Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  “I think I’m the guy your sister wanted to meet at Solley’s to ask me to help her expose Karl Lynch. And I think he stopped her by gassing her after slipping drugs in her tea.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this. I need to get home before Karl does.”

  “So you are afraid.”

  “I just want to have a nice dinner with Karl without having to explain why I was foolish enough to trust our private history to the kind of man who could take an expression of love and twist it into an accusation of rape.”

  Her words make me feel like some sort of gossipmongering slime. My reaction is infantile.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” I say, “but don’t let him near your food.”

  She gives me the finger and walks away.

  FORTY-TWO

  I’m thinking about dropping by the hardware store and picking up a new flapper for my toilet as I curve around Griffith Park, transitioning from the 134 to the 5. I’m on my way to the house formerly known as hell. It’s a two-bedroom box in a cheap bungalow court on Maltman south of Sunset in Silverlake. The place reminds me of a Salton Sea trailer park where I once got propositioned by a hooker who looked like my grandmother only older. The place is overdue for a major gentrification, but unless the landlord sobers up or dies it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

  I park on the street and walk the long driveway up the hill between two rows of five bungalows. When they were built in the thirties they were identical, but decades of tenants have individualized them with the only-sometimes-judicious use of paint, window trim, hanging plants, garden gnomes, bird feeders, landscaping, split-rail fencing, and the lone lawn jockey in front of the third unit on the right. My mother’s.

  The jockey was black when she bought it, but my father suggested that it might be a racist statement, even though he was hard-pressed to articulate why. Just to be safe, Ma painted his face and hands white.

  When my father flew his car off a cliff, Ma was forced to sell the house where I grew up, but she kept the jockey. This bungalow was the best she could afford, an involuntary downsizing. I spent my last semester of high school sleeping on the couch before going off to Princeton. A year later, I transferred to UCLA so she could spend what was left of my father’s life insurance to move, but she’s still here two decades later. She likes to say it’s just temporary until she can find a better place. I suspect that place will be Hillside Memorial.

  I knock and hear someone walk across the scarred oak flooring inside, moving much too fast to be Ma. The door opens. It’s my ex.

  I’ve actually come because I want Holly’s professional advice, and I know she’ll be here for their usual Friday lunch. She’s wearing a figure-hugging black jersey outfit that makes her look like Barbarella with better taste in clothes. I question the wisdom of wearing black in this heat, but I’m smart enough to keep my yap shut. She says hello.

  Before I can reply, Ma calls out, “Look who the cat dragged in.”

  I look past Holly to see my mother lying on the floral-print sofa. She’s got a baby-blue icepack sweating on her forehead, dripping into her bleached-blond hair.

  “Hi, Ma. What’s with the ice?”

  “It’s nothing,” she says, implying just the opposite.

  I haven’t seen my mother in a few weeks. She looked drained then and looks worse now, though it’s not easy to tell in the dim light that seeps under the yellowing window shades. Ma’s wearing a purple muumuu with white daisies all over it. There’s an abalone shell on the coffee table, overflowing with Lucky Strike butts. The place smells like the ashtray.

  “She’s hung over,” says Holly.

  “You don’t get hungover from one glass of Manischewitz,” she says.

  “I’ve seen you get hungover just smelling the bottle,” I say. “Why were you drinking? You know you can’t handle it.”

  “Like you could care less how I feel,” she says, sounding like she’s got a sore throat.

  “I do care how you feel. I just don’t think it’s productive for you to kvetch about it so much.”

  She turns to Holly. “You see how he talks to his ailing mother?”

  “You’re not ailing, you’re hungover,” I say. “Whose fault is that?”

  “It was your father’s yahrzeit. I guess you forgot as usual. So I had to toast alone.”

  This is a sore point for her. The yahrzeit is the traditional Jewish remembrance on the anniversary of someone’s death. Unfortunately, I rarely remember it because the “anniversary” is on the Jewish calendar, which makes less sense to me than foie gras to a vegan. That’s why we always celebrated Christmas instead of Chanukah when I was growing up. You always knew when it was coming.

