Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  A silence while the fire roared, then he said: "I don't know who killed her. I had nothing to do with that. The papers said bikers were suspect and I believed it. She had all kinds of rotten friends, guys you wouldn’t mop vomit with. You gotta understand, lady, I was a supervisor, a politician. I liked the girls, yeah, I admit that. I mistreated my wife, and she never mistreated me that way. I even might have caused somebody to beat up that old guy, because I hated what he was doing to this country. I thought it was wrong. So I bad-mouthed him and maybe some young guys got wrong ideas. I'm not saying either way. But I never raised a finger against that Bailey whore, ever. Even when she threatened me with that tape, the same way you're threatening me with it now."

  "What did you do?"

  "I paid up, kept my mouth shut and hoped to Hell she'd keep hers that way. Then she was dead. I didn't cry any tears, either. I felt like I'd just been let out of death row."

  "How much did you pay her?"

  "Five grand. Nothing. She wanted fifteen, and I was good for that, but I wanted to buy some time."

  "For what?"

  "What do you think? Time is what she was selling me, silent time, so I wanted to finance it over as many months as I could. Like a car you can't really afford."

  Merci tried to establish the timeline leading up to Bailey's murder in August. "That was when?"

  "June. July."

  "But in December, you stepped down from the Board of Supervisors. Resigned your elected office."

  He shrugged. "That's two different things—the girl and the job. Not related. I quit because the Grand Jury was throwing rocks at me, the press was all over my ass, my own district was talking recall. The last thing I needed was some whore kicking dirt in my face, but she never did that, you know. In that way, I was clean. Bailey had been dead for four months when I quit. It wasn't her, it was all the other stuff."

  "Kickbacks from Orange Coast Capital."

  "People can call anything a kickback. I had friends. I helped them, yeah. They helped me, yeah. I'd get the board to approve a parcel for development. Because I believe in development, I believe in people, I believe we got a right to be here so why not be comfortable? Why not have a house and a supermarket and a filling station and a fuckin' fast-food place on every corner? What's wrong with that? What are you going to do instead—just leave it to the ground squirrels and cactus? So, something would get developed. The guys who made all the dough would take me skiing for a week, or we'd go down to Mexico for some marlin fishing. Now you tell me—that a kickback or just the way the world works?"

  "It's a kickback."

  Meeks blew a cloud of smoke, coughed. "Then I should have stepped down. I did the right thing."

  "How did you meet Bailey? Skip the bourbon story."

  He looked at her, then toward the fire. "Owen. They were friends.'

  "Where'd you meet with her?"

  "Hotels. Different ones mostly."

  "De Anza?"

  "Too hot. Too lowlife. Naw, the old Grand in Anaheim, the Hot Laguna. One up in Newport Beach, I forget the name."

  "Who was 'KQ'?"

  He looked at her, thought, shrugged. "Got no idea."

  "Who else was she servicing?"

  "About a thousand guys. Like I'd know?"

  "Try."

  Meeks puffed, tapped the cigar in the ashtray. "Some of the cops. Don't know names."

  "Police or sheriff?"

  "Deputies. Owen's guys. She talked a lot. She talked way too much

  "What did Owen do when she threatened him with the tape?"

  "Same thing I did, far as I know. We didn't spend a lot of time comparing blackmail notes."

  "Why not? Two powerful men. One little prostitute with big ideas

  Meeks was shaking his head. "The whole thing with blackmail and a whore is, you want to get away. Away from her and anybody associated with her. Me and Owen, we had to stand on our own feet. I didn't want to be around him if he fell. He didn't want to be around me if I did. That kind of thing puts a wall between you and everybody else. You just cover your own ass and hope your friends can, too."

  "A month after you resigned, Owen did the same thing. You' going to tell me that wasn't connected to Bailey."

  "The girl had been dead five months by then—what could it have do with her? Owen had his own problems in the department. He wasn’t young. The county was growing and he was running things the old way. The right-wingers wanted him out. Those guys had some sway back then. You look into that, you want to find out why Bill quit."

