Over the Edge (46 page)

'That evil little weasel Kaltenblud! We zipped by fast, so I only saw him for a second, but I'd know that face anywhere - Lord knows I looked at it enough times! He was on our roundup list for Nuremberg, but we never got him - always seemed to be one step ahead. It made me suspect the damned CIA pansies had spirited him away in order to use him for dirty work, but questions to that effect got the usual hush-hush gobbledygook. Now, the prooP.

'Damned unjust to let the weasel go after all the misery he caused, but no use making a stink, the war's over. On the other hand, no harm in using it to squeeze Hornburgh's nuts, is there? Because if what I'm thinking is true, the nervousness and all that eagerness to sell the base makes a lot of sense. However, I didn't choose to spring it on him today. Just filed it away for use."
  
                   

'Ever hear of this Kaltenblud?' asked Milo. I shook my head. He thought for a moment.

'The Simon Wiesenthal Centre keeps tabs on those assholes. I'll give them a call soon as I finish this.' He returned to the diary. 'Oh, shit, another digression. Now he's into a land swap with a bunch of Indians from Palm Springs. Old Blackjack was everywhere.' He flipped pages impatiently.

'Okay,' he said several minutes later, 'this sounds like the showdown. November twenty-ninth: "Over lunch at my office, I sprang Kaltenblud on Hornburgh. Told him if the weasel was at the base, I knew what kind of dirty work had been going on and understood damn well why they wanted to dump the place. At first he hemmed and hawed, but when I told him we could either cut a fair deal or let the newspapers dig around, he fessed up. Just as I thought, they'd saved the bastard's neck, brought him over on a private military transport, and set him up with a lab at the base. Little weasel didn't care who he did his dirty deeds for - U. Sam or Schicklgruber. Just went on his merry way and left behind tons of poisonous garbage - which, after I leaned on him for a while, Hornburgh admitted they buried underground. He insisted it was done safely, in metal canisters, supervised by the Corps of Engineers, but I've got no confidence in those yahoos, having seen plenty of messes they've created. So, as far as I'm concerned, the place is sitting on a land mine. One earthquake or Lord knows what else, and the poison could leak out into the lake or plume underground. A sucker deal if I ever heard of one! I figure they picked me for the sucker because I was buying more and faster than anyone and they thought I'd

snap it up, no questions asked. Ha! By the time I left that office, it was they who were the suckers and I got everything I asked for:

A. The land, at a price so cheap it borders on free. Every damned square foot except I set aside a little for Skaggs, because his wife's a damned good cook and he does a fine job on the Bugatti. B. They furnish me with signed and certified geological reports stating the place is virgin-clean. C. All documentation of Kaltenblud's dirty work destroyed clear to Washington. D. The weasel himself must be eliminated in some sanitary fashion in case he gets big ideas, and starts yapping. Hornburgh claimed that had been their idea all along, he'd outlived his usefulness, but I won't be satisfied until I see a photo of him with pennies on his eyelids.

"So as soon as all that goes through, I'll own Bitter Canyon free and clear. Doesn't look like there's much I can do with it for the time being, but it was a gift, so I can afford to wait. Maybe someday I'll find a way to clean it up, or maybe it can be exploited in some other way, like for storage or dumping. If not, I can just hold on to it, use it as a private getaway. Toinette's behaviour is forcing me out more and more, and despite all the rottenness underneath, there's a kind of bleak beauty to the place - kind of like Toinette herself! Anyway, for what I paid, I can afford to let it go fallow, and after all, isn't being wasteful a sure sign a man's really made it?" '

'Poisoned earth,' I said. 'Plumes. Jamey was making sense all along.'

'Too much sense for his own good,' said Milo, standing. 'I'm gonna make that call.'

He left and returned a quarter of an hour later, holding a scrap of paper between thumb and forefinger.

"The folks at Wiesenthal knew him right away. Herr Doktor Professor Werner Kaltenblud. Head of the Nazis' chemical warfare section, posion gas expert. He was supposed to be indicted at Nuremberg but disappeared and was never heard from again. Which could make sense if the army kept its bargain with Blackjack.'

'Blackjack would have demanded it.'

