Early Graves (12 page)

“But there’s a date here.” Dave put on reading glasses and squinted at the card. “December tenth, last year.”

“I told you it had been a while,” she said. “I remember Michael.” She pawed around in a welter of papers on the desk and found a cigarette pack. When she lit a cigarette from the pack, the smell of the smoke was strong. Turkish, Dave thought. “Tall, slender boy, very fair hair that he wore long, down to his shoulders.”

Dave handed back the card. “Did he also carry a knife?” He tucked his glasses into a jacket pocket.

“We don’t search them.” Crofoot peered into the file drawer, slipped the card back in place. “He may have owned a knife.” She pushed the little drawer shut. “But it wasn’t the knife that got him into trouble. It was drugs. A boy came to me and said Moorcock was selling crack.” She laughed bleakly. “To raise a little money for Christmas, I suppose.”

“Did you confront him about it?” Her cigarette smoke was tough to breathe. He tried to make out the printing on the crumpled yellow pack on the desk. Could it be Fatima? Did they still make those? “Is that why he left?”

“Yes. If I didn’t act promptly and strictly about drugs,” Crofoot said, “we’d be in deep trouble here.” She pulled off the white cap and ruffled her thick, honey-colored hair with her fingertips, as if her scalp itched. “The police would close us once for all. I tell them, ‘Bring drugs in here, and there won’t be a Haven House anymore—no free food, no place to sleep.’” She smoothed her hair and put the cap on again. “I encourage them to snitch. I don’t much like myself for that.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Dave said. “You were right about Moorcock. I have a witness that he was into cocaine.”

Before she could answer, knuckles rapped the door. She called, “Come in.” A teen-age boy poked his head in. On his shiny, shaven scalp someone had painted an ancient Celtic spiral in red and gold. Also on his flat cheeks. “We straightened up the storage room like you asked. Can we take this stuff now?”

Crofoot said yes, and the skinhead came inside, followed by a short, black youth in an embroidered cap whose bright colors had grown grimy. His caftan needed washing too. It was of gaudy cotton print. Rain was falling again, and the long garment clung to him. His body was a tidy sculpture. The boys picked up cartons and staggered out with them, wheezing, laughing.

Crofoot went and closed the door. She said to Dave, “I hope today’s volunteer cook doesn’t ring to tell me her baby-sitter has let her down.” She glanced worriedly at an old black telephone that squatted on the desk. “Cooking is a chore I can live without. Oh, I do it,” she added hastily, “but not, I fear, with Christian cheerfulness.” She read her watch and sighed. “It looks like the deadline has arrived.”

“I’ve cooked meals with one arm before,” Dave said, “but not for a hundred hungry kids.”

Crofoot smiled. “Thanks, I’ll manage. She’ll no doubt be along. The freeways are wet. That means traffic jams. I’ll just get things started for her.” She opened the door.

The boys came threading their way through the tents from which radio music blared, shrieking guitars, thudding drums. When the boys were inside the office, Dave closed the door and asked the skinhead, “Did you know Mike Moorcock when he lived here?” He looked the same question at the black boy. They turned to Crofoot, as if to say, “Who is this? Do we have to answer him?”

Crofoot busied herself putting out her cigarette, and Dave said, “Did he tell you where he was going when he left?”

“What for do you want to know?” The black lad plucked the thin, soaked cloth away from his crotch. He was embarrassed. He had nothing on under the caftan. “You police?”

“Have you seen him since?” Dave said.

“He peddles crack along Franklin, around Wilcox,” the white boy said in a bored voice. He picked up cartons. “He did. He got busted. That’s what I heard.”

“Onions?” the black boy said to Crofoot. “We got those?”

“In the corner.” Crofoot pointed.

“When did he get busted?” Dave said.

“Last weekend. I guess nobody bailed him out. I go past there all the time. I haven’t seen him.” He tottered toward Dave, thin arms straining with the weight of the cartons. “You want to open the door, please?”

Dave opened the door. The skinhead went out into the rain. The black kid came laden with net sacks of onions. “Cook, she say nothing taste right without onions.” He followed the skinhead off between the tents.

“Ah.” Crofoot glowed. “The cook’s come.”

Dave grinned. “Saved from an awful fate, right? I’ll go. Thanks for your help.”

