The Brimstone Murders jo-2

by Jeff Sherratt

  “What do you mean, confidential?”

  “You ought to know what that means, being a lawyer.” Bickerton, it seemed to me, was becoming a little churlish.

  “No offense, J. Billy, but I asked Elroy here a question. This doesn’t concern you,” I said. “Hey now, Elroy, I need the address of the center.”

  Elroy instantly stopped pacing. He stood still, stiff, eyes bulging like a frozen fish.

  Bickerton roared, “Damn it, O’Brien. I said the information is privileged!”

  I guessed His Majesty wasn’t used to having his commandments being questioned.

  “Why are you butting in?” I asked. “And, anyway, what’s so confidential about a drug center, for chrissakes?”

  “Watch your language, wise guy. We are in the house of the Lord.” Bickerton waved the cigar around like it was a burning, out-of-control, flying turd. “And, mister, I’ll tell you why I’m butting in. I own this goddamn church.”

  “Thought it was the Lord’s house.”

  “Don’t get cute.”

  My welcome at the Divine Christ Ministry Church had started to wear thin. Billy Bickerton and the Reverend Elroy Snavley grew exceedingly tired of dodging my questions about the center, but I kept pounding away. And of course, it was only a matter of minutes before I was asked to leave. When I wouldn’t stop the interrogation, the chauffeur was summoned. He politely showed me the door.

  The chauffeur’s nose would heal, but my shirt was beyond repair and that fine cigar in the pocket was now in shreds.

  CHAPTER 13

  First, I stopped at a J.C. Penny’s on Nordhoff and picked up a new shirt, an OP Surfer, featuring scenes of palm trees, ocean waves, and a Woody parked by a sunny beach. Not too lawyerly, but what the heck, I liked it. Then I headed out. Turning off Winnetka, I swung into a Shell gas station and used the payphone next to the restrooms. My call went to Joyce, Sol’s private secretary. Her smoky, almost ethereal voice greeted me with a pleasant, “Good morning, Jimmy. It is still morning, isn’t it?”

  “I think so, Joyce. Is Sol around?”

  “No, but he left a message. Said that it’s important that he speak with you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Sol seldom said anything was important unless it had to do with food. But I felt certain this message was about Webster’s investigation, not lunch. “He didn’t say what it was about, did he?”

  “No, he just said you’d know, but he’ll be returning this afternoon. Will he be able to reach you?”

  “I’ll have to call him. Robbie’s mother had mentioned that the drug center is out by Barstow. There’s something funny about the place. So I’m heading there now to snoop around. Tell Sol it has to do with Robbie’s disappearance. The center and his disappearance could be related. Will you tell him that, Joyce?”

  “You bet, Jimmy.”

  Barstow was about a hundred-forty miles northeast of Chatsworth, halfway to Vegas. Traffic in L.A. was a tangled mess, but the trip went fast once I left the basin. I rolled on the down side of the San Bernardino Mountains, covering the last fifty miles of Highway 66 from Victorville in thirty-four minutes. Not a record, but not too bad.

  It was after three in the afternoon when I pulled into the desert town, crawling along Main Street. I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do. I just knew I had to do something, and the drug center seemed to be the logical place to start. I randomly turned left on First Street, continued until I came to Riverside Drive, and then turned left again.

  On my left, I spotted a tumbledown cafe sitting in the middle of a dirt patch in front of the Santa Fe Railroad switching yard. I pulled into the lot. I needed a cup of coffee and maybe a bite to eat, but, more importantly, I’d ask someone if they knew anything about the intervention center.

  It occurred to me that I stood a better chance of getting information by stopping at a cafe off the beaten track, away from the tourists. I figured the locals knew more about what was going on in their town than the people that just stopped for a tank of gas and a piss before heading back on the highway and zooming to Vegas. If the folks here were anything like the ones in Downey, I doubted they would appreciate a drug intervention center being built in their community. It might even be the talk of the town. But, after a moment’s reflection, I knew I was being optimistic. The way Bickerton refused not only to give me the address but to even discuss the center, told me that the outfit had to be keeping a low profile.

