City Of Lies

by R.J. Ellory

  Brentwood, Los Angeles; 12305 Fifth Helena Drive off Carmelina Avenue; warm breeze from the Mojave Desert into the L.A. basin; antique wind-chimes, a gift from Carl Sandburg the poet, whispering their song in the early morning light.

  Frank Duchaunak opened his eyes. He rubbed them, felt the gritty reminder of insufficient sleep.

  Blonde, beautiful, a glamorous icon, a Hollywood princess, Marilyn Monroe died tragically on Sunday, August fifth, 1962. The troubled, depressive star of more than twenty-five movies was found naked in her bed, a telephone in her hand. A bottle of sleeping tablets lay nearby . . .

  Duchaunak had not slept well since the shooting of Edward Bernstein. He looked to his right, over the junction towards the facade of St Vincent’s, and he willed himself to go over there, to go see Bernstein lying there in the ICU. The man had been a giant, a legend in his own lifetime, and a single shooting, a single random shooting, the wrong moment, the wrong store . . .

  Reminded Duchaunak of the fragility of humanity. Reminded him of Marilyn, and such thoughts became thoughts of Anne Harper, and how everything seemed to turn within its own self-generating circle. Six degrees of separation. He’d been born on the night Marilyn Monroe had died, and such a seemingly disconnected fact had fascinated him for most of his adult life. He knew he was just a little crazy, not the Jesus told me to stay home and clean my guns -crazy, but crazy nevertheless.

  Frank Duchaunak glanced in the rearview. He smiled at himself; the smile of a tired and slightly desperate man. He lifted the door lever, stepped out onto the sidewalk, locked the car behind him and started over towards the hospital.

  ‘Two visitors in one day,’ Clare Whitman said.

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Mr Bernstein’s son . . . he’s up there now.’

  Duchaunak raised his eyebrows.

  Clare Whitman leaned forward. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Is what true?’

  ‘Him up there . . . he’s really the Edward Bernstein?’

  Duchaunak smiled. ‘I only know one Edward Bernstein. Which one are you talking about?’

  She looked awkward for a second, like she’d overstepped the mark. ‘You hear things,’ she said, as if that was some sort of explanation.

  ‘Things?’

  She looked down at the phone, perhaps willed it to ring so she could extricate herself from the conversation she’d started.

  ‘What things?’ Duchaunak asked. He was interested in what had been said at the hospital, interested to know if word had gone out.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing specific.’

  Duchaunak leaned forward to read her name-tag. ‘Clare Whitman . . . so do me a favor Clare Whitman.’

  She looked up.

  ‘My name is Detective Frank Duchaunak. I’m going to be coming down here every once in a while to check on Mr Bernstein. You hear anything, any rumors, any word about Mr Bernstein, anybody coming around here showing more than a passing interest, then I’d like you to tell me about it. You can do that?’

  Clare Whitman seemed relieved. ‘Yes, Detective, I can do that.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Duchaunak said. ‘That’s going to be a great deal of help to me.’

  ‘Right, of course.’

  ‘So I’m going to go up there now.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Duchaunak turned and started walking, paused as he reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘How long’s he been here?’

  ‘Mr Bernstein?’

  ‘His son.’

  Clare Whitman glanced at her register. ‘Half an hour, a little more than half an hour.’

  Duchaunak nodded, started up the stairwell.

  Vander’s Market; delicatessen on the corner of Greenwich and Gansevoort, maybe half a dozen blocks north-west of St Vincent’s. Narrow building, tall, and up above the deli are three or four apartments where people lead their lives unaware of the business that is transacted beneath them.

  Table in the back right-hand corner. Walt Freiberg, Cathy Hollander, another man with a smallpox-scarred face. Smallpoxface is talking rapidly, his voice hushed, his eyes furtive, and it seems every second sentence he’s turning and looking nervously over his shoulder towards the front of the store.

