The Sweetman Curve Page 9

  She picked up the bills, expertly folded them, and tucked them into her tight cleavage. Mr Radetzky sat back, and smiled. ‘I can promise you won’t regret this,’ he said. ‘I can really, truly promise that.’

  Eleven

  On Tuesday morning, John came to collect her from the hospital. It was cool and overcast, and the smog had draped downtown Los Angeles in sad veils of grey. He drove into the parking lot in a dented orange Volkswagen with a long waggling CB antenna and a lip-sticked mouth painted on the hood.

  He wearily climbed out of the car and wedged the door shut with a sharp thump from his hip. He was over the worst of the shock now. Since Friday, he had drunk four bottles of whisky, listened to Santana at such ear-splitting loudness that his ears hurt, taken long and solitary walks up the canyon until it was too dark to see, and even smoked joints of sneezeweed yarrow, which his next-door neighbour Mel had described as ‘like waking up in the morning and finding you’ve eaten your herbal pillow in your sleep.’

  He looked white and grieved, but those hideous moments on the freeway were already becoming memories, instead of fresh, clamorous impressions. He was beginning to cope with what had happened in spite of his need for mourning, and even seek out some kind of reason why it had.

  She was waiting for him in the hospital entrance-hall, in a dark blue sweater and white jeans. Her dark hair was tied back under a yellow scarf because it wanted washing, and she still had a yellowish bruise under one eye.

  He kissed her, and held her tight for a long, wordless moment. Then he stood back and looked at her.

  ‘I guess if there’s anything to be thankful for, it’s just that at least two of us survived,’ he said hoarsely. He knew there were tears in his eyes, and he knew how sentimental he sounded, but it was the way he felt.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘I can’t take much more of this place.’

  He picked up her suitcase, and they walked down the steps to the parking lot, under a sky the colour of pearls;

  ‘What car did you bring?’ she asked him.

  ‘Mel lent me the Volkswagen.’

  ‘Did the repair people tell you anything about the Imperial?’

  He shrugged. ‘They’re not very optimistic. In fact, they’re downright gloomy. The guy from the spares department said that he used to stock air suspension parts for the Chrysler Imperial, but they got lost during the Great Flood.’

  They arrived at the shabby, battered Beetle, and John kicked the driver’s door to open it.

  ‘This car is masochistic, like all Germans,’ he said. ‘If you dig your fingernails into the upholstery, it gives you an extra five miles an hour in third.’

  Vicki held his arm. He turned and looked at her, and her wide brown eyes were very serious.

  ‘You don’t have to crack jokes, John. Not if you don’t want to. I can get along with a little sadness, if that’s the way you feel inside.’

  He nodded. He had to clear his throat before he could answer her.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said quietly. ‘There will be one or two moments. But mostly I’m okay.’

  He let down the driver’s seat, and wedged Vicki’s suitcase into the back. They climbed in, and sat there side by side, looking out through the dusty windshield and wondering what to say next.

  Vicki said, ‘Doesn’t this car have CB?’

  John shook his head. ‘All Mel could afford was the antenna. He’s saving up for the rest of the stuff next year.’

  Vicki touched his hand. ‘What are you going to do now? About your father?’

  ‘Bury him first.’

  ‘And then?’

  He took a deep swallow of air. ‘I don’t know. The police keep telling me it’s all in hand, they know what they’re doing. But they don’t seem to have any leads to work on, not one. And if they can’t catch the Strangler, what hope do they have of catching this guy? The Freeway Fruitcake, they call him. Good old police department humour.’

  ‘Come on, John. They’re only cops acting like cops. They’re doing their best.’

  He turned the ignition key, and the motor whinnied like an old mare. He revved it once or twice, and a black cloud of smoke rose from out of the tailpipes.

  ‘How Mel has the goddamned nerve to call himself a committed environmentalist and drive around in a travelling pollution crisis like this, I will never understand,’ said John, as they backed up, and turned to manoeuvre through the white hospital gates.

  He was still arm-wrestling with the gear-shift when there was a brisk rap at the car window. Vicki said, ‘John.’

