Dream Town

Chapter 9

The weather was chilly and it looked like it was going to rain again, so he had put up the top. He had also pulled his Smith & Wesson .38 from the glove box and inserted it in his shoulder holster. He didn’t like carrying a gun after WWII, but he liked dying even less.

He passed through neighborhoods where the old palm trees were losing their luster and the older homes their integrity. Many of these places were now renting out as tourist traps. If the water wouldn’t turn on or the heat didn’t work, you’d get a sob story about stolen pensions and unpaid hospital bills from the owners who lived in the basement or over the garage. He next passed various renditions of Skid Row, which backstopped the industrial hide of LA, like a long-ignored malady now out of control.

As he left LA proper and headed west, the Pacific was etched in the darkness as a long black stripe until the breakers ruptured white and sharp onto the golden sand. He drove through monied Santa Monica and then past Pacific Palisades, where folks who didn’t have the bank account to get into Malibu could put down semigilded roots. Far out in the water he saw a single light. Probably a cargo ship heading in or out. He watched the light until it vanished in a marine fog that sprouted up around here like mushrooms after rain.

Soon, Archer got within a pistol shot of the ocean, and the drum of the waves seemed to unspool like a movie in his head. The breakers were moodily fascinating to watch, though the ending was always the same. He turned off the road near the Sea Lion Restaurant. Back in the day the place had been built as a destination for travelers, because it was at the end of the public road in Malibu. It was only fairly recently that the beaches of Malibu had been opened for public consumption.

Across from there the single bright light of the Albatross Hotel blazed away. Archer thought he could hear some late-night New Year’s Eve partygoers splashing around in the pool. That place was a cash cow for any PI with even a modicum of talent. He had personally handled a half dozen divorce cases where the photos and recordings and other details he’d amassed at the Albatross had given his female clients the wherewithal to take their adulterous husbands to the proverbial cleaners. He had always been amazed by the fact that many of these men hadn’t realized that the distance between LA and Malibu wasn’t enough to overcome their wives’ ingenuity and anger.

“It’s thirty miles, pal,” one dazed husband had told Archer, as they sat out in the hall of the LA County Superior Court. His Albatross honey was sitting outside in his Bentley, waiting for her newly freed man. But maybe not as eager as before since the little wife had taken him for half. “Thirty damn miles!”

“Ever heard the phrase ‘a woman scorned’?” Archer had told him.

The man wiped the sweat off his brow. “I don’t have to hear it, buddy. I lived it.”

“If you’re going to walk the aisle with the pretty gal out in your car, and then pull the same on her, do it in another country. Tijuana’s not that far. But it’s more than thirty miles.”

“Don’t worry. There won’t be a next time.”

“Then you’re finally growing up, pal,” Archer had replied before walking off.

He turned right and made his way up Las Flores Canyon Road. A house light in the canyon above the fog line winked down on him. One of seventeen canyons in Malibu, Las Flores grew very steep very fast. The darkness, which was pretty complete already, was thrown into pitch blackness by the canyon walls.

He drove slowly, both so he wouldn’t hit anything, but also because he was afraid of missing Lamb’s house. He actually did miss it and had to backtrack, finally pointing his headlight at a drab brown mailbox with the right numbers on it. There was also a four-door dark blue Ford parked across the street from her house. So she had been telling the truth about that.

Archer drove around a bend in the road, killed his lights, and then his engine. He got out and made his way back up the canyon road with a turned-off flashlight in hand.

He squatted on his haunches and eyed the Ford. He saw no movement inside, not even a shadow trying not to move and pretend it wasn’t there. He pulled his gun and crept up to the back of the vehicle, doing his best to keep out of the sight lines of the car’s mirrors.

He reached the car and edged over to the rear window. The back seat was empty. So was the front. He tried the trunk hatch and found it unlocked. Nothing. He checked the car’s registration. In the beam of his light he saw it was owned by one Cedric Bender with an address in Anaheim. He pulled out a pencil and his notebook and wrote this down along with the license plate number.

He closed the car door and headed up the path to Lamb’s house. He shone his light down to see the flagstones with grass growing between as they zigzagged up to a large Spanish-style home. The place had white stucco walls, a red tile roof, and small, Moorish-style windows with honeycombed windowpanes set in silver trim and window surrounds painted green. He could smell wood smoke coming from somewhere, even as the breakers down below hurled their sound tentacles up here. Fire and water all tied up in a neat sensory bow.

He saw the sleek two-door silver coupe in a carport next to the house. He touched the engine. It was cold. He tried the doors, but they were locked. He took a moment to write down the coupe’s plate number. If this was Lamb’s ride, he could confirm that later. He’d rather the lady confirmed it right now, even if she got mad at him for waking up her and her sleepmate.

