Silent Partner

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Chapter

  27

  Old stories, old connections, but the strands were tangling even as they knitted, and I was no closer to understanding Sharon—how she'd lived and why she, and so many others, had died.

  At 10:30 P.M. Milo called and added to the confusion.

  “Bastard Trapp lost no time snowing me under,” he said. “Reorganizing the dead-case file—pure scutwork. I played hooky, wore out my phone ear. Your gal Ransom had a severe allergy to the truth. No birth records in New York, no Manhattan Ransoms—not on Park Avenue or any of the other high-priced zip codes—clear back to the late forties. Same for Long Island: Southampton's a tight little community; the local gendarmes say no Ransoms in the phone book, no Ransoms ever lived in any of the big estates.”

  “She went to college there.”

  “Forsythe. Not right there—nearby. How'd you find out?”

  “Through her university transcript. How'd you find out?”

  “Social Security. She applied in '71, gave the college as her address. But that's the first time her name shows up anywhere—as if she didn't exist until then.”

  “If you have any contacts in Palm Beach, Florida, try there, Milo. Kruse practiced there until '75. When he moved out to L.A. he brought her with him.”

  “Uh-uh. I'm ahead of you. Him I did find plenty of paper on. Born in New York—Park Avenue, as a matter of fact. Big apartment that he sold in '68. The real estate transfer listed a Palm Beach address and I called down there. These rich-town departments aren't easy to deal with—very protective of the locals. I told them Ransom had been a burglary victim—we recovered her stuff, wanted to give it back to her. They looked her up. Nada, not even a whisper, Alex. So Kruse hooked up with her somewhere else. And speaking of Kruse, he was not the hotshot psychotherapist you described. I stroked my source at the IRS, accessed the guy's tax returns. His practice only produced income of thirty thou a year—at a hundred bucks an hour, that's only five or six hours a week. Not exactly your busy shrink. Another five G's came from writing. The rest, another half mil, was investment income: blue-chip stocks and bond dividends, real estate, and a little business venture called Creative Image Associates.”

  “Blue movies.”

  “He listed it as a ‘producer and manufacturer of health education materials.' He and his wife were sole shareholders, declared a loss for five years, then folded.”

  “What years?”

  “Let me see, I've got it right here: '74 through '79.”

  Sharon's last year in college, her first four years in grad school.

  “What it boils down to, Alex, is a rich guy living off inheritance. Dabbling.”

  “Dabbling in people's lives,” I said. “The army taught him psychological warfare.”

  “For what that's worth. When I was a medic I caught an eyeful of the army's psychological warfare. For the most part, worthless bullshit. The Viet Cong laughed at it—ad agencies do it better. Anyway, bottom line is, Ransom emerges as your basic phantom lady with a rich patron. For all practical purposes she could have dropped out of the sky in 1971.”

  “Martinis in the sun-room.”

  “What's that?”

  “Nothing important,” I said. “Here's another possibility. I looked up the newspaper coverage of the Lanier/Johnson drug bust. Linda and her brother were from South Texas—place called Port Wallace. Maybe there are records down there.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Anything in the papers that Crotty didn't tell us?”

  “Just that in addition to the dope thing, the Red Scare was raised—supposedly the Johnsons went to parties with subversives. Given the mood of the country, that would have guaranteed public support for the shootout. Hummel and DeGranzfeld were treated like Most Valuable Players.”

  “Uncle Hummel,” he said. “I called Vegas. He's still alive, still working for Magna—chief of security at the Casbah and two other casinos the company owns there. Lives in a big house in the best part of town. Wages of sin, huh?”

  “One more thing to chew on,” I said. “Billy Vidal and Hope Blalock are brother and sister. Vidal set up deals between Blalock's husband and Belding. After Blalock's husband died, Magna bought her out cheap. After Belding died, Vidal ended up chairman of Magna. Mrs. Blalock was bankrolling Kruse—supposedly because he'd treated one of her kids. But she doesn't seem to have any kids.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “Ever get the feeling, Alex, we're playing somebody else's game by somebody else's rules? In somebody else's goddam stadium?”

