L is for Lawless

3

I knocked at Bucky's front door for the second time that day. The early afternoon sun was beginning to bake the grass, and the herbal scent of dried weeds permeated the November air. To my right, through a stucco archway opening onto a short length of porch, I could see the scalloped edge of the old red-tile roof. In Santa Teresa the roof tiles used to be handmade, the C-curve shaped by laying the clay across the tile worker's thigh. Now the tiles are all S shaped, made by machine, and the old roofs are sold at a premium. The one I was looking at was probably worth ten to fifteen grand. The break-in artists should have had a go at that instead of the old man's apartment with its cracked linoleum.

Babe opened the door. She had changed clothes, discarding her black T-shirt and black pedal pushers in favor of a shapeless cotton shift. Her eyes were enormous, the color of milk chocolate, her cheeks sprinkled with freckles. Her excess weight was evenly distributed, as if she'd zipped herself into an insulated rubber wet suit.

"Hi. I'm Kinsey. Bucky called and asked if I'd stop by."

"Oh, yeah. Nice to meet you. Sorry I missed you earlier."

"I figured we'd meet eventually. Is Bucky out back?"

She ducked her head, breaking off eye contact. "Him and his dad. Chester's been screaming ever since we got home. What a butt," she murmured. "He's all the time hollering. I can't hardly stand that. I mean, we didn't make the mess, so why's he yelling at us?"

"Did they call the police?"

"Uhn-hun, and they're on their way. Supposedly," she added with disdain. Maybe in her experience, the cops never showed up when they said. Her voice was breathy and soft. She was a bit of a mumbler, managing to speak without moving her lips. Maybe she was practicing to be a ventriloquist. She stepped back to let me enter, and then I followed her through the hallway as I had earlier with Bucky. Her rubber flip-flops made sucking noises on the hardwood floor.

"I take it you just got home," I said. I found myself talking to the back of her head, watching the bunch and release of her calves as she moved. Mentally, I put her on a weight program… something really really strict.

"Uhn-hun. Little while ago. We went out to Colgate to visit my mom. Chester got home first. He bought this ceiling light he was fixing to put in? When he went upstairs, he could see where the window was broke, all this glass laying on the steps. Somebody really tore the place up."

"Did they take anything?"

"That's what they're trying to figure out. Chester told Bucky he shouldn't have left you alone."

"Me? Well, that's dumb. Why would I tear the place apart? I'd never work that way."

"That's what Bucky said, but Chester never listens to him. By the time we got here, he was having a conniption fit. I can't wait 'til he goes back to Ohio. I'm a nervous wreck. My daddy never yelled, so I'm not used to it. My mom'd knock his block off if he ever talked to her that way. I told Bucky he better tell Chester to quit swearing at me. I don't appreciate his attitude."

"Why don't you tell him?"

"Well, I tried more'n once, but it never does any good. He's been married four times and I bet I can guess why they divorce him. Lately, his girlfriends are all twenty-four years old and even they get sick of him once he buys 'em a bunch of clothes."

We trooped up the steps to the garage apartment, where the door was standing open. The narrow window next to it had an irregular starburst of glass missing. The method of entry wasn't complicated. There was only one door into the place, and all the other windows were twenty feet off the ground. Most burglars aren't going to risk a ladder against the side of a building in broad daylight. It was obvious the intruder had simply come up the stairs, punched out the glass, reached around the frame, and unlocked the deadbolt from the inside. It hadn't been necessary to use a pry bar or any other tools.

Chester must have heard us because he came out to the landing, barely looking at Babe, who eased back against the wooden porch railing, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. Her father-in-law had apparently dismissed her as a target… for the moment, at any rate.

It was easy to see where Bucky got his looks. His father was big and beefy, with wavy blond hair long enough to touch his shoulders. Was that a dye job? I tried not to stare, but I could have sworn I'd seen that color in a Clairol ad. He had small blue eyes, blond lashes, and graying sideburns. His face was big and his complexion was ruddy. He wore his shirttail out, probably to disguise the extra thirty pounds he carried. He looked like a fellow who'd played in a rock-and-roll band in his youth, writing his own excruciatingly amateurish tunes. The earring surprised me: a dangling cross of gold. I also caught a glimpse of some sort of religious medal on a gold chain that disappeared under his V-neck T-shirt. His chest hair was gray. Looking at him was like seeing previews of Bucky's coming attractions.

Might as well be direct. I held my hand out. "Kinsey Millhone, Mr. Lee. I understand you're upset."

