Too Sweet to Die Read online

  “What stash?”

  Polishing a trophy with the tip of his necktie, Cruz said, “I got all these for body building. The way I’ve been going the last couple of years, I’m afraid they’re going to come and ask for their cups back.” He set the silver trophy down. “There used to be rumors floating around that Nordlin had taken in quite a bit of extra dough during his years in office. Money from kickbacks, bribes, slush, and other under the counter political activities. All in cash, the kind of money you don’t tell the IRS about. A good part of it was supposed to be hidden away somewhere.”

  “What would that have to do with Jill?”

  Cruz said, “Maybe she took a few days off to go dig up some of daddy’s dough.”

  Easy scratched at his shaggy head. “I don’t think so, Joe,” he said. “If she did, where would she go. Carmel?”

  “Maybe.” Cruz gave a shrug. “I think the old senator also had a hideaway up north, someplace in Sonoma County. I don’t know where.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “Is it important?”

  Easy grinned. “One never knows.”

  Getting back behind his desk, Cruz made another note. “Think about that, John. Dean Constance makes almost a million off pornos. Old Nordlin made ten times that by being on the take. Does that tell you something?”

  “Maybe we ought to make a dirty movie about graft.” Easy took one last look out the window. The barber was still playing the guitar. “I’ll talk to you again tonight sometime.”

  “Do you know how to get over to Ross?” Cruz shook hands with Easy, led him to the door.

  “Ross I can find,” said Easy.

  CHAPTER 10

  EASY DROVE THROUGH THIN white fog until he reached the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. Then there was all at once no more of it. Bright afternoon sun illuminated the low rolling hills of Marin County which lay ahead of him.

  Five little Japanese girls were walking along the pedestrian passway of the bridge, all with tiny arms held out at their sides like tightrope walkers. A fat young soldier was pressed against an orange railing, his camera aimed back at the fog-hidden San Francisco marina. A slender blonde girl was standing near the soldier, her hands tight in the pockets of her coat. She had a sad reflective look, as though she might be filing the bridge away under future suicide possibilities.

  A Grey Line Tour bus was stopped on the observation plateau on the Marin side of the bridge, unloading overweight tourists. Easy drove on.

  After a few minutes of unsettled countryside the highway took him through the fringes of towns. Roadside signs offered seafood, quick cash, boats, flying lessons, hamburgers, and lumber.

  As Easy turned off the highway and onto the boulevard leading inland to the town of Ross he reached down to snap on the car radio. He punched a station button at random.

  A disc jockey whose voice hadn’t quite changed yet was saying, “… and I believe it was, you know, possibly, recorded once or so earlier, you know, in a version aimed at a, you know, mainly black audience.”

  A highly amplified rock blues commenced. Another young voice, trying for a black sound, began singing. “Sometimes I think, mama, you too sweet to die. I say, sometimes I think you too sweet to die. An’ another time I think you ought to be buried alive.”

  “Ambivalence,” remarked Easy and turned off the radio.

  Eventually there were trees on both sides of him, pines, oaks, and evergreens. He located the street where Dean Constance lived, turned right. The narrow road climbed up into hills. Everybody up here had acres. Enormous houses rose far beyond the road, some guarded by high stone walls, others by trees. A silver-haired wolfhound came bounding out of a wide drive to chase Easy’s car, silent and un-barking, for a quarter of a mile.

  An unhappy gardener was picking bright yellow apples from a tree on the broad front acres of the estate next to Dean Constance’s. The rounded man wasn’t looking at his tree branches but over the low brick wall which partially masked Constance’s ten acres from him.

  There were cars and motorcycles and one semi-gutted yellow school bus scattered along the winding drive approaching Constance’s low cream-colored mansion. Easy parked his VW next to a brand new gray Mercedes 220S which had three green snakes painted on its hood. A naked four-year-old little girl with tangled blonde curls and spots of orange soda on her chubby face was asleep sitting up against the front tire of the Mercedes.

  Easy heard music, sitars, and electric violins at the moment, and noticed loudspeakers hanging here and there around Constance’s twenty-room house.

