Blood Will Have Blood (24 page)

“I told you. I have something that belongs to you. I'm not in a position to convert it to cash, so I thought you might like to buy it back.”

“That's Caroline's, I believe.” Good. Eddie must have shown him the box. Spraggue nodded at Hurley. Everything according to schedule.

“I'm not asking you to buy flowers, Darien. You can buy silence, though—with a little nose-candy bonus.”

“Five thousand was all I could get.”

“That leaves forty-five to go.”

“How will I get in touch with you?” Darien asked.

“You won't. I'll get in touch with you. On my terms. Believe me, you've got no choice.”

A brief crackle.

“He's passing the envelope,” Hurley said exultantly. “We've got him!”

“Don't go.” It was Eddie's voice, unexpectedly harsh. “I'd like to count it.”

“Hurry up.”

“Don't order me around, Darien! I want to take my time, look at you, figure out what a woman like Alison saw in you—”

“Let go of me,” Darien whispered.

Hurley's eyebrows shot up.

Eddie's voice was a grim monotone. “Listen to me, Darien. You're not getting away with it. Not because of Langford's death. Because of Alison's. Look at me. Can you see her in me? Can you? I've got you trapped, hooked and wiggling. This place is teeming with cops. I'm working with them. See this microphone? Everything you've said—”

A sound of ripping fabric, of splashing and cries, tore through the sound system.

“Jesus, Spraggue!” Hurley yelled. “You teach the kid those lines? Nice quiet arrest on the way back to the hotel—”

Hurley turned. He was talking to air. Spraggue had vanished.

The drizzle had intensified to bone-chilling rain. A gust of wind knocked Spraggue's hat to the ground as he ran toward the bridge. He couldn't see, but he heard the floundering in the lagoon, the squelching, running footsteps.

“Eddie!” he called.

“All right … I'm okay.” The answering voice was weak, but close enough for Spraggue to get a fix on. He waded into the waist-deep lagoon, dragged out the sodden bundle.

“All right. Get Darien. Across the lake.…”

Spraggue entrusted Gene to two tramps who came running forward, suddenly alert. Then he splashed on across the lagoon, toward the far shore and a fast-fading, half-running figure.

“Darien,” he shouted. The wind spat the word back in his face.

The silhouette disappeared, appeared, starkly outlined by a street lamp, then gone. Spraggue followed it. The lights at the park's perimeter were stronger. Flashing blue lights, swirling over police cruisers, marked the exits. Their beams herded Darien, drove him toward the center of the Garden. Spraggue's soaked pants' legs flapped about his ankles. He hoped Hurley had warned his men not to shoot.

Darien ran for the bridge, bent over, stumbling. Spraggue cursed; his left shoe, lagoon-soaked, tripped him up. He kicked it off.

Darien was halfway across the bridge when the cruiser parked on the other side flashed its brights. He turned back; Spraggue blocked his path. The director retreated sideways toward the railing, pressing his back against a stone column.

“Don't come any closer!” His voice was wrenched by great grasping breaths, but surprisingly strong.

Spraggue heard Hurley answer, voice mechanized by a bullhorn. “You're surrounded, Darien. We won't hurt you—”

Something glinted in Darien's right hand. “I have a knife,” he said.

“There's nothing you can do with it,” Hurley replied firmly. “Put it down.”

“Spraggue?” Darien turned to face him, the glare shining off his reddened eyes. Spraggue felt the silent support of policemen at his back. Darien's gaze shifted. Spraggue knew that if he'd been alone, Darien would have tried to take him. Thirty years' difference in age, a foot in height. No matter. Darien's eyes were mad.

He surveyed the situation—water below and to his rear, police on either side. He measured the distance from bridge to water, a paltry eight-foot flop into muddy ignominy, no glorious Golden Gate dive. Through it all, those wide staring eyes never faltered; he kept the knife pointed, hovering in a wide semicircle. His mouth opened and closed and a harsh sobbing sound emerged. It took Spraggue a long time to realize it was laughter. When Darien finally spoke, his voice was totally controlled.

