Blue Screen

by Robert B. Parker

  “What?”

  “I have no idea,” Erin said.

  “You okay?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “You were there,” she said. “With the local cop.”

  “Yesterday? Yes. That was awful for you.”

  “I bet the men liked it,” she said.

  “I don’t think they did,” I said.

  “You don’t know men like I do,” she said.

  “Perhaps not,” I said.

  A waitress arrived. Erin asked for white wine. I ordered iced tea.

  “Buddy still wants me to do it,” she said. “He says even if I’m not Jackie Robinson I can still be Eddie Gaedel.”

  “Who’s Eddie Gaedel?”

  “A midget that batted once for the Saint Louis Browns and walked. It was a publicity stunt.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’ve made five movies that did really well. I been in People magazine, and Entertainment Weekly. I was on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.…”

  The wine and iced tea came. Erin drank some of her wine at once. I remained calm about my iced tea.

  “And he wants me to be a fucking publicity stunt,” she said.

  “How do you feel about that?” I said.

  “I want to go someplace and sit in a hole.”

  “Maybe you should get out of all this,” I said.

  “He knew, didn’t he,” Erin said. “That cop.”

  “Chief Stone,” I said. “Yes. He used to play baseball.”

  “And Roy knew.”

  I nodded.

  “It was Buddy’s idea,” she said. “You know? When he bought that baseball team. He had a great genius moment. He hired Roy Linden to teach me. He invented a past for me about playing softball and all that crap.”

  “You never played?” I said.

  “No. Not until they started teaching me.”

  “In your life?” I said.

  “No.”

  “My God,” I said, “Erin. You look like you’ve played all your life. Do you realize what an accomplishment that is?”

  She shook her head.

  “I was never going to make it. A woman’s got no chance.”

  “Most people never make it,” I said. “Most don’t get to where you were. Man or woman.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She got another glass of wine.

  “I need to talk with you about Gerard,” I said.

  Erin nodded. I knew how she felt. She wanted to be in her hole, far away, alone. She didn’t care what I wanted to talk about.

  “Gerard set most of this up,” I said.

  She nodded absently and looked out the window onto Boylston Street. There was light snow falling. It was melting on the roadway and collecting a little on the grassy areas of the Public Garden across the street.

  “Part of the deal,” I said, “was you and Misty had to sleep with Buddy.”

  “‘Sleep with’ is a nice way to say it,” Erin said. “He liked it that we were sisters.”

  “Was it unpleasant?”

  “It still is,” Erin said. “And now I got to do it alone.”

  “You don’t love Buddy?”

  I felt foolish asking, but I didn’t know how else to ask.

  “Buddy’s a pig,” Erin said.

  “But it was part of the deal,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It must have been unpleasant,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Thing about being a whore,” she said. “You fuck a lot of pigs. You learn tricks. Make them think you like it. Keep yourself out of it, you know? So it doesn’t, you know, register in your head.”

  “Are you straight, Erin?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “I banged a thousand guys and no women.”

  She drank some wine. She did not make eye contact. She stared out at the snow falling pleasantly on the Public Garden.

  “Did you enjoy any of them?” I said.

  I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going. I wasn’t sure it was entirely about Erin, either.

  “Gerard,” she said.

  “Your pimp.”

  She nodded.

  “He slept with Misty as well?” I said.

  “Yeah, sure, but not at the same time.”

  It was snowing harder in the Back Bay. But it wasn’t a driving snow. It was the kind of snow that would probably stop in a few hours and would never accumulate all that much. The streets would be clear, and the city would look pretty until the snow got dirty.

  “Gerard was here,” I said, “in Boston, during the time Misty was killed.”

  She looked at me for the first time.

  “He was?” she said.

  “You know he was,” I said. “He came to see you.”

  She looked at me. I waited. She looked out at the snowfall. Then she looked at me again.

  “I didn’t want to get him in trouble,” she said.

  54

  THERE WAS NO SNOW in Paradise. Along the North Shore it had been rain. Jesse and I were in the empty squad room at Paradise police headquarters. The back window overlooked the parking lot and the Highway Department maintenance shed. There were empty coffee cups and the remnants of a submarine sandwich on the conference table. There was a big chalkboard on one wall. Jesse stood beside it. I sat at the far end of the conference table.

  “Her story matches Gerard’s,” I said.

  “Which means either it’s true or they concocted it together.”

  “Correct,” I said.

  Jesse walked the length of the conference room and stared out the back window. Then he turned and walked to the other end of the room and turned and looked at me.

  “She was there with no security.”

  “Which means she could have gone off with Gerard when he was here, also without security,” Jesse said.

  “She says the security is really for Buddy. He pretends it’s for her.”

  “So he’s scared of someone,” Jesse said.

  “If you were in business with Moon Monaghan, who would you be scared of?” I said.

  “Cronjager says Buddy’s movie company is located in LA. He’s got some forensic accounting people looking at it.”

  “They usually make a corporation for a specific project,” I said. “Tony Gault told me that.”

