Cold Heart

by Lynda La Plante

  He sighed, and shrugged his big shoulders. ‘Well, I might as well. I mean, we’ve got her sewn up - the gun was hers, her fingerprints were on it, and when she was brought into the station she virtually admitted it. We got enough witnesses to sink the fucking Titanic who say she threatened to shoot him, plus, as far as we can make out, she’s the main beneficiary of his estate - he’s got quite an art collection.’ Sharkey took a swig of beer and set the bottle down on the table. ‘Though from what I can make out, there’s not all that much in the way of liquid assets. Way I hear it, this so-called production company cum studio may go bust, which would soak up the cash from the collection.’ Sharkey cocked his head to one side. ‘But maybe she didn’t know that.’

  ‘Ah, but you do,’ Lorraine said.

  ‘Yeah, we checked him out. He’s got a share in a gallery run by an ex-wife, but lately he’d been living from hand to mouth.’

  ‘Blackmailing anyone he could,’ Lorraine added, watching Sharkey. He didn’t react.

  ‘Yeah, we figured that one. He was a real sleazeball, but we don’t have a suspect in that area.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  Sharkey took another gulp of beer. ‘Not sure of anything but the little lady. She pulled the trigger, maybe not for his money – maybe she knew he didn’t have any – but she shot him. We’ve got a few statements from Mr Nathan’s ever-loving friends that he knocked her around and that she cheated on him. These Hollywood types screw anything that moves, and Nathan certainly did his share – you see any of his movies?’ Lorraine shook her head. ‘Soft porn, and apparently he always roadtested his leading ladies – mind you, so would I if I had the chance.’

  Lorraine’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She wondered how much she should tell him, and how much he was holding back.

  ‘You know she was pregnant?’

  He nodded. ‘We also know the child may not have been his – she was screwing Raymond Vallance. He was interviewed, shitting himself, not about the shooting – he’s got an alibi, apparently—’ Lorraine registered that piece of information with interest ‘– but about it getting out, you know, harming his career. Someone should tell him he’s been on the skids for the past ten years. The only way he’s ever going to see his name in the papers again is to be up on a fucking charge.’

  Lorraine gave another chilly smile. ‘You know Harry Nathan made a lot of tapes? His phone calls, and people coming to the house, plus a few . . . adult material movies with Vallance and his ex-wives.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Sharkey lied. This was news to him. ‘We’re checking it out.’

  Well, some of the recordings have come my way, and I’ll be sending them over – don’t want to lose my PI licence for obstructing the course of justice.’ She paused a moment. ‘What I’m thinking is maybe someone didn’t like the idea of being filmed,’ she went on. ‘Maybe didn’t like it so much they pulled the trigger – and Cindy Nathan didn’t.’

  Sharkey sighed, then leaned forward. ‘Look, he was garbage, but he’d been garbage for a long time. Sure he hit on everyone for money – he was a con man, he conned anyone and anything he could, it was a way of life. Once he stopped directing, he sure as hell couldn’t produce a movie. He used them to score the chicks, maybe made a few bucks at the same time but he had a big lifestyle, so he hit on his friends, even his housekeepers – their wages haven’t been paid for months. But nothing we’ve dug up, and no one we’ve interviewed, has changed my department’s opinion. We think his wife, in a fit of jealous rage – and she could apparently throw quite a performance in that area – had had enough. She took her own gun, a weapon he had given to her and shown her how to use, and she waited until he was in the pool and popped him. Like I said, she’s virtually admitted it.’

  ‘What about his ex-wife?’

  ‘Kendall Nathan?’ he asked, and drained the last of the beer. ‘She’s been questioned, and she doesn’t have a motive.’

  Lorraine reached for another cigarette. ‘She inherits half of the gallery, where I visited her today – and somebody sliced through my brake cable right afterwards.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ He didn’t seem interested.

  ‘Yeah. She also knew about the tapes in my office, and someone broke in and poured acid over them.’

  He stared at her, waiting for more.