  He agreed to run a Texas trace and told me to watch my back before hanging up.

  I wanted to call Olivia again, but it was close to eleven, past her and Albert's bedtime, so I waited until nine the next morning, phoned her office, and was told Mrs. Brickerman was up in Sacramento on business this morning and was expected back shortly.

  I tried to reach Elmo Castelmaine at King Solomon Gardens. He was on shift again, busy with a patient. I got in the Seville and drove to the Fairfax district, to Edinburgh Street.

  The old-age home was one of dozens of boxy two-story buildings lining the narrow, treeless street.

  King Solomon Gardens had no gardens, just one pudgy-trunked, roof-high date palm to the left of the double glass entry doors. The building was white texture-coat trimmed in electric blue. A ramp carpeted in blue Astroturf served in place of front steps. Cement had been laid down where the lawn should have been, painted hospital green and furnished with folding chairs. Old people sat, sun-visored, kerchiefed, and support-hosed, fanning themselves, playing cards, just staring off into space.

  I found a parking space halfway down the block and was headed back when I spotted a chunky black man across the street, pushing a wheelchair. I quickened my pace and got a better look. White uniform tunic over blue jeans. No corkscrew beard, no earring. The crown of the head yielding to near-total baldness; the stocky body, softer. The face looser, double-chinned, but the one I remembered from Resthaven.

  I crossed the street, caught up. “Mr. Castelmaine?”

  He stopped, looked back. An old woman was in the wheelchair. She didn't pay any notice. Despite the heat, she wore a sweater buttoned to the neck and an Indian blanket across her knees. Her hair was thin and brittle, dyed black. The breeze blew through it, exposing white patches of scalp. She appeared to be sleeping with her eyes open.

  “That's me.” The same high-pitched voice. “Now, who might you be?”

  “Alex Delaware. I left you a message yesterday.”

  “That doesn't help me much. I still don't know you any better than I did ten seconds ago.”

  “We met years ago. Six years ago. At Resthaven Terrace. I came with Sharon Ransom. Visited her sister, Shirlee?”

  The woman in the chair began to sniffle and whimper. Castelmaine bent down, patted her head, pulled a tissue out of his jeans and dabbed at her nose. “Now, now, Mrs. Lipschitz, it's okay, he's gonna come get you.”

  She pouted.

  “Come on now, Mrs. Lipschitz, honey, your beau's gonna come, don't you worry.”

  The woman lifted her face. She was sharp-featured, toothless, wrinkled as a discarded shopping bag. Her eyes were pale-brown and heavily mascaraed. A bright-red patch of lipstick had been smeared over a puckered fissure of a mouth. Somewhere behind the crease and corrugation, the mask of cosmetics, shone a spark of beauty.

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Aw, Mrs. Lipschitz,” said Castelmaine.

  She drew the blanket up to her mouth, began chewing on the coarse fabric.

  Castelmaine turned to me and said softly, “They reach a certain age, they can never get warm, no matter what the weather. Never get full satisfaction of any kind.”

  Mrs. Lipschitz cried out. Her lips worked around a word for a while and finally formed it: “Party!”

  Castelmaine kneeled beside her, eased the blanket away from her mouth, and tucked it around her. “You're gonna go to that party, hon, but you've got to be careful not to ruin your make
up with all those tears. Okay?”

  He placed two fingers under the old woman's chin and smiled. “Okay?” She looked up at him, nodded.

  “Goo-ood. And we are looking pretty today, honey. All spiffed up and raring to go.”

  The old woman held up one shriveled hand. A thick black one wrapped around it.

  “Party,” she said.

  “Sure, there's gonna be a party. And you're so pretty, Clara Celia Lipschitz, that you're gonna be the belle of that party. All the handsome boys are gonna line up to dance with you.”

  A rush of tears.

  “Now c'mon, C.C., no more of that. He's gonna come, take you to that party—you've got to be looking your best.”

  More struggle to enunciate: “Late.”

  “Just a little late, Clara Celia. He probably hit some heavy traffic—you know, all that gridlock I've been telling you about. Or maybe he stopped off at a flower shop to get you a nice corsage. Nice pink orchid corsage, like he knows you love.”

