The Brimstone Murders jo-2

by Jeff Sherratt

  The next stop on my way to Rattlesnake Lake, according to the sheet on the clipboard, was a roadside cafe/gas station called Twin Oaks. It stood on a lonely stretch of Stoddard Wells Road five miles outside of Victorville. The instructions said the place would be closed for the night, but I was supposed to pull around to the back of the cafe where the cleanup man would let me in to unload the order.

  I slowed when I saw the old rusty Twin Oaks sign swinging in the breeze out front of the gas pumps. Slowing some more, I turned the big steering wheel and pulled the truck around to the back of the cafe, an archaic building made of natural stones, which I assumed were gathered from the desolate landscape around here.

  As the truck’s headlights swung through their arch, a tall lanky guy wearing a white T-shirt and apron cinched over his Levi’s bolted from the back door of the cafe. He stumbled into the gravel lot waving his arms frantically. I slammed on the brakes, just missed the guy, and after jerking out the emergency brake handle, I jumped out of the cab.

  “Did you see them? Are we under attack?” he shouted, hopping around.

  I took a quick look about the area and saw nothing but the dark, quiet desert and a few overgrown weed stalks casting a dim shadow on the side of the building next to four overflowing trashcans. “Who’s attacking?” I asked.

  “Rooskies! Martians! Hell, I don’t know! The radio is sending out a warning signal,” he hollered, running away.

  “The radio? What are they saying?” I shouted to his back.

  “Nothing, I was listening to KROQ, you know, Humble Harve, the rock ’n’ roll guy, and suddenly, the radio starts beeping.” The cleanup guy was now hiding behind the truck, peering out from behind the refrigerator van. “You know, the worldwide warning system. They didn’t say it was a test or nothin’ just, beep… beep… beep.”

  Oh, Christ, Sol’s gizmo was broadcasting a worldwide alert-or at least a half-mile alert-as I drove along. “What’s the station frequency?” I shouted to the guy.

  “L.A. Rocks with K-Rock, one-oh-six-point-seven on your dial.” The guy shouted the station’s jingle in a singsong voice.

  “C’mon, fella, I think the radio is just broken or something. Why don’t we go inside and try another station?”

  The poor guy. It was obvious: his bag of marbles had a hole in it.

  CHAPTER 28

  Back on the road, there was nothing as I drove through the night, my eyes focused ahead at the endless ribbon of black. Nothing except a pair of headlights following in the distance; Sol’s limo, I assumed. I thought about pulling over to the side of the road where I’d wait for Sol to come up behind me. I wanted to tell him that everyone was hearing the beeps coming from the truck. I glanced around some more. There was no one on the highway-except Sol-and just a few shacks were off in the distance, so unless jackrabbits had transistor radios, there was hardly a soul out there for miles who could hear my worldwide alert. Even when I got to Barstow, I’d be through the town so fast no one would notice a couple of beeps coming from their radios.

  Sol was a little wild, but he was my friend, a simple declarative sentence that said it all. I smiled, thinking of the stuff he came up with: a tracking beeper on the truck, James Bond spy limos, and now he and a couple of his tough guys were following me in the desert. What next? Pearl-handled revolvers and maybe a tank division or two to help out when needed. I loved the guy.

  I glanced at the headlights behind me in the distance and remembered back to the beginning of our friendship. It started when I was a member of the Los Angeles Police Force. It’d been well over ten years since then. What happened to the time? It was 1962, Kennedy was president, Marilyn was still alive, but by then Rock ’n’ Roll had faded out with a whimper. Chuck Berry and Fats Domino were nowhere to be seen-or heard. Buddy Holly had been killed in a plane crash a few years earlier, Elvis was making one-note movies, and the British Invasion had yet to happen. That year’s mega-star was Frankie Avalon.

  In 1962, I was a rookie cop, still in my probationary period, a Police Officer status 1. I cruised in a one-man black-and-white and worked the first watch, nights, starting at eleven p.m. My turf was out of the Newton Street Division.

  Although Newton had been known as one of the toughest divisions in Los Angeles, most nights it was calm-boring even. On other nights-nights when I earned my keep-it could be a war zone, but on that particular night, there wasn’t much going on, just a few radio calls coming in. I was drinking a lot of coffee to stay awake.

