The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  And so on.

  The room smelled of something sweet and faint—the teacher’s cologne? Rowe pictured her: very young, very idealistic, like some of the women who came and taught school in the prisons. If she were one of the old ones whose idealism was hardbitten, she wouldn’t wear so much cologne. None at all, probably.

  “I was an uptown boy,” Rowe added. “Had a few clients in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Bel Air.”

  “What happened?” Wichita looked him up and down with the frank interest of a child.

  “Well, I made one bad friend, if you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Denny suspiciously. “What exactly do you mean?”

  Rowe shook his head at himself. “I sank almost all my money into my house, in the Valley. Art, rugs, coins, you know. It’s what you do instead of a bank, you know what I’m talking about. This guy, he thought I cheated him on a deal, and he torched my house. I couldn’t claim insurance, the same reason I couldn’t put my money on a tax return.”

  “Yeah, I see,” said Denny. “Too bad.”

  “So I decided to get out of dealing. I could develop lots of my clients again, of course, since there’s so much turnover in this business,” he laughed, “but those days are behind me. I was in bad shape for a while, I owed some debts besides, after the fire. I fell into the gutter, but I met a good woman while I was down there, believe it or not.”

  “That’s who the H is for,” said Wichita, pleased with herself. A child who wore wet-looking red lipstick.

  “You’re a good guesser, ma’am. I’d been there before, but I never met anybody like her.”

  Bit by bit, Rowe revealed himself, pressing their credulity just enough, giving them just enough to stay interested. “My friend Gonzalo, over in Los Feliz, he’s gonna let me work construction for him. That’s where I’m living as of, uh, yesterday, to tell you the truth. Finally convinced him to not write me off anymore. I can make good money with him.”

  “Good enough to support your old lady’s habit?” Denny demanded.

  “Well, I’m not gonna quite, you know…I mean, there’s always stuff that fell off a truck, so to speak. Little of this, little of that. Anyhow—”

  “You sure you’re through with dealing?” asked Wichita.

  Firmly, he answered, “Dead sure. I’ve gotta look after my girl. I’ll buy for her, but I won’t deal. I can’t afford another narcotics rap. Damn bitchin’ policewoman nailed me when I wasn’t even carrying.”

  Wichita and Denny shared a meaningful glance. Denny tightened his mouth.

  “What if, James,” said Wichita, “there was a way you could deal again—in safety?”

  “No such way exists.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, let me tell you something!”

  Denny grabbed her arm. “Wichita, I gotta say, I gotta say.”

  “Ow! The Whale needs another white guy! Goddamn it!”

  “Let’s not go too fast here, OK?”

  She snatched her arm away. Rowe noticed the traces of deep bruises on it, from his own hands, where he had grabbed her and slammed her into the door on Mateo Street. She didn’t recognize him at all. He almost smiled.

  “We’re supposed to be recruiting!” she hissed. “This guy’s got experience! I haven’t had a bonus in forever!”

  Denny looked like he’d like to bash her mouth shut, but clearly her status was greater than his. He restrained himself and had to simply plead. “Come on, Witch.”

  Rowe said, “You guys—I’ve heard of Dale the Whale, OK? Half the city has.”

  “We’re not called ‘guys,’” said Wichita with hot dignity. “We’re all vice presidents. Denny and I are executive vice presidents. I respect the man. He thinks new. He don’t just go, oh, look at me, I’m at the top of the pile, all you all a bunch of dirt—no. You treat him with respect, he treats you with respect.”

  She was white—didn’t even look like she tanned easily—yet she’d adopted a style of talking that she must have considered street-black.

  “You don’t have to go on and on,” warned Denny.

  “I been around drug dealing for a long time. Long time,” said Wichita, who looked to be around twenty-five years old, “and never I’ve seen something like what he does. He’s got a whole master plan, but he carries it all up here.” She tapped her temple, and Rowe was certain she’d seen the Whale do just that. She settled her hips more comfortably in the teacher’s chair.

