Tinman

by Karen Black

  “Lost his wife a couple of years ago.” Leonard stared dejectedly at the floor, shoulders slumped. “He could be in any damned bar in Greater Los Angeles getting himself smashed. Last time he had a major battle with the booze it took six months to get him back on the wagon.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “What’s the complaint? He’s over 21. He turned to Sandra, “You might as well report it to Missing Persons anyway. They may pull him in somewhere for disorderly conduct or drunkenness.”

  Sandra went back to her desk. “Dammit,” I muttered at Leonard, “you’ve really managed to fuck things up.”

  Leonard bristled. “Now just one damned minute, Greg, I refuse to be cast in the role of Hennie’s keeper. I fished him out of that pub Wednesday and took him home. He was here most of yesterday and he seemed okay. But I am not obligated to keep round-the-clock watch on him, and you are not entitled to badger me like a prosecutor with a hostile witness. I personally told him you wanted to meet with him today. So, maybe he’s just avoiding you!” He jabbed a finger in my direction for emphasis.

  I recalled Corky’s advice and apologized, which Leonard accepted in remarkably good grace, considering the fact that I really had been a prick. “I have just one more question,” I added. “Why do you think Hennie is scared?”

  “People who know him well tell me he’s always been a worry wart, worse since his wife died. Always tilting at a windmill, or fighting some lost cause.”

  “And you don’t think Charley’s murder is a factor?”

  “Well, of course it is. He’s terribly upset. But Hennie had absolutely no visible connection with Charley’s job or Susitna.” I was about to say, neither did I, but that didn’t seem to keep me from being bombed, but I kept it to myself and got up to go.

  “Oh, Greg,” Leonard seemed to have an afterthought. He got up, closed the door, walked over to stand by the picture window wall of his office and beckoned me to join him. “Let me show you something.” He spoke in an ordinary, conversational tone. Then, when we were standing, heads together, near the middle of the window, he spoke very softly. “I want to say something to you in the strictest confidence. Any leak could be…frankly…dangerous. Wednesday you made a passing crack about the Cliffe Motel. As a friend, let me advise you to simply forget…obliterate from your mind…anything you know, or think you know, about that place.” He held up his hand to forestall any comment from me, and moved away from the window, and remarked in an offhand tone, “Did you ever see anything like that before?”

  “No, that’s quite unusual,” I said, falling in with the charade, despite the obvious threat. But why had Leonard been so secretive? Could he fear his own office might be bugged?

  “One more thing,” Leonard said as I made another move toward the door. “Would you mind telling me why you’re so anxious to talk with Hennie?”

  “Frankly, I’m having a hard time coming to grips with the idea of murder in cold blood, either for purely business reasons, or as abstract, ideological social protest. Charley’s murder, without some personal, human motive and strong emotion, seems unreal.”

  “It happens. Think of the Mafia and remember the Weathermen, The Red Army Faction, Baader-Meinhof…the world is full of self-righteous, bigoted ideologues.”

  “Well, yes, but they seem far away and far out. Wasn’t anybody even mad at Charley? Slightly provoked? I thought Hennie might have more feeling for that kind of thing than anybody else around here. He worked so closely with Charley for such a long time.”

  Leonard reflected for a moment and then sighed. “If you find a plausible, personal, human motive, I’d like to know it.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  Los Angeles, Day 5, Friday Afternoon

  I walked out into the brassy sunshine of downtown Los Angeles in a peculiarly unsettled frame of mind. So much so that I found myself at the first corner before pausing to ask myself where I was going. I stopped suddenly, eliciting a “make up your mind, buddy” from a man that bumped into me from behind, and stood uncertainly on the curb getting my bearings. I reversed my course and again sent mixed signals, this time to a youth in a white tee shirt coming up behind me, resulting in one of those awkward little shuffles where each misreads the other’s intention to pass. Finally, muttering apologies, I got myself straightened out and headed back past the entrance to the TINMAN building, reflecting that, but for me, pedestrian traffic wouldn’t be that big a problem in Los Angeles.

