Incinerator sg-4

by Timothy Hallinan

  “A true-life crime game show,” Stillman said triumphantly. “What do you think?”

  “I’m speechless.”

  “So do you see where I’m going?”

  “To the bank, probably.” I drained the rest of my coffee and held the cup out. Eleanor poured part of hers into it.

  “The format’s already in the can. Three contestants, Velez as hostess, of course, footage from some true-life crime with clues planted here and there, three suspects. One of them is the real-life crook.”

  I drank the coffee and grimaced. Eleanor, despite her New Age convictions, put enough sugar in her coffee to rot a tyrannosaurus’s teeth.

  “The home audience sees one or two clues the contestants don’t see, just to make them feel smart,” Stillman said rhapsodically. “The audience always has to feel smarter than the contestants,” he added, reciting the time-honored dictum of game-show producers all over the world. “The jerks should always be sitting at home slapping their foreheads and swearing over how much money they’d be winning if they were in the studio.”

  “And the winner gets a date with the crook.”

  “That’s what’s so brilliant,” Stillman said. “The winner gets a reward that’s posted at the beginning of the show. Remember Wanted posters?”

  I looked at my watch. If I was going to quit the case, now was the time to do it. “Look,” I said, “you can’t imagine how exciting this is, being on the inside like this. It’s almost as good as having a subscription to Broadcasting. But what’s it got to do with me?”

  “Advisers,” he said, a bit petulantly. “We’ll need advisers. Somebody to help us reconstruct the crime scenes, plant the clues, guide Velez in her prompts to the contestants. So whaddya say?”

  “I’d say it’s a lot of work for a penny.”

  “Twenty-five hundred a week,” he said.

  I began to whistle again. Eleanor winced. I can’t whistle on key.

  “Three if you work out,” Stillman said, a bit too hastily. “Maybe thirty-five if the show goes.”

  “ If the show goes? Norman, have you got a show or not?”

  “I told you,” he said, sounding huffy, “the format’s in the can, plus we’ve got Velez. Come on, it’s a certified check. There’s just a few little wrinkles to work out.”

  “Like selling it?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “We still have to sell it, of course.”

  I waited. He waited, too. While I was waiting, I polished the phone with my shirt. I was working on the earpiece when I realized he was talking, so I put it back to my ear.

  “… only exploratory, of course, just to see if you’re interested. You’re at the top of my list.”

  “Norman,” I said. “The sun is approaching its zenith. I have a beautiful woman with me. It’s Sunday, for Christ’s sake. Why in God’s name are you calling?”

  He put a lot of work into a manly chuckle. “That’s why I thought of you,” he said. “ ‘Sharp,’ I said, ‘the boy’s sharp.’”

  “Well, now that we’ve settled that I’m sharp,” I said, “what do you really want?”

  There was the kind of silence that liars loathe.

  “Ah,” Stillman said reluctantly, “there was one other thing.”

  “I thought there might be.”

  “First,” he said.

  “What do you mean, first? If there’s only one other thing, how can what you’re about to say be first?”

  “See?” he said. “See why I called you? ‘Sharp,’ I said. ‘The boy’s sharp.’”

  “See?” I echoed. “See how sharp I am? See why I’m going to hang up?”

  “Okay, there’s two things. About this dinkus with the lighter fluid.”

  “Ah. As a great man once said-Jesus, I think it might have been you, Norman-‘The old penny drops.’”

  “You’ll be great on the air. Will you do Velez’s show tomorrow? It’s about the people who track serial murderers. The title is ‘In Death’s Footsteps.’ Or maybe it’s ‘Footprints.’ Whaddya think? A thousand, cash.”

  “No. I’m not going on Velez’s show.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” Stillman said promptly. “I told Velez you’d say that. What about two thousand?”

  “No. And second?”

  “Um,” he said. I visualized him shining the buttons on his nautical blazer. Norman owned a yacht solely as an excuse for his taste in clothes and interior decorators. “Has any other producer called you?”

