Skinflick (23 page)

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

And he was. Out the window. The short, starchy hospital garment tied in the back wasn’t what he’d have chosen to travel in but it was all there was, and the citizens of Estaca weren’t looking. By now they’d have switched off the TV and gone to bed. He rounded a sharp stucco corner of the one-story hospital, and there was the parking lot. In the moving shadow of a tree, the Triumph waited for him. The blood on the leather bucket seat had dried in the hot wind. It crackled when he sat on it. The carpet under his bare feet was spongy, sticky. Blood had splattered the instrument panel and the windshield. The steering wheel was crusty with it. He drove into the street. The swinging traffic light showed red but he ignored it.

The big waterside restaurants loomed up dark out of their spotlit landscaping, wide windows glossy black mirrors. The condominiums stood up tall and black against the stars. His watch said it was almost three. He was dizzy and sick and his arms hurt. It was cold here and damp, and he shivered. He stopped the car at the gate to the parking lot where the live-aboard people left their cars. The candy-striped steel pole across the entry was snapped off. He looked at the little white gate house. He thought no one was in it and then he saw the big foot that stuck out the door. He left the Triumph. The guard’s hat was over his face. He was folded awkwardly on the cramped floor. His hand was on the butt of his holstered revolver. A bloody hole was in his chest. Dave stood over him and used the telephone.

Then he ran across the parking lot. He ran out the pier. The tender soles of his feet kept picking up pebbles and making him limp. He kept brushing them off. The boats all slept dark on their tethers, lifting a little and falling a little with the lift and fall of the tide. It was deadly quiet. Light streamed up out of the companionway that opened from the deck of Fullbright’s power boat Dave swung aboard. He went down the companionway. No one was in the room with the couches and the bar. But the door in the bulkhead was open to the sleeping cabin. He saw the blood first and then Fullbright’s body naked halfway into the washroom where no light burned. He touched the body. It was almost cold. He turned to get away from the blood smell, the slipperiness of the blood underfoot. And he heard splashing. He went up the companionway.

Below, over the side, someone feebly coughed. Someone retched seawater. Someone tried to call out. It came to Dave as a moan. He peered down into the water. Light fell from the portholes of the forward cabin but it only wavered in the water and showed him nothing. The weak splashing came from farther astern. He went back there. The light that reached out here from the parking lot was just bright enough to make the black water hard to see. He blinkered his eyes with his hands.

“Where are you?” he shouted.

“Help!” A white thing floated below. A rope lay on the polished planks. He lowered it. “Help!”

“Can you grab that?” He wound it around an upright and knotted it. “The rope. Grab it.” But nothing was happening. Even the feeble splashing had stopped. He heard bubbles break. He went over the rail. The water was cold. The white thing drifted near him, sinking. He groped out for it. Cold human flesh. He grappled for a hold, found limp arms, a hard round skull. He needed to breathe and he let go and surfaced and heard far-off sirens. He smiled, filled his lungs, and went under again.

This time he got hold of the white figure and kicked and the two of them shot to the surface. His arms were around the ribcage from the back and there was no sign of breathing. Clumsily, one-armed, he pushed at the water, bumping the slippery curved hull of the boat, trying to reach the pier. The water deafened him. He heard the sirens. The water deafened him again. The water had soaked through the bandages. The pain from the salt was bright and fierce. He struck a piling with his head. He grabbed the piling and clung onto it.

He took a deep breath and shouted.

And he felt the pier shake with running feet.

It was Randy Van in a soaked white eyelet dress with a long smear of tar on it. He lay on the white pier planks and looked pale green and dead. Except for his legs. The flesh of his legs was lacerated and oozed blood. Paramedics worked over him in green coveralls, nightmare figures in the light from the open hatch of Fullbright’s boat. One of the paramedics, a plump black with rolls of fat at the back of his neck, had his mouth over Randy’s mouth. A white one in shell-rim glasses sat astride his hips, pressing hands to his lower chest. Somebody wrapped Dave in a blanket and asked him what was funny. Dave couldn’t tell him how Randy would enjoy the situation if he knew about it. Dave’s jaws seemed to be locked. It was cold. He was shivering so hard it felt as if his joints would come apart. He wished they had more blankets.

