Shades of Eva, page 30
Ully had made some confessions that night. He had confessed to his role in profiting from his sister’s rapes by allowing Fred Levantle access to my mother through the attic entrances in his childhood home. This happened four or five times, he said, at the river house, and once at Coastal State.
Access. His confession validated each and every word in my mother’s diaries.
He had confessed to being with Fred the night Elmer was taken, too. This didn’t surprise Amelia. She’d reasoned he was there. Ully told her that Fred was drunk, and that he wanted one more night with my mother before he flew back to Korea. One more night of access! This was the only time, Ully said, he ever brought Fred to the Asylum for the exchange: access to sex for money.
That just happened to be the night Elmer was taken!
Ully said Fred wasn’t the type of person to say no to. So Ully agreed to go; to take Fred, more accurately. Ully confessed to driving with him to the University nearby, where they parked, and then to walking up the ravines out back with him, up which they climbed toward my mother’s dormitory. Ully said he pointed out the room where my mother was staying, and that he waited in the ravines for Fred to come out.
I wanted to hear this, but I didn’t. I needed to hear it, but I needed to sleep. It was more than I could bear to listen to that night. It was enough to make me go to sleep with untold numbers of pills in my body.
Sometimes you can endure the anger, and sometimes you can’t. Last night, I couldn’t. The dollar amount Ully had put on my mother’s body for Fred’s last visit was twenty dollars. Twenty fucking dollars! For twenty dollars, Fred could have one more rendezvous with Ully’s little sister. And that was the night, Ully said, that Fred came back to the edge of the ravine carrying a toolbox.
Amelia said Ully was on his way—in a bad way—to do two things: to locate Elmer’s grave, and to right Mom’s record, as in correct it.
Righting Mom’s record meant a legal confession. That meant police. Ully was to going to have to admit to authorities to what he knew, and to what he did: to allowing Fred Levantle to sexually assault my mother on multiple occasions, and in profiting from that allowance, and to being at the Asylum the night when baby Elmer was taken.
In the latter instance, he was to tell police what he had told Amelia: that Fred returned after assaulting my mother, returned carrying a toolbox, a toolbox that he and Fred buried somewhere in the ravines out back. He was also to point that location out to me.
He told Amelia he hadn’t thought anything was in the toolbox that night. HE didn’t hear any crying. Fred didn’t say there was anything inside the toolbox. Amelia went over this in some detail with Ully, so I believed in his ignorance, at least so far as that night was concerned. In fact, Ully still wasn’t 100-percent sure there was ever anything—or anyone—in the toolbox they buried. Fred had said something about fingerprints being on it, or blood, and that it needed to be hidden, but nothing about any baby or about any assault. So they buried it underground.
But after hearing his sister’s story the next day, Ully had told Amelia that he came to suspect that what they had buried was not just a toolbox with a couple fingerprints on it. He suspected it was likely the remains of Eva’s firstborn son. He confessed to his silence, and he tried to explain it by saying he was scared.
And we believed him.
My first question for Amelia was, of course: would police order an excavation of the site? And if so, why was I there posing as a security guard to do just that—to exhume Elmer and given him a proper burial?
Amelia told me I was there because if we waited for police to do what needed doing, we’d be waiting a long time. The truth was: Ully wasn’t sure what, if anything, was in the toolbox. It was circumstantial at best.
To Amelia, however, it was straight forward. But based on Ully’s ambiguity, police weren’t going to move too fast to order an excavation. Even if Ully said he was sure that Elmer was buried somewhere in the ravines, which wasn’t the truth, there’d be delays. The Institution had to evaluate Ully’s competence. Authorities would have to assess his motivation. They’d look to his bank accounts, and notice he was about $1.2 million shy of what he had the previous day, and a head injury ahead. They’d suspect foul play, and we couldn’t wait for all that.
If they, by chance, worked quickly to verify the confession, given a baby had been abducted, and they did find something there like skeletal remains, the process for ordering up a DNA analysis on those remains was likely to take weeks. This was all unacceptable to Amelia; either alternative meant delays in which we simply could not suffer.
