The Classic Car Killer

CHAPTER ONE Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to colorize Casablanca. It takes a lot of work, a lot of computer time, and a lot of money to turn an old black-and-white movie into a full-scale modern production with blue skies, red wine, skin-colored skin, and blood-colored blood. But Mother insisted on watching it with the TV controls set to turn everything back into shades of gray. Hobart Lindsey sighed as the ancient airliner lumbered into the North African night. He couldn’t see much of the plane, but it was probably a DC-3. They don’t build airliners the way they used to, Lindsey thought. The jetliners that all the airlines used nowadays were generic. No personalities like they had in the old days. Worse even than modern cars. The screen faded to the familiar Warner Brothers end-logo as Rick Blaine and Louis Renault walked arm-in-arm into the fog while Victor Laszlo and his wife, Ilsa Lund, escaped the Javert-like pursuit of Major Heinrich Strasser. Bogart and Rains, Henreid and Bergman and Conrad Veidt. They didn’t make actors like they used to, either. Lindsey had sat through the picture twenty times. Or was it fifty? He recognized the greatness of the film, but it was Mother who insisted on watching it every time they showed it on cable, and if it didn’t turn up for a few weeks she would make him rent it on tape for her. He almost enjoyed the trips to Vid/Vid/Vid to look over the latest releases and the classics section. The telephone’s intrusive burbling brought Hobart Lindsey back into the present. He left Mother sitting on the dark blue sofa. Let her stay in the past, he thought. She was happier there than in the present, better able to handle her widowhood. She wandered in time. Most often she thought that Dwight Eisenhower was just starting his presidency and Josef Stalin was menacing the Free World and that her husband—Hobart’s father—was alive and was serving on the destroyer Lewiston off the coast of North Korea and was going to come back to her someday. Hobart moved past the table still littered with the empty containers that had held their Saturday dinner of egg rolls and chow mein and shrimp in lobster sauce and moved to answer the call. The voice that came over the telephone line was unpleasantly familiar. “Lindsey, I’m glad you’re home. You’d better hustle down to Oakland and handle this. Now!” Lindsey moaned inwardly. There was no mistaking the voice and manner of Harden at Regional. Lindsey had spoken with him often enough, but always from the office. And he’d even met him a couple of times. But Harden’s phoning Lindsey at home was unprecedented. And on Saturday night, just when he was starting to feel happy and relaxed, halfway through a pleasant weekend! “What happened in Oakland, Mr. Harden?” “You’d know if you put in a few more hours, Lindsey. What time is it out there in fruits-and-nuts land?” Lindsey looked at his Seiko. He’d moved up from a Timex, and every time he checked his watch he experienced a mixed rush of pride and guilt. Pride in the gleaming timepiece, and guilt for adding needlessly to the balance of payments deficit. “It’s ten minutes before twelve.” “Yes. I don’t suppose you’ve checked the incoming claims tape lately, have you?’ “I check it every morning, Mr. Harden. Ms. Wilbur or I take every call that comes in during business hours, personally.” “You understand the International Surety KlameNet Program, don’t you?” “Yes, sir.” Lindsey had been briefed when the KlameNet system went in. Every International Surety office in the world was hooked into a regional computer center, and those were all linked to the company’s worldwide data-exchange system. KlameNet logged every incoming claim, whether it came though the branches’ own computers or off the overnight message tapes that the smaller offices used. “You can access your office from your home, Lindsey. Isn’t that right?” Lindsey nodded unconsciously, then said, “Yes, sure.” “Then why haven’t you done anything about this claim? It came in more than an hour ago!” “It’s nighttime, Mr. Harden. It’s Saturday night, for heaven’s sake. I’m at home. I would have got the claim off the tape first thing Monday morning. In the meanwhile, I’m sure the proper authorities know about it. What is it, a life claim? An auto accident? I have my mother to look after. And I have a life outside the office, you know.” Lindsey wiped his brow with a handkerchief. It was a chilly night, but talking with Harden made him perspire. “Look, Lindsey, I’m not going to fight with you. I’m just telling you to get yourself in gear. You have a pencil handy? Write this down. This is a motor vehicle theft claim.” He read the account and policy numbers, claim-log number, time-stamp of the claim, estimated time of the theft. Lindsey wrote, trying to keep up with Harden’s dictation. Why all the fuss over a stolen car? They were among the commonest of all claims that he handled for International Surety, the amounts tended to be fairly low, and the recovery rate was the highest of any class of stolen goods. Cars all had engine numbers, they all had to be registered with the state, they were bulky and highly visible and had to be used in public to be used at all. It was easy to steal a car, but it was very hard to keep it and not get caught. So why such an uproar over a claim that would probably amount to $10,000 or less? “You get that amount, did you, Lindsey? Didn’t misplace a decimal?” “Uh—would you repeat that, Mr. Harden? You’re going a little fast for me.” Harden exhaled angrily into the receiver. “The amount is $425,000, Lindsey. That’s four, two, five, comma, zero, zero, zero, dollars, Lindsey. Did you get that?” Lindsey gulped. “Four hundred twenty five thousand?” Harden growled. “That’s right. I know you’re dumb but you’re not deaf, anyway.” “But—what kind of car could that be? Even a Rolls—” “It was a 1928 f*****g SJ Duesenberg Convertible Phaeton, Lindsey. Stolen from in front of something called the Kleiner Mansion