by Betty Webb
When I asked about Lindsey, he sounded abrupt. “The doctor’s probably going to release her tomorrow, as soon as she gets a psych eval and referral.”
Psych eval. Then the doctor suspected the overdose was a suicide attempt, too. “They can’t force her to stay if she doesn’t want to, can they?”
“No, but I can. I told her she can come back to work as soon as she sees a therapist, not before. I also told her that the therapy had better be long-term, too, if she wants to remain with Living History Productions.”
His coldness unsettled me. While I was no fan of Lindsey’s, the prospect that he might fire her troubled me and I said so.
He looked back at the canal, where the water was now running slower than it had been a few days earlier. “It’s for her own good. She’s had, well, issues for a long time now, and I can’t allow them to halt production.“
Of course. Ultimately, everything in Hollywood was all about money, and nothing—not fires, floods, earthquakes or suicide attempts—would be allowed to interfere with the bottom line. From what little reading I’d done on documentaries, their budgets were even more strained than on the larger, star-studded productions. I wondered if the same held true for pornography. Probably not. A few people, a few sex toys, a bed, and some low-grade camera equipment were all any director needed, making the profit margin on sleaze sky high.
I decided to ask the question that had been bugging me for weeks. “She was in love with you, wasn’t she?”
He looked away from the canal to me, then back to the canal again. “What does that have to do with anything?”
That coldness again. “It could have everything to do with her suicide attempt. If she felt she was being thrown over for me…”
“My thing with Lindsey ended years ago, even before I married Angel. Now I’m sorry, Lena, but I have a scene to direct.”
With that none too subtle brush-off, he began rounding up the extras and placing them around the pseudo tunnel exit. I watched for a while longer, hoping the action would stop long enough for me to ask a few more questions, but after an hour passed I went back to my Jeep. As I started to leave, I saw Mark Schank drive up in the Studebaker Golden Hawk.
Schank leaned out the window and waved me down.“Heard you had some trouble down here the other day.”
“Just an accident.” Uncomfortable, I changed the subject. “I see you’re still driving the Hawk. Warren hasn’t made up his mind, yet?”
He smiled his phony salesman’s smile. “We’re getting there. But I don’t have any appointments this afternoon, and I thought I’d watch the action. I’m really into film, especially work like Warren’s. He’s such a genius.” But his eyes remained calculating as they caressed my Jeep.
Not wanting to hear another sales pitch, I made my farewells and headed for Sun City, a famous retirement community which existed economically between proletarian Sundown Sam’s RV Park and Tommy Bollinger’s snooty The Greening. Sun City was located on the far northwest side of Phoenix, about twenty crow-fly miles from Scottsdale. Easy-care houses and condos sat amid “lawns” of gravel dyed the color of grass, and the nearby shops stocked everything the active retiree could want: overpriced sports wear and large-print books.
The community was also much more comprehensive than either Sundown Sam’s or The Greening. Anyone who lived here never had to leave. For entertainment, its SunDome hosted a variety of touring shows, ranging from the Bolshoi Ballet to Wayne Newton. The various clinics and hospitals which ringed the development specialized in the ailments of the aging, but if their expertise wasn’t enough, an abundance of funeral parlors, crematoria, and cemeteries waited to welcome you with open arms. All in all, if you had to get old before you died, Sun City was the place to do it.
As I pulled the Jeep up in front of Sammy Maurice’s house, the front door opened and a stooped prune of a man tottered out.
“How much you want for that Jeep?” he bawled across his green-dyed gravel. The old car thief still had an eye for mechanical beauty.
I climbed out of the Jeep and walked up the drive. “She’s not for sale, Mr. Maurice.”
His rheumy eyes looked wistful behind his thick horn rims. “Too bad. I’d love to flash that little beauty around town. And call me Reverend Sammy, like my friends do. Only my enemies call me Mr. Maurice.”
“Reverend, did you say?”
His smile revealed a mouth full of dentures. “For the past thirty years. Retired now, if a pastor can ever be said to be retired. I can still deliver the odd sermon when called upon.” He opened the door and led me into a dark living room so overstuffed with chairs it was almost impossible to maneuver. “Take a seat, any seat, plenty of choices, right?”