  “Late.”

  “Just a little,” he repeated, and resumed pushing the chair. I tagged along.

  He began singing, softly, in a sweet tenor so high it verged on falsetto. “Now C., C.C. Rider. C'mon see, baby, what you have done . . .”

  The music and the repetitive rub of the chair's tires against the sidewalk set up a lullaby rhythm. The old woman's head began to loll.

  “. . . C.C. Lipschitz, see what you have done . . .”

  We stopped directly across the street from King Solomon. Castelmaine looked both ways and nudged the chair over the curb.

  “. . . you made all the handsome boys love you . . . and now your man has come.”

  Mrs. Lipschitz slept. He pushed her across the green cement, exchanging greetings with some of the other old people, got to the bottom of the ramp and told me: “Wait here. I'll be with you soon as I'm through.”

  I stood around, got drawn into conversation with a thick-waisted old man with one good eye and a VFW cap who claimed to have fought with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, then waited, belligerently, as if expecting me to doubt him. When I didn't he launched into a lecture on U.S. policy in Latin America and was going strong, ten minutes later, when Castelmaine reappeared.

  I shook the old man's hand, told him it had been educational.

  “A smart boy,” he told Castelmaine.

  The attendant smiled. “That probably means, Mr. Cantor, that he didn't disagree with you.”

  “What's to disagree? Emes is emes, you got to keep those pinkos in line or they eat your liver.”

  “The emes is, we gotta go, Mr. Cantor.”

  “So who's stopping you? Go. Gey avek.”

  We walked back across the green cement.

  “How about a cup of coffee,” I said.

  “Don't drink coffee. Let's walk.” We turned left on Edinburgh and strolled past more old people. Past sweating windows and cooking smells, dry lawns, musty doorways.

  “I don't remember you,” he said. “Not as a specific person. I do remember Dr. Ransom visiting with a man, because it only happened once.” He looked me over. “No. I can't say that I remember it being you.”

  “I looked different,” I said. “Had a beard, longer hair.”

  He shrugged. “Could be. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  Unconcerned. I realized he hadn't heard about Sharon, gritted my teeth and said:

  “Dr. Ransom died.”

  He stopped, put both hands alongside his face. “Died? When?”

  “A week ago.”

  “How?”

  “Suicide, Mr. Castelmaine. It was in the papers.”

  “Never read the papers—get enough bad news just from living. Oh, no—such a kind, wonderful girl. I can't believe it.”

  I said nothing.

  He kept shaking his head.

  “What pushed her so low she had to go and do something like that?”

  “That's what I'm trying to find out.”

  His eyes were moist and bloodshot. “You her man?”

  “I was, years ago. We hadn't seen each other for a long time, met at a party. She said something was bothering her. I never found out what it was. Two days later she was gone.”

  “Oh, Lord, this is just terrible.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “How'd she do it?”

  “Pills. And a gunshot to the head.”

  “Oh, God. Doesn't make any sense, someone beautiful and rich doing something like that. All day I wheel around the old ones—fading away, losing the ability to do anything for themselves, but they hang on, nothing but memories to keep them going. Then someone like Dr. Ransom throws it all away.”

  We resumed walking.

  “Just doesn't make sense,” he repeated.

  “I know,” I said. “I thought you might be able to help me make some sense of it.”

  “Me? How?”

  “By telling me what you know about her.”

  “What I know,” he said, “isn't much. She was a fine woman, always looked happy to me, always treated me well. She was devoted to that sister of hers—you don't see a lot of that. Some of them start out all noble, guilty for putting the loved one away, swearing to God they're gonna be visiting all the time, taking care of everything. But after a while of getting nothing back, they get tired, start coming less and less. Lots of them disappear completely. But not Dr. Ransom—she was always there for poor Shirlee. Every week, like clockwork, Wednesday afternoon, two to five. Sometimes two or three times a week. And not just sitting—feeding and fixing and loving that poor girl and getting nothing in return.”

  “Did anyone else ever visit Shirlee?”

