The Pariah (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “It wasn’t a mugging.” He let another long, harsh moment of silence pass. Then, without fully realizing that he intended to say it, he said, “It wasn’t a mugging. It was murder.”

  Her eyes widened, her mouth tightened. “Murder?”

  “A prostitute was murdered last night. It happened a little after ten o’clock, on Mason Street.”

  “But what’s that got to do with—” Her throat closed on the rest of it. At her temple, a pulse was throbbing.

  “The description of the suspect fits your brother, Miss Holloway. It could be a coincidence, bad information. But I’ve got to check it out.”

  “But—” She began to shake her head. “But I can’t—”

  “We don’t intend to make a lot of fuss. I know about your father, how important he is. That’s why I didn’t tell your security men about the murder. I’m being as discreet as I can. But I’ve got to talk to Elton. There’s no other way.”

  She rose, walked quickly to the view window, stood with her back to him, arms rigid at her sides, fists clenched. Her head was high, the line of her body assertive, defiant. Finally she turned to face him.

  “Give me time, to—to make some decisions. We’re doing The Hour here, at the Cow Palace, on Sunday. And Elton’s part of it. Elton, me, my children, my mother—we’ve all got to be there, onstage. It—it’s the format.”

  On his feet, facing her, Hastings said, “You’ve got your problems—but so do I. You understand that, don’t you?” As he spoke, he looked at his watch.

  “Lieutenant, I—”

  “It’s four-thirty. I’ll be back here at nine-thirty tonight. That’s five hours. I’ll come back, and I’ll ask for you.”

  She nodded: a stiff, stricken nod. Then: “This prostitute, what was her name?”

  “Amy MacFarland.”

  “And she was killed at ten o’clock last night, you say?”

  “That’s right. In the Bayside Hotel, just around the corner from here, on Mason Street. She was strangled.”

  “Strangled?”

  He nodded. “She was strangled with a rope, or a cord.” He hesitated, then said, “There’ve been other murders, like this. Other murders in other cities. And they all fit a pattern: same kind of victim, same kind of weapon. And—” Purposefully, he lowered his voice, locked his eyes with hers. “And they were all committed when your organization was in town.”

  He watched her draw back from him, as if he’d physically threatened her. For a final moment he held her eyes, watching fear begin to work on the musculature of her face. Finally he’d gotten through to her, done the job he’d come to do.

  “I’ll see you at nine-thirty.” He nodded, turned, went to the door.

  11

  SHE CROSSED HER LEGS at the ankles, arranged the folds of her skirt across her thighs and calves, smoothed down the silken fabric of her dress over the swell of her breasts. Careful of her hair, she rested her head against the curved back of the chaise longue.

  Many years ago, Austin had told her that she belonged on a chaise longue. It was his image of her, he’d said. It had always been so romantic, his picture of her. When he was away from her, he imagined her as she was now, dressed in a sheer gossamer gown, her hair beautifully done, her face impeccably made up, reclining like Helen of Troy, awaiting his pleasure.

  Even then, so long ago, Austin had used words like “gossamer” and phrases like “Helen of Troy.” Even when they were alone, just the two of them.

  The first time he’d ever said it, told her she belonged on a chaise, dressed in a gossamer gown, they’d been in Detroit, on the first tour they’d ever made together. They’d been staying at the Statler. All of them, all four of them, in the same cramped suite: she and Austin in one room, the children in another room. There’d been no nursemaid, no secretaries, no one but the four of them. Gloria had been—how old? She began to frown, then remembered: an untroubled face was an unwrinkled face.

  And then the memory cleared: Elton had been five years old, just beginning kindergarten, on that first tour. So, if Elton had been five, then Gloria would have been nine, four years older.

  Even then, they’d been so different, the two of them. From the moment of their birth, they’d been different. Gloria had always been the active one, the pushy one. Whatever Gloria wanted, she got. Elton had been the quiet one, the watchful one, the delicate one. Right from the first, he’d been—

  At the door, a soft knock sounded. Susan’s “five o’clock knock,” Marvella had secretly decided to call it.

  “Come in.”