  At about two a.m., I was parked at the curb on Central Avenue, sipping hot coffee with one hand and writing up crime reports with the other when, suddenly, this big Cadillac came barreling around the corner at Vernon Avenue. It skidded thorough the intersection and ended up on Central going north at a thousand miles per hour.

  I lit up the flashers and started the motor. I was getting set to give chase when the Caddie’s taillights vanished around the corner at the next intersection. I stomped it.

  My unit’s wheels burned rubber. I was halfway out onto the street when, suddenly, another Cadillac, bigger than the first, shot out from around the same corner behind me. It roared onto Central in hot pursuit of the first guy.

  “What the hell,” I said out loud and cranked the wheel. When I glanced back, I saw that the second guy was zooming right at me, on a collision course. He was going to broadside me.

  I hit the brakes-hard.

  At the last second, he swerved. The Cadillac fishtailed as it flew past me, just missing by a millimeter. It spun around, rolled to one side, up on two wheels, and slammed down, totally out of control. The big boat did a brodie, sideways, and smashed into a solid-steel light pole. It instantly burst into flames.

  My car was five feet away, skidding wildly, heading directly for the ball of fire. I stood on the brake pedal and stopped inches from the smashup. I could see a man inside the burning wreck scraping at the window in a vain effort to get free.

  Instinctively, I tore the riot gun from its bracket and bolted out of the patrol car. With the butt of the gun, I smashed the Caddie’s window, reached into the flames and yanked the guy free.

  I didn’t know my strength, but I dragged him away just as the automobile exploded.

  The percussion knocked us both to the ground. I stayed there a moment, panting. Then I crawled over to the guy, who was lying on his back, motionless, two feet away. I did a quick inventory of his body parts. He seemed to be all there, and he seemed to be coming around.

  He sat up and shook his big head. With his wiry hair still smoldering, he focused on me.

  The guy blinked a couple of times and said, “Hey there, buddy. How ya doing? Sol’s my name.” He held out his right hand. “What’s yours?”

  There was something about the guy. It wasn’t the way he looked-bitty little legs, a huge barrel chest, and a round smiling face-that made me laugh. No, that wasn’t it at all. It was his attitude, How ya doing, buddy. The guy was just in a horrible smashup, his car on fire, a total loss, and he had almost been killed. His hair was still smoking, for chrissakes, and he asks me how I’m doing!

  I started to laugh, and so did he. In fact, we laughed all the way to Downey as I drove him home. Being a cop, I was supposed to have taken him in and booked him on a dozen violations of the California Vehicle Code, but I didn’t do that. I did what he asked me to do. I drove him home.

  The next day, after drawing a thirty-day suspension, I went to my place to sulk, and when I got there I found a brand new color TV resting on my front step. There was no note. But it had a big red ribbon around it with a tag that said, “For Officer O’Brien.”

  I knew I could keep it, and I knew it was a gift from Sol. I had his address, so it was a simple matter of getting his phone number. I called. He wouldn’t admit that he sent the TV, but he invited me to lunch. I don’t know why, but I accepted.

  We hit it off big time. There was something genuine about him. For one thing, he cared about people, had sincere compassion for those of us
who were less fortunate, but he still had a sense of justice and wanted to take down the bad guys. Couple that with a razor-sharp wit, mind-boggling intelligence, and an I don’t give a damn attitude and you had an idea who and what Sol Silverman was.

  That day at lunch, I knew I’d found a friend-a friend forever. Of course, he bragged to everyone in sight how I had saved his life, pulled him to safety just seconds before his car blew up. He went on and on about my bravery. I didn’t mention that I wasn’t aware the car was about to explode. Hell, I wouldn’t have gotten near the thing if I’d thought it was about to blow up. At least, I didn’t think I would have. It’s funny, I never did find out why he was chasing that other Cadillac around South Central L.A. that night.

  But all of that was over ten years ago. In the intervening decade, I watched Sol’s investigation business grow. It went from a one-man operation to being one of the largest security firms in the state with dozens of operatives and a support staff that the federal government would’ve loved to have if they had the money.

