Fever City

by Tim Baker

  ‘What the fuck is wrong with Chicago?’

  The idiots didn’t have a clue. That’s why they were criminals. Criminals were always lazy men who were also very, very stupid. ‘Forget it . . . ’

  Roselli’s eyes gave up trying to read his and drifted back to the swimming pool. ‘You should see that Sinatra flick.’ Hastings looked around. There were plenty of other middle-aged men staring at the pool, their eyes on the slim young women in bathing suits. But Roselli was gazing at the blue square; the door to the other world. The domain of ghosts.

  Far away towards the hills, the dog kept barking.

  CHAPTER 10

  Los Angeles 1960

  Jesus Christ, she’s alive!’ There is a roar of revolted disbelief. Hands dig and claw their way through the earth, freeing the unconscious woman from her sepulchre of newly-turned garden loam. She has been buried almost upright, tucked inside some kind of lead casing or pipe. She is naked except for a black negligée and a high-strapped golden sandal on her left foot. I take the forgotten shoe out of my jacket pocket. Right foot. Perfect match. I press my ear to her chest. If there’s a heartbeat, I can’t hear it. Medics arrive from the ambulance outside the gate, handling her in brutal yet effective fashion, opening up airways with hoses and suction. There is an audible gasp of breath, and then mud gutters from her mouth. I turn away, catching sight of Mrs. Bannister disappearing into the house. I run after her, leaving a trail of footprints from the miraculous earth.

  She’s on the other side of a huge hallway, her face in her hands. She stands upright, mastering her expression and her voice as she watches me crossing to her.

  ‘She lives here?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘Why’s that absurd?’

  ‘The divorce was bitter. She lost custody of Ronnie.’

  ‘So where does she live?’

  ‘Now? I don’t know.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘At the wedding.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘Hers. I was a bridesmaid.’

  Mrs. Bannister was becoming more interesting by the second. ‘You were friends?’

  ‘More than that.’

  Did she mean lovers? ‘Could you be a little more precise, Mrs. Bannister?’

  ‘Elaine is my sister, Mr. Alston.’ Jesus, I hadn’t seen that one coming. She smiles at my surprise. ‘You didn’t know? It was quite the scandal.’

  ‘I bet it was . . . So what happened?’

  ‘Rex . . . Mr. Bannister made a pass at me. He tried to seduce me. And he would have succeeded too if Elaine hadn’t walked in on us.’

  ‘I see . . . ’

  ‘I don’t believe you do. Nobody understood what happened. Nobody believed. I was innocent. I was still a . . . ’ She looks away with such embarrassed modesty I could almost believe her. Oh, this one is good, she’s awful good. ‘Let’s just say I was easy prey for a powerful man of the world like Mr. Bannister. He swept me up in a passion I had never known before. I simply couldn’t resist its power; even if I had wanted to.’

  ‘I suppose your sister didn’t see it that way.’

  ‘She should have! That’s how she became the fourth Mrs. Bannister. But she would have none of my innocence. For her it was simple: in a state of inebriation, her new, rich and immensely powerful husband had been bewitched by a provocative and jealous sister. A forgivable transgression . . . For him.’

  ‘Even at her wedding?’

  ‘A final fling before the marriage got under way. Except . . . ’

  ‘Except Mr. Bannister didn’t want it to be so final?’

  ‘Your perspicacity is commendable.’

  ‘You didn’t look too shook up back there when you first saw your sister.’

  ‘I’ve always tried to keep my emotions private.’

  ‘Except at weddings?’

  ‘You have no right to make such a comment.’

  ‘How about this for a comment: you were shown your own sister lying buried alive in your garden and you hardly blinked.’

  ‘Our relationship was complicated.’

  ‘Crosswords are complicated, Mrs. Bannister. This was your sister.’

  ‘Half-sister.’

  ‘Which half?’

  ‘The mother . . . ’

  ‘And the father?’

  ‘Mr. Alston, I need to rest. I’ve had a dreadful shock.’

