by Eve Goldberg
“I thought you were glad I was on it. Considering.”
“Yeah, well I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say I saw the light. Some battles are worth fighting. This one isn’t.”
“I appreciate your advice, Detective, but I need to see this thing through to the end.”
Terekov sighed. “Just like Lou.”
“So, for Lou then. The plates.”
“Let it go. I’m saying this for your own good.”
“I believe it, but I’m meeting a guy tonight and it would help if I could get a better handle on him and what he’s up to.”
“Who’s this you’re meeting?”
“Movie big shot. Victor Dargin.”
Terekov sighed again. “Want another piece of advice?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not? Do you know something that I should know, Detective?”
“Just what I said already.”
“I need to do this.”
“When you really think about it, Ryan, there’s very little we need to do in this life.”
“Yeah, I know the line: Death and taxes.”
“Who said anything about taxes?”
After we hung up, I switched off the lights and sat in the dark for a while. I watched the red neon Bail Bonds sign blink on and off. I had to get moving to make my 2:00 AM meet-up with Dargin, but I wanted to think it all through first. Tonight was not a night I could afford to make any rookie mistakes.
I called Max Fisher. The phone rang and rang and rang. Finally, someone picked up.
“My dad’s sleeping, Ryan,” Allison said. “It’s after midnight.”
“Could you get him anyway? It’s important. A case he’s helping me with.”
“Wow, you’re really working hard these days.”
“Yeah.”
“I respect that. You know, it used to bother me that you didn’t seem to care about work, about making something of yourself.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Not that long. Why the change?”
“Necessity, I guess. With Lou down for the count and all. Listen, Allison, I can’t really talk now. I’m jammed for time.”
She ignored me. “My dad says you’re working on an interesting case. With historical implications. Maybe we can get together for dinner sometime, just you and me, and you can tell me about it.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said vaguely. “Could you get Max now? It’s a time thing.”
Silence. Then, coldly: “I’ll get him.”
I drove the deserted coast highway out to Malibu. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Allison at Chez Fisher. As a matter of fact, I hoped she had gone back to sleep.
“Hi, Ryan.”
Allison stood in the doorway. Her long blond hair glowed around the edges from the light behind her. She was wearing only an oversized men’s blue Pendleton shirt. The top buttons were undone. The tails hung about half-way down her smooth, tanned thighs.
She noticed me checking her out. It would be hard not to.
“Look familiar?” Allison said with a sexy smile.
“That’s my shirt.”
She nodded. “I kept it. I always loved this shirt.”
I didn’t know what to do or say. For so long I had secretly hoped to get back with Allison. I told myself a thousand times it was never going to happen. I told myself a thousand times to forget about her. Now, suddenly, I had a chance. Right this minute. All I had to do was take one step . . . kiss her . . .
“Oh,” Allison said, “Max asked me to give you this.”
She held out Victor Dargin notebook. I hadn’t noticed that she was holding it. I guess I wasn’t looking at her hands. I took the notebook.
And just like that, the spell was broken.
“Thanks,” I said. I looked at my watch. “Well, I gotta go.”
“What’s wrong, Ryan? You seem so distant.”
“It’s the job. I’ve got to be someplace. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“I understand.” She smiled that sexy smile again. “There’s always later.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think our time has passed.”
Allison’s smile disappeared. She looked genuinely hurt. Immediately, I wanted to soften the blow.
“I mean, like you’ve said yourself, our lives are different now. And you’re going to Paris—”
“Or Mississippi,” she interjected.
“Right. Or Mississippi. So really, there’s no point in trying to start something anyway.”
Allison stood there and looked at me intently. “Are you seeing someone else?”
“No,” I said immediately. “It’s not that at all.”
I thought to myself: Or is it? If I hadn’t met Julie, would I have jumped at another chance to be with Allison? That was something I’d never truly know. Because I had met Julie. I had met someone who was as intelligent and as beautiful as Allison, someone who, when I was honest with myself, I had more in common than with Allison. Someone I wouldn’t forever be wondering if she thought she was better than me or not.
We stood there for a while longer, not saying anything. Allison tossed back her hair.
“Let’s talk about it later,” she said. “We could sneak into the club and swim in the pool late at night when nobody else is around. Like we used to.”
CHAPTER 45
The Lick Pier parking lot sucked up the moonlight, making it even darker than the inky sea just beyond it. Someone had smashed all the streetlights up on their high concrete poles long ago, and the city had never bothered to fix them. All part of the downward slide in this no-man’s land between Santa Monica and Venice.
I made a wide looping U across the buckled blacktop, and parked at the back edge of the lot. My windshield faced the Boardwalk, rear tires touching the sand. I looked at my watch. A quarter to two. I had swung by my apartment on the way here and still made it in time.
Now I surveyed the area. The Boardwalk was deserted. The liquor store and the pawn shop were both closed up for the night. The only other car in the lot was a rusted-out Chevy Impala with flat tires that looked like it hadn’t moved in months. To my left, at the foot of the pier, was the Aragon Ballroom. Once home to Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music, the Aragon now sat shuttered and decaying. Broken windows, graffitied walls, fragments of glass and plaster littering the ground around the abandoned monolith. A lonely K, last remains of Welk, was still affixed to the marquee.
