“Reverend Elroy,” I said, “just what does Mr. Bickerton have to do with all of this stuff about Robbie? Why is he in this meeting?” I glanced at Bickerton. “No offense, sir.”
Bickerton dove in again. “Oh, I understand your concerns, Jimmy. But we’re all friends here. Nothing to hide. Isn’t that right, Elroy?” He pulled a cigar, a huge one, from his suit coat pocket. “Here, Jimmy, have a cigar.” He leaned forward and handed it to me across the table.
The cigar was the size and shape of Fat Boy, the atom bomb used in World War II, and from the looks of it, had probably cost as much. “Thanks, Billy. I’ll smoke it later.” I slipped the thing into my shirt pocket. I’ll score a few points with Sol when I hand him this baby, I thought.
“Nonsense!” Bickerton pulled out two more cigars. “We’ll smoke them now. You don’t mind do you, Elroy? Of course not. We want to loosen up and have a nice chat with Jimmy, here.” He tore the wrappers off, slid one to me, jammed the other in his mouth and talked around it while he patted his breast pockets. “Elroy, dang it, get me a match.”
Elroy jumped up, dashed to his desk, grabbed a lighter from a drawer, rushed back and torched Bickerton’s cigar. He came around to me. What the hell, I stuck the thing in my mouth. Elroy held the flame under it while I puffed. It felt good.
Bickerton and I leaned back in our chairs, gazing at the ceiling, puffing away. The room, filling with blue smoke, had the polite smell of money burning. Elroy let out a cough, which he tried without success to stifle.
After a few seconds I leaned forward, took the cigar in my hand and held it in front of my face, examining it. “Hmm,” I said, as I’d seen Edmund G. Robinson do many times in the gangster movies on the Late Show. “Hazel Farris is dead. Murdered, see.”
Elroy cried, “What!” He gawked at me, slack-jawed. “Dead?”
“Yep, murdered.” I kept my eye on Bickerton, who toked on the stogie. The news didn’t seem to faze him.
“Happens,” Bickerton finally said. “What does that have to do with Elroy here? Maybe you’re a little off base, Jimmy. He knows nothing about any murder.” Bickerton faced Elroy. “You don’t, do you, Elroy?”
“No. Why would I?”
Hazel’s death probably had nothing to do with Reverend Elroy, but he was the one who’d recommended the drug intervention center to Mrs. Farris. I needed the name and the address of the place, and I needed a knockdown to the person in charge of it. Maybe Robbie went there when he escaped, or maybe he had a friend there he’d confided in. Or maybe there was a connection between the center and the black Ford van-the van that allegedly picked him up outside the court. Or maybe it was nothing, just a lot of maybes, all smoke and maybes, like the smoke that filled the office with every puff we took.
But if people at the center were involved in Robbie’s escape, I doubted I’d get any cooperation from them. Of course, the van thing was a long-shot; a story told by a phony blind guy. A phony that I didn’t even believe. Anyway, why would people managing a drug intervention center want to help an escaped murderer? It didn’t add up. But here’s what did add up: my ass was on the line and I had to find Robbie, and the center seemed like a good place to start looking.
“Hey, Elroy,” I said, “why don’t you tell me about the drug center?”
Elroy paced the room, wringing his hands, mumbling words I couldn’t hear.
Bickerton shook his head. “No way. Can’t give any info out. Confidential.”
“What do you mean, confidential?”
“You ought to know what that means, being a lawyer.” Bickerton, it seemed to me, was becoming a little churlish.
“No offense, J. Billy, but I asked Elroy here a question. This doesn’t concern you,” I said. “Hey now, Elroy, I need the address of the center.”
Elroy instantly stopped pacing. He stood still, stiff, eyes bulging like a frozen fish.
Bickerton roared, “Damn it, O’Brien. I said the information is privileged!”
I guessed His Majesty wasn’t used to having his commandments being questioned.
“Why are you butting in?” I asked. “And, anyway, what’s so confidential about a drug center, for chrissakes?”
“Watch your language, wise guy. We are in the house of the Lord.” Bickerton waved the cigar around like it was a burning, out-of-control, flying turd. “And, mister, I’ll tell you why I’m butting in. I own this goddamn church.”
“Thought it was the Lord’s house.”
“Don’t get cute.”
My welcome at the Divine Christ Ministry Church had started to wear thin. Billy Bickerton and the Reverend Elroy Snavley grew exceedingly tired of dodging my questions about the center, but I kept pounding away. And of course, it was only a matter of minutes before I was asked to leave. When I wouldn’t stop the interrogation, the chauffeur was summoned. He politely showed me the door.
The chauffeur’s nose would heal, but my shirt was beyond repair and that fine cigar in the pocket was now in shreds.
CHAPTER 13
First, I stopped at a J.C. Penny’s on Nordhoff and picked up a new shirt, an OP Surfer, featuring scenes of palm trees, ocean waves, and a Woody parked by a sunny beach. Not too lawyerly, but what the heck, I liked it. Then I headed out. Turning off Winnetka, I swung into a Shell gas station and used the payphone next to the restrooms. My call went to Joyce, Sol’s private secretary. Her smoky, almost ethereal voice greeted me with a pleasant, “Good morning, Jimmy. It is still morning, isn’t it?”
“I think so, Joyce. Is Sol around?”
“No, but he left a message. Said that it’s important that he speak with you.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Sol seldom said anything was important unless it had to do with food. But I felt certain this message was about Webster’s investigation, not lunch. “He didn’t say what it was about, did he?”
“No, he just said you’d know, but he’ll be returning this afternoon. Will he be able to reach you?”
“I’ll have to call him. Robbie’s mother had mentioned that the drug center is out by Barstow. There’s something funny about the place. So I’m heading there now to snoop around. Tell Sol it has to do with Robbie’s disappearance. The center and his disappearance could be related. Will you tell him that, Joyce?”
“You bet, Jimmy.”
Barstow was about a hundred-forty miles northeast of Chatsworth, halfway to Vegas. Traffic in L.A. was a tangled mess, but the trip went fast once I left the basin. I rolled on the down side of the San Bernardino Mountains, covering the last fifty miles of Highway 66 from Victorville in thirty-four minutes. Not a record, but not too bad.
It was after three in the afternoon when I pulled into the desert town, crawling along Main Street. I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do. I just knew I had to do something, and the drug center seemed to be the logical place to start. I randomly turned left on First Street, continued until I came to Riverside Drive, and then turned left again.
On my left, I spotted a tumbledown cafe sitting in the middle of a dirt patch in front of the Santa Fe Railroad switching yard. I pulled into the lot. I needed a cup of coffee and maybe a bite to eat, but, more importantly, I’d ask someone if they knew anything about the intervention center.
It occurred to me that I stood a better chance of getting information by stopping at a cafe off the beaten track, away from the tourists. I figured the locals knew more about what was going on in their town than the people that just stopped for a tank of gas and a piss before heading back on the highway and zooming to Vegas. If the folks here were anything like the ones in Downey, I doubted they would appreciate a drug intervention center being built in their community. It might even be the talk of the town. But, after a moment’s reflection, I knew I was being optimistic. The way Bickerton refused not only to give me the address but to even discuss the center, told me that the outfit had to be keeping a low profile.