the best.’
Kathy Forbes was silent for a moment. Berridge looked at her with patronizing interest and thought for the first time how pretty she was. She had dark shoulder-length hair, but today it was tightly tied back with a scarlet-and-yellow silk scarf. Her face was squarish, with high cheekbones and wide hazel-brown eyes. She had one of those nice short, straight noses he always liked, and a wide mouth that looked as if it could smile a lot and talk a lot and kiss a lot. Her figure wasn’t anything to complain about, either, in spite of her severe grey linen suit and her sheer grey stockings (seamed, too - he liked that). He thought: 25-years-old, married once and probably divorced, no children, a small-time career girl, Christopher Cross fan and aerobics enthusiast. A feminist until she can find a man who can really take care of her. One hundred per cent wholesome American girl, no dental fillings, closely-depilated underarms, sheer nylon panties, warm well-filled stockings. Breasts that are just a little too large to hold in one hand. At least 10% of US RDA, Ms Kathy Forbes, no doubt about it.
‘If you want to discuss the theories in more detail, I can at least do that with you,’ suggested Berridge. His voice dropped almost an octave. ‘I don’t think I really want to do it here, though. Maybe a restaurant? I haven’t eaten all day.’
‘Didn’t you order a diet burger?’ asked Chief Ruse, sarcastically.
‘A diet burger?’ asked Berridge, with an uncomfortable laugh. ‘What the hell would I need with a diet burger?’
‘Maybe you could slim down your head,’ said Chief Ruse.
There was another chime at the door and Chief Ruse went to answer it. It was Jackson Dawes from the mayor’s office, wanting to talk about the political side of this murder. ‘We don’t want Phoenix to look like the kind of place where …’ murmur, murmur. ‘Well, you understand what I’m saying, I’m not trying to put a lid on it, but …’
Kathy Forbes said to Berridge, ‘You’re really married?’
‘Separated. Considering divorce. Mary never liked the idea of police work. If s the hours, mainly. She’s a very
systematic kind of a lady, doesn’t like her life to be full of surprises.’
‘Are you really sure this was Margot Schneider? The woman who got beheaded?’
‘You want to see the evidence? There’s no question.’ ‘Then why did they do it? Why did they cut her head off? And why did they kill her, if she was nobody more important than a plain old Air Force widow? All the neighbours said she was sweet. Why should anybody want to kill a woman like that?’
Berridge folded a stick of gum into his mouth, and shrugged. Then, remembering his manners, he offered Kathy a piece. ‘Juicy Fruit?’
‘No, thanks. I think I’d better be getting back to the office. I want to file my story by ten.’
‘You don’t want dinner? We could go to Mother Tucker’s, it’s on the way back to town. They have a terrific salad cart.’
‘Well … maybe.’
But at that moment Chief Ruse came back into the kitchen, and slapped Berridge on the back. There isn’t any need for you to stay any later, Lieutenant. I’m sure Stella will be missing you as much as anybody ever can miss you.’
‘Stella?’ asked Kathy.
‘The delectable Mrs Berridge, Ms Forbes. Our ace detective here has one of the tastiest wives on the force. It makes you sick, doesn’t it? Sick to your stomach.’
Kathy smiled at Berridge tartly. Berridge, in spite of his bravado, couldn’t help blushing. ‘Yes, chief,’ said Kathy. ‘It does make you sick.’
‘Do you need a ride back to town?’ Berridge asked her. ‘Without stopping anywhere to eat.’ ‘No, thank you. I have my own car.’ ‘In that case, you can give me a ride. Just wait a couple of minutes while I make sure I’ve got everything. Chief, do you want to meet for breakfast tomorrow morning -say seven o’clock? I really want to run over this computer thing.’
Kathy waited in the kitchen while Chief Ruse and Lieutenant Berridge arranged meetings for the following day. She felt tired now; she had been up at six, as soon as news of Margot Schneider’s murder had broken. She felt like a cigarette, but it was nine weeks since she had smoked her last, and she was determined to keep up her record. This time, it was going to be for keeps. She didn’t want to be a slave to anything or anyone.
Lieutenant Berridge had been wrong about her age -she was 29 - but right about her divorce. In Los Angeles, six years ago, she had married an incandescently brilliant young actor, David Forbes, and for four years they had lived a life of fun and laughter and beach-parties and dancing at dawn. Then she had come home from a trip to Arizona to find David in bed with two wide-eyed girls of 13 and 14, and the world had split open like a broken alabaster egg.
