Stardust

by Robert B. Parker

  “Yes, please.”

  “Zenith always puts people up at the Westwood Marquis,” Mindy said. “Okay with you?”

  “I’ll make do,” I said.

  “Okay. Corner Hilgard and LeConte, in Westwood Village.”

  “I’ll find it,” I said.

  “Super sleuth,” she said, and hung up.

  I checked out of the Islandia and headed back up the freeway. Having a production coordinator wasn’t bad. Maybe I should employ one. I needed a hotel reservation and airline bookings every two, three years. In between times she could balance my checkbook.

  The drive from San Diego to L.A. is not much more interesting than the drive from L.A. to San Diego. While I drove, I thought about what I was doing. As usual I was blundering around and seeing what I could kick up. So far I’d kicked up a child and another significant other in Jill Joyce’s life.

  So what?

  So I hadn’t known that before.

  So how’s it help?

  How the hell do I know?

  The Westwood Marquis had flower gardens and two swimming pools and a muted lobby and served tea in the afternoon. All the rooms were suites. Zenith Meridien must be doing okay.

  Everybody I saw in the lobby was slender and tended to Armani sport coats with the sleeves pushed up. I had on jeans and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. My luggage was a gray gym bag with ADIDAS in large red letters along the side. I felt like a rhinoceros at a petting zoo.

  I unpacked in my pale rose room and took a shower. Then I called an L.A. cop I knew named Samuelson and at 3:30 in the afternoon I was in my rental car heading downtown, on Wilshire.

  The homicide bureau was located in the police building on Los Angeles Street. Samuelson’s office looked like it had eight years ago when I was in there last. There was a desk, a file cabinet, an air conditioner under the window behind Samuelson’s desk. The air conditioner was still noisy and there was still something wrong with the thermostat because it kept cycling on and shutting off as we talked. Samuelson appeared not to notice. He was a tall guy, nearly bald, with a droopy mustache and tinted aviator-style glasses. His corduroy jacket hung on a hook on a hat rack behind the door. Beyond the glass partition the homicide squad room spread out like squad rooms in every city. They all seemed to have been designed from the same blueprint.

  “Probably a squad room on Jupiter,” I said, “looks just like this.”

  Samuelson nodded. He had on a white shirt and a red and blue striped tie with the tie at half mast and the collar unbuttoned. He leaned back in his swivel chair and put his hands behind his head. He wore his gun high on his belt on the right side.

  “Last time I saw you,” Samuelson said, “you’d finished fucking up a case of ours.”

  “Always glad to help out,” I said.

  “So what do you need?” Samuelson said.

  “I’d like to talk with a guy named Victor del Rio.”

  Samuelson showed no reaction.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “He’s not listed in the L.A. book,” I said. “I was wondering if you had anything on him.”

  “Why do you want to talk with him?” Samuelson said.

  “Would you buy, ‘it’s confidential’?”

  “Would you buy, ‘get lost’?”

  “I’m backtracking on a murder in Boston; del Rio was once intimate with a figure in the case. He fathered her daughter.”

  “And the figure?” Samuelson was perfectly patient. He was used to asking. He learned everything he knew this way. One answer at a time, nothing volunteered. If he minded it didn’t show.

  “Jill Joyce,” I said.

  “TV star?”

  “Un huh.”

  “You private guys get all the glamour work,” Samuelson said. “She try to bang you yet?”

  “Ah, you know Miss Joyce,” I said.

  Samuelson shrugged. “Victor del Rio runs the Hispanic rackets in L.A.”

  “That’s heartwarming,” I said. “A success story.”

  “Yeah, a big one,” Samuelson said.

  “So where do I find him?” I said.

  “If you annoy del Rio you will be in bigger trouble than I can get you out of,” Samuelson said.

  “Why do you think I’ll annoy him?” I said.

  “Because you annoy me,” Samuelson said. “And I’m a cupcake compared to del Rio. You got a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “You licensed in California?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not,” Samuelson said. “Del Rio’s got a place in Bel Air.”

  “Not East L.A.?”

  “Are you kidding,” Samuelson said. “That’s where he makes his money. It’s not where he lives.”

  “You got an address?”

  “Wait a minute,” Samuelson said. He picked up the phone and spoke into it. Outside in the main squad room an L.A. cop with his handcuffs dangling from his shoulder holster was talking to a Hispanic kid wearing a bandanna wrapped around his head. The cop would lean forward every once in a while and tilt his head up to full face by chucking him firmly under the chin. The kid would hold the gaze for a moment and then his head would drop again.

  Samuelson hung up and scribbled an address on a piece of paper. He handed me the paper.

  “Off Stone Canyon Road, you know where that is?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t give del Rio a lot of lip,” Samuelson said. “I’m overworked now.”

  I stood and tucked the address into my shirt pocket.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I can’t give you a lot of help with del Rio,” Samuelson said. “He is very connected.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Detective to the stars.”

