Читать книгу The Classic Car Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 10

CHAPTER FIVE

Lindsey stood with Jayjay Smith, watching the ambulance disappear along Lakeside Drive. The old man hadn’t wanted to go, but he didn’t resist the two attendants for long. He could barely have weighed a hundred pounds, Lindsey thought. They hadn’t exactly overpowered him, just taken him by the elbows and muscled him onto a gurney and strapped him down, and he was on his way almost before he knew what was happening. A metaphor for human existence.

Old Mr. Kleiner was hardly an Erich von Stroheim, after all.

Lindsey looked at Jayjay Smith. Her eyes were bright with tears, and even as he watched, a tear spilled over one eyelash and made a streak down her cheek. She dipped her head, lifted her shoulder, blotted the tear on her shirt without lifting a hand.

Lindsey didn’t know what to do. How could he comfort Jayjay Smith? He hardly knew the woman. Should he put his arm around her, offer her his handkerchief, look away and pretend not to notice while she composed herself?

Jayjay Smith solved the problem for him.

“God damned sons of bitches!” She turned toward Lindsey. “God damned fucking sons of bitches!”

“Who?”

“Whoever stole that Duesenberg! They didn’t know they were killing that man, but they were. Murderers! I hope they shoot the bastards when they catch them!”

She stared at Lindsey as if she were seeing him for the first time. “Come on,” she commanded.

They went inside the mansion.

Jayjay Smith led Lindsey into a room he hadn’t seen before, opened a liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Johnny Walker black. “Drink the good stuff or don’t dilute your water,” she said. “My mommy told me that. You want some?”

Lindsey shook his head.

Smith filled a squat glass with scotch and drank off a hefty portion of it. She put her glass down and wiped her eyes with a cocktail napkin, holding the bottle by its neck all the time. “You don’t do that to an old man,” she said. “You don’t do that. Let him live out his damned life, let him die in peace. I hate this town and the thieves and whores and pimps and pushers! Bastards, doing that to an old man.”

Lindsey made an incoherent sound, something vaguely intended to let her know that he was still there and paying attention to what she said.

She raise the bottle toward him. “You sure?”

He shook his head. “I really, ah, have to.…”

“Sure.”

“You’ll be all right? I mean, there’s nobody else here now.”

“Thanks a lot. No, we don’t seem to have any serial killers in the neighborhood this month.”

“Uh, will you have dinner?” He looked self-consciously at his digital Seiko. It wasn’t quite mealtime but it was getting there. “Do you have food?”

She put the bottle down and raised the glass to her lips. Lindsey heard her laugh into the scotch, worrying for an instant that she would choke, but she lifted her face again. “I’m really all right,” she said. “Thanks for offering, but I’ll just take a sandwich and climb in bed with a book. Unless you want to.…”

He didn’t know what she was going to say, and he didn’t know how he would react. “No, I have to get home,” he said. “Mother, you see. She.…”

Jayjay Smith laughed and saw him to the door. He picked up his pocket organizer on the way. “I’ll need some more information.” He saw the look on her face. “Not now, not now, of course. But I’ll need to know where the Duesenberg was kept. Is the garage here on the grounds or.… And.…”

“Yes, yes. Another day. I want to phone the hospital now, you get in touch when you need to. Don’t worry.”

She almost shoved him out the front door. Rush hour was starting. Civil servants and lawyers and ordinary citizens were pouring from the county courthouse across the street. Commuters were rushing for home. Those with no homes to rush to were rushing to the bars on Fourteenth Street.

Lindsey walked back to Broadway, found his car in the garage where he’d parked it and paid the fee, carefully filing the receipt to accompany his expense account. He headed for the freeway and started for home. The traffic was already heavy, but there was no point in trying to wait for it to grow lighter; the rush of commuters crossing the bridge from San Francisco would only pour onto the freeways and make them worse than ever.

He got home drenched with sweat. The air was chilly and moist, typical for March, and the stress of dealing with freeway traffic got worse every year. Life in Walnut Creek was no bargain, not any more at least. But it certainly beat Oakland with its filth and its crime and its poverty.

Lindsey left the Hyundai standing in the driveway and walked to the front door. He let himself in and heard the sound of something frightening coming from the kitchen.