Maybe she should have been more sophisticated about it, more Hollywood. After all, men needed their fun. But every single reaction inside her had been negative. She had married David for ever, however old-fashioned that seemed to be, and if it wasn’t going to be for ever, then it wasn’t going to be for one more minute. She had walked out.
She hadn’t asked him for anything, not even a half-share in their Westwood apartment. But he had given her his Mirada, probably on the advice of his lawyer, and, gratuitously, his complete collection of Miro lithographs. That had been the first thing he had ever said to her, ‘Come up and see my lithographs.’
While she waited, a police officer came into the kitchen with a large folder. He was slightly-built, round-shouldered, with a moustache, one of those police officers who always seemed to be called Rizzo or Wuschinsky^ and who always seem to be apologizing, even when they bust you. He put down a messy collection of magazines and photographs and papers on the kitchen table and said, ‘You seen Lieutenant Berridge? [ was supposed to hand over all this stuff to Lieutenant “Berridge/
‘He’ll be back directly,’ said Kathy. ‘He’s just talking to
Chief Ruse.’
‘Oh, right. Well, can I leave these here? You’ll make sure that Lieutenant Berridge gets them? I have to get home. It’s my birthday, would you believe, and my wife’s been planning this surprise party for weeks. They’ll all be hiding in the closet bursting their goddamned bladders if I don’t get back there and act like I don’t know what’s
going on.’
‘Okay,’ smiled Kathy. She took the file and shuffled it straight. ‘What shall I say your name was?’
‘Russo. Officer Russo. They’ll know who you mean.’
‘Not Rizzo?’
The policeman looked at her strangely. ‘Rizzo?’ he
asked.
‘It’s a private joke/ said Kathy. T’m sorry. I’ll give these papers to Lieutenant Berridge for you.’
‘It’s the stuff from Mrs Schneider’s attic,’ said Russo/ Rizzo. ‘There was nothing else up there, only clothes.’
‘All right, said Kathy.
Officer Russo left and Kathy was alone in the kitchen with Mrs Schneider’s papers. There was no question that she wasn’t going to look at them: the Flag’s ace girl reporter? She leafed through them hurriedly, her eyes flicking across insurance policies, invoices, lawyer’s bills, garage estimates, a small assembly of news-cuttings about Clark Gable, of all people, fastened together with a rusty paper-clip; a torn review of The Misfits (why The Misfits, of all movies?); and then something which stopped her cold. A Polaroid photograph, an old Polaroid photograph, because it was yellowed and blotchy and black-and-white, of a man who was smiling into the sunshine and just about to push back his thick shock of hair, a man whose face she had seen a thousand times before in news and magazine photographs, and yet never quite in this pose, never quite from this particular angle. It was John F Kennedy, no doubt about it. Smiling, alive, and wearing a white-short-sleeved tennis shirt. So alive, in fact, that he
had signed the Polaroid in ballpen: Tor N, special memories, P.’
‘P’? she thought to herself. It was certainly John F Kennedy, nobody else. Maybe ‘P’ stood for ‘President’, or some other pet name. But who was
‘N’? Maybe he had been writing ‘M’ for ‘Margof. She frowned at the Polaroid for almost two or three minutes before she heard Chief Ruse and Lieutenant Berridge come out of the murder room, and Lieutenant Berridge saying, ‘ … the blood tests tomorrow and then we can check with her doctor. Well, sure.’
She tucked the Polaroid into her suit pocket, and propped her mouth into an innocent smile. Lieutenant Berridge came into the kitchen and said, ‘How’re you doing? You still going to give me that ride?’
‘If you want,’ she smiled. ‘By the way, some officer called Rizzo left these papers for you.’
‘Rizzo?’
‘Russo. Same difference.’
Lieutenant Berridge pulled a face. ‘No wonder they never spell my name right in the goddamned newspapers. What did the Star call me last week? “Burberry.” I’ve had “Bullsbridge” before now.’
