"I've heard," I said, "that people with a three-picture deal don't usually seem to suffer the same moral revulsion."
Susan dipped a small wedge of pineapple into her small cup of yogurt and took a small bite.
"So what are you going to do now?"
"When in doubt," I said, "go home."
"Oh good," Susan said.
"Getting bored?"
"Getting homesick," Susan said.
"Pearl?" I said.
"Yes. I miss her."
"Yeah. You talk with Farrell at all?"
"Of course. He says she's sleeping with him every night. Says it's his first female."
"Man is she easy," I said.
"She's just a friendly girl," Susan said.
Chapter 33
IT WAS SEPTEMBER in Boston, which normally means early fall. When I went to work the morning after I got home, the day was bright blue and 70 degrees. The first hint of color was beginning to show in the leaves of some trees. Once again pennant fever was not gripping the Hub. And there wasn't a starlet in sight. My first assignment was to catch up. Catching up meant mostly throwing away junk mail without reading it. But there was my answering machine to listen to. Since I'd been gone there were eight new messages. One was from Frank Belson inviting me and Susan to have dinner with him and Lisa. One was from a young Chinese girl named Mei Ling who wanted to use me as a job reference. One was from Samuelson in L.A. with instructions to call him.
"Couple of sheriff's deputies found your pal, Jerome Jefferson," Samuelson said when I got him, "beside the PCH up near Topanga Canyon."
"Dead?" I said.
"Nine millimeter, once, behind his left ear."
"Think it happened there or was he dumped?"
"Coroner says he was dumped."
"Suspects?"
"None."
"Leads?"
"None."
"Clues?"
"Come on!"
"Chances of solving this?"
Samuelson laughed.
"Around zilch," he said.
"Tannenbaum?" I said.
"Probably," Samuelson said. "Wasn't satisfied with Jerome's job performance."
"There's a girlfriend on Franklin Avenue." I said. "She might know something."
"Name and address?"
I told him.
"Get there early," I said. "She should be drunk by noon."
"Wish I were."
"Cop's life is a hard one," I said. "Could you get me the record of a former cop named Dean Walker? Used to live in Santa Monica. I don't know if he was LAPD or Santa Monica."
"Glad to," Samuelson said. "If I didn't have legwork for you, I wouldn't have anything to do."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome," Samuelson said.
"Call me when you know something. If I'm not here, leave it on my machine. I may be traveling."
"Pay attention while you are," Samuelson said. "Morris Tannenbaum is a genuine bad guy. The real thing."
"All the way to Boston?" I said.
"Wherever," Samuelson said. "If he thinks it's a good thing to do."
"Lot of people think it's a good thing to do," I said. "I'm still here."
"Don't let it go to your head," Samuelson said and hung up
I listened to the rest of my messages. All of them were from Potshot. Two from Lou Buckman. Two from Roscoe Land, the Potshot mayor. And one from Luther Barnes. All of them were wondering how things were going and when I might come back there with my colleagues and clean up the Dell. I didn't return the calls.
Chapter 34
PEARL WAS AGING. Her muzzle was gray, her hearing was less acute, her eyesight wasn't as good as it used to be and her left front shoulder was arthritic, causing her to limp when she walked. But she was a hunting dog, and the genes persist. She could still track an open packet of peanut butter Nabs across any terrain. "Not too much longer," Susan said, watching Pearl ease up onto the couch. "Pretty soon we'll have to boost her."
We were drinking Iron Horse champagne in Susan's living room. Tomorrow I was heading to Potshot and the farewell supper that Susan had made waited on the counter in her kitchen, blocked off by chairs. Pearl hadn't lost that much.
"We won't mind," I said.
"No," Susan said.
"What's for supper?"
She smiled.
"Do you ask out of eagerness or fear?"
"Just looking for information," I said.
"Lobster salad and corn."
"Native corn?"
"Yes, from Verrill Farm."
"Prepared by you?" I said.
"I bought the lobster salad," Susan said. "I was hoping you'd boil the corn."
Pearl didn't like the position she had assumed on the couch. She stood and turned around a couple of times and lay back down, as far as I could tell, in the same position, and sighed with relief.
