by Alex Abella
"Somebody did it, you got six fucking bodies, for Christ's sake."
"Maybe nobody did it."
"Right, so who killed these people then, God? Was it the wrath of God?"
"Maybe."
"Pleeeze! Get back to P.I. work, my man, you've been out of touch too long."
"You know, you could be right."
5
I had seen the house hundreds of times before, every time I would drive up the Sunset Crest from Beverly Hills to Brentwood. In a leafy neighborhood of mansions meant to sooth the insecurities of their owners, this one property was as unnerving as the spread owned by the Arabian prince who had painted in the pubic hairs of the statues on his grounds. But while that Muslim fantasy shocked by its prurience, this one offended by its perverted realism. Dozens of bronze, life-size statues of people from different walks of life were set all over the property, depicted in such breathless realism that if not for their metallic flesh, you would have thought them real. A policeman made of dirty copper stood amid the azaleas, writing a ticket to a bronzed cyclist; two stiff out-of-towners in bermudas pointed their cameras for a snapshot; a yellow Japanese gardener hoed the clematis and two brazen kids clambered the wall to peer into the grounds. I felt like one of those runts as the gate opened and I drove my dusty 944 onto the graveled driveway.
The original house had probably been one of those neo –Tudor Gothic homes that midwesterners by the thousands built when they came out West and made their first real money. Most of it had been torn down, by the looks of it. A low, long Modernist building, all angles and glass, had been superimposed on the remaining foundation, a child of Neutra riding astride Stanford White.
Massive strands of exotic flora surrounded the flagstone path down which the Guatemalan butler led me. Peeking out beneath bowers, in scattered clearings, stood more bronzes of people engaged in typically sylvan occupations-bird-watching, landscape painting, lovemaking.
The wife, wearing just a smidgen of a bikini bottom, was lying on a chaise longue on the sunny side of a free-form black-bottom pool. She was tall and angular, with the trapezoid back and firm deltoids of the woman who makes her gym her temple of beauty. Her long blond curls fell compliantly on her shoulders, afraid to disrupt the perfect symmetry she had planned. In repose, she had the gathered look of the hunter contemplating the next kill. A broad-shouldered, dark-haired man dived off the board at the far end of the pool in a perfectly acceptable swan dive for such a warm steamy day.
"Mr. Morell, señora," said the houseboy in a falsetto. Mrs. Schnitzer opened her eyes, looked in my direction, nodded.
"Gracias, Alberto." She stood up, slipped into a white terry bathrobe, shook my hand firmly and efficiently. "Thank you for coming," she said in the clipped tones of somewhere back East.
"Don't mention it, Mrs. Schnitzer. I'd like to offer my condolences."
We sat at an antique white wrought-iron round table set with four mesh chairs, the kind usually advertised in Architectural Digest against a backdrop of massive waves breaking on black boulders. Alberto set, discreetly and unheeded, a Villeroy and Boch teapot on the table. The broad-backed swimmer rhythmically cut his way through the water to the pool's edge, turned underwater and swam away doing a backstroke.
"Thank you. I miss Barry very much. He gave me everything I have." She focused her blue-gray eyes on me to reinforce her words. I couldn't help but glance momentarily at the swimmer. She smiled. "Tea? It's an old Indian trick. Hot tea will cool you off faster than cold liquids on a warm day. I can't stand air conditioning, plugs up my sinuses."
I shook my head no. As she poured herself a cup, her bathrobe opened, her right breast with its dark brown nipple peeking out. She put down her cup, readjusted her robe. Leaning back in her chair, she gazed at the swimmer. When she spoke, it was with a cold mixture of contempt and disdain.
"Delmer is just a fuck, Mr. Morell. He's a friend of the family who was always interested. It's hard being alone. At least I know exactly what Delmer wants. That's something I appreciate. You should always know what you want and never attempt to hide it. Even if you do, people will know."
Delmer now reached the far end of the pool, stopped and waved at Mrs. Schnitzer. She waved back, with a tepid smile. Delmer rose out of the pool in one swift motion, sauntered to a chaise where he picked up a towel and strolled away, drying his ample, hairy back.
"I understand, Mrs. Schnitzer. Frankness has its charm, although sometimes people wear it just a little too thin. So, tell me, why exactly did you want to see me?"
