Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 04 - Silent Partner

by Silent Partner

  The reporter said, "There you have it, Keith and Kelly. Reporting live at the scene of..."

  I turned off the set, wondered about Trapp's presence at the crime scene, waited for Milo to call and cue me in. When he hadn't phoned by one, I undressed and slipped beneath the covers, dry-mouthed and so tense my palate ached. I tried deep breathing but, instead of relaxing, worked myself into a state of wide-eyed hyperawareness. Embracing the pillow like a lover, I tried to fill my head with pleasant images. None came. Finally, some time before dawn, I managed to sink into sleep.

  The next morning I called Milo at the station and was told he was still on vacation. No one answered at his house.

  I took in the morning paper. Unlike Sharon's death, the Kruse murders were being treated as serious news—a headline shouting DOCTOR AND SPOUSE SLAIN bannered over the top half of page 3. The byline was that of a staff writer named Dale Conrad, a name I recognized because he'd covered behavioral science stories in the past, gener-

  ally doing a slipshod job.

  The Kruse piece was no exception. Despite all those column inches, Conrad had come up with nothing about the murders that hadn't been covered on last night's broadcasts. The bulk of the article was biographical information on Kruse. He'd been sixty at the time of his death, twice the age of his wife—whom the article described only as a former actress. His birthplace was New York City; his origins, moneyed. He'd been commissioned as an officer in Korea attached to a psychological warfare unit, received his doctorate from the university in south Florida and, aided by society connections and his advice column, built up a lucrative Palm Beach practice before moving to California. His recent appointment to head the department was noted, and his predecessor, Professor Milton Frazier, was quoted as being shocked by the senseless death of an esteemed colleague.

  The death of Lourdes Escobar was a last-paragraph afterthought: "Also found was the body of the housekeeper..."

  I put the paper down. New York, old money, society connections—reminiscent of the phony background Sharon had created for herself.

  Had it been a total fabrication? Failed starlet mother or not, she'd lived like a rich girl—the clothes, the car, the house. Perhaps Linda Lanier had married money—the call girl's fantasy come true.

  Or perhaps she'd gotten it another way. Passing along to her daughter a choice chunk of hillside real estate once owned by a dead billionaire who'd employed her. Still deeded to that billionaire's corporation and put up on the market the day after Sharon died.

  Too many questions. My head was starting to hurt.

  I dressed, found a legal pad and a couple of pens, and left the house. Walking down the glen, I crossed Sunset and entered the north end of the University campus. It was eleven-twenty when I passed through the doors of the research library.

  I headed straight for the reference section, played with

  the MELVYL computerized index, and found two books on Leland Belding in the library's holdings.

  The first was a 1949 volume entitled Ten Tycoons. The second was The Basket-Case Billionaire by Seaman Cross. Surprised, because I'd thought all copies of the book had been recalled, I jotted down the call numbers, began looking for anything on Lanier, Linda, but found nothing.

  I left the computer and did a little low-tech research— two hours spent turning the pages of volume after volume of the Periodicals Index. Nothing on Linda Lanier here either, but over a hundred articles on Leland Belding, stretching from the mid-thirties to the mid-seventies. I selected what I hoped was a representative dozen references, then took the elevator up to the stacks and began seeking out the sources. By two-thirty I was ensconced in a reading cubicle on the fourth floor, surrounded by stacks of bound magazines.

  The earliest pieces on Belding were in aerospace-industry journals, written while the tycoon was still in his early twenties. In them, Leland Belding was hailed as a technical and financial prodigy, a master designer of aircraft and collateral equipment with three patents for every year of his life. The same photograph was used in each, a publicity shot credited to L. Belding Industries: the young inventor sitting in the cockpit of one of his planes, goggled and helmeted, his attention fixed upon the instrument panel. A handsome man, but cold-looking.

  Belding's enormous wealth, precocity, boyish good looks, and shyness made him a natural media hero, and the tone of the earliest popular magazine pieces was worshipful. One article designated him the Most Eligible Bachelor of 1937. Another called him the closest America had come to producing a crown prince.

  A prewar profile in Collier's summed up his rise to fame: He'd been born to wealth, in 1910, the only child of an heiress from Newport, Rhode Island, and a Texas oil wildcatter turned gentleman rancher.

  Another official corporate photo. Belding appeared frightened of the camera, standing, shirtsleeves rolled to

  the elbows, a large lug wrench in one hand, next to a gargantuan piece of cast-iron machinery. By age thirty he'd attained a monkish look—high forehead, sensitive mouth, thick eyeglasses that couldn't hide the intensity of round, dark eyes. A modern-day Midas, according to the article, representing the best of American ingenuity combined with good old-fashioned hard work. Though born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Belding had never allowed it to tarnish; he'd favored twenty-hour days and wasn't afraid of getting his hands dirty. He had a photographic memory, knew his hundreds of employees by name, but didn't suffer fools gladly, had no patience for the frivolity of the "cocktail crowd."

