Liminal States

by Zack Parsons

  I wanted more information on Holly’s missing roommate, but there was no hook for me to hang my hat. Filling in Holly Webber’s family tree with what Caroline had said didn’t seem like much to go on either, but it was better than the hot nothing sandwiches Bob was serving. Maybe tracking down Isabella’s film career would throw a curveball at whoever was heading me off. If I was real lucky, they’d never even heard of her.

  I knew a guy who might have some answers, or know where to find them, about Isabella Webber. Nicky Lambros. He was a Hollywood dick, the sort of lowlife bloodhound that lawyers sent sniffing when a studio wanted leverage in a negotiation. He knew all the dirty tricks. Nicky was an ex-cop like me but run out of the LAPD for the worst sort of reason: he’d ratted out another cop. If I could put Nicky on the trail of Isabella, maybe her story could take me to whatever misery had befallen Holly Webber’s foster family.

  I decided to drive the truck road to Cranford just to see how far it was from El Segundo. Wrap my head around Holly Webber’s last road trip. Quiet highway. Four lanes in the city, but I knew it would narrow to two before long.

  I tapped out a Bravo on the dash and slid it between my lips. Lighting up and taking a drag got me started coughing. I flicked the cigarette out the car window and saw stars behind my eyes from all the hacking. When I finally managed to pull out of it, I was swerving off the road. I cranked the wheel back onto the highway and met the trombone blurt of an oncoming truck. I swerved back into my lane, and the truck thundered past.

  Close call and no chance to relax. A huge black Cadillac came barreling out of the passing lane, hopping over the center line and screeching around to cut me off. The black shape closing in on my driver’s side spooked me, and I overcorrected the Tudor right into a ditch. Nearly rolled it, but a lucky turn of the wheel put me on the access road to a defunct cannery. Gravel rattled against the car’s undercarriage as I put my foot to the floor. I managed to clatter to a stop and was immediately swallowed by a cloud of brown dust.

  That’ll wake you up. Lucky thing I wasn’t cradling a coffee between my knees.

  There was another car with me. My mind was a bit addled from all that hacking and two brushes with roadside death. By the time I realized what was happening, my door was already coming open. I reached for the Stillman in its compartment much too slowly to do any good. A vise-grip hand dug into my shoulder and hauled me out of my car.

  In the dusty haze all I could see was the huge, dark shape of the man; a man to match the Cadillac that ran me off the road. He was working with saps or something heavy in his hands that knocked aside my guard and put battering rams into my guts. I spit out all the air in my lungs and doubled up, but this rooker wasn’t through with the one-sided dance. While I was looking at his boots—black, natch—he was hammering his fists at my ribs. Tenderized me up real good before picking me up with both hands.

  He hoisted me face-to-face, and what a goddamn ugly puss it was. Underneath a flat-brimmed black hat and desert sun shades the man was all scar tissue. He stank of corruption and medicines. His nose was mostly gone, his mouth a lipless crease ringed with yellowing scabs, and the rest of him was a melty candle crusted over in seeping injuries and livid scars. I’d seen my share of the ugliness of war, and this fella took top honors. Like a gasoline bomb married a radiation sickness and had kids in the burn ward.

  I believe I quoted him some of my favorite Shakespeare. Something along the lines of, “O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!”

  It came out more like “Christ!” and that only half said by bloodied lips.

  “Let it go,” he said, and he proceeded to throw my back against the Tudor and knock my brains in with his fists. When I was half-gone and spitting blood on the ground, he picked me up again. I weakly raised my hands to shield my face from more blows.

  “See what you have, Casper,” said the man, his voice rasping and sibilant. “Cherish it. This endeavor with Holly Webber, you must let go.”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  “Circumstance insists I injure you so that my point is not forgotten,” said the giant. “Understand that I do not take any particular pleasure in this.”

  His black-gloved fingers closed around the pinkie and ring finger of my shooting hand. I kicked uselessly at his shins. I saw my panicked, bloody face reflected in his dark glasses as he crushed my fingers. Pop. Pop. The gold of my wedding ring deformed along with the bone.

