Читать книгу The Cover Girl Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

Lindsey and Marvia Plum took Jamie and Hakeem to an old Tahoe restaurant for breakfast. It wasn’t glitzy and it wasn’t full of yuppies in the latest L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer ski-wear but the food was good and the portions were generous.

The boys were not pleased at missing their weekend in the snow, but Lindsey and Plum promised them another shot at it as soon as they could get away. Normally Lindsey was the one who worked Monday through Friday. Since he’d moved from International Surety’s Walnut Creek office to SPUDS, he pretty well set his own days and hours.

Marvia Plum was the one who had to fight for the shifts she wanted. A homicide sergeant on the Berkeley Police Department had to be available when the department needed her. Murderers didn’t knock off after six o’clock in the evening. In fact, they got busy after the sun went down, and peaked just about when most citizens were watching the evening news or crawling into their beds.

But this time it was Lindsey who had got the call, and this time it was Lindsey who clicked his heels, saluted smartly and did as he was commanded: Find the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch.

He dropped Marvia and both youngsters at her house. She would take care of them, get Hakeem White back to his parents and take her own son to her parents’ house. They would spend the evening there. Marvia spent more time with her mother since her father’s death. Not that Gloria Plum needed it. She had always been an island unto herself. But somehow, it seemed to Lindsey, Marvia drew strength from being in the house where she was raised, and where her father had lived almost until the end.

Lindsey left them at Oxford Street in Berkeley. Marvia would drive Jamie and Hakeem to Bonita Street in her classic Mustang. Once the boys talked things over on the ride back from Tahoe, they decided that their adventure would make better telling than an ordinary weekend excursion would have. They’d seen the helicopter crash—it almost crashed on them. They’d helped rescue the pilot, Hakeem had been on the national news and Jamie Wilkerson was a real network cameraman.

Lindsey’s computer search had turned up hundreds of books with “Death” in their titles, from Death About Face by Frank Kane, 1948, to Death-Wish Green by Frances Crane, 1960. Lots of Death in’s too. There was Death in the Devil’s Acre by Anne Perry, 1985, and there was Death in the Diving Pool by Carol Carnac, 1940. That was where Death in the Ditch belonged, right between Death in the Devil’s Acre and Death in the Diving Pool. But it wasn’t there.

Maybe it wasn’t a book at all. Maybe it was—what? What would have a cover with a girl on it, with a title like Death in the Ditch, other than a book? A magazine? A record album? A pack of trading cards? They were making some pretty weird trading cards these days, everything from famous gangsters to friendly dictators. They weren’t restricted to the athletes and movie stars that Lindsey remembered collecting in grammar school, but Vansittart’s life policy had been issued in 1951. If the designated beneficiary hadn’t been changed in later years, that would narrow the field.

He’d have to check on that, but first, after dropping Marvia and the youngsters, he headed for Walnut Creek. He pulled his rebuilt Volvo 544 into the driveway and parked beside the silver-gray Oldsmobile that had been parked there increasingly often these past few months.

Inside the house he found Mother’s new friend, Gordon Sloane, sitting in the living room with his shoes off and his feet on the ottoman. A CD was playing ii it sounded like Mozart—and Sloane held a nearly full martini glass by its stem. He looked up, clearly surprised, when Lindsey came in.

“I thought you were up in Tahoe. Your mother said—”

“That was the plan. Had to come back.”

“I hope nothing’s wrong.”

Before Lindsey could answer, Mother came into the room. She wore an apron over a pair of jeans and a warm blouse. Her hair had gone to gray—every time Lindsey noticed a change in her it was a shock to him—and she carried a wooden salad bowl and a pair of hinged tongs. She looked like everybody’s perfect mom—by Norman Rockwell out of June Cleaver. Lindsey embraced her and planted a kiss on her cheek. She smelled like flowers and cooking.

Lindsey said, “I guess you two were planning an evening at home. I can make myself scarce.”

Mother smiled. “We wouldn’t throw you out of your own home. There’s plenty of food.”

Lindsey looked past her, at Sloane. Sloane nodded. Lindsey said, “Okay. I’d better go wash up. I’m feeling kind of stale.”

At dinner he told them about the events at Tahoe, about Jamie Wilkerson’s debut as a network cameraman, and about Desmond Richelieu’s telephone call.

Sloane said, “We caught part of the report on TV. It was in this morning’s papers, too. They’re going nuts over Vansittart. I didn’t realize you were involved.”