The question remained, if we were to locate the toolbox ourselves, and by chance discover a body therein, how would we verify the identity of the skeleton? I was quite sure Amelia didn’t have a DNA analysis credential to her credit, and I certainly didn’t. However, Amelia said she had a contact down in Indianapolis to handle the forensics I had earlier seemed so insistent that we procure. She said that if we found the remains, that by the end of the day we’d have the results. Six hours, she said—not six weeks!
Amelia just simply didn’t let grass grow under her feet.
Amelia had already said that Dad had renounced his claim of being Elmer’s father. Therefore, there was no reason to use my father’s DNA as a control. Amelia wanted to do something called a siblingship test—assuming that we find Elmer’s remains—that is, compare Elmer’s DNA to mine to establish whether or not we were half-brothers, or whole. This would definitely establish Elmer as my mother’s child, my brother, and either substantiate my father’s claim of having fathered Elmer in 1953, or nullify it once and for all.
With Ben’s DNA—presumably—we could compare portions of Elmer’s sample—so I was told—to Ben’s to establish whether or not there was some relationship there. If Ben was the father, we’d have to reconsider what we were doing. If Ben’s brother was the father, we had the forensic proof of rape Amelia needed.
In either case, once Ully informed authorities of the truth of his and Fred’s little scheme, my time with Ben was about up. Once police contacted him, told him about Ully’s confessions and began inquiring about Fred once again, he’d likely want to talk to Ully. He’d likely want to talk to me. I’d given him shades of Eva, and Ben didn’t seem to be a man who liked shades of people. He wanted to see them in their true light.
Ben would have no choice but to tell police about these shades—about his suspicions. Police would want to talk to me. Ben would give them the number I’d given him; police would call me. But by then, Amelia believed, we’d have what we needed and we’d be long gone.
This meant I needed to work quickly, because if Ully did have a change of heart, or a lapse in intellectual judgment, and if, by chance, it dawned on Anna Norris who, exactly I was, then I’d be exposed. Ully would recant his confessions. He’d cry coercion and blackmail. There’d be no finding Elmer, or righting of Mom’s record. There’d be no penalties imposed, no $1.2 million to do anything good with, and there’d be no recapturing of Emily’s art. He’d have little to fear at that point, as Amelia and I would be exposed—our faces front page news—and he could invest a good portion of the money he just rescued into a new troupe of bodyguards.
I had to trust in Amelia’s powers of persuasion, and I had to trust that Ully would do as he was told. I had to trust that Anna wouldn’t recognize me, just as Amelia had asked me to. I had to trust, and that was a hard thing for a loner like me to do.
Regarding the money, Amelia told me she had opened an account in the Cayman Islands under the alias, Emily Wilson. $1.2 million was to be transferred from my uncle’s estate to the Cayman account that morning. It was the exact figure I’d given Amelia.
Amelia wasn’t too concerned with Ully turning tables on us. She said he had been given some incentives to cooperate. First, we were not taking him for $10-million; we were taking him for about ten-percent of that. Second, his stay at Coastal State was going to be three days—what Amelia called a three-day pass—as opposed to an indefinite committal, whereby Ully would likely be spending the rest of his days sucking his meals through a straw and shitting them out in a diaper, troupe of bodyguards or not.
Lastly, what Ully was there to confess to was not to rape—but to conspiracy—and that would likely command a lesser penalty—another monetary fine, and perhaps some community service. He hadn’t killed Elmer. We never believed that he had. And he didn’t know what was in the toolbox. He was a minor at seventeen, and he was scared. After all, there was a statute of limitations on rape, and conspiracy, and he was cooperating—even if it was by way of persuasion and about 40 years too late. Police might even be appreciative.
