Silent Partner (28 page)

The same photograph was used in each, a publicity shot credited to L. Belding Industries: the young inventor sitting in the cockpit of one of his planes, goggled and helmeted, his attention fixed upon the instrument panel. A handsome man, but cold-looking.

Belding's enormous wealth, precocity, boyish good looks, and shyness made him a natural media hero, and the tone of the earliest popular magazine pieces was worshipful. One article designated him the Most Eligible Bachelor of 1937. Another called him the closest America had come to producing a crown prince.

A prewar profile in Collier's summed up his rise to fame: He'd been born to wealth, in 1910, the only child of an heiress from Newport, Rhode Island, and a Texas oil wildcatter turned gentleman rancher.

Another official corporate photo. Belding appeared frightened of the camera, standing, shirtsleeves rolled to

the elbows, a large lug wrench in one hand, next to a gargantuan piece of cast-iron machinery. By age thirty he'd attained a monkish look—high forehead, sensitive mouth, thick eyeglasses that couldn't hide the intensity of round, dark eyes. A modern-day Midas, according to the article, representing the best of American ingenuity combined with good old-fashioned hard work.

Though born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Belding had never allowed it to tarnish; he'd favored twenty-hour days and wasn't afraid of getting his hands dirty. He had a photographic memory, knew his hundreds of employees by name, but didn't suffer fools gladly, had no patience for the frivolity of the "cocktail crowd."

His idyllic life as an only son had been cut cruelly short when both his parents perished in a car crash—returning, after a party, to their rented villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza, just south of Majorca.

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Another layer. I stopped reading, tried to make some sense of that. When I couldn't, I resumed reading.

At the time of the accident, Belding had been nineteen, a senior at Stanford, majoring in physics and engineering. He dropped out of college, returned to Houston to run the family petroleum business, and expanded immediately into the manufacture of oil-drilling equipment, using designs that he'd developed as student projects. A year later he diversified into heavy farm machinery, took flying lessons, proved to be a natural, and qualified easily as a pilot. He began devoting himself to airplane construction. Within five years he dominated the aerospace industry, flooding the field with technical innovations.

In 1939 he consolidated his holdings as the Magna Corporation (corporate press release: "... had Mr. Belding graduated Stanford, he would have received his degree magna cum laude."), and moved from Texas to Los Angeles, where he built corporate headquarters, an aircraft assembly plant, and a private airstrip on a 1,500-acre tract in the suburb of El Segundo.

Rumors of a public stock offering made bulls and bears take note. But the offering never materialized and Wall

Street regretted that out loud, calling Lee Belding a cowboy who'd eventually bite off more than he could chew. Belding had no comment, continued branching out—to shipping, railroads, real estate, construction.

He obtained the contract for a Department of Labor annex in Washington, D.C., built low-cost housing in Kentucky, an army base in Nevada, then bucked the mob and the unions in order to create the Casbah—the largest, most ostentatious casino ever to blot out the Las Vegas sun.

By his thirtieth birthday he'd increased his inheritance thirty times over, was one of the five richest men in America, and definitely its most secretive, refusing interviews and shunning public events. The press forgave him; playing hard to get only made him better copy and gave them more latitude.

Privacy, the last luxury...

It wasn't until after World War II that the honeymoon between America and Leland Belding began to sour. As the nation buried its dead, and working people faced an uncertain future, left-leaning journalists began to point out that Belding had used the war to become a billionaire while ensconced in his penthouse at Magna headquarters.

Subsequent snooping revealed that between '42 and '45, the assets of the Magna Corporation had quadrupled, due to successful bidding for thousands of government defense contracts: Magna had been the armed forces' prime supplier of bombers, aircraft guidance systems, antiaircraft weapons, tanks and halftracks, even K-ration kits and servicemen's uniforms.

Terms like robber baron, profiteer, and exploiter of the working man began to crop up in editorials, commentators asserting that Lee Belding was all take, no give, a self-obsessed tightwad devoid of the slightest shred of patriotic spirit. One writer pointed out that he never donated to charity, hadn't given a penny to the War Bond drive.

