The air tremored with unfinished business.
No!
A shiver ran through his body. The world shimmered and the leaves whispered. Then he pulled himself together and hurried down the hill. He would gather his things and go to the coast. Escape.
Inside the Ardmore penthouse, Thompson rummaged for some clean clothes, and for the key to the Ford. The apartment itself had the look of a world about to be forsaken. There were boxes stacked all about, and Alberta’s clothes lay strewn on the bed. He went to his closet and took among other things the white jacket he’d worn years ago to the premier of The Killing, a movie he’d written with Stanley Kubrick. The son of a bitch.
Alberta wasn’t anywhere around. Out on an errand, he guessed. Himself, he was going to the ocean.
He lugged his suitcase to the elevator. Outside, he found the Ford parked at the rear of the building, gleaming under the thin shade of a giant yucca, but its engine wouldn’t turn for him. It made an unhappy noise that grew steadily fainter and died away.
Then he saw Alberta emerge from Mrs. Myers’ green sedan. Mrs. Myers emerged too, a neighbor woman with whom Alberta sometimes went shopping—and the pair stood talking. Alberta wore a white blouse and black slacks. She held her hands up on her hips, and her breasts jutted against her white blouse. It was a posture he’d seen hundreds of times, and it always stirred his desire.
The women sauntered on towards the door. At the last minute, Alberta turned on her heels, as if surveying the parking lot.
Thompson was tempted to call out. In the old days, they would fight and afterwards it would be okay. They’d cuddle like teenagers, full of syrup, full of endearments:
Honey pumpkin. Sweet Dick. Lover girl. Joy of my life. Girlie puss.
Now she disappeared into the building. She did not see him, and he did not call out. Maybe, because in the back of his head somewhere he was thinking of Lussie Jones, imagining her in the seat beside him as he made his way down the shore.
He tried the car. The engine wouldn’t turn. The motor was silent as the dead.
He struggled the suitcase down the hill, sweating fiercely. Getting out was not so easy. On Hollywood Boulevard, he stepped again over all those stars embedded in the crumbling sidewalk. The clean-up crew was finished. The streets were empty and hot.
EIGHTEEN
Back at the hotel, the desk clerk was stoned. His head lolled, and his eyes were shiny. He wore a jacket of the type worn by organ monkeys, only more frayed. The red fabric was matted by age, its color bleached by the sun, and the gold braid was all but worn from the sleeves. The jacket, too, had its own odor about it. It gave the young man the combined smell of the many men who had worn it before, then left it to hang, unwashed, in the bell clerk’s closet.
“Messages?” Thompson asked.
“Huh?”
“Letters. Notes. Stationery scrawled with lipstick. Has anybody been by to see me?”
“Yeah. But nobody with lipstick.”
“Who?”
“A man.”
“Did he leave his name?”
“No.”
“Did you ask for it?”
“Hey, I buzzed your room. When you didn’t pick up, I told him to go knock on your door.”
“Tell me, kid. What the hell’s in your head?”
“Nothing. He gave me a tip.”
“What happened to him?”
“What do you mean?”
“The man who was here, where did he go?”
“He waited around in the lobby for a while.”
“Then?”
“He said he’d be back later.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What do you mean, you don’t remember?”
“He gave me a tip, that doesn’t mean I memorized his face.” The kid squinted, as if looking up at Thompson from inside a dark hole. “Maybe you should loosen up.”
Thompson had had it. “Go drown, you little rat.” He wanted to smack the kid, but instead he burst into a coughing fit. The fit racked his body with a spasm that started deep in his lungs and seemed for an instant as if it would never stop.
The kid smirked. Thompson wanted to punish him. Instead, he went upstairs. He wondered who had come to see him. If the Okie had searched him out somehow, there was nothing to stop him from coming back in the middle of the night. The door lock was a flimsy piece of business.
He thought of his sister’s place, and Lussie Jones. He called Greyhound, but the next bus wasn’t till tomorrow morning. He thought about Lussie again. The way things were going, he might not have another chance to see her. He went to his closet and got out some studio stationery. He still had courier privileges from his time working with Colossal. One thing about the studios: If they were slow about giving you something, they could be just as slow about taking it away.
Dear Lussie,
My sister gave me your message. Yes, I would be most glad to see you again, perhaps show you around the City of Angels. I will be at the Musso & Frank Grill tonight, sixish, for drinks and dinner. It’s a grand old place, dingy in the manner of the true Hollywood. If you are not otherwise engaged, I would love to have you at my table.
Yours,
J. Thompson.
Six o’clock was less than three hours away. It was not much notice, but maybe she would come. Meanwhile, the heat was stifling; he went to the window to get what he could of the breeze. Outside, the scofflaws had taken to the doorways and alleys, camping in the shadows. The Okie was still out there on the streets, Thompson figured. Sooner or later he would run into him again. There were laws about such things. Rules of nature. An object in motion tended to stay in motion. All lines intersected, all paths converged. Somewhere, past the curve of the ocean, Sepulvada ran into Sunset ran into Santa Monica Boulevard, became one street, divided again, became many.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Who’s there?”
