Fever City

by Tim Baker

  ‘I have not agreed to any arrangements.’ I can’t help smiling at the belligerent pride of the obstinate old man.

  ‘We want one million dollars in unmarked bills.’

  The gasp from Old Man Bannister is audible. ‘How much?’

  ‘You heard me. Come alone, in a car.’

  The instructions don’t make sense. There is a pause as Bannister grapples with the order. ‘I can’t drive.’

  ‘You heard me. Come alone in a car or the kid is dead.’ It’s as though the caller is reading a carefully written speech that’s been checked for grammar.

  ‘But I’m in a wheelchair.’

  The tape hisses while the voice considers this unscripted development. Obviously this is news to him. The kidnapper doesn’t know Old Man Bannister’s crippled.

  That means the kidnapper doesn’t know Old Man Bannister. Period.

  ‘Then send a driver.’

  ‘My chauffeur?’

  A pause as the voice on the telephone grapples with, then understands, the word. ‘That’s right. Tell him to stand by for instructions. We’ll call at three o’clock. Any attempt to follow him, any cops, and the kid is dead, got that?’

  ‘Let me talk to Ronnie.’

  ‘ . . . The kid?’

  Almost as if he didn’t even know the name of the boy.

  Almost as if they didn’t really have him.

  ‘Please. I need to know he’s all right.’

  ‘He won’t be, if you don’t do what we tell you to do.’

  There is the slow heave of the old man’s breath, seeking to force his will on the situation, as though the kidnapper were just another banker, or newspaper publisher or judge. ‘What is your name?’

  The question seems so frankly ludicrous in the context of what is happening—extortion, kidnapping, ransom demand, possible murder—that I laugh. Sam looks up at me, perplexed.

  ‘Call me Jesse . . . ’

  Not bad. The Old Man has forced a handle on the kidnapper. Although obviously not his real name, somewhere in the labyrinth of personal history and connections, the name Jesse would somehow lead to the kidnapper’s identity.

  ‘Jesse fucking James!’ Schiller says, excitedly refilling his glass.

  ‘Jesse? You won’t get the money until I know Ronnie is safe.’

  There is a long pause.

  When the kid screams, it’s a shock. So loud. So insistent. Sam and I exchange glances. The Old Man’s voice breaks in. ‘Stop it, stop it,’ the Old Man shouts. The screaming ends as suddenly as it began.

  I look at Sam. His eyes are welling with tears. He looks away. Hissing emptiness fills the room. Then, after a very long moment: ‘Satisfied?’ The kidnapper’s voice is harsh and determined now. It has crossed a line. I have no doubts about what it implies: fuck with us and the kid’s history. ‘No more communication with your son. Get the money and wait for instructions. Otherwise we start dropping pieces of the kid all over the city. And the blood will be on your hands, not ours.’

  Ours. At least two of them. Does that include the insider?

  Old Man Bannister struggles to recover his breathing; his voice broken with horror. And with anger. ‘Why in God’s name are you doing this?’

  Long pause.

  You can actually hear the moist satisfaction of the kidnapper licking his lips before he finally answers. ‘Because you deserve it.’

  Silence stretches between them, waiting to snap. The tapes hiss with suspense. ‘One more thing—’

  A slender finger with ruby nail polish leans over, and hits the pause button. The tape stretches, almost snaps as it lurches to a sudden stop, tautened tight to breaking on its reel like a victim on the rack. Sam looks up questioningly at Mrs. Bannister. She’s staring at me.

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to hear this part . . . ’

  I exchange glances with Schiller. ‘He . . . meaning me?’ I turn to the kid. ‘What the hell is she talking about?’ His face flushes red and he looks away. ‘Play it again, Sam.’ He hesitates, then hits the button and the tension of the tape eases, distortion then Jesse’s voice filling the room. ‘You can tell the private dick I know who killed his brother . . . ’

  The click of a hang-up cuts off the sound of something almost like a laugh. There’s the long white whine of disconnection. And then the smash of a glass as I hurl it across the room.

