The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  “I don’t want to get in too deep,” George said. “Wichita told me your organization’s safe. But how can it be?”

  “This type of business—the street level business—is just a paving stone for me,” he said. “I have a vision for Los Angeles. The people, they need their drugs. One day, and I’m thinking ahead here—all drugs will be legal. Look around, you know it’s true. The signs are there: high prices for American pharmaceuticals, low standards of living in the countries that produce marijuana and dope, growing tax burdens for new immigrants. I’m not saying you can’t go out and get busted. It happens. Wichita was really talking about the future, and I’d say she misspoke.”

  Wichita scowled. “I still get my bonus, you promised.”

  “So,” Vargas went on, “drugs will be legal. And whose network will already be in place? Who will already have revolutionized drug sales? Who will have been the peacemaker of Los Angeles, because gang wars are so last week? Our children will have that legacy.”

  “I see,” said George.

  “What I’m after is unity. You, Jimmer, I dress you up, say an outfit like mine, nice polo shirt—lose that crazy white shirt and sorry-ass tie, nice try, though—you could drive a BMW through Bel Air making deliveries. Nobody looks twice: clean white man in a BMW. The people up there say they’re not racist, but they are, they prefer a white dealer. Through my rotation system, I can build unity throughout this city—no arguments over turf! I implement strict schedules, good management, cooperation—it all fits, you see how it all fits? It synergizes! It’s like a movie!”

  I listened vaguely. It was hard for me to grasp how the Whale’s rotation system was supposed to work.

  George nodded. Solemnly, he said, “You’re a cross between Che Guevara and Bill Gates.”

  The Whale startled him with his shout. “My Lord! My Lord! You get me! You get me, brother!”

  “Every great man’s hands have to get a little dirty,” said George.

  “But you want to know a secret?” said the Whale.

  Respectfully, but with great anticipation, George said, “Yes.” The Whale was about to reveal something big.

  Possibly something that could really nail his ass.

  “I guess I’m like a lot of people, who do one thing but deep in their hearts, they wish to do a truly magical thing.”

  “Yes?”

  The Whale leaned in. “Eventually, what I really want to do is direct.”

  Chapter 27 – A Thug By Any Other Name

  George took me home, where I slept like a sow until ten in the morning. Before she left for work, Gina fixed me some coffee and I took a bath.

  George called around noon. “How do you feel?”

  “When I first got up, I had a fierce headache, but now I feel normal.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Except I want more heroin.”

  I heard him swallow.

  “Just kidding,” I said.

  “Goddamn it, Rita.”

  “You have no right to swear at me! You should be crawling on your knees over broken glass begging my forgi—”

  “Listen, I didn’t want to talk it over with you in advance, because I thought you might freak out.”

  “You know me so well.”

  “I brought the kit along as a contingency. Gonzalo helped me.”

  “I thought so.”

  “I wasn’t sure they’d suggest that you fix, I just thought it was a possibility to be prepared for. Didn’t you expect it?”

  “No.”

  “Your naiveté is showing, Rita.”

  “Well, I’m not naive!” I cried, deeply insulted. “I’ve smoked dope! Several times! I’m not little Baby Darla here, I’ve hung out with hoods.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “Well—my ex-husband.”

  He laughed. “OK, OK.”

  “What was the lemon thing? You asked the Whale something about lemons.”

  “Oh, if you’ve got heroin that’s poorly refined, you need a little acetic acid to get it to melt, and you can get that from lemon juice or vinegar.”

  “Oh.”

  “It probably wasn’t necessary for me to ask that, but it added to my credibility. I really was hoping that stuff was good. But I called to tell you something. Remember I found out about Deborah Keever, the dead daughter?”

  “Yes!”

  “And I told you I checked her birth certificate?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, this morning I got my hands on her death certificate as well.”

  “Yeah? I’ve got a very funny feeling about what you’re going to say.”

  He was surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “Did she die under suspicious circumstances?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Oh.”

  “As far as the attending physician was concerned.”

  “Oh?”

