Heroin Chronicles (20 page)

The car cost him more than he would have liked to pay. This was due to the woman across the room in the hat who kept upping him. But she'd dropped out when the asking price went past $25,000. One, two … the third strike of the gavel sounded and Grayson would soon possess the vehicle.

The Mustang was found in Altadena in the garage of a house belonging to a long-retired Department of Water and Power secretary named Deborah Keyson. She'd died of pulmonary failure, and any connection she may have had to Frank Matthews or Ken Schmecken was not known.

The auctioneers had put money into restoring the car and it had been fairly well-preserved under a tarp, the gas and fluids having been drained from it back when. Grayson had chanced upon its photo and description while sitting in his dentist's office paging through a freshly minted Stedler and Sons catalogue. He immediately recognized the name Schmecken in the brief write-up.

The paperwork done and money deposited, Grayson drove his prize away from the auction house in Glendale. He couldn't help but imagine he was Matthews at the wheel on his way to cement a nefarious deal as he drove home to Santa Monica. Along the way his phone rang and he answered, putting it on speaker and propping it in the opening of the car's built-in ashtray.

“So?” his girlfriend Mora Fleming asked.

“Scored it, sweeite.”

“I knew you would.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Want me to bring Chinese or Indian?”

“I could go for some kung pao chicken.”

She chuckled. “When do you
not
want that?”

“I want you.”

“Hmmmm. See you soon.”

Fleming, without her heavy boots on, was two inches taller than Grayson and outweighed his wiry frame by forty pounds—forty solid pounds. She was a bodybuilding chiropractor and gaming enthusiast. They'd met at the annual Nexus of Nerds—Comic-Con in San Diego. She'd come with a girlfriend, a fellow bodybuilder, and they'd turned the heads of fanboys and their put-upon fathers—the two of them dressed in the fantasy of scantily clad sword-wielding barbarian women.

Standing in line to get into a panel with comics superstar writer Neil Gaiman, Fleming had been impressed with Grayson's knowledge of the
S.T.A.R. Ops
game in phantom mode. That, and he managed to look at her face and not just her substantial chest.

In bed later, cuddling after making love to Fleming in his second-floor bedroom, Grayson saw through the slats of the window the light over his garage snap on. The light was motion sensitive and normally it coming on meant one of his neighbors' cats was lazing by. But the Mustang was parked in the driveway, near the garage door. He hadn't outfitted the car with an alarm yet, though he'd put a lock bar on the steering wheel.

Grayson waited for the sound of the vehicle's door being opened. He smiled, realizing he better wake up his girlfriend if there was trouble. But the light went off again and there were no more sounds of disturbance from below.

The following morning he was changing out the battery in the trunk when Fleming asked, “Why the heck is it back here?”

“They needed all the room up front to squeeze in the big block engine,” Grayson explained, lifting the battery out. He figured the auction house had spent money on the car's looks but not on a more heavy-duty battery. He intended to not scrimp when it came to his new beauty. He was going to use his electric motor Leaf and go to the auto parts store to trade this battery in for a better one. There was a recessed metal shell that held the battery in its cavity. He removed the housing to inspect it for rust.

“What's this?” Fleming asked, reaching a hand into the cavity in the trunk's floorboard. She worked for a few moments undoing some tape and held aloft a plastic sandwich baggie that had been secured on the frame below the battery's shell.

The couple exchanged a look of anticipation as Fleming tore the aged baggie apart and removed a sheet of yellowed paper. Gingerly she unfolded the stiff note and flattened it on the slope of the car's fastback. On the paper was a sentence in block lettering:
SIXTY YARDS NORTH FROM THE PANZER
.

“Panzer?” Fleming asked. “Like German for tank?”

“Precisely,” Grayson said, heading for the house. “Let me check something, but I think we might have a road trip this morning.”

“Yeah, where?”

“Why, a bombed-out French village, my dear.”

