Fever City (25 page)

‘He's obsessed with the Bannister kid. Hoover never figured it out. So Félix started to watch. To listen. Things are awful wacky in that household. The Old Man's wife—'

‘Mrs. Bannister?'

‘Mrs. Bannister—wouldn't go near the kid, let alone the Old Man. She's the only one who can stand up to him. If she doesn't like what the Old Man says, she just wheels him away and closes the door. She runs the household.'

Sounds like she runs the Old Man. And if she runs the Old Man . . . She runs the goddamn country.

‘What about Philip Hastings?'

‘The mechanic?' A knowing leer blooms across his face. ‘They spent a lot of time together. Plotting, Félix called it.' I see red: her negligée.

‘What about her sister, Ronnie's mother?'

‘Elaine? A total nutcase.'

‘Felix ever see her at High Sierra?'

‘Never. But we used to see her all the time at the Green Door and the Club Laurel. She was into weird drugs, shit like jimsonweed and peyote. She spent a lot of time with the nanny. The one that's missing.'

The one that's dead. Sal Mineo is giving me a lesson in a city I thought I knew. ‘Listen carefully. What do you know about the Old Man being blackmailed?'

'You're talking about the kid.'

‘What about the kid?'

He starts to laugh, smoke escaping from him like steam from a boiler that's about to explode.

‘What's so funny?'

He points his cigarette at me as though it were a smoking gun. ‘Figure it out for yourself, Einstein.'

Rico's working for Kennedy and Hoover. Hidalgo was working for Rico. He was also working for Morales and this Díaz, who are both working for Nixon. The arithmetic doesn't add up. Rico, Morales and Díaz are just foot soldiers. That leaves Kennedy, Hoover and Nixon. Scratch Hoover—he's ubiquitous anyway. Kennedy and Nixon. Now that's what you call a conflict of interest. Joe Kennedy's son running against the vice president for the biggest prize in the country: the right to award government contracts; the right to grant amnesty; the right to push the button and blow us all to Hell.

But where did Old Man Bannister fit into the picture? I toss the two-faced coin into the air. It comes up heads.

‘Kennedy is blackmailing the Old Man?'

‘Nothing like that.' Mineo looks away, tugging a piece of tobacco from his lip. He frowns, and it dawns on me: there'd be no way to tell if he were acting. ‘More an edge . . . He wants influence over the Old Man.'

‘What kind of influence?'

‘He wants the Old Man to throw his support behind his son's candidacy.'

That didn't make sense. ‘The Old Man hates Kennedy. And he owns Nixon.'

‘You shouldn't be smoking . . . ' I turn. The nurse doesn't see me. She only has eyes for Sal Mineo. She shrugs apologetically. ‘There's oxygen in the room . . . '

‘We're nearly done.'

She ignores me, smiling one last time at Mineo before disappearing. He frowns as he takes a big suck of smoke, his eyes narrowing from the heat. ‘So now what? Are there going to be any charges against Félix?'

The FBI and LAPD could crucify them both just on morals charges. I drop my cigarette to the floor and step on it, grinding it out like the truth, leaving a crescent of smeared ash on the linoleum. ‘He hasn't done anything wrong . . . '

There is a moan. Mineo slowly rises to his feet. ‘Félix . . . ?' He strokes Hidalgo's brow. ‘How are you doing, baby?' Hidalgo opens his eyes. They struggle to focus, but when they do, when they meet Mineo's, something passes between them. A luminous message. I had nearly forgotten—it's been so long: the way Cate used to look at me. ‘See you around . . . ' Mineo doesn't look up. He doesn't even register I'm going. In his universe, I no longer exist.

The nurse at reception looks at me coolly. ‘He didn't seem too pleased with your visit.'

‘You were eavesdropping.'

Defensively—‘You were both speaking very loudly.'

‘Pardon me for living, I didn't realize this was a library.'

She looks away. She's made her choice. The movie star, not the flatfoot.

‘I need to see Elaine Bannister.'

She opens a large, handwritten ledger, and runs past names with the aid of a ruler. ‘Elizabeth Bannister?'

‘Elaine . . . '

She looks up at me triumphantly. ‘There is no Elaine Bannister.' She snaps the registrar shut with undue force, as though imagining my nose between the covers.

‘That's impossible. She was brought in this morning, buried alive.'

