by Eve Goldberg
Joey looked down at the ground.
“To me,” I said, “if a kid steals a gun to protect his mom, that’s an emergency.”
Joey kept silent for a while. “You think I should call him?” he whispered.
“If you want to.”
“What would I say?”
“Whatever you want. Your father seems like an intelligent man, maybe he can help you figure things out.”
“My dad is . . . he doesn’t like to be bothered too much. He’s doing important work. Plus, he’d be mad if my mom got his phone number off the bill.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go find a pay phone.”
The first phone booth we saw was at a Phillips 76 station on Sunset. I dug through my pockets, came out with a clump of change, and handed it to Joey. He closed the accordion door to the booth. Even with the door shut, I could hear his side of the conversation.
“Dad?” Joey said into the receiver. “Yeah, it’s me . . . No, everything’s okay . . . Yeah, she’s okay . . . At work. . . . Yeah, I know. . . . Uh, just that detective, Ryan . . . . Yeah. . . . I think he wants to talk to you. Okay.”
Joey opened the accordion door and handed me the phone.
“Go sit in the car,” I said.
Joey nodded. I kept an eye on the kid as he ambled back to my Falcon and got in.
“Doc Flynn?” I said.
Flynn chuckled. “So what’s going on down there, wise-guy? Joey knows he’s not supposed to call me.”
“It was my idea.”
“I figured.”
“Look, I think Joey needs help, some guidance or something. He’s getting into some bad shit.”
“Details.”
“He stole a gun.”
Total silence.
“What are you talking about?” Flynn finally said.
“Ask Joey. Talk to him. I think he’d like that.”
Flynn sighed. “You might have noticed that playing Daddy is not my strong suit.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“So, wise guy, you’re at my house in the middle of the day, hanging out with my kid, maybe sleeping with my ex —”
“No, man,” I interjected. “Nothing like that.”
“Anyway, you’re there. I’m not. What about you giving the kid some, as you say, ‘guidance’? You seem to have a decent head on your shoulders.”
“No, no, no. Not me, man.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got a life, a job.”
“Oh, so it’s like that. You need money. Of course you do. The way we live up here . . . well, money is the least of it. But I can probably dig up some cash.”
“It’s not about money. I just can’t take care of a kid.”
“Well, neither can I.”
“Someone has to.”
There was silence on the line. Joey had gotten out of the car and was headed my way.
“I want to put Joey back on,” I said. “That okay with you?”
Doc Flynn grunted a yes.
I opened the accordion door and handed Joey the phone.
“Dad? . . . Yeah, sure . . . No. . . . Yeah, I will. I promise . . . Okay . . . Bye.”
After the conversation with his father, Joey seemed dispirited.
“What’d he say?” I asked.
“Stay outta trouble, I’m the man of the house, my mom needs me to be good. You know.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
We drove back to Joey’s house and I called his mother at Pinnacle Studios. She was less than thrilled to hear from me.
“Richard called ten minutes ago,” she said, “out of the blue. He’s nagging me about taking better care of Joey — talk about the pot calling the kettle black, as if he’s around to be a parent of any kind at all — and now you. I don’t need you or anyone else accusing me of being an unfit mother.”
“I understand,” I said. “I’m just concerned about Joey.”
“What do you want me to do? I’m trying to provide for my son. I’m doing the best I can.”
“I know, but your kid had a gun.”
“And that’s the end of the world? He gave it back, no harm done. What happened to ‘boys will be boys?’ ”
I didn’t say anything.
“Okay,” she finally conceded, “so Joey made a mistake. And now that self-righteous Mrs. Busybody won’t even let him play with his best friend. As if Nicholas, just because he’s retarded, is so perfect. He’s a nice boy, but please! No, of course everything is always Joey’s fault.”
