Magic Hour (37 page)
"She's been giving me some information on the case. Some insights into Sy."
"Oh." He seemed hesitant about what to do next His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
"Why don't I tell her to take a hike?" He seemed so relieved. He inclined his head; it was almost a bow.
I walked over to Bonnie and spoke softly. "Can you drive a stick shift? Okay, you know where the nature preserve is, that swamp place, about a minute and a half north of here? Go there. Watch birds or something for an hour and a half. Then take back roads to your friend Gideon's. Don't park too close to his house. Don't call him to tell him you're coming. And make your approach from one of the houses behind his in case they're surveilling his place. Got it so far?"
She was levelheaded, serious and terse. "Yup."
"Explain to Gideon what's happening. Under the circumstances, he won't want you to turn yourself in. So just sit tight."
"Do you need any help? Want me to call anyone?"
"No."
"Promise me—"
"Yeah, I'll be careful. Now look, if for any reason they find you and scoop you up—arrest you—don't make any statements of any kind."
"Okay."
Her eyes darted over to Easton. I knew what she was thinking: There was a good chance that if I didn't nail him, she'd be nailed. And maybe, in the final analysis, I couldn't nail him. Or I wouldn't be able to.
"I trust you." That's what Bonnie said instead of goodbye. Then she held out her hand for my car keys and was gone.
"You killed Sy," I told my brother.
"Please, Steve."
"You killed him."
He lowered himself on the chair Bonnie had vacated. "I didn't mean to." His voice had the emotional intensity of someone caught running a red light. "I'm sorry."
"You meant to kill Lindsay."
"Yes. How did you figure it out? From that one conversation about lightning?"
"Just tell me what happened, Easton."
"You know what's funny?" He kept tugging at the hem of his bathrobe like a woman with lousy legs in a too-short skirt. "You always call me 'East,' and now you're saying 'Easton.' "
"What happened?"
My brother's bright-blue eyes filled with tears. "I want you to know I really loved that man. There was only a sixteen-year age difference, but Sy was like a father to me." He put his hands over his face and wept.
I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him. I wanted to be moved by his grief, but I had too many years in Homicide; I'd watched this movie,
The Crying Killer
, too many times.
People who commit murder are weird, and not just in their willingness to stick out their tongues at God, to steal His gift of life, to commit the one act that is unquestionably and universally wrong. No, what always got to me about murderers wasn't their evil, their distance from the rest of humanity, but their closeness to it. I'd watched mothers sob at the coffins of babies they'd clubbed to death; I'd heard boyfriends scream out in anguish at the funerals of the girlfriends they'd battered, strangled and, postmortem, raped. They were so vulnerable, so wounded, these killers. And I knew what would be coming next from my brother because, for me, this was the hundredth rerun of that scene. His eyes would plead: Pity me, help me, go easy on me, because I, the survivor, am also a victim of this monstrous crime. What a loss I've suffered! Look at these tears!
I played it with Easton the way I always played it. I gave him exactly what he felt he deserved: sympathy and support. "It must be such hell," I said.
"It is. Complete hell." I shook my head as if I couldn't bear his—our—sadness.
What the fuck right did he have to kill? To fly off, with a new wardrobe of ties, to
I felt no sadness for my brother's stupid, wasted, empty life, and no guilt, not a goddamn twinge, about not having been a better older brother so I could have given him some values or shit like that. No, I just felt cold and very tired. "Tell me how it happened, East," I urged. Oh, did I sound full of compassion.
"You're calling me 'East' again."
I smiled. "I know. Hey, you're my brother, aren't you? Come on. Let's talk. Tell me what went on. Was there any discussion about getting rid of Lindsay before that night at dailies?" Every now and then I slipped, but I knew to avoid the word "kill" when questioning a killer.
"No. Nothing. I knew they were having troubles. Sy had turned off on her completely, went from hot to cold overnight. But I'm sure you know by now that he wasn't the confiding type."
"But then there was that remark that if lightning struck Lindsay, if she died, the problems with
Starry Night
would be over. What happened after that?"
