I used to know some cops, back in the days when I was still on speaking terms with some of them, who believed that opportunity creates crime. People do things for the simple reason that they get the chance. Wives shoot their husbands because there’s a gun in the house. Kids become junkies because drugs exist. Responsible executives take money out of the till and blow it in Las Vegas because Las Vegas is there. Opportunity. Those cops used to talk about preventing crime by getting rid of opportunity.
I think that’s a crock of manure. In my opinion, people commit gratuitous crimes, crimes they aren’t forced into, the way a starving man sometimes feels forced to steal, or a woman whose husband is cheating on her sometimes feels forced to shoot him, for the sake of power. If they can get away with it, it puts them on top of the world.
But right then I wasn’t so sure of anything. If Ginny wanted to blame it on opportunity, I wasn’t going to argue with her. I didn’t have anything better to offer. Instead I said, “There’s plenty of daylight left. What do you want me to do while I’ve still got wheels?”
“Marisa Lutt,” she said without hesitation. “Let’s make sure we’ve got everything. I’m tempted to call Encino, ask him to go farther back than two years. But I’m half afraid to find out if there’re any more of these cases. And I got the impression that he’s going to work on it anyway. Maybe he didn’t know about the notes before, but he does now. He’ll probably call us himself if he finds anything we need to know.”
I agreed with that. “You’re going to do the rest of the schools?”
“Yes. Ensenada and North Valley. I think that covers it, doesn’t it?”
I made a quick mental check. “That’s it.”
“OK.” She got to her feet. “Call my answering service when you’re finished. Then you might as well get rid of that clunker.”
“Yeah.” I heaved myself up out of the chair. Collected all the notes and stuffed them in my pocket. This time I went out first. I wasn’t trying to prove anything, no matter what Kirke had said. It was her office, and she had to lock up after me.
Alone again, I dug the Torino out of the garage and headed in the direction of the Heights. The Lutts lived in one of those newish suburbs where all the houses look nice even though they’re crammed together on lots you can hardly lie down crosswise on, and all the streets and even the developments have cute irrelevant names. The Lutts’ development was called Sherwood Forest—in this part of the world, of all places—and they lived on Friar Tuck Road between Little John Street and Maid Marian Lane. As first impressions go, it didn’t raise my expectations about Carson and Lillian Lutt, but I suppose with real estate prices being what they are you pretty much have to live wherever you find a house you can afford. If I wasn’t mistaken, Sherwood Forest’s big selling point was that the houses were less expensive than they looked. That, and a chance to send your junior-high kids to Ensenada Middle School.
I parked in the street, even though that left precious little room for the rest of the traffic, and went up the walk to the Lutts’ front door. Paint and trim aside, their place was identical to every fourth house on the block. And they had one chest-high piñon growing out of their front lawn, just like every other property in sight.
Unfortunately you can’t tell what’s going on inside a house from the outside. When Carson Lutt opened the door, it took me just one second to be sure that he was drunk.
He looked me up and down blearily, as if I were some kind of obnoxious consequence of his drinking, then said, “What the hell do you want?” His voice was smeared around the edges in a way that showed he wasn’t really very good at drinking. It takes practice to learn how to speak clearly when you’re full of booze.
I groaned to myself. The smell of his breath made me as thirsty as a dog. And I was already in no mood to put up with a belligerent drunk. I had to make a special effort not to sound too hostile myself. “My name is Axbrewder. I’d like to talk to you about your daughter.”
“That punk?” he snorted. “What’s she done now?”
“Nothing as far as I know.”
“Oh.” That seemed to surprise him. For a minute he forgot to be angry at me. “Come on in.” He waved me into the house and shut the door. “Have a drink.”
“No, thanks.” The living room looked better than I’d expected. Whoever decorated it had spent enough money to make the atmosphere soothing and the furniture comfortable, but stopped before the place looked like those implausible pictures in home decorating magazines. It was the kind of room where you’d expect a quietly successful businessman and his wife to give quiet parties for friends they actually enjoyed.
Well, Lillian Lutt was sitting there on the couch quietly enough—but if she’d looked any more miserable you could’ve stuck her head on a pole and used her to ward off evil spirits. She had a tall glass in her hands, the kind you use for heavy drinking. It took me a couple of seconds to pull myself together enough to add, “I’m on the wagon today.”
Carson Lutt peered at me. “Did I hear you say no?”
“Offer him a drink, Carson,” Lillian Lutt said from the couch. “I hate to drink alone.”
“You’re not drinking alone,” he said. “I’m drinking with you.”
“That’s nice.” She almost smiled.
“Have a drink,” he said to me. “I’m serious.”
I said, “So am I. I don’t want a drink. I want to talk about your daughter.”
“What’s she done now?” Mrs. Lutt asked. The pain in her face was terrible to look at.
“Nothing,” I snapped. The smell of all that alcohol made my nerves jumpy. My control wasn’t as good as it should’ve been. “She’s been dead a little too long for that.”
That took a minute to sink in. Lillian gave me one straight look as if she were about to scream, then got up and walked out of the room.
“All right, you, whatever your name is.” Suddenly Lutt’s voice was clear and sharp and determined. “Get out of here.”
