Fever City (21 page)

The house is stuffy, as though it hasn't been aired for months. There's food rotting on the floor alongside the dust, and a strong stench of booze and ammonia. Of death . . . or is it just the scent of those flowers outside?

The voices are strangely clear now. There are three of them, arguing, from the back of the house, probably the kitchen. I case the surroundings quickly. There's a staircase.

I take the stairs, three at a time, the floorboards creaking gently underfoot, and come to a gloomy landing, the windows pasted over with newspapers. That's a bad sign. So is the foul smell as I go down the hallway to the door at the end. I hesitate, pressing my ear against the wood.

Silence. And then a sound emerges, like the faraway, droning hum of a distant freight train slowly approaching.

I gently turn the door handle.

The lock sighs open with a lisped click. I draw my piece, then yank the door open and enter low, ready to shoot.

Something leaps up at me as I hit the room—black, whirring; full of menace, the flies all about me. The air is alive with them. I quickly shut the door behind me, enclosing myself in the stench of that quivering room. It's like the meat markets in Manila just after the war, when you never knew exactly what it was dangling from those butcher hooks, trailing blood away from the pulse of insects.

The smell rears hard at me as I approach the Murphy bed in the centre of the room, flashing me back to Manila, then back further to Iwo Jima itself.

I retch in the corner, then turn back to what is left of the kid, the screams of the war slowly leaving me, the smell of cordite shifting back towards the all-too-familiar horror of rotten flesh.

The body appears then disappears, appears then disappears under the tide of flies.

Through their hovering shadow, I can see the kid has been mutilated the way the bodies of abducted boys always are. I brush at the swarm, peering into their dark, dread territory. The poor, poor kid; the bastards downstairs had really gone to town on him. I touch his arm, pulling away in shock.

It's impossible.

This was no ordinary kidnapping, if there was such a thing. This was something else entirely. Whoever did this to the kid had gotten what they wanted. At least a week ago. Because that's about when this child died.

The flies drummed their way into my brain. So either Ronnie was kidnapped earlier, and no one even noticed. Or else Ronnie's kidnapping was covered up for days . . . But why?

Maybe it was simply because no one had the guts to tell Old Man Bannister. So they kept him in the dark. Old Man Bannister saw the kid so infrequently, he didn't even notice when he was absent. So much for his love.

I leave the room, the flies throbbing against the door as I close it on a nightmare I had never quite expected. The kid was dead. Maybe, when I was back on the Force, if I had been a little bit smarter, a little bit sharper, I might have caught the people who did it; might have put them behind bars so that five years later they'd have still been locked up; and the kid would still be alive and laughing, and playing with toy trucks.

There is no mercy, but by God, there would be reckoning.

I make it back down the landing, my legs nearly giving out twice. I pause at the top of the stairs, my weapon still in my hand, and when the wave of nausea and regret finally passes, when I have recovered enough to know I'm not going to pass out, I go quietly down the stairs and across the room, the two extra clips and my brass knuckles knocking against my leg. I can only hear two voices coming from the kitchen. That could mean that one of them had already gotten away. Or that one of them had already been snuffed.

None of that mattered anymore.

All restraints were lifted.

The kidnapping of the decade was about to go large.

T
he story was on every radio station, every newspaper banner, on every TV. It was Little Lindy all over again. A rich, famous and arrogant father punished for his sins with the loss of his son.

It wasn't just Tabloid. It was Biblical.

It was too bad about Hidalgo, Hastings hadn't meant for him to get hurt. He had figured that the safest place for Hidalgo would have been down at the station. He'd never figured on Hidalgo doing a runner.

Just once, he wanted to help someone without it blowing up in everybody's face. He wanted to get it right, for Betty; to lose the jinx for her. He needed her more than ever.

And the thing was, now she needed him.

Hastings had found out Hidalgo was working for the Feds about three weeks earlier, when he spotted him snooping around Betty's Caddy in the garage. He grabbed Hidalgo by the scruff of the neck, the kid's hand already in her Kelly bag. Hastings had shoved him against the wall, Hidalgo thumping against the tool brace. A screwdriver fell from its cradle, stabbing into the workbench. Hidalgo snatched it and struck out at his face, Hastings pulling back just in time. The lunge surprised him. He never knew Hidalgo had it in him. He was going for his eye. If he had made contact, he would have blinded him, and then Hidalgo would have had no choice but to double down and go for his jugular. Who would have thought?