Randy made a sound. Water came out of his mouth. His eyelids fluttered. The torn legs kicked weakly. The black and the boy in glasses put him on a chrome-plated gurney and ran pushing it up the pier past staring people in bathrobes toward the parking lot where lights winked amber on and off atop police cars, and a light spun round and round atop an ambulance. The one in the green coverall who had put the blanket around him pushed him down. He was weak and he went down easily. He tried to say that he could walk but the shuddering wouldn’t let him. He was pushed flat His legs were hoisted. Then came another blanket and that was fine. He shut his eyes and the little wheels jarred over the planks. It went on so long it put him to sleep.

Amanda said, “My God, look at his arms! Dave!”

He opened his eyes. She was kneeling beside him. She had on a little pearl-gray derby. He said, “What the hell are you doing here? I only asked you—”

“To find me.” Delgado swayed above her, unshaven, eyes bloodshot, shirttail out. His speech was thick. “To get me down here to rescue Fullbright. Only I couldn’t find the fucking boat. All I did was get lost. I’m sorry, Dave.”

“Not half so sorry as Fullbright,” Dave said.

Ken Barker said, “They caught Billy Jim and Charleen in Chatsworth. It was the APB from Estaca that did it.” He wore a sheepskin coat, leather side out “I’m sorry they shunted your call off. I wasn’t on any trip.”

“I’m glad everybody’s sorry,” Dave said.

“Why didn’t you say you were hurt?” Amanda said.

“I’m all right,” Dave said. “It was two hundred miles from here. What could you do?” They were wheeling the gurney. Toward the gaping doors of the ambulance. The legs folded with a mild clacking sound and for a half second he was airborne. “Stop looking so scared,” he called back to her.

“We’ll follow you,” she called.

The ambulance doors slammed shut. It was bright inside. The fat black paramedic hung up bottles of plasma. The siren moaned into life. The engine thrashed. The ambulance began to move. The black found a vein inside Randy’s elbow and shoved a big, bright, hollow needle into it. He did the same to Dave. That place in Dave’s arm was bruised and Dave passed out for a second. The tubes and bottles swung with the sway of the ambulance. Dave looked across at Randy. He wasn’t corpse-green anymore. He smiled wanly at Dave.

“Thank you,” he said. “Nice swim.”

“I didn’t plan for you to get shot up,” Dave said.

“It was my own fault. I wasted time changing.”

“Why a white eyelet dress?” Dave asked.

“I thought the sensible thing for him to do would be put out to sea. I mean, wasn’t that logical? And, well, what else would you suggest a young lady wear for a cruise on a warm summer night?”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Dave Brandstetter Mysteries

W
HEN LAST HE HAD
noticed, nothing was out here but bare hills above an empty beach. He was jolted by how much time must have passed—not years but decades. Now expensive ranch houses of distressed brick sprawled under low shake roofs on wide lots back of white rail fences. Trees had grown tall, mostly lacy eucalyptus, but even an occasional wind-bent cypress. The streets curved with the curves of the hills. Sometimes he glimpsed the blue water of backyard swimming pools where no one swam because the wind off the sea was cold though the sun shone in a clear blue sky.

He got lost among the empty suburban morning streets but at last he found Sandpiper Lane and a mailbox with the number 171, and parked the Triumph by a little palm whose hairy fans rattled in the wind. He climbed out of the car and the wind blew in his ears. When it stopped for breath, he could hear the distant surf. He heard no nearby sounds, human sounds. Even if you lived out here, you had to go to work, to school. If a wife kept at home by young children sat drinking coffee and watching television in a kitchen, her windows were closed, the sound didn’t reach the street.

The mailbox at 171 needed a new coat of black paint. Rust showed at the welds. Leaves and litter strewed the driveway that was a half-circle. They crunched under his soles. He stepped over newspapers, thick, held folded by loops of grubby cotton string, print faded by sunlight, paper turning color from the weather.
SEARCH FIVE STATES FOR MASS MURDERER
a headline read.
AZRAEL REPORTED IN MEXICO, CANADA
read another. He peered through small panes of dusty glass in garage doors. No cars were parked inside.