  Freiberg is shaking his head, looking down at his hands, glancing at Cathy Hollander to his left. She nods, says something that’s all of five or six words, and then Smallpox-face reaches out with his right hand, grips Freiberg’s hand and holds it for a moment. Then he’s up, sliding out from behind the table and buttoning his coat.

  He stands there for a few seconds. He glances towards the street. Cold outside, bitter wind travelling east from the Hudson. Out in the street you can hear sounds from the Fire Boat Station and Pier 53. He doesn’t relish the prospect of leaving the deli, but realizes that the conversation is done, the coffee’s finished, and Walt Freiberg isn’t a man to stay and share lunch with if you’re not invited.

  ‘So he’s going to do what it takes?’ Smallpox-face says.

  ‘He’ll do what it takes,’ Walt Freiberg says. ‘And whenever he’s mentioned you call him Sonny Bernstein, not John Harper or John Bernstein, but Sonny Bernstein, you understand? Anyone calls you, anyone from here in New York or any other place, then that’s who he is. He’s a player of some kind, maybe a big player . . . you’re not so sure. He’s Lenny Bernstein’s son, he’s come up from Florida, and he’s pissed about his father getting shot. That simple enough for you?’

  Smallpox-face nods, would’ve smiled perhaps but is too preoccupied with whatever runs through his mind. He almost forgets to say goodbye, takes a step, starts to turn, and then turns back and wishes farewell to both Walt Freiberg and Cathy Hollander.

  Walt raises his hand. The man walks, black and white checkerboard tiles beneath his feet, and then he’s out through the front door and into the street.

  ‘This is going to go?’ Cathy asks.

  Walt shrugs. ‘That a question or a statement?’

  ‘Question.’

  ‘It’s going to go, has to go – or we’re all in the can this time.’

  Cathy Hollander nods. A flash of anxiety disturbs her usual imperturbable expression. ‘You think Harper will hold up when we need him to? Hell, Walt, he’s gonna be dealing with Ben Marcus directly.’

  ‘I think what I think,’ Walt Freiberg says drily. ‘Let’s go . . . I have to speak to someone about something.’

  They stand, put coats on, make their way to the front door. Walt Freiberg raises his hand and waves goodbye to an ancient-looking man in a white apron behind the counter. The ancient man doesn’t notice.

  They step out into the street. Cathy Hollander looks up at the sky – flat like still water, wedding dress-white; figures it’s going to snow.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Good,’ Duchaunak said. ‘Good enough to have me start it and finish it in one sitting.’

  Harper smiled and looked away, looked around the interior of the hospital cafeteria where they were seated. Pale grey walls, too-high ceiling, acres of silver pipework, endless ducts and vents and a subliminal hum above and beneath everything

  ‘You bring it here I’ll sign it for you,’ Harper said.

  ‘Can’t do that . . . came from the library.’

  ‘You couldn’t afford a few dollars to buy one?’

  ‘Couldn’t find one.’

  Harper frowned. ‘Didn’t look so hard, eh?’

  ‘Hard enough.’

  ‘So it’s such a good book they’ve stopped selling it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so cynical. Want to build a reputation and keep your stuff in print, I figure you have to write more than one book.’

  ‘You would know this because?’

  Duchaunak shook his head. ‘Because of nothing. I don’t know squat Mr Harper. Sometimes I think like a detective. Sometimes I figure in a little bit of common sense and come up with something that’s close to the truth.’

  Harper nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

  �
��Like being a detective. You don’t build a reputation for solving one case. You get a reputation for solving many cases. You have to keep doing things over and over otherwise you’re just a one-hit wonder.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I reckon it is.’ Duchaunak leaned back. ‘So what’s with the clothes?’

  Harper smiled wryly. ‘It was my birthday. Uncle Walt took me out and bought me some things.’

  ‘Just like old times, eh?’

  Harper smiled again. ‘Sure, just like old times.’