She turned, deliberately elusive. "I'm a friend of Clay Smith's former wife, Darlene. I understand you're going to be representing one of the men who killed my husband."
"I'm not his attorney, just his investigator."
"Yes, I heard that too. Well, Mr. Morell, I'll go straight to the point. I'm ready to give you a hundred thousand dollars if you drop the case. With that you should be able to start a new business for yourself. Or maybe you'd want to go back to Miami."
In the distance I heard the humming of an overhead plane, the only alien sound to breach this bower of hate.
"You realize what you're doing is totally illegal."
"Mr. Morell, please, let's don't play games. It's very simple. I want these men to die. I'd rather do it legally but I will resort to other means if I have to. If you're off the case, I know they will hang themselves."
"What makes you so confident of my ability to prevent that from happening?"
"I know what you're capable of doing if the mood strikes you. That's why I'm making you this offer, to put you in the mood."
She made a dramatic pause then gave me Tenuous Smile Number Five right out of the Strasberg method. Sunlight filtered through the four-carat diamond in her engagement ring. "I could be induced to add some fringe benefits."
I shook my head, flattered and amused. For all my success at covering my past, I might as well have taken out a commercial on the "Cosby" show.
"Thank you, Mrs. Schnitzer, but I don't shit where I eat."
Unperturbed, she took a sip of her tea. "Good. What about the body of the offer, then?"
"I'm curious. Why are you willing to offer so much money to get the man who set you free?"
She put down her cup, ran her fingers through her hair, took a breath. "You don't seem to believe me. I loved Barry very, very much. This is going to sound corny but he rescued me from myself. These are the facts. I'm a stockbroker who gets laid off in the crash of 'eighty-seven from the slump and a coke habit. I have a five hundred dollar a day habit. After I lose my job I become an escort, you know the type. A high-class hooker, to support my habit. Barry's wife had just died and one night he needs an escort to the opera. He is naive about these things and calls up our outfit from the listing in the phone book. I'm lucky enough to be sent out. He takes a liking to me, learns about my problem, gets me into the Betty Ford clinic. Finally he asks me to marry him. He doesn't lay a finger on me until our wedding night. Treats me like a lady throughout, as though I were some kind of divine creature. Then he gets killed like a dog. End of facts. There's no way I can repay Barry. I've tried by taking care of our investments and making sure the foundation he set up lasts long after I'm gone. But that's not enough. I want revenge, Mr. Morell. It's that simple. I want to make sure the bastards who got my Barry get what's due them, full amount, with penalties."
I stand up, regretfully. "You're going to have to hire another agent, Mrs. Schnitzer. I don't know if I'm going to stay with this case but even if I don't, it wouldn't be because of your money, even though it's very tempting. Believe it or not, I always try to do what I think is right. I won't be a whore, no matter what the price."
She was not at all upset by my refusal. She poured more tea into her cup, then lit a cigarette with a solid gold Cartier lighter.
"Some of us have no choice, Mr. Morell. I hope it never happens to you. Thank you for hearing me out."
"Thank you for the show. I'll be sure to give Clay a rave
review. Four stars, steamy summer attraction. Nudity and moral ambiguity. Rated F for fool."
She finally snapped. "Get the fuck out of here."
"And foul language, too. I'm on my way."
I should have spotted them right away but my attention was still lagging behind at the Schnitzer mansion, flitting from subject to subject in the meditative trance Angelenos learn to develop to cope with driving long distances. I was tooling up Benedict Canyon Road, the winding two lanes that rise from behind the pink folly of the Beverly Hills Hotel, climbing a thousand feet over the range to wind up in the San Fernando Valley. I won't say that I was calling myself stupid for having turned down the hundred thousand but I certainly wasn't congratulating myself either. It's rough being honest in a place where everyone is pimping to get bought. After all, Los Angeles is the town of the deal. Do me a favor and I won't forget you, scratch my back and yours will get scratched in time too. Clay was ready to cut a deal, the D.A.'s office was willing to deal, hell, Ramón himself probably would make a deal if he only could. But I was tired of deals, of offers and shares and tenders, of this constant view of the world as a never ending board of futures. I wanted something solid, with value beyond the monetary, beyond the senses, eternal. That's when the front bumper of the Continental nudged, ever so deadly, my 944 almost down the cliffside.
