Chapter 9. The Spiders' Web

Anna’s occupation made her very good at concealing her feelings. But my former profession trained my eye to read people. The mortar blast hadn’t taken that away. It’s a trick that can be taught by the Army in places like Huachuca Arizona, though any professional poker player will insist deception is more of an art than a science. She usually held her cards close to her chest. Anna paused, and continued, “A twenty-two revolver was on the floorboards. The coroner ruled it a suicide. Perry didn’t have family and the body was cremated two days later. The day you got out of jail.”

“I didn’t know he owned a gun. Did they get any prints off it?”

“No. It was wiped clean.”

I played the sleuth, “How do you know that?”

“I have my sources.”

 I see what you mean though. Not too many folks wipe their prints after they blow their brains out. How were you involved?”

She looked around the room as if checking to see whether anyone was listening. She took a deep breath, lowered her voice and began telling me about the whole sordid business, “See, Doc liked to throw what he called, costume parties. It wasn’t unusual to me. He knew some pretty powerful folks around town and… where it stands now… it’s grown… some people as far away as Washington and New York… lawyers and judges. I don’t know. If there was a marquee I would have had top billing. But I dropped out of my role as the star of the show a year ago when you…”

“Yes, that night you were crying?”

She lit two cigarettes and passed one to me like Bogart would have done for Bacall. Smoke billowed up between us as she continued, “The Professor used his church for recruiting gullible young things like Jenny. He plied his Hollywood good looks to help them with their problems… spiritual ones, you know? Girls, especially young ones, go for preachers. I don’t know what it is but some of us are attracted to authority figures and you do know how smooth of a talker he is.”

“You talk as though he might have reeled you in too.”

“Yes, I’m ashamed to admit I fell for him when I was a kid… he was handsome and well to do… he played up his sugar-daddy role and had me for a while. But ours became a business affair and he took his affections to Jenny.”

“Why? she’s not jailbait.” I thought about how far back I’d been Anna’s cabbie.

“Yeah, I used to wear school girl fetish gear. Round-eyes like Jenny played the big mama. We had a whole dramatic scene goin’ on for his pals in that fuckin’ basement.”

I watched her closely and could see that she looked as if she enjoyed recalling it before she turned dead serious, “Now Doc’s trying to cash in on those connections and go big time. It’s image. He probably figured these pigs have more respect for pimps with endowed blonds than oriental school girls.”

My investigator mind knew that Doc must have gotten on Anna’s bad side for that but wonder aloud, “Jenny? We all know Doc’s banging her but not anything as kinky as this.”

A day ago I hadn’t heard Perry was dead. My biggest problem was getting my job back and now Anna’s weaving a web of conspiracy, murder and child molestation beyond my imagination. The more I heard the more I wanted to be alert and sober. Anna relit the joint and passed it to me. I raised my hand palm out and, a little annoyed and declined, “Calm down girl, you’re making me nervous. What do you mean, big time?”

“I hit him up as much as I could for this place before he was gonna make a bid for Mayor. What happened in that wine cellar was an accident but Perry’s murder let me know Doc doesn’t need me, or you, around?”

“Hah, mayor? This is a small pond. It isn’t LA, dear. Shit, mayor of this town doesn’t pay enough to rent a lily pad here. Not enough to go around murdering people for it.”

She fired back like I was an idiot, “You think I don’t know that? Can’t you see the sharks circling? There are deals goin’ on here that make the cab business petty cash. Mr. Mayor wants to be in the center of every one of ‘em.”

I saw what she meant. At that time, it was small time construction contracts… extortion via building permits. It’s called Revitalization whenever they want to kill a neighborhood for a cartoon image of the old Spanish Days.

The whole county was run by matrons and socialites married to billionaire boys needing a hobby. There have always been small time ambitious ones too; hanging around the perimeters and picking up the scraps that fall from the table, schemers and scammers, bribing, manipulating whoever they can. I grudgingly admired Doc’s ambitions. He came up to their level as a cab driver. How could I fault him if he wanted more than a seat at the big table? Hell, now it looked like he wanted to own the room the table was in. But the fact that Perry was dead should have convinced me Doc was now swimming with great whites.

