Wildcase - [Rail Black 02]

by Neil Russell

  “Snazzy,” said Birdy. “The church I grew up in didn’t have a single hymnal with all its pages. When we lifted our voices in song, the angels really had their hands full. How about you?”

  “The angels had their hands full for other reasons.”

  Suddenly, there was movement far to the front. A woman had apparently been kneeling, and now she stood. In the half-light and at that distance, I couldn’t see her features clearly, but she was slender with streaked hair. She glanced once in our direction, then walked quickly toward an exit sign and disappeared into the dark.

  “I think we interrupted someone,” said Birdy.

  On the far side of the chancel was a lighted hallway. I guided Birdy toward it, but before we got there, a heavyset man appeared, opened his arms and smiled broadly, “Welcome.”

  For twenty years, Victor Buono gave us some of the best villains ever put on film. Every veteran writer in Hollywood misses him, because if you were too hung over to write the day’s scene, all you had to do was type BUONO ENTERS, and crawl back to the couch.

  The Reverend Cabot Northcutt could have been Victor’s larger twin, and considering that Victor’s poundage probably began with a four, that made Northcutt a very large man indeed. He also had Victor’s wistful smile, giving him an air of accessibility that probably served him well in his profession. We introduced ourselves, and the reverend led us down the hallway to a nicely furnished office, where a bank of security monitors answered the question of how he had known we were there. He took a seat at his desk and beckoned us to chairs opposite.

  “Normally, the doors would be locked, but this is marriage-counseling day.”

  “We’ll be respectful of your time.”

  He raised his hand. “No rush. The couple I was expecting went to court this morning instead. Probably best for all concerned.”

  “Boy, there’s a switch,” said Birdy. “Where were you guys when my mom was getting smacked around?”

  “Our founder believed that if you spent your life angry, you weren’t doing God or anybody else any favors.”

  “That would be Big Jim Rackmann?”

  He pointed to an oil painting on the wall. In it, Rackmann stood next to a lovely Eurasian lady, well dressed but decades younger. “It would. A beautiful human being. Salty, but beautiful.”

  “Sounds wise too,” I said.

  “Sounds like a goddamn saint,” blurted Birdy. “Oops, did it again. Sorry.”

  “I think the walls will remain standing.” He smiled.

  I nodded at the painting again. “Is that Mrs. Rackmann?”

  “It is. The second. Big Jim and his first wife divorced in 1939. When he became a missionary.” A smile creased his cheeks as he added, “He met Oona in Hong Kong. After the war. It was a real love match.”

  “Judging from that, she would have been quite young.”

  “Twenty-three, but she’d seen more than most of us see in a lifetime. Her mother was Irish, and you may have read how mixed children were treated.”

  I had. There are no parallels for living through war, and you can double the suffering if you were a citizen of an occupied country. You can double it again if the Japanese were the occupiers. “Is she still living?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Breast cancer. Several years before Big Jim. He kept smiling, but he was ready to go the day she did.”

  I let my eyes wander over the accumulated keepsakes of Cabot Northcutt. You can learn more about a man from his office than his home. It’s always the first place a professional manhunter wants to see. Women are different. Their offices are usually devoid of sentimental possessions. You want to see their purses and closets.

  Floor-to-ceiling bookcases took up two walls, their shelves straining to contain mounds of magazines alongside well-worn volumes of history, philosophy and a row of motion picture bios. Squeezed into what space remained were personal photographs and some eclectic pieces of decorative statuary—no tigers.

  A man’s most prized possessions will usually be the ones physically closest to him, so I was amused to see a collection of martini shakers on the credenza immediately behind his desk. When he noticed me eyeing them, he grinned. “Not quite what you’d expect from a preacher-man.” He swiveled, reached out a meaty hand and grabbed a well-polished cylinder engraved with a vaguely familiar, stylized S. When he handed it to me, I could tell from its weight that it was Sterling.

  Northcutt leaned forward conspiratorially, eyes alive. “Friday, November 19, 1954. Dawn. Caddie convertible, flying low out of Vegas. Sammy Davis, Jr. heading to a recording session in LA. No freeway in those days, just two lanes of blacktop with a bend every now and then. Sammy’s tired, but he’s made this run before. Problem is, the sun’s coming up, and out here, that’s like having a flare stuck on your dash.

  “Just south of where we’re sitting, seventy-two-year-old Helen Boss from Akron, Ohio, misses her turn and does what you always do on a seventy-mile-per-hour highway, stops . . . and backs up. If Sammy saw her at all, it wasn’t soon enough, and wham.”

  Like the professional speaker he was, Northcutt had gradually lowered his voice, and when he got to wham, he clapped his hands. Birdy jumped halfway out of her seat, and I could imagine what the reverend was capable of with God over his shoulder and an auditorium full of sinners.

  He smiled and went on. “So they rash Sammy to San Berdoo. They get him stabilized, but his left eye isn’t going to make it. This would be a big story anywhere, but in the middle of cactus nowhere, it’s like Close Encounters. Pretty soon, there are gawkers coming from all directions.

