Читать книгу The Classic Car Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to colorize Casablanca. It takes a lot of work, a lot of computer time, and a lot of money to turn an old black-and-white movie into a full-scale modern production with blue skies, red wine, skin-colored skin, and blood-colored blood.

But Mother insisted on watching it with the TV controls set to turn everything back into shades of gray.

Hobart Lindsey sighed as the ancient airliner lumbered into the North African night. He couldn’t see much of the plane, but it was probably a DC-3. They don’t build airliners the way they used to, Lindsey thought. The jetliners that all the airlines used nowadays were generic. No personalities like they had in the old days. Worse even than modern cars.

The screen faded to the familiar Warner Brothers end-logo as Rick Blaine and Louis Renault walked arm-in-arm into the fog while Victor Laszlo and his wife, Ilsa Lund, escaped the Javert-like pursuit of Major Heinrich Strasser. Bogart and Rains, Henreid and Bergman and Conrad Veidt. They didn’t make actors like they used to, either.

Lindsey had sat through the picture twenty times. Or was it fifty? He recognized the greatness of the film, but it was Mother who insisted on watching it every time they showed it on cable, and if it didn’t turn up for a few weeks she would make him rent it on tape for her. He almost enjoyed the trips to Vid/Vid/Vid to look over the latest releases and the classics section.

The telephone’s intrusive burbling brought Hobart Lindsey back into the present. He left Mother sitting on the dark blue sofa. Let her stay in the past, he thought. She was happier there than in the present, better able to handle her widowhood. She wandered in time. Most often she thought that Dwight Eisenhower was just starting his presidency and Josef Stalin was menacing the Free World and that her husband—Hobart’s father—was alive and was serving on the destroyer Lewiston off the coast of North Korea and was going to come back to her someday. Hobart moved past the table still littered with the empty containers that had held their Saturday dinner of egg rolls and chow mein and shrimp in lobster sauce and moved to answer the call.

The voice that came over the telephone line was unpleasantly familiar. “Lindsey, I’m glad you’re home. You’d better hustle down to Oakland and handle this. Now!”

Lindsey moaned inwardly. There was no mistaking the voice and manner of Harden at Regional. Lindsey had spoken with him often enough, but always from the office. And he’d even met him a couple of times. But Harden’s phoning Lindsey at home was unprecedented. And on Saturday night, just when he was starting to feel happy and relaxed, halfway through a pleasant weekend!

“What happened in Oakland, Mr. Harden?”

“You’d know if you put in a few more hours, Lindsey. What time is it out there in fruits-and-nuts land?”

Lindsey looked at his Seiko. He’d moved up from a Timex, and every time he checked his watch he experienced a mixed rush of pride and guilt. Pride in the gleaming timepiece, and guilt for adding needlessly to the balance of payments deficit.

“It’s ten minutes before twelve.”

“Yes. I don’t suppose you’ve checked the incoming claims tape lately, have you?’

“I check it every morning, Mr. Harden. Ms. Wilbur or I take every call that comes in during business hours, personally.”

“You understand the International Surety KlameNet Program, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Lindsey had been briefed when the KlameNet system went in. Every International Surety office in the world was hooked into a regional computer center, and those were all linked to the company’s worldwide data-exchange system. KlameNet logged every incoming claim, whether it came though the branches’ own computers or off the overnight message tapes that the smaller offices used.

“You can access your office from your home, Lindsey. Isn’t that right?”

Lindsey nodded unconsciously, then said, “Yes, sure.”

“Then why haven’t you done anything about this claim? It came in more than an hour ago!”

“It’s nighttime, Mr. Harden. It’s Saturday night, for heaven’s sake. I’m at home. I would have got the claim off the tape first thing Monday morning. In the meanwhile, I’m sure the proper authorities know about it. What is it, a life claim? An auto accident? I have my mother to look after. And I have a life outside the office, you know.” Lindsey wiped his brow with a handkerchief. It was a chilly night, but talking with Harden made him perspire.

“Look, Lindsey, I’m not going to fight with you. I’m just telling you to get yourself in gear. You have a pencil handy? Write this down. This is a motor vehicle theft claim.” He read the account and policy numbers, claim-log number, time-stamp of the claim, estimated time of the theft.

Lindsey wrote, trying to keep up with Harden’s dictation. Why all the fuss over a stolen car? They were among the commonest of all claims that he handled for International Surety, the amounts tended to be fairly low, and the recovery rate was the highest of any class of stolen goods. Cars all had engine numbers, they all had to be registered with the state, they were bulky and highly visible and had to be used in public to be used at all. It was easy to steal a car, but it was very hard to keep it and not get caught.