  Also formally dressed, Susan Gaines stepped inside, closed the door. In her right hand, she carried a small embroidered satchel. Marvella had bought the satchel on Rodeo Drive, a year or two ago. It had two handles, and opened to just the right dimensions. It had been made in China, and had cost five hundred dollars, she remembered.

  “Hello, Susan.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Holloway.” Smiling her social secretary’s smile, Susan was brightly nodding.

  Without changing position, Marvella watched the other woman move with measured steps to the small mirrored bar. She placed the satchel on the bar, opened the satchel, produced a bottle of vodka. The bottle sparkled and glowed, reflected in the mirrors behind and beneath it. Susan Gaines took a crystal highball glass from a rack, placed the glass beside the bottle. From a silver bucket she took ice, dropping the cubes in the glass with silver tongs. Her fingernails, Marvella noted, were pleasingly polished. Now the bottle was opened, and two ounces of vodka poured into the sparkling crystal glass. Now came the tonic, and the lime. Susan’s hands moved deliberately, deftly. Sometimes Marvella suspected that Susan slowed down the tempo of this daily ritual to tease her, even taunt her. But, inevitably, just as the suspicion intruded, the drink was offered, the ceremony completed. Just as now, smiling, holding the glass delicately with her manicured fingers, Susan was coming toward her, bending gracefully from the waist, placing the deliciously tinkling glass on a small table beside the chaise. The table, too, was mirrored, reflecting the glass.

  “Happy September twenty-second,” Susan was saying, straightening, smiling. “Anything else?”

  Marvella smiled in return, shook her head. “No, thank you.”

  “Shall I look in on you later?”

  “I don’t think so, Susan. I’m feeling tired tonight. I think I’ll go to bed early.”

  “Well, then—good night, Mrs. Holloway.” Susan smiled again, turned toward the door, quietly let herself out. With the security men on duty in the hallway outside, Susan would be free for the evening.

  As Marvella would be free, too—free from the long hours of waiting for this moment, this time that was the focus of all the hours that had gone before: twenty-four hours, since she’d done what she was doing now, reaching for the day’s first drink.

  Carefully balanced on high-heeled lounging slippers, Marvella stooped, picked up the empty glass, turned toward the bar. An antique clock hung on the wall behind the bar. No, not an antique, not really an antique. Even in the presidential suite the clock wouldn’t be a real antique. Because, if the president stayed here, or his wife, then time would be important. The country would expect it, would demand correct time for the president, not antique time.

  She placed the glass on the bar, looked closely at the clock. Time: ten minutes after seven. Two hours and ten minutes since Susan had knocked on her door. Soon there would be another knock: a waiter with her dinner. Two waiters, white-jacketed, bringing her dinner on a cart.

  Food, but no wine. She could have had wine if she’d liked. She could have traded the vodka for a bottle of wine, any kind. And sometimes she did, traded vodka for wine.

  She poured vodka into the glass, dropped in the ice, added the tonic, squeezed in the lime. Her hands were steady—beautiful hands, Austin always said. Beautiful hands with beautiful rings, beautifully manicured nails.

  But the skin of her hands was changing, coarsening. Age, time, trouble—they were changing
her skin, changing her. She could feel it inside, the changing. In front of the mirror, naked, she could see it.

  She took up the drink, turned, steadied herself, walked back to the chaise, set the glass on the small table, another fake antique. Across the room, the bottle was half empty. It stood like some religious symbol: a glass icon, in its own mirrored niche, sparkling, sparkling.

  The highball glass, too, was sparkling, its crystals reflecting the light.

  Sitting on the chaise again, but not reclining, she realized she was looking around the sitting room, almost as if she’d never seen it. She was experiencing the same sensation she’d felt earlier in the day, in the limo, driving to City Hall. It was as if she’d materialized as two identical persons, one person observing the other, wondering how that other person came to be there—here—at this time, in this particular place, experiencing these particular sensations, this sudden moment of utter emptiness.

  They were strangers, these two identical persons. Odd, dissimilar strangers, sometimes hostile strangers. One of them came clearly from the sunshine and stars of her childhood: the girl in the gingham dress, with only a father to raise her, with her mother in heaven, looking down on them. Always, she’d been alone, that small child, wandering through golden fields, venturing into the quiet woods beyond the creek behind their house. Always alone, but in memory never lonely. Because the child could wander the wondrous landscape of imagination, like Dorothy, in the land of Oz, or Alice, in Wonderland.