"I already have to boost her onto the bed."
"Isn't she kind of heavy?" I said.
"Yes," Susan said.
Susan usually hung around the house in sweats that cost more than my suit, and looked better. But she had her own sense of occasion and tonight, because I was going away for awhile, she wore a little black dress, and pearls. Her arms and shoulders and neck were strong. Her makeup was perfect. Her face was dominated by her eyes. Her face hinted strongly at intelligence and heat.
Excellent combination.
"I heard somebody define heaven once," she said, looking at Pearl, "as a place where, when you get there, all the dogs you ever loved run to greet you."
"As good as any," I said.
She sipped her champagne. Pearl shifted a little on the couch and lapped her nose a couple of times.
"Do you think there's anything after death?" Susan said.
"Yikes," I said.
"No. Talk about it. Surely doing what you do, you've thought about it."
"As little as possible," I said.
"But you've thought about it."
"Sure."
"And?"
I took in a little champagne.
"There are some scientists," I said, "who've discovered an element of light that is faster than light."
"Einstein said that's not possible," Susan said.
"It arrives at the receiver before it leaves the transmitter," I said.
"What about cause and effect?"
I shrugged.
"Afterlife is no less implausible than anything else," I said. "All explanations of existence are equally incredible."
"So you might as well believe something that makes you feel good as not," Susan said.
"No harm to it," I said.
We were quiet, drinking champagne, looking at Pearl, who had fallen asleep.
"Well," Susan said, "we'll find out someday."
"Or we won't;" I said, "in which case we won't know it."
Susan's glass was empty. She held it out to me. I took the champagne from the ice bucket and poured her another dollop.
"I don't know whether you've cheered me up or depressed me," Susan said.
"If your feelings are inspired by Pearl's forthcoming demise, I can offer a less-complex solution."
"I know."
"Mourn for an appropriate time…" I said.
"And buy another brown German shorthair," Susan said, "and name her Pearl."
"Reincarnation," I said.
"Maybe I'm not just thinking about Pearl," Susan said.
"Is it Margaret that you mourn for?" I said.
"No," Susan said.
"Does it have anything to do with me leaving for Potshot tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"Would drinking and eating and making love ease your concerns?" I said.
Susan smiled at me.
"Oddly enough," she said, "it would."
It made me feel pretty good, too.
Chapter 35
HAWK HAD ACQUIRED a black Ford Explorer, properly registered with a new inspection sticker. I didn't ask him about it. He and I and Vinnie, with g
ear, were on the road the next day by 8:00 in the morning. Hawk was driving. Vinnie was in the back seat. The sun was shining directly into our faces. I was drinking coffee and eating two donuts. Donuts make excellent travel food. "We coulda flown," Vinnie said. "Take us four or five hours."
"With a bunch of infernal devices?" Hawk said.
"You mean guns?" Vinnie said.
"Sho 'nuff," Hawk said.
"Hell," Vinnie said. "You coulda driven the guns out, and I coulda flown out next week, first class, and met you there."
"We may all wish you did," I said. "An hour out of Boston and you're already bitching."
V'mnie almost smiled.
"We there yet?" he said.
I had a CD in the player. Carol Sloane and Clark Terry.
"She can sing for a white broad," Hawk said.
"The best," I said.
"Keeps right up with the black guy," Hawk said.
"Astonishing isn't it?" I said.
We turned off the Mass Pike at Sturbridge and went west on Route 84. We weren't in a hurry. We drove through Connecticut, which was low and green and suburban. We went across New York state and crossed the Hudson River near Fishkill. We crossed the Delaware near Port Jervis and after awhile picked up Route 81 at Scranton. The country had grown hillier. We played CDs: Carol Sloane, and Sarah, and Bob Stewart, and Sinatra, Mel Torme, and Ella, and some Clifford Brown. Hawk insisted on a couple of Afro-Cuban CDs that gave me a stomachache, but I tried to stay open-minded. We talked about sex and baseball, and food and drink, and the days when Hawk and I were fighters. When we exhausted that topic we talked about sex, and basketball, and the days when we were soldiers. We stopped along the way for more coffee, and more donuts, and peanut butter Nabs, and prewrapped ham sandwiches, and pre-condimented cheeseburgers, and chicken deepfried in cholesterol.
