Golden Throat (Cable Denning Mystery Series Book 1)

by James P. Alsphert

  “You guys break me up! You go around dictating other peoples’ lives, warning them, admonishing them—and it’s all done with a smile, now, isn’t it, Consigliere? C’mon now, what kind of dog shit are you feeding me here?”

  Those warm, brown eyes looked at me like an alien checking out an earthling. “How can I get you to understand? You’re young and fearless, it appears. That can be a lethal combination. You can’t wage a one-man war against the family. Just as we are not in control of our lives, you are not in control of things that happen in this city. Other forces mold what happens in the end, Mr. Denning. Please, I urge you, reconsider and drop the current girlfriend, the Blinthe case and lay low while you are disconnecting yourself from Honey.”

  “Suddenly you’re on a first-name basis now? Who in the hell are you guys, anyhow? You got some gall, I’ll say.” I was also thinking of something else. “Who in the hell is this Matrangas?”

  He looked at me with a little apprehension in his eyes. “He’s—he’s the man who pulls the strings from Chicago. His investments into our family are considerable. You might say, he owns us. But we don’t like to look at it that way. He’s powerful and dangerous to his enemies, believe me.”

  “Thanks for the warning, Mr. Lorena, but I’ll take my chances.”

  I left Joe Lorena and joined Mario. Lorena stood there on the sidewalk, watching us. I could imagine what he might be thinking: this poor cop is toast!

  Blood and Elevators

  By the time we got back to our apartment it was late afternoon and I called Honey to tell her I was safe and sound. She seemed relieved and I told her I’d see her as soon as I could, but lots of stuff was on the burner just now. Mario and I went on patrol and it was about 2:30 a.m. when I called in to our station. We were dispatched to the Beverly Hills Hotel off Sunset Boulevard. Apparently some poor sap ended up dead in an elevator from being stabbed in key places. When we got there the management had sealed off the area and guests were required to take the stairs to their rooms. “Son of a bitch, Cable, this is the sixth homicide we’ve been on this week,” Mario was saying as we entered the elevator. A very well dressed small man with broken glasses and a moustache lay in a pool of blood on the elevator floor.

  “Yeah, you know the saying, Mario, when it rains it pours, and it’s been pouring a lot lately in L.A.” I bent down to examine the body. “Did they call the Coroner?”

  “Yeah, I think. It’s this kinda stuff that revolts me, makes me mad as hell that people go around bumping each other off—”

  “—well, at least for the most part, buddy, they kill each other. Once in a while an innocent bystander gets it, but this—this is definitely organized crime at work.” I turned the body over slightly. “Look…here…see how the knife wounds are perfectly made. With a very sharp blade directly into the heart from the right angle, and then into the gut a couple of times for good measure.”

  “You can toss it off, Cable—I can’t. I go home with it.”

  “Then you should consider working an inside job—maybe you’re not cut out for the terrible truth that all people are potential killers—and victims. Maybe that’s why I could beat the shit out of you that day when we were kids. Admit it to yourself if you haven’t got the stomach for it, Mario. And you know it’s all right….don’t sweat it. We all have our specialties. This one happens to be mine, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well, patrolling with you in a squad car is one thing, but these gruesome killings, night after night—”

  “—hey! What’s this?” I noticed a piece of paper clutched in the hand of the victim. I carefully pried it loose from his death grip. “Son-of-a-bitch, Mario! Look at this…I don’t believe it—it’s the label from Sandor’s jar containing John Doe’s golden throat! #1602-Blinthe! What in the shit is going on here, pal?”

  Mario had seen the label stuck on Sandor’s jar. “Crap, Cable! What are the chances of this showing up here? You don’t suppose it—”

  “—it was a setup, intentional? Nope, I don’t think so. It’s just a weird coincidence we happened to be the cops called to the scene first.” I rifled through the breast pocket of the corpse. I took out his wallet. A Zurich automobile driver’s license read…Harold Eisenstadt. “Crap, Mario, he wasn’t even an American. Doesn’t that sound odd to you?”

