Читать книгу The Classic Car Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

There wasn’t much Lindsey could do on a Sunday night. Mother was able to cook dinner for them before turning on Murder She Wrote and watching it in black-and-white. They could have saved money by buying a black-and-white TV, but sometimes Mother went to bed early and Lindsey was able to reset the controls and watch the late news in color.

Not tonight. Some desperate program director had scheduled Heidi, with Shirley Temple and Jean Hersholt. Lindsey wondered if Mother was slipping ever farther into the past. For a while she had been fixated on 1953, the year Lindsey’s father had died and Hobart Lindsey was born. But now she seemed to wander the corridors of time, from the Truman Era to the Roaring Twenties, without rhyme or reason.

Lindsey sat with his pocket organizer in his lap, jotting notes and trying to figure out a way to get the Duesenberg back. He had plenty of ideas, but before he pushed them too far he wanted some more info, and somebody to talk the case over with.

On Monday morning he arrived at his office in Walnut Creek and found that Ms. Wilbur had got there ahead of him. She greeted him with a smile and a message. “Call Mr. Harden.”

Lindsey pointedly took his coffee and sipped before he hit the speed dialer for Regional. Over the rim of the cup, he watched Ms. Wilbur watching him, wondering what went on in her mind.

“What about that Duesenberg?” Harden snapped without preliminary.

“I’m working on it.” Lindsey’s hand trembled a little, but he’d lowered the level of the coffee and nothing spilled.

“And?”

“And what, Mr. Harden?”

“‘Working on’ doesn’t tell me squat, man! What have you accomplished?”

“Ah—I scrutinized the scene of the crime. In Oakland. The Kleiner Mansion.”

“That didn’t take you two days, did it?”

“And I established contact with the police investigator. Officer Gutiérrez. And I talked with Ollie and Wally and they put me in touch with—”

“Ollie and Wally? What are you talking about, what is this, Lindsey, some kind of comedy? Ollie and Wally?”

“I was starting to tell you that they put me in touch with an eye witness. An eye witness to the—”

“Who the fuck are Ollie and Wally?”

Lindsey ground his teeth together, placed his coffee cup carefully on his desk, and carefully, gently, laid the telephone handset back on its base.

Ms. Wilbur applauded silently.

The phone controller on her desk trilled and she reached for it but Lindsey said, “That’s okay.” He lifted his own handset and said, “—theft. A man named Joseph Roberts. I interviewed him yesterday, at his home, and will follow up. I also spoke with the resident manager of the Kleiner Mansion and with several other members of the Smart Set. Ollie and Wally are Oliver Wendell Holmes van Arndt and Wallis Warfield Simpson Stanley van Arndt and they run the society. Thank you, Mr. Harden.”

He hung up again, as gently as he had the first time.

Ms. Wilbur said, “You’ve come a long way, Hobart.”

Harden didn’t call again.

Lindsey said, “You think I’ll get fired, Ms. Wilbur?”

“I don’t think so. He has a boss, too. He cans you, he’s got to justify it to Johanssen. She’s a fan of yours, ever since you got back those comic books for us.”

Lindsey smiled. He phoned Oakland and reached Officer Gutiérrez. “Yeah,” Gutiérrez said, “we work crazy shifts. I’m in here all morning doing paper work. You want to talk about that Dusie, this is a good time.”

Lindsey drove into Oakland and left the Hyundai in a lot under the freeway. He found a receptionist who actually knew who Officer Gutiérrez was and phoned through to him. Gutiérrez came out and told the receptionist that Lindsey was okay, he could have a visitor’s badge. They wound up at Gutiérrez’s desk in the middle of a noisy bullpen.

“So you’re the insurance man on that car, hey?” Gutiérrez still had the business card that Lindsey had handed him Saturday night at the Kleiner Mansion. Outstanding performance for an Oakland harness bull.

Lindsey asked Gutiérrez, “You assigned to auto theft full time?”

“For the past two years.”

“What do you think of this case, Officer Gutiérrez?”

“You can call me Oscar, Mr. Lindsey. All right if I call you, ah, Hobart?”

