Nightwork
Authors: Joseph Hansen
A Dave Brandstetter Mystery
Joseph Hansen
For Bobker Ben Ali
Preview: The Little Dog Laughed
T
HE CREEKBED WAS PAVED
with sloping slabs of concrete and walled by standing slabs of concrete to a height of ten feet. Weeds sprouted from the cracks between the slabs, showing that water seeped underneath, but the slabs were bone dry, bone white, and glared in the morning sun. Seeing them, no one not native here would credit that when the rains came, water would rush muddy, deep, and dangerous under this concrete-slab bridge.
Before the construction of these acres of shacky stucco houses in 1946, the creekbed was shallow, cluttered with boulders from the far-off mountains, shaded by live oaks, and clumpy with brush. He remembered it that way from the 1930s. Then, the only house out here was on a rise. He looked for it out the window of the Jaguar now. There it stood among trees, a white Victorian hulk with cupolas, scalloped shingles, long porches bristly with jigsaw work. The Gifford place. Back then, this flat land by the creek was all that remained of the once vast Gifford Ranch.
Los Angeles had expanded even before World War II. One by one, the upland sections of the ranch were sold off and turned into pleasant suburbs. During the Depression, only the well-off could buy land and build on it. But then the aircraft factories and shipyards put everyone to work. Goods became scarce. People saved. Housing couldn’t be built during the war. Afterward, contractors couldn’t put up houses fast enough. Buyers were waiting. Dave smiled wryly to himself. These places must have gone up in summer, while the creekbed was dry, and been sold in the dry autumn.
With winter came the rains. And the creek flooded, as it always had. And the bright new little houses were up to their windowsills in swirling water. Overnight, mattresses, sofas, armchairs that still smelled fresh from Sears and Montgomery Ward became bloated sponges. The new Philco radios crackled and expired. The new Fords, Chevies, Plymouths everyone had waited years to buy drowned behind the warped doors of garages in the dark. It was a headline scandal. It became a headline scandal winter after winter—until the County at last gouged out the creekbed and lined it with concrete slabs. Much too late.
He swung the Jaguar off the bridge and onto a street that paralleled the creek. The paving was patched and potholed. Cans, bottles, wrappers clogged the dusty gutters. Squat stucco shops lined the street. Many of the signs were old, sun-faded, crackled. A few were new—shallow tin boxes of fluorescent tubes, fronted by crisply lettered white plastic sheets. Stones or bottles had been thrown through some of these—
LAUNDROMAT, DISCOUNT APPLIANCES, FRIENDLY LEO’S
.
Dave couldn’t make out what Friendly Leo sold. The unwashed windows were empty.
The high white sign that said
LIQUOR
was intact. Under it, brown men in ragged clothes sat on the littered sidewalk with their backs against a storefront in whose windows pyramids of soft-drink cans, beer cans, wine bottles sparkled in the sun. The brims of straw hats were pulled low on the foreheads of the brown men to shield their eyes from the sun. They clutched rumpled brown sacks that appeared to hold beer cans or wine bottles. Some of them smoked. Now and then they spoke, but none of them smiled. They looked sad, aimless, and without strength.
Around a corner of the building, on a bumpy dirt parking lot where no cars waited—it was not yet eight in the morning—teenage boys tilted back their heads and poured soft drinks down their throats from bright cans, or jokily pushed each other, or halfheartedly wrestled, or leaned watching beside bicycles against the liquor store wall, which was spray-painted with graffiti. They were Chicanos. Some wore green jackets stenciled
GIFFORD GARDENS
on the back. Dave halted the Jaguar at a battered stop sign. The boys turned, nudged each other, stared at the car.
Dave drove on, disgusted with himself for bringing the car here. He glumly eyed the Blaupunkt radio in the burled wood of the dashboard. They might not strip a Jaguar here. Where would they fence the parts? But they would almost certainly steal a Blaupunkt. He could afford to replace it—that wasn’t the point. He hated the notion of the car being broken into, violated. It would be like splintering an Amati. At another corner with a stop sign, he glanced into the side mirror. Boys in green jackets were following him on bicycles. He waited for a dirty white van marked in red with a plumber’s name to turn out of the side street, then drove on. He pressed the accelerator pedal. The speedometer needle climbed. There was no engine roar—just quiet, powerful obedience.
But they continued to follow, patient as a pack of wolves. For maybe ten blocks. Then, suddenly, when he glanced at the mirror, they had vanished. On a corner lot fenced in sagging chainlink, a corrugated iron garage yawned blackly. Old Mustang automobiles clustered in front of it, waiting to be made new. And beside an old-fashioned red ice chest labeled Coca-Cola in scuffed white script, eight or ten black youths, some teenaged, some a little older, lounged, laughing with very white teeth. They sobered when they saw the Jaguar. They looked thoughtful, tilting their heads. They wore black jackets stenciled
THE EDGE
.
Dave drove on, frowning. Ought he to. have brought Cecil Harris? Cecil was a young black who lived with Dave and shared his bed. And his dangers. Cecil was just out of the hospital where, for long, slow months, he had mended from bullet wounds. He was still weak and thin. He tired quickly. This day would be a scorcher. It would wring the boy out. He had begged to come along, but Dave had made him stay behind in the comparative cool of the rambling house in the tree-grown canyon. Dave doubted that Cecil’s presence with him in the Jaguar would change attitudes in Gifford Gardens. He drove on, watching the mirrors for signs of The Edge.
