Kill the Mother!

by Michael Mallory

There wasn’t much I was able to do at the moment, about anything, at least not without crossing paths with the police and becoming a person of interest myself. I would have liked to have gone and talked to the Nora’s and Elena’s neighbors, to see what they knew, but both of their homes were active crime scenes, which meant my snooping would be spotted by the police that were still on site. I had no leads on the disappearance of the boys, and certainly no leads on what might have happened to Nora’s original children…if indeed Kleinbach’s claim was true. In short, I had nothing. At times like this in the past I had learned that there was but one logical course of action, so I closed up the office and set out for Edendale Video and Poster.

  Edendale is a place that any real film buff in the L.A. area knows about, because in addition to the usual stuff, they have a private reserve for connoisseurs, “under the table” goods, if you like; films that aren’t commercially available. Somehow Edendale has managed not only to find them but to get them onto DVD. These they loan out for free, thereby skirting any rights issues, as long as you pay to rent something else. Even the store’s name has significance for buffs, Edendale being the old name for the stretch of Los Angeles real estate that was the place where the first movies in California were shot, several miles away from subsequent production centers, Hollywood, Burbank and Culver City. Edendale is part of Echo Park now, and every day thousands of downtown commuters blindly drive past a torn-up vacant lot where once stood the West Coast’s very first motion picture studio. Los Angeles has always been the kind of place that backs up its history onto film and then deletes it.

  But despite its name, Edendale Video wasn’t located in the former Edendale. That was simply a nod to buffs like me. Instead it was in North Hollywood, which was not far from my home, which made it handy. Even if it were further away, though, I would make the effort. When I got down to my car, I saw that someone had stuck a flier under my windshield wiper. Hopefully it was not from the cult religion that was well on its way to owning more real estate in L.A. than Bob Hope ever dreamt of. Picking it up, I was relieved to see it was the take-out menu from a pizza joint. It was good to know—one can never have too many pizza joints nearby.

  I was about to open the door when I heard a pop and a ping just over my head. I looked around to see what it was. The answer came a second later when I heard another pop and my side rearview mirror exploded in a cascade of glass. Someone was shooting at me!

  I hit the asphalt painfully, not simply because it was asphalt, but because I had body-slammed down on broken glass fragments, a few of which entered the palm of my left hand. I heard another shot, and this one pinged off my fender. Whoever was trying to kill me, for whatever reason, had three shots left, if they were using a normal gun. I didn’t feel like hanging around and waiting for them. I crawled backwards on my hands and knees, leaving a trail of blood from my hand, until I was hidden behind my car. If my assailant felt like approaching the car I was probably a sitting duck, but I did not have a lot of other options. After an eternity of three or four seconds, one more shot came, again pinging off the car, followed by the screeching sound of a vehicle peeling out. I raised up high enough to see through the windows of my Toyota, but the speeding car was already out of sight. Since, I had not paid any attention to other cars parked or stopped on the street, I had no way of identifying it.

  Now the shakes were starting to set in. I’d never been shot at before. Slumping back down I remained seated, leaning against a tire for support, for about five quiet minutes, and then attempted to stand. My legs were watery, but they worked. I looked at my left palm, which was blue and red and dotted with glass punctures. Less than a mile away was a walk-in clinic that I had used once before when I sprained an ankle, and I decided to visit it now. It was not easy to drive with only one hand and no side rearview, but I made it.

  Because of the blood, I was taken in almost immediately. The good news was that most of the puncture wounds were superficial; the bad, that there were quite a few of them. “What did you do, put your hand through a window?” the unsmiling nurse asked.

  “Fell on a broken mirror,” I said.

  “Try not to do it again, okay?”

  I did not bother to explain that I had not been trying to do it this time, that some idiot was shooting at me, because it seemed pointless. After picking out the glass and slathering disinfectant on my palm, which was bruised, she told me to be careful…and to pay at the desk on my way out.

  I went straight back to the office and called Colfax.