The village had gone by various names and had been used in TV shows and movies several times. It was a World War II–era set in Canyon Country that by the late '60s had become mired in an ownership battle between its original builder and the children of one of the ex-partners. This made it difficult to rent out. But in 1970, the village was utilized illegally—that is, the producers didn't bother to pay—for a hardcore shoot called
Madam Satan of the SS
.

“You've seen this epic?” Fleming asked.

“Way before I had the pleasure of your acquaintance. In fact, there was a sequel but that one took place in a mad scientist's castle. Same woman played Madam Satan both times, Jackie Salvo.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Of course I only know this due to my research into the wild and varied career of Frank Matthews.”

“Of course.”

Grayson had recalled that under the Ken Schmecken alias, Matthews had been a producer of a porno set during World War II. He'd confirmed this in a nonfiction book he had at home about twentieth-century gangsters which featured an extensive chapter on the disappeared drug lord.

Fleming wondered aloud, “Does
heron
, to use the vernacular of the day, retain its potency over decades?”

“You figure that's what he has buried there?”

She regarded the freeway outside the rolled-down passenger window. The Mustang didn't have air-conditioning. “You think he buried money?”

“He was a careful dude, Mora. Maybe he was planning in case he had to go on the run and needed to make sure he had enough liquid assets to make a break to Mexico or the Bahamas.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “My little Scarface.”

He squeezed her muscular thigh. “Better know it.”

Canyon Country was in Santa Clarita, in the northwest section of LA County. In the last twenty years the area had seen the proliferation of housing subdivisions, but there were still large swaths of underpopulated nature. Using tax records and past articles he'd accessed online, Grayson had obtained the location for the place most commonly called Attack Squad Village, as the set had been used several times in the popular 1960s World War II TV show
Attack Squad
.

Once there, they parked and walked along a dusty street bordered by French-style buildings of the proper vintage, a bombed-out church, and a bar called Millie Marie's among the façades. There was another street, then behind the false front of an apartment building, in the tall weeds, they found the German tank.

“North is this way,” Fleming said. Each carried shovels. Using a tape measure and allowing for human error, they marked off 180 feet from the tank. Grayson used the point of the shovel to scribe a large circle in the dirt.

Fleming nodded and got started. He began in another section inside the circle. In less than fifteen minutes they'd uncovered a coffin.

“Wow,” Fleming intoned. “I didn't expect that.”

“We've come this far,” he said. They dug the dirt out from around the coffin and together hefted it above ground.

“Damn!” Fleming exclaimed, sweat on her brow.

“Here goes,” Grayson said. He used the shovel to lift the lid and let it flop open.

“Oh shit!” Fleming rasped.

Inside the coffin were bricks of gold. Grayson picked up a bar, assessing its weight in his hand—roughly two pounds, he estimated. “How is this possible?” he wondered aloud.

“Gold is good anywhere, Chuck,” Fleming observed.

“I got that, but it's illegal to own gold bars.”

Hands on her hips, she said, “A drug lord isn't worried about the rules, honey.”

“I know that, but what foundry would cast these for him?”

“I can answer that,” a new voice said.

The two looked around to find three newcomers, two men in sport coats and slacks, flanking a slender woman in a loose top, white jeans, and heels. She wore a feathered and beaded Mardi Gras eye mask. The two men had on pedestrian ski masks. One of the men, slimmer than the other, pointed a semiauto pistol-grip shotgun at Grayson. A slight wind blew but the couple didn't notice the breeze.

“How'd you know to find us here?” Grayson asked.

The shotgun man snorted. “Like that purple car is hard to follow.”

“What you need to worry about,” the woman interjected, “is how you're going to pace yourself loading my goods.” There was a trace of an accent in her voice.

The smile below her mask was brittle, like a robot trying to be chummy. Grayson, who figured she was the one in the wide-brimmed hat at the auction, noted a mole to the left of her plump lips. The lines on her face indicated a woman of some years, though clearly fit.

The shotgun still on Grayson, the stockier thug retrieved a white van and backed it close to the loot. He opened the rear swing doors. Resigned, Grayson and Fleming loaded the ingots into the rear cargo area. There were 124 bars.

