Several Deaths Later t-2

by Ed Gorman

  "I guess not," Hackett said.

  Cindy, still sobbing, rose and clutched the towel tightly to herself. When she got very close to the captain she said, "I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me."

  "Oh, no," the captain said. "I'd never do that."

  As Tobin took Cindy's arm and helped her through the door, he saw Hackett shake his head and frown. Obviously he felt it was a bit late for Cindy to start defending her virtue.

  35

  2:45 A.M.

  "I'll make love if you want to."

  "Boy, you really sound enthusiastic," Tobin said. "Maybe it would help me."

  They were in his cabin in the darkness and in his bed.

  "Medicinal purposes, eh?" Tobin said. "You don't have to be sarcastic."

  "Maybe it isn't such a good idea."

  "Don't you like me anymore?"

  "It isn't that."

  "Then what is it?"

  "It's just all so goddamned confusing. The killings, and you not sleeping with me because you respect me too much, and why the 'Celebrity' people won't help Captain Hackett find out what's going on."

  She nuzzled him and he responded but something kept him back.

  "Maybe we'd both feel better," she said.

  "I thought you respected me so much."

  "I just feel so lost and so lonely. I wish I were back in Kansas City and Aberdeen and I were going shopping."

  "All right," he said. "I'll do it."

  She sort of thumped him. "Gee, you sound like you're doing me some kind of favor or something. Nobody's ever sounded like that with me before."

  Tobin said, "We're both doing each other a favor. That's how you've got to look at it.”

  Just before they went to sleep, half an hour later, Cindy said, "You know, two weeks ago I would have paid money to just hang around real celebrities. But now I don't know."

  Tobin sort of muttered a response. Then he heard the echoes of what she said and he thought of what the woman he'd danced with earlier that night-the Wicked Witch of the West-had said about paying money just to be a part of "Celebrity Circle."

  Tobin said, "I've got it."

  "What?"

  "'Payday.' "

  "What?"

  "'Payday.' I think I figured it out."

  "Well, I'm real happy for you."

  "What're you so mad about?"

  "We get done and you roll over and you don't say anything."

  "Like what?"

  "Like how much you enjoyed it?"

  "I did enjoy it. Did you?"

  Apparently she was in a mood to pay him back. All she said was, "Sort of, I guess."

  Then she turned over and in two minutes was snoring softly.

  Or maybe was faking snoring softly. With Cindy you couldn't be sure.

  But all Tobin could really concentrate on anyway was "payday."

  In the morning he planned to confront one of the remaining celebrities with what he'd figured out.

  The $10,000 Snoop was going to pay him glowed a vivid green in his dreams.

  37

  9:01 A.M.

  Alicia Farris answered the door. She wore a sheer pink robe and dark glasses and smoked a very long cigarette.

  "I take it you're not room service," she said to Tobin. He wore a white shirt and blue blazer and gray slacks and black socks and cordovan loafers. He smoked a cigarillo.

  "I'd like to talk to you and Jere."

  "Who the hell is it?" Jere said from the deep interior shadows.

  "You can see what pleasant company he is in the morning. Why don't you stop back?"

  "Why don't you close the door and get some clothes on him and then let me in?"

  "What's going on?"

  "I've figured it out."

  "Figured what out?"

  "Why all these people are getting killed."

  "You're turning asshole on us, aren't you, Tobin?"

  "I'm getting to the truth."

  "How noble."

  "Tell him to screw off," Jere Farris shouted from the bed.

  "I'll be waiting," Tobin said, "and I don't want to wait any longer than two minutes." She slammed the door.

  Tobin walked down to the edge of the deck and leaned on the rail and looked at the green water and the blue sky and the white gulls. In the distance there were other boats. Tonight they would be docking. Everything needed to be concluded by then.

  He was lost to his thoughts when he heard somebody say, "Don't you hate morning light? It has no pity."