  ‘Who was your sister’s father?’ She looks at my hand on her arm, her eyes welling with tears, then turns away. Jesus, it suddenly hits me. My heartbeat accelerates with the perverse obviousness of the answer. ‘Screwing his own daughter, is that it?’

  ‘How could you think such a thing?’

  ‘Then who was Elaine’s father?’

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  ‘Secrets are for sharing.’

  ‘I can’t, not this . . . ’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘ . . . Joseph Kennedy.’ She starts to sob.

  ‘The banker? The ambassador? That Joe Kennedy?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore.’

  ‘Does she ever see him?’

  Her eyes widen with fear. ‘She mustn’t ever know. Not after . . . ’ She struggles to regain control.

  ‘After what?’ She shakes her head. ‘You’ve got to tell me, Mrs. Bannister. This may have a bearing on Ronnie’s—’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about Ronnie! I don’t give a damn about Elaine. I only care about Rex. Now find the boy and lift this burden from my husband before it kills him. That’s what you’re paid to do, Mr. Alston. Your job. Now do it.’

  She storms away, her heels clicking fast across the oak floors. I look around the great hall with its trappings of wealth and privilege; its promise of the continuity of power. Crests, shields and arms, paintings and portraits; the severed heads of innocent animals. In other countries, in other civilizations—in Europe and Persia and China—these tokens of intimidation and supremacy took centuries to build; countless generations to maintain; innumerable wars to destroy. But in America they just appear overnight: spilling out of the back of a stolen truck; passed under a table in an envelope; whispered over a tapped wire. Delivered at the end of an untraceable gun. They arrive on the wings of crime but flower in the name of commerce and corporation. The swift, lonely power of Today. Parents are buried. Children yet unborn. There’s just you. No yesterday. No tomorrow. The fuse of Now is burning bright. The slick instant of this very moment is all that counts. It’s the Bannister Way.

  Schiller raps on one of the windows. I step out into the dazzle of sunshine. ‘Was the kid buried in there with her?’

  He shakes his big head. ‘We’ve dug it all back. That pipe she was jammed in gives on to an old well. Deep. There’s no sign of the kid, at least not with our torches.’

  ‘You better get a hold of a speleologist club.’

  ‘A spelling what club?’

  ‘Cave experts. Or Army Pioneers, anyone who can climb. You need to send men down with ropes, fast. I found what could have been a well down in the basement. What if the kid is stuck down there?’ I run my hand through my hair, soil coming away. ‘I just don’t understand it . . . ’

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘There was no opening in the bottom of the well . . . and the top’s covered with soil. How the hell did she get in?’

  ‘Know what I think? They thought she was dead and buried her there.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Give me one reason.’

  ‘Why bury her in a place where they know she’s going to be found?’ Unless they wanted her found . . . ‘Besides, I found her shoe down there in the cellars, near the well . . . ’

  ‘What shoe?’

  ‘The right one, the one missing from her foot.’ He shakes his he
ad. He didn’t even notice. That’s the difference between a PI and a cop. One gets paid to think and one gets paid, period . . . ‘Where’d they take her?’

  ‘Linda Vista . . . ’

  ‘Linda Vista? Why not Mount Sinai? Or Cedars of Lebanon? They’re both closer.’

  ‘The Old Man’s pumped a fortune into Linda Vista.’

  ‘A philanthropist no less . . . ’

  ‘Knock it off, Alston. Even Howard Hughes stays there, and you know what he’s like.’

  Even in questions of life and death, social contacts mattered for people like the Old Man. ‘Any word on her condition?’

  ‘Too early to say. She looked pretty bad when they hauled her away.’

  ‘So would you if you’d been buried alive. You know what’s funny . . . ?’

  ‘There ain’t nothing funny about this.’

  ‘Hold your horses and listen. Just when I got here last night, I saw someone digging over where they found her.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you say something?’

  ‘I did. I asked him if he’d found anything.’