Lindsey reached for a slab of pot roast. “Only by accident. Of course Jamie’s beside himself.”

“He’s going to be Hobart’s son,” Mother offered. “When he marries Marvia. You know Marvia, Gordon. Such a lovely girl. No, woman, we don’t say girl any more.”

Lindsey couldn’t suppress his grin. “That’s all right, Mother. It’s a small enough matter.”

“Well, I try to do what’s right. Don’t I, Gordon?”

Sloane agreed. Mother tried to do what was right. And she did amazingly well. After decades in a twilight world, not knowing whether Ike was President or Ronald Reagan, forgetting half the time that her husband had died in the Korean War and forgetting half the time that that war had been over for decades and that her son was a grown man approaching middle age, Mother had come around.

Something had penetrated the fog. Something like a miracle.

After dinner was over and the dishes cleaned and put away—six hands made quick work—Mother turned on the TV. It was getting late, they had lingered over coffee, and the evening news was just coming on.

There was a follow-up to the Vansittart story. The Coast Guard had dropped a plumb line, trying to find the helicopter. Nothing came up. The lake was too deep at that point, the line couldn’t even reach the bottom.

There was a canned biography of Vansittart. The news people had turned up his high school and college yearbook photos, old newspaper shots and black-and-white footage of the millionaire. Toasting the mayor of San Francisco at some civic dinner, shaking hands with the governor of California at another.

Vansittart must have been quite a fellow. Apparently he’d been ambassador to several postage-stamp nations in the 1960s and 70s, obviously the reward for generous campaign donations to the Presidents of that era.

And newsreel footage of Vansittart escorting movie stars to premieres and rolling dice at the gaming tables in Reno and Las Vegas. Yes, quite a fellow. The reporter in Reno mentioned that Vansittart had been traveling by chartered helicopter to a planned seventy-fifth birthday party—his own—when the ’copter crashed and sank into Lake Tahoe, taking Vansittart with it.

In the morning the Oldsmobile was still in the driveway. Lindsey got into his blue round-back Volvo and headed downtown to the International Surety office. Now that he was assigned to SPUDS he could have moved out, rented space for himself, hired a secretary. But he preferred to work out of the office where he’d worked for so many years.

Not that the atmosphere was perfect. Elmer Mueller, Lindsey’s successor as area manager, was a loathsome bigot, and Mueller’s hand-picked office manager, Kari Fielding, was as vicious as her boss. But in a strange way Lindsey enjoyed seeing them once in a while. It was the way you enjoy having a really miserable day once in a while, he told himself: it makes you appreciate the rest of your life.

But it was Saturday and he was alone in the office. Agent claims would be filed directly through KlameNet. Anything else could wait until Monday morning.

Lindsey used the office computer to log onto the mainframe at National. He printed out the text of Vansittart’s policy, checked the history file, verified that the peculiar description of the beneficiary had been there from the outset. The only changes over the years had come about when the alternate bennie had changed its name. Originally the Chicago Artists and Models Mutual Aid Society, it had become the National Welfare League for Graphic Creators, then the World Fund for Indigent Artists.

Each time the organization changed its name there was a new address and a new set of officers. Well, in forty-plus years, that wasn’t especially surprising. The current address was 101 California Street, San Francisco. Lindsey knew the building well, a gleaming, modern high-rise full of high-profile law firms and corporate offices. A disgruntled ex-client of one of the law firms had burst in with an arsenal of assault weapons one day and reduced the California Bar Association membership sizably. Since then there was better security in the building.

The current President of WFIA was one Roger St. John Cooke. Vice President was Cynthia Cooke. The file showed that the Cookes had been running the fund for a decade. It sounded like a nice little mom ’n’ pop non-profit foundation. The world was full of do-gooders, including those who did well by doing good.

Lindsey made a note to expect some input from the Cookes. (Brother and sister? Husband and wife? Mother and son?) There would be a polite phone call, then a lawyer letter. How handy, they probably wouldn’t even get wet if they had to visit their attorneys on a rainy San Francisco day. But Lindsey wasn’t going to worry too much about the contingent bennies today.

His job was.… He must have been listening to too much music lately. His mind was setting his task to music. A silent orchestra played inside his head as he sang along.

Was the tune Happy Birthday to You…?