He saw none until he reached Lemon Street. On this corner, flat-roofed, concrete-block buildings bracketed a courtyard with a big rubber tree. A sign read
THE KILGORE SCHOOL
.
The school was fenced in brick, topped by neat, square-cornered iron bars. Small kids in tanktops and shorts, yellow, green, magenta, clutched books and lunches outside the gate. Anglos. Two or three orientals. No blacks, no browns. Through a glass door at the end of the courtyard, two striped gray cats looked out expectantly. He swung the Jaguar off the creekside street, and here were cramped, lookalike tract houses on narrow lots. Around the corner after him turned a 1973 Mustang that had been sanded down to its body steel and had black holes where its headlights used to be.
It parked across from the school, and he forgot about it until, five or six blocks onward, when he stopped at the curb in front of the Myers house, he glimpsed it in the door mirror as he left the Jaguar. The Mustang rolled to a halt a few doors back. He gave it only a glance, reached into the rear seat of the Jaguar for his jacket, put this on. No one got out of the Mustang. The windshield was dirty, but he thought two people were inside. He locked the Jaguar and went up a cracked sidewalk between patches of summer-seared grass where an old heavy wooden skateboard lay like a dead beetle on its back, one set of wheels missing. He climbed two short steps, pressed a door buzzer, and turned to look again at the Mustang. It sat there like a steel coffin.
The house door opened. A young man stood inside, naked except for briefs, hair uncombed, a stubble of dark beard. He winced at the brightness of the morning. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot. He licked cracked, dry lips, and croaked, “Who the hell are you, now?”
“Brandstetter.” Dave had a card ready, and poked it at the closed aluminum screen door. “I’m from Pinnacle Insurance. Death-claims division. It’s about Paul Myers. I need to see Angela Myers, please.”
The young man grunted, snapped a catch on the screen door, pushed it open six inches, took the card and squinted at it. “Something wrong with the insurance?”
“Something wrong with how he died,” Dave said. “Is Angela Myers here? Who are you?”
“Gene Molloy. I’m her brother.” He turned and shouted into the house, “Angie? Some guy for you from the insurance company.” He frowned at Dave through the silvery mesh. “It was an accident. He lost control of his rig. It went off a curve in Torcido Canyon and exploded and burned.” He stepped back and shouted, “Angie!” This time, a female voice, high-pitched and short-tempered, shouted back. Dave couldn’t make out the words. Car doors slammed. Two black youths had gotten out of the Mustang, one muscular, the other fat, both in jackets marked
THE EDGE
.
They came ambling up the sidewalk, looking at everything but the Jaguar. Molloy saw them. “What the fuck,” he said.
“They followed me,” Dave said. “They admire my car.”
“Oh, shit.” Molloy pushed the screen. “Get in here.” He grabbed Dave’s arm.
Dave held back. “I don’t want them to dismantle it.”
“Better it than you,” Molloy said. “Get in here.” Dave got in. The room was dim, the air close, smelling of sweaty sleep and stale cigarette smoke. The sofa had been used as a bed. The rumpled sheet looked as if it covered a dead body. Empty beer cans stood on a cheap coffee table by the sofa. So did a fluted pink china ashtray full of butts. On a stack of magazines.
Scientific American
? At the foot of the sofa, on a wheeled tubular cart, a small television set showed blurred images without sound. Dave said, “Where’s the telephone?”
“You don’t need a telephone, you need a gun.” Molloy snicked the lock on the screen door, shut the wooden door, locked it, fastened a chain that looked flimsy. “The cops will take all day getting here. They don’t like messing with the gangs. You can get shot that way, knifed—you can get dead. Two of them died already this year.”
“It seems a good neighborhood to leave.” Dave pried open two of the thin slats on a blind and looked out. The Edge youths were walking slowly around the Jaguar, wagging their heads in admiration. But their hands were still in their pockets. “Why don’t you move?”
“Paul and I bought this house.” It was that angry female voice again. Dave let the blind go. It rattled loosely. “If we only rented, that would be different. But everybody knows what Gifford Gardens is. Who’d buy? Who’d be stupid enough to move here? We’re stuck. I mean—I’m stuck.” She turned in the door, calling into the back of the house. “If you two don’t get a move on, you’ll be late.”
Children’s voices called, each canceling out the message of the other. Didn’t raising your young here amount to criminal child endangerment? They appeared. They looked all right, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, carrying books and lunch sacks.
Molloy told them, “Go out the back way. Cut across the vacant lot. Go down Lime Street.”
“What’s wrong?” Angela Myers stared.
“The Edge is out front,” Molloy said. “Two of them. They followed Mister”—Dave’s card was crumpled in his fist; he smoothed it and peered at it—“Mister Brandstetter here. He’s got a big, fancy foreign car.”
“Brian. Ruth Ann.” Angela Myers gave her head a sharp tilt. The boy, fair hair in his eyes like a sheepdog’s, Dave guessed to be about nine, the dark-haired girl perhaps eleven. They turned and disappeared. A door banged. Small shoes ran away quickly in the morning stillness. The Myers woman said to Molloy, “At least it’s not the G-G’s.”
Dave studied her. She wore a starchy sand-colored outfit with white trim. A starchy little cap was on her head. Her shoes were stubby, with thick crepe soles. Something was wrong with her face—with the shape of it. The light was bad. He tugged a frayed cord on the blinds, and slatted sunshine came in. Her face was swollen as if from a beating. She’d applied thick pancake makeup, so the colors of the bruises didn’t show, but he thought they were under there. One eye was still partly closed.