  John looked up. It was Detective Morello, in a linen suit that looked as if he had slept in it, and then lent it to his grandfather, who had slept in it as well. John wound down the window, and said: ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi there, Mr Cullen, how are you? And that’s Miss Wallace, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I thought I recognised her. You’re looking better, Miss Wallace. You, too, Mr Cullen.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ said John, uncomfortably conscious of the Beetle’s racketing engine, and the oily smoke belching out of the back.

  Detective Morello said, ‘We turned up the killer’s car this morning. It was an Avis rental from Hollywood. A boy scout found it way up in Big Dalton Canyon. The forensic boys are looking it over now.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll find anything?’ John asked. ‘Hard to say. There’s nothing obvious. No prints, or anything like that. But you can tell a lot about a man from the car he drives, even if it’s only a rental.’

  ‘Is there any chance of catching him?’ Vicki said quietly.

  Detective Morello pulled a face. ‘Who knows? It depends on whether he does something careless and stupid. So far, he’s managed to cover his tracks pretty good.’

  ‘But you still believe he’s a psycho?’ John asked. Detective Morello’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean? What else could he be?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just seems pretty strange to me that a guy with a mental disorder can kill twelve people on three different freeways and still manage to cover his tracks.’

  ‘You think, because he’s a psycho, he’s going to leave clues all over?’

  ‘You tell me. That’s what I’m asking.’

  Detective Morello hunkered down beside the car, and his face appeared at the open window as if he were putting on a puppet show.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ he said gravely. ‘Your average psycho kills because he believes he has some kind of mystical mission in life to destroy others; Because of that, he kills without a conscience, and because he kills without a conscience he is hardly ever flustered or hurried in what he does. Your average psycho thinks about details that most sane killers wouldn’t even dream about.’

  ‘For example?’ Vicki asked, in a hushed voice that she wasn’t even sure Detective Morello had heard.

  ‘For example, we had a hit-and-run headcase about six or seven years back. He washed off the tyres of his car with soap and water after every homicide, and then drove through a special patch of dirt he kept in his back yard. He’d brought that dirt all the way down from Sausalito, and the Sausalito dirt on his tyres was supposed to prove that he’d been visiting his mother in Mill Valley at the time of the killing. We broke his story in the end, though. One of our forensic people pointed out that he would have had dirt on his tyres from every inch of Interstate 5 between here and San Francisco if he’d really been there, instead of just one particular dirt.’

  John gave a tight smile. ‘I see.’ He didn’t really feel like talking about police procedure at this moment. The Volkswagen was rattling and shaking, and uncomfortably hot inside, and he was beginning to break out in a sticky, feverish sweat.

  He kept seeing his father’s face in those last seconds before the killer started shooting, and hearing that gentle, humorous voice saying. ‘You were nervous? I was having an acute attack of the sweaty palms.’

  He said to Detective Morello, ‘Will you let us know if you
hear anything?’

  Detective Morello nodded. ‘Sure thing. We’d like you take a look at some more ID pictures some time during the week in any case.’

  ‘But if you find out anything about the guy’s motive, you’ll let us know then?’

  Detective Morello took out his handkerchief, and began to fold it into a pad in preparation for blowing his nose. ‘I’m not sure that I understand you.’

  ‘Detective Morello,’ John said, ‘I need to know that my father didn’t die because of some stupid outrageous twist of bad luck. I need to know that he died for some purpose. Because of what he was, or what he believed in.’

  Detective Morello blew his nose. ‘Not many people die like that, Mr Cullen. I’m sorry.’

  John stared at him. Then he turned away, and rubbed his neck tiredly, and said, ‘Sure, you’re right. I didn’t mean to make you feel that you weren’t doing your job. I guess it’s a little hard to accept, that’s all, dying for nothing.’

  The detective said, ‘A young woman was driving home in her Pinto this morning along Santa Monica Boulevard, and a drunk in a custom van came speeding at sixty miles an hour across the stop signals at La Brea and smashed her to death. Just think about it.’

