The Taciturn Hottie: Part Two

 
 

August 31, 2009        

A Joe Downing Mystery 
 
 

 
 

   
 

 
 

The following is fiction:

 
 

Synopsis: In Part One, Joe had a dream in which he was easily manipulated by a stranger into hurting a nine-year old child. Joe was relieved to realize it was only a dream, but now he unconsciously doubts his own moral strength.  

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

The steets were dark with something more than night.

– Raymond Chandler

   
 

Part Two:

I HAD TO GO TO PASADENA FOR AN OLD WHACK-JOB. She was pretty decent in the end, though, and pretty smart, too. I awoke unshaven and grungy: no surprise there — it’s called being a bachelor, folks. I was just on my way to the shower, hands laden with soap, shampoo, comb, mirror, shaving cream, razor, and towel, when the landline rang in the office. With all that stuff, I was handcuffed comically as I tried to turn the knob to go back in: to no avail. I couldn’t mange anything except to let the soap and mirror and razor fall from one hand with a nice plop onto the dark, florid carpeting of the hallway. A really white, soapy, liquid, oozing mess ensued thereupon.  

 
 

“Is that how you treat the shampooed carpet, boy?” Sammy queried me calmly, slowly coming up behind me (since slow is about as fast as he can go), already at work: 77 years old.  

 
 

“Oh…..” I said stupidly, “I’m sorry, Sammy, I got a call right when my hands were full of all this. I’ll clean it up in a second.”  

 
 

“That’s all right, Joe. I didn’t mean nothing by it…..go answer the phone; but you know you’re killing me, Joseph, and I refuse to die.” I laughed, and Sammy hobbled away, saying to himself,  

 
 

“I been trying to figure that sucker out…..that white dude…..”  

 
 

 
 

********************

   
 

 
 

The San Gabriel Mountains run on an east-west axis and sit patiently behind the patios of L.A. and Pasadena like a backdrop to a puppet show. The puppet show called “L.A.” that is. La La Land, Hollyweird. Or, maybe, they’re just a backdrop for the big palm trees and the baseball games in Chavez Ravine — or, maybe, for the skyscrapers of L.A. they dwarf (the Art Deco numbers included, of course).

 

But they make a backboard, too, for all those foul balls ejected out of the city — those hills, those tall, brawny, scratchy, darkish, scrub-oak dense and Manzanita-monopolized hills, they do know where all the bodies were buried in the glorious founding of the City of Angels.

 

You see the slate-colored rivulets running down from the summit of old Mt. Baldy (so named for its white top), like so many seams in a forbidding, steel door? Oh, do inquire within — no experience necessary. And welcome to the hotel: check-out time is never. Ya gotta lie to get in, ya gotta bungee jump off a basketball floor to get out. And oh, yes, I almost forgot: Baldy isn’t white on top cuzz of snow — it’s white from something more than just regular snow. Shall we say it’s “powdered snow?” You catch my drift, I’m sure.  

 
 

I picked up the L.A. Times at Bristol Farms in Pasadena after getting off the freeway, or rather, after the freeway turned into California Boulevard under my tires. It was a still, warm, pleasant morning in July. I sat outside at a heavy silver table for breakfast, with my four strips of bacon, hash browns, and four eggs (scrambled, Cayenne pepper in abundance).

 

I stretched my legs and my jeans out and glanced over the paper. The Metro-Link train came clanging by from Claremont and from even further away, come to think of it, San Berdu County. Now, on page two — what’s this?  

 
 

Body of Saliciamon member found

Grisly, mutilated state

Located in dumpster downtown: Macarthur Park

“The Times learned early this morning that the mutilated body of Ramon Gomez-Gonzalez, a reputed member of the Honduran drug cartel ‘Saliciamon,’ was found yesterday morning by a homeless man digging through the trash of a dumpster in Macarthur Park. 

 

“The LAPD spokesman, William Braxton, did not immediately respond to questions whether the apparent homicide was gang-related, pending the investigation. He did speculate, however, that the steady, six-month trend charting increased violence downtown was most probably due to the recent influx here, studied by the University of California Los Angeles, of illegal immigrants from cartel-controlled areas in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

 

“The county coroner issued a preliminary report giving the time of death as approximately 72 hours ago as of 2am this morning, and the cause of death as strangulation and multiple stab wounds, 67 in all, to the stomach, back of the neck, chest, and the small of the back…..”

