The Door to December

Page 18

His thoughts were spinning, and not merely because he had been clubbed on the forehead.
Anyway, Uhlander was evidently a key to understanding what was going on. Apparently, the intruder had broken in there only to remove those books from the house, to conceal the Uhlander connection.
Pressing the gauze to his forehead, Dan left the study. Like an electric current, the pain seemed to pass through the gauze, into his hand, up his arm, into his right shoulder, down to the middle of his back, up to his left shoulder, into his neck, along the side of his face, completing the circuit by returning to his forehead, starting all over again.
Favoring his left knee, sorting through things with one hand, feeling like a big crippled bug, he searched the place perfunctorily and found nothing more of interest. Rink was a hit man, and hit men didn't assist police investigations by keeping handy little address books and paper records of their affairs.
In the bathroom again, he removed the compress and saw that the superficial bleeding had, indeed, finally stopped.
He looked like hell. But that was fitting, because he felt like hell too.
21
When Dan limped out to the curb, carrying the small box of books, George Padrakis was still behind the wheel of the unmarked sedan, sitting in darkness, his window half open. He cranked it all the way down when he saw Dan.
'I was just on the squawk-box. Mondale wants ... Hey, what happened to your forehead?'
Dan told him about the intruder.
Padrakis opened the door and got out of the car. He looked and sounded like Perry Como, and he moved like him too: lazily, casually, with unconscious grace. He was even casual as he reached inside his coat and drew his revolver.
'The guy's gone,' Dan said as Padrakis took a step toward Rink's house. 'Long gone.'
'But how'd he get in there?'
'Through the back.'
'This street's been quiet, and I had my window down,' Padrakis protested. 'I'd have heard breaking glass, anything like that.'
'I didn't find a broken window,' Dan said. 'I think he came in by the kitchen door, probably with a key.'
'Well, hell, then they can't blame it on me,' Padrakis said, holstering his revolver. 'I can't be two places at once. They want to watch the back of the house too, they should have put two men on the place. You get a good look at the joker who jumped you?'
'Not real good.' Dan returned the key Padrakis had given him. 'But if you see a guy with a badly mangled ear, that's him.'
'Ear?'
'I nearly tore his ear off.'
'Why'd you do that?'
'For one thing, because he was trying to bash my brains in,' Dan said impatiently. 'Besides, I'm sort of like a matador. I always try to take a trophy home with me, and this guy didn't have a tail.'
Padrakis looked baffled.
A gigantic motor home turned the corner, engine roaring, and lumbered down the block, like a dinosaur.
Frowning at the box in Dan's hands, Padrakis raised his voice above the shrieking engine of the nature lovers' vehicle. 'What's that you've got there?'
'Books.'
'Books?'
'Assembled sheets of paper with words on them, for the purpose of conveying information or providing entertainment. Now what about the squawk-box? What's Mondale,want?'
'You taking those books with you?'
'That's right.'
'Don't know if you can do that.'
'Don't worry. I can manage. They aren't that heavy.'
'That's not what I mean.'
'What's Mondale want?'
Staring unhappily at the box in Dan's arms, Padrakis waited until the motor home had passed like a brontosaurus making its way through a primeval swamp. Its wake of cold air and exhaust fumes washed over them.
'I called in to let Mondale know you were here.'
'How thoughtful of you, George.'
'He was about to head over to the Sign of the Pentagram on Ventura.'
'Good for him.'
'He really wants you to meet him there.'
'What the hell's the Sign of the Pentagram? Sounds like a bar where werewolves hang out.'
'I think it's a bookstore or something,' Padrakis said, still frowning at the box of books. 'Guy's been killed over there.'
'What guy?'
'The owner, I think. Name's Scaldone. Mondale says it's like the bodies in Studio City.'
'There goes dinner,' Dan said. He headed along the sidewalk, through alternating pools of purple-black shadows and wan amber light, toward his own car.
Padrakis followed him. 'Hey, about those books—'
'Do you read, George?'
'They're the property of the deceased—'
'Nothing like curling up with a good book, though they're not nearly so entertaining when you're deceased.'
'And this isn't like a crime scene where we can just cart away anything that might be evidence.'
Dan balanced the box on the bumper of his car, unlocked the trunk, put the box inside, and said, '"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Mark Twain said that, George.'