Kathy’s car was parked outside on the kerb. It was almost dark now, on Oasis Drive, except for a single gleam of sunset over the Phoenix Mountains. Under the evening clouds, the lights of Paradise Valley and Phoenix twinkled and shimmered, grids of diamonds in the desert evening, hope and desperation and hard work and fear, each represented by a single white sparkling light. Lieutenant Berridge opened the Mirada’s passenger door, and said, ‘Nice night. Mind if I smoke?’
Kathy started the engine, and pulled away from the kerb. ‘You really think you’re going to catch this joker?’ she asked him, as he snapped his lighter and noisily sucked in smoke.
‘We’ll get him.’
‘And you really think that Margot Schneider was Margot Schneider? And that Margot Schneider was the woman who got killed?’
‘What other woman could it possibly be?’ Lieutenant Berridge demanded. ‘Is there another woman who wears your slippers and your nightwear and your make-up, and lives in your house?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Well, do you think it’s likely that Margot Schneider had a woman like that in her house?’
Kathy made a left into 24th Street. ‘It’s a pretty heavy murder, all the same,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine how much strength that guy must have had? To cut her head off like that, in one?’
Lieutenant Berridge shrugged.
‘And what does Chief Ruse think about it?’ asked Kathy. ‘He seems pretty upset.’
‘Well, sure he is. Three streets to the east, and the whole thing would have been out of his jurisdiction, and dumped in the laps of Paradise Valley. But, don’t you worry, we’ll find out who did it. Crimes like this one have a way of solving themselves when you least expect it.’
They solve themselves? Isn’t that going to put you out of a job?’
They were passing the King of Beef restaurant, on the corner of Campbell Avenue. Lieutenant Berridge said, ‘You’re sure I can’t interest you in a steak?’
Kathy patted his knee, and smiled indulgently. ‘I should go home to Stella, lieutenant, if I were you. She’ll be wondering where you are, even if Mary isn’t.’
Lieutenant Berridge flipped open the car’s ashtray and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Screw you, Lois Lane,’ he told her.
Six
Unlike most Western drinking establishments, the bar they called ‘Hank’s’ was not one of those concrete bunkers with freezing cold air-conditioning, plastic Venetian blinds and a men’s room that looked as if it had recently been used as a setting for-a John Wayne fight movie. It didn’t even have one of those blue-and-red neon signs in the window saying ‘Coors’ or ‘Bud’ or ‘Eats.’
It was an old-fashioned parlour, in the only elegant house in the whole of Apache Junction, a gingerbread creation that had been built in the days of the Lost Dutchman Mine by an enterprising but ill-starred madame called Regma Smibbs. ‘Hank’ was a bald-headed one-time piano salesman called Rufus McNeice, whose wife had never held with drinking. Rufus had lived a double life for thirty years, preaching temperance in public but privately sneaking snorts from a flask which he attached to the underside of his car with magnets. When his wife had died in 1972, Hank had applied for a liquor licence, and opened up a bar where he wanted a bar the most, in his own front parlour.
Daniel was sitting there with Cara when Ronald Reagan Kinishba came in, fully dressed in black motorcycling leathers, swinging his black crash-helmet. He was tall, with a handsome pock-marked face and a nose that looked as if it had been modelled on the beak of a golden eagle. He raised his hand in greeting to Hank, behind the bar, and then came over and put down his helmet on the table in front of Daniel.
‘Hi, Ronald,’ said Daniel. ‘How are you doing?’
Ronald unzipped about ten different zippers, and took off his jacket, hanging it over the back of the chair. Underneath he wore a turquoise T-shirt that was emblazoned with the legend ‘Remember Ah-jon-jon.’
‘Well, I’m fine, he said, in his husky voice. ‘Are you going to buy me a beer?’
This is Cara,said Daniel. Cara nodded, and said, ‘Hi.’ Ronald planted his elbow on the table and examined her with some interest. She was wearing a tight pink T-shirt, through which her nipples showed as dark and provocative smudges; and an even tighter pair of pink Bermuda shorts.
‘Daniel been treating you good?’ asked Ronald. Cara laid her hand on top of Daniel’s and smiled. ‘As good as any man could, thank you.’
‘Cara’s from South Dakota, said Daniel. ‘What do you want? Coors Lite?’
‘That’ll do,said Ronald. Then, to Cara, ‘Are you passing through, honey, or staying?’ ‘A little of each, said Cara.
