A lavatory isn’t generally a place that bowls you over with décor, but Ashley’s proved the exception. The fixtures were farmhouse-style brass polished to a bright sheen. The porcelain was faintly pink without being garish. Matching throw rugs safeguarded the user from slipping on the marble-tiled floor. The tiny room was arranged so that one’s attention was unerringly drawn to an original oil painting on the wall opposite the washbasin and crystal mirror. An engraved plate named the artist as Titorelli the Painter, and the place and year, Prague, 1925. The subject was the head of St. John the Baptist on a silver platter. It wasn’t until well into my drive home an hour later that the full significance of that particular piece of art in that particular location dawned on me, and I had to hand it to Ashley for having a wacky, nautical sense of humor.
When I emerged, Ashley was on the side porch, waving her arm slowly. A private-school bus was making a U-turn about halfway down the long driveway. It had let off two children who were walking slowly toward the main entrance of the house carrying full book bags. Ashley walked out to meet them, with me trailing uncertainly behind.
Jeanne-Renée and Benton were like no fraternal twins I’d ever seen. The girl was light skinned, with blonde hair and a lovely, wide-eyed Nordic face. She already showed the promise of both her parents’ good looks, for Harry, for all his evildoing, was handsome.
Benton was shorter than his sister, dark in color, narrow-eyed, small-mouthed. Where Jeanne-Renée emanated light, Benton seemed to absorb it, making him appear smaller than his actual size. Taken alone, he wouldn’t be considered unattractive. His features were delicate and his body was well proportioned, if somewhat diminutive. He suffered by comparison with the budding beauty of his sister. I took a mental snapshot of him that might help me recognize Dick, if it ever came to that. I was certain that J. Thompson Beck was not the father of the dark, wiry child.
After greeting them coolly, Ashley hustled the children on their way. She turned and was surprised to see that I’d followed her. She escorted me to my car where we exchanged the usual “keep in touch if anything new happens.” It seemed odd to me at the time that Ashley didn’t introduce her children. But I doubted it was an accident. Little that Ashley did or did not do was by chance.
My stitches were itching like mad. When I got back to Raleigh I drove directly to Southeast Plastic Surgery PLLC and begged them to remove the damn things. It was the end of the day and I didn’t have an appointment, but one of the nurses was kind enough to stay after hours. The lacerations had healed nicely. I could already see that the scars would be the thinnest of white lines, not one of them straight, but rather meandering around my wrist and thumb like brooks in a hilly terrain.
It was dinnertime when I finally got home. I was far too jetlagged to do anything other than eat, love the dogs, play the piano for five minutes, and crash. In the morning I updated my case file and by the time I’d finished, the banks had opened. I walked to my bank and deposited Ashley’s check, keeping back just the right amount to replenish the original cash advance.
I turned my attention to the third man and was able to take advantage of some earlier work. I’d already highlighted the Dicks and related names and initials in Harry’s purloined address book. There were five of them. Now I had only to crosscheck those names with the 31 Dick records from Marquis University. Lady Luck was on my side. I found a single match: Richard Sangfroid.
Sangfroid was in the same graduating class as Harry Angelica and J. Thompson Beck. After his graduation he attended the Marquis Medical School, where he earned his M.D. The last entry in his school record indicated that he had accepted a residency in surgery and transplantation biology at the teaching hospital of Los Angeles University.
Both Harry’s and the university’s record gave an address in Los Angeles. It appeared as though a trip to the “city of the angels” was in the offing. That suited me. I had attended UCLA and knew the city well. But best of all was that I would be able to see Charles, for he lived in Santa Barbara, only about a two-hour drive from L.A. I was psyched.
Throughout this case so far, the evidence leading to Ashley’s rapists had been circumstantial. Now, with Harry known to be the father of Jeanne-Renée, and Beck known to be Harry’s cousin and to have a missing toe, there was no doubt of those two. Dick Sangfroid was linked to them through the university and the entry in Harry’s address book. Furthermore, the “Tom, Dick, and Harry” remark that Little had made to deepen Ashley’s misery took on heightened significance now that two of the names were accounted for.