  But the other person—herself—was always lonely. Now, here—in the limousine, there—even on Sunday, in her place onstage, holding Elton with her left hand and Gloria with her right hand, singing, she felt the emptiness, the terrible loneliness.

  When she sang as a child, alone under the bright sky, she sang to God. And she’d never felt the loneliness.

  Now, at age forty-nine, with the flesh sagging on her bones and that small, constant voice from the dead never far from the surface of her consciousness, she sang for the small red light beside the camera lens.

  She’d sung for both of them—her father, and Austin. One of them dead. Her father, lying facedown in the field of weeds behind their tabernacle, his face flattened in the bloody dirt of a pathway that led to town, arms flung wide, fingers crooked into the grass, desperately hanging on.

  Life and death … death and life …

  The dead she’d seen, each one of them, had changed her life, made her a different person, a stranger to herself. Her mother, lying in the wooden coffin—her father, murdered, sprawled in the dirt—her baby, strangled in her womb—

  —and the boy lying on the sidewalk beside his twisted bicycle, his eyes turning to stone as she knelt beside him.

  The world—the room—the bottle on the crystal bar—all had faded into the mists of time, disappeared in the darkness behind her closed eyes.

  As she opened her eyes, the glass beside her filled the field of her vision; everything else was blurred, out of focus.

  Everything.

  12

  “I’M SORRY TO’VE CALLED this meeting without much warning,” Holloway said, smiling as he looked around the room. “But Herbert and I were talking while we were stuck in traffic today, going to pick up the key to the city—” To smirks all around, he held up the foot-long key. “—and I thought I should give you my thinking on the objectives, this Sunday—give you the game plan. Now, I know—I’m fully aware—that some of you think it’s dumb to bring The Hour to San Francisco.” Keeping the smile in place, he once more swept the faces with a genial, eye-crinkled gaze.

  “And that’s okay,” he said, nodding encouragement. “I want that input. I need it. You all know that. But—” Now the smile twisted playfully. The blue eyes danced, the famous face settled into its trademark friendly, folksy expression. “But I don’t need it now, four days before the cameras roll.”

  He waited for the laugh, then allowed the smile to fade. The time for pleasantries had passed. And time was precious.

  “As you know,” Holloway said, “I’ll be meeting tomorrow night with a group of men—fifty-two men, to be exact—who probably have as much influence on the way this country’s run as any comparable-size group you could think of, could assemble. Now, some of you—Larry and Gordon, particularly—” He smiled, gestured to the two writers. “—know what I’ll be saying tomorrow. But for the benefit of those of you who don’t, I’m going to make an opening pitch for the formation of a new political party. Which, God knows, this country needs badly. Now—” Gracefully, he raised a hand in benediction, acknowledging the on-cue buzz of assent, of excitement, of encouragement. “Now, I’m not going to give the speech, don’t worry. But what I wanted to tell you is that the service on Sunday will be a kind of reverse lead-in to this meeting tomorrow night, which I consider to be one of the most important, most significant meetings I’ve ever called.” As he said it, he swept the company with solemn eyes. The smile was gone now. The set of the mouth and chin was uncompromising. With its broad jaw and forehead, with its graceful flow of thick gray hair, the head was transformed, ennobled.

  “Now, what do I mean by all this? How do the two tie together, this banquet tomorrow night and The Hour on Sunday?” The rhetorical question was sternly asked. The blue eyes snapped. The set of the chin was firm. The opening moments of calculated levity were now behind them.

  “The answer is that, beginning tomorrow night, we’re going to start focusing on what’s wrong with this country—what’s wrong, and what we can do to make it right. No, I’m not going to start in on it now, don’t worry—” This time, the smile was fleeting, without warmth, inviting nothing in return but his audience’s closer attention. “But I wanted to tell you—warn all of you—that The Hour this Sunday will be something different, a new departure, a new direction for all of us. And if you do your jobs right—publicity, production, planning—” Briefly, his eye fell on the separate department chiefs “—you’ll be doing things differently, too, for Sunday. And that’ll apply particularly to you, Charlie—” He turned to his publicity director. “—when you’re dealing with the media. Because what we’ll be doing on Sunday—what I’ll be doing—is holding up San Francisco to Christian scrutiny. This city is a hotbed of sin, pure and simple. There’s no other city like it in the whole country. And the whole country—the whole world—knows it.

