Little Dog Laughed (3 page)

“Not full time. Just once in a while. But he was here the day before Adam took that drive. Adam must have given him the material—his notes and things.”

“To work up?” Dave wondered. “While your father flew to Los Inocentes?”

Dan’l said grimly, “You better get them back, Chrissie. If you don’t, he’ll write the article, claim it was his, and never mention Adam. Take all the glory for himself.”

“I’ll dress,” she said, “and we’ll go.” She started for the bedroom door, the gallery that looked down on the tranquil Chinese room far below. “The car keys are in the kitchen.”

“Great.” Dan’l went out after her. “I love to drive that car. It’s awesome.” He got into step beside her. “You want me to guide you down?”

“I’ll do that.” Dave followed them. “You go ahead. I have some more questions for Chrissie.”

“I can go downstairs by myself,” she said.

“I’ll get the car.” Dan’l swung down the corkscrew stairs like a playground child, bare heels making the treads gong.

“What questions?” Chrissie groped out to find the slim black rail with thin fingers. Once she had the rail to steer by, she went down almost as briskly as Dan’l. Dave followed. “I sleep down here, at the front, under Adam’s bedroom.”

“And above the front door,” Dave said, “so it was easy to hear him come in the other night, morning. These stairs are noisy. You heard him climb them?”

“Yes.” She took another step down, then stopped and stood motionless. “But nobody else. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?” She turned her head, raised it to him. “You don’t think he killed himself. You think someone killed him.”

“It’s a dangerous world,” Dave said. “That was what he liked about it—isn’t that what you said?”

“He had friends all over that world.” She started on down again. The cane hung from her wrist on a loop. Now and then it rang against the ironwork. “They might hate each other—Israelis and PLOs, the IRA and the British, antinukers and generals—but they all liked Adam Streeter.” She reached the gallery and started along it toward the front. “He was a journalist, Mr. Brandstetter. He didn’t take sides. If he did, how could he work? He didn’t have enemies.”

A voice came up from below. “He had one, Chrissie.”

A sound snagged in Chrissie’s throat, and she stopped so abruptly that Dave bumped into her. He looked down. A woman in red stood in the center of the lovely room, gazing up with a mocking smile. Years had marred her looks, but she had been beautiful once and, before that, pretty in the same dark way as Chrissie. There was no mistaking that they were mother and daughter. What time did to some of us!

Dan’l called, “I’m sorry. I tried to keep her out.”

“Pack your things, Chrissie.” The woman’s voice was brittle and bitter and heedless. She marched for the stairs. “You’ll be living with me now.”

“I’m all right here, mother,” Chrissie said.

“Nonsense—you’re helpless.” The woman’s shoes clanged on the stairs. “I tried to make that senile judge understand that. That your father would be gone half the time. You can’t manage on your own.”

“I’m helping her,” Dan’l said.

The beat of the woman’s shoes stopped. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You’re only a child. And so is she. And children need their parents.” She began to climb again. “Especially blind children.”

“I’m not a child,” Chrissie cried. “I’ll be eighteen next year. Go away, Brenda. You have no right to be here.”

“No right?” Brenda climbed again. “I’m your mother. Who has more right than that?” She reached the gallery. Temper had got her up the stairs, but she was winded. “Anything could happen to you alone here.” She stood panting, hanging on to the flat glossy gallery railing. “Go on.” She jerked her chin toward the far bedroom. “Start packing. I’ll come in a minute and help you.”

“I’m not leaving with you,” Chrissie said. “The court took away your rights. If you’ve forgotten that, I haven’t. It was the happiest day of my life.”

“Hear that?” The woman said this with a wry smile to Dave. “That’s daughterly love these days. Who are you?”

Dave told her. “I’m investigating his death. It’s routine.”

She scowled. “You mean there won’t be any insurance? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” She advanced on him. Dave smelled gin. “When they commit suicide, you don’t have to pay.”

“That’s all you think about,” Chrissie said. “Money. It’s all you’re here for. You don’t want me living with you. It’s Adam’s insurance you want, it’s Gandy’s money.”

“Gandy was my mother,” Brenda Streeter said. “That money should have come to me, and you know it. I was Adam’s wife, you little bitch, for sixteen hellish years. He owed me that insurance money. I earned it.” Her laugh was rough with resentment. “Oh, did I ever! What did you ever do for him but depend, depend, depend?”

“He never complained,” Chrissie said.