  “As Sammy’s working his way to a full recovery, over the hill comes a line of limos. It’s the Copa Girls from Vegas coming to cheer him up.”

  That’s where I’d seen the S before. The Sands Hotel. “With refreshments, of course,” I said.

  “Four trunkloads. Liquid and cold.”

  “A few years later, I’m born. Same hospital. Premature and the tiniest kid anybody ever saw.” He leaned back and patted his ample girth. “Hard to believe, huh? Spent half my life in the emergency room. My momma had to hold down two jobs to keep us going, so one of the nurses took it on herself to watch out for me. Barbara Jacamino. Sammy’s nurse. She brought me toys, sang to me, held me when I cried. I think she’s the reason I never married. Couldn’t find another Barbara.

  “Sammy had given her that shaker, and until the day she died, she made herself a martini every night. When I got to high school, I’d go up to her place and have one with her. Child abuse today, probably.”

  “Death penalty, maybe. And Barbara left it to you.”

  “It was her most cherished possession. Mine too.”

  Birdy was mesmerized. “What an amazing story.”

  She was right. And like Manarca’s Balboa saga, it didn’t matter if it was true. It could be true. When the truth gets in the way of the legend, print the legend. I handed the shaker back, and Northcutt returned it to the credenza.

  “How did you and Big Jim meet?”

  “Jobs are scarce for new seminary grads, so I was keeping the wolf from the door as a prison chaplain. Terminal Island, mostly. That’s where I met Big Jim. I worked the state system too, but it took forever to get your lousy forty bucks a visit. The Feds’ checks were on time, so they got more religion.”

  “Even in the slammer, you get what you pay for. Why two chaplains at TI?”

  “Oh, Big Jim wasn’t working. He was visiting somebody. Next thing I knew, he was ministering to me too. He had that kind of magnetism. Changed my life, just like he did lot of people’s. That’s how I ended up here.”

  “Any chance you remember who he was visiting?”

  “Absolutely. Markus Kingdom, a young Pan Am exec doing a year and a day on some kind of white-collar beef. After he got out, he moved to Victorville, settled down, and became one of our most loyal congregants. I’m proud to say I baptized all five of his daughters.”

  Markus Kingdom? He had my full attention.
“He still around.”

  “Around? My goodness, yes. Markus runs a highly successful business. Kingdom Starr. Do you know it?”

  I knew it very well, but I was curious what the local line was. “Something to do with ships, isn’t it?”

  “A little more than that.” Northcutt was on familiar ground—educating the slow afoot. “You can’t move much in this world that doesn’t touch a Kingdom Starr ship, plane or terminal. They’ve also got cruise ships, hotels and food service. Markus even has a division called KS High-Value that specializes in transporting racehorses, museum exhibits ... things like that.”

  “Now I know who to call when it’s time to move my Shamu collection. I presume he’s security conscious as well.”

  Northcutt grinned like a man showing off his firstborn. “You better believe it. Any problem in the empire, and their police force, KSD—Kingdom Starr Defense—steps in. Not people you want to trifle with.”

  He leaned forward again, like he was about to reveal a state secret. “Recently, Markus has been on a tear buying railroads from the Japanese occupation of the Far East. Remember The Bridge on the River Kwai? Believe it or not, that line’s still out there. Lots of others too. Sort of the final frontier of freight.”

  What the reverend didn’t know, and I didn’t tell him, was that Kingdom Starr had been good friends to Delta, the SEALs—all of special ops. Like the Hughes Corporation some decades earlier, more than one narrow escape out of a hot zone had rendezvoused with a Kingdom asset that “just happened” to be in the vicinity. The CIA also used Markus to ferry gunboats, aircraft and weapons to insurgents and to occasionally make clandestine personnel drops.

  My London company, Black Group, competes with Kingdom Starr in some commercial ventures, but despite my past associations, I don’t encourage my executives to get into black ops. That has to be a commitment from the people on the corporate firing line, and I only oversee the place from eight thousand miles away. Markus Kingdom and I had never met, but we knew many of the same people.

  “I thought Kingdom Starr was based in Singapore.”

  “For everything but air services. Markus has built his own city at the old George Air Force Base. At any given time, he’s got twenty jumbos loading or unloading out there. Hard to beat 360 days of sunshine and a pool of employees that would march into hell for the man.”

  Not to mention the pool of available cops. KSD has always recruited out of the best commando units and SWAT teams. It wasn’t difficult to convince a special operator to trade in his salute for a six-figure income. And Kingdom Starr out-paid everyone.

  Northcutt leaned back in his chair, his fingers pressed into a church. “Yes, sir, Mr. Black, Markus Kingdom’s been very good to Victorville.”

  “And the church.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, but StarrLynn has a lot to do with that. She’s also where the other half of the company name comes from.”

  “I assume that’s Mrs. Kingdom.”

  The reverend nodded. “The former StarrLynn Crowe. Sister of our chief of detectives. Never know it to look at the two of them, though. Wes’s daddy married himself a cute redhead and got that pretty little girl in the deal.”

