Counting to Infinity

by J. L. Abramo

“I wondered the same myself,” Riddle said. “Maybe Lansdale knew something that the general public didn’t know. But it’s idle curiosity; it doesn’t really concern me if I can make a buck or two, and I have no idea why Max Lansdale is so interested in Harry Chandler to begin with.”

  “Lansdale claims that Harry killed his brother,” I said.

  “For what reason?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “Was this before or after the bomb went off?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought you said that this wouldn’t take long. My mashed potatoes are turning to stone.”

  “Look, Stan. I’m in the middle of a very unpleasant situation because you ogled some skater in Venice. Forget the potatoes for a minute and help me out a little before I put your face in the meat loaf.”

  “When did you get to be such a tough guy, Diamond?” Riddle asked.

  “The Brando poster inspired me. Tell me what you’re thinking so I can get out of this fucking place before someone plays ‘Earth Angel’ on the Wurlitzer.”

  “Okay,” Riddle said, pushing the plate of food away. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Harry Chandler didn’t die in the explosion. Let’s go on to suggest that that’s a pretty good bet, being that I saw Chandler in Venice. And, going a step further, let’s grant that Chandler snuffed Max Lansdale’s brother. All I was asking, just before you went Mickey Spillane on me, was did Harry pop Lansdale’s brother before or after the bombing at Harry’s place?”

  Good question.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  Stupid question.

  “As little as possible,” Riddle said. “Look, Diamond, like I told you, I’m not much interested. I just do my job, provide information, and leave it to the client to sort out the details. I’m a pragmatist; I leave theory to greater minds. If I somehow put you in a bind because I was doing my job, it certainly wasn’t my intention.”

  “And it doesn’t matter who you’re doing the job for?”

  “Why shouldn’t I take Lansdale’s money? He’s dishing it out to everyone else. He’s obviously enlisted your services or you wouldn’t be down here ruining my lunch.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” I said, thinking about Darlene and Sally.

  “We always have a choice, Diamond. Look, I’m not entirely insensitive,” Riddle said. “If I can help you out, I will. I had the greatest respect for Jimmy Pigeon. Just don’t ask me to guess what goes on in other people’s minds. It’s a losing proposition.”

  “What about the woman?” I asked.

  “It was a string bikini and she had a body like Cindy Crawford.”

  “I mean the woman in the room with Chandler when the bomb went off.”

  “I never learned who she was, Diamond,” Riddle said, “and as far as I know, no one has seen her since.”

  I’d run out of questions.

  Stan Riddle took full advantage of the lull in the conversation to hop off his stool.

  “Don’t bother thanking me, Diamond,” he said. “If there’s something I can do, you know where to find me.” And with that he was quickly to the door and gone.

  For a moment I considered ordering food, but “Mr. Sandman” by the Chordettes chased me away. I watched Riddle walk into his office building as I got back to Willie’s pickup. I decided to go back to the house to see how the dog was doing.

  After that, like it or not, I was going to have to pay a visit to Parker Center to have a word or two with Ray Boyle.

  When I made it back to Dogtail’s place, the Impala was in front. I looked around inside the house; Darlene and the pooch were gone. I was guessing they had negotiated the path to the beach. I threw on one of Willie’s heavy sweatshirts to do the same.

  Darlene was sitting at the edge of the water; the mutt was playing tag with the waves.

  “Back so soon?” I asked. “Didn’t you find Bruno?”

  “Oh, I found him,” Darlene said.

  “Was he surprised?”

  “Oh, he was surprised. Almost as much as the pom-pom girl I found in bed with him. The door to his hotel room was unlocked so I slipped in. The patent leather boots in the hall outside the door should have been a dead giveaway, but you know how I’m a glutton for punishment.”

  “I’m sorry, Darlene,” I said.

  “Promise me, Jake,” she said, “if you ever see me go anywhere near an athlete or a musician again you’ll slap me silly. From now on it’s exclusively doctors and financial advisers for this kid.”

  “What makes you think they’re any more faithful?”

  “I don’t,” she said, “but at least I would be learning more than how to heat up a Hungry Man TV dinner or play the opening chords of ‘Stairway to Heaven’.”

