Stone Cold (9 page)

“But I forgot those ways. I went to Hollywood. I became a star. I wanted to live like a star. That was what was important to me. Women, expensive things, fancy restaurants, jewellery. Fleshly pleasures, and vanity. I was a laddie from Adimurcham and I had come a long way. I was proud of myself. And pride is a sin, the Bible tell us. It took me time to learn that I had lost my way. There’s nothing wrong with being a film actor. But I had forgotten the lessons I had learned. My life was shallow. It was all vanity. That was all the meaning of my life, vanity. Are you following me, Mr Root?”

“Yes. You make yourself very clear.”

“Good. In the book of St Matthew it says: ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.’ Do you remember that? Did you learn it in Sunday school?”

“I remember the passage, although not as well as you do,” I replied.

He went on in tones of earnest conviction. He was preaching a sermon now, I realized. “I forgot that. I laid up for myself treasures on earth. I wanted to show that I was rich. I heard about this amazing diamond, and I heard that it was up for sale. At that time I was consorting with several beautiful women, and the gossip newspapers were talking about me with this one and that one, and people were talking about when I would marry. So I bought this diamond. It cost me a lot of money but I was a star.

“I was interviewed by a woman from some Hollywood newspaper and I was full of vanity. Puffed up with it. I told her about this diamond. I said that when I found somebody I wanted to marry, I would put this diamond in an engagement ring. I’m embarrassed now to recall that interview. I said something else. I said I slept with it under my pillow. What a daft thing to say! And I did. It was that important to me, yon diamond, I thought it represented what I had become. Actually, it did, in a way that I didn’t understand then.”

He was preaching to himself as much as to me. I imagined that he had told this story in church, perhaps to a Sunday school class where they would be dazzled by his talk of being a star in Hollywood and listen intently. He had to keep on telling it, like someone who confesses to a sin again and again to assure himself that he has really repented.

“That was stupid as well as vain. What do you think happened? ‘Where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break in and steal,’ says the Bible. Thieves broke into my house and into my bedroom. My house was protected of course, by electronic devices and a fence, but they were clever. A man got into my bedroom. He was after the diamond. Perhaps I should have given it to him. But I resisted him. I’m pretty strong, I thought, I can fight him off. He pulled a knife and we fought and he slashed me across the arm and across the face. Can you see this scar?”

I nodded. I had noticed a long, thin, white scar across his cheek. It marred his otherwise handsome features. “He gave me that scar. He didn’t get the diamond. I shouted for help and my housekeeper called the police. Fortunately, they came within minutes. They caught the thief as he was getting away, and I got the diamond back.

“Well, I thought that was that. I was about to start a film but they said they would have to get another actor because of that scar. You know, I was supposed to be good-looking. That was part of my selling point. Some magazine called me the second sexiest bachelor in Hollywood, or something daft like that.

“I told the producers they could cover it with make-up but they said it wouldn’t be the same, that people would see it off the set, all sorts of things. So I waited for the scar to heal. It was supposed to heal but somehow it didn’t. I wasn’t being offered any more parts. Yes, someone offered me a minor part as a scar-faced villain, but that wasn’t for me. I was unemployed.

“I had what doctors called a nervous breakdown. I spent some time with a psychotherapist. But after a while, I came to realize that he could nae help me. My crisis was a spiritual one. This scar that would not heal was with me forever, because I had strayed from the true path.”

He paused. I asked, “It was God’s punishment?” I wanted to know. Belief in a God that rewards and punishes has always puzzled me, it seems so simplistic.

“Punishment, yes, but also a
gift
!” He said this last vehemently. “Something to remind me where I had strayed to, and something to prevent me continuing on that path. Don’t you see? I couldn’t follow the old way of life with that scar. And it was a reminder that would always be with me if I were tempted again. It took me a long time to realize this, and to understand what I should do. I left Hollywood, and left behind the life I was leading. I came here, and I returned to the faith of my fathers, and to the place of my fathers. My life is here now.”

He stopped. He had finished his story. I was moved. I am not religious but I am always moved by the passionate sincerity of a decent man.

But I had to press him further. “That’s an interesting story, and one I’ll remember. Thank you.” I paused, and then, “The diamond. You sold it through Azamouth Frères. Could you tell me who you bought it from?”

“I bought it from a dealer in London. “

“Do you know who the previous owner was?”

“Yes, as it happens, I do know. He was in California also. That’s how I first heard about it.”

“He was in Hollywood?”

