Читать книгу Sunset People - Herbert Kastle - Страница 16

Mel finally got her on the phone at two in the afternoon, which wasn’t all that late for his beautiful honky wife to sleep when she’d been dancing at the club till three and screwing around with Chris, the manager, till God knew what hour. Chris was now her main man, though he wouldn’t last any longer than the others; not any longer than her husband.

Anyway, she sounded reasonably awake and not yet stoned, and he said, “Hey, love, are we gonna have that reconciliation?”

So how does she answer ole black Mel layin’ his heart on the line? “Glad you called. I need a lid of Columbian, lightly dusted.”

“Yeah, and how you been?” he muttered. A real user, Beth-Anne. A real cunt. He’d known it from day one, and no way could he fall for her when she was just another nude dancer and the Sunset Strip was full of them and he’d had his way with so many he was certain he was immune to anything as cube-like as love. But he’d surprised himself by being the john of johns—ended up marrying her after a week in Vegas, in one of those plastic quick-job chapels.

“We’ll talk tonight,” she said. “You might as well bring the pot.”

“Might as well,” he mocked. But his pulse had picked up speed and there was a stirring in his pants. She’d almost fucked him to death during their five months of togetherness. At fifty-six, he wasn’t quite the man the twenty-three-year-old stripper needed, though he had never let her know this. He performed whenever she snapped her pussy—and, man, could it snap! Also taught her a few things about vibrators, big and rectal size, she hadn’t known.

But it wasn’t only sex he’d wanted from her. And it was only sex she’d wanted from him: sex and bread and dope, which he’d provided in unlimited quantities. Which meant he’d had to take chances he normally wouldn’t take.

He was a dealer, yes, but only in a small way, more to get the girls than the bread. When a dancer was broke, he worked a trade—what she needed for what he wanted. Before Beth-Ann, he had paid the rent and the grocery bills, and given away as much as he sold. One pickup a week, and then he used his phone to arrange meetings with the chicks, or with the rare male he supplied—who in turn supplied him with chicks.

It was a neighborhood business, like your friendly Mom-and-Pop grocery. It was nothing much to interest the pohlice.

But, baby, now was different. Now he made three pickups and now he pushed the real thing and now he was loaded and ready to buy back his wife. He had five grand, a nice round figure; had been saving until he could flash it on her. If she came back, he’d make more to hold her and try not to think of the slammer and what it had been like when he’d done what the cons called “an easy dozen.”

He was sweating as he thought how far from easy that year had been. How his mind had almost cracked. Because Mel Crane wasn’t made for the tough stuff. He was a lover, not a fighter. He was a pussycat, a pushover for most pretty white chicks, and especially for his young wife.

She proved it by dropping her voice—probably so the guy in bed with her wouldn’t hear: “You been thinking about your little Beth-Anne, Mel? You been thinking how you’d like to crawl into her?”

“Among other things,” he said, but she had his number. He was her ole black patsy. “Can I come to your pad?”

“Someone’s sharing it with me.”

Guess who, but he wanted no hassles. “Then my place.”

“Well, maybe.” She was playing little-girl cute. “First, we’ll have dinner. Then we’ll talk about reconciliations and your pad.”

“Dinner? You have to be on stage by nine, and it’s three before you’re done.”

“Night off, baby. Don’t play with that cute black dicky too much. Save some for Beth-Anne. If you bring the pot and we get along without arguments.”

They’d get along without arguments, once she saw the bread.

“Tarpon’s Fishery?” he asked.

“Right! I haven’t had a good seafood dinner since we split. Chris . . .” She paused. “Almost all my dates eat steak and Italian over and over, maybe a little Chinese. You know how to keep a girl’s figure for her, Mel.”

There was a voice in the background. She said, “Eight. Tarpon’s. ’Bye.”

He told himself he wasn’t square enough to feel jealousy . . . but whatever the feeling was, it hurt.

Frank Berdon hadn’t picked up his Chevy until noon, though Lila drove him to the garage at nine. “A few last-minute adjustments,” Gallico had said; then Frank had waited three hours. People were always doing that to him.

He’d been carrying his briefcase. He often did, when he was going to call on his steady customers, checking them for shortages, showing them whatever was current in the lines he carried.

Berdon’s Stationery and Business Machines specialized in such personal service. His father had started the practice in a more gracious time, and Frank had carried on so as to survive in an era of big discount stores.

But his briefcase hadn’t held stationery today, and while he’d waited for his car he’d taken it with him to the garage’s toilet. It was a dirty, smelly, closet-like room and he would no more have considered sitting on that grimy seat than drinking from that foul bowl.