“And how much did you sap Doc for anyway?”

“Three-hundred grand. I needed it for the down-payment. When I first saw this place I wanted it. The banker eyed me up real good too. You know, while we were checking out the place. I could tell we could make a deal. I got it for only six-hundred. You know, these places in this neighborhood go for over eight. I paid off the rest with cash money… you know?”

“Damn girl, you did that?”

“Sure did. For several years, even when I was doin’ drugs, I made sure I put a grand in my account a couple times a month.”

“Tell me more about that accident in the basement, and how come Doc doesn’t put a hit on you like he did Perry?”

“I’m tight with one of the detectives at the P.D. Ryan’s his name. I’m sure Doc’s trying to figure out a way.”

“You know Ryan? He’s the reason I came to Santa Barbara after…” I must have drifted off into the past because she waved a hand in my face.

She asked, “How do you two know each other?”

“Oh, sorry. We did some shit together in Vietnam. What’s he got to do with you in any of this?”

“Doc’s already gotten by with murder. Perry had no family and neither do I. But I have Ryan and, now that I know, so do you.”

“How so?”

“You worked together in Vietnam, okay?” She smiled, “I didn’t know you were a cop, Crazhinski. What else don’t I know about you?”

“I’ve got some secrets I keep but, apparently, not as many as you.”

“Once a cop, always a cop,” she grinned, “then you must know that any good cop’s in touch with the seedier side of town. My business has given me opportunities to…”

“So, you’re an informant too?”

“Not a snitch in the normal sense of the term. Not petty gangsters and dope dealers. When Ryan scoops out stuff in Hope Ranch and Montecito… not just your vice squad stuff… but financial swindles. I can give him leads.”

“And Doc’s on his radar?”

“Yeah, and Doc knows I’m his link. He’s protected by some high powered attorneys who were involved in his S&M masquerades but Ryan wasn’t on to it until too late. I was already cut out of the action.”

“You mean child molestation. Why aren’t you telling him about that? Isn’t that all the more reason your ass is on the line?”

“I’m walking a tightrope for sure. Doc’s hoping the money he gave me will hold me off at least until he accumulates a little more influence… enough to turn suspicion away from him. Maybe until Ryan retires anyway.”

“If I know Ryan, retirement won’t stop him if something as sleazy as this gets his attention.”

“All I can say to you now is that there are bigger fish than Doc to fry and he knows we can’t go to the law to protect us.”

The fog of confusion was coming back. My ears rang. It happened whenever I was facing a problem this complicated, whether it was in analytical logic or shopping lists. Until she said that bit about bigger fish I was thinking it would have been best had Anna put her place on the market, got out of Dodge, and if she could, take me with her.

I looked around the studio and caught sight of a web on the window pane with a fly trapped in it. The fly struggled to the bitter end. That was when I first noticed it was happening. The fog came and went and, after each time, little by little, I was no longer indifferent and was getting involved in something other than the oblivion of the bottle.

*****

It was in the early evening and Ryan sat at a strategically located booth, facing the entrance and both sides of the L shaped restaurant’s interior. Lopez sauntered by the register and flirted with the young waitress before sitting across from him. Ryan waited. It was Lopez that would have to start the conversation. It was his idea to meet and Ryan knew it wasn’t to talk about the Lakers.

Crazy Shirley filled both cups as soon as Lopez sat. She was a nice looking middle-aged woman, hair streaked with silver, and lines on her face that spoke of years pouring bottomless cups of coffee to anyone with a buck or two and a quarter tip from harbor bums to cops. Sambos on the beach was the last of the chain that once dominated the off-ramps of highways from Santa Barbara to Miami Florida. The bottomless cups of coffee were gone too. Shirley still poured them though. She had worked there through two marriages and divorces since she was eighteen years young when the grand-pa of the chain, Sam Battistone, stepped in behind the counter and flipped a pancake or two once for old times sake.  As soon as he passed on, his kids ran the chain into the ground. At least, that’s the idea everyone in town took away from watching its demise. Ryan preferred a mature woman to the starry-eyed teens that Lopez always failed to impress. She was his kind of woman but the restaurant was no longer his kind of place since it tried to become a Chic shadow of itself.

