The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller (22 page)

It looked as if I'd arrived just in time. Joe Dodge, or whatever his name was, was preparing to leave, tossing a sleeping bag and things into an old sedan. When he turned and went up a short flight of stairs to the house, I followed, stepping softly. I climbed to the porch and peered inside, making out a dimly lighted living room. More lights came from a hallway off to the right. I went in quietly and crossed to the hall. Off it was a single long room that looked as if somebody had removed the partitioning wall from between two bedrooms. Joe Dodge, it turned out, was
indeed a painter, and the room was his cluttered studio. He was at the deep end of the room, his back at an angle to me and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was paging through a carton of sketches.

"Mr. Dodge?"

I tried to say it casually, but it startled him badly. He turned with cigarette ash spilling down his shirtfront.

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Dodge. You might remember seeing me out at the Parsons' place the other evening. My name is Peter Bragg. I'm a private investigator from San Francisco, working on a missing person case. I think Allison France called you a short time ago to tell you about me."

He ground out his cigarette in a nearby coffee can filled with sand, but he didn't speak.

"Mr. Dodge, I don't like to inconvenience you, but I have to ask you to do something for me. I have to ask you to go over to the wall and assume the position. You know, legs spread, leaning into it so I can pat you down."

"You're an intruder," Dodge said harshly. "This is my home."

"I know. But the thing I'm working on, it's that serious. You can make a beef about it later. I could just as well have gone to the local police with the information I have, and had some of them accompany me out here. Then we'd go down to the station and they'd lock you up until they had an opportunity to check out a few things. I thought if I came out here by myself, maybe we could avoid all that. We could just have a talk. Only first, I don't want to be worried about you."

I nodded toward the wall. Joe Dodge caught his breath and crossed the room. I stepped up behind him to run my hands along his arms and sides. I stooped low to pat down his legs, and that's when he made his break. He didn't make any threatening move in my direction, he just shoved off from the wall and ran across the room and out the door. I stumbled and pursued him. Dodge went out the front door, slamming it behind him, but he didn't really have
much of a chance. At the bottom of the stairs he hesitated, staring at the raised trunk lid on his old car. I lunged from the porch and dragged him to the ground. We rolled in the dirt for a while.

I was a larger man than Dodge, but it wasn't any taffy pull I found myself in. We rolled and twisted and he turned out to be surprisingly strong. I tried to subdue him with wrestling holds, but he wouldn't let up. I finally managed to stun him with an open-handed blow to the side of his head. I picked him up and half carried him back up the stairs, through the front of the house and back into his workshop. I gave a shove and Dodge stumbled into the middle of the room. I turned and closed the door to the hallway and leaned back against it, holding open a flap to my jacket so he could see that I was armed. In the middle of trying to catch my breath I had to sneeze again. It nearly brought tears to my eyes.

"Feel like talking?" I managed finally

Dodge turned with a glare in his eyes. "How did you get Allison to talk? Beat it out of her?"

"Not really. She didn't tell me, but I finally started putting things together. She tried to stall me, but I was afraid something like this might be going on." I glanced around at the half-packed cartons. "Your real name is Wesley Chase, isn't it?"

He didn't reply.

"I have photos coming up from Rey Platte. They'll be here tomorrow. Then I'll know for sure that you're Wesley Chase. But Allison tried to protect you. She thinks you're in the clear about everything."

"Like what?"

"Passing stolen money, killing a cop from down south, things like that."

Dodge looked at me sharply. "What cop?"

"A man named Dempsey, from Rey Platte. If you're who I think you are, he questioned you in the Santa Barbara jail."

"Everybody questioned me in the Santa Barbara jail. So I'm Wesley Chase. So what are you going to do about it, put me up
against a wall someplace and execute me? I don't know anything about any dead cop."

"Then why did you try to run just now? Why were you planning to leave at all?"

"Why not? I don't know you from a birdbath. So you say your name is Bragg and you're a private cop from San Francisco."

"I am. And Allison has seen my ID. I'll show it to you."

