Payback
Page 9
“Oh God,” Joanna said, “I was jealous, that’s all. There were groupies all over you. Blondes. I thought they were all gorgeous and I thought I was losing you.” She lifted her shoulders. “I was eighteen too.”
“Youth,” he said disgustedly. “Youth really sucks.”
“Uh-huh,” she said grinning. “I remember that too.”
He was touching her sweater, just the sleeve of it. “What the hell is this?” he said.
“Angora,” she told him.
“I see,” he said slowly. “I think I’ll be reincarnated as a sheep.”
“I think it’s a rabbit.”
“Jesus,” he said. “It’s the Easter Bunny, huh?”
“Hey listen. I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.
“What?”
“That.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re making me crazy, that’s why.”
“Oh boy,” he said, “you want to have a talk about crazy.”
“I think we ought to turn off the music for a while. Or open a window.”
“Or take a cold shower. Together.”
“I think you ought to finish your story.”
“My story,” he said. “I went into the army. I got out of the army. Then I met a person named Jeremy Tate and he offered me a job.”
“A job,” she said flatly. “The last thing on earth you ever wanted was a job. Why’d you quit skiing?”
“You’ll see that,” he said. He paused. “I was thinking we could order in later.”
“Like tomorrow,” she said.
“I was thinking … July.”
***
He couldn’t believe it. Not just a body, Joanna’s body; moving underneath him, moving him. Sometimes he’d have to pull back just to look at her. “Jesus. Look at you,” he’d say, “Just look at you,” and feel himself grinning like a fool and then see she was watching him the same kind of way. And then he’d go off, get lost, get tumbled in the time machine again, start dreaming in the hayloft in Elton, Colorado, everything ahead of them, everything in place. He said to her, I think we invented this, you know? She said to him, We ought to be disgustingly rich. Then he said nothing, exploring in the hay again; then he was a rocket on the Fourth of July.
***
She opened her eyes now and looked at his face, his eyes half-open, his yellow eyelashes beating on her hand. He made a growl of contentment. She could pet him like a cat. She could taste the salt of his sweat with her tongue, lick him like a salt lick. She said, “Oh boy.” He was idling inside her. She said to him, “So that answers that question, huh?”
He was silent for a time. “Was it ever a question?”
“No,” she said quietly. He chewed at her ear. “I don’t ever want to move.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“No, I mean ever.”
“Uh-huh. I know. So do I.”
She wanted to tell him she was syrup and cream, that she wanted to pour herself over him forever. She wanted to tell him she was still sixteen and so painfully in love with him it hurt just to breathe. She wanted to tell him and she tightened her lips because she didn’t want to tell him.
His telephone rang.
He stiffened, relaxed, went out of her. “I’ll take it in the living room,” he said.
***
She heard him hang up. Then she heard him pacing in the living room awhile. Not just a while. She timed it on the clock. She lit up a cigarette and watched the little second hand sweep around the dial. It swept seven times. He came back with a straight shot of whisky in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth and a robe on his body. He shook his head slowly and came over to the bed. “Aprѐs,” he said. “The old postcoital phone call from the cops.”
“Oh,” she said carefully.
He sat on the bed again. “They want me to go over to the precinct for a while.”
“Now?”
“That’s what I said: Now?”
“And then they said …”
He nodded.
“Any bulletins?”
“No.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t say. They were cryptic.” He seemed to be staring at the wall. He pulled at his whisky and was silent for a time.
“I have to talk to you, Joanna.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
He looked at her.
“There’s something I don’t like about your tone.”
“Serious.”
“Deadly. Also, I don’t like your outfit,” she said. “I don’t like talking to an un-naked man. It makes me feel naked.”
“You’re right,” he said, stripping. “Any better?”
“Not much. That’s an absolutely terrible leg you’ve got, Mitchell.” She reached for it tenderly and fingered it. “If this is how you get the Silver Star, I’d’ve settled for the Bronze. Is this erogenous, Mitchell? I’m touching it, the rest of you is—”
“Hey. Cut it out.”
