Spider’s Cage (16 page)

“Yes ma'am,” said Windrow, scratching the stubble on his throat. “What I really need to know is how to get to the shack your father died in, and where I might find this fellow Hardpan. Also, do you have any idea where Jodie is?
And what do you know about a woman—I think she's a woman—called—.”

“Sal? Oh, you must mean Sal.”

“Sal, yes ma'am.”

“Well, Mr. Windrow, I don't see Jodie much, and certainly not since Dad died. She stays here sometimes, when she's singing in L.A., but not too often. Last time would have been this past summer, I think. She was here for about two days.”

“You don't get along?”

“Oh, we get along alright. But Jodie is determined to make her own career, her own money, her own way. Hal, my husband, Hal offered to help her when they first met, and she jumped all over him! Naturally I was rather sharp with her at the time, and she's been in a qualified snit ever since. I think I understand her, but really, the way she thumbs her nose at
millions
—well…” Mrs. Larkin sighed. “So, I don't see much of Jodie, as she calls herself. But she still calls regularly enough.”

“So, Jodie was close to your father?”

“Very. I haven't seen his will, or Jodie to ask her, but I'll bet he left most of the shooting match to her.” She sighed again. “I hope she has the sense to ask Hal for some advice, at least, I fear she'll find it very difficult to be a business tycoon
and
a nightclub singer.”

“And Sal?”

“Oh yes. Sal. Would do anything Edward would tell her to. She was his bodyguard, if you can believe it.”

Windrow touched the sore side of his face. “I can believe it.”

“Among other things.”

“What other things?”

“She used to keep an eye on Jodie, for one. Always
knew where she was, who she was shacking up with, how her career was doing. That sort of thing. Whenever Daddy would hole up in the desert place, Sal would keep tabs on Jodie until he got ready to go public again.”

“What would he do there, while he was holed up?”

“Read. His first wife, the original Jodie, always made him feel inferior about his education. That and his financial status. I never met her and don't want to, if she's still alive, but from what I understand, she must have been quite a bitch. I mean, when I was a kid, before mother threw daddy over for the house and the chauffeur, he came into my room drunk one night and sat on the edge of the bed to say goodnight, and I asked him about this Jodie business—you know, how come we had a mare called Jodie, and the pump sites. Well, he cried. I'll never forget it. He sat there drunk as could be and just blabbered about this Jodie, how beautiful she was, how educated she was, what good family she came from—in the
strangest
tone of voice. I was five years old and it scared me sick. Later on I thought about it, and realized that, as of that night, he must not have seen or heard from the woman in over fifteen years. Yet, he cried like she'd died in his arms at the Battle of the Alamo or something.”

A short silence ensued, during which Mrs. Larkin did not take a drink. Windrow said nothing.

“So anyway,” she resumed, “he would always read a lot, not only technical books about oil drilling and grain futures and things, you know the kind of stuff, but also a lot of philosophy, history, the Latin poets and statesmen, Plutarch and Cicero and their ilk.” she giggled. “Writers and thinkers of the first water, as my second husband used to say.”

“Diogenes?” Windrow asked, fishing.

“Mm,” she said. “He was Greek, wasn't he? I don't
know but I would say Daddy probably read Diogenes. And Socrates and Heraclitus and Homer and Suetonius and plenty of others. This woman Jodie actually shamed him into becoming an educated man, much more educated than I could imagine her being. His success too, was probably motivated by her rejection of him, at least in part. That man could work harder and longer than anybody I ever met and honey,” she clucked her tongue twice, as if urging a horse through its paces, “I've met a few. Jodie inherited that penchant for work.”

Windrow cleared his throat. “Anything else about Sal?”

“Totally loyal to Sweet Jesus O'Ryan. I don't know what she's doing now, or who's she's working for, but it's a cinch that daddy told her how it would be when he was gone. Now he's gone, that's the way it is, if she has any to do with it.”

“Did you go to the funeral?”

“Can't stand 'em, honey. I send flowers. Roses. Red roses, if it's a woman. Yellow roses for the boys.”

“Ahm—” Windrow began.

“Yellow cause I figure they just kept a date with somebody else, and I'm jealous.”

“What color did O'Ryan get?”