My front wheels spun on the gravelly curb; the rear of the car skidded on the cracked blacktop. I braked, jerked the wheel away from the edge. I could see a thousand feet below in the fold of the ravine the shake roof of a rustic million-dollar home. The black behemoth in the rearview mirror was bearing down on me again, coming full tilt in my direction, aiming to tip me over and down. Through the Lincoln's tinted windshield I thought I saw two black men dressed in the white T-shirts and blue bandannas of the Crips gang. One of them held his hand out in front, his index and little finger extended with the others folded underneath, the horn of hexes. Why the hell do they want to kill me? I thought. I downshifted into second and accelerated out of the curve, thanking good Dr. Porsche for his brainchild. The Lincoln managed to bump into me right as I was whipping out into the straightaway. The force of the impact sent me careening down the middle of the road, almost making me lose control of the wheel. I managed to swerve back to my lane seconds before a Pioneer Bread delivery truck would have plowed into me. I wanted to blast out of there but the hairpin curves forced me to slow down. The Lincoln bore down on me again.
It seemed like a bad TV series. I was struck by the sudden absurd realization that in L.A., even killers watch too much television. But now there was no easy getaway.I saw my chance up ahead at the lookout point facing west, a three-car-wide strip of blacktop ringed by a low metal railing.
I barreled into the point, the Lincoln still on my tail. I slowed down as I entered, then stopped. Thinking I was about to run off, the Lincoln accelerated to hit me and tip me over once and for all. I watched them in my rearview mirror, the black tank hurtling down on me; then, at the last moment, when a nanosecond of hesitation would have given me a set of unwanted wings, I stepped on the accelerator and twisted the wheels left as far as I could, my 944 snapping to like a well-trained stallion, surging out of the tight corner. The clumsier Lincoln, seeing its prey flyaway, attempted to stop and maneuver out, wheels spitting clouds of gravel and dust. Unfortunately for my pursuers, the momentum of the acceleration made their vehicle skid, whipping it around so that the tail struck the railing and broke through. The car teetered on the edge of the cliff, rear wheels spinning frantically in the air. Suddenly the driver's door was thrown open, but that only made the Lincoln lose its precarious balance and before the occupants could exit, the car tipped over and fell, slamming the side of the cliff as it tore through space. I could hear cries and shouts above the din of the impact as the car kissed an oak tree, then plunged into the ground, crushed into a ball of plastic, steel and bad design, exploding in a fiery blast. I stopped at the curb, got out of the car and retched my breakfast.
The investigating officer, a balding, jowly sergeant named Porras, said it might be a few days before they could sift through the wreckage and determine whose mangled, charred bodies lay inside. He sent me on my way after I told him I had no idea who or why. The worst part was that I wasn't lying. I really didn't have the slightest notion. None of the cases I'd worked with had turned out so badly that my client would want me dead and in the Valdez case, things were just too uncertain for anyone to want to do me in, at least not yet. I should have investigated more, I should have looked deeper into it, but I turned away. Random violence, life in the little city.
The week after the "accident" I went to visit Ramón. For some reason he felt like playing the tártaro, the Cuban high-life, the party animal who shucks and jives through storms, curses and death.
"Qué pasa, brother?" were his first words the moment I sat on the aluminum folding chair in the glass booth. "I heard you had a little car trouble a few days ago."
"Good news travels fast. How did you know?"
He seemed tempted to withhold his sources, but feeling tropically expansive, he waved his hands as though they had roller bearings at the wrist.
"A little bird. Jail bird, get it?"
"Bad joke."
"Pimienta, my man. His lawyer told him."
"You two are still talking?"
He smiled so wide his teeth were fangs. "Sure thing, man. We're like brothers."
"If that's the case, why do you want to pin it on him?"
"Hey, I love him, but that don't mean I'm going to die for him. He understands."
I shook my head at his display of fraternal affection and pulled out a notepad.
