Vertical Coffin s-4

by Stephen J. Cannell

  She looked at me with shrewd distrust. "What dis be about?" she said. " 'Nother nigger goin' down?"

  "No ma'am, the Smileys were Caucasian."

  Maybe she was glad to see some white assholes finally getting popped, or maybe she just wanted to be done with me. Either way, she blurted out the answer:

  "Try the Phillips. They 'cross the street on the corner. Been here forever."

  Then, without waiting for my thank you, she slammed the door in my face.

  Across the street I saw a set of curtains close. You could almost feel a warning pulsing through the neighborhood. Cop on the block. How many eyes were watching me? Hard to say. I felt exposed, like a soldier caught behind enemy lines. I walked up on the Phillips' front porch and rang the doorbell.

  "Who is it?" a high-pitched man's voice yelled.

  My estimate? Seventy-five at least. Call that my last guess. One for the road.

  "Police," I called through the door. "Mr. Phillips, I have a few questions about a case we're working. Maybe you can help us," trying to sound like Ed McMahon delivering a million dollars.

  After a moment I heard half a dozen latches being thrown. The door creaked and a very old man was standing in front of me. His skin was so white I could see blue veins on the backs of his hands and around his temples. I'd undershot my guess by at least twenty years. A complete Magoo-round, hunched, half blind, and almost bald, he was dressed in a frayed checkered shirt, tan slacks, and old tennis shoes. A hearing aid the size of a bottle cap stuck out of his right ear, and thick, horn-rimmed magnifiers rode his bony nose.

  "What was that you said?" he shouted at me, reaching for the volume on his hearing aid.

  "Can I come in, sir?" I held up my badge.

  He squinted at it. "Pasadena police?"

  "Los Angeles."

  "Fucking drugstore glasses," he mumbled.

  Without saying anything further, he turned and hobbled into his living room.

  I followed, breathing in Vicks VapoRub and mildew.

  "Who is it, Albert?" a woman shrilled from the back.

  "I got it. Go back to yer soaps," he yelled.

  We sat on his uncomfortable coil-sprung sofa and he leaned forward.

  "We don't give to no charities," he shouted, without warning. "Police included. Food Stamps. Social Security. You want money from us, gonna have to knock out our teeth and steal our fillings." Then he laughed. It was a strange, high-pitched, braying hee-hee.

  "No sir. This isn't for money. It's about a case we're working on."

  "A what?" He leaned in and again cranked up the volume on his hearing aid. It started screeching, but he didn't seem to notice.

  "Sir, I think you should maybe turn that down a little."

  He looked at me, blinking like a lizard on a flat, rock, but made no attempt to adjust the volume.

  I plunged on. "Do you remember the Smileys?" I asked loudly. "Stanley and Edna? They lived across the street at 2346 back in 'eighty-eight or 'eighty-nine."

  "Right," he said. But I wasn't sure he'd heard me.

  "Edna and Stanley Smiley," I repeated.

  "Yeah-that fucking plumber," he said. "I had him work on this place once. Fucked up everything. Had shit running out the overflow pipe in the backyard. We was on septics back then."

  "Do you remember their child? He would've been about eleven or twelve."

  "Which one?"

  "What?"

  "Which kid? Had two-boy and a girl."

  "A boy and a girl?" I said, taking out my notebook.

  "Ain't that just what I said? What's wrong? Y'deaf?" He actually said that to me while his hearing aid was wailing like an air-raid siren.

  "How old was the girl?"

  "Shit-how do I know? They was little kids 'bout eight or ten, both around the same age."

  "Albert, who is it?" the woman demanded impatiently from the back.

  He ignored her, or maybe he didn't hear her.

  "Can you tell me anything else about them? What were their names?"

  "The girl was Susan, the boy-can't remember what they called the little bastard. Both were assholes. Loud. Playing outside all hours. The parents were drinkers. Them kids was out sometimes riding their bikes around after ten o'clock at night, makin' noise. Edna and Stan inside, drunk as skunks."

  "Was the boy's name Vincent?" I asked.

