“I know him.”
“Nahan’s some kind of financial genius. He talked the congregation into buying a little radio station, put Hammond on the air, and started an empire.”
“With the contributions sent in.”
“Well, the eldersCor whatever they call themCcomplained. Said the church wasn’t seeing any money. They tried to get control back, but Nahan set up a foundation independent of the church. He got Hammond to quit the church and keep the radio station, plus real estate and other operations.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, a travel agency.”
“A what?”
“Sure: set up to send the faithful on Holy Land tours and worldwide missions, ho ho. And all tax-exempt. Of course they did a tiny bit of commercial business tooClike about ninety percent. Needless to say, the government got intrigued and finally sued them.”
“What happened?”
“It’s been in the courts for years now. You see, Nahan set up front corporations in five states and bank accounts from here to Bermuda. So every time someone goes to a court, Nahan shifts the assets out of its jurisdiction.”
Janice scratched a knobby knee. “By now they’re really flying, with a Bible college and a TV station. That station is a gold mine. They have a satellite hookup - broadcast all over the country.”
“And Hammond rakes in the money.”
“That’s the cute part: his salary is exactly one dollar a year. Of course, he has an unlimited expense account which is never audited, a Rolls Royce to ride around in, and a ‘parish house’ near Beverly Hills, though there isn’t any parish.”
“What do his faithful think of all this?”
“What else? A conspiracy by the secular humanist media to smear a man of God.”
“A very smart operator.”
“Wrong!” Janice poured four inches of Chablis into her glass. “Hammond’s just the front man but Nahan’s the brains. At least some of the holding corporations and dummy foundations are in Nahan’s name. He controls the money.”
“I saw him and Hammond fighting over money.”
“Nahan’s got a long history: fancy real estate scams, funny bonds - you name it.”
“Cold-blooded sod.”
“But things are heating up now. The attorneys general of three states are talking to each other. The FCC is on Hammond’s case about the station license, and the IRS is in hot pursuit.”
“Did Del tell you about Lee Tolman?”
“That was awful.”
“Why would Hammond want to kill her?”
Primly: “I’m a researcher, not a psychic.” She joined Del on the sofa, draping a fragile arm over his thick shoulders.
“Please, Janice, help me put this together.”
Reluctantly: “I’ll go this far: her death is probably not connected to the money business. Even if she really did work as Hammond’s secretary, she’d never see any financial stuff. That all goes through Nahan’s office.”
I recalled the iron-gray Matron at her computer. “But why else would he kill her?”
Del stared at the movie posters taped to the ceiling. “Accident? Crime of passion? Who can tell? You know, Stoney, you’re hunting connections that probably don’t exist. I told you: only movies have plots.”
“I don’t think so. I discussed it with a couple of, um, friends and they agree. They said the trick is to uncover the logic that drives this business. Then all the connections will be obvious.”
Del shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not against cause and effect. But in life, things don’t hook up in long chains like polymers.”
“Maybe. Well, thanks for all your work, Janice. What do you think, Del? Is there a story there?”
“A dandy! And the paper printed it months ago. Where do you think Jan got all that stuff? No chance for me, though.”
“Sorry.”
“Never mind; I’m intrigued. Maybe I’ll tune in tonight and watch Hammond sing his song.”
“No way!” Janice stretched like a scrawny cat. “I want to go to bed.”
“Well okay, I’ll put the timer on and tape it.”
I thanked them again and left.
Chapter 10
Chugging through the hot, dry night - open windows no substitute for the Rabbit’s busted air conditioner - toward Tolman Studios. Maybe I should sync those dailies now; it would give me a chance to think. What Janice said makes Nahan as important as Hammond - to the church anyway. Have to check him out.
Nice about Del and Janice: a reminder that there’s someone, somewhere, for everybody.
The studio lot was deserted except for a dusty van parked near the lobby entrance. I parked the Rabbit and started for the front door, juggling film, sound track, and keys. Doors opened on both sides of the van.
Paranoia time. Remembering Hammond’s unhealthy interest in me, I swung into a quick U-turn, regained the Rabbit, and drove back out of the lot.
