Dave Brandstetter 01 Fadeout by Joseph Hansen

Author:Joseph Hansen [Hansen, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2021-12-12T20:50:15+00:00

12

In his office on the tenth floor of the new glass-and-steel Medallion building on Wilshire Boulevard, Dave hung up the phone. Wearily. He’d been using it all afternoon. His hand was cramped. His ear felt bruised. He shook his head at the man standing in the doorway, lean, erect and ruddy. Only his white hair hinted at his age. Late sixties. He was Dave Brandstetter’s father and the man Dave Brandstetter worked for. He dropped into a hairy white goats-hide chair. His voice was as handsome as the rest of him.

“God knows,” he said, “you’ve tried.”

“The police haven’t turned up any Ferrari in Fresno. That would be the nearest town to Pima with an airport you can call an airport. Just the same, I’ve had three of our people check all flights from there starting zero hours October nineteen. Also from the bay area. No luck.”

“Obviously Sawyer owns a passport. Does Olson?”

“I couldn’t reach his wife to confirm it. Nor McNeil, his what—boss, manager? Both away somewhere this afternoon. But I doubt he had one. He’d been poor until pretty lately. Bureau says no application is being processed for him. Which leaves Mexico or Canada.”

“And explains why the car hasn’t turned up abandoned somewhere. They’re driving it.”

“I hope so,” Dave said. “Junking a Thunderbird’s one thing. But a Ferrari? Painful idea.”

“You tool down to the border,” his father said. “It’s possible one of the guards will remember a car like that. Especially with French tags.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.” But Dave was thinking that the United States of America is a big country: two hundred million people. If you wanted to lose yourself, you really wouldn’t have to leave it. There was no point in saying so. They both knew it. He smiled and made the expected polite inquiry. About stepmother number nine, or was it ten? “How’s Nanette?”

The older man snorted. “I’m preparing to shed Nanette. Someone, as the old fairy tale puts it, has been sleeping in my bed.”

“That’s too bad,” Dave said.

“It could be worse.” His father rose with a wry smile. “She could have caught me sleeping in somebody else’s bed. That can be very costly.”

“She lasted a long time,” Dave said. “Three years? Four?” He took Old Crow from a cabinet that was metal patterned to look like wood. Chunky glasses. Ice cubes.

“Damn near five,” his father said behind him. “She was beginning to bore me anyway.”

“Drink?”

“Before driving? In weather like this? Haven’t you learned anything from twenty years in the insurance game?”

“Twenty-two years.” Dave drowned the cubes in the glasses, handed one to his father. “I’ve learned driving is so dangerous I haven’t got the guts to do it sober.” He grinned and lifted his glass.

“You can joke.” His father’s eyebrows signaled surprised approval. “That’s good. I told you the smart thing was to get back to work. You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”

Dave said, “Somebody remarked last night that the fun goes out of mourning after a while.”

His father sat down, making a face. “Not too tactful.

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