Fever City (7 page)

‘How long was she gone?'

‘Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.'

The red negligée. She'd met someone, slept with him, got changed and came back. She figured no one would notice with her silk robe. She hadn't figured on my prying eyes. ‘Let's say she got back at five. Let's say she brought her sister with her in the back of the car. Let's say Elaine was drugged. They carried her to the grove, slid her into a goddamn pipe, and then buried her. By the time that's done, it's almost six. She comes to as soon as they finish. The soil's not packed so tight that she can't move, and the pipe's protecting her from its weight. And there's air coming up from the well. She struggles, nearly clawing her way out before she passes out. But she's still breathing—just—and then she's discovered not more than an hour later.'

‘Right in the nick of time.'

‘For her. But not for the people who put her there.' If they put her there. ‘Let's take a look at Mrs. Bannister's car . . . '

Schiller leads the way to the garage, both of us passing under the hollowing bronze gaze of all those windows, blinded by the morning sun. What if someone inside had seen what had happened? They would have come forward by now, unless . . .

That's the thing about blackmail; it's like adultery. Once it starts inside a household, it's almost impossible to stop.

The garage is bigger than the church that Cate and I were married in. Mythic names flash by in rows of blue and red and white. Bugatti. Rolls-Royce. Lagonda. Pierce-Arrow. Maybach Zeppelin. Hispano-Suiza . . .

At the end is a pink Cadillac convertible. Mrs. Bannister obviously shared the aesthetic values of the country. ‘It's large enough, all right. Let's try the trunk.'

Schiller reaches under the wheel and pops it. I run my hands around the edges. It's clean.

I go round the side, staring into the backseat. Nothing. Then I spot it, half-wedged between the upholstery. I look away, waiting for Schiller to see it too.

‘Nothing . . . ' he says. I lean in and snatch the cigarette lighter without him noticing, risking a quick glance. Gunmetal with engraved initials: EB. Elaine Bannister . . . I drop it in my coat pocket, then shiver with the implications.

‘It's the air-conditioning.' We both look up at the mechanic, dressed in blue overalls. How long has he been here? ‘Everyone shivers inside here. It's too cold, but what can you do? Humidity's bad for the leather.' I nod, steering Schiller out. Did the grease monkey see me? Tampering with evidence. Why did I do it? Because I thought Mrs. Bannister was innocent and that someone had planted her sister's lighter there? Or because I wanted to have something on her? The way she sat down on the bed, her gown opening between her legs . . .

This is why it's called a private investigation. Because we need to keep the discoveries, especially the ones we make about ourselves, confidential—hidden deep inside.

A cop comes running. ‘They're on the phone.'

‘Who?' As if Schiller doesn't know.

‘The kidnappers.'

We race across the gravel, Schiller nearly tumbling, left behind as I overtake the officer and run up the steps, my shoes full of stones. Morris stands in the hallway, panic on his face. He points upstairs.

I take the steps three at a time.

Bannister's door is open. He holds an ivory-handled telephone in his hand. Mrs. Bannister stands behind him, her hands on his shoulders. A young policeman wearing earphones over his red hair listens in, his tape unspooling. I glance at him. He shrugs. ‘What's your name?' He mouths back Sam. ‘Sam, can you get a trace?' He grimaces, unsure, then his face goes slack with concentration, listening. His pencil hovers, waiting to find its mark.

‘I want to speak to my son . . . ' For the first time, Old Man Bannister really sounds his age. ‘I want him returned, unharmed.' I can hear the tone from the caller coming over the phone from across the room: Arrogant. Almost bored, as though reading from a text.

The kidnappers own this scenario. They hold the only card worth having: the kid. I lean in to Sam's headphones, listening. ‘We will call with specific instructions.' A heavy lisp. Maybe a deliberate disguise. ‘Do not involve the police . . . '

There's the bounce of echo as Mr. Bannister speaks, like a voice reverberating in a well. ‘ . . . But how do I know he's alright unless I speak to him first? I demand to speak to my son.' A pause and then the ungodly moan of disconnection.

The telephone next to Sam rings, making us all start. He picks up just as Schiller comes in, wiping sweat from his cheeks with a handkerchief. Sam looks at him. ‘Captain. They got a trace.'