“He was a man, yellow, same as the rest. Maybe a better man, actually. I always was a tad jealous of that first Jodie, when I was younger. Almost like she broke up our home personally. Yeah…. Yellow.”

She gave him directions to O'Ryan's place, and the name of a cafe in Taft in which Hardpan had been seen between five and six o'clock every morning for thirty years.

“Thanks for all this time, Mrs. Larkin.”

“Think nothing of it,” she had said cheerily, “it's been fun getting sloshed and nostalgic over Daddy, bout time
I gave him a proper wake. I guess this'll be all the mourning the son of a bitch gets out of me.”

Windrow thought he heard the hint of a catch to her voice. He'd nearly hung up when he'd thought to ask what she might know about Pamela Neil and Woodruff.

“She got red ones,” she said, “even though I hadn't seen Pam and Manny since Jodie's first big performance in L.A. A dump called the Shotgun, about five years ago…. Disgusting place. Cement floor, stank of beer, too loud… .”

About to pour himself another drink, Windrow almost let the name go by.

“Manny?” he said, the bottle poised over the glass.

“Woodruff,” said the lady from Malibu. “Manny Woodruff. How do you think they met? Pamela and Woodruff, I mean. It was at a party at my house. Daddy was holed up in the desert, see, and Pamela got tired of sitting around the San Francisco place… Or was it the Carmel place? I can't remember. Anyhow, whenever she got bored, she'd hang around with Jodie or me or both of us. Unless she had something going on the side, of course. A fella, I mean. After all, Daddy was in his seventies and she wasn't thirty yet, to hear her tell it. She wasn't very particular about hiding the boys from me and Jodie, and, hell, I understood the—”

“What about Woodruff?” Windrow said, putting the bottle down.

“They met at a party at my house. Bango, just like that. And I do mean bango. That was right before he sold a faked Matisse to some big producer. About a year later the guy had it authenticated and, sure enough, it was a de Houry.
Beautiful
picture. Too bad he didn't hang onto it. Now it's worth almost as much as the real thing since deHouri killed hims—.”

“So who called him Manny?”

“Why darling
everybody
in L.A. called him Manny. Of course he had to close the Laguna Beach Gallery after the stink that ignorant producer raised over the fake painting, but Manny rode that one out. He's no dummy, either. The customer dropped the charges when Manny bought the picture back. His reputation was ruined around here, but by then Pamela was all his. He moved to San Francisco to be with her and took it easy for a while. After de Houry got famous Manny got a little local press about his picture, sold it for a lot of money, and picked up a reputation for a sharp eye to boot. After Pammy divorced Sweet Jesus, Manny opened a new gallery with the proceeds—one would imagine a little help from Pamela's annuity—and started to clean up peddling unknown abstract expressionism like some people peddle vacuum cleaners—every house needs at least
one
, right?”

“Manny,” Windrow murmured.

“Good old Manny, dearie. Is there anyone else in my immediate or not so immediate circle you'd like to gossip about? Hmmm?” she hiccupped. “Excuse me.”

“No thank you ma'am, not just now. If I think of anything else I'll give you a call.”

“Love to hear from you darling. So lovely to have met you. Ta.”

They hung up.

He sat in his office, not moving, not drinking, just sitting, for about fifteen minutes. Then he stirred the coke and speed into his glass of whiskey. While the mixture spun in the glass, he made two more calls. One to Gleason, to give him the tip about Woodruff's nickname, which tied Woodruff, circumstan tially at least, to the initials in Lobe's appointment book. Gleason promised to obtain a warrant to search Woodruff's gallery.

“Oh—Steve?”

“Yeah, Marity?”

Windrow lifted the glass. “Thanks for the bump.”

“Anytime, baby.”

The last phone call went to Emmy Cohen, the lawyer. Emmy Cohen and Windrow took turns employing each other. She promised to pull strings in order to discover the terms of Sweet Jesus O'Ryan's will. Windrow promised to call back, soon.

Then he drank the amphetamine, or methedrine, or dexadrine, or whatever it was the cocaine had been cut with, dissolved in whiskey.

The solution numbed his esophagus, loosened his bowels, and woke him up.

Now the Ford roared beneath him.