“Bart.”

“You know, auto theft is a very high-volume operation. We get thousands of these every year. Most of them solve themselves. Car’s abandoned, or gets stopped for some routine matter. Thieves don’t respect the law, you know.”

“No! They don’t really?”

“Don’t wise off, Bart. Somebody steals a car, he doesn’t hesitate to hit eighty or a hundred on the freeway. Or on the street. You’d think they’d be twice as cautious, driving a stolen vehicle. Not to call attention to themself, you get the idea? But instead they act twice as dumb.”

Lindsey nodded. “I guess so.”

“You have your doubts.”

“Just—this is such a peculiar case. I mean—a Duesenberg, for heaven’s sake! They haven’t built those things in thirty years. They’re scarce as hens’ teeth. How could anybody hope to get away with it? You can’t drive a Duesenberg anywhere without gathering a crowd.”

“Fifty, actually. And you’d be surprised how many hens’ teeth are still out there.”

“What are you talking about? Fifty what?”

“They haven’t built Duesenbergs for fifty years. Actually a little more. Company almost weathered the Depression, didn’t quite make it. They were built from 1920 to 1937. Outfit down in southern California started building seven-eighth scale replicas in the late seventies but they’re not true Dusies. Nice cars, though. I wouldn’t mind owning one. My old Eagle wagon is getting tired.”

“And that business about how many hens’ teeth there are?”

“Oh—you seem to think the Duesenberg is a scarce car. Of course it is, compared to Chevies or VW bugs. But they turn up at collectors’ meets and concourses all the time. Must be over a thousand Dusies left. They managed to round up thirty or forty Tuckers for that movie they made here in Oakland. Now that’s a scarce car. And there are scarcer, believe me!”

“You’re quite an authority.”

“It’s a kind of hobby of mine. I have a little reference library at home, and I go to Concourses once in a while.”

Lindsey studied a blank sheet in his notebook, then looked at Gutiérrez again. “What would be a really scarce car? What would be a really top price?”

Gutiérrez grinned wolfishly, his teeth brilliant against his black moustache and dark complexion. “Scarcity alone doesn’t make a car valuable. It’s supply and demand. Not too much demand for Willys Aeros or DeSotos. Everybody hated the Edsel but a few collectors are starting to get interested.”

Lindsey nodded. Would the man just get on with it?

“There are unique items—one of a kind experimental vehicles, custom models. And cars with association value. The Beatles’ Rolls. Hitler’s Mercedes.”

“I get the point.”

“Now the Bugatti Royale, that was a magnificent vehicle. Engine, coachwork—only six in the world. Every one is a real beauty, no two alike.”

“What are they worth?”

Gutiérrez smiled again. “Very little turnover in these vehicles. When they do sell—oh, ten mil would be a good price.”

“Ten—million?”

“Yep.”

“I guess that makes my Duesenberg small potatoes.”

“Not really. We’re paying attention, believe me.”

Lindsey nodded. “Good. You have the report ready, then?”

Gutiérrez opened a manila folder, pulled a sheet of colored flimsy and handed it to Lindsey. Lindsey studied it. It was the standard auto theft report: all that made it remarkable was the auto involved. “You think you can get it back?”

Gutiérrez shrugged. “We get most of ’em back. I don’t see how an SJ can slip between the cracks. I mean, we’re not talking about a ten-year-old Toyota.”

“Any idea where the car is now? I don’t suppose you made any progress over the weekend.”

“No, we haven’t. We know all the classic car collectors in the state. We get good cooperation from the car museums. The Behring people out at Blackhawk and the Harrah’s collection in Reno. And the parts and service garages that specialize in classics. Did you know there’s still a Packard dealer over in Alameda? You ought to drop in on ’em some time. Like falling through a time warp.”

“I have enough of that.” He wasn’t going to start talking about Mother, not with this cop. “I just want this Duesenberg back. International Surety stands to take a real shellacking if we don’t get it.”

Gutiérrez looked Lindsey in the eye. “What’s your company’s policy on buy-backs?”