'True. So the prick's definitely dead. The researcher I spoke to said he's still on the active file, considered one of the big ones who got away. He pressed me for what I knew but I stonewalled him with vague promises. If this thing ever resolves, maybe I can keep them.'

He began to circle the room.

'A power plant built on tons of poison gas,' I said. 'Now you've got your motive.'

'Oh, yeah. Seventy-five million dollars' worth. Wonder how the kid got hold of the diary.'

'It could easily have been by accident. He was a voracious reader, liked to go rummaging around old books. The night he was committed to Canyon Oaks he tore apart his uncle's library, which could indicate he'd found something there before and was looking again.'

'Buried for forty years among the limited editions?'

'Why not? After Peter died, Dwight was Black Jack's primary heir. Suppose he inherited the old man's books but never bothered to look at them? He didn't impress me as a bibliophile type. If he and Heather had come across the diary, they would have destroyed it. It was undisturbed because no one knew it existed. Until Jamey found it and realised how explosive it was. Chancellor had got him interested in business and finance, put him to work doing securities research. He had to know how heavily Beverly Hills Trust had invested in the Bitter Canyon issue, and he went straight to Chancellor and told him he'd bought a lot of potentially useless paper - twenty million dollars' worth that couldn't be unloaded without attracting unwanted attention.'

Milo had stopped pacing to listen. Now he stood with one palm pressed against the tabletop, the other rubbing his eyes, digesting.

'Your basic extortion/elimination scenario,' he said softly. 'With a bunch of extra zeroes tacked on. Chancellor confronts Uncle Dwight with what he's learned from the diary. Maybe Uncle knew about the gas, maybe not. In either case, Chancellor's chafing to get rid of those bonds

and demands that Uncle buy them back. Uncle baulks; Chancellor threatens to go public. So they arrange a buyout. It would have to be gradual, under the table, to avoid scrutiny. Maybe Chancellor even tacks on interest to compensate for pain and suffering.'

'Or demands a premium price.'

'Right.' He thought for a while, then said:

'Fast Talker told you there's been some slow selling of the bond, which could mean Uncle's letting a little trickle back onto the market, but just like Chancellor, a little's all he can afford to let go of. That leaves him doubly at risk -building a plant on all that gas and paying for it himself.'

'Tight squeeze,' I said.

Milo nodded. 'Time pressure, too. Uncle can't keep buying those bonds back without the corporate ledgers eventually starting to smell bad. He searches for a way out, finds himself thinking how nice life would be if Chancellor -and the kid - were out of the picture. Tells his troubles to wifey-poo, who's an expert on blitzing people out with herbs, and they cook up a plan that will eliminate all their problems: Cut up Chancellor and set the kid up for the murder.'

He stopped, thought, continued:

'You realise, that this doesn't mean the kid didn't kill anyone. Only that he might have been under the influence when he did it.'

'True. But it does say something about culpability. He was set up, Milo. A disturbed kid pushed over the edge slowly, with exquisite care, until he was ready for a locked ward. After hospitalisation the poisoning continued; the Cadmuses found themselves a doctor who'd do anything for a buck, including breaking his own rules to allow a private nurse to work there. Ten to one, Surtees's real job was administering the daily dose. Under Mainwaring's supervision.'

'Surtees,' he murmured, writing in his notepad. 'What was her first name?'

'Marthe, with an e. If that's her name at all. None of the nursing registries have ever heard of her. She vanished the

day after he broke out. Just like Vann, who just happened to have stepped away from her desk. The whole thing stinks, Milo. He was allowed to break out, then taken to Chancellor's house and . . . '

'And?'

'I don't know.' Translation: I don't want to think about it.

He put the notepad down and said he'd put a trace on both the nurses. 'Maybe we'll even get lucky.'

'Maybe,' I said gloomily.

'Hey, don't overwork your empathy glands.' Gently: 'What's the problem, still thinking about guilt and innocence?'

'Don't you?'

'Not when I can avoid it. Gets in the way of doing the job.' He smiled. 'Course, that doesn't mean you civilised types shouldn't."

I stood up, pressed my palms against the green walls ol the interrogation room. The plaster felt soft, as if weakened by the absorption of too many lies.

