When the Bough Breaks (42 page)

“Earl and Halstead looked for the tapes,” Kruger was saying, “after they tied them up. They tortured them to get them to tell where they kept them but neither of them talked. Halstead complained to Gus that he could have gotten it out of them but Earl went to work too fast with the knife. Handler passed out when he cut his throat, the girl freaked out totally, screaming, they had to jam something in her mouth. She choked, then Earl finished her, played with her.”

“But you finally found the tapes, didn’t you, Timmy?”

“Yes. She’d kept them at her mother’s. I got them from her junkie brother. Used smack as a bribe.”

“Tell me more.”

“That’s it. They tried to put the squeeze on Gus. He paid them once or twice—big amounts ’cause I saw large rolls of bills—but it was just to give them false confidence. They never had a chance from the start. We never got the money back, but I don’t think it mattered. It was a drop in the bucket. Besides, money doesn’t seem to turn Gus on. He lives simply, eats cheap. There’s big bucks rolling in every day. From the government—state and federal. Private donations. Not to mention the thousands the pervs pay him for their jollies. He stashes some away but I’ve never seen him do anything extravagant. It’s power he’s after, not bread.”

“Where are the tapes?”

“I gave them to Gus.”

“Come on.”

“I gave them to him. He sent me on an errand and I delivered.”

“That’s a strong-looking knee. Pity to pulverize it to bone meal.” I
stepped on the back of his leg and bore down. It forced his head up, had to hurt.

“Stop! Okay. I made a copy. I had to. For leverage. What if Gus wanted me out of the way one day? I mean I was his golden boy now but you could never know, right?”

“Where are they?”

“In my bedroom. Taped to the bottom of the mattress.”

“Don’t go away.” I released my foot.

He gnashed his teeth like a netted shark.

I found three unmarked cassettes where he said they’d be, pocketed them and returned.

“Tell me some names. Of the molesters in the Brigade.”

He recited like a kid delivering his confirmation speech. Automatic. Nervous. Overly rehearsed.

“Any more?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

He had a point. He’d mentioned a well-known film director, a deputy D.A., a political biggie—a behind-the-scenes man who managed to stay in front—corporate attorneys. Doctors. Bankers. Real estate hon-chos. Men whose names usually got in print when they donated something or won an award for humanitarian service. Men whose names on a campaign endorsement roster brought in votes. Ned Biondi would have enough to turn L.A. society on its ear for quite some time.

“You’re not going to forget all of this when the police ask you about it, are you, Tim?”

“No! Why should I? Maybe cooperating can buy me out?”

“You’re not getting out. Accept it. But at least,” I added, “you won’t end up fertilizing McCaffrey’s vegetable patch.”

He considered that. It must have been hard to count his blessings with the ropes biting into his wrists and ankles.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ve helped you. Help me make a deal. I’ll cooperate—I didn’t kill anyone.”

The power he attributed to me was fictitious. I used it anyway.

“I’ll do what I can,” I said magnanimously, “but a lot of it’s up to you. If the Quinn kid gets out of this healthy, I’ll go to bat for you. If not, you’re down the toilet.”

“Then get going, for God’s sake! Get her out of there! I don’t give her more than a day. Will put Gus off but it won’t be for long. She’ll have an accident. They’ll never find the body. It’s just a matter of time. Gus is sure she saw too much.”

“Tell me what I need to get her out of there safely.”

He looked away.

“I lied about where she is. It’s not the furthest building, it’s the one just before it. With the blue door. Metal door. There’s a key in the
pocket of my tan pants. Hanging in the closet in my room.”

I left him, fished it out and came back dangling the key.

“You’re batting a thousand, Tim.”

“I’m being straight with you. Just help
me.”

“Is anyone with her?”

“No. There’s no need. Will has her on sedatives. Mostly she’s out of it or sleeping. They send in someone to feed her, clean her up. She’s strapped to the bed. The room’s solid, concrete block. Only one way in—through the door. There’s a single skylight window they keep open. Close it, anyone inside suffocates in forty-eight hours.”

“Could Will Towle get into La Casa without arousing suspicion?”

“Sure. Like I told you, he’s on twenty-four-call for when the Gentlemen get too rough on the kids. Most of the time it’s nothing serious—scrapes, lacerations. Sometimes the kids freak out, he gives them Valium or Mellaril, or a quick dose of Thorazine. Yeah, he could show up any time.”