   
 

Meanwhile, in the sports section…..But it’s a small world: I had just passed by the park on the 110 freeway. Not the place to be at 2am. At the cashier I paid the lady in the funkadelic glasses and the Jimi Hendrix tee, got back in the Corvette, and proceeded to the old Biddleman place in the heart of old Pasadena: Elizabeth Anne Biddleman, nee Astor, 60.

 

This gal was the whole nine yards — the big hair, the horrible breath from six feet away, the suffocating fragrance, the clothes from about 1842, the fake elegance in her voice, the make-up, ugh! – she was all that, I warn you. A quiet woman, dressed all in white (let’s call her “Guadalupe”), let me into the dark, muffled, huge interior: I was expected (but for what, though?!).

 

The outside of the house, not to get ahead of myself, was tall and dun, with second-story windows peering down at you implacably (without revealing themselves, however), and there were several inset granite pillars holding up the medieval facade. A wide, neat, broad lawn stretched out in the front and in the back garden, too, with yellow, white, and red roses climbing six feet high and more on prickly, skinny, slanting, tensile vines. The house was set back from Colorado Boulevard a good thirty yards. You could have a scrimmage.

 

You were out of breath by the time you finished climbing up the steps to the porch. I walked up to that porch on a walkway of wide, blonde-colored stones, like so many trapezoids, under the sycamores and eucalyptus, which made sketchy patterns on the immaculately manicured lawn. Practice my putts? No! Not now! So dive putts, down to my soul!

   
 

A medieval light structure thing hung down portentously on a long electric cord from the porch ceiling. The light was still on at 10am, feeble against the light of a hot day in July. But once in, Lupe led me down a gloomy, long, silent, carpeted hallway. My eyes were still full of the dazzling, splashing sun of L.A., so I didn’t catch a lot: some Renaissance-style paintings of some old honchos in suits, beautiful Asian earthenware poised on delicate, curving, gold-leaf tables which were themselves poised under humongous mirrors — things like that — a general sense of clueless old money, in short. The air, too, must have come wrapped up as an addition from medieval times — a bit stuffy and sickly.

   
 

Lupe led me into the library and motioned me to a chair: I thanked her and sat. She nodded pleasantly, half maid, half nurse, and went out without a sound. The library was barely illuminated, with bookshelves crammed with hard-cover stuff all the way up to the top of the high ceiling. They looked carelessly put away. I twirled my neck around, looking. Dark wood was everywhere. Rugs with Middle Eastern designs were all over the floor of the comfortable, capacious room, giving a curious impression of being in a bazaar.

 

This house must have been built just after WWII — it had an aura of the long-ago. A very quiet, humming sound, like a swarm of polite bees, became evident to me. It “emanated,” let me put it that way. It wasn’t the traffic out on Colorado. As my eyes adjusted to the dim, I thought I beheld Miss Havisham herself perched in front of the cloistered window which looked out upon the front lawn. She sat behind a gargantuan wooden desk, which was stained dark brown. Her eyes were closed. Then they opened.

   
 

“Mr. Downing, I should like to thank you for arriving so very promptly, and on such short notice, too. It’s very kind of you,” Miss Havisham said pleasantly.

   
 

“Not at all,” I responded, “it’s easy as pie, Mrs. Biddleman. I’m sorry, though, for intruding upon you, and that I didn’t speak up. I didn’t know you were in the room at first. The sun; my eyes weren’t used to the dark yet. A very stupid start to the case for a detective.” I looked down at my hands in my lap and chuckled sheepishly in self-deprecation.

   
 

“On the contrary, Mr. Downing, I must beg your pardon — I was the one who neglected her manners. I was meditating overlong, I fear. I apologize. You see, I’m a Buddhist. It calms my nerves. But you needn’t worry, Mr. Downing, I don’t really believe it all. But you no doubt perceived my efforts?”