"Forget it. I don't care if you're the Pope. I don't want to talk to you."

"Too much is going on for you not to talk to somebody, Chase."

"Not to do with me, there isn't, and don't call me Chase." He patted his shirt pockets then looked around. "What will you do if I move around some, shoot me?"

"Not likely."

He went over to a chest of drawers and opened the top one. I brought out my gun. Dodge looked at me nervously and brought out a pack of cigarettes.

"Cigarettes, see?" He tore open the pack and lit up.

I leaned back against the door and put away my revolver.

"Jeez," said Dodge, puffing nervously. "How come you're so jumpy?"

"I'm the guy who found the dead cop. You'd be jumpy, too."

"I was born jumpy. What's the cop got to do with me?"

"That's what I'm here to find out."

Dodge shook his head. "Don't know any cops. Alive or dead."

"Maybe not. Why did you try to run?"

Dodge blew a cloud through his nostrils. "Have you ever done time?"

"No."

Dodge nodded. "You should try it sometime. Quite an experience." He took a deep drag on the cigarette then stabbed it out in the sand. "It fucking near killed me."

He half turned in the middle of the room and looked around at his paintings. "Some guys," he said, "were always being hassled
over sex." He crossed to an easel that was turned away from me. He had a drawing pad on it and turned to a new sheet, picked up a piece of charcoal and began to sketch.

"Some guys had trouble with the concept of being imprisoned. The regulation, the routine, the crushing boredom. A lot of guys managed to cope with that, but some couldn't. But the biggest thing—the worst—was the way you had to just suck your life down to the shakiest little space you could get it into, then walk quietly. Oh, so quietly, man, and hope to dear God you would not die before it was your time to leave that place. We had twenty-three stabbings while I was there. Some guys had nightmares every night."

He worked quickly at the pad, then put down the charcoal and lit another cigarette. His hands were steadier now, and his voice had calmed.

"I went through all those things. The hassles, the fear and the dread, wondering if some guy would stick a shiv in me for some fancied slight. I was out on parole from there for a little more than a year before I got my first unbroken night's sleep." He opened a flat little box of colored chalks and continued his work at the pad.

"That still doesn't explain why you tried to run just now, unless you've done something that'll send you back in there."

"That's how things look to you. I know different. I know that you don't really have to do anything to get sent in there."

"But maybe this time you did something."

"Like what?"

"Pass some of the stolen money from the Rey Platte bank job."

Dodge worked silently at the pad. "Are you working for the insurance company?"

"No, I thought Allison would have told you that. I'm looking for a man named Jerry Lind."

He nodded. "She told me. But you seem pretty interested in the bank money."

"I am. It's one of the things Jerry was interested in when he dropped out of sight. He was working for the insurance company that covered the Corrigan Security losses."

Dodge shook his head with a wry smile, ground out his cigarette and lit another. "That's very funny, man." He did some more work on the pad. "Okay, I'll tell you about the money. What I know about it. The evening of the day the bank was robbed, my brother came by my apartment in Santa Barbara. He didn't stay too long. I was working. I do a lot of work at night like this. There didn't really seem to be much point to his visit. Whenever Paul and I saw each other, it usually was for a definite reason. We'd never hung out much together. And we saw even less of each other since he got back from Vietnam. Only this time there wasn't any reason. We talked some. He drifted on back to the front of my apartment. In fact, I thought he'd left. But he came back a few minutes later and said goodbye. Probably for good.

"While he was wandering around the place he was stashing some of the stolen money. He probably figured he was doing me a good turn. He left some in a fairly obvious place. Under the front room rug. That's what the cops found. Or rather, a guy from the insurance company did."

"How did he find it?"

"I don't know. He must have gotten into the apartment sometime when I was out. He came by and we talked once. Sort of in the doorway. I didn't invite him in. Just told him I'd seen my brother that night, but I didn't know anything about the robbery. And I didn't. But that hadn't surprised me, the robbery. Paul and the two guys he roomed with—they were all in 'Nam together. They saw some hard times there. I guess you could say they were a little bitter. And the things they'd talk about—they were like animals, man. I mean a guy like me, I've always been a little jumpy. Prison made that worse. But in my head, I'm not all that soft. But those three guys..."

