I shook my head.
“An idiot for a father. You can go right down the list starting with Jackie Coogan in the silents, through Robert Blake, to Michael Jackson, Drew Barrymore, Macaulay Culkin, and this new one…what’s her name…the one who keeps ending up in jail. The one with the knockers. You name ’em, they all had problems with their fathers.” He paused before adding: “And they were all, in their times, the hottest things in show business.”
“Are you saying that Nora believed your being a failed father was a prerequisite to the boys’ success?”
“I wasn’t a failed father, all right?” Kleinbach snapped. “I just wasn’t a great one. But yeah, Nora thought if I became a total asshole, somehow it would somehow temper Ricky and Bobby and make them stronger in their careers.” Kleinbach sucked out what little was left in his beer bottle and then held it up to me. “Could I squeeze another one of these out of you?” I signaled for the smiling, mustachioed waiter from whom Kleinbach ordered another Negra Modelo before going on. “I honestly believe that if Nora had found an ancient book that said you had to sacrifice a virgin at midnight to guarantee success, she would have done it. If she could have found a virgin in Los Angeles. I remember exactly when she decided that my being a problem was good for the cause. She came to me and instead of being angry that I’d spent all night out somewhere, she said: ‘Fine! Great! Perfect! Be a fucking moron! That’s just what the boys need to put them over the top!’ I think she’d been reading People Magazine or something, and had an inspiration. It didn’t take a genius to see that a split was coming, either legally in court, or with her just throwing me out. The thing was, I wanted to straighten up. I didn’t want to be cut out of my sons’ lives.”
His beer arrived and he took a long drink before continuing. “What I really wanted was to get the boys away from her, get custody of them. I was probably fooling myself that any court anywhere would go for it, but that’s where my head was at the time. The thing was, legal battles take money, and I didn’t have any. Nora controlled the finances, mostly through her inheritance. So I turned to gambling to build up a pot, and of course that didn’t work. All I that got me was into hot water with a bookie. I was desperate, didn’t have any other choice, near as I could see, so.…”
“So you turned to crime,” I guessed.
Kleinbach sighed. “Just one job, robbing a woman at an ATM. I was hoping to get her cards so maybe I could use them to clean out her bank account, and yes I know how awful that sounds. I was desperate, and a little stupid, too. Maybe more than a little. Anyway, all I got was a couple hundred bucks in cash, no cards, which was nowhere near enough to hire a lawyer or pay off my debts. Worse, there was a security camera and I was glimpsed on the tape, though not clearly enough for a positive ID, but enough to be tagged as a suspect. I got lucky, though, and the woman couldn’t pick me out in a lineup.”
“So you got away scot free.”
“Oh, no. I paid, believe me. Nora knew I had done it, and she made me an offer. She would alibi me to the police, so the investigation would go somewhere else, and settle my debts with the bookie. In return, I would give her a quickie Vegas divorce, and then leave, and never make any claim of any kind on the boys. I couldn’t even see them. That was the deal. If I tried to get back in their lives, she’d go straight to the police.”
“What did you do after that?”
“Dropped out. I did whatever I could just to stay alive. Took odd jobs when I could find them, went to soup kitchens when I couldn’t. I even did extra work in a film shooting downtown, which is pretty fucking funny when you think about it. They needed authentic looking street guys, so I got a hundred bucks and two hot meals. Then I started working in a shelter downtown, trying to help others. It’s regular money, though not much, but honest work. I’m hoping maybe I can go back to school at some point, get a degree in something.”
“Did you ever try to contact Nora in the time you were gone?” I asked.
Kleinbach shook his head. “She got remarried, and apparently the boys were in a stable home, so.…”
“Forgive me for saying this, Alan, but I’m not sure I believe you.”
“Yeah? Okay, how about this? I believed what Nora told me, that if she ever saw me again, she’d turn my ass over to the police.”
“But isn’t there a statute of limitations on purse-snatching?”