“No, he’s a man called Tom Kinsella. He’s nothing to do with films. He’s a Silicon Valley millionaire. One of those teenagers who play with computers and make millions.” This was the first hint of worldly humour in his conversation.

“You don’t happen to know how I could reach him, do you?”

“When I bought the diamond, I remember, someone told me he was living on a yacht in Marina del Rey. That’s all I know.”

“Tom Kinsella in Marina del Rey. Thank you.”

That part of the conversation was at an end, but I had appreciated his story. I said, “If you don’t mind my asking, do you ever miss the old life?”

He thought about this for a while. “Yes, bits of it. Occasionally, I miss the work. Being on set, being at the centre of it all. Some of the industry talk. But I was wasting my life. So much of what went with it was polluting my mind and my body.

“Now I have a life here. I have friends, I attend a Bible study group. I take classes at the Sunday school sometimes. And I’m not a monk. My Uncle Albert and Aunt Margaret are coming on a visit later this week. Uncle Albert will tell me funny stories about the family that I’ve heard a dozen times before, but I’m fond of him. And soon I’ll find some useful work to do. No, the life here is the life for me.”

He stood up and said, “Well, I’ve told you more than I tell most people, Mr Root.”

“Thank you, I’ve found it very interesting,” I said truthfully. “And I’m glad I was able to help you with your security,” I added, reminding him.

I had done my work in Adimurcham and I was glad that I could get away from the hostile faces. I drove to Edinburgh, handed over the car, and flew back to London.

I reported to Jeremy and told him about the competition. “I think you’d better tell Michelmore what’s happened so far,” he said. So I telephoned him and went along to the office off Jermyn Street.

As usual, Michelmore was all business. No small talk about where I had been. He didn’t ask what the weather was like in Switzerland or whether the sun was shining in Nice. I gave him a stripped-down account of my events. He listened thoughtfully and looked concerned at my account of the conversation in Paris and my run-in with Molloy and his friend. “So somebody else wants to know,” he mused.

“And they’re ready to go to some lengths to find out and to see that we don’t. Like pushing me off a mountain,” I pointed out.

“I was pretty sure someone else wanted to know,” he said, “But I didn’t know how badly they want to know. Azamouth seems to be in on it. Well, I’d rather I got there first. In fact, that makes me even keener. Stay on the trail. You’ve done well so far.”

I nodded. I had expected a little more acknowledgment of the danger I had been in. “And don’t take any risks,” he said as I was leaving. Gosh, you’re getting soft, I thought. Then he added, “That you don’t have to.”

CHAPTER SIX

I looked up Tom Kinsella on the internet. There were several references to him. He and someone called Richard Cheng, both former Google employees, had developed a new program useful in the online retail trade. There was a brief news item from a computer magazine saying they had sold it.

I tried to find a telephone number for Tom Kinsella or his yacht but I could find nothing. “Go there,” Jeremy said. “Michelmore said stay on the trail, so stay on it. He’s got plenty of money to spend. You seem to do well when you’re on the spot. Track Kinsella down, get away from this London drizzle and get some California sunshine.”

“And if I go all that way and draw a blank?”

“Then we’ll think of something else.”

I arrived in Los Angeles in the early evening and stayed overnight in an airport hotel. The next morning I booked a room in a hotel in Marina del Rey near the pier, rented a car, and drove down there. It was only a few miles away; like most of Southern California, Marina del Rey is really a suburb of Los Angeles. Truth to tell, I took a slightly roundabout route so I could enjoy the drive along the Pacific Coast Highway, with the blue ocean and a beach on one side and on the other, undulating brown earth hillsides. I had only been to California once before, when two college friends and I drove across the country one summer and, for me as an Easterner, it is all exotic, the palm trees and the roller skaters in bikinis and the people walking barefoot and the street signs in Spanish as well as English.

I was certainly getting some California sunshine. The weather was perfect, warm but not hot with balmy breezes. I located the marina and went to the harbour office. A young woman there set aside her paperback copy of
The
Catcher
in
the
Rye and got some volumes of records off a shelf. “The last mention I have of a Tom Kinsella is eighteen months ago,” she said. “He’s on a yacht called the Lake Michigan. J Dock.”

“The Lake Michigan? Odd name for a yacht in California,” I remarked. She did not comment, but she directed me to J Dock.

The sunshine, the balmy breeze, the presence of water, the cawking of seagulls all inclined me to stroll rather than stride, relaxing into the environment. I passed bars, and stores selling fishing equipment. People ambled about in no hurry, so I ambled.

