Fadeout (7 page)

"They think you're an ogre." 

"I am," Dave said. "I eat boys. But very selectively. Come here. Let me show you." 

So there had been mostly only the two of them. It had been enough. After all, the musicals hadn't all been bad, nor the recitals all boring, and the Yvonne de Carlo costumes
were
funny, and Rod's eyes had shone at the glitter of gold and jewels in the "Art Treasures of Ancient Turkey" exhibit, and all the reading hadn't been sternly informational. They'd liked sharing detective stories—Arthur Crook, Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, characters he wouldn't read about again because they wouldn't speak the same without Rod's voice. He read well. If he hadn't been so nelly he'd have made a fine actor. But it hadn't been possible to school out of him all the femininity. Dave had tried. So had Rod. The affectations went, but what underlay them was ingrained. Real. Himself. Dave gave up trying after a while. Age took care of it to some extent. Death took care of it completely. 

No. That was how he mustn't think. Tears came hot into his eyes. He got up and walked the room. Remember something else. For God's sake, forget about the dying. Remember the trip to Oak Canyon, the cabin in the woods, making love by the light of crackling pine logs, waking in the morning to see out the window the whole landscape snowmuffled, white, white. . . . The glinting crystal chandeliers and mirrors of the Music Center. Nureyev leaping in a shaft of golden light . . . The glow of pride when Rod was able to open that first small shop of his, the chaste blackand- gold sign above the white fanlit door:
R. FLEMING, INTERIORS
. . . The sun-bright Easter morning they'd wakened to find that Tatiana, their fat, striped, indignant old cat (Rod called her Tatty Anna) had presented them with six striped kittens at the foot of the bed . . . The turning, twinkling, tremendous Christmas tree in that Greek Theatre production of
The Nutcracker
one warm, midsummer night . . . Rod's shout of triumphant laughter at the news that he'd been chosen to decorate all the apartments of a new building towering among the fountains of Century City . . . The bulging eyes of the supermarket cashier when he saw the shopping cart full of champagne and oysters, caviar and pate they'd bought the day the first fantastic check arrived . . . Remember those things. . . . 

But he kept remembering instead the eerily whispering corridors of the hospital late that last night, the smells of the hospital, kept seeing sharp and photographic his own feet in their scuffed brown loafers, pacing up and down, up and down, hour after hour, outside the door of the room where Rod's cut and gutted body lay mindless with drugs but still feeding, feeding the spreading, burgeoning red horror that would not die until it killed the thing it fed on. . . . 

And he knew he'd never sleep tonight. He got the pint of Old Crow from his suitcase, poured steeply from it into the clear plastic bathroom glass, added a twist of tap water, then took from the dresser top Fox Olson's scripts, and got into bed. Not soon, but sooner than he would have thought, he began to laugh.

He even slept. Knocking woke him. He still sat propped against thin pillows and a hard headboard. His neck and shoulders ached. Th'e scripts had slid off his knees. Now, when he straightened his stiff legs under the thin, machine-made Indian-style blankets, the scripts slithered to the floor. The lamp glowed sickly in the daylight. Wincing, he switched it off. In the glass that wasn't glass the dregs of whiskey lurked like a neglected friendship. He made a sound, cleared his throat, tried again. 

"Who is it?" 

"Coffee, Mr. Brandstetter." 

"Good." He wanted that. He flapped into the bathrobe. Under his feet the floor felt clammy. He opened the door. Beyond the heavy white arches the rain-drenched leafage of the patio garden sparkled in sunlight. He squinted. Between him and the dazzle, a young Japanese smiled and held out a black tray painted with Mexican flowers and birds. On the tray steamed a painted pottery jug. There was a cup to match, a spoon, packets of sugar and powdered cream. Dave didn't take the tray. He said, "Your name's Ito, isn't it?" 

"Yes, sir." 

Dave jerked his head. "Come in. I want to talk to you." The boy came in and put the tray down on a coffee table that had patterned tiles set into its top. Dave shut the door. "You worked for Fox Olson once, right?" 

Dave's portable typewriter stood in its case on the floor by the coffee table. The boy looked at it, then at him. "Are you a reporter?" he asked. "I can't tell you much. I only worked for him one day." 

"I'm an insurance investigator." Dave picked up the crumpled cigarette pack from the bedside stand. He held it out. The boy shook his head. Dave set a cigarette in his own mouth. "Last Christmas, was it?" 