  I’ve had more than my portion of physical misery. I’ve had limbs blown off and knives in my guts and the sharp sting of shrapnel cutting through me in a hundred places. You get used to it. Sometimes it kills you, and if it doesn’t, you can take a beating or a bullet that would lay a normal man out and you just keep on going.

  There’s no getting around broken bones. The body isn’t put together like that. The bones in my fingers crumbled like bar-top pretzels and split open my fingers, and all I could do was scream. Blood poured out and splashed into the dirt.

  “I’m sorry,” said the giant. “Let it go. Everyone will be better off.”

  He dropped me, and I lay in the dirt and watched him stalk back to the idling Cadillac. The car suited him. A mythological charger. Chrome teeth and bumper dulled by a layer of road grit.

  I pushed myself up onto my elbows and tried to get a look at its tags, but it threw out so much dust, I started choking and couldn’t see a thing. I managed to get to my feet. There was a filthy rag in my trunk, and I wrapped my hand up and hoped it would slow down the bleeding. When I got into my car, I realized I was bleeding out of my head and one of my ears as well. I’d be lucky if it didn’t cauliflower up like a boxer’s.

  I couldn’t shake this one off. Couldn’t will myself through it. My soft insides were bleeding too. I slumped in the seat and expected to wake up in that fucking cave.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I think the reason the food always stinks in hospitals is because most of the people eating it have a mouthful of medicine. Whatever Doc Brightbow gave me was a little stronger than his usual prescription of aspirin. He leaned over and checked the IV bottles hooked into my pipes. One was medicine; the other was a transfusion of blood. I tried to sit up, but a little waif of a nurse pushed me gently back in the bed and slid the food tray back into my face.

  I was gauzy-headed and smiling. Nothing really hurt. Yeah, there was throbbing in my fingers and my ribs, but it was distant, like reading a report that said I hurt, not doing the actual hurting. I smiled real big at the nurse and stuffed my face with corn bread. Lousy corn bread. Medicine-mouthed corn bread.

  “You look just like Annie,” I said to the nurse, but she didn’t understand through all that corn bread.

  “Just sit back and try to eat,” she said. “I’ll get some more pillows to prop you up better.”

  “She looks just like Annie,” I said to Doc Brightbow.

  “Eh, who’s that?” he asked, puttering over to my side and laying a fatherly hand on my shoulder.

  “Love of my life.” I grinned up at him. It was the drugs, trust me. I’m not known for my smiling.

  “Well, you had better keep that to yourself when Lynn is here,” he said. “She’s waiting outside. As are the police.”

  That sobered me up quick.

  “Cops?”

  “Yes, you’re lucky they found you when they did. You very nearly bled out in that car. The police only discovered you because you were trespassing. I believe they want to ask you some questions about a missing body. Does that sound right?”

  Yeah, sure, it sounded right for Kapinski to show up beside my hospital bed and get a few kicks in on me while I was down. He knew I couldn’t have looted that body, and he couldn’t possibly suspect my real attraction to Holly Webber.

  Truthfully, I was more worried about Lynn. My waking up beaten half to death in the hospital wasn’t going to go down well with her. It played into all her worst fears about my line of work.

  She’d begged me to drop the case, and I’d told her I’d
try. The worst sort of lie. To promise an effort you never intend to make.

  Lynn came into the hospital room wrapped in a housecoat. She saw me and covered her mouth with her hands. Tears quivered in her eyes, but she’s a strong girl. She didn’t cry. She smiled. She came over to the bed and kissed my head, and she smiled, and that was worse than her bawling or being mad.

  “I’ve been waiting out there all night,” she said. “Doctor Brightbow told me you were sleeping.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Everything is fine,” she said, and there was that damn smile again.

  I needed her to be mad. I needed her to slap me or scream. I deserved it. I was a bad boy.

  “Frank the cat?” I croaked.

  “Helen is taking care of him.” She kissed me again. “Stop worrying. Everything is fine.”

  “Stop saying everything is fine.” I’d raised my voice.