Find the girl on the book, Find the girl on the book, It’s Death in the Di-itch.…

Or maybe it was Beethoven’s Fifth.…

Locate the girl! Locate the girl! Locatethegirllocatethe-girllocatethegirl.…

He found himself giggling into the monitor screen. Maybe this job was making him crazy. He shut down the computer, left the office, grabbed a snack downstairs and walked to his car. Traffic in the Caldecott Tunnel was light.

It was a gray day in Berkeley. Lindsey was dressed casually, a heavy sweater over a woolen shirt. He parked in a city garage just off Telegraph Avenue and headed for Cody’s, the town’s premiere bookstore. A clerk at the center desk offered to help him. She had short hair and a spectacularly beautiful face. She wore a Dan Quayle for President tee shirt. Lindsey didn’t know what to make of that, so he didn’t comment.

He asked if she knew of a book called Death in the Ditch. No author, no publisher, but it was probably first issued in 1951 or so. The clerk smiled. “I doubt that it’s still in print. Unless it was a classic of some kind.”

“I don’t know what kind of book it was, except there was a girl on the cover.”

The clerk raised her eyebrows. “A little girl, you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

“Or a woman. A grown-up woman.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

The clerk turned away. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ll look in Books in Print. On the CD-ROM.” She punched some keys on a computer. Mysterious boxes and symbols raced across the monitor screen. Finally it settled down. The clerk turned back to Lindsey. “Sorry. Doesn’t show anything like that. Death in Venice? Death in the Bathroom? Death in a Warm, Dark Place?”

Lindsey shook his head.

The clerk nodded. “I didn’t think so. Tell you what.” Lindsey had one hand on the counter, and the clerk put hers on top of his. “Maybe you could try Moe’s next door. First floor, they have a lot of used paperbacks. That might be your best bet.”

Lindsey thanked her and walked next door. It wasn’t raining so he didn’t get wet, even though he wasn’t at 101 California Street.

The clerk was right, Moe’s had thousand upon thousands of used paperbacks. Trouble was, they were arranged by author, not title. Finding Death in the Ditch—if Moe’s had it at all—was about as likely as dropping a pebble from the Goodyear blimp and hoping to hit the right spectator in a stadium full of football fans.

But again a clerk came to the rescue. “You know the San Francisco Mystery Book Store? Twenty-fourth Street? If anybody can help you, they can.”

Lindsey drove across the Bay Bridge, took Duboce Street to Market and turned left on Castro. On a Saturday afternoon the city’s gay community was out in force, but something struck Lindsey as odd. There were teenagers and twenty-something’s and there were gray heads and lined faces, but the thirty- and forty-somethings were missing from the scene. Those, he realized, were the population who’d been living it up fifteen years ago, when the HIV virus was spreading like a stealth disease.

At Twenty-fourth Street he found a parking place and walked to the mystery specialty store. The place was crammed with books and book-lovers. He squeezed through narrow aisles and reached the upstairs room. Hardcovers and paperbacks were intermixed. There must be thousands of them. If Lindsey had been a mystery fan—he was not—he would have been in paradise.

But again, the arrangement was alphabetical by author, not title. He squeezed back down the narrow staircase. A blonde woman with sharp, attractive features sat at a tiny, battered desk. She had a Styrofoam cup of coffee wedged between stacks of books and papers. Maybe bookstores attracted good-looking women. Was that thought politically correct?

Lindsey asked the blonde woman if she knew a book called Death in the Ditch, published around 1951.

The woman frowned, shook her head, then said, “I never heard of it. You know anything about it?”

“Only that there was a girl on the cover.”

The blonde said, “You sure of that? Cover, not jacket?”

“As far as I know. I’ve never seen it.”

“Then it’s probably a paperback. There weren’t as many published back in the early ’fifties, that was just before the big explosion. You know, when Bantam got going, then Ballantine and Ace. But ’51—there were some pretty obscure outfits got started around then, and didn’t last too long.”

She took a sip from the Styrofoam cup. The cream in it, or whatever she used, had formed a thin scum on top of the coffee. The blonde grimaced and set the cup back down. “Maybe it’ll get better as it ages.” She looked up at Lindsey. “What you really ought to do is, you ought to talk to Scotty Anderson. You know Scotty Anderson?”

Lindsey shook his head.

“Great collector. Real scholar. If you need an old paperback, if anybody in the world has it, Scotty does.”

Lindsey grinned. “Does he live here? I mean, nearby?”

“East Bay.” The blonde shuddered. “You want his address, phone number?”