What it did have was privacy.

After locking the door, he’d opened the case and taken out the gun, examining it in the light for the very first time. And noticed another unusual feature besides the obvious one, the silencer: the entire weapon, including the custom wood grips, was finished in dull black.

He’d found the catch on the base of the butt, fiddled with it, and felt it give as he pushed it toward the rear. Then he’d pulled out the magazine, and smiled his cherub’s smile. Because there were eight rounds in the clip, and since this was an automatic that reloaded itself on firing, there was another round in the chamber. Nine in all.

Now, at seven-thirty, closing up the store, he looked at the counter on which the briefcase rested, and again smiled. He’d been given a bonus. Whoever had loaded the gun had inserted a shell into the chamber in addition to a full clip of ten in the butt. Eleven to start with, two fired, nine remaining—one more than he had expected.

And when those rounds were finished, so was he with the gun. No purchases of shells to connect him to the killings. Nothing at all to connect him to the killings.

He left the store, drawing the grilled metal gate closed behind him, and locking it with the heavy chain and padlock.

Crime was a real problem in this town.

When Mel reached the restaurant, he saw Beth-Anne standing outside. Which surprised him. True, he was twenty minutes late—he’d had to cover half of L.A. to get angel-dusted pot on such short notice—but why wasn’t she waiting inside in comfort?

Then he realized the Tarpon Fishery’s parking lot was empty except for Beth-Anne’s Javelin and his Mustang.

“Damn,” he said, running over to her. “Forgot they’re closed on Mondays.”

She wore a sour expression along with her tight knit dress, and the way she was standing, hand on hip, showed she figured him for some sort of con.

No matter what her expression, her attitude, he loved the way she looked. God, but the broad had everything! In that wild pink knit, in spike heels that brought her a little over his five-eight, she was the prettiest blonde on the Strip.

He smiled, drinking her in. “Hey, baby, I gave up kiddy scams like running out of gas and hitting on closed joints a long time ago. Besides, we can choose from a dozen seafood places.”

She nodded, but he could tell she was still pissed. So he decided not to wait. He took her arm and hurried her to his car, where he handed her the brown paper bag with the thick plastic bag inside.

She sniffed it, beginning to smile. “Dusted?”

He nodded. “Three full ounces.”

She leaned toward him from the passenger’s seat. Her lips brushed his cheek.

“And then there’s something a little heavier,” he said. He reached into his breast pocket and took out the bulging wallet, and from it the thick, rubber-banded sheaf of crisp hundred-dollar bills. He riffled it under her nose.

“Ummm!” she exclaimed, reaching. “Smells like two or three grand!”

He let her take it. “Five. For our second honeymoon. Vegas or wherever. Right here in L.A. if you want. Clothes and jewelry and anything that makes you happy.”

“Great!” She began to put the money in her purse.

He laughed, and took it back and put it away. “First the reconciliation.”

“All right,” she murmured. “Let’s pick up some Chinese or fried chicken and go to your place.”

“How about picking up your clothes? I’m talking about a permanent deal.”

Her green eyes were on him, and they were warm. “One step at a time, black beauty.” She leaned over and kissed him again, on the mouth this time. “Step one,” she said, and her hand pressed his thigh and began to slide upward.

He hadn’t kissed her, held her, in almost three months. He was so hungry for her he was trembling. But he pushed her away. “Not in the parking lot.”

He began to drive, saying they’d pick up her car in the morning. He drove two blocks, reaching out to touch her short-cropped platinum hair, her soft cheek, telling her how much he’d missed her, how much he loved her. . . and her hand returned to his thigh.

He went another block before she reached his crotch.

“Remember our first time? On your lap in the Fairfax Drive-In movie? You couldn’t wait, black beauty. I’ll bet you can’t now.”

He wanted the comfort of his bed. He wanted the pleasure of her naked body stretched out beside his. But she began squeezing, and he just had to stop.

They were on a side street somewhere between Santa Monica and Fountain, and it was very dark. She rolled a joint and they shared it. It was heavy junk because of the dust, and they lost all restraint. He had her boobs out and was kissing them. She had his cock out and was stroking it.

And then she bent her head and took him in her mouth. He grasped her head with both hands, pressing down, making her deep-throat him, loving her gargling sounds, loving the sight of his woman sucking him . . .

The voice said, “Filth! You’re forcing her! Black filth!”

Mel jerked his head to the left, to his open window.

Beth-Anne straightened.

They both saw the fat man. And the long gun.

“He wasn’t forcing me!” Beth-Anne said. “If that’s what you’re worried about, forget it!”