The nurse nods. ‘That would be Elizabeth Bannister—Room 14.'

Although she's been washed, there's still the aura of the grave about her; a shading of ethereal grey that denies the presence of the sun, that speaks of the lurking menace of the tomb. Her breath is regular but slow, almost silent. She is so completely self-effacing in her state of semi-existence . . .

I pick up the chart hanging from her bed. The name Elaine Bannister is clearly typed. Why then was she registered as Elizabeth in the admissions book? I stare at her calm suffering caused by the indignities of medically-assisted survival, enduring this life in a bed she didn't choose, separated maybe forever from her child.

The hand on my shoulder makes me jump. The doctor stares at me through thick spectacles which enlarge his eyes. Eyes like his have no right to be magnified. ‘No visitors. Mr. Bannister's orders.' The only thing that's missing is the click of the heels at the mention of the Old Man's name. I shove my badge in front of his Coke bottles. His eyes travel the not-too-gleaming badge, worrying the tarnished surface, the mug shot photo, the smear of ink for a signature. ‘Get out,
ja
?'

‘You work for the Old Man? So do I, and I'm going to report your lack of co-operation.'

‘That is ridiculous, no one can accuse me.'

I make a bet with myself: plenty of people could accuse him of plenty. ‘What's your name?'

‘Landis. Doctor Professor Boris Landis.'

‘Don't you types salute?'

He frowns, handing me back my badge. ‘I assure you I enjoy the complete confidence of Mr. Bannister.' Translation: I have no hesitation in doing the Old Man's dirty work. And the Old Man knows it.

‘In that case, Professor Confidence, tell me why this patient's name has been deliberately falsified.' He glances at the clipboard. ‘Falsifying medical records. That's a criminal offence.'

He takes off his gold-rimmed spectacles and polishes them with a silk handkerchief. Stalling for time. ‘I was unaware any name was changed. Certainly not with my authority.'

‘Who registered this patient?'

‘That would be Mr. Bannister.'

‘Mr. Bannister was here in person?'

‘That, I cannot say.'

I want to kick the equivocating bastard in the balls. ‘What the fuck can you say?'

‘
Was fällt dir ein
! I am professor emeritus at the George Washington University. I will not tolerate being spoken to in such a manner.'

I pull out my cuffs. ‘I'm guessing you'll tolerate it more than spending a night in the lockup with a couple of homeless vets of the Battle of the Bulge . . . ' The whine of the cuffs opening shrieks between us. ‘So tell me: why the confusion over her name?'

‘
Nein, nein, nein.
'

‘That makes twenty-seven. And that's how many years you'll get as an accessory to kidnapping if you don't answer the question.'

He stares at the cuffs with such fear that, goddamn it, for an instant a sliver of pity slots through me. ‘Twins, don't you see? They are twins.'

Elaine and Elizabeth.
My friends call me Betty
. . . Elizabeth is Betty Bannister. But why did Mrs. Bannister tell me Elaine was her half-sister? Because she didn't want me to know she had a twin . . . ? Or she didn't want me to know who her father was? I stare at the woman in the bed again. All this time I've been looking at her as a victim—the miraculous survivor of a bungled murder attempt or frantic escape—never as a real person; an individual. All this time I was just seeing soil and survival; dirt and despair. Near-death, not life. An apparition, as close to a ghost as you can get—buried alive. All this time I've been looking at her like a cop, not like a detective.

I gently cover one of her eyes with a lock of hair and switch on the bedside lamp. Through the shade of the grave, it's now unmistakable . . . Unmistakable only because now I know what I'm looking for: Betty-goddamn-Bannister to a T.

‘Who changed the name of the patient? Tell me.'

‘Not me.' Landis backs away, banging into a gleaming metal trolley. There is the racket of falling trays and pans echoing off the hard floor. His shaking hand points to the bed chart. ‘The name is there . . . '

I grab the chart. The name is there all right, on the bottom of the third page under authority of next of kin for procedures:
Rex Lionel Bannister
. I grab the little bastard by the cuffs of his white coat. ‘What the hell is this?'

He backs away from the chart, as though expecting me to slap him with it. ‘What?'

‘This procedure the NOK has authorized?'

He takes the chart, adjusting his glasses. ‘
Ja
, transorbital leucotomy . . . It is nothing, a common procedure performed under local anaesthetic.'