Mother was standing at the sink, slicing raw vegetables. She was laughing raucously, laughing at nothing. She’d been doing so well lately that Lindsey was able to leave her alone part of the time, able even to let her use kitchen implements. But now—

She had heard him close the front door, and she turned to face him, a manic grin on her face.

The laughter turned into words and he realized that she was singing. “Ha-ha-ha-haa-ha, ha-ha-ha-haa-ha, it’s the Woody Woodpecker song!”

Lindsey let out his breath in relief. She’d been watching TV again, watching cartoons. They were the only things that she would watch in color, everything else had to be black-and-white or she became agitated, almost hysterical. There had been color movies in her girlhood, but no color television. Movies on TV therefore had to be seen in black-and-white. But cartoons could be in color.

Go figure.

They had meat loaf and lima beans and lettuce salad for dinner. Afterwards Mother made coffee. Lindsey asked for a cup and Mother frowned. “You’ll stunt your growth, Hobo. My little Hobo. You want to be big and strong when Daddy gets home from Korea.”

“It’s all right, Mother. I’m all grown up now. See?” Lindsey stood up. He carried their dishes to the sink, then came back and stood beside the table. “And the war is over, Mother. And Father was killed. I’m sorry, Mother. Don’t you remember?”

He looked into her eyes, looking for a pathway into her mind. Were clouds gathering there again? Was she slipping back toward the days when her husband was still alive, when Lindsey himself was not yet born?

She stood up and looked at him as if were a stranger. She shook her head. “Don’t be silly, little Hobo.” She walked into the living room then returned carrying a 1951 issue of Newsweek. She held the magazine up, displaying a black-and-white photograph framed in a red border. The photo showed a soldier in a fox hole, heavy stubble on his face, his eyes weary. His helmet strap hung loose. A cigarette drooped from the corner of his mouth.

“You see,” Mother said, “those terrible commies are killing our boys. They’re nothing but barbarians, yellow commie barbarians! But General MacArthur will show them, he will. I’m just happy that your father is safe. He’s in the navy. He’s safe on a ship, not getting shot at in Korea.”

But Lindsey’s father was dead, had been burned to death when a flaming MiG had crashed onto the deck of Lewiston, cruising in the Sea of Japan.

Lindsey settled for a cup of cocoa rather than upset Mother even more. They washed the dishes and put them away together, Mother glancing at him now and then, clearly trying to understand and just as clearly falling short of her objective.

Afterwards they settled in front of the TV. Mother found a movie that she liked, a gangster film with John Garfield and Linda Darnell. It was full of car chases, and every time an old car roared across the screen Lindsey thought about the missing Duesenberg and old Mr. Kleiner, Joe Roberts and Oscar Gutiérrez of the Oakland Police Department, Ollie and Wally and Martha Bernstein. And Jayjay Smith.

When the movie ended Lindsey got Mother to bed. She settled in with a Vera Caspary novel and told him good-night, and it seemed that she knew who he was.

He made himself a nightcap and turned on the late news. Some physicist in Santa Cruz was claiming that he could predict earthquakes and that northern California was due for one soon. The newscaster closed the segment with a shrug and a genial smile and an indulgent, “Who knows?”

The TV went to a commercial for the state lottery and Lindsey punched the off button and headed for his own bed. He lay there staring at the ceiling, seeing a Duesenberg, hearing the ambulance whooper as it carried old Kleiner from the mansion, feeling Jayjay Smith’s hand on his arm. He could almost smell the perfume of her hair, and that was odd because he hadn’t noticed it at the mansion that afternoon. Or maybe he had. Maybe it was one of those submerged memories that come back to you later on.

His sleep was troubled and in the morning he felt groggy even after two cups of coffee. Mrs. Hernández was on time for once and he left Mother in her care and headed for the International Surety office in Walnut Creek. At least he didn’t have to commute!

There were half a dozen entries on the KlameNet log and he looked through them, turning the ones that didn’t require his attention over to Ms. Wilbur. The ones that did require his attention seemed to be routine claims. He filled out forms, dictated letters, made a few telephone calls. Harden wasn’t pestering him about the stolen Duesenberg. At least not yet, he wasn’t. Well, be thankful for small blessings.