  My mother is Jewish, but she never practiced until my father died. His father was a Baptist who became a Mormon then lapsed and married a Catholic. Because my grandmother was religious, my father was raised Catholic but quit the church when the priest refused to officiate at his marriage to my Jewish mother.

  Out of that stew three children were born. My younger brother, Teddy, who teaches at Reed College in Oregon, went Catholic. My older sister, Beth, who has a small business in Texas repairing wind instruments, went Jewish. And I, the troubled middle child, am a certified orthodox nonsectarian.

  “I spoke to Jerry,” I say to Holly, changing the subject and immediately regretting it.

  “This really isn’t the time or place, Nob.”

  “What’s with Jerry?” asks Ma. She knows him from when he and I used to be friends. Holly gives me a warning glare.

  “He’s trying to sell my house out from under me, because I’m having a little trouble paying my rent exactly on time.” I know it’s a cheap shot, but sometimes the entertainment value is just too seductive for self-censorship.

  My mother has no trouble grasping the nuances. She looks at Holly incredulously. “You would kick my son out of his own home?”

  “You know I don’t want to do that, Tillie. But I need the money to stay in my own place. He made a commitment.”

  “You should be ashamed, Nenad,” says my mother. It doesn’t take much to sway her vote.

  “I am, Ma. And my shame is driving me to drink. Got any Manischewitz left over, or did you chug it all?”

  “Go ahead and joke, Mr. Wiseacre. Meanwhile, they’ll toss this poor girl in the street.”

  She’s right, of course. It’s not Holly’s fault that I’m late, it’s fucking Larry Flynt’s. I did a story for Hustler about a hooker who claimed she killed her ex-husband in self-defense, even though he had his arms full of groceries at the time and she shot him in the back. She’s in jail, awaiting trial, and Hustler’s waiting, too. They don’t want to button the story until the verdict, and they refuse to pay me until then. I called my editor last week and asked for an advance at least. The trial’s been delayed for seven months and still counting. He said he’ll see what he can do. As Melody is fond of saying, I’m not holding my breath. Maybe I should get Jerry on the case.

  “I’m sorry I brought it up,” I say, and I mean it. “If my Flynt check comes in, we’re home free, no pun intended.”

  “What about that rock and roll mishegoss?” my mother asks.

  “I’m working on a story about Lana Strain’s murder,” I explain to Holly. “In fact, I’ve been meaning to call you about it. I could use your help.”

  I’ve always been attracted to smart women and Holly is no exception. Along with her law degree, she has a PhD in psychology, so she’s the go-to gal in the DA’s office on human and not-so-human behavior.

  “What kind of help?”

  “You’re the authority on sexual harassment and abuse. I might have a victim or two.”

  “I’m not interested in your love life,” she says.

  My mother finds this hysterically funny.

  “Cute. But I’m talking about Lana Strain’s daughters. I think both sisters slept with their shrink.”

  “The same shrink?” she asks.

  “That’s right
.”

  “Sisters?”

  “They hadn’t spoken in twenty years, but yeah.”

  “How’d they wind up with the same shrink?”

  “They started out in family therapy together after their mother was murdered. The fact that when they stopped seeing him together he continued to see them both separately is your first clue about his ethical standards.”

  Holly takes several seconds to consider, unconsciously picking at a chip in her Pinkaholic nail polish.

  “We don’t get many sexually abusive therapists through the DA’s office. Most of the victims are too ashamed to come forward, and if they do, they usually go straight to the state board or the civil courts. But I’ve tried a few.”

  “How’d you do?”

  “Three out of five. It’s tough to prove. Usually a ‘he said, she said’ kind of thing.”

  “How common is it?”

  “Depends what you call common. They did an anonymous survey a few years back and one out of every ten male therapists admitted to some sort of sexual contact with a client.”

