by Tim Baker
Before he killed Susan’s tormentors, he forced them all to write suicide notes with the promise of fast dispatch and the physical evidence of noncooperation: the wrinkled member of Susan’s uncle. The trembling, self-pitying confessions were testaments less to guilt and shame at the horror their lust had wrought than to disbelief that their arrogant and enduring immunity was coming to a premature end.
The police found the bodies of twelve leading citizens, including the sheriff and the judge, the following morning. The Adelsberg Suicides made the town notorious, and remain to this day America’s most startling sequence of spontaneous, simultaneous suicides. The county coroner knew that one man might be able to open his throat with a razor, but twelve on the same night? It was obviously murder, but the motive as outlined in all the confessions was so unsettling that the coroner rubber-stamped them all as self-homicides. The truth was too ghastly. And too close for comfort. The coroner had been missed by Hastings and became Adelsberg’s Ishmael.
Case closed.
Hastings watched the families of the twelve men burying their dead one by one in unhallowed ground, in earth that had been made sacred to him by Susan’s presence. He waited in their old home, but nobody came. Either they didn’t figure it was him, or they knew and were too afraid to go after him, like the Shogun’s soldiers with the wounded Ronin.
After three days of silence he disappeared, heading west like he had promised Susan.
Dallas. Phoenix.
Los Angeles.
He found menial jobs. He slept in dives. He was back in the foxholes of the Pacific—not living, just surviving.
More than a decade passed. It seemed to him like an eternity.
Then one night in LA everything changed.
His life.
Betty’s.
The entire country’s. The Bannister case saw to that.
Hastings stepped out into the Manhattan night, the rain perfect camouflage for his tears.
CHAPTER 23
Los Angeles 1960
Greta Simmons, the nanny who was the last known person to have seen Ronnie Bannister before his disappearance, doesn’t look too distraught. At least, not on behalf of the kid. She does seem a little concerned about her own professional prospects however.
It was her bad luck that she was on deck when the good ship Babysitting hit a reef. The captain always goes down with the boat. She’s already out of a job whether they find the kid or not. It’s only natural she’s looking more worried for herself than for the kid. After all, she let him out of her sight. Even though the kid was tucked safely in bed; even though she did her rounds when she was supposed to, even though it was a roster that chose her that day, she’s to blame. Always will be. This case will follow Greta Simmons for the rest of her life. Her obituary will read: ‘the nanny who lost the Bannister kid’.
But none of that is what’s really bothering me. The question—and it’s a big one—is whether Greta Simmons was in on the kidnapping.
‘Let’s run through that last hour again . . . ’
Greta sighs, like I’m an encyclopaedia salesman who won’t take no for an answer. ‘Listen, I told the police everything. There’s nothing else to add—’
‘Let me be the judge of that, will you?’
She gives me the kind of look people would love to give a cop but never dare. But with a private dick—that’s another matter. A PI is a man with a tarnished badge, a crooked rep and a pocketful of flashbulbs. Someone you don’t have to pretend to respect. ‘I want a lawyer.’
Greta’s a tough one all right. Violent father. Abusive partner. Neglectful boyfriend. Philandering husband. Selfish son. Greta’s tough enough to have had to deal with them all.
‘I want an answer. Why did you leave the kid alone all that time . . . ?’
‘I didn’t.’ She straightens in her chair, her lower lip curled in anger. ‘I put him to bed, switched off the light and closed the door, like I always do. I checked on him again. Twenty minutes before I went out . . . ’
Him. Not Ronnie. Not the poor, dear baby. Him. I’ve seen more emotion in strangers coming out of Del Mar Racetrack, talking about a horse they hadn’t bet on falling as it went into the straight.
‘Only twenty minutes, huh?’ Greta had originally told Schiller she’d looked in on the kid just ten minutes before she went out. Now she’s telling me she checked in on the kid twenty minutes before. Lying is bad, we’re taught that it gets us into trouble. But exaggeration is a different matter. Everyone does it. It doesn’t make you feel bad about yourself. On the contrary, I can tell from the self-righteous stance Greta adopts, leaning in towards me ready to argue the point, that in her mind she believes it herself. It can’t have been more than twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour. ‘Only you didn’t check on him twenty minutes before you left, did you, Greta? You took a powder and left him on his own for nearly two hours.’