  ‘I don’t think Cindy killed him. I think somebody’s fitting her up for it – maybe one of the people he was blackmailing, I dunno, and . . .’ Should she tell him about the second bullet? The parked jeep? He wasn’t giving her much in return.

  ‘And?’ he urged her.

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘You reported the damage to your car?’ He was checking his watch. ‘If someone slashed my brake cable, I’d be worried. Did you report it?’ he asked again.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t.’ Lorraine frowned.

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘No. Guess I’ll just be careful where I park.’

  ‘You got any idea who it might have been?’

  ‘No, absolutely none,’ Lorraine said, and Sharkey checked his watch again. ‘I gotta go. Sorry I couldn’t be more help. If you come up with anything, you know my mobile number.’

  ‘I’ll pay the cheque,’ she said, opening her purse. She took out three hundred-dollar bills and folded them. ‘You settle up for me, will you?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, as he raked the bills across the table. ‘You string out your PI job, sweetheart. I would if I was in your shoes – you’ve got a while before the trial. Get what you can, and if anything else happens, I’d report it. You lived quite a life, didn’t you? So I’d think about who might want to fuck with your car.’

  Lorraine stood up. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

  He watched her walk out, pause at the edge of the terrace and slip on a pair of dark glasses. He wondered how much she was getting paid by Cindy Nathan, and how he’d slip in the video and phone recordings to the new lieutenant. They hadn’t had a sniff of that but he’d look into it now.

  It was just after three when Lorraine collected her car and drove back to the garage under the office, making sure to ask the valet to park her car close to his booth. She felt hot and tired, and the meeting with Sharkey had given her nothing new. She couldn’t stop thinking about who had wanted to harm her. She wasn’t frightened, exactly, just uneasy, and by the time she got into her office she was in a foul mood.

  ‘Cops have Cindy Nathan down for it, don’t even appear to be looking elsewhere,’ she told Decker. He was elbow-deep in all the data they had got together so far on Cindy’s case. She walked towards her own office, ignoring the thump of Tiger’s tail. ‘Book me a flight tomorrow for East Hampton, New York State. I want to see Sonja Nathan.’ She kicked her door shut and sat down at her desk, where her mood become blacker.

  Five minutes later, Decker tapped on the door. ‘I’ve got you a flight at eight a.m. with American Airlines. Manhattan International limos will collect you and drive you to East Hampton, and you’re booked into the Maidstone Arms. I have no idea what Sonja Nathan’s address is – do you want me to call Cindy and check? Be a pity to go all that way and find out she may not be there.’

  Lorraine muttered something, and Decker moved closer. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Ask Cindy Nathan for the phone number, and leave me alone – I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘Fine, and when you are, so to speak, in the air, do

  you want me to look after Tiger? I’m not supposed to have pets in the house, but for one night I don’t see that’ll be a problem.’

  ‘Yeah, thank you,’ Lorraine answered gruffly.

  He shut the door quietly.

  Lieutenant Jake Burton, new head of the detective division in the Beverly Hills Police Department, stood with his back to the room, noticing that the room still smelt of paint. His office had been freshly decorated, and was now as immaculate as the man himself. Burton stood six feet two with a tight, muscular body, and blond hair cut close to his head in an exp
ensive salon style that flattered his chiselled face. His slight tan made his light blue eyes appear even bluer, and his teeth even more brilliantly white. His nickname in the Army had been ‘Rake’, but now that he was in the police force, and had moved up the ranks with ruthless determination, he didn’t like nicknames any more. He knew that his subordinates thought he was a cold bastard, and in some ways he was, but he had been shipped in to clean up rumours of officers taking bribes and kickbacks, and it was a job he intended to do to the best of his ability.