   
 

“Well, yes, I did, Mrs. Biddleman,” I replied, “and I really was taken by your meditating. Maybe I should learn it myself! Got to relax sometimes, that’s what I always say!” She beamed and smiled beatifically. I think she liked me.

   
 

“Indeed yes, young man! It works wonders for the spirit in these times of trial! I feel eminently serene after my morning effort. Do you know, the Dalai Lama meditates six hours a day? Six! Goodness gracious!” Effulgent praise, to be sure, but “eminently serene?” She continued, the kindness in her eyes turning to a more serious gaze:

   
 

“Mr. Downing, now I’ll relate to you why I called. I’m concerned for my daughter, Ingrid. I’m concerned for her safety. She’s twenty-eight, but she has a wild streak, shall I say, and she also has an awful boyfriend, this Rodriguez fellow in a drug gang downtown. He’s horrid, Mr. Downing. I think he’s a murderer and a drug-sniffer. I want you to investigate him, and discredit him so Ingrid will forget about him. I believe he committed the murder in the park, and I want you to gather the evidence and give it to the police.” This was unusually detailed for any client to be.

   
 

“Well, Mrs. Biddleman, that’s a tall order, you know. I’m sure the LAPD homicide unit and forensics team have already gathered all the evidence and will move to make an arrest. They probably already have a good idea of who it was, or at least of who is close to who it was. There aren’t a lot of different patterns that come up. It’s surprisingly uniform. They know who they’re up against, I would bet, and it’s just a matter of playing a little chess game, to make it come out clearly.” I sat back and waited. She sighed, and then countered:

   
 

“Mr. Downing,” her tone evincing a little impatience at this point, “we both know the police have always had their own reasons for what they do. If they find out it’s a gang-fellow, and how could it be otherwise, they’ll just arrest anyone they wish in the gang. It doesn’t matter to them which one. But it does to me — Ingrid is in love with this wretched Rodriguez. I want you to supplement them so they arrest the right one. They’ll believe you. It’s Pancho Rodriguez — that is the one who did it.” I lifted myself up in the chair from slouching. 

   
 

“How do you know so certainly it’s exactly this Pancho guy?”

   
 

“Because he’s horrible, Mr. Downing — believe me, sir. And because he had to be in on it: it’s his gang, he’s the chief of it, he’s the chief of the horribles.”

   
 

“The ELD — the East Los Diablos?” I asked.

   
 

“Yes, Mr. Downing, the very same. I do believe that is the correct name of those hideous people.” She crossed her legs in her leather chair for the first time, pronouncing “correct” by trilling the r’s. She went on: “I want to rid my dear lost Ingrid of him since she is too far gone to manage it herself. You see, she, too, is a cocaine addict.”

 

I gazed out through the white, lace-covered window onto Colorado Boulevard and its traffic. Things seemed so normal out there, in contrast to what I was listening to now. Traffic went by, on its way somewhere innocently in the bright, friendly sunshine. In a few months the Rose Parade itself would come meandering by — but not now, not in the heat of July and gang war. Mrs. B. grew quieter, and adopted a confidential tone:

   
 

“Mr. Downing, my husband, Phineas Cadwallader Biddleman, came to Pasadena in 1933, during the Great Depression. He was a child of three years of age. His father, Asa, was an oil man in Wyoming, and Cad followed in his father’s footsteps. We became rich, and we lived well. Life was wonderful. Southern California was the jewel of the country. Everyone wanted to come here. Then came these times, this violence. My husband was unable to compete with the bigger companies, and he foolishly refused to sell or merge.

 

“We have fallen on leaner times, I concede, but I expect you to bring a little justice to us at least. I want this man’s head on a platter! I want Ingrid free of him!” Mrs. B. glared a bit. Eventually, after a little more back and forth, I agreed to see what I could do for Ingrid. I agreed to investigate this Rodriguez dude.

   
 

We were just about to close the meeting. Behind me, though, as I sat on the dark embroidered cloth of the walnut masterpiece of a chair, the great oak door to the library cracked open a tad. In slid a small, lithe cat, except that it was not a cat at all — it was a very young girl, doing all she could to look older than her twelve years, unsuccessfully (if you’re twelve, you’re just gonna have to live with it).

