McCone and Friends (35 page)

“I know, Ripinsky, I know,” she muttered, even though I hadn’t said anything. “Eyes front.” Then she steered her MG around the van and took a side road toward the recycling sheds—a row of board shacks surrounded by busted furniture and rusted appliances, were a hand lettered sign advertised:

RECYCLED MERCHANDISE!

LOW PRICES!

HOUSEWARES, BOOKS, CLOTHING AND MORE!

Books? The morning was looking better. Maybe while she did her business I’d lay hand to an old western for my collection.

We’d come north from San Francisco on a lead one of McCone’s operatives had turned up, to hunt for a man calling himself Nick Galway. Not his real name, she had good reason to believe he was really the well known sculptor, Glenn Farrell. Ten years ago Farrell had disappeared from his farm in Vermont, leaving behind his wife and child and taking with him the gold for three pieces of sculpture commissioned by a wealthy client who invested in precious metals and wanted some of his holding put to aesthetic use. Recently a friend of the client had spotted Farrell in northern California, and the client hired McCone to find him and either take back the gold or turn Farrell over to the authorities.

It was odds even that Galway/Farrell still had the gold. At least if you took into account the condition of the caretaker’s cottage he rented on a small ranch west of Los Alegres, where we’d stopped earlier. It was sagging and in bad repair, overgrown by ivy and surrounded by weeds and a collection of junk—not the sort of place anybody with the wherewithal to live the good life would’ve chosen. When nobody came to the door, we drove up to the main house and McCone spoke with landlady, who identified Glenn Farrell’s photo as her tenant. She said he was probably scavenging at the dump, as he did most mornings.

Now as we got out of McCone’s MG, a dark-haired woman with a weather-beaten face and a grimy t-shirt came from the first of the sheds, carrying something that looked like part of a plane’s prop. She saw us, did an about-face, and tossed the thing into a refuse barrel. Then she came over and asked, “Help you?”

McCone said, “I’m looking for Nick Galway. His landlady told me he’d probably be here.”

She gave us an odd look, as if she couldn’t imagine anybody wanting Galway. “Haven’t seen him today. You a friend of his?”

“A friend of a friend asked me to look him up.”

“Why? The lunatic owe him money or something?”

“Lunatic?”

“Well, what else would call a guy spends half his life scrounging for dirt-cheap stuff?”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Anything. Everything. So long’s it’s cheap.”

“What does he do with it?”

“Claims to be a sculptor. Says he used to be famous under another name. Made expensive art for rich folks, but now his art’s in the junk. Weird way of putting it, huh?”

“Well, artist…”

“Yeah, artist. Comes around nearly every day, yaps at me the whole time. Nonsense about running away from crass commercialism and middle-class values. Guess he’s lonely and tryin’ to impress me, but he talks so crazy I mostly don’t listen.”

“Well, if he comes in today, will you give me a call?” the woman nodded and McCone wrote her cell phone number on a scrap of paper, wrapped a twenty around it. “But don’t tell him somebody’s looking for him, okay?”

The dump lady grinned at the twenty. “He comes in, you’ll hear from me.”

In case Galway had turned up at home, McCone decided to check the ranch again, but nobody answered her knocks at the door of the cottage. She was just trying the knob—and finding it unlocked—when an old sedan pulled up next to where I was sitting in the MG, and I recognized the white-haired Mrs. Mallory, the landlady. She leaned out her window and asked me, “You didn’t find Nick at the dump?”

“No, ma’am,” I glanced at McCone. She’d turned away from the door, had her hands clasped innocently behind her. “The woman who runs the recycle shop says he hasn’t been there today.”

“Strange.” She shut off her engine and got out of the car, spry and slim in her work shirt, jeans, and mud-splattered boots—the kind of tough old bird that a lifetime of ranching breeds. She reminded me of my dead mother.

Shaking her key ring, she isolated one and called McCone, “We better check inside, Nick never stays away this long unless he’s at the dump or—”

“The door’s not locked,” McCone said, and stepped inside.