So why such an uproar over a claim that would probably amount to $10,000 or less?

“You get that amount, did you, Lindsey? Didn’t misplace a decimal?”

“Uh—would you repeat that, Mr. Harden? You’re going a little fast for me.”

Harden exhaled angrily into the receiver. “The amount is $425,000, Lindsey. That’s four, two, five, comma, zero, zero, zero, dollars, Lindsey. Did you get that?”

Lindsey gulped. “Four hundred twenty five thousand?”

Harden growled. “That’s right. I know you’re dumb but you’re not deaf, anyway.”

“But—what kind of car could that be? Even a Rolls—”

“It was a 1928 fucking SJ Duesenberg Convertible Phaeton, Lindsey. Stolen from in front of something called the Kleiner Mansion in Oakland. You familiar with the Kleiner Mansion?”

“I’m not sure. It sounds familiar.” He thought for a moment, searching for an errant memory. “Got it! They used it on the cover of the Oakland phone book a few years ago. I must have seen it at the office.”

“Yeah. Well, you hightail it out there, cowboy, and see what the fuck is going on.”

“It’s my weekend, Mr. Harden.”

“It’s $425,000, Lindsey. You’re a professional. We don’t pay you to be a clockwatcher.”

Harden didn’t have to go on with the implied threat. Lindsey knew what it was, he’d heard it often enough.

“I—I’ll get right out there, Mr. Harden.”

Harden was still on the line, grumbling loudly.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Harden. I didn’t get the name of the owner.”

“Yeah, well you ought to pay more attention. I told you, this is another one of those fruit-and-nut cases you seem to specialize in, Lindsey. The car is owned by something called the New California Smart Set, whatever the hell that means. Probably a nancy social club. They were having some kind of shindig at this Kleiner Mansion. They only roll the Dusie a couple of times a year, for super-special occasions. And now it’s gone!”

“Okay, Mr. Harden. I’m on my way.” He started to lower the receiver, then stopped. “Uh—Mr. Harden. Who phoned in the report? Not the whole club, did they?”

“I thought you’d never ask, Lindsey. You might have a future with this corporation after all. Claim came in from the president of the outfit. Guy named Oliver van Arndt. He’s waiting at the mansion.”

Harden hung up without another word. That was in character for him. He’d never been exactly Mr. Charm, and Lindsey knew that Harden was both feared and disliked throughout International Surety. But he seemed to take special pleasure in harassing Hobart Lindsey, especially since the incident of the million-dollar comic books.

Actually, they were only a quarter-million dollars’ worth of comics. They’d been burgled from a shop in Berkeley, and Lindsey had recovered them for the company, saving International Surety a bundle. Harden had tried to call Lindsey off the case near its end, but Lindsey had persisted, putting his job on the line.

Some job!

And then he’d persisted further, and with the help of Berkeley Police Officer Marvia Plum had not only regained all the stolen goods, but solved three bizarrely interconnected murders.

That was now in the past. Lindsey had enjoyed his proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. He’d enjoyed a brief, intense relationship with Marvia, and that alone had been a miracle in his drab life.

Lindsey was a pudgy, unathletic, undistinguished office worker who lived in a lower-middle-class section of a medium sized bedroom community a few miles east of San Francisco Bay. His life was a study in dullness. Until suddenly he was engaged in car-chases and shoot-outs, hopping on and off airliners, and—most remarkable of all—bedding an amazing woman. Him, drab whitebread Hobart Lindsey, sleeping with a spectacular-figured black policewoman.

But it had ended. He’d won the praise of his employer’s national office and the seething jealousy of his immediate superior, Harden at Regional. He’d gone back to his routine life of processing claims by day, keeping an eye on his mentally unstable mother by night.

He blinked. A recorded voice on the telephone was telling him to hang up and try again. How long had he been sitting there, holding the dead instrument in his hand, reliving the one brief time in his thirty-six years that he’d really been alive.

* * * *

Lindsey got Mother off to bed, then jumped in his Hyundai and headed for the freeway. He liked to avoid Oakland. It was as bad, in its own way, as Berkeley or San Francisco, or those ridiculous communities up in Marin County. There must be something about living too close to all that water that brought out the aberrant in people. Mankind had climbed out of the primal swamp in order to live on land a long time ago, and on land was where he belonged!

He found Lake Merritt easily enough and drove around it until the Kleiner Mansion loomed up, easily recognizable from its depiction on the old telephone directory. It looked like something out of a Charles Addams cartoon. He expected to see Mortitia and Gomez cavorting on the lawn. The Alameda County Courthouse rose nearby, and East Fourteenth Street, the main arterial that ran all the way from mostly black west Oakland through the city’s struggling downtown and out to suburban San Leandro, carried light traffic past the lake.