Easton didn't answer. He yanked at the hem of his bathrobe. It was one of those Saks uglies that my mother had bought on final, maximum markdown and saved for Christmas; it was some sort of strange, long-haired terry cloth, and grayish-brown, the color of a rag used for unpleasant chores.
"Who brought up getting Lindsay out of the picture? You or Sy?"
"I did, but it isn't the way it sounds. I just asked him some questions about the completion insurance. He said that if a star dies, the guarantors will pay to make another movie. If you're on a forty-day shooting schedule and she dies when you're fifteen days into it, the producers will get fifteen days of money. Well, minus a deductible of either a couple of hundred thousand or three days. But Sy said the coverage was quite fair."
"But there was no suggestion he wanted you to facilitate matters?"
"No. Not then." My brother's face reflected a little hurt, as in why hadn't Sy leapt at his unstated offer right away. I had absolutely no doubt that Easton's questions about insurance were openings to Sy. Maybe Sy hadn't even thought about offing Lindsay before. Who knows? But all of a sudden, there it was, out in the electrified air: if lightning struck.
But Sy was no fool. He knew lightning was dangerous; only an expert could handle it, like Mikey. Not a jerk like my brother. So he'd bypassed Easton, who was, most likely, doing everything but jumping up and down, waving his arms, calling out: just ask me, Sy. I'm your boy. I'm your assistant producer. I'll do whatever you think needs doing. Sy, though, had gone to a pro. But the pro had been smarter than both Sy and Easton put together. He just said no.
"When did the matter come up again?"
"Wednesday night."
I sat back on the bed, as though I were getting comfortable, all ready and eager to hear about my kid brother's first day of junior high. "Tell me, how did he bring it up?" I asked.
"That's what amazed me, Steve! He was so unbelievably direct. He said, 'We've got to terminate Lindsay.' He already had the plane reservations and the appointments in L.A., so he wanted it done over the weekend, when he was out there." Easton was talking fast, freely, so I didn't stop him to ask how come he'd done it the day before the weekend. "He didn't say, 'Will you do it?' or anything. He just assumed I would."
"Goes with the territory, right?"
"You don't have to be sarcastic."
"Hey, East, I'm not. But I want us to talk straight, matter-of-fact. No bullshit between us. We're brothers."
"Don't condescend to me, Steve. That's all I ask."
"I'm not. Now, did he plan it out, or did you?"
"He had it all mapped out. He invented this imaginary killer—a crazy fan. He would make believe Lindsay had gotten a letter from the fan, telling her he loved her, threatening to kill her if she didn't write back to him."
"But she'd never gotten any letter like that?"
"Well, she
had
gotten crazy letters. All actors do. That was the beauty of it. She'd talked about them, to her agent, to some of Sy's friends at a dinner party a few weeks ago. Sy said that this murder would just seem to be a horrible extension of those letters. He'd tell the police she'd seemed a little upset about some new threatening letter, but that he'd never seen it. He'd say he kept after her to have one of the private investigation agencies who handle things for public figures look into it, and she kept saying fine, but she was busy with the movie and never bothered. And then
I
was supposed to say—but
not
volunteer it, only if the police asked me—that I'd overheard Lindsay telling him about the letter."
"Was he going to write one for the police to find?"
"No. He said he'd given it a lot of thought, and almost did it, but it was just too chancy. Who knows what kind of scientific tests the police have these days? He didn't want to risk having it traced."
What I couldn't get over was how clever Sy was. In the course of just a couple of days, he'd come up with a brilliant, almost foolproof scheme for getting rid of Lindsay. Except instead of convincing Mikey to carry out the plan, Sy had relied on a fool. So maybe, in the end, he wasn't such a brilliant mogul. He'd executive-produced his own death.
"Who decided on the rifle?" I asked.
"I did. He wanted me to stab her."
"Wouldn't that be a mess?"
