This room was filled with stuff—endless typed-up scripts and treatments and letters, and then even larger amounts of near-undecipherable handwritten notes—Daniel Lamotte wrote like a drunk doctor—all of which might contain potentially useful information. But from what Clark knew of April Lamotte, and from what he’d seen up at Erewhon, it seemed doubtful. Had she been up here and sorted through this mess? After a quick search showed no carbons of that burned blue screenplay, it seemed likely.
Barbara Eshel couldn’t recall seeing or hearing anything untoward in Blixden Apartments, either, although she was often out trying to get the next edition of LA Truth to press, and comings, goings and strange noises at unlikely hours were hardly uncommon. Neither could she quite remember the exact last time that she’d heard the typewriter clacking in room 4A before Clark had dicked around with it yesterday. She was sure, though, that it was before last weekend. Maybe early last Friday.
Clients at a first interview would often tell Clark just how good it felt simply to talk. Now, he knew exactly what they meant. Barbara Eshel clearly had her own agenda, and might have shoved herself into his life by pointing a gun at him, but just running things through with her felt like some weight was lifting off his chest. As he finished dressing, they agreed that she’d wade through more of these papers, speak to Blixden Apartments’ other residents, check up on places Daniel Lamotte was likely to have visited for research, try to find out a bit more about his and April’s lives from the public records, and then maybe the addresses of some upmarket mental health clinics. All of which would keep her more than busy enough to stay out of his hair whilst he drove up toward the mountains to find the pine cabin—Larch Lodge—that Dan and April Lamotte supposedly owned.
“Let me see. This map looks almost new. You say it was found in her car?”
For all that she smelled nice, he wasn’t so sure that he was happy about the possessive way she was leaning over his shoulder to try to help him work out where he should be heading.
“Have you looked to see if there are any marks? Or, you know, worn bits where people have been prodding at it?”
“Of course I have.” He was doing it as she spoke.
“So the road up around here is where she’s supposed to have killed herself. And this… Lookee here. See—Bark Rise! It’s on the way to that lodge of theirs, Clark! It’s got to be. Can you remember what she wrote in the suicide note? It doesn’t say in the paper…”
She leaned back from him and pushed at her hair, which glowed auburn in the light streaming from the window, as he described what he could remember seeing on the notepad, which the police had kept.
“You mean different bits of phrases?” she said. “Sentences not complete? Doesn’t that sound like a draft, instead of something finished?”
“You’re trying to make sense of an act that never makes sense. Or rarely. Barbara, I’ve known suicides. I’ve done work that’s—”
“So you think she really did kill herself?”
He stood up. Even in this bright and cluttered room everything briefly darkened, faded. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wish I did, but…” He felt in his suit coat pocket as if some devastatingly clear idea might be in it. Instead, he found the typed envelope he’d taken from April Lamotte’s bedside drawer. Now, when he shook it out, barely a few grains of sand remained.
TWENTY SEVEN
HE LEFT THE GUN WITH BARBARA in room 4A, although he got her to empty the cylinder and shove the thing back the drawer where he’d found it. Down in the hallway, the day’s mail had arrived inside a rusted wire box hung on the back of the door. He sifted quickly through it. There wasn’t much for anyone, and only one letter addressed to Daniel Lamotte. The envelope, smooth and heavy and slick, had yet to absorb the must and damp of Blixden Apartments.
Inside were two invitation cards and a compliments slip from the office of Mr. Timothy Townsend, Senior Production Executive at Senserama Studios. Scrawled in a big, eager hand, the slip read:
See you both tonight!
In gold swirls and curlicues, the embossed cards beneath informed him that Herbert Kisberg requested the pleasure of Daniel and April Lamotte’s company that night at his Beverly Hills address. It seemed odd to see both those names written out like that. As if they were still real and alive.