“She’s my wife, Mel said, shoving his wilting penis back inside his fly. And knowing what he knew about Whitey, added, “She’s Negro too, but it doesn’t show,” Negro because some nuts hated the word black.

The gun was in the window, but the man didn’t seem sure what to do. So Mel reached for the ignition, still talking: “Too much wine with dinner. Spur of the moment. Married folks on a lark. You got every right to be disgusted. Never happen again.”

Beth-Anne was frozen, eyes glued to the gun. Her big show-girl tits were hanging out, and the fat man was staring at them. Mel didn’t know if that would help or hurt and was ready to burn rubber.

“Get your hand away!” the fat man said, and Mel let go of the key. The fat man looked around quickly, and so did Mel, and there was no one there, no one to help.

“Show me your licenses,” the fat man said. “If your last names match, I’ll let you go.”

Mel smiled, relief washing over him like a cool wave. He turned to Beth-Anne. “Make yourself presentable, dear.”

She said, “Presentable?” and then, “Oh!” and began stuffing her boobs back inside her dress.

The fat man leaned closer, breathing loudly. The gun moved inside the car, right in front of Mel’s face, which wasn’t very professional. Mel could grab it . . .

But he was the wrong guy for heroics. Besides, it could go off in Beth-Anne’s direction.

And why bother when the licenses would prove they were married and the freak would let them go?

Mel took out his wallet, and only then remembered the five thousand. He began to sweat. If he lost the money, he knew he would lose Beth-Anne. And Christ, he hated to wait more months!

The gun hiccupped and jerked in front of his face, then drew back out of the window. Mel turned to Beth-Anne. She was falling over against the opposite door. There was a sharp smell, a burning smell, and Mel remembered it from Italy and Monte Casino where he’d been a cook in Mark Clark’s Eighth Army and there’d been no need for cooks during three terrible days of assault when the burning smell and dead men had been everywhere.

Beth-Anne had a small spot close to her ear. It leaked a little.

Mel said, “Dear Jesus,” and turned to his window; turned directly into that extended barrel. He wanted to beg and grovel and live. And said, “Dirty white fuck!” and reached for the gun.

As soon as he walked into the house, Lila went at him.

“What were you doing in the back yard just now? And don’t play dumb . . . I heard you clearly. And where were you anyway! I called the store and it was closed two hours ago!”

Before he conld begin to answer, she said, “Just look at you, Frank Berdon! Your hair . . . your face!”

He stepped quickly from the kitchen to the foyer mirror, expecting blood . . . and there was nothing. His hair was slightly mussed in front; he was somewhat sweaty, somewhat pale.

He stepped back into the kitchen, to where she sat at the table, a cup in her hand. “I’d like some coffee too,” he said. He spoke quietly, to make sure his voice would remain steady.

“Then get it!”

He went to the electric coffee machine and poured a cup. His hand shook, and he blocked it from her view by turning away. He took several long sips before facing her. “That lilac bush in back is dying.”

She began to say something about it being dark out, and he interrupted: “A little water in the morning, a little at night, and maybe we’ll save it. It takes only a moment to turn on the hose.”

“Idiocy,” she muttered, but she was subsiding.

“As for being late,” he said, raising his cup, his hand steadier now, “I drove Martin home. His car wouldn’t start.” He came to the table and sat down. “We pushed it, and I guess I over-exerted myself.” He brushed at his hair, his face. “Could you get me something to eat?”

“Over-exerted yourself,” she muttered, rising. “You were deathly pale.”

“Short of breath. Comes of being overweight. We really must stick to our diets, dear.”

She worked around the stove. “I exerted myself a bit today too.” Her voice had softened, and he recognized that sudden change of tone.

“My mother?”

She turned. “That’s why I was so testy just now. I needed you tonight.”

He sat waiting, the blood beginning to pound in his temples. When she hesitated, he said, “I’ll just go to her room . . .”

“She’s not there. She’s at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Intensive Care.”

He was standing without knowing it, “Oh, God.” He started for the foyer.

“There’s no point in going now, Frank. She’s in a coma. They’ll call when she regains consciousness.”

She made him sit down and served him dinner. He ate a lot, gulping, asking for more, as he always did when upset. She told him what had happened.

At four, she’d been preparing the lamb stew he was eating. His mother had come into the kitchen and begun making herself a sandwich. Lila had stopped her, saying it would spoil her dinner. His mother had been in an “irrational mood,” and stormed out of the house. Lila had followed immediately, but before she could catch the old lady, there was an accident.

“She walked right in front of a car.”

Frank soaked up gravy with a fifth slice of bread, and groaned. “Christ, couldn’t you have let her have her sandwich?”