Cautiously I inched my way into a pink floral chair, which turned out not to be as comfortable as it looked. It was so hard it could have been embalmed.
He plopped down across from me on a gold-and-brown plaid sofa and put his feet up on a red leather ottoman. As my eyes became accustomed to the dim light, I realized that none of the furniture in the room matched, neither in color nor style. Like so many other pack rats, he had probably collected the various pieces over the years and it had never once occurred to him to discard the old in favor of the new. I also figured he had to be single, or at least widowed. No woman would put up with this gaudy mess.
“Like I said on the phone, I wanted to talk to you about your involvement in the Chess Bollinger trial.”
He still smiled, the very picture of a man with nothing to hide, but I knew from previous experience that most murderers looked that way. “I’ll admit I was intrigued when you called earlier. But before we get started on the Bollingers, how about some iced tea? Or Diet Coke? Nelda can get you some orange juice, if that’s what you prefer.”
Nelda? Maybe I’d been wrong about his marital state. “Tea will be fine.”
He turned his head and bawled again. “Yo, Nelda! Make that two teas!”
A thin voice called back, “Yeah, yeah. Keep your pants on.”
Sammy grinned at me. “No respect, no respect at all. But what can you expect from an old con like her?”
Before I could ask what he meant, a tiny woman carrying a loaded tray emerged from the kitchen. Her clothing was as mismatched as her house. Bright red stretch pants clashed with a lavender print blouse, and far too many rhinestones adorned her wrinkled hands and neck. Her makeup would have looked more appropriate on a Vegas showgirl. “Raspberry tea with a dash of mint,” she announced. “Fresh made, none of that powdered chemical crap.”
“Language, Nelda,” Reverend Sammy chided.
“Up yours, sweetie.” Nelda put the tray down on the coffee table and sank down on the sofa beside her husband. Then she snuggled up to him like they were both teenagers. I had the feeling that if I weren’t in the room, she’d nibble his ear.
I took a sip. Delicious. Like Nelda said, none of that chemical crap. After complementing the brewer, I said, “Reverend Sammy, wouldn’t you prefer this conversation to take place in private?”
He waved his hand. “My wife knows all about my past, as I know about hers. We met in a halfway house in the Sixties.”
Nelda twinkled at me. “Yeah. He was on parole for car theft, me for bank robbery.”
So he hadn’t been kidding when he’d called her an “old con.” “I, uh, take it you’re both, ah, reformed?”
He smiled. “Now we steal souls for Jesus.”
The state of my own soul being somewhat iffy at the moment, I stayed on message. “How much do you remember about the Bollinger case?”
“Everything. It was the second most defining moment of my life.”
“Second?”
“Setting up my prison ministry was the first.”
Nelda elbowed him. “That means I come in third, you old bastard.” She didn’t seem all that upset at not winning the race. If life was a race.
He kissed her hand. “A very close third.” Then to me, “What exactly do you want to know?”
<
br /> “I want to know if your testimony in court was truthful, if Chess Bollinger really was with you when his family was murdered.”
He nodded. “I’ve told a lot of lies in my life, but none about the Bollinger murders. Chess was with me all that day and all that night. And, no, he didn’t kill his family.”
“Uh, all that night?”
Nelda giggled. “She thinks you’re queer, Sammy.”
I experienced my second blush of the week. What was it about old people that made me feel like such a kid? “No, no, not at all. But…but what were you guys doing all night? That was never made clear in the newspaper articles I read, and I still haven’t been able to get my hands on the court transcripts. I doubt if you two were up all night playing cards or Monopoly.”
Reverend Sammy’s smile matched his wife’s. Dentures gleamed. “No, we weren’t. We were doing what we so frequently did those days. Vandalizing public property.”
Vandalizing. Where had I run across a mention of vandalism lately? Then I remembered. Harry Caulfield had told me there’d been some instances of vandalism on Christmas Day, 1944.