‘That’s a lie.’ She wraps a silk scarf around her neck, preparing to go. I can’t tell if it’s wishful thinking or sheer audacity. ‘Talk to my lawyer.’
‘What are you trying to hide, Miss Simmons?’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘You lost a child under your care.’
‘Ronnie was in bed. My duties were completed for the day.’
I have a hunch there was only one way to ever truly complete your duties in the Bannister Estate, and that would be to hammer in the last nail in the Old Man’s coffin. ‘But you checked in on him later, you said so yourself. Why?’
‘Habit . . . ’ She sees the look in my eyes, pulling back with annoyance. ‘I’m a reliable person.’
‘You may deny it, Greta, but you were still responsible for the boy, even when he was asleep.’ She tries to answer but can’t, overwhelmed by indignation. ‘No one is accusing you of neglect . . . Not yet.’
She masters her emotion, her voice low. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘You were the last person to see Ronnie Bannister in this house.’
‘I’m not saying anything until I see my lawyer.’
‘A lawyer’s not going to get you out of this fix, young lady. You put the kid to bed, left the window open, locked the door and made a call.’
‘That’s a lie!’
‘There are witnesses.’
‘Who?’
Aha. Always play the hunch. ‘Doesn’t matter who, what matters is they saw you on the phone.’
‘You’re lying.’ She turns to Schiller. ‘Who saw me?’
Now we’re getting somewhere. There’s a change in her eyes, like the fulcrum on a set of scales. An adjustment; not in her favour. Someone saw her with a phone in her hand. Only no one did; at least not that I’m aware of. I’m running on intuition, on gut instincts; I’m running just like a cop. I feed her a name. ‘Morris.’ She raises her face in pleased defiance, like a defence attorney crossing towards the witness stand, getting ready for demolition. Morris is not going to hold up under cross-examination. Time to call in a surprise witness. ‘And Hastings.’
I score. She takes a step back, her eyes opening. Fear. Lots of it. Right there on her face. ‘Level with me, Greta, or you’ll be spending tonight behind bars . . . Maybe the first of many.’
Wrong call. Fear gives way to defiance. ‘Lay off.’ She slaps me. Hard. ‘You’re no cop.’
‘But I am . . . ’ Schiller to the rescue, coming in just like he always does, when the action’s nearly over. He pulls out his cuffs, grabs one of her wrists. Those cuffs were made for Mickey Cohen’s goons, not for a slim nanny who speaks with a lilting voice. No matter how tight Schiller clamps them, Greta’s slender hands are going to slide free. But the notion of restraint, arrest, incarceration does the job, reducing her to tears.
Another victory to abusive men.
‘Talk to us, Greta, and we’ll see you get off. That’s right, isn’t it, Cap
tain?’
‘Sure,’ Schiller drawls solicitously, slowly putting the handcuffs away. ‘We’ll talk to the DA.’
‘We’ll tell him you were coerced. That you were a cooperative witness. Hell, you might even be in line for a piece of that reward money . . . ’
The silence of the room buzzes all around us, throbbing with the insult of having eavesdropped on what was just said. Greta straightens, throwing her shoulders back and lifting her chin. There is a pause as she looks past us. Schiller and I exchange looks. She’s taking the bait. She’s ours.
And in that instant of smartass male complicity, she rushes between us, her scarf trailing behind her, touching my face with a caress both intimate and defiant.
She jumps.
There is the shock and shattering racket of glass as she goes through the window, then the wind is inside the room, ripping and probing on the tail of the curtains as they billow madly around us.
‘Sweet-Jesus-fucking-Christ-all-fucking-Mighty!’ Schiller turns to me, his face awed and uncomprehending: the cop who thought he’d seen everything suddenly transformed and contrite.
I shove past him, rushing across the snap and glitter of broken glass to the gaping insult that was once a window and look down. Greta Simmons’s lifeless body lies broken on the ridge of marble steps, the wind flicking the scarf about her like little boys taunting a dead animal, tugging on its tail.