“I know. I know. ‘This is difficult, Joanna and you go make it harder.’”
“Oh God,” Mitchell said.
“Go on,” she said, taking her hands off him. “Talk.”
He wanted to smile at her, take her in his arms again, make love to her again, but he didn’t know why the police had called him in, what they wanted, what they knew.
He said, “First of all, I’m not a very moral personality.”
“Oh yes you are. You’re just not conventionally moral but you’re moral.”
“Will you stop defending me?”
“No. Somebody has to.”
“I’m doing pretty nicely at defending myself. In fact I am possibly the best-defended character you’ll ever want to meet.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I’ve done something criminal, Joanna. I’ve committed a crime. Mostly, I thought it was a victimless crime but I might’ve been wrong. I don’t know how you’d judge it. I don’t know how, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that most of my life has been a fraud. I’m dancing on a wire. Wire keeps shaking and I think it’s gonna break.”
“Go on,” she said carefully.
“No, that’s the point. It’s all I want to tell you. I owed you that part of it but not any more. If you want to walk out of here this evening, tomorrow, day after, whenever, I’ll have to let you go.”
She was staring now. She angled her head at him, staring. “So let me get it straight now. As long as I don’t ask you what, I can stay.—Is that right?”
He shook his head. “You’re not listening, Joanna. I told you I’m a criminal. I’m close to getting caught.”
“And you wouldn’t feel close enough to trust me.”
“I can’t,” he said tiredly. “I don’t even think I’d remember how to do it.”
She looked at him awhile. “I think I need to borrow your whisky, okay?”
11
The Naturalite Task Force, like the entire Los Angeles Detective Division, was based in Parker Center, a cluster of buildings in the style known loosely as Municipal Modern—a couple of slick high-rise boxes set around a network of concrete paths and municipal landscape.
By Monday evening at a quarter of nine, the Task Force consisted of a hundred and ten—county, state, and local policemen, some federal agents, and various minions of the District Attorney.
The room itself, as Mitchell approached it, appeared to be something like a clean fluorescent-lit football stadium, a furniture warehouse for gray metal desks, or a city newsroom with most of the reporters out gathering the news. About a dozen detectives were talking on the telephones and answering the calls; they were formal and polite; they said, “Yes ma’am” a lot and they swiveled in their chairs.
Mitchell glanced over at a roster on the wall:
SQUAD #
JOB
1
Personnel/Ex-personnel
2
Psychos
3
Litigants
4
Competit
ion
5
Stock Market
6
Drug Lab
7
Sleeping Car Murder
8
Hotline
9
Misc/Co-ord
A guy at a corner desk on the phone raised a hand at him. Mitchell went over, sat down. A tag on the jacket said Detective Ortega. Ortega, on the phone, saying “Yeah.… Uh-huh …” apparently patient, only doodling zeros on a long yellow pad, examining Mitchell who examined him back: a dark-skinned man, a little younger than Mitchell, thirty-four, thirty-five; an eccentric bony almost Indian face with a deadpan manner and aware-looking eyes. He had tight-kinked hair that was cropped very close and a nasty keloided scar on his jaw. He hung up the phone and said dryly, “Your friend.”
Mitchell said nothing; he lit a cigarette.
Ortega seemed to smile. “The lieutenant.”
“Uh-huh,” Mitchell said. “You mean Keebler.”
“Yeah. Uh-huh,” Ortega said. “That’s the one.” They were facing each other at a gray metal desk with a butt-filled ashtray and a sad-looking plant.
“I got carried away,” Mitchell said, “just a little, and I called him an asshole.”
“When?”
“What time?” Mitchell said. “I don’t know. This morning. At the plant. We make drugs that’re supposed to be sterile and he’s cruising in his street clothes and sneezing in the vats. Foreman tries to tell him very nicely where to go and your lieutenant gets pissy.”