  My eyebrows launch. “One out of ten?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re shocked, Nob.” She breaks into a poor man’s Cole Porter: “Priests do it. Cops do it. Even educated profs do it.” Then she turns serious. “It’s the intoxication of power. It seems to have some sort of degenerative effect on a man’s ethics.”

  I know that women do it too, but I’m guessing it’s comparatively rare, so I ignore the gender smear.

  “But the man’s a doctor,” says Ma, as if beatification was the next step.

  “These guys aren’t thinking, they’re acting on impulse,” says Holly. We’re talking deep-rooted mating instincts going back hundreds of thousands of years. Reptilian brain stuff. This isn’t a casual poke in the hay. These are driven men who act out their own psychological stuff on troubled women who are too confused and intimidated to say no. No one’s more vulnerable than a woman in an emotional crisis, especially if she thinks the man who’s responsible is the only one who can save her from it.”

  She wipes her bangs out of her eyes, and it occurs to me that she’s let them grow longer than she used to. They look good.

  “And after it’s over?” I ask.

  “Most of these women sink into an even worse depression than they started with. Hardly any come away unscathed. Some get totally debilitated, can’t hold a job, can’t take care of their own basic needs. Some turn to binge eating, alcohol, drugs, even violence.”

  “How about blackmail? I’ve got a murder victim who might have threatened her therapist with exposure.”

  “No offense, Nob, but you’re thinking like a man. These women are in too much turmoil to turn their pain into a profit center. More likely, she would have wanted to turn this guy’s life into a living hell. If she threatened to go public, I doubt money would have stopped her.”

  “So he’d have to kill her to shut her up.”

  “He’s already proven he’s no slave to conscience.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” I say. “And I think the other sister knows something that can incriminate him.”

  “Then don’t let her get near him.”

  “They live together.”

  FORTY-THREE

  I fling the sheets all night. Can’t sleep for worry. I don’t know what I can say to get through to Sophia, but I’m determined to give it another try. I can’t risk calling her if she’s with Karl, so I cruise out to their Westside neighborhood just after six a.m.

  California’s first drive-in theater, the Pico, was closed in 1950 to make way for what has become the Westside Pavilion mall. Karl Lynch’s midcentury modern home is just a few blocks due north.

  Shadowed from the glow of dawn by overhanging jacaranda trees, I glide into a parking spot a few houses away and stare at the floor-to-ceiling Bauhaus windows that form the face of Karl Lynch’s house. Enormous white curtains are drawn to hide the interior and encourage my fears.

  I listen to KCRW for a couple hours until the garage door finally opens and Karl backs his car out. He maneuvers around Sophia’s Miata to get out of the driveway and head north, presumably toward work. I stay put and watch the house for signs of life.

  A few minutes later, the front door opens, and Sophia hustles out of the house, carrying a brown paper grocery bag. Her hair hangs wild, unbrushed. She’s wearing gym clothes. No makeup. She seems preoccupied, intent, as if something’s wrong. I resist the temptation to intercept her before she gets in her car because I want to see where she’s going. I watch her place the bag gently on the passenger seat before climbing in.

  In January 1928, Adolph Schleicher began work on the Samson Tire and Rubber Company, a slavish reproduction of the seventh-century-BC Assyrian palace of King Sargon II, complete with massive pillars and towers and heraldic griffins and bas-reliefs of Babylonian princes carved into a 1,350-foot-long stone facade. The tire plant, like Sargon’s palace, covered twenty-three acres of land, and its entrance was guarded by giant winged bulls with human heads. Today this majestic palace houses an uninspired outlet mall called the Citadel and overlooks one of LA’s ugliest byways, the Santa Ana Freeway.

  I’m guessing that’s where Sophia’s headed as she merges into the right-hand lane to exit at Atlantic Boulevard. I’m wrong. She heads northeast, away from the mall, through the unimaginatively named City of Commerce, apparently searching for a street number amid the boxlike cinderblock buildings. She finally turns into the parking lot of a U-shaped one-story structure with glass-brick windows and aluminum lettering that reads “Service Evidential Laboratories, Inc.”