Two other minor points that had found their way into my case records now looked significant. One was the use of the nickname Frenchy. The name Sangfroid is French, and Ashley’s meager description of Little fit the Gallic stereotype—shorter in height than average, dark in color, a smoker. Fatboy’s remark about Little having ice water in his veins for the impassive manner in which he tortured Ashley fit the name, for in French “Sangfroid” means “cold blood.”
I called the hospital where Dr. Sangfroid had done his residency but all I could learn was that he was no longer employed there. They were not permitted to give out additional information. At worst, the trail was now a mere three or four years old, a big improvement over the ten years I’d started out with. I was certain I could track him down, especially with Charles’s help. Being a medical examiner, Charles was in the milieu of physicians and surgeons.
I decided to fly to California, find Dr. Richard Sangfroid, and try to determine whether he was the third man. It was morning on the west coast and Charles would just be arriving at his office. I called him and told him of my intention. He was exuberant at the prospect of seeing me.
I booked everything I needed on the Internet. Twenty-four hours later, I found myself in an airline seat on final approach into LAX, peering through the brownish haze that sat, as usual, atop the L.A. basin.
Charles was to meet me in the Regal Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. It’s centrally located and less than ten minutes from the hospital where Sangfroid once worked. As I neared the hotel in my rental car, my excitement mounted. It had little to do with tracking down Dick Sangfroid, and everything to do with seeing Charles. I’d suppressed my feelings for him during the past month to focus on my work. Now that we were about to see each other, my love welled up and drowned all my thoughts except those about him.
He was awaiting me in the lobby. I rushed into his arms and he took me in a clasp that would do credit to an Alaskan grizzly bear. He released me when he saw that I was turning purple, then held me again more gently and whispered some very sweet somethings in my ear.
The lobby of the Biltmore captured the flavor of ante-bellum Los Angeles, the “bellum” being World War II. The expansive lobby with its sturdy, lush furniture and rich adornments was a reminder of the opulence of the period. Autographed photos of presidents who had stayed at the Biltmore were on prominent display. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had taken a suite there when he came to Los Angeles, as had presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, and Carter.
Our room was on the fifth floor of the middle tower. We gave our luggage over to the bell captain, who met us a long five minutes later in the room. He bustled around, puffing pillows here and removing invisible flecks of dust there. He explained in tedious detail the use of the room electronics and minibar, while I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, paying no attention whatever to his babbling. I almost took back the fiver I gave him at the door when he winked at me as I deployed the do-not-disturb sign.
“About Richard Sangfroid,” began Charles.
I put first my hand, then my mouth, over his mouth. Abstention makes the heart grow bolder.
“First things first,” I whispered.
Later, much later, we staggered outside, famished. We crossed Grand Avenue to Pershing Square and looked back at the recently restored hotel. The three towers facing the square, with their red brick and cream-colored stone façades and terra cotta overhanging roofs, reflect
a Spanish renaissance style that captures the Hispanic heritage of the city. The Biltmore, I learned from brochures, has been a location site for more than 250 TV shows and motion pictures, including Chinatown, A Star is Born, and Beverly Hills Cop. Staying there makes you feel like a minor player in the history of the city.
We hoofed over to Broadway and then turned northeast toward Little Tokyo, where superb Japanese food may be found. We drank warm sake and ate shabu-shabu at the Koharu, an intimate “bisutoro” on First Street. No shop was talked, and when we returned to our room, we put third things third.
CHAPTER 22
Only after breakfast was over did Charles tell me about Dr. Sangfroid. I learned that, even as we sat at our ease in the plush chairs of the Biltmore’s porch restaurant, the ruined remains of two California Breakfasts pushed aside, Dick Sangfroid was less than two miles distant.
