Hollywood Gothic (17 page)

It was a small house with only one large room surrounded by a couple of bedrooms and a kitchen. The comfortable jumble of furniture looked like it had been accumulated over a long time. He dropped into a soft couch and took a long drink of iced tea, felt the breeze from the patio. She sat on a hassock and asked him what he’d done since she left him under the marquee at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

He told her about Ollie Kreisler and Pete Schaeffer advising him to get out, once, for all, and for good. He told her about the link between Maximus, or at least Aaron Roth, and Donovan, which both men had mentioned. He told her about the visit to the beach house, the notations in the datebook, and the fight with the man on the deck. He told her about the futile visit to Donovan’s office and Hal Bullet’s thoughts about Donovan and Vittorio Laggiardi. He told her that he didn’t know what the hell to do next.

“Today, after I walked out of the Hong Kong Bar,” he said, “I felt spooked, afraid of being alone in the world with newspaper stories about me everywhere I looked, completely stymied about how the hell I was ever going to connect with Donovan … everybody’s ass-deep in their own problems, I guess, and not all that interested in me. You know how it is here—you’d think people would come apart with amazement at my showing up, but Ollie and Pete just sort of nodded, gave me their advice, and got back to work. I’m not blaming them, I don’t mean that, but my situation—which seems pretty damn remarkable to me—was just an incident in their days.”

“But you’re only involved in murder and escape from plane crashes,” she said. “That’s not the
business,
it has nothing to do with what really interests anybody here, and they both think that what is happening to you is only an inconvenience, something that can be fixed, like a hernia. They think nothing of offering to help you escape, but the moral question, who killed Goldie and why, strikes them as irrelevant.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they both still think I killed her. They don’t seem to think it’s particularly important whether I did or didn’t, they don’t seem to care what Goldie had gotten into that would get her killed.” He shook his head. “I just don’t get it.” The wind came up stronger, the awning’s fringe flapped noisily. “And all I keep thinking is, once we figure out what’s going on, we’ll be able to see what Goldie wanted to tell me … and then we’ll see it all clearly. I’ve got to find out what she was on to. I owe her, for Chrissakes.”

Morgan nodded soberly, looking at the piece of paper on which Challis had written the notations.

“I can help you,” she said. “I can help you with Jack, for one thing. But, first, Vito Laggiardi—now, he’s something new to the occasion. How much do you know about him?”

“Only what Buller told me.”

“Well, you remember my former husband, Charlie Sharpe? Charlie had to do some checking on Vito for one of the studios a couple of years ago. Vito wanted to finance a movie and he owned a piece of a Broadway musical the studio was also in on. The studio was one of the few without a major mob connection, and they sort of wanted it to stay that way … for as long as possible, anyway. So Charlie Sharpe took a pretty close look at Vito. Tying him into the mob was tough, at least in terms of hard evidence, but the studio wasn’t interested in hard evidence. They just wanted the truth, they didn’t have to prove it in court. And there were plenty of connections which looked more than merely probable. And Vito had been trying to buy up something for a long time—something glamorous, something kind of high-profile-ish. Vito wanted some fun, was the impression I got. He owned a big auto dealership in Chicago, one in Philadelphia, and one in Los Angeles. He owned a shoe company in St. Louis. A chain of drugstores in Detroit. Real estate in New Jersey and San Diego. An interstate-trucking company. A restaurant in Palm Springs, a couple of apartment complexes in Phoenix and Scottsdale—that wasn’t fun, that was business. So he got into the Broadway thing, backed a couple of shows that went belly-up on the road. He tried to crack Vegas with a bid on a hotel and casino and came up short. Then he went back to what he knew and acquired one of the largest storefront loan companies in America … and tried to buy control of a chain of suburban newspapers, failed. Then a publishing company, failed. The fun things kept getting away. A team in the National Hockey League, no dice. Then he went after the studio Charlie Sharpe was retained by … and the decision there was that the only way he could accomplish that was if the studio management and the stockholders asked him in—I mean, this guy was being watched up close by the SEC and the IRS and a bunch of other regulatory agencies. And the studio said no, thank you, and he couldn’t really run the risk of pushing it … so Charlie Sharpe said that the only way Vito could get more than he already had was to either keep acquisitions small or go way underground with money that would be hard to connect to him personally. Charlie Sharpe’s conclusion was that Vito was a very, very big crook, the kind that is relatively safe from prosecution
now
but had better be awfully damned careful because Big Brother is watching.”