“I don’t know.” He took another pull on the beer. “I didn’t feel like taking the chance.”
“What do you know about her second marriage?” I asked.
“Not much. It’s not like I was invited to the wedding. For a while I kept in contact with a friend from the days when Nora and I were together, and he said my replacement was a real straight arrow, a National Guardsman. That’s part of the scenario, too, see? The baby daddy’s an asshole but the second husband is the honorable one, raising the kids as though they were his own. From what I hear, he tried his best to do just that, too, until he got deployed and ended up becoming a casualty.”
“Couldn’t you have come back into the twins’ lives after the lieutenant died?”
“I told you, already.”
“Sorry, Alan, but it’s not adding up. You would steal for the sake of your boys, but not even take the chance to see them again?”
He slammed the beer bottle down on the table, which caused me to jump in the padded faux-leather seat. It silenced the chatter at the next table, too. “What the fuck would I have told them when they asked why I ran away, huh?” he shouted. “You tell me how I was supposed to look them in the eyes and argue that I had any claim on them as a parent when I ran the fuck away, scared off by their mother!” He quieted and bowed his head, shaking it back and forth. “You were right when you used the words ‘failed father.’ I did fail them. How, then, was I supposed to face them and make everything right?”
A man in a shirt and tie, whom I took to be the manager of the restaurant, appeared at our table. “Is there a problem here, señor?” he asked.
“No, we’re fine,” I said. “Sorry if it got a little loud.”
“Can I get anything for you?”
Kleinbach was sitting there, staring at his hands, one of which clutched the Negra Modelo bottle. “Do you want another one of those?” I asked him.
“Want? Sure. But I probably shouldn’t have it. Nora always reminded me that it was the third drink that was the first one too many.”
In spite of everything the man had told me, I could not help but wonder if there was not still some tiny little wind-blown torch for Nora in his heart. Turning to the manager, I said: “We’re good, thank you,” and he nodded and stepped away.
“Try to stay calm, Alan,” I admonished. “Do you mind if I ask why you started showing up to try and get a look at the boys, after staying away so long?” Since you’re asking questions, the voice of Jimmy Stewart drawled in my head, why doncha ask him how he was able to figure out the boys’d be down here at Nora’s sister’s house, when he didn’t even know Nora had a…a…a sister? It was a great question; I wish I’d thought of it.
Our waiter, now grinning broadly, as though afraid that he would set Kleinbach off again if he didn’t, hustled over to take our plates away, and promised to return with the check.
“Nora’s death was reported on the television news,” he said. “She wasn’t identified, they just said a woman had been killed, but I recognized the house. I headed on over as soon as I saw it. All hell was breaking loose, with police cars and everything. I stayed hidden and watched, but I didn’t see Ricky or Bobby anywhere.”
“How did you know to come to San Pedro, then?” I asked, on behalf of Jimmy.
“Oh, that was easy. I followed you.” My surprise at this must have shown on my face, because he smiled and started to explain himself slowly, as though he was taking to a kid. Or an idiot.
“While I was outside Nora’s house,” Kleinbach began, “I saw a car drive up with a couple kids in the back, but I couldn’t see them clearly. Then I
saw you appear and talk to the woman who was driving, and then the both of you drove away. I followed you to a restaurant, and then to building in the valley.”
“On a motorcycle?”
“That’s the easiest way. Bikers don’t have to pay attention to traffic rules, since no one expects us to in the first place.”
I would have to remember that for future investigations.
He went on: “I lost track of the woman’s car after that, but I kept following you, and you led me down here. I took a chance that the boys would eventually show up at that house, so I kept watch. Finally they did. I was able to get a little better look at them, and that’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“Christ,” Kleinbach muttered, shaking his head again. “Is that offer for another beer still on the table?”
As the waiter approached with the check, I informed him that we weren’t quite done after all. He took the news with equanimity, and dashed away, returning almost immediately with the Negra Modelo, which he set down in front of Kleinbach.