  And during that same ten-year period, I had lost my job with the police force, became a drunk, and when Barbara sued for divorce, was ready to give up. But with Sol’s help, I took the AA cure and went to night law school. When I passed the bar exams, I hung out a sign: Jimmy O’Brien, Lawyer.

  Ever since, when Sol and I were out somewhere having fun and there was a lot of drinking going on, someone would invariably ask why I wasn’t imbibing. And when that happened, Sol always said, “Jimmy quit. He wasn’t a drunk or anything. It’s just that when he went out for a cool one, he’d be gone for days at a time. He’d pass out, and maybe wake up in Mexico… at a dogfight.” Sol would laugh, “…in the ring on all fours, snarling at a pit bull.”

  “I rarely won,” I always added.

  Seven hours after pulling away from the dairy company’s loading dock, I blew through Barstow. I didn’t stop at the Bright Spot. When I turned off the highway onto the dirt road leading to the base, morning sunlight was creeping over the mountain ridge in the east, casting the wide sky in an endless expanse of burnished turquoise streaked with wispy, pink clouds. The promise of dawn, a new day.

  I thought of a painting I’d once seen at the L.A. County Art Museum years ago when my mother dragged me there. It was a Monet, and the sky this morning reminded me of the one in that painting. It’s funny what you think about at a time like that, things like paintings and new beginnings, but I guess it was better than dwelling on the thugs at Rattlesnake Lake.

  After an hour of kicking up spirals of dust in my wake, I drove through the rocky pass and down into the small valley. I could see the base ahead. From the distance, the base or gun club or teen drug center or whatever it was looked like a fortress. A high fence surrounded the camp with gun towers at the corners. Stanchions running the perimeter stood like giant sentries; their lights, mounted high, bathed the grounds in an eerie bluish hue. The road led directly to the main entrance. Outside the barricaded gate stood a guard shack made of solid concrete, just like a military bunker. Cut into the side was a metal door with a slit just wide enough for the guard inside to peer out as the enemy approached.

  I’d been told to be there at six, but it was past 6:30 when I pulled up to the gate. I was nervous about being recognized, and drawing attention to myself by being late didn’t help matters. But I remembered what the blind hustler at the court had said: workers in uniform going about their business are not noticed. It gave me some comfort. I would just have to be cautious, that’s all. I’d keep my head down and act unobtrusive. I tugged at the bill of my milkman’s hat, shading my eyes and covering the scar on my forehead. I patted the name stitched above my left shirt pocket. We can we pull this off, Chip… can’t we?

  A man in a camouflage-brown shirt wearing a fatigue hat, like the Marines wore, emerged from a steel door and moved over to my truck. Stitched above the bill of the cap, instead of the USMC emblem, was a bizarre logo. It appeared to be a snake impaled upon a cross. I had no idea what that was all about, but right then wasn’t the time to discuss it.

  He had a buzz cut, a pock-marked face, and a crescent-shaped, jagged scar, a serrated scythe that ran down from under his right eye and followed the contour of his angular face: a face of hard edges that matched his hard-edged swagger. He had a sidearm holstered at his hip, and his hand rested on the butt of the gun.

  I rolled down the window. Why didn’t he just open the gate and wave me through like the real driver, Roger, had said he would? I glanced in the rearview mirror: no sign of Sol’s limo.

  “Hey, you.” The guard jumped up on the running board and stuck his head inside the cab, giving me the once-over. I glanced at his hands gripping the edge of the window. His knuckles were heavy with scar tissue. He had been a fighter in his day, maybe still was.

  “What’s the holdup? I’m late on my route.”

  “Where’s Roger?”

  “Sick.”

  The guard scowled. “You got a radio in this rig?”

  The thump I heard was my heart dropping to my socks. Sol and his damn beeper. They nailed me, even before I got through the gate, I thought. I’d be lucky if the guy didn’t shoot me. “What radio?”

  He pointed. “The one on the dashboard. What else?”

  “Oh, yeah…” I felt a wave of relief. “What about it?” I leaned over and twisted the knob, turning on the truck’s AM/FM broadcast radio, a Motorola. Static came through the speakers. “Can’t get much way out here.”