  “Are you going to be okay, pal?”

  “Sure. I’ve got a dog and a bicycle. What did you learn from Riddle?”

  “That I need to see Boyle,” I said.

  “Are you in a hurry?” Darlene asked.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Did you eat?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Would you take me out to lunch?”

  “It would be a pleasure,” I said.

  I gave her a hand to her feet and walked her back to the house with the dog at our heels.

  Later that afternoon, Darlene said she needed to do some therapeutic shopping. I let her use the convertible. With the .38 stuffed in the glove box of the truck, behind Willie’s eight-track tapes, I drove to Parker Center. Ray Boyle was in his office on the third floor. He was on the telephone. When he noticed me standing outside his door he gave me a look that said exactly how glad he was that I had dropped by and waved me in as if I’d come to spray for termites.

  “Have a seat, Diamond,” he said, pointing at the chair beside his desk. “I’ll be a minute. Don’t touch anything.”

  A minute later, Boyle put down the phone. He was shaking his head the way my father used to when I brought home a poor report card. “Know a PI named Stan Riddle?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “In fact I saw him a few hours ago.”

  “So I understand.” He gestured to the phone. “That was the Santa Monica Police Department. Courtesy call. Seems that Riddle was shot to death in his office this afternoon.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m very serious. His secretary found him when she came back from having her nails done. She mentioned that you’d been by looking for him,” Boyle said, “so if you’re here to turn yourself in, you came to the wrong place. It’s out of my jurisdiction.”

  “You know better than that, Ray.”

  “Perhaps I do. But you’d better start talking so I can try to convince the SMPD. They haven’t closed a case in so long they’ll carve your name onto the bullet that killed Riddle.”

  “I went to see him about Harrison Chandler,” I said.

  “Let’s take a walk, Jake,” Boyle said.

  Ray and I sat in a booth at a diner across from Parker Center. Boyle was recapping all that I’d told him, claiming that it helped him to get it straight.

  “Stan Riddle bumps into Harry Chandler at Venice Beach, gives Lansdale a call, and Lansdale sends a goon to escort you to Chicago. Lansdale chooses you, he says, because you were so tight with Jimmy Pigeon. Sends you back to locate Chandler, and this Joe Clams, or else,” Boyle said. “Or else what?”

  “Or else Darlene and Sally get hurt, if I don’t ship them off to Timbuktu. And you know them both well enough to agree that neither would budge. I decided to play along until a better idea comes along, so I came down to see Riddle. Riddle sticks by his story about running into Chandler. Tom Romano told me that you were at the scene where Chandler is alleged to have exploded, so I came to see you. I’m guessing that Lansdale sent his goon, Ralph Battle, to stop Riddle’s clock, but I can’t help wondering why. Lansdale put me onto Riddle in the first place. If Lansdale didn’t want me to talk with Riddle he wouldn’t have dropped Stan’s name, o
r he would have gotten to Riddle before I did.”

  “What does that tell you?” Boyle asked.

  “That Lansdale wanted me to talk to Riddle?”

  “At least once,” Boyle said.

  “I need some help here, Ray. Lansdale scares the shit out of me. If you know something about Harrison Chandler, give me a hand.”

  “I know plenty about him,” Boyle said. “Harry Chandler was my partner before he was bounced off the force. I wanted to follow him out the door when they fucked him over, but he talked me out of it. Harry said I needed to stay inside to bring the captain down while he worked at toppling the city councilman. A year later the captain took early retirement and the councilman moved to Arizona.”

  “Is Chandler dead or alive, Ray?”

  “Harry was hired by Max Lansdale to investigate Lansdale’s brother. Randolph Lansdale was taking regular trips to Los Angeles and Max was curious. Their father had been tied in with the Chicago mob for almost forty years. The old man supposedly cut himself loose after Sam Giancana was killed, but Max seemed to think that there was some kind of holdover from the old days and that his brother was still playing ball with the Italians. Harry made a few trips to Chicago to meet with Max Lansdale, and that’s when he met Carla.”

  “Carla?”