  “It just says under cause of death, ‘cardiac arrest.’ Only that. No reference to a police report, either, for example. Nothing.”

  “Cardiac arrest? What does that mean, exactly?”

  “I guess it means your heart stops beating.”

  “That’s a pretty general term, isn’t it? I mean, if that’s all it means, then everybody who dies, dies of cardiac arrest. You’re dead when your heart stops beating.”

  “Well, it struck me as odd too. Fifteen-year-old girl. I know sometimes kids die suddenly of heart disease, but you’d think in that case they’d do an autopsy. But they didn’t.”

  “Where did she die?”

  “St. Irene’s Hospital, in Westwood.”

  “I’ve never heard of it. I’ve never even heard of St. Irene.”

  “It’s been a nursing home since the eighties. It was a small private hospital to begin with.”

  “A loony bin?”

  “No, a regular hospital.”

  “Hm.”

  “Rita, you’re on to something, but you’re not telling me.”

  “I—I can’t even bring myself to verbalize it, yet. Even to myself.”

  “Well, what would you say if I found a financial oddity? Because I did go deeper.”

  A smile broke over my face. “Ah.” Good old competent, smart George.

  “You’re smiling,” he said.

  I fought with my face. “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes you are, I can hear it. Anyway, get this: Bruce Keever paid sixty thousand dollars to the doctor who signed that death certificate.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “The day before he signed it.”

  “Oh, my God. The day before?”

  “Do you think Keever could have had his daughter quote-unquote murdered by this doctor? I’m trying like hell to—but the daughter’s death might be totally unrelated to this Amaryllis thing—”

  “Oh, no. It’s not unrelated.”

  “Rita, tell me!”

  “I just can’t. I can’t right now, George. Give me—just a day. I have to think. How the hell did you find that out, anyway?”

  “Well, I’ve learned that financial records can yield exceptional information, if you can get your hands on them. I started with Piedmont Commerce Bank, because in the 1960s half the professional people in L.A. had accounts there. I’ve got a contact in Piedmont’s morgue—their old paper records. Both Keever and the doctor had accounts there.”

  I said, “Keever being a judge and all, you’d figure the family was a real pillar-of-the-community type.”

  “Oh, yes. The wife served on the symphony board, and he was active in two or three charities himself.”

  “Reputations, then.”

  “Yeah.” He waited. “Now you’re quiet all of a sudden.” I kept thinking. In my continued silence, he went on, “Did the mother or father kill the child—maybe accidentally—and then bribe the doctor to cover it up? But why postdate the death certificate? I don’t get it at all.”

  “George, I think we’re holding it in our hands.”

  He said, “Another po
ssibility is that the payment had nothing to do with the child’s death, it could be just coincidental, the settlement of a personal debt.”

  Except that I had one piece of information he didn’t have. And as a woman, I had to check it out myself before I even spoke it to another soul.

  _____

  “No, sister, Amaryllis is meeting with the scout troops this afternoon. There’s no interrupting her when she’s with the children. Then she’s got her Tuesday radio program to do.”

  “Oh.” I shifted the phone to my other ear.

  “Tomorrow,” said the Reverend Culpepper, “she’ll be in, business as usual. Ah, is it something important?”

  “No, no.”

  “Well, you have a blessed day.” His signature tagline.

  I wanted badly to talk with Amaryllis, because it was time, it was time. I was dismayed to have to wait, but then I remembered that I’d promised Gina I’d cook tonight. She was bringing her new boyfriend Toby home.

  I vacuumed the apartment in a thinky, fuguelike state.

  Gramma Gladys was on my mind. Before picking up some groceries, I dropped in at the parking lot at Rodeo and Santa Monica, to commune with her spirit more for courage than for guidance.

  I called her down through the smog as the drone of L.A. life surged around us. She counseled patience, and warned me to take nothing for granted.

  Just when you think you’ve got it sewed up, that’s when everything goes to hell! I felt her say in her bitterly wise way.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  At home I prepared Gramma Gladys’s baked pork chops, a homey dish guys love.

