Get out.
He was breathing, coughing in the smoke. His right hand was useless. He wondered, in the darkness, if it was still there. His left hand probed forward, felt the rippled, undulating glass of the door’s interior. He found the door handle, turned it, stepped into the hall. Cool as heaven.
The world was silent, but the light in the hall was overpowering. Shutting his eyes was to scrape burned corneas; instead he shaded his pupils with his numb right hand. Feeling the wall with his left hand, he negotiated the corridor. The stairs were here somewhere.
His foot tried to find the left side of the staircase and his left hand found the rail. In that manner he descended from the third floor to the second. Again, he sought the top stair with his left foot. This time he miscalculated, slipped. He rolled down the staircase, landing heavily in the building’s entryway. A knee was damaged, some ribs had cracked.
Get out. Get out.
He rose to his feet, tottered. Keep going. Keep going. Never stop. Don’t rest. He found the door, opened it, stepped into the night.
• • •
The concussion and the flash of light reminded Danny James that he had not seen all that was to be seen in this world. The 217 would be coming by directly. He was ready. He spun and stared up, hearing the shrill cry of the smoke alarm.
A bomb. A bomb in Hollywood. Islamists. Islamists in Hollywood.
The door to the Hollywood Professional Building opened and a man staggered out. Dude was in bad shape. Danny went over. Dude’s face looked toasted.
But through the toast Danny realized he was looking at the man who’d been asking about Dave. The man who murdered Dave.
Jesus Christ. No question. It was him. Didn’t seem like the dude could see very well.
Down the street came the 217. Epiphany. Danny reached into his pocket, took out the three-by-five card, put the card in the man’s coat pocket. Keep walking, dude, he said to the man. Keep moving. Dude smelled like gunpowder. Dude couldn’t see.
• • •
At the wheel of the 217, listening to Marvin Gaye, Lucius Connor decided he could make the light. From the shadows down from the corner two men hurried toward the street.
Stay back, fools. You already done missed your bus.
• • •
Connor slammed on the brakes, but twenty-five thousand pounds traveling at forty miles an hour was a force that could not be mitigated.
• • •
Chuck Hames was thrown across Cahuenga in a line drive, landed on the sidewalk in front of Popeye’s Chicken.
Odell Wallis had just departed World Book & News when he heard the flat thud of collision and turned to see a flying man. “Damn,” said Odell.
Odell hurried to the corner and looked down on the man. Nope. No one he recognized. This was just plain, garden-variety, ordinary death. Man versus bus. The numbers weren’t with you.
No case for the TattleTale.
SIXTY-FIVE
Magic Jack
Hale Montgomery had cried every waking second for twenty-four hours. Then awoke with mind and purpose clear, tears dry. He gathered his clothes, his effects, walked out of the hospital. No Randle McMurphy for him.
A taxi from the queue rolled up. Montgomery slipped in, met the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview mirror. A Paki. Somewhere over there. Down there. Whatever. He watched the where to? die on the tip of the dark man’s grateful tongue. Hale Montgomery was his passenger! He acknowledged the cabbie’s awe with a lordly tip of the head. “Twenty-second Street Landing, San Pedro. Can we do that?”
The cabbie nodded. Always say yes to the customer. No matter what the question or who he was. Or how condescending the question. Even if he didn’t know where it was. He could find it.
The man in the backseat. His face was familiar. TV. A TV huckster-wallah. That’s right. The guy who sold the Magic Jack.
Huckster-wallah’s tip was meager. Which meant the Magic Jack was bullshit. You didn’t tip like a weasel unless you made weasel-money.
• • •
Hale Montgomery was going whale watching. If he hurried, he was told, he could make the next run. He hurried.
He took deep drafts of the ocean breeze. It was foggy and cool but it would burn off in early afternoon. The other passengers recognized him, like they always did—looking down when he lifted his gaze. After a few minutes, when the shyness wore off and they realized they were on the same boat with Hale Montgomery, they waved and he would wave back. Youngsters too small to have seen his work achieved awe once removed by way of their elders. Eyes wide, the little people waved and giggled, then retreated back into the safety of their friends.
