by Paul Neuhaus
“Well, yeah, duh. He’s crazy. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
My friend said to me, “I’m gonna get a man on the door. Why don’t you introduce yourself?” He picked up the phone on the nightstand and made a call. Noah’s sister and I were left looking at one another.
I held out my hand. “Hi, Nikki. I’m Jack Huggins. I’m a private detective. I met your brother yesterday.”
She took my hand and shook it, but her eyes narrowed. “Are you the guy? The last one that saw him alive?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Just tell me one thing: Did you lure Liam down there? Are you the reason Noah’s dead?”
The question tapped into the pseudo-guilt from my dreams. “Liam’s the one that beat you up? Tall guy. Thick hair? Prematurely gray?”
She nodded.
“Why would you think I lured Liam there? I liked your brother, and I never would’ve knowingly put him in harm’s way.”
Nikki shrugged her shoulders. “Because Noah was shacked up for months, safe as a bug in a rug. Until you came along and now he’s dead.”
“That’s a circumstantial case. Unless I hear something different, we’re talking about a case of bad luck—for Noah and for me.”
Nguyen was unconvinced. “Right. Okay.”
Dennis got off the phone but said nothing. He was content for me to do the driving. At least temporarily. Crafty son of a bitch.
“Does Liam have a last name?” I said. “How do you know him?”
“Liam O'Connor’s his name. I met him through Noah. We dated briefly, but our relationship was mostly… spiritual.”
I looked at Hill briefly, but he remained an observer. “What do you mean ‘spiritual’?”
Nikki had a brief fit of coughing though she was polite enough to cover her mouth. When she was done, she resumed talking. “Noah toyed briefly with joining The Aetheric Concordance. For reasons I probably don’t have to tell you.” She looked back and forth between the two of us. I was willing to bet Dennis didn’t know what she was talking about, but he was content enough to ride it out . “This was months ago. He asked me if I wanted to tag along. I did. We went for evals together. Read the literature. Got proselytized to. Ironically, for him it didn’t take and for me it did. I stuck with it. I got to know Liam. He became a mentor. Although, it wasn’t hard to see why. He wanted sex. I was willing to give it to him since the Concordance felt like a new, better direction. Liam was high up in the pecking order. Being associated with him gave me luster.”
“Wait… So, you’re saying Liam O'Connor is a big shot airhead?”
Nikki’s whole face fell, and I realized I’d made a faux pas. “We don’t like being called that,” she said.
“Right. I’m sorry.”
“What’re you?”
“What do you mean what am I?”
“What religion are you.”
“I’m an agnostic.”
“What if I went around calling you a fence sitter and telling you to shit or get off the pot?”
“You’d be an asshole,” I said sheepishly.
“Right. Exactly. Don’t be so quick to disparage.”
I held up my palms in a show of surrender. “You’re right, you’re right. I’ll try to do better.” I glanced over at Dennis and he was beaming. His expression said, “It’s going well, don’t you think?”
Nikki turned to the cop. “Why is he interrogating me, anyway? Aren’t you the officer assigned to the case?”
I leaned into her umbrage. “Yeah, Denny. Why am I interrogating her? Aren’t you the officer assigned to the case?”
Hill gave us both a sour look. “I’m letting Mr. Huggins lead because he was the last person to talk to your brother. Also, he knows things he’s not telling us and I wanna make sure every little morsel is out in the open.”
Nguyen looked back and forth between us as she spoke. “What’s he know that he’s not telling? His client’s name? Unless I miss my guess, that’s strictly between him and his client. I don’t care about that, and I don’t know why you would either, Sergeant Hill.”
“Lieutenant, actually.”
She started to go on to something else, did a double take, and looked back at Dennis. “Lieutenant? Shouldn’t you be behind a desk? Aren’t you administration?”
“Not necessarily. In this case, I’m— How is it you know so much about the LAPD org chart?”
“My uncle’s a Detective in Pomona.”
Hill brightened. “Oh, well, give him my regards. I got a buddy over in Pomona. Do you know Bryan Nutting?”