  The screen door banged shut after me when I walked into the Bright Spot Cafe. A ceiling fan spun listlessly above, harassing a tiny squadron of houseflies engaged in a tight formation flight on the periphery of the revolving blade’s arc. The cafe, with the fan and sweltering heat, could’ve been the setting for the movie Key Largo. I glanced around. Bacall was nowhere in sight but a grizzled old guy, cigarette dangling, sat at the counter. He bore a striking resemblance to Bogart. I didn’t ask for his autograph; didn’t want to gush.

  All eyes turned and looked at me as I walked across the scuffed linoleum floor and sat at the far end of the counter. Other than Bogey, a half-dozen men slouched at the few tables placed haphazardly around the cafe. The men all wore bib overalls, and two had baseball caps pushed back on their foreheads, the Santa Fe Railroad logo prominently displayed above the bill on both caps.

  A pretty girl with dark hair wearing a white apron over her checkered shirt and tight-fitting jeans wiped a table across the room. Her back was to me, and she was bending slightly. Her hand moved across the table with a slow, mechanical rhythm.

  The girl had to be about eighteen with the firm, tight, nascent body of feminine youth, which never failed to tantalize old guys like me.

  The girl peeked surreptitiously at me. When she saw that I noticed her, she quickly looked away and continued with her chore.

  I plucked the menu, a single sheet covered in plastic, from its metal bracket clamped to the edge of the counter. The front side of the menu listed the cafe’s offerings: bacon and eggs, hamburgers, that sort of stuff, but typed on the back was a blurb, a short history of the Bright Spot Cafe.

  The white clapboard building was built in 1930. “John Steinbeck stopped right here at the Bright Spot Cafe when traveling Route 66, doing research for his great novel, Of Mice and Men, about a bunch of Okies coming to Calif.”

  The waitress, a woman of undeterminable age but a hell of a lot older than me, brought me a chipped coffee cup, the handle of which ringed the pinky of her left hand. She held a coffeepot in her right hand.

  “Grapes of Wrath,” I said.

  She dropped the cup on the counter and, with an exaggerated sigh, turned to the food delivery slot in the wall behind her. “Hey Gus, we got another one of them intellectuals here.”

  “Hey, buddy, don’t want no trouble,” a heavy voice growled from the slot.

  “Nope, no trouble.” I already had to buy one shirt today. “Must have been mistaken, sorry,” I shouted back at the slot.

  “S’okay.”

  I decided to drop the issue and not delve any further into Steinbeck. It was obviously a sore point at the Bright Spot. Who was I anyway, a literary critic? I needed information about the drug intervention center and I wouldn’t get any cooperation by upsetting the natives. Besides, maybe George and Lenny did travel through Barstow on their way to the Salinas Valley.

  The waitress turned back to me. Her chin was tucked in, and she looked at me cautiously. She filled my cup, stepped back a couple of feet as though I might explode, and slowly withdrew an order pad from the pocket of her white but filthy uniform. “Want something to eat?”

  I was starved. “Nah, not hungry,” I said. “Just coffee, thanks.”

  She started to move along the counter. “Wait,” I called out.

  She stopped dead in her tracks, really uptight. Christ, the last intellectual who came in here must have been hell on wheels.

  “Got a phonebook?” I said.

  It was like she deflated, kind of slumped. Then she
dashed to the cash register, reached behind it and pulled out the thin book. She slid it along the counter toward me.

  A male voice from behind me, one of the men at a table, spoke up. “Looking for someone in town, mister? I’ve been here nigh on forty years. Know everybody in town.”

  I swiveled on the stool. An older guy without a baseball cap nodded.

  “Ben Moran,” he said. “Yep, came here from Kansas in thirty-three. Depression, you know, heading to L.A. Had to find work. Got this far, ran outta money. Been here ever since. Still outta money.” When he said that, everyone in the place, even the waitress, let out a loud guffaw.

  Ben sat hunched over his coffee cup alone at the table. Even seated I could see that he was a large man, a giant with more fat than muscle. His shapeless form filled the chair and parts of his backside spilled over it, curling around the edges. The man’s stringy gray hair was thin in front but long and wavy in the back and on the sides. He wore a handlebar mustache under a banged-up nose, which was too large for his face. His mouth was a jagged slit cut into his molting, liver-spotted skin.

