Over the Edge

22

THE NORTHERN edge of the Valley began to bleed off into empty stretches just past San Fernando. As I turned onto the Antelope Valley Highway, the way posts of prefab civilisation — Colonial Kitchens, Carrows, Dennys, Pizza Huts — disappeared, and expanses of increasingly raw terrain slid into view: low sandstone hills parched white under a stubble of creosote and sagebrush, squat and pitiful against the distant black backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains; long sashes of ravaged gravel pit; chaparral still scorched from last summer's brush fires; sudden flashes of brilliant canary yellow wildflowers.

As Milo had predicted, the highway was nearly empty, five barren lanes herringboned by exits leading to the canyons that ran the county line to its demise: Placerita, Soledad, Bouquet — whose rusty blue rock graced the patios and spas of many an L.A. dream house — Vasquez, Agua Duke.

The Bitter Canyon turnoff was abrupt, a sharp downgrade that deposited the Seville on a narrow, squirming asphalt road, bordered by boulders and an occasional wind-savaged tree. Here, in the lowlands the hillsides were water-etched and craggy, a quilt of tans and reds washed with coy overtones of lavender and blue. The sky was overcast with heavy grey stratus clouds, and every so often a ray of sun escaped through a threadbare patch in the mist, casting a startling pinkish spotlight upon a favoured section of rock. Incredible beauty, cruelly fleeting.

The Texaco station was fifteen miles down the road, rising from nothingness, straight out of a time warp. A pair of prewar pumps sat in the middle of a treacherously furrowed dirt and gravel yard, fronting a one-bay white frame garage of equivalent vintage. Occupying the bay was a green bubble-backed '39 Plymouth.

Attached to the garage was a shack that served as an office, its dirty windows obscured by piles of paper. A few yards down the road was a frame cafe sporting twin antique Coca-Cola discs on either end of a faded sign that said SAL'S and a crowing-cock weather vane atop a tar paper roof. The cock postured arrogantly, unmoving in the still desert air.

The cafe looked as if it hadn't done business in a while, but a fleet of official vehicles had encamped around it. I pulled the Seville between a familiar bronze Matador and a mobile crime lab van and got out.

The northern corner of the yard was cordoned off by string attached to makeshift posts. Taped to the string were LAPD tags. Within the cordoned area technicians stooped and squatted, wielding scrapers, hypodermics, brushes, and plaster-casting material. Some worked on a pearl grey RX-7; others, on the area around the car. On the ground nearby was a sausage-shaped lump, encased in a body bag. A few feet from the bag a roan-coloured stain spread its tentacles across the dirt. A Chinese man in a dark suit hovered over the body, talking into a hand-held cassette recorder.

A county ambulance was parked just outside the tape, its engines still running. A uniformed attendant stepped out of the ambulance's passenger door and looked around. His eyes finally settled on Milo, who was leaning against one of the gas pumps, writing in his notepad.

"Okay?"

My friend said something to the Chinese man, who looked up and nodded.

"Okay."

The attendant gave a hand signal, and a second attendant got out from the driver's side and flung the rear doors open. A stretcher materialised. Within seconds the body had been lifted nonchalantly and deposited with a dull thud in the rear of the vehicle. The ambulance departed, leaving behind a small dust storm.

Milo saw me and put the pad away. He flicked dust off his lapel and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"What happened?" I asked.

"About eight this morning Radovic powwowed with two bikers right over there and got sliced up." He pointed to the bloodstain. "From what our witness saw, sounds like it was a prearranged meeting to pull off some kind of dirty deal. But the deal went bad."

I looked at the stain, then at the empty grizzled hills.

"Why all the way out here?"

"That's what we're trying to find out. Park ranger's due any minute. Maybe he can shed some light on it."

He pulled a package of mints out of his pocket and offered me one. I took it, and both of us sweetened our breaths.