"Yes, but it would be very convincing," Easton explained. "Stab her once, to kill her, but then do it again and again, so it looked like the work of a mental case. Except I told him I didn't have the stomach for it." I nodded with great seriousness, trying to show how much I cherished my brother's decency. "But then I told him I'd been a pretty good shot as a kid. And he
loved
it that I already had the rifle, that we didn't have to go out and buy one. He was very edgy about leaving any kind of tracks."
"I don't blame him. We've been checking gun dealers' records going back six months. He was a smart guy."
"Yes, he was." My brother got teary again. He sniffed.
"East, how did you have the balls to pick up a rifle that probably hadn't been touched for years? And then to rely on your being able to bag Lindsay with one or two shots?"
He gave me an I-thought-of-everything smile. "Well, it did take some balls, as you say. But I did some fast planning. Although first I had to find the key to the padlock for the gun cabinet. That took me hours! You'll never guess where it was."
"On top of the gun cabinet."
"You
knew
?"
"Yeah. You should have given me a call. I could have saved you some time." We both went chuckle-chuckle. "So you just took it out, locked the cabinet and went ready, aim, fire?"
"No. I cleaned it."
"Smart. Did you try it out?"
He inclined his head. "I went to a range."
"Which one?"
"The one up near Riverhead."
"Right. I've been there. Where did you get the bullets?"
"At a hardware store right near there."
"Took some target practice?"
"Yes. But I didn't need much. It's like riding a bike. You never really forget it."
"No, you don't," I agreed.
"And from fifty feet, it's so easy."
"Did you and Sy plan where you'd stand?"
"Yes. It had a clear view of the whole pool, but the spot itself was sort of in shadows because of the porch. The only thing I had to worry about was to make sure no one else was around. Sy would be in L.A., the cook would be off. Sy was worried Lindsay would invite some people over for drinks. Or Victor Santana for ... you know."
"What did he say to do if Santana was there?"
"To wait, see if he'd leave."
"But if not? Get rid of him too?"
"Not on Saturday. If he was there, I should leave and come back on Sunday afternoon. There was a good chance he'd have left by then, to go over the next day's work. She'd be alone. But ... You want me to be totally honest?"
"I really do, East."
"Well, if not, get Santana too. It would look like the crazy fan saw them together and got jealous."
I stood, walked to the open window, lifted the screen and leaned out for a minute. I pulled a couple of leaves off an overhanging branch. Then I turned back to my brother. "It was a terrific plan."
"It really was."
"So how come it didn't work?"
Easton got real earnest. He crossed his legs, rested his elbow on his knee, braced his chin on the heel of his hand. "That's what's so maddening. It
should
have worked. You know how impossible the traffic is Friday afternoons? I mean, the Long Island Expressway: the world's longest parking lot." This quip hadn't been funny even in 1958, when it had probably been invented, and hadn't improved with either age or repetition. But I laughed as though hearing one of Western Civilization's Great Witticisms. "Well," Easton continued, apparently satisfied with my appreciation of his ability as a raconteur, "the casting director was so crazed—she was casting another movie and two plays—that when I left, I realized she wouldn't have any idea of the time. And then I got finished at Sy's shirtmaker in about two seconds. So instead of taking the Expressway or the
I laughed again. Such cleverness! Such superb humor! Of course, I'd done that audience appreciation bit more times than I could count. It was part of the job, not only turning a suspect into your friend but also turning yourself into the one person most able to savor his comic or tragic art. It had never bothered me before, this playacting. But now, every smile, every good-natured nod of understanding I offered, cost me too much.
A couple of times I had to fight down surges of insane vitality—like rushes of a mainlined drug—to go for him, hurt him, kick him off his chair, hold him down and smash his bland, handsome face against the floor. The killer was so civilized; the cop was so savage.
"So you pushed a little and got home earlier than you'd expected?"
"Yes, a little before four. I'd been in quite a state all day, as you can imagine. This was not going to be any ordinary weekend."
"Doesn't sound like it," I said.
"I said to myself: I can't wait. I have
got
to get this over with today. I cannot
stand
the tension. But I was smart. I knew I'd promised Sy to wait until Saturday or Sunday, to make sure he was safe in