  24

  BEL Air had its own gate, opposite the point where Beverly Glen jogs on Sunset. There was a gatehouse and alert members of the Bel Air patrol in evidence. I went past the gate on Sunset and turned into Stone Canyon Road. There was no gate, no members of the private patrol. I was always puzzled why they bothered with the gatehouse. Stone Canyon Road wound through trees and crawling greenery all the way up to Mulholland Drive. I wasn’t going that far. About a mile in I turned off the drive onto a side road and 100 yards farther I turned in between two beige brick pillars with huge wrought-iron lanterns on the top. I stopped. There was a big wrought-iron gate barring the way. Beyond the gate a black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows was parked. I let my car idle. On the other side of the gate the Mercedes idled. The temperature was ninety. Finally a guy got out of the passenger side of the Mercedes and walked slowly toward the gate. He wore a black silk suit of Italian cut and a white dress shirt buttoned to the neck, no tie. His straight black hair was slicked back in a ducktail, and his face had the strong-nosed look of an American Indian. He stood on the inside of the gate and gestured at me. I nodded and got out of the car.

  “Name’s Spenser,” I said. “I’m working on a case in Boston and I need to see Mr. del Rio.”

  “You got some kind of warrant, Buck?” His voice had a flat southwestern lilt to it. He spoke without moving his lips.

  “Private cop,” I said and handed him a business card through the gate. He didn’t look at it. He simply shook his head at me.

  “Vamoose,” he said.

  “Vamoose?”

  “Un huh.”

  “Last time I heard someone say that was on Tom Mix and his Ralston Straight Shooters.”

  The Indian wasn’t impressed. He gestured toward my car with his thumb, and turned and started away.

  “Tell your boss it’s about somebody named Zabriskie,” I said.

  The Indian stopped and turned around.

  “Who the hell is Zabriskie,” he said, “and why does Mr.
del Rio care?”

  “Ask him,” I said. “He’ll want to see me.”

  The Indian paused for a moment and pushed his lower lip out beyond his upper.

  “Okay,” he said, “but if you’re horsing around with me I’m going to come out there and put your ass on the ground.”

  “You don’t sound like a Ralston Straight Shooter,” I said.

  The Indian tapped on the window on the driver’s side. It rolled down silently. He spoke to the driver, and the driver handed him a phone. The Indian spoke on the phone again and waited, and spoke again. Then he listened. Then he handed the phone back inside the Mercedes and walked toward the gate. The gate swung open as he walked toward it.

  “I’ll ride up with you,” he said.

  “How nice,” I said.

  We got in my car and headed up the drive. The gate swung silently shut behind us. The roadway wound uphill through what looked like pasture land. Trees defined the borders of the property, but inside the borders was smooth lawn and green grass grew thickly under the steady sweep of a sprinkler system. To my left a young woman on a white horse came up over the crest of a low hill and reined in the horse and watched as the car went past. Then we came around another turn in the road and there was the house, a long, low structure with many wings that sprawled over the top of the next hill in a kind of undulating ramble. It was white stucco with the ends of the roof beams exposed.

  “Park over there,” the Indian said.

  I put the rental car in a turnaround that was paved with crushed oyster shells and we got out and walked back toward the house. The Indian rang the doorbell.

  We waited.

  The front door was made to look as if it had been hammered together from old mesquite wood and had probably cost $5,000. The plantings along the foundation of the house were low and tasteful and tended to bright red flowers. I could smell the flowers, and the grass, and a hint of water flowing somewhere, and even fainter, a hint of the nearly sweet smell of horses. A Mexican guy opened the door. He was medium-sized and agile-looking with shoulder-length hair and a diamond stud in his ear. Behind him was another Mexican, bigger, bulkier, with a coat that fit too tight and a narrow tie that was knotted up tight to his thick neck.

  Nobody said anything. The Indian turned and walked back toward my car. The graceful Mexican man nodded me into the house. Inside there was a large foyer with benches that looked like antique church pews on three walls. Three or four other Mexican men lounged on the benches. None of them looked like a poet. The slender Mexican made a gesture with his hands toward the wall, and I leaned against it while he patted me down. The bulky one stood and stared at me.

  “Gun’s under the left arm,” I said.

  Nobody said anything. The Mexican took my gun from my shoulder holster and handed it to the bulky guy. He stuck it in the side pocket of his plaid sport coat. The slender Mexican straightened and jerked his head for me to follow him. We went through an archway to the left and along a corridor that appeared to curve along the front of the house, like an enclosed veranda. We stopped at a door with a frosted glass window and the slender Mexican knocked and opened the door.

  He nodded me through.

  “Cat got your tongue?” I said.

  He ignored me and came in behind me and closed the door. Through the frosted glass I could see the shadow of the bulky Mexican as he leaned against the wall outside.

  Behind a bare wooden desk a man said, “What about Zabriskie?”

  He looked like a stage Mexican. He had a thin droopy mustache and thick black hair that seemed uncombed and fell artfully over his forehead. He was wearing a Western-cut white shirt with billowy sleeves, and he was smoking a thin black cigar.

  “You del Rio?” I said.

  Behind the stage Mexican there was a low table, as plain as the desk. On it was a picture of an aristocratic-looking woman with black hair touched with gray, and beside it, a picture of a young woman, perhaps twenty, with olive skin and a strong resemblance to Jill Joyce. I was pretty sure I had a picture of her when she was younger, inside my coat pocket.

