One Grave Too Many (4 page)

Gesturing with the shorthandle scythe, the gardener said, “Get your butt back in the car.”

“I’ve come calling on Mrs. Goffman.”

The Goffman house was a huge place, looking something like three or four English country inns shoved together. It sat at the crest of a dozen sloping acres. Far below, through the trees and over the high brick wall, you could see the Pacific. The color of the afternoon was beginning to thin.

“You ain’t got an appointment.”

Easy walked toward him. “How’d you know that?”

“I get a list every morning. And there’s no big stud in a beat-up old Volkswagen on the list for today,” the man answered. He absently honed the blade of the scythe on the leg of his trousers. “Besides the old guy would never allow a big stud like you to visit her when he ain’t around. Not at all.”

“Mrs. Goffman is home?”

“Sure. She’s almost always at home, but you ain’t going to see her,” said the gardener. “How’d you get by the gatekeeper anyhow?”

“That’s an interesting question,” said Easy. “He was even more belligerent than you.”

“He’s a tough bastard, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not the kind of guy you can bribe to let you in.”

“Right. Everybody’s loyal to the old guy around here, he pays us to be. So how’d you get by the gatekeeper?”

“I knocked him on his ass,” explained Easy. “And if you don’t go back to cropping your lawn I’m going to do the same thing to you.”

“Bullshit you are.”

“That will be quite enough, Mullin,” said a soft throaty voice. “Please tend to your gardening duties and don’t annoy my friends.” A slender redhaired girl had come out of the big house. She wore a brand new pair of white bellbottoms and a peppermint stripe shirt. There was gin on her breath.

“Trouble,” said Mullin. “This is going to get people in trouble, Mrs. Goff …”

“Go away, Mullin,” she told him. “And the next time you step in cowshit clean your shoes afterwards.” She smiled at Easy. “You wished to see me, Mr. …?”

“John Easy,” said Easy.

“Come into the house,” Danny Goffman invited. “There are fewer goons inside.” She put a warm hand on Easy’s, led him along the gravel to an oaken doorway with a brass lionhead knocker.

Mullin stayed near Easy’s car, muttering, “Stupid bitch,” over and over to himself.

Danny pushed the door open, pulling Easy into an immense dark-paneled hallway. “I was just fixing myself a sundown cocktail,” she said. “Care for a martini?”

“No,” he said.

The redhaired girl drifted into a living room full of dark, heavy furniture. One wall was entirely made up of long, high windows which looked toward the sea. “Prefer scotch?”

“A beer will do.”

Danny gave a small shrug. “You in training?”

Easy said nothing.

At a curving bar in the corner of the room the girl bent down. “We’ve got anything you can think of to drink, including Portuguese anise and carob brandy. Yeah, here’s some Tuborg. Will that suffice?”

“Fine.”

“I myself don’t see any sense in not drinking,” said Danny. “I enjoy it, so I do it. Do you ever think about death?”

“Mine or somebody else’s?”

“Yours, mine, anybody’s.” The girl uncapped his beer. “Sometimes when I’m out driving, on the occasions when I can sneak off the premises without a hassle, I get to looking at the people on the streets. Or when I’m down at Malibu sometimes on the beach and there are hundreds of people there … men, women, little kids. I suddenly feel very sad because not one of them is going to escape. They’ll all die. It’s a lousy thing to try to get used to.”

Easy accepted the beer she’d poured for him. “I’ll tell you why I’m here,” he said.

“Who gives a rat’s ass.” She walked to a marble-topped coffee table to pick up a crystal pitcher of martinis. “You’re somebody to talk to. I don’t see why I can’t talk to anyone I so please. What difference is it going to make! Have you ever thought about how very short a time you’re alive and how long a time you’re dead?”

“Late at night,” answered Easy.

“Really? I’m surprised you admit it. Nobody around here will, including my venerable patriarch of a husband,” Danny said. “There’s really no reason not to sleep with whoever you want. You know, there’s no heaven and there’s no burning hell or anything. There’s only … I don’t know, only nothing. Somebody else’s husband, somebody else’s wife … what can that really mean? It’s simply an arbitrary game, a let’s pretend thing.” She poured herself a fresh martini and drank it. “Why are you here?”

“I’m a private investigator.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Danny refilled her glass. “Did old Santa Claus hire you?”

