He was most expressive when writing about land purchase and management: how he'd cadged three hundred acres of orchard out of a San Fernando farmer at a bargain price by charming the man's wife 'told her the pie was the best I'd ever eaten and complimented the baby. She leaned on the rube and we cut the deal that afternoon'; the maximum number of bungalows that could be constructed on a desert plot in the east end of the Valley; the most economical way to supply water to his projects; a
Mexican crew boss who knew where to get cheap labour.
By comparison, his personal life had received short shrift in the sections that I read; his marriage, the births of his sons, even the beginnings of his wife's mental deterioration were most often relegated to single-sentence status.
One exception was a rambling August 1949 analysis of his relationship with Souza:
Like myself, Horace has pulled himself up out of the gutter. We self-made men have plenty to be proud of. Give me one bootstrap yanker for a hundred of those California Club pansies sucking their allowances straight from Mama's teat; Toinette's old man was one of those, and look how fast he slid down once he was forced to deal with the real world! But I think the experience of climbing to the top also leaves us with some scars, and I'm not sure old Horace has learned to live with his.
His problem is that he's too damned hungry - too damned intense! Took the thing with Toinette way too seriously. She told me he misunderstood; she never thought of him as anything more than a chum. Then to run like a mutt to fish-faced Lucy, only to have her throw him over for the medico! He smiles through it all, like a good little gentleman, but it worries me. I know he's always thought I should have cut him in as a full partner. But lawyering - even good lawyering -just doesn't put you on a par with the man who does all the thinking and the risk taking! Even after the war I continue to outrank him.
So I figure down deep he's got to hate my guts, and I'm wondering how to diffuse it. I don't want to cut the ties; he's a first-class manoeuverer and a good friend to boot. Asking him to be Peter's godfather was what the hoity-toities would call a gracious gesture on yours truly's part, but the bottom line is bucks. So maybe I'll add on to his Wilshire parcel as a bonus, it's prime, but I'll have a lot more soon when the Spring St. deal goes down. A little charity camouflaged as
gratitude could go a long way. Got to keep H. in his place but also make him feel important. Now if only he'd hitch himself up with a nice girl - preferably one that has nothing to do with me!
Milo returned, green eyes suffused with excitement.
'That was Platt. The blood tests are positive for anti-cholinergics. Lots of it. He was blown away, wanted to know when it would be okay to write it up for a medical journal.'
He sat down.
'So now' - he smiled - 'we've got more than theory.'
'When will they be giving Jamey the Antilirium?'
'Definitely not today, probably not tomorrow. The head injury complicates things; it's hard to know how much of the stupor comes from the concussion and how much from the dope. They want him to be stronger before they give his nervous system another jolt.'
He eyed the book in my hands.
'Learn anything?'
'So far only that Jack Cadmus's and Souza's view of their relationship don't jibe."
'Yeah, well that sometimes happens, doesn't it?'
He held out his hand, and I gave him the diary.
'Now that we've got method, it would be nice to firm up some motive before I call in Whitehead and the gang. How far'd you get?'
'August ninth 'forty-nine.'
He found the place, backtracked, a few pages, read for a while, and looked up.
'Arrogant son of a bitch, wasn't he?'
'The scars of a self-made man.'
Twenty minutes later he found the first entry on Bitter Canyon.
'All right, here we go - October twelfth 1950: "I'm in a good position on the Bitter Canyon base because Horn-burgh came to me rather than vice versa. That means the army wants to get rid of it quickly and they know I can come up with quick cash. But why? From the way Horn-
burgh threw around the Hail, Comrades bunkum, he'll be trying to jew me down by playing on my sense of patriotism. When he does, I'll turn it back on him. Ask him if a decorated hero isn't entitled to a fair deal from his Uncle Sam. If he keeps on buddying up, I'll ask him what he did in the war; Horace has checked around and says he was a West Point pansy who spent his entire tour pushing paper in Biloxi, Miss." '
Milo turned a page.
'Let's see, now he's off on something else - a downtown office building... he's going to have to bribe someone to get a zoning variance... okay, here it is again: "Horn-burgh took me for a tour of the base. When we got close to the lake, it seemed to me that he looked a little antsy, though it may have been the heat and the light. The water's like a giant lens; when the sun hits it a certain way, it's blinding - damn near unbearable - and a milquetoast like Hornburgh is used to being pampered. As we drove, his jaw kept flapping; the man may be a colonel, but he blabs like a woman. Gave me the whole song and dance about the potential for development: houses; hotels, maybe even a golf course and country club. I let him go on then said, 'Sounds like the Garden of Eden, Stanton.' He nodded like a dummy. 'Then how come' - I smiled - 'the army is so damned eager to dump it?' He stayed smooth as cream, yammered about needing to let go of the land due to congressional restrictions and peacetime budget concerns. Which is a lot of gobbledygook, because the army does as the army damn well pleases - hell, they say Ike will be the next pres, so it can only get better. So the whole situation bears watching''.'
Milo hunched forward and peered at the diary.
