The Big Fix

by Roger L. Simon

  “Look,” I said. “I’m not sure about this, but I think they were setting us up. They had reason to believe we might be on to them and they wanted to clear us out.”

  “What reason?” said Alora.

  “I was in Nevada looking for this guy named Alfred Craw at the Palm Casino in Tonopah and ended up at some godforsaken place called Cottonwood Meadows. . . . It’s too complicated. Do what you want.” I sank down in the seat again and gazed at my knuckles. It would have been a last resort anyway.

  “Good,” said Jorge. “Why don’t you get out here.” He stopped the car and opened the door for me.

  Before I could move Alora leaned forward and took her brother by the arm. “Esteban’s all right,” she said.

  “So what?”

  “So what?” she repeated, shaking her head at him. “So no hay tiempo para hablar. Ve al centro como dice.” She spoke with the authority of a stage director.

  “It’s stupid,” said her brother, but he circled around again and turned onto the Golden State going downtown. Traffic was light. In less than a minute the Music Center appeared ahead of us again. Slowing down, we veered off through Chinatown and came up the same way behind the Shell station and the supermarket. Jorge parked in front of an insurance office near where the man had been knifed. His body had been removed from the sewer grate. The area beneath the underpass was empty. They had left.

  “See,” he said. “Gone. That’s it.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, opening the door and dismounting from the van. The others watched me as I pointed over the freeway bridge to the Forum Theatre. A wide banner had been strung along the facade—

  HOWARD EPPIS AND THE FREE AMERIKA PARTY

  BACK

  HAWTHORNE IN ’72

  The message was printed in bold red letters, visible for half a mile. Howard holding a rifle and brandishing a fist appeared at the bottom, a public nightmare of the 1960’s brought to life at the intersection of the Hollywood and the Santa Ana Freeways, the dreams of one decade degraded by the next.

  I took a few steps forward and drew an imaginary line from the banner to the bridge. Then I motioned for them to follow me. Leaving one man with Esteban, the five of us proceeded up the hill at the base of the underpass by a row of newly-planted succulents. Peering down Temple Street, the sidewalks were bare. A woman walked her dog on the plaza of the Music Center. No one talked. We continued, single file, along the freeway abutment, listening for voices, listening for the burning sizzle of a fuse. At the corner of Temple and Grand, we turned up the off-ramp, but froze at the entrance. Something about stepping on the surface of the freeway, a taboo of sorts, held us back.

  Then we all saw it together, a keg of dynamite standing in the middle of the freeway like some graven icon implanted by a willful god. A detonation wire ran off in the opposite direction. The cars dodged around it, seemingly unaware of its content, mistaking it perhaps for a barrel of cement mix left over by a crew of careless road workers.

  We waited for a lull in the traffic, wandering about the detonation wire, and the source of its connection on the other side of the abutment. A flatbed truck sped by, stacked with Pontiac sedans followed by a trio of milk trucks from a dairy in Orange County. After they were gone, the five of us crouched low and dashed across the freeway, clutching eagerly for the center divider. We heard a hissing sound from over the abutment.

  “Corta-lo hombre,” said Alora to her brother, who held his knife at shoulder height.

  Jorge reached down and sliced the wire from the keg.

  “Suerte!”

  Down below, a Ford pickup backed up with a screech and roared up Temple Street toward Figueroa. It was the same car I had seen tearing out of Hawthorne headquarters when I had first visited there with Lila Shea.

  21

  YOU SAID HE was still alive!” Jorge insisted angrily.

  “Well, I, uh . . . ” We carried the dynamite keg around the running track circling Echo Park Lake. A grove of palm trees filled a tiny island in front of us like a miniature Banana Republic. “I, uh, can’t be sure.”

  “Then why’d you tell me that on the phone?”

  “I needed help. There wasn’t time.”

  “So he’s dead.”

  “I didn’t say that either.”

  “Make up your mind, gabacho.” This time it was Alora. Her eyes were dark and accusative. It made me nervous. “Is Luis Vazquez alive or is he dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She shook her head in disgust.

