Tinman

by Karen Black

  “Well, I sort of think you did,” I said, struggling not to sound as miffed as I really was, “And I guess that opens up a bunch of attitudes and values we’re going to have to sort out one of these days if we’re going to keep moving forward as we seem to be. But for now it doesn’t matter what color I think their hats are. The real question is, why TINMAN?”

  “Please, Greg. Just forget it.”

  “No. I still want to know, why TINMAN?”

  Corky sat subdued, staring down at the dregs of the coffee in her cup. “I don’t know. It’s just so phony…‘Engineers with a Heart.’ Charley wasn’t like that. He had to be an alien in that environment, no matter how good he was at playing their game. Those macho guys are afraid of people they can’t bulldoze…people who are smarter and more subtle and more concerned for people than they are.”

  “What macho guys?”

  “Don’t be dense. Those big-time corporation execs. They knew they couldn’t control Charley, so they had to shut him up. It has to be a big corporation. Who else could come up overnight with hit men in Saint Paul and Denver?”

  “Hit persons,” I reminded her. “Let’s not be chauvinists. Mine was a long-legged blonde, as you know.”

  “Sexploitation,” Corky muttered, but I thought I heard the ghost of a snort, as she tried to hold back one of her frequent giggles. “I’ll get some more coffee.”

  I tried to return to the paper, but my mind was on another track. Were Greg, the pedantic square, and Corky, the flower child feminist, an impossible combination on an impossible mission? Would we wake up some day wondering how we ever fell so easily into each other’s arms? Maybe Corky just has it in for TINMAN out of a kind of jealousy over a side of Charley’s life in which she had no part? Or is she militant about industry, the environment and women’s lib in general? Am I really a square, rather than the reasonable and rational, tolerant person I think I am? Or is that just the way squares always think of themselves?

  When Corky came back, we picked up the paper again and turned to another report on Charley. She linked her arm with mine, which immediately eased the tension.

  We read it together “SLAIN ENGINEER LAST OF SOUTHLAND PIONEER DYNASTY.” It recounted the history of the Farnsworths in California, starting with Charley’s great-great grandfather coming out from Philadelphia in1850 and acquiring a large, nearly worthless ranch in the Los Angeles basin, which legend says was in settlement of a gambling debt. Two generations later, the dusty road out to the ranch was called Wilshire Boulevard, and a dynasty was in the making.

  “Many readers will remember,” the article went on, “the ornate Farnsworth Mansion, long a landmark in Hancock Park. Occupied by Mrs. Farnsworth until her death in 1989, the mansion was sought for preservation as an historic and architectural monument by the California State Historical Society. However Mrs. Farnsworth directed in her will that the house be razed, and Charles Farnsworth insisted that his mother’s wishes be carried out, despite public protest and lengthy litigation.

  “The contents were sold in a memorable auction which brought art and antique collectors from all over the world. The house fell to the wrecking ball in 1992. Recent proposals for a high-rise residential and commercial complex on the site have come under heavy fire from neighborhood preservationists and planners. The untimely death of Charles Campbell Farnsworth brings to an end a chapter of California history unique to the southland region.”

  “Why do you suppose he did a thing like that?” Corky asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Tear down the house.”

  “I think Charley saw the house as a self-imposed prison for his mother, and also as a prison from which something of himself had never managed to escape because of what the article didn’t mention. Charley’s immensely wealthy father, an early patron of aviation, scandalized even the already blasé pioneers in another new frontier called Hollywood by flying off into the sunset with a notorious casting couch starlet. Charley was then two. His mother retreated behind the wrought-iron palisades and cast-iron stags of the Farnsworth mansion to become a recluse with only little Charley to provide a contact with the world. That continued until her death.”

  “What about the high-rise project? Was Charley behind that?”

  “I don’t know. That part is news to me.”