Two years ago he had accepted the post of Director of the Western Regional Organ Bank Clearinghouse. This organization matches donated organs to qualified recipients, and is expected to follow the guidelines set down by the United Network for Organ Sharing. In effect, the criteria for receiving donated body parts are to be strictly medical with no regard to cost. The post is particularly sensitive in that there are always rich and powerful people who want to use their position to “cut in line,” so to speak. One job of the director was to protect the integrity of the system.
Sangfroid had had two crises in his tenure as director, one offsetting the other. The first came when a Los Angeles newspaper suggested that he lived so far beyond his means as to cast suspicion on his impartiality. It was hinted, archly, that he took bribes. Sangfroid lived in a multimillion-dollar house built by Frank Lloyd Wright, and belonged to an upscale members-only country club with dubious connections to the sex industry. Such a life style, the reporter wrote, must mean duplicity in the selection of transplant recipients.
Sangfroid had countered these charges by noting that he had family money and anyway, it wasn’t anybody’s business how he lived his personal life. The public reacted favorably to this curmudgeonly defense. In California, people are sick to death of gauzy allegations on one side and vaporous excuses on the other. They more or less approved of Sangfroid’s “attitude.”
What put the coup de grâce to the first crisis was the second, which occurred six months later. Sangfroid claimed he was menaced by two hoodlums, who had ordered him to approve a liver transplant for a member of an organized crime family. Failing that, they said, he, Sangfroid, would have his liver forcibly removed without benefit of anesthesia.
Sangfroid went directly to the authorities and reported the coercion. A rival newspaper broke the story. Their reporter lionized him as a man of unbending principle. Sangfroid used the threats as a reason to institute 24-hour protection, and now lives like an American diplomat in the Middle East, traveling nowhere without a bodyguard. As for his private life, it was effectively off bounds to the law whose duty was to protect him, not investigate him.
The offices of the Organ Bank Clearinghouse (OBC) were located in a building on Wilshire Boulevard overlooking MacArthur Park. It was, as Charles had noted, barely two miles from the Biltmore. It took just over five minutes to drive there. I parked in a pay lot and the two of us walked to the building.
The OBC was on the third floor and was accessible only by elevator. Security guards patrolled the lobby and let no one into the elevators without a badge or a badged escort. I tested the waters by pleading to one of the guards that we wanted to sign up for organ donor cards, and if he didn’t mind, we’d nip up to the third floor and sign away our guts.
“No way,” was the terse response, with a nod in the direction of the house phone. I could call upstairs if I wished, and if they wished, someone would escort us.
I was dying to have a look at the man. If he was six foot six, blond-haired and blue-eyed, my search was in vain. I used the phone to call them up. The person who answered told me that their offices didn’t deal with the public. She gave me a number to call for information. Turning my back to the guard so as not to be overheard, I asked if the famous Dr. Sangfroid, whom I’d read about in the newspapers, still worked there. She politely, but firmly, informed me that that was none of my business.
There was nothing to do but leave the building. I took Charles’s hand and we crossed the street to MacArthur Park. The park, named for the World War II general, surrounds a beautiful, manmade lake. One can rent electric boats that glide so gently over the water that a child may safely take the helm. Landlubbers of all ages lounge in the grass under trees, or sit on the brightly painted benches that line the gravel walkways at the waterside. Food vendors ply the hungry with tempting treats, often selling goodies to boaters who pull up alongside the shoreline.
As we walked hand in hand in silence, I had a thought.
“Didn’t you say Sangfroid lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright house?”
“That’s right,” said Charles.
“Then we ought to be able to find it, shouldn’t we? All Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses must all be in a register somewhere. Everything he built is a national treasure and protected by a preservation society. I think they all have their own names even—I mean the houses.”
“Now you mention it,” said Charles, “I think the newspaper article said where he lived. And there was a photo of him, too.”
We had the same thought: “The library.”
Conveniently, the Los Angeles Public Library is a few blocks from the Biltmore on Fifth Street. We left the car with the hotel’s parking valet, and headed out on foot. On the way, I asked Charles if he remembered when Sangfroid had gained his notoriety. He thought it was the first part of the year. He remembered thinking that here we were in the last year of the 20th century, and the gangsters were still pulling the same load of rubbish that they pulled in the last year of the previous century.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” he noted philosophically.