“No, but I bet my uncle does. He—“
I interjected. “Look could we save this for the policeman’s ball? I’m afraid the medics are gonna come in and kick us out. So the patient can get some rest.”
My friend looked embarrassed, but he knew I wasn’t wrong. He extended a hand toward Nikki, inviting her to continue.
“Was I talking last?” she said. “I was, wasn’t I?”
“You were,” I replied.
“What was I talking about?”
“What I know that I’m not sharing…”
“Right.” The girl went back to addressing both of us, but mostly she was talking to Dennis. “What does he know that he isn’t telling that’s relevant? That Noah was gay? That he was dating Tad Albright? Any yahoo reading between the lines could’ve guessed that from what I’ve said already.”
“There you go, Dennis. Now you know everything I know.” I knew damn well he didn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
He gave me a cross look. “I know damn good and well I don’t know everything you know. Do me a favor and keep asking questions until you need to tag team me.”
“Tag team you?” Nguyen said, smiling. “Isn’t that a sexual thing?”
“Oh, fer fuck’s sake. Can we just get on with it?” Denny said.
“Now, now,” Nikki replied. “Don’t get cranky.”
“He’s not cranky. It’s gas.”
Hill sighed and threw his head back. “Weren’t you the one worried about the medics coming back?”
“Right, right. Noah was hiding because he didn’t want the media getting hip to Tad’s life choices, right? That was the state of affairs long before Tad got himself kidnapped…”
Nikki Nguyen and Dennis Hill said the same four words at the same time and I knew I’d made a boo boo. “Tad Albright’s been kidnapped?!”
My head shrank into my shoulders, turtle style. “I… can neither confirm nor deny that.”
My friend put his hands on his hips and glared at me. “Jack, that’s big. That’s Federal. That’s not something you or anyone else fucks around with.”
“All I know is he’s MIA and my client wants him found by Monday sun-up.”
“Jack, you’re being crazy irresponsible,” Dennis said. “What if the kidnappers kill him over the weekend? Do you want that on your ledger? I can’t keep this under my hat. I gotta call in the Bureau. As soon as we get outta here.”
“We’ll talk about it in the car. But let’s get back what we’re here for.” Downcast at my lip slip, I turned back to Nikki. “Your bro seemed like a bright kid. He wouldn’t’ve been satisfied with always being Albright’s secret stash. Either the truth would come out, or Tad’d get bored and move on to someone else. Why was Noah so willing to go along with being a kept man?”
Nikki took her time answering. She even made a b-b-b-b noise by flapping her lower lip with her finger. She didn’t want to tell, but realized maybe she didn’t have a choice. Finally, she broke her silence. “Because it wasn’t like that. Tad loved Noah. He wanted the two of them to have the same kind of relationship any other two people might have. He was thinking about coming out publicly. He was thinking about leaving the Aetheric Concordance.”
“Really?” Dennis and I said simultaneously.
The airheads didn’t take kindly to apostates. In fact, those who left the church were generally harassed in ways both legal and not. I
also knew they weren’t especially keen on homosexuality. In fact, they considered it a disease of the spirit. Still, some of their biggest congregants were gay, and they did what they could to keep that under wraps. They were known for their ability to sanitize the reputations of their people. Prior to yesterday, I hadn’t known Tad was gay. Certain things were falling into place. “Albright’s marriage to Scarlett Hennesy was a sham arranged by the church.”
“Yeah, of course,” Nikki said.
“And now, recently, Tad’s been thinking about bailing on the Concordance and the Concordance got wind of it…”
“That’s what Noah told me.”
“And this guy Liam O'Connor is associated with the church…”
“He’s more than associated. He’s—I’d call him a pillar. He was J.D. LaRue’s personal security in the couple of years before J.D. died.”
I could tell we’d lost Dennis. He spoke up to fill in the gap. “J.D. LaRue?”
“James d'Artagnan LaRue. Founder of the Aetheric Concordance,” I replied.
He smirked. “Really? d'Artagnan?”