His handshake was perfunctory. "You can knock off the 'Mr. Lee' shit and call me Chester. Might as well be on a first-name basis while I chew your ass out. You better believe I'm upset. I don't know what Bucky asked you to do, but it sure wasn't this."

I bit back a tart reply and looked past him into the apartment. The place was a shambles: boxes overturned, books flung here and there, the mattress rolled back, the sheets and pillows on the floor. Half of Johnny's clothes had been pulled from the closet and piled in a heap. In the kitchen, through the doorway, I could see cabinet doors standing open, pots and pans strewn across the floor. While the disorder was extensive, nothing appeared to be damaged or destroyed. There was no sign that anyone had taken a blade to the bedding. No graffiti, no food emptied out of canisters or pipes torn from the walls. Vandals will often festoon the walls with their own fecal paint, but there was nothing like that here. It looked more like the methods big-city cops might employ at the scene of a drug bust. But what was the object of the exercise? Fleetingly, I entertained the notion that I was being set up, called in as a witness to a phony crime scene so that Bucky and his father could claim something valuable had been taken.

Bucky appeared from the kitchen and caught sight of me. In one split second we exchanged curiously guilty looks, like co-conspirators. There's something about being accused of criminal behavior that makes you feel like you did it even if you're innocent. Bucky turned to his dad. "Toilet tank's cracked. Might have been like that before, but I never noticed."

Chester pointed a finger. "You're paying for it if it has to be replaced. Bringing her into it was your bright idea." He turned to me, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the bathroom. "You ought to see in there. Medicine cabinet's pulled all the way out the wall…"

He droned on, pouring out the details, which seemed to give him satisfaction. He probably liked to bitch, reciting his grievances in order to justify his ill treatment of other people. His irritation was contagious, and I could feel my temper climb.

I cut into his monologue. "Hey, I didn't do this, Chester. You can rant and rave all you want, but the place was fine when I left. I locked up and put the key back through the mail slot like Bucky suggested. Ray Rawson was here. If you don't believe me, you can ask him."

"Everybody's innocent. Nobody did nothing. Everybody's got some kind of bullshit excuse," Chester groused.

"Dad, she didn't do it."

"You let me take care of this." He turned and looked at me narrowly. "You trying to say Ray Rawson did this?"

"Of course not. Why would he do this when he's hoping to move in?" My voice was rising in response to his, and I worked to get control.

Chester's attitude became grudging. "Well, you better have a talk with him and find out what he knows."

"Why would he know anything? He left the same time I did."

Bucky interceded, trying to introduce a note of reason. "Pappy didn't have a pot to piss in, so there's nothing here to take. Besides, he died in July. If burglars thought there was anything of value, why wait until now?"

"Maybe it was kids," I said.

"We don't have kids in this neighborhood as far as I know."

"True enough," I said. Ours was primarily a community of retirees. It was always possible, of course, that a roving band of thugs had targeted the apartment. Maybe they figured that any place this crummy looking had to be a cover for something good.

"Nuts!" Chester said with disgust. "I'm going down and wait for the police. Soon as you two crime experts finish your analysis, you can get the place cleaned up."

I gave him a look. "I'm not going to clean the damn place."

"I wasn't talking to you," he said. "Bucky, you and Babe get busy."

"You better wait for the cops," I said.

He swung around and stared at me. "Why is that?"

"Because this is a crime scene. The cops might want to dust for prints."

Chester's face seemed to darken. "This is bullshit. There's something not right about this." He made a motion in my direction. "You can come on down with me."

I glanced back at Bucky. "I wouldn't touch anything if I were you. You don't want to screw around with evidence."

"I hear you," he said.

Chester gestured impatiently for me to pick up the pace.

On the way down the steps, I glanced at my watch. It was 1:15 and already I was tired of taking crap from this guy. I'll take crap when I'm paid for it, but I don't like doing it without compensation.

Chester clumped into the kitchen and went straight to the refrigerator, where he jerked open the door. He took out a jar of mayonnaise, mustard, bottled hot sauce, a packet of bologna, and a loaf of Wonder white bread. Had he ordered me to come down here so I could supervise his lunch?

"I apologize if I was rough, but I don't like what's going on," he said gruffly. He wasn't looking at me, and I was tempted to do a double take to see if there was someone else in the room. He'd dropped the imperious attitude and was talking in a normal tone of voice.

"You have a theory?"