“Do you mean to tell me that you and Chess were the kids who wrecked Scottsdale High School?”
All these years later, he still managed a guilty look. “I’m afraid so. After spending the day getting drunk on some liquor that I sneaked out of my parents’ house, we walked to the school at around, oh, six in the evening—it was already pretty dark—and spent a while going through the classrooms, tearing up books, writing on walls, that kind of thing. Then we set fire to a couple of trash cans and split. But we still weren’t done. From the school, we moved on to a barber shop and trashed that. Neither of us had any idea that while we were acting like fools, Chess’ whole family was being murdered.”
He gave a trembling sigh. “Look, I was a dumb kid. In my confused mind, I believed things would be worse for Chess if the cops found out what we’d done that night, so I helped him hide up in our attic and I kept my mouth shut. Chess believed the same thing, too, and begged me not to tell, not even after the cops caught him and charged him with murder. But when the trial started up, I realized I had to tell the truth or they might hang him! It took me a week or two to get my nerve up, and that’s when I stepped forward. But I’d waited too late. Nobody, other than that blessed jury, ever believed me. They brought in a not guilty verdict, but Chess was still branded for life as a murderer who’d escaped justice.”
I thought back over Chess’ deeply troubled life, the run-ins with the law, the prison sentences, the violence against women. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to be fifteen years old, to learn that your family was dead and that you were the suspect. You didn’t have time to grieve, just time to hide. Then, after days in your friend’s attic, you feel the handcuffs snap around your wrists. The only way to bear it would be to go numb, to refuse to allow any emotion to take hold. The problem was, such a solution came at a stiff price. If you continue to deny your own feelings, you’ll wind up always denying the feelings of others.
Such as your wife’s. Your child’s.
Or the feelings of any other poor wretch you come across.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As soon as I left Reverend Sammy’s house, I checked the messages on my cell and heard Warren apologizing for being so curt that morning. Then he added, “Let’s have dinner tonight. Call me or just come by. On second thought, come by. I want to see your beautiful face.”
I needed to do something first, so on my way back to Scottsdale, I stopped in at Schank Classic Cars, figuring that Mark Schank would probably have made it to work by now. My guess was right. He was in the showroom polishing a chrome strip on an elderly Rolls Royce Silver Shadow when I walked in. I got straight to the point. “Say, Mark. Maybe you can help me with something. I’m looking for a picture of a ’39 Oldsmobile convertible.”
His salesman’s smile, which he’d plastered in place when he first saw me advancing across the showroom floor, broadened and his eyes narrowed in calculation. “I see Warren’s love of the classics is contagious. Well, the ’39 Olds is a superb model, truly superb, and you’ll look wonderful driving it up Scottsdale Road with that blond hair of yours blowing in the wind. Although I don’t have that model here on the lot at this very moment, with my contacts, I can have one here next week. It’s…”
My next words erased his smile. “I don’t want to buy one, Mark, just see what one looks like.”
I’ll give him this. The smile returned almost immediately, although a little stiff around the edges. “I have pictures of several in a catalog in my office. But I can assure you that the moment you lay eyes on that little sweetheart, you’ll fall in love like Warren did with the Golden Hawk. As I’m certain you already know, the ’39 Olds came in a convertible model, which is perfect for Arizona’s beautiful climate. And if you wish, we can retrofit it with air conditioning.”
Which the car would need when “Arizona’s beautiful climate” heated up to a hundred and twenty degrees and the sun turned into a blowtorch. “I’ll bear that in mind. Now can I see that picture, please?”
Still extolling the charms of classic cars and the ’39 Olds in particular, Mark Schank led me down a hallway filled with photographs of antique cars into an office, where to my surprise, I saw Gilbert Schank ensconced behind a massive desk. Still in his wheelchair, still sucking oxygen through a tube. And still the car salesman, because his phony smile mirrored his son’s. Although Gilbert had shrunk alarmingly since his vigorous years on television, I could still see the strong physical resemblance between him and Mark. Both were little taller than jockeys and both had the same thin faces and beaky noses. “Miss Jones. How nice to…see you…again.”