  “Can’t be anything new,” Rowe said contemptuously.

  “Hah! James! Just listen! The bad boys in the old hoods—they all go strictly by territory. They go, oh, this is my corner, you get the hell outta here or I’m gonna shoot choo inna ass. No. The Whale, he goes by days of the week, you understand that?”

  “Witch—”

  “Get out of here, Denny!” she shrieked. “I’m talking to this man, goddamn it! Just go, get your ass outta here!”

  He did, his back hard and angry.

  “Each dealer,” she resumed eagerly, after a little goodbye eye-roll, “rotates through common territories. It’s a rotation, you see?” She pronounced the word carefully and strongly, as if a host of meaning lay within it, as if she were explaining a scientific principle. “So you got five days on, two days off, which you must take, except for if a regular customer can’t wait. So no one gets burned out. Because of course you’re on call twenty-four/seven when you’re on your five days on. We are not like any other organization out there. We are innovative. We do sinajizing.”

  This time Rowe nodded in comprehension. “But don’t the customers get confused who to call? Which day it is?”

  “Regulars who got your number, they’re different. All this prevents turf wars. He’s trying to bring every gang in L.A. into this. Scheduling’s the main challenge. The Whale is first and foremost a peacemaker. What do you think of that?”

  The Whale must have a whole lot of charisma to make anyone think his rotation system made sense, but slowly Rowe said, “Well, that sounds new.”

  “He takes care of his people. You get arrested, he gets you out.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  Wichita paused uncertainly. “Well, he can explain it to you. Don’t you think you might want to get back into it, just a little, you know? Maybe”—she realized she could go further—“if we give you clean shit for your old lady, then you’d do a little for us? I need a bonus so bad!”

  Rowe pinched his lip. “So you won’t give me shit before the cut unless I agree to deal? Not just pay?”

  “OK, I’m not the Whale, I can’t make the final say. I’ll talk to him and see what I can do. You think about it, James, OK?”

  “OK.” He turned to go.

  She looked after him.

  He turned back. “Say, is Amaryllis B. Cubitt the Mrs. Whale?”

  Quickly, “What you want to know for?”

  “A man has eyes and ears, and he wonders things. She seems like a nice lady.”

  “Well,” said Wichita, “if you want to keep your eyes and your ears on you, you keep ’em shut.”

  “OK.”

  “I’m saying?”

  “OK.”

  Chapter 23 – Earth Puppets and Archives

  I wondered and wondered about Diane Keever. What the hell was going on in that house? I thought about the disquieting Neneng, her rancid cookies, her mastery of Grieg, her pronged carving knife.

  Today was Friday, and I lingered over my first cup of coffee at the breakfast bar while Gina showered. I guiltily reveled in my vacation from Petey, or his from me. I missed his assertive little spirit, his tiny quandaries and victories, yet life was so easy and peaceful without him. No worry about making a nutritious breakfast; Gina and I could eat leftover popcorn or nothing if we wanted to. Certainly I didn’t miss that damn ScoreLad.

  But oh, the feeling of his soft-bud mouth kissing my cheek at bedtime! How fleeting it all is! When he was a newborn, Jeff would lie on the bed shirtless and place Petey bellydown on his bare chest,
and Petey, no bigger than a puppy, would relax into that feeling of total security, riding gently up and down on his daddy’s breath.

  Those days were so gone.

  When I weaned him I felt a physical change, a hollowness that had never been there, beneath my sternum, before. I felt the relief of not having the responsibility of suckling him and yet! He needed me less! Never again would I nourish him so directly and so completely. Weaning, I realized, was not merely an act of rejection on my part, it was the act of training him to reject me. When my milk dried up, I’d wondered, well, maybe that’s it. No more babies for me?

  Shit, if I thought about these things too much I’d bust out cryin’.

  I went back to brooding about the Keever house.

  The piano? The instrument itself could not possibly be a place to hide contraband, nothing so crude—it sounded beautiful, full and resonant, no bundles of drugs taped inside it. Microdots, perhaps.