"I'll get to that in a bit. Grab a chair."

At least he had my attention. I took a seat at the kitchen table and watched in fascination as he started his preparations. Somehow in my profession I seem to spend a lot of time in kitchens looking on while men make sandwiches, and I can state categorically, they do it better than women. Men are fearless. They have no interest in nutrition and seldom study the list of chemicals provided on the package. I've never seen a man cut the crusts off the bread or worry about the aesthetics of the "presentation." Forget the sprig of parsley and the radish rosette. With men, it's strictly a grunt-and-munch operation.

Chester banged a cast-iron skillet on the burner, flipped the gas on, and tossed in a knuckle of butter, which began to sizzle within seconds. "I sent Bucky out to live with his granddad, which turned out to be a mistake. I figured the two of them could look after each other. Next thing I know, Bucky's hooked up with that gal. I got nothing against Babe… she's a dim-wit, but so's he… I just think the two of 'em got no business being married."

"Johnny didn't warn you?"

"Hell, he probably encouraged it. Anything to make trouble. He was a sneaky old coot."

I let that one pass, leaving him to tell the story his way. There was an interval of quiet while he tended to his cooking. The bologna was pale pink, the size of a bread-and-butter plate, a perfect circle of compacted piggie by-products. Chester tossed in the meat without even pausing to remove the rim of plastic casing. While the bologna was frying, he slathered mayonnaise on one slice of bread and mustard on the other. He shook hot sauce across the yellow mustard in perfect red polka dots.

As a child I was raised with the same kind of white bread, which had the following amazing properties: If you mashed it, it instantly reverted to its unbaked state. A loaf of this bread, inadvertently squished at the bottom of a grocery bag, was permanently injured and made very strange-shaped sandwiches. On the plus side, you could roll it into little pellets and flick them across the table at your aunt when she wasn't looking. If one of these bread boogers landed in her hair, she would slap at it, irritated, thinking it was a fly. I can still remember the first time I ate a piece of the neighbor's homemade white bread, which seemed as coarse and dry as a cellulose sponge. It smelled like empty beer bottles, and if you gripped it, you couldn't even see the dents your fingers made in the crust.

The air in the kitchen was now scented with browning bologna, which was curling up around the edges to form a little bowl with butter puddled in the center. I could feel myself getting dizzy from the sensory overload. I said, "I'll pay you four hundred dollars if you fix me one of those."

Chester glanced at me sharply, and for the first time, he smiled. "You want toasted?"

"You're the chef. It's your choice," I said.

While we chowed down, I decided to satisfy my curiosity as well. "What sort of work do you do back in Columbus?"

He snapped back the last of his sandwich like a starving dog, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin before he responded. "Own a little print shop in Bexley. Offset and letterpress. Cold and hot type. Brochures, flyers, business cards, custom stationery. I can collate, fold, bind, and staple. You name it. I just hired a guy looks after the place when I'm gone. He does good I'll let him buy me out. Time I did something else. I'm too young to retire, but I'm tired of working for a living."

"What would you do, come out here to live?" Chester fired up a cigarette, a Camel, unfiltered, that smelled like burning hay. "Don't know yet. I grew up in this town, but I left as soon as I turned eighteen. Pappy came out here in 1945, which is when he bought this place. He always said he'd be in this house until the sheriff or the undertaker hauled him out by his feet. Him and me never could get along. He's rough as a cob, and talk about child abuse. You never heard about that in the old days. I know a lot of guys got knocked around back then. That's just what dads did. They came home from the factory, sucked down a few beers, and grabbed the first kid came handy. I been punched and kicked, flung against the wall, and called every name in the book. If I got in trouble, he'd make me pace until I dropped, and if I uttered one word of protest, he'd douse my tongue with Tabasco sauce. I hated it, hated my old man for doing it, but I just thought that's the way life was. Now all you have to do is pop a kid across the face in public, you're up on charges, buddy, looking at jail time. Foster home for the kid and the whole community up in arms."

"I guess some things change for the better," I remarked.

"You got that right. I vowed I'd never treat my kids that way, and that's a promise I kept. I never once raised a hand to 'em." I looked at him, waiting for some rueful acknowledgment of his own abusiveness, but he didn't seem to make the connection. I moved the subject over slightly. "Your father died of a heart attack?"