'I was hoping there'd be a way to find him truly innocent,' I said. 'To show that he hadn't killed anyone.'

'Alex, if it turns out he was under the involuntary influence of drugs, he'll never see a day in jail.'

'That's not innocence.'

'But it is, kind of. There's something called the unconsciousness defence - applies to perps who commit crimes while unaware of what they're doing: sleepwalkers; epileptics in seizures; head injury victims; the chemically brainwashed. It's almost never used because it's even harder to prove than dim cap; real unconscious felonies are pretty damned rare. Only reason I know about it is an old guy I busted several years ago. Strangled his wife in his sleep after his doctors had fucked up his medicines and derailed his circuits. It was bona fide, backed up by real medical data, not just psych stuff - no offence. Even the DA bought it. They let him off at the prelim. Free and sane. Innocent. Souza'll be sure to jump on it.'

'Speaking of Souza,' I said, 'there's something else to

consider. He was the one who found Mainwaring. And Surtees. What if he's in on it and the whole defence is a sham?'

'Then why would he call you in and subject it to scrutiny?'

I had no answer for that.

'Listen, Alex, I like the general flavour of what we've come up with. But that doesn't mean we're even close to know what actually happened. There are lots of question marks. How did the diary get from Chancellor to Yamaguchi? How did Radovic know to look for it? Why was he following you around? And where do Fat and Skinny figure in? And what about all those other Slasher victims? I'm sure I could come up with a few more if you gave me some time. Point is, I can't afford to sit around and speculate, can't keep cowboying this thing much longer without clueing in Whitehead and the others. And before I'd do that, I'd prefer something more solid than old books to back me up.'

'Such as?'

'A confession.'

'How do you plan on getting that?'

'The honourable way. By intimidation.'

The STORM continued to rage, battering the coastline and dressing it in graveclothes of fog. Pacific Coast Highway was closed to nonresidents past Topanga, because of mud slides and poor visibility. The highway patrol was out in force, setting up roadblocks and checking IDs. Milo grabbed the magnetic flasher from the dash, opened the window, and slammed it onto the roof of the Matador. Having returned a drenched arm to the wheel, he steered onto the shoulder and sailed past the jam of high-priced buggies.

He braked at the command of a CHP captain, engaged in the ritual exchange of police banter, and drove on. As we hit the highway, the Matador's tyres spun and skidded before attaining traction. He slowed down, squinted, and followed the taillights of a BMW with vanity plates proclaiming it HALS TOY. The police radio belched out a litany of disaster: fatal crackups on the Hollywood and San Bernadino freeways; a disabled truck obstructing the Cahuenga Pass; killer surf jeopardising what remained of the Santa Monica Pier.

'Goddamn city's like a spoiled brat," he growled. 'Minute things aren't gorgeous it falls apart.'

To the left was the ocean, roiling and black: to the right, the southern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains. We passed through a section of highway that had been decimated by slides two years ago, the hillsides skinned like a slaughterhouse steer. Art and chemistry had come to the rescue: The denuded earth had been preseved under an immense sheath of pinkish brown fibreglass - the kind of trompe l'oeil topography used on movie sets, complete with moulded furrows and simulated scrub. A Disneyland solution, synthetically perfect.

The house was two miles into Malibu, on the wrong side of the Pacific Coast Highway, segregated from sand and sea by four lanes of blacktop. It was a small fifties ranch structure, a single storey of white texture-coated stucco under a low, flat composition roof, the entry side coated with used brick, the sole landscaping beds of ice plant that hugged a rising asphalt driveway. Attached to the house was a double garage. Where the front lawn should have been was all oil-stained concrete.

Parked in front was a pea green Mercedes sedan. Through its rain-clouded windows came a flash of white - a doctor's coat, draped over the passenger seat.

'I think I've got it down pretty good,' said Milo, parking close to the house and turning off the engine, 'but do me a favour and keep your ears open. In case he tries to snow me with technical stuff.'

We went out and made a dash for the front door. The bell was out of order, but Milo's knock evoked a quick response - a slice of thin face through a door barely edged open.

'Yes?'

'Police, Dr. Mainwaring. Sergeant Sturgis, West L.A. Division. I believe you know Dr. Delaware. May we please come in?'