in Oakland. You familiar with the Kleiner Mansion?” “I’m not sure. It sounds familiar.” He thought for a moment, searching for an errant memory. “Got it! They used it on the cover of the Oakland phone book a few years ago. I must have seen it at the office.” “Yeah. Well, you hightail it out there, cowboy, and see what the f**k is going on.” “It’s my weekend, Mr. Harden.” “It’s $425,000, Lindsey. You’re a professional. We don’t pay you to be a clockwatcher.” Harden didn’t have to go on with the implied threat. Lindsey knew what it was, he’d heard it often enough. “I—I’ll get right out there, Mr. Harden.” Harden was still on the line, grumbling loudly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harden. I didn’t get the name of the owner.” “Yeah, well you ought to pay more attention. I told you, this is another one of those fruit-and-nut cases you seem to specialize in, Lindsey. The car is owned by something called the New California Smart Set, whatever the hell that means. Probably a nancy social club. They were having some kind of shindig at this Kleiner Mansion. They only roll the Dusie a couple of times a year, for super-special occasions. And now it’s gone!” “Okay, Mr. Harden. I’m on my way.” He started to lower the receiver, then stopped. “Uh—Mr. Harden. Who phoned in the report? Not the whole club, did they?” “I thought you’d never ask, Lindsey. You might have a future with this corporation after all. Claim came in from the president of the outfit. Guy named Oliver van Arndt. He’s waiting at the mansion.” Harden hung up without another word. That was in character for him. He’d never been exactly Mr. Charm, and Lindsey knew that Harden was both feared and disliked throughout International Surety. But he seemed to take special pleasure in harassing Hobart Lindsey, especially since the incident of the million-dollar comic books. Actually, they were only a quarter-million dollars’ worth of comics. They’d been burgled from a shop in Berkeley, and Lindsey had recovered them for the company, saving International Surety a bundle. Harden had tried to call Lindsey off the case near its end, but Lindsey had persisted, putting his job on the line. Some job! And then he’d persisted further, and with the help of Berkeley Police Officer Marvia Plum had not only regained all the stolen goods, but solved three bizarrely interconnected murders. That was now in the past. Lindsey had enjoyed his proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. He’d enjoyed a brief, intense relationship with Marvia, and that alone had been a miracle in his drab life. Lindsey was a pudgy, unathletic, undistinguished office worker who lived in a lower-middle-class section of a medium sized bedroom community a few miles east of San Francisco Bay. His life was a study in dullness. Until suddenly he was engaged in car-chases and shoot-outs, hopping on and off airliners, and—most remarkable of all—bedding an amazing woman. Him, drab whitebread Hobart Lindsey, sleeping with a spectacular-figured black policewoman. But it had ended. He’d won the praise of his employer’s national office and the seething jealousy of his immediate superior, Harden at Regional. He’d gone back to his routine life of processing claims by day, keeping an eye on his mentally unstable mother by night. He blinked. A recorded voice on the telephone was telling him to hang up and try again. How long had he been sitting there, holding the dead instrument in his hand, reliving the one brief time in his thirty-six years that he’d really been alive. * * * * Lindsey got Mother off to bed, then jumped in his Hyundai and headed for the freeway. He liked to avoid Oakland. It was as bad, in its own way, as Berkeley or San Francisco, or those ridiculous communities up in Marin County. There must be something about living too close to all that water that brought out the aberrant in people. Mankind had climbed out of the primal swamp in order to live on land a long time ago, and on land was where he belonged! He found Lake Merritt easily enough and drove around it until the Kleiner Mansion loomed up, easily recognizable from its depiction on the old telephone directory. It looked like something out of a Charles Addams cartoon. He expected to see Mortitia and Gomez cavorting on the lawn. The Alameda County Courthouse rose nearby, and East Fourteenth Street, the main arterial that ran all the way from mostly black west Oakland through the city’s struggling downtown and out to suburban San Leandro, carried light traffic past the lake. Coule be he was getting another chance. A stolen car, a routine claim—or maybe not. A sixty-year-old Duesenberg worth nearly half a million dollars was far from routine. Was it time for Lamont Cranston to put on his slouch hat and cloak and turn into the Shadow? Was it time for Bruce Wayne to draw down his cowl and his cape while Alfred the butler warmed up the Batmobile for a midnight prowl? A white Oakland police cruiser stood in front of the Kleiner Mansion, its roof lights flashing. Lindsey parked his Hyundai beside the cruiser and scampered up the front steps of the mansion, patting his pockets to make sure that he had his notebook and pencil with him. The Kleiner Mansion had a broad Victorian veranda. A uniformed Oakland police officer was talking with a man and two women, asking them questions and jotting down their responses. When Lindsey approached, the cop turned. “Who are you?” Lindsey introduced himself, handed each of the others his business card. The cop studied the card, then Lindsey, then the card once more. Lindsey was wearing a heavy sweater over a cotton shirt and slacks. He hadn’t changed before leaving Walnut Creek. Maybe he should have, he thought, but it was too late to do anything about that now. “Okay, Mr. Lindsey. Your company carries the policy on the Duesenberg?” Lindsey nodded. The cop had a tan, Hispanic face with high cheekbones, dark liquid eyes, heavy black eyebrows and a thick handlebar moustache. His speech was unaccented.