Nelson Algren - The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 1)

Ever faithfully

Laszlo

Jacob Asch was introduced in Arthur Lyons’s first novel, The Dead Are Discreet (1974), and in the eight Asch novels since, Lyons has written so convincingly about crime that he has been engaged as a consultant by the Los Angeles Police Department.

“Trouble in Paradise,” Lyons reports, “was inspired by a true case I learned of while doing research for a book in the Caribbean. Being a scuba diver myself, I was fascinated by the case, and although my version of what happened differs from the outcome of the actual case, I feel that this is the way it could have come down. It is the only Jacob Asch story in print.”

Arthur Lyons lives in Palm Springs, California, where he operates a restaurant called Lyons’ English Grill. He is thirty-nine.

“That whore did it,” John Anixter pro-claimed angrily. “I know she did. I want you to prove it.”

He was a tall and gristly forty-odd, with a long, rectangular face and brown hair that was deciding to be gray. His eyes were pale blue and had a no-nonsense expression in them. His dress was no-nonsense, too; a gray worsted suit, a white shirt, and a gray and blue striped tie. His hands were jewelryless except for an inexpensive Seiko watch. All in all, he looked no more than a fairly prosperous businessman; I would have had no idea he was worth $8 million if Harry Scranton hadn’t told me.

Harry was an attorney for whose firm I occasionally did investigative work and the one who had recommended me to Anixter. All that he had told me about the man, except for how much money he had, was that he had made it dabbling in the commodities market before starting up his own successful commodities brokerage firm, and that he was a hell of a nice guy. Oh yeah, he also told me that the man’s son had recently died in an accident, which was why he wanted to see me.

“What whore is that, Mr. Anixter?”

His face flushed. “The one Chip married. He couldn’t see what she was, but it was obvious to me the first time I laid eyes on her.”

“Chip was your son?”

He nodded, then turned and looked out the window. The office was plush, with elm burl walls adorned by deco light sconces and furnished with big, cushy chairs with great wide arms. “When I cut Chip off,” Anixter said, looking down the fourteen floors to the streets of Century City, “I thought for sure she would take the hint and leave, but she found another way to work it.”

He was trucking now and I was peddling slowly behind on my bicycle. I peddled harder, trying to catch up. “Work what?”

He turned and gave me a solemn look. “Three months ago, my son took out a life insurance policy worth $300,000, with her as the beneficiary. Two months later, Chip died under mysterious circumstances while scuba diving in the Caribbean. The authorities in St. Maarten have declared it an accident, but I’m certain that woman had something to do with it. Chip was an experienced diver and a super athlete. Scuba was one of his passions. She probably worked some sort of deal with the scuba instructor to do away with Chip and split the money.”

“Was an autopsy performed?”

“You have to have a body to perform an autopsy.”

“They never found his body?”

He shook his head. “All they found was his diving gear and swim trunks. Both were pretty chewed up.”

“Sharks?”

He shrugged.

One thing I have found with parents whose children have died unnaturally, murder is always a preferable alternative to suicide or accidental death. With the former comes a truckload of guilt and with the latter comes a capricious and uncaring universe.

“The insurance company has to have investigators on it, Mr. Anixter—”

He waved a hand in exasperation and sat back down at the desk. “There’s nothing they can do. Chip’s death is officially an accident. In the absence of new evidence, they’re going to have to pay off.” Two knots of muscle rose on his jawline, just below his ears. “I’ll see that bitch in hell before I let her collect a bounty on my son’s life.”

“How long were they married?”

“Five months.” He leaned back in his chair, and his brow furrowed. “My son was a screw-up, Mr. Asch.”

“The only thing he ever showed any interest in was fast cars and faster women. A lot if it was my fault, probably. I wasn’t the best father in the world. My wife — Chip’s mother — died when he was only nine and I was too busy trying to keep the business going to give him the supervision he needed. When he was a teenager, I had to get him out of one scrape after another. I always thought he would straighten up, even after he quit college and drifted from one job to another. I offered him a position with my company, but he said he had to ‘find himself,’ whatever that means. But when he came to me and said he intended to marry that tramp, that was the last straw.”

He paused, but he wasn’t through yet. He came forward and rested his forearm on the desk.

“I’ve worked my butt off my whole life, Mr. Asch. I came up from nothing and struggled to put something together. Too damned hard to sit back and watch it squandered on some fortune-hunting hooker. I told Chip if he wanted to marry the girl, fine, but he could support her on his own, because he wouldn’t get one more dime from me, before or after I died. We both said things we shouldn’t have. That was the last time I saw him.” Coldness in the blue eyes softened; guilt tugged at his features.

“You called the woman a hooker,” I said. “Did you mean that literally?” He gave a look of distaste. “They all hook in places like that.”

“Places like what?”

“The Paradise,” he said, folding his hands on the desk top. “It’s a topless bar on Beverly Boulevard. She was dancing there when Chip met her.”

I wrote it down. “What’s her first name?”

“Rhonda,” he said, as if he did not like the sound of the word.

“Where is she living now?”

“In Chip’s apartment.” He recited the address, then looked at me appraisingly as if I were a pork belly for which he was trying to guess tomorrow’s market value. “Harry says you’re good.”

Never one to deal well with flattery, I said nothing.

“That bitch took away my only son,” he said through pursed lips. “I don’t care how much money it takes, I want her nailed for it.”

It sounded as if he had lost his son years ago and wanted me to help him pin his guilt on the woman. For two hundred a day plus expenses, I was willing to at least try.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

Chip and Rhonda Anixter had gotten married in September, in Westwood, and I obtained a copy of the marriage license from the Hall of Records downtown. Her maiden name was Rhonda Jo Banks, and she was twenty-eight, two years older than Chip. She had been born in Arizona, had completed high school, and listed her occupation as “dancer.” I figured that was as good a place to start as any.

The Paradise was on Beverly Boulevard, on the edge of the Silver Lake district, in the middle of a fatigued city block of laundromats and seedy-looking Mexican and Vietnamese restaurants. From the outside, it looked like a dirty plywood and plaster box, covered with cartoon paintings of leggy, scantily-clad girls. Inside, it was a dirty plywood and plaster box with real girls instead of cartoons. The cartoons looked better.

The place was built like a dog pit, with tables set around the perimeters of the sunken dance floor, where an anemic-looking redhead in nothing but a G-string was gyrating listlessly to a Michael Jackson tune. “Flashdance” it wasn’t.

Afternoon trade was sparse and I had no trouble securing a table. Passing myself off as an old acquaintance of Rhonda’s, it took one hour, five beers and twenty-eight dollars in “tips” spread between the bartender and a bovine brunette named Noreen to find out Rhonda had not been around much since she’d gotten married. Noreen was particularly talkative, especially after I picked up some latent hostility from her and assumed the role of one of Rhonda’s jilted exboyfriends.