Ellen felt a rush of sickness. It couldn’t be. Please say it isn’t.
“The victim, a woman in her thirties, whose name is being withheld, was savagely beaten and died at the scene. The police, commenting unofficially on the severity of her injuries, said her condition was quote grotesquely sickening unquote. Now, on a lighter note, today in Brentwood, a bear—”
Ellen snapped it off. It was hard to breathe. Her husband looked up at her.
“You alright?”
Ellen nodded, not speaking. “I’m going shopping.”
“Shopping? At this hour? For what?”
“Feminine products, Harry. Want to come with me?”
She walked out.
He heard the garage door go up. Then go down. Who was she? She was going shopping?
A shameful word occurred to him. With it came a churning in his gut. Cuckold. Was he, a man who’d labored honestly his entire life, now a pitiful cuckold?
He remembered the first time they’d made love. In Newport. Good God. She knew things. She knew a lot of things. And she did them. Went boldly where no man had gone before. He corrected himself. Where no woman had gone before. Men—out of the question.
Was she now flying to the arms of a lover?
He threw the salad bowl across the room, where it shattered.
Cuckold.
Cuckold.
Bobby had just cooked up a few big boogers when he heard her knock on the door. The knocks came fast. She was pissed. He’d heard her trying to control herself on her cell phone, which was, in effect, public broadcasting.
“Who is it?” he sang sweetly.
“It’s me, you asshole, open up.” A hissing whisper.
Ahh. His former child bride. Maybe he’d let her wait, fix himself a purple hit. Naaah. He’d wait for the hit. And anticipate.
He opened the door and she was in, throwing her purse to the floor.
“Do you realize what the fuck you’ve done?”
“What have I done?”
“You were going to talk to that woman.”
“I did. What’s the problem?”
Was it possible he didn’t know? “You killed her, Bobby. You killed her. You stupid piece of shit. It’s all over the news. You beat her to death.”
Bobby shook his head, absolutely sure. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that.” He applied his Bic to the loaded liquor spout. He heard the tiny crackling, heralding that purple vapor. And . . . and there was the rrrrush. He set the pipe down, looked at Ellen, shook his head again. “I didn’t kill anybody. No fuckin’ way. No way.”
He fixed two pipes, slid one across the coffee table. She picked it up automatically.
The woman was dead. There was nothing she could do about that. She hadn’t wanted it. She hadn’t ordered it. Had certainly taken no pleasure in it. Maybe the woman was with Art in paradise.
Strippers would be welcomed in heaven. Of course they would. Cousins of Mary Magdalene. Lots of wine would be served. They’d make it from water. From the clouds. They’d wash some feet, too.
Maybe Bobby hadn’t done it. Maybe he hadn’t. He said he didn’t.
But accidentally, purely accidentally, the killing had served a purpose. A witness was mute.
The only loose end was doofus Dick-Dave. He’d be at the woman’s funeral, no doubt. And then he could be taken care of. One way or the other.
She applied a flame. Ohhhh, yessss.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A Visit to Myron Ealing
I rolled down Hollywood Boulevard toward the Hollywood Professional Building, the southwest corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga.
I had talked to Puss last night. She was doing well at Doc Peach’s. She’d shampooed a collie, which, apparently, was as hard as it got as far as dogs were concerned. Fine hair. I’d asked her if she’d ever given Ellen Havertine her address. After the dinner with Art, maybe?
No, she said, but then she changed her mind. “Actually, I did. We were talking about classical dance and she said she’d send me some tapes of Dame Fonteyn.”
“I think I’ve heard of her,” I said.
“Sounds like a country-western singer,” said Puss. “I thought she was going to send me classical dance tapes. Whatever.”
“What else went on? At the dinner? Anything else?”
“Nothing,” said Puss, “just dinner.”
But that put Puss’s address in the hands of the marriage brokers. I decided I needed to know as much as I could about Ellen Havertine.
So I parked across from World Book & News, waved at Smilin’ Jack Hathaway, went up to see Myron Ealing.