“‘Fraid so.”
Nikki shrank down further underneath her covers. She pulled them up to her chin. “I know the Concordance can be litigious,” she said. “I even heard they were underhanded in getting tax-exempt status, but murder? That sounds like a bridge too far. I told you I knew Liam O'Connor.”
“How well did you feel you knew him when he showed up at your hotel room early this morning?”
“That was a side of him I’d never seen before. Why do you think he came after me? I wasn’t directly involved in the whole Tad and Noah thing.”
“Are your parents still alive, Nikki?”
She shook her head. There was something she and I had in common.
“Are you close with your uncle? The Pomona flatfoot?”
“Mmm… Not really.”
“So, Noah was the only family you had left, correct?”
“Yes.”
“How close are you? In age I mean.”
“Oh, we’re twins,” she replied. “Anyway, we were.”
Ouch. That’d make the connection even closer. “I’m guessing, since the two of you tried out a religion together, you were fairly tight?”
“Oh, very tight. Since we were born.”
“Once you’d recovered from Noah’s death, you would’ve done something about it, right? Worked with the police or maybe even hired a private detective of your own?”
“Fer sure, yeah. I mean he was my brother. There’s no way I would’ve let something like that stand.”
I gave her a kindly smile. “Remember how, just a minute ago, you were wondering why Liam O'Connor would wanna come after you?”
Nikki Nguyen turned to Dennis. “Is there any way I can get two officers on my door?”
Hill nodded. “Damn right.”
Dennis and I headed back to his car. Mason Welk was told to wait in the hospital lobby until the men showed up to watch Nikki.
“I assume you’re going to take me back to the Holiday Inn,” I said, skirting the gorilla in the room.
“Hold on, buddy. I’m not taking you anywhere until I put in a call to the FBI.”
“C’mon, Dennis. Do you have to do that?”
“You know damn good and well I do. This isn’t something we can play loosey goosey with. Not only is it a probable kidnapping, it’s a probable kidnapping of maybe the most famous man in the world—although I’m not sure how I feel about him now that I know he’s a gay.”
“That’s not very woke.”
“It’s not that,” he said, annoyed. “It’s just that the image—the tough-guy image—no longer tracks in my head with reality.”
“Did you have any idea Tad Albright was gay ten minutes ago?”
“No.”
“Then, couldn’t it be argued he’s a helluva thespian? You thought he was just to the right of Bronson.”
My friend mulled that for just a moment. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“Then stop worrying about tracking things and just appreciate the man’s craft.”
We got into the car and Dennis immediately picked up the radio’s handset. The digression about Albright’s sexuality hadn’t deterred him.
“Dennis. I’m asking you as a personal favor…”
“Who’s your client? It’s gotta come back to that. He’s gotta have a personal stake in Tad’s disappearance.”
“You know I can’t tell you that. I’ve got a professional reputation to worry about.”
“And I’ve got an Internal Affairs investigation to worry about.”
“What Internal Affairs Investigation?”
“The one they’re gonna open when they figure out I didn’t call the feds. Believe it or not, that’s a huge breach of protocol. LAPD takes a dim view when one of their own forgets to enforce the law.”
“Maybe you could ‘forget’ you heard me mention the alleged kidnapping.”
“Maybe I could… If you hadn’t blurted it out in front of a witness. Face it: you screwed the pooch. If you wanted it on the down low, you shouldn’t have blurted it out.”
I whistled between my teeth. “Yeah. I’m a blurter from way back, aren’t I?”
“‘Fraid so, pal. You were a blurter in high school. Remember when we found Mr. Bremmer and Mrs. Kowalski were diddling regular like in the kiln room and you spilled the beans in front of Principal Wigget?”
“I do, I remember that,” I said with real regret. Turned into a real shit show for Bremmer and Kowalski. And I liked Bremmer and Kowalski.”
“Why do you do it?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. I’m the king of saying the wrong thing at the absolute worst time.”
“It’s kind of a shitty trait for a private dick.”
“It really is.”
