Music for Chameleons (25 page)

BIG JUNEBUG JOHNSON:
Lord save us. I ought to be halfway home. Jim has to have his supper on the table seven sharp, and he won’t let anybody fix it for him ’cept me. Don’t ask why. I can’t cook worth an owl’s ass, never could. Only thing I could ever do real good was draw beer. And … Oh hell, that reminds me: I’m on duty at the bar tonight. Usually now I just work days, and Irma’s there the rest of the time. But one of Irma’s little boys took sick, and she wants to be home with him. See, I forgot to tell you, but I got a partner now, a widow gal with a real sense of fun, and hard-working, too. Irma was married to a chicken farmer, and he up and died, leaving her with five little boys, two of them twins, and her not thirty yet. So she was scratching out a living on that farm—raising chickens and wringing their necks and trucking them into the market here. All by herself. And her just a mite of a thing, but with a scrumptious figure, and natural strawberry hair, curly like mine. She could go up to Atlantic City and win a beauty contest if she wasn’t cockeyed: Irma, she’s so cockeyed you can’t tell what she’s looking at or who. She started coming into the bar with some of the other gal truckers. First off I reckoned she was a dyke, same as most of those gal truckers. But I was wrong. She likes men, and they dote on her, cockeyes and all. Truth is, I think my guy’s got a sneaker for her; I tease him about it, and it makes him
soooo
mad. But if you want to know, I have more than a slight notion that Irma gets a real tingle when Jim’s around. You can tell who she’s looking at
then
. Well, I won’t live forever, and after I’m gone, if they want to get together, that’s fine by me. I’ll have had my happiness. And I know Irma will take good care of Jim. She’s a wonderful kid. That’s why I talked her into coming into business with
me. Say now, it’s great to see you again, Jockey. Stop by later. We’ve got a lot to catch up on. But I’ve got to get my old bones rattling now.

SIX
 … 
SIX
 … 
SIX
…: the voice of the hour-bell tarries in the greening air, shivering as it subsides into the sleep of history.

Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers. To know such cities, to unwrap them, as it were, one has to have been born there. Venice is like that. After October, when Adriatic winds sweep away the last American, even the last German, carry them off and send their luggage flying after them, another Venice develops: a clique of Venetian
élégants
, fragile dukes sporting embroidered waistcoats, spindly contessas supporting themselves on the arms of pale, elongated nephews; Jamesian creations, D’Annunzio romantics who would never consider emerging from the mauve shadows of their palazzos on a summer’s day when the foreigners are abroad, emerge to feed the pigeons and stroll under the Piazza San Marco’s arcades, sally forth to take tea in the lobby of the Danieli (the Gritti having closed until spring), and most amusing, to swill martinis and chew grilled-cheese sandwiches within the cozy confines of Harry’s American Bar, so lately and exclusively the watering hole of loud-mouthed hordes from across the Alps and the seas.

Fez is another enigmatic city leading a double life, and Boston still another—we all understand that intriguing tribal rites are acted out beyond the groomed exteriors and purple-tinged
bow windows of Louisburg Square, but except for what some literary, chosen-few Bostonians have divulged, we don’t know what these coded rituals are, and never will. However, of all secret cities, New Orleans, so it seems to me, is the most secretive, the most unlike, in reality, what an outsider is permitted to observe. The prevalence of steep walls, of obscuring foliage, of tall thick locked iron gates, of shuttered windows, of dark tunnels leading to overgrown gardens where mimosa and camellias contrast colors, and lazing lizards, flicking their forked tongues, race along palm fronds—all this is not accidental décor, but architecture deliberately concocted to camouflage, to mask, as at a Mardi Gras Ball, the lives of those born to live among these protective edifices: two cousins, who between them have a hundred other cousins spread throughout the city’s entangling, intertangling familial relationships, whispering together as they sit under a fig tree beside the softly spilling fountain that cools their hidden garden.