  “Sounds like that’s the case here,” Jesse said. “This company is Warrior Productions.”

  “I don’t know what they will find out,” I said. “But here’s what I think happened.”

  “I’m all ears,” Jesse said.

  “Well,” I said. “Not all.”

  Jesse grinned.

  “I may blush,” he said. “What’s your theory.”

  “I think Moon invested a lot in Buddy and even though the pictures did well, Buddy doesn’t show a profit.”

  “Creative accounting,” Jesse said. “Remember, I used to live there.”

  “So Moon wants his money,” I said. “He pressures Cousin Arlo, who pressures Buddy, but he can’t pressure him all that hard, because Buddy lives three thousand miles away with a bunch of bodyguards in a big, inaccessible house. Close to Moon, actually. But Moon isn’t working on Buddy, at least not yet. Arlo was the one who got him to invest. Arlo’s supposed to get it back. Moon, however, doesn’t care about bodyguards and miles. Moon wants his money.”

  And we know Moon’s collection methods.”

  “Exactly. He doesn’t kill Buddy, because then Buddy won’t ever be able to pay him. So he kills somebody else to scare Buddy.”

  “And, knowing a little about Moon, to punish them for getting him into a sour deal.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So you say Moon killed the two guys in LA?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Misty?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All that security? And it doesn’t seem Moon’s style, sneak somebody in and break her neck.”

  “Maybe he bought off the security,” Jesse said.
“Let Buddy see that Moon could get in there, security or not.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who else we got?”

  “Gerard, Buddy, or Erin,” I said.

  “That’s my list, too,” Jesse said. “We may get something from Cronjager in a few days.”

  “Or a few weeks,” I said.

  “Depends,” Jesse said. “Cronjager likes to clear cases.”

  Jesse looked at me for a moment without expression.

  “Shall I lock the door?” he said.

  “Fancy boutiques,” I said, “okay. But I draw the line at squad rooms.”

  He grinned.

  55

  IT WAS NEARLY noon when I came calling. Buddy was in his atrium, having some waffles served by a maid in a little uniform. He wore a maroon polo shirt with white velour sweatpants and tan snakeskin loafers. His waist rolled out a little over the top of his sweatpants, and his arms were thin and soft-looking.

  “Hey, Sunny Randall,” he said. “Girl gumshoe, what do you know?”

  “A lot and nothing,” I said. “Can we chat while you eat?”

  “Sure. I love company. Want something? Coffee? Juice? Want some waffles?”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Outside the atrium glass it was still snowing, though it still was falling as if it didn’t mean it. The ocean looked unpleasant, slate-colored and choppy.

  “So tell me what you know and what you don’t,” Buddy said.

  “First a question,” I said.

  “Shoot”—Buddy snickered—“in a manner of speaking.”

  “Did your first Woman Warrior picture make money?”

  “Sure did,” Buddy said. “That franchise has been a damn cash cow, you know?”

  “Did it show a profit?”

  Buddy was spreading butter on his waffle. He paused with the knife in mid-spread and frowned a little.

  “Why you want to know?”

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “I like to know things.”

  “Well, Sunny Bunny,” he said, “movie business ain’t easy to explain. And that was a while ago. I don’t remember the details now. But I can tell you that Buddy made out like fucking gangbusters, okay?”

  “Sure, Buddy,” I said. “Who financed the first one?”

  Buddy put his knife down.

  “Sunny,” he said, “lemme make a couple of points here. I got a lotta enterprises going. Movies is just one of them. I can’t be running the kind of thing that Buddy Bollen runs and worry about small specifics from five years back.”

  “So you don’t remember?”

  “Correct,” Buddy said. “And my second point: It’s none of your fucking business.”

  “Did Arlo help arrange financing?” I said.

  “Arlo?”

  “Arlo Delaney. He was partners with Greg Newton.”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Buddy asked.

  “I’m investigating,” I said.

  “Well don’t investigate me, for crissake. I’m the one hired you.”

  “Actually, Erin hired me,” I said.

  “Yeah, and I’m paying you.”

  “Your choice,” I said. “Do you know Arlo Delaney?”

  He was silent, looking at his waffles.

  “How about Moon Monaghan?” I said.

  Buddy sat back in his chair. He stayed like that for a time without further movement. Studying the indentations in his waffle.

  “You think I know them, don’t you?” he said.

  “I believe I can prove it,” I said.

  He sat some more.

  “What can you prove?” he said.

  “I believe I can prove that Gerard helped you get financing through Arlo Delaney, that it came from Moon Monaghan, and that to secure your continued support, Misty and Erin had to regularly have sex with you. Often together.”

  “You could get in on that,” Buddy said, “you want to.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “You have any comment on what I can prove?”

  “By prove,” Buddy said, “I assume somebody told you this—so it would be my word against his, or hers.”

  “There are several hims or hers,” I said. “Plus, the LA police are doing some forensic accounting.”

  “On me?” Buddy said.