I got out of the MG and followed at a distance. The case was McCone’s, and I knew from long and sometimes hellacious experience to maintain a hands-off attitude.

The cottage was pretty dingy inside: matted pea-green shag carpet, dark scarred paneling, furniture that belonged at the dump—and had probably come from there. Mrs. Mallory went through the place calling out for Galway, while McCone followed close on her heels and I cooled mine in the front room. They came back, Mrs. Mallory shaking her head. “Not here. Worries me.”

McCone asked, “Can you think of anyplace else he might’ve gone?”

“Did you check his studio?”

“I didn’t know he had one. Where is it?”

“The barn. It’s not used anymore, so I let him have it.”

“So he’s still sculpting?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it that. Don’t know what I would call it. Maybe putting together atrocities. Huge, horrible things that’re a mishmash of what he drags home from the dump. Let’s see if he’s there.”

I wouldn’t’ve let that barn stand two minutes on my ranch in Mono County. Of course one good windstorm, and it probably wouldn’t be standing here much longer. The door was open, hanging crooked on weak hinges, and a rust-spotted pickup was nosed inside.

“Galway’s?” McCone asked Mrs. Mallory.

The landlady nodded and called out to him. There was no answer. Quiet there. Only the rustle of eucalyptus windbreak and flies buzzing under the eaves. And a feeling of wrongness. I felt the hair on my neck bristle, looked at McCone and saw she was getting the same warning sign. Together we moved through the door and stopped by the truck.

The clotted shadow was broken by shafts of light from holes in the high roof. They filtered down on a couple of eight-foot towers shaped like oil derricks made of metal, wood, glass, and plastic. Their components were all different pieces of junk: beercans, chair legs, bottles, parts of a baby stroller; an automobile bumper, fence rails, barbed wire, a window pane, a refrigerator drawer.

“My God,” McCone said, she didn’t mean it reverently.

My eyes had adjusted to the gloom now, and I saw other towers that were toppled and broken, lying on their sides and canted across one another as if an earthquake had hit the oil field. The one at the top of the heap was crowned by the blades from a small windmill.

“Stay here,” McCone said to Mrs. Mallory. Then she started moving through the wreckage.

I followed, because I’d spotted what she had—a pair of bluejeaned legs sticking out from under the bottommost tower. Bluejeaned legs and feet in shabby cowboy boots. McCone squatted down and shoved at the debris while I lifted. Together we cleared enough room so we could see the man’s face.

Glenn Farrell, aka Nick Galway.

His neck was bent at an unnatural angle, the back of his head caved in and bloody. McCone felt for a pulse, shook her head, pulled her hand away quickly.

“He’s cold,” she said.

I heard a noise behind us, swiveled, and looked up at Mrs. Mallory. Her eyes moved from the body to us, shocked but unflinching. Yeah, a tough old bird like Ma.

“How did this happen?” she said.

I shook my head and stood up. Like he told the dump lady, Farrell’s art was junk—or in his junk—and now his lifeblood mingled with it.

I glanced at McCone, who had stood up too. Her expression was as unflinching as Mrs. Mallory’s, but I knew what was going on behind those steady dark eyes. She’s seen a lot of death, my woman, but she’s never grown indifferent to it, any more than I have. By all rights we should both be pretty callous: In her years as an investigator she’s had more than her share of nasty experiences, and my own past still gives me nightmares. But inside we’ve got that essential spark of humanity—which was why we drew closer together now as we stared around at the wreckage.

Broken lamp globes. A vacuum cleaner bag and part of a rusted wheelbarrow. Curved chromium chair arms. A 1973 Colorado license plate. Mason jars—shattered. Broken mirror—bad luck proven. Chipped head of a grinning garden gnome and some paperback romance novels with holes drilled through them. A toaster’s innards. Moth eaten stuffed dear head. Busted axe. The top of the windmill, one blade missing…