Stripped (25 page)

“Yes, we do.” Stride saw surprise bloom in Walker’s good eye, and he reached into the slim folder he carried to retrieve the police sketch. “We haven’t arrested him, but we have his face. This is the man who killed MJ.”

“Let me see it.”

Stride handed him the sketch, and Walker took it eagerly. He held it far enough away in his right hand that his eye could focus.

“Do you know him?” Stride asked.

“No.” Walker shook his head, disappointed. “He’s not familiar to me”

“I’ll leave the sketch with you.”

Walker turned the sketch over and put it in his lap. “Would you like a tour before we get down to business? Not many people get to come here, you know.”

Stride had come halfway across the continent to see the man, and he was curious about the estate, which was the kind of home he was never likely to see again. “Why not?” he said.

“Good.”

Walker spun his wheelchair around and led him from the porch into the main body of the house. For all the antique decor, it was electronically sophisticated, with every feature controlled by computers and operated from the control pad on Walker’s chair. Windows, lights, doors, curtains, skylights, everything could be opened, closed, turned on, and turned off with a flick of the keypad. They passed from room to room, and each one felt like something out of a European palace, huge and elaborately decorated, but sterile, like a museum. Stride knew the house couldn’t be more than two or three decades old, but it felt like a relic from another century. It didn’t feel like anyone lived here.

The house was generally warm, but some of the dampness of die region still made its way inside the walls, and the heat sometimes seemed to dissipate into the high ceilings. Stride found himself shivering and pulling die button closed on his suit coat. In just a few months, he thought, he had changed from a Minnesotan impervious to cold to a desert dweller chilled when the temperatures dipped below eighty.

“I rarely leave the island,” Walker told him. “I’m sure you know that. But I can do almost anything from here. I see just about every movie made right in here.” He guided Stride into a full-sized movie theater that had a handicapped-access row directly in the center. They might as well have been in the upscale multiplex in Las Vegas. Stride realized the theater here was probably always empty, just Walker sitting here, alone, analyzing movie after movie. He began to feel sorry for the man.

Walker sensed his emotions. “Don’t feel bad for me, Detective. I’m not Howard Hughes, you know. People visit me all the time—actors, directors, editors, agents. I am intensely engaged in every aspect of every one of my movies. When they’re being filmed, I have the dailies transferred to me electronically right here, and I review them and get my feedback back on the set by morning.”

“Why not go there?” Stride asked.

“First, I don’t need to. I can do it from here, and you have to admit, I have one of the most beautiful locations anywhere on earth.”

Stride nodded. That was true. Every time they passed a window, he saw the island, the sound, or the gardens, and each one was a view to get lost in.

“Second, I’m intensely private. I’m not a partier, not anymore. To be very candid, the way I look makes people uncomfortable. I hate that. The people who come here generally know me well enough to respect my privacy and not to be put off by who I am.”

He took Stride through the living room at the front of the house, with chambered windows looking out on the water, and then out onto a deck that led down toward the boat dock below. Stride could see a ferry passing by well offshore on its way to Victoria. The trees closed in around the estate, and he saw several eagles circling overhead.

“This is wonderful,” Stride told him honestly.

“Thank you, Detective.” Walker seemed to recognize that the compliment was genuine, and it pleased him. “You want to know about MJ, don’t you? How things went so wrong between us?”

“I do, yes,” Stride admitted.

Walker rolled his chair to the very edge of the balcony, where he could stare down at the waves slapping gently on the rocks. “Does it surprise you that many women want to marry me?”

Stride shook his head. “Not at all.”

Walker used his one eye to give him a knowing stare. “Very smooth, Detective. Of course, it’s my money. Actresses—hell, plenty of actors, too—seem to become very enlightened about wheelchairs and physical appearance when they think about all that cash in the bank. They tell me it’s love that matters. You really have to be from L.A. to make that line work.”

Stride laughed. Walker did, too.

“But MJ’s mother was different. Terrible actress—all the desire in the world but none of the talent. I think the director must have known she and I would hit it off, because he certainly didn’t send her to me because of her audition. Or maybe he just thought I needed a good lay. She wanted to be in this movie I was casting, and she was ready to do anything—I mean anything—to be in it. When I declined, she fell to pieces, crying. She was very unstable, but there was something oddly appealing about her. She was such a waif. I guess I wanted someone I could take care of. Much to the surprise of a lot of people in Hollywood, we got married. I guess you could say we were codependent for a while.”

“I understand,” Stride said. He thought about his second wife, Andrea. Their relationship was similar. Two people who needed each other but didn’t love each other.

“MJ was born two years later. I didn’t realize she was falling into a deep depression. People didn’t really talk about those things. I just thought she didn’t love me anymore and didn’t love the boy. I was a fool.”

