Double

24: “Wolf”

I spent better than two hours in and around Lauterbach’s office while the S.D.P.D. homicide boys went about their grim business. The cop in charge was named Gunderson. I told him everything I knew, but I didn’t get into any of the suspicions about Elaine Picard’s death, the disappearance of Nancy and Timmy Clark, or illegal activities on the part of Lloyd Beddoes and Victor Ibarcena. For one thing, despite Lauterbach’s connection to Elaine and to the Clarks, none of those matters might relate to his murder. And for another thing, the sheriff’s department was handling the Picard case and the hotel was their jurisdiction; Tom Knowles was the man to talk to on those fronts.

By keeping my ears open during the time I was on the scene, I found out that Lauterbach had been dead close to twenty-four hours — since Sunday noon at the latest. The first person to try to use the lavatory this morning was the screaming woman who’d found him, K. M. Ardry’s flat-chested secretary. He had been shot with a small-caliber weapon at close range; two of the entry holes bore the scorching, cruciate tears, and powder tattooing that mark contact and near-contact wounds. The murder weapon hadn’t been in the lavatory and apparently wasn’t anywhere else in the building. A search of Lauterbach’s office revealed nothing directly linked to the shooting. Nor did the people from Dutton Design & Manufacturing and the divorce specialist’s office know anything useful; none of them had been in the building the day before. They also didn’t know if Lauterbach was in the habit of coming in to his office on Sundays — but he could have done it easily enough, in any case, because each tenant had a key to the front entrance.

Not much in any of that, except that it provided a rough fix as to the time of death. The coroner would probably be able to pare it down closer at the postmortem.

When Gunderson finally said I could leave I had every intention of talking to Knowles first thing. The problem was, he wasn’t in when I got to the sheriff’s department on West C Street and nobody could tell me just when he’d be back. The best estimation was “sometime this afternoon” from another plainclothes officer.

On my way to where I’d parked the rental car, I did some brooding about Lauterbach’s death. Why had he been killed? Because he was investigating Elaine Picard? Well, maybe. But if he’d found out anything that made him a candidate for homicide, I hadn’t been able to see it in his notes. It was also possible that there was a connection between his murder and whatever was going on at the Casa del Rey, and with Elaine Picard’s death. But if that was it, I couldn’t even guess what it might be. And where did Rich Woodall and a place called Borrego Springs and a house somewhere in the desert fit in?

I gave it up for the time being and considered stopping somewhere for coffee and a sandwich. Only I had no appetite; Lauterbach’s blood-caked face, the bullet hole where his left eye had once been, had seen to that. I wondered if I should look up Henry Nyland, to ask him why he’d hired Lauterbach to investigate Elaine, but I decided against it. That was Tom Knowles’s prerogative, and Gunderson’s. And if there was anything else to be found out, anything Nyland might not tell the authorities, McCone could probably get at it better than I could. She had more of a vested interest in all of this than I did.

A few blocks from the sheriffs department I stopped for a traffic light. There was a secondhand bookshop across the street, with a big sign that caught my eye — and it reminded me of what Charley Valdene had told me about Beddoes’s interest in pornography. Not much of an angle in that, maybe, but I could check out the shop where Valdene had run into Beddoes: Charley had given me the name and address. It was something to do, at least, until I could connect with Knowles.

When I reached the address, out past Balboa Park near University Avenue, I found myself at a newish, boxy, four-story office building, with a realtor’s sign out front that said OFFICE SPACE FOR RENT. The occupied space seemed to belong mostly to lawyers, architects, and other professional people: all very upper middle class and proper. I wondered as I scanned the lobby directory if Valdene might have made a mistake with the address. But he hadn’t; I found the listing near the bottom — PRIAPUS BOOKS AND CURIOS, 5E.