Challis said, “And now he owns Donovan.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“And Donovan and Roth have become chums.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But we don’t really know. Remember what Ollie Kreisler told you about Donovan and my father? Well, Ollie was right—Jack Donovan is not exactly a day at the beach. … Well, Vito Laggiardi is like stepping on a broken beer bottle. You said Pete Schaeffer thought maybe somebody killed Goldie to make a point? Look at these notations.
V.L.”
She made a face at him. “Vito Laggiardi lives in that kind of world. Where you sometimes have to make a point the hard way.”

“Good God.”

“I’m not saying he did it, Toby. Just that he’s the kind of man who might order it done as a matter of business policy. Maybe
V.L.
means something else altogether. But Goldie seemed to know some odd people, as Schaeffer reminded you. Donovan’s no prize.”

“So how can you help me with Donovan?”

“Stroke of luck,” she said. She was throwing herself into his predicament, and he felt himself drawing strength from her. She wasn’t part of the business; she had the touch of real life. She squirmed with anticipation, enthused with the idea of constructing their plot. “I’m launching a new mystery novel at the store tonight. Arch Crosby, it’s his fiftieth novel, and I’ve set up a cocktail party, he’ll say a few words and we’ll all look uncomfortably at trays of slowly drying canapés … he’ll sign a hundred books, he’s always been popular out here, writes about the Los Angeles mystique. He knows everybody in the business, and among those he knows is Jack Donovan, who will definitely be there tonight. Jack always likes it when I pay attention to him—I think it’s because of what he did to my father, he gets a kick out of talking a little risqué with the daughter. God, he’s a real prize! So, I can get you and Jack into my office. Alone. And, God willing, you take it from there. I’ll even have a tape recorder going if you want. … You read enough mysteries, you learn about these things.”

Challis wandered back outside onto the patio while Morgan went to bathe and dress. Sirens drifted up from Sunset, and the wind was colder. The afternoon had gone quickly. He felt some raindrops riding on the wind, and finally, when it had, turned to a spray, he went back inside and turned on the television.

Jerry Dunphy’s familiar rugged face appeared, pink and topped with all the curly white hair. “From the mountains to the sea, to all of Southern California—here’s what’s happening. Late this afternoon a mysterious development in the Toby Challis case … we’ve got Joanne Ishimine live from St. Christopher’s School to tell us all about it. … Joanne, what’s happening out there in Santa Monica?”

The screen filled with the face of a pretty Oriental girl-woman who was as well known in Los Angeles as most movie stars. She was trying to keep from blowing away, wore a raincoat, and stood outside a high wrought-iron gate with a Spanish-mission-style school building behind her. A plaque beside her face was in focus enough to give the name of the school, a motto in Latin, and the inscription “Founded 1926.”

“It’s raining cats and dogs right now, but the situation is this. You may recall that at the same time the plane carrying Toby Challis was down on the mountainside, we were also concerned about a group of children who had wandered away from a campsite in the same area, within just a few miles. Well, the children were found safe and sound at the lodge belonging to a woman … ah, Morgan Dyer. Now, at the time there seemed to be no connection between the children and Mr. Challis—this afternoon all this changed. One of the smaller boys mentioned to a teacher that something previously unreported had happened up there, and I’ve got the teacher, Eileen Wheeler, right here. … Mrs. Wheeler, what did the boy tell you?” Mrs. Wheeler moved into the picture, looking earnest, stocky, with lots of dark curls framing her face. A crew member was holding an umbrella over the two women now, but the teacher’s glasses were glistening with raindrops.

“Stevie Faber mentioned to me—I guess I should say he blurted it out like it had been building up in him—he told me that a man covered in blood had found them, or maybe been found by them on the mountain, and that this man had led them to safety … he said that the man’s name was … Bandersnatch. That’s what he said, Bandersnatch.” She looked alertly at Joanne. “I thought I’d better call the police, and I guess that’s what brought you here. …”

“How much credence do you put in what Stevie said? I mean, he wasn’t alone up there, what do all the other campers say?”