  “The whole damned thing is odd to me,” Mario responded, checking out the dead man’s shoes. “He’s also been in an area with red clay, not too long ago,” he observed. “Very red. Here…look at this.”

  I checked it out. “Good catch, Mario. You see, maybe you’d be a good forensic investigator.”

  “Naw, I like it better out here with you. It’s more hands-on. It’s just the murders that kind of depress me. You know I’m thinking of marrying Rosalie Elena and having kids. What do I tell them about the world we live in?”

  “Yeah, that’s a big one, but we’ve already had this conversation.” Just then the Coroner came in. We told him what we knew and left, except I told Mario to stay mum about the piece of paper I had tucked into my pocket.

  When we got out into traffic, Mario was thinking about what I had done. “You know, that’s withholding evidence, what you just did. It could be a major clue in cracking the case for the guys who follow up on it.”

  “I’m counting on just that,” I said.

  “What does that mean? You’re not a detective, you know. You’re just a cop and you happen to work for the police department—and that piece of paper should’ve by rights gone to the coroner and then on to the detective division. You’re a three-year veteran, for God’s sake. You know better.”

  “Is this a reprimand, Mario? Because if it is, I’m gonna tell you something. That piece of paper would sit in a file for months gathering moss while six detectives work on piled-up caseloads until doomsday. Is that what you would want, Mr. Seek-out-Justice cop?”

  “No, but you can’t take the law into your own hands, Cable.”

  “Then…my friend, who will? I was born with this sniffer of mine and a gut that tells me when something’s right—and when something’s wrong. And this whole stinkin’ mess is wrong, Mario. If I don’t take this bull by the horns, nobody will. You gotta remember, we work for cops who work for the mob who happen to be in bed with City Hall. So who’s gonna do something about something they don’t want something done about?”

  Mario remained silent for a while and I lit up a Lucky Strike. “Well, I guess that’s where we’re different, you dumb Mic. So what are you gonna do now—become a two-man elimination team?”

  “That’s the easy part. Sniff out old doc Sandor and pin him against the wall. I sense—no, I know he’s hiding a lot more than he’s telling.”

  Vaulting with Death

  The next night was a night off and I told Mario I was going to catch the enigmatic Dr. Sandor in his lair. My partner and friend feared for me, but understood that I had to do what I had to do. After all, our growing up together told us that if you didn’t watch out for your own butt in our neighborhoods, you’d lose it—and just maybe your life. It was a tough, survival-of-the-fittest jungle, poor and struggling—so the poor stole from the poor a lot and when the pressure got too great for them to handle, they started beating each other up, unleashed testosterone on dirty streets littered with garbage and blood. I also called Honey and told her I might come by after my evening appointment, but I didn’t tell her where it was or with whom.

  It was about seven p.m. when I got to the county morgue and started tracking down Sandor. I found him in a basement laboratory, that place where he took the removed organs and such he wanted to keep and dropped them in formaldehyde. “Dr. Sandor,” I called out as I approached him. The place had an echo and our voices bounced all over the place.

  He turned around to look at me. He raised those huge eyebrows of his in surprise. “Officer Denning! You keep showing up uninvited, like a bad penny. But I was warned about you. Just recently, as a matter of fact.”

  I approached the tall, gaunt m
an. “Yeah, I’ll bet it was Dragna and his gang. Seems I attended Ardizzone’s funeral yesterday and found a curious assortment of hoodlums hanging around the coffin like grave robbers, ready to pounce when the coast was clear. You’d have been right at home.”

  “A rather quaint way to describe a funeral, Officer Denning. I notice you are not in uniform—am I to gather…this is an…informal visit?”

  “Well, not exactly, Sandor. You see, I’ve kinda got a problem. There’s a stiff arriving any minute upstairs for you.” I reached in my pocket. “I have a hunch he died for this. #1602-Blinthe. Sound familiar?”

  “It was stolen, Officer Denning, from the sample room. I fear someone else, other than known parties, was seeking the gold-lined throat.”

