Clea's Moon

by Edward Wright

  “They say she ran away.”

  “Maybe she did. That’s bad enough by itself. But I think Scotty was killed by somebody who’s involved with those photos. Maybe by the same sick piece of crap who took dirty pictures of Clea when she was a little girl. That means it could be a lot more serious than some girl running away from home. Maybe somebody’s taken her, maybe they’ve. . . .”

  “I get you. You want the police in this?”

  “They’re already in. Iris called them. Let them work, and I’ll work too.”

  “Bet you have her home quick.”

  “Be nice, wouldn’t it? You know, I don’t fool myself thinking she’s really my daughter. But I’m still worried about her. I got a right to be.”

  “Then good luck, amigo,” Mad Crow said. “Haven’t seen her in years, but she was always a nice little thing. I got a feeling that it’s not as serious as you think, that she’s just off having some fun, like that other time. That’s what youngsters do, right? She wants a taste of that sweet grass on the other side of the fence. Bet you a stack of chips she comes home on her own. Three more days.”

  “Maybe,” Horn said with a sigh. “A lot of things could happen to a sixteen-year-old girl out there. Before I came over here tonight, I spent some time on the Santa Monica Pier, just walking up and down. She used to love going there.”

  “I remember. She used to bust broncs on the carousel, right?”

  “I took her there on her birthday a couple of times. She’d try to ride the same white horse every time, ‘cause she said the color was a little like Raincloud. You should have seen her riding that thing, the way her face lit up. Anyway, there I was, walking around, kind of looking for her, hearing the music, watching all the couples enjoying themselves. But every girl I saw, I thought: Is this one happy, or is she in some kind of trouble? Are her folks worried about her?” He ground out his cigarette hard.

  “Come on,” Mad Crow said uneasily. “Ease up. I bet she’s off having a good time somewhere. She and some boy drove down to Tijuana—”

  “That’s not what I want to hear.”

  “Okay. Maybe that’s not what she’s doing. Tell you one thing: If I was her father, I’d think about keeping a tighter rein on her.”

  “Lock her up in her room, you mean?” Horn made a face. “She’s just a kid. Far as I know, this is only the second time she’s done this. She’s had three fathers in the last ten years. Let’s let her finish growing up.”

  Mad Crow held up his palms, I-surrender style. “Fine. So how’s the lovely Iris?”

  “I just saw her for a few minutes at the funeral. That guy she married is a rich pipefitter from Long Beach. They’ve got a place in Hancock Park, where the real estate’s not cheap. After bad luck with husbands One and Two, maybe she’s finally found herself a solid citizen.”

  “You were solid enough, at least until things went to hell. From what I hear, her real disaster was Number One, Wesley What’s-His-Name. You started to tell me about him once, but we ran out of beer, as I recall.”

  “Wendell. Wendell Brand. I don’t know much about him,” Horn said. “She showed me a couple of pictures. Nice-enough looking little guy. From what she told me, though, he didn’t have much personality or ambition. He was happy working behind the reception desk at the Hollywood Palms Hotel back when Scotty’s dad owned the place. Just a clerk. Sometime after Clea was born, she must’ve realized she’d made a mistake marrying him.”

  “So she dumped him,” Mad Crow said.

  “The year before I met her. He was sickly—TB, I think she said. He moved up to San Francisco to be with some relatives, and a few years later he died. I remember she went up for the funeral, because she’d always gotten along with his sisters. I thought it was pretty nice of her, considering.”

  Mad Crow was staring at him. “You know what I’m wondering?”

  “You’re wondering,” Horn drawled, “if Wendell had anything to do with the picture of Clea. Me too. Somebody took her up to the lodge.” His jaw set hard. “If it was him, it’s a good thing he’s dead now, ‘cause. . . .”

  “If Iris went to his funeral, that doesn’t sound like she thought of him as a child molester,” the Indian put in. “Anyway, not much chance of finding out now, I guess.”

