Time Bomb (50 page)

“Could Sophie Gruenberg have been interested in Wannsee Two?”

“Doubt it. That old lady was too sophisticated to be taken in by that kind of crap.”

“You knew her well?”

His headshake was vehement. “I only met her once. With Norm. But he talked about her. Said she was a revolutionary of the old stripe—well-read, intellectual. Even though he didn’t get along with her, he respected her intellect.”

“You only met her once?”

He was silent.

I caught his eye.

He said, “Twice. When I returned to L.A.—doing my little network page gig—I checked in with her. To see how things were going.”

“With Ike?”

“With the world.” He twisted his lip between thumb and forefinger.

I said, “Did you really just leave him on the step?”

“You bet I did. It was all I could do to hide and wait until she took him in. Going there in the first place was a risk. I was totally freaked-out, wanted to get the hell out of town before the men in the gray suits came calling. I figured eventually someone would figure out I hadn’t been blown up and try to finish the job.”

He laughed. “No one bothered. All these years.”

I said, “You mentioned the Feds’ running dogs. Any suspects?”

“Sure,” he said. “There were these weird trapper types skulking around in the forest. Mountain men—long hair, beards, homemade buckskins, eating grubs and whatever. Living off the land, like Redford in
Jeremiah Johnson.
We kind of did a mutual ignoring thing with them, but later, when I had time to think, I started to wonder. Because using them would have been a perfect government setup. We were naïve—we trusted anyone who looked counterculture. Crew-cut types sneaking around would have gotten us immediately paranoid, but
those
hairy fuckers we ignored. They’d been there before we got there, didn’t seem to have any real interest in us. Also, we respected the way they were doing their own thing. Thought of them as hippies with guns and Bowie knives. Macho freaks. We were
jazzed
by the whole live-off-the-land bit—that’s what
we
were aiming for. So it would have been easy for one of them to sneak in, plant the bombs, and sneak out. They were probably G-men or
agents provocateurs
—probably pushing paper in Toledo today. Which is punishment enough, right?”

The bitterness in his voice put the lie to his last statement.

I said, “Did you discuss any of these suspicions with Sophie Gruenberg the time you dropped by?”

“Didn’t have to. Moment she closed the door she sat me down and started lecturing to me about how the explosion had been a government plot; Norm and Melba and the others were martyrs. No tears—she was very tough. Just anger. This hot rage that made it seem as if she was vibrating.” He smiled. “She was a tough old lady. I could see her running a guillotine back in Bastille days.”

“Where’d she send Ike to be raised?”

“What makes you think she sent him anywhere?”

“He’d just moved to L.A. a few months before his death, told people he’d been living back east. That makes sense. Someone as suspicious as Sophie might be nervous keeping the son of martyrs around in plain view.”

“I don’t know the details,” he said. “When I asked about him, she said she’d sent him away to relatives. Said government people had come snooping around pretty soon after the blast, asking questions of the neighbors. She called them goddam cossacks. Said if they found out she had him with her, they’d kidnap him or something, claim she was unfit and take him away. She said he needed to be in a safe place for a while. I took that to mean temporary, she was planning to bring him back, but I guess she could have kept him away the whole time.”

“Any idea where these relatives lived?”

“She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I kind of assumed it was Philadelphia because Norm was born there—the family used to live there.”

“You only dropped in on her once?”

“That’s it. She was part of what I’d put behind me. So was Malcolm Isaac.
That’s
why I didn’t see him—it wasn’t just apathy. What would have been the point?”

His tension had lifted him out of his chair, and his skin had turned waxy. His eyes kept moving, up and down, side to side, back at the cartoon characters. Everywhere but at me.

I said, “I understand.”

“Do you? To understand you’ve got to know what it’s like to be a hunted animal—mainlining adrenaline, looking over your shoulder, hearing things, seeing things. Peeing your pants, afraid to move, afraid not to move. Convinced every tree is a storm trooper, not knowing what’s real and what’s not, when that bullet’s gonna come flying by, or the blade or the time bomb turning you into instant smog. By the time I dropped in on her, I’d finally managed to pull myself out of that insanity. Working at my page gig, renting a little bachelor apartment, going to the supermarket, the laundromat, the filling station. Eating Swanson TV dinners and hot dogs—no more macrobiotics, I was ready for some nitrite-cramming, like a real American. Doing regular-person stuff, so happy and grateful to be alive. I mean, I couldn’t
believe
they weren’t coming after me—couldn’t believe they were letting me live and work and eat hot dogs and do my thing and no one was trying to blow me up.