“And you, too, Mr. Schank. How are you feeling?” Mark had told me his father almost never left the house, but here he was, as big as life. Or what was left of it.
A grimace. “I’ll live…unfortunately. Just came down…to keep my…hand in. Always try to…at least once…a month. You here…to buy a car? By the way…you look…like hell. What…happened?”
I forced a laugh. “I fell into the canal.”
“Dumb thing…to do.”
“So I noticed.”
Perhaps sensing that I was growing uncomfortable discussing my messy physical condition, Mark explained the purpose of my visit. His father frowned in concentration. “A ’39 Olds? How…strange. Someone had…where did I hear…?” He scratched his head with a trembly hand.
“Edward Bollinger had a cream-colored ’39 Olds,” I volunteered. “It disappeared the night of the murders.”
His frown went away. “Yes, now I…remember. The authorities…looked all over…for it. Such a…shame, a beautiful…car like that.”
“Yes, a shame.” But not as big a shame as the smashed-in heads of the Bollinger family.
As I struggled over what to say next, Mark plopped a heavy three-ring binder down on the desk and leafed through it. “Here it is. This one’s owned by…” He stopped, not wanting to give up the seller’s name. “Well, it’s owned by a businessman back east. He’s eager to sell, and at a bargain price, too.” The figure he quoted didn’t sound like a bargain to me.
When I studied the picture, I couldn’t understand the car’s expense. Yes, the Oldsmobile was sexy in a homely, Humphrey Bogart sort of way. It was a gleaming deep purple, and had a long hood and a deeply sloping trunk, but the headlights looked like a myopic bugs’ eyes, and the grill was as tall and pinched as an Edsel’s. I was willing to bet that the car’s narrow, split windshield had caused many an accident, too. I closed the binder. “Nice, I guess.”
For a brief moment Mark’s genial manner slipped. “Nice?! You guess?!” Then he recovered himself. “Ah, well, chacun à son gout, to each his own taste, and all that. Tell you what. You don’t really look like an Olds person, but I have a nice little Camaro out on the lot, a ’72 painted exactly the same deep green as your eyes. And it has airbrushed red flames shooting along the body!
That one’s a convertible, too. You’d be surprised at the price.”
I doubted I’d be surprised at all. “Thanks, but I’m not in the market.”
His face grew sly. “Oh, a beautiful woman’s always in the market for a new car. Let me tell you about the Camaro. It’s…”
“Mark, the lady…says she’s…not in…the market.” Oxygen hissed.
At his father’s admonition, Mark halted the sales pitch and returned the binder to its shelf. “Right. Well, I hope I’ve been of help, Miss Jones.”
I had one more question. “Is the Olds rare?”
Despite his frail physical condition, Gilbert Schank managed to offer a joke. “It certainly…is now.”
“I mean, was it rare in 1944, when the Bollingers were murdered.”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. Not…rare. But…snazzy.”
As his son had pointed out, chacun à son gout. With nothing else to ask, I said good-by to Mark’s father and received a shaky hand-wave in return. I watched as the old man picked up a paper from the desk and held it so close to his face that it almost touched his beaky nose. He squinted at it for a moment, then a spasm of pain crossed his features. He grunted, closed his eyes and let the paper drop.
Leaving Mark to tend to his father, I headed for the exit.
But not before wondering how I would age.
***
By the time I made it to the Papago Park set, filming was finished on the canal bank and the crew had reassembled near the reconstructed prison camp. But for all Warren’s apologies on my cell, he was still cranky. While I watched from the shade of a mesquite, he snapped at a cameraman, telling the man to get a move on before the sun got too high in the sky. “I need shadows! So see if you can get that Ariflex in position sometime before noon!”
Putting off our discussion yet again, I backed away and drove to Desert Investigations, where I found Jimmy so intent on work that he barely grunted a greeting when I came in. By now, my earlier good mood had vanished, so I called Warren’s cell and left a message that something had come up and I couldn’t have dinner tonight. I promised to call him first thing in the morning, then hung up. Jimmy and I worked in silence for the rest of the day.