A dozen dry shades of red and brown, eucalyptus leaves lay heaped at the foot of the front door. The door was recessed, its yellow enamel cracked and, near the bottom, peeling, curling back on itself. The door must have looked cheerful once. It looked sad now. Dave pushed a bell button. Chimes went off inside the house. He waited but no one came. He rang the chimes again, inhaling the dark insistent eucalyptus smell. He rubbed his nose. He used a tarnished brass knocker at eye level in the middle of the door. Its rattle raised only echoes. Rubber squealed in the street. He turned. A new little red pickup truck swung in at the driveway of a house across the street. From the bed of the truck, a surfboard flashed signals at the sun.

The truck rocked to a halt in front of the door of the house and a boy jumped out of the cab and ran for the door. All of him but his face was covered by a black wet-suit, red and yellow stripes down arms and legs. He hopped on one foot while he jingled keys and tried to get one into the door. Dave ran down the driveway of 171, holding up a hand, calling out to the boy to wait a minute. The boy flung a panicky look over his shoulder and disappeared into the house. The slam of the door was loud in the stillness of a moment’s drop in the wind.

Dave trotted across the street, up the drive, dodged the little red truck, and rang another set of door chimes. He panted. He was getting old. Running wasn’t natural to him anymore. From inside the house he heard a shout but couldn’t make out the words. Were they “Go away!” or “Come in!”? He waited. The apple-green enamel on this door was fresh and dustless, as if it had been laid on yesterday. He regarded it for two or three minutes, whistling softly between his teeth. Then the door opened.

“Sorry,” the boy said. He wore a red sweatshirt now and was tying the drawstring of a pair of red sweatpants. His hair was a blond mop. He was barefoot. “I had to get to the bathroom. You want them, across the street?”

“Westover,” Dave said, “Charles. Any idea where he’s gone? It looks as if it’s been a while.”

“What are you about?” the boy said. “All kinds of people keep coming. Once it was a marshal.”

“I’m about insurance,” Dave said. “Life insurance.” He watched the boy start to shut the door and said, “No, I don’t sell it. I investigate death claims.” He took out his wallet and handed the boy a card. The boy read it and looked startled. “Brandstetter,” he said, and smiled. “Hey, sure. I saw you on TV—Tom Snyder or somebody. You solve murders when the police can’t do it.”

“The police are busy,” Dave said. “I’m not busy. How long has the Westover house been empty?”

“A week, ten days.” He frowned. “Who’s murdered?”

“Maybe no one,” Dave said. “Maybe Serenity Westover.”

“Oh, wow.” Noon-blue sea light had been in the boy’s eyes. It clouded over. He stared at Dave, at Dave’s mouth, where the name had come from. He said numbly, “Serenity?”

“Do you know her?”

“We were in the same kindergarten, grade school, high school.” The boy looked past Dave, maybe at the house across the street. “We had our first date together. Sixth grade.” The wind blew cold, and that may have been what made him shiver. Or it may have been something else. “Jesus.” He said it softly to himself, then backed inside and told Dave to come in. Dave stepped in and the boy shut the door. “I’m freezing,” he said, and walked off. “You like some coffee? Some breakfast? I’m starved. I didn’t eat before I left this morning. God, that water was cold.” He was out of sight now, but Dave followed his voice. “There’s a storm down off Baja, and the surf is way up, but you get so numb all you do is fall off. And after while, anyway, all you can think of is how badly you have to pee, and that’s not easy in a wetsuit.” Dave found him in a spacious kitchen of waxed wood cabinets and waxed red brick under sloping beams. “I should have gone to school. I knew how it would be. I’ve tried it before in weather like this. I don’t learn very fast.” A circle of flame burned high under a red-orange teakettle. The boy scooped coffee beans into a grinder of the same color. The grinder whirred and rattled while the boy held his hand on it. When the motor quit whining, he looked at Dave. “How do you mean, ‘maybe’?”