Nightwork (16 page)

“Probably the one who beat Angela Myers,” Dave said.

From the darkness, Cecil said, “Damn,” to himself. The camera churred and snapped. Again. Again. “Wish she’d take off that hat. Can’t get her face. Now she’s going to another truck. If she’d just once look up—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Melvil said. “Focus on the driver, man. Get pictures of what he going to do.” Melvil nudged Dave’s arm with the glasses. “Watch.”

Dave watched. The man in the cowboy hat peeled the Saran Wrap off the envelope, dropped the wrap into an oily rain puddle at his cowboy-booted feet, tore open the flap of the envelope. He peered inside for a moment, reached inside, drew out thick white plastic sheets with raised red lettering. He reached up, slammed the door of the cab, hiked himself up, and flattened one of the sheets against the door:
ACME WASTE DISPOSAL
.

Melvil said, “Mama say you told her there ain’t no Dr. Ford Kretschmer. Not in the phone book. Noplace. Well, ain’t no Acme Waste Disposal, either. ‘Peerless Sanitation’ going to drive out of here tonight, too. Another one called ‘Certified.’ Names you might believe, if you didn’t know the Duchess only made them up.”

“Look at that.” Cecil kept snapping the camera shutter. “Now it’s a pirate ship.”

Dave focused on the cowboy driver. He was slapping skull-and-crossbones warning placards on the trailer of his truck:
HAZARDOUS CARGO
.
Dave lowered the glasses and frowned at Melvil. “I don’t follow. You camouflage yourself as exactly what you are?”

“This only half of it,” Melvil said. “He still got a lot of goodies in that envelope. You want to see how the last part work? We’ll have to follow him.”

“We can try,” Dave said.

It was a grimy corner of L.A. At two-forty-five in the morning, the wet streets were empty. A freeway arched past, its trees and shrubs an unearthly green in the blaze of lights. Beyond the freeway, the glass towers of downtown glowed tall against the dark sky. Down here, there was a lot of shadow. The streets edged between old buildings, half of them blinded by plywood or rusty corrugated sheet iron. Dave held the Valiant back two blocks behind the giant semi, which bulked ahead of them almost as wide as the street. Red braking lights flared now on its rear. Its air brakes brought it to a hissing, clattering halt outside a brick wall where metal signs read
MILLEX CORP
.

Dave swung down a side street, then into an alley, to park between walls where graffiti was dense and as intricate as lace. Rain-soaked trash overflowed dented dumpsters and squished under the tires. The eyes of cats shone in the headlight beams and vanished. Dave switched off lights and engine. “That’s a high wall,” he said, and wearily pushed the door handle and climbed out. He left the alley and went back up the side street. The truck was inching through open gates into the Millex yard, which was now brightly lighted. Dave studied the street, then returned to the car and leaned at Cecil’s window. “May I have the keys, please?”

Cecil pulled the keys out of the dashboard and handed them to him. Their little jingle was loud in the silence. Dave unlocked the trunk of the Valiant. The light was poor. He shone the sharp, thin little beam of a penlight into the trunk. A tire iron lay on the frayed carpet. He closed fingers around it and brought it out and slammed down the lid of the trunk. He pocketed the keys and started deeper into the alley. “Come on,” he said, and heard them open car doors, scramble out, come hurrying after him. He played the little light along dank walls. The windows were high up and barred with iron. In sunken doorways, trash had accumulated against doors sheeted in metal, padlocked. He touched one or two of these padlocks, studied the slits of Yale locks, went on.

In the next block he found the kind of door he wanted. It was wooden. The hasp that held its padlock was rusty and hung a little loose off its screws. He wedged the tire iron under it, pushed. The screws came out and rattled in the litter underfoot. He didn’t worry with the spring locks. He jammed the tire iron between door and frame and leaned his weight on it. Wood cracked and splintered. The tire iron slipped. Dave fell against the door. It gave, and he pitched into blackness. He fell, bruising elbows and knees on gritty concrete. The penlight skipped away. He dug out his cigarette lighter and flicked up a flame. The tube of the pen-light glittered. Melvil picked it up and handed it back to him. Cecil helped Dave to his feet. “Stairs,” Dave said.

They found a corner room on the third floor, empty, dusty, plaster fallen from the ceiling, where the view was good of the Millex yard. The window glass was dirty, and the lock on the window was corroded. Melvil hammered at it with the tire iron.

