No Cure for Love

by Peter Robinson

  “Oh, just cute stuff, you know. He’d call her ‘The Lady,’ for example. ‘The Lady’s carriage awaits,’ he’d say when the limo arrived. Or ‘Princess.’ ‘Little Star.’ Names like that. Look, if Sally’s been getting threats, they’re not from Mitch. He worshipped the ground she walked on.”

  But Arvo was no longer listening. He put his glass down and sat up.

  “Do you know where he went after the tour ended?” he asked.

  “Haven’t a clue, man.”

  “Mind if I use your phone?”

  “No,” said Buxton, looking puzzled. “Not at all. No, don’t get up. Stay where you are. I’ll get Bella to bring it out to you. Bella!”

  32

  STUART AND SARAH ATE A HURRIED LUNCH AT A table opposite Brentano’s in the open plaza of the Century City Shopping Center. Sarah nibbled at a corned beef on rye she’d got from the deli and Stuart sucked at his Diet Coke and tucked into a Johnny Rocket burger with the works.

  Sarah was still in her Anita O’Rourke costume from the morning’s shooting—this time a navy-blue business suit over a pearl silk blouse—and one or two shoppers stared and whispered as they walked by, recognizing her.

  It was almost three o’clock and the lunch hordes had gone by then. When she was filming, Sarah often didn’t get a lunch break until two or three. Today, Stuart had taken pity on her and brought her here just to get her out of the gloomy studio atmosphere for an hour or so. At least that was what he told her. She knew Stuart well enough to know he had another agenda, too.

  It had been a tough morning’s filming, especially given the mood on the set over Jack’s murder. The director wanted to do a few fill-in scenes and solo Anita scenes—the female cop at home feeding her cat, eating her breakfast and so on—basically just about anything he could get away with shooting without Jack.

  The whole affair gave Sarah the feeling that the network was some sort of gigantic perpetual motion machine and, whatever happened, it must not be allowed to wind down. Sarah had found it difficult to concentrate and felt annoyed with herself because they had to do simple scenes over and over again. Usually she prided herself on her professionalism, but today she’d been like some kid fresh out of drama school. Worse, a high-school play.

  Between mouthfuls, Stuart was telling her about the morning’s meeting he had attended, but she found her attention wandering. Even in public, in broad daylight, she felt jumpy. She kept wondering if the dark figures she saw coming toward her out of the corners of her eyes meant to do her harm, if one of them might be him. It was hardly paranoia, she assured herself—someone really was after her—but somehow the thought didn’t offer much comfort.

  She had slept badly, hearing noises in the dark, worrying that the killer would find her there and kill Stuart like he had killed Jack. She even worried again for a moment that it might be Stuart and that he was lulling her into a false sense of security before the kill. Of course, that thought made her feel guilty.

  “A penny for your thoughts?”

  “Pardon? Oh, sorry, I was miles away. Forgive me?”

  “Sure. Just try not to brood on it, huh? It won’t do any good. Let the cops handle it. It’s what they do.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t seem to help but worry. But please go on. I promise I’ll listen.”

  “I was only talking about your future, that’s all. And mine. Hell, maybe even the fucking network’s future.”

  Sarah smiled. “Oh, so it’s nothing very important then.”

  “Right. Well, the main thing is they’re not giving the show the ax just yet. We’ve got a few episodes in the can, and then there’s reruns we can always throw in for a few weeks. Come February and March nobody notices anyway. Half the country’s covered with snow and ice and shit like that. People watch anything just to avoid looking out their windows.”

  “And Jack?”

  “We’ve got to find a replacement. Sooner the better. You know the network. They want someone new in before the fucking ashes have settled in Jack’s urn. Shit, I’m sorry, honey.” He ran his hand over his silvery hair. “I can be an insensitive bastard sometimes. Maybe the pressure’s getting to me. Anyway, they know that it’ll take time if we want to get it right. And it’s got to be right. That’s why they’ve given me a week.”

  “A week? To find a replacement for Jack?”

  “Yup. Can you believe it? And you’ve got to help, too. You and Jack had a special kind of chemistry, and I don’t think we should even try to duplicate that, but it’s got to be someone you can work with. I mean, it has to be someone you have some sort of rapport with. You’ve got to meet some of the possibilities. Maybe dinner, cocktails, whatever. I’m sorry.”