He stood for a while on the sidewalk on Blixden Avenue, heard clock chimes through an open widow—it was ten already—and set and rewound his Longines watch. Then, fishing for change in his pockets, he headed for the phone booth. The air inside was fetidly hot. The heel of his shoe skidded on a used rubber on the concrete floor. Fishing for the newsprint advert for Nero Securities in his pocket, a strange chill came over him. What exactly was he doing? There was a steel mirror screwed in behind the phone set, but it was far too scarred with gum, grime and spittle to make out anything more than the vague and anonymous outline of a man’s face.
He checked the number he had for Nero Securities against the telephone listing, just to see if it was current. It was, and the operator put him through without question. Once again, the line just rang and rang.
The sudden sound of the change rattling into the tray as he pulled down the cradle made him shudder. He told himself to forget. Concentrate. Stay in character. What would a writer who worked in this city do on the day after his wife had supposedly committed suicide? Go on a long walk? Have a shot at some In Memoriam poetry? Drink himself stupid? Most likely all of those things. But first, he’d call his agent. If, that was, she didn’t happen to be his dead wife as well. He took a long breath and looked at his watch again. Then he checked the phone number on the compliments slip from the letter he’d just opened.
What sounded like the same glossy Senserama secretary who’d greeted them the day before put him straight through to Timmy Townsend’s office.
“Dan? Jesus—Dan. Is that really you?”
“Yeah, Tim. Have you heard—”
“Fuck. Jesus. It’s right here on my desk. How are you feeling ol’ buddy? How the fuck could a thing like that happen?”
“I just don’t know. It’s…” For a moment, he felt genuinely blocked-up. “… The police came to find me at Blixden Avenue right after you’d seen me yesterday.”
“Must have been awful. God, I’m sorry. Where are you now?”
“Still Downtown.”
“And you got that invitation I sent you for tonight?”
“Yes…”
“… Guess it seems ridiculous, right now, eh, Dan?”
“Guess it does…”
The pauses down the line were growing longer.
“Look, Danny boy. I know this is the worst possible time to suggest such a thing… Well, you know, maybe not… Fact is, Dan, the big Indian chiefs here at Senserama have read today’s report too. And here’s me, I mean I’m just some fucking squaw. Terrible thing to say, I know, but my balls are just the teeniest bit on the line here. And, let’s face it, you have been out of the loop for a while, credits-wise… Well, push come to shove, the smoke signals I’m getting are they want to know that you’re still the guy who’ll produce a working script with a shooting schedule this autumn.”
“Writers write, Tim. It’s what they do. Nothing’s going to change about that.”
“Great to hear you say that, Dan. And I believe you. But it might just be the teeniest bit helpful… Jesus, I feel such a shit for having to say this…”
“You want me to show my face at the party this evening? Show them that Daniel Lamotte’s still up to it?”
“Sounds like crud, I know. But yeah.”
He took a long breath. “Okay. Message received, Timmy. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Dan, you’re an absolute—”
He put the earpiece back in the cradle, thought for a moment, then jotted down the number of the booth. The kid Roger and his mates were clustered around the post box up the street as he came out.
“Hi there,” he called as the rest of them scattered and Roger shoved somet
hing into the back of his pants. “Thanks for that message last night on the windshield. It meant something. Never happened to actually see my wife, did you?”
“Never saw your wife, no.” The kid spat. “Never will now, by the look of it.”
So much for sympathy. Although the kid’s mini-hardman act was a million times better than Timmy Townsend’s balls-less squaw. “And thanks for keeping an eye on the car.”
“Yeah.”
“Another dime help?”
“Wouldn’t do no harm. But a half buck would do even better.” The kid took the two quarters, rubbed them as if they might be fake, palmed them into his pocket. “You in trouble? I mean, what with the police and your wife and that.”
“Wish I knew.”
“Well, if you don’t, pal—”
“Yeah, I know. Nobody does. But I got another little job you could do for me…”
Wary as a bird, the kid cocked his head and stood one-footed.
“… It’s no big deal. But assuming you’re around here as often as you seem to be, you could maybe listen out for that phone?”
“And do what?”