CHAPTER 24
Dallas 2014
Evelyn Rutledge is not a natural blonde, but she is a natural beauty. Two things she shares with Norma Jean Baker, who stares dolefully over her shoulder. The black and white still is from The Asphalt Jungle. In her late thirties, Evelyn bears more than a passing resemblance to Marilyn Monroe. It’s the sense of a tender beauty that would bruise if touched the wrong way.
The Spanish-style house in Vickery Place is large and airy and opens onto a shaded garden. Datura flowers hang stricken by the heat, filling the air with the scent of their poisonous promise. It’s almost a shock to see such open access to nature, such disregard for the claustrophobic control of air-conditioning. There’s even birdsong. Evelyn Rutledge offers me a glass of French rosé and bowls of Brazil nuts, Japanese crackers and Greek olives. Evelyn Rutledge is the United Nations of Dallas and seems proud to be the rest of the world’s ambassador, the rest of the world in Dallas being everything outside of Texas. She confirms her own alien status here. ‘I’m from South Carolina but grew up in Savannah. I got a job as an intern in the Menil Collection. I just love Rothko. That’s where I met my late husband. He was visiting the chapel. We moved to Dallas after the wedding. My family never forgave me for marrying a man older than my own father. But when Mr. Rutledge suddenly passed on, and I inherited his estate, they were more than willing to forgive. Unfortunately . . . ’ She shrugs, refilling our glasses. ‘After all that had been said, I just didn’t feel the same way. The move to Texas wasn’t as hard as you’d think . . . ’ I have a feeling I’ve already reached the end of the Mr. Rutledge part of the story. ‘ . . . Although I do miss being close to the sea. Even when I was in Houston, Galveston was just not the same.’
‘I suppose not . . . ’ The only thing I know about Galveston is the song. Something about a gun. Neil Diamond. Or was it John Denver?
Evelyn Rutledge’s claim to have psychic evidence about the JFK assassination puts her firmly in the same category as her plate of almendras, but she is by far the most civilized and approachable of all the conspiracy theorists I have visited so far. And definitely the most alluring. She places an olive pit companionably next to one of mine, her liquid brown eyes assessing me. There is the hint of a smile. ‘I see that you’re divorced . . . ’
She says it as though I’m stepping out of a large building marked ‘Divorce Court’ to loud applause with a decree pasted to my forehead. Could this little tête-à-tête be some kind of awful mistake? Has she confused me for someone from an online dating service? ‘What . . . ?’
Her smile is no longer camouflaged. ‘I see it in your hands, Mr. Alston.’
‘But you haven’t read my palms . . . ’
‘I read people, Mr. Alston. Your ring finger still has a circular indentation between the second and third joints. The hairs above the knuckle have been worn away by time. You wore that ring for years.’
‘Seven years.’
‘And . . . ’ She gives a pleasing if wicked smile. ‘In the interests of transparency, as they say, I also looked you up on Facebook.’
‘But there’s nothing about my divorce on my Facebook page.’
‘True. But it led me to your wife’s—your ex-wife’s page. All her friends are obsessed with the divorce. Not to mention Monica’s wedding announcement.’ I try not to show any reaction. But what can I do? She just told me she reads people. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know you didn’t know . . . ’ That wicked smile again. Liar, liar. She’s not the only one who can read people.
‘I hope that made you feel better.’
There is the teasing tumble of more wine. And then her fingers touch my hand. A thrill passes through me. Another response I can’t hide. I want to ask Evelyn who Monica is planning to marry but not only would it be humiliating, it would be wrong. I am here to do my job, to pretend to be interested in initials like ESP, JFK, CIA and LBJ. Then I have to go back home to an empty house in Sydney and make sense of this shifty alphabet soup. Besides, as soon as I leave Evelyn Rutledge, I can find out myself. If Monica hasn’t unfriended me.
Evelyn Rutledge puts me out of my misery. ‘His name is Kaplan . . . Alan Kaplan.’