  Sarah nodded, pale. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. And in the meantime? How do they explain Jack’s absence?”

  Stuart paused to glance around, then slurped some Diet Coke through a plastic straw, leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Remember that scene you did when you both entered that suspect’s apartment in the dark and someone fired a shot? The cliffhanger they were saving for later in the season?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how Jack gets killed on screen.”

  Sarah pushed her paper plate away. “But that’s sick.”

  “No. That’s network television, honey. I don’t mean to sound hard here, but a lot of people have got a lot of money invested in Good Cop, Bad Cop. And it’s not just this season, either. Sure, we could hobble through that, even without a replacement. But what about next year? The year after? We’re talking about a high-rated show here. Real high. And the challenge is to keep pushing up the ratings without Jack. Sad as Jack’s death is to them, it’s not as sad as losing their jobs or their Bel Air homes. Not as sad as losing the beach house, either, or finding yourself out of work. Think about it.”

  “You can’t mean that. You know I’d give up the beach house if I thought it would bring Jack back.”

  “That’s exactly my point. Though I’m not sure that asshole Dean Conners would give up his new Saab, or that bimbo he’s got stashed away down in Carlsbad, even if it would bring Jesus Christ back. What I mean is, nothing’s going to bring Jack back, but the rest of us have to go on. The wheels continue to grind exceeding hard here. We don’t just want a one-season wonder. You’re either on the bus or you’re off it, Sarah. Bottom line is we find someone you can work with real quick, or they can write you out, too, and start over. I’m sorry to be the guy putting the pressure on, especially with all the other shit that’s going down right now. But it was either me or Ollie the Producer from Hell. I kind of volunteered.” He grinned.

  Sarah smiled and patted his hand. “Thanks, Stuart. I appreciate that. And I do understand what you’re talking about. I’m not that naïve. It’s just that to have him murdered on television the same as in real life doesn’t seem right. It seems sort of cynical, sick, disrespectful.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, and you’re probably right, but that’s the way it’s going to go down no matter what you or I think. Makes sense in a way. I mean, cops do get shot on the job.”

  A young man in shorts and a UCLA sweatshirt approached the table and Sarah tensed, ready to run if he came up to her.

  At first, it looked as if the kid was going to pass right by, then he made a sudden movement toward them. Before Sarah had even scraped her chair back, a figure seemed to appear from nowhere, grab the kid from behind and throw him to the ground. Shoppers and tourists scattered as if a bomb had been thrown among them. People at the cafés screamed and hid behind tables. Sarah and Stuart stood up and moved away.

  The kid in the sweatshirt lay on his stomach, the other man standing with one foot between his shoulder blades, holding a gun on him and talking on a radio handset. He was only medium height, but muscular, fit-looking, blond-haired.

  “Hey, man!” the kid protested. “You’re hurting me. I only came to get her autograph, tell her how sorry I was about what happened to her partner. That ain’t no crime,
is it?”

  “Shut up,” the other said, increasing the pressure on his foot so the kid screamed. “Just shut the fuck up.”

  Within moments, two security guards from the mall had arrived on the scene and the kid was being dragged away.

  Stuart took Sarah’s arm. She was shaking. “Come on, honey,” he said. “I’d better get you back to work.”

  “What happened?” Sarah asked, in a daze, allowing Stuart to lead her toward the exit. “Was that him?”

  “Probably not. Like he said, just a kid after an autograph.”

  “Who was the other man?”

  “That was Zak, our bodyguard.”

  “I’m glad he’s on our side.” Sarah felt a little dizzy, and her heart was beating fast. “I’m okay,” she said to Stuart, disengaging her arm. “Just a bit shaken, that’s all. If people keep treating my fans that way, I won’t have any left before long.”

  33

  NOT MUCH MORE THAN AN HOUR AFTER ARVO left a balmy late afternoon in Orange County, he arrived in a chilly, foggy San Francisco. He picked up his gun from airport security and headed for the cab stand.

  The area around the airport was clear enough, if you didn’t count the dirty rags of cloud in the darkening sky, but fog loomed ahead over San Bruno Mountain as the cab sped along the Bayshore Freeway, past the still gray water around Candlestick Park, jutting out to the east.