He checked his watch, looked up the number of the Kleiner Mansion in his pocket organizer and punched the call. An unfamiliar voice answered and told him that Ms. Smith was out. Lindsey asked the voice to have her return his call, please.

He was relieved to learn that there were other people working at the mansion. Of course, there had to be a housekeeper, handyman, probably a couple of docents to take visiting school children on guided tours of the splendors of the past. He wondered what an Oakland ghetto kid, leaving a project filled with crack dealers and derelicts,and rats, would think of the Victorian gingerbread and polished mahogany of the mansion.

He phoned his friend Eric Coffman and asked about having lunch at Max’s Opera Plaza. Coffman said he was working in his law office, waiting for a jury to come in. Sure, Max’s was fine.

It would be good to spend a while with Eric again. He was Lindsey’s best friend. Come to think of it, he was just about Lindsey’s only friend. Not that Lindsey didn’t like people. It was just that he had to take care of Mother. He didn’t get out much, and he didn’t invite friends over very often. Not with Mother likely to decide it was 1953, or 1968, or some other year.

But Eric had been his friend since their school days. If Lindsey were to swap places with anyone he knew, it would be Eric Coffman. He held a respected place in the world, he was a husband and a father. He understood about Lindsey’s mother. He was a busy man, forever running off to meetings and hearings and trials, but somehow he always had time to listen to Lindsey, to swap stories with him, to give him a sane view of reality when Lindsey needed it most.

Lindsey spent the rest of the morning on routine work, relieved that nothing exciting happened. You need a morning like that once in a while. When he left the office at noon Ms. Wilbur said, “Not sending out for deli?”

He said, “No.”

* * * *

Lindsey looked across Max’s and saw that Eric Coffman had arrived before him. Coffman’s gold-rimmed glasses and high forehead gleamed in the overhead light. The lawyer stood up and waved as Lindsey crossed the room. His perfectly cut three-piece suit and solid gold cuff links gave him a look of elegant grace despite his rotund form. Lindsey always felt shabby in Coffman’s presence.

“Lindsey! Have a libation!”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Lindsey slid into a leather chair.

“I’m one ahead of you.”

“So I notice. How can you drink those things, Eric?”

“Abominations? Why, these are ambrosia. Got in the habit when I was in college and we paid fifty cents a gallon for drinking alcohol.”

A waitress had arrived, and with another horrified look at the awful scotch concoction that Coffman had invented, and insisted upon drinking, Lindsey ordered a mineral water.

Coffman fingered his heavy beard. Lindsey had heard him say a hundred times that his hair was slowly migrating from the top of his face to the bottom; when the process was complete he’d move to Australia and start it going the other way.

“What’s the matter, Lindsey? You look glum, chum.”

Lindsey didn’t know where to start. He just shook his head.

“Work? Lousy love life? You mother again?”

“No, she’s doing all right. You know, she gets a little better, then she gets a little worse. Sometimes I don’t know what’s happening.” He told Coffman about last night’s incident, about his mother singing the Woody Woodpecker song.

“And you thought she’d gone round the bend?”

Lindsey nodded.

“Can’t blame you. Cackling away like that, coming at you like Norman Bates in his mama suit. But you say she was all right after all?”

“Well, yes. And Mrs. Hernández is there.”

Coffman said, “You’re lucky to have her. That woman is a saint, working as a grown-up babysitter.”

Lindsey nodded. “And a good thing Mother likes her. But lately Mother’s even well enough that Mrs. Hernández can leave at four most days. Mother can stay alone for a few hours now, without getting into trouble. And Joanie Schorr comes over when I need her to help out. But I can’t help thinking, one of these days.…” He made a vague gesture.

“Just hang in there, pal. What about Marvia, you still seeing her?”

Lindsey looked up. His mineral water had arrived, and another Abomination. Lindsey and Coffman ordered—a shrimp louie for Lindsey, a sirloin on toast for Coffman.

“I have a funny claim,” Lindsey said. The waitress had bustled away.

Coffman looked at him over the rim of his glass.

“Somebody stole a car in Oakland Saturday night.”