“It’s too late for that, Frank! I blamed myself enough while waiting here for you!” She wiped at her eyes.

He muttered, “Yes, sorry. What did the doctors say?”

“Really, she was lucky. It could have been much worse. She has a broken hip. In falling, she also fractured her skull, and that’s causing the coma. But they feel there’s a good chance she’ll regain consciousness . . .”

The phone rang. “Maybe that’s the hospital,” she said, and ran to the wall unit near the foyer. He took another slice of bread.

“This is Mrs. Berdon,” she said. “Oh, wonderful! We’ll be right over. I know it’s late, but Dr. Meade promised we could see her, if only for a moment. Yes . . . thank you!”

She hung up. “She’s regained consciousness! We can go now, Frank.”

He was sagging in his chair. He was stuffed with food, emptied of emotion, eyes heavy, truly exhausted.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Have to lie down a moment,” he mumbled, and pulled himself out of the chair and stumbled to the bedroom, where he fell face forward on the bed and into a deep sleep.

The man and woman had been found at about eleven p.m.; the first black-and-white had arrived at eleven-twenty, the ambulance almost immediately afterward. Larry Admer had been called at home, and pulled up to the scene as the ambulance was disappearing down the street, siren winding into high gear. He took the two responding officers aside to get whatever information they had.

“Middle-aged male Negro,” one young officer said, tilting his notebook toward a street lamp, “and young female Caucasian, both shot with a small-caliber weapon.” He pointed at a dark Mustang parked at the curb, an officer standing guard over it. “They were seated in that car, the black behind the wheel, the girl in the passenger’s seat. They might’ve been making out because the girl’s dress was open and disarranged at the top, the black’s fly unzipped. Neither was robbed.”

“Head wounds?”

“Correct. The girl in the left temple. The black in the upper jaw, obviously a missed headshot.”

“A bullet in the jaw killed him?”

“He’s not dead, Lieutenant.”

“Way to go!” Admer said, thinking of being able to show Diana that justice could triumph.

“But he’s in bad shape, according to the ambulance intern. Looks like bone and bullet fragments entered the brain. Anyway, he wasn’t conscious to tell us anything.”

Admer sighed. “What hospital?”

“I didn’t get that.” He looked at his partner, who was as boyish as he was. “You get it, Matt?”

“Nearest hospital to here: Cedars-Sinai.”

“Who found them?”

The first officer turned toward the entrance to a two-story, motel-like apartment complex, where an elderly woman stood holding a small white dog. She was hugging the animal and crying.

“A Mrs. Clausen. She was taking her dog for a walk. Came out of that entrance and passed the car and heard what she thought was a groan. She didn’t stop, but on the way back she again heard the sound, and this time she glanced in.”

“ID on the victims?”

“Get the stuff,” the officer said to his partner. Matt hurried toward a black-and-white parked across the street.

“Anyone hear the shots?”

“We haven’t canvassed the neighborhood, but no one’s come forward. Mrs. Clausen lives in that ground-floor apartment right off the street.” He pointed at an open window almost in a direct line with the Mustang. “She says she was resting in bed beside the window, wide awake. But old ladies get hard of hearing, right?”

Admer glanced over at her. “Doesn’t look that old. And two gunshots almost in her ear. She heard your questions all right, didn’t she?”

The officer nodded.

Admer looked up and down the street. A civilian male stood watching them from across the way. Three more were clustered half a block north, near the corner.

“Gunshots on a quiet street like this . . . we should have had a mob scene.” He made some notes, did some thinking.

Within the last three days, four people had been shot in the head, counting the black’s wound as a missed headshot. There’d been no robbery. No sexual assault, though he wanted to ask the black about the girl’s disarranged dress. No discernible motive in three of the four killings, the cabby cum Vegas-dealer being a possible professional hit.

The two in the Mustang had been found four blocks from Diana’s sister, who had been found six blocks from the cabby, all in the West Los Angeles area, not far from the Sunset Strip.

No gunshots had been heard in any of the four assaults, and this was beginning to worry him . . .

Two cars pulled up, coming from opposite directions. Detectives Marv Rodin and Vic Chasen got out of the one across the street. A fingerprint specialist from Forensic named DiLorca got out of the other, indicating DHQ was also beginning to worry.

“Go talk to them,” Larry told the young officer, giving his men a wave and pointing at the Mustang.

The other officer, Matt, was back with a large, white plastic bag. It bore a department-store logo, and Larry said, “L.A. County issue, right?

“Since Prop Thirteen, Matt said, “we even provide our own toilet paper.

