Nightwork (20 page)

Dave took off the reading glasses and gazed down the room at the workbench. He folded the bows of the reading glasses, pushed them into their pocket, rose, dropped the files back into their drawer, rolled the drawer shut. He walked down the long room and crouched to look under the workbench. There hadn’t been time for junk to accumulate there, not much, a few small empty cartons. And a shoe box—not empty. He lifted it, set it on the bench, took off its lid. Inside was a snarl of thin wires of many colors, switches, gadgets he couldn’t name. But under these, each trim flat oblong wrapped separately in cellophane, was something he could name—soft, corpse-gray, and sticky. Plastique.

“Stand very still,” a voice said. A man stood in the doorway to stairs that led up to the kitchen. Lorin Shields. Tall, thin. And bald. Checked sports shirt open at the throat, hopsack trousers, corduroy jacket, crepe-soled shoes. A revolver in his hand. Forty-five. The sort that U.S. law enforcement believes stops a man best. “Brandstetter,” Shields said. “I suppose I knew it would be. I’ve read about you in the magazines.”

“They exaggerate,” Dave said. “They get things wrong.”

“One thing they didn’t get wrong,” Shields said. “You never quit.”

“If you’d kept out of it,” Dave said, “I’d never have connected you.”

“I was sure someone knew where Paul Myers had been that night. And why. This house is so near. I had to find them and stop their mouths.”

“What had Myers done to you? Besides littering up your landscape?”

“Killed my wife,” Shields said. “A lovely young girl. Do you know what she wanted from life? Everything gentle and beautiful. A house in the woods. Quiet. Solitude. Nature. Away from the world.”

“You gave her that,” Dave said.

“She went walking, didn’t she?” Shields said bitterly.

“And stumbled on that dump,” Dave said. “And died of uncontrollable diarrhea, coughing, paralysis of the diaphragm. The way Ossie Bishop died.”

Shields’s mouth spasmed at one corner. “Who knew who Smithers was? Not even you. He came to your house to kill you. Your wife saw him. Even after that, you didn’t know. Who told you?”

“A sick old man you never even heard of,” Dave said. “Crippled. In a wheelchair. You worried about the wrong thing, Shields. Do you know how H. L. Mencken defined
conscience
? ‘The still, small voice that tells us someone is watching.’”

“Not now,” Shields said. “No one is watching now.”

Dave said, “But your conscience hasn’t worked for a long while, has it? Your man Jochim told me that factory out there, Tech-Rite, meant everything to you.” Dave looked around at the handsome room, the lovely setting outside the long row of windows. “It paid you well, didn’t it? Bought you everything a man could wish for. Beautiful house, expensive cars, lovely wife. It didn’t matter to you that it was poisoning people. Not till it poisoned her.”

“We’re going to take a walk,” Shields said.

“And then,” Dave said, “you didn’t have the guts to plant your bomb at Tech-Rite, did you? Instead, you blew up some man whose name you didn’t even know. You didn’t know Myers. Wait a minute, maybe you did. You brought those cargo manifests home to hide them.”

“I knew we were using gypsy truckers to get rid of certain chemical wastes we weren’t authorized to dump at Foothill Springs. You don’t understand how impossible all those government regulations make doing business.”

“And the horrible thought suddenly struck you that maybe Myers had brought his load that night from Tech-Rite, so you snatched the papers. But you were mistaken. He didn’t dump waste from Tech-Rite in your front yard.”

“Not that night—no. But earlier someone had, Myers or Bishop or someone. I recognized the barrels. Our codes stenciled on the lids.” He gave his head an impatient shake. “It wasn’t Myers. It was what he was doing. It was what he and his kind had done to Jennifer.” His eyes were wet. He blinked them hard. He jerked the gun barrel. “Come on.” He stepped up backward into the doorway. “And be very careful.”

“A walk?” Dave said. “Where? Down to the dump?”

“It kills everything that touches it,” Shields said.

He began climbing the narrow steps backward, the gun leveled at Dave’s head. After the brightness of the workroom, the stairway seemed dark. Dave watched his step. It wouldn’t do to stumble. A noise from the kitchen above made him raise his head. He knew that noise. He had made it often lately. It was the rasp of the slide, backward, forward, on the Sig Sauer automatic, the move made to get a bullet from the clip into the chamber.