'Listen, until a member of his family has been located and gives approval, I really don't think you should—'
Slamming the lid of the trunk, Dan said, '"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island." Walt Disney. He was right, George. You should read more.'
'But—'
'"Books are not merely lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves." Gilbert Highet.' He clapped George Padrakis on the shoulder. 'Expand your narrow existence, George. Bring color to this drab life as a detective. Read, George, read!'
'But—'
Dan got in the car, closed the door, and started the engine. Padrakis frowned at him through the window.
Dan waved as he drove away.
After he turned the corner and went a couple of blocks, he pulled the car to the curb. He got out Dylan McCaffrey's address book. Under the S listings, he found a Joseph Scaldone, followed by the word 'Pentagram,' a phone number, and an address on Ventura.
Almost certainly, the murders in Studio City, the death of Ned Rink, and now the Scaldone killing were linked. It was looking more and more as if someone out there was desperately trying to cover up a bizarre conspiracy by eliminating everybody involved in it. Sooner or later, they would either eliminate Melanie McCaffrey as well—or snatch her away from her mother. And if those faceless enemies got hold of the girl again, she would vanish forever; she would not be fortunate enough to be saved a second time.
*  *  *
At 7:05, Laura was in the kitchen, preparing dinner for herself, Melanie, and Earl. A big pot of water was working up to a boil on the stove, and a smaller pot of spaghetti sauce and meatballs was also heating. The room was filled with mouthwatering fragrances: garlic, onions, tomatoes, basil, and cheese. Laura rinsed off some black olives and added them to a big bowl of salad.
Melanie sat at the table, silent, unmoving, staring down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. Her eyes were closed. She might have been asleep. Or perhaps she was just withdrawn farther than usual into her secret, private world.
That was the first meal Laura had made for her daughter in six years, and even Melanie's depressing condition could not entirely spoil the moment. Laura felt maternal and domestic. It had been a long time since she had experienced either of those feelings, and she had forgotten that being a mother could be as satisfying as anything that she accomplished in her profession.
Earl Benton had prepared the table with plates, glasses, silverware, and napkins. Now he sat across the table from Melanie, in his shirtsleeves—and shoulder holster—reading the newspaper. When he came across something surprising or shocking or funny in a gossip column, Dear Abby, or Miss Manners, he would read it aloud to Laura.
Pepper, the calico cat, was curled comfortably in the corner by the refrigerator, lulled by the humming and the vibrations of the motor. She knew that she wasn't allowed on kitchen counters or tables, and she usually kept a low profile while in the room, to avoid being chased out altogether. Abruptly, however, the cat shrieked and popped onto her feet. Her back arched. Her fur bristled. She was wild-eyed, and she spat angrily.
Putting down the newspaper, Earl said, 'What's wrong, puss?'
Laura turned from the cutting board where she was making the salad.
Pepper was alarmingly agitated. The calico's ears were flat against her skull, and her lips were drawn back in a snarl, fangs revealed.
'Pepper, what's wrong with you?'
The cat's eyes seemed to bulge in terror from its head and fixed for an instant on Laura. There was nothing of the domestic pet in those eyes, nothing but sheer wildness.
'Pepper ... ?'
The calico bolted out of the corner, squealing in fear or rage or both. She dashed toward a row of cabinets but suddenly wheeled away from them as though she'd seen something monstrous. She streaked toward the sink instead, then shrieked and abruptly changed direction again, claws ticking and scraping on the tile. She chased her own tail for half a dozen revolutions, spitting, and snapping her jaws, then leaped straight into the air as if she'd been stung or swatted. Slashing at the air with her claws, she pranced and twisted on her hind paws in a weird Saint Vitus's dance, came down on all fours, and was moving even as her forepaws touched the tile. She flashed under the table as if running for her life, between the chairs, out the kitchen door, into the dining room. Gone.
It had been an incredible display. Laura had never seen anything quite like it.
Melanie had been unaffected by the cat's performance. She still sat with her hands in her lap, head bowed, eyes closed. Earl had dropped the newspaper and had risen from his chair. In another part of the house, Pepper let out one last miserable cry. Then silence.