  There were a couple of other items we read with interest. One was a separate article about the discovery of an unconscious man in Charley’s apartment with evidence the place had been burglarized. The man, as yet unidentified, was being held for observation and investigation in the detention ward of L.A. County Hospital. He had regained consciousness shortly after being hospitalized but at press time was unable to give an account of his presence in the apartment or how he might have suffered the blow on the back of the head which rendered him unconscious. It appeared that he had been surprised by another intruder, but police were unwilling to speculate on a linkage with the murders in Colorado.

  “I’m glad I didn’t kill him,” Corky said soberly.

  “Why? I’m sure he killed Charley.”

  “I wouldn’t want to kill anyone, even if they deserved it. How could you live with that?”

  “I think I could live with it just fine given what he did. If there’s a trial, he’ll likely get the death penalty anyway…well…maybe not in California. At least the son-of-a-bitch has a hellava headache,” I said, trying lamely to keep the satisfaction out of my voice.

  The other item was a notice that Charley’s funeral would be Saturday. Arrangements were being handled by one of the larger Beverley Hills mortuaries. No flowers. Memorial donations in his name could be made, oddly enough, to the California State Historical Society.

  I swept the paper to the floor, and we sat looking rather glumly at each other. Somehow the scope of the net in which we were enmeshed had not really been brought home to us until we saw it all in print, taking up the better part of a page in one of the nation’s largest newspapers. “I wonder if the morning news has an update on any of this,” I said, glancing at the TV, which neither of us had turned on.

  “Probably,” Corky said concisely, and it struck me that simply by bringing it up I had broken the thread of our communication. Corky felt it too. “Greg,” she said soberly, “could we take a little more time to consider what we’re doing and where we’re going?”

  “I suppose so,” I said, smiling at her seriousness.

  “It’s not funny. I have a ‘fools-rush-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread’ feeling anyway, and you were close enough to the Pearly Gates yourself last evening so we might want to think things through before we take the next leap into space.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that particular metaphor,” I said, shivering slightly. “The trouble is that it’s hard to think constructively without hard data, and the only way I can see to get data is to tweak the system.”

  “The best way I can think of for you to start tweaking the system is to tweak TINMAN.” At least her focus hadn’t changed. I shook my head and chewed on my lower lip.

  “And,” she added, when I failed to respond, “Before we walk into the fox’s den to find out what’s killin’ us chickens, I’d like to ask a couple of basic questions.”

  “So ask,” I said coolly.

  “Why did somebody try to kill you Sunday morning?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “That’s a wimpish answer. You’ve got to do better than that.” Corky’s voice was matter-of-fact, but it stung me a little.

  “Damn it, I don’t know.”

  “That’s right, get huffy,” she shot back, then her face softened. “I’ve watched enough late night Perry Mason shows to know how to handle a hostile witness. Come on, Greg, let’s brainstorm…be outrageous. Have you got any wild ideas?”

  “That’s the trouble. I hit a blank wall beyond the fact that Charley and I were planning to meet, and somebody didn’t want us to get together.”

  “Bad enough to kill?”

  “That’s t
he crazy part. What do I know? I’ve had nothing more than a funny note on a Christmas card from Charley in at least a year.”

  “So looking at it from your point of view, you haven’t had contact lately with Charley, and you don’t know anything worth killing for. But looking at it from their point of view, they may think you’ve been tight with Charley and that you know whatever it was they killed him for. What might that be?”

  I shrugged, “¿Quien sabe?”

  “How nice,” she smiled in an irritatingly smug way, “you’re bilingual. The question is, did they try to kill you because they think you know something that Charley knew. Or did they try to kill you to keep you from learning whatever it was from Charley?”

  I laughed without amusement. “What difference does it make? Either way I’m on the hit list for something I don’t know.”

  “It could make a lot of difference. You’re still on the hit list, if they think you know something. If they think killing Charlie stopped you from finding out, then they might not think you’re worth the trouble.”

  “Comforting,” I muttered. Still, I had to be impressed by her relentless logic.

