No Cure For Love (6 page)

Sarah shivered. Even the sweater wasn’t warm enough to keep out the chill of Lisa’s story. Kiri finished and Jack started with the sixties music again. This one Sarah recognized; it was Led Zeppelin doing ‘Whole Lotta Love.’

‘Anyway, don’t worry about the letter, honey,’ Lisa said, resting her hand lightly on Sarah’s arm. ‘I mean, this was different. The guy
knew
her. They’d dated. It wasn’t just like, you know, some pervert writing out of the blue. That happens all the time. See you later, sugar, I just
have
to go and dance to this song.’

And Lisa dashed off inside the house. Sarah finished her rum and Coke and chatted with a few other guests, her mind hardly on it at all, then looked for Stuart to take her home.

Not being able to drive was a hell of a drawback in Los Angeles, she had found, but the idea of getting behind the wheel of a car – especially on the freeways – terrified her even more than the inconvenience of calling cabs or relying on friends.

She wasn’t ‘big’ enough yet to merit a limo and driver from the network, so Stuart would often give her a ride to the studio. He lived in Brentwood, which, while it was practically in the opposite direction, wasn’t very far away. If Stuart couldn’t make it, she would call a cab.

The show’s producer wanted Sarah to learn how to drive – at least enough to look comfortable behind the wheel of a police cruiser on TV. Stuart had taken her out in the desert a couple of times for lessons, and she’d learned the basics, like how to turn on the ignition and put it in ‘Drive,’ which was the gas pedal and which was the brake, but that was as far as she had got. The roads out there had been empty; she couldn’t imagine herself ever driving in traffic.

Led Zeppelin rocked on. The bass and drums were so loud that Sarah worried the vibrations would shake the house loose and send it careening down the hillside the way mudslides often did in the canyons.

The whole setting was ridiculous anyway: a house propped up on stilts near the top of a steep slope. How could Jack live up here, perched so precariously? Sarah didn’t think she could.

Still, it seemed that no matter where one lived in Los Angeles, there was danger from the forces of nature. Impermanence was a fact of life that insinuated itself into people’s psyches in odd ways. Sarah had often thought that explained some of the general craziness of the place. Nothing’s permanent, so don’t get hung up on anything.

Since she had been living in LA, there had been fires, heavy rains and a major earthquake, and she had heard people say that the four seasons in Southern California are called flood, fire, earthquake and riot. Yet here she was, standing on the deck of a stilt-house high on a canyon side probably within spitting distance of the San Andreas fault. Crazy.

Talk about floating on air. It was bad enough
feeling
as if she were forever wobbling on stilts, constantly feeling that someday someone would come and pinch her and say, ‘It’s all been a mistake, love, you’re not really a star, you’re just a snotty-nosed little girl from Yorkshire and all this has just been an illusion, now it’s back to the meat-packaging factory where you belong.’

Bad enough
feeling
it, let alone living it. Suddenly she felt an attack of vertigo coming on; she had to get back to solid ground. Brilliant, our Sal, she thought, catching Stuart’s eye across the deck, now Los Angeles is a metaphor for your insecurities.

Before she left, she looked again at the Christmas lights across the canyon and shivered. ‘This was different,’ Lisa had said of her friend. ‘The guy
knew
her.’ Then she turned and looked at the party crowd. Could it be someone close to her, someone who
knew
her, someone who knew her real name and her address, like Jack and Stuart? Then she tried to dismiss the idea from her mind as ridiculous. Jack and Stuart were the only real friends she had here. They weren’t perverts. They couldn’t be.

6

‘What are the chances of an ordinary person becoming the target of the kind of person you’ve been talking about? Someone like me, for instance.’

Arvo scanned the sea of faces for his questioner and noticed that she was a good-looking redhead in a green silk blouse. She had a southern accent. Arvo straightened his tie, the one with the Salvador Dali melting watch design.

Tall and tanned, with the physique of a long-distance runner rather than a sprinter, and smartly dressed in a lightweight wool suit, Arvo was generally thought attractive by women.