  “Ay, pindejo!” said Jorge, dropping the dynamite on the track. We all jumped backwards. “I don’t want to carry this stuff anymore.” He pushed with his foot and rolled the keg into the water. It made a large splash and floated on the surface.

  “You should have cut a hole in it first,” said Alora.

  “Shut up.”

  We stood there for a moment watching the dynamite float off into the middle of the lake. Soon it began to sink.

  “See what I mean,” said Jorge.

  Alora folded the Hawthorne banner around some rocks and dropped it after the dynamite keg. It sank quickly to the bottom. Some kid would probably bring up a piece of it catfishing over the summer.

  “What about this man Procari?” she said. “Does he know where my father is?”

  “If anybody does.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In Rolling Hills.”

  “Where?”

  “A rich neighborhood out by the ocean.”

  “And you think he’s keeping my father there?”

  “I doubt it. He wouldn’t hide anyone in his own house.”

  “Then where?”

  “Who knows. Maybe in a castle.”

  “A castle?”

  I nodded. “That’s a good place to hide people . . . a castle. Good facilities.”

  “And where’s this castle?” she asked. “England or France?” She had a bemused, skeptical expression that made me want to grab her and forget the castle and Procari and her father and anybody else for that matter.

  “Somewhere north of Sunset and west of La Cienega. It belongs to Isabel La Fontana.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “I think she was Procari’s wife.”

  22

  THE LIGHTS WERE off in most of the houses as we drove up Queen’s Way to Isabel La Fontana’s. Only the upstairs of an A-frame was illuminated with a man pacing about his bedroom in a terry-cloth robe. At La Fontana’s a thick privet hedge obscured the Norman facade. In passing it was difficult to see if anyone was awake. We continued on, parking near the corner of Mulholland fifty yards beyond, and returned on foot, four of us—Jorge, Manuel, Alora and me. When we reached her house, the entry light was out and the gate in front of the moat was padlocked. On the other side, we could see the German shepherds asleep, snoring quietly.

  We circled around to the side, across the lawn of a Tudor mansion, staring up at the parapets. The upper windows were shuttered. No light was visible through the cracks. We walked around to the back of the castle. The moat ended abruptly and the manner of construction changed to simple stucco as if the builders gave up their medieval pretext in medias res, deciding it was too pretentious even for the Sunset Hills. Or too expensive. The rear of the house was flimsy and motel-like, slatted with louvred windows like a middle class tract. The Ford pickup was parked under the acrylic carport.

  We heard a woman crying. Her sobs came through the louvres.

  “Don’t do it,” she said. “Don’t do it, Oscar. . . . Please.”

  La Fontana.

  I crept up to the window. The woman was half-sitting, half-lying on the floor with her face in her hands and her forehead almost touching the hardwood. Her hair was bedraggled, her skin flaked and wrinkled. She looked seventy years old.

  Procari stood opposite, flanked by Jonas and the other heavy. Jonas had his gun in his hand, but he wasn’t pointing it at her. In the far corner, Sebastian sat slumped on a sofa, his face ashe
n.

  “What do you want, Isabel?” said Procari. “A ten million dollar loss?”

  “Ten million dollars to you.”

  “You lost too, Isabel!”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care? I let you in on this as a favor. Ever since I closed the Church you’ve been whining about how poor you are. You’d think you were on food stamps.”

  “You can’t make the boy do something like that.”

  “Boy? He’s thirty-three years old.” Procari lifted a telephone from the end table and carried it over to the sofa, handing the speaker to his son. “743-4000. Ask for the night editor.”

  “What do I say?” asked Sebastian.

  “What I told you. Tell him you’re Eppis and the letter you sent to the Times was incorrect. An oversight. You meant the morning of June 1, not May 31.”

  “I don’t know if I can do it, dad,” said Sebastian. His face was going through a peculiar twitching motion that was difficult to watch.

  Procari turned to Jonas. “You dial it.”