  I’m familiar with the lab. Its founder and fearless leader, Dr. Selena Service, is a well-known figure around the LA courts, a frequent defense witness in high-profile criminal trials.

  I pull up in front and watch Sophia pass several empty parking spots to find one in the shade. It’s only nine thirty in the morning, but the heat is already oppressive.

  I wait for her to cross the lot and walk in the back door before I head in the front. I’m waiting at the closed reception window by the time she winds through the building to find it.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks.

  “You took the words right out of my mouth.” I nod toward her grocery bag.

  “You followed me.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  She thinks on that for a moment. The last time we spoke we didn’t part on very friendly terms, so I assume she’s trying to decide whether to hold the grudge. Finally, she turns her attention to the sign on the reception window that tells her to “Ring Bell for Service.” An intentional pun.

  The receptionist tells us to wait. A few minutes later, Dr. Selena Service opens the door to the inner sanctum. She introduces herself to Sophia and gives me a friendly nod of recognition, then she leads us into the back. Sophia hasn’t asked me to join her, but I follow her in, assuming she’ll squawk if she doesn’t want me.

  Selena Service was the star center on her college women’s basketball team called, inappropriately enough, the Cal Tech Beavers. Almost six five, she sweeps down the lengthy lab corridor, her stride hard to match. Sophia has to do a little skip every third step just to keep up without breaking into a run. Service’s mane of long curly platinum-blond hair is tightly constricted by a hair band with bobbles shaped like a pair of silver dice. Her hair seems to explode from the band like a shotgun spray. Flowing in her slipstream is an audacious scarf, tiger-striped in neon orange and green, wrapped around her neck to offset the refrigerator white of her immaculately ironed lab coat.

  “We don’t get many civilians in here,” she says over her shoulder, “mostly lawyers, PIs, and the occasional consumer advocate.” She speaks almost as fast as she walks. “Some of the things we’ve found in fast foods…well, I guess nothing shocks me anymore since I found human thyroid in a cube of vegan cashew cheese.”

  Dr. Service leads us into her office and points to a lone reception chair, li
me-green upholstery with wooden arms whose lacquered finish, after years of rubbing elbows, is down to its last flakes. “Take a load off.”

  Service sits behind her desk as Sophia, still absorbing the thyroid revelation, takes the proffered chair. I lean against the door jamb, trying to look casual as Sophia sets her grocery bag on Service’s desk.

  Service looks at me. “You here on a story, Nob?”

  “Right now I’m just along for the ride. Sophia came on her own.”

  Service points to the bag. “So what is it? Powder or pizza?”

  “I’m sorry?” says Sophia.

  “Most civilians either find white powder in their kid’s bathroom and want to know if it’s cocaine or Desenex, or they puke from takeout food and want to sue Dominos.”

  “I just want to get this analyzed.” She pulls a ziplock bag and a Tupperware container from her grocery bag. A croissant and some coffee.

  “You’re looking for something like botulism, salmonella?”

  “Not exactly. I doubt it would be…” She has to search for the word. “…biological.”

  This surprises Dr. Service. “You think somebody tried to poison you?”

  “I expect to prove he didn’t,” she says, glancing at me. “But I need to be sure.”

  “You poor thing,” says Service.

  I walk Sophia out of the lab.

  “What made you suspicious?” I ask.

  “You. At the beach.”

  “You didn’t taste anything off in the food?”

  “I didn’t even try it. The timing was just too strange. He never brings me breakfast in bed.”

  “Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

  She looks at me bewildered, like the thought had never occurred to her.

  “I can’t just leave Karl. What am I going to tell him?”

  “You can’t stay there with him. You think the man tried to poison you.”

  “No I don’t!” Her voice softens. “I just have to be sure.”

  “You can’t go back there. The man’s job is to see through people. He’ll know you’re hiding something.”