Blue Screen

by Robert B. Parker

  “She’s Sunny,” Felix said. “He’s Eddie. He’s going to tell you what he knows about Buddy Bollen.”

  Eddie was small and pale-skinned. He had on a navy watch cap and a pea jacket.

  “She don’t say where she got this,” Eddie said.

  “No,” Felix said.

  “And he doesn’t make things up,” I said.

  “Eddie ain’t smart enough to make things up,” Felix said.

  “Hey,” Eddie said.

  Felix made a sound that I knew was his version of laughing.

  “Tell her what you know,” Felix said.

  Having squeezed into place behind the steering wheel, Rosie had settled into Felix’s lap. Felix patted her. Eddie looked straight ahead at the front door of the Dunkin’ Donuts and began to talk.

  “Guy named Moon Monaghan,” he said. “Used to be a collector for a shark named Patsy Lang. Then one day Patsy was gone and Moon was in charge.”

  “What happened to Patsy?” I said.

  Eddie shrugged. “Something,” he said. “As soon as he took over, Moon juiced the whole fucking shylock thing, ya know? Loaned out more money, collected more vig. Nobody ever didn’t pay Moon. After a while, he’s pulling in so much cash he’s trying to find places to store it. He had cash in one of them public warehouse storage lockers for a while, looking for ways to wash it.”

  “And you know this how?” I said.

  Rosie had flipped over on Felix’s lap with her feet sticking up and her tongue lolling out while Felix rubbed her stomach.

  Eddie shrugged again and shook his head.

  “So Moon’s got a cousin,” he said, “shyster named Arlo Delaney. In LA. And Arlo hooks him up with a couple dudes that finance pictures.”

  “Names?” I said.

  Eddie shook his head, still staring straight ahead at the donut shop.

  “Ran a company called Hollywood Investment Team. They’re looking for cash. Moon’s looking for something besides a storage locker, ya know, for his cash.”

  Eddie spread his hands.

  “Love at first sight,” he said. “Ya know?”

  Rosie had fallen asleep in Felix’s lap. I could hear her soft snoring. Felix had stopped patting her and was simply resting his massive hand on her pink stomach.

  “Moon bought into the business.”

  “Yeah. And one thing led to another. And they end up funding a movie that Buddy Bollen was making.”

  “Which movie?” I said.

  “Got me,” Eddie said.

  “Did they fund more than one?” I said.

  “Got me again,” Eddie said. “I tole you what I know.”

  “So you don’t know if they’re still connected?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “You said before that no one ever didn’t pay Moon. Why is that?”

  “That people always paid?”

  “Yes.”

  Eddie turned and looked at me for the first time.

  “Say it was you,” Eddie said. “And you owed Moon and you didn’t make your payment. Somebody would come and talk to you. Then you still don’t pay, and somebody comes and slaps you around a little. Not bad, nothing broken, just get your attention. And you still don’t pay and somebody comes by and, maybe, shoots your dog. Then they hurt your husband or your mother or your friend. No deaths, but hurt. They tell your husband or your mother or your friend why they’re getting hurt. Maybe they’ll cough up the dough. Maybe not. Puts a lot of pressure on you. Now and then they come by and hurt you, too, but not so bad that you can’t pay up.”

  “Would he ever kill me?”

  “Not until he got his dough.”

  “But he’d kill other people.”

  “Sure,” Eddie said. “Sooner or later. And once he got his dough from you.”

  Eddie pretended to slit his throat with his forefinger.

  “So I’d be better off not to pay.”

  “Be a judgment you’d have to make,” Eddie said. “Myself, I’d find the money.”

  “What if I went away,” I said. “Moved, left no address.”

  “Moon would look for you for as long as it took. Anyone knew where you were, Moon would make them tell. If nobody knew, he’d keep looking. He’s got some people don’t do nothing else but skipchase.”

  “You’d have to kill him,” Felix said.

  “And most of his crew,” Eddie said. “Hard to do.”

  Felix made his peculiar laugh noise again. Rosie opened her obsidian eyes and looked at him.

  “But not impossible,” Felix said.

  Eddie shrugged and turned back to look at the donut shop.

  I said, “Rosie?” and held up her leash. She sat up and looked and scrambled over Felix’s thick torso to the backseat. I hooked her leash on.

  “You gonna run this down,” Felix said. “I know that. You get involved with anything gonna annoy Moon Monaghan, and you let me know. You can’t deal with him by yourself.”

  “I’ll be all right, Felix.”

  “Not if you fuck with Moon Monaghan,” Felix said. “You call me.”

  Felix looked at me. I nodded.

  I said “Thank you” to the back of Eddie’s head. He nodded, and Rosie and I got out of the car. Felix stayed where he was until I got in my car and drove away.

  31

  IT TOOK two days and several phone exchanges with an assistant named Veronique to finally get through to Tony Gault. When I finally did, it was six o’clock eastern time on a cold Monday. I was sitting at my kitchen counter with a glass of white wine when he called me back.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said when I answered. “I got back to you as quickly as I could.”