  “What do you want, Mr. Beauchamp?” he asked. “Are you calling to confess?”

  “I’m calling because someone attempted to kill me about a half-hour ago.”

  “Oh. You sure about that?”

  “I may not be Sam Spade, but I know when someone is firing bullets in my direction.”

  “Did any hit you?”

  “No, but the experience didn’t exactly make my day. How about coming out and checking the crime scene?”

  “Out of my jurisdiction. You need to call your local precinct.”

  “But this could have something to do with Nora and Elena’s murders, and the disappearance of the boys.”

  “You think it does?”

  “I kind of hope it does, otherwise somebody’s trying to kill me just for kicks.”

  I could hear Colfax sigh. “Okay, fine, I’ll come by. Where did it happen?”

  “My office,” I told him. “I know you know where it is. I’m here now. I just got back from the medical clinic.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t hit.”

  “Not by a bullet. I cut my hand on some shattered mirror glass.”

  “One of the bullets shattered the mirror?”

  “Yes, obviously.”

  “Is the slug still there?”

  “Uh, I didn’t think to look.”

  “You’re right, Beauchamp, you’re no Sam Spade. As a detective, you’re not even David Spade.”

  “Look, Colfax, my usual purview is tracking cheating spouses,” I protested. “I’m not used to getting shot at.”

  “Okay, I’ll get there as soon as I can.” The detective hung up.

  While waiting for him to arrive, I went back down to the small parking garage in my building. Pulling out the tiny but powerful penlight I carry on my key chain, I examined the broken mirror for a bullet fragment.

  Finding nothing, I tried the garage itself, but could not find anything resembling a slug, or even a shell casing. The best I could turn up were the rubber marks where the car—presumably belonging to the shooter—had peeled away from the curb, but I knew from taking a community college class in forensics that it took one complete revolution of a tire—covering twenty feet—in order to get an accurate, identifiable tire print. There was nowhere near twenty feet of lain rubber against the curb.

  Going back inside, I picked up the phone and dialed Marcy, but it went to her machine. Hopefully, she was still asleep. When I got the beep, I said: “Marcy, it’s Dave. I still don’t have any information on the boys but I found out who the strange man hanging around your place is. His name is Alan Kleinbach, and Nora’s first husband, and the boys’ real father. I think he’s harmless, but I can’t swear to it. If you see him again and feel like calling the cops, go ahead. And be careful, okay? I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” I cut off the call. Should I have told her that someone had taken shots at me? Perhaps I should have, but leaving something like that on the machine might also have spooked her even further. The next time I see or talk to her in person I will tell her.

  After forty minutes Colfax had still not arrived, so I popped a disk of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid into my laptop. It’s the Steve Martin parody of film noir, in which he is optically inserted Zelig-like into a host of old film clips and appeared to act alongside Golden Age Hollywood legends. It’s the perfect time-killing film since there really isn’t a plot anyway, so you just watch the gags and marvel at how well they were able to recreate sets and lighting, until i
t’s time to stop.

  It was dusk by the point it was time to stop. Detective Colfax arrived at seven thirty-five—sans Mendoza, thankfully. “Where’s Tonto this time?” I asked.

  “Better watch it, Beauchamp,” the detective cautioned. “That could be construed as a racist remark.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” I said. “I just meant to be mildly insulting.”

  “You do everything mildly, don’t you?”

  He had me there.

  “I told you not to take what Hector says personally,” Colfax went on. “He’s hated all private dicks since one was hired by his mother to get the goods on his father, who was sleeping around on her. That broke up the marriage. Hector was pretty young at the time…well, he’s still pretty young. But he’s a good cop.”

  “I see. Pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but it wasn’t it the actions of his father that destroyed the marriage, and not the private eye who followed his father?”

  “You want to tell him that?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Didn’t think so. Anyway, I’m here, so show me where you were when you got shot at.”