Other docks had fishing boats but J Dock was for recreation. The boats moored there were small sailboats and some motor boats, stacked two and three deep. The Lake Michigan was one of the largest, a forty-footer I would say, big enough for overnight journeys.

There were two people on the deck. One was a man of about fifty, slim, dressed in a sport shirt, cream-coloured slacks and deck shoes, with a drink in his hand. It was only just twelve o’clock. A blonde woman about the same age was lying on a lounge chair, with sunglasses and a floppy sun hat obscuring her face. She was tall, almost as long as the sun lounge she was sitting on, and slender. They were the kind of people who could decide who would cross the gangplank into their lives.

I stood at the edge and called out, “May I come aboard?”

“What do you want?” the man called back.

“Are you Mr Kinsella?”

“No.”

“Is Mr Kinsella about?”

“No, I’m afraid he isn’t.”

“May I come aboard?” I called out again.

The man said, “Are you from the ATF?”

“The what?”

“The Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau.”

“No. I’m a private investigator looking for Tom Kinsella.”

“You’re not from the FBI either?”

“If I was from the FBI I probably wouldn’t be asking your permission to come on board.”

The man hesitated. The woman raised her sunglasses and took a long look at me. She seemed to be appraising me either for social acceptability or sexual possibility. Eventually the man said, “Come on.”

When I was on the deck he became friendly. He held up his glass and said, “I’m Jerry Caldwell. Would you like a drink?”

“My name is David Root. Not just now, thanks. I’m looking for Tom Kinsella. This is his yacht, isn’t it?”

“It used to be. It’s ours now. We bought it.”

“Oh, I see.”

He kept looking at his glass.

I asked, “Do you have an address for him?”

“Why do you want to see him?”

“It’s a personal matter.”

The man looked at me suspiciously. Then the woman spoke up. “Oh, tell the man where he is if you know. It’s not our job to protect him from creditors.”

“I don’t know where he is,” the man told her. “I bought his yacht through an agency.”

The woman said to me, “Anyway, I think he’s still somewhere around here.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you sure you won’t have a drink?” the man said. “I’ve got a pitcher of martini here.”

“Ok, maybe I will, thanks. But just a small one.” They might know some more.

“I’m Jerry Caldwell,” he repeated. “And this is my wife, Melissa.” I introduced myself again.

“Are you a Californian?” Jerry asked.

“No. I’m from Connecticut and New York. But right now I’m living in London.”

“England?”

“That’s right.”

The woman got up from her lounge chair and sauntered over, evidently for some more serious conversation. “Why do you want to find Tom Kinsella?” she asked.

“I’m making enquiries about a diamond he has.” No point in not telling them. They might know something about the diamond.

“What about it? Is it stolen?”

“No, no. But it’s a very unusual diamond, and someone in the diamond trade is anxious to know some more about it.”

Jerry pondered this. “Hmmm. Do you want to tell me what’s unusual about it?”

“Nobody knows where it comes from.”

“Why does someone want to know?”

“They think there may be more like it.”

“There probably are,” Jerry said. “If they have a diamond mine they can keep to themselves, they will.”

“Who’s ‘they’,” I asked.

The woman said to me, “Oh please don’t get him started on that.”

Jerry ignored her. “The people running things. The people you don’t read about in the controlled media.”

“You think they might have a secret diamond mine somewhere?”

“They might. It would help finance their activities. Although they control the world’s finances anyway.”

I thought I would follow this up, just to see how far it would go. “So you believe someone is controlling the world’s finances?”

“Some people. And more than the finances,” he said. “You can find out. It’s all out there. Watch the Alex Jones television programme. He tells it like it really is. Have you ever watched his channel?”

“No.”

“You should. It’s an eye-opener.”

He had been standing but now he sat down and beckoned me to a chair. This was going to be serious conversation. “You know, I didn’t used to take this conspiracy theory seriously. I thought it was just a bunch of rednecks and the gun lobby. But then I came across some stuff on the internet about 9/11. There’s proof there that the CIA blew up the World Trade Center. A former CIA agent has testified to that, and they have fire experts and other people saying it couldn’t have happened the way they said it did, with planes crashing into them. They pinned it on some Arab terrorists.”

I thought I might as well get his full picture. Besides, in some crazy way it might have some relevance to the diamond. “Why would they do that, Jerry?”

“So that they have another reason to control us. Tear up the Constitution. Take away our rights. Why do you think they put fluoride in the water?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was for health reasons.”

“Nonsense. It’s well known that fluoride reduces IQ. It’s to make us more docile. I don’t drink water from the faucet, only bottled water. We’ll be more docile, and then they’ll take away our guns.”