He talked to Spraggue as if they were alone—kind-uncle-anxious-to-explain. The knife circled; the eyes flashed warily from side to side. “I always wanted to do
Macbeth
,” he said, as if it were the natural beginning to a conversation on a bridge in the middle of the night, dead in the sights of five S&W six-shot revolvers. “Do you want to know why?”

From across the bridge, Hurley nodded eagerly. “Why?” Spraggue asked, too loudly.

“Because I find the ending so powerful. You remember, ‘I will not kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet.'”

“Yes,” said Spraggue. “Throw the knife in the water, Arthur.”

“Macbeth was wrong, wrong throughout the play. He traded honor for calumny, love for hatred.” Here Darien's voice wavered. “But Macbeth dies a hero! That's how I would direct it. He knows he'll die, but still he fights. ‘Lay on, Macduff/And damned be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”'”

It should have been ridiculous. An old man with a knife, rain and tears pouring down his face, quoting Shakespeare to the police.

“Kill me,” Darien pleaded. “I will not yield.”

“No one's going to kill you,” Hurley said. “Put down the knife.”

“You still don't see. Don't you know what I was? I drank, Spraggue, but I was a great director. People should remember my name, not like Nichols, not like Papp, but like Stanislavsky, Meyerhold. The classic men of the theater—”

“Like Samuel Borgmann Phelps,” Spraggue said.

“Yes. But the pressure, the
pressure
. I drank. And they knew. And the scripts stopped coming. No one would trust me; no one would back me. I needed that money, Spraggue. To prove myself again. It would have worked. This play would have put me back on top, where I belong. Don't you see?”

“But Langford got in the way?”

Darien tried to laugh, failed. “He knew. He came to me like some bright Boy Scout brimming with his news before the show. He never suspected I had anything—”

“Spider,” Spraggue said.

“Yes. He thought Spider was pulling the strings. No one ordered me around, Spraggue.
I
ruled. What was Langford? An actor, a puppet. I made him dance; I won him applause, awards. Me. I could do that for any actor. For you. What did I need Langford for?”

“Put down the knife, Arthur.”

“No.” With his left hand he unbuttoned his coat, loosened his shirt.

“Macbeth would never kill himself,” said Spraggue.

The director turned to him, a smile lighting up his mad eyes. “I remember. ‘Why should I play the Roman fool and die on mine own sword?' Right? ‘Whiles I see lives, the gashes do better upon them.'” As he spoke, his voice grew wilder, stronger. He hefted his knife and dove at Spraggue.

“I can handle him!” Spraggue cried. “Don't shoot!”

He jumped back, and the tip of the knife sliced by him, an inch from his chest. Blue light glittered off the blade. He ripped his sodden jacket off, wound it around his left forearm, used it as a shield, drawing Darien closer, waiting for Hurley to get in place, to twist the dagger from Darien's grip.

He reckoned without madness. Darien fought like an animal, writhed, slashed; a shrill stream of abuse escaped from his bubbling mouth. The knife caught Spraggue's shirt-sleeve; a thin line of fire burned down his right arm. He hooked a leg behind the director's knee, tripped him up, and pounced on the hand that held the knife.

The battle changed; Darien no longer tried for Spraggue. He twisted the knife in, toward his own face, toward his eyes. They arm-wrestled in grim sweaty silence.

Other hands reached to help. Blue-clad bodies knelt at Darien's side, surrounded him. The director cried out, went suddenly limp.

“His heart! How's his heart?” The voice must have been Hurley's.

“I don't know,” Spraggue gasped.

How Darien pulled it off, how he twisted out of the melee armed with a police revolver, no one knew.

“Don't—” Spraggue cried. His words were drowned in the blast of a single shot. Darien's gun clattered to the ground. His hand reached up, grasped his side. He took a long time to fall.

Hurley bent over him, shaking his head as his fingers searched for a pulse.

“He didn't have a—” Spraggue began. He looked down at Darien's calm, baby-round face, white hair plastered down across his forehead. He shrugged, swallowed twice. “Christ, you did him a favor.”

Spraggue stood on the bridge, leaning against a column, deaf to all questions. He unrolled his jacket, put it on slowly. Inspected the cut in his arm: a scratch. Then he pulled his collar up around his ears and walked away. Voices called after him. He kept walking. After a while, the drumming rain blocked out all other noise.

