Rose Gold (28 page)

I stretched my hand over toward the picnic basket that Virginia Purdy had given us. It was just out of reach and so he took out a sandwich for me.

“I think we should get some help with this Vandal guy,” I said upon reaching the southern border of L.A.

“Okay.”

We stopped at a street corner and I made a call.

“Hey,” someone answered. It sounded like a teenager, probably a boy.

“Terry there?”

“Sure,” the kid said and the phone banged down.

“Hello?” a tenor male voice said a minute or two later.

“Hey, Terry, it’s Easy Rawlins.”

“I took Coco back to Compton this morning.”

“Actually I wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Do you know a guy named Vandal that lives in Laurel Canyon?”

“At the Newmans’ ashram?”

“You know him?”

“I know the Newmans. They used to have feasts up there. But then Vandal came and the vibes got bad.”

“Bad how?”

“The Newmans, Lev and Anna-Maria, are old people, you know like in their fifties. But they like the hippies and opened their house to people like I do. Vandal came as a kind of holy man or something. He ran the meditation sessions and then he kind of took over the house. He makes everybody do things his way. It’s just not cool.”

“Would you meet me up there and introduce me and my friend to the Newmans?”

“Sure, Easy. Give me an hour.”

I always get lost driving around up in the canyons. The roads twist and turn up there like maggots on an overripe peach. But Redbird could follow a map out of hell. Without one false turn we made it to the top of Buena Vista Court.

Dawn was right. The blue mansion and golden roses were the only address we needed.

The lot was at the crest of the hill and we could see L.A., the Valley, and almost all the way to the ocean. It felt rich up there.

Terry was standing next to his cobalt Jaguar. He surprised me by wearing a blue blazer and dark, dark green slacks. He still had brown leather sandals on his feet and wore no shirt, but he seemed at least to be trying for some kind of professionalism.

“Easy,” he said.

“This is my friend Redbird.”

“Hello,” Redbird greeted.

“Good to meet ya, man,” Terry replied.

There was no plan to go over. We just walked up the rosy path to the front doorway. The door itself had been taken off its hinges, so we went through, finding ourselves in a large room furnished with various sofas, divans, and settees upon which sat and reclined eighteen or more hippies. The scent of patchouli oil permeated the room; it almost overwhelmed the smoke of the joints being passed around.

The hippies were mostly but not all young. There were a few men and women in their thirties, and two as old as forty-five.

“You an Indian?” a young fair-haired girl asked Redbird. She was wearing a full-length East Indian dress of blue and burgundy velvet with tiny mirrors stitched in here and there.

“Taaqtam,” Redbird said, and we moved out of the room of dreamers.

We passed through a kitchen where six young women were cooking, baking, and prepping—all the while chattering about things that had nothing to do with food.

It struck me that though the hippies wanted to turn the world on its head, they kept pretty close to the expected roles of men and women.

Outside there was a broad lawn, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a large jury-rigged canopy constructed from thick bamboo stalks and palm fronds. In the center of this shelter was a big chair covered with plush purple cloth. In the chair sat a man wearing black pants and a black, long-sleeved pullover shirt. His wavy, shoulder-length hair was also black, as were his eyes, which were penetrating even from twenty feet away.

Around the man, sitting on the ground in lotus and half-lotus position, were a dozen or so acolytes. Their eyes were closed and their faces rapt.

“Terry,” a man whispered.

“Hey, Lev,” our hippie guide said. “This is my friend Easy.”

The man was in his fifties with a big gut, wearing a blue and green tropical shirt. His shorts were tan.

“Shh,” Lev said, putting a finger to his lips. “It’s meditation hour.”

“What is this interruption?” the man in black said.

People all around were opening their eyes.

“Sorry, Vandal,” Lev said, holding his hands up in surrender. He had a mane of salt and pepper hair and the strong hands and biceps of a man who’d spent a lifetime doing physical labor. “They didn’t know.”

“I know you, Terry Aldrich,” Vandal said. He got up from his throne, his movements fluid and feline.