  "Don't remember, mighta been. It wasn't like all I had t'do back then was watch the fuckin' plumber's house," he snapped. "If you say he was named Vincent, fine. Ain't gonna get no argument from me."

  "How long did they live here?"

  "One year. One year and one year only. Just one year." Why he said it four times, I have no clue.

  "And then what? They sold the house and left?"

  He thought about that, then nodded and sliced a withered hand through the air between us. "Good riddance. Fuck 'em."

  He finally reached up and turned down the ear piece.

  "You don't happen to have any pictures, do you?" I asked.

  "Why would I take pictures o'assholes?" he said reasonably.

  "And you have no idea where they moved to?"

  "Nope."

  "Albert, who is it?" the woman yelled again.

  He didn't answer, but I knew he heard her this time, because an annoyed look followed.

  "Well, thank you, sir. You've been a big help."

  I walked to the front door then turned back to say good-bye. A strange, troubled expression appeared on his pale face. I thought he was about to say something, but he just lifted one haunch and farted. I let myself out.

  Once outside I called Jo on my cell phone. She picked up on the second ring.

  "I might know what happened to the other five hundred thou," I told her.

  "Let's hear."

  "Smiley had a sister named Susan. Maybe she got the other half. The old man I talked to said he couldn't remember if Vincent was the boy's name or not, but the guy was ancient. Waiting for the chariot."

  In light of that, we decided to scotch what we were doing and meet to reorganize at a restaurant I knew in Pasadena.

  Chapter 35

  TWIN PALMS

  The twin palms Restaurant was developed by Cindy Costner in the mid-nineties. It's located on Green Street, just one block south of Colorado Boulevard in Old Town Pasadena. Old Town is one of the great redevelopment stories in Southern California. Back in the eighties it was a slum. Situated at the west end of Colorado Boulevard, it had become a hang out for winos, hookers, and hugger-muggers. Drug dealers hung on every corner selling bags of cut. Low-end secondhand stores were lumped in with all the urban decay, and the entire nine-or ten-block area had completely slid off the human spectrum into some sort of environmental hell.

  Then a group of entrepreneurs saw an opportunity. They bought the land cheap and tore down the slums, while saving the period architecture. They lured in retail chains and designer shops and sprinkled in some upscale sidewalk restaurants with colorful Cinzano umbrellas shading decorative wrought iron tables. Presto! Four years later, Old Town became a shopper's mecca. Caffe Mocha and sushi bars, Tommy Bahama and The Gap. The winos moved east and started camping out under the freeway.

  I pulled to the curb in front of the white-tented patio restaurant, then handed my keys to a red-coated valet and walked around the corner to the gated entrance. I didn't have a reservation, but it was a large place and there were enough tables so that you could be seated without too long a wait. I spotted Jo over at the bar. In one fist she had a Coors Light, the other was up to her mouth, head tilted back, tossing salted peanuts down her throat. Nothing too delicate there.

  "You beat me," I said.

  "Story of our short little partnership," she said, then slid off the stool and followed the hostess to a table over by the wall, taking the preferred gunfighter's seat looking out at the room, leaving me with the chair facing a slab of concrete. I settled in and ordered a Corona with a lime squeeze.

  As I watched our hostess walk away to g
ive my order to the bartender, Jo said, "So the neighbor says there were two kids. A boy and a girl."

  "That's right. Susan and a boy, probably Vincent, both around the same age."

  "Twins?" she said, looking up at me with a hunter's predatory gaze.

  "I don't know. He didn't say."

  "Twins would have the same DNA, right?" She was leaning forward now, a pointer on scent. "What if that was Smiley's twin sister they found in the bathtub up at Hidden Ranch Road? What if he did go out through the tunnel like you thought?" Loving her connect-the-dots theory, looking intently at me, waiting for me to pump my fist and go "Yesss!"

  Instead, I felt myself frowning. "To begin with, we don't know if they were twins or not. Second, a girl and a boy would be fraternal twins, not identical."