  Gina came home from work and hustled through the shower and into a pretty outfit she’d scored at Madwoman in the Attic, my favorite resale shop. It’d been tough to get her to save money, but as soon as I mentioned that I’d spotted Calypso Henderson there browsing the vintage bowling shirts last month, she was into it. Calypso’s latest movie, where she plays a nurse’s aide trying to infiltrate a terrorist network but it turns out to be the Pentagon all along, was a hit at Cannes, and she’d signed a whopping contract for her next film.

  A word Gina had gotten into lately was cachet, which of course usually comes with a really high price tag. People chase all over L.A. for cachet, they go broke trying to trap it and own it. Sometimes cachet is, I admit, worth the price, but once in a while you can get it for cheap, like at Madwoman. Gina had scored a two-piece Rhonda Tripley ensemble—you know, with the hand-done geometric lace—which she’d accessorized with a copper lunch box as a purse. She looked as chic as they come.

  I put some Art Pepper on the stereo and felt lonely for Petey. I wondered how the dynamiting had gone.

  My sister swept into the living room, trailing a beautiful fragrance. “Is that the dregs of my last free sample of Chanel No. 5?” I asked, knowing full well.

  “I love Chanel No. 5,” she said, “it makes me feel so adult. Do you really like my hair?”

  “It’s just so different.”

  “I used Gramma Gladys’s secret weapon: Dippity-Do.”

  “They still make that?”

  At Halloween time when we were little, we’d build a spook house in the basement for the neighborhood kids, featuring a feel-the-corpse-in-the-dark exhibit. We’d mix Dippity-Do with a handful of rubber bands (his guts), and we’d have cold fruit cocktail (brains), and there were other things too, as we thought of them and could score the ingredients. I remembered the excellently slimy Dippity-Do well. We thought it was hilarious. Gramma Gladys’s hair would stay put in a typhoon.

  “But my real question,” I said, “is why?”

  Gina tossed her stiff tendrils. “Toby’s got dreads, and I was just feeling like looking a little less smooth, myself.” She sighed. “He’s so wonderful! He knows all the words to ‘Squirrel on the Barbie.’”

  “That’s quite a credential.” In case you’ve been in a coma for six months, “Squirrel on the Barbie” is that allegorical Aussie pop song about global warming.

  The door buzzed and she flung it open to welcome Toby.

  “Hiya, honey!” she trilled.

  “Hey,” he said, stepping in.

  She pulled him by the hand to meet me, and it was good that it went so fast, TobymeetRitaRitaTobyHaha! because the guy who walked into my apartment, kissed my sister, and shook my hand was Denny.

  It was absolutely him, his dreadlocks long and loose, his smile ready, his hand large and warm as he shook mine.

  One time I played a poker dealer in a TV ad for some Indian casino near Palm Springs, and I had to keep a neutral expression while a guy at the table laid down a thousand-dollar bet on what turns out to be a bluff. I was glad for that experience, as well as the many insane concepts Petey had put to me as he came along as a human, because now I drew on that skill to keep my face friendly and open.

  “So good to meet you,” he said, and it was Denny’s deep, bluesman voice, this fucking guy was Denny, phony guard at the ABC Mission, sidekick to Dale the Whale Vargas. The guy who, with Wichita, had tried to intimidate Amaryllis as I’d listened behind the bags of rice, the guy who, last night, had held my foot and inspected my fake needle tracks while I prayed to God for survival.

  My heart surged into my mouth and I said brightly, “Hi, Toby. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Don’t believe half of it,” he responded, smiling.

  I withdrew to the kitchen.

  What the hell was going on? I’d seen no recognition in his eyes, no calculation. He was totally this guy named Toby. He was wearing a pressed sport shirt with a red-and-yellow Kente type weave and a pair of Levis. No sign of the homeboy gold chains. He’d politely slipped out of his loafers at the door.

  What the hell, what the hell, what the hell, I thought as I poured smoked almonds into a dish. The guy had two identities: Toby the consultant, and drug-den criminal Denny. What for? Was it just coincidence that he’d walked into the record store and struck up a conversation with Gina?