  “Which was as soon as there was no one more important to call,” I said.

  “Of course,” Tony said. “I’m a Hollywood agent.”

  “You’re fun despite that,” I said.

  “We both are,” Tony said.

  I drank some of my wine. “What do you know about an organization called Hollywood Investment Team.”

  Tony laughed. “HIT,” he said.

  “Hit?”

  “The initials spell hit. That’s why they called themselves that.”

  “Oh,” I said, “of course.”

  “They arranged financing,” Tony said.

  “Why the past tense?” I said.

  “Company was run by two guys,” Tony said. “Lawyer named Arlo Delaney, and a financial type named Greg Newton. I think he shortened it from Nootangian.”

  “Clever name change,” I said.

  “Isn’t it,” Tony said. “I don’t know the details. But last summer somebody shot them. I don’t know if the company actually exists anymore.”

  “Arlo Delaney?” I said.

  “Yeah. The lawyer.”

  “Well, pretend they’re alive,” I said. “Tell me about the company.”

  “Find a film project that’s floundering,” Tony said. “Put it together with an investor who wants to be a movie mogul.”

  “What does the investor get out of it?”

  “Depends,” Tony said, “on how good his lawyer was when they made the deal. If he gets a percentage of the profits, he gets nothing. I know accountants who could prove that Gone with the Wind showed no profit.”

  I drank some wine.

  “What would be a good deal?” I said.

  “Percent of the gross is nice, maybe some of the back end.”

  “Back end?”

  “Like foreign sales. Sometimes a guy will buy the rights to the foreign sales of a film before the film is made. The filmmaker takes the money, makes the film, makes money, he hopes, on domestic box office, and the investors get to sell the film abroad.”

  “Can you do that with other rights?”

  My glass was empty. I poured some more wine.

  “Sure. Television. Video. Novelization—stuff like that,” Tony said.

  “And if the foreign sales don’t happen? Or whatever?”

  “Then the investor
is, as we shrewd financial manipulators say, fucked.”

  “So there’s risk,” I said.

  “Sure. There’s risk investing in the S&P 500,” Tony said.

  “And does the investor always know the risk?”

  “Of course not. It depends on who did the negotiating and what questions they asked,” Tony said. “There are smart businessmen who want to be in the movie business so bad that they agree to nonsense, as long as someone will take their money.”

  “What was HIT’s reputation?” I said.

  Tony laughed a little on his end of the phone.

  “They didn’t fund a lot of Oscar winners.”

  “What did they fund?”

  “Porn,” Tony said. “Movies you see on cable starring people you never heard of. Some guy’s pet movie project—he’ll do anything to get it made, so it can show once in an art house in Des Moines.”

  “Were they honest?”

  “God no,” Tony said. “Why should they be different?”

  I had some wine.

  “Corruption is everywhere,” I said.

  “Thank God,” Tony said. “It’s what allows me to flourish.”

  “Where were they killed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know where their office was?” I said.

  “Hollywood, someplace, hold on a second….”

  I heard him speak off the phone. “Veronique, do we still have HIT in the Rolodex?…Delaney and Newton…yeah, that’s it…write it down for me…thanks.”

  He came back to me.

  “Office was in Hollywood on Gower,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Is this part of the same case?” Tony said. “Buddy Bollen and Erin Flint and all that?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “And that’s all you’re going to tell me,” Tony said.

  “I don’t know much more than that,” I said. “Yet.”

  “I like the yet,” Tony said. “Confident.” He was quiet.

  “Will this bring you back out here?” he said after a while.

  “It might,” I said.

  “I hope so.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Again, quiet for a moment across the three-thousand-mile connection.

  “Are you being faithful to me?” Tony said.

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “Because the opportunity hasn’t presented itself?” Tony said.

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “So,” he said, “maybe you better hurry on out here.”

  “And, of course, you’ve been faithful.”

  “I’m a Hollywood agent,” Tony said.

  “I withdraw the question,” I said.

  “But I remind you, again,” he said. “I am fun.”

  “What else is there?” I said.

  32

  IWENT TO see my shrink. I didn’t go regularly anymore, but I was always welcome when I needed an appointment. I was usually kind of glad to need an appointment. Being with her made me feel safe. She seemed always to know. Even when she didn’t say much of anything, I always left feeling that I knew.

  The nameplate on the front door was discreet: SUSAN SILVERMAN. Nothing else, no title before, no degrees after. I went in and sat in her waiting room, and looked at The New Yorker, and listened to the white-sound machine, not looking up when the preceding client left and Dr. Silverman came to the waiting-room door and beckoned me in. She was wearing black slacks and a gray tweed jacket. Her thick, dark hair gleamed and her makeup was perfect and understated. I knew shrinks toned down when they were working. Even so, she was the most pulled-together woman I had ever seen. As always, I wondered what she looked like when she went out.

  “Richie’s wife is pregnant,” I said without preamble. “A boy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Which means it’s over,” I said.

  “How so,” Dr. Silverman said.

  “I’m out of Richie’s life,” I said. “He’ll have the son he always wanted. I know him. He won’t change his mind.”