  Vicki said to Detective Morello, ‘I believe he has enough to think about right now, officer. We’ll be on our way.’

  Detective Morello stood up. ‘I’ll keep in touch,’ he promised. ‘And do me one favour, will you?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Have your exhaust fixed. I don’t want my prime witnesses picked up for emission violation.’

  John nodded, and engaged first gear. As he drove out of the hospital gates into the traffic of downtown Los Angeles, he didn’t know whether to laugh, or stay silent, or bury his face in his hands and weep for all the people who die because of carelessness, and random malice, and for all those confused and bitter friends they leave behind.

  Twelve

  They finally reached their steep curving driveway on Topanga Canyon with the orange Beetle coughing and sighing like an old asthmatic. John parked under the trees in front of their green verandah, and climbed out. He stretched, and took a deep breath of the canyon air, and looked up through the leaves at the hazy blue sky.

  ‘John – the car’s slipping backwards!’ Vicki yelped.

  John turned, tugged open the driver’s door, and wrenched up the handbrake just in time. Then, gripping the brake tight, he told Vicki, ‘Bring me a couple of those housebricks, will you? I forgot that Mel told me to chock the wheels on a gradient. Worn brakes, you know? It once ran all the way through a parking lot and halfway across Sunset, and didn’t hit another car once. So he says, anyway. You know what Mel’s like.’

  ‘What is Mel like?’ asked Mel, coming across the sloping drive with a large frosted flagon of Chablis. He was squat, and bearded, with horn-rimmed glasses and a belly that stretched his checkered cowboy shirt to the limit.

  ‘Mel is generous and thoughtful to a fault,’ said Vicki. ‘Mel is also wonderful and wise, and the best neighbour anyone could wish for, provided they want to lose their life in an orange Volkswagen.’

  Mel came up and kissed her. ‘You keep your life, honey. It’s too precious to lose any place at all. Hi, John. How are you?’

  ‘On the way upward, thanks. Is the wine for us?’

  ‘A little coming home present. I know that hospital wine is lousy.’

  ‘What hospital wine?’ asked Vicki. ‘I didn’t know they had hospital wine.’

  ‘That’s what’s lousy about it.’

  John pulled Vicki’s suitcase out of the car, and the three of them went up the flaking green steps of the house, across the verandah, and inside. The house was a quiet, dignified old place of weathered wood. It had been built by a retired set painter almost twenty years ago, as a retreat from the rest of the world, and a place where he would work on paintings that were only a few inches square, instead of acres. It had escaped one serious fire after another because of its unusual location in an isolated hollow, and it was one of the oldest dwellings in the canyon, with a gambreled roof, a balcony of carved Tyrolean-style railings, and shuttered windows.

  John and Vicki had been working with patience and care to restore the house, and the living room into which they walked this morning was already finished. There was a high carved mantelpiece, crowded with Staffordshire figurines, a pine floor that was polished like glass, and elegant antique chairs upholstered in velvet the colour of dark grapes. Through the wide French windows, there was a green shady view of trees, and dappled daylight, and flowers.

  Vicki brought out three green-stemmed hock glasses, and John opened the wine.

  Mel said: ‘Do you know a guy with blond hair? Looks like a surfer, or a football jock?’

  ‘No,’ said John, pouring wine. ‘Not unless you mean Sammy, and he’s on vacation in Hawaii.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t recognise him either,’ said Mel. ‘But he was around here this morning, when you were out. He came up the driveway, looked over the place, and then left.’

  John handed Vicki her wine, and she glanced at him apprehensively.

  ‘You don’t think it’s anything to do with what happened on the freeway?’ she asked him. ‘I mean it couldn’t be him again, could it?’

  John shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s anything. Probably some tourist looking around. Just because some maniac decides to use us for target practice on the freeway doesn’t mean he’s going to follow us around wherever we go.’

  Vicki sipped at her wine. ‘I’ve had nightmares about it,’ she said. ‘Nightmares of men with dark hair, and cars that kept chasing me, and trying to kill me.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ Mel said. ‘This guy was a blond. A harmless, ordinary, all-American blond.’