  “I asked you a question, gringo.”

  “Ai chihuahua!” I said.

  Del Rio smiled suddenly, his teeth very white under the silly mustache.

  “Then Chollo here sings a couple of choruses of ‘South of the Border,’” he said, “and we all have tortillas and drink some tequila. Si?”

  “You got a guitar?” I said.

  “The ‘gringo’ stuff impresses a lot of anglos,” del Rio said. “Makes them think I’m very bad.”

  “Scared the hell out of me,” I said.

  “I can see that,” del Rio said.

  Chollo had gone to one side of the office and lounged in a green leather armchair, almost boneless in his relaxed slouch. His black eyes had no meaning in them.

  “You see how we scared him, Chollo?” del Rio said.

  “I could improve on it, Vic, if you want.” It was the first time he’d spoken. Neither he nor del Rio had even a hint of an accent.

  “You sure you guys are Mexican?” I said.

  “Straight from Montezuma,” del Rio said. “Me and Chollo both. Pure bloodline. What’s this about Zabriskie?”

  I took the picture out of my inside pocket and put it in front of del Rio. He looked at it without touching it. I picked it up again and put it back in my pocket.

  “So?” del Rio said.

  “Your daughter,” I said.

  Del Rio didn’t speak.

  “I got it from her grandmother.”

  Del Rio waited.

  “Anything you don’t want him to know?” I said.

  “Chollo knows what I know,” del Rio said. “Chollo’s family.”

  “How nice for Chollo,” I said. “I know who your daughter’s mother is.”

  “Yes?”

  “Jill Joyce,” I said, “America’s cutie.”

  “She tell you that?” del Rio said.

  “No,” I said. “She hasn’t told me anything, and half of that is lies.”

  Del Rio nodded.

  “That would be Jill,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Information,” I said. “It’s like huevos rancheros to a detective.”

  “Si,” del Rio said.

  “Were you and Jill married?” I said.

  Del Rio leaned back a little in his chair with his hands resting quietly on the bare desktop in front of him. His nails were manicured. I waited.

  “Your name is Spenser,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Okay, Spenser. You think you’re a tough guy. I can tell. I see a lot of people who think they are a tough guy. You probably are a tough guy. You got the build for it. But if I just nod at Chollo you are a dead guy. You understand? Just nod, and . . .” He made an out sign, jerking his left thumb toward his shoulder.

  “Yikes,” I said.

  “So you know,” del Rio said, “you’re on real shaky ground here.”

  “It goes no further than me,” I said.

  “Maybe it doesn’t go that far,” del Rio said. “Why are you nosing around in my life in the first place?”

  “I’m working on a murder in Boston,” I said. “And I’m working on protecting Jill Joyce. The two things seem to be connected and your name popped up.”

  “Long way from Boston,” del Rio said.

  “Not my fault. Somebody has been threatening Jill Joyce. Someone killed her stunt double. Jill won’t tell me anything about herself, so I started looking and I found her mother and then I found you.”

  Del Rio looked at me again in silence.

  “Okay, Spenser. I met Jill Joyce when she was Jillian Zabriskie and she was trying to be an actress, and I was starting to build my career. We were together awhile.
She got pregnant. I had a wife. She didn’t want the kid, but she figured it would give her a hold on me. Even then I had a little clout. So she had it and left it with her mother. I got her some parts. She slept with some producers. I supported the kid.”

  “You still got the same wife?”

  “Yes. Couple years after Amanda was born, Jill’s mother started disappearing into the sauce. She was never much, but . . .” He shrugged. The shrug was eloquent. It was the first genuine Latin gesture I’d seen. “So my wife and I adopted her.”

  “Your wife know about you and Jill?”

  “No.”

  “She know you’re the kid’s father?”

  “No. She thinks we adopted her from an orphanage. We don’t have any other children.”

  “How old is Amanda now?”

  “Twenty.”

  “What happens if your wife finds out?”

  “Whoever told her dies.”

  “What happens to her?”

  Again the eloquent shrug. “My wife is Catholic,” del Rio said. “She is a lady. She would feel humiliated and betrayed. I won’t let that happen.”

  “Amanda know?”

  “No.”

  We all were silent then, while we thought about these things.

  “And Jill knows better than to talk about this,” I said.

  “Jill don’t want to talk about it. Jill don’t want anyone to know she got a spic baby.”

  “But if someone was looking into things you might want to squelch that,” I said.

  “I wanted to, I would,” del Rio said.

  “What if you sent some soldier out there to clip her and he got the wrong one,” I said.

  “Get you killed,” del Rio said, “thinking things like that.”

  I nodded. “Something will, sooner or later,” I said.

  “Most people prefer later,” del Rio said.

  We all thought a little more.

  “I don’t like you for it,” I said. “It’s too stupid. Killing Jill or somebody else like that stirs up more trouble than it squashes. You’d know that.”

  “Haven’t killed you yet,” del Rio said.

  “Same reason,” I said. “You don’t know who knows I’m here.”