“No! That’s amazing! How come it wasn’t on the network news, Lindsey? At least on CNN. Somebody’s slipping! Next thing they won’t report kids going truant from school. What’s Murrica coming to!”

Lindsey frowned. “Don’t kid around. This wasn’t any ordinary car theft. This was a 1928 Duesenberg. It’s worth $425,000.”

Coffman’s head popped back. “You do get the odd ones, don’t you? What was that weird case you had a while ago, the stolen comic books?”

“Yeah. They were worth a quarter million. And they got a couple of people killed, too. A UC professor wound up in jail for murder. He’s there now.” Lindsey didn’t tell Coffman that the comic book killer had also, it turned out, been involved in the death of Lindsey’s own father thirty years before. Yes, the elder Lindsey had been burned to death aboard Lewiston, but he could have been saved, and as far as Lindsey was concerned he was more a victim of murder than a casualty of war.

If there was any difference.

“And now you’ve got an even bigger one,” Coffman said. The food had arrived and Coffman’s steak knife flashed, his silver fork skewered a gobbet of red meat and transferred it to the hole in his beard. He chewed for a few seconds. “Any clues? You getting any help from the cops?”

“I don’t know about clues.” Lindsey speared a couple of bay shrimp and ate them. They were delicious, the best thing that had happened to him all day. “I don’t know about clues,” he repeated. “I talked to a man who saw the car being driven away, but he was drunk at the time and he couldn’t tell me much. And I talked to an Oakland cop. I don’t know if he’s going to help me much at all. I don’t know, Eric.”

Coffman chewed more steak.

Lindsey speared another shrimp.

A telephone burbled from under their table and Coffman pulled a morocco attaché case onto his lap, opened it, lifted out a handset and muttered into it. He put it back in the attaché case. He managed to get the remainder of his steak into his mouth and to mumble around it. “Gotta go, pal. Jury’s in. We’ll settle up next time, hey? And I’ll hear more about your love life.” He wiped his mouth delicately with a linen napkin before moving away from the table.

Eric Coffman lumbering across Max’s Opera Plaza, attaché case in hand, looked distinctly like Raymond Burr.

Lindsey settled the bill. No point in even trying to claim it as a business lunch. International Surety would never let him get away with putting this one on the expense account.

Back in the office, Ms. Wilbur said, “Ms. Smith called you from Oakland. Message on your desk.”

Lindsey grunted.

“You’re a grumpy one this afternoon. What happened, get stuck with a lunch tab you can’t write off?”

“None of your business.” Lindsey sat down and tried to ignore Ms. Wilbur’s happy cackle. Maybe she could get together with Mother and do a Woody Woodpecker duet.

The message read, Going to visit Mr. Kleiner at Kaiser Oakland. Call me there if you want. There was a telephone number and an extension.

Lindsey decided not to phone. He wanted to talk to Kleiner himself as well as Jayjay Smith—if Kleiner were in any shape to talk. Well, he’d find out.

Early afternoon traffic was light, even though Lindsey didn’t like spending this much time on the freeway or in Oakland. It beat driving in rush hour, anyway.

He parked near the hospital and stopped at the desk to ask for Mr. Kleiner’s room number. The receptionist was polishing her nails and carrying on an impassioned dialogue with a colleague, an embarrassingly specific comparison of their respective boy friends.

Finally Lindsey got their attention, learned Kleiner’s room number, and was directed to a bank of elevators.

The old man turned out to be in a ward. Jayjay Smith sat in a straight-backed chair, conversing softly with a middle-aged man. Kleiner was sleeping.

Jayjay Smith turned toward Lindsey. “Bart! I thought you were going to phone. Why did you come here?”

“Well, I thought Mr. Kleiner.…”

Jayjay shook her head. The middle-aged man shot Lindsey a peculiar look, partly hostile, partly appraising. Come to think of it, the man looked vaguely familiar to Lindsey, too.

Lindsey turned his glance from the man standing beside old Kleiner’s bed, to Kleiner, then back. There was a definite resemblance even though the old man was a wizened figure, little more than a flesh-covered skeleton, while the younger one was broad-shouldered and beefy. There was some similarity of feature that Lindsey couldn’t place. It was like an unreachable itch.

Jayjay said, “Bart, this is Morton Kleiner. Mr. Kleiner’s grandson.”

