Hollywood Gothic (21 page)

“Is the master ready to see me?” Challis began extricating himself from Daffy’s grasp.

“Always enjoy seeing you, Toby. Just follow me … that is, if you’ve finished with him, Mrs. Roth.”

“How about fucking yourself, Tully?” She had turned away and was looking at all three of them reflected in the window.

“What kind of talk is that for such a pretty lady?” Hacker asked kindly. There was a distant chuckle in the back of his throat that helped define the place where lovely ladies were placed in his universe.

“Daffy,” Challis said. “I’ll stop in before I leave—”

“Don’t bother.” She wouldn’t look at him. “Just get away from here. We’ll let the rest of it take care of itself … just get safe somewhere.”

He followed Hacker.

“How’s the leg, Hack?”

“Leg? What leg, Toby?” He put the brown felt Borsalino on and snapped the brim. He smiled at Toby from behind heavy horn rimmed glasses. “After you,” he said. They crossed the patio toward the dock. The rain on the grass smelled good. Daffy was standing in the same place, cigarette glowing, watching them through the glass. A blue light from an upstairs room where Bogey had just arrived in Key Largo looking for Lionel Barrymore and finding Lauren Bacall.

Hacker pressed the button which started the cable car on its way back up from the distant lower shelf of lawn where Aaron Roth went to soak in his hot tub and meditate on his life. The engine whirred. Hacker got a cigar case from his pocket and lit a Monte Cristo. He always smoked Monte Cristos. Challis knew the aroma. “Well, well,” Hacker said as he puffed. “You’re a lucky man. You just may be a survivor, Toby. You never know. I always thought it was the hard men who survived, but you never know. I wouldn’t call you hard. You’ve got that soft civilized quality, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Why, I don’t mind. You’re right.” Challis waited, said, “Been to the bridge lately, Hack?”

It was a long-standing joke between them. In the old days Hack had used his own colorful interrogation techniques. He’d stake out a corner or a bar or a drugstore, anywhere his quarry was known to hang out. When the guy he was looking for wandered by, Hack would get him like a moray eel coming out of his hole. Snap. Hack would climb into the backseat of the unmarked car. His partner drove. “Never handcuffed them,” Hack had told Challis. “You don’t handcuff him, and the fella knows what’s going on. He knows we’re going to kill him, and we don’t want those marks on his wrists … those cuff marks, you see, mean cops, and if you are going to kill a fella, you don’t want those marks pointing at the cops. So, we’d drive him out to, say, the North Broadway Street bridge. We don’t say anything to him. Just let him do the shaking there on the seat beside you. Then we get him out of the car and hustle him over to the bridge railing, hoist him up, and get him hanging out over the bridge … you hold him by the heels. Yeah, sure, once in a while you wind up holding an empty pair of shoes, bound to happen every now and then. But usually the guy is dangling upside down with the blood running to his head and he’s watching the quarters and dimes falling out of his pockets, falling past his head … well, a fella in a position of that type doesn’t stay hard very long. They’ll tell you pretty much anything you want to know … funny thing, they’re usually real grateful when you pull ’em back up. They don’t remember you as the guy who hung ’em over the bridge in the first place. To them you’re the guy who saved their lives. Part of the psychology of being a hat, I guess.” He’d told Challis the story a long time ago, at a bar in Marina del Rey where they were looking for Goldie. Aaron had sent him to help Challis, who’d been distraught. They hadn’t found Goldie, but Hacker had gotten him drunk and taken him back to the house in Malibu to sleep it off. When he’d wakened Hacker had been sitting on the deck reading Alan Moorehead’s
The March to Tunisia
with a jug of Bloody Marys ready for the recovery. Goldie hadn’t come back for a week.

“No, I haven’t been to the bridge in quite some time,” he was saying. “But I’m ready, should the need arise, Toby. You never know. I’ve got a couple of bridges left in me.” He puffed deeply, looking off into the middle distance.

“Nostalgia got you, Hack?”

“You’re quite a kidder, ain’t you? Well, that’s okay, Toby. You’re okay. Yeah, Toby, I hope you get away with it. Come on, here’s the train.”

The cable car clanged into its mooring and jolted to a stop. Hacker swung the door open, pivoted on his bad leg, waiting. Challis climbed up the steps and settled into the wobbly carriage. Hacker sat across from him and pressed the button to activate the contraption. “Leave the driving to us,” he said. They began to descend. The swimming pool glowed turquoise with the underwater lights on. The shrubs lurked menacingly in the background. Mist filtered in on them. The car creaked. Below them the swimming pool receded and they passed over the barbecue area and the changing rooms, still heading into fog. Challis shivered in the cold and damp. They creaked onward, passing through a heavy cloud bank, unable to see either the house and pool at one end or the lights of the city at the other. Then slowly they slid beneath the fog and saw Aaron Roth fifty yards farther on at the cliff edge of the property. He was submerged shoulder deep in the hot tub, steam rising around him like fire smoke. He was looking out at the blurred lights of the city, winking through the fog like stars a million years dead.