  His idyllic life as an only son had been cut cruelly short when both his parents perished in a car crash—returning, after a party, to their rented villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza, just south of Majorca.

  Another layer. I stopped reading, tried to make some sense of that. When I couldn't, I resumed reading.

  At the time of the accident, Belding had been nineteen, a senior at Stanford, majoring in physics and engineering. He dropped out of college, returned to Houston to run the family petroleum business, and expanded immediately into the manufacture of oil-drilling equipment, using designs that he'd developed as student projects. A year later he diversified into heavy farm machinery, took flying lessons, proved to be a natural, and qualified easily as a pilot. He began devoting himself to airplane construction. Within five years he dominated the aerospace industry, flooding the field with technical innovations.

  In 1939 he consolidated his holdings as the Magna Corporation (corporate press release: "... had Mr. Belding graduated Stanford, he would have received his degree magna cum laude."), and moved from Texas to Los Angeles, where he built corporate headquarters, an aircraft assembly plant, and a private airstrip on a 1,500-acre tract in the suburb of El Segundo.

  Rumors of a public stock offering made bulls and bears take note. But the offering never materialized and Wall

  Street regretted that out loud, calling Lee Belding a cowboy who'd eventually bite off more than he could chew. Belding had no comment, continued branching out—to shipping, railroads, real estate, construction.

  He obtained the contract for a Department of Labor annex in Washington, D.C., built low-cost housing in Kentucky, an army base in Nevada, then bucked the mob and the unions in order to create the Casbah—the largest, most ostentatious casino ever to blot out the Las Vegas

  sun.

  By his thirtieth birthday he'd increased his inheritance thirty times over, was one of the five richest men in America, and definitely its most secretive, refusing interviews and shunning public events. The press forgave him; playing hard to get only made him better copy and gave them more latitude.

  Privacy, the last luxury...

  It wasn't until after World War II that the honeymoon between America and Leland Belding began to sour. As the nation buried its dead, and working people faced an uncertain future, left-leaning journalists began to point out that Belding had used the war to become a billionaire while ensconced in his penthouse at Magna headquarters.

  Subsequent snooping revealed that between '42 an
d '45, the assets of the Magna Corporation had quadrupled, due to successful bidding for thousands of government defense contracts: Magna had been the armed forces' prime supplier of bombers, aircraft guidance systems, antiaircraft weapons, tanks and halftracks, even K-ration kits and servicemen's uniforms.

  Terms like robber baron, profiteer, and exploiter of the working man began to crop up in editorials, commentators asserting that Lee Belding was all take, no give, a self-obsessed tightwad devoid of the slightest shred of patriotic spirit. One writer pointed out that he never donated to charity, hadn't given a penny to the War Bond drive.

  Rumors of corruption soon followed—intimations that all those contracts hadn't been won by putting in the lowest bid. By early 1947 the intimations became accus-

  ations and took on enough substance for the U.S. Senate to pay heed. A subcommittee was created, charged with investigating the genesis of Leland Belding's war profits and dissecting the inner workings of the Magna Corporation. Belding ignored the furor, turned his talents to movies, bought a studio, and invented a hand-held motion picture camera that promised to revolutionize the industry.

  In November of '47, the Senate subcommittee held public hearings.

  I found a summary of the proceedings in a business magazine—conservative point of view, no pictures, all small print and dry prose.

  But not dry enough to camouflage the racy nature of the main accusation against Belding:

  That he was less captain of industry than high-class pimp.

  Committee investigators claimed Belding had shifted the odds on contract bids by throwing "wild parties" for War Board officials, government purchasing agents, legislators. These bashes took place in several secluded Hollywood Hills houses purchased by the Magna Corporation expressly as "party pads," and featured "stag movies," flowing booze, indulgence in "marijuana reefers," as well as nude dancing and swimming displays by legions of "young women of loose morals."

  These women, described as "professional party girls," were aspiring actresses chosen by the man who ran Belding's studio, a "former management consultant" named William Houck "Billy" Vidal.

  The hearings went on for more than six months; then, gradually, what had promised to be a juicy story began to shrivel. The subcommittee proved unable to produce witnesses to the notorious parties, other than Belding's business competitors, who testified from hearsay and crumpled in cross-examination. And the billionaire himself refused subpoenas to testify, on the grounds of endangering the national security, and was backed up by the Defense Department.

  Billy Vidal did show up—in the company of high-priced legal talent. He denied his major role was to procure women for Leland Belding, described himself as a successful Beverly Hills-based management consultant to the film industry prior to meeting Belding, and produced documents to prove it. His friendship with the young tycoon had begun when the two of them were students at Stanford, and he admired Lee Belding. But he denied involvement in anything illegal or immoral. A legion of character witnesses backed him up. Vidal was dismissed.