  “Not a one, excepting the time she came with you. Only Dr. Ransom, like clockwork. She was the best family to one of those people I ever saw, giving, not getting. I watched her do it steadily up until the day I quit.”

  “When was that?”

  “Eight months ago.”

  “Why'd you quit?”

  “'Cause they were gonna let me go. Dr. Ransom tipped me off that the place was going to shut down. Said she appreciated all I'd done for Shirlee, was sorry she couldn't take me with her, but that Shirlee would continue to get good care. She said I'd made a big difference. Then she gave me fifteen hundred dollars cash, to show she meant it. That shows you what she was like. Makes no sense for her to get that low.”

  “So she knew Resthaven was going to close.”

  “And she was correct. Couple of weeks later, everyone else got form letters, pink slips. Dear employee. A friend of mine was working the wards—I warned her but she didn't believe me. When it happened she didn't get any notice, no severance, just bye-bye, Charlie, we're bankrupt. Out of business and so are you.”

  “Do you have any idea where Dr. Ransom took Shirlee?”

  “No, but believe me, it had to be somewhere fine—she loved that girl, treated her like a queen.” He stopped, turned grim. “With her dead, who's gonna take care of the poor thing?”

  “I don't know. I have no idea where she is. No one does.”

  “Oh, Lord. This is starting to sound mournful.”

  “I'm sure she's all right,” I said. “The family has money—did she talk much about them?”

  “Not to me she didn't.”

  “But you knew she was rich.”

  “She was paying the bills at Resthaven, she had to be. Besides, anyone could tell she had money just by looking at her—the way she dressed and carried herself. Being a doctor.”

  “Dr. Ransom was paying the bills?”

  “That's what it said right at the top of the chart: All financial correspondence to be directed to Dr. Ransom.”

  “What else was in the chart?”

  “All the therapy records—PT, OT. For a while Dr. Ransom even had a speech therapist come in but that was a waste of time—Shirlee was nowhere near talking. Same with a Braille teacher. Dr. Ransom tried everything. She loved that girl—I just can't see her destroying herself and abandoning the poor thi
ng.”

  “Was there a medical history in the chart?”

  “Just some early stuff and a summary of all the problems written out by Dr. Ransom.”

  “Any birth records?”

  He shook his head.

  “Were any other doctors involved in Shirlee's care?”

  “Just Dr. Ransom.”

  “No physicians?”

  “What do you think she was?”

  “She was a psychologist. Did she tell you she was an M.D.?”

  He thought for a while. “Come to think of it, no, she didn't. But the way she took charge of Shirlee's case, writing orders for the therapists, I just took it for granted.”

  “Shirlee must have had physical complaints. Who handled those?”

  “You'd think she would have, but funny thing was, except for all her problems, she was really healthy, had a good strong heart, good blood pressure, clear lungs. All you had to do was turn her, feed her, change her, give her postural drainage, and she'd go on forever.” He gazed up at the sky, shook his head. “Wonder where she is, poor thing.”

  “Did Dr. Ransom ever talk about the accident?”

  His eyebrows arched. “What accident is that?”

  “The drowning that caused all of Shirlee's problems.”

  “Now you lost me.”

  “She drowned when she was a small child. Dr. Ransom told me about it, said it was what caused Shirlee's brain damage.”

  “Well, I don't know about that, because what she told me was something totally different—the poor girl was born that way.”

  “Born blind and deaf and crippled?”

  “That's right, all of it. ‘Multiple congenital deformities.' Lord knows I saw it often enough, staring up from Dr. Ransom's summary.”

  He shook his head. “‘Multiple congenital deformities.' Poor thing started out that way, never any chance at all.”

  It was close to noon. I drove to a gas station nearby and used the pay phone to call Olivia's office. Mrs. Brickerman, I was informed, had returned from Sacramento but wasn't expected back in the office today. I phoned her home number, let it ring ten times, and was just ready to hang up when she picked it up, breathless.

  “Alex! I just got in. Literally. From the airport. Spent the morning taking a power breakfast with Senate aides and trying to get them to give us more money. What a bunch—if any of them had ever owned an idea, they sold it a long time ago. Cheap.”