"We got to find better chop," Hawk said. "We keep eating this crap we'll be dead before we get there."
"Maybe the next place will have a salad bar," I said.
"With some of that orange French dressing," Hawk said.
"Which is also excellent for slicking your hair back."
"My hair?" Hawk said.
"If you had some."
"Used to have an Afro," Hawk said.
"I remember," I said. "You looked like a short Artis Gilmore."
"Handsome," Hawk said, "and distinguished, but too easy to get hold of in a scuffle. My present do is more practical."
In the back Vinnie looked out the window and said very little. Vinnie wasn't much for small talk.
We stopped the first night at Hagerstown, Maryland, near the Antietam battlefield, and slept in a Holiday Inn. We drove south. We listened to Tony Bennett and Carmen McRea, Anita O'Day, Stan Kenton, Bobby Hackett and Johnny Hartrnan.
Going through West Virginia, near Martinsburg, Vinnie said, "You guys ever listen to anything recorded this century?"
Hawk said, "No."
"Don't you have nothing like Pink Floyd, or Procol Harum?"
"How 'bout The Ink Spots?" Hawk said.
Vinnie shook his head and settled back to look out the window.
We drove down the horsy green Shenandoah Valley with the Alleghenies to the west and Blue Ridge to the east. We hit Knoxville that evening. We crossed the Mississippi at Memphis a day later. Fort Smith, Little Rock, Oklahoma City. I felt like Bobby Troup. Shoney's, Shakey's, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC. I felt my arteries clogging. Gulf, Mobile, Esso, Pilot. Truck stops with buffet tables where you could overeat vastly for maybe six bucks. Hawk and I had a running bet as to who could count the most desirable women. By the time we crossed the Texas panhandle I had already spotted two. Hawk said it wasn't fair, that my standards were too low.
"You have to adjust," I said, "to your environment."
We went through Amarillo. Big John's Steak House. Tucumcari. Uphill to Albuquerque. We slept in Holiday Inns, and Quality Courts, and Hampton Courts, and. Motel Sixes. We drank coffee and Coke and bottled water. We pulled into rest stops and mingled with fat people who wore pink shorts and plastic baseball caps. I was leading the desirable women contest two to one. Sometimes the people wore plaid shorts and plastic baseball caps. They were of both genders, I think. Motor homes got in our way. They moved like odd beetles, slowly, hugging the edge of the highway, driven uneasily by aging people, many of whom were almost certainly wearing pink shorts. Big rigs with fifteen gears slowed us down on the upgrades, and tore past us on the downgrades, trying to make time, which as we know, is money. Small sub sandwiches, biscuits and gravy. Biscuits and sausage. Biscuits and sausage with gravy. Chicken fried steak with cream gravy.
"Used to sleep with a woman was a professor at Harvard," Hawk said. "Red-headed woman. Taught literature."
I was driving. Hawk was in the passenger seat. Vinnie was in the back seat gazing out the window.
"She felt I was," and his voice deepened and his accent disappeared, "the perfect embodiment of untrammeled sensuality. Unrestrained by the stale ethics or conventions of the state."
"I thought that was you," I said.
"What the fuck she talking about?" Vinnie said.
"Meant she liked a lot of unusual ways to do it," Hawk said.
"Nothing wrong with that," Vinnie said.
"Nuthin'," Hawk said.
The next morning we came down out of the mountains west of Albuquerque, and by evening were in the desert.
Chapter 36
THE HOUSE WAS on the east edge of town, with a good view out the back windows of the Sawtooths to the east. It was a big sprawling place with a wide front porch. Bernard J. Fortunato was on the front porch when we pulled up. He was wearing a redchecked shirt and blue jeans and a cowboy hat and boots. A blue bandanna was knotted around his throat. Who the fuck is that," Vinnie said, "Roy Rogers?"
"It's that tough little dude from Vegas," Hawk said.
