“How could she know that?”
“Maybe she knew he didn’t like children, or maybe she was making an educated guess—Belding was a cold man, shunned relationships. The last thing he would have wanted was an heir he hadn’t planned. Make sense so far?”
“Go on.”
“Crotty saw Lanier and Donald Neurath together—playing coochy-coo. What if Neurath was her doctor as well as her lover—they met on a professional level and it went further.”
“Theme of the loop.”
“The loop was a cartoon of their relationship, compressed for posterity.”
He sat back, put his spoon down. “She starts as a party girl with Belding, takes it further. Starts as a patient with Neurath, takes it further.”
“She was beautiful. But more than that. An expert seductress—she had to have had something special for Belding to pick her out from all the other party girls. As her gynecologist, Neurath would be among the first to know she was pregnant—maybe the first. If he’d gotten deeply emotionally involved with her, finding out she was carrying another man’s child could have made him angry, jealous. What if he offered to abort it and she refused? He then threatened to tell Belding. Linda’s back was up against the wall. She told her brother, and his extortionist’s mind came up with a plot: seduce Neurath on film. Get leverage. Cable worked at the studio, had access to equipment. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to set it up.”
Milo chewed on that for a long time, then said, “And Cable, being a sleazeball, figures out how to make some extra cash on the deal—sells a copy of the loop to some collector.”
I nodded. “Gordon Fontaine or someone else who eventually sells it to him. Years later, Paul Kruse comes across it, sees the resemblance to Sharon and gets curious. But that’s jumping the gun. Let’s stick with Linda for a moment. When her pregnancy shows, she leaves town, gives birth—to twins—sometime between spring and summer of ’53. Now she figures it’s safe to tell Belding: Aborting a fetus is one thing; rejecting two adorable girl babies is another. Maybe brother Cable builds up her confidence—visions of dollar signs would be dancing in front of his eyes. Linda pays Belding a visit, shows him the girls, states her demand: Make an honest woman out of me or shell out enough money so the kids, Uncle Cable, and I can live happily ever after.”
Milo gave a sour look. “Sounds just like the kind of stupid scam stone losers always try to pull. The dumb story you piece together after they’ve ended up on a slab.”
“It was stupid. The Johnsons were penny-ante players. They gravely underestimated the threat they posed to Belding—and his lack of compassion. The twins would be his sole heirs. His entire fortune was at stake—monstrous loss of control for a man used to being master of his own destiny. This is a man who didn’t believe in sharing the wealth, never took his business public. He wouldn’t have tolerated a single careless afternoon coming back to haunt him. As Linda talked to him, the wheels started turning. But he didn’t show it—put on a happy face, played the proud papa. Expressed his good will by putting all of them up in that penthouse on Fountain. Bought them a car, furs, jewels, instant entree to the Good Life. And all he asked in return was that they keep the babies a secret until the moment was right to go public—buying himself a little time. The Johnsons complied, a pair of hicks in hog heaven. Up until the day they died. And the twins remained a secret.”
“Cold,” said Milo.
“But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Hummel and DeGranzfeld were Belding’s boys. Narcotics detectives, in a perfect position to set up a phony dope bust. Bankrolled by Belding, they could get their hands on plenty of heroin. They kept the uniforms outside, went into that apartment alone to set up the shoot-out, arrange the crime scene. But getting rid of Linda and Cable solved only part of Belding’s problem. He was still stuck with two little babies he didn’t want. Under the best of circumstances, raising twins is a challenge. For someone like Belding the prospect would have been overwhelming—a lot scarier than designing girdles or buying up companies. So he resorted to habit—bought his way out of it. And his deal with the Ransoms was a lot cheaper than any he would have had to cut with Linda and Cable. The same arrangement with Sharon’s twin and some other couple.”
Some other dirt lot. No Helen Leidecker. The other girl ending up crippled, or …
“Set up his own kids’ mother to be ripped off, then sold them. Ultra-cold.”