How a man lived on a diet of stale popcorn and Diet Dr. Pepper I couldn’t imagine. Myron weighed somewhere over four hundred pounds but over short distances he was extremely fast. As various adversaries could ruefully attest.
A failed mathematician, Myron had a mind like a steel trap—a trap that had rusted out on the liquid minutiae of string theory. There were eleven dimensions but five through eleven were tiny and in Einstein’s pants but the pants were at a Chinese laundry and the laundry was closed.
No tickee, no washee.
Temporarily stymied, Myron decided he would compile the Encyclopedia of Pornography, and that research led directly into the sleazy white underbelly of Hollywood. Now he had the dirt on anyone who had gotten dirty. And who hadn’t?
“Ellen Havertine,” I said. “What do you know?”
Myron dug into his barrel of Christmas corn. Half-price if purchased in January. Of lasting freshness. “I know everything.”
“Let’s have it.”
Myron leaned back, closed his eyes, set his prodigious mind to work. “Precocious child actor at nine. Caught smoking pot on the set at eleven.”
I felt a faint tickle of memory.
Myron opened his eyes. “Remember Dick Shale?”
“No.”
“TV director. Episodic. Hill St. Blues, Houston, some pilots. The breed wasn’t as well respected then.”
I shrugged. “Never heard of him.”
“Well, at fourteen she seduces him—”
“You mean, he seduced her.”
“No. She came into his office, sat in his lap, sucked his cock. Then blackmailed him.”
“When an adult has sex with a child it’s the adult’s fault.”
Ealing raised a meaty hand. “I agree. The fault was his. I’m just saying she wasn’t the ordinary, pigtailed fourteen-year-old. She knew things and used them. Where she learned them, I don’t know.”
Ealing brought up a new page on his computer. “Anyhow, she got him to put her up for Me, Dad, and Me, and the rest is history. They made the pilot into a show and by fifteen she was a network star. Two hundred grand a week. Age nineteen, three seventy-five a week, she marries one of her costars. Bobby Lebow. Lebow was twenty-three.”
“I remember him. Redhead. Curly hair, played guitar. Teen magazines and stuff.”
“A Tiger Beat heartthrob. He acted, well, he acted like himself, he played a little guitar, had a couple of hits, he did a few chop-socky flicks. But then he grew up, was headed straight for the pimple heap. Me, Dad, and Me saved his ass. Then, like everything else in the world, Me, Dad, and Me was canceled and he’d worn out his welcome and did a quick fade. Still lives here in Hollywood.”
“Where’s Tarantino when you need him?”
“No shit. And, boy, does he ever. If rumor holds true, he lives right up here on Cherokee.”
“Whitley Heights?”
“Not that far up. The Cherokee Hotel. Not far from the Blackstone, Playboy Liquor.”
“That’s junkie territory.”
“I hear he’s into coke. But maybe not. He was a pro rehabber for a while.”
“That didn’t last?”
“I don’t think so. You got to be humble, naturally humble. That’s not Bobby.”
“Back to Ellen, please.”
“Let’s see. Her marriage to Bobby fucked up the show. But she went on, made
a couple of things, flamed out on the big screen. Then she married a director, Gus Tchamtik.”
“Better than marrying a writer.”
“She and Gus had a nice little run, he did a Sharon Stone thing, but in the end she squeezed him dry and dropped him. Then she met Judge Glidden on the set of Law & Order. Pretty soon the good judge kicked his wife of twenty-seven years to the curb.”
“Bye-bye, Patricia.”
“I think her name was Marcia.”
“No. It’s Patricia.”
“Which liar told you that?”
“The judge himself.”
Myron put his head back and laughed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Indian Dinner Theater
Of course Ellen had never given her the $25,000 she’d promised. And now here she was in the middle of nowhere, the middle of the desert, on her “honeymoon,” marooned at an Indian casino. Fucking marooned. How many manicures and pedicures did a person really need?
And then she’d been Jacuzzied, shrimp-cocktailed, Bloody Mary’d, and massaged with special Indian mud. Was that chick trying to hit on her? She wasn’t sure, so she let it pass. Maybe Indians liked lots of mud on their tits.
