Serpentine

Chapter 11

Sunset Boulevard was relatively fluid, so Milo took Laurel Canyon down to the Strip.

We cruised past dormant nightclubs, hair and nail salons, strip joints, skin palaces, sex shops, and cannabis cafés. Everything topped by gigantic recording- and movie-biz billboards. Some of the boards were electronic and kinetic. More movement up there than among loitering addicts, shuffling homeless, misdirected foreign tourists, and the occasional hooker hungry enough to venture out during daylight.

At San Vicente, Milo said, “On paper, Galoway sounded like the least likely source of info. Go know. What do you think of his conspiracy theory?”

“He was set up to fail? Maybe.”

“It happens. But then why open it up at all?”

I said, “We could be talking departmental politics. A token attempt to appease someone, nothing happens, the nets get hauled.”

“Who would the brass want to appease? Don’t see an optometrist from up north having much pull down here.”

“A guy like Des Barres might. So contrary to Galoway’s suspicions, he could be a would-be hero not a suspect. Dorothy was his love interest, he wanted to know what had happened to her and why.”

“Galoway got the case fourteen years after it happened, Alex. Long time to get all sentimental.”

I thought about that. “Des Barres died soon after Galoway took over, from some sort of disease. Terminal illness can change your perspective.”

“I guess. Either way, time to learn more about him. Another long-dead person.”

“Want me to call Maxine and see if he has an interesting past she knows about?”

Maxine Driver was a history prof at the U., the daughter of Korean immigrants who’d disappointed her parents by rejecting med school to become an expert on L.A. gangsters. In the past, she’d traded information for early access to closed-case files. Her work product: academic papers, book chapters, presentations at conferences.

Milo said, “Des Barres was a tycoon who hung with sketchy types?”

“A tycoon who shacked up with a much younger woman and gave her a Caddy.”

“Good point — sure, ask her. Meanwhile, I’ll buy a dust mask and see if I can find the book.”

“Galoway said it didn’t amount to much.”

“Anything’s better than nada.”

He shifted forward in the driver’s seat, jaw jutting, eyes narrow.

Work-mode.

Hooked.

No answer at Maxine’s campus office. I was leaving a message on her cell when she broke in.

“Just saw it was you. What’s up, Alex?”

“Looking for anything you have on a guy named Anton Des Barres.” I went through the same spelling recitation Galoway had given.

She said, “French guy or a guy with a French name?”

“Don’t know.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, Alex. He a small-timer?”

“Not a hood,” I said. “A rich guy who owned a company that made surgical equipment. But there are hints of playboy so I thought he might’ve hung with some of your people.”

“My people.” She laughed. “Now you sound like my dad. You could be right, swinging types have always been drawn to the demimonde. Surgical equipment as in scalpels?”

“I believe so.”

“This some sort of Ripper deal?”

“A shooting thirty-six years ago.” I gave her the basics on Dorothy Swoboda.

“Des Barres was her boyfriend and hence a suspect?”

“It’s not at that level, yet.”

“What got this going after all this time?”

“She had one child, a three-year-old daughter. She’s pushing forty, retired, rich, and curious.”

“Retired from what?”

“Gym wear. Company called Beterkraft. She started it and sold it.”

“That’s hers? Love their stuff. Use it all the time.”

“Happy to pass that along, Maxine.”

“Like she’d ever care about a starving academic struggling to avoid the assault of time. So in terms of Des Barres, we’re talking big money, hence big influence, hence trying to dig up dirt.”

“Exactly.”

“Why not?” she said. “I’m getting a little bored with Bugsy and Mickey and their ilk, this could lead me in an interesting direction. Notorious unsolveds. Enriched, of course, by a whole bunch of scholarly theory. And we have worked well together, Alex.”

“That we have.”

“So tit for tat?” she said. “Same as before.”

“No problem.”

“You’re authorized by Milo to deal.”

“Can’t imagine he’d object.”

“I sure hope not. The last one, I got three peer-reviews plus coverage on the U.’s website. Insulated me from having to take over as department head when the rotation reached me.”

“No interest in bossing people around?”

“On the contrary, I love bossing people around, ask my husband. Problem is nowadays leadership means contending with Orwellian word-warp, chronically whining students, and terminally mewling faculty members. Utter the wrong syllable, you face a tribunal. You haven’t encountered that at the old-school med school?”

“I’m not important enough,” I said.

“You’re a full prof, no?”

“Still have the title but I don’t get paid and the last time I lectured was a year ago. Third-year pediatric residents. Too exhausted to protest anything.”

“Ha. Maybe my parents were right. Wrong field. Let me think about that for a sec... nah. All right, I’ll see what I can find about Monsieur Des Barres. What was the name of his company?”

“Don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“He was in his sixties twenty years ago, had a big place on Mulholland.”