Cecil stood at the top of the stairs in sunlight, gripping the gun in rigidly outstretched hands. His eyes were wide. His skin looked dusty. Shields heard the noise when Dave heard it. Shields tried to turn. Too quickly. He lost his footing. His gun went off. The Sig Sauer went off. The bullet thudded into Shields’s chest and tore out through his back. Shields’s blood spattered Dave’s face. He tasted the salt of Shields’s blood. Shields fell backward on him, and his dead weight was too much to hold up. Dave folded under it. He ended on his back on the workroom floor, struggling to free his legs. He wanted to get to Cecil. Because, up in the kitchen, Cecil was crying. It was the saddest sound Dave had ever heard.

Romano’s was quiet in its candlelight. The white tables with their shimmering glassware and silver had been vacated long ago. Shadowy figures drank in the little bar where Max polished glasses. At the corner table, Dave sat back, smoking a cigarette, holding brandy in a snifter, turning it gently, watching Cecil. Cecil was telling Amanda how it had come to happen. He had already told the story several times today. Dave was hoping that telling it enough would free him of guilt and grief. He doubted, but he hoped.

“So then Lieutenant Salazar phoned. He had the information on this license number Dave had asked him for. From De Witt Gifford’s record book. Smithers’s Mercedes, right? And I wrote it down. It was at the desk, you know, in the back building. Those little Bishops hopping around.”

“I love them,” Amanda said, “but they do hop a lot.”

Dave looked at his watch. “They should be sound asleep at the Hutchings house in Halcon by now. And Melvil too. I don’t think he’s had much sleep lately.”

“That Duchess made a good substitute for nightmares,” Cecil said. “So Melvil heard me say the address, as I was writing it down. And when I hung up, he came and read what I’d written on the pad. Concho Canyon. And he said Concho Canyon was where he took Dave. To show him the dump. Off Torcido Canyon. Where Dave went this morning. To talk to whoever it was that lived up there in that house.”

“Shields,” Amanda said, “who called himself Smithers.”

“Turns out it was his wife’s maiden name,” Dave said. “Salazar was right. Who would hide behind an alias like Smithers?”

“So I tried to call Salazar back,” Cecil said, “tell him to get up there right away. Only by then he’d already left the office. On his way to the beach. The LAPD found Silencio Ruiz’s body. It washed clear down to the ocean. But I didn’t learn that till later. All I knew now was that Dave was walking into Shields and he wouldn’t be ready.”

“I thought I was going to talk to people who might be able to tell me something about the dumping up there that I didn’t know. Something that might help me get to the Duchess. They had a marvelous vantage point, perched up there on the side of the canyon.”

“Salazar had given me Shields’s phone number too,” Cecil said, “and I tried that. Don’t know what I thought. What good was that going to do?”

“It would have done a lot of good,” Dave said, “but I couldn’t answer it, could I?”

“You didn’t,” Cecil said. He told Amanda, “Didn’t leave me any options, did it? He didn’t even have the gun. Left the gun with me, in case Smithers came around.”

“He liked shooting in the early morning,” Dave said. “Remember? He was shooting Louella Bishop while I waited for him at Tech-Rite.”

“So I drove up there,” Cecil said. “And, oh-oh, the Mercedes was there. And it was quiet. So quiet.” He gazed at Dave across the candle flame, eyes round and ready to weep again. “And I thought, ‘He’s dead. Shields shot him.’ But this time I had the sense not to make any noise. Last time—remember?—I went up to the door of that cabin and told everybody inside I was there, and they shot me full of holes. Not this time.”

“And a good thing, too,” Amanda said mildly.

“I climbed the fence. And tried a bathroom window. That’s the one everybody forgets to lock. And inside the house, I heard them talking. And.” He set down his brandy globe, pushed back the black velvet barrel chair, stood. “Can we go home now, please?” he said to Dave.

“Poor child,” Amanda said. “You must be exhausted.”

“I’m going back to television news,” Cecil said. “There, whatever happens, it happens to somebody else.”

