Silent Partner

“Tying up loose ends,” I said.

He nodded. “Question is, who?”

“Any idea where the Fontaines are?”

“Bahamas. Bijan’s dad was less than helpful. Beverly Hills Cab only had a record of taking them to the airport. But I did manage to trace the car storage company and, through them, the travel agency. First-class passage, L.A. to Miami, ditto to Nassau. They kept moving after that but the agent couldn’t or wouldn’t say where. There was no way for me to push the issue. My guess is one of the smaller remote islands- bad phone lines, rum drinks named after birds and monkeys, banks that make the Swiss look nosy. Kind of environment where someone with cash could stay cozy for a long time.”

He finished the juice, then the cereal, raised the bowl to his lips and drank the milk.

“Where’ve you been, anyway?” he said. “And what were you calling me about last night?”

I told him what I’d learned in Willow Glen.

“Weird,” he said, “very weird. But I don’t hear any crime- unless she was kidnapped as a kid. Am I missing something?”

I shook my head. “I want to run some ideas by you.”

He filled the bowl again. “Run.”

“Let’s say Sharon and her twin were the result of an affair between Leland Belding and Linda Lanier- a party-girl thing that went further than usual. According to Crotty he singled her out; she used to go to his office. Linda kept the pregnancy secret because she was worried Belding would force her to terminate.”

“How could she know that?”

“Maybe she knew he didn’t like children, or maybe she was making an educated guess- Belding was a cold man, shu

“Go on.”

“Crotty saw Lanier and Donald Neurath together- playing coochy-coo. What if Neurath was her doctor as well as her lover- they met on a professional level and it went further.”

“Theme of the loop.”

“The loop was a cartoon of their relationship, compressed for posterity.”

He sat back, put his spoon down. “She starts as a party girl with Belding, takes it further. Starts as a patient with Neurath, takes it further.”

“She was beautiful. But more than that. An expert seductress- she had to have had something special for Belding to pick her out from all the other party girls. As her gynecologist, Neurath would be among the first to know she was pregnant- maybe the first. If he’d gotten deeply emotionally involved with her, finding out she was carrying another man’s child could have made him angry, jealous. What if he offered to abort it and she refused? He then threatened to tell Belding. Linda’s back was up against the wall. She told her brother, and his extortionist’s mind came up with a plot: seduce Neurath on film. Get leverage. Cable worked at the studio, had access to equipment. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to set it up.”

Milo chewed on that for a long time, then said, “And Cable, being a sleazeball, figures out how to make some extra cash on the deal- sells a copy of the loop to some collector.”

I nodded. “Gordon Fontaine or someone else who eventually sells it to him. Years later, Paul Kruse comes across it, sees the resemblance to Sharon and gets curious. But that’s jumping the gun. Let’s stick with Linda for a moment. When her pregnancy shows, she leaves town, gives birth- to twins- sometime between spring and summer of ’53. Now she figures it’s safe to tell Belding: Aborting a fetus is one thing; rejecting two adorable girl babies is another. Maybe brother Cable builds up her confidence- visions of dollar signs would be dancing in front of his eyes. Linda pays Belding a visit, shows him the girls, states her demand: Make an honest woman out of me or shell out enough money so the kids, Uncle Cable, and I can live happily ever after.”

Milo gave a sour look. “Sounds just like the kind of stupid scam stone losers always try to pull. The dumb story you piece together after they’ve ended up on a slab.”

“It was stupid. The Johnsons were pe

“Cold,” said Milo.

“But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Hummel and DeGranzfeld were Belding’s boys. Narcotics detectives, in a perfect position to set up a phony dope bust. Bankrolled by Belding, they could get their hands on plenty of heroin. They kept the uniforms outside, went into that apartment alone to set up the shoot-out, arrange the crime scene. But getting rid of Linda and Cable solved only part of Belding’s problem. He was still stuck with two little babies he didn’t want. Under the best of circumstances, raising twins is a challenge. For someone like Belding the prospect would have been overwhelming- a lot scarier than designing girdles or buying up companies. So he resorted to habit-bought his way out of it. And his deal with the Ransoms was a lot cheaper than any he would have had to cut with Linda and Cable. The same arrangement with Sharon’s twin and some other couple.”

Some other dirt lot. No Helen Leidecker. The other girl ending up crippled, or…

“Set up his own kids’ mother to be ripped off, then sold them. Ultra-cold.”

“He was a cold man, Milo, a misanthrope who preferred machines to people. He never married, never developed normal attachments, ended up a hermit.”

“According to the hoax book.”

“According to everyone. Seaman Cross just embellished reality. And you know babies get abandoned all the time. With a lot less reason. Casa de los Niños was full of them.”

“Why the Ransoms?” he said “What co

“Maybe none. When I say Belding did these things, I don’t mean literally. He probably never got his hands dirty, had some intermediary, like Billy Vidal, handle it- that was his specialty: procuring people for Belding’s needs. Where the intermediary found them, who knows? But their being retarded would be a plus, not a minus. They’d be passive, obedient, not likely to get greedy or ask questions. They think concretely, are stubborn- good at keeping secrets. Or forgetting. I had an exhibition of that just yesterday. On top of that, they were anonymous- neither of them even knew their birthdays; no government agency had any record of them. Not until 1971, when Sharon went away to college and Helen Leidecker decided they needed extra protection and took it upon herself to file for Medi-Cal and Social Security. If she hadn’t, I’d never have found them.”

Milo said, “If Ransom hadn’t named the crippled woman after Shirlee.”

“Yes. And I don’t profess to understand that- she was full of weird symbols. But be that as it may, giving a child to Shirlee and Jasper was equivalent to erasing that child’s identity. Perhaps Belding never even expected her to survive. But Helen Leidecker discovered her, tutored her, sent her out into the world.”

“Out to Kruse.”

“Kruse went to that Careers Day at L.I.U. under the guise of altruism. But he was a predator- a lecher and a power junkie, always on the prowl for new disciples. Maybe he was attracted by Sharon’s looks or maybe he’d seen Linda Lanier’s loop and was struck by the resemblance. In either case, he turned on the charisma, got her talking about herself, saw how evasive she was about her background, and grew even more intrigued. The two of them were a perfect match for mind control: she, molded by Helen, no real roots. He, lusting to play Svengali.”