“There’s a girl up in those apartments I got doing some, ah, research for me that I might need to get a message to. You know her? Name’s Barbara Eshel.”
“You mean the kike?” The kid gave a grinning wink. “You got something sweet’n’sticky going on with her?”
“Where’d’you learn to talk like that?”
“Probably the same place you did.”
“Sure.” Clark gave up; the kid was still grinning, and sharp as a razor.
“I’ll see what I can do. Another fifty wouldn’t hurt, though, buddy.”
TWENTY EIGHT
HUNGRY, HE DROVE IN SEARCH of a local foodmarket or eatery. Downtown was a confusing jumble of dead ends and old shadows even on this bright morning. It was a district he’d never gotten the hang of. You could walk, drive or crawl here and some turreted building you thought you recognized could seem so close you were sure you were only a block off. Then you’d turn a corner and find some tunnel or ravine or whole run-down area you’d never seen before in your way. He drove on past the once-grand old rooming houses, then braked sharply and pulled in past a rundown lot when he saw a sun-faded sign for a place called Edna’s Eats.
Not so much a trolley car diner as a lunch wagon—barely a distant relative of one of those sleek steel and chrome Fodero creations you saw drawn up along the new strips toward the coast. Inside, hung fly papers and the thick brown air stirred to the creak of a fan. The sign above the chalked board of specials—bean and barley soup, pineapple pie, home made lemon sponge cake—stated NO SERVICE UNDER 5 CENTS. He took a table by the windows at the far side, lit up a Lucky Strike from Daniel Lamotte’s book of Edna’s Eats matches, and squinted through his glasses at the menu, which was covered with food stains. Meat hissed. Smoke drifted. Two guys a few empty tables along were talking about some insurance deal. An old woman with small dog in her basket was nursing a coffee. The well-dressed couple in the furthest, darkest corner were talking with quiet animation.
“You want… ?” The remains of a bruise was fading around the thin, tall waitress’ left eye. The name stitched on her lapel said MARY HAMILTON.
“How you doing Mary?”
“Oh, just fine.” She sighed a thin, tall waitress’ sigh.
“Mind if I ask a stupid question?”
“We don’t do credit.”
“Nothing like that.”
“Didn’t walk into no door, either.” She wiped her fingers down her apron and touched her face. “And the guy who did this has got balls even sorer than my face. Okay?”
“Nothing like that either. I was just wondering if you can remember seeing a guy in here who looks a bit like me. Tall, same kinda suit, these sort of specs. Same hereabouts ears and teeth as well. But with a beard…” He watched her eyebrow raise. “Told you it was a stupid question.”
“I heard stupider.” She gave the matter some thought. Or maybe she was just staring at him. “An’ I know who you mean. He was last in about five days ago. Maybe a tad less. Say about last Friday. Yeah. It was Friday for definite, and about this time. Don’t look that much like you, though, with or without the beard.
“So people keep telling me. He a regular?”
“You might say. Ain’t spoke as much to me as you in all the months I seen him, though. Don’t tip worth pickin’, either. Course, I only do mornings, so I quit at noon. And the guy’s usually got this notebook he writes in.”
“Alone?”
“Usually, yeah. But last time he was with this broad. Okay with the questions…? You want to order or not? I don’t get paid none to shoot the breeze.”
“This woman he was with—was she red haired, well dressed?”
Mary Hamilton watched as he unpeeled a dollar from Daniel Lamotte’s billfold and laid it on the table. Then she nodded. “… That’d be the one. Looker like her, you’d have thought she coulda done better.”
“What do you mean?”
“Guy’s obviously a boozer. Last time, f ’instance, came in okay but could barely stand up came time to leave. Lolling like Raggedy Anne. Woman had to help him—and, believe me, I know what a bastard that one is. Probably pissed his pants.”
“He was that bad?”
