The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  Ricky said, “Shar—are you okay?”

  “McCone?” Hy called.

  “I’m all right. What about Rattray?”

  Someone stepped back then. I saw the road manager lying in a fetal position and making hoarse, high-pitched sounds that reminded me of a terrified parrot. One of the guards knelt beside him, prying Rats’s fingers loose from his right shoulder, where blood seeped through them and ran down onto the floor. He ripped open Rattray’s shirt and examined the wound. After a moment he said, “He’s lost a lot of blood, but it’s not too bad.”

  “What do you mean, not too bad?” Rattray croaked. “It hurts like hell, you cocksucker!”

  Ricky let out a sigh of relief. “Rats is his usual charming self; he’ll live.” He extended his hands and got me to my feet. He was pale and shaky and had cuts on his forearms, but otherwise seemed okay.

  Hy was still on the walkie-talkie. “Nothing? Well, keep searching. And get those security lights on; check the breaker box on the north side of the garage.” To the guard kneeling next to Rattray he added, “Call that doctor in Pacific Beach that we use and get him up here. This man’s got to be treated, but we can’t have a police report on it.”

  I looked down at the shattered glass on the floor. Arletta James’s blood-speckled image stared up from where I’d dropped the CD. For a moment I felt as if I were being sucked into a whirlpool, then Ricky steadied me and the vertigo subsided.

  The security lights by the pool flashed on. Hy said into the walkie-talkie, “What was it?… Uh-huh, I thought so… Nothing? Well, keep at it until you’ve covered everyplace. Then I want a complete list of everybody who’s entered and left the property tonight—times, too. And for God’s sake, keep the family out of this part of the house.”

  Too late. I looked up, saw my nieces in the entryway. Jamie was crying and a white-lipped Chris was restraining her by the shoulders. I started toward them, then stopped when I spotted Charlene at the foot of the steps.

  She looked terrible. In the weeks since I’d last seen her she’d grown too thin and hollow-cheeked; her usually sleek cap of short blond hair was dry and unkempt; her skin was pale and papery. But her eyes were the worst: underscored by purplish half moons and, now, black and bottomless with horror.

  As I watched her I had the curious sense that time was slowing down. She stood frozen, staring at Ricky. He looked back but remained equally still. Finally she took a tentative step and held out her hands to him.

  Ricky turned away.

  She blinked, looked down at her outstretched hands, and ran from the room.

  Ricky waited till the sound of her footsteps had died away; then he went to his daughters.

  I took the last sheet of the batch that I’d been transmitting to RKI’s San Francisco office from the fax machine. It was long after midnight, but I wanted the information on Ricky’s employees and associates that I’d culled from his files to be on Charlotte Keim’s desk first thing in the morning. Behind me the office door opened and shut. Hy.

  “Everything under control?” I asked.

  “More or less. While I was questioning people about their whereabouts at the time of the shooting I put out the word that it was probably a stray bullet from a deer poacher. Girdwood’s not buying that, but he’s not challenging it, either. Amory’s very curious about both the shooting and the security arrangements; he’s asking a lot of questions and pressing hard for answers. I referred him to Ricky.”

  “He won’t get anything there. Ricky doesn’t trust him, and I can’t say as I blame him. Amory’s a manipulator. Reminds me of a blackmailer I once knew: always skulking around collecting information. Never mind whether he needs it; he might be able to use it some day. What about the band members?”

  Hy grimaced. “There’s some heavy drug use going down tonight. None of them’re in a condition to do more than accept the situation at face value.”

  “Nice house party they’ve got going here. Great environment for Chris and Jamie.”

  “Uh, I want to talk to you about them. Your nieces are in Jamie’s room—coping, I think, with the aid of some grass they copped off one of the band members.”

  “Jesus! Their parents don’t approve of them doing either drugs or alcohol. I caught Chris smoking a cigarette this afternoon, and she didn’t even try to hide it. I can’t lay down the law to them, though; they’re not my kids.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Charlene?”