  I walk over to the steps, staring at the grove, getting the angle and distance as approximate as I can. I try to summon the silhouette of the man against the glimmer of LA streetlight; listening to the sea conch of my memory. The rasp of a shovel digging; not the pad of it filling. ‘I’m sure of one thing; he was preparing the hole when I saw him.’

  Schiller stares at me.

  ‘Meaning she would have been put in there after I arrived. But there’s another thing. Look at that terrain. If she were already lying there, I would have seen her.’

  ‘Not if she were behind the mound of earth.’

  ‘But there was no mound of earth—not then. He must have just started.’

  ‘The nerve of the guy.’

  Nerve had nothing to do with this. It wasn’t just cool calculation. It was certainty. They knew they could pull this one off. Either they were preparing a grave for Elaine Bannister . . . Or else they were preparing her escape route. And then got interrupted. ‘Who else came through the gates apart from me?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘How about the doctor who was here?’ Schiller’s eyebrows arch in acknowledgement. ‘Any other no ones?’

  ‘Well, the Old Man’s attorney was with him.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Name’s Adam Granston. A Texan. Not your usual kind of lawyer. Rough around the edges. A heavy drinker. His clients are mainly oilmen.’

  Oilmen. Crumpled suits and soiled cowboy boots. Red, sun-hurt faces hunched in half circles, whispering to each other about money, making nasty cracks about their wives. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘LAPD. That’s it. The ambulance was always outside . . . ’

  ‘They were there all night.’

  ‘So . . . ?’

  ‘Did they come inside to use the john?’

  ‘You don’t think a medic from an ambulance . . . ’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t think. But someone could have come in pretending to be a medic. Like the guy digging pretending to be part of the search.’

  ‘He didn’t pretend, you mistook . . . ’

  ‘He went along with it. That’s pretence, okay. Now think, was there anyone else?’

  This time Schiller actually stops and thinks. I can see him taking roll call inside that enormous head of his. ‘That’s it, except for . . . ’ His voice trails away.

  ‘For who?’

  ‘Mrs. Bannister. She went out to look for the nanny after the Old Man finally went to sleep.’

  ‘How long was she gone?’

  ‘Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.’

  The red negligée. She’d met someone, slept with him, got changed and came back. She figured no one would notice with her silk robe. She hadn’t figured on my prying eyes. ‘Let’s say she got back at five. Let’s say she brought her sister with her in the back of the car. Let’s say Elaine was drugged. They carried her to the grove, slid her into a goddamn pipe, and then buried her. By the time that’s done, it’s almost six. She comes to as soon as they finish. The soil’s not packed so tight that she can’t move, and the pipe’s protecting her from its weight. And there’s air coming up from the well. She struggles, nearly clawing her way out before she passes out. But she’s still breathing—just—and then she’s discovered not more than an hour later.’

  ‘Right in the nick of time.’

  ‘For her. But not for the people who put her there.’ If they put her there. ‘Let’s take a look at Mrs. Bannister’s car . . . ’

  Schiller leads the way to the garage, both of us passing under the hollowing bronze gaze of all those windows, blinded by the morning sun. What if someone inside had seen what had happened? They would have come forward by now, unless . . .

  That’s the thing about blackmail; it’s like adultery. Once it starts inside a household, it’s almost impossible to stop.

  The garage is bigger than the church that Cate and I were married in. Mythic names flash by in rows of blue and red and white. Bugatti. Rolls-Royce. Lagonda. Pierce-Arrow. Maybach Zeppelin. Hispano-Suiza . . .

  At the end is a pink Cadillac convertible. Mrs. Bannister obviously shared the aesthetic values of the country. ‘It’s large enough, all right. Let’s try the trunk.’

  Schiller reaches under the wheel and pops it. I run my hands around the edges. It’s clean.

  I go round the side, staring into the backseat. Nothing. Then I spot it, half-wedged between the upholstery. I look away, waiting for Schiller to see it too.