Hidalgo was just like him—he had the instincts of a killer.

Hastings grabbed him by the wrist, turning and bending it backwards, snaring him with the physics of the human body, the logic of humerus and scapula. Down and around, he continued the sweeping action, rolling him onto his knees, his arm fully rotated and reversed, flexed at an acute angle against the weight of his chest. He grabbed Hidalgo's thumb in one hand, bent the wrist with the other.

‘First, I'm going to snap your thumb. Then your wrist. Then I'm going to dislocate your shoulder . . . ' He leant his weight against the arm, driving it forwards, towards his head. Hidalgo groaned in agony. ‘Then I'm going to pop your arm from your body. And then I'm going to start on your legs. You got ten seconds to avoid becoming a freak on Nightmare Alley. Talk, kid . . . '

‘I don't know nothing . . . ' Hidalgo let out a scream. ‘Okay, stop.'

Hastings pulled back, taking the pressure off the arm. ‘Who told you to snoop around Mrs. Bannister?'

‘A Fed.'

Hastings was so surprised, he let go of the kid. Hidalgo retrieved his arm, cradling it against his chest like a lost puppy that's just been found. ‘What does the FBI want with Mrs. Bannister?'

Hidalgo looked up at him, fear and pain in his eyes and something else besides. A lie forming fast. Hastings kicked him in the ribs. ‘The truth.'

‘This Fed set up my boyfriend. He was going to do us for lewd and lascivious unless we . . . co-operated.'

‘What Fed?'

‘His name's Rico. From Boston. A real piece of work.'

‘What's he doing in LA?'

‘Spying. On everyone. Every-fucking-one! Businessmen, teachers, writers, rocket scientists. But most of all movie stars. They're listening in on everyone. Nobody's safe. Not even the biggest stars. So someone like Sal . . . '

‘Sal who?'

‘Sal Mineo. The actor.' For the first time, the fear in Hidalgo's eyes was gone, replaced by incredulity as he gazed into Hastings's unregistering face.
‘Rebel Without a Cause
. Plato.'

Hastings shook his head.

Hidalgo's lips curled in disdain. ‘He's famous . . . '

‘So what's the racket?'

‘Blackmail. How do you think they got Jerome Robbins and Robert Taylor to testify against the Reds? By appealing to their civic duty? Crap! By threatening to expose them—not for being commies, for being gay.' Hidalgo got up off the floor, still cradling his arm. ‘It's an easy choice when it's the only one you've got: lose your job and go to jail—or talk a little.'

'What do they want to find out about Mrs. Bannister?'

‘Everything . . . '

Including him? ‘What have you told them . . . ?'

Hidalgo looked away.

Everything. ‘I don't care who you spy on—leave Mrs. Bannister, and me, out of it.'

‘Easy for you to say, I—'

Hastings tapped him on the chin. ‘Got it?'

Hidalgo rubbed his jaw, anger in his eyes.

And that was the last thing Hastings saw when he spoke to the private dick outside the bus . . . The anger in Hidalgo's eyes.

Hastings needed to find this actor, Sal Mineo. He needed to find out what the Feds wanted with Mrs. Bannister. Most of all, Hastings needed to know what they had on him.

He got himself a glass of water and checked the back room. All was quiet. The water had a metallic aftertaste, like the pungent flint of oysters. The stench of the hawthorns outside hadn't only permeated the air, it had contaminated the water. The aroma was elemental and alarming, with its bitter traces of formaldehyde, almonds and death. The entire street was in bloom, but instead of festive springtime it felt more like All Hallows. Oppressive and rotten. He was getting cabin fever.

He turned on the radio, keeping the volume low, listening to the news. The hysteria had built to overwhelming proportions. Everyone could sense it: the decade not six months old, and already this was the crime that would define the Sixties. An evil old man; a wicked young wife; an innocent child. A lethal cocktail of guilt and retribution, served up to the smug Everyman. The Big Fall before The Big Sleep.

