Little Dog Laughed (16 page)

“What’s going on?”

“Everything’s fine,” Dave said. “I just couldn’t sleep.” He lit a cigarette. “I’ve been reading in that current events annual Streeter kept on his desk. Lying here tonight, I remembered reading a listing he’d marked—for one Colonel Lothrop Zorn, U.S. Marine Corps, retired. And I reread it.”

“Mmm.” Cecil flopped back down, pulled pale covers up over his dark shoulders. His voice came muffled by pillows. “And you got to wondering, could he be El Coronel?”

“That’s what I got to wondering.” Dave sat on his side of the bed. “What I read was suggestive.” He blew away smoke. It drifted up into the skylight where leaf-strewn panes divided the star map into long rectangles. “Do you known anything about Zorn?”

“
Poquito
,” Cecil murmured. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

At ten after six, the panes of the skylight showed blue sky. The telephone was ringing. Dave groaned, turned groggily, reached out for it. But it stopped ringing before his hand located it. He glanced over his shoulder. Cecil had left the bed. Dave didn’t hear his voice from below. He must be in the cookshack or the front building, taking the call there. Dave looked at the bedside instrument again. A light winked beside the pushbuttons. He sighed, sat up, rubbed a hand down his face, and picked up the receiver. The voice at the other end of the line was Leppard’s. “Brandstetter?” it said. “You were wrong. I did not see. Nobody came.”

“Is Porfirio’s sister all right?” Dave said.

“Stiff neck from sleeping in a chair,” Leppard said. “Otherwise fine. I’m using her phone. She’s fixing me breakfast.”

“You’re in for a treat.” Dave shook a cigarette from the pack beside the phone, set it in his mouth, clicked a flame from the lighter, lit the cigarette, and coughed. “You calling somebody to replace you when you leave?”

“You really think it’s necessary?” Leppard asked, then said “
Gracias
” to someone. “This is half a mango,” he told Dave, surprised.

“I really think it’s necessary,” Dave said.

“Okay,” Leppard said. “Till noon. But it’s a waste of time. Much as I hate to crow, you guessed wrong.”

“I hope so,” Dave said. “But I doubt it.”

“Did you sleep?” Leppard said. “You looked beat.”

“I slept,” Dave said. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“Thank Frosty the Snowgirl,” Leppard said.

When Dave stepped out of the shower, a mug of coffee waited for him on the surround of the washbasin, steaming in the steam that filled the room and fogged the mirror at which he shaved. He climbed the stairs naked, carrying the coffee mug, drank some coffee, lit a cigarette, took another swallow of coffee, wedged the cigarette in an ashtray, and dressed. Tan hopsack jeans, a gold velour pullover. He slid his feet into canvas shoes with rope soles, pushed cigarettes and lighter into a pocket, and carried the coffee mug back downstairs. The black book lay where he’d left it under the lamp, reading glasses beside it. He picked up the book and dropped it. It splayed open and a folded paper slid out. He set down the coffee mug, bent for book and paper, tucked the book under an arm, put on the reading glasses, unfolded and peered at the paper. It was a Xerox of the clipping he’d found at Underhill’s the other morning—about the President offering five hundred thousand dollars reward for the capture of terrorists. He laid it back in the book, and carried book and coffee mug across the uneven patio bricks, ducking the lianas of a flowering vine, to the cookshack. The cookshack door was open and good smells came out. He worked the screen and stepped inside.

“Sorry the phone woke you.” Cecil was at the stove. He wore white jeans and that was all. “I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t jump that fast.”

“Forget it.” Dave kissed his naked shoulder and peered at what he was up to. “Buckwheat cakes, country sausage, and eggs over easy.”

“And biscuits in the oven,” Cecil said. “You better be hungry.” He kissed Dave’s mouth lightly, took the coffee mug from him, noticed the book. “We going to start Bible readings at breakfast?”

“This is my calorie counter,” Dave said, and laid the book on the table. “I carry it with me everywhere.”

“Lightning”—Cecil reached plates down from a cupboard and laid them on a counter—“is going to strike you, one of these days.” Dave poured coffee into the mug Cecil had forgotten, and carried the mug to the table, where he set it at Cecil’s place. He took his seat. Cecil shoveled griddle cakes, sausage, and eggs onto the plates, brought them to the table, set them down, and returned to the giant stove for the hot biscuits. Whistling and shaking his fingers, he dropped the biscuits one by one into a napkin-lined basket, brought the basket to the table, and sat himself down. “It’s all hot. Don’t burn yourself.”