  “Who was Blinthe? And why didn’t he have a belly button? You’d better show and tell quick, doc, I don’t have a lotta patience for bullshit.”

  “I don’t know—a biological anomaly. He was nobody. I don’t know who lined his throat—or why.”

  “Oh…doc…ya gotta come up with better stuff than that. I have this gut that goes off like an alarm bell when bullshit gets thrown my way. I’m kind of a truth guy and this whole Ardizzone and Blinthe thing doesn’t add up in my book. But that’s not what I came for.”

  “Indeed? There’s more? Now you’ve piqued my curiosity, Officer Denning. Intuition, you know, can be…a dangerous thing. It would be one of the first things I would…operate out of a human being had I those…powers. ‘Gut feelings,’ as you describe, can be very misleading—and inaccurate as well. I’m a very busy man, so I would appreciate—”

  “—there was something missing from the lingual cavity on Blinthe, wasn’t there, Sandor? The gold lining was to protect whatever was housed in that nice little place safely tucked away in a dead man’s mouth. You see, I’ve learned to put two-and-two together, Sandor. C’mon.…you’re a lot brighter than this! Or maybe….dumber than you look because whoever you’re doing this for—and whatever you’re concealing, they will eventually kill you for it. You must know that.”

  Sandor glowered at me. “A sleuth with…partial knowledge…is very dangerous indeed, Mr. Detective. And assuming you are correct to some degree, what object could possibly have been lodged in the dead man’s throat? And even if it were so, it’s biologically impossible—he would constantly gag because the motor nerves located there in back of the tongue trigger the throat to convulse and the stomach to become nauseated. So I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I knew Sandor wasn’t the type who responded to subtle tactics, so I approached him and put my .38 in his ribs. “You’re lying, doc. Things are exploding in my head because I know this thing is a lot bigger than you or me, somehow—and you have access to it. It either belongs to the city, county or a museum—or your mysterious benefactors—now what’s it gonna be?”

  “Threats…will avail you nothing, Officer Denning.” He looked around the room, a strange stare coming over his eyes. “Do you think I could have lived all these years among the dead and fear death itself? You are… mistaken, my foolish man. You can’t play cat-and-mouse with me.”

  “Well, then, try this!” I said, yanking his arm behind him until he yelled out, his sound reverberating throughout the room. “Where I come from, coercion is an art, Sandor. So…what is it you stole from them?”

  “Please!” he cried out. “I don’t mind dying—but I cannot tolerate pain. All right, all right. But you must know, once you have seen what I have to show you, your life will be, for all intents and purposes—over.”

  “Let me make that decision, Sandor. Lead the way.”

  Still at gunpoint he led me to a vault on the far side of the laboratory. He knew the combination to the lock that sealed the door and soon it opened. He pulled a string and an eerie blue light bulb went on. Silently he approached a little metal box. He opened it. He withdrew an egg-shaped golden capsule about the size that would’ve fit nicely into that depression in Blinthe’s throat cavity. It was finely etched with mysterious inscriptions. What was weird was that the blue light seemed to make the thing glow from within itself and the lettering showed up more clearly, even symbols that didn’t appear until the blue light was applied. Sandor held it up to the light. “The God of Our Fathers…it is the Great Omnipresent…housed inside,” he smiled a rather demented smile. ”The secret of all life is etched onto a golden microfilm, painstakingly photographed from the original scroll.”

  “So what the hell does it do that’s causing so much shit?”

  Again, holding the capsule up against the blue light, he spoke as if he were mesmerized by its influence. He slid the capsule open, and took out a small bright gold rectangle. “Here! Look!” I came over and inspected both the outer capsule and the tablet inside. They were perfectly rendered although the tablet was miniscule. “The golden etched tablet is best seen with The Blue Light of Noda. Photonos, the God of Light, and Audianos, the God of Sound, fashioned this unique communiqué to reveal the source of creation itself.”

  “Now you lost me, Sandor.” I took my gun and put it in my chest holster. “Now you’re talking mythological gibberish—and even if it were true, what possible value would something like that have to a bunch of hoodlums who run the streets of L.A.?”