  A forty-year-old black man wearing only a pair of orange overalls came riding a motor scooter down the drive from behind Easy. “Out of the way, mother,” he suggested as he passed close.

  At the rear of the big house was an enormous swimming pool, at least twice Olympic size and lined with turquoise mosaic tile. Beyond that stretched an acre of green lawn and then came woodland.

  On the high board a black man was making love to a fifteen-year-old blonde girl. As they bounced together they inched closer to the edge of the board. Only two or three of the twenty people in and around the pool were watching.

  At the far side of the pool, sitting in a high back rattan chair, was a bald man with a bristly mustache. He held a 16-millimeter movie camera aimed at the loving couple. He wore a black turtleneck sweater, black bell-bottom pants. The cuff of his right trouser leg was twisted in the bright metal of his leg brace.

  The blonde on the high board dug her fingers into the black man’s back, crying, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus!”

  They both went toppling off the diving board.

  While they were in midair, still coupled, the man with the camera exclaimed, “Right on. Beautiful. Tremendous.”

  The couple separated on hitting the water. The girl capsized a Chinese faggot who’d been floating on an inflated lime-green seahorse.

  The four-year-old girl who’d been sleeping against the Mercedes was at Easy’s side now. “Did you see that mother?” She giggled, then leaped into the pool. Easy stepped around a smiling unconscious young man in knee-length striped trunks who smelled sweetly of fruit wine and made his way to the man he figured to be Dean Constance.

  The bald mustached man was kneeling at the pool edge, his right leg held out stiff. “Beautiful,” he said, his camera pointed at the Chinese faggot, who appeared to be drowning. “You ain’t doing a number on me, are you, Chen?”

  “I’m not jiving,” gasped Chen.

  Without looking back Constance said, “Nick and Nora.”

  Two nearly identical red-haired girls, both twenty and slender and bare-breasted, had been sitting on the tiles beside the rattan chair. “Yeah?” said one.

  “Save that poor drowning mother.”

  “Why?”

  “Off your ox,” ordered the filmmaker. “I don’t want any drowned fags in my waters. It makes for pollution.”

  Nick and Nora shrugged bare shoulders, stood up in unison, dived into the pool.

  “Who are you, brother?” Constance asked.

  “You’re Dean Constance?”

  “Right, brother.” Constance got himself back into his chair, resting the movie camera in his lap. “You come for the party?”

  Easy shook his head. “My name’s John Easy. I’m a private investigator from Los Angeles.”

  “No jive?”

  From his wallet Easy withdrew a card, handed it to Constance.

  “Easy Rider, Private Pig,” said Constance, pretending to read the card close to his face. He scratched the stubble of his shaved head with the rolled-up card. “I’m getting bad vibes from you, brother.”

  “I’m looking for a girl named Jill Jeffers.”

  “Different people are into different things.”

  “She was here Saturday night, with Mitzi Levin.”

  A tall pretty Negro girl in a two-piece scarlet suit had climbed out of the pool near them and was sitting on the edge, hugging her knees and quietly watching Easy.
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  “So?” said Constance.

  “Nobody has seen Jill Jeffers since.”

  “Again, so?”

  “I’ve been hired to find her.”

  “Don’t let me impede your progress, brother.”

  Easy took a step nearer the bald man. “The police are going to start looking for Jill if she doesn’t turn up soon.”

  “Pigs is pigs,” said Constance. “I don’t know any Jill Jeffers. Mitzi Levin I am acquainted with in a business way. I was pretty wrecked Saturday night, really spaced out, brother. Maybe I encountered Jill Jeffers and maybe I didn’t. I don’t now recall. Goodbye, brother.” He left his chair and limped around the big pool to where Nick and Nora were attempting to revive Chen.

  “Hello,” said the pretty black girl. She was nearly five ten, bony, with red-tinted hair.

  Easy remembered a poster he’d seen at Mitzi’s movie house. “You’re Nada?”

  The girl smiled. “Have you seen me on the silver screen perhaps?”