"Way I figure it," he said, "one of the parties knew the area, the other didn't, and the station was used as a landmark. Which, under normal circumstances, would have been an excellent idea because the place is usually deserted. The station, the greasy spoon over there, and fifty acres on either side of the road are owned by an old man named Skaggs who lives in Lancaster and rarely opens up anymore. I just finished interviewing him, and he told me forty years ago there used to be an army base a few miles down the road and the cafe was a "jumpin' joint" — outdoor bandstand, great steaks, illegal hooch. But today we're talking ghost town."

Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked into the sunlight and scanned the terrain, as if seeking confirmation of his assessment.

"From what I can gather, he considers the cafe a symbol of his wife; she was Sal. When they were in business, he pumped gas while she did the cooking. She died in 'sixty-seven, and he never got over it. So when he starts thinking about her and gets really low, he drives down, sits at the counter, and reminisces. Which is what happened last night. It was the twentieth anniversary of her death. He'd pulled out their wedding album and got all weepy. When he couldn't take it anymore, he threw on some clothes, grabbed the album and a quart of Jack Daniel's, drove over, locked himself in, and got shitfaced. He's a little hazy about time but figures he got here around eleven and dozed off around one. At eight he was awakened by shouts. At first he thought it was an evil booze dream, but then his head cleared, and he realised someone was out there. He peeked out through the window, saw what was happening, and crouched behind the counter. Poor old guy was so scared he stayed there for three hours before calling anyone."

He glanced at the old Plymouth.

"That's his car. No one saw it because he'd parked it in the garage and locked the door."

"Lucky for him."

He shook his head.

"It was no accident. We found a piece of rubber hose attached to the exhaust pipe. Needless to say, we're going to be looking after his health. He's far from the perfect eyewitness but good enough to renew my faith in God."

"What did he see?"

"By the time he woke up things had already got nasty. Radovic and the bikers were shouting at each other. Skaggs isn't sure, but he thinks the leather boys said something about Radovic's not keeping his end of a bargain, and Erno responded in his usual endearing manner: laughed, cussed them out and put up his fists. At that point things moved pretty fast. The fat biker must have blinked wrong because Radovic hit him, floored him with a fist in the gut and a fast chop under the bridge of the nose. Skaggs says he went down easy, like a 'soft sack of shit'. But the skinny one was another story. When he saw his buddy laid out like that, he pulled out a chain and a buck knife and went into a street fighter's crouch. Radovic reached into his pocket — we found another Beretta on the body — but Skinny was too fast. He got the chain around Radovic's neck, jerked him close, and stepped straight in with the knife. The ME looked at the wounds and said permanent damage was intended: There was a forward thrust that pierced the liver and several up-and-down saw cuts. Also a throat slash, which appears to have been done after he was dead — your basic street fighter's coup de grace. Afterward Skinny revived Fatso, and the two of them split. Skaggs heard an engine starting, but he was hiding so he didn't see the vehicle."

"One vehicle? You'd expect two bikes."

"The old man claims he heard only one, and the techs found only one set of unaccounted tyre marks, so it looks like they doubled up on one chopper. Romantic, huh?"

He ran his hand over his face and stared at his shoes.

"I looked at the body myself, Alex. He was thoroughly eviscerated. You know how I felt about the guy, but that's still no way to go."

We began walking away from the crime scene, drifting toward the roadside and keeping parallel to it. There was a large bolt in the dirt, and Milo kicked it. A flock of crows rose, squawking over a distant hilltop.

"Tell me more about that sculpture he brought," he said.

"A heavy lump of clear Lucite, with all kinds of toys moulded inside to create a tableau."

"A Ken doll hanging, you said?"

"From a noose, with a knife in his belly. What really grabbed my attention was the title. The Wretched Act. It's a phrase Jamey used to describe suicide."

"And the artist is another one of those geniuses from the university."

"Right. A kid named Gary Yamaguchi. According to the others, the closest thing Jamey had to a friend. He was seen going off with Jamey and Chancellor."

"Tell me more about the toys inside the plastic."

I realised that I hadn't looked at the sculpture that closely. Concentrating, I tried to recall the details of the scene.