They were both joking. The police had done well, despite shrinking funds. This town, like New York, like Chicago, like any large American city, was always in a criminal state of siege, and no one was willing to cut defense funds too deeply.

Larry reached into the bag.

“Wait’ll you see the loaf that jigg was carrying. You can really write off robbery in this case!”

Larry took out a bulging wallet. He handed the plastic bag to the officer and counted the bills. “Five thousand rubber-banded, and eighty loose.” He put the money back in the wallet. “Lucky you weren’t alone,” he said, smiling to show it was another joke.

“That’s what you call lucky?”

Larry read the driver’s license. “I certainly hope Mr. Melvin Crane lives. I’d like to meet a man who carries five grand in pocket money.”

The woman’s wallet held considerably less cash—eight dollars. Her name was Beth-Anne Crane, indicating she was related to the black. Which blew a possibility he’d been shaping up in his mind: that she was a hooker and the man was a customer. It figured, didn’t it, she being young and white and he being older and black? At least in and around the Sunset Strip it figured, especially in light of a possible psycho hooker-killer.

“If you’re wondering how he could make that kind of bread,” Matt was saying, “this might give you a clue.” He handed over a brown paper bag. Inside was a smaller plastic bag, and inside that a considerable quantity of marijuana. “The pocket scale shows over three ounces,” Matt said. “My nose says PCP, angel dusted.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have personal experience smoking that dust poison, would you?”

Matt smiled slightly. “If it was as bad as they tell us, half a million or more in L.A. rock audiences would be dead or crazy.”

“You like rock concerts?”

“They still legal? If so, I confess.”

Larry handed him the dope, nodding sourly. The officer walked back to his black-and-white, and locked the plastic bag in the trunk. Young, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three, and like many of his contemporaries, in as well as out of the department, with a fine contempt for the drug laws. Always comparing them to Prohibition: always asking him if he’d have given up his beer, his Scotch. What really griped him was he didn’t have an answer. And what griped him even more was that he knew, rationally, that alcoholism was a bigger problern than drug addiction, and felt, irrationally, that drugs were filthy.

He wondered whether Diana was into any kind of drugs.

Marv called from the Mustang. Larry walked over. The stocky detective held up a flattened piece of metal. “Lodged in the door jamb. Twenty-two, for sure. Now we’ll look for the other slug.”

“From what I hear, it’s in the survivor’s head, in bits and pieces.”

“Tell the doctors to save it, if not the spook.”

Larry gave him the mandatory chuckle, and headed for his car and the hospital.

The moment he flashed his badge at the Emergency desk, the young and attractive black nurse showed that prejudice worked two ways. “What did he do that you had to shoot him in the head?” she asked coolly, “pass a traffic signal?”

He smiled, and explained that Melvin Crane had been shot by an unknown assailant, and that in order to find that assailant the police had to interview Mr. Crane.

“I’m sorry,” she said, opening a folder, “Mr. Crane won’t be allowed visitors, police included, for quite a while. We’re here to save lives, not conduct investigations.”

He nodded slowly, saying nothing, until she finally looked up. He handed her a card with his station telephone number and said, “The moment he regains consciousness, someone is to call me. Or else you might have more Melvin Cranes for Intensive Care and the morgue.”

Since she still didn’t seem impressed, or cooperative, he asked for the doctor on duty . . . and began repeating it all again to a young, bearded character who heard him out with one ear, while the other was tuned to the pretty black nurse’s murmured comments about Melvin Crane’s “very critical” condition. “All right, Lieutenant,” Kevin Riley, boy-doctor, said abruptly, and walked away.

Larry stood there another moment wondering whether to call his commander at home, or to file a complaint with the Chiefs office at Parker Center.

But official channels had never been effective for him, and he went out to his car. He would return tomorrow morning, but not to Emergency; he’d walk into Intensive Care to see Mr. Crane’s condition for himself.

He had been about to shower when DHQ had called him on the mislabeled “double killing,” and as soon as he reached his apartment he stripped and stepped into a strong, hot stream. He completed the relaxing process with a Scotch and water, and reached for the phone, thinking to call Diana and discuss the possibility of a solution to her sister’s murder.

But he didn’t dial her number. Nothing to say yet, really. And he wanted to give her straight dope, no bullshit, no con. Just Numbah One info, as they used to say in ’Nam.

Instead, he called Roberta. The little blonde secretary was eager, and drove over from Studio City in twenty minutes. She was wearing a green slicker-style raincoat, which surprisd him since it hadn’t rained since June. But then she took it off and was nude underneath.

He was surprised again, when it didn’t mean a hell of a lot.