Mainwaring's eyes caromed from Milo to me and back to Milo, settling, finally, on a spot somewhere in the middle of my friend's thick torso.

'I don't understand - '

'Be happy to explain it, sir' - Milo smiled - 'if we could just step out of this monsoon.'

'Yes. Of course.'
                                                  

The door swung open. We walked through, and he backed away, staring at us, smiling nervously. Stripped of his white coat and status, he was far from impressive: a stoop-shouldered middle-aged man, undernourished and overworked, wolf face dotted with a day's growth of white stubble, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He wore a bulky grey fisherman's sweater over rumpled olive twill trousers and scuffed bedroom slippers. The slippers were cut low and revealed marble-white flesh veined with blue.

The interior of the house was musty and so devoid of style it had been rendered psychologically invisible: a boxy white living room filled with bland furniture that appeared to have been lifted intact from a department store display; walls hung with the type of seascape and landscape that can be purchased by the pound. Beyond the half-open door at the rear of the room was a long dark hallway.

The adjacent dining area had been converted to an office, its table piled high with the same kind of clutter I remembered from Mainwaring's sanctum at Canyon Oaks. A framed snapshot of two sad-looking children - the boy seven or eight, the girl two years old - was propped against a pile of medical journals. There was food on the table: a wax carton of orange juice, a plate of cookies, and a half-gnawed apple, browned by oxidation. On the floor was one of those robot toys - a jet plane - that transform into three other objects when manipulated by small, nimble fingers. Beyond the dining area was a pistachio green kitchen, still resonating with last night's cabbage and boiled meat. A Bach organ fugue streamed out of a Montgomery Ward stereo.

'Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen,' said Mainwaring, gesturing toward a cotton couch the colour and texture of congealed oatmeal.

'Thanks,' said Milo, removing his slicker.

The psychiatrist took it and my London Fog, regarded them as if they were diseased.

'Let me hang these up.'

He carried the garments through the half-open door into the hall and disappeared in the darkness long enough for Milo to grow antsy. But a moment later he returned, closing the door.

'Can I get you anything? Some coffee or biscuits?'

'No, thanks, Doc'

The psychiatrist looked down at the cookies on the table, thought for a moment, then sat down, folding his spare frame into a brown velveteen armchair. After selecting a briar out of a rack on the coffee table, he packed it. lit, sucked, and settled back, exhaling bitter blue smoke.

'Now then, what can I do for you, Sergeant?'

Out came the notepad. Milo flashed a stupid grin.

'Guess it's a switch for someone like you, huh? Me taking notes while you talk.'

Mainwaring smiled with just a trace of impatience.

'Let me just get a few details out of the way, Doctor. First name?'

'Guy.'

'As in Fawkes, huh?'

The smile widened condescendingly.

'Yes, Sergeant.'

'Middle name?'

'Martin.' He looked at me quizzically, as if expecting a secret eye signal or other evidence of a camaraderie. I turned away.

Milo put the pad on his knee and scrawled.

'Guy Martin Mainwaring . . . okay . . and you're a psychiatrist, right?'

'That's correct.'

'Which means you charge ten bucks an hour more than Dr. Delaware here, right?'

Mainwaring's eyes narrowed with hostility as he looked at me again, unsure what game was being played but aware, suddenly, that I was on the other team. He kept silent.

'The accent's British, right?'

'English.'

'Where'd you go to school? In Britain?'

'I attended the University of Sussex,' the psychiatrist recited crisply. 'Upon earning my M.B. - '

'M.B.?'

'It's the English equivalent of the M.D. - '

'What does the B stand for?'

'Bachelor.'

'So you're a Bachelor of Medicine, not a doctor?'

The psychiatrist sighed.

'It's called that, Sergeant, but it's equivalent to an American medical doctorate.'

'Oh. I thought they called doctors Mister in Britain.'

'Nonsurgical physicians are addressed as Doctor, surgeons as Mister. One of our funny little traditions.'

'What do you use here in America?'

'M.D. To avoid the type of confusion you just experienced.' When Milo didn't say anything, he added: 'It's all quite legal, Sergeant.'

'Confusion is right. Probably be more simple if I just called you Guy, huh?'