  She hands me a glass. Brandy. All I’ve wanted to do since I first met her was sweep her into my arms and feel the promise of the dark warmth of her body against mine. I can’t take her, but I can take the liquor, can taste the smoke and fire, the dark warmth now inside me. Only burning, not healing.

  Schiller wipes his face with a handkerchief. ‘How the hell did he know you were here, Alston?’

  ‘It’s not like he’s Howard Hughes, Captain Schiller.’

  ‘She’s right. They’ve been watching us. From the beginning. For all we know they’re watching us right now.’ Schiller swears. ‘They’re professionals, and yet . . . ’

  ‘What, Mr. Alston?’

  ‘Jesse sounded so sure of everything; everything except for your husband and the boy. The mark and the victim are normally the only things they are sure of.’

  Schiller pours himself a refill. ‘What the hell are you getting at?’

  ‘Only a hunch but . . . ’ I turn back to Mrs. Bannister. ‘Imagine if the boy is not with Jesse.’

  ‘But we all heard Ronnie, Mr. Alston.’

  ‘Did we?’

  ‘What the . . . ’ He checks himself, with a glance at Mrs. Bannister. ‘ . . . Heck are you driving at?’

  There is a gleam of self-satisfaction in her eyes. We’re on the same wavelength; have been ever since we first met. ‘I think what Mr. Alston is suggesting is that it could have been another child . . . ’

  ‘Not to put too fine a point on it but . . . One screaming kid sounds just like any other.’

  The penny drops, right on Schiller’s crown. One of LA’s finest cops, and it never occurred to him.

  ‘Where does that leave us, Mr. Alston?’

  Us. ‘We pay the ransom . . . ’

  ‘But what if they don’t have Ronnie?’

  ‘What if they do? It’s only a hunch.’

  ‘Hunches are what you’re paid to have, Mr. Alston . . . So what do you advise?’

  ‘We wait for instructions for the drop.’ I look at my new watch. Nearly eleven. ‘Almost lunchtime and I still haven’t had breakfast.’

  ‘If you’re hungry, Mr. Alston, I’ll have someone fix you something to . . . ’ Her voice trails off. Those days of servants on tap are gone; maybe for good.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to put you to the trouble of fixing a meal. In your own home and all.’

  ‘Lay off, Alston.’

  She smiles politely at Schiller. ‘It’s all right, Captain, Mr. Alston’s had a shock; like all of us.’ She hands him a full balloon of brandy. A vote of confidence. She’d rather have Schiller drunk than in my way. ‘I make a wonderful omelette, Mr. Alston. Just as long as I can remember where to find the kitchen . . . ’

  I turn to Schiller. ‘You hungry too?’ He’s staring at the brandy decanter. Who needs to be hungry when you’re as thirsty as Schiller? I follow Mrs. Bannister out of the room; she’s very easy to follow. But I suddenly freeze outside the library doors.

  Mrs. Bannister has vanished.

  Not even the click of heels on the oak floor. I look up and down the hallway. There are trails in the floor varnish from the wheelchair. A wall slides open opposite me. Mrs. Bannister’s standing inside an elevator on one leg, rubbing her foot with one hand, holding a shoe in the other. ‘The problem with Italian shoes is the better they look, the more they hurt . . . ’

  ‘I thought the problem with Italian shoes was that they normally hold Italian women.’


  She gives a light whistle. ‘Why, Mr. Alston, that sounds like the voice of bitter experience . . . ’

  ‘My wife’s Italian.’ I hear the betrayal in my voice.

  She smiles. She’s heard it too. The first rule in successful adultery. Mutually denigrate your respective spouses. ‘Going down?’ I step inside the elevator, squeezing past her. ‘I hope you’re not afraid of small, tight spaces?’

  ‘I’m not claustrophobic, if that’s what you mean . . . ’ I lie, feeling the warm flush of her body against mine.

  ‘What I mean is that some men just don’t feel relaxed.’ She slips her foot back into her shoe. ‘In tight spaces, I mean . . . ’ She brushes a spot of soil from my shoulder. There is a ring and the elevator doors slide open onto a closed wall.

