Wildcase - [Rail Black 02]

by Neil Russell

  * * * *

  34

  Chesterfields and Rockwells

  Except for a few slivers of sunlight around the tightly closed Levolors, the living room of the Cape Cod was dark, the faint hum of an air conditioner the only sound. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out a slightly built figure half-sitting, half-lying in the corner of an oversized sofa. He was wearing dark sunglasses, and a blanket covered him from the lap down. However frail he might have otherwise appeared, a pair of thickly roped forearms protruded from the rolled-up sleeves of his flannel shirt.

  My late friend, Bert Rixon, the Michelangelo of prosthetics, had a term for arms like that—wheelchair arms. After Bert sold his original company, he founded Rixon Radicals to develop cutting-edge devices for disabled men and women seeking high performance, and those were the kind of arms he sought out.

  As it turned out, the number of applicants was so large he had to start a second company to devise special testing methods so he could identify those at the very top of the pyramid. What he discovered was that not only were these individuals exceptionally strong, many had measurably better sensory skills and reaction times than elite athletes. And because of their unique physiology, a few showed a considerably higher tolerance for altitude, cold and g-forces.

  Always a pain in the ass to bureaucrats and small thinkers, Bert badgered the Pentagon to let him outfit an F-16 for a paraplegic—at his cost. He wanted to train his pilots his way, then let the military run anybody they wanted against them in a dogfight. They’d put the whole thing on television as a recruiting tool, and as an added incentive, Bert would ante up $10 million to begin funding training of disabled Top Guns. Needless to say, it didn’t happen. Now Bert’s gone, and it never will. Pity, I think he was onto something—not to mention the ratings.

  One tiny beam of light hit an end table where two black-and-white photographs sat in matching frames. The first was of a handsome young man in an LAPD patrolman’s uniform. Fabian Cañada in younger days, I presumed. The other was of a pretty young Asian girl, about ten, dressed in a schoolgirl outfit only Catholics could have designed. She was standing in profile next to a sharp ‘53 Merc convertible with wide whitewalls and fender skirts, and her smile was as big as her tiny face could manage.

  I’d asked Dr. Dan to keep my identity sketchy. The doc hadn’t much liked the idea, but he agreed to try. As it turned out, the former cop hadn’t pressed, so what I said in the next few seconds would elicit as pure a reaction as I was likely to get. I stepped past Dr. Dan and approached the man on the sofa. As I reached the coffee table separating us, there was a sudden flash as Fabian lit a cigarette, fumbling several seconds to get the flame to the tip.

  The turtlelike appearance of a person with catastrophic facial burns is something you never get used to, and I was glad when he extinguished the lighter. But it had been on long enough to see that his hair, ears and lips were gone, and all that remained of his nose was a nub of white cartilage, necessitating his sunglasses be held in place by a neoprene strap. Crudely grafted skin had been drawn tightly across his cheekbones, and it was spiderwebbed with thick keloids brushed a splotchy red by random clusters of capillaries. This was as bad as any I’d seen, and I’d seen my share. ‘

  “Fuckin’ scary, ain’t it?” He pitched the pack of cigarettes onto the coffee table. Chesterfields.

  “Didn’t know you could still get those,” I said.

  “Same fuckers that killed Bogart. Finally found something the Internet’s good for. Help yourself.”

  “Thanks, but not right now.”

  “Don’t blame you. Me, I’ve been trying to get the Big C for sixty years and can’t even work up a good cough. Pretty funny considering, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t think he was looking for an answer, so I started to introduce myself. “Mr. Cañada, I’m ...”

  He cut me off. “I know. Rail Black. Haven’t heard my name pronounced correctly for quite a while. Fuckin’ Boston here thinks taco rhymes with Waco. How’d you find me? It wasn’t that preacher in Victorville. He’s so wound up, he’s pissing himself. Had to be Maywood.”

  So much for pure reactions, but I’d half expected it. We’d overlapped at the church, and Cal Northcutt was an anxiety infection agent. Dr. Dan sat in one of two straight-backed chairs, and I took the other. “Actually, it was somebody who never met you. Another cop. San Fran.”

  “Surprised they still got a force up there. They’re not allowed to arrest anybody.”

  I skipped the editorial. “Long drive to church,” I said. “Make it often?”

  “You here to check up on my soul?” His laugh was more guttural than his speech, so I guessed his lungs and throat had been burned, and he’d taught himself to talk without using his diaphragm.

  He took a deep drag and a third of the Chesterfield glowed. “Me and God made us a deal. He doesn’t assign me to any more flattops, and I don’t give him shit about why he’s not killing the assholes I tell him to. Course, if I had it to do over, I’d ask for the cancer.”

  The guy was in his nineties and sharp. When you want people to open up, you listen to what they want to talk about first. “Any assholes in particular?”

  “Take your pick, but how about starting with the cock-suckers who think slitting a stewardess’s throat gets them a ticket on the eternal starship. Tell you what, I’m a chick and somebody says I gotta spend my afterlife being sweated over by one of those douche bags, I’m going to have me a serious talk with the Man.”

