Fever City (2 page)

‘Yet perhaps nobler than private investigator?'

At the beginning of every case there is this moment, when the client can't quite believe it's come to this—they actually need a private investigator. It is a moment when the enormity of their situation hits them; a moment of revolt. Of panic. Of denial. A moment when they turn against the very person they expect to help them, questioning how a man can make a living snooping through dirty laundry—maybe even theirs. This is when the fee is suddenly doubled, or the case declined. This is the only moment of power. Once you decide to take the case, you are locked into the gravitational pull of the client, and gravity always pulls down.

‘I didn't ask you to drag me away from my wife in the middle of the night.' I turn and start going down the stairs. Her hand takes mine; soft, warm, surprisingly strong. Determined. ‘I hope I can make it up to you one day.' I look up at her, at the way her gown has opened, providing shadowed glimpses. She mounts the stairs, speaking over her shoulder. ‘This way, please. My husband is anxious to speak with you.'

‘Tell me about Greta Simmons'

‘There's nothing to tell. I had as little to do with the boy as possible.'

Had. ‘And was that your decision, or Mr. Bannister's?'

Without answering, she opens a large door with a crystal handle. Old Man Bannister is by the windows, sitting in a wheelchair. He gestures dismissively at a doctor, who snaps a medical bag shut and strides out of the room with the dignified anger of an insulted ambassador. I turn back to Mrs. Bannister. She smiles before she puts out her hand. ‘Good evening, Mr. Alston. Please don't hesitate to call should you require anything.' I feel the loss as soon as she withdraws her hand. ‘I am entirely at your disposal . . . ' This time she doesn't try to hide the teasing inflection in her voice.

I cross the room. The Old Man gestures for me to sit down; clears his throat. ‘
Evil is rampant.
'

I wait, but there's nothing more. ‘Mr. Bannister, if you could please just start at—'

‘Did you not hear me?' He leans forward, red-faced.

‘Evil is rampant?' He nods. ‘What exactly does that mean, Mr. Bannister?'

‘Mathew 24:12:
Evil and sin shall be rampant, and the love of many shall grow cold
.'

I had expected many things from Old Man Bannister but not Bible verse.

‘If you understand that, you understand everything.'

‘Everything about what, Mr. Bannister?'

‘This household. Her. What my life has become.'

‘What has your life become, Mr. Bannister?'

His face fills with slow, bitter exasperation. ‘Mr. . . . '

‘Alston. Nick Alston.'

‘Mr. Alston, if there's anything in the world I am certain of, it is that I love that boy above all else and consider him not just my son, but my only heir.' He clears his throat, shifting his weight in his chair. The emotion appears genuine. ‘Unfortunately, several months ago my lawyer started receiving representations from a man claiming to know the identity of the boy's true father.'

‘I see . . . '

‘This . . . person stated that he would commence court proceedings to remove Ronnie from my legal custody unless a significant sum of money was deposited into an account in Mexico.'

‘And did you pay this money?'

‘I am old, Mr. Alston, but I am no fool. To acquiesce to a demand such as that would only be to invite every felon in the state of California to feast at the same trough of iniquity.'

‘Have you ever been subjected to blackmail attempts before this incident?'

‘What happened before is of no concern to you.'

‘I beg to differ, Mr. Bannister.'

Old Man Bannister pushes himself fast towards me, his arms shaking from the effort. He sits upright and rigid: an uneasy man soon to die. ‘I will not tolerate contradiction.'

I whistle. ‘I can see you're still a tough old bird despite all the doctors and nurses.'

He gives a harsh, dry laugh. ‘And I can see you're not one to mince his words.'

‘So, allow me this. What do you tolerate less: contradiction or kidnapping?' Old Man Bannister sags back against his wheelchair, worn out. ‘Cigarette?' He looks at the offered packet, torn between easy temptation and righteous denial. He shakes his head. ‘Tell me, when were you first blackmailed?'