  Lynn stared at me. She wouldn’t give me the benefit of her real feelings. That must be what it was like for her and all my non-answers and mysterious, late-night meetings.

  “We can talk about it when you’re better. For now I want you to get well. Do as your doctor says.”

  Kapinski interrupted. Lynn’s glance asked my permission to shoo him out, but I wanted him there. I’d rather tangle with him than her any day of the week.

  “He’ll be quick,” I said to Lynn.

  When she’d left, Kapinski came over and sat on my bed.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “You asking for my sake or yours?”

  “I’m asking as a friend. Or whatever we were before you left the force. Look at yourself. You’re a damn mess.” He waved his hat in the general direction of Cranford. “But I’m asking as a cop too. Body disappears from the morgue. Body you seemed to care about enough to show up at the morgue and try to talk your way in. Not three hours later the manager of that diner calls me and wants to know why some private dick was nosing around his restaurant and asking questions about Holly Webber. Then a squad car calls in an ambulance and picks you up in the middle of the night, half-dead in your car.”

  He got up from the bed and came around to the other side. Backlit by the hospital window, he reminded me of the giant who had done so much villainy to my body.

  “Just spill it,” Kapinski said. “I’m not going to run you in or put you in bracelets. But I can’t help you if you aren’t telling me the truth.”

  “You and I both know that girl was killed with intent out there,” I said. “That’s all it is to me. I’m trying to solve a murder I don’t think you can.”

  “Charity case, huh? You’re Mr. Generous all of the sudden.”

  “Go to hell, Kapinski. I’m not one of your dogs anymore, and it’s still a free country. You can’t keep me away from this.”

  Kapinski put his hat on his head and smiled really, miserably, shit-eatingly wide. “Looks like someone else will do that job for me,” he said. “Let me know when you swallow your pride and realize you’re in over your head. For your sake I hope that’s before you get yourself killed.”

  Lynn stayed with me through another night. I picked at her, but she refused to engage in any of the arguments I tried to start with her. Doc Brightbow wanted me in the bed for a few days. My ribs weren’t broken, but he couldn’t put a plaster cast on my hand until the swelling went down.

  “I’m still worried about blood in your organs,” he said, pulling at his lip with concern. “We need to watch the urine for signs of deeper injury.”

  I had no intention of staying horizontal or letting a nurse strain my piss. While I was scabbing up in a hospital bed, there was someone out there with a lot of free time to work against me. But their little plan had backfired. The pain and humiliation of the beating only made me want to find Holly’s killer even more.

  In the morning Bishop sent a huge bouquet of flowers that smelled rotten to me. Lynn loved them.

  “It’s so good to know you still have friends,” she said.

  “I have lots of friends,” I objected.

  “You have lots of people you use to get what you need.”

  She went hunting for a vase. I’d been planning the escape all night. I popped out my IV, got my coat on over my hospital gown, filled my pockets with some bandages and tape, snatched the sack full of my bloody clothes, and made my getaway. The bruises and cuts on my face were already healing, but I still looked a mess. An orderly tried to stop me at the door, but I convinced him I’d been sleeping off a drunk and made my escape.

  Nicky Lambros had an office on Laurel Canyon in the heart of Studio City. The palm trees looked like moldy lollipops. His office was decorated with ferns and expensive wood grains and a secretary with a foot of blond hair piled up. Her pin-up curves were swaddled in a blue velvet shift dress.

  “Mr. Lambros is busy with a client, but you can have a seat over there.” She pointed to the darkest corner of the waiting area.

  Who could blame her? I looked like a bum. She kept shooting me looks out of the corner of her eye while I tried to get comfortable. My back and insides were killing me. Finally I broke down and got down on my back on the floor.

  “You can’t do that,” she said.

  “I’m doing it,” I pointed out.

  “I mean you’ve got to stop,” she said. “I’ll call the police.”

  “Come on, doll, I’m an old friend of Nicky’s. It’s been a rough couple days, and I need to—”

  The door to his office burst open with a roar of laughter. Nicky Lambros came out clapping a couple of Hollywood Jews on their shoulders. He was an olive-skinned, fuzzy-headed fireplug wearing a pink suit and yellow tie. Low-key as ever.