  Merci looked up at the skylight. The rain was softer now, but it was still coming down.

  Meeks coughed softly. "What are you going to do with that tape, that date book?"

  "Leave them in Property, where they belong."

  "That's good. You can hurt people with those things. Same way Bailey was trying to hurt people. I hope just because you're a cop and she was a whore you don't think it's any different."

  "It's all the difference in the world."

  "Explain that."

  "Bailey fucked you for money because that was her job. But I'll fuck you for free, because that's mine."

  Meeks laughed quietly. "Why do that? What do you want outta me?"

  "I want to know who killed her. You know. I know that. So, if your memory gets any better, be sure to call. Until then, I'll do some legwork, put together assault and conspiracy charges based on that tape. Of course, how the tape got made is going to cause more trouble for you than what you say on it. That's your problem, not mine. You've got all my numbers on this card, and I'm putting this card into your hand in about five seconds."

  She scrawled in her cell number on the back of a business card, walked over to Meeks and stood in his cloud of smoke. She gave it to him.

  "I don't know who killed her, lady. How come you have to show up in the twilight of my old age, and make my life miserable all over again?"

  "You screwed a girl for money, you had an old farmer beaten so bad he was left half blind and toothless. That's wrong. It's illegal. And you have to pay for it."

  "You simpleton. If I knew who killed the girl, don't you think I'd have told you by now?"

  "You'll tell me, when the facts sink in. County lockup's a miserable place. We got three thousand beds for five thousand crooks. You might have to sleep on the floor. No smoking. You might even have to give your beach mansion here to your lawyers. Even if you got off, it would cost you. You'd have to burn scrap wood instead of the last orange trees in the state."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  She got a window booth at the Fisherman's Restaurant, out on the pier in San Clemente. It was less than five miles from Meeks's house and she wanted somewhere warm and private to read Colin Byrne’s "crooked cops" clips. See if they tracked with what Meeks had said.

  She sat down and watched the Pacific surging just below her—black water, gray sky, white spume whipping off the swells and the damned rain pounding down again.

  It gave her a queasy feeling to sit this close to the ocean that had once almost killed her and her son. That had been a stupid accident, really, absolutely her fault, something she'd never do again. She hadn’t been sane those first few months after Tim was born. Somehow, the sea had forgiven her and offered her another chance.

  Sitting over the ocean and watching it through glass was safe. It was confined. Or maybe she was. She told herself that being this close to it was like getting back on the horse that threw you. She looked down: The bullet that killed Aubrey Whittaker was out there somewhere, launched from the service automatic belonging to Mike McNally. A waitress brought her coffee and Merci stirred in plenty of milk and sugar.

  Colin Byrne's research began with a few brief articles about street level police corruption—excessive force, cops stealing impounded drugs and money, cops on the take from prostitution rings. A three-part investigative series on the cops and the De Anza Hotel pretty much fizzled out: Plenty of law enforcement officers admitted to going there to socialize bu
t none, of course, knew anything about prostitution.

  Byrne had followed a handful of other cops into the more interesting world of 1969 politics. He'd focused on a small group of law-enforcement officers—five Santa Ana P.D. and three sheriff's deputies—who were vocally right wing, in favor of organizing volunteer police departments in the neighborhoods, and openly critical of police and sheriff management.

  The sheriff's deputies were familiar to her: Beck Rainer, Pat McNally, Art Rymers. The Santa Ana cops were just names; she'd never heard of them before.

  She tracked all eight of the officers into the John Birch Society. They were all members. Most of them were members from the early sixties to the end of the decade but only a few of them were still active by 1972.