'Back to the office building again.' He frowned, running his index finger over the yellowed pages. 'The bribe worked... Here's something on the wife. They were invited to a party at the Huntington Sheraton, and she stood in a corner and wouldn't talk to anyone. It pissed him off... C'mon, Bitter Canyon, where are you... Wouldn't it just be my luck for that to be all of it?'
He perused silently through September and October, pausing from time to time to quote a passage out loud. The quotes painted Jack Cadmus as the quintessential robber baron - ruthless, single-minded, and self-obsessed - with occasional lapses into sentimentality. The man's feelings toward his wife had been a combination of rage, bafflement, and compassion. He professed his love for her but viewed her weakness with contempt. Terming his marriage 'deader than Hitler', he described the mansion on Muir-field as 'a damned crypt' and berated Antoinette's doctors as 'Harvard-educated quacks who pat my back with one hand while dipping into my pocket with the other. All they have to offer are idiot grins and jargon.' He'd escaped the emotional void by embracing work, power brokering and putting together one deal after another, playing the high-stakes poker game known as big business with an almost
erotic zeal.
'Aha, here we go again,' said Milo. 'Wednesday, November fifteenth: "I've got Hornburgh and the damned U.S. Army by the short hairs! After plenty of phone bluffs I agreed to come down for another tour of the base. Once I arrived, Hornburgh made a pathetic attempt at flexing his own muscles - sent word that he'd be tied up in ordinance inventory for a while and had his driver zip me around in a jeep. Far as I could tell, nothing much was going on; the place looked empty. Then we passed a group of wooden bungalows on the east end and a passel of MPs marched out from between the buildings, all stiff and deadly serious. Looked like an escort, so I took a gander, and when I saw who they were guarding, I nearly jumped out of the jeep and went for his throat.
'That evil little weasel Kaltenblud! We zipped by fast, so I only saw him for a second, but I'd know that face anywhere - Lord knows I looked at it enough times! He was on our roundup list for Nuremberg, but we never got him - always seemed to be one step ahead. It made me suspect the damned CIA pansies had spirited him away in order to use him for dirty work, but questions to that effect got the usual hush-hush gobbledygook. Now, the prooP.
'D
amned unjust to let the weasel go after all the misery he caused, but no use making a stink, the war's over. On the other hand, no harm in using it to squeeze Hornburgh's nuts, is there? Because if what I'm thinking is true, the nervousness and all that eagerness to sell the base makes a lot of sense. However, I didn't choose to spring it on him today. Just filed it away for use."
'Ever hear of this Kaltenblud?' asked Milo. I shook my head. He thought for a moment.
'The Simon Wiesenthal Centre keeps tabs on those assholes. I'll give them a call soon as I finish this.' He returned to the diary. 'Oh, shit, another digression. Now he's into a land swap with a bunch of Indians from Palm Springs. Old Blackjack was everywhere.' He flipped pages impatiently.
'Okay,' he said several minutes later, 'this sounds like the showdown. November twenty-ninth: "Over lunch at my office, I sprang Kaltenblud on Hornburgh. Told him if the weasel was at the base, I knew what kind of dirty work had been going on and understood damn well why they wanted to dump the place. At first he hemmed and hawed, but when I told him we could either cut a fair deal or let the newspapers dig around, he fessed up. Just as I thought, they'd saved the bastard's neck, brought him over on a private military transport, and set him up with a lab at the base. Little weasel didn't care who he did his dirty deeds for - U. Sam or Schicklgruber. Just went on his merry way and left behind tons of poisonous garbage - which, after I leaned on him for a while, Hornburgh admitted they buried underground. He insisted it was done safely, in metal canisters, supervised by the Corps of Engineers, but I've got no confidence in those yahoos, having seen plenty of messes they've created. So, as far as I'm concerned, the place is sitting on a land mine. One earthquake or Lord knows what else, and the poison could leak out into the lake or plume underground. A sucker deal if I ever heard of one! I figure they picked me for the sucker because I was buying more and faster than anyone and they thought I'd
snap it up, no questions asked. Ha! By the time I left that office, it was they who were the suckers and I got everything I asked for:
A. The land, at a price so cheap it borders on free. Every damned square foot except I set aside a little for Skaggs, because his wife's a damned good cook and he does a fine job on the Bugatti. B. They furnish me with signed and certified geological reports stating the place is virgin-clean. C. All documentation of Kaltenblud's dirty work destroyed clear to Washington. D. The weasel himself must be eliminated in some sanitary fashion in case he gets big ideas, and starts yapping. Hornburgh claimed that had been their idea all along, he'd outlived his usefulness, but I won't be satisfied until I see a photo of him with pennies on his eyelids.
"So as soon as all that goes through, I'll own Bitter Canyon free and clear. Doesn't look like there's much I can do with it for the time being, but it was a gift, so I can afford to wait. Maybe someday I'll find a way to clean it up, or maybe it can be exploited in some other way, like for storage or dumping. If not, I can just hold on to it, use it as a private getaway. Toinette's behaviour is forcing me out more and more, and despite all the rottenness underneath, there's a kind of bleak beauty to the place - kind of like Toinette herself! Anyway, for what I paid, I can afford to let it go fallow, and after all, isn't being wasteful a sure sign a man's really made it?" '
'Poisoned earth,' I said. 'Plumes. Jamey was making sense all along.'
