Jeff Sherratt - The Brimstone Murders

I guessed His Majesty wasn’t used to having his commandments being questioned.

“Why are you butting in?” I asked. “And, anyway, what’s so confidential about a drug center, for chrissakes?”

“Watch your language, wise guy. We are in the house of the Lord.” Bickerton waved the cigar around like it was a burning, out-of-control, flying turd. “And, mister, I’ll tell you why I’m butting in. I own this goddamn church.”

“Thought it was the Lord’s house.”

“Don’t get cute.”

My welcome at the Divine Christ Ministry Church had started to wear thin. Billy Bickerton and the Reverend Elroy Snavley grew exceedingly tired of dodging my questions about the center, but I kept pounding away. And of course, it was only a matter of minutes before I was asked to leave. When I wouldn’t stop the interrogation, the chauffeur was summoned. He politely showed me the door.

The chauffeur’s nose would heal, but my shirt was beyond repair and that fine cigar in the pocket was now in shreds.

First, I stopped at a J.C. Penny’s on Nordhoff and picked up a new shirt, an OP Surfer, featuring scenes of palm trees, ocean waves, and a Woody parked by a sunny beach. Not too lawyerly, but what the heck, I liked it. Then I headed out. Turning off Winnetka, I swung into a Shell gas station and used the payphone next to the restrooms. My call went to Joyce, Sol’s private secretary. Her smoky, almost ethereal voice greeted me with a pleasant, “Good morning, Jimmy. It is still morning, isn’t it?”

“I think so, Joyce. Is Sol around?”

“No, but he left a message. Said that it’s important that he speak with you.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. Sol seldom said anything was important unless it had to do with food. But I felt certain this message was about Webster’s investigation, not lunch. “He didn’t say what it was about, did he?”

“No, he just said you’d know, but he’ll be returning this afternoon. Will he be able to reach you?”

“I’ll have to call him. Robbie’s mother had mentioned that the drug center is out by Barstow. There’s something funny about the place. So I’m heading there now to snoop around. Tell Sol it has to do with Robbie’s disappearance. The center and his disappearance could be related. Will you tell him that, Joyce?”

“You bet, Jimmy.”

Barstow was about a hundred-forty miles northeast of Chatsworth, halfway to Vegas. Traffic in L.A. was a tangled mess, but the trip went fast once I left the basin. I rolled on the down side of the San Bernardino Mountains, covering the last fifty miles of Highway 66 from Victorville in thirty-four minutes. Not a record, but not too bad.

It was after three in the afternoon when I pulled into the desert town, crawling along Main Street. I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do. I just knew I had to do something, and the drug center seemed to be the logical place to start. I randomly turned left on First Street, continued until I came to Riverside Drive, and then turned left again.

On my left, I spotted a tumbledown cafe sitting in the middle of a dirt patch in front of the Santa Fe Railroad switching yard. I pulled into the lot. I needed a cup of coffee and maybe a bite to eat, but, more importantly, I’d ask someone if they knew anything about the intervention center.

It occurred to me that I stood a better chance of getting information by stopping at a cafe off the beaten track, away from the tourists. I figured the locals knew more about what was going on in their town than the people that just stopped for a tank of gas and a piss before heading back on the highway and zooming to Vegas. If the folks here were anything like the ones in Downey, I doubted they would appreciate a drug intervention center being built in their community. It might even be the talk of the town. But, after a moment’s reflection, I knew I was being optimistic. The way Bickerton refused not only to give me the address but to even discuss the center, told me that the outfit had to be keeping a low profile.

The screen door banged shut after me when I walked into the Bright Spot Cafe. A ceiling fan spun listlessly above, harassing a tiny squadron of houseflies engaged in a tight formation flight on the periphery of the revolving blade’s arc. The cafe, with the fan and sweltering heat, could’ve been the setting for the movie Key Largo. I glanced around. Bacall was nowhere in sight but a grizzled old guy, cigarette dangling, sat at the counter. He bore a striking resemblance to Bogart. I didn’t ask for his autograph; didn’t want to gush.

All eyes turned and looked at me as I walked across the scuffed linoleum floor and sat at the far end of the counter. Other than Bogey, a half-dozen men slouched at the few tables placed haphazardly around the cafe. The men all wore bib overalls, and two had baseball caps pushed back on their foreheads, the Santa Fe Railroad logo prominently displayed above the bill on both caps.

A pretty girl with dark hair wearing a white apron over her checkered shirt and tight-fitting jeans wiped a table across the room. Her back was to me, and she was bending slightly. Her hand moved across the table with a slow, mechanical rhythm.

The girl had to be about eighteen with the firm, tight, nascent body of feminine youth, which never failed to tantalize old guys like me.

The girl peeked surreptitiously at me. When she saw that I noticed her, she quickly looked away and continued with her chore.

I plucked the menu, a single sheet covered in plastic, from its metal bracket clamped to the edge of the counter. The front side of the menu listed the cafe’s offerings: bacon and eggs, hamburgers, that sort of stuff, but typed on the back was a blurb, a short history of the Bright Spot Cafe.

The white clapboard building was built in 1930. “John Steinbeck stopped right here at the Bright Spot Cafe when traveling Route 66, doing research for his great novel, Of Mice and Men, about a bunch of Okies coming to Calif.”

The waitress, a woman of undeterminable age but a hell of a lot older than me, brought me a chipped coffee cup, the handle of which ringed the pinky of her left hand. She held a coffeepot in her right hand.

“Grapes of Wrath,” I said.

She dropped the cup on the counter and, with an exaggerated sigh, turned to the food delivery slot in the wall behind her. “Hey Gus, we got another one of them intellectuals here.”

“Hey, buddy, don’t want no trouble,” a heavy voice growled from the slot.

“Nope, no trouble.” I already had to buy one shirt today. “Must have been mistaken, sorry,” I shouted back at the slot.

“S’okay.”

I decided to drop the issue and not delve any further into Steinbeck. It was obviously a sore point at the Bright Spot. Who was I anyway, a literary critic? I needed information about the drug intervention center and I wouldn’t get any cooperation by upsetting the natives. Besides, maybe George and Lenny did travel through Barstow on their way to the Salinas Valley.

The waitress turned back to me. Her chin was tucked in, and she looked at me cautiously. She filled my cup, stepped back a couple of feet as though I might explode, and slowly withdrew an order pad from the pocket of her white but filthy uniform. “Want something to eat?”

I was starved. “Nah, not hungry,” I said. “Just coffee, thanks.”

She started to move along the counter. “Wait,” I called out.

She stopped dead in her tracks, really uptight. Christ, the last intellectual who came in here must have been hell on wheels.

“Got a phonebook?” I said.

It was like she deflated, kind of slumped. Then she dashed to the cash register, reached behind it and pulled out the thin book. She slid it along the counter toward me.