  “Don’t you see, Greg, this leads us straight to TINMAN plain as day. Who else had so many ways of finding out that he was planning to meet with you…had access to all his correspondence and the papers in his office…could get to his secretary…monitor his office calls…keep track of who he was meeting with…easily bug his home phone? It has to be TINMAN! They’ve probably had his phone tapped for years and know everything, even his plan to leave a message for you at the Cliffe Motel.”

  “I’m not so sure it leads us straight to anyone. Let’s leave that open until we have a little more hard data. But even if it turns out to be TINMAN, I don’t think they know everything. I think it’s more likely that Charley stumbled onto something very recently and was planning to bring me into it before they had any idea the cat might be out of the bag. Then they panicked and things got out of control.”

  “Out of control?”

  “They started improvising. There’s no way that booby-trapping me could be part of a long range plan. They had to call someone in Minnesota they could count on in a hurry and say, stop this guy–we don’t care how you do it, just keep him off the plane to L.A.”

  “They certainly picked a weird way to do it. It seems more like a Miami drug deal than my idea of safe and sane old Minnesota.”

  “You’ve got to admit, in defense of Minnesota, that booby-trapping a single victim at his home is nicer than putting a bomb in an airplane full of innocent people.”

  “Greg, you’ve got it!” Corky said excitedly, “I’ll bet that’s just what they wanted to do, bomb the plane, but they couldn’t figure out which airplane to put it on, because, thanks to Charley’s machinations, you were booked as Dr. Gregory. Like you said, they were improvising.”

  “Plausible,” I mused, “the first reasonable explanation of an otherwise totally bizarre modus operandi.”

  Corky scoffed. “You sound like Dr. Watson.”

  “Well, as you put it,” I huffed, “I am a little square.”

  “Come on,” she pleaded, “Let’s keep our brains in gear. Thanks to poor Darwin….”

  “Who they bombed,” I interjected, frowning at the bad, sad memory, but plowed on. “I don’t think they knew they’d missed me right away. They couldn’t stick around to see whose remains were being put in that plastic bag. And I don’t think they could have known that I was able to call Charley within minutes of the explosion to change our meeting from L.A. to Denver. So, by the time they found out I was still alive, they had lost me.”

  “But they must have known. They followed Charley to Denver and murdered him.”

  “Not necessarily. His L.A. apartment phone could have been bugged so they would have heard him reschedule the meeting place with me, or they could have had a tail on Charley in Los Angeles with the idea of following him to his meeting with me, and they were taken by surprise when he went to the airport instead and jumped on a plane to Denver. In that case, they could have called a Denver link in their far-flung operation and ordered Charley’s murder. But I don’t think they got all the papers or whatever Charley had with him that they wanted, so that’s why they sent their heavy hitters to Aspen and to his apartment in L.A. Something is still missing.”

  “Excellent, my dear Watson,” Corky said. “Let’s see if we can find that missing piece.”

  “Okay, here’s what we know: the black guy and Wispy Whiskers were working as a team in Denver and they had a third accomplice… the driver of the car. Someone arranged for the black guy to be picked up by helicopter from the ski slopes. Wispy Whiskers beat us to L.A.– and we weren’t letting any grass grow under our feet. What does that tell us?”

  Corky grimaced, “Good summary. It looks to me like we’re facing a well-organized and well-funded enemy…someone like TINMAN.”

  I exhaled loudly, then shook my head a couple of times, torn between my considerable annoyance at what I considered her unrelenting and unfair condemnation of TINMAN and that small voice in my ear that said she could be right. I tried to appear open to her conclusion in my response. “Those facts certainly could point to someone or even more people in TINMAN…but they could also point to lots of criminal organizations, foreign governments, drug cartels….”

  “Okay, you’ve got a point,” she conceded reluctantly, sensing correctly, I think, that she shouldn’t push it any further. “So where does that leave us now?”