O
UTSIDE THE FORD IN THE MOONLIT DARKNESS THE
S
AN
Joaquin Valley flowed north, taking with it mile after mile of aqueducts, Los Banos, the Pacheco Pass, the potential site of Los Vaqueros Reservoir, the San Luis Reservoir and Forebay, sizzling power transit lines, 43% of California agriculture, the intersection where James Dean died, the stench of herbivore dung that envelopes a few cubic miles around the huge Harris Ranch feedlot at the Coalinga turnoff, gas flares, blue mercury lights and the sulphurous reek peculiar to the oil fields that dot the whole valley with increasing density until the traveler arrives in that unique oilrich pocket in the southern San Joaquin, between the westward-curving southern tip of the Sierra Nevada and the slopes of the easternmost Coastal Ranges, in western Kern County, California.

Here the traveler finds oil wells and walking beam pumps everywhere; in backyards, next to restaurants, in supermarket parking lots, in cotton fields and pastures and fruit groves, on desert flats: multiply in fields or preserved as relics, like a valued species of shade tree. In the first third of the twentieth century, California produced more oil than any other state, and a great deal of it came from the south end of the San Joaquin Valley.

It was into the vertiginous financial prospects of oil, the ruthlessness of water politics, and the dizzying manipulation
of irrigable land that Edward “Sweet Jesus” O'Ryan had inserted himself by his sentimental purchase of an insignificant plot of desert in the thirties. Deepwell technology turned his innocuous purchase into a small empire. As Windrow negotiated the Buttonwillow turnoff he was mulling over the luck of old man O'Ryan, and the shortsighted willfulness of his proud bride from Philadelphia.

But Windrow had been driving at speed for almost three hours, and found himself underestimating the curve of the off ramp. He passed the 35mph sign doing better than seventy, slid sideways up to and slightly beyond the stop sign at the end of it, before he got the machine halted. Across the road stood an open gas station, empty of traffic, with a young attendant sitting bolt upright in a chair next to a pump staring in unabashed, open-mouthed admiration at Windrow's smoking Ford. Windrow drove a crescent to the pump island, switched off the motor, and got out and stretched, wide awake.

The kid eagerly washed every window, inside and out, filled the empty tank with hi-octane solvent, and dumped two quarts of black gold into the creaking engine block. He'd checked every fluid reservoir on the car and had three tires properly inflated when Windrow returned from the telephone booth at the other end of the lot. The detective paced around the pump island, lost in thought, while the kid brought the fourth tire up to snuff, readjusted his Crane Racing Cams cap and reported in.

“You need some brake fluid, mister. Water's ok in the battery and radiator. She took two quarts of oil and seventeen and a half gallons of gas, the right rear—”

“Put it in,” Windrow waved his hand at the car.

The kid pulled a can of brake fluid out from under the rag hanging out of the back pocket of his coveralls and topped off the reservoir, saying the while, “Also, sir, I couldn't help
but notice your fan belt squealing as you pulled across the intersection, I can take care of that for you two ways sir, though you seem to be in a hur—”

“How long's the quick way?”

“About three seconds, sir, you just—”

“Do it.”

The kid drooled some of the brake fluid out of the can onto his fingers and pinched them around the inside circumference of the tired fan belt, rubbing it in, observing as he did so, “You handle this rig pretty good, sir, if I may say so, though I imagine she oversteers like a motherfucker—”

Windrow handed thirty dollars to the kid. “That cover it?”

Windrow was traveling faster than the kid was, who was falling far enough behind that he took the cash with the same hand that had brake fluid all over it.

“Yessir,” he said, disappointed that Windrow didn't want to discuss driving techniques. “I'll get your change.”

“Keep it,” Windrow said, slamming the hood. “Which way is Reward, California?”

The attendant pointed west. “Highway fifty-six to McKittrick, take the right into the hills.”

“The right?”

“There's only one, sir.”

“Thanks for the service,” Windrow said, getting into the car. The motor started immediately. He levered the selector into low and floored the accelerator. The four-barrel carburetor moaned and the rear tires laid a long pair of loud black marks through a sliding U-turn out of the service station and onto the pavement west. The fan belt didn't squeak.