“That’s it?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Hmm... you do understand that his not being a gangster lowers the chance of him cropping up in my database. Unless he was a thinly veiled bad guy with a respectable front who appears in a footnote or a side reference. And those guys usually ran restaurants and clubs, they didn’t get into surgical steel.”

“Understood. But like you said, maybe a hanger-on.”

“Just so you don’t get your hopes up,” she said.

“I will be appropriately pseudo-pessimistic.”

“And Milo?”

“He’ll be genuine pessimistic and I’ll give him emotional support.”

“Ha. Okay, soon as I get back, I’ll start digging.”

“Where are you?”

“One guess.”

“A convention.”

“What tipped you off?” she said. “The despair in my voice?”

“Where’s the idea-fest?”

“New Haven, talk about rarefied hot air.”

“Groupthink.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “And the group’s an idiot.”

I ran my own search for Anton Des Barres. Got immediate gratification in the latest quarterly report of a corporation called ADB-Tec and Research.

The company’s “mission” was “ultra-precision manufacture of high-grade scalpels, clamps, cannulas, stylets, trocars, endoscopes, elastomeric balloons, catheters, and arthroscopes.”

Now a subsidiary of a Taiwan-based conglomerate called Healing Hands, Ltd., ADB operated satellite facilities in Singapore, Stockholm, and, most recently, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Des Barres’s name came up in a two-paragraph Company History exposition.

Between the paragraphs was a color headshot of a man with a long, seamed face thatched by a head of full white hair. Black suit, white shirt, black tie, a taut smoothness to the face that said professional retouching. Anton Des Barres’s eyes were pale and sharply focused, his nose an off-kilter beak that shadowed a dark pencil mustache.

Below the photo were the bracketed dates of the founder’s birth and death. Des Barres had passed away nineteen years ago at the age of sixty-two.

The scenario I’d suggested didn’t seem unlikely: a dying man reaching out for answers.

If that was true, a living relative might have something to say. I ran a search using Des Barres’s surname alone and came up with three likelies.

Anthony Des Barres, M.D., practiced vascular surgery in Winnetka, Illinois. William Des Barres, Esq., practiced estate and trusts law in Highland Park, Illinois. Both towns were affluent suburbs of Chicago a brief drive from ADB Corporate Headquarters in Franklin Park.

Promo photos showed two beefy men in their mid- to late fifties. A strong resemblance and logic made brotherhood a cinch. So did an overall similarity to Anton Des Barres’s facial structure when you accounted for the extra flesh common on adults of the postwar, ample-food era.

Excellent candidates for contact, but Valerie Des Barres of Los Angeles, California, no neighborhood or photo provided, was a more geographically convenient target.

Her name brought up the IMDb database, where she was listed as executive producer of three animated TV movies shown on a family-friendly channel.

Muffy Comes Home.

Muffy Finds a Friend.

Lionel Roars but No One Hears.

The next reference linked me to an author’s website.

Valerie Des Barres was a narrow-shouldered, dark-haired woman with a pinched but pretty face and a hesitant smile. Younger than Anthony and William — midforties.

She described herself as “an artist and activist passionate about children’s growth and development” whose interests had led her to write eleven books for preschoolers in as many years. All had been released by Muffy Press. I found no other authors on the company’s list, suggesting self-publication.

Six Muffy books starred a streetwise squirrel, three featured Lionel Van Noise, a cheeky, high-volume raven, and the most recent two, released three years ago, described the adventures of Lady Hildegard, a once-pampered Maltese separated from her family by a yacht wreck and forced to make her way through an urban jungle closely resembling Lower Manhattan.

For each column, Valerie Des Barres was listed as both author and illustrator. Samples of her artwork revealed vibrant, eye-catching watercolors. Serious talent, well beyond a vanity project.

The bottom of the Books page posted sales links and the assurance that proceeds were “donated wholly to charity.” The final line was a small-print list of “suggested nonprofits recommended by Muffy, Lionel and Lady H. But the choice is yours.”

I returned to IMDB and found the name of the production company that had put the trio of films together. Muff-Li Ltd. Likely another self-fund.

The books had garnered a scatter of online reviews, most praising the gentleness of the story lines. One anonymous rater panned Lionel Puffs Up His Treasure Chest for the bird’s “classical male abrasiveness.”

Pushing away from the computer, I poured coffee in the kitchen and carried it back to my office, wondering if Valerie Des Barres’s interest in child welfare had ever led her to one of L.A.’s most deserving nonprofits: the children’s hospital where I’d trained then worked for a decade.

I spent the next hour talking to doctors, nurses, child activity specialists, and social workers at Western Pediatric Medical Center, made a last stab at the Development Office. No one had heard of Valerie Des Barres.

Not a total surprise; there are rich neighborhoods throughout L.A. but the concentration of wealth is highest on the Westside and the hospital’s scruffy East Hollywood location sometimes puts Westsiders off.

