“Those magazines of yours,” Dave said. “The new Supreme Court decision on obscenity. You’re going to have to do some retooling—right?”
Shevel’s eyes got their old hardness back. “It’s been on the drawing boards for months. A whole new line. Home crafts. Dune buggies. Crossword puzzles. And if you’re suggesting I shot Robbie with his rifle in order to get the money to finance the changeover, then you don’t know much about publishing costs. Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t buy the staples.”
“But you do know how much the policy paid.”
The crooked smile came back. “Naturally. I bought it for him. Years ago.” The smile went away. “How typical of him to have forgotten to take my name off it.”
“And the thirty-thirty. Did you buy that too?”
“I paid for it, of course. He had no money.”
“I’ll just bet he didn’t,” Dave said.
The development may have looked sharp to start with but it had gone shabby fast. It was on the coast road at the north end of Surf, which had gone shabby a long time ago. You couldn’t see the development from the coast road. You had to park between angled white lines on the tarmacked shoulder and walk to a cliff where an iron pipe railing was slipping, its cement footings too near the crumbling edge.
Below, along a narrow rock and sand curve of shore, stood apartment buildings. The tinwork vents on the roofs were rusting. Varnish peeled from rafter ends and wooden decks. The stucco had been laid on thin. It was webbed with cracks. Chunks had broken out at corners showing tarpaper and chickenwire underneath.
Dave saw what Ken Barker had meant. The only access to the place was down cement steps, three long flights against the cliff face. There’d been too much sand in the cement. Edges had crumbled. Today rain washed dirt and pebbles across the treads and made them treacherous. No—no wheelchair case could get down there. He was about to turn back when, the way it will sometimes for a second, the surf stopped booming. It charged and fell heavily, like a big, tired army under one of those generals that never gives up. But it breathed.
And in the sudden silence he heard from below a voice, raised in argument, protest, complaint. He went on down. The iron rail was scabby with corrosion. His hand came away rusty. He left cement for a boardwalk over parts of which sand had drifted, sand now dark and sodden with rain. He passed the backs of buildings, slope-top metal trash modules, the half-open doors of laundry rooms. The voice kept on. He turned between two buildings to walk for the beach front.
The voice came from halfway up wooden steps to a second-story deck. A small man stood there under a clear plastic umbrella. He was arguing up at the legs of a young black police officer above him on the deck. The officer wore a clear plastic slicker.
The little man shouted, “But I’m the goddamn owner of the goddamn place! A taxpayer. It’s not Chief Gates that pays you—it’s me. You know what the taxes are here? No—well, I’m not going to tell you because I hate to see a strong man cry. But they got to be paid, friend, if I rent it or don’t rent it. And have you looked at it? I was screwed by the contractor. It’s falling apart. Nineteen months old and falling apart. I’m suing the son of a bitch but the lawyers are breaking me. Not to mention the mortgage. A storm like this, carpets get soaked, plaster falls down. Could be happening in there right now. Why do you want to make things worse for me?”
Dave climbed the steps. When he’d come up to the little man, the officer said, “Mr. Brandstetter. That make three. This one. Robinson’s ex-boss. Now you.” His grin was very white. “This a real popular spot this morning.”
“Turning people away, right?” Dave said. “Because the apartment’s sealed, waiting for the DA?” He looked past the little man. Up the beach, a clutch of slickered cops was using a drag with deep teeth on the sand. Plastic wrapped their caps, their shoes. Nothing about them looked happy. It was work for tractors. But there was no way to get tractors down here.
The black officer said, “DA been and gone.”
“Yeah.” The little man goggled at Dave through big hornrims. “They talk about human rights. What happened to property rights? I own the place but I get treated like a thief. I can’t get in till Robinson’s brother comes and collects his stuff.” His nose was red. And not from sunburn. There hadn’t been any sun this month. “You’re not his brother, are you?”
“Not the way you mean,” Dave said. And to the officer, “Flag me when he comes, will you?” He went down the stairs and down the rain-runnelled beach. The sergeant he talked to wore plainclothes and no hat. His name was Slocum. Rain plastered strands of pale red hair to his freckled scalp. Dave said, “What about the surf?”
“Running too high. You can’t work a launch on it. Not close in where we have to look. Keep washing you up all the time.” He glanced bitterly at the muddy sky. “Storm doesn’t quit, we’ll never find it.”
“The storm could be your friend,” Dave said. “Ought to wash anything ashore—all that power.” And fifty yards off a cop yelled in the rain, bent, picked something out of the muddy surf, came with it at a trot, waving it above his head like a movie Apache who’d got the wrong room at Western Costume. “See?” Dave said.
“No wonder you’re rich,” Slocum said. It was a rifle. The cop offered it. Slocum shook his head. “You’ve got gloves, I don’t. You hold it. Let me just look at it.” He stared at it while the cop turned it over and it dripped. “Thirty-thirty Remington,” Slocum said. “Eight years old but like new. Won’t act like new—not unless they get the seawater out of it right away.”
“Seawater doesn’t erase prints,” Dave said, and turned back toward the apartments because he heard his name called above the slam of surf, the hiss of rain. The black officer was waving an arm from the deck. A bulky man was with him. Dave jogged back. The landlord was yammering to a girl with ragged short hair in a Kobe coat at the foot of the stairs, but there wasn’t any hope in his voice now. Dave went up the stairs.
“Reverend Merwin Robinson,” the black officer said. “Mr. Brandstetter. Insurance.”
“Something wrong with the insurance?” The reverend had a hoarse voice. The kind you get from shouting—at baseball games or congregations. A thick man, red-faced. A big crooked vein bulged at one temple.
“What’s wrong with it is the beneficiary,” Dave said.
Robinson stiffened, glared. “I don’t understand.”
“Not you,” Dave said. “Bruce K. Shevel.”
Robinson blinked. “You must be mistaken.”
“That’s what Shevel said.”
“But I’m Arthur’s only living relative. Neither of us has anyone else. And he’d left Shevel. Said he never wanted to see him again.”
“He saw him again,” Dave said. “Tried to borrow money from him. I gather he saw you too.”
The minister’s mouth twitched. “Never at my invitation. And years would go by. He knew my stand. On how he lived. The same saintly mother raised us. He knew what the Bible says about him and his kind.”
“But lately he tried to borrow money,” Dave said.
“He did.”
The black officer had opened the glass wall panel that was the apartment door. Robinson saw, grunted, went in. Dave followed. The room was white shag carpet, long low fake-fur couches, swag lamps in red and blue pebbled glass.
“Of course I refused. My living comes from collection plates. For the glory of God and His beloved Son. Not to buy fast automobiles for descendents of the brothels of Sodom.”
“I don’t think they had descendents,” Dave said. “Anyway, did you have that kind of money?”
“My church is seventy years old. We’ve had half a dozen fires from faulty wiring. The neighborhood the church serves is just as old and just as poor.” Robinson glanced at a shiny kitchenette where a plaster Michaelangelo David stood on a counter with plastic ferns. He went on to an alcove at the room’s end, opened and quickly closed again a door to a bathroom papered with color photos of naked men from Playgirl, and went into a room where the ceiling was squares of gold-veined mirror above a round, tufted bed.