  I turned the next corner, passed a large travel agency, and walked on a short distance. Again, on sudden impulse, I turned back, looking rather sheepishly to see if this created further confusion. The clerks were occupied so I took a number from the machine. Glancing out the window as I walked over to a seat, I made fleeting eye contact with a youth in a white tee shirt, peering in as he walked by. He was perhaps twenty, Japanese or Chinese in origin, cuddling what I assumed was a Walkman radio to his ear, a totally unremarkable passer-by in Los Angeles, except for a nagging impression that the young man in the white tee shirt I had almost bumped into a block away was oriental, about twenty, and also cuddled something similar. The more I tried to focus that picture, the more plausible it seemed that they were one and the same and that the Walkman might, in fact, be a cell phone.

  More in irritation than real anger I went over to a public telephone and called Leonard. “I hadn’t planned to be back in touch so soon, Leonard,” I said, “but it seems as though I’ve acquired a tail.”

  “You what?”

  “More monkey business, Leonard?”

  “Dammit, Greg, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Leonard,” I said, with exaggerated patience, “ever since I walked out of your office building someone has been following me.”

  There was a long pause at Leonard’s end of the line, finally, “What does this person you think is following you look like?”

  “This latest addition to your menagerie is an oriental youth with a cell phone stuck in his ear, presumably to keep in touch with home base.”

  “And you really think that TINMAN is home base for this hypothetical surveillance team?” Leonard’s voice was a nicely blended mixture of incredulity and irritation.

  “Precisely. Who else knew that I was coming to your office today?”

  Leonard gave a short, exasperated laugh. “How would I know who else? What can I say?”

  “Nothing. Just get this damned tail off my ass. Tell them to call that kid on his walkie-talkie and tell him to go home.” Leonard made some kind of an inarticulate noise. “With a little luck, I’ll see you at the funeral,” I said, and hung up.

  My number came up while I was on the phone. I bought a ticket to Alaska for Miss Consuela Gonzales, which somehow seemed strange, and made reservations to fly to Anchorage late Saturday afternoon.

  Time was getting short, so I hailed a cab and went directly to the Museum of Contemporary Art, a semi-underground structure cut into the hillside near the Civic Center. The roof of the gallery is a short flight of steps above street level and forms a broad, stone-paved plaza…a roof garden in effect, accessible from the street. Fountains and plants make it a pleasant place to sit or stroll in the open air, and a broad flight of granite steps descends to the galleries below. At the back, the plaza drops off thirty or forty feet to a parking lot, reachable by a long flight of stairs.

  The museum bookstore and shop opens directly off the plaza, so before descending to the gallery I looked in to see if Corky might be there. As I walked out, I stopped short in the act of loosening my tie. An oriental youth in a white tee shirt carrying some sort of electronic device was sprawled on a bench, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, but in a position that covered the path from the bookstore to the gallery. Clearly my message to Leonard hadn’t gotten through, and this little jerk had tailed my taxi from the travel agency.

  I was furious. I yanked my tie up tight again and decided it was time to make a move, but first I needed to give some kind of cue to Cor
ky. I strolled past my oriental shadow, each of us feigning indifference to the other. I was almost close enough to step on his toes, which I was sorely tempted to do, but I went on down into the gallery. My guess was that he would stay where he was, confident that he would pick me up again when I came out. I lingered just inside the entrance long enough to be assured of this and then hurried from one room to the next until I found Corky. Her gaze traveled no further than my tightly knotted tie and went right on by me as though I were non-existent.

  “Sweetheart,” I spoke quickly and quietly, “It’s okay for the moment. My tail is waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Get the car and time it coming out of the parking ramp to hit the street and come by the entrance at exactly three-fifteen. That gives me ten minutes to make my move.”

  “What move?”

  “If it works, you’ll be the first to know.”

