A Family Business (11 page)

Shocked that his friend would even make such a suggestion, Gray refused.

Tim’s reaction was not what his friend had expected. When Gray said no, Tim leaped to his feet. Slipping his hands underneath the table edge, he flipped it over, dumping dirty dishes, coffee, and glasses of water into Gray’s lap. Then he stormed out the door, leaving Gray to find his way home.

That, Gray said later, marked the end of their friendship. Although he talked to Tim once or twice on the telephone after that, he never saw his former friend alive again. His next personal contact would be as a visitor at Tim’s memorial service.

David, however, had no intention of letting Tim intimidate
him
. He had nothing but contempt for the 300-pound, quick-tempered cremation service operator, who he also suspected was gay. He could not afford to sit by while Tim continued to spread the rumor about multiple cremations. There was too much at stake.

By then, early in 1985, David had taken complete control of Pasadena Crematorium, making it official by signing a lease with his mother and renaming the business Coastal Cremation Inc. In the two-plus years he had been running the operation, the business had prospered beyond his wildest expectations, and with any luck at all, he could corner the cremation market in the entire state of California.

Already in his mind was a half-formed plan to expand his operation northward into the Bay Area. Since cremation licenses were difficult to get and San Francisco had reached the saturation point for such permits, David had to come up with a way to get the business without having to secure a license or building a crematorium in the area. What he decided to do was buy a building within commuting distance of San Francisco—it was too expensive to even contemplate buying one actually in the city—and turn it into a giant cold room in which he could store cadavers for short periods. Then he would build a crematorium near Bakersfield, in the central part of the state. A couple of times a week he could pick up the bodies from the Bay Area cold room, transport them to Bakersfield for cremation, and then return the remains. That way he could double his volume since he could continue his southern operation by using the facility at Altadena.

It was a good plan provided he could get the necessary permits to build the Bakersfield crematorium
and
provided no one like Tim Waters rocked his boat. If Tim mentioned the rumors about multiple cremations to the right people, it could bring investigators from the state regulatory offices down on David’s back and they could close his entire operation. David was determined he would not let that happen; Tim had to be discouraged from talking too much. In David’s mind there was only one way that could be satisfactorily accomplished: reenter Dave Edwards.

One day early in 1985, David pulled Edwards aside and asked him if he was interested in “another job.” Edwards knew exactly what he meant. When Edwards asked David who the victim was going to be that time, David said it was a guy in Burbank who, like Hast and Nimz, was threatening to make trouble. His name, he said, was Tim Waters. If Edwards agreed to take care of him, he would pay him $800. David added that Waters was a “real fat guy” and Edwards would have no trouble handling him.

Edwards agreed. But first he planned to enlist Augustine again. As they had done before the attack on Hast and Nimz, the two decided to case Tim’s place before committing themselves to an attack. When they went to the address furnished by David, however, Edwards and Augustine discovered an unanticipated problem.

Burbank is an almost exclusively white community, and black men—particularly large, ferocious-looking black men—are viewed with suspicion by the local police. The two were sitting outside the Alpha Society’s offices waiting for Tim to appear when a patrol car passed by. They thought the officers gave them a suspicious look, although they did not stop. But a few minutes later a cop on a motorcycle came down the street. And not long after that a police helicopter flew over. By this time Augustine and Edwards definitely were getting paranoid.

Edwards turned to his friend.

“Hey, man,” he said, “you notice something?”

Augustine looked around. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “we’re the only blacks here. Shit,” he added, expanding on the thought, “we might be the
only
blacks in Bur-bank.”

Edwards nodded. “Let’s go,” he said, shifting the car into gear.

They left without ever seeing Tim Waters. But that mattered little to the two. The next day, Edwards went to David and gave him a detailed but totally fictitious report about how they had beaten Tim, striking him again and again until “blood was squirting.” Then, Edwards said, he and Augustine dropped Tim in a heap on the floor and left.

“Great!” David cheered. “That’s just great!”

They had done a terrific job, he told Edwards. They had been so efficient, in fact, that he might want them to take care of another guy in Glendora, a man who David felt had swindled his father in a business deal several years earlier.

“Any time,” Edwards said, holding out his hand. David counted out $800. That night, Edwards gave Augustine his half. Then, over a couple of beers, they got to laughing so hard about how they had been paid for beating up a guy they never even saw, they thought they’d piss their pants.

David has never said whether he found out that he had been taken. In any case, Tim kept telling others about what he thought was going on at Coastal Cremation. That prompted David to decide anew that he could not let it continue. This time David went to Danny Galambos.

As he had with Edwards, David asked his friend if he would be willing to rough up someone else, as he had done with Hast and Nimz.

“Sure,” Galambos replied. “Can I get some help?”

“Yeah,” David replied, “but don’t take Edwards.”

“Why not?” Galambos asked.

“Because he’s already ‘done’ him once,” David replied.

The target, David told Galambos, was an obese crematory service owner named Tim Waters.

“I want some bones broken,” David told Galambos. “I want him hospitalized. Beat him up and make it look like a robbery.”

“Okay,” Galambos said agreeably.

“And don’t worry about getting too rough,” David added.

“How’s that?” Galambos asked.

“If you accidentally kill him I can always get rid of the body. I’ll just burn it.”

As a partner for the job, Galambos picked a weightlifting buddy named Christopher Long, who was only six feet tall and 220 pounds, but he had such a fierce disposition that even Galambos, who was considerably taller and heavier, confessed to being afraid of him.

Galambos and Long drove to Burbank in Galambos’s gray Toyota and parked outside, making themselves comfortable while waiting for Tim to appear. As they sat, Galambos consumed a sandwich and emptied a carton of milk. When he finished, he carelessly tossed the empty container out the window onto the sidewalk. Eventually, Galambos would pay an extraordinarily heavy fine for littering.