When I was a kid, the Aragon was packed and bustling. On weekends, squares from all over L.A. came to dance to Welk’s good-timey polkas and waltzes in the immense chandeliered ballroom. My buddies and I sometimes hung around outside, gawking at the fancy cars and tuxedoed musicians. Eventually some broadcasting genius turned the scene into a TV show. “And now, direct from the Aragon Ballroom in Pacific Ocean Park, here is your host, the music maker himself . . . .” The TV show included a machine that spewed soap bubbles across the screen when the band played its cheesy numbers. The program was such a huge hit that they moved it over to the Hollywood Pavilion. That’s when the Aragon closed its doors. And they stayed shut ever since.
I rolled down the window and listened to the waves break beneath the pier. In the distance I heard the clatter-click-clatter-click of the rollercoaster over at Pacific Ocean Park. P-O-P was Santa Monica’s answer to Disneyland — a nautical-themed amusement park with rides like the Mystery Island Banana Train, Davy Jones’ Locker and Mr. Octopus. The park closed at 10:00 PM, so the clatter-click must have been the maintenance crew working through the night.
After a while, the rollercoaster stopped. I listened as the surf battered away at the wood pilings under the pier. Eventually, I thought, the ocean will win. One day, none of this will be here. The pier, the Aragon, the rollercoaster, the pawn shop and the liquor store, and the Boardwalk itself will all be swallowed up by the sea.
At 2:0
0 AM sharp, Dargin’s green Jag pulled into the parking lot. The Jag cruised slowly towards my car. It stopped about ten yards away, and Victor Dargin stepped out. I got out of my car and waited by the driver’s side door.
“Nice spot you’ve got here,” Dargin sneered when he reached my car. “I’ll bet it really sparkles in the sunlight.”
“I’m gonna pat you down,” I said.
“What is this, some kind of surfer boy’s High Noon meets Asphalt Jungle fantasy? I don’t carry a gun. I’m a movie producer, not a gangster.”
I patted him down. When I finished, Dargin took his time adjusting his suit jacket and getting the crease in his pant legs just right.
“So where’s my property, buddy boy?”
“In the car.”
“Get it.”
I opened the rear door to the Falcon, reached onto the backseat, and brought out Dargin’s notebook and manila envelope. I gave him the envelope. As soon as he had it in his hand, he frowned. He opened the envelope and looked inside.
“What the —!?”
He turned the envelope upside down. A stream of ash cascaded onto the ground.
“Is this your idea of a joke? Where are my photos?”
“You’re looking at ’em.”
Dargin stood there for a moment. He stared down at the pile of ash, then back up at me.
“Why you no good . . . ”
He took a step towards me. I took a step back. My shoe crunched over broken glass.
Dargin stopped. He stared at me hard, his face contorting with anger. But he didn’t take another step.
“Why?” he grunted.
“Because Steve Sutton’s my client and that’s what he would have wanted me to do.”
Dargin shook his head in disgust. “Fuck you. Just give me the notebook.”
“Not until I’m totally sure there’s no more of these photos . . . anywhere.”
“You destroyed the negatives didn’t you?”
“Yup.”
“So what more do you want?”
“The photographer. I don’t figure it was you shimmying up a tree in the Hollywood Hills with a long-lens Nikon. Who took the photos of Jordan and Sutton?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“It is if that person has copies.”
“Look, let me simplify things for you: Nobody gives a damn about Steve Sutton. Nobody does, nobody ever did. He was just . . . hmmm, how do I say it . . . a civilian casualty.”
“You make it sound like a war.”
“For Christ’s sake!” Dargin snapped. “Are you truly that ignorant? Of course there’s a war. Call it the Cold War, call it anything you want, but if it weren’t for patriotic people like me fighting it, our country would be overrun by the Russians by now. Or the Red Chinese. But maybe you like the idea of some slanty-eyed chink dictator in grey overalls running our country. No more free enterprise. No more democracy. No more freedom.”
“I don’t see the free in taking pictures of a homosexual and blackmailing him to snitch out his friends to HUAC.”
“So this is what it’s come to,” Dargin sneered. “An ignoramus PI giving me a lecture on freedom.”
I liked Dargin calling me an ignoramus. The stupider he thought I was, the more he’d talk. Also, it gave me a chance to say some things that had been building up inside. Maybe it was getting to know Julie and Niles, maybe it was learning from Max about the blacklist and what it did to people, maybe it was everything put together, but I didn’t feel like giving Dargin and his bigoted, fearful opinions a free ride. Not tonight.
“I don’t see how our country is any freer with Chip Jordan in his grave,” I said.
“Don’t you fucking pin that on me, buddy boy. He made that decision himself.”
“He was pushed.”
“Jordan cozied up to the Reds when it suited him, took their acting classes, starred in their pictures, walked their Commie picket lines. When truth-time came, he couldn’t take his lumps like a man.”
“What truth?”
“That he’s a fruit. A pinko faggot.”
“Who took the photos?”
Dargin shook his head. “Ancient history. Just give me the notebook.”