Lindsey did.

“Let’s see.” She moved a stack of publishers’ catalogs onto the floor, uncovering a plastic Rolodex. She flipped the lid open and read an address and phone number aloud. Lindsey wondered if her tone was what they used to call a whiskey voice.

Lindsey flipped his pocket organizer open and jotted down the information. “He won’t mind my calling?”

“Just tell Scotty I sent you.” The blonde told Lindsey her name and he added that to the organizer. He slipped his gold International Surety pencil and the organizer into his pocket, thanked the blonde and headed for a pay phone.

Anderson was at home. Lindsey made an appointment for Sunday afternoon and hung up. Maybe he was getting somewhere.

He called Marvia’s house and got her answering machine, then tried her mother’s house. Gloria Plum answered. Marvia had taken her son, Jamie Wilkerson, and his friend, Hakeem White, to the mall to make up for their canceled snow weekend.

Somehow Gloria managed to blame Lindsey for the canceled weekend. Somehow Gloria managed to blame Lindsey for most things she was unhappy about.

This is really swell, Lindsey thought. I’m not even married and I’ve got mother-in-law problems already. He went home.

Mother had planned to go out for the evening with Gordon Sloane. They’d been dating—How can your mother be dating? Lindsey wondered—for almost a year now. They’d met when Mother got a job, her first real, out-of-the-home job, at Sloane’s company, Consolidated Alpha. Whatever that meant.

Sloane worked in product development. Mother was a secretary, not a bad job for a woman entering the job market for the first time in her late fifties. She took to a computer as if she’d been born to use one, and she loved her work. But Sloane.…

Lindsey had never been able to learn what products Sloane developed. Consolidated Alpha was one of those shadowy Bay Area corporations that seemed to have something to do with the University of California, or maybe with the Lawrence Labs, or with the Department of Energy, or maybe Defense.

Maybe they were building neutron bombs.

Maybe they had a crashed UFO with seventeen frozen aliens in a secret lab.

Lindsey fixed himself some dinner and tried to vedge out in front of the TV. He couldn’t get interested in anything. He went for a walk around the block. Mother had spoken of selling the house and buying a condo. Then she and Sloane had started talking about marriage. And Lindsey had asked Marvia to marry him enough times, and she seemed to be edging slowly, ever so slowly, toward doing it.

One way or another, Lindsey’s comfortable life in the nest was coming to an end, that was for sure.

When he got home there was still no sign of Mother, no silver-gray Oldsmobile in the driveway. He showered and climbed into bed, but sleep would not come. He went downstairs and stared at the television set. It stared back at him with its single eye. He didn’t even pick up the remote. He knew that he and the TV had nothing to say to each other.

He walked to the single, sparsely-populated bookshelf in the living room and plucked a book that had stood there unopened for years. It was The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton. It was wonderful.

The next day, Sunday, he kept his appointment with Scotty Anderson. Finding Anderson’s home in Castro Valley wasn’t difficult. Anderson lived in an apartment in a standard, low-rise, 1970’s development. The neighborhood was marked with strip-malls and broad, treeless streets. The parking lot outside the apartment was full of ten-year-old Toyotas and deteriorating pickup trucks. A couple of motorcycles stood at the end of the lot. Even those showed signs of neglect.

Lindsey rang the bell beside Anderson’s door. Anderson was a massive individual. He looked as if he’d combed his mouse-brown hair once, and had shopped with taste and care at Goodwill. He clenched an unlit match in his teeth. Well, at least the sulfur end was outside his mouth. When he greeted Lindsey, Lindsey felt as if his hand was being absorbed by a great, soft animal.

But the inside of Anderson’s apartment was very different from its exterior. It was a combination library, museum and shrine. The air outside might be cold and damp in winter and hot and dry in summer; inside Scotty Anderson’s apartment it was kept at a steady temperature and humidity. The Library of Congress had nothing on Scotty Anderson.

“So you’re doing some research on paperbacks.” Anderson put one bear-like hand on Lindsey’s shoulder while he closed the outside door with the other. “Come on in. Let me show you around.”

Lindsey had never seen a residence—at least he assumed it was Anderson’s residence—so jammed with books. The walls were covered with shelving packed with books. The room was divided into narrow passageways, little more than tunnels, between rows of standing metal shelves. Books were everywhere. The ends of the rows were covered with posters advertising books, blowups of ads for books, reproductions of covers of books. Ninety-nine percent of them were paperbacks.

