Fadeout (12 page)

"This is probably pointless," Dave apologized. "I won't keep you if it is. My name is Brandstetter. I'm a claims investigator for Medallion Life Insurance Company. One of our policyholders has disappeared. I'm trying to locate him, trying to learn all I can about him. He once went to school here. Maybe you can help me." 

"Ah? How intriguing." Kohlmeyer was watching the boys again. Not the pictures. The boys. Dave agreed. They were more beautiful. The difference was that the pictures would keep their beauty. Such as it was. The boys would wake up ugly one morning. "What was his name?" 

"Olson," Dave said. "Fox Olson." 

Kohlmeyer turned so sharply he staggered. "Really?" 

"Yes . . . why?" 

"Oh . . ." A delicate shrug. "It's only that you're the second person who's come inquiring about him lately. After a lapse of twenty-odd years. Isn't that strange?" 

"You remember him?" Dave nodded at the boys hoisting another big canvas into position. "They must come and go. I'd think they'd blur after a while." 

"Blur . . ." Kohlmeyer's laugh was a death rattle. "Yes, that's very well put. They do, most of them." He gave Dave a flat meaningful stare. "Even the loveliest." 

Dave didn't like being tagged. Not by Kohlmeyer's kind. "Was Olson one of those?" he asked. 

"Yes . . ." Kohlmeyer blinked into the past. "Fresh blond skin, lovely mouth, and a simply divine shock of golden hair. The young preferred crew cuts then. Awful. Remember? Not Fox. He anticipated the shaggy sixties." Quick cap-and-bells smile. "No . . . I remember him first because of his very odd name. . . ." Pause. 

"And second?" Dave prompted. 

"Because he was so
in love
." Kohlmeyer set the two words out like Valentine chocolates from a jar of formaldehyde. "With another boy. I can never remember his name. Something out of Mark Twain." 

"Sawyer," Dave said. "Doug Sawyer." 

The linered eyes widened. "Why, that's it. However did you know that?" 

"How did you know they were in love? Any proof?" 

The withered mouth turned down, mocking. "Really, does one need proof? The young are so obvious. But, yes. As a matter of fact, quite graphic proof. They spent a summer together at a place called Bell Beach. Some very naked and explicit snapshots resulted. Taken with the aid of a delay mechanism on the shutter. I'd lent it to young Sawyer myself, not knowing, of course, why he wanted it. I found the negatives dangling from clothespins in the school darkroom. Drying. Shocking carelessness. Anyone might have got hold of them." 

Dave wondered if he'd given them back, and bet not. For half a dozen reasons, none of them noble. He asked, "Who was it came inquiring about Fox the other day?" 

"A public relations man. Big, bluff type. Expensive clothes, but rumpled. The unmade-bed syndrome. It seems Fox has become something of a popular idol in a small way. Radio? Music? I can't recall. . . ." Vague wave of the hand. "This man's been commissioned to do a biography. I told him everything I could remember." 

Dave felt cold in the pit of his stomach. "Everything?" 

"Well, I assumed anything Fox doesn't like he can always take out of the manuscript." Sardonic smile. 

Dave felt sick. "And the pictures? He got those too?" 

Kohlmeyer shouted, "No, no!" But not at Dave. At the boys sweating with a gigantic curve of red across white. He tottered toward them. "You've got it upside down." 

Dave followed. "He paid you. Right?" 

"I'm dying, Mr. Brandstetter. Of cancer." The mouth twitched bleakly. "That can be very expensive.... Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm pressed for time." 

"Just one more thing," Dave said. "The man's name. This writer." 

"He introduced himself as Smith," Kohlmeyer said. "But on his check it said Chalmers. Lloyd Chalmers." 

Dave came in by the back door and used the extension phone on the kitchen wall. There was no sound in the empty house but the drip of rain from his coat onto the waxed brick floor, while the desk sergeant in Pima connected him to Herrera's home phone. When the police captain picked up the receiver Dave heard television gunshots and the rattle of hoofs. Herrera sounded sore at being interrupted. And he evidently could see the set from where his phone was, because he gave something his attention besides Dave. Until Dave got the story out. Then he said: 

"It's wrong. Some kind of lie. Chalmers is a big man, a busy man. He wouldn't go nosing around L.A. for dirt. He'd hire somebody." 

"He wouldn't be so big or so busy if he lost the election. And he was losing it. A couple million bucks in building contracts. Junior college. Freeway. It was too important to trust to some slimy professional. What would keep the professional from turning around and blackmailing Chalmers, then, for the way he'd won?" 