He was thirty-five years old, had thick brown hair, perhaps a shade too long over the collar, and a boyish smile enhanced rather than hindered by slightly crooked teeth. He also had good bone structure, including high cheekbones and a strong jaw, which he had inherited, along with his unusual first name, from his Estonian mother.

His brown, expressive eyes always gave the impression of being interested in whatever people were saying to him, but if you looked closely you could see a diamond glint of toughness at their centre. They were eyes that had seen violent death and faced danger; they were cop’s eyes.

Arvo didn’t know what he had acquired from his Welsh father, except perhaps his crooked teeth and his public-speaking abilities. The Welsh, his father had told him, had a tradition of great oratory.

That was no doubt why the lieutenant had chosen him to speak on ‘Assessing Erotomaniacs and Love Obsessionals’ to a National Law Enforcement Convention in the Pasadena Hilton that morning.

The LAPD Threat Management Unit was the only such department in the country. As the unit could only operate within the Los Angeles city limits, its members always seemed to be advising out-of-town police departments, acting as consultants to the FBI, the Secret Service or the CIA, and giving talks like this. Arvo had even appeared on a PBS TV special, where he had been so nervous all he remembered now was how hot the studio lights had been.

‘It’s a subtle difference,’ Arvo answered carefully. ‘In most cases, both erotomaniacs and love obsessionals target unattainable objects, almost always people they have never met. Senators, congressmen, movie stars and suchlike. Erotomaniacs generally believe that the person they have chosen is in love with them. For the love obsessionals, though, that doesn’t matter. They’re in love with whoever they’ve chosen and they believe that that person will probably come to love them in time, if they do the right things. The danger to ordinary individuals is far more likely to come from what we call “simple obsessionals”: that is, someone they know, someone they have been intimately involved with and spurned. A past lover, for example.’

The redhead thanked him. He could tell by the way her eyes smiled along with her mouth when she looked at him that if he stayed around after the talk she would approach him with another question, that he would ask her out to dinner and she would only hesitate as much as good taste demanded before saying yes, and that at the end of the evening they might end up in bed together, probably in her hotel room.

Knew it, but didn’t want it. If he wanted to go to bed with anyone, it was with Maria. But that situation was fraught with complications: they worked for the same department; they were friends; they were both on the rebound. Plenty of reasons not to.

Instead of hanging around, he ducked out fast onto Los Robles. It was clear and seventy-five degrees in Pasadena, and the San Gabriel Mountains rimmed the northern horizon like a jagged dark-green chalkboard streaked with white doodles. He put on his shades. The traffic on the Pasadena Freeway was as light as it ever got at eleven o’clock in the morning.

Arvo tuned in to FM 93.1, an oldies station, and listened to The Association, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Strawberry Alarm Clock. Downtown, he exited the freeway at Hill, drove through the colourful Chinatown strip, then turned east on Temple. A group of press people with microphones and cameras stood interviewing someone outside the Criminal Courts Building. Arvo turned south on Spring.

The Threat Management Unit, part of the Detective Support Division, was located at 419 Spring Street, the south-west corner of Spring and Fourth, in the heart of shabby downtown Los Angeles. Across the street was the run-down façade of the old Pacific Grand Hotel – which now looked like the kind of place even a hooker might avoid taking her client – and a liquor store barricaded with mesh and metal grilles against the street people and aggressive panhandlers who infested the area.

Arvo took the elevator to the fourth floor, turned left and walked along the flecked carpet. The unit was located at the far end of a largely empty open-plan office. The desks faced one another, each with a teal blue divider coming up to about shoulder height when the person was sitting, so the detectives could see one another over the tops. The lieutenant had his own desk at the far end.

‘Well, if it ain’t
Pro
-fess-or Hughes,’ said Eric Mettering when Arvo walked up to his hutch. There were only eight detectives on the Unit at the moment, and most of them were out. Eric had hung his jacket over the back of his chair. His top button was open and his tie loose. He ran his hand over his shiny bald head. ‘How’d it go?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ said Arvo. ‘Had them hanging on my every word. Anything new?’