  In the February 1967 JBS Chapter 231 newsletter, Beck Rainer wrote:

  In the face of the worldwide communist conspiracy, constant vigilance doesn't just make sense—it is mandatory if we are to maintain a free society. Part of Lenin's design to overthrow America is to accomplish it FROM THE INSIDE. Our schools, churches and neighborhoods must be kept as safe havens for learning, worship and lawful assembly. When they are corrupted by drug addicts who are forced to steal for their next fix, petty criminals with no respect for the law and "hippie" protesters who dance to every tune played back in Moscow, it is time for us to ACT. America will not fall like overripe fruit into the hands of communism if we are strong in the streets, strong in the schools, strong in the churches. I'm asking every one of you Society members to make an extra effort to inform your neighbors and your friends—those well-meaning men and women who are so susceptible to communist propaganda. Get them to your chapter meetings, show them some of the films that inspired you to join the Society, and most of all—GIVE THEM A COPY OF THE BLUE BOOK. Robert Welch's book is still the strongest weapon we have! Thank You!

  Merci wondered how such a passage qualified Beck Rainer as a bad cop, aside from a little extra zeal.

  The Los Angeles Times had printed several letters to the editor over the summer of 1969. They were complaints from citizens concerned about "squadrons" of "Nazi-like police motorcycles" parked on driveways in their neighborhoods, apparently during "Birch Society propaganda meetings."

  A Times editorial warned of "vigilantism" and "misplaced patriotism" and said that "volunteer police departments are not the answer crime and the perceived communist threat."

  She followed Rainer's story in the papers: He accused Sheriff Owen of "poor leadership" and "lax discipline" in a 1969 interview. He got himself on the ballot in the 1970 special election to elect a new sheriff after Owen's retirement in late 1969. But he failed to gain the support of Interim Sheriff Vance Putnam and couldn't sway the department rank and file, even though many Orange County conservatives stood behind him. He lost a narrow election to Chuck Brighton—Putnam's designated successor—in June of 1970. A disappointed Rainer vowed to run again. He was also one of sixty-five sworn deputies whose picture was supplied by Bill Owen for examination by Jesse Acuna. Merci scanned down the list, recognizing Rymers, Thornton and Pat McNally. Acuna had failed to identify any of them as the men in the white Mercedes, who approached him that day with an offer for his property and a threat

  A small article printed in late 1978 profiled a successful private security company, Patriot Protective Services, run by ex-sheriff captain Beck Rainer. Rainer liked to employ law-enforcement and ex-law-enforcement officers in his company, "because they happen to what they're doing." Merci looked at him in the picture: curly ' winning smile, hard eyes.

  Colin Byrne had thoughtfully penciled in the current address and phone number for Patriot Protective.

  Pat McNally was quoted often in the papers, and wrote often Birch Society newsletter. He was flamboyant and caustic. He called Supervisor Ralph Meeks a "lib with a checking account full of public money." He said Richard Nixon had "become a puppet of the communist conspiracy by sending American troops to die in Vietnam." He said, "Hanoi should be bombed level and if the Russians squeak, Moscow should be flattened next." McNally wrote a petition to allow members of volunteer police departments to carry firearms, running contrary to the opinions of Sheriff Bill Owen. Owen said he wouldn't endorse such a thing "no matter how many trigger-happy John Birchers signed it."

  McNally wrote a long and passionate letter to the editor of the Register, saying that it was ludicrous for the Sheriff Department to supply personnel photographs of sworn deputies to a biased, angry and bitter old man who claimed, "without evidence and without reason, that he'd been baited and beaten by Mexican-hating cops."

  McNally's last appearance in the file was a 1989 Times article looking back on the Jesse Acuna beating. McNally was a lieutenant by then, in administration. He said that the old passions of 1969 seemed "unwarranted" now, two decades later, and that "the world was just a different place back then. Cooler heads prevailed."

  Cooler heads, thought Merci. Is that what they had? She turned to Byrne's index in the back and ran her finger down the list of players.

  No KQ.

  Jim O'Brien was listed, one page only.

  Her heart sped up when she saw Rayborn, Clark—pages 81,88,119.

  Her father was mentioned in the Birch Society Chapter 231 newsletter as a new member, recruited by O'Brien. The date was January 24, 1967. In a newsletter published six months later, Clark wrote an article about gun control, arguing that Hitler's first step in enslaving the Jews was to remove their right to keep and bear arms. "Big Government," he wrote, "would like to do the same to you. Without weapons, the citizen is helpless against the criminal as well as the political master."