  “Tune in 106.7.”

  “Why?” The pain in my side kicked in. Did everyone in the Mojave listen to 106.7?

  “My radio inside,” he nodded toward the guard shack, “is beeping like crazy.”

  I dialed in 106.7 as instructed and the beeping came through, loud. “Mine beeps, too. Must be the station,” I said and turned off the radio. “I hope it goes away by the time I leave. I want to listen to Humble Harve on the drive back.”

  “It’s not the station,” he said coldly.

  “What do you mean? It’s beeping on my radio, too.”

  “You got a problem, buddy.” His right hand shifted from the edge of the driver’s window. Was he reaching for his gun? My back stiffened and my ribs felt like a boil on a carbuncle. I slipped my hand low, under the dash, ready to flip the panic switch.

  “What kind of problem?”

  “You got an FM transmitter, a tracker, planted on your vehicle.”

  It took a moment for his words to register then the thought of the.45 automatic under the seat crossed my mind. I wouldn’t go for it unless he brought his gun out first.

  “What are you talking about?” I tried to act dumb, but I knew the plan was over. They were on to me now. My cover was blown. I couldn’t blame Sol, though. I had brought it on myself. Why did I think no one would notice me sneaking onto the base? The thugs who attacked me had called me by name and, by now, everyone had to know about me, including the guard, the angry guy with a gun standing two feet away from me. Yet, there I was, driving through the night with the truck beeping like crazy, broadcasting a worldwide alert-hey, are the Russians coming? No, run for cover, it’s Jimmy O’Brien in a milk truck-God, was I a shmuck, or what?

  “They think you’re a thief. Are you a thief, Mr. Milkman?”

  What was this guy talking about? If someone warned him about me, then he knew I wasn’t here to steal anything. He’d know I was a lawyer. But, then again, maybe he couldn’t make the distinction. “A thief? I’m not a thief.”

  “The beeper’s probably under the bumper, stuck on by a magnet. Your boss is tracking you. They don’t trust you.”

  “Hey, I’m new. I think they do that with all the new guys.” I knew I’d just dodged a bullet-ooh, bad choice of words.

  “Okay, I’m going to let you in, but I’m going to call the commissary, tell them to keep an eye on you.”

  The guard turned and went into the shack. In a moment, the gate swung open. I put the truck in gear, drove through it and continue
d on, following the road to the commissary. By the time I pulled up to the loading dock, I was sweating, and I hadn’t even unloaded the milk order yet. I made it this far and felt exhilarated, but at the same time I was scared out of my wits.

  At the end of the dock was a metal roll-up door. It clanked open a moment after I banged on it with my fist. Inside, a man dressed in white stood at a tall desk; the receiving clerk, I presumed. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, and had a three-day growth of heavy stubble and a thick, dark head of hair, the color of which matched his eyes. He glanced up at me for a second and then shifted his gaze back to the desk, jotting something on a pad.

  “You’re late,” he said. “They’re getting ready to serve breakfast, and there’s no milk. Unload your truck and hurry it up.”

  I took a quick peek beyond the guy into the kitchen area. The room was bright, well-lit with fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. The walls were yellow ceramic tile, the floor red cement squares, and the equipment all shiny steel. The area was about the size of a small college or large restaurant commercial kitchen.

  Teenage boys and girls were busy working, some at the prep tables, while others scurried about with trays in their hands. I estimated that ten or twelve kids silently prepared the morning meal. If there were that many kids just fixing breakfast, how many people resided on the base?

  A large TV, mounted high in one of the corners, beamed down a flickering image of a women’s choral group. The group contained half a dozen members or so-each wearing a white surplice over a delphinium-blue gown. Even with the noise of clattering pans and pots, I could tell that the music was religious in nature. The kitchen staff ignored the TV. I didn’t blame them; when I was a teen, I liked rock ’n’ roll. Still do.

  I hadn’t expected to see Robbie, but I thought Jane might be working in the kitchen because of what she’d said at the Harvey House. I quickly scanned the area, but she was nowhere in sight either.