  Jonas leaned down and began to dial the number, but midway through he was interrupted by a loud yelp. The German shepherds were tearing around the house straight at us. The first one jumped high in the air, landing on Manuel. The other lunged at Alora’s leg. Before I could make a move, her brother pulled his knife and slashed at the dog’s neck. On the second thrust, the blood spurted out like a fountain in front of the rear window. The other dog retreated in terror, barking hysterically.

  “Once again, Mr. Wine.” Procari nodded to me from the back door. He was standing with Jonas and his buddy, both of whom now held guns on us, chest high. They signalled for us to raise our hands.

  “Mr. Wine,” Procari continued, “gentlemen and lady, will you step back a few feet.” We stepped backwards as the three men followed us into the yard. Procari bent over to look at the slain shepherd. His mate whimpered in the background. “Miss La Fontana will be most distressed at the condition of her dog. He was a champion, you know. He won the blue ribbon at the Western States Kennel Show in San Diego. Champion Hermes Trismegistus. A rather pathetic name, don’t you think, Mr. Wine?”

  “Tacky.”

  Jonas jabbed his gun deep in my ribs. “Just like Oscarino and his absurd identification with King Nestor,” Procari went on. “The powerless always have a strong attraction for the occult, but I suppose you know that, Moses.”

  “Your son didn’t want to be King Nestor, Procari . . . anymore than Howard Eppis wanted his bones ending up in a little black box in the Coroner’s office.”

  “Good guess, Mr. Wine. Excellent. I compliment you.” La Fontana emerged from the back door making a valiant effort to hold herself erect, but she had the frail, wavering stance of a morphine addict. Procari turned and smiled at her. “Oscarino always was more Isabel’s son, sickly and weak. He suffered from terrible asthma attacks when he was a child. Maybe if he hadn’t always run to his mother, he would have grown into a real man.”

  “Tell me, Procari, did your son set me up for that fake at the freeway—or was it your own diabolical device?” It didn’t matter. But I had to exercise restraint if we were getting out of this.

  “My son is incapable of original action.” La Fontana knelt down beside her dog and began to weep. I looked to my side.

  “Keep still!” said Jonas.

  I lunged at him, but he slammed me in the shoulder with his gun butt. I thought I heard a bone crack.

  “You know, Mr. Wine,” said Procari, “if you had had the good sense to remain at the Meadows, you wouldn’t have forced me into sacrificing this new vehicle. I might have found a solution for you that was easier on both of us.”

  “Yeah, something outrageous like shooting me up with psilocybin and dropping me down that well.”

  “Get in there!” The two gunmen prodded us into the rear of the pickup. We didn’t seem to have a choice.

  Jonas closed the gate and locked it. I could feel Alora shivering next to me.

  “Take them to Tujunga Canyon. . . . I’m sorry, Mr. Wine. But it’s not only my money involved. I’m responsible to a lot of people, a cartel of sorts. We can’t take risks.”

  “All my sympathy, Procari. I know you’ve always wanted to take care of those close to you.”

  Procari nodded and Jonas started around for the cab of the truck. This was it. I was trying to remember the words to the mourner’s Kaddish.

  Then I saw a dark figure looming up on the parapet. Like the ghost in Olivier’s Hamlet, he raised his ancient weapon. For a split second I thought it was an illusion, the dazed outgrowth of twenty-four sleepless drug-crazed hours, but the weapon fired.

  Procari fell to the ground, his cranium split, brains and blood mingling on the lawn as gory as a placenta.

  Another shot.

  This time the blast rammed Jonas into the rear of the truck.

  The other thug dropped his gun and threw himself on the ground, screaming for mercy.

  I climbed out of the truck and looked around.

  Sebastian was standing at the back door, sobbing. “I had to let him out. I had to let him out,” he said. “I couldn’t do it myself.”

  Turning upwards, I saw the dark figure on the parapet more clearly. His face was creased and sallow as if he had spent a lot of time indoors.

  Luis Vazquez threw his rifle to the ground.