I held up his notebook and tapped it. “And who followed these people around? Where’d all this blackmail stuff come from?”
“Blackmail? You toss that word around like you know what it means. Blackmail’s that fruit Panozzo trying to make a few bucks off something he had no business having in the first place. What I did wasn’t for money, it wasn’t for personal gain. Far from it. If I was selfish, just looking out for number one, I would have said no when my government called. I would have simply minded my own business, taken the easy route, cashed my fat pay check and bought the wife another mink. Someday you’ll thank me, and people like me, who stood up for our country when the Communists were threatening to take over. We drew a line in Hollywood. We said, ‘If you’re a Commie, you’re not welcome here.’ It sent a message to the entire country. I’m proud of what we did.”
“As far as I can see, what you’re proud of is sending out your spies to get information on people you disagreed with, so you could get them fired from their jobs.”
“My spies?!” Dargin laughed. “I should be so lucky! What do you think, that I dispatched an army of studio gofers to run around the country on their lunch break?”
I shrugged. “So who did follow them? Who took the photos?”
“One thing I’ll give you,” Dargin chucked, “you’re persistent.”
I waited. He said nothing. The waves kept rolling up onto the sand and ebbing back to sea.
“What about the notebook?” I said. “The blacklist’s over, so why are you still compiling notes on people? Right up into this year.”
“You never know when the studios may once again feel the need to weed out subversives.”
“Like Orson Welles?” I said sarcastically. “Or Hazel Scott? Big subversives.”
Dargin rolled his eyes. “Obviously, I’m wasting my breath, but for your information, Mr. Welles is about as dangerous as you can get. Under the guise of so-called ‘film,’ he’s spewing propaganda against our capitalist system. And Miss Scott? A covert Communist if I ever saw one. Now, just give me my property so we can call it a night. Your client has nothing to worry about. The photos are ash, and even if they weren’t, nobody gives a fuck about pansy-boy Sutton. He’s a nothing. A nobody. A worthless faggot who —”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. It was by the Aragon Ballroom, at the corner of the building, where the pier meets the sand. I turned towards the movement. A dark figure was rising up, emerging like a monster from the sea, now running, flopping overcoat, one arm pointed forward. A white flash emanated from the running figure. And a popping sound.
I dropped to the ground and dove under my car. I grabbed the .38 from my waistband, then came up into a crouch behind the open rear door.
Another flash of white and another pop. Victor Dargin screamed. He skittered back a few steps, his eyes and his mouth wide open.
The shooter was almost on us. His bone white hair caught the moonlight.
“Leon! No!” I shouted.
He shot again. Victor Dargin crumpled to the ground. He started dragging himself towards my car. Leon came to a stop and held his gun steady, aiming directly at Dargin’s torso.
“Put the gun down, Leon,” I said. “Put it down.”
He shot again. Victor Dargin stopped crawling. A split second later, I shot back. I wasn’t a sharp shooter, didn’t trust myself to knock the gun out of Leon’s hand like they do in the movies, so I shot low.
Leon let out a yelp. He bent down and grabbed his leg. His other leg buckled and he dropped to the blacktop. He sat on the ground, holding his injured leg. He looked at me in astonishment.
“Why’d you do that?” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Leon, are you crazy? You can’t go shooting people like that. Killing people.
”
“He was bad.”
I didn’t say anything. I was listening to the sirens in the distance. They were getting closer. Leon cocked his head to the side. He heard them too.
“Bad like the other one,” he said.
“Panozzo?”
He nodded. “They shouldn’t try to hurt the boss. It’s not right. He’s a good man. He helps people.”
Leon was still holding his gun. He wasn’t doing anything with it, but it was there. He pushed himself up from the ground and stood unsteadily.
“What are you gonna do?” I asked.
“No jail,” he said. “Maybe Yugoslavia.”
The sirens were getting louder. Leon turned and hobbled towards the shadows of the Aragon Ballroom. I stayed crouched between my car and the open door.
Moments later, a black and white came speeding down Rose. The squad car barreled into the parking lot and came to a skidding stop. Leon tried to run, but could only manage an awkward, lumbering limp.
“Police! LAPD! Stop where you are!” The shout came from a megaphone sticking out the side window of the squad car.
“Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon!”
Leon looked down at the gun in his hand. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined bewilderment. Then he put the gun to his temple and shot.
CHAPTER 46
Leon’s massive body blew sideways. His head struck the pavement with a sickening crack. The police megaphone went silent.
Moments later, another squad car and a white Savoy screeched into the lot. I heard car doors opening and closing, voices, a crackling police radio. Now footsteps running across the pavement. Detective Terekov and a uniformed cop came around the side of my car.
“You alright?” Terekov asked.
I nodded.
“Okay, stay there.”
Guns drawn, Terekov and the patrol cop inspected the scene. First Dargin, then Leon.
“Radio the station,” Terekov said to the patrol cop. “Two down at the Lick Pier.”
The cop jogged back to his squad car. I got up and joined the detective, who was aiming his flashlight beam at the hulking corpse lying on the blood-soaked blacktop.
“Who is he?” Terekov asked.