  ‘That’s one helluva suit he got you . . . that English?’

  ‘I believe so, Detective.’

  ‘How much a suit like that cost?’

  Harper shrugged. ‘God knows. I didn’t pay for it.’

  ‘Figure maybe Walt Freiberg didn’t pay for it either.’

  Harper looked at Duchaunak. ‘I have a question for you.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Heard you paid five thousand dollars for a baseball signed by Joe DiMaggio ’cause you figured Marilyn might have held it one time. That true?’

  ‘You know anything about Marilyn Monroe?’

  ‘You didn’t answer the question.’

  ‘No, Mr Harper, I did not pay five thousand dollars for a baseball signed by Joe DiMaggio.’

  ‘Okay,’ Harper replied. ‘And no, I don’t know a great deal about Marilyn Monroe. I do know a little about Arthur Miller.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Pulitzer Prize 1949. Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman. The Crucible.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘But you just know about her marriage to him I guess,’ Harper said.

  ‘June twenty-ninth, 1956,’ Duchaunak replied. He looked up from stirring sugar into his coffee. ‘You know she went down to a place called Juarez in Mexico to divorce him on the same day Jack Kennedy was inaugurated just so the press would leave her alone?’

  ‘Why would I know something like that?’

  Duchaunak shrugged. ‘’Cause it’s interesting. ’Cause it’s got something to do with Arthur Miller and he was a writer like you.’

  ‘He was a playwright not a novelist.’

  Duchaunak didn’t reply.

  ‘So what’s the point of all this?’

  ‘All what?’

  Harper looked directly at Duchaunak. ‘All this talking back and forth. Coming down here and harassing me—’

  ‘I’m harassing you?’

  Harper smiled. ‘Well no, not harassing—’

  ‘You just said I was harassing you. If you feel I’m harassing you Mr Harper then I’ll leave right now. I wouldn’t want—’

  ‘Enough. Enough already. Cut the crap.’

  Tense silence between them for a few moments. Duchaunak glanced to his left, towards the door. A doctor walked in, looked around for someone, and then left. The door slammed shut behind him.

  ‘Crap?’ Duchaunak asked.

  ‘You know what’s going on here,’ Harper said. ‘You’re playing some kind of game with me. You have something on my father, something on Walt Freiberg. I don’t know what the hell you’ve got on them but it has absolutely nothing to do with me—’

  ‘Nothing to do with you?’

  ‘Fuck no. What the hell does whatever’s happening here have to do with me?’

  ‘You’re involved in this—’

  ‘Involved? Involved in what? What exactly am I involved in Detective?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Duchaunak said. He looked down at the fingernails of his right hand. They needed trimming.

  ‘You don’t know?’ Harper asked.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Well, maybe vaguely?’

  ‘Vaguely, yes. I can do vaguely.’

  ‘So tell me what the fuck is vaguely going on?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Duchaunak asked.

  ‘Don’t know what? Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell is it with you people? Is everyone in New York so fucking obscure?’

  Duchaunak leaned back in the chair. ‘So who paid for the suit, Mr Harper? Who paid for the watch you’re wearing? What is that? That’s an Omega, right?’

  Harper knew the answer but looked anyway. ‘Yes, an Omega.’

  ‘What is that? Fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand bucks?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Sure you do.’

  ‘Okay, say it is . . . say it’s two thousand dollars.’

  ‘So who paid for that?’

  ‘Walt Freiberg.’

  ‘And how the hell did Walt Freiberg get that kind of money? The kind of money that buys English suits and two thousanddollar watches for someone who isn’t so far from a stranger?’

  ‘We’re not strangers.’

  ‘Have been for what? Twenty-five, thirty years?’

  ‘He says he kept an eye on me.’

  ‘What the hell would he want to keep an eye on you for?’

  ‘Maybe ’cause my father asked him to?’

  ‘And what kind of people have people who keep an eye on other people? What kind of people do that shit?’