  “I think they may be in a state of confusion right now. They’ve lost both of us, but I doubt they have made any connection between us. They’ve got to be wondering who the hell slugged their man in Charley’s apartment, and I doubt they have made the connection between Gregory McGregor and Malcolm Gregory, the mythical mystery man. In fact, they may be getting a little paranoid, thinking they’re up against some mysterious organization, instead of just us chickens.

  “You know, Mythical Mystery Man, you’re not half bad at this game, once you get your brain in gear,” Corky said, snuggling up to me.

  “A charming compliment,” I said, a little miffed at being patronized, “which I’d accept, except this entire web of intrigue is woven out of little more than two pronouns, for which we have no antecedents.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Corky retorted, “Well, you know I ain’t too long on formal book larnin’, so maybe you could introduce me to ‘Aunty Seedent’.” She smiled flippantly.

  I relented. “One is the mysterious ‘they’ we keep referring to. Your feminine intuition insists that ‘they’ is TINMAN, which may or may not be true. The other is that mysterious ‘something’ that Charley is supposed to have known…‘something’ worth dollars in nine-digit numbers…‘something’ worth killing for.’ Until we have terms to substitute for ‘they’ and ‘something’, we ain’t got nothin’.”

  Corky stirred restlessly. “Why isn’t my idea about TINMAN good, sound logic instead?” she demanded.

  “Instead? Instead of what?”

  “Instead of ‘feminine intuition.’” She got up and moved to the half drawn draperies opening to the sun deck and stood gazing out on the beach. “Feminine intuition, or not, maybe we’d better act as though ‘they’ might be TINMAN until we know they aren’t,” she called back over her shoulder.

  “It’s just a manner of speaking,” I called to her.

  “Let’s jog,” she said abruptly.

  CHAPTER XI

  Los Angeles, Day 2, Tuesday, Cliffe Motel

  We headed up the beach toward Malibu running barefoot on the hard, wet sand. At the top of the strand where the surf ran out, splashing through chilly ankle-deep water, a larger-than-usual wave ran up across the beach, turning the heads of early morning strollers and joggers as Corky flashed past, her supple, smoothly muscled body doing wonders for the skimpy turquoise thing she’d bought in Grand Junction, which was cut very high in the hips like a string bikini. “It’s all I’ve got,” she’d s
hrugged when she put it on.

  Any notion I had that I would demonstrate my fitness by conversing steadily as we jogged along was quickly left behind by her long, smooth ground-eating stride which I, though a foot taller, was pressed to match. “You okay?” she flung over her shoulder after we’d gone about half a mile, and I’d dropped back a pace or two just for the pleasure of watching her run.

  “Great, but you’re a runner, not a jogger,” I panted. She tossed her head and laughed, and with her long hair flying, we pounded down the beach stride for stride with a marvelous sense of release and exhilaration. A good mile further we pulled up, breathing hard, and walked on arm in arm. I was about to make a move to turn back when Corky said as though she’d read my mind, “Just a little farther, Greg, I always want to see what’s around the next bend.”

  We rounded a bank of oleanders and came upon a very pleasant four story apartment facade with sun decks on each floor. At beach level was a small terrace and service bar with wicker chairs and tables dispersed among potted palms and a modest sign saying: Cliffe Motel Coffee Shop, Breakfast Now Being Served. We stood and looked at each other, and I could see that she was conflicted, just as I was.

  “I’m famished, how about you?” I asked.

  “If we just walked in off the beach, would they have any way of knowing who we are?” Corky wondered.

  “How could they know?”

  “But what have we got to gain if we take the chance?

  “Breakfast,” I said emphatically.

  No one was being served when we walked up. The maître d’, a spare, deeply-tanned, balding man wearing sandals and a loose-fitting karate costume, was fussing around with the table settings. He looked rather disdainfully at Corky, smiled knowingly at me, and asked if I would be charging breakfast to my room. “No,” I said, “we’re just walk-ins from the beach,” at which point he led us to a table in a rather obscure corner with a limited view. I was getting pretty restless by the time he deigned to notice us again, managing in the process to look as though he were conferring undeserved bounty on the lower classes.