  I took him down to the parking area and stood approximately where I was standing when I heard the first ping, and then pointed across the street where the sound of the car peeling out had come from. I showed him the tire marks on the road. Since it was getting dark, Colfax pulled out a much more powerful flashlight than mine to examine the site. Then he walked across the street and crouched to the approximate height of someone sitting in a car seat. Pulling a laser pointer out of his pocket, he then shined it onto the side of my building. “Look above your head,” he called out. “Is that a hole?” I looked, and danged if it wasn’t.

  “Think there’s a slug in there?” I asked.

  “Short answer, yes,” he said, waiting for a car to drive by so he could cross the street. “The question is whether it will be of any use.” The laser pointer was an attachment to a Swiss Army knife, from which Colfax now flipped out an awl spike and began digging into the wall. Before long he uncovered a small ball of lead. Holding it up in the nearly vanquished light, he said: “Might be too damaged for ballistics.”

  “But at least you believe me,” I said. “Someone really was shooting at me.”

  “If I didn’t believe you, I wouldn’t have shown up.” He produced a small baggie from his pocket and put the slug into it, then returned it to his pocket. “Can you describe the car?”

  “I never saw it, I just heard it. I guess we don’t have a lot to go on, huh?”

  “We?” Colfax said, pointedly.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I have something to go on, Beauchamp. Whoever shot at you was either a terrible shot, because otherwise you’d be dead, or they didn’t really want you dead, just frightened.”

  “Do I need to go down to the station and fill out a report?” I asked.

  “Oh, now you volunteer to fill out a report. Before, I had to threaten you.”

  “Let’s say I learned my lesson.”

  “Then it wouldn’t hurt. Do it at West Valley, though. That’s the precinct covering this neighborhood. As for me, I’m done,” Detective Colfax said, turning to leave. “Watch your back, David.”

  “Detective, there’s something else you might want to know.” He stopped and turned back. “That mysterious figure I saw at Marcy DeBanzi’s place? The tall, bearded guy in the military coat?”

  “What about him?”

  “His name is Alan Kleinbach, and he’s the father of the twins.”

  Colfax approached me and gave me an Eastwood squint. “I thought the late soldier was the twins’ father.”

  “So did I, but it turns out the soldier was their step-father.” I gave him the USA Today version of what I had learned from Kleinbach, but omitted his suspicion that the missing twins were not really his natural sons.

  “What’s your gut say about this guy?” Colfax asked.

  “He didn’t strike me as dangerous if that’s what you mean, at least not as long as he’s sober.”

  “Oh?”

  “Look, I don’t want to incriminate the guy, but he gets a little testy and sarcastic after three beers. If you’re asking whether I think he killed Nora and Elena.…”

  “Well?”

  So tell him, Robert Mitchum ordered.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said. “My gut’s telling me he’s not involved.”

  “Could he be the one who took the shots at you?”

  “No, that I’m pretty sure of. Kleinbach rides a motorcycle, and I know I didn’t hear a chopper roaring away.”

  “Still, it won’t hurt to talk with him. Where does he live?”

  I gave Colfax the name of his apartment building, which he wrote down, and after recommending once more that I not get murdered (the man was nothing if not considerate) he ambled to his car and drove away. Since there was nothing more I could do here except stand around and perfect my impersonation of a clay pigeon, I got in my car and left, too. I was getting more used to driving without a side mirror; angling the rearview to the left helped a bit. By the time I got to Edendale Video and Poster, hours after I had intended to, the sun was long gone and L.A. was floating in darkness. Los Angeles always looks so much better in the dark than it does in the daylight. Thousands of multi-colored lights come on like so many jewels bedraping the buildings and dressing the place up. Maybe that’s what the noir filmmakers of the 1940s figured out.

