Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective

by Don Pendleton

  Let him have it, you say. Let them all have what they want. I mean, you are God; you can afford it. Right? You are the one who started this whole thing and it has nowhere to go except where you aimed it in the beginning. Right? No matter what any of them may want at any given time, that's okay because it's only temporary; eternity is a long time for working things out so all the pieces will come together sooner or later.

  It's a smart machine and it knows what it has to do to reach the goal.

  You are God and you built it with those three in mind.

  But tell me, now. Tell me honestly. Which one of those guys did you respect the most?

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Echoes on the Wind

  Comedians have long enjoyed the names of the communities in the San Gabriel Valley, and they have extracted a lot of mileage from them.

  "Do you mind if I go to town, dear?"—"I don't care if you go to Cucamonga, my love."

  "No, I didn't say I wanted to lose ya. I said I'd rather be in Azusa."

  The tradition lives on, with George Burns in a recent TV commercial where he assures us that the Visa card is accepted worldwide...even in West Covina.

  It's all in fun, of course, with no put-down intended. They just like the ring of the names. All are actually very lovely communities that have moved with the times but still provide a pleasant small-town atmosphere at the fringe of me- gatropolis L.A.

  Azusa is nestled into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains just minutes east of Pasadena. Close neighbors are the City of Hope and Santa Anita race track. Nearby also are various recreational and wilderness areas. And it looks like it would be a nice place to live—broad avenues lined with stately palms, quiet residential streets with neat lawns and riotously blooming shrubs and trees—good place to raise kids, I would think. You still see white frame cottages nestled in with newer stucco and brick, these neighborhoods giving way here and there to spanking new condo and town- house developments, apartment complexes, etc.

  The old central business district has sadly gone the way of most small towns in this area today, defeated by the trend toward dispersal and the proliferation of upscale shopping malls and trade centers, reduced now to the low-rent business sector and featuring a lot of antique stores, specialty shops, and empty buildings. But it's still an interesting town and very much alive. It officially bills itself as "the canyon city"—referring to San Gabriel Canyon which cuts through the mountains at that point for access to the wilderness areas, the north slope, and high desert towns like Pear- blossom, Littlerock, and Antelope Center. There are Indian signs all through that canyon but apparently nobody knows who put them there or when.

  I went crawling in there at three a.m. and found a small motel on Foothill Boulevard. Had to get the guy out of bed to rent me a room. It was clean, adequate. All I wanted was a nap, a shower, and a shave—and that's all I got; I was out of there at eight o'clock, had breakfast in a Winchell's Donut Shop, then went looking for the real Ann Marie Mathison.

  I found a guy at city hall who remembered "the movie cowboy couple" who'd come from Hollywood to open a riding academy in the canyon but he knew very little about them; he sent me to the local historical society and they sent me to the local newspaper office who referred me to their microfilm files at the local library.

  Everyone was very cooperative and wanted to be helpful but let's face it, thirty-five years is a long time and Azusa was not a one-horse town even that long ago. I did find a one-line mention of Ann Marie's birth but that is all I had found after a two-hour search of the old weekly newspapers.

  So I took a drive up along the canyon road. The deep gash through those mountains was obviously cut by the San Gabriel River from time out of mind as it carried the seasonal run-off of melting snow from the high elevations. In modern times there had been disastrous floods from that river until the hand of man tamed it and corraled the waters behind monstrous dams. Now the San Gabriel from Morris Dam south is a dry rocky bed. The canyon road skirts high along the western face of the wide gorge and is something of a misnomer if you think of a canyon road as a trail that runs along the bottom of the gorge. What runs along the bottom of that gorge is not fit for travel by man or machine—and once you reach the first dam, which seems to rise several hundred feet above the canyon floor, there is more than a hundred thousand acre-feet of water backed up into several reservoirs; the road runs high above those.

  I did not travel beyond that point—several miles above Azusa—but turned around and headed back because there simply was no habitation in that canyon. I had passed a couple of horse properties at the edge of town; possibly one of those could have been the Mathison place.

  I had no vibes at all. But Selma had advised me to go to Azusa so I was there and just flailing around. And I guess I got lucky. Because I struck vibes at the first stop.

  It sat across the dry riverbed upon a small knoll, a really beautiful spread with plenty of shade trees and white corrals, a dozen or so horses in individual stalls and a gorgeous two-story house behind a white picket fence—but it all looked fairly new so I had no illusions that this could be the place where Tony and Maizey had sought refuge from the vicissitudes of tinseltown. I was flailing, though, so I went on through the gate and up the steps and punched the doorbell. I punched it several times, received no response, decided what the hell, returned to the car and stood there gazing about for a few seconds then leaned in and laid on the horn.

  An aged black man shuffled around the corner of the house and laid a disgusted gaze on me; said, testily, "Ain't nobody home here, man. Can't you see?" He wore crisp clean overalls and spit-shined shoes, a napkin at his throat; held a chicken leg in one hand and a biscuit in the other.

  I stepped back into the yard and joined him in the shade of an oak; told him, "Sorry to disturb your lunch."