  “Carla Rosario. She was a lawyer with Lansdale and Sons. Harry and Carla clicked at first sight. Harry took her to dinner the evening they first met at Lansdale’s office, and they spent the weekend together at her Chicago apartment. Harry kept an eye on Max’s brother for a while. He found that Randolph Lansdale’s trips to Los Angeles had to do with some legal research he was doing, and was in no way connected to any crime syndicate. Harry reported his findings to Max Lansdale, which effectively ended their business arrangement. Meanwhile, Harry was spending more and more time with Carla. He would go to Chicago or she would come to L.A.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Turns out that Randolph Lansdale was in love with Carla. He was much older, but a very charming bachelor. They dated nearly a year, and Lansdale apparently had marriage in mind. Then Harry came along. Carla tried to ease out of her relationship with Randolph, all the time insisting that it wasn’t about another man. Lansdale was unrelenting. Finally she had to admit that she had met someone she cared more for, and Randolph Lansdale fired her on the spot. With nothing holding her in Chicago, she picked up and moved to L.A. She found a job in a law firm here and settled into an apartment out near Cal State. And spent most of her free time with Harry Chandler.”

  The waitress walked over and refilled our coffee cups. Boyle took a few sips before continuing.

  “A few weeks later, Harry gets a call from Max Lansdale. Lansdale tells Harry that his brother Randolph is acting irrational, ranting about Carla this and Carla that. Crazy talk about making plans for the wedding, will Max be his best man, who they should invite from their mother’s side of the family, and so on. Max says he found photos in his brother’s desk, of Harry and Carla outside of Harry’s apartment. Max says that his brother has still been making trips to L.A. and Max believes that Randolph has been stalking Carla. He says that he’s worried about his brother; he’s been trying to get Randolph to seek professional help. Max says he wanted Harry to be aware of the situation. The next day, Harry and Carla traveled up to Monterey for the weekend. Carla was afraid to stay alone at her place, so they went over to Harry’s apartment when they got back. Harry was in the shower when the telephone rang. The bomb was planted underneath the bed. It was rigged to explode when the receiver of the telephone on the bedside table was lifted. Carla answered the call. She was killed instantly. The bathroom door tore loose and knocked Harry into the tiled shower wall. Harry was in the hospital for two days.”

  Boyle paused for a moment that felt to me like a week and a day.

  “Ray, please.”

  “Chandler called Chicago and discovered that Randolph Lansdale had been in L.A. that weekend. He walked out of the hospital, flew to Chicago, and Randolph turned up dead.”

  “Who was the second man? Who is Joe Clams?”

  “He was Carla’s brother. That’s all I can tell you about him,” Boyle said. “Let me finish. After Lansdale was killed and Harry was implicated there was a hefty price put on Harry’s head. Randolph’s mother was a Giancana and she demanded a vendetta. We had to kill Harry Chandler ourselves: me, Jimmy Pigeon, and Joe Clams.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We staged a shoot-out between Harry Chandler and the LAPD. Myself and a couple of Harry’s old friends in the department. Chandler was killed trying to get away; Jimmy Pigeon witnessed the showdown and reported it to Max Lansdale. We used the body of a John Doe we’d found under the freeway near the Coliseum a week before. We sent Harry up to San Francisco, he laid low for a few days, and then Clams got him out of the country. There was a lot of heat for a couple of years, but it eventually died down. At least until recently, when Max Lansdale suddenly became interested in Harry again.”

  “Because Stan Riddle saw Harry in Venice.”

  “Word had it that Lansdale started asking about Harry again months ago, long before he got the call from Riddle,” Boyle said. “On top of that, Stan Riddle never saw Harry Chandler in Venice. Harry hasn’t been anywhere near California for years, and I know that for a fact.”

  “So why did Riddle call Max Lansdale to say he’d spotted Chandler?”

  “To make a few bucks I would guess, or maybe it was Lansdale’s idea to begin with.”

  “Lansdale somehow knew that Harry was alive.”

  “Seems like a possibility.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll look into it, Jake. I’ll try to find out if this guy Ralph Battle or anyone connected to Max Lansdale was anywhere near Riddle’s office when he was shot. And I’ll clear you with the Santa Monica police,” Ray said. “I can’t promise you more than that. I’ll do everything I can do to help. I can’t force the Chicago PD to cooperate, but I will reach out to them.”