“Same as anybody else in the industry. We don’t like to do it. It’s too much like blackmail and it just encourages more of the same. Like any other kind of blackmail.”

“You don’t do it, then.”

“Oh, we do it. I said we went along with the industry practice. If we could buy back the Dusie for, say, ten per cent of the insured value, we’d be fools not too. But then we’d still want to see the thief caught. And we’d want our money back, too, if there was any way we could get it. If we couldn’t, we’d still be saving most of the settlement.”

Gutiérrez stood up and headed for a hotplate. “You want some java, Bart?”

“Sure.” Lindsey was starting to think that America ran on caffeine. If the shakes didn’t get you, kidney failure would.

Gutiérrez brought back two cups.

Lindsey said, “Oscar, do you think they’ll try and sell it back?”

Gutiérrez shrugged.

“You haven’t heard from them, have you?”

“They’d more likely contact you than us, Bart.”

Was that a hint? Was this some kind of racket, a tie-in between Gutiérrez and the car-theft ring? There hadn’t been any bulge in auto-theft claims lately, Lindsey would have known about it if there had. He jotted a note in his organizer. He’d want to think about this later.

“No, I’d have known if they’d contacted the company. Not a peep.”

“Well, it’s only thirty-six hours. You might hear yet.” Gutiérrez took his coffee black. As he sipped, a wavering column of steam softened his face.

Lindsey wondered how Gutiérrez kept his moustache from getting coffee-logged. “In the meanwhile, I’d hoped for some police action.”

Gutiérrez lowered his cup. “We can’t send a SWAT team out to recover a stolen car, Bart. Too many cars get stolen. And we wouldn’t know where to send ’em. And we’ve got too many other problems, we can’t compete for manpower with crack houses springing up and gang wars breaking out all over Oakland. You know what it means when junior high school kids bring Uzis and AK47s to school with ’em? Junior high school kids! And meanwhile we’re in a budget crunch and we can’t hire the cops we need. Jesus, man, we can’t pull officers from other jobs to look for your stolen car.”

Lindsey counted to ten. “I’ve heard that line before, Oscar.”

“I’ll bet you have.”

“I want that car back.”

“You want me to call up Wyatt Earp and have him deputize you? Pin a star on your shirt so you can strap a gunbelt around your waist and go after the rustlers?”

Lindsey put down his cup, slipped the auto theft report into his pocket organizer and stood up. “Stay in touch, will you? And thanks for the coffee.”

Gutiérrez said, “Don’t forget to turn in your visitor’s badge. They freak out if the count gets off.”

Lindsey found a phone booth in the lobby and dialed the University of California in Berkeley. Maybe Martha Rachel Bernstein, Ph.D., could tell him something useful. Oscar Gutiérrez certainly hadn’t. What department was Bernstein in? Oh, yes, Sociology. He reached the department secretary and learned that Bernstein had finished teaching her morning class and was in her office. Lindsey got through by phone and introduced himself.

“You’re the man who called yesterday.”

“Right.”

“You still trying to pester Joe Roberts?”

“I’d like to talk with you, Dr. Bernstein.”

“Why me?”

“I’m investigating the theft of the Duesenberg from the Kleiner Mansion Saturday night.”

“I didn’t take it.” She laughed, not altogether pleasantly.

Lindsey sighed. “I didn’t really think you took it, Dr. Bernstein. I’m just gathering information at this point. I have no idea who took the car. May I come up and talk with you?”

There was a pause. “I was going to work here for the rest of the morning, but if you want to come over I suppose it will be all right.”

He got his Hyundai back and started for Berkeley. As he headed up Broadway toward College Avenue, he opened the pocket organizer on the passenger seat beside him. At a traffic light he studied his notes on the Gutiérrez meeting. The only worthwhile item was his scribble about Gutiérrez’s comment on buy-backs. It was definitely possible that Gutiérrez was tied in with an auto ring. If he was, he could set up a buy-back, rake off part of the ransom, and quash the police investigation at the same time.

The owners would have their car back, the insurance company would get off light, the thieves would pick up a nice piece of change and they didn’t have to worry about disposing of the stolen goods. And with a friend in charge of the investigation, there was no way they were going to get caught.