  “I saw your photo in front of Mitzi Levin’s place. Do you know her?”

  Nada was watching Dean Constance circling Nick, Nora, and Chen on the poolside tile. “I know Jill Jeffers, too. I heard you asking after her.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  Her eyes still on the limping Constance, Nada touched one long-fingered hand to her high sharp cheek bone. “I maybe do.” She shook her head. “I’ve got to do a few more tricks with Nick and Nora and the others. For a new film of Dean’s. On top of which, I don’t want to talk to you too much in the open here.”

  Easy hunkered down beside her. “When and where can you talk?”

  “Sundown. By then my day’s work will be done,” said the long black girl. “You know where Mill Valley is?”

  “Yeah, not far from here.”

  Nada gave him an address and directions. “I bought myself a place in Mill Valley. Be there when it starts getting dark. Will you?”

  Easy watched Nada’s pretty face for a few seconds. “Okay,” he said.

  “Far out,” Constance was shouting. He ordered Nick and Nora to throw Chen back into the pool.

  CHAPTER 11

  A SINGLE RED APPLE fell down through the twilight. Bending, Easy picked up and polished it on the sleeve of his coat. Then he noticed the apple was pocked with brown soggy spots. He flipped it away.

  The apple produced a pong sound when it hit one of the cast iron statues dotting the front acre of Nada’s property. There were four statues—a cupid, an elk, a Venus, and one Easy couldn’t figure out. The apple had hit the cupid.

  The grass was a dry yellow, nearly knee high. Most of the dozen trees ringing the property were losing their leaves. The path leading to the actress’s house was covered with pale white gravel. Her house was a two-story Victorian, its roof encrusted with thrusting spires and cupolas. There were two weathercocks, each indicating the wind was blowing in a different direction. Pigeons huddled on the roof gutters and one was doing a hopping dance on the scalloped red shingles.

  The heavy oak front door stood wide open. The light shining out onto the warped wooden porch grew and diminished, flickering orange. Easy unbuttoned his coat, moved his hand toward the .38 revolver in his shoulder holster.

  Easy climbed the six swayback steps sideways, watching the open doorway. On the threshold of Nada’s Mill Valley house he stopped and listened. There were various creakings—shutters, eaves, floorboards. Up above him the pigeons cooed. Easy waited, then stepped inside.

  Just off the entrance was a bow-windowed parlor. There was no furniture in the room. Only two bicycles and a thin bearded young man sprawled on his back on the bare floor. Beside him a squat candle burned on a saucer.

  Easy knelt, checking the boy’s pulse. He was alive.

  “The sun isn’t down yet,” said Nada. She was in the parlor doorway, both arms behind her buttoning a ribbed sleeveless wool pullover. She was wearing low-waisted and flared tan trousers, a wide belt with a zodiac medallion for a buckle. Her hair looked redder. “I was upstairs prettying myself up.”

  “What’s wrong with this guy?”

  “That’s only Kemp,” explained the pretty black girl.

  Easy thumbed one of the bearded boy’s eyelids. “Is that a condition?”

  “It’s his name. Kemp. Kemp takes things,” said Nada. “People call him the Medicine Cabinet. He’ll put anything inside himself. Don’t worry about him, he always recuperates.”

  “What did he take this time?”

  “Some little white tablets with red flecks in them. I don’t know the name.”

  Easy rose up away from the sprawled Kemp. “Who is he?”

  “Kemp the comic artist,” said Nada. “I guess you probably don’t follow that medium. He’s a cartoonist, very gifted.”

  “That explains the spots.”

  “Spots?”

  “Black, spots on his fingers. I was trying to think what drug will do that. It must be India ink, though.”

  Nada touched Easy’s arm with one slender hand. “I let Kemp stay here off and on. I have occasional maternal impulses, though I’m basically bitchy at heart,” she said. “I think I forgot to pay my electric bill for a few months, which is how come you’re being entertained by candlelight.” She picked up the candle from beside Kemp. “I usually hold my at-homes out back in the kitchen. Come along.”