  The interior of Edendale Video and Poster lived up to its name: just about every surface was covered either with shelves of DVDs or old movie posters (though these days, the 1980s counted as “old”). The place still had an ample supply of old-fashioned, non-digital, VHS tapes, but they had been relegated to the back room and were available by request only. I heard the cry, “Hey, Dave, what’s up?” as I walked in. It was the proprietor, a middle-aged, balding guy named Brian McLiamore, who everyone called “Mac,” and who appeared to know everything there was to know about old movies and Hollywood. As far as I knew, he did not use this knowledge to write books or articles or even blogs. Instead she shared it, person-to-person, with everyone who came into his store.

  “Hi, Mac,” I said.

  “What did you do to your hand?”

  “Oh, got shot at today. You know, private eye stuff.”

  Mac laughed. “Right. Broke a mirror and cut yourself, is what you mean.”

  He meant it as a bantering joke at my expense, obviously, since like everyone else he knew my normal daily routine involved nothing more exciting than photographing an insurance cheat or following a husband to his secretary’s house, but what he said was close enough to the truth that I wasn’t able to laugh. I muttered something about bad luck, and started looking at titles until Mac called out, “Hey, come see what I just got in.”

  I went up to the counter as he carefully slid a rolled poster out of a cardboard tube, and almost reverently uncurled it. It was vibrantly colored, but yellowed enough with age as to announce its authenticity. Much of the one-sheet was taken up with a ghastly green shriveled head, belonging to Boris Karloff. This was a poster for The Mummy, and there was only one such poster known to exist. That one, I heard, held the record for the highest price ever paid for a movie poster at auction. “Good God, Mac, don’t tell me you bought that!” I said. “Did you win the lottery or something?”

  “No, another one turned up in a garage out in the Pasadena, can you believe it?” he said, grinning like a kid on Christmas. “But that’s just the start. There’s a whole story behind it.”

  I wasn’t really up for a long-winded story, but knowing I was going to get one anyway, I leaned against the counter and tried to make myself comfortable.

  “So,” Mac began, “a few days ago this fellow comes in and tells me that he’s the great nephew of Willy Lipton. You know who Willy Lipton is, right?”

  “The voice actor,” I replied. “The guy who always did little kid characters, even at the end o
f his career.”

  “Right, because he had some glandular thing and his stones never dropped, or some such. Well, before he went into cartoons and radio, he did movies, playing kids. You know, like Billy Barty, who played babies in the 1930s, even though he was a teenager?”

  “Yeah, I know, Mac. What does Willy Lipton have to do with this poster?”

  “It turns out he appeared as a Saxon child in The Mummy in one of the flashback reincarnation scenes that were cut out before the release. Somehow Lipton got hold of a poster when it first came out, even though he was cut out of the movie, and after he died this poster ended up with a bunch of his stuff in the garage of his sister, who lived in Pasadena. The sister died last year, she was like ninety-five, or something, and her grandson, the guy who came in, found the poster while cleaning out her garage. So now I’ve got a double treasure!”

  “A double treasure?” I asked.

  “Not only do I have the poster, in pristine condition, but I’m the only one who knows that Willy Lipton, the voice of Sheldrake in Colonel Dogbody’s Time Machine, was in The Mummy!”

  “But since you just told me, you’re no longer the only one.”

  “Okay, the first one, then.”

  “What did you have to pay for that poster?”

  “I offered the guy five grand and I thought he was going to collapse.”

  “Five grand?” I cried. “That’s only ten percent of what the thing’s worth, isn’t it?”

  “One percent is closer, but it didn’t matter to him. I didn’t diddle him, Dave. I told him I’d give him that much right now or he could take it somewhere else and get it appraised. But I sized him up as a guy who wanted a sure bet, and I was right. I also told him that if I ever decide to sell it, and there’s a profit from it, I’d give him half.”

  If Mac was right about the value of the poster, that would still leave him with a quarter-million in return for a five-thousand-dollar investment. “Are you going to sell it?” I asked him.

  “Not any time soon,” he replied. “This may be my retirement plan.” He carefully rolled the one-sheet back up and replaced it in the tube. “I’m not going to display it either, at least not here.”