“No, I was hired by Gay Holland to find her brother Gary.”

“Names out of the past. Whatever-happened-to sort of people.” She carried the glass and the pitcher to the high windows. “What’s Gary up to these days?”

“Can you tell me?”

“I haven’t seen him for years and years.”

“Not even when you worked for him in those margarine commercials?”

“I’d forgotten about that.”

“He’s been missing two days. Somebody tore his cottage apart looking for something.”

“I only know Gary Marks in a business sense.”

Easy moved around the coffee table and stopped a few feet behind her slim back. “Why not tell the truth? Doesn’t that fit in with your philosophy?”

“Despite everything,” she said, talking not to him but toward the distant sea, “I don’t want to blow what I’ve got here. There’s nothing else I can tell you, Mr. Easy.”

“If,” he said, “I don’t locate Gary in another day or so, I’m going to advise Gay to go to the police.”

“Do,” said the girl. “A man in my husband’s position, he can talk to cops or he can tell them to shove it.”

“San Amaro cops maybe. But not LA cops, or the FBI.”

Danny snickered. “Oh, Jesus, Easy. You can buy any cop who ever lived. And the FBI … don’t you read the papers?”

“Maybe so,” said Easy. “Okay, just worry about me then. I’m going to keep looking until …”

“What the hell is this?” came a booming voice from the doorway.

“You’re home early, Jake,” said Danny without turning.

“Who’s this bastard? What’s he doing here?” Jacob Goffman came stalking across the room, a thickset man with short-cropped grey hair. He had his suit jacket over his arm, was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a wide scarlet tie. “One of your new lovers?”

The girl faced her husband. “Jacob Goffman, John Easy,” she said. “John Easy, Jacob Goffman.”

Ignoring Easy, the old man strode straight to Danny and grabbed the pitcher from her. “Boozing it up in the middle of the day.”

“It’s the cocktail hour, Jake.”

He threw the pitcher from him with a disgusted growl. It trailed gin and smashed against a Flemish painting on the wall. “You,” he said to Easy, “get out before I mop the floor with you.”

“Famous thoughts of famous men,” said Danny, putting the rim of the glass to her lips.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” roared the old man. He slapped the glass out of her hand.

It went splashing into the window.

Easy reached out and took hold of Goffman’s arm. “Don’t do that anymore,” he advised.

“You trying to tell me …” The pressure on his arm began to bother him. “Okay, okay. But you just better get the hell out of here now, whoever you are.”

Easy let go of him. To Danny he said, “Call me if you think of anything I ought to know. My office’s in Hollywood, on the Strip.”

He walked out of the room, down the long hall and outside to his car. He climbed in and drove out through the still open gates. There was a new man in the gate house.

E
ASY WENT FROM THE
air conditioner back to the cornbeef sandwich. It was sitting in a paper plate on the exact center of his desk blotter. He sat down in his swivel chair, unbuttoned his $200 sport coat and picked up a half of the sandwich. Next to it on the plate were three potato chips, a half a dill pickle and a raw carrot. A memo beside the plate explained, “The carrot is from Hagopian when he dropped by to say ‘Hello.’”

Easy took a bite of the sandwich, watching the ceiling of his office. The tiny alarm clock at the edge of his desk was ticking loudly. Frowning at it, he tried to calculate if Jill was in Spain.

Someone knocked cautiously on the rear door.

Rising, Easy called out, “Yeah?” From habit he stood clear of the door.

“I want to see you.”

He unlocked the door.

Danny Goffman, a tan carcoat over her shoulders, was standing out there in the dark. “I didn’t see any lights out front so I came around back to the parking lot. You ought to take better care of your car.”

“I’m planning to have it washed.”

She circled his office, pulling the coat tighter. “You keep it awfully cold in here.”

“My secretary has trained the air conditioner to keep everything always icebox crisp.” Easy nodded at the client’s chair. “Sit down.”

She ignored him, moved to the sofa against the wall. She dropped down onto that. “Don’t let me interrupt your dinner.”

Easy pushed the sandwich aside. “You have something to tell me?”

“My husband’s quite pissed off at you, not to mention curious,” she said. “Ennis has a nice black and blue spot right here.”

“Ennis is the gatekeeper?”

