The Instant Enemy (19 page)

Besides confirming what I already knew, this second story suggested that Fleischer had deliberately closed off the investigation. He must have known who the victim was; possibly he removed identification. The money in the dead man’s pockets didn’t rule out the possibility of murder, or the possibility that Fleischer himself had committed it.

I was struck by the sequence of the two deaths, three or four days apart. It could have been a coincidence, but it was clear enough that Fleischer hadn’t thought so. Also it seemed very likely that Captain Aubrey was that same Deputy Aubrey who had dealt with Mark Hackett’s murder fifteen years ago.

I found Captain Aubrey in the living room with Thorndike and Dr. Converse. Hackett wasn’t seriously injured, the doctor
was telling them, but he was suffering from a certain degree of shock. He didn’t feel that his patient should be questioned any further until he’d had some rest. The policemen didn’t argue.

When Converse had finished, I drew him into the next room, out of earshot.

“What is it now?” he said impatiently.

“The same old question, about Sandy Sebastian. What did you treat her for last summer?”

“I can’t possibly tell you. It wouldn’t be ethical without the patient’s permission.” Converse paused, and his eyebrows went up. “Did you put Dr. Jeffrey up to calling me last night?”

“Not exactly. I asked him the same question I’m asking you.”

“Well, I’m not answering either of you,” Converse said flatly. “The girl’s in enough trouble as it is.”

“I’m trying to get her out of trouble.”

“You’re going about it rather strangely, aren’t you?”

I threw him a question from left field. “Was she taking drugs last summer, something like that?”

“I refuse to answer.” But his clever eyes flickered in a way that said yes.

“Psychedelic drugs?”

His curiosity overcame his ethics, or whatever they were. “What makes you suggest that?”

“I heard she was suicidal. A bad trip on LSD sometimes has that effect. I’m sure you know that, doctor.”

“Of course.”

“Will you sit down and talk about it with me?”

“No sir, I will not. I have no right to discuss my patient’s private affairs.”

“Sandy’s affairs are pretty public now. And I’m on her side, remember.”

Converse shook his head. “You really must excuse me. I have hospital rounds to make.”

“How’s Lupe?”

“He’s doing fine now.”

“Is Lupe on drugs by any chance?”

“How on earth should I know?”

Converse turned abruptly and went away.

Captain Aubrey was waiting for me in the living room. Thorndike had filled him in on my report, but he had some further questions.

“You’ve been close to this case from the beginning,” he said. “How do you think it all started?”

“It started the day that Davy Spanner and Sandy Sebastian got together. They’re both badly alienated, young people with a grudge.”

“I know something about Spanner. He’s a psycho with a record. He shouldn’t have been out on the streets.” His eyes were a cold gray. “Fortunately he won’t be out much longer. I’ve been in touch with Rodeo City. They found the Sebastian girl’s car north of the ranch, hub-deep in the mud. Spanner won’t get far without it. The Santa Teresa County authorities expect to take him today.”

“Then what?”

“Spanner’s their baby.” Aubrey’s phrase hit me queerly, and broke into multiple meanings. “They want him for first-degree murder, and that takes care of him. The problem of the girl is more complicated. For one thing, she’s a juvenile, with a clean record. Also she ran out on Spanner before the Fleischer murder was committed. Lucky for her.”

“Sandy’s no criminal. She wanted to quit as soon as she saw crime was for real.”

“You’ve talked to her, haven’t you? What gets into a girl like that?” Aubrey was genuinely disturbed. “I’ve got a daughter sixteen. She’s a good girl. So was this one apparently. How do I know my own daughter won’t walk up to somebody some fine day and crack his skull with a tire iron?”

“I think Sandy had a grudge against Lupe. The case may have started right there.”

“What did she have against him?”

“I better not say until I can prove it, Captain.”

He leaned toward me, red in the face, remembering his own daughter. “Did he have sexual congress with her?”

“Not that I know of. Whatever happened between them will all come out in the wash. The probation people will be going over her with a fine-tooth comb.”

Aubrey gave me an impatient look, and turned to leave.

I detained him. “There’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. Let’s go out to your car. It’s more private.”