Chapter Thirty

“You sound terrific,” Hurley said after Spraggue sneezed for the third time in two minutes. “Drink?”

Satch's, behind police headquarters on Stanhope Street, was almost empty at three in the afternoon. They slid onto two bar stools.

“Just coffee,” said Spraggue. “Black. I'm all doped up on antibiotics.”

Hurley gave his order to the barmaid. Bourbon on the rocks. Spraggue raised an eyebrow.

“Coffee,” Hurley muttered sadly. “And here it was gonna be my treat. Serves you right for wandering around half the night soaking wet. I almost put out an APB—but I figured it might look bad: loony millionaire dressed up like a vagrant. What would people think? And with your luck, Menlo would have been the one to spot you. He'd shoot on sight.”

“What's he want?” Spraggue asked, annoyed. “His case is solved.”

“
My
case, Spraggue. I'm grabbing a lot of points on this one. I'll be out of Records so fast—”

The drinks arrived. Spraggue tried to smell his coffee, gave it up. The steam felt good anyhow. He cradled his cup. “So that explains the celebration.”

“And I thought you might like to know that we picked up your friend, the Spider. Got him at the airport.”

“Congratulations.”

Hurley sipped bourbon. “You know, based on those calls your boy, Eddie, made, only one out of four citizens calls the police when threatened with blackmail. Caroline Ambrose was the only one who came to us. Darien—well, Darien had reason not to. Spider heads for Miami—”

“Probably bound for points South American.”

“Right.”

“What about Hudson?” Spraggue asked. “I was sure he had nothing to do with it, but he threw me with that total failure to react.”

“Says he just figured it as one more prank. And he's real busy consoling that redheaded wonder woman. I'll bet she put it out of his mind.”

Spraggue drank hot coffee.

“I bear greetings, too,” continued Hurley. “Your little blond friend is out of jail. She sends her undying thanks. If you'll call her, she'll say 'em in person.”

“Yeah.”

“The other one, Karen Snow, asked me to give you this.” Hurley thrust a small square envelope into Spraggue's hand. “She left town this morning, with her stepbrother. Going up to Maine to see the family. No one pressed charges.”

Spraggue turned the slender envelope over in his hands. Just as well, he thought. If she hadn't fooled him so completely—

“Don't you want to know what Spider said?”

“Sure.”

“Spider really started the whole business—” Hurley began.

“By blackmailing Darien over that car accident?”

“You got it. Darien was dead drunk. Spider saw it all, from the backseat of the car, no less. By judicious use of shady connections, he got Darien off the hook—for future considerations. Darien
had
a real future back then, before he got labeled a drunk.”

“When did the cocaine come in?”

“While visiting friend Caroline down in Colombia. Spider was bleeding Darien pretty good by that time. Darien got inspired, smuggled a little dope back to the States, just enough to keep Spider off his back. Later, after Caroline left De Renza, Darien figured out a way to take advantage of the orchid scam.”

“He had a confederate in Colombia?”

“One of De Renza's assistants. As far as De Renza knows, he only sent Caroline floral tributes for one year.”

Spraggue smiled. “That'll be a blow to a king-sized ego. Think she knew what was going on?”

Hurley shrugged, tipped back a slug of bourbon. “I doubt she wanted to know. I'm sure she never questioned her popularity as a Darien leading lady. Only the critics did that.”

“The one time she talked to me about her pals, Spider and Darien, her dog died. Spider must have let her know there was a connection between the two events.”

“Spider admitted killing the dog.”

“And what else?”

“Oh, he was anxious to confess, to everything but murder. That honor he gives to Darien.”

“Funny how all the pieces fit together,” said Spraggue.

“Make me laugh, then. I still don't get it all.”

“From the beginning?”

“Great place to start.”

“Okay. Gene Arnold gets himself cast in Darien's play. He borrows another actor's résumé; the real Eddie Lafferty's probably off on some European tour. Gene's goal: to give Darien a severe case of guilt. Maybe even scare him out of the business.

“Darien panics. He wants protection, but he's afraid to go to the cops because of the cocaine. So he tries a couple tricks of his own.”

“Get me another bourbon,” Hurley said to the barmaid. “Which tricks?”