by Jerry Ludwig
* * *
I’ve just told David about Keeler getting fired—and withdrawing as Leo’s alibi. We’re drinking coffee at the catering truck on the Western street and he can see how shook up I am.
“It doesn’t fit,” he says. “Sure, Leo’s a liar, but I still don’t see him as a killer.”
I desperately want to be reassured. He’s still my father. And then I remember why I hurried over here. I hand David the telex from the Navy Department. He reads the single sentence. “Subject Axel Atherton, then stationed San Diego, deceased 11/17/45 in non-service-related event.”
Before he can spiral down into disappointment, I ask him: “What sort of ‘event’ would that be?”
A glimmer flickers in his eyes. Not excitement. But a faint hope. We’re probably clutching at straws, but what else do we have?
CHAPTER
36
MCKENNA
It’s been an irritating wheel-spinning morning. Alcalay phoned early with an invitation. He’d gotten a search warrant for David Weaver’s car and insisted I accompany him to Panorama. Without notifying Weaver, we found his car in his assigned spot in the rear parking lot and went through it. We found a black marking pen under a bunch of maps in the glove compartment. Like the one that wrote the movie title signs.
“Terrific, I’ve got one in my car, too,” I mocked Alcalay. But it sailed past him. He was too intent on gathering even a quasi-morsel of “proof.”
I also mentioned a new thought. “Know something, Ray, without the sign about The Informer and the reference to number two, we might not have plugged into the Wendy Travers hit and the whole Blacklist slant on this case.”
But he treated that point as a sidetracking distraction. He concentrated on wrapping Weaver’s pen in an evidence bag, we both initialed it, and he took it back to his lab. He’s like a dog with a bone.
But only about some things. Take Weaver’s alibi, for example.
After my initial interview with Weaver, I’d told Alcalay the meager details he offered as to his whereabouts on the night of Shannon’s murder. I suggested LAPD send out troops to either verify or disprove his alibi. Alcalay seemed lukewarm on the idea, so I again offered to provide Bureau manpower. Again he scoffed at “allowing in more Fat Boys.”
He said, “I’ll take care of it.”
Couple of days later I asked, and Alcalay hadn’t gotten around to it. Obviously his way of taking care of it. So that night I went saloon-hopping alone with a photo of David Weaver. I followed the sketchy route as Weaver had described it.
The bartender at Musso’s scanned the photo and said he remembered David. “I told him he looked familiar, turns out he’s Teddy Weaver’s son.” Yes, it was definitely that night, he recalled other people who were there at the same time.
Okay, that much checked out—David Weaver did start here. I worked my way down Hollywood Boulevard. It used to be a fashionable shopping street, with exclusive men’s stores on one side of the boulevard and women’s on the other. Now it’s gone honky-tonk with hookers, street freaks, and runaways on the sidewalks, lots of liquor stores, magic shops, sleazy soft-porn and gross-out T-shirt emporiums. The anchor store is risqué Frederick’s of Hollywood, featuring edible underwear. And a shitload of saloons, which I methodically visited.
In a pub near Cahuenga, a bartender thought maybe David had been in, but he couldn’t be sure. No one in any of the joints south of Cahuenga down to Sunset sparked to the photo. Then Weaver’s memory supposedly got hazy. But I canvassed saloons on Sunset for blocks in both directions. No results. So I hopped to Western Avenue, where Weaver recalled coming into focus again with his knuckles raw. I tried every bar down to Beverly Boulevard. Not one bartender or cocktail waitress could ID David Weaver.
So that’s where it wound up. Still gaping holes in the alibi. With ample unaccounted time for him to have detoured over to rack up Shannon—as Weaver himself admitted he’d been seriously considering. I felt disappointed. Guess I was hoping to balance the ledger on Weaver after my early blurt to Hoover and also to show up Alcalay’s slipshod methods.
I did mention my search to him the next day, thinking he’d be embarrassed.
Alcalay shrugged. “See, told you it was a waste of time. C’mon, a guy says he went on a toot but don’t remember where or how. That’s a horseshit alibi if I ever heard one.”
Asshole.