  “An unfathomable amount of money, for one thing. It is priceless. From the point of science, the scroll speaks of a new unit of light, a magical property—just now this year, named as photon, a basic unit of light that allows electro-magnetic interaction, thus forming form via intelligent intent in the cosmos. Einstein and others have been investigating it for a while, but they have not yet given it a name. Think of it, Denning—the why and how of Creation known, at last.”

  “You mean to say, this microfilm replica tells us the universe didn’t happen by plain ol’ incident and accident?”

  “Precisely, Denning, precisely. No more guessing about the origin of the blueprint of Creation. However, it isn’t a religious, but rather a scientific revelation.”

  “So, why are you telling me all of this, Sandor? And how do you know all this shit about it in the first place?”

  “I have sources, shall I say? Mr. Blinthe wasn’t exactly…what you and I might call human, you see. He possessed other dimensional qualities to which I gained access, quite by accident. Surely you realize, Denning, even I am delighted and surprised to learn of new things…new dimensions.” Then he looked up to the ceiling and his eyes were aglow. “To transcend…to wipe aside man’s pitiful little accomplishments and see…see the greater glory of a cosmos…filled with superior beings…”

  “How do you know I won’t take it from you now and make millions from selling it myself?”

  “Because, my dear man, part of my motivation is science—the other is profit. But…as I told you earlier, officer, you are a dead man, no matter how you slice the cake, now.” In deep thought, I started to walk away and made the mistake of turning my back for a split second. Before I could react fast enough, Sandor hit me hard on the head with what felt like a lead pipe he got off the shelf and down I went for the count.

  I was whirling in a vortex of sound and light and blackness all at the same time. I felt nausea and elation and pain. I came to in that dark vault of Sandor’s. He must have slugged me, locked me in and left me for dead. Well, in the worst-case scenario, I wouldn’t have far to go. Just upstairs to one of those slabs. My head pounded until I thought it would burst and I had a goose egg on the back of my skull big enough to excite a kid at Easter. I crawled toward the door. It was probably six-inches thick, made of solid metal and a lock suitable for a bank vault. The air was beginning to get a bit thick and I knew it would only be a matter of time before I’d suffocate—and then it would be all over. Or just beginning…..

  Immersed in pitch-blackness can be a frightening thing for us surface creatures whose ordinary stimulus is visual and auditory. Now I had to depend on inner senses and my sense of touch. When one’s head is banging and probably has a c
oncussion—or worse—that isn’t an easy task. I tried not to think of that moment when my body would consume all the air in that 10’ x 12’ vault, but it was getting harder to breathe so I tried to minimize my panic and how deep I inhaled. Like a wounded animal, I sat with my back against the vault door, waiting for the inevitable. When pain is so intense, one can’t just start reminiscing about life and what you should have done and didn’t, who you loved and didn’t, what way it could have gone but didn’t. But there were good things, too. I was awful young to be dying, I thought. Twenty-seven and I had only begun to know what I wanted to do in this life. Hell, the kids who went off to WWI were as young as sixteen and died in a forgotten trench somewhere on the Russian front, frozen to death.

  Unbelievably, just then I could hear the clicking of the tumblers outside on the combination lock. Had that bastard Sandor changed his mind—maybe he didn’t want murder on his conscience? Or did someone else regularly visit this inner sanctum? Soon the heavy door swung open and a flashlight spotted me on the floor. “Someone’s been locked in here one-hundred percent alright.” The little guy drew a gun and put it to my head. “You wouldn’t be invitin’ any trouble now, would ya? Because if you did, I would have to plug you one-hundred percent,” he wheezed.

  I could hardly speak I was in so much pain and exhausted. “Hardly…Sandor slugged me…with something and I…I went down. I think I may have a concussion or I’m bleeding somewhere in my head.”

  “Now ain’t that one-hundred percent too bad,” he sneered, completely without compassion.

  Just then another man entered with a flashlight. I could see he was impeccably dressed, stood about six feet and his black hair shone in the light.