‘Where?'

There is the scratch of a pencil obliterating itself against paper. Sam's hand falters, not completing the address. He looks up at Schiller, fear in his eyes.

‘Well?' Schiller barks.

I glance at the half-completed address and swear. I turn to Schiller. ‘From here . . . Jesus Christ, the call came from here.'

P
hotos tell stories but their narratives are mainly fiction.
Death in Action
was just a stunt;
Les amants de l'hôtel de ville
were student models who had never met before, feigning their passionate kiss. Who made Trotsky vanish from the stage with Lenin? And what the hell happened to the Gang of Four? Take any actor's photo: his or her skin is airbrushed to seamless perfection—whether they like it or not. Oprah becomes Ann-Margret; Kate Winslet, Kate Moss.

Photos are stories that help us buy what we're supposed to; see what we have to. Understand all that we need to. Whether it's right or not. The proof is in the proofs. Truth becomes interpretation; interpretation manipulation.

To see a world in a grain of pixels.

Sam ‘Momo' Giancana's photos are no different. They stare out at me from press book after press book in the air-conditioned office. His oversized head, weighed down by heavily-magnified glasses, seems to balance precariously on a small, stooped frame, giving him a deceptively benign appearance, especially when he's sporting a porkpie hat and shades. He could be just another favourite uncle on his way to the racecourse or the retirement club for a couple of hands of pinochle.

But the photos are fiction.

Giancana was a brutal, disgusting man, capable of acts of both great and petty evil. His pride and ambition hid grievances that bordered upon paranoia and were fed by a need for generalized vengeance. His speech had a foul, keening sense of the sewer combined with a self-grandiosity that was almost lyrical in its absurdity.

He began his career as a hoodlum for the Forty-Two Gang, before becoming a wheelman for the Chicago Outfit, which was reinventing itself after Scarface Al Capone's arrest. Then Momo took a major step upwards by orchestrating the takeover of the South Side numbers racket through a series of annihilating racist attacks. He unleashed extreme sadists like ‘Mad Sam' DeStefano and ‘Milwaukee' Phil Alderisio onto the streets of Second City, USA, knowing that their rampages of unimaginable barbarity strengthened his authority—they were all 42-men and they were taking over the Outfit. Giancana was beaten up several times in one-on-ones in Vegas. A physical coward, afterwards he'd order his henchmen to exact revenge. Facial and genital trauma followed by unmarked graves in the Nevada desert.

Momo got messed up when he started fucking a pretty brunette in her twenties, sharing her with Sinatra and JFK. Judy Campbell had a big smile and a frank, open face, although her firm jaw should have warned them she was trouble with a capital T. Judy was an unlucky talisman. Her curse rubbed off on all who touched her. Sinatra lost his casino license. JFK lost his life. And Momo lost his war with Joey ‘Doves' Aiuppa, who took over Chicago without a fight.

Momo got old. Momo got scared.

Momo ran away to Mexico, spending his last years in luxury running gambling rackets.

When he was finally nabbed, he squealed.

Under house arrest in Oak Park, not far from Hemingway's old joint, he was betrayed by the very institution he had owned for so long—Chicago law enforcement—his police guards mysteriously withdrawn just before an assassin pumped seven bullets into his head right when he was due to testify before the US Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. The killer took one of the sausages Momo was cooking—the mob never turns down a free meal—and left him lying there in the greasy smear of burning oil, bullet holes rimming his lips.

The question is a slap in the face: how could this worm of a man be responsible for the death of a president of the United States?

‘Fascinating, isn't it?'

I look up at Miriam Marshall: real estate agent, conspiracy advocate, and surprisingly cheery survivor of alien abduction. ‘Creepy is more the word I'd use.'

Mrs. Marshall nods understandingly. She has been through so much creepiness herself: interstellar travel, outer space organ transfer, internal brain tattooing. ‘As you can see, Mr. Giancana organized it all.'

The finger has been pointed at Momo ever since the Magic Bullet started to pirouette. Momo had access to Vegas dough. Big Oil dough. Howard Hughes dough. CIA dough. And US Attorney General Bobby Kennedy was after him and his mobbed-up pals. What better way to get rid of Bobby than get rid of Jack?