  Vicki went to the window. Her pale reflection looked back at her from the green garden like a lost ghost of herself. ‘I hope you’re right,’ she said. ‘Right now, I feel as if I’m never going to sleep properly again.’

  ‘What did this blond guy look like?’ John asked. ‘Was he young, or what?’

  ‘It’s pretty hard to say,’ Mel answered, scratching at his gingery beard. ‘He was rugged, you know, and pretty well-built. Athletic, I’d say, but more like throwing the javelin than running. Wore a plaid shirt and jeans. But I couldn’t pick him out in a crowd. Half the guys in California look like that, and the other half look like me.’

  Vicki turned nervously away from the window. ‘I hate a mystery. I like everything to be explicable. I guess I’m just being Capricornian.’

  John grinned. ‘Why don’t you start being Aquarian and run yourself a bath and wash your hair? Then you won’t smell like Dr Kildare’s second-string date any more. In the meantime, I’ll fix us some good ol’ home-cooked hamburgers. Mel, could you get yourself around a good ol’ home-cooked hamburger?’

  Mel chuckled. ‘Asking me if I want one of your good ol’ home-cooked hamburgers is like asking if I want to take my next breath.’

  ‘Well, you can take your next breath if you prefer. It’s cheaper.’

  ‘I won’t be long,’ Vicki said. ‘Don’t eat all the pickles before I get back.’

  Mel raised his glass to her, and as she walked across the room called: ‘Vicki.’

  She turned. A cloud crossed the sun, and dulled the house.

  Mel said, ‘I just want to drink a toast, to whatever fates there are, that you’re safe and well. We’d have been pretty lonesome up here in the canyon without you.’

  Vicki nodded, and her eyes were a little moist. She came over and kissed Mel’s forehead, and whispered, ‘Bless you, Mel. Bless all friends.’

  John had refilled his glass, and walked through the carved pine archway into the kitchen. He took the ground beef out of the icebox, and started chopping onions and herbs. He opened the kitchen window, and there was a warm fragrant smell of California fall, and a view down the valley between the trees towards Topanga and the road. Mel came in with his wi
ne, and perched himself on a wooden stool by the breakfast bar. ‘This thing’s hit Vicki pretty hard, hasn’t it?’ he said. John looked up. ‘More than she’s telling.’

  ‘Can her shrink help her? Who does she see these days?’

  ‘She’s into natural reflective healing. We both are.’

  ‘Natural reflective healing? I never heard of that.’

  ‘Sure you have,’ John said, beating an egg into the ground beef, and seasoning it with pepper and thyme. ‘It’s when you look at yourself in the mirror first thing in the morning, and say to yourself, “Good morning, you well-adjusted person, why does a well-adjusted person like you need to waste ten thousand bucks a year on a psychoanalyst?”’

  Mel opened the glass jar of hazelnuts and shook a few into the palm of his pudgy hand. ‘Maybe she’d like to join in my TA sessions. I mean, it seems to me that she’s been traumatized by this shooting, and it’s going to take some pretty supportive stuff to get her out of it.’

  ‘You’ll have to ask her. She’s an independent lady.’

  ‘I know it. It’s real sad that it had to happen to her. And to you, too. Do you think you’re over the worst of it yet?’

  John slickered oil over the broiler pan, and lit the gas. ‘I guess I’ve accepted he’s dead. But it’s not the killing itself that shocks me so much. It’s how senseless it was. I can’t come to grips with the mind of any person who kills at random, innocent people, for no reason whatever. I think of my father, you know, and he was nothing more than a mild, ordinary, kind person. That’s all. I could have accepted his death a little easier if he’d worked for the Mafia, or the KKK, or if he’d been into unions. But he was just a guy.’

  Mel said, ‘Do you think the cops are talking sense about that?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About this Freeway Fruitcake. I mean, do you really believe he kills people at random?’

  John frowned. The oil was spluttering now, and he took down a blue-and-white striped butcher’s apron and hung it around his neck. There was a pungent aroma of scorched beef and herbs.