But not Becky Thompson, age five. “I know who you are,” she said defiantly, to his face.
“Who am I?”
“You’re Magic Jack.”
Magic Jack. He hadn’t heard that one. Did it involve a beanstalk? Maybe it was a modern fairy tale. Magic Jack was a kid with two dads. “Who’s Magic Jack?” he asked the little black-haired girl.
“He’s cheap,” said Becky. “He’s cheap all year.”
Montgomery tapped his chest, infinitesimally insulted—but insulted nevertheless. “I’m not Magic Jack. I’m Hale.”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“I know who you are,” said Becky.
“Who am I?” asked Montgomery.
“You’re Magic Jack.”
Arguing with this little girl was like arguing with his ex-wife. There was no point. You couldn’t win. Not that logic wasn’t on your side. But you couldn’t win. When you’re in a hole, stop digging.
All girls were wise for their age. Girls were born women, boys were born boys. Then the boys grew up and cleverly insisted on making their important decisions in the dark.
He pulled one shoe off, then the other. Then both socks. He grinned at the kids, waggled his toes. Then he unzipped his windbreaker, dropped it onto the seat.
By the time he had unbuttoned his shirt, an older lady had tapped the helmsman. “I think Mr. What’s-his-name is going for a swim.”
“A swim? Who?”
The woman pointed. Hale pulled off his slacks.
“Whoah, mister,” said the helmsman. No shit, Sherlock, they’d blame him for this lunatic. Like they blamed him for everything else.
Montgomery looked down at his boxers. SpongeBob? He’d grabbed them in the dark. Another bad decision. Who’d bought these things? The children were giggling and pointing.
“Goodbye, children,” he said formally, with a bow. The helmsman was coming.
But too late.
Hale dived into the cold water.
• • •
He swam down and down and down. Like Martin Eden. But for a different purpose. Always loved Jack London. He felt strong and powerful and in no need of air.
Maybe fear and panic came with measuring your distance from the surface. No measurement here.
Down and down. Smooth. Strong.
And, then, there she was. Like no time had passed. She’d been waiting for him.
They communicated outside the crude medium of spoken language.
Have you been waiting for me, Betty?
Yes.
I didn’t know.
How could you have known?
You’re as beautiful as the day I last saw you.
Yes. Yes, I am.
You’re completely healed.
I am reassembled.
That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?
Yes. Time had scattered me. You healed me.
We’ll never be parted, right?
Never. Are you ready?
Yes.
• • •
She opened her arms. He moved into her embrace, surrendered his individuality, his distinctions, his parameters. He was flow, it was confluence, all was well.
SIXTY-SIX
All in the Wind
Dr. Wolf stood by the slip and looked down. The bridge clearance on Hush, My Baby w
as twenty-four feet exactly. The radar mast, a top-of-the-line Raymarine, stood up an additional four feet, eight inches. Which meant that the marina was twenty-eight feet, four inches deep in this particular channel berth. Because only a four-inch white plastic twig stood above the water. The only unrefracted visible aspect of his treasured craft. Which had cost him a million dollars cash and a sizable trade.
Until he had looked into the water himself, he had hoped against hope that a jest of celestial proportion was being visited upon him.
But it was no joke. God had raised his voice against him and against God there was no defense. His particular acts of evil he had long since put into the balance with the good he might have done. Betty Ann Fowler, Rhonda Carling, and numerous tiny souls never brought to term. Were those murder, too?
And all the good he had done! He’d saved lives. He had treated indigent people for nothing. Well, next to nothing. He had donated money to worthy causes, as urged by his tax lawyers, or Hogue. He had purchased medical supplies for needy communities. He had outfitted ball teams. And did God now disremember his donations for Katrina?