  The last reference to her father was from a community newspaper in Buena Park, where Clark made a commencement speech at the high school in 1970. The speech dealt with "our nation of laws" and called for the graduating seniors to "change our republic from within the law, not beyond it." The reporter said the address was stirring. Clark was booed and called a pig by some students. Merci pictured her mild-mannered father up at the podium, trying connect with three hundred teenagers who thought they had just become adults. It must have been hard for him to reveal his principles for people who just wanted to get out of the football stadium, get high and celebrate.

  It wasn't until she got to the back of the Birch Society newsletter that Merci hit pay dirt. The May 1969 meeting of Chapter 231 was held in the home of Pat McNally, where American involvement in the United Nations was the topic of discussion. Among the member attendees listed were Clark Rayborn and Jim O'Brien. The speaker was Birch Society Section Leader Beck Rainer.

  And among the eleven visiting guests was Patti Bailey.

  • • •

  Beck Rainer's Patriot Protective Services was headquartered in a quiet business park in the city of Orange. PPS had the third floor. There was big reception room, some young guys filling out applications. A huge American flag was framed behind glass on one wall, along with so framed documents—Declaration of Independence, Preamble to the Constitution, Gettysburg Address, part of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt. And some big nature photographs with patriotic sayings under them—Grand Canyon, Half Dome, a stand of redwoods with sunlight spraying through.

  Over the phone, Rainer had agreed to meet with Merci on short notice, and when she got there he was ready. He was a tall, slender man with big hands and arms a little too long for his sleeves. Corduroy pants, plaid shirt, an argyle pattern of wrinkles in the back of his neck, stooped like a man used to stooping. He ambled down a quiet carpe hallway and let Merci walk ahead of him into his office. No secret; no receptionist. He had a bank of telephones on his desk and a big radio dispatch console, like the ones they had at county.

  "How's your dad?"

  "Mom died about two years ago. He took it hard."

  "Marcella was lovely. Too young for that."

  "Fifty-six."

  "My wife's healthy. I feel blessed."

  There were framed posters of Porsches on the walls, and a few photographs of Rainer w
ith Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. A USC diploma. A John Birch Society award. More pictures: Rainer in uniform as a Trojan basketball player; Rainer in uniform as a sheriff's captain; Rainer with his wife and children; Rainer on horseback somewhere dark and green with pines a hundred feet high. Through a big window Merci could see that the rain had stopped. She looked out over the Orange County suburbs huddled beneath the gray sky, drenched and dripping, the colors rich and full.

  "What kind of security do you do?"

  "Every kind. Private residences—patrol, alarm systems, response. Some bodyguarding. Some industrial and plant work. The high-tech companies keep us busy. Lately, we've been getting a lot of the new guarded developments that are popping up all over. Everybody wants a guard gate and a courtesy patrol. We're up to three hundred employees."

  "Still like to hire ex-cops?"

  Rainer smiled, half pleasant, half carnivorous. "Sure, you interested?"

  "Not yet."

  "Some of it's interesting. The high-tech manufacturers have to be careful. Mostly employees ripping them off. The rest of it's pretty routine. That means we're doing our job, if it's routine."

  Merci told him about drawing the Bailey unsolved, told him about the cassette recording and date book, about Bailey's evidence against Meeks on the Jesse Acuna beating, about Bailey's blackmail of Meeks and probably Owen, and who knew who else.

  "Wow," he said flatly, "that takes me back. How'd you get the tape and date book?"

  "I can't tell you."

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  Merci continued. "And I can't figure out what Patti Bailey was doing at a JBS meeting three months before she was murdered."

  "Now that's news to me. Which one?"

  "May, sixty-nine. Pat McNally's house. You spoke about the United Nations. And Patti Bailey was a guest. I got that from the chapter newsletter. Chapter two thirty-one—the one with all the cops in it."