A
S THE RIDE ENDED, HACKER
leaned across to unlatch the gate and whispered to Challis, “About Mrs. Roth, I’d be very careful with the hugging and kissing. She and Aaron aren’t getting along all that great just now … she’s caught the fever that’s going around these days, this female discontent, wondering what her life’s about—you’ve heard about all that, I suppose? Well, the boss is on edge about her … a word to the wise.” He got the latch pulled back and swung the gate wide. “Watch your step, there,” he said as Challis climbed out. “If you get my point? If he asks me, well, he’s the man who pays me.” He raised his voice as they walked away from the shelter of the dock toward the rising clouds of steam. The rain was starting again. Hacker stopped at the edge of the patio, took a black umbrella out of a brick stand which held croquet mallets, several putters, and some ancient tennis rackets. He opened the umbrella, held it over Challis’ head. “Mr. Roth,” he said, “Mr. Challis is here.”

“I know, Hacker, I know who he is, whatever he may look like. Graydon announced him some time ago … what took you so long, Toby? Or should I call you Bandersnatch?” He had his hand over the telephone mouthpiece; somebody must have been talking at the other end, because he shifted his attention back to the previous conversation. “Now, you listen to me,” he said in his quiet, precise voice, his small oval face composed and smooth, like a very old child’s. His shoulders, back, and chest were covered with black hair, matted by the hot water. Perspiration beaded neatly on his forehead. “There are certain things I will allow, others I will not. I have been exceedingly generous, but you must realize that every prudent man sets limits. You have reached the limits I have set—if you persist with such vulgarity I shall replace the telephone on its cradle and you can carry on to your heart’s content.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Hacker, I want ten more degrees of heat in here, please.” Hacker turned the dial set into the brick wall. “Excuse me,” he said to the mouthpiece, “but you know nothing about this business. Your man confines himself to making deals—then he shoots the deal. He is an ignorant young man. I make the deal, but I shoot a picture … a very large difference, as you will learn to your regret, should you be so foolhardy … I suggest you think it over long and hard. And when you come to your senses, we’ll have the man from Bank of America interface with the Boston bankers and sweep up the details. Probably with the Hamburg and Munich people. Good-bye.” He hung up the phone. “And good riddance,” he added. “Now, Toby …” He smiled curiously. “That feels fine, Hacker. You may leave us. Tell Mrs. Roth that the Berkowitzes may arrive at any moment. And tell Graydon I’m taking only a call from Toronto or Germany, nothing else. And don’t let your ash fall in my water, please.” Hacker nodded and went back to the carriage dock. “Toby, my son … what in the name of God did you do to Mr. Donovan? I am all ears.” He looked up benignly, his short curly hair mostly gray, his face brushed with only a hint of tan; his eyes behind the silver-dollar spectacles were small and bright like something looking at you from a dark place. His nose was aquiline in the true meaning of the word, hooked but not long, and his mouth had a well-formed sensuality which added a nice contrast to what was otherwise the face of a slightly tarted-up accountant. Challis forgot momentarily that he was staring at a face which he hadn’t seen for several months, remembering the various circumstances in which he’d seen it. He hadn’t thought of his relationship with Daffy for a long time, until he’d seen her a few minutes ago; now he was surprised by all the memories seeing Aaron Roth was bringing back. “Well, Toby, say something.”

“Donovan,” Challis repeated, shifting under the umbrella. The rain tapped lightly. The trees whispered in the breeze. “I wanted to know what was going on between him and Goldie, between him and you … I was looking for a connection, Aaron. I know Goldie was up to something and I want to know what it was. She said she finally had something on you … something that was going to fix you for good.”

“And instead, some unknown person, assuming you didn’t do it, fixed
her
for good.” He sighed at the vagaries of human nature. “Toby, you know that Goldie was always sure she had something that was going to ruin me. Wish fulfillment, of course. She was rabid on the subject of her father, and there was nothing I could do about it except pretend she was a headstrong eccentric who was going through a rebellious phase. My friends went along with my excuses for my daughter, but neither they nor anyone else was fooled. Goldie was crazy. Crackers. Who should know that better than you?” He put his arms up along the rim of the tub and kicked his feet quietly out in front of him. A plastic shark, a remnant of the
Jaws
summer, floated toward him, appeared to begin nibbling at his chest.