“Tell me about Marisa first.”
He didn’t even blink. “You’re a lot bigger than I am. I don’t think I can throw you out. But I’m going to try. And I’m going to keep trying until you”—his voice jumped into a yell—“get the hell out of here!”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. It was his house. And I understood what he was doing with his pain. So I just shrugged and let myself out the front door.
But I didn’t leave. Instead I sat down on the front porch and tried to think of a way to handle the situation.
Part of me wanted to go back and accept his offer. I had a feeling that he’d tell me everything I wanted to know and more if I just had a few drinks with him. People who aren’t used to being drunk are like that. But I wasn’t ready to pay that much for the answers to a few questions. Once I got started, I wouldn’t stop. On the other hand, I was seriously tempted to go back into the house and pound on him for a while.
I was still considering my nonexistent options when a kid came up the driveway toward the house. She looked to be about nine or ten—a cute kid with straight blonde hair, braces, and one of those loose-jointed tomboy bodies that promises a lot of future development. She stopped in front of me, studied me gravely for a long minute.
Not having any better ideas, I said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said. Then abruptly, “Are they drunk again?”
That sounded like a dangerous question, and I was leery of it. But the seriousness in her child-face demanded an honest answer. Finally I said, “I think so.”
“Oh, damn.” She made damn sound as innocent as sunlight. All at once, she dropped herself onto the porch beside me and put her chin on her knees. “They’re going to blame it on me.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I’m late. When I’m late, they always use it as an excuse. They say they’re worried sick about me.” Her sarcasm underlined the hurt in her voice.
I waited a moment. Then I said, “But you don’t think that’s the real
reason.”
“Of course not.” This time I heard real bitterness. “I come home late because I know they’re going on one of their binges. I stay away as late as I can.”
I nodded. “It must be rough.”
“Yeah.” She stared in front of her as if her whole future were a desert. “They think I’m going to turn out like Marisa.”
All of a sudden, the Lutts went click in my head and started to make sense. Now I knew what they were going through. I’d seen a lot of it in the last two days. Your thirteen-year-old daughter suddenly runs away for no reason in the world, and when she turns up dead months later you’re told she’s a junky whore. So who do you blame? It must be your fault, she’s a little too young for you to pin it all on her, but to save your soul you can’t think what you did wrong. Pretty soon you start to think that you did everything wrong. You can’t trust yourself anymore—and that means you can’t trust anybody. Not even your ten-year-old.
“That’s why they drink,” I said quietly. “Because of what happened to her.”
“Yeah,” she assented. “And then that pig came. The cop. At first I thought you were him. He was big, too. I didn’t hear what he said, but when he was gone Mom was crying and couldn’t stop, and Dad looked like he was going to be sick.”
I was thinking fast now—and what I came up with disgusted me. I felt rotten just considering it. But I didn’t see any other way. After a minute I said, “My name is Brew.”
She looked over at me, made an effort to smile. “I’m Denise.”
“Denise,” I said carefully, “I’m a private investigator. I’m trying to find a girl who ran away from home. Just like Marisa. Right now, it looks like they’re connected. The same thing is going to happen to this girl unless I can find her in time. But I’m not getting anywhere, and I need help. Your parents—well, they’re too upset to understand why I need to talk to them.”
She peered at me intensely. “You can ask me. I know all about it. They didn’t want me to hear, but I listened at the door.” She was eager to help. Probably her own self-respect wasn’t exactly in great shape. She needed to do something, make a positive contribution in some way.
I gave her the best smile I could muster. “There’s just one thing I really need. After she ran away, Marisa wrote your parents a note. That’s where the connection is. In the note. I need it.”
For a second while she looked at me, her eyes brightened. Then she jumped up. “I know where it is.” Before I could regret what I’d gotten her into, she hurried into the house.
She wasn’t gone long. I heard shouts as if her parents were yelling at her. Then she came back out and handed me a piece of paper.
A half sheet of good twenty-pound bond, neatly torn along one edge. What the messy handwriting had to say wasn’t more than three words different than Alathea’s note. By this time I could recognize the watermark at fifty paces.
I got to my feet. Talking fast so that I could finish before either of the Lutts came out after Denise, I said, “Now listen. When your parents are sober, I want you to tell them about me. Tell them Marisa didn’t run away. She was kidnapped. I don’t know how or why, but I’m going to find out. I’m going to nail whoever did it. Your parents don’t have any reason to hate themselves. And they don’t have any reason to be worried about you.”
If Ginny had been there, she would’ve tried to stop me during that whole speech. I didn’t have any business making promises like that, and I knew it. But I felt dirty about the way I’d used Denise, gotten her in trouble with her parents when she already had more than she could handle. I had to give her something in return.
If it turned out that I couldn’t keep my promises, I could always go back to drinking. One shame more or less wouldn’t make any difference. Alcohol doesn’t care about details like that.
10
Rush hour traffic slowed me down, so by the time I’d returned the Torino and walked back down Cuevero to my apartment I needed supper. I didn’t feel much like cooking for myself, but in my neighborhood there aren’t any restaurants that don’t have bars attached, so I didn’t have much choice. I fixed whatever was left in the refrigerator and ate as much of it as I could stand. Then I called Ginny’s service and left a message telling her everything I knew.