It was all very neat!

But that didn’t mean it was so. It was just something to bear in mind. Lindsey wondered if there had been many buy-backs of stolen cars in Oakland. Probably better to follow up through the industry than through the Oakland Police Department. If Gutiérrez was part of a ring, better not to make him nervous at this point.

Lindsey managed to get into a campus parking lot at Cal, and threaded through a mixture of young-looking, clean-looking students and crazed street people to Dr. Bernstein’s office. What kind of woman would he find? A doctor of philosophy who lived with a former Oakland Raiders lineman.…

“Dr. Bernstein?”

She stood up and smiled faintly. She was a stocky, tweedy woman with short brown hair. She stuck out her hand and shook his with vigor. He handed her a card and she dropped it onto the top of a desk cluttered with papers, journals, and notebooks. To one side a computer monitor glowed, a pie-chart in three colors filling the screen. At the other end of the desk a huge cut-glass ashtray held down a stack of photocopied forms. A brown-wrapped package of Philip Morris cigarettes and a monogrammed book of matches lay in the ashtray.

Dr. Bernstein’s eyes followed Lindsey’s glance to the giant ashtray and the unopened pack of cigarettes.

“I didn’t think they made those any more,” Lindsey said.

“Don’t think they do. I keep ’em there as a reminder. I’m supposed to be a smart woman. Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, tenure before forty. Pretty smart, right?”

“I—guess so.”

“Smart enough to get hooked on a killer drug when I was twelve years old. Kept smoking when my father died of heart disease thanks to butts. Kept smoking when my mother died of lung cancer thanks to butts.”

“What made you stop?”

“Mason. My friend Ed Mason. Said he’d move out if I didn’t quit. I believed him. I’m strong and independent, too, not just smart. Okay.” She turned to her computer and clicked at the keyboard until the screen went dark. “Okay, Lindsey, what can I do for you?”

He’d planned this interview. He expected Dr. Bernstein to be difficult, and there seemed little point in asking directly about the Duesenberg. “Why did you join the Smart Set?”

She was leaning back in a leather swivel chair, fingers laced beneath her chin. Now she popped upright, dropping her hands to the desk. “What a nifty question! What’s it to ya?”

“I want that car. My company will save a fortune if I get it, and that means a lot to me. To my career.”

“An honest man,” she grinned. “No bullshit about punishing criminals and the breakdown of morality in American society. I joined the club to study the freaks. Pardon me, that’s a judgmental term, isn’t it? The members. To study the members.”

“And you’re an honest woman. I heard about the paper you’re writing. Anachronistic Mimesis. Pardon me, I don’t know what that means.”

“Should be an easy journal placement. Maybe do a popular version for Psychology Today or some other consumer sheet, then tuck it away as a chapter for my next book.” Her eyes flickered for a moment. There was a cork bulletin board covered with scraps of notepaper, news clippings and scribbled index cards, all of them held in place by push-pins of various colors. Beside the bulletin board, in a glass-fronted case, she kept four or five copies of each of her books. She caught him following her own glance. “My brag shelf.”

“Very impressive. This paper your working on—the one about the Smart Set.”

“Yes. Anachronistic mimesis—imitation of other eras. Did you get the full title?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. “Anachronistic Mimesis and Temporal Alienation, Violent and Nonviolent Acting-Out Strategies of Readjustment. It’s about people who don’t fit in. Lots of different ways of not fitting into society, and lots of ways of compensating for that. I mean, there are plenty of standard roles available to us in our society. Businessperson, homemaker, academic, factory worker, salesman, soldier, cop, truck driver, priest, mechanic, gardener, medical worker, politician, artist. Notice how we define ourselves by our work. Not all societies do that, but ours certainly does.”

She spun in her chair, slapped a fat leather-spined book on the shelf behind her. “Dictionary of occupational terms. Fifty thousand entries, and they keep issuing supplements. But a career isn’t an identity, is it? How about spouse, parent, child, friend, boss, rival? Sports fan, filmgoer, music-lover, barfly, pool shark, new age flake—how the hell do you spend your time? How do you define yourself? How do you relate to the world, Lindsey? That’s my field.”