When Tim showed up a few minutes later, Galambos and Long sat quietly, watching him disappear into his office. As soon as he closed the door, they jumped out of the car and made for the building. They opened the door and saw Tim sitting at his desk, looking like a happy John Goodman before he lost his baby fat. Long crossed the room in two strides. Without saying a word, he punched Tim squarely in the face, breaking his nose and knocking him out of his chair.

Galambos had paused to quietly close the door. When he turned back into the room, Tim already was supine and Long was leaning over him. Galambos quickly covered the short distance and looked down. Blood was spurting from Tim’s nose and he was whimpering, sounding like a puppy afraid of the thunder. Also without speaking, Galambos bent over and hit him twice. Tim’s whimper gave way to a gurgle. As he lay there trying to catch his breath through the blood and the panic, Galambos began stripping off his jewelry: a gold chain Tim wore around his neck, a gold bracelet, and two rings. A few days later Galambos took the items to a fence and collected $400, which he pocketed without sharing with Long. He did, however, give his confederate $400 of the $1000 David forked over as the agreed-upon fee for the beating.

If David thought that a beating would be enough to convince Tim to keep his mouth shut, he miscalculated. Although it made Tim more cautious, he did not try to keep secret the fact that he believed he had been attacked as part of a scheme to discourage his aggressive approach to competition. Exactly what he said after the beating, and to whom, is not clear, but whatever it was, it may have been enough to provoke an even more violent reaction.

The beating took place on February 12, 1985. Less than two months later, on Easter weekend, an even more traumatic thing happened to Tim. He died.

11

Tim Waters was sick, as sick as he had ever been in his entire life. Even a sip of water taken to relieve his raging thirst sent him dashing for the bathroom. Tim had had intestinal flu before, bad cases of vomiting and diarrhea. But never had he experienced anything like this.

It had begun late on April 5, Good Friday, after he and his friend since grammar school, Scott Sorrentino, pigged out on Chinese food. It must have been the chicken with almonds, he told himself, although Scott had not complained about being sick. Whatever it was, it was certainly hanging in there. Nothing had passed his lips except water, but still he was sicker than he had been before.

At noon on Saturday, soon after Scott left to drive back to Los Angeles, Waters telephoned his mother, as he did virtually every day.

“Where are you?” Mary Lou Waters asked.

“In Malibu,” he replied. “At Susan’s,” he added, referring to his older sister. “She went off for the weekend and I’m house-sitting.”

They chatted for a few minutes and Tim hung up. He had not told his mother he was ill. No sense worrying her, he thought, convincing himself he was going to feel better in a few hours. But as the day went on, he felt worse rather than better. Late that afternoon, as he was sitting on the john for the umpteenth time, he looked into the toilet bowl and saw the water was stained with blood.

That evening he called his mother again.

“I don’t feel very good,” he confessed. “I’ve been sick all day.”

Mary Lou Waters frowned. Tim seldom complained about his health. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked worriedly. “Do you want me to call a doctor?”

“You always want me to go to the doctor, Mother. I’ll be all right.”

“You’re still coming tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asked, suddenly faced with a potential new problem. “You haven’t forgotten Easter dinner?”

How could he forget, Tim thought. Every year his parents made a huge production out of Easter dinner, inviting a couple of dozen guests as well as family members. “No, I haven’t forgotten,” he assured her. “I’ll be there.”

However, on Sunday morning he wished he had not made a promise he might not be able to keep. When the sun came up, the day promised to be bright and cheerful, as almost every day is in Southern California. Except Tim felt anything but bright and cheerful. He had been up most of the night, running to the toilet, passing more blood. He felt so weak he was not sure he could stand, much less get in his station wagon and drive somewhere.

Before mid-morning his mother telephoned and asked if he was coming over in time to go to mass with her. In the last few months Tim had formed the habit of attending mass every day, going alone and standing quietly in the rear of the church. But Easter was special. On Easter he always went with his mother. This year, though, he knew he was not going to be able to make it. That thought disturbed him greatly.
Everybody
, even the Catholics who never went to mass at any other time, went on Easter Sunday.

“I’m still not feeling too well,” he said, trying, for his mother’s benefit, to sound chipper.

“You don’t have to go to church when you don’t feel well, Tim.” Mary Lou Waters said condescendingly, treating the twenty-four-year-old, as mothers are wont to do, as if he were still in the fifth grade. “I’ll go to church and then I’ll come by and pick you up.”

Tim sighed. “Okay,” he agreed, not feeling up to an argument.

They had barely hung up when Tim called her back, telling her not to drive to Malibu to get him. “I’ll need my station wagon later anyway and I don’t want to have to come back to Susan’s to get it,” he explained.

“That’s fine,” his mother said after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll see you after mass.”

By noon Tim was feeling a little better, but he was still incredibly weak. With effort, he dressed himself and prepared to leave. On the way out he was overcome with thirst. Taking a glass from the kitchen cabinet, he shuffled into the garage, where his sister kept her mineral water dispenser. But when he bent over to fill his glass, dizziness swept over him like a wave. The tumbler slipped from his hand, hit the floor and shattered. Tim cursed. He knew if he bent to clean it up he would be overcome with vertigo and would collapse. So he left the broken glass on the floor and slid behind the wheel of his black Ford station wagon, a vehicle that looked exactly like what it was—a miniature hearse, a vehicle he used to transport bodies from wherever they happened to be to a crematorium. On weekends, especially holiday weekends, Tim was on call. Since he never knew when he would be summoned to pick up a body, he had to have his station wagon handy. On such occasions, it did double duty as his personal vehicle.