  Burton was originally from Texas, but he had travelled widely and his roots were now detectable only as a faint burr in his voice. It was in the army that he’d qualified as an attorney - he was prepared to thank Uncle Sam for that, but not for shipping him out to Vietnam with one of the last units dispatched. He had been there only two months before the conflict ended, but those two months lived on in his mind, and had marked him deeply. He never talked about it, or referred to himself as a veteran simply because he didn’t think of himself as a one, having spent so little time in Vietnam and taken so little part in the war. It had been a nightmare experience which he buried deep inside, and on his return, he had left the army and enrolled in police academy. He was then only twenty-three, but older than most other recruits, and used that to his advantage. Before he had even graduated from the academy, he was earmarked as an officer to watch. He had been married for a short while and his wife, a secretary, had claimed in her divorce petition that, in fact, he was married to his job. He still was in many ways, although he was hitting the mid-forties. He had some private life now but it was mostly fraternizing with other officers, playing squash or tennis, for Burton was as obsessive about his physical fitness as he was about his job.

  He had done such good work in Santa Barbara, cleaning up the department and weeding out officers who were found to be taking bribes, that he had become known for his ability and, above all, for his unimpeachable integrity. Jake Burton was as straight as they made ’em, and when the opportunity arose to move to LA, to a job with enhanced status, he had readily accepted it.

  He had, at the time, been involved with a divorcée and the time had seemed right to move on from her too. Recently, he had been dating a girl from the legal department, a well-groomed, pretty brunette with intelligent brown eyes, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to make a commitment.

  At the knock on his door Burton’s attention snapped back to the present. ‘Come in,’ he said sharply, straightening the row of brand new, sharpened pencils on his pristine desk.

  ‘You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?’

  Burton nodded and opened a file of reports on the Cindy Nathan case. ‘Sit down.’ He gestured to a hard-backed chair in front of his desk. ‘What’s this about tapes?’

  Sharkey cleared his throat. ‘I got a tip-off. Apparently Nathan recorded everything but bowel movements.’

  ‘And this is the first we’ve heard of it?’

  Sharkey nodded. ‘He filmed everyone coming in and out of the house on security cameras, and also some porno stuff with the wives, but I doubt if the tapes will tell us anything we don’t already know. I mean, everybody in LA knew Cindy Nathan was a fucking whore.’

  ‘Really?’ Burton said coldly. ‘You had access to these tapes?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So did this informant - whoever tipped you off- have access to them?’

  ‘Cindy Nathan sent them to her.’

  Burton turned the pages of the report, then tapped it with his index finger.

  ‘Why would Cindy Nathan send the tapes to this informant?’

  Sharkey squirmed in his seat. ‘Well, she’s a private dick, hired by Mrs Nathan.’

  ‘Really?’ Burton said softly. ‘So how did this interaction come about?’

  ‘Well, she called me . . .’

  ‘Yes. And?’ Burton waited for a reply, tapping his desk with one of the needle-sharp pencils. He neither liked nor trusted Sharkey.

  ‘She wanted information - you know, do a trade.’

  Burton waited, his eyes on Sharkey. A trade in what, exactly, Detective?’

  ‘Well, you know, what I’d got - et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘Did you tell her anything relevant to the investigation?’

  ‘Hell, no, nothing like that.’

  ‘Did she pay you?’

  ‘Of course not. Didn’t give her nothing.’ Sharkey grinned.

  ‘I sincerely hope not. So what is the lady’s name?’

  ‘She used to be a cop.’

  ‘So did most PIs. What’s her name, Detective?’

  Sharkey sucked in his breath. ‘Lorraine Page.’

  Burton opened the file again, and appeared to be devoting his full attention to it as he said quietly, ‘So, tell me about this lady, this Lorraine Page.’

  CHAPTER 6

  CINDY NATHAN had always known something like this would happen: now that it had she found herself strangely calm, as though the fate she had always known was walking just behind her had finally taken her hand.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ the man said, and she slowly unbuttoned the white shirt and took it off.

  She began to unfasten the zip of the tight aqua jeans, then stopped. ‘Will I take off my shoes?’ she asked docilely, as though speaking to the nurse at school.

  ‘Everything.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and unbuckled her high ankle-strap sandals, then pulled off her jeans with her underwear still inside. She was naked now except for a choker of tiny black glass beads, strung into a fine pattern like a broad strip of lace. He did not look at her: the female body held no mystery for him.