"Yeah . . ." Herrera didn't like it but he bought it. "Yeah, you put it that way, it makes sense." 

"Ask Chalmers," Dave said. "Ask him if he didn't tell Olson to quit the race for mayor or he'd wreck him." 

"With some twenty-six-year-old snapshots of a couple teen-age boys blowing each other on a beach?" 

"You're a law-enforcement agent," Dave said. "You don't shock. Olson's radio audience would be shocked. Or Olson thought so, which is what matters." 

"Shit!" Herrera was unhappy. "Look, I don't see what you expect to get. You want to find Olson. Do you think he'd tell Chalmers where he was going?" 

"Maybe Chalmers told him where to go." 

"Yeah. To hell." Herrera's laugh was short and not a success. He obviously didn't feel funny. He felt trapped. "Look, Brandstetter, I can't go to a man like Lloyd Chalmers and accuse him of blackmail. He's—he's the mayor of this town, for Christ sake." 

"Yeah," Dave said quietly. "Sure. Okay. I'll handle it myself. Tomorrow. I'll bring Kohlmeyer. If he lives. All I ask of you is to be around when Chalmers explains." He hung up.

He hung up the wet coat on the dark service porch, mopped up the rain puddle with a big pink cellulose sponge, then made himself a drink, lit a cigarette and stood telling himself he had to eat. He didn't feel like driving to Romano's. Too far in the drizzle. He opened the big copper-toned refrigerator. The white emptiness inside was dazzling. He looked into cupboards. A dusty can of artichoke hearts. He'd shut himself up here too long with his grief. Nothing left to eat. He closed the cupboard. 

Behind him a voice said, "There's a place that barbecues chickens on Melrose. You want me to go?" 

The only light burning in the kitchen was a dim fluorescent tube over a built-in range deck. An edge of the brick chimney kept it from touching whoever it was who had parted the shutter doors from the dining space. But it was a very young voice. With a trace of Mexican. He knew it. 

"Anselmo?" he said. 

The boy stepped grinning into the light. Mop of black hair. Face round, brown, smooth as an Aztec pot. Five feet six. Hip-hugger pants of cream corduroy, printed with tiny pink and blue flowers. Fringed yellow calfskin boots to the knees. Puff-sleeved paisley shirt open damn near to the navel. Singlegold crescent earring. Loops of beads. A strong and dusky smell of incense. 

"I got my Yamaha outside." 

"Your Yamaha will rust," Dave said. "What the hell are you doing here? How did you get in?" 

"Madge Dunstan was in the shop today. She told my mom you were making the scene again. I wanted to see you. I been wanting to ever since . . . a long time. I tried to call you at your officebut the line was always busy. They said leave a number but I didn't have no number to leave. I was allover. I have this gig, delivering stuff. Then I thought I'll just come here and wait for you. Rod gave me a key one time, you know, to get something for him for the shop—" 

"And you forgot to give it back?" 

Dark lashes lowered, head lowered, voice lowered. "I didn't exactly forget." 

"No? Look, what's this all about, Anselmo? I'm kind of tired tonight." He was. It had been a long, discouraging day. He felt old. Yet now, inside him, something young and very alert got to its feet. He knew why, and was surprised and not pleased. "Some other time?" 

"Aw ... " The black eyes begged. "You got to eat. You're hungry. I'm hungry. I been waiting here a long time. If I get the chicken, we can talk while we eat." 

Dave sighed. It was a mistake and he knew it was a mistake but he took bills from his wallet and laid them in the small, brown, not very clean hand. "You win. Get french fries too, and anything else you think might taste good." 

"
Sí
. Okay. Ten minutes, I'll be back." 

The boots went away soft and quick. The front door closed. Outside, the motorbike spluttered into life and snarled off. Then there was only the whisper of the rain. For a moment Dave frowned at the place where the boy had stood. Then he finished his drink in a long swallow, set the glass down, and began assembling the coffeemaker. . . . 

Anselmo's mother had worked for Rod for a long time. A scrawny little woman with a bad temper, who refused to speak English, she could do anything with a power sewing machine. Fast and right. Sometime she'd had a husband. And six kids. All were gone now except Anselmo, a late arrival, his mother old enough to be his grandmother. She brought him with her to the shop, where he would spend the day dressing himself up in scraps of bright cloth. He'd been four, five, six then. Big-eyed, solemn. His mother had rattled Spanish abuse at him when he got underfoot. Rod had ignored him. It wasn't that Rod disliked children. He never saw them. They didn't exist. 