  He was just getting started. “The fuckin’ ganoushes didn’t invent anything. Mosques, churches, beer halls. What’s the difference? They’re just places where deals get made. The genius is in keeping your followers stupid and the young ones dying. Formula’s worked for everybody who’s used it.”

  “Only when helped along by cowards on the other side,” said Dr. Dan.

  “Shit,” sneered Fabian. “This country’s always had plenty of pussies who’d hand over the keys to the first asshole who pissed in our direction. But we also had ourselves a tussle of men who’d take a good spit and say, ‘Let’s go kill us some motherfuckers.’”

  “Tussle. I like that.”

  “My granddaddy’s word. Lived to be 102, the cocksucker. You taken a hard look at the males we’re breeding lately? Ones who ain’t holding hands are being raised by single moms who’ll put Little Joey on phenol if he says the word gun. Hell, even the criminals can’t shoot. Ten of them, firing at each other, and all they hit is some five-year-old playing on her porch. Hey, assholes, holding the goddamn weapon sideways takes several hundred years of balancing and sighting out of the equation.”

  I smiled. “I got a friend. Benny Joe Willis. You two need to meet.” I gave him a moment to light another cigarette, which is usually an indication a person is settling in. “Can I ask why you left Victorville?”

  “Didn’t. We split our time. Little more elbow room out here.”

  That rang about as true as one of Northcutt’s smiles. “I thought maybe it was the pounding surf.”

  He didn’t think I was funny. I waited, and he finally got there. “Truth was, once Big Jim was dead, things weren’t the same. Lotta influences rose up past their worth.”

  “Markus Kingdom.”

  “That’d be one.”

  He flicked his ash and changed the subject. “Dr. Dan says you’re okay. He’s a shitty doc but a good judge of character, so that’s enough for me.”

  Just then, there was commotion at the back of the house, and a door slammed. A moment later, a pair of Rhodesian Ridgebacks came flying in, ignored me and the doc and jammed their panting muzzles into Fabian Cañada’s lap. He must have had some kind of treat under the blanket, and as soon as he handed it out, the beggars moseyed to the other side of the room, lay down and began munching.

  A woman came around the corner, her voice light. “First Athena scares up a jackrabbit, and we all run for a mile, then Spice decides she wants to visit every bush in the desert.” She saw me a
nd the doc. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know we had company.” She shook her head. “Fabian, darling, how many times do I have to tell you we’re not moles.” I could now see enough of her to tell that she was Asian, but she had no trace of an accent.

  She crossed the room and dialed open the Levolors. Sun flooded in, and suddenly, a gallery of museum-quality art appeared on the walls. An extraordinary Rockwell oil hung over the sofa, while others by Federico del Campo, Montague Dawson and the staggering Presenciando una Corrida de Toros by Rodriguez Clement, occupied every available space. I’m not up on my auction pricing, but just what was visible had an insurance value of more than $15 million, making the prefab in Suicide, Nevada, one of those places Antiques Roadshow dreams about when they’re planning Begging for Dollars Week. Only these people weren’t eccentrics eating cat food and hoarding. They were escapees from a society that had gotten too complex and too unpredictable.

  The woman was in her sixties, naturally thin and moved like a dancer. Her gray-streaked hair was cropped medium short, and she wore tailored cargo pants and a dark blue blouse that showed off a very fit figure. She reminded me of a Chinese Audrey Hepburn. Combined with the yellow Mercedes, it was the same woman whose prayers I had interrupted at the cathedral. She recognized me too.

  Dr. Dan and I stood, and she embraced him. “What is it about men?” she said. “Leave them alone for an hour, and they take off their underwear and sit in the dark.”

  “Sun’s bad for the art,” Fabian grumbled. “And my Jockeys are tight but on.”

  “Then we’re making progress,” she said. “The paintings will have to fend for themselves. If you didn’t want me to look at them, you should have put them in storage or sold them with the rest of your family’s things.”

  As she turned to shake my hand, I saw that the right side of her face and her right arm were scarred. Not nearly as badly as Fabian’s, but still noticeable under her makeup. She was also wearing a wedding ring. “I’m Astaire Cañada,” she said, and her smile made the already sunny room brighter.

  “Rail Black.”

  She took me in with a pair of onyx eyes that seemed to hold the wisdom of a hundred generations. “You’re the man Lucille said would come, aren’t you?”

  I shouldn’t have been caught off guard, but lately, it had been happening more than I liked. The inscrutability of the Orient is real and, to the rest of us, as ungraspable as a fistful of water. “I am,” I answered.

  “She didn’t tell us your name. We were there that night. But if you’re as smart as Lucille said, you probably knew that.”

  It hadn’t even crossed my mind. Sorry again, Lucille. I keep letting you down. And then I had to take time off from feeling sorry for myself because I was too busy catching Astaire as she collapsed.

  Dr. Dan raced out and got his bag from the truck, but by the time he returned, she had come to. She told me where I could find a bottle of Hennessey, and when the doctor objected, she gave him a stare that ended the conversation.

  After she had a drink in her hand, I suggested we leave and come back, but Astaire was adamant. “Why, so I’ll feel better? I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, do you?”