Redbird took a step forward. I didn’t try to stop him.

“This is a sacred place,” Vandal said, luxuriating in his power and his words.

In an instant I hated him.

“It’s okay, Vandal,” Lev was saying. “I’ll see them out.”

“Why are you here?” Vandal asked, ignoring his landed vassal.

“Rosemary Goldsmith,” I said, looking over Redbird’s shoulder into Vandal’s daunting gaze.

“She betrayed us.”

“I don’t care about that shit,” I said. “I need to find her and so I’m here asking.”

There was a slight waver in Vandal’s arrogant stare that lasted maybe a second and a half.

“Leave,” he said, holding up his left hand with all the fingers extended.

That’s when Redbird pounced. In my many years of struggle, from street fights to military battles, I had never seen a man move faster. The Taaqtam warrior knocked the cult leader on his back and, from nowhere it seemed, produced a large, gleaming hunter’s knife. This he held to Vandal’s throat.

“Where is she?” I heard the Indian say.

His prey coughed and stuttered but couldn’t manage to speak.

“Tell me or I’ll cut your throat right here.”

The penitents were awake and rising to their feet but none of them approached Redbird and Vandal, so I left the pistol in my pocket.

Redbird slapped Vandal.

“Please don’t kill me!”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

The ensuing silence was probably the closest thing to a religious revelation that had occurred in the Newman backyard. Vandal had turned two shades lighter and Redbird was hunched over him like a huntsman about to gut his not-quite-dead kill.

For his part Vandal had been reduced to pure fear; there was nothing else in him.

“Brother,” I said. I don’t know why I didn’t use his name. I didn’t touch him because that would have certainly ended in violence. “Let him go. You kill him and we won’t ever find her.”

Slowly, Redbird rose up from Vandal.

“How about a man named Minx?” I asked the dethroned religious leader.

“He left when Rosemary and Dawn did,” he stammered. “That was more than eleven months ago.”

Moving on his back, using his elbows and heels, Vandal scuttled away from Redbird, who turned quickly away, walking past me and into the house.

Terry and I followed as the hubbub started up among the devotees.

Outside, next to Terry’s Jaguar, I shook the young hippie’s hand.

“Sorry about that, man,” I said. “I didn’t expect a war.”

“Some people only understand the misuse of power,” he said. “In my civics class they talk about how despots and dictators are often overthrown and killed.”

There I was, talking to a high-school senior. He wasn’t yet eighteen but there was a man behind that ugly mug.

“Terry.” It was Lev. He hurried up to us, looking over his shoulder now and then.

“Hey, Lev. Where’s Anna-Maria?”

“She got out of here. Last month she went off shopping with one of Vandal’s girls, DeeDee. Anna gave the girl a thousand-dollar watch and she let her go.”

“He’s keeping you prisoner?” I asked.

“He spent all our money on his people. We’re deep in debt and he wants the sewing factory. Anna’s parents own the deeds and he wants to get them signed over so he can build his commune.”

“You should come with me, Lev,” Terry said. “Come on down to my house. I’m sure Easy here can talk to some people and get those freeloaders out of there.”

“Do you know a guy named Minx?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Is that his real name?”

Glancing over his shoulder toward the house, the fat man said, “Youri Kidd. His name is Youri Kidd.”

“You know where I can find him?”

There were a few big guys standing out on the lawn of Lev’s house.

“No,” he said miserably.

The men started walking toward us.

That seemed like a good time to take out my pistol.

Noting my gun, they stopped and conferred. Then they headed back for the house.

“Terry, you better take Lev down to your place. Me and Redbird’ll meet you there.”

I don’t know if Vandal’s men were going in the house to get guns of their own, because sixty seconds later we were gone.

Driving down the curvy mountain roads, I gripped the wheel tightly because my heart was beating so fast I worried that I might lose control. It is in tense moments like these, after the threat has passed, that thoughts flit through my head of their own accord, like flying leaves in a strong wind.

Alana Atman, her missing son Alton, came to mind. Time was running out for that business.