My mind runs after faces with names, like a dog chasing a car. Then I have him. Not quite the face, but a handshake. Firm and, in hindsight, oddly satisfied.
Eight years ago, I was handshaked through Monica’s previous life and now I had been handshaked into her future one.
When we met, she fell hard. It had never happened to her before. When she proposed, I accepted without hesitation. She was the most exciting person I had ever met. Hard to believe after all that’s happened, but she felt exactly the same way about me. She found me handsome; I reminded her of John-John Kennedy. Monica had palled around with Caroline in Martha’s Vineyard the summer of ’97 and developed a huge crush on the dashing Junior. I never cared for them; they were just another celebrity couple, but I did feel a wave of sadness after the plane crash. Monica believed in the Kennedy Curse. It was at least as convincing as the Curse of Tutankhamun. But why would such curses be reserved just for powerful families? They could equally apply to families no one’s ever heard of. Families just like mine.
I had already been married twice before, but with Monica, if felt different. When we finally surfaced after our first three weeks together, very sore but hardly sorry, we were focusing on the future—Us Together Forever. She took me on a tour of the faculty where she worked. This was her mentor, her colleague; this was her former student who was doing his doctorate. Always ‘pleased to meet you’. Then the circuit got bigger. This was her old mixed-doubles partner. This was a friend from up at the lake; or down at the gym. The motorcycle club—Monica rode an Indian Chief.
I didn’t get these impromptu social calls at first. We’d be on our way to the beach and stop off at some university facility, or go by a gallery or rehearsal space, and Monica would introduce me to another guy. Quite a few were older than me, a couple were younger than her. Occasionally it was a woman.
It was a professor who gave it all away. He didn’t want to shake hands. He just wanted to talk to Monica. Alone. I stood outside the frosted-glass door, his muffled voice pleading at first, almost sobbing, then rising in outrage and anger.
Did they know about all the others; did they think it was only a matter of time before they’d lose her? Had they ever even cared about her, or was she just a convenient and easy pleasure on the side—erotic fast food? Were they secretly relieved that they could simply give up the st
ress that goes with adultery and go back to their families, hiding their reckless episode with Monica in the attic of their memories? Along with all their other clandestine indiscretions, embarrassments and fantasies: the students and the secretaries and receptionists in Friday-afternoon offices.
Then around two years ago, there was Kaplan, a distinguished-looking French teacher who reminded me of myself, only a little more old-school, a little more stylish. More Cary Grant than John-John . . .
I didn’t realise till it was too late. The story of my life.
CHAPTER 25
Manhattan November 8th, 1963
JFK’s daiquiri sits untouched by the bed, melting ice draining the high lime tint. Eva Marlowe stretched across the president, her nipple raking the hair on his chest as she helped herself to his drink. Eva liked to screw as well as the next woman, but she wasn’t exactly crazy about Jack’s ‘lay back and give it to me’ style. It was all about dick; nothing for Dora.
Eva was a party girl with an artist’s mind. When she was up on the screen, audiences only ever saw her beauty. They thought that’s what gave her sex appeal. But her crooked smile hid a huge intelligence. Eva knew that nothing got a man up so fast—or deflated him so quickly—as a well-chosen word, and Eva had plenty of those in her repertoire.
She was able to hold her own with most men, whether they liked it or not. Dukes or playboys. Cowboys or bandits. Presidents. She practically collected them. Adolfo López Mateos was the first. She had loved him. Here was a man who wasn’t interested in power for its own sake, but as a means of making people’s lives better. When Alfredo became president in ’58 he wrote down a list of things that would help the ordinary Mexican’s life become better: compulsory education; increased minimum wages; farmers’ markets that cut out middlemen. Housing. And then he set out in a methodical fashion to try to achieve as many of those goals as possible. It was all a little too radical for a few, very important people and Eva wondered if the terrible migraines Alfredo started suffering weren’t caused by some kind of slow-acting poisoning. A hugely popular, internationally respected social reformer was always a threat to those intent on preserving the status quo—the status quo being accumulating the greatest amount of wealth amongst the fewest possible individuals. The Bannister Way.