“Yeah, some things don’t change much,” I said.
Once inside the library, and having taken a minute to admire the splendid entrance hall, we followed the signs to the periodicals section. The lady in charge showed us the storage bins of microfilm and gave us a brief lesson on using the readers. She apologized for the obsolete technology and assured us that in the future the newspapers would be on DVDs. Given that the woman was at least as old as the Central Library Building, whose archway keystone had 1926 chiseled on it, you had to admire her sprightliness and “get-with-it” attitude.
We found the microfilm we needed. Each spool contained one month’s worth of past editions. The search was tedious because we had to look at each page of each section of national news and metro news. More than that, actually. Since a Frank Lloyd Wright house was part of the story, we needed to check out the various features sections as well.
We sat at adjacent machines. Charles took January, I took February, and we began our search. Those months yielded nothing. While scanning March, I was stopped not by a headline but by a photograph of a man whose resemblance to Benton Bloodworth was unmistakable. It was Dr. Richard Sangfroid. The text beneath the photo lauded his intent to uphold the integrity of the OBC, blathering on about his bravery under fire, etc. It said nothing about the house he lived in.
“But of course not,” said Charles, slapping his forehead. “They wouldn’t be so crass as to publish the man’s address in the same article that reports his death threat. The house was in the other paper, the one that didn’t like him. It must’ve been the previous summer or fall.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “This photo of Sangfroid leaves no doubt that he’s the man I’m looking for, so the time wasn’t wasted.”
We traded in the current batch of microfilm for a new batch covering the months in question. Once more we began searching, page by page, week by week.
It was Charles’s turn, after an hour of spooling, to make the find. “That’s a stroke of luck,” he said. “I nearly spooled past it
.”
So there it was: a scathing article about Sangfroid. It began by stating that only a person of unquestioned probity should fill the position of director of the OBC. The journalist asked, rhetorically to be sure, how it was possible for Dr. Sangfroid to possess the financial resources to own a multi-million-dollar home. This led to the merest of suggestions—mere enough to avoid a libel suit—that perhaps the good doctor “cooked the books” in favor of wealthy clients. To emphasize the point about Sangfroid’s home, an archived photo from the 1930s of the noteworthy Fillmore House was in a side panel.
Another hour in the library rewarded us with information about the house. It was named for its first occupant, President Millard Fillmore’s great-grandson, for whom it was built in the 1920s. An old Architectural Digest filled in some details:
The home manifests the superb naturalness that was Frank Lloyd Wright’s trademark. It is set smartly into the side of a hill above Silver Lake. However, it is thought that the great architect’s role in its design was minimal. Rather, two of his protégés—Messrs. William Jenkins Williams and Bartholomew Babbitt—were the architects of record. They had clearly followed the master’s lead, with a result that bears the unmistakable imprint of a Wright-architected home.
“I wonder what the place looks like now,” I said as we were strolling back to the hotel.
“There’s still some daylight left,” said Charles. “We could have a look.”
“I’d rather see it tomorrow,” I said. “By the time we get the car, fight traffic, and find the place, it’ll be nearly dark in the hills. Anyway,” I added, “I know of a very romantic restaurant, pardon me, bistro, on Melrose Avenue.”
The next morning we drove to the Silver Lake district. It’s a maze of winding streets and cul-de-sacs in the Hollywood Hills, about four miles northwest of City Hall. Overlooking the lake are some of the most interesting and costly homes in Southern California.
The Fillmore House had the concrete-block structure typical of Wright’s work of the 1920s era, just as the Digest had described it. It was difficult to find a spot from which we might view the house in toto. The problem was that Sangfroid or a previous owner had turned the place into a compound. High, imposing fences surrounded most of it, and a steel-barred electric gate protected the main entrance. We had to drive to different vantage points around the property to fully appreciate how seamlessly integrated the house was with the hill into which it was built.
Where Evil Lurks Page 18