  She checked her watch, turned on her heel and walked out. I followed in a couple of minutes, found my tail about the way I’d left him, and strolled over to the bookstore, checking my watch rather ostentatiously as though I were waiting for someone and getting impatient. Then, with the count down to five minutes, I strolled back. The kid was lolling indifferently on the bench with his device to his ear as though acid rock had turned his mind to jelly. As I reached the bench I swerved and passed behind it. He was pinned. He couldn’t turn around to watch me without giving himself away. Coming up directly behind him, I seized the device. Considering he was unprepared and I outweighed him fifty pounds, I easily wrenched it from his hand.

  He was stunned for a moment and then totally flustered. I turned my back and walked toward the rear of the plaza. He caught up with me in a few paces hissing hysterically, “What do you think you’re doing. You can’t do this. Give it back.”

  “Calm down,” I said, “I want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t…I won’t…I’ll call the cops.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “why don’t you just do that?”

  We reached the back of the plaza. I took the phone, which I could now see was a very high-quality police-type instrument, out of my pocket and leaning my elbows on the parapet, dangled it over empty space. The kid was frantic. He was a nice-looking boy just doing a job, and I was about to hate myself for having to bully him when he snarled, “All right, you big shit, you asked for it,” and assumed a very business-like karate stance.

  “Oops,” I said, and dropped the phone into the shrubbery at the base of the wall some thirty feet below, momentarily evading an encounter with oriental martial arts.

  “What did you do that for?” the kid cried, staring aghast over the parapet at the spot where it fell.

  “I guess you’ll have to run down those stairs to get it,” I said, and when he looked off in the direction I pointed, I turned and ran for the front of the plaza. He started back after me, wavered again in the direction of the stairs, then turned back toward me, but by that time I was into the crowd at the entrance and Corky was just a few yards down the street.

  “Well, dear,” she said, after we made a couple of turns and were pretty sure we weren’t followed, “Did you have another busy day at the office?”

  “I love you,” I said. The car swerved momentarily. “Watch the road,” I said.

  “Say again what you just said.”

  “I said, keep your eye on the road ahead.”

  “Oh.” Her voice trailed off.

  “The reason I said the other is because, despite a lot of doubt, hesitation, concern, debating with myself, a little bit of fear, and astonishment, oh, and did I mention doubts and concerns, I’ve concluded, that’s the way I feel, and I thought you should know.”

  Corky pulled over to the curb and stopped. “Oh, shut up, and kiss me,” she said.

  Almost immediately a cop stuck his head in the window. “He just said he loved me,” Corky explained with a dazzling smile.

  “With luck like that,” the cop said dryly “you could even get a traffic summons.”

  Corky giggled as she placed her license in his outstretched hand. “What’s your badge number, Officer? You can be a witness if he tries to deny it.”

  “I’ll make it easy to remember. The number is right here on this ticket. You both from Colorado?” he asked as he checked Corky’s license.

  “Yes,” we said in unison.

  “Well, you’re in the big city now. The next one will cost you money, this is just a warning. Oh, yeah,” he called as we drove off, “congratulations.”

  We turned off the main thoroughfare, heavily posted, we noted, with “No Stopping except for Emergency” signs. “So we had an emergency,” Corky shrugged when we were legally parked. “How often does a girl get told she’s loved by a wonderful man in rush hour traffic? If we took it to court, any fair-minded judge would have to agree that the poetry and romance of it were simply overwhelming.”

  “It was a little gauche,” I said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean….”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t mean?” Corky broke in. “If you didn’t mean it, why did you say it?” Underneath the banter I thought I heard a small, uncertain quaver.

  “I meant it when I said I was in love with you,” I tried to explain, “but…” I hesitated, searching carefully for the right words.

  “Lend me your handkerchief,” she interrupted, and I was surprised to note her eyes were suddenly moist. “Are you sure you’re in love with such a drippy girl?” I nodded. “And whatever made you blurt it out, right out of the clear blue, well…almost clear blue sky, driving down Second Street, in Los Angeles, at a little after three fifteen in the afternoon?”

