Long Shot (5 page)

All the same, the particular smell of a single man hit him hard as he came inside. It was ordinary stuff—gym gear and old books and lemon-lime cologne—that pinned down the kind of man Harry was. Like a hiker, even here in the desert city. A man not easily housed. He was taking a walk around the world, so everything he needed had to fit on his back. Greg swallowed a sob and wiped at both eyes. He padded across to the sink to get water, and let the cold run till it chilled. He bent and drank. The small view of life was right: No man could be free and safe at the same time. One's innocence played no part. Nor did being twenty-four. From where Greg stood in his furnished room, Harry Dawes had passed this way like a boy on a raft, so unencumbered was the place. And yet, for all of that, it turned out he was doomed.

Greg took it all in, but he already knew there was nothing here. The narrow bed unmade, a pair of disheveled wicker chairs, a bamboo table stacked with a week's dishes. What Greg was after was a well of details—things that, taken together, showed Harry Dawes completely whole, before the story of Jasper Cokes consumed him. Greg wanted clues. The signs of a struggle, or maybe a trail of popcorn starting here and ending up at Steepside. He picked up a pair of shorts from the floor, folded them once, and laid them on the bed. Then a T-shirt balled in a knot, still hot with sweat from an afternoon's run. He shook it out and draped it over the back of the chair. It seemed these bits of life could break his heart, but they couldn't prove a thing.

He sat on the edge of the other chair and tried to give it up. He was nobody, after all. So what if he turned up evidence that somebody'd kidnapped the modest man who lived in this bare room? Who would he ever take it to? The years of brush-offs had taught him one thing over and over: If you have no bureaucratic recourse—no producer's desk to put it on, no agent's name to drop—then whatever it is you've come up with doesn't really exist. And if Greg was a crummy detective, Harry Dawes was a crummy victim. Nobody really cared. It was Jasper Cokes who got top billing. Any one of a thousand unemployed actors would have done fine as the young male drifter. No one was going to bother much with why this Harry Dawes had ended it all in his twenty-fourth year.

He picked at the props for blowing dope that littered the wicker-table top. The eight-year gap between them figured forth wherever he turned. As a general rule, Greg wouldn't allow a man in his life unless he could prove he was thirty-two. More or less was a whole other generation. It was as if he had no patience with people who hadn't been through what he had. He ought to have known that a kid wouldn't leave any interesting secrets lying about. Twenty-four wasn't nearly eccentric enough. It took years. How could you track down the thread that led to their pimps and killers? A kid didn't leave any traces at all.

He and Harry had kept it clean from start to finish. Nobody lied to. Nobody scored on. The one night they spent in each other's arms had barely brought them out of hiding. If love was what you called it, Greg had only been in that far for a little under an hour. It seemed the moment he said the word, Harry Dawes was gone. No wonder he was pissed. Like anyone else, he'd lost a hundred men in his time, but he never lost one to death before. He'd always supposed that loving and dying went on in countries that didn't share borders.

Now the walls were closing in. There was nobody good to blame it on. He knew he had no other choice but to let it go.

The book was half under the telephone in the middle of the floor. He never would have noticed it if he hadn't wondered, as he walked away, what the hell the number was. He probably ought to have it, he thought, in case he found it written in somebody's book who swore he never heard of Harry Dawes. He knelt and peered at the dial, committing the seven digits to memory. He saw the phone was resting on a book, and he picked it up to read the title. No particular reason. When he saw it was
Walden
, he realized just how close he'd come. He probably would have been quite content to watch the rest on NBC, like everybody else.

Walden
was money up front.

He crouched there testing the heft of it. Then peeled the back cover at the upper edge to check out the number of pages: 271. Print like a prayer book. Lucky for him, he didn't much need the inside part. He knew the gist of this old book from a C/ C+ in American Lit: the shorefront cottage, the four pretty seasons out of Currier & Ives, and a man has to beat his own drum. When it came to reading, he preferred a thriller's pace and a Hollywood angle. Still, he liked the serious feel of it in his hand. He'd have to give it a shot some day, for Harry's sake. Then, suddenly, he saw his own name on the flyleaf. Dated today. And as he read the sentences meant for him, he felt himself grow oddly naked.