The elevator deposited me on the fifth floor. I went down a carpeted hallway until I came to 5E. Except for a tiny magnifying-glass peephole, the numeral and the letter were all that was on the door; but on the jamb, above an inlaid bell button, was a fancy scrolled business card tucked into a metal frame. It read:

I pushed the inlaid button. Nothing happened for a time, but I got the feeling I was being studied through the peephole. I tried to look like a guy with an interest in erotica instead of what I was, and I must have managed all right; there was the sound of a lock snicking free and the door popped open and the guy standing there said pleasantly, “Yes? May I help you?”

He looked like somebody’s kindly grandfather. He was about sixty-five, he had wispy white hair and a wispy white mustache and polished-apple cheeks, and he was decked out in a conservative three-piece gray suit and a bow tie. He didn’t surprise me much. Purveyors of pornographic art, like everybody else, come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and dispositions.

I said, “Mr. Littlejohn?”

“At your service. I don’t believe I know you, sir.”

“Ah, no, you don’t. I’ve never been here before.”

“May I ask how you learned of Priapus?”

“You were recommended by a friend — Lloyd Beddoes.”

He beamed at me. “Yes, of course, Mr. Beddoes is one of my most valued customers. And your name, sir?”

“Wade. Ivan Wade.”

“Come in, Mr. Wade. Please come in.”

He stepped back and I went into an area carpeted in plush wine-red, softly lighted, and outfitted as a showroom. There were glass cases along three of the four walls, another in the middle of the room. The cases were full of books and carvings and things, none of which appeared to be particularly erotic when I got close enough to see what they were. The same was true of the paintings, pen-and-ink sketches, and woodcuts illuminated on the walls. It all might have been pretty hot stuff thirty years ago, but in this permissive age it wouldn’t stimulate anyone — except maybe a sheltered old maid or a member of the Moral Majority.

Littlejohn watched me browse for a couple of minutes. Then he asked, “Did you have anything particular in mind, Mr. Wade?”

“Well, something a little more — you know, graphic.”

“Books? Art?”

“I’m not sure. Is this all you have?”

“Oh no. This room is for my more conservative clientele. I have another that might prove more suitable. Priapus wouldn’t be worthy of the name if it didn’t offer something for the taste of every connoisseur.”

“It wouldn’t?”

“Ah, you’re not familiar with the mythological reference?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“In Greek mythology, Priapus was the son of Dionysus, best loved son of Zeus, and the god of wine and pleasure. Priapus was the god of virility and procreation; his symbol was an erect penis.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Will you follow me, Mr. Wade?”

I followed him — into another room, much larger than the first one but similarly appointed. There was also a desk unobtrusively tucked into one corner, and beside it a portable bar that appeared to be well stocked. Littlejohn asked me if I cared for an aperitif; I said no thanks. Then we got down to the real stuff, the most erotic and no doubt most expensive items in Littlejohn’s stock.

First he showed me what he called “Dionysian literature”: old books, many of them beautifully bound in leather — copies of the Chin P’ing Mei from China, Harlot’s Dialogues from Italy, Fanny Hill from England, Sade’s Justine and Juliette. Then it was Rajput miniatures from India, delicate Chinese Ming scrolls, small screen blocks and painted scrolls and two-hundred-year-old folding paper fans from Japan; wooden statues and carvings from Madagascar, Central Africa, the Philippines, silver figurines from Peru, bronze figurines from the Ivory Coast, a humorous phallic demon from Bali; paintings and sketches, both primitive and modern, from all over Europe and from the United States. Some of the stuff was downright obscene, but in the main it was highly sensual. I found myself thinking that it was a good thing I’d come here and not McCone; a few of the items made me blush. But that was my paternal streak again. McCone was a grown woman, as she’d tartly reminded me. For all I knew, she might have enjoyed all of this much more than I did.

Littlejohn gave me a running commentary on each of the objects we looked at, beaming on them in a paternal way of his own. “Erotica from every culture has passed through Priapus,” he said. “Think of it, Mr. Wade. Every culture of man! The human animal has always been fascinated by matters of the flesh, always paid tribute to his desires.”