“You were going to tell me about Lothrop Zorn.” Dave took a biscuit from the basket, broke it open, cut a chunk of butter to melt inside it. “The background I got from the book—but what happened after those congressional hearings? What became of him?”

Cecil burned his mouth on sausage, and hastily gulped orange juice. “He started a military training camp in some swamp in South Carolina.”

“His own private army?” Dave took a bite of the biscuit. Perfect. He swallowed some coffee, and buttered his hotcakes. “The way they tell it down in San Feliz?”

“Only he was breaking all kinds of laws,” Cecil said. “Our lawmakers don’t permit training foreign troops on U.S. soil.” Cecil handed Dave the brown pottery pitcher of maple syrup. “Zorn claimed he was only trying to help out our Central American allies by shaping up their field officers. See, after his debacle in Los Inocentes, Congress got strict about U.S. officers training armies down there. Made a law our people could not get out on the field to teach them. The army game then became to put the officers indoors with TV cameras and the men outdoors with TV receivers, but that was kind of awkward.”

“Really?” Dave laughed and tried the buckwheat cakes. “I never heard that. That’s funny.”

“Nothing’s funny to Zorn, nothing that gets in his way, fighting the communists.” Cecil chewed sausage, reached for the syrup, drizzled it on the pancakes. “And South Carolina sympathized with him. Until one of his trainees died and his Salvadoran relatives raised hell about it. Then Carolina kicked Zorn out. Nothing else they could do.” Cecil set down the syrup.

“How long ago was this?” Dave said.

Cecil shrugged. “Two years?” He ate with concentration for a few minutes. “You think he’s down there in the San Jacintos—the mountains back of the produce ranches? You think he’s El Coronel? For real?”

“Isn’t that how it adds up to you?” Dave said. “What Tamayo saw—men in combat camouflage running along a dry creek bed, being shot at by others from the woods? With live ammunition? Doesn’t that sound like Zorn?”

“It sounds like insanity.” Cecil’s look was troubled. “And you should forget it now. Leave it to Leppard.”

“Leppard is looking in the wrong places.”

“How are you going to find Zorn?” Cecil said. “Search those mountains on horseback?”

“He came down from the mountains,” Dave said. “His men did. More than once. He’s desperate.”

“Not so desperate he sent them to kill Porfirio,” Cecil said. “That didn’t work.”

Dave smiled thinly. “Then I’ll have to think of something better, won’t I?”

“I hope you don’t,” Cecil said. “I mean that. Adam Streeter is dead, Rafael, McGregor. You’ll be next.”

“He has to be stopped. I’ve got to find him. Somebody knows where he is.” Dave ate thoughtfully for a minute. “Of course.” He laid down his fork. “Duke Summers.”

Cecil stared and swallowed hard. “You know Duke Summers?”

“He lives at the Grovers. We were old Army buddies.”

“Jesus,” Cecil said. A light, irregular tapping sounded on the patio bricks. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, pushed back his chair, rose, and went to the cookshack door. “Hello?” He pushed open the screen. “Can I help you?”

“Mr. Brandstetter?” The voice was Chrissie Streeter’s.

Dave said, “Right here,” and rose to go meet her. She wore a man’s hat with a wide brim, a tweed jacket too large in the shoulders and too long, and trousers with twice the yardage required. It was the latest look. That slender white cane with the red tip wasn’t all she carried. In her other hand was a white plastic bag from a department store, something black bulging out of it. “Let me take that,” Dave said, and took it. “This is my associate, Cecil Harris. Christina Streeter.”

“Chrissie,” she said, and held out her thin, nail-bitten hand for Cecil to shake. “This is a strange place.” She stood in the doorway. “You’re eating breakfast.”

“It’s three buildings,” Dave said. “This is the cookshack. The other two are for living and sleeping, respectively. Have you had breakfast?”

“Coffee and toast would be fine,” she said. “I’ve found out something. Something terrible. I didn’t want to call the police. I thought you’d know what to do.”

Dave took her arm that seemed very thin inside the bulky coat sleeve, and led her inside and sat her at the table. “Would biscuits be all right? Fresh baked. Cecil is a dab hand with biscuits.” He looked at Cecil, who seemed immobilized. He still stood at the door and was staring at Chrissie unblinking, with his mouth slightly ajar. Chrissie nodded. “Biscuits sound lovely.” She turned her face toward the door. “Cecil? You’re very tall, aren’t you?”

