Chapter 9. A Spiders' Web

She needed very little practice at the
arts of deception and showed me all
the cards she thought I wished to see.

Her formative years of abandonment, abuse, and betrayal, bred in Anna good reflexes for concealing her feelings and motives. But my former profession chose me too. I was one of those few who intuitively knew how to read and deceive people. The Army training had very little to do with this talent except to confirm what I already knew and enhance the technique... the craft of it... in the same way Picasso didn't need to be taught how to paint.  Tricks can be taught in places like the base at Holabird Maryland, though any professional poker player will insist, deception is more of an art than a science. The mortar blast hadn’t taken that away. 

Anna needed no reason other than self-preservation to hold her cards so close to her chest. I suppose she was trying to read me too, and paused before she continued to fill me in on the past few days, “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 pret-ty 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…”

She was telling me only that which she thought I wanted to hear. I decided to play along, “Yes, that night you were crying? How can I forget? It was the last time I saw you too.”

She lit two cigarettes and passed one to me like Bogart would have done for Bacall. It must’ve been for effect because I could tell she didn’t inhale. 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’d been Anna’s cabbie since she was an adolescent.

“Yeah, I used to wear the 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 trading her off like that. I sighed, “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, hold that joint a second, will you? 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 wasn’t an accident and Perry’s murder let me know that Doc doesn’t need me around with what I know, or you, asking questions.”

“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. This flood of information swamped my brain. It warranted a glib remark, “They aren’t waiting around for another earthquake to help ‘em out, are they now?”

She exhaled a cloud of smoke, and choked out saying, “I fuck billionaire boys to keep them busy while their matron and socialite wives help them slice up the pie in this town with a plethora of charities appearing as though they just needed a hobby.”

“Plethora? That’s a ten-dollar word coming from my million-dollar baby.”

“Yeh, I know. But there have always been small-time ambitious ones hanging around the perimeters and picking up the scraps that fall from the table.” It was the dope talking now, “Yes, yes, yes!” She exclaimed, “Schemers and scammers, bribing, manipulating whoever they can!”

“You know, Anna, I grudgingly admired Doc’s ambitions. He’s trying to come up to their level and he did it as a cab driver. How can I fault him if he wants more than a seat at the big table?”

“Hell, now it looks like he wants to own the room the table’s in!”

We paused a minute as the situation sank in. The fact that Perry was dead was all I needed to convince me Doc was now swimming with great whites. It arose from more than idle curiosity that I asked, “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.”

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

“Yeh, I’m clean. Off n’ on… you know… ‘cept for pot… clean. I’m tight with one of the detectives at SBPD. 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?”

“Damn, damn, damn. I’ll be damned. So, you were a cop with Ryan in Vietnam? Okay.” She smiled, “I didn’t ever suspect you were a cop, Kraszhinski. I would’ve thought you were a convict but never a cop. What else don’t I know about you?”

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

“Counter this counter that... Who gives a shit. You should’ve told me.  Oh hell, once a cop, always a cop,” she grinned.

“… and once a whore, always a whore.” It was a flash… a twitch of a grimace that told me I’d gone too far. I’d always known that pain was very close under the surface of Anna’s skin. I pulled back to get her on another track, “So, you’re an informant?”

“My business has given me opportunities to… but not a snitch in the normal sense of the term. Not petty gangsters and dope dealers. When Ryan scoops out horseshit in Hope Ranch and Montecito… not just your vice squad stuff… but financial swindles involving a murder that has to do with where the skeletons are buried. I can give him leads.”

“And Doc’s on his radar?”

“Yeah, Big time... 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. That ain’t all I’m not telling. You’d best not know either, for now. 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 ourselves.”

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. Patience, if it ever was a virtue, it had to be one then because Anna wasn’t going to tell me the whole story… as if she knew it herself.

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.