“Good to see you strangers. You want a menu?”

“Naw, Shirley, I’ll just have an S.O.S.”

“Shit on a Shingle hasn’t been on the menu since the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ryan.”

“I’d still have Mary Tyler Moore though,” Ryan teased.

“Me too,” she smiled.

After Shirley left the booth, Lopez finally breached the subject, “We have a problem, Ryan. The scuttlebutt around the Barn says that you’ve gone over the edge on this case. I said it already, you ought best take some leave. You have it coming to you.”

His tone, without revealing the rage he was stuffing, Ryan asked, “And if I slump off, who’s going to cool his jets? What sewer is this coming from, Lopez?”

“You know how it is Ryan. This shit doesn’t come out of nowhere. You’ve been a loose cannon and I know you know it. This ain’t like you, buddy.”

“Buddy my ass. You’re changing the subject. What’s goin’ on up there that you aren’t telling me? Is it somebody in the DA’s office?”

“The DA? What’s next Ryan, a UFO cover-up… contrails… The JFK assassination? You’re going on leave… paid vacation.”

Ryan did everything he knew to do to suppress his anger telling himself, Stay objective. Don’t let your emotions get to you. He said, “Okay. I’m good with that. I’m thinking of taking the Sherlock to Mexico anyway. Maybe Cabo.”

They were cordial and Ryan tried not to rush. He been wanting to get some pics of the tire treads on Doc’s Jag all day. He knew where Doc lived and drove up Eucalyptus Rd, parking down the street where he had to walk a quarter mile on a lane lined with bougainvillea. The property was on a hill surrounded by an adobe wall within several acres of Eucalyptus and Sycamore trees on undeveloped land.

The wall had security cameras that were easily spotted. Ryan had paused near a side gate where he squatted while thinking of a ruse or tactic to get inside. Fortune graced is patience as he heard voices arguing… approaching the gate.

A calm deliberate Slavic accent said, “There can’t be witness. That bitch is no asset. Why did you fire that cab driver… we might have gotten the right one but you don’t know.  Do you?”

His question was met with silence. He demanded once more, “Do you.”

“I fired him to get him out of the way.”

Ryan clicked on his cassette hoping to catch what the conversation. It was loud enough. He could see them once they stepped out of the gate. The Slav grabbed Doc by the collar and put what Ryan knew so well to be a Marakov automatic pistol to the side of Doc’s head, “This is the best way to get someone out of way. You should have done that.”

Ryan could only imagine Doc sweating blood… “I know. I will. I couldn’t right there in my office. We looked for him… couldn’t find him.”

Yuri slipped the pistol back inside is jacket, “He’s with whore. Where’s she?”

Doc’s body breathed relief, “I thought she left town. I don’t know where she is.”

Ryan thought, well shit, neither do I.

“Amateurs… damned amateurs.” Yuri snarled, “She’s in town and going to city college under another name. Anadel Bonnaire. Her old place is on her registration. Don’t you know how easy it is to get something like that?”

“We looked at some places she wanted to buy… several. But I thought she took the money and split.”

‘You want to be a gangster, Mr. Spawn. You shit. You idiyote! How much you give her, eh?”

“A couple thousand grand…”

“And places you look at… eh, what they cost?” I go to county. I look up purchases… I look and see who bought. What houses you look at? What sold to Anadel Bonnaire. You see? I find before you know. You go in house and give me a list before I go. Now we have nice dinner, okay. Relax, I find her.”

This was better than Ryan could have hoped for. If only he could find where Anna was tucked away. He’d lost track of Craszhinski too. He took Yuri’s advice and called county records as soon as he got back in town. The clerks there are quick to follow through with police requests. Favors curry favors and you never know when a DUI might need to be dealt with. Ryan felt relieved almost as much as he was frustrated that there was no sign of a Bonnaire anywhere in the files. She must have used someone else’s name. He wished he had Yuri’s list.