Magic Hour (34 page)

"Yes."

"It's not a nice place. It doesn't get a fun crowd, and they don't show Bette Davis movies. You won't like it. So if I can, I want to spare you that. But even more, selfishly, I need you a little while longer for consultation. Just till five. Five o'clock, you can call your friend Gideon, have him alert Bill Paterno, and you can set the whole process in motion. But let me just warn you, if you're in the slammer, I may not be able to contact you. Your lawyer is going to say, No cops."

"But I could explain that you're helping."

"Bonnie, do you think a criminal lawyer is going to believe that a detective on the Homicide Squad has a soft spot for his client and will act in her best interests?"

"He might." It disturbed me how naive she was, how God Bless America. She wanted to turn herself in, put her faith in the System. She'd be walking into a hellhole. Jail to her was movies about exploited women with pitiful stories and one twisted prison matron. To her, ugliness was a set designer's vision. She didn't know the lunatic screams, the rage, the violence, the stink. Her crack addicts were on NBC News; she had no idea.

"Now, you told me you were going to be very busy today, solving the case. How far did you get?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

I took her hand. She pulled it away. I'd forgotten I hadn't mentioned that I loved her, or that I wasn't marrying Lynne, so I reached out for her again. But she stood up and went over to my leather recliner. There was a pad and pen on the table next to it, and as she sat back, she picked up the pad, held it to her heart as if it were the ultimate mash note. "I read too many mysteries, see too many detective movies," she explained. "When I thought about the whole case, everything you told me, I wound up suspecting Victor Santana and Mrs. Robertson."

"Why, for Christ's sake?"

"Because he was jealous of Sy and knew Sy thought he was weak—and if Lindsay was going to be fired, he'd be next."

"And Marian Robertson?"

"Who knows? Because Sy went strolling into the kitchen once too often and lifted a lid off a pot and stuck his pinkie into her bearnaise sauce and sniffed it and put a dab on his tongue and suggested a soup-con more chervil."

"Too bad you're over the hill. You'd be some great cop."

"You're not impressed by my deductive powers?"

"No."

"I didn't think you'd be. That's why I gave up looking at the big picture—because I keep trying to turn it into a movie. I decided to concentrate on Sy. Analyze my last few days with him, factor in everything you told me."

"Go ahead."

She pushed back so the recliner was practically horizontal. She glanced from me to the pad and back again. "Think of Sy's behavior. What was out of character for him?"

"Not concentrating when he was humping you."

"Let's just call it distracted behavior," she suggested.

"Distracted behavior. Third-rate fucking. Whatever you want."

"It was second-rate," she said. "With you it was third-rate."

"No. You never had it so good. You know it. Admit it."

"Nope. Anyway, Sy was distracted. That could have meant something big was happening—or about to happen. Now, what else?" I thought she was going to answer her own question, but she was waiting for me.

I thought about it. What in the last few days of Sy Spencer's life had in any way been atypical? Love. "He'd fallen in love with Lindsay," I began. "And she hurt him. All of a sudden, the ultimate victimizer was a victim. It must have come as a real blow to him."

"Right. And so what was going on? Under the best of circumstances, Sy was a vengeful man if someone crossed him. And here was the object of his affection or obsession, his love, cheating on him. He was going to get even."

"But ultimately, he couldn't get even." I told her what Eddie Pomerantz had said, that because of money, Sy would wind up keeping her on the picture.

Bonnie's eyes got huge. "That's even better!" She jumped out of the recliner, came right over to me. "Think!" she ordered.

"Think about what?"

"Vengeance is one thing. That's what I was concentrating on. But how could he get vengeance
and
money?"

I bolted up. "Jesus! The completion insurance!"

Bonnie grabbed onto my jacket sleeve. "If lightning struck Lindsay, he'd get his money, he'd get his new actress."

"And he'd get his revenge," I said slowly. "Okay, but let's slow down. The theory's good, but the truth of the matter is, Lindsay
wasn't
struck by lightning. Sy was. How does that figure?"

"Stephen, ask yourself: Who was killed? Sy?"

"Of course Sy."

"Or someone in a white, hooded bathrobe who was standing at the edge of the pool, the way Lindsay Keefe did when she came home from the set and did her laps?"