But it was all in the wind. The vectors of fortune had changed. Odious Melvin, the dead men who lay with his boat, Nazarian, and through Nazarian the realization of his weakness, Gretchen and her contempt, Paulita and her disappointment. He could barely stand the sight of himself in his own mirror. The fallen chest. The expanding white softness at the belt-line. But those beautiful, resourceful, intelligent blue eyes.
To hell with it, with everything. He had done what he had done, played the game of life as he had come to believe it should be played.
His plan had gathered form on the ride down the Harbor Freeway. He called his broker and initiated his emergency plan, cashing out every investment he had. That he would die, violently, in a foreign land, unlamented and alone, was his foregone conclusion. He was seeking his own death now, and he would meet it, and his creator, without complaint.
He was going to Mexico. Where a man with ready cash could get things done.
“Ulli?” said a frightened voice. He turned. Paulita. “Paulita!” He grasped her by the shoulders, pulled her close. Her dark eyes were full of fear.
“What happened your boat, Ulli?”
He shook his head. “The boat doesn’t matter. You’re here. That’s what matters. Are you ready to go?”
• • •
She would never love him like he loved her. She would never know who he was, what he had done, why he had done those things. She would leave him when he needed her most. She would choose a lesser man in his stead and he would watch them go, red lights diminishing in the night, two points red on black. Then silence and the sigh of a dying wind.
But tonight she would be his.
SIXTY-SEVEN
A Damn Shame
The doctor answered on the third ring.
“It’s Melvin, Doc.”
“You sound like a Melvin.”
“I did what I had to do, Doc.”
“No. You went beyond the call of duty. Far beyond.”
“You’ve been to Cabrillo?”
“Yes.”
“What time are we going out?”
Wolf checked his watch. He had just passed through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. He was in Mexico. Never to return. “Be at the boat in an hour.”
• • •
The boat was gone. First Melvin wondered if he were on the wrong pier. No, he was channelside, where the big boats were.
Where toupeed millionaires wore captain hats to impress paid companions. What was a trophy wife but a paid companion? You traded in your original, whom gravity had condemned, purchased a new model. Tight skin, high boobs. All your old stories new. Her laughter bouncing around the cabin.
The boat was gone. Overhead lighting reflected off the dark water. Unlike the doc to do something like this on his own. One of the millionaires approached. In his captain hat.
Captain-hat looked into the empty slip, nodded his head. “It’s a shame. It’s a damn shame.”
What was a shame? Melvin nodded his head in agreement. What had happened? “What happened?”
“Nobody really knows.”
Melvin remained mystified. “Uh, what do you think happened?”
“Well, these things don’t happen naturally. It was scuttled. That’s what I say.”
Scuttled? He wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Probably behind on his payments.” Captain-hat peered down into the water. “Ten, fifteen thousand a month. Got to get out from under that.”
What was the old fool looking at? Then he saw it. It was right there. Just a few feet under the water. “He sank his boat?”
“That’s what I think,” said captain-hat. “Opened up a drain cock. Or put a hole in the bottom, turn off the bilge pumps. A one-inch hole, five-foot draft, say, uh, forty gallons a minute. It was settling by the time we saw it. We were too late.”
But the doc had a home, a wife, a mistress, investments. He had a life. Could he really cut it all loose?
Melvin turned to the man. “When will they raise this thing?”
“That’s the owner’s problem. The marina won’t do anything as long you pay your slip fees.”
Which meant the fish would get to Luis and Ernesto before the authorities did. Which meant he, Melvin, was out of it. Two dead, fish-eaten corpses with holes in their heads on Himmler’s boat. Things didn’t get much more convenient than that.
“For the sake of the craft, of course,” continued captain-hat, “the sooner the better.”
Melvin walked back up the pier, disbelieving. On a grand scale, God was wiping the slate clean.
Now for Nazarian.
SIXTY-EIGHT
Last Man Standing
Lew and I met that night at Canter’s. Reubens and matzo ball soup. Heinekens.