I listened to Mrs. Flynn and wondered: Was it this difficult for my mother when she was raising me? I had gotten into my share of trouble. One time, Reno and I had been caught scaling the fence at the junior high, me holding a trumpet, Reno holding a guitar that we had lifted from the music room. The cops brought me home in handcuffs. Had my mother worried about me, or just figured I’d be okay? Or had alcohol blotted it all out. Unlike Mrs. Flynn, my mother hadn’t seemed to care about what others thought of her, a single mother trying to raise her boy. Then again, she didn’t have the stigma of being divorced. Plus, she had Uncle Lou. And I had the Venice Beach surfers who took me under their wing. Who did Joey have? He was alone all day with nobody around to notice what he did. Did he get himself to Hollywood and kill a man? There was a city bus that ran all the way up Sunset, from the Palisades to Hollywood and beyond. No. It couldn’t be. Or could it?
I looked over at Joey who was lying on the couch in the sunken living room staring at the TV. Who was this kid? What was he capable of doing? I was going to have to find out.
“Hey, Joey,” I said after finishing the phone call with his mother, “I gotta go now, but do you want to hang out with me sometime, go fishing or something?”
He perked up. “Tomorrow?”
“Can’t do it tomorrow. How about the day after?”
“Okay.”
“Alright. I’ll be by day after tomorrow, in the morning.”
I headed for the door, taking one last glance at Joey. He had turned back to the TV, and was staring at it blankly.
CHAPTER 33
The next morning, I called Detective Terekov at the Hollywood station. The desk sergeant said Terekov was busy but that he’d deliver my message.
I drove downtown. I parked on Hill, dropped a couple of dimes in the meter, went around the corner to the Hall of Records.
The lobby was light and clean and spacious, with acres of pristine, polished marble floors and walls. I took the elevator down to the basement, a dark and sunless maze of even more polished marble. I’d been down here many times on errands for Lou. It was amazing what they kept down here: a century of paper detailing people’s liens, divorces, deeds, and court appearances. The clerk, a thin man with thinning hair and a grayish complexion, looked briefly at the form I put in front of him, picked it up and disappeared into a back room. I leaned against the wall and waited. The cold of the marble seeped through my shirt and put a chill on my skin.
When the clerk returned, he handed me a two-page list. I sat on a recessed marble bench and read through the document. Steve Sutton owned 17 separate parcels of property. I took the list to the adjoining room and searched through a file cabinet for each parcel map, writing down the corresponding street address for each piece of land. Sutton’s properties were scattered all across the region, from Sunland to Norwalk to Compton to Venice.
Back at the office, I spread out a road map of L.A. on my desk. I went down the list of Sutton’s properties, marking an X on the map for each one. Once all the Xs were in place, I examined the map and planned my route. I couldn’t charge the trip to my client, so I did some quick math in my head. A hundred plus miles at thirty cents a gallon, twenty miles to the gallon. I’d only be out about two dollars. It was worth it.
I started in Venice. Both of Sutton’s Venice properties were east of Electric Avenue. Electric got its name from the electric trains — they were call the Red Cars because they were painted, duh, red — that used to run all ov
er L.A. My mother used to take the Red Car to work. When they shut the system down, she had to switch to the bus, complaining for years about how much better the Red Cars were.
East of Electric was the Negro section of Venice. Officially, the neighborhood was called Oakwood, but from as far back as I can remember, everyone in Venice — black and white — called it Ghost Town. Don’t ask me why. A few years ago, some Mexican families moved into Ghost Town when construction of the 405 Freeway tore up their neighborhood and forced them out. That’s when you started seeing V-13 graffiti scrawled on walls and garage doors, V-13 standing for Venice 13, the Mexican gang. The Mexicans and Negros didn’t get along all that well, and once in a while you’d hear about knife fights, even a killing or two. But Ghost Town was Ghost Town, Venice was Venice, and we just swung with it and got on with life.
I drove by each of Sutton’s Venice properties. The first was a rundown wood frame house on Vernon. The second was a stucco 4-plex with peeling paint and missing roof shingles on Flower. An elderly Negro man sat on the stoop at the 4-plex. He was holding a paper bag wrapped around a bottle. As I pulled to the curb, he set the paper bag down on the concrete behind him.