Sure enough, the van followed. Unbelievable: I’ve lived so close to movies, I was finally in one - somehow absorbed into a cheap action picture, playing out clichés. A car chase, for God’s sake; this couldn’t really happen.
Could it? Test the thesis: left on Santa Monica; the van copied. Right on Vine; the van followed. North all the way up to Franklin with the van maintaining its distance. Left on Franklin; the van turned left as well.
And so on, through four miles and six turns, to Laurel Canyon Boulevard, the van precisely half a block behind. Up into the canyon proper, corkscrewing around crazy little streets canted at ruinous angles, past eccentric box houses on stilts, along scrub-coated hillsides full of snakes, coyotes, and other vermin. Inky labyrinth outside the Rabbit’s headlights, except for two bright spots trailing behind. Another mile and I’d be home.
Home? I didn’t want to take them home. I swerved suddenly into an uphill lane, driving as fast as darkness and potholes allowed. Then faster, pushing it dangerously on the curves, twisting around Toyotas and Jeeps and Porches parked half off the asphalt. Skidding; recovering; wishing I’d seen to that bad steering linkage.
The van dropped back a bit; it didn’t handle like the Rabbit. But my old engine was half shot. Give them a long straightaway and they’d catch me. I prayed for curves; prayed I’d stay on the road when I hit them.
A cross street. I swung right without stopping, then down fifty yards and yanked the wheel hard left into another lane. Did I lose them? No: headlights behind.
The Rabbit picked up speed on a downhill straight, then screeched into a dead-end circle. Stuck! I slewed around the circle, then snuggled up against the hillside by the exit. I killed the lights.
A surge of crazy joy, despite the situation, like ol’ Burt Reynolds truckin’ shine in his Trans Am, 200 yards ahead of the Law. Joy faded fast as the van roared past into the dead-end turning circle. I gunned the Rabbit and shot downhill again, hitting the lights just in time to see a 180-degree turn. The van’s lights were visible as I screamed around the bend and back to the cross street; then right again, always uphill. If I could reach Mulholland Drive at the top, I could lose them.
I wound upward past the last houses, past the streetlights, up the dark, empty road now bordered only by trees and scrub. Couple of miles now; just a couple.
No chance: there was that deadly uphill straightaway. The van gained steadily, then shot past. Fifty yards up, it braked and spun sideways to block the road. No room to turn; no time to back down.
Two figures jumped out of the van as I stopped ten feet away. One crouched in my headlights holding something in classic, two-handed firing position. I hit the door lock on my side and was reaching for the other button when the second figure yanked the door open. A dull, bulky weapon pointed at my eye. He reached across and pulled my door handle. The first man opened my door and hauled me out into the hot night.
They were just shapes in the dark: a fat man and a tall man. Fat said, “Put him back in his car. No, asshole, the passenger side. I’ll drive. You turn the truck
around.”
Tall walked back toward the van. In the Rabbit’s headlights, he revealed a beaky nose, red nylon warm-up jacket, and running shoes.
The fat man squeezed into the driver’s seat - a bearded troll in a lumber-jack shirt with a stubby pistol in his thick hand. He looked at me without expression, wheezing from his exercise.
The tall man pointed the van in its original direction and started uphill. The Rabbit followed, lurching as the fat man tried to shift, steer, and keep me covered. We wound up the deserted road through several switchbacks while I tried to ignore my dry mouth. There was no conversation.
Two hairpin reverses higher, the van pulled off and stopped at a scenic viewpoint. The fat man parked the Rabbit facing the drop-off, about three feet back from the edge, then wheezed, “Out!” He covered me as he too left the car.
In front of us, the hillside plunged at a sixty degree angle toward a bright blue kidney target: someone’s lit swimming pool eight hundred feet below. On the other side of the road behind us, the same slope rose up toward the next switchback above.
The tall man trotted up and the fat man yelled at him, “Go get the truck. Pull it up behind here so we can push him off.”
“How do we keep him from locking his brakes?”