“What do I care? Woman say she had a car outside, and that was the last I heard and I ain’t talking to no police…”
He let all of that sink in. After all, April Lamotte had told him that she’d first met Dan at this diner on her way back from shifts at the Met, and that they’d come here since to discuss his work. And he knew that she was more than capable of doping someone. What it sounded like this waitress was describing was April Lamotte drugging and abducting her husband later on the very same Friday morning that Barbara Eshel last remembered hearing him typing in room 4A. What felt weird wasn’t the oddness of this, but the fact that it made sense.
“When they were talking before that, how did they seem?”
“He was plain agitated. Like he had something big and exciting he needed to explain.”
“Didn’t happen to hear what he was saying, did you?” He put out his cigarette in the tin ashtray and unfolded another one buck note.
Mary Hamilton skewed her mouth as she stared at him, then at the note, and then back at him again. “No,” she said eventually. “Like I said, he seemed agitated. And she was trying to calm things down at first. You know, being reasonable, the way us women are when men do what they’re best at an’ act pecker-stupid. At least, that was the drift. Spend too much time listening to what people say in this joint and you’d end up even more cracked than you are.”
“Anything happened since? People in asking questions?” She shook her head.
“Well thanks, Mary. I’ll have the standard breakfast with an extra glass of squeezed orange and a large coffee.”
“Well, hallelujah.” Mary Hamilton scribbled his order. “Used to be there, didn’t you?” she added as she bunched the notes from the table into her apron pocket.
“There what?”
She gazed up and away from him into the diner haze. Something softened the harsher edges of her face. “Up on that screen…” Her hand went to her hip. “Now, what was your name… ?”
“I used—”
“No, no, no—don’t tell me! I like things to stay the way they were. Meet someone. Talk to them. Find out they got bad breath and want to sell you dishcloths an’ aint too careful about how they prune their nails. All it does is mess with a girl’s head. I’ll go get that coffee…” She turned to slump away.
“Uh, one last thing, Mary.” She swiveled.
“That man and the woman. Where exactly were they sitting?”
“Over there,” she nodded to the furthest, darkest corner of Edna’s Eats.
“You mean where that couple are?”
“What couple?”
“That couple who were arguing over in the back…” He trai
led off. The booth was empty.
“There ain’t been no couple there, Mister. Ain’t served no one there all morning. Now, are you sure you want that extra juice… ?”
TWENTY NINE
UP ALONG ARROYO SECO past the neat, sweet Arts and Crafts houses and over the Colorado Street Bridge where Betty Bechmeir had hung herself, he paused to check April Lamotte’s roadmap outside a sprawl of new real estate signs on the fringes of Pasadena, then found the scenic byway which led north and east through green foothills. Soon, there were winding switchbacks. Increasingly fantastic views. Buzzards. Flashing waterfalls. Eagles. He checked the rearview for the umpteenth time and pushed the button which made the Delahaye’s top fold down.
A poker-burned rustic sign pointed to an overlook on the road’s right. He pulled in and stopped the Delahaye’s engine and climbed out. There was no one else around. There was no sound of any cars approaching on the road. This was some spot. The air was raucous with the wind, the trees, the sunlight, and with the tumbling rush of a creek which glimmered in the valley somewhere far beneath. The drop beyond the old wood and iron barrier was spectacular. Whether or not April Lamotte had chosen it, this was some place to die.
He pecked and peered at the loose gravel. Saw evidence of many recent cigarette butts, screwed-up Chesterfield packs, gritty lumps of discarded gum, half-eaten sandwiches, a few fluttering sheets of yesterday’s Van Nuys News. Cops were such slobs. Amid the recent swirl of car treads, there were also the wider tracks of what he took to be the ambulance and tow truck. He peered more carefully over the flimsily-guarded drop where rocks gnashed and tumbled through scrub larch toward the flashing creek. Something long and black had been tossed that way and was lying curled, nasty as a snake, about thirty feet beneath. His heart hammered. The wind rushed in his ears. The length of hose which had ended April Lamotte’s life had probably been thrown that way by the walkers who’d found her, or the guys from the tow truck. Evidence or not, no-one was going to risk climbing down there to get it. Neither was he.
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