“Hi,” I said as I walked up to him.
The man nodded. His skin was dark and leathery. He was wearing denim overalls and a white ribbed undershirt.
“Ryan Zorn,” I said, and handed him my card. “I’m a private investigator.”
The man examined the card, slowly and deliberately.
“I’m looking for Leon Vanek. They guy who collects the rent.”
“What’d he do?” The man had a slow, southern, country drawl.
“Nothing. I just need to find him.”
“Hmmm.”
“Has he been around lately?”
“Nah.”
“Have you seen him since the first?”
“Not then neither.”
“I thought he collected the rent.”
“We pay on time.”
“Does he come by to fix things, do maintenance?”
The man snorted. “Do it look like it?”
“So when does he come by?”
“Evict. Or trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Any.”
“Been any trouble around here recently?”
“Nah. No trouble.”
It was the same all over Steve Sutton’s dilapidated empire. Nobody had seen Leon lately. He only showed up to collect late rent, evict, fix the kind of problems that took muscle or the threat of it. Plumbing or electrical? Forget about it. A Mexican woman in Tujunga who lived in a shack with chickens running around the front yard told me in broken English that Leon had shoved her husband around and broken his jaw. A Negro boy in Compton said he liked Leon because Leon gave him a candy bar.
By the end of the day, I had circled L.A. I’d driven from the beach, to the Valley, to the Eastside, to the flats south of downtown, and back west again. Out of all Sutton’s seventeen properties, the only place not neglected and shabby was the apartment building in Norwalk where Leon had been the manager. It was also the only property where the tenants were white. Par for the course. Even with Leon gone, things would get fixed for the white renters in Norwalk. When I was in his office, Sutton had made a note to get that woman’s sink fixed. PLUMBER FLOWER 3.
An idea hit me.
Flower. The 4-plex.
I headed back to Venice and parked in front of Sutton’s 4-plex. As I walked towards the building, I heard Vin Scully’s voice calling a Dodgers game from a radio or TV in one of the apartments. There were two units downstairs and two up. I went upstairs and rapped on the cheap hollow door that had a #3 hanging lopsided from a single screw. When nobody answered, I went back downstairs.
The door to Unit 1 was open. Though a screen door, I could see the elderly man who had been sitting on the stoop that morning. He was playing checkers with a woman about his age whose hair was wrapped in a colorful scarf. A radio sat on the table next to the checker board broadcasting the Dodgers game.
I rapped on the screen door’s rotted wood frame. The woman started to get up, but the man put a hand on her arm and said, “I’ll get it, babe.” He walked slowly to the front door, using a cane. He nodded when he saw me, but kept the screen door shut.
“Hi,” I said. “I was here this morning.”
“I remember.”
“Anyone living in number three right now?”
The man shrugged. “Not my bizness.”
“I guess not.” I gestured towards the radio. “What’s the score?”
“Dodgers just scored eight in the sixth.”
“Who’s pitching?”
“Roebuck in relief.”
I nodded. “Thanks. Have a good evening.”
I went back up the stairs to #3. I slipped my plastic Texaco Travel Card into the door jam, pushed open the door, and went inside.
CHAPTER 34
The room was dark and reeked of cigarette smoke. All of the windows were closed and the curtains pulled shut. An old couch sagged against one wall. No table. No pictures or photos. No shelves. No books or magazines or radio or TV or phonograph. No knick-knacks, no loose change, no mail laying around. The wall-to-wall carpet, what was left of it, was stained and worn down to the matting in some places. A single metal folding chair was positioned near one end of the couch. On the seat of the chair was a beanbag ashtray filled with cigarette butts.
I went into the bedroom. There was a mattress on the floor with a rumpled blanket on top, no sheets. Next to the mattress, on the worn carpet, was another beanbag ashtray filled with ashes and butts.
The galley kitchen had just enough room for one person to stand. On the counter was a bag of unshelled peanuts and an Abba Zabba candy bar. In the fridge was a carton of milk and a few apples. The milk smelled fresh. In the trash bucket under the sink was an empty package of Marlboros and an apple core.