Mainwaring bit down on the pipe and puffed furiously.

'You were telling me about what you did after you got your. . . M.B., Doctor.'

'I was awarded a residency at the Maudsley Hospital in London and was subsequently appointed to a lectureship there in the department of psychiatry.'

'What'd you teach?'

Mainwaring looked at the detective as if he were a dull child.

'Clinical psychiatry, Sergeant.'

'Anything in particular?'

'I instructed the house staff in comprehensive patient management. My specialty was the treatment of the major psychoses. The biochemical aspects of human behaviour.'

'Do any research?'

'Some. Sergeant, I really must ask - '

'I'm asking
 
'cause Dr.
 
Delaware has done a lot of

research, and when he talks about it, I always find it interesting.'

'I'm sure you do.'

'So what was your research about?'

'The limbic system. It's a part of the lower brain that's related to emotional-

'How'd you study it - examine people's brains?'

'On occasion.'

'Live brains?'

'Cadavers.'

'That reminds me of something,' said Milo. 'There was this guy Cole; they executed him last year in Nevada; he used to go into sudden rages and strangle women. Killed anywhere from thirteen to thirty-five. After he was dead, some doctor lifted his brain in order to study it, see if he could find something to explain the guy's behaviour. That was awhile back, and I haven't heard if he found anything. Has it been written up in some medical journal?'

'I really wouldn't know.'

'What do you think? Could you look at a brain and say anything about criminal tendencies?'

'The origins of all behaviour are in the brain, Sergeant, but it's not quite as simple as merely looking - '

'So what did you do with those cadaver brains?'

'Do?'

'How'd you study them?"

'I conducted biochemical analyses on homogenized - '

'Under a microscope?'

'Yes. Actually my use of human brains was infrequent. My usual subjects were higher-level mammals - primates.'

'Monkeys?'

'Chimpanzees.'

'You figure there's a lot to learn about human brains from looking at monkey brains?'

'Within limits. In terms of cognitive function - thinking and reasoning - the chimpanzee brain is significantly more limited than its human counterpart. However - '

'But so are some people's brains, right? Limited.'

'Unfortunately that's true, Sergeant.'

Milo inspected his notes and closed the pad.

'So,' he said, 'you're quite an expert.'

Mainwaring looked down with forced modesty and polished his pipe with the edge of his sweater.

'One tries one's best.'

My friend swivelled toward me.

'You were right, Dr. D. He is the right person to talk to.' Back to Mainwaring.

'I'm here for a little medical education, Doctor. An expert consultation.'

'Regarding what?'

'Drugs. How they affect behaviour.'

Mainwaring tensed and glanced at me sharply.

'In relationship to the Cadmus case?' he asked.

'Possibly.'

'Then I'm afraid I can't be of much help, Sergeant. James Cadmus is my patient, and any information I have is privileged.'

Milo got up and walked over to the dining room table. He picked up the photo of the two children and examined it.

'Nice-looking kids.'

'Thank you.'

'The girl kind of looks like you.'

'Actually both of them resemble their mother. Sergeant, ordinarily I'd be pleased to help, but I have a staggering amount of work to do, so if- '

'Homework, huh?'

'Pardon me?'

'You took the day off to work at home.'

Mainwaring shrugged and smiled.

'Sometimes it's the only way to get through the paper work.'

'Who takes care of the patients when you're gone?'

'I have three excellent psychiatrists on my staff.'

Milo returned to the living room and sat down.

'Like Dr. Djibouti?' he asked.

Mainwaring tried to hide his surprise behind a veil of smoke.

'Yes,' he said, exhaling. 'Dr. Djibouti. And Drs. Kline and Bieber.'

'Reason I know his name is when I called the hospital to talk to you, they hooked me up with the psychiatrist on call, who was Dr. Djibouti. Very nice guy. What is he, Iranian?'

'Indian.'

'He said you'd been out for four days.'

'I've had a nasty cold.' As if illustrating, he sniffled.

'What do you do for it?'

'Aspirin, fluids, rest.'

Milo snapped his fingers and gave an aw-shucks grin.

'That's it, huh? For a minute I thought I might pick up a medical secret.'

'I wish I had one to offer you, Sergeant.'