The San Pedro Film Company had been lethally effective. Hale Montgomery had committed suicide. Dr. Ulbrecht Wolf had disappeared. Chuck Hames, head of Ivanhoe security, had broken into San Pedro Film, seen the scripts and photos of Davis Algren, and apparently been overcome with remorse. Had thrown himself in front of the eastbound 217. With the strange, sweaty, wrinkled three-by-five card in his pocket. I killed Dave Algren. I’m sorry.
Myron Ealing had been on scene in a hurry. Turned off the smoke alarm. Didn’t see anything.
The cameras had worked perfectly, though the images were overexposed. Chuck Andrew Hames. Had Hames executed Davis Algren? It made sense. Montgomery, Wolf, Hogue, Hames.
With a picture of Hames, I made another midnight run to Dunkin’ Donut Hole. Got a lot of hits on the picture from Hannah and the gang. Yes, this guy had been asking about Dave. Everyone was cooperative except Danny Smart-ass, who’d supposedly been Dave’s writer friend. He hadn’t seen a goddamn thing and who was Dick to say he had?
All in all, Lew and I concluded the Algren script was true. Which didn’t mean we could prove it in a court of law.
• • •
Hogue was the last man standing. With a ten-figure bank account. Which didn’t mean we couldn’t talk to him. Grind him a little bit. Let him know that we knew. Maybe he’d want to confess. Funnier things had happened.
But before we’d worked out a strategy to talk to Hogue, Hogue contacted me. Again.
I was invited for a return visit to Hogue’s office. It seemed too public a place to die of unnatural causes.
I accepted the invitation.
SIXTY-NINE
Palmettos in a 7-D
The endgame was where masters revealed themselves. Melvin briskly dispatched a two-inch line of cocaine and a tiny mound of Persian green. The plan had come to Melvin with absolute clarity. It had imagination, dimension, specificity, and a good chance of success. An excellent chance. Maybe one more little, precisely little line, and just a dot of green.
He picked up his phone, called Sylvette Walker.
“Hi, Melvin,” she purred.
“I’m going to be in West Hollywo
od tonight. Why don’t you meet me at Bambi’s?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I’ll explain when you get there.”
“I want that apartment.”
“Well, maybe you’ll get it.”
“What time?”
“Seven.”
“I’ll see you there.”
• • •
Perfect. He gathered his things. Cigarettes. Lighters. Duct tape. Rope. Knife. The gun that had dispatched Luis and Ernesto to the Promised Land.
Where was Wolf? Eating beans in Sinaloa. ¿Donde está la baño, señora?
He was glad he hadn’t De Niro’ed the Glock, discarding a piece here and there, as he had planned, in Dumpsters all over town. He would need it tonight. To send the Mystery Man and Nazarian to their just rewards. Everything was playing out like clockwork. Don’t fuck with Melvin Shea.
He valeted his car at the Chateau Marmont and walked down to Bambi’s old place with his briefcase.
Bambi’s mess had been cleaned up by the Kahlo Squad, an organization of his own founding. The squad was a loose group of incurious, silent Hispanic women, instructed not only to clean up but to remove every last article from the premises. What they did with those articles was up to the women themselves. Clothes, shoes, books, food, minor appliances, minor furniture, CDs, DVDs, all tidily disappeared. The squad was always anxious to work.
The place looked good. He would slip Beatriz a couple of extra fifties. Though the kitchen needed more work.
The evolution would go down in the living room. He rearranged the furniture as necessary. He could already hear the sounds of Sunset Boulevard. They’d grow louder as the night progressed. Cars turned at De Longpre, the geometrical array of headlight and shadow climbing up the wall and moving across the sprayed stucco ceiling.
Melvin sat in the cool and the dark and breathed deeply. A breeze eddied through the room. What food wasn’t represented up on Sunset? Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Middle Eastern. Steaks, chops, barbecue.
The phone rang. Sylvette. Good. “Hello?”
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