"Someone small," I said.

And Bonnie said: "Yup. Small, just like Sy."

Bonnie was all juiced up, talking too fast, bopping in a U-shaped path around the bed, stopping each time at the shaded window to bounce on the balls of her bare feet and peek out. She was not at her best, excited in a confined space. "Okay," she said. "We've got to figure out if this really is a possibility, and then—"

"Stop. I'm running this show, not you. I'm the lead detective. You're zero."

"Be quiet. I know what I'm doing." She perched on the dresser and swung her leg back and forth fast, like a pendulum running amok.

"With all due respect, you may be semi-smart, but when it comes to police procedure you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground, and we don't have time to debate hierarchy, so I'm in charge." She put her fingers up to her mouth, as though hiding a yawn induced by being too, too bored by such childish jockeying for position. "Don't give me that yawn crap, Bonnie."

"I'm not giving you yawn crap."

"Now think; don't just shoot off your mouth. In the time you knew him, did Sy ever make threats against anyone, or wish a person dead in a way that made you fear for their lives? Beyond the 'I hope he dies' we talked about."

She swung her leg some more and finally shook her head. "But that's not to say he wasn't spiteful. He had his hate list. If thirty years after the fact he could hurt someone who called him Peewee in junior high school, he definitely would. But he didn't think of revenge in terms of death. He didn't want to cause physical pain; he wanted to inflict maximum emotional pain on anyone who ever got in his way."

I added another item to Bonnie's asset column, which now had about five million items: She didn't sway with each trendy breeze. The way things were looking, it would have been easy for her to portray Sy as a Man with Murderous Instincts, but she was too fair to do that.

"All right," I said. "So what it boils down to is that Sy was just your average, malicious guy."

"Except his malice got.more intense as he got older—or as he got more successful and powerful. Look, maybe the man I married was no cute little cuddle bunny, but the Sy I got to know again after I gave him the
Sea Change
script was much harder; he was so full of himself, so disdainful of other people. Anyone who crossed him was bad, selfish, stupid and ipso facto deserved whatever damage Sy decided to inflict. In his mind, when he got back at someone, he was only making sure justice was done."

"All right, think about this: Did he have any morals at all?"

Bonnie gave the question some serious, leg-swinging consideration. "He took decent political positions: apartheid is bad, rain forests are good. But no, I never saw any evidence of morals, not in a personal sense."

"So we could call him amoral." She nodded. "And we can say,
maybe
, that he'd have no reservations about murder; it just was unnecessary or dangerous."

"Or unseemly. Dartmouth men don't kill."

"But what if Sy had gotten past unseemly? Look, he was on a nine-year roll, making good movies, big money. He could do no wrong. Is it possible he got so conceited that he finally thought everything he did was by definition seemly?"

Bonnie wriggled farther back on the dresser and sat cross-legged. She grew reflective, staring past me into space. "Sure. It's possible. He believed his own publicity; Sy Spencer was superior, creative, refined. He could never be crass like the West Coast producers he was always going on about, screeching into their car phones or building bowling alleys in their houses. And he was so exquisitely sensitive he couldn't possibly be cruel. But forget Sy's idealized vision of Sy. I think all we've been talking about, all of what was going on in his life—thwarted love, his need for revenge, his need for money—played a part in pushing him toward the edge. What finally made him jump was that he got scared."

"Of what?"

"Failure. The studios hadn't gone for
Starry Night
, but he believed in it and so he went out and got the financing himself. Give Sy credit. He told me
Starry
would be the best kind of American movie, where characters grow and finally come to deserve each other. But Lindsay was ruining everything. Not only making a fool out of him with Santana, really wounding him, but destroying what he really cared about most: his movie, which was his reputation, his immortality."

"So she was costing him an extra half mil, plus future profits. And cutting off his balls and breaking his heart with Santana."

"More than that. She was making him lose status in the business. Sy told me this much: People were starting to say, See? We were right.
Starry Night
was a dog from day one. And the way Lindsay's performance was going—so lifeless—the critics and all his fancy friends would get into the elevator after a screening and say, Was that
thing
we just saw a Sy Spencer film?"

"But you know about those old guys out in Hollywood—those Goldwyn guys," I countered. "They made movies the critics said were lousy, and all their so-called friends laughed at them, and they just went on."