In those days, ten, twelve years ago, Dave had enjoyed dropping in at the shop. It was a fine place to be. Rod's ideas had begun to catch on. There was excitement, happiness, promise in the air. There began to be more hired hands too, and Dave had felt sorry for the little kid lost in the turmoil. He'd made it a habit to take him down to the corner for an orange drink or an ice cream bar, to bring him small puzzles in cellophane from supermarket racks, crayons, a coloring book. They became friends. 

Then Anselmo started school and they met less often. But now and then Dave would find him at the shop late afternoons. Reading comic books. Dave kept him supplied. On his eighth birthday he took him to a Dodgers game, on his ninth to Disneyland. Then the shop moved to glossy new quarters. Assurance took the place of excitement. Dave stopped going. Now and then Rod spoke of Anselmo. Mostly about trouble between the boy and his mother. 

Then he appeared. At a party Rod threw for his staff. At a place with green lawns and a blue pool and low white buildings. Twelve, maybe thirteen, Anselmo had been by then, a dark smudge along his childish upper lip, his voice deepening. He had stuck close by Dave that afternoon. Very close. Dave had all but forgotten. The cabana by the pool. Himself under the shower. The boy lurking by the lockers, staring and pretending not to stare. Meaningless at that age ... 

The Yamaha came back. Dave set the tone arm on Bach partitas played by Glenn Gould and crossed the room and pulled open the front door. Under the wide roof overhang the boy shed a hooded plastic raincoat, draped it across the glinting little machine and came toward Dave, grinning and holding out a wet brown paper sack. 

"Thanks. That was quick." Dave turned inside. 

Anselmo stopped in the doorway. "My boots are wet." 

"Take them off and bring them out here." Dave slid plates from the warming oven. The sack held two small chickens, brown and varnished-looking, swathed in cellophane; a waxed-paper box of french fries; and four soft, leaky little paper cups of orange-colored sauce. He fixed the plates. Anselmo padded in in child-size white gym socks and set the boots by the oven. Dave looked at him. "Does your generation drink beer?" 

"My generation smokes grass," Anselmo said. "The table looks nice. Like a picture. What's the music?" 

"Would you believe the Rolling Stones?" Dave handed him the plates. "Go sit down. I'll open myself a beer." When he reached the table the boy had a chicken in both hands and half demolished. He grinned at Dave, chewing. 

"The Rolling Stones," he scoffed. 

Dave smiled, sat down, poured Dos Equis, took a gulp of it and was suddenly hungry. The chicken tasted machine- made. The potatoes were limp and greasy. He had no faith in the Chalmers gambit. He was afraid he'd lost OIson—$150,000 worth. But he ate very nearly as ravenously as Anselmo, who, while he savaged the chicken, watched Dave across the table, steadily, unblinking, with big, dark, liquid, animal eyes. Then the skeletons were on the plates and Dave took them away and came back with coffee, and the boy said: 

"I sleep with it under my pillow." 

Dave blinked. "What's that?" 

"The key. Can I have a cigarette?" 

Dave slid the pack to him. "The key to this house? Why?" He lit a match. 

"Because you are here." A flush darkened the brown, smooth face as the boy leaned to get the flame. When he sat back his eyes were anxious. "Does that bug you?" 

Dave stared. The match burned his fingers. He shook it out. "I ... guess you'd better explain." 

"Do you know what a love-in is? In the park, where the hippies go to do their thing? And they got rock bands make a lot of noise. And people wear"—he glanced down at himself and brought up a small smile—"what they want to. Lots of color. It feels good—" 

"It looks good," Dave said, nodding. 

"And people give flowers to each other and feed each other and play drums and dance, you know?" 

"I've read about it," Dave said. 

"And everybody says, 'You're beautiful,' and you say it back. It don't mean how your face is made or like that. It means how you are inside, man, you know? Loving, loving everybody and everything, feeling good about flowers and birds and babies and like that, about everything You understand?" 

"I'll have to go to the next one," Dave said.

"No." Anselmo scowled. "No. It's a fake. Don't go. They think all this—what I told you—is the way it is. But it ain't. Oh, maybe for a few people. But mostly they're freaks there. Like fat, pimply girls. They might give you flowers and smile but it's not love-in love they want. They want to be balled. Nobody in their school or anyplace will ball them. They're too much dogs. They come alone because nobody will bring them. And they tell you, like everybody, 'You're beautiful,' and all that. But if you hang around them, pretty soon they grab your hand and put it under their shirt or up their crotch. It is sad. They don't know nothing about love like what a love-in is supposed to be." He picked up his cup of coffee and set it down again and looked at Dave and said, "You do. You're the only one I know. It's kind. And giving. And it don't try to get nothing."