“He was a cold man, Milo, a misanthrope who preferred machines to people. He never married, never developed normal attachments, ended up a hermit.”
“According to the hoax book.”
“According to everyone. Seaman Cross just embellished reality. And you know babies get abandoned all the time. With a lot less reason. Casa de los Niños was full of them.”
“Why the Ransoms?” he said “What connection would a billionaire have with people like that?”
“Maybe none. When I say Belding did these things, I don’t mean literally. He probably never got his hands dirty, had some intermediary, like Billy Vidal, handle it—that was his specialty: procuring people for Belding’s needs. Where the intermediary found them, who knows? But their being retarded would be a plus, not a minus. They’d be passive, obedient, not likely to get greedy or ask questions. They think concretely, are stubborn—good at keeping secrets. Or forgetting. I had an exhibition of that just yesterday. On top of that, they were anonymous—neither of them even knew their birthdays; no government agency had any record of them. Not until 1971, when Sharon went away to college and Helen Leidecker decided they needed extra protection and took it upon herself to file for Medi-Cal and Social Security. If she hadn’t, I’d never have found them.”
Milo said, “If Ransom hadn’t named the crippled woman after Shirlee.”
“Yes. And I don’t profess to understand that—she was full of weird symbols. But be that as it may, giving a child to Shirlee and Jasper was equivalent to erasing that child’s identity. Perhaps Belding never even expected her to survive. But Helen Leidecker discovered her, tutored her, sent her out into the world.”
“Out to Kruse.”
“Kruse went to that Careers Day at L.I.U. under the guise of altruism. But he was a predator—a lecher and a power junkie, always on the prowl for new disciples. Maybe he was attracted by Sharon’s looks or maybe he’d seen Linda Lanier’s loop and was struck by the resemblance. In either case, he turned on the charisma, got her talking about herself, saw how evasive she was about her background, and grew even more intrigued. The two of them were a perfect match for mind control: she, molded by Helen, no real roots. He, lusting to play Svengali.”
“Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid gang.” Milo’s big face had darkened with anger.
“On a one-to-one level,” I said. He got up and brought back a beer.
As he drank I said, “He took her under his wing, Milo. Convinced her she’d make a great psychologist—her grades made that realistic—brought her out to California with him, set her up in grad school, set himself up as her adviser. He supervised her cases, which always involves some therapy. He turned it into intensive therapy. For Kruse that meant bizarre communications, hypnotic manipulation. Like many people with confused identities, she was an excellent hypnotic subject. His power role in their relationship increased her susceptibility. He ageregressed her, exposed early childhood memories that intrigued him further. Some sort of early trauma that she was unaware of on a conscious level—maybe even something about Belding. Kruse started snooping.”
“And making movies.”
I nodded. “An updated version of her mother’s loop—part of the ‘therapy.’ Kruse probably presented it to her in terms of reattaching her to her roots—to mother love. His game was controlling her—building up one part of her, tearing down another. Using hypnosis, he could suggest amnesia, keep her consciously unaware. End up knowing more about her than she knew herself. He fed her bits of her own subconscious in calculated nibbles, kept her dependent, insecure. Psychological warfare. No
matter what you saw in Vietnam, he was an expert. Then, when the time was right, he turned her loose on Belding.”
“Big bread, big-time control.”
“And I think I know exactly when it happened, Milo. The summer of ’75. She disappeared with no explanation, for two months. The next time I saw her, she had a sports car, a house, a damned comfortable life-style for a grad student without a job. My first thought was that Kruse was keeping her. She knew that, even made a joke about it, told me the inheritance story—which we now know was bullshit. But maybe, in a sense, there was some truth to it. She’d put in a claim on her birthright. But it played havoc with her mind, accentuated her identity problems. The time I found her staring at the twin picture, she was in some kind of trance, almost catatonic. When she realized I was standing there, she went crazy. I was sure we were through. Then she called me up, asked me to come over and came on to me like a nymphomaniac. Years later she was doing the same thing with her patients—patients Kruse set her up with. She never got her license, remained his assistant, worked out of offices he paid the rent on.”