  “Where is Chandler now, Ray?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Jake. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re going to be a lot sorrier if something happens to Darlene or Sally, Ray,” I said, “that much I know about you. Get in touch with Chandler and tell him that he’s put me in deep trouble and if he gives a shit he’d better think of something fast.”

  “I’ll do that, Jake,” Boyle said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I really don’t fucking know, Ray,” I said, and I walked out of the diner.

  When I made it back to the beach house I could see that Darlene wasn’t any more interested in staying down south than I was. And the dog couldn’t seem to find a spot half as comfortable as his haven beneath Darlene’s desk.

  I left a short thank-you note for Willie Dogtail, wrapped around a twenty-dollar bill for truck fuel.

  And we ran back home to San Francisco.

  Six

  The following morning Darlene and I were sitting at her desk drinking coffee out of matching mugs with the inscription “Oswald Acted Alone,” a gift from Vinnie Strings on my last birthday. Tug McGraw was safe and cozy underneath the desk. It was Wednesday, and since Sunday afternoon I had been to Chicago and back and to Los Angeles and back. I was getting ready to travel again, and I was clueing Darlene in.

  “Why in heaven’s name would you want to go back to Chicago, Jake?” Darlene asked.

  “Wanting has nothing to do with it. Lansdale somehow gets a notion that Harry Chandler might be alive, so Max puts me onto Riddle, who is supposed to have bumped into Chandler on the beach. The thing is, according to Boyle, Stan Riddle never saw Chandler. So either Riddle made the story up himself, to make a buck, or Lansdale put Riddle up to fabricating a Chandler sighting.”

  “Why would Lansdale do that?”

  “To make me believe there was some real evidence that Chandler was alive and then watch to see what I would do. Lansdale has an idea that Chandler is aliv
e, he thinks that I know something about it, so he uses Riddle to put me in motion to possibly lead him to Chandler. Then Lansdale eliminates Riddle before Stan can change his story. But it’s a bluff, except where poor Riddle is concerned. If I know nothing about Chandler, it doesn’t matter if Riddle said he saw Harry a thousand times. Or Elvis, for that matter. Trouble is, Lansdale is so convinced I do know something, he won’t believe me when I insist that I don’t.”

  “And remind me again,” Darlene asked, “why does Lansdale think you know something about Chandler?”

  “Lansdale believes Pigeon knew a lot about Chandler, and with Jimmy gone, Lansdale thinks I’m his best bet.”

  “And Ray Boyle can’t help you?”

  “Ray says he can’t. He confirms that Chandler is alive, but won’t say where. And there’s the rub. Now I actually do know something about Chandler’s mortality,” I said, “but not a thing that will help to get Lansdale off my back.”

  “Why not just call Lansdale’s bluff, tell him that you know nothing and that he can go fuck himself if he doesn’t buy it?”

  “He won’t believe me.”

  “So? What’s he going to do, sue you?”

  And then it was time to tell Darlene that she was part of the equation.

  “Good of you to finally get around to telling me that my life was in danger, Jake.”

  “I was hoping to avoid worrying you.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Jake. But not too politically correct. Some of us girls actually like to know when we’re on someone’s expendable list, just to be prepared. I can do a pretty good job watching out for myself when I know that there’s something to watch out for. I would strongly recommend you get the news to Sally as soon as possible. I’m pretty sure she’d be interested.”

  “You’re right, and I will.”

  “So,” said Darlene, “getting back to the original question, what do you hope to achieve by going back to Chicago?”

  “I will call Lansdale’s bluff, just for grins. I’ll tell him that I haven’t heard anything to convince me that Harry Chandler is alive, including Riddle’s story,” I said. “When that doesn’t work, I’ll do my best to assure Lansdale that I’m giving the matter of locating Harry Chandler and Joe Clams my undivided attention and pray that it satisfies Max enough to give us some breathing room. Maybe Ray Boyle will get hold of Chandler and good old Harry will come galloping to the rescue. In the meanwhile, if I can’t get to Chandler, maybe I can find Joe Clams. Boyle told me that Carla Rosario was Joe Clams’ sister. I’ll do some snooping around.”