Anderson led Lindsey up one aisle and down the next, declaiming on cover artists, publishers, authors, points of distinction between first editions and later printings. Lindsey’s head was soon swimming.

Finally they reached a cramped room furnished as an office. Anderson gestured Lindsey to a battered wooden chair. He dropped his own bulk into another and leaned a massive arm on a desktop. There was a computer on the desk, a stack of reference books beside the computer and a row of file cabinets beside the desk. Anderson’s mouse-brown hair hung over his forehead. He wore a denim work shirt and ragged, faded khaki work pants.

Anderson looked at Lindsey expectantly.

“Death in the Ditch.”

Anderson grinned. He had large teeth. “Lovisi sent you, right?”

Lindsey shook his head. “Who’s Lovisi?”

“Come on, I know I’m a little late but does he want it fast or does he want it right? This ain’t easy. What did you say your name was? I know most of the collectors.” He peered into Lindsey’s face. His eyes were a pale blue. “I’m sorry, you don’t look familiar.”

“We’ve never met.”

“The draft is done. I’m really sorry, he’s been patient and I appreciate it. Another week. Two at the most.”

“I’m afraid you misunderstand. I’m not a bill collector.”

Anderson roared with laughter. “That wouldn’t worry me.”

“I’m with International Surety.” Lindsey reached for his wallet. Anderson flinched, then relaxed. Lindsey handed him a business card. “You see, there’s been a death. You may have heard about it.”

Anderson offered a look a bland inquiry.

“Albert Crocker Vansittart.”

Anderson waited.

“His helicopter crashed in Lake Tahoe. The pilot survived, Mr. Vansittart was lost. They’re going to try and find the wreckage, the University of Nevada is sending a team with fiber-optic equipment.”

Anderson closed his lips around the unlit match. “Right.” He nodded his massive head. “I heard something about that on the car radio.”

Okay. At least the guy had some awareness of the outside world.

“My company—International Surety—had issued a policy on Mr. Vansittart’s life. He hasn’t been formally declared dead as yet, that’s going to be a little problem. Who has jurisdiction, Placer County, California, or Washoe County, Nevada? And of course there’s no body as yet. If the fiber-optic scanner works, maybe we’ll have proof.”

Anderson frowned. “This is all fascinating stuff, I guess. But what does it have to do with me?” He tilted his head like a dog hearing an unfamiliar sound. “You sure Lovisi didn’t send you to collect? Or to pressure me?”

Lindsey sighed. “I promise you, Mr. Anderson, I haven’t an idea in the world who this Lovisi person is. And he certainly didn’t send me to do anything to you.”

“Okay.” Anderson stood up. He must have weighed close to 300 pounds, and if he wasn’t exactly in muscle beach shape, he was far from flabby. “Okay,” he repeated, “if Lovisi didn’t send you, how do you know about Death in the Ditch?”

“Vansittart. It was in Vansittart’s life policy. He was killed in the ’copter crash, at least it seems he was killed, and his insurance policy names his beneficiary as the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch.” Lindsey was going to say more, but the dawning light of comprehension had brightened Scotty Anderson’s face like an interior sun.

“Poor Lovisi. I’m going to have to revise the article, I can see that.”

This time Lindsey played the waiting game.

“Gary Lovisi runs Paperback Parade. It’s a collector’s journal.”

“For people who collect paperbacks,” Lindsey supplied.

“You got it. Interesting character. I remember when he started out, his stuff was so crude I couldn’t believe it. Like he was the Ed Wood of publishing. But he kept at it and now he turns out beautiful stuff. Beautiful.”

Good for him, Lindsey thought. But what does this have to do with me? He waited for Anderson to go on, and Anderson did.

“I promised Lovisi an article for Paperback Parade on the legendary Paige Publications. Everybody in the hobby claims he knows somebody who has some Paige books, even claims he’s seen one, but none of them turn up at the shows, none of them turn up in dealers’ catalogs.”

“Do they really exist?”

Anderson’s pale blue eyes lost their wide innocence. They narrowed and darkened and flashed. Anderson reached an oversized hand and clasped Lindsey by one wrist. He leaned forward so the unlit match clenched in his teeth nearly scraped Lindsey’s cheek.

Scotty Anderson cast a suspicious look to the left, then to the right. The match-head did scrape Lindsey’s face but Anderson ignored the contact.

“I have one,” he whispered.