I felt my own rage grow. “Kruse was in a position to help her, but all the bastard did was play with her head. Instead of treating her, he had her write up her own case as a phony case history and use it for her dissertation. Probably his idea of a joke—thumbing his nose at the rules.”
“One problem,” said Milo. “By ’75, Belding was long dead.”
“Maybe not.”
“Cross admitted he lied.”
“Milo, I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. But even if Belding was dead, Magna lived on. Lots of money and power to leech off. Let’s say Kruse leaned on the corporation. On Billy Vidal.”
“Why’d they let him get away with it for twelve years? Why’d they let him live?”
“I’ve been turning that over in my mind and I still can’t come up with an answer. The only thing I can come up with was that Kruse also had something on Vidal’s sister, something they couldn’t risk coming out. She endowed his professorship, set him up as department head. I’ve been told it was gratitude—he treated a child of hers, but in her husband’s obituary there was no mention of children. Maybe she remarried and had some—I was going to check on that before I found out about Willow Glen.”
“Maybe,” said Milo, “the Blalock thing is just a cover—Vidal using his sister as a screen, with the payoff really coming from Magna.”
“Maybe, but that still doesn’t explain why they let him get away with it for so long.”
He got up, paced, drank beer, had another.
“So,” I said, “what do you think?”
“What I think is you’ve got something there. What I also think is we may never get to the bottom of it. People thirty years in the grave. And it all depends on Belding being the daddy. How the hell you going to verify that?”
“I don’t know.”
He paced some more, said, “Let’s get back to the here and now for a sec. Why did Ransom kill herself?”
“Maybe it was grief over Kruse’s death. Or maybe it wasn’t suicide. I know there’s no proof—I’m just hypothesizing.”
“What about the Kruse killings? Like we said before, Rasmussen’s not exactly your corporate hit man.”
“The only reason we latched on to Rasmussen was that he talked about doing terrible things around the time the Kruses were murdered.”
“Not just that,” he said. “Asshole had a history of violence, killed his own father. I liked all that psych stuff you dished out—killing Daddy all over again.”
“To paraphrase an expert, that ain’t evidence, pal. Given Rasmussen’s history, terrible things could mean anything.”
“Fucking pretzel,” he said. “ ’Round and around.”
“There’s someone who could clear it up for us.”
“Vidal?”
“Alive and well in El Segundo.”
“Right,” Milo said. “Let’s just waltz into his office and announce to his secretary’s assistant’s gofer that we want an audience with the big boss—friendly little chat about child abandonment, blackmail, inheritance claims, multiple murder.”
I threw up my hands, went to get a beer of my own.
“Don’t get miffed,” he called after me. “I’m not trying to piss on your parade, just striving to keep things logical.”
“I know, I know. It’s just damned frustrating.”
“How she died, or the things she did when she was alive?”
“Both, Sergeant Freud.”
He used his finger to draw a happy face in the frost of his glass. “Something else. The twin photo—how old were the girls in it?”
“About three.”
“So they couldn’t have been separated from birth, Alex. Meaning either both were cared for by someone else, or both were given to the Ransoms. So what the hell happened to the sister?”
“Helen Leidecker never mentioned a second girl living in Willow Glen.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No.”
“Didn’t bring up the picture?”
“No. She seemed …”
“Honest?”
“No. It just didn’t come up.”
He said nothing.
“Okay,” I said, “flunk me in Freshman Interrogation.”
“Easy,” he said. “Just trying to get a clear picture.”
“If you get one, share it with me. Goddammit, Milo, maybe the damned picture wasn’t even Sharon and her sister. I don’t know what the hell is real anymore.”
He let me stew, then said, “Suggesting you let go of it all would be stupid, I suppose.”
I didn’t answer.
“Before you indulge yourself in self-contempt, Alex, why not just give the Leidecker woman a call? Ask her about the picture, and if you get a weird reaction, that’ll be the tip-off that she hasn’t been Honest Annie. Which could mean more cover-up—as in the twin was hurt under suspicious circumstances and she’s trying to protect someone.”