“Okay, leave that aside,” Challis said. “Donovan went crazy when I brought you into the conversation—”

“Come, come. You didn’t simply bring me in. You surely made accusations, drew your own conclusions, buried him in unfounded assumptions. Let’s be frank, Toby. Donovan is undoubtedly a man with many things to be frightened of … not my kind of man, you must have noticed. But still … let me be absolutely open with you. My relationship with Jack Donovan is a very uncomplicated one. I have invested some money in his magazine. He is an enterprising man, a good salesman—an emotional man. He was crushed by Goldie’s death, at which time I had met him on only a couple of occasions. After her death, brought together by our shared grief, we got to know each other rather well—”

Shared grief
came like an echo. Everybody had the same script. Challis interrupted. “Aaron, Aaron, Aaron … you forget how long we’ve known each other! You can’t make me swallow that shared-grief crap, you wouldn’t know grief from tuna salad.”

“How thoughtless, Toby. And we’ve always been such good friends—”

“I don’t believe a word of what you say.” Challis switched the umbrella to his other hand. “For all I know, Goldie really had you by the nuts and you killed her—”

“Toby! Really, how unorthodox you are!” He almost smiled. He was, as Challis had often reflected, beyond insult, beyond persuasion, beyond normal temptations. “One would have thought a man in your delicate position would be a shade more diplomatic.”

“One would have been wrong. What was Goldie into with Donovan?”

“Excuse me, Toby. In any case, how can you possibly be taking up your getaway time asking silly questions about something that doesn’t concern you? Your behavior baffles me—or did you merely come to say good-bye to Daffy?” He cocked his head at that, the dim light reflecting on the round disks of the steel-rimmed spectacles. The water in the tub was like the pool, lit from below, a pale turquoise green. The shadows played across Roth’s face, emphasized his remoteness.

“I want to know why Goldie wanted to see me the night she died. I want to know what she was bugging Donovan about—what was it he was doing for her, but too slowly. I’m betting what she had on you and what she was badgering Donovan about were the same thing—it’s all wrapped up together, but Donovan wasn’t doing what she wanted him to do … and where does Vito Laggiardi fit into it? Why does it all seem to be connected?”

“Only in your troubled mind, I’m afraid.” Roth’s voice was soothing. His calm was seductive. “Don’t be offended by what I’m about to say, Toby … but you’re a fool. Or, let me be less harsh, you’re behaving in a foolish manner. I don’t blame you—goodness, no, not with what you’ve been through. I refuse to be uncharitable … why, you’re nearly out of your head, aren’t you? But you are foolish to be here, you’re a fool to be wasting even one valuable minute and to be concerning yourself with other people’s lives.” His manner was so cool, so dispassionate. He was shielding his nerves. It was hard to see it, but it was there: a high-strung man, precision his watchword, under control and facing the untidiness of a peculiar situation. “Sit down, Toby. You must be exhausted … you look like someone at a funeral with that black umbrella. Sit down. How do you feel? Are you all right?”

Challis sat. “Stop being such an asshole, Aaron. You’re acting like I don’t know you. But I do know you.”

“Of course you do, Toby. Now, listen to me and try to think clearly, and remember that I have always been your friend. Isn’t that true? If you didn’t kill Goldie, and I have an open mind on that, I’m prepared to believe whatever you have to say about that.”

“You’ve heard what I have to say.” Challis suddenly felt very tired. Being alone with Aaron Roth was an utterly exhausting experience. His mind wandered away, and he wondered what the cops were doing, where they were looking for him.

“Then what difference does it make who killed her? She was a confused, unhappy, amoral woman. The fact of the matter is, her life was a cesspool. She was not a normal, decent person … loyalty was left out of her personality, do you understand that? No loyalty to me, to her grandfather, to you.” He picked up the plastic shark and pointed its gory red mouth, gaping and full of little plastic teeth, at Challis. “You want to know who killed her? Right? Well, I know who killed Goldie … it’s no great job figuring it out. Do you seriously think you’re the only man she ever drove crazy, the only poor bastard she ever drove to a murderous rage? Good heavens, Toby, it was a way of life for her. She set men’s lives on fire just to see them burn. Who killed her? A beach bum she picked up … an out-of-work actor from a party at the marina … a biker who said to hell with her act and wasted her with the handiest blunt object … some poor nameless slob she tried to throw away after a night’s hard usage. Some guy they’ll never catch. Now, you’ve got to start being sensible and beat a retreat—”