*  *  *
The Sign of the Pentagram was a little shop in a bustling block that was the very essence of Southern California hopes and dreams. Photographs of this portion of Ventura Boulevard could have been used in a dictionary as the sole definition of 'bootstrap capitalism.' One small store or restaurant shouldered up against another, block after block of enterprises owned and managed by entrepreneurs of all ages and ethnic backgrounds, and there was something for every interest and taste, both the exotic and the mundane: a Korean restaurant with maybe fifteen tables; a feminist bookshop; a purveyor of handmade knives; something called the Gay Resource Center; a dry cleaner and a party-supply store and a frame shop and a couple of delis and an appliance store; a bookstore that sold only fantasy and science fiction; Ching Brothers Finance, 'Loans to the Reliable'; a tiny restaurant offering 'Americanized Nigerian cuisine' and another specializing in 'chinois, French-Chinese cooking'; a merchant who sold military paraphernalia of all kinds, although not weapons. Some of these entrepreneurs were getting rich, and some never would, but all of them had dreams, and it seemed to Dan that, in the early evening darkness, Ventura Boulevard was nearly as well lighted by hope as it was by streetlamps.
He parked almost a block from the Sign of the Pentagram and walked past the Eyewitness News van, similar vehicles from the news departments of KNBC and KTLA, marked and unmarked police cars, and a coroner's wagon. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk, including curious locals, punk and gangsta-rap kids who wanted to look like street people but probably lived with their parents in three-hundred-thousand-dollar Valley homes, and sensation-hungry media people with the quick-eyed look that always made them seem (to Dan) like jackals. He pushed through the crowd, saw the beat man from the Los Angeles Times, and tried to stay out of the range of the active minicam in front of which a reporter and his crew were filming a segment for the eleven o'clock news on Channel Four. Dan edged past a teenage girl with blue-and-green-striped hair twisted into punk spikes; she was wearing knee-high black boots, a minuscule red skirt, and a white sweater with a bizarre pattern of dead babies. The entire front of the shop was covered with amateurishly painted but colorful occult and astrological symbols, and a uniformed LAPD officer was standing directly under a faded red pentagram, guarding the entrance. Dan flashed his badge and went inside.
The extent of the wreckage was familiar. The berserk giant who had smashed his way through that house in Studio City last night had come down his beanstalk again and had stomped through this shop as well. The electronic cash register looked as if someone had slammed a sledgehammer into it; somehow, a current of life remained in its battered circuitry, and one red number flickered in its cracked digital readout window, an inconstant 6, which seemed analogous to a dying victim's last word, as if the cash register were trying to tell the cops something about its killer. Some of the bookshelves were splintered, and all the volumes were on the floor in mangled heaps of rumpled dust jackets and bent covers and torn pages. But books hadn't been the only merchandise offered by the Sign of the Pentagram, and the floor was also littered with candles of all shapes and sizes and colors, Tarot decks, broken Ouija boards, a couple of stuffed owls, totems, tikis, and hundreds of exotic powders and oils. The place smelled of attar of roses, strawberry incense, and death.
Detectives Wexlersh and Manuello were among the cops and SID technicians in the shop, and they spotted Dan as soon as he entered. They headed toward him, wading through the debris. Their icy smiles were identical, with no humor in either of them. They were a couple of land sharks, as cold-blooded and predatory as any real sharks in any sea.
Wexlersh was short with pale-gray eyes and a waxy white face that seemed out of place in California even in winter. He said, 'What happened to your head?'
'Walked into a low tree branch,' Dan said.
'Looks more like you were beating up some poor innocent suspect, violating his civil rights, and the poor innocent suspect was foolish enough to resist.'
'Is that how you handle suspects in the East Valley Division?'
'Or maybe it was a hooker who wouldn't come across with a free sample just 'cause you flashed your badge at her,' Wexlersh said, grinning broadly.
'You shouldn't try to be amusing, Dan told him. 'You have about as much wit as a toilet seat.'
Wexlersh continued to smile, but his gray eyes were mean. 'Haldane, what kind of maniac you think we have on our hands here?'
Manuello, in spite of his name, was not Hispanic in appearance, but tall and blond and square-featured, with a Kirk Douglas dimple in the center of his chin. He said, 'Yeah, Haldane, share with us the wisdom of your experience.