"It was a takeoff on a teenager's bedroom. Football pennants, a diary, miniature pill vials — empty ones — a toy knife, fake blood."

He frowned.

"Doesn't sound like something worth bidding for. Anything else?"

"Let's see — some photos of Barbie, an Elvis poster, love letters."

"What kind of love letters?"

"Miniatures. One-inch scraps of paper with "I Love You" all over them."

"All that to dress up Ken with a knife in his gut, huh?" He shook his head. "Art."

We walked a bit.

"The bikers," I said, "they keep cropping up."

"Uh-huh."

"Doesn't that put a new cast on the Slasher case?"

"It complicates matters, but if you mean, does it help Cadmus, the answer is no. All it might boil down to is that Chancellor and Cadmus's little cutting club had two more members than we thought. Which makes sense — we never found anyone who saw Chancellor cruising Boystown, and a guy like him would be damned conspicuous. He was an executive type, used to delegating odd jobs. So he could have sent the bikers to snare pretty boys and bring them to the mansion, then let them stay for the party."

"Which means the bikers may have killed him."

"We found the knife in Cadmus's hand. What does that make him, an innocent bystander?"

"A psychotic bystander."

"Then why wasn't he killed, too? You're reaching, Alex."

"Maybe," I said, "but what's Radovic's connection to all of it?"

"Could be he found out what was going on during his nights off, and when he tried to blackmail the bikers, things got out of hand."

"Then why was he following me? And why was he so intent on buying The Wretched Act?"

He sighed.

"Look, I'm not saying that's the way it actually went down. Just that it's goddamned complicated and far from a reprieve for Cadmus." He clenched his jaws and breathed in deeply. "Maybe Radovic really was trying to clear Chancellor's name — even assholes have bursts of altruism — and he thought you might know something useful because you were Cadmus's therapist. Or maybe his motives were impure, and he thought you might be able to give him some dirt for the same reason."

"I hadn't treated Jamey in five years."

"How was he supposed to know that? What if Cadmus rambled on about what a great doc you were and Radovic thought you were still in the picture?"

I remembered what Andrea Vann had told me that first night at Canyon Oaks: that Jamey had spoken of me fondly. When he was lucid.

"That still doesn't explain why the bikers ransacked Gary's place."

"You want me to play Answer Man? Okay, Yamaguchi was a member of the cutting club, too."

My mind rebelled at the thought of another Project 160 member indicted for murder.

"That's ridiculous."

"Why? You yourself said he was seen going off with Chancellor and Cadmus."

"If he were a murderer, he wouldn't advertise it in a sculpture."

"It's been known to happen. Few years back one of those British crime writers made a good case for a painter named Sickert being Jack the Ripper. The guy did paintings that were damned close to some of the murder scenes. And from what you told me about Yamaguchi, rationality isn't his strong suit. Shoot enough speed, and the old cerebral cortex starts to look like Swiss cheese."

"When I saw him, he was hostile, but he was rational—"

"Point is, Alex, I could stand here and theorise all day, which would be a great parlour game for the whodunit crowd. But without evidence the whole thing translates to bullshit. Bikers, Cadmus, back to bikers again. A goddamn roller coaster. And roller coasters always make me puke."

He lengthened his stride and jammed his hands in his pockets.

"What really gripes me," he said, "is that we've already done a damned good search for those assholes. Spent weeks running down dozens of leads and listening to Whitehead's pearls of wisdom. Visited every S and M bar in L.A. and saw enough leather to upholster the state. We even pulled a couple of guys out of undercover — guys Narco'd taken a lot of time to plant in the outlaw gangs. All for nothing."

"You've got a physical description to go on now."

"What? One fat, one skinny? For some reason — undoubtedly sociological — those assholes tend to fall into two categories: gordos disgustos or speed freak anorexics. Fat and skinny eliminates exactly zero percent of the population."

"The old man saw them. Couldn't he tell you more?"