  A woman walked unsteadily from the bar over to the jukebox and put in a nickel. Soon the lounge was full of the sounds of a whining Hawaiian electric guitar. Horn winced.

  “I keep going back to Scotty and how he died,” he said. “Let’s say Wendell and Scotty’s father were playing with little girls, taking their pictures and all those other things. If you look at the photos, you can tell there were at least three men there. Let’s say three. That means there’s somebody else out there. And since I think Scotty was killed for the pictures, that means whoever is out there is not just hiding, he’s killing people, to keep their little games secret.” Don’t think of Clea, he said to himself.

  “I think I see where this is going, and I’m going to tell you something you should already know,” Mad Crow said evenly. “Those movies we made were just pretend. We never really lassoed bad hombres and brought ‘em in to be tried by the territorial judge. We never shot it out with a bunch of rustlers up in some box canyon. Those were just stories—”

  “Come on,” Horn tried to break in.

  “I mean it. We probably thought we were hard guys, because we rode horses fast and the other guys always fell down when we threw a punch. But we were just actors.” He stressed the word, as if Horn was hard of hearing. “I’m a businessman now, and I’m getting a belly from all the good meals I can afford. You’re a guy who needs to keep his nose clean, comprende? If you know anything about somebody killing people, take it to the police.”

  “I don’t get along with the police. And why would they listen to some half-assed hunch of mine?”

  Mad Crow leaned toward him. “If you stick your fool neck out and get in trouble, they might just put you away again. If that happens, who’s going to collect for me?”

  When Horn didn’t answer, the Indian looked around for their waitress. “I thought we came here to have a good time,” he said. He lifted his glass and drained it. “Here’s to all the husbands of the lovely Iris,” he said dramatically. He spotted the waitress, waved her over, and ordered two more. “And one for Annie,” he said, gesturing toward the front door.

  “Annie can’t drink on the job,” the waitress said.

  “Then make it a lemonade.” Mad Crow’s silver bracelet glinted as he placed some money on her tray. “Keep it.”

  Portuguese Annie was the South Seas’ legendary greeter / hostess / bouncer. Weighing in somewhere north of two-fifty, she sat planted on a stool just inside the front door. Often the first sight to greet patrons was the blue and crimson anchor tattooed on Annie’s enormous bicep. To hear Mad Crow tell it, she had once drop-kicked an unruly drunk all the way across the sidewalk, where he bounced off a taxi.

  Somewhere along the way, Horn had learned that she had been born Mary Ann Rourke, and she seemed to enjoy it when he addressed her as Mary Ann. He hadn’t been in the South Seas since before he was sent up, and when he and the Indian had come in this afternoon, she grinned and said, “Hey, gunslinger.”

  The beers arrived. “So, the Mick still own this joint?” Horn asked.

  Mad Crow nodded.

  “I heard you two weren’t getting along. Think I should have picked a different place for us to meet?”

  “No, it’s all right. We got it straightened out. He wanted a piece of the casino, and I didn’t want him in. It was just business. All settled now. Besides, he hardly ever comes in this early.” Mad Crow’s eyes idly followed a grass skirt as it went by. “When you called, you said you needed something.”

  “Right. Can I use Douglas? For addresses and stuff. It should take only a few days.” Do
uglas Greenleaf was one of those Mad Crow called his “Dog Soldiers,” Oglala Sioux cousins, nephews, and more distant relatives who did various jobs for him. Greenleaf was married to the sister of an L.A. cop, and one of his gambling buddies worked in the Department of Motor Vehicles. When chasing skips, Horn often asked him to run a name, a license plate, or a phone number.

  Mad Crow hesitated a moment. “Sure, why not?” he said finally. “Just don’t overload him, okay? He still works for me.”

  “I know. Appreciate it.” Horn looked up. “I think the Mick needs to get his watch fixed.”

  “Hmm?” Mad Crow followed Horn’s eyes across the room, where he caught sight of Mickey Cohen approaching.

  “Now don’t bust up the place,” the mobster said when he reached their table. “You two go in a saloon, you always bust up the place. I seen some of those movies. Neither one of you guys could act worth a crap.”