  “Are you kidding? She’s barricaded herself in her room. I tried half an hour ago, and she wouldn’t let me inside or talk to me through the door. Where’s Ricky?”

  “Down at the rehearsal studio with the band.”

  “Now? It’s nearly one in the morning.”

  “Musicians don’t operate on normal schedules, any more than you or I. Besides, I think he’s acting on the principle that when your life starts going to hell you throw yourself into your work. Anyway, that’s where he is. Girdwood and Amory are hitting the bar again. The doctor’s come and gone, and Rattray’s resting comfortably in one of the guest rooms.”

  “They’ve got guest rooms, in addition to the guest houses?”

  Hy sat on the edge of the desk and yawned. “I suppose they were anticipating weekends like this.”

  “No one in his right mind could possibly anticipate a weekend like this. You say the band members are doing drugs. What about Ricky?”

  “Well, there’s a fine grade of coke being passed around down there, and he offered me some.”

  I frowned.

  “No, McCone, I didn’t take him up on it. Do I look like a guy who’s running on synthetic energy?”

  “Well, if Ricky’s coked up, he’s not going to be much help as far as the problem with Chris and Jamie. Still, I should tell him about it.”

  “Why don’t you stop in on them first, see if maybe I’m wrong. If I’m not, at least they won’t be going anywhere; I alerted the guard in that wing to watch out for them.”

  That removed some of the urgency from the situation. “So where was everybody when the shot was fired?”

  “Unfortunately, what I got out of people is vague and unreliable at best. The band members claim they were in and out of the rehearsal studio, waiting on Ricky to finish with Rattray, but none of them can corroborate the others’ stories. None of them admits to hearing the shot, either.”

  “That’s possible; the studio’s fully soundproofed and far enough from the house that you might take a shot fired up here for a car backfiring. What about Amory and Girdwood?”

  “Had just gotten back from dinner and were talking in the parking area.”

  “Short dinner.”

  “Yes, but the gate guard corroborates their arrival.”

  “None of the staff were on the property?”

  “They all live out.”

  “I hate to ask this, but what about Charlene, Chris, and Jamie?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Both girls are pretty angry with their parents. And Charlene’s completely off the wall. This threat to Ricky may have given one of them an idea.”

  “Christ, I hope you’re wrong there. But whoever fired that shot was familiar with the property. The security lights in back didn’t go out by themselves; somebody tripped the circuit breaker. Part of the system—the alarms on the wall by the road—went out, too.”

  “So where was the family?”

  “In their rooms, as far as I know. And Ricky says neither he nor Charlene owns a gun. I had my people search the entire place, including the cars, but of course it’s impossible to comb the grounds at night; there’re plenty of places out there where somebody who’s familiar with the property could hide a rifle.”

  “A rifle? Then you found the bullet?”

  “Yeah, thirty-caliber. Scored Rats’s shoulder and embedded itself in a chair.”

  I was silent, picturing the scene in the living room immediately before the glass wall shattered. “You know, Ripinsky, I don’t think that shot was meant t
o hit anybody.”

  “No?”

  “Uh-uh. Right before it was fired, Rattray and Ricky noticed me standing on the steps. Ricky started toward me. Rattray moved, too—into the space that would’ve been between them, had they stayed put. My guess is that the shooter was aiming there and already pulling the trigger when Rattray stepped into his line of fire.”

  “Interesting. Like the CD that was given to Jamie—another teaser or warning.” Hy thought about that for a moment, yawned more widely, and motioned at the papers in my hand. “What’re those?”

  “Information from Ricky’s files that I just faxed to Keim’s office.”

  “You go over it?”

  “I started to, but I’m too damned tired to focus. Hungry, too. I haven’t eaten since lunch.”

  “Me either, come to think of it. Why don’t you and I raid the fridge and call it a night? I noticed a nice deep Jacuzzi in our bungalow.”