  “Now, obviously, I’m not going to make a frontal attack, to use the military vernacular. I’m going to put it that we’re saving the city’s soul, praying for its salvation at the bar of God’s heavenly justice. In other words, we’ll be striving to save this wicked city from itself.” He paused, allowing a long, measured moment of calculated silence to pass. “What we’ll actually be doing, of course, is playing to the rest of the country, the rest of the world. We’ll be playing off San Francisco, in other words. It’s a high-risk strategy, I suppose—something we’ve never tried before. But the truth is, at age sixty-three, I’m feeling that it’s about time I take some risks. I think this country is ready for risks. It’s ready for some new ideas, some new leadership.” A final pause, as he swept the circle one last time with sharply focused eyes. Then: “And I hope you’re ready, too.”

  He waited for the expression of approval and assent to subside, then he asked, “Any questions?”

  The first among equals, Charlie Benton raised a forefinger, waited for Holloway’s answering nod, then said, “If you can manage it, Austin, I’d like to spend a few minutes with you after we’re through here. I’ll be meeting with two local reporters in less than an hour. In fact, one of them is a city editor. And I’d like to be sure I’m straight on your thinking for Sunday, on the appeals you want to hit, especially locally.”

  Holloway glanced at Flournoy, who nodded.

  “No problem,” Holloway answered. Quickly, Holloway’s questioning glance circled the group of a half dozen shirtsleeved men lounging at their ease in the sitting room of his suite. Each man knew that, after the first pro forma post-meeting questio
n, Holloway quickly lost patience with further questions.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  When no hands were raised, Holloway beamed at them, waved benevolent dismissal. To confirm his authority, Flournoy lingered behind after the department heads left the room. Ignoring Benton, who frequently displeased him, Flournoy spoke directly to Holloway:

  “I’ll be back in a half hour, Austin. Gloria wants to see me. Then I’ll meet you here. Right?” It was an implied command, directing that Benton conclude his business in thirty minutes. Signifying acceptance, Holloway nodded. “Right.”

  “Drink?” Gloria asked, as Flournoy sat down to face her across a marble cocktail table.

  “White wine, please.” Appreciatively, Flournoy watched Gloria as she rose, went to the bar, took a bottle of Chardonnay from the small refrigerator, began working with a corkscrew. She was dressed in fawn-colored slacks and a color-coordinated beige sweater. The slacks were cut close, modeling a perfection of thighs, buttocks, and a taut, flat stomach. The sweater was cut full, only hinting at the richness of her breasts, the suppleness of her waist. Like her father, Gloria moved deliberately, decisively, always mindful of the effect she was creating, yet arrogantly indifferent. But if their mannerisms were similar, their objectives differed. Austin sought power. Gloria sought sex. She’d been divorced for two years. On the road, always with her two children, The Hour’s sentimental favorites, Gloria never indulged herself, never went looking for bed partners. At home, though, in Beverly Hills, Flournoy was aware that she slipped into her second persona: the female in heat, constantly on the prowl.

  But for Austin, and therefore for Flournoy—Gloria had never been a problem. Unlike Marvella, who drank, and Elton, who was grotesquely unpredictable, Gloria managed her vices the way she managed everything else: quietly, efficiently, intelligently. And economically, too. Gloria didn’t believe in wasted motion or wasted words. Many times, lying in bed, listening to his wife as she lay beside him, quietly snoring, Flournoy had imagined himself making love to Gloria. Occasionally, if he’d been drinking, and if his wife had denied him, he had actually resolved to speak to Gloria. But the resolve had never survived the cold light of morning, not to mention the cold light in Gloria’s eyes as she and Flournoy made the day-to-day, week-to-week decisions essential to the successful operation of the conglomerate that was Austin Holloway.