"Bernard J. Fortunato," I said. "We're all gathering. It'll be like The Big Chill."
"Just like," Hawk said.
"About time you got here," Bernard said. "I been cooling my heels in this burg for a couple days now."
"Been shopping some," Hawk said.
"Yeah. Hawk, how ya doing. Good to see ya again."
I introduced Vinnie, who already had the rear lid of the Explorer open and was starting to unload. And we carried everything into the house. It was sort of shabby inside, but big. Six bedrooms and two baths upstairs, and a big study downstairs that would convert to a bedroom. There was also a living room, a dining room, a large kitchen, another full bath, and central air.
"Furnished," Bernard said. "Six bills a month, large."
"Six grand a month?" I said. "We better clean this up quick."
"Hey that's with the furniture, all the pots and pans, all we got to do is pay the fucking utilities."
"Anybody else show up yet?" I said.
"The hard case from Atlanta pulled in yesterday," Bernard said. "Where do you find these guys?"
"I pick them up at Tony Robbins Seminars," I said.
"Where's Sapp?"
"Out running," Bernard said.
"It's a hundred and ten thousand fucking degrees," Vinnie said.
Bernard shrugged.
"What have we got for bedrooms?" I said.
"Sapp's upstairs, front," Bernard said. "I took the couch in the den. I'm compact, and I don't sleep much anyway."
"Compact," Hawk said.
We took our luggage, left the other gear on the floor in the living room, and located ourselves in bedrooms. I took a front bedroom where you could overlook the town. There was a double bed with maple headboard and footboard and fluted posts with wooden flames at the top at each corner, a maple dresser and a disreputable looking gray-and-black steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. The windows had shades, but no curtains. Normally when I travel, I don't unpack, but I was going to be here a bit, so I put my stuff in the maple bureau, and went back downstairs. Bernard, Tedy Sapp, Hawk and Vinnie were sitting on the wide porch in the
cooling evening, having a drink.
"You want something?" Bernard said.
He had set up a little drink table on the porch, with ice in a bucket. I made myself a Scotch and soda and sat down.
"I guess you've all met."
"We have," Sapp said. "Two more coming?"
"Yeah, driving over from L.A."
"Desert cools off good in the dark doesn't it," Sapp said. "Georgia it's hot all night."
"Hope the a/c keep pumping," Hawk said.
"It don't I can fix it," Vinnie said.
"You know how to fix air-conditioners?" Hawk said.
"Anything," Vinnie said. "Cars, machine guns, phones, TVs. I can fix shit."
We all looked at Vinnie as if he had just come out of the closet. He shrugged. We drank our drinks and sat quietly. The desert air was clear and the stars were bigger than I was used to. A night bird kept chirping something that sounded like "tuck-a-hoo."
I felt like singing "Home on the Range."
"You hungry?" Sapp asked.
"The drive out was a movable feast," I said. "Why would we be hungry?"
"I made a meatloaf," Sapp said, "and there's some beans."
"Well aren't you the homebody," Hawk said.
"Yeah. Bernie hated my pink apron," Sapp said. "Straight guys are so fucking straight."
"Bernard," Fortunato said.
"There's biscuits, too," Sapp said.
Chapter 37
I was in the Chiricahuas County Sheriff's Department talking with their chief homicide investigator. The room was cinderblock. The windows were tinted. The air-conditioning was high. The metal desk and chairs and file cabinet and small conference table were forest green, perfectly complementing the light green walls. All of it was brightly lit by a bank of overhead fluorescents, which perfectly complemented the sunlight coming in through the windows. The chief investigator's name was Cawley Dark. He was a thin, leathery-looking guy wearing starched blue jeans and snakeskin cowboy boots, a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a Glock 9, high on his waist just in front of his right hip. On the forest green metal bookcase behind his desk was a big photograph of three teenaged girls clustering around a blond horse with a white mane. "Buckman was shot three times," he said. "With a 9-millimeter weapon. We did an autopsy, couldn't match the slugs to anything. Wife says he was threatened by some people from the Dell. We say, `Who?' She says, `I don't know.' We say, `Would you recognize them?' She says, `Certainly.' "
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