'And why did Giancana organize it all?'

‘Because he knew the truth about President Kennedy . . . '

‘I don't think even JFK knew the truth about himself.'

‘Mr. Giancana knew, because he was one himself . . . '

Oh-ho. One of what? Take your pick. Freemason; Catholic; Mafioso; Elder of Zion; Illuminati; Communist; Knight of the Golden Circle. Alien. Abductee. ‘And what was Sam Giancana, Mrs. Marshall?'

‘A homosexual of course . . . They know. They can tell others of their kind.'

Of their kind. ‘And that would make Judith Campbell . . . ?'

She nods sadly. ‘A transvestite. Just like Mrs. Kennedy.'

Jackie O indeed. ‘I suppose she had the last laugh on Onassis then . . . ?'

She shakes her head. ‘He was one too.'

‘And how do you explain Maria Callas?'

‘A castrati . . . '

Castrato. ‘I see you've given this a lot of thought.'

‘It's my life's work . . . '

‘You have sources?'

‘Gore Vidal, for one. He was a fellow abductee on the spaceship.'

Of course he was. ‘Well, thank you, Mrs. Marshall.' I get up. Three days in Dallas and I haven't spoken to a single sane person so far. At least Mrs. Marshall isn't coercing me into buying endless rounds of bourbon and Coke. I actually enjoyed her coffee—the first decent cup I've had since arriving in the city. Her espresso machine sits dramatically in the centre of the room like a gleaming holy tabernacle.

She looks at me gathering my things together. ‘But you're not leaving already?'

‘Afraid so.'

‘That's so disappointing, I prepared a PowerPoint presentation and all.'

‘I'm terribly sorry.'

‘I even had a section on the Bannister case.'

‘Excuse me?'

‘You know about the case, of course?' I think I nod. ‘Mr. Giancana was involved.'

‘How exactly was Sam Giancana involved?'

‘It's in the PowerPoint presentation, right after the Adelsberg Suicides.'

I glance over at the door. Escape is only five strides away. If I stay, I will be subjected to an insane conspiracy theory based upon the prejudices of a deluded crackpot who believes in the existence of gaydar and little green men. But I may also be able to get a lead on one of the most persistent and enigmatic rumours surrounding the Bannister case. Before Elvis, there was the Bannister kid. Did he die or was he saved? Is he still alive today? Did he ever really exist?

What the hell, at least it's air-conditioned in here and I could do with another cup of coffee to wake me. I turn on the voice recorder of my iPhone. ‘Can we perhaps start with the Bannister case?'

R
oselli set the meet in Chicago for Halloween. Nobody laughed. Hastings left Bella at a boarding kennel in the canyon. She whined and scratched at the wire cage as he drove away, her face cleaved with anxiety.

Premonitions.

People used to have them before the marble temples and the men in robes, the newspapers and the radios, the pay slips and the railroad stations. People used to heed the warnings. They wouldn't get on the boat, they wouldn't cross the bridge at night. They'd turn when the whispers urged them to; they'd watch the flight of birds and harvest a day early. But in these modern times, premonitions were discarded like dinner scraps—left only to household pets.

Unless it was a hunch on the second race at Hollywood Park, no one listened to the internal voice anymore. But Hastings did, thanks to Bella. Hastings had lied to Roselli at the Monogram Pictures Ranch. Bella didn't bark but she did see ghosts. In July '62, just a week before the Brentwood break-in, Hastings had come back one night from a job—a fence who had stuck ten grand's worth of paste in with the merchandise he was passing on to DeSimone's people—and was going through the back door in the kitchen when Bella slowly lifted her head, trembling in fear.

Hastings thought she must have been poisoned, Bella was shaking so much. She had refused eye contact, her gaze frozen at a point always just behind him. Hastings did a slow circle around the kitchen, Bella's head rotating, following the invisible secret sharer who was tailing him.

Hastings went out the way he came in, strode all the way down the driveway, then made a loud noise with the keys as he came in through the front door, Bella waiting for him, her wagging tail hammering hard against the wall. She jumped up on him, unable to contain her joy, but when he tried to get her to follow him into the kitchen, she had refused.