  "I ain't buying nothing, man," he said defensively. "Ain't nobody else here that can. So you best just spend your time on down the road there."

  This guy must have been eighty. Uncle Remus in the flesh, cottony hair and all, but tall and straight and proud and a very intelligent gleam in the eyes. That is when I got the vibe.

  "I'm not selling," I told him. "I'm searching."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  "What you after?"

  "I'm after Maizey McCall."

  He chuckled; said, "Shit," then turned around and walked away.

  I followed him to a redwood table in the backyard, sat down, helped myself to a tall glass of iced tea.

  He gleamed at me and said, "Just help yo'self."

  I said, "Okay," and took a drumstick from a Colonel Sanders box. "Call me Ash," I said, around the drumstick.

  He nibbled at his; said, "I'm Ben," then nibbled some more while he told me, "She was somethin' else, that woman. But she been gone the longest time."

  I asked, "Where'd she go?"

  "I seen her on television once or twice. Oh my, that's been..."

  I said, "About thirty years ago."

  "I guess so. Yes I guess so."

  "This her place?"

  "Lord no. She done sold that place when she went back to work on television. It ain't been around here for the longest time. They done built some new little houses on that propitty—you come up from town?"

  I said, "Yeah."

  "Then you come past it. Used to be the T bar M, best damn saddle horses west of El Paso; now it's Canyon Country Estates or some damn thing like that. You come right past it."

  "Did you know Tony, too?"

  He nibbled the drumstick clean then replied, "He give me the job. I mean right off. He come to town one day, I got the job the next. Best damn saddle horses west of El Paso."

  "He knew horses, then."

  "The best. Best I ever seen. Not like me. I feed 'em and carry their water. That man tells them saddle horses how to act. Let me tell you, whoo-eee, them damn saddle horses don't give him no sass back. They just do it."

  “Too bad he had to die so young.”

&n
bsp; "Yah-suh, that's a fact, that man was too young to die."

  "Especially with the new baby and all."

  "That's a fact." He chuckled. "Especially..."

  "What?"

  "That miracle baby."

  "What do you mean, Ben?"

  He chuckled again and reached for another drumstick. "Just help yo'self."

  I said, "I'm fine, thanks. What about—?"

  "These are nice folks here. I got my own apartment. I got my own garage, my own car. Come and go as I please, if'n I don't stay too long. Don't feed no horses, don't carry no water. Don't even shovel no shit."

  "What do you do, then?"

  "I am ree-tired."

  "Really!"

  "That's a fact. Carried water and shoveled shit for these folks for twenty years. They say that's enough. Now I just reelax and keep an eye on the place when they gone. Like now."

  "That's great," I said. "Beats hell out of an old folks home."

  "That's a fact."

  "Uh, you were telling me about the miracle baby, Ben."

  "That's what she done called it, sho."

  "Why did she call it that?"

  "Well, because they all done said she ain't gonna have no babies, that's why."

  "Who all said that?"

  "All them fancy doctors. She seen 'em all, I guess. One after the other. After they all get done telling her she ain't gonna have no babies, then she up and has one all by herself with no help from them. So that child was a miracle, she said."

  "What did the doctors say about it?"

  "Whoo-eee. I guess they faces is red. Old Doc Timkins here, he sho was."

  I said, "Is Doc Timkins still around?"

  "If he is he must have both feet in the grave. That's a fact. 'Cause I got one in, and he always been old Doc to me."

  I said, "Ben... thank you for sharing lunch with me."

  "You got enough?"

  "I got plenty," I assured him.

  And I went away from there convinced that I had, even though it was no more than a word upon the winds of time.

  "Different," Selma had told me, of Ann Marie.

  How different?

  "Miracle," Ben said.

  That was different enough for me. But I sure wanted a shot at old Doc Timkins.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Shades of Difference

  I stopped at the first pay phone and contacted Francois. He was beside himself with anger and frustration. His legal team was continuing to battle a stone wall in their attempts to have Annie released. Complicating that situation further, the D.A. was now preparing to file additional murder charges. I advised Francois that I might be onto something and suggested that he simmer down and let due process run its course.

  Francois suggested that I was crazy as hell if I thought that he could relax for a moment with Annie behind bars. He also suggested that maybe I was a bit too relaxed.

  I suggested a place where Francois might go and ended the conversation on that note.

  Then I called my own number and told the machine to cough up my messages. There were two: one from Paul Stewart and the other from a female assistant D.A. named Alvarez. The message was the same from both: come in and let's talk.

  It was shortly past noon when I made the third call, this (me to the county medical association's physician's referral service. I was looking for Timkins, of course, and they had two of them in their registry; one was in Santa Monica and the other in Glendora, a community neighboring Azusa, both in general practice.

  So I called Glendora. The woman I talked to there assured me that her Dr. Timkins could not possibly have been in practice in Azusa or anywhere else in the early 1950s because he had not been born by that time.

  Then the doctor himself came on the line, pleasant and helpful, wondering if maybe I was looking for his grandfather who had practiced medicine in the area for more than forty years before his retirement in 1964.