“Ha! Why should he? He could walk out anytime he wanted, and stay away for months. Karachi. Danang. Sidon. I was stuck with you. Every damn day. Twenty-five hours a day.”

“You’re drunk.” Chrissie turned and headed for her room, whose door stood open, bright with sunshine. She guided herself with a hand on the gallery rail. “I’m phoning security. Do you want to leave first, or wait for Mr. De Lis to throw you out?”

Dan’l came at a run up the stairs.

Brenda jeered, “Mr. De Lis let me in. He had no choice.” She dug in a red shoulder bag, pulled out a paper, flapped it. “I have a court order, signed and sealed. Making me your temporary guardian now that your father is dead.”

Chrissie had stopped, turned back. “You can’t have. Judge Farmer wouldn’t do that to me. He knows what you are.

Brenda’s laugh had a jagged edge. “Judge Farmer is dead, Chrissie.” She jammed the court order back into the bag, stepped around Dave, strode toward the girl. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that, since he was such a friend to you.” She gripped Chrissie’s arm.

“Leave her alone.” Dan’l darted past Dave, caught Brenda from behind, pulled her off balance. With a cry, she sat down hard on the hard, shiny planks of the gallery. Grunting, she struggled to get to her feet. “You vicious brat. Get out of here.” Dave went to help her up. She batted his arm away and snarled, “Keep your hands to yourself. I don’t like you.” She caught the railing, dragged herself to her feet, stood swaying, pushing messily at her hair. A puddle glistened on the planks where she had sat. A blotch darkened the back of her skirt. “Go away, both of you.” She took Chrissie’s arm again. “This is between me and my daughter.”

Dan’l asked Dave tearfully, “Can’t you do anything?”

Dave watched the woman tug the girl away. “Maybe later. Come on. I’ll have to drive them. She’s too drunk.”

They went to wait in the kitchen. Dan’l moodily drank soda. The kitchen was teakwood and copper with accents in Chinese red. Dave smoked. The women’s voices came down to them, edgy but faint. Misery was on Dan’l’s face, along with the acne. He picked at the sores. Small birds squabbled in the patio shrubs. He watched them. He said to Dave:

“Silencer? You can’t put a silencer on a revolver.”

“It wasn’t a revolver. It was a Desert Eagle. Semi-automatic. Gas-operated, .367 Magnum.”

“All he owned,” Dan’l said, “was a .32 Colt. I know. He taught me to shoot with it.” Dan’l twitched a little smile. “That didn’t go over too well with my mom.”

“I didn’t see his address book up there,” Dave said. “Do you know where Mike Underhill lives?”

“In Venice,” Dan’l said. “Amoroso Street.”

I
T WAS A NARROW STREET
of rundown frame bungalows and big dark acacia trees. Because it was a short walk from the beach, cars lined the curbs, bumper to bumper. This left only a narrow strip to drive. Police department signs warned against parking before nine and after five. Dave read his watch. It was ten past five right now, but only one hairy youth in cracked sunglasses was trying to get off the street, having a bad time with only inches between his dusty Honda CVCC and cars in front and back.

Dave spotted the address Dan’l had given him. In corroded metal numbers on a plywood rectangle hung by wire to a four-foot-high hurricane fence. A shiny lavender van with new paper license plates was parked across the driveway. He wheeled the Jaguar slowly around the block, past a graffiti-scrawled little mom-and-pop grocery, a liquor store with steel-barred windows, the foggy plate glass of a pizza stand, a laundromat, a bicycle shop, a cave-dark arcade where the lights of electronic games winked and twinkled. This was a long way from Saint-Tropez. How was Underhill liking it?

The van still sat across the driveway, but three cars had taken off from Amoroso Street now, and others were working at it. He slid into a space where the untrimmed and very leafy branches of a big oleander brushed the car. It was risking a ticket, leaving the car here now, but there was no place else to leave it. He was a few doors past the house. The sidewalk was cracked and humped by the roots of the old trees. Under the trees and oleanders, the parking strip was bare of grass and strewn with beer cans and wine bottles in rumpled paper sacks, with crushed Big Mac and Marlboro boxes, bones of Kentucky Fried Chicken, greasy paper napkins. A ragged old man with a filthy white beard came slowly at Dave, pushing a rusty shopping cart crammed with clothes, newspapers, bulgy supermarket sacks. Dave stepped out of his way. He asked for a quarter. Dave gave him a dollar.