  In the long hardwood hallway they passed two more leaning bicycles. “You’re fond of bikes,” said Easy.

  “I never had one when I was a kid.” She pointed with her free hand. “Over that way. No, over there actually. Over there across the Bay is Oakland. You know where 7th and Central is?”

  “No.”

  “Good for you then. That is where I grew up, in that vicinity. Now I’m practically a superstar.”

  “When you’re full-fledged you can pay your light bill.”

  “I could pay it now except I keep forgetting.” The kitchen was large, with a high white ceiling. Copper pots, all new and unused, hung from hooks around the walls. “Want a drink?”

  In the center of a round carved oak table sat a half-full bottle of Riesling and another candle in a saucer. Easy lit the candle. “No, thanks,” he said. “Now, what about Jill Jeffers?”

  “I think you’re supposed to chill this,” said Nada, setting her candle on the big table and picking up the wine bottle. She wiped the lip of the green bottle with the back of her hand. “Skol.” She drank from the bottle, took it with her as she walked, slow and slide-footed, across the room. There was a 10-speed Italian bicycle propped against the refrigerator. “I don’t mind making the skin cinema stuff for Dean. However, I still have a … well, maybe you can’t call it a moral sense. Anyhow, sometimes I see things happen which I don’t much like.”

  “Did Dean do something to Jill?”

  Nada shook her red head. She took another swig of the warm Riesling. “What I’m going to tell you … you have to act like you obtained it from an informed source who prefers to remain nameless. A deal?”

  Easy nodded at her. “Sure. What happened to Jill Jeffers? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know where she is, not for sure. But what happened to her is Poncho.”

  “Who’s Poncho?”

  “Poncho is Poncho,” replied Nada. “A great big bastard, and mean. Good looking, in a grizzly bear sort of way. He works in some of Dean’s flicks once in a great while. He took Jill.”

  “Took her?”

  Nada drank from the green bottle. “Took her with him, away from that party,” she said finally. “I’ve met Jill once or twice before. Saturday she was in a very down mood. I’m bitchy myself most times and you have to be pretty nasty to beat me. Jill did. Poncho kept circling around her. He got her to try some stuff he had, to cheer herself up.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  The black girl shrugged her left shoulder and her breasts bobbed under the ribbed wool. “Supposed to be meth. Whatever it was, it didn’t bring her up any.” Nada r
an her tongue over her lips. “Nor did what Poncho had in mind for her probably. Poncho and his friends.”

  Easy moved nearer the dark girl. “What did they do to her?”

  Nada’s left shoulder gave a faint shrug. “A gang shag.”

  Easy’s face grew taut. “You mean Poncho and his friends raped Jill?”

  Nada looked away, setting the wine bottle on the olive-colored electric stove. “I don’t know what he actually did for sure,” she said. “All I know is what he told me he was thinking about. They’ve done it before.”

  “You didn’t try to stop him.”

  “Poncho ain’t somebody you try to stop. Anyhow, Jill wasn’t in any mood to be talked out of anything,” said Nada. “It’s not exactly rape if she went along on her own, is it?”

  Easy was directly in front of her. He put his big hands on her bare arms. “You didn’t tell anybody until now. Why?”

  “Why do you think? Now I’m worried,” she said. “It’s a long time from Saturday to Wednesday. And I told you I feel maternal sometimes.”

  “So finally today you’re worried.”

  The pretty girl closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. “You don’t know all I got to carry around.”

  With the fingers of one hand Easy stroked Nada’s forehead and cheek. “Where is Poncho?”

  The black girl let herself lean against him. “Poncho doesn’t live any one place. Usually he hangs out over in San Francisco, mostly around the tenderloin. I think maybe he brought Jill over to San Francisco that night.”

  “You haven’t heard from Jill or Poncho since Saturday?”

  “No.” She reached her slender arms around him and hugged him once, then stepped back and away. “Try a bar named Superpop’s on Mason in the tenderloin. They usually know where Poncho is. Are you going to look for him right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Be cautious, will you? Poncho is a nasty son of a bitch sometimes.”

  “So am I,” Easy assured her.