He decided to bypass the front door and headed to the rear. A set of colorful Mexican tile steps led him up to the rear yard. The smell of eucalyptus was so prominent it was like someone had injected a liter of it directly into his nostrils. The sharp, dry chaparral grabbed at his trousers. The clay that made up the canyons was geologically unstable, resulting in the area’s being acutely susceptible to mudslides when the hard rains came, which they always did. On top of that, the thick brush and Santa Ana dry winds made for frequent wildfires, with the chaparral being one of the prime ignitors. In spite of all the flooding and burning, the folks just kept coming. Maybe a swarm of locusts might do the trick and get the builders and home buyers to knock it off. But he doubted it.

In the distance Archer heard a fox scream and then another one answered right back. Maybe they were celebrating the new year, too. Then a coyote chimed in. Now they just needed a bear and they’d have a quartet.

He came around to a concrete patio, on which sat a couple of thick-boned teak chairs around a table with a decorative tile top in blues and gold, and a beige umbrella with a frilly edge set in the down position. A small corner fountain in the shape of an urn and raised up on some rough stone slabs gurgled away like a dying man with a slit throat. A hedge of cypress shielded the rear yard from the scrub oaks clinging precariously to the canyon’s edifice. Trailing lobelia rising out of the dirt had tacked itself to the home’s stucco, adding a dash of color. And there was a pool, oval in shape. He could smell the chlorine as it rose off the surface. He put his hand in the water and was surprised. It was heated. That wasn’t cheap.

The back door was locked. There was an enclosed deck on the upper level that one reached by a set of metal circular stairs. So Archer reached them and went up. The beige French door leading into the house was not locked. He opened it and went inside.

His light showed him this was a bedroom. The bed was made, and there were no discarded clothes anywhere that he could see. He stood in the middle of the room, listening. The house was as still as any morgue he’d ever been in. Yet there was nothing scary about a morgue. Other than the coroner, everyone else was dead. A pitch-dark house maybe full of lethal surprises was a different ball game altogether.

He looked into the en suite bathroom. Blue and white tiles, blue tub, and towels monogrammed with an L were neatly arranged on a built-in shelf; no dead bodies were behind the shower curtain or stuffed in the linen closet. He grabbed a washcloth and used it to open the medicine cabinet, where he found the typical items like face powders, a box of Tampax, creamy moisturizers, tonics, and other patent medicines. He also found a bottle of black hair dye, and a hair straightener. So the lady was not a natural brunette with straight locks. Why had she lied about that?

He next searched the other rooms up here. One was no doubt a guest bedroom outfitted in Spartan fashion, with a bathroom that was half the size of hers. But maybe Lamb didn’t want to encourage guests, so she made the accommodations uninviting on purpose. He could easily see her being that sort of introvert.

Another room was obviously Lamb’s office or writer’s den, or literary sweat shop, whatever one wanted to deem it. There was a portable Smith-Corona typewriter in its open carrying case on a desk with a chair in the kneehole. Next to it were stacks of yellow legal pads and loose white pages with notes and doodles littered over them. They all seemed to pertain to various scripts she was working on.

On the other side of the typewriter was a script marked “Bette Davis film.” He didn’t bother to open it. If he ended up seeing the movie, he wanted to be surprised.

There were other scripts marked “DRAFT” stacked next to it from a number of other projects, with several other studios. Lamb was one busy scribe. Next to the telephone was a Wheeldex. He fingered through the cards there and saw some famous names and others that were obscure. His first inclination was to take the whole thing; his second inclination won out, and the Wheeldex stayed where it was.

He looked through the drawers and found a check register. There was no bank balance listed, but her checks seemed to be made out to the sort of folks you made checks out to. He made a note that she banked with the Second National Bank of Malibu. He wondered if the First National Bank of Malibu was still in business and, if so, why a town this small needed a spare.

Against one wall was a small leather couch with fluffy pillows embroidered with cats and puppies, and a coffee table with stacks of books. There were bookshelves filled with more books and scripts. The sole window held a view of the canyon. Archer noted that Lamb’s back would be to it. Focus, focus, apparently.

A large world globe sat next to the couch. When he hinged it open, revealed was a bar with bottles and glasses arrayed in round cut holes.

He glided down the stairs, reached the ground level, and turned to his right.

He stumbled hard and hit the floor with a grunt; his light fell from his left hand and his gun was knocked out of his right with the sudden impact. The next moment he was smacked on the back of the head with something hard enough to qualify as a blunt instrument. He briefly saw fireworks and then the flames went out and the coal-black around him became complete.

When he slowly came to, he rubbed his neck and stretched out his jaw, which had seized up with the blow to his skull. Vague stars knitted against a black background floated through his mind. He slowly checked his watch. It was now after four in the morning. He reached up and massaged the back of his head where a lump had risen like a volcano from the ocean of his scalp. His fingers came away sticky with his blood. He groped around for his light and his gun. He found both and turned the light on to see what he had stumbled over.

The person was dead, that was certain. The pupils were fixed, and neither one bit even a little on Archer’s light. Only it wasn’t Eleanor Lamb. It was a man.

Someone had ushered him into 1953 with one right between the eyes.