Out on the sidewalk in the dying light, he saw that someone had made off with paint, pan, roller. He didn’t take the bad news back inside,
FAGS CAUSE AIDS KILL ALL FAGS
still showed through. Bullets struck the words now. He heard the whine of bullets past his ears. He saw the stucco shatter and fly away in fragments. He dropped to the sidewalk. Two more bullets hit the wall. Bits of stucco stung his face. Someone shouted. Dave got carefully to his feet. Across the street, Samuels in his pale coat ran away between buildings, gun in his hand. Past him, Dave glimpsed a skinny, ragged kid, running like hell, long blond hair streaming. The light was poor, but didn’t it have to be Moorcock? Whoever it was dodged from sight at a building corner, dodged back, fired a gun. Samuels fell down. Dave ran back into the court of Haven House, clutching the arm in the sling. The door to the office stood open. The boy with the shaved head came out, a gunnysack of potatoes balanced on a bony shoulder. Crofoot walked behind him, talking. When she saw Dave, her mouth closed, and her eyes opened wide. Over the shriek of radios, Dave shouted to her, “Phone the police. There’s been a shooting, tell them an officer is down.”

S
OPHIE SAMUELS WAS PLUMP
and pale like her husband. She wore a yellow sweater, faded blue jeans, jogging shoes. And she held on her lap a plump, pale child of maybe three. The child slept with its head of pale curls nestled under Sophie Samuels’s chin, and its thumb in its mouth. Beside mother and child on the couch where they sat lay the mother’s pink raincoat and the child’s very small red plaid one. The mother stared over the baby’s head at a pottery jar of flowers that stood on a coffee table strewn with tattered magazines and empty paper cups. The place was an alcove for anxious people to wait in off a hospital corridor near the rooms where surgery was done.

Dave waited there too, smoking, trying to remember not to smoke. Jeff Leppard wore tweeds again, and found it hard to sit still. He kept jumping up and walking down the corridor to its end, and walking back again. Now and then, his eyes met Dave’s. Nothing friendly was in their look. If Dave had stayed home and minded his own business, Samuels wouldn’t have been shot. Leppard had let himself say this much to Dave in the rainy areaway between those two scabby apartment buildings on Novello Street while blue uniforms in clear plastic raincoats beat the neighborhood searching for the suspect, and ambulance attendants hustled Samuels off on a gurney in his bloody fly-front coat. Leppard was wrong to say it, and he knew it, and said no more. But Dave didn’t blame him. He also didn’t blame himself. He hadn’t asked for Samuels to guard him. Or anyone else.

Samuels’s partner, Dugan, had come and gone earlier. The surgery was taking a long time. It was Dugan who brought the flowers, hoping they’d speak for him. A leathery older cop, his husky voice stammered when he tried to express his concern to Sophie. She’d scarcely looked at him. She’d sat staring at the flowers. Captain Ken Barker arrived later, and was better when it came to finding the words, the tone to talk to the frightened wife, to lend her comfort, reassurance, a sense that someone cared. Still, she’d said little in return, murmured thanks, a wan try at a smile. “He’s only thirty-two,” she said. “Too young to die.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Barker said.

“He didn’t want to be a cop,” she said. “He wanted to be a lawyer.” Tears ran down her cheeks, she chewed her lip. “But he wasn’t smart enough.”

Barker laughed gently. “Neither are most lawyers. Don’t cry.” He found tissues in a pocket and bent and dried her tears. “He’s only gunshot. It hurts but not forever.”

She nodded tearily. “Thank you for the flowers.”

Barker turned to Dave. “Whoever it was,” he said, “it wasn’t Michael Moorcock. He’s in jail, waiting trial for peddling crack. He was in jail the night Drew Dodge was killed, still there when you were attacked at your house. We don’t know where he was when Eddie Vorse was killed, but we didn’t find any knife among Moorcock’s possessions.”

Dave nodded glumly. “Stein’s description fit, so did Crofoot’s, but nothing ever comes that easy, does it?”

“You’d hate it if it did,” Barker said.

“Not really,” Dave said. “I’m tired. I’d like to get it over with.”

“Tell me about it,” Barker said. He rubbed his broken nose, moved his blocky shoulders restlessly, looked up the corridor. “I could use a drink. And you sure as hell look as if you could.”

Dave glanced at the young woman. “I can’t go. She’s got to think the way Leppard thinks—that this is my fault. I’ll stay here until it’s over.”

“What’s the prognosis?” Barker said.

“Fifty-fifty. He took it in the chest, almost in the sternum. Maybe it got his heart. Maybe not.”

Then the double doors marked
SURGERY
pushed open, and a tired-looking tall man in a green surgical gown came out, pulling a green mask down so he could show a weary smile to Sophie Samuels. “It took some fancy needlework, but he’ll be all right,” he said. “Good as new.” He glanced at Ken Barker. “Captain—you’ll have him back on the job in six weeks.” He pulled off the green cap. His gray hair was tangled and sweaty. “What happened to bulletproof vests?”