Amelia and I reasoned that if worse came to worse, if the police ever got involved and started pointing a finger at me, that my time with Ben would have had some value. Ben would have a brief history to refer to: the history of a troubled young alcoholic from River Bluff. Troubled would become part of my defense should things go south and for some reason I was captured. Any infiltration I’d be accused of, or fraud, by Ben or by Ully, or by the Institution for that matter, would be mitigated by two circumstances: first, by my own troubled past and addictive personality, as attested to in therapy; and second, I had become a pawn to the homicidal handiwork of Emily Wilson—Amelia’s latest alias—who was bent on using me to extort my uncle out of $1.2 million, and to find Ben’s brother, and to rob the Institution out of a cache of patient art.
If it came down to it, I was to tell police I’d been approached by a stranger calling herself Emily Bond, who said she was working with a friend to find my mother’s rapist. I’d tell them I was being forced into helping them locate Elmer’s remains and extort my uncle out of a million dollars; that I was bribed with promises these assailants probably had no earthly intention of keeping. I could use my alcoholism as an excuse, and my affiliation with the matter as the reason I’d been coerced into all of this in the first place.
Sitting back looking at it from the grounds that morning with a few benzos flowing through my veins, Amelia’s plan was nothing short of genius. The whole thing seemed to be coming together, even though we hadn’t a clue as to where Fred Levantle—or my brother—or where any art gallery was. It was a pretty crafty ruse, but there was something gnawing at me…something abstract. That something was Amelia’s reputation.
If I got captured, Amelia was offering a sacrifice to me by painting me as the victim. All I had to do was to protect her real name.
When I expressed my concern, however, at this scenario, she said that her aliases were in place, so not to worry about her freedom. She said that if the reverse occurred, and she was captured, she’d tell police she was working for someone else, too—someone named Emily Wilson. She’d tell police that we—the each of us—were mere pawns in this Emily’s game. We’d be held for questioning and released on our own recognizance. And then we’d be gone.
As far as Amelia’s reputation was concerned, Amelia said she didn’t give a damn about it. If police believed us, fine. But if not, she really didn’t care. She wanted Elmer found, my mother’s record corrected, and her aunt’s art. That was all she wanted, which was a God-awful lot to ask for.
I, however, cared about her reputation. Seemingly overnight I was concerned with abstractions like reputations. The money, and dare I say my own freedom, weren’t particularly mattering to me anymore.
***
Chapter 31
I flashed the entrance guard Chet’s identification. The gateman checked a list, checked my ID, stared at my Ray Bans as if he were looking for his reflection in them, then said, “Go ahead. Isaac’s waiting for you, Chester.” He gestured to a tall, African-American gentleman a few yards away and then tapped a button that lifted a red-and white forearm hovering over the narrow road before me.
Isaac Flout had been a security guard at Coastal State since 1970. He was instructed to give me a tour of the grounds and a proper orientation to our work. Isaac did wonder about my sunglasses.
I told him I got migraine headaches and suffered from photosensitivity, thus the glasses, which he seemed to accept.
“Lentes del sol,” Isaac said.
“Lentes del sol.”
He commented on the leather driving gloves I wore, too. He said they reminded him of an old television serial called Chips, where two motorcycle officers patrolled the California highways.
“Ponch and John,” I said, referring the show’s lead characters. I remembered them. I laughed and told him to call me Ponch if he wanted to. John seemed a little too boring for my taste.
Isaac pointed out the ambulance entrance at the main hospital, the chapel, the old juvenile center (now abandoned), and the Sax Rehab halfway house. It was all review, except this time I got to go inside these places.
The halfway house, where my father had stayed shortly after Meryl died, where my mother once roomed when it was called by a different name, had ten beds. It resembled a bed-and-breakfast. The rooms were quaintly furnished. It had a resplendent charm, reminiscent of some other era.