The Old Man stares at me, his head inclined to the side, as though a tainted fluid were slowly draining from his ear. It's too much for him. He gestures for a cigarette, his fingernails rasping against my hand as I follow it with a lit match. What does it matter, this greedy old man is already on borrowed time. ‘Tell me, Mr. Atlas . . . '

‘Alston . . . '

‘Mr. Alston . . . Tell me, have you read Balzac?'

I blow out the match, shake my head.

His eyes gleam with the malice of superiority. ‘
Behind every great fortune there is a crime
. Balzac was wrong. Behind every great fortune there are
many
crimes. Oh, don't look too shocked, Alston.'

‘I'm not the shocking kind.'

He laughs, his wheeze ghosted by smoke. I gesture towards a decanter, and he nods. I pour us both generous shots. ‘These were not my crimes, per se; they were crimes thrust upon me, extorted payments to corrupt and lazy officials to facilitate access to instruments of business I had every right to enjoy in the first place. These were the very first instances of blackmail. I was the victim, Alston, but I was guilty too. I consorted with these evil men. I also profited from these crimes; they permitted an unjust advantage over my competitors.' Old Man Bannister sighs as he sips his whiskey. ‘One day, a newspaper reporter came to interview me, in this very room. It was not an invalid's sickroom back then, but a place of study and reflection. The reporter had done his research. He was blunt. Avaricious. He demanded payment for his knowledge. I determined to silence this reporter. Not with cash but with fists, Alston, brutal, compelling fists. They knocked the reporter's teeth out, one punch at a time. You may remember it; Goodwin James?'

Everyone who was old enough remembered Goodwin James. His working over was legendary. Only real pros could have inflicted that much damage without killing a man. His photo did the rounds—a good-looking, arrogant young man with a chip on his shoulder the size of his IQ transformed into a monster. I stare at Old Man Bannister, a slither of terror now overtaking me. He stubs his cigarette out against the wheel of his chair. ‘You can therefore imagine my reaction when this man stepped forward, claiming to know the identity of Ronnie's father and demanding payment for his silence.'

Where can we find his body? is what I want to ask, but instead I play it safe. ‘And who was this man?'

‘
Was
, Mr. Alston? Is. I haven't had him killed. Not yet, at least. This man, Mr. Alston, is called Johnny Roselli.'

I gag on the whiskey.

‘I see you know of whom I speak.'

Choose your words carefully. ‘Mr. Bannister, have you ever considered just paying Roselli and letting sleeping dogs lie.'

‘Sleeping dogs never just lie; they always awake, savage and ravenous. You are not here to give me advice, you are here to find my son, and when you do, you are here to deal with Roselli.'

‘That's a tall order, Mr. Bannister.'

‘That's why I chose you.'

‘To tell you the truth, Mr. Bannister . . . '

‘I am not interested in the truth. Or even justice. I just want peace.'

‘I'll do my best . . . '

‘You're not a Boy Scout, Alston. I want more than best.'

L
uck is not a state of mind, it is a physical condition; it is a climate, an ecosystem where fortune and providence are born; where blessings and accidents lurk in the foliage, assisting one passerby—ensnaring another.

In this jungle of chance, fate and circumstance are two sides of the same coin, not opposing entities. Fate is when you try to make sense of luck, circumstance when you no longer have the strength to do so. Death at twenty. Death at eighty. That's the real difference between fate and circumstance.

There are all types of luck: good, bad; equivocal. Dumb luck. Most often, there is unregistered, unacknowledged luck: happenstance.

But when luck is married to conspiracy, it always becomes unlucky.

Adam Granston is well over eighty yet his voice is quick and solid, and his movements belie the crumpled face, the tobacco yellow teeth, the watering eyes. He threads the audiotape with the care of an old tailor. ‘The signals are clear and followed with military precision. The first horn is to let them know Oswald is coming. The second orders them to kill him.'

I nod with a betraying intensity. What the hell was I doing in an old lawyer's over-air-conditioned Dallas apartment fifty-one years after an assassination? Some leads have a way of sounding interesting when you hear them on a phone. But when you're sitting drinking weak coffee and listening to the panting of an ancient beagle in the corner, you begin to have serious doubts.