  23

  I STARED THROUGH the window of the Rampart Division at the El Batey Market and the Cuban record store. The morning seemed to have been going on for hours. Forms, questions, explanations, interviews, autopsies—it was endless. My shoulder throbbed. My head was beginning to feel like the inside of a steam press. Evidently Craw and some Vegas cronies had placed a large bet on Dillworthy in the name of Monarco Enterprises. Monarco Enterprises was owned by Caracoa Industries, a subsidiary of Golfo Imperial Limited, which was in turn controlled by Apellido Feo, S.A., a holding company Procari had set up in Venezuela. To come full circle, there was no Alfred Craw. That was a pseudonym Procari used for the Board of Directors of Monarco Enterprises. It was all very boring. When Koontz indicated he was about to wrap it up, I broke into a broad grin. At that point I would have done anything to get out of there.

  “As I see it, there’s no point in the newspapers hearing about this case,” said Koontz, leaning across his desk and fingering his umpteenth cigar.

  “Suit yourself,” I said. A warrant for my arrest had been crumpled into a ball and thrown into the wastebasket.

  “Now, just a minute,” said Sugars, who was sitting next to me. “The way I see it, the public has a right to know. Certain parties, possibly allied to Governor Dillworthy, possibly not, but in any case working in his behalf, were attempting to smear Senator Hawthorne for their own financial gain, defrauding the voters and causing the deaths of several persons.”

  “Uhuh,” said Koontz. “That’s the way you see it, is it?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, that’s what I always thought about you pseudo-liberals. Opportunists. Every time a cop shoots a Mexican, it’s manslaughter; every time a Mexican shoots a cop, it’s social justice.”

  “Not social justice, Koontz,” I said. “Good marksmanship.”

  “So you condone the wanton murder of police officers, is that it?”

  “Oscar Procari wasn’t a cop, Koontz.” Sugars was mad. I was restless.

  Koontz snorted and doused his rum crook in the ashtray. “Look, I don’t want to bullshit with you. I heard enough about your kind in my propaganda course at USC. As far as I’m concerned, this case is closed. If you want to reopen it, that’s your affair. But I promise you when those press boys come snooping around here, I’m gonna deny the whole thing and create enough confusion to make it look bad until the election.”

  Sugars shrugged in resignation.

  “If this interview is over,” I said, “I think I’d like to catch up on my sleep.” I started for the door.

  “Not so fast, Wine,” said Koontz, r
eaching in his drawer for a slip of paper. “There’s a little matter of a defective tail light which, according to our records, has not been repaired. This is an impound order on your car, Buick, license number RLT786.”

  “I don’t want to obstruct justice. You can find it off a dirt road 23 miles out of Death Valley. Just bring a tow truck. The engine’s wrecked and the back wheels are gone.”

  I dropped the keys on the desk in front of him.

  “Nobody likes a smart ass, Weinberg, but you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I feel sorry for you.”

  Sugars and I left the police station together. It was hot outside. The smog was heavy for the last day in May and I shielded my eyes from the sun as we walked down the steps. At the bottom, Sugars turned toward the station parking lot.

  “I never would have guessed Eppis was dead.” He stopped and looked up at the sky. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, reaching into his pocket for an envelope. “Here’s your money and a ticket to the Hawthorne victory party at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  “You can keep the ticket,” I said, returning it to him. “I like to endure the elections in private. It’s a tradition with me. Besides, I’m not very good at celebrating. . . . Give it to Sebastian. He’d like it.”

  “Sebastian?”

  “Yeah, the poor demented bastard’s been feeling low since he was three years old. I think it would cheer him to feel wanted at the victory party. He really supported Hawthorne, you know.”

  “That’s what you said. . . . Say, I’ve been wondering—how did you know Isabel La Fontana was Sebastian’s mother?”

  “It was a hunch. Isabel La Fontana was the stage name of an actress who used to do impressions at night clubs on the Strip during the fifties. She went on with her teen-age son who could also mimic—Jimmy Cagney, Jerry Lewis, that kind of thing. Sebastian was good. He had Eppis’ voice down to a tee—or almost. So when he started to whine about what had happened to his mother. . . .”