“Uh-huh. Tell me, what kind of erotica fascinates Lloyd Beddoes the most?”

He looked mildly surprised. “You haven’t seen his collection?”

“Ah... well, no, not his recent acquisitions. I’ve been out of the country for a while. On business.”

It was flimsy, but all he said was “What business are you in, Mr. Wade?”

“Oil exploration.”

“Very lucrative, that sort of thing, isn’t it?”

“I do pretty well,” I said.

“Yes, of course. Well, Mr. Beddoes prefers items with homosexual and S and M themes, naturally.”

“Why ‘naturally’?”

This time Littlejohn frowned. “You really don’t know Mr. Beddoes very well, do you?”

“Not really, no. He’s — a friend of a friend.”

“Indeed? May I ask who that is?”

I had backed myself into a corner. Trying to get out of it, I said the first thing that came to my mind, “A fellow in Borrego Springs. He, ah, belongs to the club out there.”

It was the right thing to say, even though I had no idea why. Littlejohn beamed again and said, “Mr. Darrow?”

Darrow was one of the names that had been on the list among Lauterbach’s notes, one of those with a check mark in front of it. I said, “That’s right. Arthur Darrow. You know him, then?”

“Oh, yes. He and his charming wife both. Lovely people. They buy from me occasionally, you know.”

“I didn’t know that. The same sort of items Beddoes is interested in?”

“Somewhat. Although their tastes generally run more to the heterosexual.”

I pretended to study a complicated Oriental silk painting. “Does Beddoes come in often?”

“Oh, yes,” Littlejohn said. “Every week or two.”

“Does he buy much?”

“Well, I do consider him one of my best customers. He has a very large collection.”

“All homosexual and S and M stuff?”

“For the most part. Just last week I found a marvelous whipping statuette from Germany for him. And before that, a rare first edition of Teleny, or the Reverse of the Medal — one of the earliest and best of the homosexual erotic novels, published in 1893 and quite probably written by Oscar Wilde.” Littlejohn beamed again, but there was a glint of avarice in his eyes. He was telling me all this because he thought I had money to spend and that I would be impressed by his ability to satisfy his customers. I was impressed, all right. But not the way he thought.

I said, “Items like that rare first edition must be pretty expensive.”

“One must always pay well for the rare and the unusual. Don’t you agree, Mr. Wade?”

“Sure. Always.”

“And may I ask what you’ve seen that strikes your fancy?”

I hesitated. I wanted to ask him some more questions about Beddoes, and about the Darrows of Borrego Springs, but I couldn’t figure a way to do it without arousing his suspicions. And if his suspicions got aroused, he’d be on the phone thirty seconds after I walked out the door, telling Beddoes and the Darrows all about my visit. The smart thing for me to do was to back off and be satisfied, for now, with what I had already learned.

To make it look as if my hesitation had been over one of his offerings, I reached out and picked up an item at random. “What would this set me back?”

“Ah,” Littlejohn said. His smile got wider and the gleam in his eyes got brighter. “An excellent choice, sir. A truly excellent choice. That figure is from the third or fourth century B.C., of Mexican origin. Note the simplicity of the design, the superior condition of the terra-cotta. A rare work of art. I know of only three others like it in existence.”

“How much?”

“I could let you have it for five thousand.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand dollars. A bargain at that price, Mr. Wade. A bargain.”

I took a closer look at the thing in my hand. And then put it down in a hurry. “Well, uh, I’ll have to think it over, Mr. Littlejohn. Five thousand might be a little out of my price range.”

But it wasn’t the price that made me put the figure down so fast. It was what the thing was — for all I knew, a statuette of old Priapus himself. The guy it depicted was naked and grinning, probably because he had the biggest jutting phallus you ever saw. And that, for God’s sake, was what I had been holding it by.