  “Norman,” I said unctuously, “is there any other producer?”

  “Not who’s worth talking to.”

  “So talk.”

  “If you get this dinkus,” he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “you hold back a couple of things for me. There’s nobody who can handle this kind of thing like Norman Stillman Productions. You play ball, we’ll do ninety minutes live on network the night after the dinkus gets jugged. We already got the title.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “‘The Fire Within,’” he said obliviously. “Or something like that. Bring me the right stuff, we’re talking six figures.”

  “As in three comma three figures?” Eleanor arched her eyebrows.

  “You got it.”

  “What’s the first figure?” I asked, just out of curiosity.

  “Ahhh,” Norman Stillman said, “that’s a detail. That’s for the bookkeepers.”

  “Have your bookkeeper call me,” I said.

  “Hey,” Stillman said apprehensively. He was working up to something better, but I didn’t hear it because I hung up.

  “Who would have thought it?” I asked. “I get hired to find someone who’s torching the homeless, and people start throwing money at me. Come on, I’ve had cases that began and ended in Beverly Hills, and no one’s ever mentioned six figures before.”

  “Six figures sounds good to me,” she said. “You’ve never had this kind of media attention before, either.”

  “Public television hasn’t gotten to us yet,” I said, feeling momentarily optimistic.

  “It’s their pledge week,” she said. “They’re on documentaries about baby pandas and the giant sea slug. They’re concentrating on endangered species. And Yanni.”

  “I’m an endangered species,” I said, taking an emotional nosedive. “I’m in danger of being put out of business.”

  “You can still carry out point two. You can quit. I don’t care about the nice man who got set on fire, I care about you. That Baby or whatever her name is had no right to call a press conference without telling you she was going to do it. How do you know this crazy won’t come after you?”

  “I’m not his type,” I said, with more conviction than I felt.

  “It even says where you live. In Topanga. Suppose-”

  “He’s been burning the homeless.”

  She looked around the shack, much the worse for wear since she’d left. “You almost qualify.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said, watching her. We hadn’t been talking much lately, since she’d begun to date someone else. Jealousy worked two ways.

  “Well, she shouldn’t,” Eleanor began, then stopped, catching my eyes. “She shouldn’t have held that press conference, even if she does have all the money in the world. That guy…” She trailed off. “This is complicated, you know?” she asked, looking at Bravo. “I mean, I still love you. In a way.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. I didn’t have the courage to say anything else.

  Hand in hand, something we did out of habit, we went down the driveway, as she accompanied me on the first phase of the journey that would take me to the Bel Air Hotel to tender my resignation. Bravo Corrigan trotted along next to us, sniffing professionally at the bushes, a big, longhaired, raffish canine bum. At the bottom of the driveway, I noticed something unusual for a Sunday: The red flag on the mailbox was vertical, and there was a piece of paper wedged between the hinged door of the mailbox and the mailbox proper. And with Eleanor standing be
hind me and looking nosily over my shoulder, I opened and read the letter from the Crisper.

  “Darling,” I said, calling Eleanor something I hadn’t called her in more than a year, “all the rules just got changed.”

  5

  The Brotherhood of the Pumpkin

  The first thing I did was get rid of Eleanor. She protested that I’d promised her lunch, but I sold her on a rain-check and watched her coast her little Acura down the hill. After she left, I waded through the heat and back up the rutted, unpaved driveway and put in the call to Hammond.

  Then came the hangover-fueled discussion at Parker Center. When it was over and Willick had retired to some upstairs cubicle to type his notes, Hammond walked with me to the underground garage.

  “So now what?” he asked, lighting one of the vicious cigars he smoked to enhance his image.

  “So now I quit, Loot,” I said, fanning at the smoke. I opened the iridescent blue door of my car, Alice, and got in. Hammond propped a size-twelve double-E shoe against the door to keep me from closing it.

  “You’re the only one he’s written to,” he said.