Then she’d sat through the Indian Heritage Dance Review, but it had been done better at Disneyland. DUM-dum-dum-dum DUM-dum-dum-dum, those fucking drums. She was dead sure that she recognized one of the drummers, the one with the fucked-up feathers. He was one of the lunchtime busboys at Cielo Lindo, the upscale restaurant place where a significant portion of the fresh Native Salmon Feast had still been frozen. She’d almost broken a tooth. The only thing she’d managed to avoid was Indian Dinner Theater. But she wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. DUM-dum-dum-dum DUM-dum-dum-dum. Jesus.
Honeymoon. What a joke. The big dead cocksucker must have weighed three hundred pounds. There was no gurney. Nothing professional. Of course. So they’d wrapped him in a rug and dragged his dead ass feet first down the stairs. If he wasn’t dead yet, that did it. His head banging every step on the way down.
Then arguing with that smart-ass cokehead who used to be her brother-in-law. A long time ago she’d thought he was funny but now, God, she loathed him. She half-remembered him coming into her room one night when Ellen was away and making her feel him. She must have been fifteen. But maybe that didn’t happen.
Fuck it.
Medically speaking, he was going to kill himself with cocaine. And that would be fine by her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Truths Laid Bare
The service was at St. Paul of Tarsus in Hollywood. There’s not a single good thing about a funeral. No matter how cheap, they’re expensive; no matter the pomp, they’re meaningless; and not a single attendee, living or dead, with the exception of mortuary personnel, wants to be there. It was no different with the funeral of Violet Brown.
At the rear of the church, representing O’Halloran’s, was Billy Ravenich, my friend from Navy days. Billy owned seven black suits. All of them write-offs. He attended up to fifteen funerals a week, depending on traffic. After long practice, his performance had moved beyond words. Now he clapped those who would be comforted on the shoulder and nodded silently, slowly, looking into their eyes. What did words mean, after all? Few noticed the tiny wire and earpiece. Dodgers, Kings, Lakers. Me, I miss Chick Hearn and the popcorn machine.
I walked toward the back, stood with Billy. He put a hand on my shoulder and nodded. I nodded back.
I was there for Dennis, spiritually, for Puss, physically. Things were going swell down at Doc Peach’s but I wondered who might show up at the service.
Prudently assuming the worst, Violet’s demise had been meant for Puss. Meaning someone had fingered her. It couldn’t have been the nurse. She hadn’t seen that much of Puss before Puss had caned her. Which probably meant a security system. If so, Puss and I were on video. But Puss could have been identified only by someone who knew her. And that someone would have to have knowledge of Art’s security system. Everything went back to Puss’s dinner with Judge Glidden and Ellen Havertine. Where Puss had given Havertine her address. And had shown her Art’s security system.
“You showed her Art’s security system? I thought you said nothing happened that night.”
“Nothing did,” said Puss, oblivious. “Art just asked me to show her around.”
“And you showed her the security system.”
“I showed her the walk-in freezers, too.”
Yes, Ellen Havertine’s prints were all over this thing. And if her companions wanted to kill Puss, certainly I was next on the list.
Reverend Jenkins walked out of the sacristy and the service began. The reverend, now in his seventy-second year, was a true foot soldier of Christ and had worked long hours in the vineyard of lost souls. We were friends of a sort.
Prayers came and went and then it got personal. He turned to the twenty or so mourners and spoke to the Creator on behalf of all.
“Father, we ask you to accept the spirit of Violet Patrice into Your Presence, to forgive her sins, to comfort her, to hold her close to Thee. We also ask that You comfort those she left behind, reminding them that life is eternal in Jesus Christ. Reminding them that all love sundered in this world will find a day restored. We ask these things in the name of the Lord.”
“Amen,” said Dennis Donnelly, gently but deeply drunk. He swayed in place, tears streaming down his cheeks.
I couldn’t imagine what he would do without Violet. They’d each been through a lot, lost their hearts in fruitless chasings, renounced love as a conjurer’s deceit, then, stony-eyed and skeptical, found each other. They settled into a solid rhythm around their own sun, oblivious to all others. They had their vices, transparent to both, they took their pleasures. It was a lifetime groove, on ’Lectric Aven-oo, you could see it.
