I had a heavy foot, speeding past brown, rumpled-blanket mountains, groves of scrub oak and pine and California pepper trees, the occasional grazing horse. The heat hadn't let up, but the sky was awash with pretty clouds-lavender-gray swirls, satin-shiny, as if an old wedding dress had been draped over the world.
The clippings had given me three possible contacts: Teo-doro Alarcon, the ranch superintendent who'd found the bodies; Sheriff Jacob Haas; and the only other person to comment on Ardis Peake's strange behavior without protection of anonymity, a kid named Derrick Crimmins. No listings on Alarcon or Crimmins, but a Jacob B. Haas had an address at Fairway Ranch. I called his number and a hearty male voice on a machine told me Jake and Marvelle were unavailable, but feel free to leave a message. I said I'd be in town on LAPD business and would appreciate it if Sheriff
Haas could spare me some time.
The highway forked, the truck route sprouting to the right and draining the traffic from three lanes. Radar surveillance warnings were all around, but the eternity of open road before me was too seductive and I kept the Seville at 85, zipping past
Saugus and Castaic, the western ridge of Angeles Crest National Forest, the Tejon
Pass, then the Kern County border.
Shortly after eleven, I exited at Grapevine and bought some gas. My freeway map showed me how to get to Fairway Ranch, but I confirmed directions with the sleepy-looking attendant.
"That's for old people," he said. He was around nineteen, crew-cut, tan, and pimpled, with four earrings in his left lobe.
"Visiting Grandma," I said.
He looked up and down the Seville. "It's pretty nice there. Rich people, mostly.
They play a lot of golf." The minitruck with the huge wheels and the Radiohead bumper sticker parked near the garbage cans was probably his. Freshly waxed. His eyes narrowed as he continued to stare at the Seville. I try to keep the car in good shape, but it's a '79 and there are limits.
"Used to be another town around here," I said.
His stare was dull.
"Treadway," I said. "Farms, ranches, peaches, and walnut groves."
"Oh, yeah?" Profound indifference. "Cool car."
I thanked him and left, taking a narrow northeastern road toward the Tehachapi
Mountains. The range was gorgeous- high and sharp, peaks of varying height laid against one another masterfully, more perfectly arranged than any artist's composition could ever be. The lower hills were dun, the upper ridges the precise ash-gray of the Beatty brothers' dead faces. Some of the more distant crests had faded to a misty purple. Wintry colors even at this time of year, but the heat was more intense than in L.A., burning through the clouds as if they were tissue paper.
The road rose sharply. This was subalpine terrain. I couldn't imagine it as farmland. Then ten miles in, a sign reading FAIRWAY RANCH: A PLANNED COMMUNITY directed me down a left-hand pass that cut sharply through walls of granite. Another sign-STEEP GRADE: REDUCE SPEED-came too late; I was already hurtling down a roller-coaster chute.
A good two miles of chute. At the bottom was flat green patchwork centered by a diamond-bright aquamarine lake. The lake was amorphous-too perfectly shapeless, it shouted man-made. Two golf courses hugged the water, one on each side, fringed by lime-colored trees with feathery tops- California peppers. Red-topped houses were grouped in premeditated plots. Spanish tile on cream stucco, interspersed with trapezoids of green. The entire layout-maybe five miles wide-was outlined in white, as if drawn by a child too fearful to*go outside the lines.
As I got closer I saw that the white was waist-high beam-and-post fencing. An exact duplicate of the "planned community" sign appeared a hundred yards later, over a smaller plaque that said Bunker Protection patrolled the premises.
No gates, just a flat, clean road into the development. Fifteen MPH speed limit and warnings to watch for slow-moving golf carts. I obliged and crawled past stretches of perfect rye grass. Lots more pepper trees, shaggy and undulating, sub-planted with beds of multicolored impatiens.
A thousand feet in, another dozen signs on a stout, dark tree trunk that might have been walnut offered a crash course in the layout of Fairway Ranch.
Balmoral Golf Course to the north, White Oak to the south, Reflection Lake straight ahead. The Pinnacle Recreation Center and Spa to the north, Walnut Grove Fitness
Center to the south. In the center, Piccadilly Arcade.
Other arrows pointed to what I assumed were six different housing subdivisions:
Chatham, Cotswold, Sussex, Essex, Yorkshire, Jersey.
The mountains were two or three miles away but seemed to be closer. Sparkling color and knife-edge detail said the air was pure.
Beyond the tree post was a small single cube of a building. The rounded edges and blatant texture of pseudo-adobe. More Spanish tile.
Letting the Seville idle, I looked around. Acres of grass and scores more California peppers, a few clumps of peach trees with curling leaves. A handful of larger trunks with bark that matched the color and texture of the signpost and had to be walnuts.
No fruit or blossoms. Dead branches and truncated tops.
Imagining the stink of fertilizer, the grind of machinery, pickers moving through sun-dappled rows, I thought of Henry Ardullo's resolve never to sell out.
In the distance I could see assortments of houses-sugar cubes with red tile roofs.
Not a hint of half-timber, brick, slate, or wood shingle.
Sussex, Essex... English monikers, Southwest architecture. In California, escape from logic was sometimes construed as freedom.
I heard an engine start. A pale blue Ford sedan with black-wall tires was parked next to the cube. Now it drove forward very slowly and stopped right next to me.
Understated shield logo on the driver's door. Crossed rifles above "BP, Inc. A
Security Corporation." No cherry on top, no conspicuous display of firearms.
At the wheel was a mustachioed young man wearing a pale blue uniform and mirrored shades.
"Morning, sir." Tight smile.
"Morning, Officer. I'm here to visit Jacob Haas on Charing Cross Road."
"Charing Cross," he said, stretching it out so he could appraise me. "That's all the way over in Jersey."