  “Hello, Mick,” said Mad Crow.

  “My girls treating you all right?” Mickey Cohen was short and squat, with a round, chipmunk-cheeked face and a cupid’s bow mouth that clashed with his eyes, which were blank and heavy-browed. He wore an expensive linen jacket over a silk sport shirt, buttoned to the neck, along with razor-creased slacks and two-tone shoes.

  “Just fine,” Mad Crow said. He seemed ill at ease.

  “I hear you got set up with a new partner,” Cohen said, leaning slightly over Mad Crow’s side of the table. His right hand was buried in his pants pocket, and Horn could hear the rhythmic jingling of keys.

  “That’s right,” the Indian said with a smile. “You know, just a business decision.”

  “Just business,” Cohen echoed, nodding, his face still expressionless. “Maybe we’ll do business sometime.”

  “Sure.” Mad Crow studied the tabletop as he wiped at a damp spot with his napkin.

  Cohen turned to Horn. “How about you? Big Chief doesn’t like me. Maybe you and I, we can do business. I hear you’re a hotshot collector. You want to come collect for me?”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  Cohen’s face registered no change. “They show any of your movies up in the joint, or they got better taste than that?”

  “No, the place was too high-brow,” Horn said. “Mostly old Shirley Temple movies, so the boys wouldn’t get all stirred up.”

  “She stirs me up,” Cohen said. “She’s legal now, but even when she was jailbait, she stirred me up.” The jingling in his pocket grew more vigorous. “She ever walks in here, I’ll tell her I got something for her.”

  Horn got up. “Guess I should go,” he said to Mad Crow. “Coming?”

  Outside, they stood for a moment by the Indian’s white Cadillac convertible, which gleamed in the multicolored light from the neon sign over the South Seas’ entrance. The seats were covered in pinto hide.

  “You’re a man of understatement, aren’t you?” Horn said, nodding toward the car.

  “Hell, people expect me to act like this. It’s good for business.”

  “So who’s your new partner?”

  “Nobody you know,” Mad Crow shrugged. “He’s from Reno. And he’s only got a minority interest, so the place is still mine. The Reno crowd’s been sniffing around for a while now, and it seemed better to let them get their nose under the tent than to partner up with somebody like the Mick.”

  “Don’t know why you’d say that,” Horn said. “He’s such a sweetheart.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt you to be polite to him, though. You could use a few more friends.”

  “Maybe. I’m just not in the mood to hear anybody talk about jailbait right now, you know?”

  “Sure.” Mad Crow punched him lightly on the shoulder. “I been wondering, though. Even though I always admired the lovely Iris, she cleaned you out good and proper. I’m surprised you’re helping her out. After a divorce like yours, some guys would be real bitter.”

  “Who says I’m helping her out?”

  “All right, you’re not. You okay for money?”

  “For now. Got my cut from old Buddy Taro.”

  “Come back to work when you’re ready,” Mad Crow said. “And don’t worry about the little girl. You’ll find her.”

  “Sure. See you.”

  “Hey, did I ever tell you I saw Maggie? It was at a horse show a couple of months ago, and she was looking good. Said to say hi. I bet she wouldn’t mind if you gave her a call sometime, get caught up on. . . .”

  But Horn was already walking away.

  * * *

  He wanted to resume his search the next morning, but he felt under pressure to finish the job up the hill. He couldn’t afford to antagonize Harry Flye and risk losing the cabin. So he spent several hours working on Ricardo Aguilar’s old swimming pool. By early afternoon he had cleaned it out down to the concrete, and he loaded the accumulated trash in his car and drove it down the canyon to one of the big public trash barrels by the highway. He fixed himself a late lunch, and as he ate, the name of one of Clea’s friends suddenly surfaced in his memory. A boy her age named Peter Binyon had lived with his parents not far away from the Horns’ place in the Valley. From age 10 on, they had played together, visited each other. Turning 12, they had started at the same junior high school. At some point Horn lost track of the boy, but he needed to find him now.