April 3rd. To my friend Greg. I can't find it right now, but he says somewhere how you can't pull up a single flower without the whole universe coming up with it. Maybe, after you read this, we ought to go pull one up together. You say when. Love, Harry
.

All day long, he'd been acting just like Edna said, as if he was in a movie. Then, tonight, he passed across some time zone, out of one story into another. April third was a double feature. From the moment Harry left this morning, to buy him this book and go running, Greg had played at the failed writer. All afternoon, if he thought of Harry at all, it was purely carnal stuff. Two men twined like creatures underwater, rolling through the chambers of a coral sea. But that was all in the background, waiting till after dark. Greg was much too busy feeling failed to get all wrapped up in the simples of love. He had no idea he would end the day as a friend of Harry Dawes. Now that it was so, he had to dog this story down. He had to find his way through all the contradictions, all for the sake of a small affair that had lasted twenty hours. Maybe it wasn't a movie at all. But if it were, there was one thing sure: A man didn't die without a reason.

He closed the cover on the final words and stowed the paperback
Walden
in his back pocket. Without another look, he left his friend's apartment forever, determined to find just one good reason why they had to kill two men to get rid of Jasper Cokes. He'd done this much for Harry Dawes already: The cops would stop and think twice when they found the door of 2C blown open. Meanwhile, Greg came down the hallway, looking kind of sleepy. No one could have guessed what speed he had stored for the days ahead. To anyone looking out, he was doubtless much the same as ever. Lost in a dream and vaguely alarmed. By the time he got into the elevator, the pain in his eyes was faded into the general air of wistfulness. By the time he got off at the eleventh floor, he looked like anyone else.

Vivien threw the door open and strode in ready to fight. The parlor was empty. She ventured in a couple of feet and drew a breath to shout. The bucket had cramped her arm, and the breeze that blew through the cottage shivered the skin on her naked back. She meant to bellow something like “Get out!” But even as the first sound broke, she froze. A burgundy leather briefcase stood by the Adam desk. A putty-colored trench coat lay on the chair. And a fear like a fit of madness knocked the anger out of her. “Jasper?” she whispered across the room, but not because they were Jasper's things. They were Carl's. What she wanted from Jasper was why.

Then Carl himself came out of her bedroom, his Brooks Brothers suit all out of place. He was zipping up a garment bag that he cradled in one arm. His steely eyes hid out behind his tinted glasses. He wore a bush mustache that wasn't there two months ago. Vivien had kept her distance from this man for the whole of her married life. The terror that had her by the throat, that kneed her in the belly till she thought she'd puke, came down to this: Carl Dana had finally cornered her.

“Oh, Viv,” he said when he saw her—a trifle absent-mindedly, it seemed. As if
he
were surprised to see
her
. “I've started you packing. There isn't much time.”

“Put that down,” she ordered him tightly. Amazed at how little she cared for keeping up appearances. “In fact, why don't you fuck off? Your twenty percent doesn't cover me.”

“Can we argue later? We got a plane waiting.”

“I guess you better hurry, then. I'm not going anywhere.”

She decided to act as if nothing had happened. She walked across the parlor toward the kitchen, seeming to forget she was numb with fear. It didn't appear to get in her way that she had nothing on. She'd got it into her head that Carl was here to bring her back for another round of publicity. A special appearance at the Oscar ball, with her and Jasper together again for the first time in over two months. If she'd stopped to think, she would have realized the show was over. At the earliest, they were seven hours' flying time from Hollywood, even if they started right away. But she was too scared to think. She only knew how sick she was of the stories Carl put out. She wouldn't play wife to Jasper Cokes. She wouldn't sit for pictures.

“Hey, Viv,” he said as she passed abreast. The voice was so gentle she could have screamed. “Didn't Artie call you?”

“There's no phone.”

“I'm sorry. I thought you knew. It's Jasper.”