“Uh-huh,” Ortega said. “Yeah. That’s the one.” Looking at Mitchell very carefully; taking in the sweater and the jeans and the Guatemalan boots and the hair that was a little bit long but not styled. Ortega didn’t seem very sure about Mitchell.
“You’re the president, huh?”
“I think so,” Mitchell said.
“I don’t know. You walked over I was thinking you were some kind of narc from downtown.”
“And you think that’s a compliment.”
“Yeah. So do you.”
The telephone rang.
“I think you got me, Ortega.”
Ortega picked it up and said, “Yeah. Squad nine …” Mitchell turned around again and squinted at the wall. 9: Miscellaneous/Coordination. Ortega said, “Alexis, I’m about to knock off.… Yeah, if I see him. Right.” He hung up again and lit a cigarette.
Mitchell said, “What the hell’s a sleeping car murder?”
Ortega glanced over at the roster on the wall. “Number seven,” he said.
“Thanks,” Mitchell told him.
“It’s an old French movie. Half a dozen people getting murdered on a train. Appears to be random only later it’s discovered that one of the victims was the actual target and the rest were just cover.”
Mitchell thought it over and shrugged; he said, “Anything’s possible I guess.—And ‘litigants.’ What’s litigants?”
“Anyone who ever sued the company and lost. Consumers. Suppliers. And then we get a character like Billy McAllister who says you stole his company.”
“Conned,” Mitchell said. “He thinks I conned it, not stole it. Anyway, I heard he bought a beach in Majorca.”
“Yeah. So he did. He’s retired,” Ortega said; he was opening a drawer. “Guy’s thirty-four, he’s got a hundred thousand dollars coming in every year from some software company. Talk about the life. The reason we called you here tonight,” he said flatly, “is we found a little goodie.”
He tossed it on the desk: a business-size envelope in fire-engine red. Mitchell looked down at it. SPECIAL DELIVERY. A whole lot of stamps. Postmark reading New York, N.Y. No sender’s address. He could figure what it was; he could try to jump ahead now and figure how to act.
“It arrived at your office at the factory at six,” Ortega said.
Mitchell looked up. “You just happened to be there.”
“Lieutenant just happened. On the other hand, it does kind of scream for attention, though—doesn’t it?” Ortega leaned forward in his chair. “You can touch it if you want to. The envelope’s dusted.”
Mitchell picked it up, turned it over; it was sealed. He looked quickly at Ortega. “You think it’s a—what?”
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it.”
“A blackmail letter. And, simply for the honor roll, we haven’t either.”
“Opened it.”
“Yeah.”
“Uh-huh,” Mitchell said. “Yeah. I imagine that’d be against the law.”
“That’s right,” Ortega nodded.
“Uh-huh. What’s it say?”
“It’s a blackmail letter.”
“I see.”
“You want to open it?”
“No,” Mitchell said. He was thinking that anybody’d hesitate a little so it really didn’t matter; he was thinking how to frown: “Jewelry? Dogtags? Hell, beats me.” He was thinking: or just spill the whole fucking story, get it over with. He opened the envelope. “So.—Now what?”
“Now we’re all cool,” Ortega said, his eyes moving up again and studying the face: poker face. Cool. Actor. Not a bad actor in a way, but an actor, he was thinking. “Go on,” Ortega said, and then waited while the president flattened out the letter, then watched him as he looked at it, read the thing rapidly, registered—what?—just a flicker of relief—and then started at the top again.
Mitchell looked up. “Two million dollars—cash. To a post office box in Vienna—as if you didn’t know it—or the poisonings resume. He says possibly in Europe.”
“Let me see,” Ortega said.
“Cut the bullshit, Ortega. Is he serious? You think this is really from the guy?”
