Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery

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J2 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 goat's-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 01son ?" 97 "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." 98 "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." "The truth seldom is." Dave perched on a comer of his desk. "I'm all right." His father tried the whiskey, started to speak, frowned, wasted time with a cigarette and a gold butane lighter. Finally, solemn, clearing his throat, he said, blunt, businesslike , "All right. Now he's gone. That infatuation's done with. You're forty-four years old. It's time you found a wife and settled down." Dave laughed. "Look who's talking about settling down." "Well, damn it, you know what I mean. Kids, a family. Future. I at least gave you life." "A slipup and you know it," Dave said. "What is it you're getting at? You want to be a grandfather? That I find very difficultto believe." "I don't see why." "What the hell kind of genetic legacy are we supposed to bequeath to the world of tomorrow? An old satyr and a middle-aged auntie!" 99 His father winced. "You've got a very ugly mouth sometimes ." "I'm sorry," Dave said, "but you're not being honest and you know it. You don...