Years ago, while I was working in Hematology-Oncology, my boss had ordered me to train a group of “highly motivated” Junior Leaguers from Pasadena to serve as volunteers. I’d spent a month with what seemed to be an enthusiastic bunch of young matrons only to have the project fall apart because the women decided the half-hour drive was “too intense.”

I shifted west and tried contacts at the U. med center in Westwood. Same result.

Logging back onto Valerie Des Barres’s website, I scrolled down to the organizations “recommended” by her characters.

Aprendemos, a group in Modesto that provided after-school tutoring to the children of migrant workers.

The supplies funds of five PTAs in South Central and East L.A.

The Comfort Zone, a San Francisco group providing “toys, recreational opportunities, and emotional support to bereaved youngsters.”

That made me wonder. Ellie Barker had talked to a woman, a San Francisco fundraiser for children whose parents had died, before Andrea Bauer had taken over. I didn’t have Ellie’s number but I did have Bauer’s.

Her voicemail said, “Traveling somewhere.” Her Facebook page said Asia.

I looked up time differences between L.A. and the Far East. China, Hong Kong, and Singapore were fifteen hours later, Japan, sixteen.

Four p.m. here meant seven to eight a.m. in what used to be called the Orient. If Bauer wasn’t an early riser, she could learn to be flexible.

She answered her cell sounding cloudy. “Who?”

“Alex Delaware. We met on the—”

“Oh. The psychologist.” Yawn. “Why would you be calling me at this hour?”

“I figured by seven you might be up.”

“It’s six. I’m in Saigon.”

“Sorry.”

Another yawn. “I’ll cope. I assume this is about that girl — Ellie whatever?”

“Barker.”

“So Milo did get assigned.” She chuckled. “How’d he take that?”

“He’s a pro.”

“Meaning he’s ticked off. But so goes reality. Any progress to report?”

“He just started.”

“Meaning no,” she said. “So what do you imagine I can do for you?”

“Ellie Barker described meeting another woman at the Comfort Zone fundraiser—”

“And?”

“What’s her name?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Don’t have her number.”

“What’s this about?”

“Can’t get into that, yet.”

“But you can call me at six?”

“Given your initiative in getting the process going, I thought you’d be pleased to help.”

“You... are something. Okay, fine, I did get the ball rolling, can’t complain about it bouncing back. Her first name was Val, never met her before, don’t know her surname. She was some kind of movie person, was sitting between me and that poor girl. We traded places because I said I might be able to help. I’m a people-pleaser and I always follow through.”

I said, “A movie person.”

“I knew she wasn’t an actress,” said Bauer, “because she didn’t have that actress thing going on and I never heard of her. I asked her what aspect — this was after the whole murder discussion, we were having dessert — and she said she wrote and produced. That could mean anything, right? More often than not it’s rich kids dabbling and she has money from somewhere. Donated twenty thousand at the luncheon. I’d tell you what I gave but it’s none of your business.”

“I’m sure you were generous. Thanks. Bye.”

“Wham bam?” she said.

“Unless you’ve got something to add.”

“I do not. And no need to contact me again unless you’ve got a progress report. I don’t know either of them from Adam, did a good deed and am not committed nor involved in their issues. Know the difference? With a ham-and-eggs breakfast, the chicken’s involved but the pig’s committed.”

With a trip to the archive scheduled tomorrow and total autonomy, I figured Milo would avoid his office. But he didn’t answer his cell so I tried his desk and got him.

“Had to clear paper, just about to leave.”

I said, “Stay in your seat,” and told him about Valerie Des Barres.

He said, “The guy’s daughter... ol’ Du might actually be onto something? Except if she thought Daddy was involved in murder, why would she encourage Ellie to dig?”

“Maybe it’s been an issue for her, too. She’s a few years older than Ellie, would’ve been around eight or nine at the time Swoboda went over the cliff. Easily old enough to have seen something and hold on to the memory. What if she’s been carrying around disturbing memories from her childhood? All of a sudden, Ellie’s sitting next to her at a fundraiser and telling her a story that shocks her. It would’ve seemed like massive karma.”

“She’s one of those moral compass types, wants the truth at all costs?”

“She seems to devote herself to good works. I don’t want to demean altruism but it can be a form of atonement.”

“Any idea where she lives?”

“Her website says L.A.”

“Let’s find out where she pays property tax.”

I sat through a couple minutes of keyboard clicks.

He said, “Here we are, the Valerie Antonia Des Barres Trust... well, look at this. We’ve already been there. Today.”

“The gated place on the corner of Marilyn.”

“None other, according to the plat map. That’s like... three and a quarter acres of ancestral soil. So whatever feelings she has for the old man, she’s okay with living in his manse. Ready for a drop-in tomorrow, say nine?”

“Instead of the archive?”

“Way instead, I’m allergic to dust.”

“Since when?”

“Now.”