‘Nope. Pretty quiet morning, so far. Apart from the phone’s been ringing most of the time.’ He pointed to Arvo’s desk. ‘One for you. Called twice.’

Arvo checked the message. It was from Stuart Kleigman, asking him to call back. Arvo knew Stuart, had worked with him before, and knew he wasn’t the kind of guy to cry wolf.

Stuart answered on the third ring. ‘Arvo,’ he said. ‘Good of you to call. Can you come over to the studio?’

‘Problem?’

‘Weird letters.’

‘Hold on.’ Arvo covered the mouthpiece. ‘Where’s Maria?’ he asked Eric. He wanted to talk to her about the paperwork on the Sandi Gaines case.

‘Out in Devonshire talking to some guy who’s scared shitless his ex-wife’s gonna do a Bobbit number on him.’

‘When d’she leave?’

Eric looked at his watch. ‘About half an hour ago.’

Devonshire. The Valley. It was just after noon now, so that meant she wouldn’t be back for a while. Hell, the paperwork could wait. He took his hand off the mouthpiece. ‘Stu?’

‘Yeah. Look, Arvo, I can come over to Spring Street if it’s a problem for you.’

‘No problem. I’ll be there soon as I can.’

‘Great. Thanks. See you soon.’

Arvo told Eric where he was going, then he left the building and got into his car again. The engine was still warm after his drive back from Pasadena.

The security guard at the studio gate eyeballed his ID and waved him through. Arvo parked in the visitors’ lot and walked over to the long, narrow office building. He checked in at reception and went up to Stuart’s second-floor office.

The door was ajar. Arvo tapped lightly and went in. He had already heard the TV set from the corridor and remembered it from his last visit. He wondered if Stuart always had it turned on while he was working. Right now it was showing a
Flintstones
rerun.
Yabba-dabba-doo
.

‘Coffee?’ Stuart offered.

‘Sure.’

‘Sit down.’ Stuart picked up the phone and ordered.

‘Can you turn the TV down?’ Arvo asked.

‘What? Oh, sure.’ Stuart pressed the mute button. Arvo could still see Barney Rubble from the corner of his eye.

‘You get used to it,’ Stuart said. ‘Can’t think without it on these days. And at least it’s a kind of constant noise, covers up the racket outside.’ He pointed to the window. Arvo had heard some shouting, so he went over and looked out.

Opposite Stuart’s window was a street that the studio had constructed for a movie set so long ago no one could remember its title. But the street remained. It looked like thirties New York to Arvo – definitely an eastern city, anyway. It came complete with grimy tenements, fire escapes out front, black metal railings, fading ads for Pears soap and Dr Graves high on the end-of-block walls, and even something that looked like a New York subway exit in the middle of the sidewalk. There were basement shops and restaurants, too, all of them empty.

One corner shop, down some steps with black railings at each side, had been given signs proclaiming it as a video rental centre, and that was where the cameras, actors and studio technicians were milling around filming a scene. All around it, scaffolding had been erected to accommodate the various lights and camera angles. A couple of  TV cop cars were parked outside at sharp angles, and some of the actors were wearing Kevlar vests.

The coffee arrived. After Stuart’s secretary had poured, Arvo sat down and asked, ‘What can I do for you this time?’ He had helped a couple of Stuart’s clients in the past couple of years, and he liked the man. Stuart Kleigman was one of the old guard, a gentleman in a business populated largely by sharks and cut-throats, and he had still managed to hold on to a good reputation. His easygoing exterior, Arvo guessed, must cover a mind like a steel trap and guts of seasoned leather.

Stuart handed over the letter and polished the lenses of his glasses. ‘It’s the third,’ he said.

Arvo picked up the envelope carefully and sniffed it first. You never knew. He had come across any number of enclosures in his time, from that used tampon the soap star had received to human excrement, dried oregano and even a half-eaten tuna salad sandwich.