  “I don’t know where they’re starting, but it will get to you. And when they do, I suspect I’ll be able to prove that you cooked the books on the first Woman Warrior and the investors got stiffed. And since I’m pretty sure that the principal investor was Moon Monaghan, you are then implicated in two murders in LA. It would also explain the security here.”

  “That’s for Erin.”

  “The hell it is,” I said.

  “It’s for both of us. We’re larger-than-life people,” Buddy said. “We need to be protected from the public.”

  “And from Moon Monaghan, whom you stiffed.”

  Buddy stood up suddenly and walked to the end of the atrium and looked out at the sweep of his snow-dressed lawn. Then he turned and looked back down the atrium at me.

  “Say it’s true. I’m not saying it is, but if it was, you think I killed Misty.”

  “No,” I said. “Misty wasn’t Erin, maybe, she was a big, strong, agile girl; you don’t look to me like you could snap the neck on a canary.”

  Buddy’s face flushed.

  “You think like a loser,” Buddy said. “I can hire people for anything I need.”

  “Did you?”

  “To kill Misty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would I?” he said. “I liked the sister thing. It was like they would compete with each other. See who could be hotter.”

  Ick!

  “We’re going to prove all of this. It would just speed things up a little if you confirmed my theory,” I said. “Also make all of us like you better when the time comes to reckon it all up.”

  “Us?”

  “Me and the police.”

  “LA too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re connected in LA?”

  “Yes.”

  Buddy walked slowly down to the breakfast table again. He picked up his waffle and took a bite out of it like it was a piece of toast. He chewed, swallowed, made a dissatisfied face, and threw the rest of the waffle back on the plate.

  “Mostly you got it right,” he said. “Except I don’t know nothing about anybody getting killed in LA and I don’t know about Misty getting killed.”

  “But you did finance your movie with Moon Monaghan through his cousin Arlo.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then you flimflammed him on the net profit.”

  “Moon was hot to be a player,” Buddy said. “But he didn’t know the rules of the game, you know?…And I did.”

  “You might have been wise,” I said, “to find out Moon’s rules, too.”

  “Don’t matter,” Buddy said. “He can’t get to me.”

  Suddenly Buddy raised his head and looked straight at me.

  “Nobody can,” he said.

  “And you know Gerard,” I said.

  “Basgall? Sure. He used to come around every once in a while, visit the girls.”

  “He was here at the time Misty was killed.”

  “Yeah? If you say so.”

  We looked at each other. Having heard the worst, Buddy seemed to have recovered. In a little while he’d be calling me Sunny Bunny again.

  “Do you have any ideas,” I said, “on who killed Misty?”

  He shook his head.

  “Be your department, Samantha Spade,” he said.

  56

  ISAT WITH Felix in a booth at a faux-Irish pub in Allston. We each had a draft beer in a pint glass. Rosie sat with us. I was pretty sure that dogs weren’t allowed even in Irish bars in Allston. But she was sitting in Felix’s lap, and no one seemed prepared to speak on the subject.

  “I talked to Moon,” Felix said. “About the bozo he sent to talk to you.”

  “How does Moon feel
about that?” I said. “Spike was pretty, ah, direct.”

  “I told Moon it was lucky the tough fag was there, because you’d have shot the bozo if the tough fag wasn’t there.”

  “Spike,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure, Spike. Anyway, the bozo’s just day labor. Moon don’t care.”

  “Good.”

  “I told Moon that me and Desmond had a special interest in you, even though you wasn’t married to Richie anymore.”

  “Does Desmond really feel that way?” I said.

  “No. You ain’t married to his kid anymore, Desmond don’t much give a shit anymore. But I do, and me and Desmond been brothers a long time.”

  “And using both your names would impress Moon,” I said.

  “Moon don’t want trouble with the Burkes,” Felix said. “He won’t bother you no more.”

  “How about the, ah, bozo?” I said. “You think he’ll make a return visit, even things out, perhaps?”

  “Nope.”

  I looked hard at Felix.

  “You sound sure.”

  “He won’t be back,” Felix said.

  “Felix?”

  “Take my word.”

  “Did you…?”

  “Don’t ask,” Felix said, and made the growly sound he thought was a laugh. “Don’t tell.”

  “Felix,” I said. “I don’t…”

  “Anybody ask you?” he said.

  “How did you even know about this?”

  “The tough fag called me.”

  “Spike,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Felix said. “Spike.”

  “I appreciate you looking out for me, Felix,” I said. “I appreciate Spike, too. But I can’t have you killing people for me.”

  “I kill who I kill,” Felix said. “You got no say.”

  I was quiet. I knew it was true. Felix sat there with Rosie in his lap, patting her gently with his enormous, thick hand. In his way he loved her. In his way he loved me. It was a scary way. But it was real. And the ugly truth of the matter was, I wouldn’t miss the bozo.

  “Do you know anyone Moon might use,” I said, “who would snap a woman’s neck with his hands?”

  Felix drank some beer and patted his lips with a paper napkin.

  “Ain’t that hard to do,” Felix said. “Moon would know plenty of guys could do it.”

  “Is there anyone who would, what, specialize?” I said.