She leaned forward, poked a finger at him. She was one hell of a lecturer, Lindsey thought. Bet a nickel her classes were over-enrolled every semester.

“Those people at the Smart Set, they can’t live in the present. So they live in the past. What is it about this year that they can’t take? The political scene? Ecological disasters? Collapsing social infrastructure?”

She flashed him an inquisitive grin. When he didn’t answer she resumed. “When I was in grad school, kids ran off to join communes. And some who weren’t kids at all. Beat the daylights out of blowing up buildings and killing people. Now these Smart Set people are living in the 1920s.”

“Sounds harmless to me.”

“You know what, Lindsey? It probably is. Relatively speaking, anyhow. I studied another group, call themselves Creative Anachronists, live in the twelfth century. Hold courts and tournaments and bop each other over the head with rubber lances. A lot of violent acting-out in that bunch. The Art Deco people are nonviolent, but it’s the same syndrome.”

She slid some papers around on her desk. “People can’t stand it here, they go there. You see what I mean?”

Lindsey didn’t get much chance to answer.

“Move to Oregon or Canada or Australia.” She flailed her hands as if they were going to fly to another country themselves. “These people, their problem isn’t here, it’s now. They can’t cope with the closing decades of the twentieth century. Don’t blame ’em, it’s a tough era. So these Creative Anachronists go to live eight hundred years ago. I’ve looked at some science fiction fans, they do the same thing, they go to live in the future. What’s funny, some of them are the same people. They take turns living in the year 1200 and year 12,000! I’ve studied some Sherlock Holmes people. They have a slogan: ‘It’s always London, and always 1895.’ I kind of like that.”

She nodded, generously agreeing with herself. “And these Smart Set people live in 1929. Very interesting. Very, very interesting.”

Maybe she was finished. If she was just pausing to catch her breath, Lindsey wasn’t going to give her a chance. Not until he got in another question, at least. “So you’re not really interested in Art Deco yourself?”

“Vargas and Ert, silver fox furs and cloche hats? I know the buzz-words. It’s as interesting an era as any, I suppose. If I were a historian. I’m not. I’m a sociologist. Let me put it this way, Lindsey. I’m interested in the people who are interested in Art Deco.”

“Do you have a clue about who would steal the Duesenberg?”

“You mean somebody in the club?”

Lindsey nodded.

“I thought it was a passer-by. Somebody who saw the car and jumped in and drove away. Were the keys in it?”

“Apparently.” Lindsey unfolded the report he’d got from Gutiérrez at Oakland police headquarters. “They’re not certain, but nobody could turn up the keys at the mansion, so they figure they must have been in the car.”

“That isn’t conclusive.”

“No. Keys might turn up yet. They haven’t polled everyone who was in the mansion, everyone who might have had access to the keys.”

“So they don’t know whether it was an inside job or an outside job.”

“That’s right. I’m leaving the possibility of an outside job to the police, they’re better equipped to handle that. But if it was inside, I think I might do better than they can.”

“They don’t mind your getting into the case? I thought the cops didn’t like private eyes messing into their investigations.”

“I’m not a private eye, Dr. Bernstein. They need a special license and I don’t have one and I don’t want one. I’m just an insurance adjuster.”

“Yep.” She picked up a pencil and jotted something on a yellow pad. I’m making notes about her, Lindsey thought, and she’s making notes about me. Like the laboratory chimp who learned to peep through keyholes. Dr. Bernstein said, “That’s very interesting, too.”

“Well, do you think somebody in the Smart Set might be responsible?”

She went back to the tilted-chair, hands-steepled-under-the-chin, posture. “Someone might. Someone definitely might.”

Lindsey waited for her to elaborate. He waited a long time. Finally she said, “Let me think about this. I’ve got your number.” She scrabbled on her desk until she found his card. It had already burrowed deep into the mound of papers. She levered herself out of her chair and pinned his card to her cork bulletin board.