reluctant. Since childhood I'd been an A student, one of life's hall monitors, observing signs, avoiding cracks in the sidewalk, reading all instructions before starting the test. Only in art did I color outside the lines. Doc considered me capable of prostitution, and now that my shock had worn off, this intrigued me.

And I liked that it disturbed him. He disturbed me, with his black hair and deep eyes, his sinewy forearms and articulate hands on the wheel of my Volkswagen, steering us around the slow cars. Who was he to judge me, anyway, this—

Something on the side of the road caught my attention.

Doc saw it too. He slammed on the brakes. I was out of the car before it stopped.

P.B. lay on his stomach, in the ditch alongside San Fernando Road. The right side of his face was in the dirt. His eyes were closed.

I slowed my approach, aware of the morning traffic and birds singing and a second and third slam of car doors behind me. Most of all I was aware of dread. I moved slowly because if there was something terrible to be discovered, I wanted to prolong this moment, before darkness closed in.

I reached him. I stood over him. I saw the rise and fall of his back. Relief fell upon me like a warm spring shower, making my knees wobble as I sank down into the ditch. “P.B., it's Wollie,” I said. “You can open your eyes.”

He didn't respond, although his nose wrinkled. In the breeze, a lock of limp blond hair traveled across his forehead, stopping at his nose. I reached over and put it back. Then I rested my hand on his shirt, gingerly, as though my palm might leave an imprint. The shirt was hot from the sun, a pastel plaid button-down, fragile with wear, a Christmas present from a former decade. I marveled that he still had it.

“I'm glad I found you,” I said. I settled next to him in the dirt, arranging myself on my side. A truck passed and I felt its vibrations in the earth beneath us.

P.B. moved again, turning his face away from me. He seemed engaged in some sort of ear-to-the-ground exercise, alternating ears. I leaned over and said, “I'd like you to come home with me. I'll make you a grilled cheese sandwich. You can watch TV. Uncle Theo can come over. I've really missed you.”

There was no response to this.

After a time a shadow fell on us, and I looked up to see Doc. He was blocking the sun, and I couldn't tell what his face was doing. It occurred to me that this was as naked as he was likely to see me, lying in the dirt with my brother at 9:47 on a Thursday morning.

“P.B.,” Doc said, “I'm a friend of your sister's, and I'll take you to Venice if you want. I'm sorry about your friend Steve.”