  He turned and saw Susan Richards next to him. She wore a festive red scarf over her black hair and a white pleated blouse and tight black slacks. With her red mouth and shades she looked very Hollywood. She was a pleasure to look at.

  All this was ruined by the fact that she was drunk. He knew it by the smell of booze on her and by the way she weaved when she spoke. Hadn't she gone to bed? Had she spent the whole night drinking? She must have tried to sober up by showering and putting on fresh clothes. It hadn't worked.

  She said, "But then so few things do these days."

  "Hmmm?"

  "Pity. There's so little of it these days."

  "Oh."

  "You're aware I'm drunk."

  "Yes."

  "Perhaps I have a problem in that area. I've been told by three husbands and four shrinks that that may well be the case."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I like you, Tobin. Have I told you that?"

  "No. But I certainly accept it as a compliment. And I like you."

  "Wouldn't it be ducky if we could do something about it?" She paused, tossed her head as if it were something she wanted to be rid of. "I don't mean just go to bed. I mean… have a relationship or something."

  "That would be very 'ducky.'"

  "I used that word because you use it in your column sometimes."

  "It's when I'm trying to be British, I suppose. I'm not sure it ever comes off."

  She laughed. She sounded miserable. "We're a lot alike."

  "How's that?"

  "No confidence in ourselves. You're always putting yourself down, and I'm always fearing the worst."

  This time when she started to stumble backwards, he had to catch her by the wrist. It was a slender wrist, a lovely wrist.

  He said, "Would you do me a favor?"

  "What's that?"

  "Would you go back to your cabin and lie down?"

  "I came here to tell you something."

  "Just sleep for a few hours and then maybe we'll have lunch together."

  She slid her glasses down to the tip of her nose. "Do you have some pressing business or something?"

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, I do."

  "No wonder I'm so insecure. I practically ask you to marry me and you tell me to lie down. Alone."

  He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. She was weaving and wobbling again. He waved to a white-jacketed steward.

  "Would you walk with Miss Richards to her cabin?" Tobin said, pressing a five-dollar bill into the steward's hand.

  "I really need to talk to you," Susan said but by then the steward had taken her arm. He seemed very good and very practiced at this sort of thing. Within moments they had disappeared around the curve of the deck.

  Tobin went back to the Farrises' cabin.

  38

  9:14 A.M.

  "He wasn't blackmailing you, was he?"

  "I don't have to answer any of your stupid goddamned questions," Jere Farris said.

  "He wasn't blackmailing you-but you were paying him to be on the show. Probably a certain percentage."

  Alicia Farris had opened the cabin curtains. The sunlight was rich and yellow and you could see clearly the red nub in the carpeting and where there was a stain of some sort on the sheet and the last wisp of steam on the bathroom mirror from the shower being run hot and long.

  Jere wore a blue button-down shirt and jeans. His blue eyes needed some Visine. He wore no shoes or socks. He had a fierce red bunion on the big toe of his left foot. He
smoked one of his wife's long white cigarettes. In the yellow sunlight the smoke was silver blue. He said, "I'm getting sick of you, Tobin. In case I haven't told you that already, I mean."

  "That's what 'payday' meant. Every time you got a check, you had to pay him part of it."

  "That's bullshit," Farris said.

  Alicia, sitting on the edge of the bed near where the sheet was stained, said quietly, "Why don't we just tell him, Jere?"

  "Why don't you just keep out of it, bitch?"

  She leaned over and with a great deal of expertise slapped him once very hard across the mouth. You could see tears in his eyes and a pinpoint of blood on his lower lip. "I'll put up with your stupid little girlfriends, Jere, but I won't put up with anything else."

  Tobin pulled his eyes away. He did not want to be in this room at this moment. There was a slow and sad and long-standing anger here-an anger about to become rage-one of the worst kind, one borne of humiliation and debasement. There was nothing uglier to see. Nothing.