“I think this is postmarked Saturday, Mitchell.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Mitchell handed him the letter. “So it’s either from the killer or it’s somebody’s heavy into e.s.p.”
“Considering we didn’t know shit until Sunday … yeah,” Ortega said. He shrugged and asked Mitchell if he wanted any coffee. Looking at the envelope, Mitchell said yes, and then looked at Ortega going half across the room to a table with a pot. He wanted more coffee like he wanted more sweat, more nerve endings and more general commotion but it bought a little time.
He looked at the letter. It was typed on some not very classy looking bond and it started like a shot:
By now you’re aware I’m
doing serious business …
He could narrow his eyes and just think about the postcard: Mickey Mouse, not a very serious rodent. Dancing: not a very serious job. He could think about the phone call from “Cat” in New York. And the answering machine that said Marian Cleaver. He could put it together, he could tear it apart. He could think about a guy who’d leave his ladyfriend’s number and a guy who’d start giving him an Austrian box. He could think, if he wanted, it was two different guys. He could think what he wanted, but he wasn’t necessarily convinced it was true.
The telephone rang. Ortega, coming back with the coffee, picked it up with his bored, “Squad nine … Uh-huh.” He sat down again and swiveled in his chair. He said, “No, not yet.” He said, “No, I don’t think so.” He said, “Listen, Alexis, he’s either out looking for a psychopathic killer or he’s screwing with a hooker. I’m giving you a choice.” He hung up the phone and said elliptically, “Wives …”
Mitchell said nothing.
“My partner, okay? I said to him, McGinty—you want the kind of lady stays home, cooks a stew, what happens is, the lady stays home cooks a stew. You can’t win,” Ortega said.
Mitchell looked at him carefully and said, “When you’re ready.”
Ortega said, “I’m ready, I just have nothing very interesting to say.” He lit a cigarette. “You want to understand something,” he said. “I can’t tell you not to answer that letter. I can tell you it’s stupid, but it’s not against the law.—You want to answer it?”
“Why? You want to fuck around a box in Vienna?”
“Forget it,” Mitchell said. “You’re gonna whistle in your hat. Vienna. You know about the bankers in Vienna? You ever get ahold of some real dirty money, take it over to Vienna. They don’t ask your name. You pick yourself a code. You call yourself John Q. Public if you want. ‘You don’t have a permanent address, Mr. Public? Hey—no problem and have a nice day.’ The point is they couldn’t even turn the guy in if they wanted to.”
“The point is they don’t,” Ortega said. “The point is the money’ll be legally protected till the guy picks it up.”
“Like a year from now.”
“Maybe.”
“Terrific,” Mitchell said. “So there’s nothing you can do.”
Ortega leaned back again and swiveled in his chair. “Not a lot,” he said flatly. “We can keep it from the press. That way I figure we can buy a little time. A guy’s gonna threaten you with Money Or Else, he’s gonna save his Or Else until he knows about the money. You can stall him for a while.”
“For a while,” Mitchell said. “You mean four-and-a-half days. He says Saturday at noon. Or else.”
“So he says.”
“Would you gamble with it?”
“Personally? No,” Ortega said. “And then, on the other hand, four-and-a-half days is still four-and-a-half days. Figure anything can happen.”
“Yeah?” Mitchell nodded. “What’s the chances that it would?”
Ortega looked away.
Mitchell said nothing, just waited.
“You want to know the truth?” Ortega said. “Shitty. Really bad. That’s catching him at all. You want to catch him in a hurry …?” Ortega let it slide.
***
Mitchell walked around. It was drizzling a little and the neighborhood was shit, spooky, deserted, and if anybody wanted to mug him at the moment, he’d be happy for the fight. But the shadows were empty. He passed a few bag ladies sleeping in the doorways, the doorways leading into needle manufacturers and Fine Arts Fans and Metropolitan Carting. Shadows in the dark. Six-story buildings from the turn of a century that turned out badly. As Mitchell himself.