  The photographs atop the piano intrigued me. I tried not to give them a whole lot of weight—I mean, any idiot could focus on family pictures. I really should be looking into Neneng. But how? Who was she? I didn’t even know her last name. Maybe that was her last name. I typed “Neneng” into a telephone search and didn’t come up with anything.

  When I’d mentioned Dale the Whale, Diane Keever made no reaction. Amaryllis’s name had triggered the angry reaction. Mrs. Keever had made a questioning sound in her throat, as in, Why would you bring up her? Or was it—Why would you bring up her? She emoted anger, but why anger, unless it was solely directed at me? Amaryllis was dropping off ten grand in cash to her house each month. How could you be angry at someone who was doing that?

  I remembered Nathan saying his mom called the money her “reverse welfare” payment. Why? Because she was black and Mrs. Keever was white? Because she felt sorry for Mrs. Keever for some reason?

  I should look beyond the goddamn pictures on the piano, but they were all I had. The young girl—I’d noticed a resemblance between her and Diane, a straightness of the mouth, sort of a similarly set line. But that could be my imagination wanting to glom on to something. Maybe not a daughter, but a doted-on niece, or a foster child? Did Bruce Keever find himself taking on the result of some client’s ulterior relationship?

  Had the girl turned into an ungrateful, drug-using bitch teen who ran off to Thailand and had then been disowned? What the fuck, what the fuck.

  Then I dwelled on the luscious photo of what appeared to be a young Diane Keever. I’d been struck so hard by the expertness of the picture, her beauty, her self-possessed expression, and by the questions it raised.

  Gina came out wearing my newest top, a grasshopper-green scoopneck jersey. She looked terrific in it, and she knew it.

  “I love this top!”

  “Hey, I didn’t give you permission to—”

  “But doesn’t it fit me better than it fits you? You’re a little shorter-waisted than I am. Don’t you think?”

  “Oh, just wear it. Where are you going?”

  “I can eat something with you, I don’t have to be there until eleven. Equinox, a few people are getting together.” Equinox was that new organic, low-emissions chain of espresso bars. “I’m so in love with that place, the one on Highland. The guy making the drinks told me if somebody comes to work wearing Nike shoes, they get fired on the spot!”

  “The people who make the drinks are called baristas. And he was joking, for goodness’ sake.”

  “No, no, he was serious.”

  “So what’s going on at Equinox? A meeting for that environmental thing? What’s it called again?”

  “It’s not a thing, it’s a movement.” She shook out her hair and felt it for dryness. “The longer it gets, the more it takes forever to dry. It’s called EP.”

  “What’s it stand for?”

  “Rita, you don’t know? My God, I thought you were so hip. Earth Puppets.” She looked at me for a reaction. “Earth Puppets,” she repeated.

  I burst out laughing.

  “That’s the point,” she said. “They started out as actual puppeteers, doing environmental marionette shows in schools? And then they just grew into a movement. People hear the name and laugh, but they’re dead serious. They fly under the radar of the authorities.”

  “Earth Puppets,” I said, marveling. “That’s what they should have called the demonstrators in The Canary Syndrome.”

  “It’s going to change the world, that picture. I’m so proud you’re a part of it.”

  I just laughed.

  She went on, “Well, a few of us are getting together this morning to—”

  “Us?”

  “I’m thinking of getting involved. I mean, they’re a coalition, you know, not like a party or anything. They’ve got much higher goals than that, they’re more like individual cells that form and carry out education, and…” She trailed off.

  “And?”

  “Like go on missions.”

  “What kind of missions?”

  “To save the earth in—various ways.”

  “That’s what they told you?”

  “Rita, the earth is in desperate need of saving! In case you haven’t noticed. Look, they’re not a terrorist group, OK? They just try to get people fired up about the environment. They hold rallies and stuff, OK?”

  “OK, OK. But hon, you know we’ve got quite a mission right here.”