“Don’t break the glass,” Dave said.

“Hurry,” Cecil said. “They’re loading now.” He had his face pressed against the next window. He rubbed at the grime on it with a hand, and shifted anxiously from foot to foot, and made small sounds of frustration while the camera, on its neck strap, jogged against his chest.

“Let me try,” Dave said, and took the tire iron. He tapped it in under the window lock and pried. With a squawk, the lock came loose and flew in the air. Dave dropped the tire iron and pushed up the window sash. Cold, wet air came in. Cecil bumped against him and leaned far out the window. He began snapping the camera shutter again. Dave got the binoculars from the case on his hip.

Steel drums were stacked along a loading dock. Not many of them were new. A few had a little shine left to their finish, red, yellow, black. Most were mottled, pitted, streaked, colors no one could name. Wearing gauntlets and black rubber aprons, three men—two dockers and the driver—rolled the drums on dollies from the lighted platform into the dark trailer of the truck. A few drums bore faded company stickers, warning stickers. Not many.

“This a sleaze operation,” Melvil said. “They don’t care about nothing. Place Dad went did everything up neat, labeled what the chemicals were in the barrels, all that. Tech-Rite. They just as evil, but they make it look nice.”

The loading took forty minutes. Then the driver shut down the door at the back of the truck, shoved the lock bolts to, and shed gloves and apron. A squat, paunchy docker dug under his apron and brought out folded papers. The driver unfolded these, read the top one, taking his time. He walked to a crate beside a door that gaped wide on a dim, empty storeroom, picked up his cowboy hat and put it on, laid the papers on the crate and signed them. The squat man took the papers back, separated the copies, handed a couple to the driver, folded the others and tucked them back under his apron. The other docker, a gaunt Latino with rounded shoulders, came out of the warehouse, carrying Styrofoam cups.

“Oh, no,” Cecil groaned, and pulled himself back into the empty office. “They aren’t going to drink coffee now.” He peered at the elaborate black watch that made his wrist look fragile. “Don’t we ever get to sleep?”

Dave heard his exhaustion. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Wait.” Melvil took the binoculars. “It’s not all over yet.” He leaned out the window. “He ain’t got time for coffee. Wherever he going to dump that stuff, it’s a long way from here. He got to do it before daylight.”

Dave touched Cecil’s drawn face and returned to the window. The driver jumped down from the loading dock. He carried papers and coffee to the truck cab and climbed in. The big engine roared into life. Smoke poured out the high exhaust pipe. The brakes hissed, the gears ground. Jerkily, snorting, the truck nosed out the gates and lurched on big tires into the street. The space was narrow, so it took backing and filling, but at last the entire length of the rig was once more in the street. Headed back the way it had come. The yard gates swung to. A moment later, the yard went dark. The truck came on toward the building where Dave, Cecil, and Melvil waited. It stopped almost under their window. The driver climbed down, peeled the white magnetic signs off the doors, the skull-and-crossbones placards from the trailer.

“See?” Melvil whispered. “Now he nobody again.”

The man climbed back into the cab. The angle from up here was steep, but Dave could see the man’s hands sliding the signs back into the Duchess’s brown envelope. He folded the posters and pushed them into the envelope too. He stuffed in the manifests given him by the Millex docker and drew out another set, green ones. These he stowed above his head, where Dave couldn’t see. He dropped the brown envelope behind the seat and reached for the gear stick.

“Now he got cargo manifests he can show,” Melvil said, “in case the CHP stop him or they a roadblock or something.”

The brakes hissed. The big rig growled slowly off.

“Prepared by the Duchess,” Dave said.

“Anything,” Melvil said. “Stuffed toy animals.”

“Paper hats for your end-of-the-world party,” Cecil said, and began laughing and couldn’t seem to stop.

Dave lifted the cases off him and draped them on himself. Cecil staggered with laughter. Dave took his arm and, by the gleam of the penlight, steered him toward the hall. “You’re hysterical. Let’s get you home to bed.”

Melvil followed them, plaster crunching under his shoes. “Don’t you want to see him dump it?”

“Not tonight, thanks.” Dave’s voice echoed in the stairwell. “Not unless it’s up Torcido Canyon. Where Paul Myers went. That I want to see.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Melvil said. “Torcido Canyon where Dad went that night I stowed away with him.”