  Alicia turned to Tobin and said, "It was very simple. He had all the power, Ken Norris did. He could go to the syndication company and get any one of us fired at any time. He knew it and we knew it. So we had to pay him ten percent of our salaries to stay on the show." She exhaled silver blue smoke of her own. "Face it, Tobin, without that show none of us would have any career at all. It was worth the ten percent."

  Tobin said, "Iris Graves knew that. That had to be the story she was working on. And Sanderson the private detective knew that too. I can understand why one of you would kill them and Ken Norris. But why Kevin Anderson?"

  "Because he was sick of the sham," Farris said, slamming his fist on the table. "He was going to talk to the press as soon as he got back."

  "So everybody in your group knew this?"

  Alicia nodded.

  "And apparently," Tobin said, "added Kevin to the list."

  "I didn't kill anybody, if that's what you're thinking." His petulance was getting irritating again.

  "I think," Alicia said with a kind of defiant dignity, "that Tobin suspects it's me." She smiled at her husband. It was a pleasant smile to see. "After all, dear, I'm the only one with any balls in the family."

  "She didn't kill anybody, either," Farris said.

  "One of your group did," Tobin said, "in order to prevent the story from coming out."

  "It would have made us laughingstocks," Alicia said, her voice quiet again. "It's bad enough to be has-beens but to have to pay kickbacks on TV-you can imagine what the press would have done to us."

  Tobin was about to speak when a noise, almost vulgar on the fresh ocean air and on such a sunny day and on such blue water, violated the peace of the cruise ship.

  There was no mistaking what it was, the noise.

  It was the sound of a gun being fired.

  "My God," Alicia said.

  But Tobin was already out the door.

  39

  9:26 A.M.

  Six doors away, Todd Ames, looking as if he were preparing for a GQ photo shoot-white button-down shirt, apricot colored ascot, white linen pants, steel gray hair in perfect shape-leaned to the side of Susan Richards's door. He appeared to be in clinical shock.

  As Tobin reached him, he saw that. 45 dangled from Ames's left hand. Tobin recognized the weapon as Ames's own. Ames did not seem aware that he held the gun.

  Tobin glanced at him, then pushed inside.

  The curtains were still drawn. The room stank of bourbon. The bed was a mess. There was the scent of sleep and sweat and vomit. With the door closed, Tobin felt as if he had stepped down into a deep hole that had sealed itself behind him.

  She sat curled in a chair. She was naked. There was for the moment nothing erotic about her. Indeed her nakedness was terrifying because it was obviously symbolic of her mental state.

  She turned her beautiful aging face to look up at Tobin. She said, "You know the funny thing?"

  "No," he said, "no, I don't know the funny thing."

  "Prison isn't what scares me."

  "What scares you, Susan?"

  "The photographers."

  "Why do they scare you?"

  He wished it were light in here. He wished it did not smell so womb-warm. He wished her eyes did not look so unfocused.

  "The way they used to follow Marilyn Monroe around. You remember?"

  "Yes."

  "They'd get right up to her and she'd start to cry and you could see the panic in her eyes. That's what scares me."

  "You killed them, then?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  She laughed. "Tobin, it was the only career I had. Once it came out that I'd had to pay to be on it-"

  "God," he said, and sank down onto the ottoman. He leaned back a bit toward the bureau where he could smell the sweet perfume and even sweeter sachet. He liked the female smells and for the first time he became aware of the sexuality of her naked body. He felt ashamed that lust had as always triumphed over compassion.

  "What was the gunshot? You trying to kill yourself?"

  She laughed and for a moment sounded genuinely delighted. "What, and ruin my makeup? No, I was just trying to get attention, Tobin." She pointed with an elegant hand to a hole in the wall. "I just fired the gun because I thought it would sound good. I had to do something." Then her face grew sad again, like a small girl hearing terrible news, and she said, "You didn't want me to be the killer, did you?"

  "No."

  "That's very nice of you."

