Deadfall (Nameless Detective) (9 page)

Ozimas, I discovered, had the twenty-first and top floor all to himself—the penthouse, no less. The penthouse in a building like this had to go for at least three-quarters of a million. Some Alex Ozimas. Or Alejandro Ozimas, as he was listed on the brass nameplate above his mailbox.

But I was going to have to wait to get a look at him. I rang his bell three times, the last time for a good fifteen seconds, and nobody answered. Which figured. It had been that kind of day.

I made one business call when I got home. The maid or housekeeper at the Moss Beach house had told me Alicia Purcell would be back “after five”; it was after six when I hauled the phone out of the bedroom on its long cord, sat down with it on the living room couch, and rang up the Purcell number. A different woman answered this time: the servant apparently didn’t live in and was gone for the day. When I asked for Mrs. Purcell the voice said, “Yes? This is Alicia Purcell.”

I identified myself and my profession and said that I was investigating the death of her brother-in-law.

There was a pause. Then she said, “May I ask who is employing you?”

“Tom Washburn.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I don’t know how I can help you. I hadn’t seen Leonard for at least two months before he was … before he died. I told that to the police.”

“Yes, ma’am. But I’m following a particular line of inquiry, at Mr. Washburn’s request. I wonder if I could—”

“What line of inquiry is that?”

“That there is a connection between what happened to your husband and Leonard’s murder. That maybe your husband’s death wasn’t an accident after all.”

Silence for about five seconds. “That’s absurd,” she said finally.

“Maybe so. Mr. Washburn doesn’t think so.”

“There is no basis for such a supposition. None at all except for a ghastly coincidence—two brothers dying under tragic circumstances six months apart.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said patiently. “But Mr. Washburn wants the possibility checked out. I’d appreciate it if I could count on your cooperation.”

“I’ve already told you, the idea is preposterous. There is nothing I can do for you.”

“Well, that’s not quite true. I have some questions—a few details you might help me clear up. If you wouldn’t mind I’d like to stop by sometime tomorrow—”

“Can’t you ask your questions now?”

“I’d prefer to ask them in person, Mrs. Purcell.” I also wanted a look at the house and grounds, but I wasn’t about to tell her that over the phone. “What time would be convenient for you?”

More silence. It could go either way; if she told me to go diddle myself, there wasn’t much I could do about it. But she didn’t tell me to go diddle myself. After about ten seconds she said in a wintry voice, “Oh, all right. I’ll be here all morning. Come when you like.”

“Thank you. Could you tell me how to get to your house?”

“Are you familiar with Moss Beach?”

“A little.”

“I live on the hill next to the Marine Reserve.”

“The beach with the tidepools?”

“Yes. You have the address, I suppose?”

She gave me just enough time to say, “Yes,” before she hung up on me.

The Purcells were
some
family. I wondered if Kenneth’s widow was going to be as unpleasant in person as his daughter had been. Could be. If my luck was running good, though, she wouldn’t have her own version of Richie Dessault to make things even more unpleasant.

I took the phone back into the bedroom and myself into the kitchen. There were some packaged chicken parts in the refrigerator—I’ d taken them out of the freezer that morning—and a couple of zucchini that weren’t too fresh but not shriveled up so badly you wouldn’t want to eat them. I opened a can of Bud Light, then put the chicken on a broiler pan and sprinkled some spices on each piece. Then I cut the zucchini in half lengthwise, scooped out the innards of each half to form little green-and-white boats, and filled them up with grated parmesan cheese and a couple of dabs of margarine. Not exactly a gourmet feast, but Kerry wouldn’t mind; she didn’t care that I was not the culinary type. If she had wanted gourmet cooking she would have taken up with a male equivalent of Julia Child.

I put the chicken in the oven to broil, took my beer into the living room, and picked up the 1939 copy of
Popular Detective
that I had started reading last night.
Popular
had not been a top-of-the-line pulp, but occasionally you found an issue that contained a diamond in the rough—a “Diamondstone” in the rough, in this case, that being the name of a suave, wealthy magician sleuth created by one of the better pulpsters, G. T. Fleming-Roberts. The Diamondstone story in this issue, “Three Wise Apes,” was pretty good and I got absorbed in it—so absorbed that I almost forgot about the chicken. I remembered just in time to hurry in and turn the pieces over before they started to burn.