  I didn’t.

  “If my daughter trusted you, then we do too.” She looked at Fabian, and when he didn’t jump in with his vote fast enough, she added, “Don’t we?”

  “I know about the children,” I said to get past the moment. “And I’ve spoken with Suzanne Chang and a few others. Northcutt obviously. Some of it I think I understand, but I’m missing the framework.”

  Fabian wasn’t finished. “I’d like to know why my daughter picked you?”

  “A fair question. A logical one too, but unfortunately, Lucille didn’t let me in on it either. I have a reputation for helping friends, but it would have made more sense to tell me before something happened. I’ve been designated to handle the estate too, but I’ll be happy to have my attorney put that in your hands. You would know better than I what she and Chuck wanted.”

  “No,” said Astaire, “Lucille always knew exactly what she was doing. If she selected you, we have no reason to second-guess her.” She looked at her husband. “Fabian, why don’t you start at the beginning.” Turning to the doc, she added, “How about that drink now? And I’m going to need another too.”

  With a beer in hand, Fabian began. “Our home in Victor-ville is on the other side of town from Chuck and Lucille’s. When we were there, we got together on holidays and Super Bowl Sunday, but most of the time, the girls just talked by phone. You know how it is. Families are nice, but they’re nicer when they’re somewhere else.”

  I did. I never loved my mother so much as when she wasn’t talking to me, but she was a drunk, so that might have factored in.

  “We were supposed to have dinner that evening. At their place. I didn’t want to go, but Lucille was insistent. She said she had a big announcement, and we were supposed to bring champagne. Well, when she pushed, Daddy always got with the program, except I told her to stick the champagne, it was going to be brewskis or nothing.”

  “Any idea what the announcement was?”

  “None, but both Chuck and Lucille were like that. Close-mouthed and full of surprises. Like that crazy railroad car. We hit their exit just as the sun was going down, and we pulled off to watch it set. Out here, people do that. They think it’s a desert thing, but we did it in the navy too. All you need is a horizon line to bring out the Nat Geo in even old fucks like me. If we just hadn’t stopped ... maybe ...”

  I didn’t want to lose him. “You and Astaire would be dead too.”

  He knew it, but hearing it from me gave him something to hang on to. “It was pretty dark by the time we got to the ranch, but I could see two cars up by the house, and some of the ATVs were out of place. I wasn’t happy. That’s wrong, I was pissed. Lucille knew I hated most of her asshole friends. I wanted to turn around and go home, but Astaire does the driving, so I was stuck. Just as we got next to the barn, three people come running out of the house and pile into the cars—one of them half-naked with a towel wrapped around her arm.”

  “Three women?”

  “Two women, and a guy. All Chinese.”

  “It was dark. You’re sure they were Chinese?”

  “Well, Chinese or pygmy. I get them confused.”

  When was I going to learn? I shut up.

  “Anyway, they come flying past us, almost out of control. We get to the house, and I’m so anxious to get inside, I forget I can’t fuckin’ walk, and Astaire has to waste time getting me off the ground and into the chair.”

  He looked off into the distance. “It was a mess. I saw a lot of things in the war I don’t ever want to see again, but this wasn’t like that. It was a man I knew and loved, hung up like a prize hog on butchering day. My baby’s husband and one helluva cop. I know it doesn’t fuckin’ matter, but I can’t seem to forget they even killed the goddamn puppy we gave Lucille for her birthday.”

  At that point, Cheater would have already been dead. “Can you describe the man?”

  “Young guy. Handsome. Wearing sunglasses at night, which is something that frosts my ass. I got to, and I fuckin’ hate it when jerks do it because they think it’s cool.”

  “What’s young?”

  “Under seventy.” He was getting some of his attitude back. “But this guy was about Lucille’s age.”

  “Why don’t you just tell him who it was?” Astaire snapped.

  “Because we can’t be sure.”

  Astaire looked at me. “It was our nephew—my nephew. Bolin. Bolin Ran.”

  * * * *

  35

  Returns and Relatives

  MARCH 14, 1979

  BRITISH CROWN COLONY OF HONG KONG

  “Mommy, there’s a monster on the plane! “ The girl was no older than five, but her scream was worthy of Hitchcock, and her panicked sprint down the long aisle of the 747 had brought crewmembers running. It had already been a gruellingly long flig
ht for Fabian, who had tried for several hours to ignore the furtive stares of his fellow first-class passengers. After the incident with the little girl, Astaire and the copilot had helped him up the winding stairs to the lounge, where he retreated to a quiet corner and chain-smoked the rest of the way across the Pacific.

  Now, after a day’s rest in their Peninsula suite, Astaire pushed Fabian’s wheelchair past a line of bellboys, resplendent in starched white uniforms and matching pillbox hats, and let the Hong Kong sunshine wash over them. It had been thirty-two years since Fabian had last smelled the airborne brew of fish, vinegar, ginger, charcoal and flowers, but it was exactly the same. And the years had added something new—prosperity. Everywhere he looked, skyscrapers loomed, and from curbside carts to boulevard shops, commerce was being conducted at a frenzied pace.