"Sure. The fat one was bald — or maybe he had real short hair — with a big or maybe medium beard that was either black or brown. The skinny one had long hair that was straight or wavy or curly and a moustache — no, make that a moustache and a beard." He sighed disgustedly. "Eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate when it comes to physical description, and this one's an eighty-year-old depressive coming out of a heavy drunk. I'm not even totally convinced he heard any of the conversation he reported. I need something solid, Alex. I've put in an order to have Pacific Division go down to the marina and toss Radovic's boat. Maybe we'll even find the sculpture and learn that it's crammed full of emeralds. Or coke."

"Just like in the movies."

"Hey" — he grinned — "this is L.A. Anything's possible, right?" The grin faded. "I want to talk to Yamaguchi. Where can I find him?"

"He drifts around downtown. I got to him through the gallery, but it sounded as if he were planning to leave L.A. He may be gone by now."

He took out his book and wrote down Gary's name and the address of Voids Will Be Voids. I thought of something.

"There was a little blonde girl with him who looked as if someone might have eared for her once upon a time."

"Name?"

"He called her Slit."

"Sweet. I'll run a check with Juvie. Let's head back. I want to put a couple of calls through."

We turned around and walked back toward the cafe. When we reached the Matador, Milo got in and began talking into the radio. While I waited, I peered inside the cafe. A small, shrivelled man in a plaid flannel shirt and overalls stood behind the counter, scouring the chrome-lipped top with a wet rag. The counter stools were chrome-legged mushrooms with red leather tops. An inert Black Forest cuckoo clock hung on the knotty pine wall, next to a third-rate oil painting of Lake Tahoe. Strains of country music — George Jones lamenting that his blood could start a still — floated forth from a cheap transistor radio.

The music was overtaken by engine sounds from the north. I turned and saw a jeep appear to float over the horizon. It sped on and slowed down at the cordon. The driver stared at the crime techs, then coasted to a halt in front of the cafe, turned off the motor, and got out. The jeep bore the emblem of the Parks Department, and the man wore a ranger uniform. He was in his forties, skinny, and sun-cured with generous features, round wire-rim eyeglasses, and an Abe Lincoln beard. Wisps of yellow hair sneaked out from under the brim of his Smokey the Bear hat. The back of his neck was the colour of steak tartare. "Sergeant Sturgis?" he asked. "That's him over there."

"Bill Sarna." He extended a hand as hard and dry as rawhide.

"Alex Delaware."

"Sergeant?"

"Consultant."

That puzzled him, but he smiled through it. I looked over at Milo.

"He should be off in a moment."

He glanced at the cafe's open door.

"I'm going to go see how Asa's doing. Come on in when you're ready."

He removed his hat and entered Sal's.

Several minutes later we joined him at the counter. Inside were more third-rate landscapes, more time warp ambience: a shelfful of Depression glass; a tool and die company calendar dating from 1967, a wall menu listing steak and eggs for $1.59 and nickel coffee. Cobwebs tapestried every corner. The place smelled stale and musty, like the mausoleum it was.

"Hello, gents," croaked the old man. He was moving a lot without accomplishing much — darting, pacing, scrubbing nonexistent stains, patting, wiping. His face had a caved-in look, the legacy of several years of toothlessness; his hyperactivity seemed theatrical, a charade designed to coat the place with the veneer of vitality.

Sarna stood. He and Milo introduced themselves.

"Like to offer you fellows coffee or something," said the old man, "but I been a little lax about provisions."

"That's okay, Asa," said the ranger. "Next time."

"You betcha. Chicken-fried steak and buttermilk biscuits with snap beans and chicory coffee. Maybe next time?"

"Sure." Sarna smiled. "Looking forward to it." He put a hand on Skagg's shoulder, told him to take care of himself, and led us out of the cafe.

"How's his mind?" asked Milo.

"Good enough for eighty-three."

"What about as a witness?"

The ranger put on his hat and adjusted it.

"Sometimes he gets a little lost in wishful thinking."

"Terrific. Has he been suicidal before?"

Sarna looked surprised.

"Before?"

As Milo told him about the hose around the exhaust pipe, his face grew grim. The moustacheless beard made him look like an Amish elder.