  The idea was tempting, but I shook my head. “I want to check on my nieces and, if you’re right about the dope, I’ll try once more to get through to Charlene. If I can’t, I’ll go down to the studio and talk with Ricky. Besides, I want to take a closer look at those band members.”

  As I followed the flagstone path to the studio, my overactive imagination conjured up a sniper in the shadows. Small spotlights close to the ground illuminated my feet and threw my upper body into outline. I pictured myself as a shooter would: alone, an easy target. I listened for the whine of a bullet, the report of a shot—

  Stop it! I warned myself. You’re getting off on this game.

  This kind of edginess was something I responded to, craved when I didn’t feel it often enough. When I was tired while working a long case, it invigorated me. When I was down, it elevated my spirits. The latter was why I was currently indulging in it; the deteriorating scene here threatened to drag me into the depths.

  When I’d gone to check on my nieces I’d found them hopelessly zoned out, so stoned they barely made sense. My arrival had turned Chris remote and silent once more; Jamie had lashed out at me, declaring that she didn’t give a fuck if I told the whole world including her fucking parents that she was ripped. I left them, feeling hollow and sad.

  It was tempting to lay the blame for Chris’s and Jamie’s condition at the feet of our drug-ridden society, but a great deal of it belonged squarely on Charlene’s and Ricky’s shoulders—as well as the band member who had supplied them. And tonight my sister seemed bound and determined to shirk her parental duties; the second time I knocked at her door, she didn’t respond at all. I was hoping I’d have better luck with Ricky.

  God, I thought as I approached the studio, wouldn’t it be splendid if we were all hatched from eggs and never had to put up with families? It was an idea that had occurred to me more than once.

  The studio was a stucco building in the same style as the house, nestled in a pine grove at the far side of the tennis court. When I stepped through its door a blast of music hit me—“The Midnight Train to Nowhere.” Ricky, his lead guitarist Norm O’Dell, and bass player Forrest Curtin stood around the sound system, heads bent, listening intently to a tape. Ricky motioned to me that they’d be through in a few minutes.

  “There it is, Norm,” he said, stopping and reversing the tape. “That riff, the timing’s off.”

  O’Dell frowned in concentration as Ricky replayed the section. He was a big man with a heavy, graying beard, older than my brother-in-law by a good ten years. “Yeah, now I hear it,” he said. “I blew it the same way at the concert. Damn!”

  “And here,” Ricky told Curtin, “is where the bass is off. Sounds mushy.”

  “Uh-huh, yeah.” Curtin, baby-faced with a ponytail and a single gold earring, nodded in agreement.

  Even if Hy hadn’t told me they’d been doing coke, I’d have suspected: Ricky’s speech was unusually rapid and clipped; O’Dell couldn’t keep his hands from moving; Curtin repeatedly tapped his foot and snapped his fingers. Ricky interrupted the play again, reversed the tape, went over the passage two times more. Then he hit the STOP button and switched the system off.

  “We’ll get an early start tomorrow,” he said. “Might be the last good session before we go out on tour.”

  “Think I’ll join the others up at the house,” Curtin said, “have a couple of drinks before I turn in.” On the way out he smiled shyly at me.

  O’Dell seemed reluctant to follow. “Uh, Rick, I’ve got a question.”

  “Sure, what?”

  “That shooting tonight—”

  “Like Hy said, probably a wild shot from a poacher. We’ve got a lot of deer on the property.”

  “But all these security people… You’ve never had them around before. I’m wondering if there isn’t something going on that we should know about.”

  “Norm, the increased security is just an experiment—something Shar’s boyfriend talked me into. They’ll probably be gone in a week.” Ricky’s speech was more clipped now, as though he were reining in annoyance.

  O’Dell looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Well, I guess I’ll go have me a nightcap, too.” He shuffled out of the studio, shoulders rounded, big head bent.

  Ricky watched with narrowed eyes as he left, sighing as the door closed. “First Ethan, now him.”

  “Amory’s been after you?”

  “Buttonholed me up at the house. He’d’ve made a good trial attorney, the way he goes for the jugular with the questioning.”