I lean forward as the hiss of memory and time unspools; a once-familiar sound, a pause for contemplation that has almost been removed from our consciousness. Then comes a general, blurred commotion, voices indistinct but excited, and the slap of movement through a crowd. A radio announcer's voice cuts in, oily in its professional confidence; sinister in the context of what you know is about to happen. The glib announcer is talking about T-shirts. He's performing his professional patter. This could be a football match or a parade.

But it's going to be a murder.

The old Texan raises a finger, his eyes liquid behind the inquiry of their magnified lenses. A klaxon is sounded, and immediately afterwards the announcer says that Oswald is coming. Voices rush and whisper all around the car park, jealous ghosts seeking the medium's attention. I lean in closer, still staring at Granston, who raises a second finger. The horn sounds again, and instantaneously the shot is fired, so clear that I can hear the whistle of the bullet as it turns through the rifling of the .38 Colt Cobra's barrel, husks a passage through the air, billows through the charade of the clothing's defence and thuds into the fatality of flesh. I can see my own face reflected in the man's glasses as he nods.

The announcer seems as stunned as I am. ‘Oswald has been shot,' he says, his voice stripped of all confidence. This is no longer a carnival sideshow. This is history. The announcer has passed through the assurances of his microphone and has become part of his own audience: he has been caught living in wonder, and in awe. ‘Oswald has been shot,' he repeats, the disbelief sucking his voice of timbre. ‘Holy mackerel . . .'

This was in 1963. When disbelief was registered with phrases like
holy mackerel
. That was back in the old days, when the constraints of the airwaves regulated the private home. Today it is the other way round, when reality television begins in the public home and shatters the constraints of the airwaves.

The announcer's voice accelerates; wavers—nearly flutters and dies. Just like the victim, already being transported away in an ambulance. A phantom voice, charred with liquor and inside dope, slurs into the mike. ‘Jack Ruby is the name.' The announcer repeats this information, his voice rising in disbelief. How can such knowledge be transmitted so quickly? The stranger's voice sounds pleased with the effect it's had. It continues with the punch line. ‘He runs the Carousel Club.'

This is too much for the radio announcer. He can barely repeat this last item of news. I imagine him keeling over, cowboy boots clattering into silence. Holy mackerel indeed.

This moment of murder, when justice was denied and the truth killed as surely as the skinny kid with the bruised face was captured live on television and radio. Beep. Beep. Bang. The Morse code of the new Cool Media. The birth of a different kind of experience: Real Time. At that very moment, we were all sucked into the vortex: the witnessing instant of history, right now as it happens. It would be only one small step to the moon landing, one giant leap to the Berlin Wall.

I look up at the old man, who's tapping his temple. ‘See? What the hell did I tell you: it was a conspiracy. They all knew about it in advance. They were all in on it.'

‘And who exactly are
they
?'

His laugh is the unforgiving chuckle of an embarrassed father watching a worthless son fail yet again in public. ‘They are not us.'

But who is he; this old man with the angry spittle on his lips? ‘Us?'

‘Patsies. Oswald said it himself, in the station before they shot him. We were all patsies.'

‘How were you a patsy, Mr. Granston?'

His laugh is more a shriek, a rasping intake of breath sucked through a web of mucus. He looks up at me, his eyes whittled with blood vessels. ‘Because I was the man on the car horn.'

The hum of air-conditioning needles the uncomfortable silence. He had me going there for a second, too. It was like my time in Ciudad Juárez, when people would read about the killings in the papers then pretend that they had witnessed everything. Granston was typical of most people: he wanted in on history. It didn't matter if he were only a footnote. Not for a crime this big. ‘So you'd like me to write that you were part of the conspiracy?'

He bumps the table getting up, the undrunk coffee bridging the lip of the cup. The dog takes a shot at raising its head but doesn't quite make it. ‘We're done here.' He sounds like a frustrated felon dismissing his incompetent lawyer. The door is already open. I take a step back to the table, but he blocks my way. In the corner is a sound almost like a growl. ‘I knew your father when he was working on the Bannister Case.' Another pathetic lie to get my attention. He sucks in breath; half succeeds. Coughs up indignation and mottled phlegm. ‘A travesty of justice.'