  “And let’s not keep it that way,” I said. I used my own foot to shove Hammond’s away and slammed the door. “What do you think, Al, that I want to be on that lunatic’s Christmas card list?”

  “We’re going to check the cars on your street,” he said. “I mean, we’re already checking them.” He leaned a beefy forearm on the open window on the driver’s side. “We could be looking at a lead.”

  “Look at it by yourself. I’m out. All I have to do is talk to Baby. Then I’m going to go surfing. Phone me at the beach if you need me.”

  “Could be important,” he said.

  “I hope it is,” I said. “I hope you nail the clown. You, not me.”

  “The note’s for real,” he said, telling me something I hadn’t learned while Willick was present. “The psychologists say so.”

  “Well, good for them. Here’s hoping he gets one of their addresses next time.”

  “He won’t. The shrinks are invisible.”

  “Well, then, here’s hoping he gets yours.” It was a nasty thing to say, but it had been a nasty morning. I twisted the key in Alice’s ignition, and she caught.

  “Sure,” Hammond said. “There’s nobody living there anyway.” He lifted his arm from the window while I tried to think of anything to say.

  “Thanks for last night,” Hammond said unexpectedly. “I know I was pushing it.”

  “Al the Red,” I said, leaning out to thump him on the shoulder. It was okay with Hammond if you touched him, but only if you did it with your hand clenched into a fist. “Nobody’s going to get Al the Red.”

  He nodded in a morose way, and I headed Alice out into the sparse Sunday traffic toward Bel Air.

  The Bel Air Hotel on a Sunday afternoon, even during the worst week of the worst October in years, looked more like a postcard than it did like a real place. I crossed the bridge over the hotel’s private stream, and one of the hotel’s private swans hissed a welcome at me. Tall sycamores shaded the grounds, their broad leaves intercepting the steady rain of ash from the latest rash of fires in the Santa Monica Mountains. Even so, there was a short Hispanic man with a wet cloth and a bucket of water cleaning the ferns. He did it slowly, meticulously, with total absorption, one frond at a time, as though there were nothing more important in the world than preventing the sensibilities of the rich from being offended by the sight of ash on the ferns.

  The rich themselves were in ample evidence, their sensibilities apparently intact. I’d forgotten which room Baby Winston was in, so I checked the dining room first. It was packed. Sunday is brunch day at the Bel Air. From about eleven until about five, rich people carefully underdress and pay someone to tousle their hair before heading for the Bel Air to compliment each other on their appearance, compare notes on doctors and domestics, talk deals, and get swozzled.

  Baby wasn’t there. That left what I should have done in the first place. Resigning myself to the possibility that I might never develop her economy of movement, I crossed the little bridge over the moat and headed for the front desk.

  “I’m sorry, but she’s not here.” The desk clerk was a motherly type in her middle forties who had chosen to celebrate Sunday by pinning a large, purple, vaguely vulpine orchid to her left lapel. The desk clerk shook her head sympathetically, and the orchid stuck its purple-specked tongue out at me.

  “Perhaps she left a message,” I said. “My name is Grist.”

  “Well, perhaps she did.” The desk clerk sounded as though she disapproved of the fact that she hadn’t thought of that on her own. “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” she sang to herself on a descending scale as she flipped through a stack of envelopes. “Whoopsy-daisy, here we are.” She started to hand me an envelope and then pulled back her hand and regarded me suspiciously. She pursed her mouth, working out the protocol. “Mr. Simeon Grist?” she asked, the picture of vigilance.

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then. This is for you.” She smiled maternally and handed me the envelope.

  “Look,” I said, “you did that all wrong.”

  “How do you mean, dearie?” I wondered what I’d done to become “dearie.” “Miss Winston said to give it only to Simeon Grist, and that’s what I did.” Her blue eyes were as open as the Canadian border.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Love the orchid.”

  Annabelle Winston’s note was an address: 13731 Moorpark, Sherman Oaks. Beneath that she’d written, Ten till six. There was no phone number.

  “Well, shit,” I said out loud. Sherman Oaks was a long way to drive just to quit a case.