“Good. You’re going to call him, Tim. You’re going to tell him he needs to make just such an emergency call. I want him entering La Casa a half-hour after dark—let’s say seven-thirty. Make sure he’s on time. And alone. Make it sound convincing.”

“I could be more convincing if I could move around a little bit.”

“Work with what you’ve got. I have faith in you. Use your dramatic training. You were pretty good as Bill Roberts.”

“How’d you kn—”

“I didn’t. Now I do. It was an educated guess. You’re a trained actor, you were a natural for the part. Did your role include killing Hickle, too?”

“Ancient history,” he said. “Yeah, I made the call. Setting it up in your office was Hayden’s idea of a joke. He’s a mean little mother. Sick sense of humor. But like I told you before, I didn’t
kill
anybody. For the Hickle thing I wasn’t even there. That was all Hayden and Cousin Will. They—and Gus—decided to shut him up—same old story, I guess. Hickle was a member of the Brigade, one of the originals. But he free-lanced with the kids at his wife’s school.

“I remember after he got busted, the three of them were talking about it. Gus was ranting. ‘Damned stupid shithead!’ he was yelling, ‘I furnish that fool with enough hairless pussy to keep him smiling for the rest of his life and he goes and does a dumbshit thing like this!’ The way I figured it Hickle’d always been regarded as weak and stupid, easily influenced. They bet that once he started confessing the school stuff he’d open his yap and bring it all down around them. They had to put him away.

“The way they did it was for Hayden to call him and tell him he had good news. Hickle’d asked Hayden to pull strings downtown with
the D.A., which just goes to show you how stupid he was. I mean at that time Hickle was page one. Just knowing him was the kiss of death. But he called Hayden, asked him anyway. Hayden faked it like he was going to try to help. Couple days later he called him, said yeah, there was good news, he could help. They met at Hayden’s house, very hush-hush, no one around. From what I gather Will slipped something in his tea—the guy didn’t drink booze. Something you could time precisely and that wore off, so traces were hard to find unless you were looking for something specifically. Will fixed the dosage—he’s good at that. When Hickle was out they moved him to your place. Hayden picked the lock—he’s good with his hands, does magic shows for the kids at La Casa. Dresses up like a clown—Blimbo the Clown—and does magic tricks.”

“Forget magic. Go on about Hickle.”

“That’s it. They got him up there, faked the suicide. I don’t know who pulled the trigger. I wasn’t there. The only reason I know anything about it is I did the Bill Roberts bit and a few days later Gus told me what it was all about. He was in one of those dark moods when he talks like a megalomaniac. ‘Don’t think your cousin the doctor is all that noble, my boy,’ he was saying. ‘I can fry his ass and the asses of lots of noble men with one phone call.’ He gets that way—anti-rich, after he thinks back to how he was poor and all us rich folk mistreated him. That night, after they killed Hickle, we were sitting in his office. He was drinking gin and he started to reminisce about how he used to work for Mr. Hickle—Hickle’s father—from the time he was a little kid. He was an orphan and some agency basically sold him to the Hickles, like a slave. He said old Hickle had been a monster. Vicious temper, liked to kick the help around. He told me how he took it, kept his eyes open, learned all the nasty family secrets—like Stuart’s kinks, other stuff—saved it all up and used it to get off Brindamoor, to get the job at Jedson. I remember him smiling at me, half-drunk, looking crazy. ‘I learned early,’ he said, ‘that knowledge is power.’ Then he talked about Earl, how the guy was damaged goods, but would do anything for him. ‘He’d eat my shit and call it caviar,’ he said. ‘That’s power.’”

Kruger had arched his back, picking his head up, stiff-necked, as he talked. Now exhausted, he sank back down.

“I guess,” he said, “he’s getting back at all of us.”

He lay in the ochre stain of dried urine, pitiful.

“Anything else you want to tell me, Tim?”

“I can’t think of anything. You ask, I’ll tell.”

I saw the tension travel up and down his bound limbs like a handcar on a twisted track and kept my distance.

There was a phone on the floor several feet away. I brought it near,
stayed away from his arms and laid the speaker near his mouth. Holding the gun to his brow I punched in Towle’s office number and stepped back.

“Make it good.”