“Lieutenant Mann, Los Angeles Police.”
Thompson glanced out the landing toward the fire escape. If he were a young man, he might leap out and be gone, but he was not a young man. He opened the door.
Lieutenant Mann was a plainclothes cop, tall and gangly. He wore a seersucker jacket, pressed slacks and a pink shirt that opened at the collar. He wore a white hat too, which he removed from his head as he stepped inside. The room was a mess. It smelled of whiskey and cigarettes and rumpled bed clothes, and Thompson’s traveling case stood out in plain view. The cop took it all in without a flicker.
“You’re originally from Oklahoma, I understand,” said Lieutenant Mann. He made it sound like small talk, but Thompson knew better. If the cop knew this much, he knew more. He’d been checking into his background.
“Years ago.”
“I spent some time on the force in Oklahoma City, but I’m from corn country myself.”
“That right?”
“Cedar Rapids.”
Once again Thompson heard it, the reedy accent of the Midwest. It shouldn’t have surprised him. They were coming out here everyday, these Midwesterners, bringing with them their big ears, and their fat heads, and all that empty space in-between. Thompson had been through Cedar Rapids. He remembered the red brick hotels and the sandstone apartments and the huge silos, and he remembered too the oats mounded up on boxcars that rattled through town in a line that reached all the way to Dubuque. The cop’s voice sounded a little like that, all those boxcars loaded with oats, rolling through the night.
“I hear you’re a writer. A crime novelist, that right?” Mann flashed him an aw shucks smile. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Go right ahead.”
The lieutenant made himself comfortable. Thompson waited for the grilling to begin, but Lieutenant Mann took his time. He was in no hurry to go anywhere, as if he were on a front porch back home, watching the cars roll by on Main Street, waving to the men in their overalls, flirting with the women in their summer dresses. Thompson knew
better. He knew how these people sugar-gummed you to your face; then later, after the ax fell, treated you with the same compunction they would a turkey at the evening table.
Lieutenant Mann’s eyes drifted over to the suitcase, then to Thompson.
“I’m here in regards to the Lombard murder. You’ve heard about it, I’m sure.”
“In the paper.”
“You were acquainted with Mr. Lombard?”
“That’s true.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Last night, down at Musso’s.”
“What did you talk about?”
“We didn’t speak. I only saw him from across the room.”
The lieutenant considered this and went on considering. He gandered once more at the suitcase. He held his white hat in his lap, running his fingers around its brim.
“We’ve been talking to a lot of people. People say things, as I am sure you know, and from what I hear …”
Thompson cut him off. Maybe Lieutenant Mann here was a bumpkin, or maybe it was just a routine, but Thompson didn’t mean to play this game. “I’m not the only person who had trouble with Lombard. He screwed people right and left.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Thompson felt the heat under his collar. He was sweating. I should be quiet, he told himself. This cop is nothing but a country clown and here I am …
“When was the last time you were at his house?”
“Never.”
“How about last night? Where were you?”
The cop set his hat aside. His manner was still boyish. He sat with his hands together, resting between his knees, his hair greased up pretty well, though not well enough to control his cowlick. A shank of black hair stuck straight up. At the moment, Lieutenant Mann didn’t look so much like a cop as he did a preacher’s son, the kind of kid who spent his days nailing up loose boards around the chapel.
“I was at home,” Thompson lied.
“Here?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“At the Ardmore penthouse. With my wife.”
Mann chewed on that. “Alberta?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Thompson felt a quiver in his knees. If Mann knew Alberta’s name, perhaps he’d been up to see her. If so, the cop likely knew his alibi was a lie.
“Let me ask you something,” said the cop. “I got a chance to look at some of those books of yours. And I been wondering. They got much biography in them? Auto, I mean. Tales of the self.” Thompson looked at him blankly. The cop’s face was guileless as the moon. “I mean, you seem like a nice guy. And I ask myself, how could a nice guy write books like those. I tell myself, well, all of us, we got something a little weird inside. I say, okay, so it’s there inside him too. Then I wonder, what is it like? You know, to be thinking those kind of things you think. A man up to his neck in a pile of shit. A women cutting off her husband’s privates with a piece of glass. A man hitting his girlfriend with his fist. In the gut. Hitting her so hard her stomach busts. That blood bursts out her mouth like some kind of star exploding between her teeth. It makes me wonder.”
“About what?”
“Well us cops, we see so much stuff sometimes. We walk so close to the edge, sometimes a man crosses over. For example, a vice man, undercover. After a while he isn’t undercover anymore. He’s just under. He’s not just watching. He’s part of the show.”
“I see.”
“So don’t you ever worry, the things you write, just describing things like that, back there in the recesses, about what might happen? You contemplate a thing long enough, you describe it—you make it part of the world. And some things, maybe they should be left alone.”
Thompson didn’t have an answer. Though he didn’t want to admit it, he’d wondered the same thing himself, a time or two. That voice inside, though, it was hard to deny. You could try for a little while, maybe. Walk over to the shelf, uncork the bottle—but then a whole new batch of demons came flying out.
“You were working on a project with Mr. Lombard?” asked Mann.