  I nodded. “Jimmy O’Brien, glad to know you.”

  His pale, watery eyes, hooded by a thicket of salt and pepper brows, peered at me. “You ain’t really one of them professors or smarty-pants fellows, are ya?” he asked.

  “Not me,” I said. “Just a guy trying to make a buck here and there.” I didn’t want to tell him I was a lawyer, God forbid.

  “Didn’t think so. Don’t look the type. Well then, come on over here. Bring your coffee.”

  I picked up my cup and moved to his table. When I got close, Moran kicked out a chair. I sat down, and we shook hands.

  We-or I should say Ben-talked about his town and the people in it. He seemed to know everyone and was determined to tell me all of their life stories. He had everyone in the cafe enthralled with strange tales of his forty years in this strange town. Everyone but me, that is. He chortled and slapped his hands on his denim clad legs when he told me about Vera Olson, an eighty-year-old spinster, who was rumored to have been a communist in the thirties and now subscribed to Ms magazine. Vera was the town’s leading proponent of women’s lib. He figured she was definately bent and he figured she was bent in the wrong direction. “And like Tinker Bell,” he did a finger wave, “Vera had scattered a little pixie dust in her day.” The crowd broke up at that last crack.

  But as enlightening as his narrative was, it had to end. It was getting late and I wanted to find the drug center before dark. Ben’s jocular mood shifted when I changed the subject. “Tell me, Ben, what do you know about a Christian teen drug center out here somewhere?”

  The cafe instantly became quiet, and the people in the room pretended not hear my question. They all looked away.

  “You some kind of government agent?” Ben asked menacingly.

  “No, not at all.”

  “Why you asking about the center?”

  “Heard about it. That’s all.”

  He leaned closer and peered intently at me. “You’re the lawyer.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Without saying anything he pushed on his chair, and slowly his enormous bulk rose. Then he turned and galumphed out of the cafe without looking back.

  I glanced around; everyone was ignoring me.

  “Hey, buddy, we need your spot at the table,” the voice from the food slot called out. “Got a big group coming in. Be here any moment now. So, why don’t you be a good guy and hightail it outta here.”

  I climbed out of my chair, surveyed the room, and in a loud voice, said, “Hey, c’mon. Don’t you people know anything about a teen drug center right here in your midst?”

  Everyone in the cafe sat there gawking at me. Their eyes were dead, their faces masked with blank expressions. There wasn’t a murmur, hardly a sound, just the whining noise of the ceiling fan. It needed a new bearing in the motor.

  “Where is it? Damn it, someone tell me!”

  Not a peep, just the staring.

  I continued to stand with my back stiff, rooted in the center of the room. My eyes tracked the vacant, lifeless forms. These people were frightened. But frightened of what? That old fat guy, Ben Moran?

  After long seconds of dead silence, the food slot pleaded in a hushed tone, “Come on, Mack, leave us alone. Get going.”

  “Why don’t you come out from behind that wall and make me leave?”

  The food slot was beginning to grate my nerves. In fact, the whole joint was making my skin itch.

  “Grapes of Wrath. Do you hear me, damn it? It’s The Grapes of Wrath!” I stomped out of the cafe.

  In the parking lot around the corner of the building, I noticed a payphone. Stepping in and closing the door, I dropped a coin in the shot, dialed O, and when the operator came on, I asked to make a collect call to Sol Silverman at Silverman Investigations, Inc. in Downey.

  Joyce came on the line. She accepted the call and said, “Oh, Jimmy, I’m glad you called. Sol has been pacing the floor. Hang on a minute, please.”

  The line clicked and there was a moment of static.

  It was stifling hot in the booth. I turned to open the door a crack and that’s when I saw her. The teenage girl from the cafe stood just outside the booth staring at me with the same blank expression as the people inside had. I swung the door open all the way. “Can I help you miss?”

  She stood there motionless and silent.

  “Miss?” I said.

  “You want to know about the center?”

  My heart thumped. “Yes.”