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T
HE CONDOMINIUMS, RAW CEDAR
beams supporting shake roofs and plank decks, the sun glaring off glass walls, looked easy to get to from the coast road, but there turned out to be gates. Beside these was a raw cedar and glass guardhouse. When Dave drove up and halted the brown Jaguar behind a new BMW, a guard, a tall, lean, white-haired black in wonderfully unwrinkled suntans, stood in the doorway of the guardhouse listening to a stocky woman in suede boots, designer jeans, and a gaucho hat, who was going to lose patience before he did. She was blinking hard. And not just because the wind off the ocean was blowing in her face.

“I tell you, she left specific instructions I was to feed her damned cat.” She jerked back the cuff of a fringed leather jacket and read a wristwatch. “At precisely four in the afternoon, every damned day. And water the plants.”

“She didn’t leave those instructions with us.” The guard tried a smile of regret and sympathy. “I’m sorry. Her husband—Mr. Gernsbach—he didn’t say nothing, either.”

“But the damned cat will starve,” the woman cried. She dug into a shoulder bag, came up with keys, jingled them in the man’s face. “She gave me her door key. What more proof do you want?”

“Don’t you worry,” the guard said. “We’ll feed the cat.”

“She has to be petted, too,” the woman said.

“That cat?” The man gave a little dry laugh. “No, ma’am. Not that cat. You try petting her, she turn around and rake you hand open.”

“Oh, you know her, do you?” The woman dropped the keys back into the bag. “I don’t know why Lily keeps her. Pedigree is one thing, but she’s not civilized.”

“Pretty, though,” the guard said. “We’ll feed her.”

“And water the plants?” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for calling it to our attention.”

The woman seemed uncertain. She started to speak again, then saw Dave waiting. Turned, turned back, and at last got into the BMW, slammed the door in annoyance, and drove off.

“Yes, sir?” the guard said. “Who did you wish to see?”

“I have an appointment with Christina Streeter.” Dave laid a business card in the guard’s hand. He read it, stepped up into the guardhouse, took down a telephone receiver there. He pushed buttons, waited a long time, spoke into the receiver, and hung it up again. “She’s expecting you,” he said.

“What kind of cat is it?” Dave said.

“Big orange-color Persian,” the guard said. “One of those with a little pug nose and big saucer eyes. Beautiful. Her mama and papa were both champions, blue ribbons galore. She worth a lot of money.” He laughed and wagged his head. “But she sure grumpy.” He reached for something inside the guardhouse. “Grumpiest cat I ever did see.”

Dave got into the Jaguar, slammed the door. What the guard had reached for was a switch. An electric motor whined, and the high wire-mesh gates that matched the razor-wire-topped fencing that surrounded the place swung open. He took a curving drive of cleanly swept fresh blacktop and parked in a square surrounded by azalea bushes. The shadows of gulls flickered over him as he walked among carefully tended plantings to the door marked twenty-seven in brass numerals. He pushed a button under a hanging wooden cricket lantern whose paper panels wind and seaspray had shredded. An electronic chime pinged inside. And in half a minute, the door was opened by a scrawny six-foot adolescent in wet, floppy swim trunks, a blend of purples, magentas, and pinks, all faded. He was drying spiky red hair with a yellow-and-green-striped towel. Acne flared angrily on his face, neck, shoulders. He squinted at Dave against the sun.

“Brandstetter,” Dave said. “To see Miss Streeter?”

“Oh, hi,” the boy said indifferently, and turned away to call, “Chrissie? It’s the insurance guy.” He stumped away on skinny bowlegs, telling Dave, without looking back at him, “Come on in.” He disappeared up a spiral steel staircase.

Dave came in and shut the door. The room was down a couple of steps from the entryway. The furniture was Chinese, carved wood, lacquered black. The rug was Chinese too, old, camel’s hair, quiet designs in blue and rose, the biggest Chinese rug Dave had ever seen, and beautifully kept. The splayed wet footprints of the acned boy lay on it like blasphemy. The room was a great square, shadowy under beams and lofts and skylights two stories overhead. A large bronze Buddha sat with crossed legs, hands together, palms up in his lap, and smiling serenely. Not Chinese. Burmese, perhaps. Superb gold lacquer cabinets of silk stretched on bamboo rested their fragility on low ebony stands. A Japanese screen pictured a procession among mountains. Over the fireplace hung a Tibetan banner of some fierce, fanged demon, once borne aloft in parades.