‘Can the technical bullshit. What is it in layman's terms?'

‘Lobotomy.' Stretching the four syllables as though the ‘common' procedure had already been performed on me.

‘That woman is a witness to a crime. You touch a hair on her head, and so help me God . . . '

‘You don't understand.'

There's plenty I don't understand. ‘You better explain it to me then, doc . . . '

He points to Elaine Bannister like a tour guide pointing to a statue in a museum. ‘This procedure is not for Elaine . . . '

‘Then why is it marked on her sheet?'

‘Because she is incapable of giving consent.'

‘Consent for what, goddamn it?'

He shakes his head, marvelling at my ignorance. ‘For the procedure on her child . . . '

I snatch the chart from him and go back to the last page. Unpronounceable medical terms, hospital stamps and fucking Latin. Then I see it. Ronald James Bannister. The kidnapped kid; snatched before they could poke a knitting needle into his eye. And this is what awaits him if he's brought back alive: Herr Doktor and his procedure.

Jesus Christ, is this a kidnapping . . . or a rescue?

I shove Landis out of the way, my footsteps slapping an angry passage out of the stinking hospital.

The rookie cop is lounging by the squad car, chatting up a nurse, unable to hide his annoyance at my arrival. He flicks his cigarette between my legs. ‘Back to the Bannister joint?'

‘We're taking a detour. To Sunset Boulevard.' The moment I'd been dreading ever since I first spoke to the Old Man had finally arrived. It was time to make a house call on Johnny Roselli.

J
ohnny Roselli's house lay at the end of a crest of long, open lawn on North Linden Drive. Sparse. Hyper-manicured. No trees to hide behind. No cover; no ambush. No surprises for a man who preferred to spring them. Whatever direction you approached the house, he'd see you coming, silhouetted against the wide, empty space, like a moving target at a rifle range.

Roselli's home was less than two blocks from where Benny Siegel was shot dead. Roselli had learnt from Benny's mistake. After all, rumour had it that he and Johnny Stompanato had been the triggermen.

The rookie cop looks at me like I'm nuts when I tell him to pull up outside Roselli's joint. Rookie cops know where all the gangsters live. They're like Hollywood tourists with stars' homes. ‘Mr. Roselli's place?'

I stash my Colt Police Positive .38 Special, Allen's KA-BAR and his Moose Hunter, a couple of spare clips, my cuffs and my knuckle dusters under the front seat of the squad car. ‘What's your name, kid?'

‘Gillis.'

'Let me give you a word of advice, Gillis. Never say
Mister
Roselli. It only makes you sound like a shit-heel on the take . . . ' I slam the door hard, wishing his dirty little fingers were in its hinges, and march across the lonely lawn.

Before I'm ten paces from the door, two goons come out, their bodies lumped by weapons and the desire to use them. ‘Who the fuck are you?'

‘Tell your boss I'm a representative of Mr. Rex Bannister. He's expecting me . . . '

Two small heads swivel painfully sideways, cutting through acres of sinew and muscle, just so they can look at each other. As if either of them had the brains to make a decision like this. One of them grabs me. A voice booms from the other side of a screen door. ‘For crying out loud, how many times have I told you? Never frisk outside! What will the goddamn neighbours think?'

If they had any brains, the goddamn neighbours would pull up stakes and move to another city—pronto. Living next door to Johnny Roselli is like living next door to the Nevada Atomic Bomb Test Site.

They shove me inside, the screen door slamming on the back of my heels, frisking me with a contained brutality, as though I were to blame for their mistake outside. And in a way I was. I can't imagine that Mr. Roselli receives that many visitors, and my hunch is that most of the ones who enter his home never come out again. At least not in an identifiable state. Word on the street was that Roselli had a basement pizza oven even busier than Big Tuna's in Chicago. I raise my hands to help them with the frisk—co-operation is better than incineration—but these goons are strictly old-school: they don't appreciate assistance. I get my arms yanked and twisted and my back pounded as though I were Tommy Dorsey choking at the dinner table. One of the gorillas paws my wallet out of my inside jacket pocket—along with its lining—and tosses it to Roselli, who's dressed in a silk dressing gown and leather slippers: quite the lord of the manor. All that's missing is the pipe and the pooch with the paper.