"Nothing in particular... just small talk, you know... where you're from, why you chose medicine, how you know the boss, family? That type of thing".
Eve smiles at the questions and says Well, I'm from Rochester, New York originally, my parents still live there as a matter of fact. As for why I chose medicine, I guess you could say it's in my blood. My father is a brilliant physician himself and so I wanted to follow in his footsteps. As for how I met Janet, it was during one of her tours of the hospital. She is a patron and financier and so the administration has a tendency to kowtow to them most fiercely. Fortunately, Janet isn't a snob like most of the super rich and we got to talking and realized we had a lot in common. When you mention family her eyes darken a bit and she says somewhat bitterly Not anymore.
Dr. Udko opts to remain in the hotel room, typing up the leads thus far in a formal report for Janet. "Best to have it all in writing, in case this Trammel person or Roosevelt's goons close in on us!", he opines.
Keeper screen:
It's a short drive into Pasadena, as it's right next to Glendale geographically. The sky is clear and the weather is mild as you drive into the San Rafael hills. Pasadena, a twin city to Los Angeles, is famous as a winter vacation spot for wealthy Easterners. Like much of California, there's no small shortage of Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl and searching for work. You pass groups of people on the side of the road, some sitting in the back of a truck that's breathed its last, others trying to thumb down traffic for a ride or work. There's a prevailing look of hopelessness in their eyes, seeing that California for all its luster didn't offer the second chances they had hoped for.
Armed with a visitor's guide and Trammel's address, you track down the various civic institutions of Pasadena.
"I vote that a couple of us stake out the place, maybe from the car, while another group goes to the hall of records for some information. I'd probably be more useful in the hall since I'm used to dealing with immigration and other bureaucratic BS".
I know my way around City Hall as well a little bit. I have been there to renew my medical license on a few occasions.
With a name as unique as Samson Trammel, it isn't difficult to find what's available at City Hall: routine paperwork filed on the construction of his mansion, along with blueprints of its two floors. You take a rough sketch of what the floor plan looks like, in case it becomes useful.
The state's records offer a little more information- that Trammel is licensed to sell real estate in California and that, while he maintained that business in the 1910s and '20s he hasn't carried on any obvious real estate activities since 1925 or so.
After gathering what information is available Anatoly suggests that they maybe delay checking police records... just in case something happens they don't want to be asking about the victim if something happens.
Should we join the others on the stakeout, or just wait somewhere nearby the address for their report, the immigrant asks the docter.
Eve looks around and says Let's get their report later. For now perhaps we can get more information around his neighborhood. What do you think?
Samson Trammel's mansion is large, airy and new. Situated in a neighborhood with similar newly constructed homes of various new money Southern Californians, the grounds are large but not expansive. Besides the main house, there is a gardener's shack and a carriage house. The place looks quiet and the grounds are well kept.
"Interesting. New money here. Odd that a PI has this much wealth." Amadeus mutters.
Freddy will use two points straight away.
Edit: Eh, he'll use another two to make it an even 6
Keeper screen:
Freddy spends most of the day watching the mansion from down the block with his binoculars. There's an unobtrusive trickle of people into and out of the place over the course of the day and night and it doesn't seem to be obviously guarded. A prickly feeling settles over him, thinking about all those eyes, maybe marking his position and he decides to move to a different vantage point after a few hours.
At the end of the day, Freddy revises his opinion: a quiet staff of serious and muscular Mexicans always seem to be handy around the house, and he doubts that they're dusting.
Anatoly will go about the neighborhood and if he see's anyone available to talk to (NOTE: He will not knock on doors, but look for someone outside). He will try to get some information from them, using his Oral History skill.
After this he will head back to the hotel.
Anatoly (and Amadeus and Evelyn?) takes a walk through Trammel's neighborhood. Since it's a Wednesday afternoon, there aren't too many people out in the cul-de-sac besides household servants walking dogs or tending lawns.
Chatting up the people he can find, Anatoly quickly finds that this isn't so much a community as much as it is a bunch of side by side residences- outposts of where the owners had previously lived. Everyone is almost pathologically concerned with their own business.
At the well-kept house next to Trammel's mansion, the elderly gardener does seem a little more forthcoming than most- though he's quite guarded. While exchanging pleasantries about the neighborhood and where the family he works for just moved from in Laurel Canyon, the archaeologist notes the gardener, a Mr. Genial Booker, has a pocket bible tucked into his shirt pocket.