He tugged at his cheeks, created a sad mask. “It took me a long time to get there. To realize no one cared about any of it anymore. The war was over; Nixon had gone down; Eldridge was marketing codpiece-pants; Jerry and Abby were doing Wall Street, the talk-show circuit; Leary was asshole buddy with G. Gordon Liddy. Fascists were wearing long hair and beards, hippies going for crew-cuts. Boundaries blurring, all the old myths dead. Live and let live—bygones
were
bygones. It was
my
turn to live. I
worked
at living. Malcolm Isaac’s call came at a bad time. I’d just gotten engaged to be married, was planning to go away with my lady. Real vacation, bring a little romance into my life—better late than never, right? We’ve since broken up, but at the time it looked liked forever, rice and flowers. I had my tickets in my hand when he called. Out the door. Last thing I wanted to deal with was the past—what would have been the point?”

“No point,” I said.

“Gotta keep moving forward,” he said. “No point in looking back. Right?”

“Right.”

But a plain truth filled the space between us—unseen but corrosive.

No one had cared because he’d been second cadre all the way. Too unimportant to kill.

31

I pulled out of the network lot. This time someone followed me.

At first I wasn’t sure, wondered if the time spent immersed in Crevolin’s fugitive memories had made
me
paranoid.

The first hint of suspicion came at Olympic and La Cienega, just east of Beverly Hills, as I squinted into a platinum sunset glare that ate through my shades. A tan car two lengths behind me changed lanes the moment my eyes hit the mirror for the twentieth time.

I slowed. The tan car slowed. I looked back, trying to make out the driver, saw only a vague outline. Two outlines.

I slowed some more, received an angry honk for my efforts. I picked up speed. The tan car held back, stretching the distance between us. We cruised that way for a while, then hit a red light at La Peer. When things got moving again, I eased into the fast lane and put on as much speed as the crush would allow. The tan car continued to hold back, retreated into vehicular anonymity. By Doheny Drive, I couldn’t see it anymore.

So much for high intrigue.

I tried to relax but kept drifting back to exploding warehouses. My imagination gorged itself on conspiracy theories until my head started to hurt. Then I noticed it again. Center lane, two lengths behind . . .

I managed to get into the center lane. The tan car moved out of it, into the fast lane, coming up on my left. Wanting a better view?

Making sure not to move my head, I snuck a peek in the mirror. Still there.

Traffic in the right lane was dragging a bit now. I squeezed into it, settled into the slower pace. Hoping for a view of my own. The vehicles that had been in back of me whizzed by. I kept an eye to the left, waiting for the tan car to pass. Nothing.

Rearview peek: gone.

Another light at Beverly. Behind me, again. Two lengths.

It took until Roxbury for me to get back into the fast lane. The tan car stayed with me, all the way to Century City.

The sun was nearly down. Headlights came on. The tan car became a pair of yellow spots, indistinguishable from hundreds of others.

The loss of visibility made me feel violated, though I knew I was also less easy to spot. Anger took the place of fear. Felt a whole lot better than fear.

Practice-what-you-preach time, Doc.

Best-defense-is-a-good-offense time, Doc.

Just before Overland, I made a sudden move into the center lane, then the right, drove a block and made a quick turn onto a side street, just past a Ralph’s market. Speeding a hundred yards, I doused my lights, pulled over to the side, and waited, the engine still running.

Residential street. Small nicely kept houses. Tall trees. No foot traffic. Lots of parked cars on both sides; my turn to blend in.

The first set of headlights from Olympic belonged to a gray Porsche 944 that zipped by at fifty per and pulled into a driveway at the end of the block. I made out the shape of a man with a briefcase. He disappeared into one of the bungalows.

Soon after came a Dodge Ram van with the logo of a plumbing company on the side, driving at moderate speed. It stopped at the next corner and turned right.

Then nothing for several minutes. I waited, almost ready to concede the afternoon to paranoia, when I heard an automotive hum coming from Olympic.