"That's right." The boy took a matchbook from his white jacket and lit the cigarette. Quick and graceful. "Mrs. Olson hired me. As a surprise for him." 

"Thanks." Dave bent and poured coffee from the jug. It smelled great. "Was he surprised?" 

"Very." The boy grinned. He had beautiful teeth. "He almost fell down." 

"But he wasn't pleased? Look, if you get another cup ... " 

"It's okay," Ito said. "I've already had enough coffee to surf in." He had no Japanese accent. Strictly California. He blinked thoughtfully. "He seemed pleased. Mrs. Olson told me he was. That was Christmas Day." He raised his shoulders, held his hands out palms up. "Next morning—bop! You're fired." 

"No reasons given?" Dave sat down on the edge of the bed, blew at the coffee, sipped it. 

"No reasons." Ito smiled. "Just a very fat check. Not two weeks' wages. Two months'. Mrs. Olson said she was very sorry, she'd made a mistake. She'd thought Mr. Olson would want me working for him. He didn't." 

"Whose check? His?" The ashtray was full of butts. When he tapped ashes into it, Ito took it and emptied it into the frayed Indian basket by the dresser. 

"Hers," he said, putting the ashtray back. "She handled the money. I heard somebody talking about that, Christmas Day." 

"What else happened that day?" 

The boy shrugged. "They had a lot of people in. It was a beautiful day. Clear and sunny like this. Only dry and warm. I was really happy. I mean, it's a nice house, beautiful surroundings. The kitchen was perfect. That's what bugged me worst. I never got a chance to cook a real meal there." 

"You like to cook?" Dave asked. "You don't cook here." 

"No. But it's a good job. I'm saving my chips. When I get enough I'll open my own restaurant." 

"The Olsons paid you well?" 

"Better than any job I ever had. And I liked them. Especially him. He was somebody else, man. Always, like, 'If it's convenient' and 'Don't go to any extra trouble' and 'When you have time' and 'Aren't you getting tired? Would you like a break? I can look after things.... ' Always jumping up to help me whenever I came in sight with a tray. They were mostly out in the garden and around the pool. Even if he was singing or something, he'd take time to ask me if I was okay, did I need anything. Great guy." 

"Except he fired you," Dave said. 

Ito laughed. "Yeah. And they talk about inscrutable Orientals." 

"No incidents with him? Arguments? Criticism?" 

"No." The boy frowned. "Unless ... I don't know whether you'd call it an incident, exactly. But after I got everything cleared up that night, real late, I was getting ready to sack out. I'd just had a shower. He knocked at my door and called my name and I said, 'Come in.' It was probably two-thirty, three by now. It'd been a long day. And he was kind of stoned. He opened the door and for a minute he just stood there staring at me. I was drying myself off. Then he said, 'Excuse me,' and started to back out. 

"I asked if there was anything more I could do for him. He looked kind. of funny for a minute. He didn't answer. Just stared with his mouth half open. Then finally he gave a smile like maybe he was feeling sick or something. He said, 'No, thanks, Ito. It was a very nice Christmas.... ' And he turned and bumped into the door and mumbled, 'Thanks for all you did . . .' or something like that, and he was gone." The boy knelt, picked up the scattered scripts. "That was the last time we ever talked." 

"It's a small town," Dave said. "You must have run into each other now and then." 

"No. I don't move in the country club set. My speed is the movies and the bowling alley." Ito tamped the edges of the scripts on the dresser top and laid them in a neat stack. "If I was going to see him, it would almost have to be here. It was. Only a couple weeks ago. He drove in in that white T-bird of his. To see a guest. Guy from France. I was raking the garden. Mr. Olson passed me. He nodded and smiled. That was all." Ito frowned and sighed. "Just the same, I'm sorry he's dead. He was the nicest guy I ever expect to meet. . . ." 

In the sunlit Daffodil Café, while Dave ate scrambled eggs and fresh country sausage, the little yellow plastic radio played Fox Olson again. Telling one of his stories this time. A lot was missing when you read them to yourself. The book would be funny. But a better idea would have been to put the stories on disks. Olson's easy, dry delivery gave them a—what word did he want?—drollness that print never could. 

On the stools along the counter, at the tables in the booths, truck drivers, shopkeepers, ranch and vineyard hands grinned and chuckled and guffawed, forgetting the good coffee, the bacon and buckwheat cakes, the buttery breakfast rolls growing cold in front of them. 