Coule be he was getting another chance. A stolen car, a routine claim—or maybe not. A sixty-year-old Duesenberg worth nearly half a million dollars was far from routine. Was it time for Lamont Cranston to put on his slouch hat and cloak and turn into the Shadow? Was it time for Bruce Wayne to draw down his cowl and his cape while Alfred the butler warmed up the Batmobile for a midnight prowl?

A white Oakland police cruiser stood in front of the Kleiner Mansion, its roof lights flashing.

Lindsey parked his Hyundai beside the cruiser and scampered up the front steps of the mansion, patting his pockets to make sure that he had his notebook and pencil with him.

The Kleiner Mansion had a broad Victorian veranda. A uniformed Oakland police officer was talking with a man and two women, asking them questions and jotting down their responses.

When Lindsey approached, the cop turned. “Who are you?”

Lindsey introduced himself, handed each of the others his business card.

The cop studied the card, then Lindsey, then the card once more. Lindsey was wearing a heavy sweater over a cotton shirt and slacks. He hadn’t changed before leaving Walnut Creek. Maybe he should have, he thought, but it was too late to do anything about that now.

“Okay, Mr. Lindsey. Your company carries the policy on the Duesenberg?”

Lindsey nodded. The cop had a tan, Hispanic face with high cheekbones, dark liquid eyes, heavy black eyebrows and a thick handlebar moustache. His speech was unaccented.

“You can get a copy of the police report sometime Monday, but I don’t suppose you want to wait that long to get involved, do you?”

Lindsey shook his head.

“Okay. This is Ms. Smith. She’s the resident manager of the Kleiner Mansion. And Mr. and Mrs. van Arndt, of the New California Smart Set. I’m headed out of here. And you might as well have one of mine.” He handed Lindsey a business card. It read, Oscar Gutiérrez, Oakland Police Department, and it had a phone number on it.

Lindsey slid the card into his pocket organizer and looked up to see the police cruiser pull out of the Kleiner Mansion driveway. Gutiérrez was gone.

“Mr. van Arndt, Mrs. van Arndt, Ms. Smith—maybe we should step inside and you can give me some facts.”

“Don’t you want to look at the scene first?” van Arndt spoke. He was a tall man, taller than Lindsey by several inches. He wore an old-fashioned tuxedo with silken lapels and a wing-collar shirt and a bow tie that looked as if he’d tied it himself. His hair was parted just off center, slicked back with a glossy substance that shimmered in the lights that surrounded Lake Merritt. His upper lip bore a pencil-thin moustache. He looked a little bit like Mandrake the Magician.

“Look at the scene?”

“The scene of the crime! Come on, man, don’t you realize what’s happened?”

Lindsey was taken aback. “Of course I realize what’s happened. You car was stolen.”

“Not exactly my car. I drive a 1946 Ford Sportsman. But yes, the Dusie was stolen from right there. Wasn’t it, Wally m’dear?” He pointed to a spot near Lindsey’s Hyundai, managing to turn his head simultaneously toward the woman who stood beside him.

She was several inches shorter than her husband, even in heels. She wore her light brown hair short, a band circling her forehead and a feather rising from behind her head. Her dress was clasped at both shoulders and was draped in champagne colored folds—at least as far as Lindsey could tell by the lights on the mansion’s veranda.

“We’ve been over the ground, Ollie darling.”

Lindsey noticed that she was swaying slightly, and held a half-empty martini glass in one hand. She wore rings on several fingers, and they did not have the look of costume jewelry.

Still, it might be a good idea, and it couldn’t hurt. “Would you show me, Mrs. van Arndt?”

The woman giggled and took Lindsey’s hand. She swayed against him, making her way down the steps of the mansion. She led him to a spot on the gravelled driveway. It swung in a U-shaped loop off Lakeside Drive. There wasn’t much traffic on the drive, this time of night, but a pair of headlights swept past every so often, glaring like the eyes of a great supernatural beast.

The air was chilly and moist. Lindsey’s breath—and Mrs. van Arndt’s—clouded before them. Beyond the mansion, a low bank of fog hung just above the surface of the lake.

“I don’t see anything,” Lindsey said. The driveway was covered with a thick layer of gravel. It would show tire tracks, to a certain extent, but it would hold little if any detail. “Do you know what time the car was taken?”

“What time is it now?” Can you see my little watch, Mr. Lincoln?”

“Lindsey.”

“Can you?” She stood close to him, her shoulders pulled back and chest pushed forward so he could see the old-fashioned timepiece pinned to her bodice. Her hands hung at her sides, one of them holding the martini glass. A few drops splashed on the gravel.