“Smash him on the forehead first. It’ll look like he hit the windshield.”
The tall man returned to the van and started the engine. As he revved it, the gears crunched and the wheels started spinning. The fat man looked exasperated.
I edged around until my back was to the Rabbit.
The fat man swung to cover me: “Hold it!” I stopped and he ended up facing me, his back to the van.
The motor roared again and the spinning wheels threw gravel up onto the roadway. The fat man glanced angrily back at the truck, then gave a mighty bellow as the truck started inching backward.
The fat man lost all patience: “Jesus Christ!” He swung his bulk to look.
I punched into his soft gut as hard as I could. He oofed! noisily, turning toward me. I backhanded him in the face with the heel of the same fist. His nose made a sound like snapping chicken bones. The fat man screamed and grabbed at his face.
Fat man gaped at his bloody hands as I looked around. The drop in front was suicide. Across the road and up the opposite slope. At least they couldn’t follow me in the truck.
I scrabbled through the dry scrub in total blackness - swarming up, sliding back, grabbing anything, small bushes yanking loose in my hands, rain of dirt and stones marking my trail up over boulders, brush, and sod. Shouts from below as they followed. Making a dangerous racket myself, I crashed through the tinder. No pausing, no looking down.
I was brought up short by a six-foot granite escarpment. Had to go sideways. I crept along the rock wall to the right, sneakers slipping, cascades of pebbles giving me away. Thrashing and crashing continued down below me. I spotted a small hollow beside a boulder. Maybe I could roll it down on them. Trial heave. No, it must weigh a thousand pounds. I paused to listen, opening my mouth, nose, and throat to keep my breath from whistling. The crashing sounds were fifty yards to my left now, and twenty below.
The tall man shouted: “I lost him.”
“Hey!” from the fat man back on the road below. “Get back here. There’s a better way.”
Scrambling sounds diminished as the tall man retreated.
Looking around the boulder, I could see the outline of the van. The tall man opened the rear doors, disappeared inside, reemerged with a burden, and returned to the fat man. Brief instructions too low to hear, then the tall man started carrying the object along the base of my scrub hillside, pouring from it as he went.
The fat man lit a match.
* * * *
You have to see a California brush fire to understand its terror. The scrub is so dry it actually explodes, shooting flames twenty feet high. The fire burns in long lines, snaking over the ground contours, advancing in sudden rushes, reversing itself, leapfrogging a hundred feet to ignite a new spot just beside you. Hot dusty winds sweep up canyon walls, driving the flames in sheets. Eucalyptus trees blaze like leafy beacons. The sound is as frightful as the heat and flames - a crackling riot over an almost subsonic roar.
This fire was no exception. Fifty feet long at the base of my slope, it rushed up toward me at thirty feet a jump, boiling with acrid smoke and sounding like a giant stomping a million Tinker toys. Plenty loud to cover my noise, so I scrambled farther to the right, sweating and cursing the dirt in my eyes.
I’d moved another fifteen yards sideways when the fat man shouted, “Okay, up to the top.”
“What if he comes down?”
“I’ll watch down here.”
The tall man jumped in the van and headed up the road. The next switchback would bring him to a spot just above the fire. They were hoping the flames would drive me out of cover onto the road above. Instead, I scrabbled down and sideways, trying to check the fire’s direction. But there was only a confusion of black night, white murk, and searing yellow-red.
It seemed to burn straight up the hill. I reached the road below and looked up it toward the Rabbit and the fat man beside it, gun in hand. Suddenly, his head turned toward the far edge of the fire and he lumbered away in that direction. I scuttled across the road and keeping low, ran through the poisonous air to my car. I crouched in the shelter of the driver’s door and looked upward. An immense cloud of smoke rolled uphill. Jumping in, I switched on the ignition, slammed the door, screeched backward away from the drop-off, and swung the Rabbit’s nose downhill. A fat form in my rearview mirror was silhouetted in the flames. It wheeled around.
I heard nothing above the fire’s thunder, but a sunburst of crazed glass erupted across my rear window. I shoved the car viciously into first gear and screamed away in a splash of white gravel.