The kitchen clock said 7:20, which startled me somewhat; I hadn’t realized it was that late. I might have begun worrying about Kerry—she was supposed to have gotten there at 6:30—except that I had no sooner gone back into the living room when I heard her key in the lock. She came in looking windblown and wilted at the edges, and trailing wine fumes. She wasn’t drunk, but then again she wasn’t quite sober either. Which started me worrying in a different direction, because she seemed to be drinking a good deal lately: white wine, for the most part, not that that made me any less concerned. The pressures of her job, she said, but I wondered if maybe that was turning into a convenient excuse.

Ray Dunston had provided her with another good excuse for boozing it up tonight. The first thing she said was, “He came by the agency this morning. Ray. Right after he left your office.”

“You talk to him?”

“No. But Donna—the receptionist—said he seemed weird. He left his card and asked her to have me call him.”

“Did you?”

“God, no.”

She shrugged out of her trenchcoat and sank down on the couch next to me. A big curl of her copper-colored hair hung over one eye; the rest of it had been roughed up by the wind. Some other time I would have felt like putting my hands all over her. Not right now, though.

I said, “Cop friend of Eberhardt’s checked up on the Church of the Holy Mission and the Moral Crusade,” and went on to tell her what Eb had told me.

She didn’t interrupt or offer any comments; she just sat there looking pained. When I was done she laid her head back, exposing the slim white column of her throat, and closed her eyes and said, “Oh Lord, what am I going to do?”

“What are
we
going to do, you mean.”

“All right, we.”

“He showed up on my doorstep this morning, remember?”

“I said all right.”

“And getting looped isn’t going to help, you know.”

She opened one eye. “I’m not looped.”

“Close to it.”

“Nonsense. You’re not going to start in on me, are you?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I only had four glasses of wine,” she said.

“Only
four glasses? That’s a lot of wine.”

“No, it isn’t. I’m a big girl; I go potty by myself and everything. Besides, I needed it. I had a rotten day. And Jim Carpenter was nice enough to invite me out to MacArthur Park for drinks.”

“Him, huh?” I said. “Good old Jim.”

She had both eyes open now and she rolled them in one of those martyred expressions women put on now and then. “We’re not going to start
that
again, too?”

“What again?”

“You being jealous of Jim Carpenter.”

“Why the hell should I be jealous of him?”

“That’s a good question. You sure act like you are.”

“Well I’m not.”

“I can’t even go out for a couple of glasses of wine—”

“Four
glasses of wine.”

“—without you getting jealous, for God’s sake.”

“I told you, I’m not jealous. Screw Jim Carpenter.”

“Isn’t that what you’re afraid I’m doing? Or will do?”

“Goddamn it,” I said, and then I couldn’t think of anything else to say. So I sat there with my mouth shut, feeling impotent.

She was silent, too, for a time. Then she made a face and sniffed the air like a poodle and said, “What’s burning?”

“Nothing’s burning. That’s the chicken for dinner.”

“Smells like it’s burning.”

Kerry got up and went into the kitchen. I followed her. She opened the oven, looked inside, made a face, and shut the thing off. “Charcoal,” she said.

I took a look for myself. It wasn’t that bad—some of the pieces showed a little black around the edges, that was all. I said as much to her. She said, “Then you eat it,” and closed the oven door and went to the refrigerator.

“What are you looking for in there?”

“Some wine,” she said. “Isn’t there any damn wine here?”

“No. You drank it all up two nights ago.”

“Well, why didn’t you buy some more?”

“Why didn’t you? I don’t drink that stuff.”

“Stuff? You make it sound like poison.”

“It is if you guzzle enough of it.”

“Here we go again. Guzzle. Hoo boy.”

“You can’t deny you’ve been drinking a lot lately.”

“I’ve had a lot of problems lately.”

“Sure, I know. Pressures at work.”

“That’s right.”

“And now there’s your Looney Tunes ex.”

“That’s right. And then there’s
you
. ”

“Me?”

“You. I hate it when you moralize at me.”

“I don’t moralize—”

“Yes you do. You act like a prig sometimes.”

“. . . Did you say prick?”

“I said
prig
. But the other applies just as well.”

“Now listen, Kerry—”

“Oh shut up. God, you can be stuffy sometimes.”

“If it’s too stuffy for you here why don’t you go home?”

“That’s a good idea. At least I can have a glass of wine at home without a male Carrie Nation looking over my shoulder.”