The story was about Aunt Minnie Husk, who, when the Cottonwood Comers water tower was toppled by beavers who'd mistaken the props for saplings, used the tank as a mold in which to bake the world's biggest cupcake, and how the resulting invasion of the town by millions of mice had been solved by the providential arrival of owls, "who gorged themselves till they were too heavy to fly. They could only sit on the ground and belch. " 

Dave had read it and laughed at it last night. He laughed now, allover again. Next to him sat a pair of high-school girls, Cokes in front of them, books in their laps. One was pretty and dark and wore braces on her teeth. The other was red-haired, freckled and fat. Pinned to each of their blouses was a big orange-and-blue campaign button:
OLSON FOR MAYOR
. When the story ended and a cigarette commercial twanged and everybody began eating again, Dave nodded at the buttons. 

"Isn't it a little late for that?" 

The pretty one gave him a cold look. "No. Everyone in school's wearing them. We loved him." 

"Anyway," the freckled one said, "we don't think he's dead." 

Dave nearly choked on his coffee. "You don't? Why not?" 

The pretty one said dramatically, "Because his body was never found. Only his car." 

"So I heard." Dave lit a cigarette. The tiny counter ashtray was yellow plastic. It looked flammable. He shook the match out carefully. "But if he's not dead, what happened to him?" 

The freckled girl was poking a pair of bent paper straws among the melting ice chips in the bottom of her glass, noisily sucking up the last drops of sweetness. She stopped that for a second to say, "He was kidnapped." 

"You're kidding. By whom? What for?" 

"Mayor Chalmers, of course." The pretty girl was disgusted to have to explain anything so obvious. "Till the election's over." 

"Come on, Lou Ann." The fat girl got off her stool. "If I'm late again, my mom will confiscate my tapes." 

Picking up her books, Lou Ann told Dave, "Doreen's got every Fox Olson broadcast—" 

"Till school started." Doreen made the correction over her shoulder, hurrying toward the Daffodil's screen door. There was a lot of her. All of it jiggled. 

The street was as dry now as if it had never rained. By afternoon it would be dusty. Cars parked on the bias in Pima. He nosed his to the high curb between a pair of identical, mud-crusted pickup trucks piled with empty orange crates. The building he faced was old red brick. Two stories. On the downstairs windows peeling gilt lettering read
PIMA VALLEY SUN
. When he was on the sidewalk he saw through the windows that the paint inside was time-darkened, the desks and woodwork nicked. The morning was already warm and the front door stood open and sounds came out, jangle of telephones, stammer of two-finger typing, chitter of linotypes. He passed. He wanted the other door, the one with the KPIM logo on it. 

He went in and climbed straight stairs into air-conditioned silence. The place smelled of newness and success. It glowed with clean light from fluorescent tubes masked by frosted glass. Underfoot the blue-green speckled carpeting was deep. The white walls and ceiling were cushiony with thick, fibrous plaster. Long rectangles of double plate glass looked into studios and control rooms where equipment glinted, records turned, shirt-sleeved men laughed without sound. Down the hall, somebody used a door. Thick and heavy, it sighed, closing. 

In Hale McNeil's office floor-to-ceiling drapes, crisp blueand- green-striped, shut out the view of ugly Main Street. The furniture was burnished steel and saddle leather. On the white wall hung a big Peter Hurd painting. McNeil wore buckskin-colored corduroy on his big frame, pockets leather-edged, modified cowboy style, expensive. His face was tanned and rugged, his dark hair handsomely gray at the temples. Dark brows and lashes made his blue eyes startling. The eyes mocked Dave. 

"Thorne tells me you don't think Fox is dead." 

Dave gave a small amused shrug. "Neither does the student body of Pima High. None of them at your house?" 

"Grown and gone," McNeil said. "But . . . I suppose at that age he'd have worn the fool button. Probably tacked the poster up in his room too." 

"Which, of course, his mother would have loved." 

McNeil's face hardened. "His mother and I were divorced when Tad was fifteen months old. The reason? She was a drunk and a tramp. Prettiest girl in the graduating class of Pima High School, June 1939." His mouth twisted. "A drunk and a tramp." 

"Who raised the boy? You, by yourself?" 

"My folks. They did their best. So did I. But . . . there's an old saying: Wash a dog, comb a dog, still a dog. I don't know what's become of him. Don't care."