He didn’t look like my idea of a gun-owner. I couldn’t see Jerry driving a pick-up truck with a rifle rack in the front. “Do you keep a gun?”

“Oh yes. I have a rifle and a pistol on this boat, for our protection. I’ve taken lessons in using them.”

“Do you really think you’re in danger?”

“We’re all in danger of being taken over. Maybe not now, but someday soon. Or they may not bother to take over the government because they control it anyway. Do you know why I bought this boat?”

“Because you like sailing?”

“No. I don’t particularly like sailing. It’s so that when they really clamp down the United Nations dictatorship, or whatever they’ll choose to call it, I can get away. I can’t go far in this, but I can go down to Mexico, to some small place where we can live out our lives. Think about it, David. Look into it. They’re taking away your liberties too.”

“All right, I’ll think about it,” I lied.

There was no more to be gained by remaining. I took my leave and departed, to Melissa’s evident disappointment. I had the idea that Jerry’s view of the world was driving her crazy and she craved some other company and normal conversation.

I did reflect for a few moments on Jerry’s view. I’m sure there are things going on that we don’t know about, and I accept, regretfully, that my government is capable of lying to me. But government lies usually come out. And vast conspiracies involving thousands of people just wouldn’t work. Jerry’s world is much better organized than the real one.

I felt the need for some normality also. I walked along the quay and went into a bar for something to eat. The menu was mostly freshly caught seafood. It really was freshly caught; while I was there a man came in carrying a net heaving with what looked like crabs. He was tall and slim, wearing a skimpy undershirt and shorts, with arms and legs so hairy that he looked like a spider. He dumped his net on the floor and had an argument with the manager which, from the few words I could catch, was about price, before he took the bag in the back, and then emerged with about half his load left. I had an ocean sandwich, which was bulging with crab and prawns and salad with mayonnaise that splattered all over my face when I took a bite.

Most of the people in the bar were regulars, I could tell. Notices around the bar drew attention to a collection for a local children’s charity, a pool contest, and a cricket team. A cricket team? I asked the bartender about this. “Yeah, we have a few Brits who come here, and some locals have learned to play it. There’s a British team around here. You play cricket?” I said I had played for a while when I was at school in England but not since. I was aware that some of the others were listening to our conversation now.

“Some of the guys who play it say they like it because it’s faster than baseball. Which seems odd,” the bartender said.

“I suppose it is, although they stop for tea. They notch up hundreds of runs.”

Someone else asked, “What’s it like in England? Not like here, huh?”

“The sun doesn’t shine so much. It rains a lot.”

A man on another bar stool, with a drinker’s red nose and a beer belly asked, “What are the women like? Do they put out?”

“It depends how good-looking you are,” I said, which got some chuckles around the bar.

“I was in England, in the service,” someone else said. “Met some nice people. Their pubs are different to our bars. And they seem hung up about the Queen.”

Now I knew I had their attention I said to the bartender, “I’ve just been visiting a yacht. The Lake Michigan, in J Dock. Do you know it?”

“No. They friends of yours?”

Then someone else spoke. “That’s that guy Kinsella’s boat, or it was – he sold it.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Do you know him?”

“Came in her a few times. Pleasant guy. Sort of quiet.”

“Do you know where he is now?” I asked. “I’d like to find him.”

“Sorry, can’t help you there.”

Someone spoke up from the other side of the room. “I ran into him the other day. He told me he’s at the Kinsella Motel over in Santa Monica.”

“The Kinsella Motel? He’s bought a motel?”

“I dunno.” The man shrugged. “But that’s where he lives, he told me.”

It seemed an odd address for a Silicon Valley millionaire. I spent some more time in the bar, drinking beer with a couple of the guys. I thought I might learn some more about Kinsella. Anyway, I liked listening to their chat. I learned from one that he’d had an annoying weekend with a couple of men from Massachusetts. He had taken them out on his standard two-day fishing trip, staying overnight on San Clemente Island. “They did pretty well. Caught some tuna, durando. Abalone also. But they weren’t satisfied. Seemed to think they should have caught something bigger. What the fuck did they expect, Moby Dick?”

Another one remarked that it seemed to be a good week for tuna. “Yeah, and the weather’s helping,” said another. I gathered from their conversation that it had not been a good season either for tourists or for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The bartender asked whether I would like to try my hand at cricket. “They’re always looking out for more players,” he said. I told him that I didn’t know how long I would be around but if I stayed for a while I might.