  Arvo had called the airport from Carl Buxton’s house and found out the time of the earliest available flight. After that, he had phoned a hotel he knew near Chinatown and booked a room for the night.

  He had left a message for Sarah Broughton at the studio, asking her if she could remember anything about a member of Gary Knox’s entourage called Mitch, and leaving the name of his hotel. He had also let the lieutenant know where he was going and why, then he phoned Joe Westinghouse to see if Mitch’s name rang any immediate bells with Robbery-Homicide. It didn’t.

  Around Union Square, it seemed to Arvo as if the fog really were some vast sea-wraith that had slid under Golden Gate Bridge and insinuated itself through streets, under doorways, smudging the neons and the streetlights, reducing the city to a few smears of blurred pastel on a gray canvas. It looked like a futuristic, Blade Runner kind of world; all it needed to complete the picture was steam rising from soup-vendors’ pots and people standing around at open counters eating noodles in the mist.

  Arvo paid the cabby and checked into the hotel near the Chinatown Arch on Grant Avenue. It was close enough to North Beach. He hadn’t bothered renting a car; he knew from experience that wheels were more of a liability than a blessing in San Francisco. If he got tired climbing the hills, he could always hail a cab or jump on a cable car.

  First, Arvo took a quick shower. He wished now that he had taken the time to go home and at least pack a change of clothes; he would stick out like a sore thumb in some of the places he was likely to be visiting tonight. It could have been worse, though, he decided, getting dressed. For his meeting with Carl Buxton he had put on light khaki slacks, a tan button-down shirt and his sport jacket. At least his appearance didn’t scream COP.

  When he walked out onto Grant Avenue, he wished he had brought an overcoat, too, or at least a sweater. The fog seemed to have cold, ghostly fingers that pried deep and soon found every weak spot in every bone and muscle in his body.

  Beyond the Chinatown Arch, the stores were open. Garish displays of T-shirts, electronics, handicrafts and Oriental gifts spilled out onto the sidewalk. Fog blurred the edges of the neon characters over the stores. Tourists milled around asking themselves if the no-name portable CD-player they bought here at a giveaway price would really work when they got it back to Buckeye, Sawpit or Bullhead City.

  He heard the insistent clanging of a cable car as he approached California. Then he saw it glide through the fog across the intersection ahead of him like some special effect from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. San Francisco could get you like that sometimes.

  Now and then Arvo fancied he caught a glimpse of workshops through grimy basement windows, sweatshops where people pressed clothes in clouds of steam, or printed local newspapers and flyers. Though the bad old days were long gone, when the area was a poor, cramped ghetto riddled with opium dens, child prostitutes and disease, Chinatown could still seem like an overcrowded warren riddled with connecting passages and rooms beyond rooms, none of them empty.

  Arvo turned right at Broadway, which pretty much marked the boundary between Chinatown and North Beach. Carl Buxton had said that Mitch used to be a bouncer in a North Beach strip-joint, so at Broadway and Columbus, Arvo started with the first place he saw. At the intersection, he could hear the regular two-tone droning of the foghorn from the Bay beyond the traffic noise.

  Inside the bar, the smoke created the same effect as the fog outside. A top-heavy black woman on the stage moved to some bump-and-grind song Arvo didn’t recognize. It hardly mattered, anyway, as her movements were out of sync and the meager audience was more interested in the flesh she was about to display than anything else. Having no intention of staying in any of these places long enough to catch something, Arvo went straight to the bar to start asking questions.

  He struck out in the first three places; staff turnover being what it was, he couldn’t find anyone who had been in the job for more than six months. In the fourth place, he found a waitress who said she’d worked there for two years and thought she recognized his description of Mitch.

  After twenty dollars had disappeared down the front of her lacy black panties, which was all she was wearing, he realized he’d been conned. He declined the blow-job, offered for only another twenty, and moved on. He supposed he should have been flattered by the price; he’d heard that the older you are, the more they charge, seeing as it takes you longer to get it up.

  At the sixth place, thirsty from walking and talking and breathing so much secondhand smoke, he ordered a beer. What came from the tap would probably have failed any rigorous scientific test, but at least it was fizzy and cold. The bartender knew nothing of Mitch but suggested he ask Martha, the club’s manager. As she happened to be talking to one of the waitresses only a few feet away, Arvo asked her if she would join him.