A piano is playing. I can’t decide where it’s coming from: strong fingers playing a striding, riding-it-on-out piano: “I want, I want …” That’s a black man singing; he’s good—“I want, I want a mama, a big fat mama, I want a big fat mama with the meat shakin’ on her, yeah!”

Footfalls. High-heeled feminine footsteps that approach and stop in front of me. It is the thin, almost pretty, high-yeller who earlier in the afternoon I’d overheard having a fuss with her “manager.” She smiles, then winks at me, just one eye, then the other, and her voice is no longer angry. She sounds the way bananas taste.

HER:
How you doin’?

TC:
Just taking it easy.

HER:
How you doin’ for time?

TC:
Let’s see. I think it’s six, a little after.

HER
(laughs): I mean how you doin’ for
time
? I got a place just around the corner here.

TC:
I don’t think so. Not today.

HER:
You’re cute.

TC:
Everybody’s entitled to their opinion.

HER:
I’m not playing you. I mean it. You’re cute.

TC:
Well, thanks.

HER:
But you don’t look like you’re having any fun. Come on. I’ll show you a good time. We’ll have fun.

TC:
I don’t think so.

HER:
What’s the matter? You don’t like me?

TC:
No. I like you.

HER:
Then what’s wrong? Give me a reason.

TC:
There’s a lot of reasons.

HER:
Okay. Give me one, just one.

TC:
Oh, honey, don’t let me
commence
.

IV

Derring-do

TIME:
NOVEMBER
, 1970.

Place:
Los Angeles International Airport.

I am sitting inside a telephone booth. It is a little after eleven in the morning, and I’ve been sitting here half an hour, pretending to make a call. From the booth I have a good view of Gate 38, from which TWA’s nonstop noon flight to New York is scheduled to depart. I have a seat booked on that flight, a ticket bought under an assumed name, but there is every reason to doubt that I will ever board the plane. For one thing, there are two tall men standing at the gate, tough guys with snap-brim hats, and I know both of them. They’re detectives from the San Diego Sheriff’s Office, and they have a warrant for my arrest. That’s why I’m hiding in the phone booth. The fact is, I’m in a real predicament.

The cause of my predicament had its roots in a series of conversations I’d conducted a year earlier with Robert M., a slender, slight, harmless-looking young man who was then a prisoner on Death Row at San Quentin, where he was awaiting execution, having been convicted of three slayings: his mother, a sister, both of whom he had beaten to death, and a fellow prisoner, a man
he had strangled while he was in jail awaiting trial for the two original homicides. Robert M. was an intelligent psychopath; I got to know him fairly well, and he discussed his life and crimes with me freely—with the understanding that I would not write about or repeat anything that he told me. I was doing research on the subject of multiple murderers, and Robert M. became another case history that went into my files. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.

Then, two months prior to my incarceration in a sweltering telephone booth at Los Angeles airport, I received a call from a detective in the San Diego Sheriff’s Office. He had called me in Palm Springs, where I had a house. He was courteous and pleasant-voiced; he said he knew about the many interviews I’d conducted with convicted murderers, and that he’d like to ask me a few questions. So I invited him to drive down to the Springs and have lunch with me the following day.

The gentleman did not arrive alone, but with three other San Diego detectives. And though Palm Springs lies deep in the desert, there was a strong smell of fish in the air. However, I pretended there was nothing odd about suddenly having four guests instead of one. But they were not interested in my hospitality; indeed, they declined lunch. All they wanted to talk about was Robert M. How well did I know him? Had he ever admitted to me any of his killings? Did I have any records of our conversations? I let them ask their questions, and avoided answering them until I asked my own question: Why were they so interested in my acquaintance with Robert M.?

The reason was this: due to a legal technicality, a federal court had overruled Robert M.’s conviction and ordered the state of California to grant him a new trial. The starting date for the retrial had been set for late November—in other words, approximately two months hence. Then, having delivered these facts, one of the detectives handed me a slim but exceedingly
legal-looking document. It was a subpoena ordering me to appear at Robert M.’s trial, presumably as a witness for the prosecution. Okay, they’d tricked me, and I was mad as hell, but I smiled and nodded, and they smiled and said what a good guy I was and how grateful they were that my testimony would help send Robert M. straight to the gas chamber. That homicidal lunatic! They laughed, and said goodbye: “See ya in court.”