  ‘Rich people.’

  ‘On the fucking money, Mr Harper, on the fucking money. Rich people. Too fucking right rich people. And how do people get rich?’

  Harper looked up at Duchaunak. ‘Get to the fucking point will you? Say what you’re going to say and then go wherever you were headed to when you stopped off here.’

  ‘I wasn’t going anywhere but here, Mr Harper. I came here specifically to see your father.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, because you’re really sorry that someone shot him and you want to make sure he gets better fast?’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘You do? Why would you be so interested in seeing that he gets better?’

  ‘Because it wouldn’t be right for him to die like this,’ Duchaunak said.

  ‘Right for him? How can a man die right?’

  Duchaunak smiled. ‘You have a point there, Mr Harper.’

  ‘And your point, Detective? What the hell is your point?’

  ‘I think you should leave New York.’

  ‘I know. You told me already.’

  ‘I think you’ve stayed long enough . . . and I think you know why you should leave.’

  ‘Enlighten me, Detective. Tell me why you think I have any fucking idea what you’re talking about?’

  ‘Cathy Hollander.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You know who she is?’

  ‘Sure I do,’ Harper said. ‘She’s Cathy Hollander.’

  Duchaunak smiled. ‘That’s a sharp sense of humor you got there. That’s a little dark though, right? Kind of dark humor that threads its way through your book.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘So you know who she is for real?’

  Harper shook his head. ‘What do you think? I met the woman on Monday, today is Wednesday . . . I don’t think that qualifies me as a character referee.’

  ‘You ever hear of Neumann and Marcus?’

  ‘Neiman, like the department store?’

  ‘Neumann,’ Duchaunak repeated. ‘Like the actor but spelled different?’

  ‘Neumann and Marcus . . . no,’ Harper lied. ‘I never heard of them. They like a vaudeville duo or something?’

  ‘You should go down the Comedy Store on a Friday evening. You could get like a half-hour slot and work all this out of your system.’

  ‘That where you go?’

  Duchaunak didn’t rise to the bait. ‘So you never heard of these people?’

  ‘Neumann and Marcus? No, I never heard of them.’

  ‘Benjamin Marcus is a bigshot here in New York.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘Sure it is . . . he’s a bigshot, carries a lot of weight—’

  ‘He’s like a real fat guy then?’

  ‘No, he’s not a real fat guy. You can stop winding, Mr Harper. I got a spring like a car and it won’t ever give. You know what I mean, right?’

  Harper n
odded. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Cathy Hollander used to be in with Ben Marcus—’

  ‘In with?’

  Duchaunak nodded. ‘Sure, used to be.’

  ‘How d’you mean, in with?’

  ‘Like she was the girl in the picture, Mr Harper. She was there to hear everything and say nothing, to do what she was asked, to take care of any special guests Mr Marcus might have down to New York—’

  ‘She’s a hooker?’

  ‘No, she’s not a hooker, Mr Harper. She’s a friend of the family, the Marcus family.’

  ‘So why is she with Walt Freiberg?’

  Duchaunak smiled. ‘There was a wager about something or other and Mr Marcus lost to your father, and Mr Marcus had said that if he lost he would give Cathy Hollander to your father.’

  ‘You’re so full of shit,’ Harper said. He couldn’t help himself; started laughing.

  ‘Whatever,’ Duchaunak said. ‘These people have a different set of values, a different set of importances than people like you and I.’

  ‘These people? Who would they be then, Detective?’

  ‘The people you’ve been spending time with since you came to New York.’

  ‘And that would include my aunt?’

  ‘Sure it would.’

  ‘You know her?’ Harper asked. He was beginning to feel unsettled. Not once had he wished to face the truth of what Duchaunak was implying. Defences were up but starting to wear thin.

  ‘I don’t know her. I went and spoke to her today.’

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘To see if she was the one who asked you to come to New York, or to see if Walt Freiberg told her to bring you here.’