  When subpoenas for Magna's accounting records were rejected by the company, once again on the basis of national security, and both Defense and State backed up Belding, the committee reached an impasse and died.

  The senators saved face by delivering a mild reprimand to Leland Belding, noting his invaluable contributions to the national defense but suggesting he be more careful in the future with his record keeping. Then they assigned staffers to compile a report of their findings and voted the committee out of existence. Cynics suggested that in view of the charge that members of Congress had been on Belding's party list, the entire process had been just another example of the foxes guarding the henhouse. But by this time no one really cared. The country was ripe with optimism, intent on rebuilding, and determined to have a damned good decade. If a few hearty rascals had indulged in a little high living, so be it.

  Party pads. A film connection. Stag films. I wanted to know more about Bashful Belding's conduit to the fast life.

  Before I could return to the index section to look for anything on William Houck Vidal, the announcement that the library was closing in fifteen minutes came blaring out of a ceiling speaker. I collected my two books and as many unread periodicals as I could carry, made a beeline for the photocopy machines, and spent the next ten minutes feeding dimes. Then I went downstairs and used my faculty card to check out the books. Armed with my treasures, I headed home.

  A WHITE VW Rabbit was parked in front of my carport, blocking the Seville. A young woman slouched against it, reading a book.

  When she saw me she sprang up.

  "Hi! Dr. Delaware?"

  "Yes."

  "Dr. Delaware? I'm Maura Bannon? From the Times? The Dr. Ransom story? I wondered if I could talk to you—just for a minute?"

  She was tall and stick-skinny, about twenty, with a long freckled face that needed finishing. She wore yellow sweats and white running shoes. Her pageboy hairdo was dyed orange with pink overtones, the same color as the lashes around her light-brown eyes. She had a marked overbite with a toothpick-wide gap between the upper incisors.

  The book in her hand was Wambaugh's Echoes in the Darkness and she'd flagged it in several places with yellow tags. Her nails were gnawed stubby.

  "How'd you find out where I live, Ms. Bannon?"

  "We reporters have our ways." She smiled. It made her look around twelve.

  When she saw I wasn't smiling back, she said, "There's a file on you at the paper. From a few years ago? When you were involved in catching those child molesters?"

  Privacy, the last luxury. "I see." At least Ned Biondi hadn't played fast and loose.

  "I could tell from reading the clippings on you that you're a dedicated person," she said. "Someone who doesn't like bullshit? And bullshit is what they're giving me."

  "Who is?"

  "My bosses. Everyone. First they tell me to forget the Ransom story. Now, when I ask to cover the Kruse murders, they give it to that dweeb Dale Conrad—I mean the guy never leaves his desk. He has about as much drive as a sloth on Quaaludes. When I tried to reach Mr. Biondi, his secretary told me he was out of town—off to Argentina, taking some Spanish course. Then she handed me an assignment to follow up a trained horse story—out in Anaheim?"

  A mild, warm breeze blew in from somewhere across the glen. It ruffled the tags in her book.

  "Interesting reading?" I said, holding my own books in a way that obscured their titles.

  "Fascinating. I want to be a crime writer—get into the core of good and evil? So I need to immerse myself in life-and-death issues. I figured I'd go with the best—the man was a cop, had a real solid experiential base. And the people in this one were so weird—outwardly respectable but totally crazed. Like the people in this case?"

  "Which case?"

  "Cases, actually. Dr. Ransom? Dr. Kruse? Two psychologists dying in the same week—two psychologists who were connected to each other. If they were connected in life, maybe in death too? Which means Ransom may have been murdered, don't you think?"

  "How were they connected?"

  She made a naughty-naughty gesture. "Come on, Dr. Delaware, you know what I'm talking about. Ransom was one of Kruse's students. More than that—a prize student. He was her doctoral committee chairman."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Sources. C'mon, Dr. Delaware, stop being coy. You're a graduate of the same program. You knew her, so chances are you knew him, too, right?"

  "Very thorough."

  "Just doing the job. Now could you please talk to me? I'm not giving up on this story."

  I wondered how much she actually knew and what to do with her.

  "Want some coffee?" I said.

  "Do you have tea?"

  Once inside the house, she said, "Camomile, if you've got it," and immediately began inspecting the decor. "Nice. Very L.A."

  "Thanks."

  Her gaze shifted to the pile of papers and unopened mail on the table an
d she sniffed. I realized the place had taken on a stale, unlived-in smell.

  "Live alone?" she asked.

  "For the moment." I went into the kitchen and stashed my research materials in a cupboard, fixed her a cup of tea and myself a cup of instant coffee, put all of it on a tray with cream and sugar, and brought it into the living room. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa. I sat down facing her.

  "Actually," I said, "I was off campus by the time Dr. Kruse came to the University. I graduated the year before."

  "Two months before," she said. "June of '74. I found your dissertation too." She flushed, realized she'd given away her "sources," and tried to recover by looking stern. "I'm still willing to bet you knew him."