“Now what?” Grayson said, using the heel of his hand to wipe sweat from his brow. The temperature had risen past the mid-eighties.

“Now we say bye-bye,” the woman answered triumphantly.

Fleming was standing near the rear of the van, at an angle to the shotgun holder. She rushed at the man, hoping to tackle him and relieve him of his weapon. But he was a pro and wasn't rattled.

“Back that ass up, you big bitch,” he said, clubbing her with the pistol-grip end of the shotgun.

Fleming went down heavy.

“Mora!” Grayson blared, rushing to aid her. The larger hood produced a stun device and jammed it against Grayson's neck. He convulsed and spittle coated his lips as he too dropped to the ground on his knees. A second jolt toppled him and he lay twitching, his muscles unresponsive to his commands. He wet himself.

“That's a cherry ride you got, bro,” the one who'd shocked him said. “I'll look good driving that bad boy.” The hood removed the keys from Grayson's pocket, easily knocking aside the other man's hand in his feeble attempt to stop the thug.

“Is that necessary?” the woman said.

“It's a perk, baby,” the man shot back. He and the shotgunner laughed harshly. The woman said something in Spanish, and the three left in the two vehicles.

Mora Fleming moaned and rolled onto her side. She then got herself up and helped Grayson to his feet.

“That was exciting,” she said dryly.

“How're you feeling?” Tenderly, he placed the flat of his hand on the side of her face.

She touched the back of her head. “Some painkillers and intravenous tequila ought to remedy the situation.”

He looked beyond her. “I hate getting beat,” he declared. “Not to mention, that was a serious haul of gold. And that bastard took my car.”

“Maybe we should be happy to be alive, Chuck.”

He had an odd smile on his face when he addressed her. It wasn't an expression she'd seen before. “Maybe they shouldn't have left me alive.”

Despite him just standing there with the front of his jeans dark from urine, Fleming got nervous.

There were hardly any photos of Frank Matthews aside from booking shots. But Grayson found one of him at a club in Harlem taken by the black-owned
Amsterdam News
, as the white press at that point didn't know who he was. Using a magnifying glass, Grayson studied the picture that showed Matthews smoking a cigar, holding court with a tableful of cohorts. Because it was a close-in shot, not all the faces were distinct. He wonderd if there were other shots from the club.

Via the online records of the New York Public Library, Grayson was able to narrow his possibles to two photographers who worked for the
News
then and who might have taken the uncredited shot. One was dead, and the other, Tim “Cheaters” Pleasy, was still alive. He was seventy-six and taught an extension photography class in Sarasota. Grayson promptly got him on the phone.

“Yeah,” Pleasy said after the exchange of pleasantries, his voice clear and young sounding. “Ol' Frank fancied himself the big shot all right. Passing out twenties to the kids on the streets like free lunch, buying color TVs for the senior center … Yeah, he was something.”

Grayson let the old timer drone on some, then asked, “You remember a shot you might have taken of him at the Montreaux Club? Him at a table of people having a good time?” He described the scene in further detail.

“Naw, young man, that don't ring no bell,” Cheaters Pleasy said. “I'd bet Garmes took that shot.” Davis Garmes was the deceased photographer.

“Any idea where his outtakes got to? He have family? I wanted to see if he had other shots showing the faces clearly.”

“You sure seem to want to go through a lot for your book,” Pleasy observed.

“I might have an uncle in that shot, and I want to know for certain,” he lied.

“I got you,” the older man said. “I'll check on that and will get back to you. I might know where some of his old photos went.”

“That would be great, Mr. Pleasy.”

It didn't take the photographer long, as he and the late Garmes had stayed in touch. He was able to locate the man's photos left in the possession of an ex-wife he also knew. Garmes's photos were in various film boxes designated by years. She found two other shots Garmes had taken that night, had them scanned, and eventually they reached Grayson via e-mail.

“There she is,” Grayson said to Fleming. They sat at his kitchen island. He tapped the magnifying glass against his opposite hand. “That beauty mark, mole, whatever you want to call it, gives her away. She's at the table here with Matthews.”