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Rumors of corruption soon followed—intimations that all those contracts hadn't been won by putting in the lowest bid. By early 1947 the intimations became accusations and took on enough substance for the U.S. Senate to pay heed. A subcommittee was created, charged with investigating the genesis of Leland Belding's war profits and dissecting the inner workings of the Magna Corporation. Belding ignored the furor, turned his talents to movies, bought a studio, and invented a hand-held motion picture camera that promised to revolutionize the industry.

In November of '47, the Senate subcommittee held public hearings.

I found a summary of the proceedings in a business magazine—conservative point of view, no pictures, all small print and dry prose.

But not dry enough to camouflage the racy nature of the main accusation against Belding: That he was less captain of industry than high-class pimp.

Committee investigators claimed Belding had shifted the odds on contract bids by throwing

"wild parties" for War Board officials, government purchasing agents, legislators. These bashes took place in several secluded Hollywood Hills houses purchased by the Magna Corporation expressly as "party pads," and featured "stag movies," flowing booze, indulgence in "marijuana reefers," as well as nude dancing and swimming displays by legions of "young women of loose morals."

These women, described as "professional party girls," were aspiring actresses chosen by the man who ran Belding's studio, a "former management consultant" named William Houck "Billy"

Vidal.

The hearings went on for more than six months; then, gradually, what had promised to be a juicy story began to shrivel. The subcommittee proved unable to produce witnesses to the notorious parties, other than Belding's business competitors, who testified from hearsay and crumpled in cross-examination. And the billionaire himself refused subpoenas to testify, on the grounds of endangering the national security, and was backed up by the Defense Department.

Billy Vidal did show up—in the company of high-priced legal talent. He denied his major role was to procure women for Leland Belding, described himself as a successful Beverly Hills-based management consultant to the film industry prior to meeting Belding, and produced documents to prove it. His friendship with the young tycoon had begun when the two of them were students at Stanford, and he admired Lee Belding. But he denied involvement in anything illegal or immoral. A legion of character witnesses backed him up. Vidal was dismissed.

When subpoenas for Magna's accounting records were rejected by the company, once again on the basis of national security, and both Defense and State backed up Belding, the committee reached an impasse and died.

The senators saved face by delivering a mild reprimand to Leland Belding, noting his invaluable contributions to the national defense but suggesting he be more careful in the future with his record keeping. Then they assigned staffers to compile a report of their findings and voted the committee out of existence. Cynics suggested that in view of the charge that members of Congress had been on Belding's party list, the entire process had been just another example of
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the foxes guarding the henhouse. But by this time no one really cared. The country was ripe with optimism, intent on rebuilding, and determined to have a damned good decade. If a few hearty rascals had indulged in a little high living, so be it.

Party pads. A film connection. Stag films. I wanted to know more about Bashful Belding's conduit to the fast life.

Before I could return to the index section to look for anything on William Houck Vidal, the announcement that the library was closing in fifteen minutes came blaring out of a ceiling speaker. I collected my two books and as many unread periodicals as I could carry, made a beeline for the photocopy machines, and spent the next ten minutes feeding dimes. Then I went downstairs and used my faculty card to check out the books. Armed with my treasures, I headed home.

A WHITE VW Rabbit was parked in front of my carport, blocking the Seville. A young woman slouched against it, reading a book.

When she saw me she sprang up.

"Hi! Dr. Delaware?"

"Yes."

"Dr. Delaware? I'm Maura Bannon? From the Times? The Dr. Ransom story? I wondered if I could talk to you—just for a minute?"

She was tall and stick-skinny, about twenty, with a long freckled face that needed finishing. She wore yellow sweats and white running shoes. Her pageboy hairdo was dyed orange with pink overtones, the same color as the lashes around her light-brown eyes. She had a marked overbite with a toothpick-wide gap between the upper incisors.