Chester took a drag of his cigarette, removing a piece of tobacco from his tongue. "Keeled over in the yard. Doctor told him he better lay off the fat. He sat down one Saturday to a big plate of bacon and eggs, fried sausages, and hashed browns, four cups of coffee, and a cigarette. He pushed his chair back, said he wasn't feeling so hot, and headed out to his place. Never even reached the stairs. 'Coronary occlusion' is the term they used. Autopsy showed an opening in his artery no bigger than a thread."

"I take it you don't think his death is related to the break-in."

"I don't think he was murdered, if that's what you're getting at, but there might be some connection. Indirectly," he said. He studied the ember on the end of his cigarette. "You have to understand something about my old man. He was paranoid. He liked passwords and secret knocks, all this double-o-seven rigmarole. There were things he didn't like to talk about, the war being foremost. Once in a while, if he was tanked up on whiskey, he'd rattle off at the mouth, but you ask him a question and he'd clam right up."

"What do you think it was?"

"Well, I'm getting to that, but let me point this out first. You see, it strikes me as odd, this whole sequence of events. Old guy dies and that should have been the end of it. Except Bucky gets the bright idea of applying for these benefits, and that's what tips 'em off."

"Tips who?"

"The government."

"The government," I said.

He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "I think my old man was hiding from the feds."

I stared at him. "Why?"

"Well, I'll tell you. All the years since the war? He never once applied for benefits: no disability, no medical, no GI Bill. Now why is that?"

"I give up."

He smiled slightly, unperturbed by the fact that I wasn't buying in. "Clown around if you like, but take a look at the facts. We fill out a claim form… all the information's correct… but, first, they say they have no record of him, which is bullshit. Fabrication, pure and simple. What do you mean, they don't have a record of him? This is nonsense. Of course they do. Will they admit it? No ma'am. You following? So I get on the phone to Randolph – that's the Air Force base where all the files are kept – and I go through the whole routine again. And I get stonewalled, but good. So I call the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. No deal. Never heard of him. Then I call Washington, D.C… we're talking the Pentagon here. Nothing. No record. Well, I'm being dense. I'm not getting it myself. All I know to do is raise six kinds of hell. I make it clear we're serious about this. A lousy three hundred dollars, but I don't give a good goddamn. I'm not going to let it drop. The man served his country and he's entitled to a decent burial. What do I get? Same deal. They don't know nothin' from nothin'. Then we have this." He jerked a thumb toward the garage apartment. "See what I'm saying?"

"No."

"Well, think about it."

I waited. I didn't have the faintest idea what he was getting at.

He took a deep drag from his cigarette. "You want to know what I think?" He paused, creating drama, maximizing the effect. "I think it took 'em this long to get some boys out here to find out how much we knew."

This sentence was so loaded, I couldn't figure out which part to parse first. I tried not to sound exasperated. "About what?"

"About what he did during the war," he said, as though to a nitwit. "I think the old man was military intelligence."

"A lot of guys worked in military intelligence. So what?"

"That's right. But he never admitted it, never said a word. And you know why? I think he was a double agent."

"Oh, stop this. A spy?"

"In some capacity, yes. Information gathering. I think that's why his records are sealed."

"You think his records are sealed. And that's why you can't get verification from the VA," I said, restating his point.

"Bull's-eye." He pointed a finger at me and gave me a wink, as though I'd finally picked up the requisite IQ points.

I looked at him blankly. This was beginning to feel like one of those discussions with a UFO fanatic, where the absence of documentation is taken for proof of government suppression. "Are you saying he worked for the Germans, or spied on them for our side?"

"Not the Germans. The Japanese. I think he might have worked for 'em, but I can't be sure. He was over in Burma. He admitted that much."

"Why would that be such a big deal all these years later?"

"You tell me."

"Well, how would I know? Honestly, Chester, I can't speculate about this stuff. I never even knew your father. I have no way of guessing what he was up to. If anything."

"I'm not asking you to speculate. I'm asking you to be objective. Why else would they say he wasn't in the Air Force? Give me one good reason."

"So far you don't have any proof that he was."

"Why would he lie? The man wouldn't lie about a thing like that. You're missing the point."

"No, I'm not. The point is, they're not really saying he wasn't there," I said. "They're saying they can't identify him from the information you submitted. There must be a hundred John Lees. Probably more."

"With his exact date of birth and his Social Security number? Come on. You think this stuff isn't on computer? All they have to do is type it in. Press Enter. Boom, they got him. So why would they deny it?"

"What makes you think they have all this data on computer?" I said, just to be perverse. This was hardly the issue, but I was feeling argumentative.