"As you wish. Let me tell you, your brother's attorney is not so hot about the idea of your claiming your hermano did it. Frankly, I don't know how you'll be able to swing it but then since I'm not your lawyer, I don't give a shit. You asked for me, guy, I will be your P.I. But that's it, no más, entiendes? I'm not going to tell you how to run your case and I'm not going to answer any legal questions. If you don't know what you're doing, that's fine by me too. Get yourself a lawyer, then. But I don't know anything about the law and even if I did once, believe me, I've forgotten it. So now, suppose you tell me who your witnesses are and what you want me to look into."
Thinking back on it I realize I probably laid it on a little too thick. But the outburst didn't seem to bother Ramón. He leaned back in the chair, so far back he balanced it on its hind legs, then he crossed his arms behind his head, staring at the oil-painted green ceiling.
"Groovy, brother. I understand where you're coming from. You need your space to get ahold of yourself and realize the consequences so that's fucking A. Let me tell you, there's a couple of people I want you to contact, for credibility purposes."
"Are you filing a discovery motion?"
He glanced down sardonically, eyebrow raised. "You said no legal questions."
"I have to know, to see if I have all the info I need."
The store Ramón sent me to was located in one of the trashier stretches of Temple Street, two miles west of the Hall of Justice. BOTANICA DEL SABIO INDIO read the sign out front with a picture of a high-cheekboned Cherokee in full headdress. A block away slovenly undercover cops slunk out of the Rampart police station, a piece of fifties flatcake architecture that was the only building in the neighborhood not graced with graffiti. Across the street, the All-American Dance Hall, a salsa music club where on any given night half the customers are narcs and half are nickel-and-dime dealers, had not yet opened its doors. That would be at sunset, at the same time that the fancy disco the next street over started its dinner run. Owned by a former bit actress in B movies, Baby Bolte had been set in the neighborhood for its automatic cachet, born out of the nostalgie de la boue of jaded Westsiders who think all life in Los Angeles ends east of Crenshaw Boulevard. At night three armed security guards patrolled the small parking lot around the white barred club, protecting the Ferraris, Mercedeses and Rollses from the
inquisitive residents of the barrio, for whom a single hubcap from one of those luxury conveyances would be enough to support their family for a month. The area, like an old whore, was much more acceptable under the cover of darkness. Then the sodium streetlamps would leave pockets of gloom that hid the overflowing trash cans on the sidewalks, the empty bottles of Thunderbird in the gutter, the used cans of Castrol Oil and the occasional bloody syringe scattered among the dried-out weed of driveways and parkways. But in the daytime the burned-out cottages, the racks of dollar fifty-nine T-shirts offered by anxious Salvadoran women outside discount stores, the soot-stained windows of the Guatemalan bakery in the pocket shopping mall, the poor struggling suppurating life of the neighborhood around the shop was impossible to ignore, a desperado grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you, saying "Do something, do something!" I turned my back on it all and entered the shop.
Inside statuettes were everywhere, crowding the shelves, surging off counters, grouped on the floor and in racks by the door, pressing together like so many pilgrims on the way to Santiago. Ostensibly the images of saints-Saint Barbara, Saint Lazarus, Saint Peter- they stood in for spiritual powers far stronger than the followers of the Nazarene. The figurines were the Christian countenances of the old African deities- Shangó, Yemayá, Ochá -the hewers of lightning and carvers of the sun, who like so many immigrants took on a new name and identity upon reaching American shores. Stacked on the floor were prayer books for contacting these powerful beings, the orations to the Seven Powers, to Our Lady of the Waters, to the Great Saint Peter, who holds the keys to heaven. There were also potions in spray cans guaranteed to bring blessings, money, love, success, the constant desires of humanity, when sprayed in the moment of need. Displayed behind glass doors and piled up to the cobwebbed ceiling lay balms and ointments to draw back the straying lover, to ward off the evil eye, to make the cards sing and show aces and kings and queens upon command, to bring the almighty blessings of the Holy Trinity upon the suffering head. Finally, for those few who truly knew, glass jars of ingredients for the preparation of secret remedies and incantations, sarsaparilla root, dried and fresh green basil, camomile, raicilla, cascarilla, mandrake, musty roots and grainy powers, all promising an exit from the crowded slum where the Botanical Shop of the Wise Indian opened its doors for business every day from twelve to eight, Sundays excepted.