Dennis cradled the handset. “Okay, how about this? What if you and I were to hit the road? Say toward the Holiday Inn? What if, during that ride, you were to blurt out the name of your client along with anything else you think might make a good case for me not calling the Bureau?”
I bit my lower lip. “Drive, you son of a bitch.”
The Aetheric Concordance was born in the late 1960s and was, as we’ve seen, the brainchild of one James d'Artagnan LaRue. LaRue was… well, he was an interesting cat. He spent his teens and early twenties in and out of the penal system. In that respect, chapter one of his bio is like Charles Manson’s. After his last stint in the stir (for petty theft and crossing state lines with a minor—a Kansas girl named, I kid you not, Betty Lou), he decided to get himself straight. And so came the obligatory Time in the Military. Not surprisingly, J.D. did not get on well in our armed forces. Years of smacking back against authority didn’t exactly prepare him for twelve-mile hikes in the rain or peeling mountains of potatoes.
After a strangely vague dismissal from the army, our hero headed West. He landed first in San Francisco, joining the Summer of Love crowd in the Haight. Not unlike Manson, LaRue recognized a racket when he saw it. A bunch of disaffected, drugged-out kids far from home is a bonanza when you’re a certain kind of predator. Hell, the more I think about it, the more I realize James and Charlie shared certain elements of their M.O. As far as I know, LaRue never had anyone murdered, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had.
Manson formed a cult and so did LaRue—and I can’t say that one was any more rational than the other. One was based—if you believe former L.A. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi—on race wars and Beatles tunes. The other was based on achieving Universal Consciousness and communing with the Space People. One ended in the murders of at least six people and the long-term incarceration of the perpetrators while the other spawned a spiritual institution with billions of dollars in assets. If I’d been there, my money woulda been on Charlie, but you never know how things are gonna pan out.
“Aetheric” is, according to Google, “the ancient Greek personification of the clear upper air of the sky” and a “Concorda
nce” is and agreement. So, I guess the name indicates a pact with the creatures who live in space or some other hippy dippy bullshit. Either way, it’s just the sort of drivel you’d expect to come out of the City by the Bay in ’68. I can’t rattle off the specifics of the dogma since I never gave enough of shit to find out, but I know it’s pay-to-play. To advance through the church hierarchy, you gotta drop some serious dimes. Basically, there’s a system of gates and every gate has a toll. As someone without a dog in the religion fight, it sounds like a scam to me. I’m an agnostic because, at a very early age, I came to a couple of conclusions (and remember, these are the observations of a ten-year-old): 1) There sure are a lot of religions, and they all think they’re right. They can’t all be right, can they? and 2) Why does God need money? It seems like—at least according to the tacky men on TV—that God needs tons of dough. That kinda killed it for me.
Anyway, the Concordance has always been one of the shadiest outfits. Not only is it a pyramid scheme, they bullied the U.S. Government into giving them tax-exempt status. Again, I don’t know all the details, but the word ‘extortion’s’ been bandied about. Also, there’s the way they treat apostates and the curious press. If you left the Church or were unduly curious about the way it conducted its affairs, you were in for a tsunami of harassment.
Anyway, if I had my druthers, I’d keep far away from the Aetheric Concordance at all times. Right then, I didn’t have my druthers.
I was feeling ambivalent when Dennis dropped me off at my Jeep. I’d had to spill all the missing pieces from my case. I’d named Randall Dunphey, and I’d also mentioned that Albright seemed to go with his so-called “swarthy” kidnappers willingly. That last tidbit was enough for Hill to put off calling the FBI. I had that one small thing helping me, but it couldn’t last. Then again, Hill told me he’d have to tip the G men on Monday but my investigation would be over by then.
As I got into my ride, I contemplated my next move. The biggest revelation of the morning was that Liam O'Connor was likely Noah Nguyen’s killer. Dennis said he would work that angle, and that was only appropriate. I was trying to find a missing person and had neither the interest nor the tools to nab a murderer. With any luck, the police would at least keep O'Connor out of my way while I located Albright.