  ‘Now go into the bathroom,’ he said. ‘Take that thing off from round your neck.’

  At eight fifteen that evening, Juana cooked supper at the Nathan house and pressed the number for Cindy’s bedroom on the intercom. There was no answer. Juana was a little annoyed and wondered if Cindy wanted to eat in her room instead of at the dining table, where the meal had been laid. She dialled Cindy again just after eight twenty, and still received no reply from the room, although the girl had specifically ordered what she wanted to eat – a grilled swordfish steak, salad of fennel and watercress dressed with lime juice, and no wine or fruit, just a glass of sparkling water.

  Juana prepared a tray and rang again at eight thirty, but still no one picked up. She wondered if Cindy could be taking a shower, waited a few minutes more, then asked Jose to go up to Cindy’s room and check that she was all right. Jose went upstairs, tapped on the bedroom door and listened outside. He could hear music playing quite loudly, but there was no answer from Cindy. He tried the door, only to find it locked. Perplexed, he returned to the kitchen and he and Juana ate their own supper. At nine fifteen Jose went to Cindy’s room again. This time he banged loudly on the door, and then, with Juana at his side, used his pass key to enter the room.

  The room was empty, and the clothes Cindy had been wearing were strewn across the bed, her shoes discarded beside it. Jose went towards the closed bathroom door, tapped, and waited a moment. He could hear the shower running, and turned to Juana. ‘She’s taking a shower. I told you not to worry.’

  Juana pursed her lips, put the tray down on a bedside table and closed the doors to the balcony, through which the curtains were billowing in the wind. Jose had already left the room. Juana crossed back to the bathroom and listened again: the water was still running. She knocked and called that she had left Cindy’s supper tray on the bed, relocked the bedroom door and went back downstairs.

  Lorraine arrived home after driving up to Santa Monica to walk Tiger on the promenade, a pretty stretch of parkland on the bluffs above the beach, just as darkness was falling at about six o’clock. She immediately checked her answerphone, to find only one message from Decker, giving Sonja Nathan’s home number, which Lorraine took down. After a shower, she fixed herself some agnolotti and salad, cooked up some meat and vegetables for Tiger, and was just about to make the call to Sonja Nathan when Tiger let r
ip with a deep bark, then growled as footsteps became audible on the walkway up to the apartment.

  Lorraine went to the window and looked down into the road. She saw the Chewy, parked directly underneath. She didn’t recognize the car and looked quickly at her watch. Just after ten. After the incident with the brakes, she was immediately tense, and Tiger was ready to pounce.

  The door buzzed, and Lorraine hesitated before she picked up the entryphone. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Lieutenant Burton, LAPD.’ The voice was neither friendly nor familiar.

  Lorraine looked out of her window and could see Burton standing back from the front door on the steps. He was holding his ID card up for her to see, so she pressed the door-release button and told Tiger to sit. The dog still wasn’t convinced and she had to hold his collar in one hand as she opened the door to the apartment.

  ‘Hi – can you just say hello to my dog?’

  Burton smiled. ‘Sure. Hi . . . Do I put out my hand or what?’

  ‘Just stay where you are, let him have a sniff. He’ll be okay soon.’

  As Burton leaned forward Tiger growled deep in his throat.

  ‘Good boy . . . good boy.’

  Lorraine slowly released her hold on the dog’s collar and he relaxed. ‘Sorry about that. Come in.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I should have called first, but . . . you want another look at my ID?’

  She smiled. ‘No, that’s okay.’

  Lorraine tried to think what the hell had brought Burton to her apartment, while smiling and offering him coffee or tea, both of which he refused.

  ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here?’

  ‘You could say that.’ She sat down opposite in an easy chair. Burton was not the kind of man she found attractive – she had always preferred men with darker colouring – but she was impressed by him. He seemed quite a cool guy, though the hair was too short, and judging from the pressed pants, polished shoes and so on, he was anally retentive. She laughed at her analysis.

  ‘Did I miss something?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just you being here all spick and span, and at the same time my mind is wondering what the fuck it is you want?’