Isaac pointed out where the heating plant, laundry facility, and sewage disposal plants used to be. Isaac had apparently read Dr. Podjen’s book. His tales were Dr. Podjen’s tales, but unlike stories on white paper, Isaac’s tales, ones told in the very setting where they occurred, made the Asylum come to life. He talked of criminals held captive there, and their deeds, everything from treason to torture. He talked of wards and particular rooms—seclusions he called them—rooms believed to be haunted, places where people had been killed, stabbed, raped or had committed suicide. He talked about floors that had been condemned, the asbestos scare of the eighties and the months it took to abate it, all with a passion of a man who never seemed to tire of recounting such tales.
I could tell he was very fond of this place.
I listened with an insatiable ear, tossing Isaac question after question, feeding his passion like I was feeding a friendship. Something told me I’d need an ally in Isaac in the coming days, and I was correct. I did what people do who want to make friends—I made his interests my interests. I made Isaac’s affinity for the Asylum my affinity.
I’d pulled my writing tablet and pen from a pocket and began making a map of the place to further demonstrate that interest. Isaac commented on the crude drawing, and I told him it was for details, and left it at that. He gave me a strange look, nodded somewhat approvingly, and then gestured us onward.
We continued around Kern Circle toward the rear of the grounds.
“Not much activity here anymore, but it’s important,” Isaac said. “Food service, transportation, maintenance, the recreation hall, the laundry…this street used to be the busiest one in the complex. There used to be a dime store and a cobbler along here. We even had a barber and a beauty shop.”
We stood outside the large, wrought iron gate securing the tunnel cut into Ward E. “So how many stayed here at one time?” I asked, pulling on the gate to test its weight.
“In its heyday, I’d say 2,000 people at one time. Course there were a lot more buildings around back then. All tolled probably half a million souls have spent time in this wonderful place, for better, for worse.”
I sketched the gate and made an outline of the back of the main building as Isaac pulled the gate open. I was making notes of all of the camera locations on the outer walls, and drawing lines between the different buildings to estimate distances between them. Should I fail to find blueprints to the place, these sketches would have to suffice.
The iron gate creaked through every second of its arc and opened just enough to allow us passage into the courtyard. Isaac closed and then locked the gate behind us, then led me in.
I was finally in the Quad, that walled-in, gardenesque space where my parents had met. I was finally in and I felt every ounce of that finality when that big iron gate swung closed and then locked behind me with a clang that sounded like a giant prison door banging shut.
“This gate is the entry point for all the trucks,” Isaac said. “The cafeteria has been moved up to the front of the complex, but they still move supply through here.”
As I said, the Asylum proper was essentially a square (the perimeter made up of the wings) wards A and B in the front; Wards C and D on each side; and Ward E comprising the back of the square with the Quad smack in the middle. Punctuating the Quad was the 110-foot water tower.
Whereas before I could only imagine what it was like to stand right beside this structure, I took the opportunity to do just that as we made our approach. It looked as it did 40 years ago in that postcard, but it was real. It was mammoth and that was an understatement. Its slightly curving surface felt just as flat as I’d imagined it would; it felt as if it were a flat wall before me.
The Quad had the look and feel of a garden, far from what you’d expect from a mental institution’s recreation yard. Isaac explained it was part of a patient’s therapy to maintain the Quad. Painted benches lining flagstone paths wound their way through sections of perennials, dogwood trees, Japanese maples and a variety of shrubs and flowers. There was even a fountain within an area separated by a thick hedgerow split by a white stained arbor with hanging vines in full bloom.
It was an English garden. I had pictured an urban wasteland.
“The entire complex is under 24-hour surveillance,” Isaac continued. I continued sketching as Isaac continued the tour. “There’re cameras mounted everywhere.” He looked to my drawing again. “I see you have most all of them depicted. Why are you drawing those?”
“Details,” I reiterated. “Got a short memory so I need to write things down.” Again, Isaac left it at that, though he nodded less approvingly this time.
We entered the rear of the admin center and stood in a long corridor that branched off to the east and west. We proceeded east down the hall toward a sign above a stairwell that read Basement, and then entered its doorway. Isaac flipped a light switch on that dimly lit the stairwell. I followed him down. Two file rooms flanked each side of the staircase. On the left: patient files A-N. On the right: O through Z.