C
ECIL SLEPT, SLUMPED ACROSS
the back seat, hands open in his lap, camera in its case in his hands. Melvil slept in the passenger seat, head over against the window, rolling against the glass with the movement of the car. The glass was wet. Rain had begun falling again about the time they reached Horseshoe Canyon. It was five o’clock but still dark. Dave ached from all the driving. He swung the Valiant gratefully down into the bricked yard and stepped on the brakes. The headlights shone on a patrol car, black and white,
PROTECT AND SERVE
on the door. Uniformed officers climbed out of the car, shining flashlights. One stood back, hand on the butt of a big revolver on his hip. The other came forward cautiously. He was young, blond, and looked sleepy.

“See some identification, please?”

“I live here.” Dave dug the leather folder from his inside jacket pocket, flapped it open, held it out where the officer could shine a light on it. Plastic covered his badged cap. Rain beaded on his leather jacket. He squinted at Dave’s private investigator’s license. Dave said, “This is my house. What’s the trouble?”

“You can put that away, thanks.” The officer bent and shone his light inside. On Cecil. On Melvil. “Who are they?” He swung the light so it shone in Dave’s eyes. “Are you all right? What’s the situation here?”

“You mean,” Dave said, “they’re black and I’m white, they’re young and I’m old, so something must automatically be wrong?” He pushed the door handle and moved to get out. The officer didn’t step back. Dave jerked his head to indicate Cecil. “And he is surrounded by rich men’s toys?”

“This car is no rich man’s toy.” The flashlight played over the dented thin-gauge steel. “Guess I’m a little confused.”

Cecil stirred, lifted his arms to stretch, stopped and sat up straight. “What’s going on?”

“Just keep your seat, please,” the officer said.

“The car is a cover,” Dave said. “For stakeouts. That young man is Cecil Harris, my associate. He lives here. This is Melvil Bishop. I’m looking into the death of his father. He’s helping me. He’s my houseguest.”

Melvil opened his eyes. “Oh-oh,” he said.

Dave asked the officer, “What are you doing here?”

“Mrs. Brandstetter called us. Prowler with a gun. Tried to make her let him in. When she refused, he sat out here in his car.” The young man smiled slightly. “Rich man’s toy. A new Mercedes. By the time we got here, he was gone. Smithers. You know a Smithers?”

“Nobody knows Smithers.” Dave pushed the door a little farther open. “Not by that name. Excuse me—I’d like to get out of the car now.” The officer took two steps back. Over beside the black-and-white, where a radio dispatcher’s voice crackled quietly, the other officer kept his hand on his gun. Dave got out into the gentle rain. “Smithers is involved somehow in a case I’m working on for Pinnacle Life. That’s all I know.”

“Your wife,” the officer said, “seems to think he came to kill you.”

“Is she all right?” Dave said.

Melvil leaned across the seat. “What about the babies?”

“She’s worried for you,” the officer said. He frowned at Melvil. “She didn’t mention any babies.”

Melvil scrambled out of the car. The officer by the patrol car drew his gun. “My little brothers,” Melvil said, turned, and took steps across the wet bricks.

“Hold it right there,” the officer with the gun said.

And Amanda came through the headlight beams, small and trim, cinching the belt of a red raincoat. Her dark eyes were wide with worry. “Thank God you’re back,” she said, and put her arms around Dave and laid her neat head against his chest for a moment. She looked up into his face. She was pale. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m unscathed,” she said. “Just scared witless.”

“What about my brothers?” Melvil said.

“Asleep.” Amanda gave him a weary smile. “And if they sleep as hard as they play Donkey Kong, they’ll stay asleep for a while.”

“You right about that.” Melvil laughed relief.

“You know Bishop here?” the officer asked Amanda. “Harris, in the car there?”

“Yes, they’re friends.” Amanda nodded.

“And this
is
your husband?”

Amanda blinked at Dave, mischief in her eyes. She was about to complicate things. Dave wanted to sleep. He shook his head at her pleadingly. She sighed, looked at the officer, and said, “Yes, of course. Thank you for staying. I’ll be all right now.”

“You’re welcome.” The officer touched his cap. He looked at Dave. “Two other patrol cars searched the area. No sign of Smithers. We ought to locate him. Forty to fifty years of age? Tall—six three or four? Slender—hundred sixty-five pounds?”