He changed stations.

Miles Davis.
Elevator to the Gallows
. Hastings sat in the shade in the back of the room and lost himself in the horn. Foolishly, he started dreaming. He and Betty Bannister, walking hand in hand along a boulevard in the Latin Quarter. It was twilight. Hot as hell. They stop under a chestnut tree by the river. The leaves rustle above them; a benediction from the Gods. He leans in to kiss her: his woman, his lover; his lady in Paris . . .

The lady vanishes like the music.

A newsflash. Hastings woke with a start, leaping to his feet. Please stand by, the voice said, they were going live to the Bannister Estate. Captain Schiller's voice rumbled official confirmation that the boy's nanny, Greta Simmons, was dead.

Hastings didn't switch off the radio, he yanked it out of the wall and battered it senseless against the table. He assassinated it.

Even without the details, he knew her death could be traced back to him. This had always been his curse: to be doomed to hurt every single person he had ever tried to help . . .

He froze. There was movement on the street. The room whined with extended silence. A shadow shimmered across the drawn curtains as a car slowed outside . . .

Hastings went to the window and lifted the edge of the curtain before pulling back in shock. That private dick, Alston, had just pulled up in a Chevy Nomad on the other side of the street. Impossible. No one knew about the hideout on Hawthorn Parade.

No one except Mrs. Bannister.

Hastings got his gun, secured the silencer, and went back to the window, again drawing the curtain slowly. Alston was alone. He was crossing the lawn of one of the houses opposite. Hastings remembered what Greta had told him. Half the joints on this block were owned by Roselli. It could be that Alston was after someone else.

He watched Alston as he climbed through the window of the house.

The low buzzing drilled its way through his skull. Balancing him. There was no time to mourn Greta. He had to act now. He unlatched the back door, sunlight slapping him with the promise of pain.

Hastings swung the garage door open. Greta must have known they'd force her to talk in the end. She was protecting someone. Not him. Not Betty Bannister. Certainly not the kid. It had to be Elaine.

Their cover was as good as blown. He and Betty weren't just running out of places to hide. They were running out of time.

C
onspiracy was back in fashion.

All it had taken was one whistle-blower from the NSA. That's when I had come up with my idea of developing a list of expert witnesses—personalities who represented all the major conspiracy theories of the assassinations. Some, like Adam Granston and Tex Jeetton, were among the usual suspects, already well known to JFK conspiracy buffs. Others, like Annette Martinez and Dwayne Wayne, had made their presence felt in recent years, pushing their opinions—and their personalities—via aggressive forum contributions on every site from
JFK Lancer
and
The JFK Assassination Debate
to
The National Enquirer
. Evelyn and Miriam Marshall were local personalities I'd discovered by focusing on small Dallas community sites. But the gemstone jewel in the crown of all the witnesses is Leopold Steiner, former Stanford Law Professor and renowned criminal appellate attorney who had given up both careers to concentrate on the JFK Assassination.

Leopold Steiner lives in a comfortable loft in West Village, Uptown Dallas and welcomes me with a wry smile and warily cocked head. ‘The journalist . . . ?'

No, the trapeze artist. Steiner vigorously shakes my hand, checking behind my back before closing and bolting the door. His head tilts all the way to the other side of the spectrum. ‘Funny . . . '

I can tell it's not ‘ha-ha'.

‘You're not by any chance related to . . . '

‘Nick Alston? He was my father.'

Steiner gestures to a glass conference table heavy with documents and photos stacked with organisational purity. The only non-business touches are a blue dahlia growing in a hand-painted pot, a tray of kumquats, and two glasses of water with crushed ice and slices of lime—all suggestive of an austere flair for healthy, minimalist living. He nods proudly at the display. ‘The national plant of Mexico . . . '

‘The kumquat?'

‘The dahlia. I made the pot myself.'

‘Nice . . . ' I suppose. It's definitely not bad.

‘It's something I've taken up since moving out here. The adobe tradition . . . ' He offers the kumquats to me as though they were a platter of chocolates. ‘Help yourself.'