But goodbye to all that.
Behind me a measured, authoritative pair of high heels entered the church, approached. A scarfed woman put her hand on Billy’s arm. “Excuse me,” she said in a low voice, peering toward the altar, “this is the service for Violet Brown, isn’t it?”
I turned, looked across Billy at Ellen Havertine. An evil joy filled me as speculations turned to probabilities. “Ellen Havertine?” I inquired.
She turned, her eyes went wide. “You!”
“Yeah, me.” She knew me. She’d seen videotape. “But what are you doing here, Ms. Havertine?”
Then Puss walked up, eyes swollen, recognized Ellen, goggled. “What are you doing here?”
Ellen whirled to Puss, jaw dropping to her chest. Then she turned and ran out of the church.
Puss looked at me. “What’s her problem?”
I grinned a cold grin. Certain things were clear to me now. “She thought you were dead.”
Havertine had just settled into her yellow Mercedes when I hustled up. I tapped on her window. She started the car, lowered the window three inches.
I pointed at her. “I know who you are. And I know what you’ve done. And I’m going to fuck up your party big-time. You’re not going to get a goddamn penny and your ass is going to rot in jail.”
She flipped me the bird, put the window up. I pointed at the beautiful murderess, drew my finger across my throat, turned, walked for the Caddy.
If I’d been postulating before, now I knew. Ellen Havertine and Hangin’ Harry were the opposition.
I heard a squeal of tires. I turned, dived onto my belly as the Mercedes, coming backwards, shrieked to a stop. The passenger’s window came down, she leaned across the seat, looked down at me on the pavement. “Don’t worry about my ass, Dick-Dave, I know how to take care of it. Now smile for me.” She held up her cell phone, snapped my picture.
Before I caught my breath she shoved the Mercedes into gear, banged out of the parking lot, turned up toward Franklin, floored it, left rubber.
And to think, she’d been People magazine’s Sweetest Girl in the World two years running.
But my heart had turned cold. Vio
let Brown’s blood and Dennis Donnelly’s tears made it personal. Very personal. Like Sun Tzu said in the Art of War, some battles are not meant to be fought.
But some are.
I stood up, brushed off the little stones imbedded in my palms. Puss finally arrived on scene. “Jesus. She doesn’t know how to drive.”
Pure Puss. Homing in on the essentials.
“Go back to Venice, Puss.”
“Who’s Dick-Dave, Dick?”
Oh, shut up. Dick-Dave-Dick.
What would Ellen Havertine do with my picture? It didn’t really matter. I knew my adversaries.
Woe unto them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
You Pay Him
East on Hollywood Boulevard. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Inquiring, unofficially, about the murder on Sierra Bonita Avenue, Harry’s secretary, Arnelle, had given her the name Violet Brown. Then, foolishly, Ellen had assumed Pussy Grace was a stage name—for Violet Brown. Glaringly, at the church, she’d revealed her ignorance to Dick-Dave. Her obvious surprise at seeing Pussy Grace alive and well, 36 double-D. She would kill Bobby. Kill him.
And Dick-Dave didn’t put out a gofer vibration. He was dangerous. Who was he? She’d find out. She had his photograph.
She parked behind Musso & Frank’s. She wondered if the three valet Mexicans in the greasy red jackets lived in that kiosk. They watched her come over for a ticket, started laughing among themselves.
She could tell the subject across the lot. What else? Pussy. Well, she still had it, baby, breakin’ out all over. And all men, real men, were fools for it. She snapped the ticket out of the ringleader’s fingers. She could hear them giggling as she stalked away. Grown men.
Her mother. Vicious, disappointed, cynical, alcoholic. The things Ellen had learned at her knee. At her elbow. In her bed.
After Jack, her husband, had disappeared, Agnetha Havertine had entertained a series of men. Ellen would meet them in the afternoon, at the kitchen table, after she came home from school. The visitor and mom would be drinking and smoking. Laughing.
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