Do I believe the kid is innocent? Well, at this point I refuse to even consider that question. I’m just being thorough and evenhanded. Like Sgt. Joe Friday says on Dragnet, “Just the facts, ma’am.” But I wonder if my galloping around from one bar to another was also to counter Kathleen’s criticism.
* * *
Now I’m back in my cubicle, checking accumulated mail. More routine crap. But there’s a reply from the Navy Department to my query. Able Seaman Axel Atherton, while stationed in San Diego, died in 1945 of a non-service-related event. That’s what I call an alibi. I’ll fax it to Alcalay so he can toss it in the dead letter section of his Shannon file, as I’m going to do.
The phone rings. It’s Tom Churillo in D.C. He’s effusive. “You’re doin’ it, Mac! Found your comet! Just want to let you know it’s looking great for me to bring you aboard. Hoover can’t stop talking about your case, says he’s so glad you’re our man on the scene. I mean, he’s carrying on like you’re about to take down Machine Gun Kelly.”
He tells me to keep up the good work. I don’t tell him anything about my hassles with the locals. After the call, I sit there thinking I should be feeling better than I do. But I don’t. Not yet.
I call my sister because I want to complain to someone about Alcalay and the stupid marking pen, and she’s the only one I can think of. I’m looking for sympathy. But she lumps us together.
“What are you doing, Brian?” Kathleen asks,
She doesn’t shout. That would be better. She sounds disappointed in me. She’s at her desk in the public defender’s office in Van Nuys.
“We had a warrant,” I assure her. “Alcalay gussied up a request to toss the car. I was surprised a judge would sign it, but he did.”
“But what are you doing?” she repeats. “What happened to innocent until proven guilty? What happened to the full-on investigation that was going to happen? Follow all the leads? Not just the ones with David Weaver’s name on ’em.”
I’ve told her quite a bit about Weaver. Some details I volunteered, the rest she pried out of me. Maybe that’s what I wanted her to do. I’ve been using her as a sounding board. I remind her how I trudged around Hollywood a whole night trying to check out Weaver’s alibi.
“Don‘t take a bow for that! It’s what you’re supposed to do. Instead of ganging up with the goon squad. Look, here’s a kid who was banished from his own country, went through who-knows-what in Korea, he’s buried his mother and now his father, he comes back here looking for his girl—and suddenly the full weight of The System is bearing down on him. Who’s looking out for him? Suppose it was Donnie, this Weaver kid’s not that much older than he is, would you think Donnie was getting a fair shake?”
“Hey, I’m just one cog in the wheel.”
“That was Declan’s rationale.”
Throwing that bastard in my face? “What’s he got to do with—”
“Remember what he always said? ‘Kid, y’gotta go along to get along.’ We didn’t know what Declan meant back then. The corruption that he was justifying. That’s not why you and I signed up for the jobs we have, Bri. We said we were going to make a difference.”
“What do you want from me, Kath?!”
“To thine own self be true!” She hits me with that golden oldie again. “Just ask yourself now and then—how much is that big job in D.C. really worth to you?”
It’s a jagged end to the call. After I hang up, I make busy work, but I’m furious. Imagine comparing me to Declan, that fuckin’ travesty of a cop. But I can’t duck her basic question. What ever happened to the super-cop I set out to be? Where’s he
gone?
My phone rings and I’m sure it’s Kathleen with another sermon, but the hesitant voice on the line is one that I never expected to hear again and it instantly banishes the Shannon case.
“Brian,” she says, “it’s Ashley.”
* * *
The stately old Biltmore Hotel faces Pershing Square in the bustling center of downtown L.A. only a mile or so from my office. The clubby, mahogany, old-money dining room is jammed for lunch today. I had to pull strings not only to get a table, but a good booth. I’m already sitting there—ten minutes before we’re scheduled to meet. Ashley arrives seven minutes early. A good sign.
I don’t spot her at first, but then all the hot-footing waiters and table-hopping conventioneers shift out of focus and melt away. All I see in delightful detail is her walking toward me. Almost in slow motion. Arms and hips swinging, those fabulous legs encased in silk; she’s wearing a robin’s egg blue suit that perfectly matches her eyes, ash blond hair shoulder length, longer than I remembered. I realize that time had hazed my memory of how beautiful she was, but here she is to remind me.