  "So what?" she said brushing that aside with an impatient gesture.

  "We have an identical DNA match at the morgue. A boy and a girl can't have identical DNA. Fraternal twins don't look the same or have to be the same sex, because they come from two separate female eggs fertilized by two separate male sperms."

  "You're sure about that?"

  "No, I'm just saying it to mess up your theory."

  "Look, you don't have to be copping attitude all the time. It was just a question."

  "I was dealt off to a foster family in Torrance when I was seven. They had fraternal twins. Tom and Morgan Weiss. I had it explained half a dozen times. To have identical DNA, they have to be identical twins. That's the way it is."

  "But all of a sudden we've got an extra kid here. Maybe his sis can fill in some of the blanks." She was jazzed. "So how do we find Susan?" she asked.

  "We go back through county records. Start hunting. Of course, Susan might be married now. Different name."

  She thought for a minute, then finally said, "How do you want to do this?"

  "Huntington Hospital is only a mile or two from here, down Arroyo. If they lived here, maybe that was where they were born, and you can access Edna Smiley's prenatal records for the mid-to late seventies, find out for sure if they were twins, or if they were just brother and sister. Susan could have been a few years younger or older than Vincent. Mr. Phillips wasn't too sure of anything. Maybe there's other family listed on that form that we can contact."

  "What're you going to do?" she asked.

  "I'm gonna go see Midge Kimble. Maybe Susan went to that school with her brother and she can remember something."

  Just then my cell phone rang. I looked at the readout: Jeb Calloway.

  "Who is it?" she asked.

  "My skipper." I turned the phone off and put it back on my belt.

  "Aren't you gonna take it?"

  "It's just him telling me to contact the IOs at Justice. The minute I do that we're gonna both get turned into info humpers for the FBI. Turn yours off, too. Let's be out of cell range for a while." She reached into her purse and switched off her cell.

  The waiter came over and handed us menus. "Something for lunch?" he asked.

  "Sorry, we're going to have to leave. Something just came up," I told him.

  While we were waiting outside for our cars Jo touched my arm, and I turned to face her.

  "I hate to tell you this, Hoss, but you were right. If we hadn't been reworking Smiley's background we would have completely missed this. Feels important, like it might lead somewhere."

  "But let's not get carried away. So far, all we have are questions and we only have a few hours to get the answers before we're yanked in a another direction."

  "Maybe you should learn to take a fucking compliment yourself," she grinned. Then she did a strange thing-she reached out and took my hand. "Don't get the wrong idea here, Scully, this is purely professional, but as partners go, you ain't half bad."

  Our cars arrived. She had managed to get the green Suburban back from Vice. She got in and, without looking back, roared off toward Huntington Hospital. A few minutes later I was in the Acura on my way to see what Midge Kimble had to offer.

  My nose was definitely twitching. Or, as Jigsaw John might have said, "We got our first whiff of something good here, boy."

  Chapter 36

  MIDGE

  Royal oaks manor turned out to be an upscale assisted-living facility. As I pulled up the drive I saw a large expanse of rolling lawns and neo-Spanish Colonial buildings. This wasn't your standard linoleum floor and vinyl couch old folks home. There were attractive, tile-roofed buildings separated by expensive floral landscaping. The residences all had their own two-car garages. There was a large medical facility off to the east side of the property, next to a tennis court and a large common patio. I pulled in and parked between a new red Mercedes and a black Lincoln Town Car, then walked up the manicured path to the main building. Inside the spacious contemporary lobby I found a house phone, dialed zero, and asked for Midge Kimble. A minute later I heard the familiar shouted greeting from her answering machine.

  I hung up and went to the front desk. An elderly man working over some papers glanced up at me.

  "I'm looking for Midge Kimble," I told him.

  "Today is bridge day," he said. "She's out in the Culture Center Annex."

  "Where's that?"

  "Through the main lobby, down the corridor. It's the pavillion on the right."

