"Yeah, yeah. Right." He liked that one.
"So I've got a proposition for you." I reached into my wallet for a crisp hundred-dollar bill. "I'm giving you this hundred now to go over to the Glendale post office and stake out that box. There's a hundred more in it for each additional day it takes you and a five-hundred-buck bonus when you tell me whose box it is."
"Sounds great to me, pal. I'm your man."
It was a close race between Burckhardt and me to see who was out the door first. I felt better the moment I hit the street. It was a gorgeous day in early October, my favorite time of year in L.A., and the opening day of the new California Lottery. I went into the liquor store across the street and bought a ticket. It was kind of a bingo game and you had to get three of a kind to win. The first two numbers were $5,000.00, but the next four chances came up trumps when I scratched them off. I put it down to not-a-bad-start and got back into my car. In any case, I was off to Malibu to see Otis King, and just the thought of being near the ocean kept me in a good mood. On the way I stopped by the phone company's phone book library on Wilshire just to see if something resembling B for B popped up. There wasn't anything similar in the L.A. directories for the last five years. I also knew I should check the fictitious business name listings in the courthouse building on Hill Street, but it was sheer drudgery and I wished I had someone I could trust to do that. Sometimes I used my older son, Jacob, but he was in school now, getting ready for his college boards on Saturday.
It was then I thought of Chantal Barrault. Maybe she was serious about being a PI, One trip down to the court would cure her. Anyway, a woman like that would be crazy to have a listed phone number. I checked anyway. She wasn't crazy.
I kept thinking of Chantal Barrault as I drove out to Malibu. She only started to drift out of my mind as I came through the tunnel leading from the Santa Monica Freeway onto the Pacific Coast Highway. The minute I got down by the water, I always wondered why I didn't live there. Maybe it was fear of isolation, not living in the middle of things in West Hollywood, the newly incorporated capital of gay pride, gray power, and fresh lox. But I often thought that if I had someone to live with again, I would move out here, find a spot in those Malibu hills that look so much like Portugal, and watch the whales go by.
I certainly didn't have fantasies about living in that world-famous cordon sanitaire—the Malibu Colony. We all have our own level of ambition and mine just didn't run to living in a cluster of 110 $2 million-and-up houses with twenty-eight tennis courts.
Actually, like most things, the Colony was no longer what it once was-the seaside capital of movie glamour. The vicissitudes of the entertainment industry being what they are, some of the more expensive homes had been sold to jet-set refugees and petrodollar riffraff from places like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Now, with oil prices plunging, some of them would doubtless have to move on, to be replaced by whom? I wasn't sure.
I was musing on this subject as I drove up to the Colony gatehouse, which seemed to be modeled after those other imposing edifices that blocked the way into the movie studios themselves. In fact, it was just as easy to get into the Colony as onto a studio lot. All you needed was a knowing look, a fancy car, and perhaps the name and address of someone living within. I often thought it would be fun to put on a Fila jogging suit, rent one of those new Mercedes station wagons, park right on the narrow street that divides the pricier beachfront houses from the less costly landward properties, and start ripping off Mondrians while waving to my friends and neighbors.
Dr. Carl Bannister lived in 63A, a two-story redwood and glass structure on the landward side. The maxed-out funk of the Jesse Johnson Review was pounding through the walls at megadecibels on what must've been studio JBLs or Altecs when I approached. I banged extra hard on the door to be heard over the sonic boom, but a muscular young man of about twenty in a Banana Republic T-shirt opened it almost immediately, as if he had been standing there waiting for me. I glanced up at the video camera above the door and knew why.
"I'm looking for Dr. Carl Bannister," I said, knowing I'd have to see the man himself before I had a chance to see his patient.
"Do you have an appointment?"
"No, I don't. But this is sort of an important matter and—"
"Dr. Bannister is with a patient now."
"That's okay. I'll wait."
"That could be a long while. Sometimes he's with his patients four or five hours at a time."
I nodded. "I'll wait."
The young man looked unhappy. He wasn't losing me as easily as he expected. Behind him I could see a woman walk by in a bikini with a note pad, a Malibu secretary.
"What'd you say your name was?"
"Wine. Moses Wine."