“Uh-huh.” She shrugged out of the coat. You’re in pretty good shape for somebody who lives on deli food.”

“It’s the raw vegetables that do it,” he said. “Where’s Gary Marks?”

The redhaired girl sat for a half minute watching him. “I really don’t know.”

“You have an idea, though.”

“I wanted to see you again,” said Danny. “Isn’t that enough reason for coming?”

“Is it?”

She looked away from Easy. “They took him away from me.”

“Who? People from your husband?”

“No, Jake doesn’t know I’m seeing Gary again,” she said. “Besides, if he had something to do with this he’d be bragging to me by now. No, I don’t know who they were.”

“They took him from the cottage in Westwood?”

“Yes, they were waiting at Gary’s place when we got there after dinner Monday. They seemed to know all about Gary, even about me.”

“How many of them?”

“Two,” replied Danny. “One was a little odd-looking guy with kinky blond hair, the other was a really fat spade. He seemed a little gay to me.”

“Did Gary know them—know who they were?”

She shook her head. “I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Was the house torn up when you got there?”

“Yes, that was the first thing we saw when we walked in.” She rubbed her palms along the legs of her white trousers. “Then the little kinky one came out of the bedroom with a goddamn gun. They told me they wanted to talk to Gary alone, that I could go home to my old man.”

“Did you?”

“You know I did, Easy,” she answered. “I couldn’t get involved with any trouble, with cops or anything. They knew that. Little trouble with Jake I have most of the time, but big ones I want to avoid. So I drove myself home and kept my damn mouth shut. Until now.”

“What else did these guys say?” asked Easy. “How do you know they took Gary away?”

Danny began rubbing her wrist. “Well, the little blond guy made a couple jokes about being old friends of the family, of Gary’s family. I guess you know about his father.”

“Yeah, what else?”

“The fat spade kept giggling. He said something about if they couldn’t get what they wanted they might have to go see the old witch in the desert,” said Danny. Remembering made her frown. “The kinky blond told him not to talk so much. Then I left. I went straight home to San Amaro and left Gary there with them. Not very brave at all.”

Easy crossed to her. “Okay, I’m going to go look for Gary.” He took hold of her hand, pulling her up from the sofa.

“Right this minute?” she said. “Couldn’t you stay here awhile with me? I’m pretty down tonight and …”

“Right now.” He walked her to the back door of his office.

As he reached out for the doorknob the redhaired girl turned, got hold of him and kissed him once. Her tongue knifed in between his teeth. It tasted of gin. “I hope you find him,” she said when she’d pulled back from Easy. “But whether you do or not, I want to see you again.” She opened the door for herself and went out.

“…W
HEN HE TOUCHED ME,
you know,
there
, I felt absolutely, well, giddy,” the car radio was saying. “I mean, here I was a married woman in her early thirties being turned on by the man who came to reseed the lawn. And yet I must confess …”

Easy jabbed on another station.

“… being a hopeless bedridden cripple all my life I think has enabled me to see what God’s purpose is, Norm. That’s why I want to tell that listener in Downey with the tumor not to …”

The next station he found was playing unobtrusive string music.

Easy rolled down his window further, yawning.

It was a few minutes short of midnight and he was driving across the flat Southern California desert.

“Hope these gentle sounds are lulling you into the right mood to drift off to dreamland,” said the radio. “Remember that we bring you nothing but relaxing mood music from dusk to dawn. So whenever …”

Easy turned the radio off.

On his right, surrounded by fuzzy-armed joshua trees, a road sign told him he was two miles from Manzana.

Manzana was the desert town where Gary Marks’ aunt lived. After Danny’s visit Easy had put in a quick call to Gay Holland. She told him she’d already called her aunt and the old woman had said she hadn’t seen Gary. Easy wanted the old woman’s address anyway, figuring she still might be the old witch in the desert the two hoods had talked about in front of Danny.

Nearing Manzana he passed a covered wagon on the wide flat highway. He looked back at it and the driver gave him the finger.

The town was all lit up, its adobe and brick buildings festooned with strings of colored lights. A huge oilcloth banner suspended over the main street proclaimed:
Golden Pioneer Daze Festival.

Most everyone in town was pretending to be someone else. The streets were thick with bearded cowboys, Spanish soldiers, Indians, señoritas and dueñas and a few trail scouts and seamen.