“Wally? Yoo-hoo, Wallis!”

“That’s me,” Mrs. van Arndt giggled. “Ollie must be getting anxious. Have you seen enough, Mr. Lipton?”

“Not much to see here. Let’s go back.”

She took his hand and pulled him along toward the mansion. “Ollie isn’t really so jealous, he just likes to keep an eye on me. We have the same birthday, you know. That’s how we met. I mean, we met at Antibes, have you ever been to Antibes?”

Lindsey hadn’t.

“Well, don’t bother, it’s ruined now. But it used to be wonderful. Ollie and I were both there on vacation and we discovered that we had the same birthday, even the same year. It seemed we were fated for each other. Our parents even named us for famous people. He’s named for Oliver Wendell Holmes. My name was Wallis Warfield Simpson Stanley. Now we’re Ollie and Wally van Arndt.”

She swayed up the steps, still dragging Lindsey by the hand. He was happy to transfer custody back to her husband. They went inside the mansion. The entrance featured a cloak room the size of Lindsey’s house. They passed through it into a huge, high-ceilinged room lighted by electrified chandeliers. The furnishings looked more Victorian than Art Deco. A handful of men and women stood around in period costumes, looking like refugees from a stage production of The Great Gatsby. One exception to the tuxedo-and-gown set was a black man in a World War II era uniform. He sat slouched in a period chair, the sleeves of his olive drab Ike jacket marked with a tech sergeant’s chevrons. A row of service ribbons were pinned above the jacket pocket. He appeared to be dozing.

A white-covered table bearing the decimated remains of a buffet meal stood at one end of the of the room; a deserted bandstand, at the other.

“This was our annual 1929 gala,” van Arndt said.

“Where did everybody go?”

“When the Dusie was stolen—well, a few wanted to keep the party rolling, but it just put such a damper on, it fizzled.”

“Did anyone see the car taken?”

“Joe Roberts did.”

“He still here?”

“No. He was too upset to stay. He’s our youngest member, too. The club baby. Thirty-three years old. Some of the members didn’t want to let him join, but he convinced them. He’s a scholar, at that. A great researcher. In fact, that’s why he joined the Smart Set.”

Lindsey had his pocket organizer in his left hand, his gold-plated International Surety pencil in the right. Anybody could get a wooden International Surety pencil, or a plastic company pen, but only top performers got the gold-plated models.

“Did you want to talk to Joe?” van Arndt asked.

“He actually saw the car stolen? Saw the thief get in and drive off in it? How did he start the car? Were the keys left in it? Or did he tow it away?”

“I didn’t see. Wally and I were dancing. The orchestra was playing Star Dust. Roberts must have gone outside for a breath of air. I’m afraid he’d had a few sips more than he should have and he wanted to clear his head. At least, that’s what I think.”

“Yes, yes.” Lindsey kept his patience.

“Well, you tell it, Wally, m’dear.”

“He came in shouting,” Wallis furnished. “Waving his arms and shouting, ‘It’s gone, they stole the Dusie!’ And then he fell down.”

“What?”

“Right on the dance floor.”

Van Arndt said, “He was dizzy. Poor chap passed out. He’d had a bit too much, I mentioned that, didn’t I? I’m afraid the excitement and the sudden change did it. You know, it was pretty stuffy in here. Roberts had just gone outside a few minutes before for some fresh air, when he saw the car taken and came running back in.”

“And you say he left? He took a cab? I hope he didn’t try to drive.”

“No. He gave his statement to Officer Gutiérrez. Did the best he could, anyway.” Van Arndt looked up. Lindsey followed his gaze. Mrs. van Arndt had tipped her glass up and emptied the last drop from it onto the tip of her tongue. She swayed to her feet and made her way from the room.

“Roberts,” Lindsey prompted.

“Dr. Bernstein took him home.”

“Dr. Bernstein?”

“Martha Bernstein.”

“M.D.?”

“Ph.D.”

Lindsey put on his best listening-with-eagerness expression, his gold-plated pencil poised to jot notes.

“Dr. Bernstein is in the Sociology Department at Cal.”

“She an Art Deco enthusiast?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But she’s a member of the club? Or was she here as guest?”

“Oh, she’s a member all right. I was against her, too. Like young Roberts. But she insisted on joining.”

“You couldn’t stop her? Don’t you have a membership committee, or a screening, what do you call it? A blackball?”

“The Kleiner Mansion is municipal property. We have to let anyone join who wants, if we want to meet here. I’d be all for moving to private property, myself. The Kleiner Mansion is a wonderful meeting place, but we could get another clubhouse where we could run our own affairs. But the board of directors voted to stay, so we have to deal with these bureaucrats and their pettifogging. Oh!”