He shrugged. We went outside. Aubrey got in behind the wheel of his unmarked car, and I slid in beside him.

“Are you the same Aubrey who used to work out of the Malibu station?”

“I am. It’s why I was assigned to this one.”

“This is the second major crime in the Hackett family, I’ve been told.”

“That’s right. The senior Mr. Hackett—his name was Mark—was shot on the beach.”

“Did you ever get a line on the killer?”

“No. These hit-and-run crimes are hard to solve.” Aubrey sounded apologetic. “The trouble is there’s generally no provable connection between the robber and his victim.”

“Was robbery the motive?”

“Apparently. Hackett’s wallet was taken, and he carried a lot of money. Which wasn’t the wisest thing to do under the circumstances. He had a hideaway cottage on the beach, and he made a habit of walking down there at night, all by himself. Some thief with a gun caught onto the habit, and took him for his roll.”

“Did you arrest anyone?”

“We picked up dozens of suspects. But we couldn’t pin the crime on any one of them.”

“Do you remember any of their names?”

“Not at this late date.”

“I’ll try one on you, anyway. Jasper Blevins.”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid it rings no bell. Who is Jasper Blevins?”

“Davy Spanner’s father. According to an old Santa Teresa newspaper, he died under a train near Rodeo City, about three days after Mark Hackett was murdered.”

“So?”

“It’s an interesting coincidence.”

“Maybe. I run into these coincidences all the time. Sometimes they mean something, other times they don’t.”

“This one does.”

“Do you mean there’s a causal connection between these two crimes—Mark Hackett’s murder and his son’s kidnapping?”

“Some kind of a connection, anyway. According to a newspaper account, you recovered the revolver Mark Hackett was shot with.”

Aubrey turned and looked at me appraisingly. “You do your homework, don’t you?”

“Did you ever trace the revolver to its owner?”

Aubrey was slow in answering. “The queer thing is,” he said finally, “the gun belonged to Hackett himself, in a sense—”

“That suggests a family affair.”

Aubrey lifted the flat of his hand above the wheel. “Let me finish. The gun belonged to Hackett in the sense that one of his oil companies had purchased it. They stored it in an unlocked drawer in their Long Beach office. It wasn’t kept proper track of, and it simply disappeared, apparently some time before the murder.”

“Disgruntled employee?”

“We went into that pretty thoroughly. But we didn’t come up with anything tangible. The trouble was, Hackett had quite a number of disgruntled employees. He’d recently moved here from Texas, and he was riding herd on them Texas style. He was very unpopular with his people. But we couldn’t prove that any one of them killed him. He had nearly five hundred employees in Long Beach alone, and a good half of them hated his guts.”

“What was the name of his company?”

“Corpus Christi Oil and Gas. Mark Hackett originally came from Corpus Christi. He should have stayed there.”

Aubrey punched my arm in a friendly way, and turned his ignition key. I wandered into the house.

G
ERDA
H
ACKETT
was in the picture gallery, standing absorbed in front of a painting. It showed a man in a geometrical maze, and seemed to show that the man and the maze were continuous with each other.

“Are you interested in painting, Mrs. Hackett?”

“Yes. Particularly in Klee. I sold this picture to Mr. Hack—to Stephen.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I worked in a gallery in München, a very good gallery.” Her voice was thick with nostalgia. “It was how I met my husband. But if I had a second chance I would stay in Germany.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like it here. Such dreadful things happen to people.”

“At least you got your husband back.”

“Yes.” But this failed to cheer her. She turned to me with a vague ambiguous light in her blue eyes. “I’m very grateful, really. You saved his life and I want to thank you.
Vielen Dank.”

She pulled my face down and kissed me. This gesture was unexpected, perhaps even by her. It may have started out as a thank-you kiss, but it turned into something more involved. Her body leaned into me. Her tongue pushed into my mouth like a blind worm looking for a home.

I didn’t like the woman that well. I took her by the arms and released myself. It was like handling a soft statue.

“Am I no good?” she said. “Am I not attractive?”

“You’re very attractive,” I said, stretching the truth a little. “The trouble is, I work for your husband and this is his house.”