  Martha was a squat, barrel-shaped woman in her early fifties. Her intelligent green eyes gave the impression that what she hadn’t seen wasn’t worth seeing. She had a dark mole beside her nose, with three hairs growing out of it, and a square chin under an almost lipless mouth, as thin and red as a razor slash. Her hair, which was cut short and layered, seemed a natural, healthy chestnut color, though Arvo had been fooled before by the magical properties of chemicals. She wore a light-green cotton blouse tucked into the waist of a brown skirt that fell well below the modesty level.

  Martha hoicked her hard, square butt onto a stool and looked ready to listen to yet another hard-luck story she didn’t want to hear. On the stage, a flat-chested, anemic dancer stumbled through the motions with her eyes half closed. Arvo thought he could see needle-marks on the insides of her thighs, but they might have been tiny moles, or a rash of some kind. Diaper rash, maybe, judging by how young she looked.

  “Cop,” said Martha. A statement rather than a question.

  Arvo nodded and pulled out his badge.

  She scrutinized it. “LAPD.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Long way out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you, sonny? I’ll bet you don’t even have any power up here.”

  Arvo smiled. “No more than any other citizen, ma’m.”

  Martha looked him up and down. “You’ve got the tan,” she said, “and the look, but you still don’t seem one hundred per cent purebred La-La-Land asshole to me.”

  “Maybe that’s because I’m from Michigan.”

  “That right?”

  “Yeah. Detroit. Well, Birmingham, really. It’s a sub—”

  “I know where Birmingham is. Know what it is, too. Other side of the tracks.” She pointed to her formidable chest. “Hamtramck
. My daddy was a drunk and my mother was a saint. What do you want to know, Mr. Arvo Hughes?”

  Arvo smiled and shook the strong, dry hand she held out, then he told her what he knew about Mitch. “Can you help?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “I know Mitch. Mitchell Cameron. Haven’t seen him for a while, but I know him sure enough. One of the meanest sons of bitches I ever had the misfortune to employ.”

  Arvo took out his notebook. “When was this?”

  “About eighteen months ago. Sometime last summer, anyway.”

  “What did he do?”

  Martha paused for a moment and asked the bartender for a glass of milk. When she got it, she took a sip, made a sweeping gesture around the club and said, “I don’t know if you’re familiar with this business at all, son, but the last thing you want is trouble. Sure, sometimes you get a customer cuts up a bit rough. When men get all excited they have a way of thinking with their dicks. And believe me, none of them are big enough to hold enough gray matter to understand a simple ‘No.’ So you need a bit of muscle around.” She laughed. “Helps if they’re eunuchs, of course, but hell, most of ’em have taken so many steroids they might as well be.”

  Arvo laughed. “How did Mitch fit in?”

  “Well, Mitch was different. For a start, he wasn’t so much muscular and threatening physically as he was mentally intimidating. He had killer’s eyes and a scary presence. To put it simply, he scared the shit out of most people and never even had to lift a finger. Not that he couldn’t if he wanted. That was the trouble.”

  “He hurt someone?”

  “Real bad. Damn nearly killed a guy. Not that it would’ve been any great loss, but like I said, the last thing we want in this business is the place swarming with cops.”

  “What happened?”

  Martha tossed back the last of her milk, saw Arvo looking puzzled and grinned. “Stomach,” she said, patting her corseted midsection. “Never has been quite what it should be. I blame it on too much borscht when I was a kid. Anyway, why drink the profits? What happened? The usual. Some drunken asshole gets a bit too fond of one of the dancers, and all of a sudden he’s in love. A case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak, if you get my point.” She winked. “Anyway, he’s grabbed the girl and he’s pulling her toward his lap when Mitch goes over. Instead of being Mr. Diplomacy like he should and ushering the guy out with apologies and promises of good times to come, what does Mitch do? He breaks the guy’s arm, is what. Just like that. Where the guy has his arm stretched out, dragging the girl, who’s crying and pulling back, Mitch just puts the arm over his knee like it was a stick of firewood and snaps it. You could hear it crack over the music.”