  I said yes, that must be the one, too bad, and when did he die.

  Young Dr. Timkins corrected my hasty conclusion, informing me that the old boy was hale and hearty at ninety-one and from every indication would outlive us all.

  That revelation sent me into a whole new set of shivers and an interesting interview with Jud Timkins.

  He still lives in Azusa, though now in a very lovely private nursing home. He does not see too well and does not always appear to hear what is said to him but he gets around under his own power and the mental faculties seem sharp enough except for occasional lapses. Stacks of medical journals and newsmagazines in his sitting room indicate that he is keeping up with the world about him. We move out to the front lawn with bottles of root beer and sit beneath a giant flowering acacia; the old boy seems delighted to have someone to talk to.

  "You've seen a lot of changes in this valley, Jud," I suggest, just to get the conversation flowing.

  His voice is firm but he has to ration the breath just a bit if he speaks more than five words in a stream. "Sure have. Born here, you know. Mostly agriculture, back then. Grapes. Citrus. Town wasn't even laid out 'till '87, incorporated in '98. Yes. I've seen changes."

  "You're older than the town, then."

  He chuckles. "I'm older than God himself."

  "You went to medical school in...?"

  "Right after World War I. Hung out my shingle in '25. Right up here on Azusa Avenue. Stayed in the same office forty years."

  "Long time, Jud," I observe admiringly.

  "Seems like forty days."

  "Really?"

  "Yes. 'Cept for the nagging. That was good for forty lifetimes."

  I grin. "Expect to have that many?"

  He chuckled again. "Why not?"

  "Who nagged you?"

  "Everybody nagged me. Do this. Get that. Buy more. Doctor less. Retire, retire, retire. Hell, no man should ever retire, especially no professional man. It's a shame to just throw away all that experience. I can still tell more from a look into your eyes than most of these kids today can ever know with all their damned machines. Of course..." Chuckle. "... I may not be able to see your eyes."

  "Does it bother you to be old, Jud?"

  "Bothers me to be broken-down. It's undignified to be old. Nothing works like it should. Being very old is like being very young."

  "How's that?"

  "Nothing works like it should for a baby, either. Can't feed himself. Drools and shits his pants. Can't walk, can't talk—just sits there and grins or sits there and complains. It's the same."

  "You seem to be doing okay," I say.

  "It comes and goes. One of these days it will just keep on going, and I can't say that I mind the idea."

  I take a pull at the root beer. "How do you feel about immortality?"

  He smiles and replies, "I'm all for it."

  "Seriously."

  "Seriously?" Another little smile. "I was a medical doctor forty years, Ford."

  "Uh huh."

  "I've seen it all. Brains, intestines, every organ, every bone. I've seen it all."

  "Uh huh."

  "But I never saw a soul."

  "I hear the soul is invisible."

  "I never saw one."

  "Ever see a miracle?"

  "Saw those all the time, sure. Patients who had no medical reason to be alive but kept on living anyway. Patients who had died, I mean medically died, but started living again. Sure. Happens all the time. We doctors don't talk a lot about those cases because it makes us a bit less than God and some of us can't take that. But it happens all the tune."

  I gave him time to catch his breath, then ask, "Remember Maybelle Mathison?"

  "Who?"

  "Also known as Maizey McCall. Stunt rider in the movies."

  "Oh her. Sure. Well, she'd messed herself up. Too many injuries. Those crazy stunts. I don't know why people treat themselves that way. Death wish, maybe. I've often wondered ..."

  "Maizey wanted to have a baby, though."

  "Sure she did. They all do, after they've fixed it so there's no
way they can."

  "What was Maizey's particular problem, Jud?"

  Maybe he does not hear that because he just takes a breath and plunges on. "Figures have been about the same for as far back as the record goes. One in six. That's the odds. Census figures from a century ago bear it out. Not a modern phenomenon; probably always been that way from the dawn of time. One in six marriages is childless. That's bad enough odds, wouldn't you say. But then she goes out there and throws herself off moving horses, tumbles down hillsides, all that crazy stuff, then comes to me in tears because she can't make a baby."

  "But you helped her."

  "No, I couldn't help her. Went through the usual stuff. Called in an OB—did the BBT and the semen check, tried counseling, tried—"

  "What is a BBT?"

  He is talking and obviously thinking like a doctor, now. "Basal Body Temperature charts, to determine ovulation. She was okay there, like clockwork. Did a sperm count on her husband, that was okay. Found the trouble with a tubal insufflation. That's where we pump a gas into the uterus and listen to hear it escaping through the Fallopian tubes into the abdominal cavity. If it doesn't move, you know the tubes are blocked. She was totally blocked, both tubes. Inoperable, in those days. We recommended that she adopt and we closed the book on her."

  "We?"

  "Me and these two obstetricians. Two because she wanted a second opinion. But she wanted more opinions than that, I guess. About a dozen more, from what I heard."

  "So she did find help."

  "Not medical help, no, not possible. We simply did not know enough back then to do the sort of things being done today for infertile women. The first test-tube baby was born in England in about '78."