He shook his head and stepped back to look at his work. "Those three guys didn't belong in society anymore. Not when you heard what was going down inside their heads."

"Could those three have killed a cop like Dempsey?"

"In a minute, smiling all the while. But I'm sure that they didn't. My guess is that after the robbery they split for Mexico or Spain or somewhere."

He fiddled with some chalk pieces and went to work again. "Anyhow, that one talk was all I had with the insurance guy, before I was arrested. The next day he showed up again with a couple of cops. They had a search warrant and the insurance guy went directly to where the money was. He kicked back the rug and there it was. Five big ones. And I was the only surprised guy in the room."

"What was the testimony in court? To do with finding the money?"

"The insurance guy lied in his teeth. He said I'd let him into the apartment during his first visit, and he spotted a corner of a bill sticking out from under the rug. Which was all bullshit, of course. Before it got that far even, he came to see me in jail. He told me maybe we could work out a deal if I told him where my brother and the others were. And the rest of the money. I couldn't have told him that even if I'd wanted to. So I went to prison."

"But they must not have found all the money your brother left."

"That's right. I had a friend sublease the apartment while I was in prison. I didn't tell anyone, but I figured there might be some more hidden around. When we were kids, my brother and I used to devise elaborate hiding places around home. We spent a lot of time there together back then. When I was paroled my friend moved out, I moved back in and began looking for more money."

"Didn't the police search the place?"

"Yeah, but only in the obvious places. They didn't know about this game my brother and I had about hiding things. He stuck a couple of bills under the backing of a small print I had hanging on a wall. He put a couple down inside a can of green oil I'd bought that day, and had just left on the kitchen table. He rolled up a couple to about the size of a thin cigarette and taped them to the top of a window casing. Things like that. Only one or two in any one place. Not in a bundle like the cops were looking for."

"How much did you find?"

"About two thousand, in all. I had another friend who was going to Europe not long after I got out. I gave most of it to him. Asked him to unload the bills on his trip. Gave him a third of the proceeds. He brought me back the change."

"From most of it."

"Yeah. The rest was dumb, admittedly. I hung onto a couple of the bills just for the hell of it. Then last month I met this girl. She was the nicest little thing. Only about seventeen. In trouble. Pregnant. She had some sort of female infection. We didn't have any romance or anything. I felt like her older brother more. So I took her to Willits. Put on a false beard, shades, the whole thing."

He shrugged. "She didn't want to stick around after the surgery. Don't know why. But then she was just a kid. Guess she didn't know what she wanted."

"Do you have any more of the money?"

"After I paid the doctor in Willits I had one bill left. I gave that to the kid. Told her to go far away before she spent it."

"She went as far as New Mexico."

Dodge looked up. "Yeah? That's something." His eyes went back to the drawing pad. "There is one thing you've done for me, Bragg. You got me to verbalize on some things I've been trying to hold down. Maybe it'll help my head some."

He swung around the easel so I could see what he'd been working on. It was a strange and bleak combination. The lower part of the sheet had a charcoal sketch of a man's arms reaching into the drawing from below, fingers gripping a window sill. Beyond the window he'd drawn, beyond a pale wall, a bursting world of color. Blue sky and brilliant green knoll in the distance. Atop the knoll was a single cow, looking back toward the window, as if wondering about it.

"For eighteen months," Dodge said quietly, "this was the only thing I saw of the outside. You could see this from the prison library. Barely. That's why, you talk about stolen money, I don't think of it that way. Least not the money I had. Who does it really belong to? The insurance company, since they had to make good on it? What did the insurance company do for me? It sent me to prison for a year and a half on a bum rap. That figures out to be a little more than a hundred dollars a month. I don't call that stolen. I call it hard-earned."