'Too much sense for his own good,' said Milo, standing. 'I'm gonna make that call.'
He left and returned a quarter of an hour later, holding a scrap of paper between thumb and forefinger.
"The folks at Wiesenthal knew him right away. Herr Doktor Professor Werner Kaltenblud. Head of the Nazis' chemical warfare section, posion gas expert. He was supposed to be indicted at Nuremberg but disappeared and was never heard from again. Which could make sense if the army kept its bargain with Blackjack.'
'Blackjack would have demanded it.'
'True. So the prick's definitely dead. The researcher I spoke to said he's still on the active file, considered one of the big ones who got away. He pressed me for what I knew but I stonewalled him with vague promises. If this thing ever resolves, maybe I can keep them.'
He began to circle the room.
'A power plant built on tons of poison gas,' I said. 'Now you've got your motive.'
'Oh, yeah. Seventy-five million dollars' worth. Wonder how the kid got hold of the diary.'
'It could easily have been by accident. He was a voracious reader, liked to go rummaging around old books. The night he was committed to Canyon Oaks he tore apart his uncle's library, which could indicate he'd found something there before and was looking again.'
'Buried for forty years among the limited editions?'
'Why not? After Peter died, Dwight was Black Jack's primary heir. Suppose he inherited the old man's books but never bothered to look at them? He didn't impress me as a bibliophile type. If he and Heather had come across the diary, they would have destroyed it. It was undisturbed because no one knew it existed. Until Jamey found it and realised how explosive it was. Chancellor had got him interested in business and finance, put him to work doing securities research. He had to know how heavily Beverly Hills Trust had invested in the Bitter Canyon issue, and he went straight to Chancellor and told him he'd bought a lot of potentially useless paper - twenty million dollars' worth that couldn't be unloaded without attracting unwanted attention.'
Milo had stopped pacing to listen. Now he stood with one palm pressed against the tabletop, the other rubbing his eyes, digesting.
'Your basic extortion/elimination scenario,' he said softly. 'With a bunch of extra zeroes tacked on. Chancellor confronts Uncle Dwight with what he's learned from the diary. Maybe Uncle knew about the gas, maybe not. In either case, Chancellor's chafing to get rid of those bonds
and demands that Uncle buy them back. Uncle baulks; Chancellor threatens to go public. So they arrange a buyout. It would have to be gradual, under the table, to avoid scrutiny. Maybe Chancellor even tacks on interest to compensate for pain and suffering.'
'Or demands a premium price.'
'Right.' He thought for a while, then said:
'Fast Talker told you there's been some slow selling of the bond, which could mean Uncle's letting a little trickle back onto the market, but just like Chancellor, a little's all he can afford to let go of. That leaves him doubly at risk -building a plant on all that gas and paying for it himself.'
'Tight squeeze,' I said.
Milo nodded. 'Time pressure, too. Uncle can't keep buying those bonds back without the corporate ledgers eventually starting to smell bad. He searches for a way out, finds himself thinking how nice life would be if Chancellor -and the kid - were out of the picture. Tells his troubles to wifey-poo, who's an expert on blitzing people out with herbs, and they cook up a plan that will eliminate all their problems: Cut up Chancellor and set the kid up for the murder.'
He stopped, thought, continued:
'You realise, that this doesn't mean the kid didn't kill anyone. Only that he might have been under the influence when he did it.'
'True. But it does say something about culpability. He was set up, Milo. A disturbed kid pushed over the edge slowly, with exquisite care, until he was ready for a locked ward. After hospitalisation the poisoning continued; the Cadmuses found themselves a doctor who'd do anything for a buck, including breaking his own rules to allow a private nurse to work there. Ten to one, Surtees's real job was administering the daily dose. Under Mainwaring's supervision.'
'Surtees,' he murmured, writing in his notepad. 'What was her first name?'
'Marthe, with an e. If that's her name at all. None of the nursing registries have ever heard of her. She vanished the
day after he broke out. Just like Vann, who just happened to have stepped away from her desk. The whole thing stinks, Milo. He was allowed to break out, then taken to Chancellor's house and... '
'And?'
'I don't know.' Translation: I don't want to think about it.
He put the notepad do
wn and said he'd put a trace on both the nurses. 'Maybe we'll even get lucky.'
'Maybe,' I said gloomily.
'Hey, don't overwork your empathy glands.' Gently: 'What's the problem, still thinking about guilt and innocence?'
'Don't you?'
'Not when I can avoid it. Gets in the way of doing the job.' He smiled. 'Course, that doesn't mean you civilised types shouldn't."
I stood up, pressed my palms against the green walls ol the interrogation room. The plaster felt soft, as if weakened by the absorption of too many lies.
'I was hoping there'd be a way to find him truly innocent,' I said. 'To show that he hadn't killed anyone.'
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 03 - Over the Edge Page 39