  I thanked him and made the trip. If you were stuck waiting for the Grim Reaper, this was certainly the place to do it. The windows offered views of beautiful trees and flowering bushes. Purple bougainvillea trellised off latticework set up in each of the small, landscaped areas. Outside the main sliding glass doors, Brown Jordan outdoor furniture sat on a large, pebbled, concrete patio, all of it washed clean, sparkling in the afternoon sunshine.

  The Culture Center Annex was an art exhibit area off the main building. I walked into a high-ceilinged room filled with older, well-dressed men and women studiously playing bridge. There were at least ten card tables, all fully occupied, everybody bent forward, intent on their cards. For a room full of people, it was strangely quiet. I didn't quite know where to start. This place seemed so upscale, I couldn't just shout out Midge's name. Sensing my dilemma, a woman seated at the table nearest me reached out and touched my arm. I turned toward a pleasant octogenarian in a pink pillbox hat.

  "You look lost," she said sweetly.

  "I'm looking for Midge Kimble."

  "In the blue dress over by the window." She smiled, so I smiled back. "Nice to have such fine young people come visit," she said.

  Right then I didn't feel very fine or young, but I thanked her and walked over to the table and waited until the foursome finished a hand and started throwing their cards into the center.

  "Excuse me, are you Midge Kimble?" I asked the woman in the blue dress.

  "I am." Her voice was strong and didn't even resemble her shouted message on the answering machine. She was close to eighty, but there had been a time when she would have stopped traffic. The remnants of beauty still clung stubbornly to her strong, wrinkled face.

  "I hate to interrupt your game, but I have a few questions."

  "In that case, you have excellent timing," she said a bit too loudly.

  "I do?"

  "I'm the dummy."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's a bridge term," she said, smiling. "After the bid on the next hand I lay my cards down. Don't have to do anything after that. It's called being the dummy."

  "Oh-I never played bridge."

  I watched as the cards were dealt and a round of bidding started.

  "Three spades," one of the women said.

  "Four hearts," another answered.

  "Four spades," a third said. It went on like that for a while until finally Midge said:

  "Trump." Then she laid down her hand face up, rose, and accompanied me to an alcove in the adjoining room.

  Midge Kimble was spry and athletic. She moved with authority and purpose. We sat down and she fixed a polite smile on her face, waiting for me to begin. She had inbred grace and refined social beari
ng.

  "This is nice out here," I started, apropos of absolutely nothing. I hate to admit this, but, sometimes when I'm in the presence of money or culture my normal self-confidence can suddenly desert me. Another curse visited on me by my childhood. I had a sudden revealing thought: Did I become a cop so Yd have social authority and could use my badge to gain emotional status, and to build a wall between me and my insecurities?

  "My husband was a developer," she was saying. "He actually put up two of these buildings when we moved out here. The Kimble Rec Center across from B unit was his. You can see it on the right when you drive out."

  "So the school was just a hobby?" I said, putting the pieces together thinking, her husband had the gelt and she ran the country day school for kicks.

  "Not a hobby-a treasured vocation," she said, fixing me with a stern look.

  My smile felt hot on my face. I immediately pulled out my badge and showed it to her.

  "Oh my goodness," she said. "I knew I shouldn't have borrowed Lillian's jewelry and not returned it."I'm sorry.''

  She smiled. "I'm just fooling, Sergeant. When you get to my state in life, you need to take your laughs where you can find them." The same argument the humps in Devonshire had used.

  But I liked her. Instantly I felt more at ease.

  "This is about a young boy who I believe went to your school, named Vincent Smiley. It was around 'eighty-eight or 'eighty-nine. Do you remember him?"

  "Yes." Her expression softened slightly, or maybe it saddened. "Vividly," she added.

  "I was wondering if you could tell me a little about him?"

  "It was one of the strangest things that ever happened during all the years I ran that school."

  "Start at the beginning," I said, and whipped out my trusty notebook, clicked down my pen, then poised over a fresh page, all business now. Sergeant Scully on the case.

  "The Smiley children first came to school in the sixth grade. Paul and Susan."

  "Paul, not Vincent?"

  "If you'll let me finish, I'm getting to that."