He did. I would have been convinced. I hoped Towle was. He signaled me the conversation was through by moving his eyes back and forth. I hung up and had him make a second call, to the security desk at La Casa to set up the doctor’s visit.

“How was that?” he asked when he was through.

“Rave review.”

Oddly enough that seemed to please him.

“Tell me, Tim, how are your sinuses?”

The question didn’t throw him. “Great,” he blurted out, “I’m never sick.” He said it with the bravado of the habitual athlete who believes exercise and firm muscles are guarantees of immortality.

“Good. Then this shouldn’t bother you.” I crammed a towel into his mouth while he made enraged, muffled noises through the terry-cloth.

Carefully I dragged him to the bedroom, emptied the closet of anything that resembled a tool or weapon and shoved him inside, molding him to the confines of the tiny space.

“If
I get out of La Casa with the kid and myself in good shape I’ll tell the police where to find you. If I don’t, you’ll probably suffocate. Anything else you want to tell me?”

A shake of the head. Beseeching eyes. I closed the door and moved a heavy dresser in front of it. I replaced the gun in my waistband, closed all the windows in the apartment, drew the bedroom curtains and shut the bedroom door, blocking it with two chairs stood on end. I cut his phone line with a kitchen knife, drew the drapes so that the view of the ocean was erased and gave the place a final once-over. Satisfied, I walked out the door, slamming it tight.

28

T
HE
S
EVILLE
was running, but shakily, as a result of the grand prix with Halstead. It was also too conspicuous for my purposes. I left it in a lot in Westwood Village, walked two blocks to a Budget Rent-A-Car and picked up a dark brown Japanese compact—one of those square little boxes of molded plastic papered with an allegedly metal shell. It took fifteen minutes to putt-putt through the traffic from one end of the village to the other. I pulled into the Bullocks garage, locked the gun in the glove compartment, locked the car and went shopping.

I bought a pair of jeans, thick socks, crepe-soled shoes, navy blue turtleneck and a windbreaker of the same dark hue. Everything in the store was tagged with plastic alarm clips and it took the salesgirl several minutes to liberate the garments after she’d taken my money.

“Wonderful world,” I muttered.

“You think this is bad, we have the expensive stuff—leather, furs—under lock and key. Otherwise they just waltz right out with it.”

We shared righteous sighs and, after being informed I was likely to be under surveillance, I decided not to change in the store’s dressing room.

It was just past six and dark by the time I was back on the street. Time enough to grab a steak sandwich, Greek salad, vanilla ice cream and lots of black coffee and watch the starless sky from the vantage point of a front table in a mom-and-pop eatery on West Pico. At six-thirty I paid the tab and went into the restaurant’s men’s room to change. While slipping into my new duds I noticed a piece of folded paper on the floor. I picked it up. It was the copy of the Lilah Towle accident story given to me by Margaret Dopplemeier. I tried to read it again, with not much greater success. I was able to make out something about the Coast Guard and high tides, but that was it. I put it
back in the jacket pocket, straightened up and got ready to head for Malibu.

There was a pay phone at the back of the café, and I used it to call the West L.A. station. I thought of leaving a convoluted message for Milo, then thought better of it and asked for Delano Hardy. After being kept waiting for five minutes I was finally told he was out on a call. I left the convoluted message for him, paid the check, and headed for Malibu.

It was slow going but I’d constructed my schedule with that in mind. I reached Rambla Pacifica just before seven, and the county sign announcing La Casa de los Niños at ten after. The sky was empty and dark, like a drop down an endless well. A coyote howled from a distant gully. Nightbirds and bats flittered and squeaked. I switched off my headlights and navigated the next mile and a half by sense of touch. It wasn’t all that difficult, but the little car resonated at every crack and bump in the road, and transmitted the shock waves directly through my skeletal system.

I came to a stop a half-mile before the La Casa turnoff. It was seven-fifteen. There were no other vehicles on the road. Praying it stayed that way, I swung the car perpendicular to the road and blocked both lanes: rear wheels facing the ravine that bordered the highway, front tires nosing the thick brush to the west. I sat in the darkened compartment, gun in hand, waiting.

At twenty-three after seven I heard the sound of an approaching engine. A minute later the Lincoln’s square headlights came into view a quarter-mile up the road. I jumped out of the car, ran for cover in the brush and crouched, holding my breath.