Barker said, “Nobody was expecting bullets on this assignment.” He looked grimly at Dave.

The double doors of the surgery room slammed open, and a gurney was pushed out into the hallway by green-clad help. One of them held high a plasma bag. They wheeled the gurney swiftly away. Sophie Samuels gave a cry. “Joey!” She struggled to her feet, made awkward by the burden of the child. She took steps, meaning to catch up with the gurney, but the surgeon stopped her. “You can see him when he’s in post-op. For just a few minutes, all right?”

“Thank you.” She didn’t look at him. She looked at the gurney, disappearing into an elevator. “Oh, God.” She sank down on the stiff little couch again and began to weep. Not from worry now. From relief. Leppard came down the corridor from somewhere. He stopped and stood over her. “Will you be all right?” he said. “Have you a ride home? Is there someone to stay here with you tonight?”

“I have my car.” Sophie was making a soggy wad of the tissues Barker had given her. Sniffling, she looked up and gave Leppard a wet, wobbly smile. “My parents are coming. From Simi Valley.” Blinking back tears, she read her watch. “They’ll probably be at the apartment before us.” She kissed the sleeping child and shook it gently. “Wake up, Pepper. We’re going to see Daddy now.” She set Pepper on his small feet, worked at getting his limp short arms into the sleeves of the little plaid coat. The child kept nodding, leaning drowsily against her knees, eyes shut. Leppard crouched to help out. He said, “That’s quite a name, Pepper.” He tickled the pudgy little tummy, and Pepper giggled. “That’s all right,” Leppard told Sophie. “I’ll carry him.” He took the baby up on his arm. Sophie snatched her own raincoat off the couch, and hurried away up the corridor after him. At the elevators, she remembered, turned, waved to Barker, smiling. “Thank you, Captain,” she called. She didn’t call anything to Dave. He didn’t expect her to.

He got heavily to his feet, and said to Barker, “I think I can use that drink now.”

A car with its lights off sat half in the drainage ditch on Horseshoe Canyon Trail when Dave reached home. He made out two figures seated inside the car. If there had been only one, he’d have worried. He jounced the Jaguar down onto the bricks. Cecil’s van sat in its old familiar place. He moaned inwardly. He wasn’t up to a confrontation tonight. The drinks with Barker at Max Romano’s, and the good food afterward, had left him in a mood to listen to music and drift off to sleep. It had been a long day. He parked beside the van and clambered out. A man from the unlighted car stood at the trail’s edge. He said: “Leppard sent us. I’m Officer Gregory. My partner’s Munroe. We’ll be here all night if you need us. Don’t worry if you hear us walking around. That’s part of the drill.”

“Thanks,” Dave said, locked the Jaguar, and walked across rain-matted leaves on the bricks, around the end of the front building. The cookshack was dark. He hoped Cecil had fed himself. Cooking he was no more in the mood for now than a confrontation. He liked the idea of cooking right this minute as much as Crofoot liked it all the time. The back building was lighted. Not the front.

He unlocked the door of the front building, a broad, heavy door of thick glass panes clinched in strong wood—switched on lamps, crossed thickly carpeted floor, down steps, up steps to the stereo rig. He peered through reading glasses into little drawers of cassettes, rattling their brittle plastic cases, filing through them, seeking quiet music, settling on Miles Davis ballads.

He dropped the cassettes in a jacket pocket and left the front building. When he stepped into the back building, he didn’t see Cecil. A lamp glowed on a table at one end of the long corduroy couch that faced the fireplace, and that was all. He walked down the room to hang hat and coat on the rack by the bar. “Whatever it is,” he called, “I’d rather we talked about it down here.” He poured brandy into two small snifters.

“You sure?” Cecil said from the sleeping loft.

Dave looked up. Cecil was naked. That had figured to happen, sooner or later. Dave carried the brandies to the couch. “Put your clothes on, please,” he said.

“You didn’t ask if I’ve told Chrissie,” Cecil said.

“If you had, you wouldn’t be trying desperate measures,” Dave said. “There wouldn’t be any need.”

Cecil muttered and vanished from the rafter-shadowy light. Dave heard the whisper of cloth as he dressed. He came down the raw pine plank steps barefoot, carrying shoes and socks in his hand. He brought these to the couch, plumped down grumpily, bent forward to put them on. Dave sat at the other end of the couch, tasted his brandy, lit a cigarette. “Where is Chrissie?” he said.