"But they were tough. They could take it."

"You're telling me Sy couldn't?"

"Stephen, remember how we were talking about Sy being different things to different people, that he didn't seem to have any core? Well, it wasn't just something he chose to do when it amused him. Sy always let himself be defined by whoever he was with, and if those people were laughing at him—for being cuckolded by a fancy-pants like Victor Santana, or for making an adventure-romance that wasn't adventurous or romantic—he would allow himself to be transformed into precisely what they were laughing at: a failure, a nothing, a jackass."

"So he wanted her dead for making him a laughingstock. But he wouldn't have killed her himself?"

"No. I can't see him injecting strychnine into her melon balls. Sy was much too squeamish to commit a violent act. And he wouldn't have dirtied his hands in the metaphorical sense. He was a gentleman; he never did anything nasty himself."

"Somebody was there to do it for him."

"Always."

"So who did he know who would do that kind of dirty work?" I asked. She knew, but she didn't want to say it. "How about Mikey LoTriglio?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because if Mikey or one of his boys did it, Lindsay Keefe would be on the cover of People this week, with a '1957-1989' over her bazooms, and Sy would be rolling with
Starry Night
starring Nicholas Monteleone and Katherine Pourelle."

I told her she was wrong, that La Cosa Nostra boys' invincible reputation was a myth, and in fact, half the time they were such a bunch of screwups they made the FBI look good.

She said she'd read
Wiseguy
and knew all about sociopathic Mafia morons who couldn't make it in the legitimate world, but Mikey was as clever as they come, and with a different background, he could have been CEO of Merrill Lynch.

I told her she was a fucking dunce, and she smiled at me and said she wasn't.

I had to go into the kitchen to call Thighs at Headquarters, but I didn't feel like leaving Bonnie because I liked looking at her, especially in my undershirt, which was a washed-out cotton you could sort of see through. Also, if I left her alone she'd probably wind up lying on the floor, bench-pressing my stereo, so I picked up the phone on my nightstand. No word from Robby at the Lifecodes lab up in Westchester. And no leads at all to Mikey's whereabouts: he wasn't at home in his fifteen-room Tudor in Glen Cove, in Nassau County, or at Terri Noonan's apartment in Queens, or at the Sons of Palermo social club in Little Italy. I asked, What about that bar in the meat district where he hangs out, Rosie's? Thighs said, I asked the bartender if Mikey LoTriglio was there, and he said: Mikey
who
?

"Rosie's?" Bonnie repeated when I hung up. "I remember hearing about Rosie's." She picked up the phone, got Manhattan information and asked for the number of Rosie's Bar and Grill on Ninth Avenue. Then she dialed and asked for Michael LoTriglio. I shook my head sadly, as in Pathetic. She was clearly hearing the same "Mikey
who
?" that Thighs had got. But she cut the guy off. "You may not know Mr. LoTriglio," she said into the phone, "but he comes into Rosie's every now and then." She sounded commanding, secure, the way a good cop has to sound. "I'd like you to do your best to get a message to him. Tell him that Bonnie Spencer—S-p-e-n-c-e-r—called and said it's urgent that she speak with him." She gave him my number and hung up.

"Good luck," I said.

"Thanks."

I told her I was going to go to the set in East Hampton to try and harass Lindsay into cooperating, and tie up a few other loose ends. I started to enumerate them when the phone rang. I recognized the voice, gravelly, tough. "Get Mrs. Spencer," it ordered. I handed it over to Bonnie.

"Mike?" Pause. "Fine." Pause. "I've missed you too." I stood beside her, tilted the receiver and put my ear right next to hers. "Actually," she went on, "I'm not so fine."

"What's the matter, Bonita?"

"I'm the major suspect in Sy's murder."

"What?"

"They issued an arrest warrant for me."

Mikey laughed. Not amused. An incredulous snort. "That is so stupid it makes regular stupid look smart."

"I know. But, Mike, let me tell you what happened."

"You don't need to give me no explanations."

"I know. But see, I was sort of keeping company with Sy again. And the police found evidence of my being at his house right before he died—and we weren't downstairs having tea. So they have this physical evidence from a bedroom, and they have this theory that Sy rejected me or my new screenplay and that I shot him. And that's another problem. They know I can handle a rifle."