“Male Carrie Nation. That’s very funny.”

“Pretty soon you’ll start quoting the Bible at me. You’re about one long step from joining the Moral Crusade yourself, you know that?”

“Quit shouting, will you?”

“I’m not shouting!”

“You’re being hysterical—”

“And you’re being an
asshole!”

She stormed out of the kitchen, hurling the swing door after her with such force that it came back through the frame and almost whacked me in the face. I clawed at it, cussing, and went on through into the living room. She had her coat and her purse and was heading for the door.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“Home. You told me to go home.”

“I didn’t tell you to go home—”

“Goodbye, you jerk,” she said, and out she went, slamming the door behind her.

I stood there shaking. I wanted to hit something, but the only object handy was me. Fifteen seconds passed, and I was still standing in the same place, and there was a scraping sound in the latch and the door opened again and she came back in.

“I don’t want to go home,” she said in a small, tired voice. And she started to cry.

All the anger went out of me at once; in its place, also at once, came feelings of awkwardness and inadequacy. I do not deal well with crying women. Crying women, especially if I happen to be the one who made them cry in the first place, give me the craven urge to slink off somewhere and hide. Instead, I kept standing there. She kept standing there too, bawling her head off.

Nothing happened to change the tableau for maybe half a minute. Then we sort of groped toward each other at the same time, and clung together mumbling apologies, and a couple of minutes after that we were in bed making love. And a couple of minutes after
that
, she sighed and said, as if nothing at all had happened and she had just walked in the door, “God, what are we going to do about Ray?”

Sometimes I think I lead a strange life. And then there were times when I knew damned well I did.

We left the flat together at nine on Friday morning. I usually leave earlier—eight-thirty or so, in order to get to the office and have it open for business at nine; but today, for two good reasons, I waited for Kerry, who didn’t have to be at Bates and Carpenter until 9:30. One reason was that I wasn’t going to the office first thing. (So I had called Eberhardt, waking him up, and asked
him
to go in early for a change and open up.) The second reason was that I liked to sit around with Kerry in the morning, lingering over coffee and indulging in the mild fantasy that we were old married folks. The mild fantasy was all mine, unfortunately, and likely to remain just that. She wasn’t having any more of marriage after her experience with Ray Dunston—not that I could blame her much. She also kept refusing to move in with me. She didn’t want to give up her apartment on Diamond Heights, she said, even though it cost her a thousand dollars a month; and she liked the feeling of independence living alone gave her. This in spite of the facts that we already shared some expenses, we each kept part of our wardrobe at the other’s, and we slept together—either at her place or mine—an average of four times a week.

There was no discussing the subject with her; she got defensive and angry whenever I tried, which usually led to a fight. I hoped the same thing wasn’t going to happen with the subject of her alcohol consumption. It was a matter we hadn’t discussed any further last night. What we
had
discussed, at great length and to no conclusion whatsoever, was the Reverend Dunston and his relationship with the Right Reverend Clyde T. Daybreak. I think we both had the same fantasy on that score: that he would just disappear again, as magically as he had appeared yesterday morning, and we would never have to deal with him again.

I got my old clunker started and drove up over Laguna and down to the high-rise where Alex—excuse me, Alejandro—Ozimas had his penthouse. Parking isn’t so bad around there after nine A.M.; most of the neighborhood drones (of which I was one) had left for work by then. I found a place for the car around the corner, and walked back and rang Ozimas’s bell.

There was an answer this time, after about ten seconds. A young, unaccented male voice, of the type that can only be described as fruity, yelled through the speaker in angry tones, “Yes? What is it?” If I had had my ear down there I might have suffered damage to the eardrum. I pushed the talk button and gave my name and occupation and said I wanted to discuss an important business matter with Mr. Ozimas, one relating to Kenneth Purcell. The voice snapped, “I’ll see if he’s receiving,” and clicked off.

I waited. And I thought: So it’s late in the fourth quarter of a crucial game for the ’Forty-Niners, they’re trailing by six points, they’ve got the ball and eighty yards to go for a touchdown. Joe Montana calls time out and goes over to the sidelines to talk to coach Bill Walsh. Walsh says, “What I think we should do, Joe, I think we should throw deep to Dwight Clark down the left sidelines.” And Montana says, “Good idea, Coach, but I’d better check with Dwight first. I’ll see if he’s receiving.”