  A crest of panic rises in my chest, then is controlled. ‘It was put in when Mr. Bannister had his accident. Although it cost us a fortune . . . ’ Us. ‘ . . . And it’s always breaking down. Give me a hand, will you?’

  We each take a part of the door frame and pull away from each other, sliding the hidden wall panels open.

  We’re in the entrance hallway, to the left of the stairway. ‘Tell me about the accident?’

  ‘Which one?’

  Interesting. I thought we were talking about the Old Man. What other accident could be on her mind? They didn’t mean to kidnap the kid? Elaine was supposed to have been dead when they buried her? Elaine was supposed to have escaped unharmed?

  I follow her down the corridor. ‘Your husband’s . . .’

  ‘It was a riding accident.’ She crosses the enormous kitchen, passing through bolts of sunshine that pick up the gold in her hair. The diamonds in her anklet sparkle then are lost in the shadow.

  ‘That’s why he’s in a wheelchair?’

  She looks at me. ‘Surely you knew that?’

  ‘I thought maybe old age played a part.’

  ‘Don’t be coy, Mr. Alston. Men like my husband may get old but they never get feeble. Not unless they’re suddenly broken.’

  ‘I heard it was no accident.’

  We stare at each other in the long silence. ‘My husband was riding his favourite horse. He loved that horse more than . . . ’ She didn’t have to fill in the missing words: more than his wife. ‘ . . . Except Ronnie, of course.’

  I don’t believe her. That’s the problem with this kidnapping. Everyone, including the Old Man, insists on how much he loved the kid. But where’s the evidence? Where are the photos of father and son crowding the walls and the mantelpieces? Where are the stories of the time they spent together? The trips they took, their outings to the circus, the playground, the movies. Sure the kid was a part of the household, but so was the grandfather clock in the hallway. The alarm the Old Man felt when the kid was snatched? That was definitely genuine. But the love . . . ? It was as if Ronnie were an insurance policy or a bank account, something that had been misplaced or lost. A valuable asset suddenly menaced. There was certainly no sign that Ronnie was a normal, happy child. ‘It was a hit and run, wasn’t it?’

  ‘The horse was clipped by a truck as it crossed the road.’

  ‘Who do you think wanted to kill your husband?’

  ‘You think it was intentional?’

  ‘If the truck didn’t stop, it normally means it was.’

  ‘I think the truck didn’t stop because the driver recognised who it was he had hit.’

  ‘Meaning the driver thought Mr. Bannister had it coming to him?’

  ‘Meaning . . . he knew that Mr. Bannister doesn’t believe in forgiveness.’

  ‘Something I should note?’

  ‘Something you should avoid ever testing, Mr. Alston.’

  ‘That’s a warning?’

  ‘Call it advice.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Los Angeles 1959

  Mrs. Rex Bannister sat forward in her seat, staring over the shoulder of the chauffeur, watching the lights of the hospital swelling into the night. Her husband’s lawyer, Adam Granston, sat nervously in the back beside her, riffling through papers. He handed her one. ‘We’ll need you to sign this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just a document, for the hospital . . . ’ The metal of his fountain pen glinted in the lights of the emergency entrance. She didn’t like his tone. She never had. And she didn’t like his presumption: that she could trust him. As if she didn’t know—she couldn’t trust anyone in this world, least of all Rex Bannister’s people.

  ‘Not now . . . ’

  ‘There’s no time to discuss . . . ’

  She pushed the paper away. ‘I said, not now.’ She was playing her card; and it was an ace. He was the lawyer. But she was the wife. Her husband was seriously—perhaps fatally—injured. The law was on Granston’s side, but the drama . . . that was on her side. That was stronger than any legal document.

  The car pulled up. Taylor got out and went around and opened her door. She could feel the flush of Granston’s anger giving way to nighttime coolness. ‘I want to see my husband . . . ’

  There was the stutter of flashes as they passed the shouted questions of the press, and then she was inside, passing a private waiting room full of aging men. Some averted their faces; others stared at her. With alarm. With hostility. With lust. Some of the faces she recognized from the Star Chamber ceremonies.