  She took a couple of quick glances in both directions. “Meet me behind the old Harvey House in five minutes. But I can’t wait. I’ll leave if you’re not there.” She started to back away.

  “The what? What house? Where?”

  “You’ll find it,” she whispered over her shoulder as she turned. She moved like a shadow, slipped around the corner of the building and disappeared.

  “Jimmy,” Sol said on the phone. “I’m glad you called. I have news-”

  I hung up the phone and ran for my car.

  CHAPTER 14

  I jumped in the Vette, raced out of the parking lot, and shot into the first gas station I saw, a Standard Oil just off First Street by Riverside Drive.

  A craggy-faced, weathered guy hobbled out of the office. He had on the Standard Oil uniform, white pants and shirt, black bowtie, and a garrison cap like those worn by soldiers in World War II. The old guy looked like he had fought one too many battles. The Battle of Gas Pump Island popped into my head.

  I asked directions to the Harvey House. He didn’t say anything, just kept moving toward me with a lumbering gait. Jumping out of the car, I rushed to him and asked again about the old house.

  He stood there deep in thought. Finally, he drew an oil-stained orange rag from his hip pocket and slowly wiped his brow with it. He looked off into the distance, started to point, and then said, “Nah.” He stared at the rag in his hand. Forever, it seemed.

  I mentioned that I was in a hurry and glanced at my Timex: two minutes had passed since my encounter with the girl.

  Suddenly, like in a cartoon, the light bulb lit up. Not only did he know what and where the Harvey House was, but he was bent on giving me the entire history of the place. I tried to interrupt, but the guy wouldn’t shut up about the old house. He kept rambling on, said the house was once used as a location for a 1940s movie, The Harvey Girls, but now it was in terrible shape.

  He kept on talking, grousing that someone should turn the place into a museum. “Maybe they will someday. You know, it reminds me of a story…”

  I was getting frantic. If the girl took off, I’d never find the teen drug center. It could be anywhere in the billion square miles of desert out here. How foolish to think I could drive to Barstow, cruise around, and find it.

  What did I expect? Did I think there would be signs pointing the way? Signs like the Burma Shave ads posted every mile or so I saw driving up here: “The monk
ey took…One look at Jim… And threw the peanuts… Back at him… Burma Shave.” Even the Burma Shave pundits didn’t think I had a chance.

  This was hopeless. I’d better forget about the center and head back to Downey. But before I left Barstow, I’d call Sol and see if he had any news. Maybe he could find out, through the authorities, something about the center. It had to be licensed, I was sure. But where would he begin? I didn’t even have the name of the place. Oh my God, it suddenly dawned on me that I had hung up on him.

  I cast a quick glance in all directions and spotted a phone booth. I was about to make a dash to it when I saw the gas station guy pointing to the west at what appeared to be an abandoned train station just down the road about a hundred yards.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The Harvey House.”

  “Where? I don’t see any house.”

  “The Harvey House is the old railroad depot and hotel right next door,” he said. “Ain’t that what you were asking me about?”

  I had only thirty seconds before the teenage girl would leave. Jumping in my car, I cranked the engine and stomped on the gas. I swerved to miss the fence separating the gas station lot from the dilapidated hotel, then stood on the brake. In a cloud of dust, I skidded to stop in front of the antiquated hotel-depot. Ten seconds to spare.

  The sun was low in the western sky when I darted around the corner of the building and ventured into the dirt yard behind the derelict building. I stopped and glanced around. The girl wasn’t there.

  The atmosphere was eerie, unnaturally quiet. The trash-laden yard was blanketed with long murky shadows. I watched carefully as I walked to the other end of the building amid a minefield of debris. Rusted oil drums, a banged-up refrigerator, a jumbled nest of broken pipes sitting next to a worn-out sofa with its fibrous stuffing pulled out in spots like the straw from a long-standing scarecrow littered what was once, I imagined, the manicured grounds of the old mission-style building behind me.

  A spotted lizard, no bigger than a Tiparillo cigar, scurried from its position under a rock, stopped once with its head raised as if listening for a distant train that would never pass this way again, then quickly vanished behind a rusty hubcap.