"That's news to me. I've always thought of him as a solid old guy with too many memories. As far as being a quality witness, I couldn't say."

"He have any family?"

"Not that I know of."

"Who can I talk to about looking in on him?"

"There's a senior citizens' group at the Baptist church, but as far as I know, Asa's a nonbeliever. If you want, I can ask around."

"I'd appreciate that, Bill."

Up the road the technicians had started to pack up.

"My captain said it was a nasty one," said Sarna, watching. "Biker cutting?"

Milo nodded.

"We get a few of those each year, mostly in Angeles Crest. Which club was involved?"

"We don't know. Skaggs couldn't identify any colours."

"What about the victim?"

"The victim wasn't a biker."

"Hmm. That's worrisome. Most of our calls are the result of those turkeys getting blasted on booze and crank and tearing away at each other. But for the most part, they've stayed away from the straights. Hope this isn't the start of something. Do you need help with your search?"

"No, thanks. The search is over. We sent guys out in all directions hours ago, but they didn't find a thing. Later the techs told us that the tyre tracks pointed back to the highway."

"That means they could have headed into one of the northern canyons or back into the city. When did it happen?"

"About eight this morning."

"Then it's too late to do anything about it. Asa give you any physical description?"

"One was fat; the other was skinny. Which clubs ride around here?"

"The major ones — Angels, Mongols, Satan's Disciples — as well as a bunch of smaller packs that come and go. They tend to headquarter in Foothill Division — Tujunga, Sunland — and use parkland for partying."

"Is this parkland?"

"No. Originally it was owned by the army. Then it was transferred to private ownership. But once in a while we patrol here anyway. The surrounding canyons have been earmarked for recreational development, and unless you've got a map, the boundaries are tricky. If you're asking whether this is a hub of biker activity, it isn't."

"What kind of criminal stuff goes on here?"

"In Bitter Canyon specifically? Not much. Once in a great while we come across a body that was killed elsewhere and dumped. Then there's the usual petty stuff — teenagers drinking, poachers bagging tortoises. Nothing heavy."

"What I'm getting at is this," said Milo. "Our victim may have been engaged in a blackmail scheme. The homicide could have resulted from a payoff gone bad. Can you think of any reason someone would come all the way out here to transact business?"

Sarna removed his glasses and grew contemplative.

"Just that it'd be far from prying eyes. It's a darned quiet place, Milo. No tourism to speak of, because it's not as pretty as some of the other spots. The lake's impressive, but it's inaccessible for fishing or water sports. Lately there's been a little more traffic because of the power plant — surveyors, architects, construction people — but even they're few and far between."

"What kind of power plant?" I asked.

"Hydroelectric."

"From a lake?"

Milo looked at me curiously, but he didn't cut me off.

"It's more than the lake," said Sarna. "Bitter Canyon's not really a canyon at all. It's a water-filled volcanic crater surrounded by sloping mountain walls and fed by underground streams. It's the streams that make the difference, because you get constant replenishment. The estimates run into the billions of gallons. Untapped." He'd segued into a lecture and was enjoying it. "There's a ten-year plan with two long-range goals: to harness the water for enough energy to meet the needs of the northern Valley and to establish an emergency drought control reservoir that interfaces with the aqueduct."

"Sounds like the quiet days will be over."

"Once the construction gets going. It's a huge undertaking — forty-five million dollars for the plant alone and another twenty-five million for the town that's supposed to grow around it. They've been talking about it for years. It got a kick in the pants a few years back when we had that drought and all the fancy restaurants stopped serving water with dinner. Then the rains finally came, and things quieted down. They revived it about two years ago, but it took quite a bit of backroom politics to push through a bond issue to finance it."

"Environmentalists?" I asked.

"No. Like I said, except for the lake itself, which few people ever see, it's not particularly pretty around here, and the locals are more interested in jobs than preserving creosote. But there was a conflict-of-interest matter that took a while to resolve; the company that owned the land was the prime bidder to build the plant."

"Cadmus Construction?"