“Yes. But the status now—it’s kind of murky.”
Mann wandered over to the window, studied the street. From his angle, Thompson could see out too. The street was pretty much empty, except for a young man on crutches, thin and scraggly. The guy looked as if he had just walked across the desert on those crutches. Thompson expected the cop to ask him more about his relationship with Lombard, but instead he just stood there, studying the cripple.
“Why do you do it?” Mann asked at last.
Thompson felt a bit of panic, as if he were being accused of the murder. Then he realized the cop was asking about his writing again.
“It’s my talent,” Thompson said. “And I get paid.”
“What does your wife think about it?”
“She likes it.”
“You sure?”
Thompson hesitated. “Yeah.”
Mann waited at the window. The young man had been joined by a woman now. On crutches too. Heavy as the man was thin, twice as battered. They hobbled together down the street.
“It takes all kinds to make a world.” Mann nodded in the way country people do at such expressions, as if he had just said something original. There was a gleam in his eye, though. “You know how they say, a lid for every pot.”
“Sure,” Thompson said. The cop was a cornponing him, but he had no choice but to play along. “A kettle for every stove.”
“That’s right. And a match for every fire.”
Then Lieutenant Mann stood up, his hat in his hand. He seemed finished, as if he’d gotten what he needed, though in fact Thompson couldn’t see how he’d gotten much at all.
“You got any leads?”
Something imperceptible shifted in the cop’s face, and Thompson regretted the question. It was the kind of thing a guilty man might ask, looking to see how much the cops knew.
“A few. Objects at the crime scene. Maybe the killer left them behind, maybe not.”
“Oh.”
Thompson recalled his missing shoe, his wallet, and saw at the same time how Lieutenant Mann studied his face. He nodded at Thompson’s suitcase.
“You going somewhere.”
“No.”
“That’s good,” the cop said. “Now you take care. And good luck with your writing.”
Mann tipped his hat and left. Thompson listened to the cop’s footsteps fade down the hall. His own shirt was soaked through with sweat. The heat. He slammed down a drink. Stripped off his shirt. Trapped. The cops on one side. Miracle on the other. He shook his head. Mann did not know anything, not yet. Just blowing smoke up a hole.
Another knock—and Thompson about leaped from his skin.
“Who’s there?”
“Courier.”
Thompson remembered. He’d called the Studio Courier. He swung the door open and handed the boy his message for Lussie. The courier was a blue-eyed kid who aspired to stardom, no doubt, but in the meantime it was his job to drive envelopes around town.
When the kid was gone, Thompson poured himself another drink. He stripped off the rest of his clothes and lay buck-naked on the bed, an old man sweating in the Hollywood heat.
NINETEEN
Thompson thought about Lussie. He felt that old tremble, smelling for an instant that heavy green smell he used to smell in the night air in Lincoln, when he stood on her porch and the yellow light was on her (or maybe it had been Alberta under the porch light; his memory confused things). She wore a farm girl dress, scooped at the neck, so you could see her collarbone. Up close to her like that, it had seemed he could smell the night even thicker around them both, along with the soap on her body that could not hide, not completely, her animal smell.
They had gone for a walk, up the hill behind her house, and Lussie was all innocence in her cotton dress.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked. “What’s really inside you?”
He looked down at the
lights of the little village, and heard the sound of some cow lowing, children playing by the river. All that stuff is in me, he wanted to say, the whole business—but something else, too, an undercurrent in his head like the undercurrent in the Platte, washing things to shore. Old boots, maybe; a bullwhip; a petticoat stained with blood.
She pulled away, tightening her knees, and would not let him kiss her.
Years later, when they met in New York, things had changed. Something different in her eyes. They had a few drinks in her hotel room, and she leaned sloppily against the wall, innocence gone, a bit of the matron in her hips. He touched her cheek. That was the moment, then. His chance. Blue flecks in her glimmering eyes. Instead, he went out into the hall. More ice. By the time he returned, she’d recovered herself. They went to the bar in the lobby. Some friends of hers happened along, fellow travelers, and the evening was finished.
He climbed out of bed and got dressed. Slipped on his white jacket. Outside, he bought a bouquet of flowers and strung a carnation through his lapel.
He wondered if she would appear.
Inside Musso’s, he ordered himself a double shot and waited. He lounged. He watched the door. Soon it was six clock. Then it was six thirty. He sipped. Time passed. When the door next opened, the person who stepped through was not Lussie. Rather it was Billy Miracle. A step or two behind, entering the bar with the air of a bereaved widow, was Michele Haze.
TWENTY
Under the new circumstances, Haze and Miracle carried about them an aura of intense glamour. It was the glamour of death, visceral and irresistible, and it had its own smell, its own way of hushing a room. It had too its own hue and texture, a distinct means of coloring the light, electrifying the air.
Miracle surveyed the Musso & Frank Grill with an odd grandeur. He placed a hand on Michele’s forearm. Something in his demeanor—solicitous on one hand, proprietary on the other—reminded him of those men who accompany famous widows down the aisle at the funerals of their recently slain husbands.
Manifesto for the Dead Page 6