“Thanks, man,” Kleinbach said, acknowledging the waiter for the first time since we’d been seated. That was probably as close as he was going to come to offering an apology for his earlier outburst, but the waiter seemed to accept it, nodding and smiling. Kleinbach took a long pull on the beer.
“Will you be all right to drive your cycle?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine. Takes a helluva lot more than this to put me under, no matter what Nora said.”
“You never answered my question, Alan. What was it you saw regarding the boys?”
Before Kleinbach could answer, the waiter reappeared, this time with the revised check, which he set in front of me. Then he scurried away. I glanced at the check: just under thirty bucks, thanks to the refreshment. As I pulled out my wallet, I said: “You are going to tell me, aren’t you?”
He drained about half of the bottle and then set it down, offered a quiet burp, and then said: “Dave, do I come off as crazy to you?”
I sighed. “No, Alan, you do not come off as crazy. The worst I can say about you is that you have a maddening habit of not finishing your thoughts.”
He smiled. “I don’t think I’m crazy, either.”
“Good, we agree.”
“So if I’m not crazy, that means there really is something going on that’s not right.”
“Yeah, I think we can also agree that murder, kidnapping and assault is not right.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about my boys.”
I was practically ready to slide out of the booth and get down on my knees to beg him to fill me in on what he had noticed about the Alphas. Instead I calmly stated: “What is it about them. Please, Alan, tell me.”
He drained the beer bottle and set it down on the table. “I was there, this morning, out behind the house, and I saw the boys come outside. I finally was able to get a good look at them. I was standing behind a wall, so they didn’t see me, but I saw them.”
“And?”
“They aren’t my sons.”
I shook my head, and said, “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”
“Earlier I asked you where Ricky and Bobby were, remember?”
I nodded.
“I meant that literally. I want to know where my Ricky and Bobby are, because the two kids I saw at that house are not them.”
It took me a few seconds to figure out how to respond to that one, especially since Kleinbach had already announced that his consumption of three beers was the beginning of a potential danger zone. “Could you elaborate on that?” I asked.
“Don’t start looking at me like I’m nuts,” he pleaded. “I’m not nuts, and I’m not drunk, either. Slightly buzzed maybe, but still okay. I know what I’m saying. I may not have seen Ricky and Bobby for years, but a father knows his own kids, particularly if they’re twins.” He once more produced the photo of him and the boys that he had shown me earlier, plopping it down on the table. “Look at those faces,” he commanded. “What do you see?”
“Children,” I said.
“Look more closely.”
I studied, I looked…and then I saw what he wanted me to see. “These two are identical, aren’t they?”
Alan Kleinbach nodded. “They’re identical. I never saw two living creatures so identical. They even made the same sounds. But the two boys you’ve been dragging around, they’re not identical, are they? From what I’ve seen of them, they could easily pass as non-twins. If those two kids are my sons, the ones in this photo, I’ll eat this bottle.”
I glanced up to see him staring with laser intensity at the upside-down photo of happier times involving his children. Then he looked up at me with tired eyes set in a worried face. “So where are Ricky and Bobby?” he asked, softly. “Where are my sons? What did Nora do with my boys?”
FOURTEEN
I could have rejected the idea as simply the paranoiac mutterings of a lightly-oiled man with an ex to grind, but Alan Kleinbach did not strike me as paranoiac, nor could the evidence in that photo of the two kids be blown away like so much smoke. Granted, kids always change in looks as they grow, in large part because all babies tend to resemble one another. While the two infants in the picture certainly did not look much like Taylor and Burton Frost, I could not prove that it wasn’t them. “What do you propose to do about this?” I asked Kleinbach.
“What I’m doing,” he said, “telling you. You’re the P.I., so you find out what happened to them.”
“Are you offering to hire me?”