  After a half-hour, Douglas Greenleaf called him back with the address and phone number. The family had moved east of downtown, several miles away from their old address. He called the number and got Peter’s mother, a woman he had never known well. Unsure how she would feel about hearing from him, he told her he was doing a survey for the Board of Education and needed to check some information with her son.

  “He’s working this summer,” she said proudly. She told him where.

  He cleaned up quickly, put on a fresh shirt, and left. It was mid-afternoon. The traffic began building on Sunset as he approached downtown, the smell of auto exhaust grew more intense, and Horn was reminded of how much the city had changed in just a few years.

  Before the war, he and Iris had a little ranch out in the San Fernando Valley, a few acres of lawn and pasture and horse corrals almost surrounded by citrus groves. Back then, it seemed that wherever you went in Los Angeles, you were never more than a twenty-minute drive from open land or the ocean. When he came back from the war, though, that sprawling adolescent of a city he’d known had matured into something bigger and rougher and less forgiving, where the scent of orange blossoms now had to fight it out with the smells of the automobile. A few years ago they had finished a wide new road connecting L.A. with Pasadena to the northeast, something called a parkway. They were working on others, because now this city was in a hurry.

  Wouldn’t mind one of those parkways right now, he thought as he caught sight of City Hall up ahead, white and sharp-topped, the colossus of downtown. Twenty minutes later, he parked by a loading dock in the warehouse district near the railroad tracks in downtown L.A., a few miles southeast of the white tower. The warehouse was owned by a toy company. Inside, a foreman told him where to find Peter Binyon. He spotted him down a row of high shelves, wrestling crates onto a hand cart. “Hey, Peter,” he said.

  The boy was wearing dungarees and an undershirt and was sweating in the still air of the building. He was much bigger than Horn remembered, three inches taller and shoulders turning to muscle. The young face had matured into something lumpier, with the remnants of old acne scars.

  “It’s Pete,” the boy spat out in a tone that said, I use a tough guy’s name now.

  “Okay, Pete. Do you remember me?”

  Pete squinted. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “You’re Clea’s dad.”

  “That’s right. Can you take a break for just a minute? I’d like to ask you something.”

  The boy looked around. “I guess.” They stepped out onto the sh
ade of the loading dock, where a carton had burst and spilled out small cast-metal soldiers. They lay in a jumble, frozen in various fighting postures—throwing grenades, aiming rifles, loading mortars. One planted a flag, the red and white stripes glinting on the metallic surface. Horn stooped and picked up an officer’s figure, its right arm pointing out some imaginary enemy position.

  “You can take that,” Pete said. “We pick up stuff around here. I take things home for my little brother.”

  “Thanks,” Horn said as he put the figure back. “I guess you know I’m not Clea’s dad any more.”

  The boy nodded, looking wary. You probably know some other things about me too, Horn thought, then went on:

  “I had to tell your mother a little story, since I wasn’t sure she’d want me talking to you. But the reason I’m here, I’m worried about Clea. Her mother tells me she’s run away, and I want to help them find her. I’m hoping you might have some ideas about where she went, who she might be with.”

  The boy laughed. “She and me, we aren’t exactly friends any more.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Oh, I got the idea her mother didn’t like me after a while. Maybe thought I wasn’t good enough to go out with her little girl.” It sounded like Iris, he thought. She wasn’t a snob, but when it came to Clea, she wanted only the best for her.

  “Did you go out with her?”

  “Once, I did.” Pete pulled out a pack of Old Golds and lit one. He handled the cigarette carefully between thumb and forefinger, like a new smoker. “She told me her mother wouldn’t let her do it again.”

  “What about Clea? Did she like you?”

  “Yeah, I think so. She was all right. I liked her. But people go different ways, you know? I got a new girlfriend now.”

  “Good for you. So who was she close to? Who were her best friends, the last year or so?”

  Pete thought, scuffing his shoe on the rough flooring of the dock. “Well, there was Addie Webb.”