Come Back Dead (4 page)

“So this party tonight was your idea?”

“No. That was Carson staying one step ahead of me as usual. He'd already lined up one potential angel, a buddy of Tyrone McNally's named Traynor. After Carson agreed to go public with the production, he talked this Traynor into footing the bill for a coming-out party. The hick probably thinks he's going to meet Jane Russell.”

Since we'd broached the subject of money, I asked the question Paddy had written on my shirt cuff: “Where did Drury's first bankroll come from, the one that's running out?”

“Eden,” Shepard said. “That's Carson's ranch out near Encino. He bought it with his
First Citizen
paycheck, and he's hung onto it somehow ever since. He loves that place. It's a sign of how desperate he is to make good this time that he'd put Eden up as collateral for a loan.”

“What bank is holding the paper?”

“Bank? Banks and Carson don't speak to each other. He got the money from the Alora Land Conservancy, a farming cooperative.”

“Why would farmers lend money to Drury?”

“They're buying up a lot of land north of Encino to keep it out of the hands of developers. It so happens that a developer named Ralph Lockard has been trying to buy Eden from Carson for years. So Carson went to the Alora people and told them if they wouldn't lend him the money, he'd be forced to sell to Lockard. He convinced them that either way it played out, they'd win. If he pulls this gamble off, Eden is safe. If he doesn't, the conservancy gets it. So the farmers forked over.”

We arrived back at Tara's garage. Shepard lounged in the doorway, keeping all the shade for himself. “You haven't asked me yet about Carson's enemies,” he said.

“How do you know I'm going to?”

“Carson told me when he phoned.”

“He told me he didn't have any enemies.”

“That's Carson all over. Never met a man who didn't like him. All the same, he wanted me to be sure to mention John Piers Whitehead.”

“His partner?”

“They haven't been partners since
Albertsons
died young–or pen pals or even nodding acquaintances. Whitehead's been here in Culver City, though, sniffing around.”

“For what?”

“Redemption, Carson said. I don't know what he meant, exactly, but that's nothing new. He won't even speak to Whitehead. The one time the guy actually knocked on our door, I dealt with him. But he didn't know me and wouldn't tell me his business. I bought him a drink and sent him on his way. He seemed like a harmless enough bird, but I guess you can never tell.”

“When was this?”

“The morning before the fire.” Shepard took a business card out of his shirt pocket and passed it over. Whitehead's novel-length name was printed on the front of the card in small, raised letters. On the back of the card, a shaky hand had written, “59 Belmont Street.”

“Easy enough for you?” Shepard asked.

“Too easy,” I said.

“It won't stay that way, pally. Not with Carson in the game. Take my word for it.”

6

I decided that my interview with John Piers Whitehead could wait. An arsonist who left engraved calling cards had a certain fish-in-a-barrel quality that made rushing around seem undignified. My boss thought that money might be behind the attacks, and Paddy's nose for a motive was seldom wrong. So I decided to follow Drury's windfall back to its source. Besides, I hadn't had the DeSoto on a really open road in a week. I topped off the tank and headed north to Alora.

My route took me across the Santa Monica Mountains and back in time. I'd lived in the foothills of those mountains after the war, in a cabin on the estate of an old pal from my Paramount days. So the drive made me nostalgic. I also felt sad because my old benefactress was dead. She'd drunk herself to death in a patient, deliberate way, and the memory of that and the little I'd done to stop it added guilt to my emotional mix.

My friend's problem had been obsolescence. For no particular reason, her comfortable career had ground to a halt in the late thirties, as had Ruth Chatterton's and Ann Harding's careers earlier and any number of others since, including my own. The solution I'd worked out for my obsolescence–punching a clock–hadn't fit her. Her own solution had arrived twice a week in brown parcels too discreet to clink, and that had been that.

South of Encino, I drove through miles of inexpensive houses that looked as if they'd all been shoved off the back of the same flatbed. Each instant neighborhood had a different pretentious name painted on its billboard-size entrance sign, but there was a common denominator. Almost all the signs bore the words Lockard Development Corporation.