I stand up in the aisle—she holds out both her hands, I take them in mine. Cordial greeting, if anyone’s looking. Like good old friends. My cheek brushes against hers, inhaling the familiar scent of Shalimar, feeling the rush of all the old feelings.
We sit down in the booth and for a long moment it’s a smiling contest to see who can send the warmest, wordless greeting. I wave away the waiter with an order for two dry martinis, Tanqueray gin. She’s pleased that I remembered. We start talking as if a dozen years have not intervened.
A strange thing happens as we talk: I’m raptly tuned into what she’s saying, but I’m also outside looking in, gleaning subtext in her every utterance. At least I think I am. I hope I am.
“I’ve never been in Southern California before and you’re the only one I know here,” she tells me lightly with lots of dimple. She’s on her way back to Detroit from a vacation in Hawaii with some girlfriends. She landed in San Francisco to visit her son. “So I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”
What I hear is she came hundreds of miles out of her way to see me. And she definitely likes what she sees. I’m entranced with the way her lips move as she speaks.
“I’m very proud of my son,” she tells me. Kim spent last summer in Mississippi registering black voters. Now he’s a social worker in Haight-Ashbury.
What I hear is that she’s no longer worried about him. That obstacle to our being together is gone. Her face is still flawless. Her skin almost luminous.
“Rudy hates how Kim turned out,” she tells me, “calls him a brainless beatnik.”
What I hear is that the marriage has endured but not improved. She puts a cigarette between her lips and I light it. As I did the first time we spoke at that long-ago party.
“Rudy inherited a lot of money when his father died,” she tells me. He retired from the Bureau and started a security company. Big corporate clients in a tri-state area now, he travels a lot on business.
What I hear is that Rudy is still cheating on her. I’m aching to touch her.
“What about you?” she asks. “Has L.A. worked out for you?”
“Let’s just say I’ve enjoyed about as much of it as I can stand.”
She laughs. That throaty chuckle. “That’s how I feel about Detroit.”
What I hear are words that send my pulse racing. The waiter is approaching us with his pad.
“Are you hungry?” I ask her.
“Not for anything they have on the menu.”
For a second I think I only heard that inside my head. But she really said it.
* * *
We don’t have far to go. She has a corner suite on the seventh floor that costs more per night than I earn in a month. A great view of the city, if that’s what you’re interested in. We’ve got the drapes drawn in the bedroom and we’re swimming in each other. The first time is a frenzy of groping, pounding, gasping, racing to a mutual climax. Desperate to confirm we’re together again. Then we lie there spent and content, fingertips exploring each other, reestablishing the closeness we once had. Is everything the way we recall it? Is it really you?
When we make love again, it’s tender and unhurried. A pair of synchronized dancers. Pacing, delaying, quietly reveling as if it can go on endlessly, and at the end she’s smiling as tears slip down her face.
“Something wrong?” I say.
She shakes her head. “Just—happy.” But the tears splay across her cheeks.
I wipe the tears away with the heel of my hand and kiss her gently. Feeling such gratitude that she’s come back to me. Until this moment I haven’t realized how shut down I’ve become.
* * *
The exquisitely tiled tub in the spacious bathroom is almost as big as a pond in the park. We’re doing it in the water. Like primal creatures alone in the forest. Afterwards, still embracing, with me still inside her, water up to our shoulders, she murmurs, “Wish this could go on forever.”
“Why can’t it?” I ask.
“I’m booked on a red-eye flight tonight.”
“Cancel. There are lots of planes.”
She tells me she’s hostessing a party tomorrow night at the mansion in Detroit for a bunch of Rudy’s big clients. That’s their arrangement. He leaves her alone. In return, she makes the necessary public appearances. She has unlimited use of the credit cards, neither of them asks the other questions. They’re at home together as little as possible. He does whatever he does elsewhere, and so does she.
What I hear are the barren dimensions of her life. Like an echo of my own. “Don’t go back,” I whisper in her ear.