“No credit to me.” Cecil shook himself out of his trance. “It just happened. I am also black.” He went to a cupboard and brought down one of the handsome brown mugs and filled it with coffee for her. He found a small plate and brought this, with the coffee, to the table. The mug he set in front of her, the plate he took to his own place, where he buttered biscuits on it for her. “Twenty-five years old. I work in television news.”

Dave sat on his chair, set the slick white bag on the floor, and pulled the contents out. It was a black wet suit with yellow and red leg and arm stripes. A long rip was in the left upper leg. As if the rubber had caught on something sharp. He laid the wet suit over the back of the empty fourth chair at the table, and saw that in the bag lay a face mask and black swim fins. He pulled these out, and beneath them metal gleamed. A pair of wire cutters. “Where did you find these?”

“In a locker in the cabana at mother’s,” Chrissie said, and to Cecil, “These biscuits are heavenly.”

“We’ve got honey, if you want,” Cecil said, “orange marmalade, lime marmalade, currant jelly, raspberry jam—”

“I like them this way,” she said, “just with butter.”

“Whose are they?” Dave asked her.

“Do you want cream or sugar for your coffee?” Cecil said.

“Both, please,” she said. “Two sugars. Ken Kastouros,” she told Dave. “My mother’s boyfriend. It was his locker. I wanted to swim, and I didn’t have my cap. And I knew he had one—he has all this awful greasy hair, you know, and he likes to keep it that way. And so I jimmied his locker to get the cap, and here was all this weird stuff. Dan’l and I talk on the phone all the time. I can’t talk to mother except it turns into a fight. And Ken only wants to talk about sex. Anyway, Dan’l told me you thought somebody got in and killed Adam by coming by water, cutting the fence, and climbing over the roofs. And then I found these things. It took me a while to get away without them stopping me, but I thought you ought to know.”

“How did you get here?”

“In a taxi. I had your card. I gave it to the driver.” Cecil stood by her, leaned beside her to sugar and cream her coffee. When the spoon stopped rattling, she said, “It’s bad, isn’t it? I mean, it must have been Ken. I knew she was sick. In her mind. With all that drinking and doping. And I knew she was furious at Gandy for not leaving her her money. She likes money. She has to have it. She only knows one way to live, and it costs a lot. But I never thought she’d kill Adam. I thought she still loved him. I thought all that hate talk was cover-up, you know?”

“You think she talked Kastouros into murder?”

Chrissie took a quick swallow of coffee and shook her head. “She must have promised him money. From Adam’s insurance. He’s like her about money. Because they’re beautiful, they think they deserve to be rich. I guess some women have always been like that—it’s a way to survive in a man’s world. But Ken’s no woman—and he’s the very same way. He trades his looks for whatever he wants. That’s what Adam said. And he was right.” She munched biscuit for a thoughtful moment, butter oozing down her chin. She felt it, wiped at it with her fingers, licked her fingers, gave a bitter little laugh. “I wasn’t there more than a few hours when Ken tried to get me to go to bed with him.”

Cecil stared. “In your mother’s house?”

She nodded. “I don’t want to go back there.”

“Stay here,” Cecil said. “We’ve got a guest room. Brand-new. Never been used.”

“He wasn’t thinking, was he?” Chrissie said. “Good looks don’t mean anything to me. I can’t see them.”

“I saw him,” Dave said, “at the funeral.”

“I didn’t know you were there,” Chrissie said.

“I came to locate Adam’s lawyer—for a friend.”

“And what do you think?” she said. “Is Ken beautiful?”

“It isn’t going to help him with Sergeant Jeff Leppard of the LAPD,” Dave said, and stretched a hand up to take down the receiver of the yellow phone.

L
EPPARD YAWNED. IT WAS
late afternoon, and he was no longer sleek. His sweaty jacket hung on the back of his chair. His shirt had wilted. After the old manner of Ken Barker, he had unbuttoned the collar and pulled down the knot of his handsome tie. Rough beard stubble showed, and his eyes were bloodshot. In front of him on his desk lay stained orange paper wrappings from taquitos he’d had brought in from an Olvera Street stand. A Styrofoam cup held the dregs of coffee. Not a crumb was on the papers, and Leppard crushed them now and dropped them into his wastebasket. He finished off the cold coffee, made a face, dropped the cup after the wrappers, and belched. Sourly.

“There’s Mexican food,” he said, “and Mexican food.”

“You’re thinking of Porfirio’s sister’s kitchen.”

“Wish I was there.” Leppard sighed and changed the subject: “He ripped the wet suit leg on the cut fence.”