  ‘Nothing . . . ’ he says. I lean in and snatch the cigarette lighter without him noticing, risking a quick glance. Gunmetal with engraved initials: EB. Elaine Bannister . . . I drop it in my coat pocket, then shiver with the implications.

  ‘It’s the air-conditioning.’ We both look up at the mechanic, dressed in blue overalls. How long has he been here? ‘Everyone shivers inside here. It’s too cold, but what can you do? Humidity’s bad for the leather.’ I nod, steering Schiller out. Did the grease monkey see me? Tampering with evidence. Why did I do it? Because I thought Mrs. Bannister was innocent and that someone had planted her sister’s lighter there? Or because I wanted to have something on her? The way she sat down on the bed, her gown opening between her legs . . .

  This is why it’s called a private investigation. Because we need to keep the discoveries, especially the ones we make about ourselves, confidential—hidden deep inside.

  A cop comes running. ‘They’re on the phone.’

  ‘Who?’ As if Schiller doesn’t know.

  ‘The kidnappers.’

  We race across the gravel, Schiller nearly tumbling, left behind as I overtake the officer and run up the steps, my shoes full of stones. Morris stands in the hallway, panic on his face. He points upstairs.

  I take the steps three at a time.

  Bannister’s door is open. He holds an ivory-handled telephone in his hand. Mrs. Bannister stands behind him, her hands on his shoulders. A young policeman wearing earphones over his red hair listens in, his tape unspooling. I glance at him. He shrugs. ‘What’s your name?’ He mouths back Sam. ‘Sam, can you get a trace?’ He grimaces, unsure, then his face goes slack with concentration, listening. His pencil hovers, waiting to find its mark.

  ‘I want to speak to my son . . . ’ For the first time, Old Man Bannister really sounds his age. ‘I want him returned, unharmed.’ I can hear the tone from the caller coming over the phone from across the room: Arrogant. Almost bored, as though reading from a text.

  The kidnappers own this scenario. They hold the only card worth having: the kid. I lean in to Sam’s headphones, listening. ‘We will call with specific instructions.’ A heavy lisp. Maybe a deliberate disguise. ‘Do not involve the police . . . ’

  There’s the bounce of echo as
Mr. Bannister speaks, like a voice reverberating in a well. ‘ . . . But how do I know he’s alright unless I speak to him first? I demand to speak to my son.’ A pause and then the ungodly moan of disconnection.

  The telephone next to Sam rings, making us all start. He picks up just as Schiller comes in, wiping sweat from his cheeks with a handkerchief. Sam looks at him. ‘Captain. They got a trace.’

  ‘Where?’

  There is the scratch of a pencil obliterating itself against paper. Sam’s hand falters, not completing the address. He looks up at Schiller, fear in his eyes.

  ‘Well?’ Schiller barks.

  I glance at the half-completed address and swear. I turn to Schiller. ‘From here . . . Jesus Christ, the call came from here.’

  CHAPTER 11

  Dallas 2014

  Photos tell stories but their narratives are mainly fiction. Death in Action was just a stunt; Les amants de l’hôtel de ville were student models who had never met before, feigning their passionate kiss. Who made Trotsky vanish from the stage with Lenin? And what the hell happened to the Gang of Four? Take any actor’s photo: his or her skin is airbrushed to seamless perfection—whether they like it or not. Oprah becomes Ann-Margret; Kate Winslet, Kate Moss.

  Photos are stories that help us buy what we’re supposed to; see what we have to. Understand all that we need to. Whether it’s right or not. The proof is in the proofs. Truth becomes interpretation; interpretation manipulation.

  To see a world in a grain of pixels.

  Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana’s photos are no different. They stare out at me from press book after press book in the air-conditioned office. His oversized head, weighed down by heavily-magnified glasses, seems to balance precariously on a small, stooped frame, giving him a deceptively benign appearance, especially when he’s sporting a porkpie hat and shades. He could be just another favourite uncle on his way to the racecourse or the retirement club for a couple of hands of pinochle.