  “You tell him anything?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “That’s good. But as far as the band goes—shouldn’t they be informed?”

  He shook his head.

  “What, you don’t trust them, either?” It had occurred to me that he might have become overly paranoid.

  “It’s not a matter of trust, Shar.” He began to pace around the sound system, flicking switches on and off.

  “What, then?”

  “You remember my old band—my Bakersfield buddies?”

  I nodded impatiently, anxious to get on to the subject of his daughters, as well as ask questions relevant to my investigation.

  “Well, that relationship was totally different. We’d grown up together, we were close. But when I made it, one of them decided to go off on his own, prove he could make it too. Another guy’s wife persuaded him to stick with his day job. And when Dan was killed in that accident two years ago, and Benjy OD’d six months later, that ended it. I’ll never work with anybody that way again. These guys, they’re employees—handpicked because they’re the best at what they do. Sure, we share a certain camaraderie, but there’re things you don’t share with the people who work for you.”

  “Not even if you might be putting them at risk?”

  “Shar, whoever’s doing this isn’t after them. He wants me and my family.”

  “Speaking of your family, you’ve got a problem with Chris and Jamie. They’re stoned out of their minds on grass, and Hy thinks they got it from one of the band members.”

  Ricky stiffened. “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, dammit, I’ll find out! I’ve already told those guys to stay away from my kids. And I’m gonna read the girls the riot act. Drugs’re strictly off limits in this household.”

  I gave him an ironic look and sat down on a nearby stool.

  “All right,” he said defensively, “Charly and I do grass, but never in front of them. And when the band’s down here, the same rule applies.”

  “But they haven’t been following the rule, at least not since I got here. And you haven’t been doing only grass tonight.”

  “Yeah, so I’ve done a few lines. It’s the first time in years, Sister Sharon, and the way I feel right now, it’ll be the last time.”

  “I hope so.”

  He picked up a second stool and moved it closer to mine. “Look, I’ll talk to Chris and Jamie tomorrow. And I’ll lay down the law to the band. I’m sorry about tonight. My judgment’s way out of orde
r and I feel like… Jesus Christ, when did it get so complicated?”

  “You mean this situation? Or the one with Charlene?”

  “Both. The business, too. Actually, I know when that happened—to the day, hour, and minute. It happened when Kurt called me up and said ‘Cobwebs’ was number forty with a bullet—meaning rising fast—on Billboard’s country singles chart. Two weeks later it was number one, and nothing about my life was ever simple again.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  “Tonight? Yeah.” He paused. “Funny, Red asked me the same question earlier.”

  “Red?”

  “Rae. I called her after the shooting.”

  “Why?”

  “Just to hear her voice. I’ve been talking with her off and on all evening. She… Shar, she likes me for myself, for who I am under all the showbiz trappings. Last night, once she got over being scared of the sex-fiend superstar—and I’ve got to admit I was doing a damn good imitation of one—we could really talk. I told her things I’ve never told anybody, and she did the same. Talking with her, I get a sense of peace that I’ve never found with Charly.”

  My face must have betrayed my inner conflict, because he added, “I’m not putting Charly down or dismissing what we’ve had together. And I’m not saying it just because she’s hurt me. Jesus, I don’t know what to think or feel right now. We’ve had our problems before, God knows, but this time she’s made it clear she’s really through with me. Still, I can’t tell her the one thing she wants to hear that would get her off the hook as far as guilt is concerned—that I don’t love her anymore.”

  “Then shouldn’t you fight for your marriage?”

  “I don’t know as I can do that. I love Charly in ways that I don’t even understand, but there’re ragged edges to the relationship, and maybe I’m not willing to rub myself raw and bleeding against them anymore. Maybe it’s good that she found this Vic person.”

  “She told you about him, then.”

  “In detail. In excruciating detail, as soon as I got home this afternoon. I’ll tell you, I preferred it Thursday morning when she wasn’t being so specific.”