I laughed aloud at my own wit and made a mental note to share it with Kerry and Eberhardt. It made me feel like kicking my heels a little, like Snoopy on top of his doghouse when he gets off a good one. Maybe this was going to be one of my better days.

At least three minutes went by. I was getting ready to ring the bell again when the electronic locking system made its wounded-fly sound. I pushed inside and got into the elevator and rode it up to the twenty-first floor, where it deposited me in a kind of foyer with a couple of chairs in it, in case anybody needed to sit down while waiting. I didn’t need to sit down or wait: the door opened five seconds after I used the ornate knocker in the middle of it.

The kid who materialized in front of me was about twenty, dressed in a white housecoat and dark slacks. He had clear, pale skin, curly brown hair, and features like those on a classic Greek statue. He was very pretty; you couldn’t describe him any other way. He was also furious about something. His dark eyes glittered and snapped, his mouth was so pinched at the corners you could see little white knots of muscle there, and his fruity voice was shrill with rage when he said, “Follow me. He’ll see you in the breakfast room.”

I followed him through some demented interior decorator’s idea of elegant living. Everything was in white and silver, with little touches of glossy black; it made me feel as though I were walking through rooms full of snow and silver frost. There was also a lot of nude statuary, mostly male, none of it as pretty as the kid. Eventually we ended up in a glassed-in nook that overlooked a jungle of potted plants on the penthouse terrace. When the weather was clear, as it was today, you also had a sweeping view of the city. Even the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge were visible to the north, above the wooded hills of the Presidio.

There were two people sitting in the nook, facing each other across a table laden with expensive silver and china and the remains of breakfast. One of them was a diminutive platinum-blond woman of about twenty-five, her sleek little body draped in a lacy peignoir; she was attractive, vapidly so, and her eyes had a dull, bombed-out look. She was picking a cinnamon roll apart into crumbs, as if she were trying to make confetti out of it. The man across from her wore a silver robe with black piping. He was twice her age—small, brown, lots of black hair combed into waves, handsome in a dissipated way. I would probably have taken him for a Filipino even if I hadn’t known who he was.

He smiled at me and said, “I am Alex Ozimas. Please sit down.” His voice carried an accent, but it was very faint. He struck me as an intelligent and educated man.

I sat on the table’s third chair. The girl continued to pick the roll apart; she didn’t look at me or at Ozimas or at the furious kid in the white coat. She might not have known any of us were there.

Ozimas said to the kid, “Ted, bring another cup and pour our guest some of your excellent coffee.”

Ted was standing a little behind him, so that Ozimas didn’t see him mouth the words
Fuck you
before he turned and stalked off. Or maybe Ozimas did see it. He said to me, “I must apologize for Ted. He is very angry with me this morning.”

“Oh?”

“He doesn’t like it when I entertain young women.”

I got it then. Ted was more than just a servant; he probably lived here and he probably also shared Ozimas’s bed on a more or less regular basis. Melanie Purcell had called Ozimas a “fag,” and this place and the kid pretty much confirmed his sexual orientation. Or rather, it confirmed his primary sexual orientation. It was plain that he liked a woman now and then, maybe as a change of pace. That was why the bombed-out blonde was here this morning.

“Ted is a good boy,” Ozimas said, “despite his jealous nature. I don’t know what I would do without him.” Then he laughed abruptly and said, “Don’t you find it amusing?”

“Find what amusing?”

“The fact that Ted is Caucasian and I am Filipino. For many years it was a status symbol for rich white Americans to have Filipino houseboys. Surely you remember. I have reversed the trend. I am a rich Filipino who has a white American houseboy.”

It hadn’t occurred to me to look at it that way. I said, “Good for you,” because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You don’t approve?”

“I have no opinion either way. It’s your business.”

“Ah yes, business. You are a private detective?”

“That’s right.”

I gave him one of my cards. He looked at it and nodded slowly and then put it down beside his plate. “Please tell me who gave you my name in connection with Kenneth Purcell.”

“His daughter, Melanie.”

“Yes, a lovely girl.”

I looked at him.

“Actually,” he said, “a despicable little bitch. Kenneth despised her, too, of course.”

“He left her a lot of money in his will.”

“She was his daughter,” Ozimas said, and shrugged. “He believed in providing for his family.”

“Did you know his brother?”