  “You haven’t asked me for much help yet. It’s just been you and George.”

  “Just wait. I’m going to need you soon. Hey, is Toby involved in the Earth Puppets?” She’d been regaling me with tales of the wondrous Toby, her brand-new boyfriend.

  “No, he’s not interested yet. But I’m working on him. Oh, God, he’s so wonderful. I want to bring him over. Not a bartender, not a musician, but a regular guy with a day job and a driver’s license and seemingly no ex-wives.”

  “What’s so attractive about him?”

  “He lets me talk. And he’s a boxers guy. You should see his butt, it’s like a Michelangelo sculpture. I like boxers guys, briefs guys creep me out.”

  “Me too. Wait a minute, have you slept with him already?”

  “No, not quite exactly yet, I forgot my diaphragm the other night.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is George a boxers guy?”

  “No comment. Bring Toby home soon.”

  “You’ll love him. He’s sweet. He’s kind. He looks like a little boy when he smiles!”

  “Does he pick up the tabs?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s quite the gentleman.”

  He’d wandered into the record store the other week and started up a conversation, she told me, and they’d hit it off. He’d taken her on a couple of jaunts out of L.A.: down the coast to San Diego, up the coast to Santa Barbara where Gina had seen her first sea otter. “It was so CUTE, Rita! He just revolved in the water and floated on his back, looking at me. He was so CUTE!”

  “I know, otters are very cute.”

  “No! They are not ‘cute.’ They’re CUUUTE!”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s like I want one, you know?”

  “Typical first reaction.”

  “You are so unromantic, you know that? No wonder George is having such a hard time with you, poor guy.”

  “Shut up.”

  “No, you shut up.”

  “No, you shut up.”

  “Anyway, Toby’s really opening my eyes up about a lot of things, both social and—”

  “What does he do, anyway? And what’s his last name? Toby what?”

  “Toby Phillips. He’s a consultant.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, he works with, uh, various organizations.”

  “To help them do what?”

  “Maximize their potential.”

  “Huh, sounds like Dale the Whale. All this business bullshit.”

  “You can belittle just about anything I do, can’t you? Just about anything I like.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t
really being serious.”

  “Toby is very romantic. I’ve told him about you, and he didn’t say anything snide about you.”

  “Once again, I apologize.”

  “In fact, he’d like to meet you.”

  “Oh?”

  “He asked about you. Because he’s interested in me. In my life. He wants to get to know me better, and you’re family, so.”

  “Have you met his family yet, or any of his friends?”

  “Uh, no, but it’s only been two weeks.”

  “Has he lived in L.A. long?” I continued our customary third degree about boyfriends. Sisters can wring blood from any turnip of a topic.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think so. He doesn’t talk much about his family.”

  “Well, do bring him. How about tomorrow night?”

  “I don’t know. His work schedule is kind of unpredictable.”

  “OK, whatever. I feel I know him now just about as well as you do.”

  “Oh, no!” she laughed. “I haven’t told you the best part.” She looked at me expectantly.

  “Well, what?”

  “He’s black!” She looked victorious.

  I understood.

  I said, “Well, hey, you did it. You made friends with a black person.”

  “Not just friends. But I’m not using him, Rita.”

  “Well, you’re pretty proud of yourself. Hey, I’ll see you later, I gotta go over to campus.”

  “What for?”

  “To look for a ghost.”

  _____

  In a surge of ecological feeling I took the bus across town to UCLA. The bus sort of sucks, because you have to expend personal energy guarding against the assorted dirt and weird behavior and cell phone conversations. The main good thing about it is the virtuous feeling you get.

  As you’d expect, the UCLA arts library, housed in claustrophobic quarters in the Public Policy Building, has a huge collection of books on the art and business of making films. I searched on the computer, didn’t find a title that looked right, so I plunged into the stacks, looking for some kind of reference book on starlets from the old days of the studio system. I picked up a few tell-alls from the era and checked the indices for the names Keever and Ratkinson, no good.