"What can I do?" Mikey asked. "You got a blank check with me. You know that. Want me to find a nice, quiet place for you where you can not get noticed? Need money? Want me to ... Listen, I would never talk to you this way, but what we have here is not your standard situation. So you want me to say abracadabra? Make some rabbit disappear? Name it. You're a sweet girl, a lady, and you were a good friend to my Terri."

"Terri's a lovely woman," Bonnie said. I couldn't believe this conversation. "You're lucky to have each other."

"Thanks," Fat Mikey said. "I tell her she's too good for me, but she don't believe it."

"Mike, let me tell you what I'd like you to do, and please, feel free to say no. You know me. I don't live in a world where people call in IOUs."

"I'm listenin'."

"There's a detective on this case, Detective Brady."

"I met him."

"He's on my side. He's trying to help me."

There was a long pause where Mikey contemplated the alternatives, including, if he had half the brains Bonnie credited him with, a setup. But he trusted Bonnie. He had to, because all he did was ask: "What makes you think he's on your side?"

"He knows it's a weak case, and he thinks he can make a better one." There was silence. "And he's in love with me." I stepped away from the phone and stared at her. She just continued with the conversation, so I stepped back and kept listening.

"The cop's in love with you?"

"I think so. So this is what I'd like, Mike—if you can see your way to doing it. I'd like you to talk to him. Anyplace you say. He seems to feel you might remember something now that slipped your mind during your interview." Mikey gave another one of his laugh/snorts. "He's sworn to me this would be off the record." I grabbed her shoulder, shook my head, but she just kept talking. "If you feel this would compromise you in any way, please don't do it. I know how it feels to have the police after you, and it's not something I'd want for you or Terri or your family. It's a horror."

"Where are you now, Bonita? The truth."

"He's hiding me, Mike. I can't tell you where."

"Tell him to meet me at the Gold Coast restaurant on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset in an hour." I shook my head, made a stretch-it-out signal with my hands.

"I think it will take him more than an hour to get there," she said.

"An hour and a half, then. Tell him to meet me in the parking lot in the back. Get out of his car, walk away from it and just stand there. Got it?"

"Thank you," Bonnie said. "I won't say I owe you one, Mike. But I will say I appreciate this from the bottom of my heart."

"I know you do, Bonita."

"I
love
you?" I said.

"I had to say something."

"Do you honestly think I love you?"

"Yes. Not that it means anything. You've decided you need a life with a Ford station wagon and kids with freckles and trim-a-tree parties and intercourse every Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. It's preventive medicine, something you have to take to keep from self-destructing. I think you've convinced yourself that passion is a dark side that's too dangerous for you. Well, maybe you're right. Look at my life. Where has passion gotten me? What do I have to show for forty-five years of letting go? One movie nobody remembers and a warrant for my arrest for murder. Listen, you made the right choice. What could I offer you? Two dried-up fallopian tubes and a few laughs? So forget what I said about the love business. I get delusional under stress. Don't think twice: she's perfect. Grab her, marry her.
Mazel tov.
"
 

The restaurant was a block away from one of those sumptuous suburban shopping centers that attract people who need to spend eighty-five dollars for a cotton T-shirt.

Another cloudless day. Heat shimmered off the hoods of the Mercedeses, BMWs and Porsches, distorting the air, making the lot look like a slightly out-of-focus downtown Stuttgart. No Mikey. I'd been waiting for ten minutes, away from my car. All I saw was an occasional woman who had exhausted every possibility in the way of hair, makeup, nails, jewelry and clothes; one of them should have been put in a glass case in the Smithsonian just to show what we had become after eight years of Reagan.

I unbuttoned my jacket; all that accomplished was to allow more hot, humid air to circulate around my sweat-drenched shirt. Five minutes later, as I was loosening my tie, the door of a little red Miata convertible, top up, opened, and Mikey, with all the grace of sausage meat oozing out of its casing, somehow managed to emerge. He waddled across the blacktop. He'd obviously been watching me since I arrived. We nodded at each other. He was wearing sports clothes that looked more maternity than Mafia: white pants and a huge red, blue and purple flowered shirt.