“Who? The Ransoms? I don’t see them as abusers.”
“Not abusers—neglecters. You yourself said they weren’t parent material, could barely cope with one kid. Two would have been impossible. What if they turned their back at the wrong moment and one twin had an accident?”
“As in drowning?”
“As in.”
My head was spinning. I’d crammed all night, was still floundering….
Milo leaned over and patted my shoulder. “Don’t fret. Even if we can’t take it to court, we can always sell it to the movies. Show Dickie Cash the way it’s done.”
“Call my agent,” I said.
“Have your people call my people and let’s take a power bran muffin.”
I forced a smile. “Have you checked Port Wallace birth records yet?”
“Not yet. If you’re right about Lanier going home to have her baby, hometown would be the perfect place—assuming she never read Thomas Wolfe. How about you give a call down there and see what you come up with? Start with the Chamber of Commerce and find out the names of any hospitals doing business back in ’53. If you’re lucky and they hold on to records, a little lying will pry it out of them—say you’re some kind of bureaucrat. They’ll do anything to get rid of you. If nothing pans out, check out the county registrar.”
“Call Helen; call Port Wallace. Any more assignments, sir?”
“Hey, you want to play sleuth, develop a taste for the tedious stuff.”
“The safe stuff?”
He scowled. “Damn right, Alex. Think back to what the Kruses and the Escobar girl looked like. And how fast the Fontaines lit out for Coconut Country. If you’re right about a tenth of this, we’re dealing with people with very long arms.”
He made a circle with thumb and forefinger, released the finger as if flicking away a speck of dust. “Poof. Life is fragile—something I got from Freshman Philosophy. Stay inside; keep your doors locked. Don’t take candy from strangers.”
He rinse
d out his bowl, put it in the drainer. Saluted and began to leave.
“Where are you off to?”
“Got something I have to follow up on.”
“The something that kept you from calling Port Wallace? Stalking the wild Trapp?”
He glowered at me.
I said, “Rick assured me you’re going to get him.”
“Rick should stick to cutting up people for fun and profit. Yeah, I’m gunning for the scrote, found a soft spot. On top of his other virtues, he has a penchant for females of the underage persuasion.”
“How underage?”
“Teenage jailbait. When he was back in Hollywood Division he was heavily into the Police Scouts—earned himself a departmental commendation for public service beyond the call of blah blah. Part of that service was providing personal guidance to some of the more comely young lady scouts.”
“How’d you find this out?”
“Classic source: disgruntled former employee. Female officer, Hispanic, couple of years behind me in the academy. She used to work the Hollywood Evidence Room, took leave to have a baby. After she returned, Trapp made her life so miserable, she opted for stress disability and quit. Few years ago I ran into her downtown, day of her final hearing. Racking my brains for a hook into Trapp made me remember. She really hated him. I looked her up and paid her a visit. She’s married to an accountant, got a fat little kid, nice split level in Simi Valley. But even after all these years, talking about Trapp made her eyes bulge. He used to grope her, make racist comments—how Mexican girls lost their virginity before their baby teeth, what brown-nose really means—all of it delivered in a Tio Taco accent.”
“Why didn’t she report it when it was happening?”
“Why didn’t all those kids at Casa de los Niños tell anyone what was happening to them? Fear. Intimidation. Back then the city didn’t believe in sexual harassment. Filing a complaint would have meant exposing her entire sexual history to Internal Affairs and the press, and she’d been known to party. These days her consciousness is raised. She realizes how badly she got screwed and is sitting on a lot of rage. But she hasn’t talked about it to anyone—certainly not hubby. After she spilled her guts, she made me swear I wouldn’t drag her into anything, so I’ve got knowledge that I can’t use. But if I can find corroboration, the bastard’s good as gone.”
Four Classic Alex Delaware Thrillers 4-Book Bundle Page 38