‘You be careful of this guy, Ronald warned her. ‘He has a very weird effect on women. In fact, he has a weird effect on everybody. The Indians have a word for guys like him.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Cara. ‘Sure. They call them “moksois.” ‘ ‘What does that mean?’ giggled Cara. Ronald looked at her with great mock-seriousness. Pot-belly, he said. Then he laughed out loud. ‘Don’t take any notice, said Daniel. Hank brought them over two Lites, and a pina colada for Cara. ‘Willy coming in tonight?’ he wanted to know. ‘He was supposed to be here by ten/ said Daniel. ‘But, well, you know what he’s like. Gets himself involved.’
‘Not just with work, either, grinned Ronald, dragging his chair six inches nearer to Cara, and staring at her with undisguised appreciation.
‘You keep your distance, Daniel warned him. ‘Be very careful/ Ronald murmured to Cara. ‘He’s very possessive, as well as being crazy. If he catches you even glancing at another guy, he’ll kill you. You don’t have any idea what you’ve let yourself in for.’
Cara giggled again, and said to Daniel, ‘He’s cute. Don’t you think so?’ ‘Cute? Is a sidewinder cute?’
‘Oh, come on, said Cara.
They talked and teased and drank for another hour, until well past eleven o’clock. Then Daniel checked his watch again, and said, ‘This isn’t like Willy, you know. He’s never on time, but he’s never as late as this. Particularly when there’s drinking time a-wasting.’
‘Maybe they gave him extra duty,’ suggested Ronald.
‘Why did your parents call you Ronald Reagan?’ asked Cara.
Ronald shrugged. They weren’t too bright, either of them. Well, they were quite bright, but they weren’t educated. They thought that if they named me after a famous white hero, I’d find it easier to get on in the white man’s world. The only famous white hero they knew was Ronald Reagan.’
‘At least they didn’t call you Mickey Rooney/ said Cara.
Daniel fidgeted for a while, and then said, T think I’ll call the base. Maybe he’s been held up.’
‘Well, why don’t you just go do that,’ said Ronald, inching even closer to Cara. ‘And - please - take as long as you like.’
Pete Burns the deputy sheriff came in, and gave them a wave of acknowledgement. He was a placid, big-bellied man, but he had booked Ronald eight times in two years for speeding, and he had always made it quite clear that he would happily run any citizen of Apache Junction straight into the pokey
at no notice flat if he or she even looked as if they were doing anything illegal. ‘Laws don’t get passed to get mocked/ he used to say, too often for it to be interesting. Ronald, just as often, had accused him of ‘legislative flatulence’.
Daniel went out into the hall. Hank had fixed a pay-phone by the front door, next to the elephant’s-foot umbrella stand. Daniel thumbed in a dime and dialled 988 2611, the number of Williams Air Force Base.
Inside the parlour, Ronald was saying to Cara, ‘What’s a foxy-looking lady doing with a nice tame guy like Daniel? Did you ever ride on the back of a motorcycle? Pillion?
The wind in your hair, the stars in your eyes, and 749 cc of throbbing engine clutched between your thighs?’
Cara said, ‘Daniel’s cute.’
‘Listen, nobody said he wasn’t. But I’m talking about four transverse-mounted cylinders, double overhead cams, transistorized pointless ignition and Pentroof heads,
Cara said, ‘You’re talking about what?’
Just then, Daniel came back in again. He looked perplexed. He sat down and said, ‘He’s not there. They say he hasn’t been there all day.’
‘Well, maybe he hasn’t,
‘No, he specifically told me he was going to go back to the armoury to run some tests,
‘Maybe he changed his mind,
‘It wasn’t the kind of thing he was going to change his mind about. It was something urgent.’
Ronald pulled a face. ‘I don’t know what to say. If he isn’t there, he isn’t there,
Daniel finished his beer. Maybe Ronald was right, and maybe he was just being ridiculous. But he couldn’t help remembering what Willy had been telling him so earnestly this morning: all that stuff about missiles that wouldn’t work against Soviet radar signatures. All that stuff about ‘heads will roll’. And now, he wasn’t there.
Cara said, ‘You don’t have to worry. He’s a grown-up man. He’s a major in the Air Force, for Christ’s sake. I’m sure he can look after himself. Well, I hope to God he can look after himself, when you think that he’s supposed to be looking after us.’
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