  He raised his head again and stared at her. "When the captain comes, don't say anything."

  "What?"

  "Don't say anything until you've got a lawyer."

  "It doesn't matter, Tobin. It really doesn't."

  "It matters to me."

  "I appreciate that."

  Tobin said, "Why kill Sanderson too? Iris Graves had discovered what was going on-Ken Norris demanding a part of your salary-but why Sanderson?"

  "Because he was helping the reporter and even if he hadn't wanted to, he would have exposed me."

  "They worked together?"

  "Yes."

  He was about to ask her more but the door creaked open and Captain Hackett put his head inside.

  "I just had a conversation with Todd Ames, Miss Richards," Captain Hackett said. "He told me what you tried to do and what you confessed to. Are those things true?"

  "Remember what I said about a lawyer," Tobin said. "Yes, Captain," Susan Richards said. "They are true."

  "God," Tobin said. "God."

  She'd been right, Susan had. He would not have been unhappy to learn that the killer was Jere Farris or Todd Ames or Cassie McDowell or even Alicia Farris. But he genuinely liked Susan Richards. Genuinely.

  Captain Hackett said, "I'll be outside, Tobin. You help her get dressed and then bring her out. All right?"

  Tobin did the only thing he could do. He nodded.

  40

  11:14 A.M.

  "Forget the part where you think she's crazy."

  "Forget it? Why?"

  "Because if she's crazy, then people feel sorry for her and if they feel sorry for her, then it's just another story about some pathetic has-been TV star. But if she willfully and coldly set out to do in all these people-ape shit is the word I'm looking for here, Tobin."

  "That's two words."

  "Whatever. Ape shit is what our readers will do. AGING PRIME TIME QUEEN KILLS TO KEEP HER SHAME SECRET. It needs some work but it's a good peg. You earned your dough, pally."

  "Thanks."

  "Hey, you get seven grand and you sound miserable."

  "I am miserable. I happened to like Susan. And what's this seven grand stuff?"

  "Expenses."

  "What expenses?"

  "I told you already. Phone calls and stuff."

  "What's 'stuff?'"

  "Jesus, all right. We should be celebrating and we're haggling. Seventy-five hundred then."

  "First you said ten, then you said eight, and now you're sa
ying seventy-five hundred."

  "Just get some good pictures, OK?"

  The editor of Snoop, who probably not only watched "Celebrity Handyman" but liked it, hung up.

  Tobin went into one of the ship's eight bars.

  41

  2:04 P.M.

  There was a kind of ritual involved in getting drunk to forget. First of all, you wanted to reach the first level of drunkenness very quickly so you drank drinks with gin in them. In this case, Tobin used martinis. Then you wanted to sit by yourself with a window to stare through, which was easy enough to do on a cruise ship. Then you wanted to be left entirely alone with only a jukebox for company. This tiny dark bar, festooned with nautical symbols, had a jukebox that ran to Sinatra and Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis. You couldn't ask for more than that.

  It didn't always work as you intended it to, of course. There was a certain kind of drunkenness that was just bloody wonderful, when you reached the exact point where sadness and despair meshed-there was an almost overwhelming and perverse sweetness to it.

  Unfortunately, Tobin must have gone right past it without noticing it because, almost as if he'd been in a car accident, he looked up and saw a gigantic bartender in white shirt and white ducks and white apron leaning in and hauling him out of the booth.

  "You've had enough for this afternoon, Mr. Tobin," the bartender said.

  Enough? How long had he been drinking. Enough?

  He couldn't possibly have had more than fourteen or fifteen martinis. So what if he did kind of trip and fall on his last journey to the jukebox ("Strangers in the Night" just kept sounding better and better). He tripped; was that a capital offense or what? "Come on now, Mr. Tobin. Come on now."

  42

  6:17 P.M.

  You wake up and you can't remember anything. Nothing at all. You need to pee and you're afraid you need to barf and then you're afraid because you can't remember anything.