I resisted the temptation to say, "Atlantic City or Newark?"
"Thanks."
He cleared his throat. "New around here?"
"First time," I said.
"Relative of Mr. Haas?"
"Acquaintance. He used to be the sheriff. Back when it was Treadway."
He hesitated a moment before saying, "Sure." The same dullness I'd seen on the gas jockey's face. Treadway meant nothing to him, either. He knew nothing of the area's
history. How many people did? I looked past him at the peach and walnut trees, now just woody memorials. Nothing else from the ranching days remained. Certainly not a hint of the blood-bath at the Ardullo ranch. If Jacob Haas wasn't in, or if he refused to see me, I'd wasted my time. Even if he talked, what could I hope to learn?
The security guard's car phone buzzed and he picked up, nodded, told me, "Jersey's way at the end-go straight through to the lake, turn right. You'll see a sign pointing to the White Oak golf course. Just keep on and it'll be there."
I drove away, watched him through my rearview mirror as he performed a three-point turn and headed toward Balmoral.
Piccadilly Arcade was a small shopping center due east of the security office.
Grocery with a post office and ATM, dry cleaner, two clothing shops leaning toward golf togs and velour jogging suits. A sign outside the second said the movie tonight was Top Gun.
My drive to Jersey took me past perfectly appointed public buildings-the clubhouse, the spa-tennis courts, swimming pools. The houses looked better from a distance.
They varied in size by development. Essex was the high-rent district-detached split-levels and two-story hacienditas on postage-stamp lots, some landscaping, lots of Cadillacs and Lincolns, a few satellite dishes. Clear views of the lake.
Fit-looking white-haired people in activewear. Further inland, Yorkshire was mock-adobe town houses clumped in fours and fives. A little skimpier in the flower-and-shrub department, but still immaculate.
The lake was obscured, now, by peppers. The trees were hardy, drought resistant, clean. They'd been brought into the San Fernando Valley years ago by the truckload, taking over the chaparral and contributing to the death of the native oaks. A quarter-mile of shaded road before Jersey appeared.
Mobile homes in an open lot. The units were uniformly white and spotless, with plenty of greenery camouflage at the base, but clearly prefab. Just a few trees on the periphery and no direct access to the lake, but majestic views of the mountains.
The few people I saw also looked in good shape, perhaps a bit more countrified.
Parked in front of the mobiles were Chevys, Fords, Japanese compacts, the occasional
RV The road that split the subdivision was freshly asphalted. No-frills, but the overall feel was still cleanliness, good maintenance, seniors settled in contentment.
I parked in one of the ten public spaces at the end and found Charing Cross Road easily enough-first street to the right.
Jacob and Marvelle Haas announced ownership of their Happy Traveler with a wood-burned sign over the front door. Two vehicles-a Buick Skylark and a Datsun pickup-so maybe someone was home. Some improvements had been added to the unit: green canvas window awnings, an oak door that looked hand-carved, a cement porch stacked up to the entrance. Potted geranium and cactus at the top, along with an empty fishbowl still housing a carbon filter. The door knocker was a brass cocker spaniel. Around its neck hung a garland of tiny cowries.
I lifted the dog and let it concuss against the door.
A voice called out, "One minute."
The man who opened was younger than I'd expected- younger than any of the residents
I'd seen, so far. Sixty, if that, with iron-gray hair brushed straight back, and very acute eyes the same color. He wore a short-sleeved white knit shirt, blue jeans, black loafers. His shoulders were broad, but so were his hips. A lip of fat curled over his belt buckle. His arms were long, hairless, thin except at the wrists, where they picked up some heft. His face was narrow, sun-spotted in places,
cinched around the eyes, and sagging around the bone lines, but his skin had a sheen, as if someone had buffed him lovingly.
"Dr. Delaware," he said in that same hearty voice. But his expression didn't match-cautious, tentative. "Got your message. Jacob Haas."
When we shook hands, his grip seemed reluctant-bare contact, then quick pressure around my fingers before he pulled away and stepped back inside.
"C'mon in."
I entered a narrow front room that opened to a kitchenette. A window air conditioner hummed. The interior wasn't cool, but the worst of the heat had been kept at bay. No knotty pine, no framed homilies, no trailer-park cliches. Deep gray berber carpeting floored the mobile. White cotton sofa and two matching easy chairs, glass-and-brass coffee table, blue-and-white Chinese garden bench serving as a perch for daffodils in a deep blue vase.
Picasso prints hung on panel walls painted pale salmon. Black lacquer bookshelves held paperbacks and magazines, a thirty-five-inch TV with VCR and stereo setup, and a skinny black vertical rack full of CD's. The Four Seasons, Duane Eddy, the Everly
Brothers, Tom Jones, Ferula Clark.
Rock and roll was old enough to retire.
The room smelled of cinnamon buns. The woman on the sofa got up and said, "Marvelle
Haas, so pleased to meet you." She wore a navy polo shirt, white slacks, white sandals, looked to be her husband's age. More wrinkled than he, but a trim figure.
Short, wavy hair dyed mahogany.
Her grip was strong. "Have a nice drive up from L.A.?"
"Very nice. Beautiful scenery."
"It's even more beautiful when you live here. Something to drink?"
"No, thanks."
"Well, then, I'll be shoving off." She kissed her husband's cheek and put her arm around his shoulder-protectively, I thought. "You boys be good, now."
"Now, that's no fun," Haas said. "Drive carefully, hon."
She hurried to the door. Her hips rotated. Years ago, she'd been beautiful. She still was.
When the door closed after her, Haas seemed to get smaller. He motioned toward the chairs. We both sat.
"She decided to visit her sister in Bakersfield," he said, "because she didn't want to be here when you were."