I'd actually been to Alora once, five or six years earlier. I remembered it as a crossroads town in a dusty corner of the valley. My previous visit could have been the week before for all the place had changed. Its outstanding features were still competing produce markets, one to the north of the town and one to the south, and a Spanish mission–style church nestled, with a few stores and shops, between the bookend markets. In front of the church, an old man was sweeping a broad stone plaza with a narrow broom.

I pulled up as close to the plaza as I could and asked the man for the Alora Land Conservancy. He shrugged and suggested I try the café next door. While I had him on the line, I asked how to get to Eden.

“You can never get back there once you've left,” the old man said. “That's the whole problem with this life.”

He laughed, and I did, too. Not at his joke, but at the pleasure he took in it. He was sun-browned and bent, and his white hair was cut like Moe Howard's. When we had collected ourselves, I thanked him and drove the half block to the café. The old man watched me until I opened the front door. It was a slow day in Alora.

The café was doing better than the town square. Two of its four tables were occupied, as were three of the six stools at the counter. I made it four. The lone waitress brought me a glass of water and a menu card. I'd only come in for information, but the smell of frying onions altered my priorities. I ordered coffee and a hamburger, and made small talk with my neighbors at the counter.

They were farmers. Growing up in Indiana, I'd learned that there were only two kinds of rain as far as farmers were concerned: not enough and too much. My luncheon companions told me that this year's problem was not enough. I made sympathetic comments and kept my questions general until the waitress came by for my empty plate. Then I asked for the Alora Land Conservancy.

“Follow Highway 27 north,” the woman said. “You'll see their place. The office is in an old schoolhouse.”

She stood there holding my plate, politely giving me the chance to explain my interest in the conservancy. The farmers on either side of me were equally curious.

“Are you gentlemen members?” I asked them.

“Members of what?” the waitress asked me. I'd heard both men speak, so I knew they could, but in the waitress's presence, they were suddenly mute. She reminded me of Brian Donlevy, sans moustache. That is, she called to mind the foreign legion sergeant Donlevy had played in
Beau Geste
. She had the same ramrod posture and suspicious eyes.

“Members of the cooperative,” I said. “The Alora Conservancy.”

“That's no cooperative,” the waitress said. “Who told you that was a cooperative? Whoever it was was pulling your leg. That's a private company. It's going to be the biggest farm in the valley someday. It may be already.”

“Except they're not farming,” the man on my left said. “Not above ten percent of their holdings.”

“You want them to farm in a drought?” Miss Donlevy asked. “Is that how you build an empire?”

“And they're not extending their leases beyond a year,” the man on my right said, as much to divide the waitress's wrath, I thought, as to contribute to the conversation. To me he said, “They leased most of their land back to the farmers who sold it to them. That was part of their sales pitch. But they never give anyone more than a year's renewal.”

“If they renew a lease at all,” the man on my left said.

The woman let out the breath she'd been waiting to use and drew a deeper one. “So they're going to farm the land themselves, so what? It's what I've been telling you all along. They're putting together the biggest farm in the valley. In the state, maybe. That's the only way to make money farming these days.”

“Only they're not farming,” the man on my left said.

I broke the cycle by dropping some money on the counter and heading outside. I looked for the old theologian, but he had finished his sweeping and gone off, perhaps to nap. I felt a little like a siesta myself after I'd settled into the DeSoto's front seat, its leather heated to the consistency of putty by the afternoon sun. I drove north instead.

Two miles outside of Alora I spotted the schoolhouse. It was red brick with a metal roof that had recently been painted silver. The building looked so much like a country train station that I glanced around, after I'd parked my car, for the tracks.

The name of the conservancy was painted on the front door in letters that had just begun to fade. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open, setting off a tinny buzzer that buzzed on until I'd closed the door behind me.

I had time to note that the receptionist's desk was unstaffed. Then a man appeared in the doorway behind the desk, pulling on the jacket of a pin-striped suit as he came.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought you were my ride.”

“Nope,” I said.

