Cheat and Charmer (88 page)

“No,” Dinah said. “I’m coming down now. If Pete’s in danger, I’m not leaving anything to you.”

This time it was Jake who started in the direction of the attic. She watched as he disappeared into her large walk-in closet, and reemerged a minute or two later, holding a long object encased in a canvas bag. “This,” he said, “I’m giving to Vernon. I don’t want you anywhere near it. You’ve got too much Milligan in you not to use it. On me.”

“Very funny,” she said. “Very funny.”

D
inah and Jake hadn’t seen Vernon and Claire (whom he had married a week after her high school graduation) since Veevi’s death. Neither had they spoken to them. Jake had always been fond of Claire, and he was fascinated by Vernon and his stories about his years as a vice-squad cop. But there had been an unfortunate incident, or moment, rather, only a few days after Veevi’s death. Dinah, Dorshka, Felicity, and Claire were all out at Veevi’s house going through her things when Dinah came across an album she had put together during the years in Malibu. There were pictures of everyone from those days: Dorshka and a young teenage Mike barely able to speak English; Stefan in his American bathing trunks, with his arms around Dinah and Veevi; groups of people on the beach, mugging for the camera; then, clusters of refugees in straw hats and sandals, talking together under striped umbrellas. Dinah had actually taken most of the pictures herself, with her own Kodak, and remembered pasting them in the album with Stefan. Looking at them again, she became desolate. Grief overwhelmed her. It seemed impossible that she was alive and that Veevi was dead, impossible and incomprehensible. “I’m sorry,” she’d said. “I have to go.” Dorshka and Claire looked at each other, somewhat put out, since there were a great many things to do, and only two days left before Felicity was to take Dorshka and Coco back with her to Paris. Dinah caught their look on her way out, as well as Felicity’s far more forbearing expression. But she simply couldn’t help herself; she had to get away. She ran, blind with tears, to her station wagon and sat behind the wheel, thinking she would drive home. But putting her head down and clutching the wheel with both hands, she sobbed and sobbed, holding nothing back, allowing the sadness to have its way with her completely.

In a while, it subsided. She blew her nose and smoked a cigarette, and then, instead of starting the car and driving home, she felt she really ought to get back to work. So she returned to the house, and entered through the kitchen door, quietly, so quietly in fact that as she approached the living room she heard a voice, a very clear young voice, saying: “Why wasn’t it Dinah who died? Why did the good one have to die?”

“Shame on you, Claire,” Felicity said. “What an awful thing to say. I was friends with your mother and Dinah, for years, and loved them both. How could you say such a dreadful thing?” Then she caught sight of Dinah in the doorway.

“I came back to help you f-f-f-finish the job,” she said to all of them. Then she looked directly at Claire. “You know, Claire, there were many t-t-t-times, in the hospital, when I wished it had been me, too.”

She and Claire hadn’t spoken since that day. Dinah longed to see her, to give her things, to help her set up her household. But she could not, would not, call her.

V
ernon Ashby was so tall, lean, and lanky that he looked like a caricature of someone tall, lean, and lanky. Whenever Dinah saw him, she thought of Ichabod Crane and his feet “like shovels.” But somehow it all made for a strange kind of handsomeness.

He had quit the vice squad, after a fight with a pimp in which he’d gotten his jaw broken. Through a fisherman friend he’d met Saul Landau, who’d made him a partner in the business; he loved taking out the charter boats. Jake had gone out with him one Sunday with some country club pals, though he hadn’t been able to do it again because of the show in New York. But he thoroughly liked and respected the younger man.

Vernon listened as Jake told him about the jam he was in. When Jake came to the part about his affair with Veevi, Vernon interrupted him. “Is this something you want Claire to know about?”

“Not if we can help it,” Dinah answered for him.

“Okay,” said Vernon. Then he listened some more, rubbing the side of his clean-shaven face from time to time.

“How long were you in the LAPD?” asked Jake.

“Oh, close to ten years.”

“Did you ever hear of him? Burgoyne, I mean?”

“No. Never did. But that doesn’t mean he’s lying. Still, it sounds kinda funny to me. If you hang on, I can find out for you.”

“Can you call someone right now?” said Dinah. “He’s threatened Pete.”

“Not to mention me,” added Jake, making an attempt at levity.

“Well, I need some time alone with a phone,” he said.

Jake took him upstairs to his office, while he and Dinah, treating each other with deliberate and artificial courtesy that was not lost on Peter and
Lorna, had dinner in the breakfast room, on paper plates with plastic knives and spoons. Their real plates and silverware had been packed up in preparation for the move to England.