“Well, this is very hard to tell—the others say they don’t remember …” She sighed like a woman who realized the difficulties in dealing with groups of children, who knew the kinds of peer pressure and intimidation and shame. “Of course, you talked with Ralphie …”

“That’s the other thing, Jerry, we did speak with one of the members of the camping expedition, the oldest boy, Ralph Halliday, who’s nearly fourteen, and we’ve got that piece of film …”

The screen was now occupied by the reporter and the large, tubby figure of Ralph Halliday. They were standing in a corridor, brightly lit for the cameras, with children milling about behind them, curious to see what was going on. Tired out and emotionally unwound by the rest on the couch, Challis felt tears filling his eyes at the sight of Ralph, who wore a Dodgers warm-up jacket over a slipover shirt that was tight around his ample waist. Ralph frowned intently at the microphone as he listened to the question.

“You’re the oldest of the campers, all the others seem to look to you as the leader—you’ve heard what Stevie Faber has said about the blood-covered man on the mountain, the man whose name he says was Bandersnatch. Now, did you see this man Bandersnatch, too?”

“It’ll be the Abominable Snowman next,” Ralph growled like Edward G. Robinson. “We’re up on the mountain, see? The littlest kids are cold and hungry, but I’m not worried. I find us a nice cave, build a fire, make some coffee, divvy up some candy bars, turn on the radio—it’s no big deal, see? I had the whole thing under control. I had a compass, I knew where we were … more or less, anyway. But kids like Stevie—well, Stevie’s a nice little kid, but he’s not playing with a full deck, y’know what I mean?”

“But Bandersnatch—if he didn’t see a man covered in blood, what did he see?”

“That’s his imagination, see? I had all the kids marching along reciting Lewis Carroll’s poem, the ‘Jabberwocky’ poem—you know that poem? Okay, there’s that part about the frumious Bandersnatch, and Stevie wanted to know about what one was, and everybody was telling him, making up this terrible stuff—well, then, I suppose Stevie got to dreaming about it, see? And here we are—me on television!” He suddenly grinned broadly into the camera and said in a perfectly normal voice: “Here I am—cast me!”

The film ended, and Dunphy and his co-anchor, Christine Lund, who was not only as well known as the movie stars but substantially better looking than almost all of them, were laughing and shaking their heads. Christine Lund, her mouth moist and tantalizing, her blond hair in the trademark shag, said: “Joanne, we realize the story isn’t funny, but that boy, he’s really—”

“He’s on his way,” Dunphy said. “What’s going to happen next, Joanne?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. At this point, Ralph Halliday—who’ll probably have his own series by the time this is over—and Stevie Faber are at odds and the other kids aren’t talking. But the police were here most of the afternoon talking to Mrs. Wheeler and the boys who were up on the mountain, and I was assured that they’ll be following up on all the leads they get. And I’ll be in touch and keep you posted. For KABC News, this is Joanne Ishimine at St. Christopher’s School in Santa Monica.”

Christine Lund reappeared, the smile wiped off the glistening lips. “In a moment … more storm damage last night in Malibu and an interview with the man in charge of the Hillside Strangler Task Force.” A commercial clicked into place, and Challis realized that Morgan had come back, was standing behind the couch.

“Damn,” she said. “They’re not going to just forget about what Stevie said, regardless of how many stops old Ralph pulls out—what an amazing kid!”

Challis wiped at his eye, nodded. The hanging ferns swayed in the wind. Thunder rolled somewhere up above Mulholland Drive, and rain pattered in the trees outside. The sky had gone completely dark. Morgan went to the sliding screen door, flipped a switch, and a couple of floodlights came on, casting huge ominous shadows across the lawn. She was wearing a khaki gabardine pantsuit with a pale orange scarf. The pants rode high and tight, made her legs look even longer, and the jacket was fitted at the waist, flared across the firm, round swell of her hips. Challis got up, went to her, stood behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders. She leaned back against him, her thick hair against his cheek. His hands were shaking.

“I should never have gotten you into this,” he said. “Jesus, it’s getting worse and worse … now this Bandersnatch thing …” The smell of the rain and her perfume mingled, gave him a lightheaded feeling.