  “You tell Tony I am going to take him to the horses the next time we’re both in New York,” said Lambros. “Then we’ll see who has a better eye for talent.”

  Nicky sent his clients on their way. The door closed, and his footsteps approached across the hardwood. He stood over me, his big, vivid tie hanging so low, the tip of its diamond almost touched my nose.

  “You got a real comfortable floor, Nicky,” I said.

  “That’s twelve-hundred-dollar hardwood you’re bleeding on.” He pushed me with the tip of his shoe. “You lose a fight with a truck?”

  “Something like that.”

  He sighed and plopped down in one of the nearby chairs. His expensive shoes went up on the table, and he pretended to idly flip through a copy of Photoplay.

  “So to what do I owe this visit from my esteemed former colleague?”

  “I need your help.” I rolled onto my side to sit up.

  “I am shocked. Shocked, I say.” He leaned over my head again and spoke with a stilted affect. “Being as how you have already imposed yourself on my hospitality, why don’t you regale me with the full tale of what I am to involve myself in?”

  I spilled the sauce on Holly Webber’s roadside death, the suspected murder, the missing body, and that her mother, Isabella Webber, used to do the Rex Rawhide serials.

  When I reached the part about the serials, Nicky said, “Aha!” and got to his feet.

  “I loved Rex Rawhide,” said Nicky. “Back when I was twelve, everybody watched Rex Rawhide and that little Indian fella, Kakakshi. Had to take the little brother trick-or-treating, and I was Rex, and he was Kakakshi—oh, must have been—”

  “Save it for your memoirs.”

  “Point is, Paramount bought up Royal Radio Pictures. They folded all their equipment and people into their own serials department. You know the film vault Paramount keeps on Melrose?”

  “I know of it. The one that almost burned down a few years back?”

  “What? That was more like twenty years back,” said Nicky. “Look, don’t worry, the fire was long before your picture ended up in there. I can help you with this.”

  He disappeared into his office while I struggled to heave myself up off the floor. His secretary watched my effort with apparent fascination.

  “I think I
even know the gal you’re talking about,” shouted Nicky from his office. “She played Red Rogue.”

  Something clattered and spilled loudly on the floor in Nicky’s office. His secretary looked up from the book she was reading.

  “I’m all right, Candy,” he assured her. “Just digging deep for this. That Isabella, she was a hot number. Rode a paint horse around in this outfit somewhere between a bathing suit and a cowgirl’s. Used to lasso the bad guys and drag them behind her horse.”

  He stuck his head out of his office and said, “I tell ya, she could drag me over broken glass. Maybe take me back to the Red Rogue’s hideout in the hills. I think they used to shoot over in Riverside. She could tie me up and then—”

  “Jeez,” groaned Candy.

  “Then we can go for pancakes! That’s all I was gonna say.” He looked at me and hooked his thumb at his secretary. “She’s got a perverted mind, I tell you. All those pulps she reads.”

  “Was she in all the serials?” I asked.

  “Candy?”

  “Isabella Webber,” interjected Candy.

  “No, no, only Rex and Kakakshi were in every one.” More clattering and a sound like a plate breaking. “Shit. Can you get the broom? No, I’ll get it later. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, about Red Rogue. She was in the ‘El Camino de la Muerte’ stories. I think they did two batches of five.”

  “You know everything about Red Rogue. Is that why you’re so good at finding Reds?” I shouted to Nicky. “Is that how Romulus got such a great deal with Jose Ferrer?”

  “House Un-American Activities Committee marches to their own drummer.” He poked his head out of the door of his office. “You gonna run down my line of work while I’m doing you a favor? Some nerve. Some damn nerve. You believe this guy, Candy?”

  “He’s a joker,” she said.

  Nicky returned by the time I’d managed to leverage myself back onto my feet. He handed me a pair of white gloves and a scuffed-up octagonal metal case with STUDIO USE ONLY printed on the side.

  “Paramount vault,” he said. “Just get yourself a jacket from one of the boys running reels. One of them service caps too, if they got ‘em.”