He raised his eyebrows and grinned, got to his feet. Mrs. van Arndt had returned, her martini glass filled again with sparkling clear fluid, an olive floating in it like a red-irised, green eyeball harpooned on a sliver of pine. Van Arndt took his wife’s free hand and raised it to his lips. “So good to see you again, m’dear.”

“I couldn’t stay away,” Mrs. van Arndt said. “Have you boys been entertaining yourselves? Haven’t you offered Mr. Lincoln a drink, Ollie? Where are your manners?”

“Lindsey,” Lindsey said.

“Mr. Lindsey, please forgive me. Would you care…?”

“No, thank you. What about Dr. Bernstein?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. van Arndt made a sour face.

“You don’t like her either?” Lindsey asked.

“Don’t like her looks, don’t like her manners, don’t like her clothes, don’t like her attitude.”

“I can see you don’t like her. But—could you be more specific than that? Did she do or say something in particular?”

“I don’t think she loves 1929.”

Lindsey felt his eyes go out of focus. Wasn’t anyone willing to cope with the present? He had enough trouble, constantly dragging his mother back from 1953, her favorite year, or from whatever other era she happened to wander into.

In Mother’s case there was a reason if not an excuse. She’d been a pregnant young wife, little more than a teenaged bride, when Lindsey’s father was killed aboard ship in the Korean war. Mother had never got over the shock. She was forever expecting her husband to come home, forever waiting to resume her life. Her doctors had urged Lindsey to institutionalize her, but he’d never been able to bring himself to do it.

But now this—what kind of craziness was this about 1929?

“She lives now,” Mrs. van Arndt amplified.

“Don’t we all?”

“I mean,” she paused and sipped at her glass, swaying slightly and rubbing her cheek against her husband’s tuxedo shoulder. “I mean, we all formed our club because we all love Art Deco and the era it symbolizes. That’s what the New California Smart Set is all about. We all know that things used to be better than they are now. Some of our older members actually recall the old days. They were here, they lived through the Crash of ’29.”

“We almost called it the HarCooHoo Club,” van Arndt interrupted. “In honor of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Those were the days, Mr. Lindsey.”

Mrs. van Arndt said, “After the Crash, everything went to hell in a handbasket, Mr. Lindsey.”

He noted that she got his name right that time. “But not Dr. Bernstein?”

“Tweedy mannish woman.” Her eyes flashed, not so tipsily. “She studies us. Studies us, can you imagine that? Like specimens under her microscope.”

The van Arndts had sat down facing Lindsey. Van Arndt took his wife’s free hand between his two and massaged it. To Lindsey he said, “She gets agitated now and then. But it has become a sordid, ugly world, Lindsey. You wouldn’t live in a slum if you could move to a decent neighborhood, would you? As far as I’m concerned, the whole world has turned into a giant slum.”

Lindsey said, “What do you mean, studies you, Mrs. van Arndt?”

She had lifted her martini glass to her lips and looked at Lindsey, apparently baffled by the challenge of trying to sip and speak simultaneously.

Her husband answered for her. “Dr. Bernstein wants to publish a paper about us. Publish or perish, she’s said a thousand times. She comes to meetings and sits and watches and writes.”

Lindsey looked at his own hands, holding golden pencil and pocket organizer.

“That’s all right, old man,” van Arndt said generously. “You’re here on business. Dr. Bernstein even told me the name of the paper she’s planning. Anachronistic Mimesis and Temporal Alienation: Violent and Nonviolent Acting-Out Strategies of Compensation. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t know what it means.”

“Me neither, me buck-o, me neither.”

Lindsey scratched his head with the top of his International Surety pencil. “I’m afraid I’m losing the thread here. You told me this fellow Joseph Roberts actually saw the Duesenberg stolen.”

“Caught a glimpse of it, I’d say.”

“Came running back into the mansion shouting and then passed out.”

“Precisely.”

“But he was able to give a statement to Officer Gutiérrez?”

“I think so.”

“And then Dr. Bernstein did—what?”

“She loaded him into her Land Rover and took him home.”

“His or hers?”

“Oh, hers. He was much too drunk to drive. They had to go in her Rover.”

“Yes, but where did they go home to? His home or hers?”

“Please, Mr. Lyons,” Wally van Arndt said, “that is not a polite question at all.” She plucked the olive from her glass and used her teeth to pull it from its toothpick. She chewed carefully on the olive, dropping the toothpick onto the polished hardwood floor. “Besides, they didn’t say.”