“Yes.”

“What was your relationship with him?”

“Relationship? Ah, of course. Leonard was a homosexual and I am a bisexual; therefore you think we might have been lovers.”

“I don’t think anything,” I said. “I’m only asking a question.”

“Let me ask
you
a question before I answer yours. Do you dislike homosexuals?”

“No. The man I’m working for is gay.”

“Ah?”

“Leonard’s housemate, Tom Washburn.”

“I see. I’m afraid I have never met the man.”

“About Leonard,” I said. “How well did you know him?”

“Not well at all. I saw him two or three times at Kenneth’s home.”

“Nowhere else?”

“No.”

“You do know he was murdered last week?”

“Of course. And are you investigating his murder?”

“Yes. Washburn believes it’s connected with Kenneth’s death.”

“Really? In what way?”

“His theory is that Kenneth didn’t fall accidentally—that he was murdered too.”

Ozimas raised an eyebrow. But he had time to think about what he was going to say in response because the houseboy, Ted, reappeared just then. The kid took a fancy china cup and saucer off the silver tray he was carrying, banged them down on the table —not quite hard enough to break or chip either one—and poured me some coffee, most but not all of which wound up in the cup.

“Now, Ted,” Ozimas said reprovingly, “if you keep this up I won’t take you to Big Sur this weekend.”

The kid didn’t answer, didn’t even look at him. He backed up, glaring over our heads, and stalked off again.

For a time it was silent in the nook. Ozimas was still thinking; he had his mouth open slightly and he kept tapping his forefinger against his front teeth. The blond woman had finished shredding the cinnamon roll and was also making use of a forefinger: wetting it and then blotting up the crumbs one by one.

I got tired of the quiet and said, “So what do you think, Mr. Ozimas?
Could
Kenneth have been murdered?”

“I hadn’t considered the possibility until now,” he said. “But, yes, I suppose he might have inspired someone to an act of violence. He could be … abrasive, shall we say.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Are you suggesting
I
might have killed him?”

“No,” I said. Then I said, “Did you?”

He liked that; it made him laugh. “Hardly. I was not at his home that evening.”

“No, but you were there earlier that day. Around five.”

“How did—Ah. Melanie. Yes, I was there. I left at about five-thirty. I drove straight home, as I remember, and spent the evening here; I expect Ted can vouch for that, if it becomes necessary.”

“Would you mind telling me why you went to see Kenneth?”

“It was a business matter.”

“What sort of business? Foreign interests buying up American real estate?”

He had been open up to now, urbane and faintly self-mocking; now I watched him close off—like watching something soft turn hard and unpleasant. This was the real Alex Ozimas. This was a shrewd and thoroughly corrupt son of a bitch who had got to where he was right now, twenty-one stories above the rest of us mortals, by manipulation, bribery, deceit, and general villainy. I looked at him right then and knew he was capable of anything to get what he wanted, or to protect what he already had. Anything at all.

He said in a flat voice, “My business dealings with Kenneth Purcell were of a private and confidential nature. I will not discuss them with you or anyone else.”

“Does that include the federal government?”

He drank coffee instead of answering—and pulled an annoyed face because it was cold.

I said, “All right, I won’t ask about your real estate deals. My hunch is that you and Kenneth had different business that day.”

He studied me for a while; it was like being scrutinized by a rock. Then he said, “Yes?”

“A snuff box,” I said. “An early eighteen hundreds snuff box made by Hainelin, with a Napoleonic battle scene engraved on the lid. Napoleon at Toulon.”

Nothing changed in his face—and then it did, all at once. The hardness went out of it and a smile formed in the waxy brown softness that remained. I took this to mean he considered the conversation back on safe ground.

“You believe I gave this snuff box to Kenneth?” he said.

“Not gave it to him. Sold it to him. I’m sure you’re a generous man, Mr. Ozimas, but fifty thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of generosity.”

He laughed. “Yes, so it is.”

“Did
you sell him the Hainelin box?”

“I see no reason not to be frank with you. Yes, I sold the box to Kenneth.”

“For how much?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“Why so little, if it was worth fifty thousand?”

“Why not? I might have sold it to a certain other collector for its full value, but Kenneth was my good friend. And he had recently done a substantial favor for me … no, I will not tell you what that favor was. Also, I confess I paid less for the box than the twenty-five thousand Kenneth paid me.”