I walked back into the main room and sat on the couch. A lonely feeling came over me. I tried to shake it, but the feeling stuck to me like the nicotine on the ratty drapes. I imagined what Leon’s life was like, living here in a dark, smoke-filled room, sustaining himself on candy bars and cigarettes . . . and something else.
Leon was a man on a mission.
CHAPTER 35
The phone was ringing when I got home. I’d been driving around all day; I was tired and hungry; but my first thought was: I hope it’s Julie.
“Ryan, I’ve got the intel you wanted.”
It was Max Fisher, my Hollywood connection and Allison’s father. For a moment, I couldn’t remember what I had asked him to find out for me. Luckily, Max kept rolling.
“I called a pal of mine over at Columbia who’s up on everything,” he said. “Looks like our man Dargin was canned because he refused to hire Lester Cole for a picture. The producer wanted Cole. So did the director. Even the big wigs in New York wanted Cole. But Dargin flat out refused.”
“He lost his job over a writer?”
“Lester Cole wasn’t just any writer. He was one of The Ten.”
The Ten. My mind was blank. THE TEN. It was something I felt I should know, but no picture, no words, floated in to fill the void. Think, Ryan. Don’t be a dope. I could hear the waves roll in on the other end of the line. Max must have been on the extension with the long cord that reached out to the deck. Allison used to take the phone out there when we wanted to talk in private. I pictured Malibu’s smooth right break, the perfect waves to cross-step up the board, curl all ten toes over the nose . . .
“The Hollywood Ten,” I said. “They went to prison for not answering HUAC’s questions.”
“Exactly,” Max said. “And, by not answering, by invoking their First Amendment rights, they showed HUAC to be precisely what it was: a political witch hunt cloaked in Congressional clothing.”
“So Dargin has a grudge against old Commies?” I ventured.
“That’s putting it mildly. Guys like Dargin would just as soon eve
rybody to the left of Nixon be shipped off to another planet. One without oxygen, if possible.” Max chuckled. “He must have really blown his top over the thought of hiring a real Red like Cole.”
“Sounds like Dargin is an extremist.”
“Not for 1950.”
“But we’re not in 1950 anymore.”
Max laughed. “How right you are. I guess our man Dargin hasn’t gotten the news. It ain’t the 50s anymore, Victor. McCarthy’s dead. Trumbo got screen credit for Exodus and Spartacus. For god’s sake, we have a Catholic president!”
“So Dargin is willing to lose his cushy movie job over politics.”
“Which, in a perverse way, you’ve got to admire. He took a stand. I mean The Ten went to prison over ideological issues, of course for them it was about freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation, whereas for Dargin it’s the antithesis. It’s fear of free speech, fear of new ideas, fear of things he doesn’t understand. He’s what I call a fear-man.”
“A fear man . . . ” I liked the sound of it. I had only met Victor Dargin a couple of times, but I had a sense that the term fit.
“Of course,” Max continued, “these are just the humble speculations of a lowly television writer. I figure a fear-man like Dargin, the more power he gets, the more he fears losing it.”
“Seems to me that getting fired is more like losing power, not keeping it.”
“That’s the ironic beauty of it all. Dargin is a dinosaur. Tyrannosaurus Darginitis. Thrashing about in the swamp, the ground shifting beneath him. The more he thrashes, the further he sinks. It’s the end of an era, Ryan, and good riddance to it. Mark my words, ever since the Supreme Court ruled on Brown versus the . . . ”
I could tell that Max was revving up for an extended political monologue.“Max,” I interrupted, “did your friend say anything else about Dargin?”
“Just that they’re taking bets on tonight.”
“Bets?”
“Yup. UA’s having a private screening of the new McQueen picture tonight, some World War II epic. Dargin was invited before he got the ax. Some pals of mine are taking bets whether he’ll have the balls to show up. He’s not very well liked around town.”