A mile down the mountain road, a pair of fire engines roared past me, headed uphill. L.A. firemen are unbelievably responsive - especially to brush fires above residential areas. They would drive Fat and Tall away in the opposite direction and save me from roasting to a pile of charred bones and melted fillings.
Shouldn’t have thought of that. Suddenly I had to pull over. I stumbled out of the car and onto the shoulder. Then I threw up. Shaking and sweating, I crawled back into the driver’s seat. I managed to turn the ignition key and the starter shrieked in protest: the engine was already running. I put the car in gear and wobbled down the long hill home.
The shaking and nausea were waning now, leaving me scratched and dirty and tired beyond imagining. Once again, I drove home on automatic pilot.
* * * *
Curled up on my bed, exhausted, smelling sweat and smoke, listening to my twitchy breathing, bedspread embossing my cheek. Paralyzed.
My front door opened and shut. If it was my playmates again, I didn’t care.
“Stoney? You back? I saw the Rabbit.” Sally’s voice coming slowly on-mike. “I left a demonstrator in my trunk. Can you come help me lift - my God!”
Her hands on me, turning me on my back. “What’s the matter? You’re filthy. Are you all right?”
I just stared.
“Stoney, what happened to you?”
“Some of Hammond’s meatballs found me.”
“When?”
“What is it, ten o’clock? An hour ago.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“You’re shaking.”
“Damn right.”
“Oh Stoney! I warned you this morning. How stupid can you get? Come on.”
“What?”
“You can’t just lie there. Up!”
Powerful hands under my arms hauled me up off the bed and propelled me, shambling, into the bathroom.
“Look at you: shirt torn, covered with filth, cuts, scratches. Don’t do that; stand up! Come on, Stoney, stand up!”
Belt jerked open, pants yanked down, shirt peeled off. I sank onto the toilet while Sally discarded my shoes and socks and wres
tled off my pants and shorts. Shivering, naked, as she turned on the water. Then I was heaved up again and shoved into my big stall shower.
“Clean yourself.”
Standing there an inch below the shower head, feeling the hot sting on my new little bald patch. Sally was talking loudly over the shower noise: “Who was it?”
“Told you.”
“Hammond’s people?”
“Who else?”
“Are you washing? Wash, Stoney.”
Weaving in the stream. “Okay.”
“I’ll get your robe.” The bathroom door closed, leaving me in the roar of hot water.
* * * *
Five minutes later, Sally found me still swaying there, a sopping zombie.
“Oh Stoney!” She stripped and crowded in with me. “Give me the soap. Washcloth. Come on, Baby: the square blue fuzzy thing. That’s a boy.”
She washed me like a nurse processing a patient: face, neck, arms, chest. “Turn!” She rubbed the foaming cloth around my back, between my shoulder blades. It was beginning to feel good.
“Now rinse.” I revolved obediently under the nozzle, coming slowly back to life.
Sally soaped the cloth again, squatted, and washed my feet and legs, scraping at the grot above my heels. Looking down, I saw her yellow hair darkening in splotches as the spray caught it, and a line of spine bumps dwindling down her back. Her shoulder blades shifted as she scrubbed.
“Rinse again.” I did, starting to enjoy the stinging stream.
Standing up, Sally discarded the washcloth and revolved the soap in sudsy hands. “As long as I’m in here...” She plastered her neck, arms, and shoulders with foam. “I’m a little rank myself.”
Glancing downward as she turned, Sally noticed my growing interest. She smiled. “Why Stoney! Does that mean you’ve come back to life? Come here.”
She wrapped me in a soapy embrace. “Sally. Um, Sally...”
She smiled and nodded gently, then leaned back against the blue tile wall. Her arms circled my neck.
We stood locked together in the hot spray, enfolded, unmoving except to tense, relax, and tense again. I could have stayed suspended there forever.
As Sally pushed her hips against me, she drew her head back and the water suddenly coursed down her face, blinding her. She laughed and spluttered, then whispered, “Let’s get dry now.”