He looked down at the cluttered desk between us. “I gave my girl the day off.” And the month preceding it, to judge by the dust on her desk. It was the same yellow-brown stuff the DeSoto had collected, only thicker. “What can I do for you, Mr. …”

He was a young man, and he would look that way for years yet if his hair held out. His boyishness was due to his slight build and to his inability to remain at rest. He didn't appear to be nervous or even especially curious, but he was still in a constant state of motion: buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket, shooting his shirt cuffs, smoothing his glistening black hair, and adjusting the knot in his tie so many times that I felt an urge to garrote him with it.

“My name is Elliott. I'm interested in selling you some land, Mr. …”

“Faris. Eric Faris. I'm the land agent for the conservancy. You don't look like a farmer.”

Where I hailed from, that was a compliment. I considered returning it; Faris certainly didn't look like a land agent. He looked like the kind of errand boy common around Hollywood, the kind with a college degree in his hip pocket.

Faris checked the dusty window to my right for his ride and then said, “Come in, won't you?”

He led me into his office, which was smaller than the reception area, but cleaner. He opened a window, started to take off his suit coat, stopped, and then started again. He was still working at it when he hit his chair. A calendar hanging on the wall behind Faris's head featured a young redhead in bib overalls cut off at mid-thigh. She'd forgotten to wear anything underneath the overalls, but then, it was July. I decided she was there for the enjoyment of Faris's clients. He looked like the type who preferred his pinups painted in oil.

“What's the Alora Land Conservancy all about?” I asked.

As fidgety as Faris was, he was still paying attention. “You must know that if you want to sell us your land.”

“I know you're buying farmland around here for the stated reason of keeping it out of developers' hands. You're willing to lease a farm back to the farmer and even to write a guy a loan. I'd like to hear more about that last option.”

“Where is your land?” he asked.

“Doyle Heights,” I said.

That didn't register, so I added, “In Los Angeles. It's only half an acre, but the view is terrific. And there's the ambiance. The house next door once belonged to Vilma Banky. Vilma sold the place when talkies came in. She had a Hungarian accent that was thicker than your dust.”

“What's the gag?” Faris asked.

“That's what I'd like to know. Is this office really a land conservancy? Some of the locals think it's a front for a factory farm. I think maybe Boeing is planning to build its new bomber out here, and you guys got wind of it.”

Faris began the process of putting his coat back on. His jaw was clenched, and the hard line aged his baby face considerably. He unclenched long enough to say, “If you'll excuse me.”

“Do you remember a loan you made to Carson Drury?”

“I'm not answering questions about our business transactions or anything else.” He shut the window and locked it.

“I'm not here to ask questions. I wanted to pass along a little information. Mr. Drury invested the money you gave him in a motion picture. It's almost certain to make a pile, which means he'll be able to pay you back.”

“Delighted to hear it,” Faris said.

“There is one little problem, though. Someone tried to burn Mr. Drury's studio down the other night. Maybe so he couldn't make his film. Maybe so he couldn't make his loan payments.”

Faris actually stopped yanking at his wardrobe for a restful second or two. “What has that to do with us?”

“I just thought you'd like to know. Forewarned is forearmed, after all. If there's one more accident, the police will be around to see you. When they ask you what goes on here, you'll have to tell them.”

I wasn't altogether disappointed when a car horn sounded outside, shattering the mood of the moment. I'd strung Faris along about as far as I could on the little I knew.

He saw me to the door. Out front, his ride was seated behind the wheel of a jeep. He was a Mexican wearing a straw hat turned up in front. The hat was the color of the jeep and my car and everything else the dust could reach. The man under the hat was big enough to make the war surplus Willys look like a kiddie car. He joined Faris on the schoolhouse steps, from which they watched me drive off.

I drove north, away from Alora, to a slight rise in the road from which the silver roof of the land office was just visible. I parked there and smoked a Lucky and waited. I hadn't finished the cigarette before I saw a little cloud of dust rise from in front of the building, signaling the jeep's departure. It headed south, and I followed it, debating with myself over which would be easier to force, the office's window or the door.

I never found out. When I neared the little building, I saw the Mexican sitting on the front steps. Across his big knees he balanced a baseball bat. That was gilding the lily, in my opinion.

I waved to him as I drove past.