  “Icky, icky,” said the desk clerk behind me. “There’s no need for such language.” The way she was looking at me, I was no longer “dearie.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I have no breeding at all.”

  I took Laurel Canyon up over the top of the Hollywood Hills. Rainbirds chopped at the air like machine guns, shooting out long, glittering arcs of water. People were keeping the foliage green just in case, a perfect example of baseless optimism. A really hot fire creates its own winds, and the winds always blow up. Given enough momentum, a brushfire can move up a hill at twenty miles an hour, exploding everything in its path. A nice green lawn offers about as much protection as drawing the Venetian blinds.

  The San Fernando Valley was 8 to 10 degrees hotter than the other side of the hills, making it around 100. The Santa Anas had shouldered the smog out over the Pacific, and the Valley spread below me like the world’s biggest, driest sink.

  The Moorpark address was a small hospital, obviously private, a cluster of low white buildings sheltered from the slanting afternoon sunlight by tall eucalyptus trees. There were lots of visitors’ spaces, most of them empty. I pulled Alice into one and left her there, a bright blue blemish on the asphalt.

  The starched, crinkly-white imitation nurse wrapped an expensive smile around the information that Mr. Winston was in 312 and that Miss Winston was with him and that I should follow the yellow line. Sure enough, there was a yellow line on the floor. There were also blue and red lines. Fighting down an obscure desire to find out where the red line went, I followed the yellow one down a long, arctically air-conditioned corridor and around a corner. There, seated on a black leather couch with chromium armrests, was Annabelle Winston.

  She wasn’t alone. With her was a youngish man who was clearly working at looking youngisher. His dark, wet-looking hair was combed straight back from a high, tanned forehead. His eyes were too close together, but he had fine bones and a broad mouth with a little too much lower lip. It looked as though he’d pouted once too often as a boy and the expression had stuck, just as my mother always predicted my eyes would when I crossed them. He was holding Annabelle’s hand in what seemed to be a brotherly fashion.

  The two of them got up together as I rounded the corner. Annabelle extracted her hand from the man’s grasp and sa
id, “Mr. Grist. Thank you for coming. Have you got anything for me?”

  “You bet,” I said.

  “This is Bobby Grant,” she said. Bobby Grant stuck out a tan paw, and I shook it briefly. His white linen safari shirt had enough pockets for a very long safari indeed, and his beige pleated trousers were accented with pencil-thin green and red stripes about two inches apart. He wore lizard-skin loafers with no socks. I’ve never trusted men who don’t wear socks.

  “Bobby is the one who arranged the press conference,” Annabelle Winston said. “He handles all my West Coast PR.”

  “Good job yesterday,” I said nastily.

  “We had a real story,” Grant said in a higher voice than I’d expected. He obviously thought he was looking at me, but his eyes were focused about two inches above my head. “It’s easy when you’ve got real news,” he added, modestly minimizing his accomplishment. “A lot easier than product.” He also, I noted, sported a single gold earring, a modest loop that dangled from his left earlobe. He reached up and tugged on it, and Annabelle Winston looked on obliviously. The lesson of Harvey Melnick hadn’t taken.

  “Product?” I asked. I didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about.

  “We put Bobby in charge of introducing our new skinless franks a year ago,” Annabelle said. She was wearing a silk suit that could have been a twin of the one she’d worn yesterday except that it was gunmetal gray. It complemented the agate eyes very nicely. “There wasn’t much space from that one.”

  “Well, wieners,” Bobby said. I wondered if he’d still call himself Bobby when he was sixty, and decided that he probably would.

  “Franks,” Annabelle Winston said absently.

  “Miss Winston,” I began.

  “Call me Annabelle,” she said. She reached up and touched my cheek. “I feel I know you well enough for that.” She wasn’t making it easy. “You’re my main hope,” she said, making it even worse.

  “I spoke to the cops today,” I said, by way of starting out.

  “And they didn’t know what you were talking about,” she said.