The book in her hand was Wambaugh's Echoes in the Darkness and she'd flagged it in several places with yellow tags. Her nails were gnawed stubby.

"How'd you find out where I live, Ms. Bannon?"

"We reporters have our ways." She smiled. It made her look around twelve.

When she saw I wasn't smiling back, she said, "There's a file on you at the paper. From a few years ago? When you were involved in catching those child molesters?"

Privacy, the last luxury. "I see." At least Ned Biondi hadn't played fast and loose.

"I could tell from reading the clippings on you that you're a dedicated person," she said.

"Someone who doesn't like bullshit? And bullshit is what they're giving me."

"Who is?"

"My bosses. Everyone. First they tell me to forget the Ransom story. Now, when I ask to cover the Kruse murders, they give it to that dweeb Dale Conrad—I mean the guy never leaves his desk. He has about as much drive as a sloth on Quaaludes. When I tried to reach Mr. Biondi, his
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secretary told me he was out of town—off to Argentina, taking some Spanish course. Then she handed me an assignment to follow up a trained horse story—out in Anaheim?"

A mild, warm breeze blew in from somewhere across the glen. It ruffled the tags in her book.

"Interesting reading?" I said, holding my own books in a way that obscured their titles.

"Fascinating. I want to be a crime writer—get into the core of good and evil? So I need to immerse myself in life-and-death issues. I figured I'd go with the best—the man was a cop, had a real solid experiential base. And the people in this one were so weird—outwardly respectable but totally crazed. Like the people in this case?"

"Which case?"

"Cases, actually. Dr. Ransom? Dr. Kruse? Two psychologists dying in the same week—two psychologists who were connected to each other. If they were connected in life, maybe in death too? Which means Ransom may have been murdered, don't you think?"

"How were they connected?"

She made a naughty-naughty gesture. "Come on, Dr. Delaware, you know what I'm talking about. Ransom was one of Kruse's students. More than that—a prize student. He was her doctoral committee chairman."

"How do you know that?"

"Sources. C'mon, Dr. Delaware, stop being coy. You're a graduate of the same program. You knew her, so chances are you knew him, too, right?"

"Very thorough."

"Just doing the job. Now could you please talk to me? I'm not giving up on this story."

I wondered how much she actually knew and what to do with her.

"Want some coffee?" I said.

"Do you have tea?"

Once inside the house, she said, "Camomile, if you've got it," and immediately began inspecting the decor. "Nice. Very L.A."

"Thanks."

Her gaze shifted to the pile of papers and unopened mail on the table and she sniffed. I realized the place had taken on a stale, unlived-in smell.

"Live alone?" she asked.

"For the moment." I went into the kitchen and stashed my research materials in a cupboard, fixed her a cup of tea and myself a cup of instant coffee, put all of it on a tray with cream and
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sugar, and brought it into the living room. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa. I sat down facing her.

"Actually," I said, "I was off campus by the time Dr. Kruse came to the University. I graduated the year before."

"Two months before," she said. "June of '74. I found your dissertation too." She flushed, realized she'd given away her "sources," and tried to recover by looking stern. "I'm still willing to bet you knew him."

"Have you read the Ransom dissertation?"

"Skimmed it."

"What was it about?"

She bobbed her tea bag, watched the water in her cup darken. "Why don't you answer some of my questions before I answer yours?"

I thought of the way the Kruses had looked in death. Lourdes Escobar. D.J. Rasmussen. Bodies piling up. Big-money connections. Grease the skids.

"Ms. Bannon, it's not in your best interests to pursue this case."

She put the cup down. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Asking the wrong questions could be dangerous."

"Oh, wow," she said, rolling her eyes. "I don't believe this. Sexist protectionism?"

"Sexism has nothing to do with it. How old are you?"

"That's not relevant!"

"But it is, in terms of experience."

"Dr. Delaware," she said, standing, "if all you're going to do is patronize me, I'm out of here."

I waited.

She sat. "For your information, I've worked as a reporter for four years."

"On your college paper?"