Kleinbach snorted. “Oh, sure, I’ll cash in one of my CDs and hire you. It’s a Billy Joel CD, should be worth about seven-fifty.” He laughed and then rested his head in his hands. “Sorry, man,” he said. “Didn’t mean to dump on you. It’s just that of late, things have kind of sucked. By late, I mean the last several years.”
“Don’t stress it. As for finding out what happened to your sons, once I finally locate the twins that I know, I’ll look into your claim. You ready to go?”
Kleinbach nodded and slid out of the booth, and we left the restaurant. Mr. Necktied Manager seemed happy to see us go.
Out in the parking lot I fished out a business card and handed it to Kleinbach. “Bow-champ?” he said, looking at the card. “I thought your name was Beachum.”
“It’s pronounced Beachum. I have thought about changing the spelling at time or two.”
“Why not change your whole name?”
“To what?”
“How about Dave Jones, P.I.?”
It didn’t have quite the same ring as Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, or even Joe Friday or Richard Diamond, but I didn’t press the issue. Once we were inside my Toyota, I said: “By the way, how can I get in touch with you?”
“I live at the Kirkwood Arms downtown. We call it the Broken Arms, given the way the manager twists us for the rent every month. But it has a roof, hot water, a bed, and no twenty-eight day shuffle.”
The twenty-eight day shuffle, I knew, was the practice among slum or near-slum landlords of evicting tenants before thirty days had passed, thirty days being the minimum requirement for legal residency and the rights that come with it. The fact that Kleinbach had experienced the shuffle implied that he had been stationed at Fort Hardknox for some time now.
As I pulled the car onto the street, he suddenly said: “Dave Davies!”
I looked around, assuming he had seen someone he knew. “Who?”
“You. Dave Davies, P.I. Kinda has a ring to it.”
For a sportscaster, maybe, or the kind of low comedian that used the diminutive of his last name as a first name, like Rags Ragland. “I’ll think about it,” I said.
“How about Dave Danger? That’s pretty cool. Or Dave Derringer, P.I.? Like Magnum, you know?”
I remained silent, and fortunately, Kleinbach did, too, until we arrived back at the spot where he had parked his cycle, and which point he asked: “Don’t suppose you could float me a litt
le until the next time we run into each other, could you?”
Sighing, I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and handed it to him, proud to be pioneering the latest innovation in investigations: the detective paying the client. He smiled, jumped out of the car, and headed for his cycle. “Watch out for the police,” I called after him, but I don’t think he heard me. Once he had peeled out on the bike (which sounded a bit like a 787 taking off), I pulled away from the curb. Part of me…no, most of me…wanted to turn around and go right back to Marcy’s house, but I respected her need for peace and quiet. Later I’d give her a call just to let her know that the mystery man was Nora’s ex, and that she shouldn’t be frightened by him. I should probably give Colfax a heads up as well, but doing so would put Alan Kleinbach at the very top of the suspect list for Nora’s murder…since spouses invariably are…and would virtually guarantee that his claims the two missing boys were not really his children would either be ignored or taken as laying the groundwork for an insanity defense.
Sheez, what a mess.
It was nearly four before I finally pulled into my parking area, which was blissfully free of police officers. Once inside my office, I noticed the light on my phone machine was blinking (which reminded me to plug my cell into the charger), indicating a message, and hoped it might be Marcy. No such luck, though: it was some woman named Nellie Marsh who found my ad in the phone book and was calling to see if I would take on a missing person case. It seemed her pet Pekingese, Cha-Cha, had disappeared. She lived in Glendale, many neighborhoods of which are tucked against the Verdugo foothills, which is the natural habitat for bobcats and coyotes. Under different circumstances I might have agreed to take the job, walked around the neighborhood, broken it to her that Cha-Cha was probably the daily special at the Prairie Wolf Café, and billed for a day’s work. But I had other things to worry. Then again, it was gainful employment, and Nora’s retainer, generous though it was, would not last forever, particularly if I wanted to keep indulging my eating and housing habits. “I’ll think about it,” I muttered to myself.
Kill the Mother! Page 13