Vernon came downstairs just as Gussie was serving coffee, in paper cups. He had dinner, too, and then he and Jake and Dinah went into the den. What he reported was this: He had checked out Burgoyne with the guys downtown. The connection to the LAPD was real enough, though it wasn’t quite what Burgoyne had made it out to be. They knew him pretty well; some of the boys drank with him, gave him tips. He liked to be in on the action when there were busts and such. He was like a kid—got a kick out of hanging out at cop bars and riding around in cop cars, liked using the radio equipment, enjoyed hearing the lingo. He was friends with the chief, so the boys humored him. He had his loves and hates: worshiped J. Edgar, hated reds. “He’s pulled this before; he likes intimidation stunts. He gets his books made into movies—starring himself—but he thinks he’s been slighted by respectable Hollywood folk and likes to get the dirt on them,” Vernon added. “Remember that Swedish actress Astrid Bengston? Came out here, had an affair with an actor—oh, what’s his name, you know, Kent Tempest? Well, Burgoyne started snooping, got the American Legion involved, and Tempest—”

“I remember it well. Bengston was deported, Tempest blacklisted, because he wouldn’t talk,” said Jake. “Remember him, honey? Nice fellow.”

She nodded but kept her eyes fixed on Vernon.

“But the truth is, most of the guys laugh at him behind his back. Give him their old toys—handcuffs, radios, bulletproof vests—just to keep him happy. Still,” he said, looking back and forth between a stricken Dinah and a rapt Jake, “it doesn’t mean he can’t do some damage. He does have pals, on and off the force, who’ll do favors for him. A guy like Burgoyne’s got himself confused with the guy in his stories—what’s his name, I can’t think of it right now. Likes to use his fists. And maybe other things, too. So the threats are real. Burgoyne should be arrested for them, though you’ll have a scandal on your hands if you do; there’s no two ways about it.”

“I want Dinah and the kids to leave the country.”

Vernon nodded. “Good idea.”

Jake looked at Dinah. “Do you hear, honey?”

She said nothing. She was thinking about something.

“Meanwhile, you and I have a little date on Monday night at Joe Brogan’s, right?”

Vernon laughed. Dinah scowled at them. “You’re both crazy.”

“Let’s go upstairs,” said Jake to Vernon, “and punch out some dialogue together.”

A huge grin widened on Vernon’s face. “You know, just living out here, you can’t escape the movies.”

“Darling,” he said to Dinah. “You and the kids finish packing. You guys are leaving on the 7
A.M.
flight to Paris tomorrow morning.”

“What do I tell the kids?” Dinah said.

“Anything you want,” he said. “Except the truth.”

S
he was in her own bed, her last night in her own bed, and he was in his, flat on his back. She wanted him to fall asleep, but she couldn’t let him—not yet.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew it that time I saw you b-b-bending over her in the den. You had that look all the boys used to have, like you wanted to disappear into her.”

“It was nothing like that.”

“You know, if I’d just followed my g-g-g-guts, I could have figured it all out. One week you can’t stand her, the next week you’re dying to hear all her Ben Knight stories. And I knew Veevi. She couldn’t get up in the morning without thinking about whom she was gonna conquer that day. She was a born pr-pr-pr-predator, with the conscience of a cat. I didn’t put a little flirtation past her. A little seduction. I mean, that was her nature. And yours, too. She charms you; you charm her, you have a crush on her, maybe you neck a couple of times. Okay, it killed me, but so what? But the two of you ending up in the s-s-s-sack? My sister and my husband?”

There was a long pause between them in the dark. Then Dinah glanced at her watch. It was eleven-thirty. “This is the last night I will ever sleep in the same room with you.”

“Let’s just get through this part together. Then you can do whatever you want to, darling.”

“ ‘Darling.’ ‘Honey.’ ‘Sweetheart,’ ” she said, stuttering on them all. “Horseshit. All horseshit.” She turned on her side and pretended to go to sleep.

An hour later, as Jake snored within the cavern of Nembutal-induced slumber, she eased herself out of bed, dressed quickly, tiptoed through Peter’s room, covered him up, kissed his pale oval face, and let herself out, crossing the painted planks that connected the house with the apartment above the garage. She knocked lightly three times on Gussie’s door until it opened and Gussie slipped out.

The night was warm and clear, as July nights in Southern California can be, and the two women, each wearing slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, stepped lightly down the back stairs.

“Did you park the car in the street, Gus?” Dinah whispered.

“Right on over by the mailbox,” Gussie replied. “You got the address, Dinah?”

“Yes, Gus. Got it right here.” And she pressed her hand to her breast pocket.

Together they drove, with Dinah behind the wheel of her station wagon, down Sunset Boulevard, past the mansions in Beverly Hills, the two of them smoking Camels in tense but companionable silence. When Dinah turned left onto Crescent Heights, and then made a sharp right onto Franklin, Gussie said, “Ain’t this where you grew up, Dinah?”