  A big police captain named Schiller gave her a rundown on what was known. Her husband had been riding a great bay gelding called Goliath. A horse her husband hated. Because the horse had a nobility that the man lacked. Goliath had fought bravely to stay upright after they’d been struck, stumbling all the way down the embankment before its mighty hooves struck the concrete lip of a culvert and its pasterns snapped with the impact, her husband’s leg crushed between the unforgiving ground and 1100 pounds of muscle, sinew and suffering tension. His left leg. His left hip. His pelvis. Pulverized.

  Shattered.

  Irreversible.

  The richest man in the country; probably the most powerful, and certainly the most hated was now suddenly a cripple. The very day after his scandalous fifth marriage to the younger sister of his fourth wife. All across America, the same phrase was being repeated with satisfaction: serves the bastard right.

  When they came for him after the accident, her husband had insisted they end the horse’s life before they did anything for him. Not because he had wanted to put it out of its misery, but because he had wanted it dead. He carried the gelding’s blood dusted across his face and clothes when they trolleyed him, delirious, into the operating theatre.

  That night a vigil was held at the hospital. The governor and both senators were there. The mayor and the police chief too. So were Howard Hughes and Johnny Roselli. There were Texas oilmen, and even some CIA and banker types from the East Coast. She knew who they were: the shadow men of the True Republic. Wizards without their capes. It gave her the creeps, the way they all just showed up. As if they were malevolent Magi following an evil star. But why were they all there? Were they waiting to see if Rex Bannister would die, so they could haggle and gamble over his assets like Roman soldiers with Christ’s robe . . . ? Did they believe he might designate a successor before he died? Or impart some terrible secret that would give them access to the enormous powers he had always enjoyed?

  Or were they simply waiting to see if he could survive such a terrible accident; proof that he was, as some half-suspected, the devil incarnate?

  She was at her husband’s bedside when he came to after the operation. The first thing he asked the chief surgeon, Dr. Lowell Everett, an arrogant man with an appreciative smile for her, was how long it would be before he could ride again. The doctor had laughed; the accident had been so traumatic, the damage so acute that he was sure her husband was joking, so he kidded along: a couple of months; a half-year at the most, but he’d be back up relatively soon, doing all the rid
ing he could ever wish for . . . in a wheelchair.

  Her husband had reached down beside his bed, where Morris had left his newly-polished riding boots, one of which contained his riding crop. He drew it fast out of the boot, as though unsheathing a sword, and whipped it forwards and backwards, leaving an enormous X-shaped cut across the front of Everett’s face. The doctor stood there, stunned, his cheeks slowly falling open as an eyeball rolled lazily out of its socket and hung like a ripe fruit from a gaping black and red hole.

  Betty Bannister managed to wait until the blood began to bubble and suck out of the wound where the doctor’s nose had been before she passed out.

  He husband had struck Dr. Everett so hard that he had dislocated his shoulder on the return blow; the Old Man’s suffering—like the doctor’s—would not end as easily as his horse’s.

  Afterwards, she had learnt that Dr. Everett was in a sanatorium; paid for out of the kindness of Mr. Bannister. The official story was that the surgeon had disgraced both himself and his hospital by driving home drunk later that night and hitting a tree. But Truth in the Bannister Estate was, like her husband’s domestic staff, unsentimentally replaceable. Rex Bannister made sure the medical board stripped the surgeon of his license to practice medicine. Not that the former Dr. Everett would have been doing much surgery, after having a scalpel taken to his brain by Professor Boris Landis, the ‘Laureate of the Lobotomy.’ Her husband would do whatever it took to keep Lowell Everett alive so as to continue his suffering for as long as possible.

  The Bannister Way.

  The question was, when would her own suffering end?

  CHAPTER 17

  Los Angeles 1960

  Was there any truth in that story about your husband and the doctor?’

  Betty Bannister stares at me as though she’s just come back from a long way off and hasn’t heard the question. She focuses on me; and it’s only then that I realize I’ve been missing those green eyes all morning. ‘You don’t know my husband, Mr. Alston. He takes personal slights extremely seriously.’