“He wouldn’t carel” The ambiguous light in her eyes crystallized in a kind of helpless anger. “Do you know what they’re doing? She’s on the bed beside him feeding him soft-boiled eggs with a spoon.”

“That sounds like an innocent pastime.”

“It’s no jokel She is his mother. He has an Oedipus fixation on her, and she encourages it.”

“Who told you that?”

“I can see it with my own eyes. She is the seductive mother. The soft-boiled eggs are symbolic. Everything is symbolic!”

Gerda was disheveled and close to tears. She was one of those women who dishevel easily, as if the fronts they turned to the world were precarious to begin with. She would never be the equal of her mother-in-law.

But that was not my problem. I changed the subject: “I understand you’re a friend of Sandy Sebastian’s.”

“No more. I helped her with her languages. But she is a little ingrate.”

“Did she spend any time with Lupe?”

“Lupe? Why do you ask?”

“Because it may be important. Did she see much of him?”

“Certainly not, not in the way you mean. He used to go and get her sometimes, and drive her home.”

“How often?”

“Many times. But Lupe isn’t interested in girls.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell.” She flushed. “Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to have a look at Lupe’s room.”

“For what reason?”

“Nothing to do with you. Does he have a room in the house?”

“His apartment is over the main garage. I don’t know if it’s open. Wait, I’ll get our key.”

She was gone for a few minutes. I stood and looked at the Klee, and found that it grew on me. The man was in the maze; the maze was in the man.

Gerda Hackett came back carrying a key with a tab attached: “Garage apt.” I went out to the garage and used the key to open Lupe’s door.

It was what is called a studio apartment, consisting of one large room with a pullman kitchen. It was furnished in bold colors with Mexican fabrics and artifacts. Some pre-Columbian masks hung over the serape-covered bed. If Lupe was a primitive, he was a sophisticated one.

I went through the chest of drawers and found nothing unusual except some pornographic pictures of the handcuff school. The bathroom medicine cabinet yielded only a jar of something labeled Psychedelic Love Balm. But some of the sugar cubes in the bottom of the bowl in the pullman kitchen were amateurishly wrapped in aluminum foil.

There were six wrapped cubes. I took three, tied them in my handkerchief, and put them away in an inside pocket.

I hadn’t heard anyone coming up the stairs, and was mildly surprised by the door opening behind me. It was Sidney Marburg, wearing tennis shoes.

“Gerda said you were out here. What’s with Lupe?”

“Just checking.”

“Checking what?”

“His morals and his manners. He’s no ordinary houseman, is he?”

“You can say that again. Personally I think he’s a creep.” Marburg walked toward me silently. “If you get something on him, I’d like to know about it.”

“Are you serious?”

“You’re bloody right I’m serious. He puts on a show of being interested in art, because my wife is, but she’s the only one that’s taken in.”

“Is there something between the two of them?”

“I think there is. He comes to our house in Bel-Air sometimes when I’m away. Our houseboy keeps me posted.”

“Are they lovers?”

“I don’t know,” Marburg said in pain. “I do know she gives him money, because I’ve seen some of the canceled checks. According to the houseboy, Lupe tells her everything that goes on here in her son’s house. It isn’t a healthy situation, and that’s putting it mildly.”

“How long have they known each other?”

“Practically forever. He’s worked here, if you can call it work, as long as I can remember.”

“How long is that?”

“Fifteen—sixteen years.”

“Did you know the Hacketts when Mark was still alive?”

For some reason, the question irritated him. “I did. That’s hardly relevant to what we were talking about. We were talking about Lupe.”

“So we were. What do you suspect him of, besides spying for your wife? Does he mess around with drugs?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Marburg said, a little too readily. “I’ve seen him high more than once. He was either manic or on drugs.”

“Did you ever see him with the Sebastian girl?”

“I never did.”

“I understand he chauffeured her quite a bit.”

“No doubt he did. She spent a lot of time here in the summer.” He paused, and gave me a questioning look. “You think he tampered with her?”

“I haven’t come to any conclusion about it.”

“Boy, if you can get that on him—!”

I didn’t like his eagerness. “Slow down. I’m not going to shove the facts around to suit you.”