"Why don't you give me your phone number, Mr. Wine, and I'll have the doctor call you?"
"I'd prefer to wait."
I got my foot in the door just before he tried to shut it on me, and I wedged my way into the living room. I had barely taken in the two-story space with the sunken fire pit when a man in his fifties entered wearing a worn pair of khaki shorts, huarache sandals, and no shirt. He had curly silver hair like spun wire a la Joseph Heller or Norman Mailer, but his physique was trimmer. And his piercing, almost catlike hazel eyes gave him the charismatic appearance of a high-toned hypnotist.
"Dad," said the Banana Republic shirt. "This is Mr. Wine."
"Moses Wine," I said.
"Oh, yes, the famous detective. I've heard all about you from friends in the personnel behavior department at Tulip Computers. They were sorry to lose you. It's an honor." He bowed to me with an ambiguous flourish. "No doubt you're here to speak with Otis about the horrible business with Mike."
"If you don't mind."
"Not at all. Not at all. Although if you wish to see Otis alone, that's going to be hard. He can't be alone for six months or so."
"Never?"
"Not according to his contract. From his first jog in the morning until the last late show at night, one of our people is going to be with him. And if he wakes up in the middle of the night, I insist that they call me." Bannister gestured toward his son and the secretary.
"You mean his movie contract specifies he can't be alone?"
"N0, no." The secretary signaled Bannister, who went to answer a blinking phone. "His contract with me—for the initiation phase of therapy. You lead a person to independence by first making him dependent." Bannister picked up.
"Carl, here. Yes, Ian . . . I see .... Well, just do what normal people do and go from aisle to aisle in the lot until you've found your car .... Yes, call me back." He hung up and turned to me. "Celebrities are so sheltered, you have to teach them to walk all over again .... C'mon, let's have some lunch—with Otis."
He led me down a corridor toward a mirrored room where the sound of Jesse Johnson was, if anything, redoubled. Otis King was inside working on a rowing machine while a large Polynesian who looked like a bodyguard for the king of Samoa sat sleepily in a wicker chair.
Otis jumped up the moment he saw Bannister. "Carl, please, baby, my man, my lord, my mother, please please please .... The dude called from the California-Hunger-Africa shit and wants me to do a Jerry Lewis on their motherfuckin' telethon. Can I do it, Carl, please? I wanna help them babies, please please please." He got down on his knees and begged like a little child.
Bannister went and turned down the stereo. "Sure, Otis, why not? I want you to help the babies." He petted Otis's shoulder as you would a dog. "This is Moses Wine. He's a private eye looking into Mike's suicide."
"Oh, man, I don' wanna run down that shit again. Blue-jays had me up three days on that one. Almos' set me back in therapy six years. Any more o' that, I'll be a regressive motherfucker, back on the floor like one o' them fetuses." He balled himself up and rolled over by way of demonstration. Then he looked up at us, grinning.
"Good show, Otis," said Bannister.
"Yeah, how you like that body language? Not bad, huh? Pryor never did shit like that. No
t even Eddie." He stood up and brushed himself off. "When's lunch? I wanna get me some of that Malipussy!"
6
"S0 you one of them private eye motherfuckers. Get you laid a lot?"
We were sitting in a booth in the Malibu Pharmacy and Otis definitely had his eye on the "Malipussy" as he spoke—and not just the blond, blue-eyed kind, but on anything that walked between the ages of seven and seventy.
"Now and again," l said.
"Yeah? All James Bond gotta do is look at it and he get his pecker wet. Think I'm a movie star, I could get laid anytime I wanted it. No wonder I'm into coke .... C'mere, you!"
Otis reached unsuccessfully for a surf bunny who was wandering by in a Malibu Beach Club tank top. She stopped and gave him a look. "Sorry, baby, you know us niggers. We be full-moon crazy we get near the water." He turned back to me with a grin on his face. "So, Magnum-motherfucker, you wanna know 'bout Brother Ptak. I got a suspicion Sigmund here killed him jus' so he could get his greedy little hands on my contract—and I ain't talkin' 'bout that shrink contract he made wid me. I'm talkin' 'bout the big-assed cinematic movie star multipic pact, know what I mean? Right, Sigmund?"