  At a furious pace, I reviewed the time Gina and I had gone to the mission to serve lunch. He’d been there, he’d been there! I hadn’t really seen his face. How had that gone down, again? Gina had seen Wichita and him hassling Amaryllis, then I’d followed the three of them into the kitchen. I’d eavesdropped from behind the rice, but I hadn’t seen his face! I’d looked up as their backs were disappearing into the kitchen, I’d heard his voice and followed, but had not seen his face.

  Had he seen mine? Gina’s? Gina had not, to my memory, gotten a good look at him that day either. He and Wichita were all the way across the cafeteria, at least sixty feet away, when Gina had noticed them arguing with Amaryllis. Maybe she hadn’t seen his full face at all, with those dreadlocks flying around.

  But maybe he’d seen her. Fallen for her at first sight, or what? And decided to make it his business to find out who she was. And where she worked. And who her sister is.

  What the hell, what the hell, what the hell.

  This guy carried out orders from the most dangerous drug boss in Los Angeles. When I really interacted with him—just last night!—I’d been, of course, DeeDee the pregnant skag. If I’d have let him, he probably would’ve skin-popped me himself. Mainlined me, for that matter.

  What else had he done for the Whale as one of his top thugs—oh, ’scuse me, executives? How many people had he gotten hooked on drugs? Had he committed murder? I remembered him smirking as George and the Whale gloated over the slaughtered Sgt. Annette Soames. Had he carried out that execution, been in that car? Had he blasted the bullets that drilled into Kip and me? Had he beaten and kicked Kip, before I blundered into the scene?

  Then it hit me: twins! Oh, my God, maybe he’s a they! Yes! Identical twins! My whole body relaxed at the possibility. I’d seen all the twist-of-the-twin movies, and even watched Daniel’s pirated reruns of The Patty Duke Show, so I knew how hideously twins can diverge.

  Yet as I opened the oven to check on the savory pork chops—I’d thrown in a few sprigs
of fresh thyme—yum—I also realized what a far-fetched, desperate idea that was.

  I went back to the day of Kip’s beating. One assailant had been short and fat-assed, the other taller and thin—Wichita and Denny? I’d been thinking that for some time, even though at first I’d thought both attackers were guys. A malevolent bitch like Wichita could’ve swung that piece of lumber. Then I remembered George talking about Wichita and Denny driving him out of the same neighborhood a few days later.

  OK: my sister was going around with a dope peddler, this thug, this criminal-mastermind wannabe. My God—was she using? How could I tell? You don’t start injecting right away, do you? Plus I’d heard how wily drug users are, at first, before the drug really takes hold and starts to show. What kind of danger had she just let in through that door?

  Dinner, for me, was a bit of a strain.

  During salad, Toby referred to his dad having been in the army. “You’re an only child?” I asked, taking a flyer.

  “Yes, how did you guess?”

  Damn it to hell, that destroys the twin theory. “Oh, I don’t know. Something about your confidence level, maybe. I’ve found that only children have a certain—confidence.”

  “Hm,” he said, relentlessly smiling.

  “Toby, what do you do, exactly?” I asked, cupping my chin attentively. I wanted to hear about his “consulting work.”

  He swallowed—my food, my wine, at my table!—and said, “I help companies manage their inventory and personnel.”

  “Ah. Like…”

  “Like helping them design ways to anticipate customer needs, and then stock or restock accordingly. These potatoes are delicious.”

  “Thank you! Gina and I have had our troubles working for bosses, haven’t we? Do you get along well with your boss?”

  “Oh yeah, he’s—you know, he’s a regular guy. We get along real well.”

  “So if a client has a problem with an employee, what do you advise?”

  “Well, it all depends on the situation.”

  You know, acting can get pretty emotionally heavy; even in a doughnut commercial you can be called on to summon both agony and ecstasy, not to mention what you have to draw forth to do Streetcar or Lear. You let your emotions surge, and you feed off the emotions of your comrades. Actors and actresses talk about “working dangerously,” which means taking risks that you’re not sure you can pull off—throwing in a physical bit on the spur of the moment, or asking for something new from another player.