“A deal’s a deal,” she says as she rolls off me. We’re shoulder to shoulder in the water now and she stares off.
She tells me she maintains a full social schedule, charity luncheons, golf and tennis foursomes at the country club with the girls, no fooling around at home, saving those activities for the cabana boys in Cancun or Belize or the Bahamas. She tells me she drinks far too much, her vacation visit in Hawaii was spent drying out, again, at a rehab clinic.
“None of that matters,” I say. “Not now.”
She just stares off.
“We missed our chance before, Ashley, but—”
She interrupts. “Not we, Brian, I missed our chance.” Ashley climbs out of the tub and wraps a bath sheet around her as if it’s a suit of armor. “I’ve got to go back. It’s too late for me to start over.”
What I hear is what I absolutely refuse to accept: finality and mournful resignation. It tears at my guts. No. I can’t lose her again.
* * *
I’m talking as fast as I can. There isn’t much time left. We’re walking down the airport corridor toward her departure gate. I’ve got to convince her. She’s just scared, bruised by the years; I can make her reach out for this chance, I know I can.
I tell her about the major investigation I’m working on now, how that’s going to get me a big promotion, a top job in Washington, D.C. That beats small-minded Detroit and phony-bullshit L.A., right? Just think about it, Ashley, even if Rudy cuts you off without a penny I’ll be making real money then, we can be happy there together, it can be like today always.
Before she walks through the doorway onto the plane she turns and we embrace and I kiss her for a long moment to let her know this is only the beginning, our new beginning, our forever is starting now. When our faces part I gaze into her eyes.
“Give us a chance, Ashley. Just think about it, okay?”
“Okay,” she says. Do I see a flicker of hope? “Let’s talk on the phone,” she says. “See how things work out.”
Then she’s gone. I stand at the wall of glass staring off into the night as the plane taxis away. It can’t end like this. I must find the way to get her back. It’s all intertwined with this fuckin’ case. My whole life can come together if it works out right.
CHAPTER
37
DAVID
Atherton, Axel Atherton, yeah, sure, I remember, just a run-of-the-mill unsolved homicide. I’m surprised Hollywood is interested in that tired old tale. Feisty Ron Gorman is a retired San Diego detective sergeant. Now he’s a bartender at the Tip Toe Inn, a cop saloon in the Gaslight District of the laid-back beach city. He’s looking curiously at the two of us.
Jana and I have driven to San Diego after she checked the 1945 newspaper files of The San Diego Union. First looking up the date of Atherton’s death, according to the Navy Department report. No mention in the paper for 11/17/45 or several days after. Then a week later, a small story on page eleven stating that the dead man found two days before buried in the scrub brush near the Mexican border had been identified as a U.S. sailor assigned to the San Diego Naval Station. Axel Atherton.
Sarge Gorman, who is polishing the bar top in the near-deserted afternoon quiet, was mentioned in the newspaper reports as lead investigator back then.
Jana tells him that, as research for a possible Panorama movie, we’re interested in any details that didn’t make it into the newspaper. He’s proud of his memory and it’s surprisingly good. Atherton was struck repeatedly by a blunt instrument. Massive head injuries. Stripped naked, the civvies clothes he was wearing and all identifying items gone. “Never did find ’em,” Gorman recalls. “Coyotes had uncovered the shallow grave. A Boy Scout troop on a hike found what was left. Police lab founds semen stains on Atherton’s crotch, so we figured it was the usual.”
“The usual what?” Jana probes. Gorman clearly likes to talk to pretty Jana. It’s like I’m not here.
“The usual weekend in those days. It used to be kind of wild around here, particularly on payday at the naval base. So a sailor gets picked up by a hooker, gets ambushed by her pimp, gets rolled for the greenbacks in his pocket. If he’s real unlucky he gets killed.”
Jana asks Gorman if they worked up a time line. They did, but it didn’t go much of anywhere. Atherton and a sailor buddy went into town together. Hit a few saloons. The buddy drank too much, got the upchucks, took off back to the base. Last thing he saw was Atherton and an off-duty marine from Camp Pendleton buying drinks for a busty blonde in a crowded bar. End of time line.