"The neighbors?", he says, when the conversation turns to Trammel's property. "Oh, I stay on the Hampdens' side of the fence- best not to traffic in their business over there." He seems scared or nervous.
"Ah I see you are a man of god. My Uncle is a priest, and I have studied religion myself. It is good to see a like minded man when so many have other motives".
Eve looks at the man and smiles, saying Oh I understand that my good sir and seek to cause no trouble for you or yours. We are only concerned citizens ourselves and seek to help our fellow man in any way we can.
Booker nods, getting a little bit more comfortable- relieved, even.
"I see what goes on in the neighborhood. I'm not nosy, mind, but I pick up on things working on the flower beds. I seen people in and out of that house, all hours, all types- well dressed folks, Mexicans in those zoot suits, sometimes even bums. But it's not my business what company they keep over there... so I didn't say anything."
He turns away from Trammel's house, looking out over his flower beds.
"Late at night, I seen 'em carrying out something... could have been a body. More than once, too. But I couldn't swear to it."
The gardner fixes Anatoly and Evelyn with a serious look.
"But I can tell you this, because you seem like decent God-fearing folks. And I ain't making this up: I witnessed Mr. Trammel crawling naked through his garden late at night, spilling his seed upon the soil. And I thought, 'You gotta go to someone with this, this is all adding up'. But who's gonna believe me? And who's gonna do anything about it?"
"This one night, just about dusk, I was beset with this question- what should I do with what I seen?- I heard this whispering as I was headed up to the house. This hissing and spitting."
"So I think maybe it's a raccoon or a cat trapped up. I headed over there to the garden patch where it was coming from, all this rustling and hissing and spitting."
He shakes his head.
"You'll think I'm crazy, so I'm just gonna show you."
Genial Booker brings you to a patch of flowers deep in the back of the property. Kneeling, he pulls back a blanket of moss and mulch lying on the ground in the midst of thick- and unusually lush- flowers.
In the ground is what looks like a calcified mouth frozen in a biting scream. You try to tell yourself it's just a statue, someone's incredibly lifelike and grotesque art... but it looks more like Medusa from the old myths had frozen a living mouth in mid-scream with its hideous uneven gnarled teeth lain bare for all to see.
Mouths... why does it always have to be mouths...
Anatoly jumps back a bit at the sight, and quickly looks at the gardners bible before turning away.
: Stability roll
Amadeus, who lurks behind Anatoly and Evelyn while staying quiet, gives a start at the mouth! 'The mouth... What can it tell me?'
Anatoly and Amadeus push down their fear and revulsion, but it nonetheless rattles them. It's inert. It can't do anything. Yes, it's not a threat. Just a lifelike statue.
"There it is.", Booker continues. "'Cept when I saw it, it was all hissing and biting at me, and I'm not afraid to tell you that I screamed and wet my pants like a baby."
"The only thing I could think of was to get my mama's holy cross, the one the Holy Father himself blessed, or that's what she said. I ran to my shack and got that cross, and I threw it into the mouth."
Evelyn's stability roll:
Evelyn is a bit unnerved by the petrified mouth, but she falls quickly into a clinical detachment while examining its malformed teeth and ulcerous tongue.
Eve jumps in surprise but then becomes insatiably curious. Looking at the man she says Is it alright if I take this for further study? If so, do you have a blanket or something I can use to wrap it? I'm willing to pay you for it of course.
Booker looks at Eve like she's grown a second head.
"Miss, why in tarnation would you want somethin' like this?"
He shakes his head.
"I thought 'bout diggin' it up, but... just seemed best to me to cover it up. Judge me if you like, but I haven't got the grit to grapple with this sort of... this sort of evil that must be next door. You wanna try pullin' it out, be my guest but I'm not touching that thing!"
Amadeus bends over and cautiously touches the rock-mouth, murmuring soft words as if speaking to a mad dog.
Amadeus pokes at the mouth in the soil. It doesn't react. After a few experimental tugs, he concludes that the thing is well buried in the soil- maybe a shovel could do more to unearth it, depending on how deep it goes.
It's weird how warm it feels. And it's a little moist, with rough texture that's not quite like stone....
But it was buried under compost out in the sun. That's why it's warm and a little slimy. And it has to be stone, that's the only logical conclusion. Yes, that's all it is.
Amadeus very carefully strokes the stone mouth, staring at it with way too much interest and ... lust? "We ought to take this. I believe it bears upon the case we are investigating. I think we can dig it up... Yes, Freddy can definitely. He's much more used to such physicality." Amadeus doesn't take his eyes off the 'stone' thing, stroking it almost lovingly.