Morton Kleiner nodded to Lindsey. “You’re the insurance man, hey?”

Lindsey accepted the label.

“You going to pay out for my grandfather? I don’t think the old bird’s ever going to fly again.”

“Ah, I’m afraid you don’t understand. As far as I know, we don’t carry a life policy on your grandfather. Ah, aside from which, I don’t think it would be in the very best taste anyway, to discuss that while Mr. Kleiner is still alive. And might recover.”

He looked at Jayjay Smith for information, or possibly for support.

“They want to take some more tests. The doctor said she didn’t think there was anything specific wrong with him. It’s just his age, and if he’s so depressed about the car that he’s lost his will to live, I don’t think he’ll recover.”

“Anyway, listen.” The younger Kleiner reached across the bed, pointing a finger at Lindsey as if Kleiner were a teacher pointing at a miscreant student. “I want to find out what’s coming to me, and I want to get it. Don’t you think just because—”

Jayjay stood up abruptly. “Stop it!” she hissed. In the bed beyond Kleiner’s a massively built black man with grizzled hair and stubble on his cheeks was talking softly with two women, one his own age, one a generation younger.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Jayjay said. “They’re going to throw us out of here if you make a racket!”

They took the elevator to the lobby and found an alcove furnished with chrome and imitation leather couches. A standing ashtray filled with sand held an accumulation of cigarette butts and chewing gum wrappers. There were anti-smoking signs on the walls, but they had to do something for people who refused to quit. Besides, when you just came back from visiting Great-aunt Matilda on her death bed, you needed all the help you could get.

“Now,” Morton Kleiner said, “what’s this about the old man’s insurance? You’re going to weasel out of it? You insurance guys are all the same. Best friend when they’re trying to sell you a policy, don’t know you from dog-turd when you have a claim.”

Lindsey took a deep breath. He almost knew who it was Kleiner reminded him of. It was that close, absolutely that close. He blinked and saw the other face on the inside of his eyelids. He made an effort to freeze the image; he’d come back to it later and he knew he’d pin it down once and for all.

“I tried to explain upstairs, Mr. Kleiner, I’m not here about a life policy on your grandfather. I don’t even know if he has one. Do you know—” turning to face Jayjay Smith “—do you know if he has a desk at the mansion? Any kind of files or records? Maybe a safe deposit box at a bank?”

“I think he has a box of papers.” She pressed her hand to her eyes. She was dressed informally again, jeans and a blouse with a bulky sweater over it, her hair done back in braids. A long coat was folded over the back of the couch where she sat. Lindsey figured that she and Morton Kleiner were of an age, maybe ten years older than he was, maybe a little less. But she looked younger today than she had at the mansion. She must have had a better night’s sleep than Lindsey had.

“You ought to check there, Mr. Kleiner.” Lindsey took out his pocket organizer and offered Kleiner an International Surety card. “That’s my office number. If you think your grandfather has a policy with us, phone there and we can put it into the computer and find out, even if you don’t turn up the policy itself.”

Kleiner stared at the card in Lindsey’s hand for a few more seconds than necessary, then he took it. “Sure,” he said. “Fat chance you’d admit there was a policy if I didn’t have it to wave in your cheap faces.” He was wearing a heavy green plaid jacket. It hung open over a red plaid shirt. He shoved Lindsey’s card into a pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit up.

Lindsey heaved a sigh. “I give you my word, sir, International Surety is a legitimate, ethical company. We have branches all over the world, millions of policies in effect. If you grandfather is insured with us, and if he dies, International Surety will pay. But I’m here to get information about the stolen Duesenberg. That’s another matter altogether.”

“Why don’t you get out and look for it, then, if the God damned car is so important to you? Why are you hanging around Kaiser sniffing after my grandfather? Or you sniffing after something else?”

Lindsey blinked and saw the face on the inside of his eyelids again. He knew who it was. Hans Schumm, a scowling, lantern-jawed onetime actor—a sort of all-purpose bully and sadist. He’d specialized in playing snarling Nazis in low-budget programmers in the 1940s. Lindsey wondered if he was still alive today. If so he’d look more like old Mr. Kleiner than his obnoxious grandson.