Heard but didn’t see.

The side mirror revealed a faintly resolving image, just a hint of chrome under streetlight: a car with its headlights off, making its way slowly toward me.

The hum grew louder.

I slumped low.

The tan car cruised by at ten per. Plymouth sedan. Not unlike the unmarked Milo used. Not unlike the car he’d thought had been following us on our way to the Holocaust Center.

Ten miles per. Slow cruise. The way cops cruise when they’re looking for trouble.s

My engine suddenly sounded deafening. They had to hear. I should have turned it off. . . .

But the tan car kept going, turned right, and disappeared. I pulled out, keeping my lights off, and went after it. Caught up just as it made another right turn. Tried to read the license plate, couldn’t, got closer.

Not close enough to make out any details of the two people inside.

I nudged the accelerator, came just short of tailgating.

Switched on my lights.

Nonreflector plates, a number, two letters, four more numbers. I shot a mental snapshot, developed it just as the passenger swiveled sharply and looked back.

The tan sedan came to a sudden stop. I jammed on the brakes to avoid rear-ending it. For a moment I thought there’d be a confrontation, was prepared to back away. But the tan car peeled rubber and took off.

I let it go, preserving letters and numbers in my head until I got home.

Still no luck reaching Milo; where the hell was he? I called his house and got the machine again. Phoned the Cedars-Sinai emergency room and asked for Dr. Silver-man. Kick was in the middle of surgery, unable to come to the phone. I called the machine again and recited the tan car’s license number, explained why it was important to trace it as quickly as possible, and gave a summary of what I’d learned from Terry Crevolin. Talking to the damned thing as if it were corporeal, an old pal. Mahlon Burden would have been proud of me.

When I was through I phoned Linda at home.

“Hi,” she said. “Have you seen it yet?”

“Seen what?”

“The Massengil stuff hitting the fan—right now, the six o’clock news. Call me back when you’ve had your fill of it.”

The newscast was featuring the second assassination of the late assemblyman, this one not nearly as quick and clean as the ambush in Sheryl Jane Jackson’s backyard. A photo of Massengil that could have been a mug shot. An old one of Cheri T in a corkscrew hairdo and white eye shadow that was. The jail photographer had preserved her looking like the hollow-eyed, switchblade-in-purse streetwalker she’d once been.

The gloating anchorwoman went on in a sultry voice about sex for hire . . . the
exact relationship
between the two victims and Jackson still being unclear . . . sex scandal . . . sex sex sex . . . Massengil’s reputation as a law-and-order politician who’d campaigned against pornog-raphy . . . twenty-eight years in the state legislature advocating . . . sex . . . psychological adviser . . . sex . . .

She needn’t have bothered talking. Pictures were still worth millions of words: Massengil open-mouthed and snarling, Dobbs’s well-fed sanctimoniousness. Cheri’s eyes, full of corruption and defiance.

Now an action shot. Ocean Heights. The Widow Massengil walking out of her front door to a waiting car, black-garbed, face and snowy bouffant hidden by veil and hands. Hobbling, hunched, in the protective grip of all four sons. Flashbulbs popping, microphones thrusting. The bereaved family fleeing with all the dignity of war criminals hustled to the tribunal.

The station’s resident political commentator came on, wondering who was going to fill Massengil’s unexpired term. Apparently a political technicality was operative: Since Massengil’s death had occurred after the nominating period for his next term, there would be no special election and the remaining eight months of the term would go fallow. In accordance with tradition, the widow had been considered the most probable replacement, but today’s disclosures made her an unlikely contender. Faces of possible candidates flashed on the screen. A deputy mayor I’d never heard of. A former TV anchorman—with an obsession about separating paper trash from the rest of the garbage—who surfaced every few years to play small-time Harold Stassen and was regarded as a municipal joke.

Then Gordon Latch.

The resident commentator reported “inside rumors” that Latch was considering running for the vacated seat. Next came footage showing him at his desk, fending off questions and letting the viewing public know that “during difficult times such as these we’ve all got to pull together and not stoop to careerism. My heartfelt thoughts are with Hattie Massengil and the boys. I urge all of you to refrain from unnecessary cruelty.”