 

She kept to the walls, moving laterally, eyeing me relentlessly. She already knew what her mother looked like. A very small, white, Bichon Frise had come in with her, quiet, cute, and worshipful. The girl knew every inch of the library, easily avoiding, without ceasing to stare me down, the green Byzantine-patterned chair up against the mahogany panels. The panels rose to the fourteen-foot high ceiling, which depicted a dreamy reverie scene of the blue sky, beyond the hopeful, sunny, cream-colored battlements.

   
 

The girl looked at me a ton, implacably. I glanced at her a tiny bit, quickly. She was slender, about five feet tall, athletic and svelte, wearing pistachio Capri pants, flat shoes, and a short-sleeved white top. She had long, long mahogany hair, straight as a string, like the long grooves in those mahogany panels against which she stopped, fifteen feet from me. Her delicate, fluffy dog, plodding along like a walking bathroom slipper, followed her everywhere, looking up at her from her ankles. Mrs. B. was indulgent, but not too.

   
 

“Are you talking about my sister?” the girl queried, calmly, like a grizzled, experienced trial lawyer. She took five steps towards me after speaking, looking deep into my eyes. (The Magic Johnson look-off pass was decidedly not her style.) I looked at Mrs. Biddleman briefly, then replied,

   
 

“I’m sorry, Miss, that’s confidential. But may I please know the name of such a pretty girl?”

   
 

“Aly, don’t bother Mr. Down–”

   
 

“What’s ‘conn-fee-den-tal’?”

   
 

“Oh, no, please, it’s OK; she’s not bothering me at all. She’s perfectly charming, in fact.” (Did I really say “perfectly charming?”) I smiled benevolently, trying to smooth the rift between mother and daughter. I went on: 

   
 

“But you know what ‘confidential’ means, Aly,”  I said amiably, then made the mistake of adding, “Don’t give me that, Cat Girl.”

   
 

“Don’t call me that.”

   
 

“Aly!”

   
 

“All right, I’m sorry. You’re right — I thank you for pointing that out to me…..but do you spend a lot of time with your sister?” I continued.

   
 

“No!” she said abruptly and decisively, as if everyone knew something so obvious, then walked fully up to where I sat, put her hand possessively on the arm of the very chair, leaned down to my face, and, in a manner that can be plausibly described as “clinical,” put her eyes about two inches from mine, like she was an eye doctor now. She looked at the sides of my eyes as I looked over, amused, at Mrs. B., who sighed irritably at the interruption.

 

Aly was so serious and so painstaking as she gazed at my faculty of vision, totally deadpan, I couldn’t help chuckling. Then she had both hands on the arm of the chair, in single file, still searching my eyes, and presently she leaned forward even more with the grave news:

   
 

“You’re outside a lot.”  

   
 

“Oh yeah? How’d ya know that?”

   
 

“Your eyes aren’t completely white anymore,” she answered with finality. Her eyes were mischievous and confident of their wisdom.

   
 

“Well,” I smiled, “you’re right about that, Aly. You’re smart to notice that. Are you a detective?”

   
 

“Yes,” she promised, “I read Encyclopedia Brown.”

   
 

“Yeah?! I did, too, when–”

   
 

“Aly! Leave us! We’re discussing business, and this is no time for a young girl’s shenanigans! Take Flapper out in the garden and be a good girl, please!” Mrs. B. was a little bent out of shape. Aly slumped a little, for the first time, and her posture flagged a bit, but she shot me another deadpan, conspiratorial look as she slid her hands over the cloth of the chair upon exiting: “Don’t betray the cause!!!” her eyes said to me. I nodded in assent to the silent imperative.

 

Aly thereupon picked up Flapper and went out unceremoniously. Flapper barked a little out in the hallway, in excitement at going outside, presumably. Then I had to bark a little out in the car as I got back in: the sun had made the steering wheel super-hot to the touch. I had to go talk to Ingrid, and to Aly, too. Mrs. B. didn’t mind. Well, South Pasadena, so chic, so haute couture, so nouveau…..so…..so…..I’m at a loss for words…..anyway, it was now South Pasadena or bust.

   
 

…..to be continued…..