  “Very little in life is certain,” Dr. Silverman said.

  “Are you suggesting I cling to the hope that he’ll come back?”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing?”

  “I guess so.”

  “And you feel that it’s no longer appropriate?”

  “Appropriate,” I said. “Why do shrinks always say things like ‘appropriate.’”

  “We try to be nonjudgmental,” Dr. Silverman said.

  “So something’s appropriate or inappropriate?” I said. “And that’s not judgmental.”

  “Behavior is consistent with the causative circumstance or it’s not,” she said. “It’s an assessment of behavior, not a judgment of worth.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  Dr. Silverman cocked her head slightly but didn’t say anything. She waited.

  “I’ve met an interesting man,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “He’s the chief of police in the town of Paradise.”

  She nodded again.

  “He’s divorced but trying to reconcile.”

  Nod.

  “Do you think it’s appropriate?” I said.

  “Do you,” Dr. Silverman said.

  “I asked you first,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “What about it might be inappropriate?” Dr. Silverman said.

  “He’s trying to reconcile with his ex-wife,” I said. “I don’t want to ruin that for him.”

  “You feel he’s drawn to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re drawn to him?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Dr. Silverman sat perfectly still. Her hands were motionless in her lap. She waited.

  “So maybe he should be allowed to choose?” I said.

  Dr. Silverman smiled.

  “All’s…appropriate…in love and war?”

  Dr. Silverman raised her eyebrows slightly but didn’t speak.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be worried about her?” I said.

  “Are you worried about her?”

  “I…I don’t even know her,” I said.

  Dr. Silverman nodded.

  “So maybe I’m not worried about her,” I said.

  Dr. Silverman did something with her eyes that, I had learned, meant follow that thought.

  “So what am I worried about?”

  She smiled. I sat. She waited.

  “Give me a hint,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you are worried about, but we both know what most people worry about.”

  “Themselves,” I said.

  She smiled. I sat. Neither of us spoke.

  After a while, I said, “I’m worried about myself. I’m scared that if I commit to Jesse, I’ll let go of Richie.”

  I don’t know how she let me know. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem to do anything. But I knew she thought I was right.

  33

  CRONJAGER GOT BACK to me last night,” Jesse said.

  He and I were sitting near the window with a view of the harbor in a restaurant called the Gray Gull.

  “And?” I said.

  “Delaney and Newton were shot to death with the same nine-millimeter,” Jesse said. “Delaney took four in the chest and one in the head. Newton took three in the chest, one in the head.”

  “The one in the head was from close range?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Jesse said. “Pays to make sure. The office computer was missing. There were no files.”

  “Was there any sign that there might have been files?”

  “There was an empty two-drawer file cabinet,” Jesse said.

  “So whoever shot them must have had reason to think he was in the files.”

  Jesse nodded. The waitress came with menus. We asked for iced tea while we read the menu.

  “What’s good here?” I said.

  “The view,” Jesse said.

  “Oh,” I said.

&nb
sp; The waitress brought the iced tea. We ordered. The waitress departed.

  “Cronjager got tax returns from the IRS,” Jesse said. “Nothing.”

  “Buddy wasn’t mentioned?”

  “Nope.”

  “Moon Monaghan?”

  “Nope.”

  “And of course no Erin Flint,” I said.

  Jesse shook his head. “These guys took a big net loss each of the last several years.”

  “People lie on their tax returns,” I said.

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “But they have to keep their own records,” I said, “or they won’t know what they’re doing.”

  “Which is probably why the computer is missing and there’s nothing in the file cabinet,” Jesse said.

  The waitress brought us two chef salads and refilled our iced-tea glasses. The day was dark. The harbor water looked murky and cold. The boats in the harbor floated silent and sparse at their moorings. Across the harbor I could see Paradise Neck, and half closing the harbor mouth I could see Stiles Island, where Buddy Bollen lived in style.

  “Well,” I said. “If my sources are correct, two of the principals are here in Boston, available for conversation.”

  “They probably will not confess,” Jesse said.

  “But if we pry away at them,” I said, “something might pry loose and then…who knows?”

  “Maybe he’ll do something stupid,” Jesse said, “and we can catch him doing it.”

  “We can try,” I said.

  “Who you want to start with,” Jesse said.

  “Monaghan.”

  “Fine,” Jesse said. “You know where he is?”

  “Uncle Felix will know,” I said.

  Jesse smiled at me.

  “You have got the damnedest set of connections, Sunny. Your father’s a cop and your uncle’s a crook.”

  “Actually, my ex-husband’s uncle. But he likes me.”

  “Who wouldn’t,” Jesse said.

  “Felix says Monaghan is very dangerous.”

  “We’ll talk with him together,” Jesse said.

  “Felix said I should let him know if I’m going to, ah, ‘fuck with Moon Monaghan.’”

  “So to speak,” Jesse said.

  “Metaphorically,” I said.

  “We’re pretty dangerous, too,” Jesse said.

  “And Felix?” I said.

  “Up to you, he’s your ex-uncle-in-law,” Jesse said.