The woven wire fence had a gate, but it wouldn’t open. It was padlocked. To the woven wire of the gate was fastened a metal sign:
NO AGENTS PEDDLERS SOLICITORS
. Not
BEWARE DOG
, but a big white woolly dog jumped at the front window of the house now, and barked. It was a long time since Dave had vaulted a fence. He was going to feel stupid if he didn’t manage it. Raw ends of the steel mesh could rip his clothes. He was getting old, and old bones broke easier than young ones. But he gripped the gritty top bar of the fence that held the wire fabric, bent his knees a couple of times, took a deep breath, and swung up and over the fence.

He didn’t land gracefully. Still, he was where he wanted to be. He got up a little shakily off the Bermuda grass and brushed at his pants legs with hands that stung where he’d come down on them. He weighed no more today than he had at seventeen. The only time he’d been heavier was in Germany, after the war, a kid lieutenant in Army intelligence, questioning frightened civilians on their political past. None of them had been a Nazi—of course not. And while they scrabbled in the snowy rubble for food, U.S. Army chow was plentiful, and Dave had got up to a hundred-eighty. Duke Summers, his skinny sidekick, had nicknamed him Porky. Before, and since, Dave had weighed one-sixty. So why had he landed so heavily here? Why had he brushed that low fence? With a shake of his head and a glum laugh at himself, he started for the bungalow. The dog left the window and began raving and clawing behind the front door. Dave set a foot on a sagging wooden step, its green paint crackled, and a voice called to him. He paused and looked.

A young Oriental woman regarded him from the driveway. She was brown-skinned and trimly made, and wore white short-shorts, a man’s shirt knotted under neat breasts, a rice-paddy straw hat, and straw sandals. From her hand hung a woven straw carryall. “Is it really Hunsinger you are looking for?” she said. “People who need Hunsinger put their clothes on backward and can’t tie their shoes.” She smiled.

“I’m looking for Mike Underhill,” Dave said.

“Ah.” She seemed cheered up. “You have an appointment?”

Dave went away from the short green steps, and the dog left off barking and returned to the front window where it stood up with paws on the sill, whimpering, and watching Dave cross the grass to the young woman. Dave told her, “No, I don’t have an appointment. Do I also have the wrong address?”

“Not quite. People just forget sometimes to add the one-half after the number. It’s the house in the rear. But it doesn’t help if he isn’t coming.” She looked mournfully back along the broken cement strips of the driveway. “He’s gone.”

“Where to—do you know?” Dave said.

“I don’t know. I wanted to talk to him about …”—she thought better of that and said instead—“I don’t know him well enough to know where he goes when he isn’t home.”

“Let me guess,” Dave said. “You wanted to talk to him about Adam Streeter.” Her gaze didn’t deny it. He said, “So do I. It was Adam Streeter you did know well enough to know where he went when he wasn’t home. Is that it?”

“We were good friends,” she said.

“You hadn’t quarreled?” Dave said. “That wasn’t why he killed himself?”

“Why would anyone quarrel with Adam?” she said. “No. He brought me to this country from Cambodia, and set me on my feet. I would never quarrel with Adam. I don’t know why he killed himself. I can’t believe he did. He was brave. And he loved being alive.” She found tissues in her straw bag and dried her eyes. “Excuse me.”

“If you wanted to talk about him,” Dave said, “why pick Underhill? Why not Chrissie?”

“He didn’t want me to go there,” she said. “He didn’t want Chrissie to know about me—about us. Or anyone. He was afraid his wife would go to court about it and take Chrissie away from him. And she wasn’t a good mother. She had many problems; drink, drugs.”

“I know. But she’s got Chrissie now.”

A wince flickered in the young woman’s smooth face. “Ah, he would hate that. It’s another reason he wouldn’t have killed himself. He wouldn’t abandon Chrissie that way. Not so young and helpless.” She pinched her nose with the tissues, wadded them in her fist, pushed them back into the straw bag. “Who are you?”

“Dave Brandstetter.” He slipped a card from his wallet and gave it to her. She read it, and looked up at him.

“Private investigator?” Her mouth fought back a smile. “There really are such people, then? Not just on television?”

“This one only investigates death claims for insurance companies,” Dave said. “When the death is sudden and violent. Did he own a .357 Magnum automatic pistol?”

“He owned a gun,” she said, “a handgun. But I think he told me it was”—she frowned and blinked—“what is the name? Something about a horse? A very old American name?”