Afterward I spent about an hour cleaning my apartment, which is something I do whenever I’m feeling particularly grimy inside—and trying not to think about it. You’d be surprised how much cleaning you can do in a one-room efficiency apartment if you really put your mind to it.
By then it was dark outside. But not dark enough to suit me. Looking for chores to pass the time, I stripped the .45 and cleaned it. It didn’t need much. In the past few years, I’d probably cleaned the damn thing three times for every shot I’d fired. But it’s another job that can take a while if you go into it with the right attitude.
When I was done, I took a long shower.
The night still felt too early, but I couldn’t stomach any more waiting. After my shower, I got dressed, loaded the .45 and stuffed it into my shoulder holster, and went out.
Looking for Manolo, the information dealer.
I’d spent the whole day doing what Ginny wanted me to do. Now I wanted to check out an idea of my own.
Manolo was the man who could help me.
Most of the traffic had died out on Eighth Street. I could smell the alleys as I walked past them, hear the jukeboxes in the bars. Women shouted at their children, husband, loan sharks. Young studs swaggered in the road, catcalling at every girl they saw. Grizzled patriarchal Indians, Chicanos, Mestizos tried their best to walk in straight lines. Couples stood and necked in doorways and around corners. I didn’t pass five Anglos between Cuevero and the center of the old city, where Paseo Grande would’ve continued on if it hadn’t turned into a pitiful narrow thoroughfare called Coal Street. For the first time today, I felt like I knew what I was doing. Things can happen at night.
Not that my search promised to be easy. Old Manolo was a man of regular habits—and he made it his regular habit to be wherever the listening was good. Which on any given night could be any one of twenty different places. Sometimes he seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, and you had to know the history and fate of every bottle of anisette in the city to find him. Not a very reassuring prospect, but I didn’t see any way around it.
I was trying to decide where to start when I got lucky. A kid came running toward me down the sidewalk, and I recognized him before he got to me. His name was Pablo. I knew him because I’d met his family two years ago, when Ginny and I were working on a protection-racket case. He was in a hurry, and there was a strange bulge under his shirt. He had a packet of some kind tucked into the front of his pants.
Apparently he was running for a numbers racket.
I suppose you could say that’s a relatively harmless way for a kid to hustle a few bucks. He was a messenger boy, nothing more. And anyway it was none of my business. But that didn’t stop me. I caught his arm as he went past and swung him to a halt. “Hola, Pablo. There is no dignity in such haste,” I said in Spanish.
“I must run, Señor.” He didn’t even look at me. He was trying to break my grip without making a production out of it. Probably afraid of attracting attention. “If I go and come swiftly, I will be given a dollar.”
“A man does not run to do the bidding of those who are themselves not men enough to do their own running.” Stern Uncle Axbrewder. If Ginny heard me, she would’ve had real trouble keeping a straight face.
Now he looked at me. “Ay, Señor Axbrewder?”
“It is I myself, Pablo.”
Then he put on a whine. “Señor Axbrewder, my arm is being broken.”
“An arm will mend, Pablo. When it is the self-esteem which breaks, mending is not done easily.”
“Yes, Señor. For what have I been stopped?”
Well, I could see that I wasn’t getting through to him. I got down off my high horse. “I wish to have speech with old Manolo, the
drinker of anisette. Where is he to be found?”
“God knows, Señor.”
“That is very true. But a cunning boy like Pablo has surely taken thought on the matter.”
He twisted against me for another moment. Then he gave up. “It is possible that he takes his anisette in the place of Juan Cideño.”
I said, “Gracias, Pablo,” and let him go.
He stared at me for a moment as if I were as crazy as all Anglos. Then he turned and started running again.
Like I said—lucky. Juan Cideño’s bar wasn’t more than a block from where I stood.
On the inside, it resembled the Hegira. Its major distinction was a life-sized poster of Raul Ramírez on the wall opposite the bar. The poster wasn’t old, but stale air and smoke had stained it until Ramírez seemed like a champion from another generation.
Old Manolo sat in a booth at the back.
His eyes were closed—he looked sound asleep. Even knowing him the way I did, I half expected him to topple slowly to the floor and start snoring. But there was a small glass of anisette on the table between his hands, and after a few seconds he picked it up delicately with his fingertips, tucked it under his gray walrus mustache, and took a sip. Then he set the glass down, swallowed, and went back to looking like he was asleep.
I glanced around the bar, just making sure there wasn’t anyone nearby who might be offended if he happened to overhear me. None of el Señor’s men, for example, would take kindly to the questions I wanted to ask. Then I went over to the barkeep. Old Manolo is like an oracle—there are ceremonies you have to perform if you want answers from him. I bought a bottle of anisette and took it over to his booth.
Hoping he wouldn’t try to make me drink it with him. Wondering what I was going to say.
He spared me the effort of finding an opening line. When I arrived at his table, he said without opening his eyes, “Hola, Señor Axbrewder. Have you come to sit with an old man and tell him interesting tales? That would be very welcome.”