Of course she knew. But she kept on walking forward into the kitchen. She heaved her bucket and tipped it into the sink, till the clams all clattered out. Then she turned to the white tin cabinet. She jerked the warped door open, filling the room with a sound like cymbals. Years ago, these shelves were crammed with all the kitchen necessaries. She put out an automatic hand to the spot where the clam knives used to be. But no. She'd lost the thread of this whole idea. She stood there, rubbing the purpled crease in the crook of her arm, and started to cry at last, as if to palm the crying off on a patch of local pain. There wasn't any doubt she was naked now.

“How did you find me?” she asked him, still not turning around.

“He slit his wrists in the bathtub,” Carl replied, as if trying to get what he could into just a few words. “Him and this other guy.”

What other guy? The last she heard, he was unattached. They both were. Still, they'd only talked by telephone these last two months, and maybe Jasper never found the moment ripe for naming names. If he thought he had to keep her in the dark, it must have been awfully serious.

“Me, I've been in New York,” Carl said. No time to wait till she asked him. “I figured, since I had the plane, I better pick you up. Otherwise you'd have to wait till morning. The press'd be all over you.” When she didn't nod or say a word, he took another step and threw the blame on someone else. “It was Artie's idea,” he said. “He promised to call and break it to you.”

The name shot through her like a pang of relief. She realized all she had to do was hang on now till she got to Artie.
He'd
know. Whereas Carl, whose trade was hype, could only talk in lies. She turned around icy and dry-eyed, determined not to give him the satisfaction of watching her fall apart.

“There's no phone,” she said as she crossed to the bedroom. “I'm all ready. The bank can send my things. What bathtub?”

“No, no,” he corrected, two steps behind her. Leaning in at the bedroom door. “I meant the outside tub.”

This wasn't at all what he said before. If he had, she would have asked him just how that could be. Carl knew as well as she did, surely. Jasper wouldn't go near it. He said it made him queasy to sit in hot water. It turned his muscles to rubber. So somebody must have got it wrong. Unless—did people bent on dying get so they didn't mind a bit of discomfort? Why was it she couldn't stop looking for holes? She felt like she wanted to answer back, to everything Carl was telling her: “You're
wrong
.”

“What other guy?” she said out loud.

She slipped on a white silk dressing gown. Then packed a dark knit suit in a carry-on—shoes and makeup and all. She'd dress on the plane. She listened to what Carl said about Harry Dawes with only half an ear, assuming it was lies.

“You know the type,” he said. “Kid drifts in from nowhere. Finds he can't make it. Gets attached.” But all of this could wait. He had another case to plead. “Viv, I know what you're thinking. Me and Artie weren't careful enough. I don't say you're wrong. But you got to understand, this whole last picture was a real bitch.”

“You'll have to tell me all about it,” Vivien answered distantly.

She flipped off the light and walked towards him. He shrank back as she zigzagged through the living room, dousing every lamp. The darkness fell behind her as she left. Carl had to move double-time to keep up. He'd scarcely retrieved his attaché before she was out in the drive. But she didn't go forward toward the car—its headlights lost in the cedars, engine running high—until he joined her. She stood with her head turned up the hill. She looked to be checking the weather.

“Aren't you going to lock it?”

“What?” she asked. Pulling away from the scent of lilies reeling down off the upland field.

“The house. We have to close it up.”

“Why?”

Why, indeed. She walked across the grassy court to the waiting BMW. The driver, whom she knew to be the pilot of the Willis jet, leapt out at his side and held the rear door open for her. As she scooped up the long white folds of the robe, she might have been setting out late for a party. And Carl, who'd lost the lead the moment she walked in, got in beside her now without a word. He'd had his fill of trying to second-guess her. Or perhaps they'd reached the point where they could keep a proper silence. The car pulled out, and he fiddled with the latches of his attaché, as if he had plans to bury himself in work.

“I never read the script,” she said. “It's a western, right?”

“
The Broken Trail
.”

“And what's it about?”

She knew he wouldn't pass up the chance to talk a picture up. The word-of-mouth was everything. Besides, he was more than glad to take a break from the other matter. If he thought she was acting oddly unaffected by it all, he gave no disapproving sign. To him, she probably wasn't any odder than usual.