Once the first shift of "not guards" leaves the manor, Freddy tucks his binoculars away into the glove box and follows close behind.
Two point spend
Eve smiles and says Mr. Booker, have you a shovel we could borrow? We could get this out of your way and I have an interest in the odd and strange from an academic perspective. At the very least we could see how large this statue is.
Once the first shift of "not guards" leaves the manor, Freddy tucks his binoculars away into the glove box and follows close behind.
Two point spend[dice=Shadowing]1d6+2
At around midnight, a car approaches the mansion and parks in the carriage house. A burly Mexican man wearing an unremarkable black suit walks into the mansion from the servant's entrance on the side. After about fifteen minutes, a different man of a similar build and description walks out to the carriage house with his jacket slung over his shoulder, lighting a cigarette. A minute later, a different car drives out.
Freddy follows at an unobtrusive distance as the guard drives from Pasadena back toward Los Angeles proper, heading southeast. The neighborhoods start changing the further east they go, with many of the signs going from English to Spanish. The guard parks his car on the street outside of a well maintained apartment building and starts walking inside.
Eve smiles and says Mr. Booker, have you a shovel we could borrow? We could get this out of your way and I have an interest in the odd and strange from an academic perspective. At the very least we could see how large this statue is.
The old gardener sighs.
"If you insist, miss, you can dig it up. I'd just as soon bury it again, but I suppose I'll be glad to be rid of it."With a spade from the gardener, Anatoly clears away dirt from around the mouth and in short order you've managed to exhume the thing. Beneath the mouth with its curling, hateful lips and crooked teeth is a stone column that resembles an esophagus roughly the length of Eve's arm. At the end it branches off, almost like a root structure.
Booker crosses himself at the sight of it.
"Drat. Thought he would head to a local watering hole." Freddy mumbles to himself. "Oh well, let's see if there's any funny business going on in this building." Freddy lights up a cigar and heads to the building. He'll try to make it in to the lobby quickly enough, that if the guard takes an elevator, he'll be able to watch which floor it stops at.
"Drat. Thought he would head to a local watering hole." Freddy mumbles to himself. "Oh well, let's see if there's any funny business going on in this building." Freddy lights up a cigar and heads to the building. He'll try to make it in to the lobby quickly enough, that if the guard takes an elevator, he'll be able to watch which floor it stops at.
The guard unlocks the front door and walks into the building, letting the door swing shut on its own and giving Freddy enough time to walk into the lobby. Waiting by the metal mail boxes, Freddy tracks the man going up the stairwell; a sign on the elevator says that the operator is on duty from 7 am to 7pm. The guard walks up to the fourth floor to an apartment in the rear of the building, opens the locks and steps inside.
I'd like to bring it back to the car and place it in the trunk until I can examine it later, Evelyn says. Once that is secured we can go and find Freddy.
Freddy jots the room number and floor in his notepad, puts his cigar out in a nearby ashtray, then casually walks outside of the mans apartment. He'll walk down to the apartment and stand off to one side of the door, hoping to listen in on any conversation that may happen inside.
I'd like to bring it back to the car and place it in the trunk until I can examine it later, Evelyn says. Once that is secured we can go and find Freddy.
Booker grabs an empty burlap sack ("Roasty's Wood Chips") and hands it to Evelyn.
"Here, Miss. Best to keep that outta sight. If you'll excuse me, folks, I'll fill that hole in there..."
Freddy jots the room number and floor in his notepad, puts his cigar out in a nearby ashtray, then casually walks outside of the mans apartment. He'll walk down to the apartment and stand off to one side of the door, hoping to listen in on any conversation that may happen inside.
From outside the door, Freddy can hear the guard speaking softly- it sounds like Spanish. A woman responds drowsily, likewise in Spanish. From the tone of the conversation and the likely age of the woman according to her voice, she's likely his wife or girlfriend. The only thing that jumps out at Freddy is the word "Walker", which must be someone's name- it's the only English word in the conversation.
After a few minutes, Freddy hears a baby starting to stir with a little plaintive wail. The man says something hushed to the woman, and the PI can hear his heavier footsteps walking through the apartment followed by the distant sound of the guard trying to settle the baby.
Amadeus accepts the bag and puts the mouth in it, but refuses to relinquish it to anyone. "I will carry it." he growls if anyone tries to take it.
Freddy shrugs as he writes down the word/ name Walker. "We'll see if that takes us anywhere." He whispers to himself as he heads back out of the building.