  “In retrospect, it was an odd time and place to tell you; I could have done it in a more amorous setting, like walking hand in hand on the beach. Or I probably should have taken you to a nice, expensive, romantic restaurant. But when you asked if I’d had a hard day at the office, I liked the way it sounded and it just popped out.” Corky nodded as though that made perfect sense, which, as I repeated it in my mind, I realized it made absolutely no sense at all.

  “One more thing,” I added, “before we get back to playing cops and robbers. Normally when someone tells you they love you, you respond…either by professing your love for that person, or telling them thanks but no thanks. Now that I’ve left myself all hanging out there, I’d kind of like to know if it’s reciprocated.”

  She leaned over and kissed my cheek. Was that a bad sign? Not exactly the most reassuring gesture.

  “Greg, I’ve felt the same way ever since you gave me your handkerchief to blow my nose in Aspen, but I knew it was waaaay too soon. And just because a guy has sex with a girl, as I know all too well, doesn’t mean that guy is making much of a commitment. So, I didn’t know if you even came close to feeling the same way.”

  Suddenly she grabbed my hand, faced me head on, and looked me directly in the eye, her face exhibiting a very serious expression, “I’m still not sure, despite your beautiful and totally romantic announcement. We’re both so vulnerable right now, and this is such a weird time, so many strange things happening. I can’t help but wonder if either one of us will feel the same way once this roller coaster ride is over and the adrenalin slows. I think we should just cool it for a little while.”

  What she said was not the response I wanted, nor actually what I had expected. Too rational. I hated to admit it, but it was the sensible course of action. But I still needed clarification. “What exactly do you mean by ‘cool it?’”

  She rubbed her chin. “Perhaps not the best choice of words. Let’s just go on, together, as we have been, and let our feelings develop…or not…as they will.”

  I relaxed a little. “Okay, but for what it’s worth, mine have developed, and I’m not expecting that to change.”

  “Good.” She said, grinning, as she started the car and pulled out into traffic.

  We found we were in a part of town called Little Tokyo. A sign proclaimed a garden restaurant with a “Sushi Happy Hour” starting at four,
which was fast approaching. We were soon seated in a tiny bamboo grove by a goldfish pond, artfully screened from the real world.

  “Tell me…” we both started to say in unison, stopped and laughed.

  “You first,” I said. “I’m up to here with TINMAN. Tell me about Mrs. Morales. Was it a nostalgia trip?”

  “A lot like Tejon Street. She has a real neat little house, neatest on the block. Too neat, if you know what I mean, with a chain link fence around the yard to keep dogs and kids out. I had a hard time getting to her, rang the bell several times and waited, almost gave up. Then I saw a little change in the light in the fish-eye lens on the door and I waited some more. Finally, she opened the door a crack but kept the chain on and asked me, in Spanish, what I wanted.” Corky paused, frowning, as though she were having a hard time finding words.

  “Reminds me of the problem I had with the house-sitter in Charley’s place in Aspen,” I commented owlishly. “Another Mexican type.”

  Corky’s brief, wan smile made it clear that this was not the time or place for my lame attempt at humor. “I told her I needed to talk about Señor Farnsworth, and she started to close the door. I stuck my toe in it. I really did, and I started to plead with her, saying anything I could think of, how I took care of him in Colorado, and how I loved Señor Farnsworth, he was like a father to me, and how kind he was to me, and how my heart was breaking. The next thing I knew, I was crying on one side of the door, and she was crying on the other side of the door. I almost kept her from letting me in, because I forgot my foot was in the door. She was trying to close it so she could get the chain off, and I was trying to keep it open to keep talking.

  “When we finally figured that out and got the door open we just fell into each other’s arms sobbing. Then I began to look around the room. Looked like a tornado went through. Everything smashed, overturned, dumped out, and ripped open. They came in the night…two, maybe three…one, at least, was very big and tall…she never really saw them…they broke in the back door, and the big man came into her bedroom dressed all in black with a stocking over his head. He tied her to the bed, blindfolded her and told her that if she made any noise or tried to call the police, even after they left, they would come back and kill her. Then they tore the place apart.”