He pointed a French fry straight at Bannister, who was sitting beside me, his head profiled against a production still of John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in Red River. The Malibu Pharmacy stayed close to its roots.
"I didn't know you were planning on making me your manager," he said.
"Well, you tol' me yo'self I can't let them blowhead mo'fuckers in the Bronx do it no more. They gonna snort my profits or send 'em to Colombia to one of them generals in the green glasses, buy 'em another plantation, and I'll be a lost motherfucker without a penny to my name, rollin' in the gutter all alone. I'm a little lost boy and I need help. Take care of me, take care of me, please please please. You gonna be my main man, right, please?"
"Of course, Otis. Of course I'll be your main man." Bannister said it soothingly, as if they were the key words in a mantra. "I'll always be your main man."
Otis calmed down for a second.
It felt like the energy level of the whole room went down a few notches.
"Moses is going to ask you a few questions now," Bannister continued, his voice still sounding like a disc jockey on an easy-listening station.
"Okay, okay," said Otis.
"Where were you when Mike died, Otis?"
"Where I always be," he answered simply. "Right here with Dr. Bannister."
"In the house?"
"Yeah. In the house. We was watchin' a tape of Road Warrior. You like that movie?"
"Uh-huh."
"You my man! Crazy bald motherfuckers with chains. I love it! . . . Anyway, you was askin' me about my alibi. You doin' an interrogation, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, great. I tell you everything you want to know. Is that okay, Doctor?"
"Sure it's okay, Otis," said Bannister.
"When did Mike start on speedballs?"
"Speedballs? He was into speedballs? I didn't know that."
He turned to Bannister. "See what I mean? I was his partner and I didn't know shit. Motherfucker wouldn't tell me nothin'. Probably a racist motherfucker, if you ask me. All that shit about discoverin' me in Washington Square Park when I was doin' stand-up and makin' my career—that's bullshit. Every motherfucker in the Village knew me. Every last hippie and homo. Even Swami X knew me . . . knew my whole family, even my brother, knew 'em all . . . thems that was alive, anyway."
"Who's Swami X?"
"Greatest fuckin' genius of comedy ever was. Learned everything I knew from Swami X. Tell the truth to the motherfuckers. That'll make 'em laugh. Tell 'em their secrets. Like every motherfucker in this room's thinkin' about pussy—right now—whether they like it or not. Whether they know it or not. Isn't that right, Doctor?"
"That's right, Otis."
"And if they not thinkin' about pussy, they thinkin' about dick." Suddenly Otis stopped his tirade and looked at me quite seriously. "Who told you Mike was doin' speedballs?"
"Police."
"Motherfuckin' Liars."
"How do you know that?"
He jumped up and started pointing at me. "I know it! Don't tell me I don't know it! Who the fuck you think you're tellin'? I was his partner. I fuckin' went on the road with that white nobody. I made him. He couldn't make a motherfucker laugh if he tied him down and tickled his dick with ostrich feathers!" Otis sat down again and started muttering. By now everyone in the coffee shop was staring at us openly. "And him always telling me what to do like he was my mother. You my mother, right, Doctor?"
"Yes, Otis."
"Thank God, I got a mother." He looked at me. "You got any more questions, Mr. Dick? I got time for one more question before I take my nap and go to my aerobics class. Gots to be all rested up so's I can get my nose in the bush o' the Nazi bitch teaches that class."
"Okay. Just one. Did you or Mike know anything about a police investigation into drugs in Hollywood? Some big connection back East who's been funneling major amounts of dope to movie people?"
"Connections'? What you talkin' about connections?" He stared at me with a sudden blast of cold hatred. "Who brought him in here?" he said to Bannister.
"He's working for Emily."
"That mind-fuckin' cunt .... Look, man, you don't know nothin' about nothin'. Understand? And people who don't know nothin', when they hear somethin', they ain't gonna understand it anyway. So if I was you, I'd take your white face and get as far away from here as you possibly can or one black brother's gonna cut your ass. And that ain't no joke from Otis King. That's the blues and the abstract truth. Good-bye, Mr. Charlie." And with that he stood up. "C'mon, Sigmund."
"Good afternoon, Mr. Wine," said Bannister, and followed the black man out. It was hard to know if the tail was wagging the dog or the other way around.