I had no intention of honoring the subpoena, though I was aware of the consequences of not doing so: I would be arrested for contempt of court, fined, and sent to jail. I had no high opinion of Robert M., or any desire to protect him; I knew he was guilty of the three murders with which he was charged, and that he was a dangerous psychotic who ought never to be allowed his freedom. But I also knew that the state had more than enough hard evidence to reconvict him without my testimony. But the main point was that Robert M. had confided in me on my sworn word that I would not use or repeat what he told me. To betray him under these circumstances would have been morally despicable, and would have proven to Robert M., and the many men like him whom I’d interviewed, that they had placed their trust in a police informer, a stool pigeon plain and simple.

I consulted several lawyers. They all gave the same advice: honor the subpoena or expect the worst. Everyone sympathized with my quandary, but no one could see any solution
—unless I left California
. Contempt of court was not an extraditable offense, and once I was out of the state, there was nothing the authorities could do to punish me. Yes, there was one thing: I could never
return
to California. That didn’t strike me as a severe hardship, although, because of various property matters and professional commitments, it was difficult to depart on such short notice.

I lost track of time, and was still tarrying in Palm Springs the day the trial began. That morning my housekeeper, a devoted friend named Myrtle Bennett, rushed into the house hollering:
“Hurry up! It’s all on the radio. They’ve got a warrant out for your arrest. They’ll be here any minute.”

Actually, it was twenty minutes before the Palm Springs police arrived full-force and with handcuffs at the ready (an overkill scene, but believe me, California law enforcement is not an institution one toys with lightly). However, though they dismantled the garden and searched the house stem to stern, all they found was my car in the garage and the loyal Mrs. Bennett in the living room. She told them I’d left for New York the previous day. They didn’t believe her, but Mrs. Bennett was a formidable figure in Palm Springs, a black woman who had been a distinguished and politically influential member of the community for forty years, so they didn’t question her further. They simply sent out an all-points alarm for my arrest.

And where
was
I? Well, I was tooling along the highway in Mrs. Bennett’s old powder-blue Chevrolet, a car that couldn’t do fifty miles an hour the day she bought it. But we figured I’d be safer in her car than my own. Not that I was safe anywhere; I was jumpy as a catfish with a hook in its mouth. When I got to Palm Desert, which is about thirty minutes out of Palm Springs, I turned off the highway and onto the lonely curving careening little road that leads away from the desert and up into the San Jacinto mountains. It had been hot in the desert, over a hundred, but as I climbed higher in the desolate mountains the air became cool, then cold, then colder. Which was okay, except that the old Chevy’s heater wouldn’t work, and all I had to wear were the clothes I had on when Mrs. Bennett had rushed into the house with her panic-stricken warnings: sandals, white linen slacks, and a light polo sweater. I’d left with just that and my wallet, which contained credit cards and about three hundred dollars.

Still, I had a destination in mind, and a plan. High in the San Jacinto mountains, midway between Palm Springs and San Diego, there’s a grim little village named Idylwyld. In the summer,
people from the desert travel there to escape the heat; in the winter it’s a ski resort, though the quality of both the snow and the runs is threadbare. But now, out of season, this grim collection of mediocre motels and fake chalets would be a good place to lie low, at least until I could catch my breath.

It was snowing when the old car grunted up the last hill into Idylwyld: one of those young snows that suffuses the air but dissolves as it falls. The village was deserted, and most of the motels closed. The one I finally stopped at was called Eskimo Cabins. God knows, the accommodations were icy as igloos. It had one advantage: the proprietor, and apparently the only human on the premises, was a semi-deaf octogenarian far more interested in the game of solitaire he was playing than he was in me.