"What makes you think they don't?" I barely suppressed a groan. I was hating this conversation, but I couldn't find any way to get out of it. "Come on, Chester. Let's don't do this, okay?"

"You asked the question. I'm just answering."

"Oh, forget it. Have it your way. Let's say he was a spy, just for the sake of argument. That was forty-some-odd years ago. The man is dead now, so why does anybody give a shit?"

"Maybe they don't care about him. Maybe they care about something he has. Maybe he took something that belongs to them. Now they want it back."

"You are making me crazy. What it?"

" How do I know? Files. Documents. This is just a hunch."

I wanted to lay my little head on the table and weep from frustration. "Chester, this makes no sense."

"Why not?"

"Because if that's the case, why call attention to it? Why not just pay you the three hundred bucks? Then they can come out at their leisure and look for this thing… this whatever you think he has. If he's been in hiding all these years… if they've really been looking and now they know his whereabouts, why arouse your suspicions by refusing to pay some dinky little three-hundred-dollar claim?"

"Four hundred and fifty with interment thrown in," he said.

I conceded the arithmetic. "Four fifty, then," I said. "The same question applies. Why cock around?"

"Hey, I can't explain why the government does what it does. If these guys were so bright, they'd have tracked him down years ago. The VA application was the tip-off, that's all I'm saying."

I took a deep breath. "You're jumping to conclusions."

He stubbed out his cigarette. "Of course I'm jumping. The question is, am I right? The way I see it, the boys finally got a lock on him, and that's the result." He tipped his head in the direction of the garage apartment. "Here's the only question I got… did they find what they came for or is it still hidden somewhere? I'll tell you something else. This Rawson fellow could be part of it."

This time I groaned and put my head in my hands. This was making my neck tense, and I massaged my trapezius. "Well, look. It's an interesting hypothesis and I wish you a lot of luck. All I offered was to see if I could locate a set of dog tags or a photograph. You want to turn this into some kind of spy ring, it's not my line of work. Thanks for the sandwich. You're a genius with bologna."

Chester's gaze suddenly shifted to a spot just behind me. There was a sharp rap at the back door, and I felt myself jump.

Chester got up. "Police," he said under his breath. "Just act normal."

He moved toward the door to let the guy in while I turned and squinted at him. Act normal. Why wouldn't I act normal? I am normal.

On the back step, I could hear the uniformed police officer's murmured introduction. Chester ushered him into the kitchen. "I appreciate your coming out. This is my neighbor, Kinsey Millhone. Officer Wettig," he said, using this phony Mr. Good Citizen tone of voice.

I glanced at the officer's name tag. P. Wettig. Paul, Peter, Phillip. This was not anyone I knew from my dealings with the department. Gutierrez and Pettigrew had always handled this beat. Despite my skepticism, Chester's conspiracy theory was apparently having an effect, because I was already wondering if his 911 call had been intercepted and an impostor sent instead. Wettig was probably in his late forties, looking more like a lounge singer than a uniformed patrolman. He wore his blond hair long, pulled into a little pigtail in back; brown eyes, short blunt nose, round chin. I pegged him at six three, weighing in at 210. The uniform looked authentic, but wasn't he a little old to be a beat cop?

"Hi. How are you?" I said, shaking hands. "I expected to see Gerald Pettigrew and Maria Gutierrez."

Wettig's look was neutral, his tone of voice bland. "They split up. Pettigrew's on Traffic now, and Maria moved over to the county sheriff's department."

"Really. I hadn't heard that." I glanced at Chester. "You want me to stay? I can hang around if you like."

"Don't worry about it. I can call you later." He glanced at Officer Wettig. "I guess I better show you the apartment."

I watched as Chester and the officer walked down the back steps and across the concrete drive.

As soon as they were out of sight, I moved down the hallway and peered out the front. A black-and-white patrol car was parked at the curb. I found the telephone, which was located in what looked like a little prayer niche in the hall. I pulled out the telephone directory and dialed the regular phone line for the Santa Teresa Police Department. Someone in Records answered.

I said, "Oh, hi. Can you tell me if Officer Wettig is working this shift?"

"Just a second and I'll check." She clicked off, putting me on hold. Moments later she clicked back in again. "He's on until three this afternoon. You want to leave a message?"

"No, thanks. I'll try again later," I said, and hung up. Belatedly I blushed, feeling slightly sheepish. Of course there was an Officer Wettig. What was wrong with me?