Then I considered lecturing Redbird about pulling out his knife, but my angry heart wasn’t in it.

We arrived at Terry’s mansion on Ozeta Terrace maybe half an hour later. The young master and his paunchy middle-aged guest were sitting in the kitchen. Lev was drinking whiskey, Scotch by the smell of it, while Terry sucked on a joint.

I lit a cigarette and Redbird opened the garden door, placed a chrome and green vinyl chair half in and half out, and sat.

“I found it, Easy,” Terry said, his voice constricted by the smoke.

“Found what?”

“I know a dude named Millman who’s hooked in with some bikers down in Venice. Lev told me that Youri Kidd was a dealer and Millman knows something about all that. I called him and he told me that Youri lives less than a mile from here.”

Terry handed me a slip of paper that had a San Vicente address scrawled on it.

“Can you help me?” Lev asked while I studied the note.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You don’t understand what?” Lev asked.

“Meditation is like prayer, right?”

He nodded.

“Then why were they smoking dope in the living room?”

“Vandal says that the herb enhances perception, that it brings us to a higher revelation. Minx was his supplier for a while.”

“And you believe that prayer and getting high go together?”

“Not anymore,” he said, and then finished off the glass of whiskey.

Terry was taking a long hissing toke off of his joint.

“Is your friend safe here?” I asked the young hippie.

“I can lock the doors,” Terry said after exhaling. “And my father gave me the number for some bouncer guys if I ever got in trouble. I guess I could call them if I had to.”

“Okay,” I said to Lev. He was pouring himself another drink from a crystal decanter. “I’ll take care of it right after this business I’m in. But it’ll cost you one thousand dollars.”

“Anything you say.”

It was a strange moment in time. The scared businessman that had worked his way up by physical labor and hard sweat, the member of an extinct North American tribe sitting inside and in the sun at the same time, and the hippie inhaling his drug—it felt to me even then like a special moment that might never be repeated.

Youri Kidd’s address was two blocks north of 3rd Street. It was a side-by-side single-story two-family house. It once had been a modest home but somebody got old and decided that their property could supplement their income, and so split the dwelling down the middle to assure their later years.

I knocked on Youri’s door. When he didn’t answer I knocked again.

Then I tried the door next to his. The mailbox told me that this half-home belonged to Miss Phyllis Landers. No answer there either.

Now and then a car cruised down San Vicente but there was little to no pedestrian traffic. That was back when most people had jobs from nine to six or eight to five, or even seven to four. Leisure happened at night and on the weekends for most folks.

“Maybe I should go around back,” Redbird said.

“Maybe you should.”

While standing out front I smoked a cigarette and wondered about Jackson Blue and Percy Bidwell. I find that it’s helpful to think about seemingly simple problems while waiting for the more complex jobs to gel.

The door to Youri’s apartment came open. Redbird was standing there. I remembered a time when I was the one who went around the back and came in through some window.

While pushing the door closed Redbird said, “He’s in the bedroom.”

An air conditioner was on full blast in the bedroom; that cut down on the odor and swelling. Pale, wearing only striped boxer shorts, the young man was quite thin and dead. He had been beaten before his throat was cut. His left leg was on a single mattress that had no frame or box springs. His penis poked out through the opening in the shorts.

“He’s cold,” Redbird said.

I saw no reason to check this claim. I noticed that my partner was wearing cloth gloves. I always had a pair in my back pocket when I was working. I took them out and donned them before going through the apartment looking for any sign of Rosemary.

Redbird concentrated on the drawers and closets while I studied the floor and went through the trash.

After forty-five minutes I had come up empty. The only thing Redbird found was a tiny phone diary that contained a couple of dozen numbers, not one of which was connected to a full name.

“You want me to do it?” I asked my fellow burglar.

He nodded once.

In the living room of the six-hundred-square-foot apartment there was a tan couch that had its legs sawed off. Sitting down, you were right at the floor. I took the big black phone next to it and started making calls.

“Hello?” a man answered for a number with the name
Manny
next to it.

“Am I speaking to Youri Kidd?” I stated in an official tone.