"That's right," he said, surprised. Then he looked at us with sudden insight. "Homicide cops from West L.A. That case, huh?"

"Bill," said Milo, leaning forward conspiratorially, "we don't know yet. And we'd appreciate it if this conversation were kept under wraps."

The ranger drew a line across his lips.

"Sealed."

"Muchas gracias." My friend smiled. "The construction types who've been passing through, where do they go?"

"To the northeast rim of the crater. It's the only place you can get a look at the entire lake. They stand there and draw plans."

"Do they ever get down to the lake itself?"

"Nope. It's a two-day descent for an experienced climber. With pitons and rope."

"How about giving us directions so we can take a look ourselves?"

"What are you driving?"

Milo pointed to the Matador.

The ranger shook his head.

"Forget it unless you feel like hiking. The road ends four miles before the viewpoint. It's four-wheeler terrain. I'll take you in the jeep."

We hurtled south over a progressively deteriorating road, the ride bone-jarring, the view through the window flaps of the jeep a horizontal slash of ghost-pale rock, infinite and inert. But Sarna made it come alive, giving names to the scrub — greasewood, honey mesquite, rabbit brush — directing our eyes toward rare oases of activity — a flock of birds feasting upon a bitter cherry bush, an alligator lizard scurrying across the spines of a fan palm — extolling the beauty of a single, time-ravaged digger pine, describing the savagery of a hard winter in the high desert and the resilience of those creatures that survive.

Throughout it all Milo slumped in his seat, nodding at the appropriate time, his mind fixed upon a different kind of savagery.

The transition from blacktop to dirt caused the jeep's chassis to vibrate like a bowstring. The dirt turned to sand, and our wheels kicked up a dust storm. Sarna seemed to view it as a challenge, maintaining his speed and playing with the gears in lieu of braking. Milo and I held on to our seats.

We climbed and dipped through the scrub, then climbed again. Remembering what Milo had said about roller coasters, I looked over and saw him: shut-eyed, tight-lipped, and honeydew green.

The jeep continued to rise. Sarna gave one final feed of gas, and we lurched to the top before reaching a shadowed plateau. He came to a halt, set the parking brake, and bounded out.

"We've got to take the last bit on foot."

We got out and stood facing a stand of pines. Most of the trees were dead — hollow grey hulls with jagged, dry spikes for branches, some felled, others tilting improbably out of the parched earth. The live ones didn't look significantly better. The space between their trunks was filled by eye-searing flashes of grey-white light, and we were forced to look down.

Sarna found a pathway through the trees. We followed him, ankle-deep in leaf dust, stepping gingerly over brittle spindles of dead branches. Once Milo snagged his trouser leg and had to stop to free himself. He still looked ill, but his colour had returned to normal.

Beyond the trees was a clearing, and as we neared it, the grey-white light grew unbearably intense. We walked haltingly toward open ground, shading our eyes with our hands. Sarna stopped along a sloping, sandy rim blemished by random mounds of rock. And beyond the rim, the white-hot light.

"It's hard to see at this time of day," said the ranger. "But if we stand over there, we can probably get enough shade. Be careful, the ground tilts sharply."

He led us to the shelter of one of the rock formations, a pile of boulders topped by an overhanging sandstone shelf. We stood under the shelf and looked out.

The lake was an opal set into the sun-gilded earth. Its surface was as brilliant as a crystal mirror, so static that it seemed artificial. A single step out of the shade turned it into a blinding disc of luminescence, as Milo quickly learned.

"Jesus," he said, shielding his face and returning to shelter.

Sarna lowered the brim of his hat and nodded.

"The setting sun hits the rocks at an angle that sets off one heck of a refraction. It's another reason few people come up here."

"It's like a goddamn sheet of plate glass," said Milo, rubbing his eyes.

"That's what the Spanish thought, too. They named it El

Canon Vidrio, which later became vulgarised to Bitter Canyon. Which is a shame, don't you think? Because on top of being a heck of a lot prettier, the Spanish is accurate.

"Vidrio," said Milo.

"Sure," said the ranger. "The glass canyon."