  Bingo. Like small towns everywhere. Walk a block, meet a relative. Walk ten, have a reunion. “I understand there’s another brother. Sells ice cream.”

  “Soft serve, not ice cream. I’m a Haagen-Dazs man myself. That’s Melvin, but he goes by Cheater. Great big guy with a chopper as long as my Lincoln. Ink everywhere. The usual, skulls, swastikas, that kind of nonsense. Makes sure everybody sees them. Never wears a shirt, just a black leather vest. No helmet when he rides either, and he’s got a real short fuse. Cops gave up ticketing him.”

  From the description, they wouldn’t have to worry about Melvin’s fuse anymore. Cheater Crowe was fertilizing Chuck Brando’s woods. “Melvin come in the package with StarrLynn?”

  “No, Cheater’s Chinese. Just showed up one day last year, and Wes started introducing him around town as his brother. Nobody knows where he’s from. Worked as a loader out at Kingdom Starr for a while, but I heard he got fired for busting somebody up. That’s when he took out the lease on the Desert Freeze stand. Pretty much all I know. He’s not much of a churchgoer.”

  “Markus and StarrLynn live here too?”

  “Real fancy place up in the mountains. Near Wes.”

  Northcutt’s tone suddenly changed. “I sure like talking to you fine folks, but you’re not here for town gossip or because I had a hole in my counseling schedule.”

  I waited a moment, then watched him closely as I said, “I’d like to ask about Chuck and Lucille Brando.”

  His eyelids fluttered only once, but it was enough. He knew they were dead. Wes Crowe had obviously been working the phones. “Great people,” he said as noncommittally as he could manage, but he didn’t quite bring it off.

  The reverend was also one of those people who, no matter what script he’d been given, was going to ham it up as long as the footlights were on. Wes had to know that too, so maybe he’d just decided he’d handle damage control later. Cops make their living on the type, so they know how to handle them.

  “I’m in charge of the estate,” I said.

  I don’t care what deity you kneel to, a guy with a checkbook goes to the head of the line. Cabot Northcutt was no different. He skipped right past feigned surprise and forced condolences and went straight to: “The Brandos told me many times they wanted to remember the church.” He tried hard to keep the excitement out of his voice, but as good a storyteller as he was, he was on the other end of the acting scale. Birdy had no idea what was going on, but you didn’t have to be overly savvy to notice the change in the room. We’d become royalty.

  “Can I offer you something to drink?” Northcutt asked with new oiliness to his voice. “We’ve got some delicious bottled lemonade made by one of our members. He markets it to gourmet shops all the way to New York.”

  “No thanks,” I said, and Birdy shook her head.

  “How long has Big Jim been dead?” I asked.

  Once again, his eyelids fluttered, only this time like butterfly wings. He recovered quickly. “Little over two years now. Made it to 103. Came every Sunday and gave me notes on the sermon. Good ones, too.”

  “Somehow an offering basket and a box of Bibles don’t seem like much of a tribute to the man who created all this.”

  Cabot Northcutt was a polished speaker and probably a good marriage counselor. The essence of both is to never hesitate. This time, his mouth opened, and no words came out. He closed it and tried again, but all he found was, “Well, there’s a plaque on the pulpit too. Real nice. Eighteen-karat gold.”

  “Let’s cut the crap, Reverend. Did Wes Crowe happen to mention that the FBI has their panties in a bunch because they can’t figure out what’s going on in your fair city? If I’m here, they’re not far behind. You dance them, and your next visitor is going to be an IRS task force. There was a woman in that house when the Brandos were killed. She was lucky, she got out. I want to know her name, and where she is now.”

  He looked like I’d thrown his Sammy shaker under the 6:10 to Poughkeepsie. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he squeaked. “Honest to God, I don’t. Wes said Chuck and Lucille were a murder-suicide, and until they had it sorted out, they needed to keep it quiet.”

  Murder-suicide! This had LAPD written all over it. What was it Dion had said? If Maywood’s involved, somebody’s gonna get it in the ass. Well, whose ass was more convenient than the dead guy’s.

  “So what happened? Lucille overcooked the pancakes, and Chuck said, ‘The cunt’s gotta go’?”

  It was crude, but the reverend knew he’d fucked up, and I wanted to keep the panic on high. I saw sweat stains come through his big and tall suit coat. He stammered a couple of times, then managed, “He sort of intimated it might have had something to do with Lucille’s being . . . how can I say this ... ?”

  “What? A tramp?�
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  “Oh, God, no. Oh, please don’t tell anyone I said that. I just meant she might have had a boyfriend.”

  “And Wes intimated it was him.”

  He nodded.

  The best lie is the one people already believe. I had to admit it was a smart way to handle a delicate problem, but I didn’t have to pretend it was okay. Somebody, starting with that cocksucker Maywood, was going to answer to me for this.

  I changed direction. “What exactly is the Rackmann Project?”

  On familiar ground, though his voice was up an octave. “We provide Bibles to developing countries. Make the Lord’s Word available to starving souls. We’ve placed over a million now. A couple of presidents have recognized us.”