7
"Bannister is directive."
"Otis can't pee without his permission. Every hour of the patient's day is accounted for."
"That must cost a considerable amount."
"Enough to keep a staff of three on twenty-four-hour-a-day duty in a house in the Malibu Colony."
Nathanson shook his head gravely. I was in his office for my usual session that afternoon between two and three. A harsh light filtered in through his greenhouse window and I was feeling uneasy, disoriented. I wasn't sure whether to talk about myself or talk about the case, so the conversation vacillated uncomfortably between the two until the subject of Bannister came up and Nathanson pounced on it like a hawk.
"And on top of everything," I continued, "it's possible that Bannister's real objective is not to cure Otis but to get his hooks into his lucrative career. Otis practically said as much when we were having lunch."
"And do you believe him?"
"I don't know what to believe. Otis is pretty crazy. Or at least he pretends to be .... Look, Doctor, I'm still feeling pretty depressed myself. I've been having these dreams about my father and I--"
"Bannister's manipulative. He's more interested in being a guru than a psychiatrist. And he does have excessive material ambitions."
I stared at Nathanson. In the months I had seen him, he had broken his shrink's persona once or twice, but never this severely. It disturbed me and I told him so.
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," he replied.
"Yes, but this is my hour."
"And?"
"I'm not feeling great."
"And you expect me to solve that for you?"
"You're my shrink!"
"Moses, I am not usually a fan of Carl Jung. But he wrote something once that I thought quite succinct: 'Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.' Keep that in mind the next time you expect someone else to solve your problems for you."
"What're you talking about?" I felt a hot stab of anger I through the back of my neck. "Then what'm I doing here?"
"Think about it." Nathanson checked his clock. "I'm sorry. That's all we have time for toda
y." He pressed his servo-control and sat up straight.
I got up to leave. "Oh, I meant to ask you—King called Emily Ptak a 'mind-fucking cunt.' Do you know why that was?"
The doctor hesitated. "If I knew, I couldn't give you that information, Moses. She's my patient."
"According to the law, if a psychiatrist has information pertaining to a capital crime, he must reveal it."
"Yes, to the police. You're a private detective. Besides, if you have a question about Emily, I suggest you ask her yourself. See you Thursday."
Thursday? I walked out of Nathanson's office not knowing what to think. A good working definition of a schizophrenic was a private detective trying to solve a case for his shrink.
I thought about talking to Emily, but I had something else on my mind as I pulled into a liquor store about half a block away to use the phone. I picked up a couple of lottery tickets while I was making change and started to scratch off the numbers as I walked into the booth. I dialed Parker Center and asked for Inspector Koontz. He wasn't in, but I was redirected to a Sergeant Estrada in homicide who was working on the Ptak case.
"Who's this?" he said. He sounded belligerent.
"Moses Wine. I'm a PI on the Ptak case. I'm a friend of Koontz's." I stretched it a little.
"Yeah."
"He was going to find out for me the hours on that Romanian bellhop, Vasile Nastase—the one who brought Ptak up to his room. I understand his shift was over about twenty minutes after Ptak arrived."
"What'd you say your name was?"
The first card was another loser and I chucked it in the basket.
"Wine."
"Well, Mr. Wine, I wouldn't be going around asking questions about Mr. Nastase if I were you."
"Why's that?" I rubbed through the first two numbers of the second card—one five hundred and a one thousand.
"Because Mr. Nastase turned up dead this morning at about ten-twenty-five."
He hung up. I stuffed the second ticket in my pocket and left.
I got back in my car and started heading east along Sunset back into the city, wondering what I had contributed to Nastase's death. I must have been one of the last to see him alive and he obviously wasn't pleased to see me poking around the D'Avignon Suite at ten o'clock last night. It was obvious too that this would reawaken, and perhaps broaden, the police investigation of Mike Ptak's suicide. Where would they look? On the face of it Nastase, the Romanian Orthodox bellhop, was not a prime candidate for a major participant in the drug world, but then neither was the Thai grandmother I read they arrested, last year importing seventy pounds of brown heroin from Bangkok in her husband's funeral urn.
The Straight Man - Roger L Simon Page 4