Stride had read newspaper articles about Walker. His wife had killed herself a few years after MJ was born. “I think I know the rest,” he said.

“Yes, her suicide made the news. But you don’t know
why
, Detective. MJ understood it eventually, or he thought he did. He realized that my wife couldn’t stand the competition. She was fragile and neurotic, and I only made it worse. Because I couldn’t let go of the past, you see. MJ realized it, too. That’s why this business about the Sheherezade was so upsetting to him.”

Stride felt his senses shift as he heard the name Sheherezade. He tuned out his emotions and hardened his heart. It was a shame, because he found himself liking Walker Lane.

“You said your wife couldn’t stand the competition,” Stride said. “What do you mean? What couldn’t you let go?”

Walker sighed. “Yes, that’s what you’ve come for, isn’t it? To hear the real story.” He turned the wheelchair around and pointed up at the tower rising above the house. “Do you see it, Detective?”

Stride looked up, confused. He saw only peaked roofs and stone, and dozens of windows opening on the water. He saw the tower overhead, with a circular balcony at the top like a widow’s walk. “I don’t—” he began, but then his eyes finally lighted on the five stones different from the others in the tower. They were gray slate like the rest, but someone had carved a letter into each of them. There were other stones between them, so they were spread out, forming a word horizontally that stretched from one side of the turret to the other. Years of Pacific rain had washed down their edges, but he could still read it.

He stared down at Walker, not understanding. Walker was lost in thought, studying the letters with his one eye as if he could caress them.

“You named your estate after her,” Stride murmured. “Why?”

“Why? Detective, you’re not a romantic.”

“You
killed
her,” Stride said. The words slipped out.

Walker shook his head. He didn’t seem angry, just intense and heartbroken. “No, no. Never. Don’t you understand? I’d sooner kill myself. There are many days I’ve thought about doing that, just to be with her. I
loved
Amira. She loved me. We were going to be married that very night. The night that Boni Fisso murdered her.”

When they returned to the porch, Stride saw that the cloudless sky had dissipated into patches of darkness. It happened so quickly here, the changes from rain to sun, sun to rain. Drizzle began to dampen the garden outside and streak the windows. It grew colder. Walker called one of his staff, who stacked logs in the fireplace and started a blaze that quickly warmed the room. He opened wine, and Stride gave up his inhibitions and accepted a glass. Walker sipped the pinot noir and stared into the fire.

“I wish I could explain about Vegas in those days,” Walker said. “I think it had the same kind of allure that Hollywood did in the thirties. It was young, electric, glamorous. Millionaires rubbing shoulders with showgirls. Entertainers playing craps on the casino floor at two in the morning. Everyone dressed up in jewels and tuxes like they were going to the Met. I remember it seemed to me that everyone there was beautiful. Everyone was rich. It was illusion, of course. Sleight of hand. That’s what the town is so good at. You couldn’t walk into one of the casinos then and not get caught up in it. Maybe that’s because the real world seemed so far away. Walk a hundred yards in any direction and there was nothing but desert, an utter wasteland. I remember driving there on this two-lane nothing road from California, spending hours in the darkness without a glint of light anywhere. Then you’d see a glow like fire on the horizon, and you’d come over the crest of a hill and find this neon island blazing out of the night.”

“Helen Truax said the town had star quality then,” Stride said.

“Yes, she was right. That’s exactly what it was.”

Stride added, “Helen was one of the dancers with Amira.”

Walker shook his head. “Was she? I don’t remember her.”

“Her stage name was Helena Troy. She says she slept with you.”

Walker looked embarrassed. “I don’t doubt it. I played the game. I was young and rich, and I liked to sleep with lots of girls in those days. Vegas seduced me like so many others.”

“What about Amira?”

“Yes, her, too. She seduced me. Have you read about
Flame
?

Stride nodded.

“Words can’t do it justice,” Walker said. “I think I fell in love with Amira the very first time I saw it. I had had plenty of flings, but Amira was different. I fell for her, head over heels. Maybe I’m flattering myself, but I think it was the same for her. Perhaps she just wanted my money, or wanted an escape, but I think she loved me, too, just as passionately.”

“But Amira was Boni’s mistress, wasn’t she?” Stride asked.

Walker’s face, the part of it that moved, showed his pain. “Foolish, wasn’t I? Naive. I was playing with gangsters, and I thought it was just another one of my movies. The tough guys in suits and fedoras looked like actors. But this was real.”

“What happened?”

“We thought we could keep it secret,” Walker said. “No one would know how we felt, until we were long gone and married.”

Long gone
, Stride thought again.

“I wasn’t good at hiding my feelings. I was young, and love was written all over my face. Everyone knew it. They knew when I showed up every weekend at her shows. Boni knew, too, of course. Leo Rucci told me how it was. He told me Amira was Boni’s property, like a chair or a dog. That made me furious, but I pretended it was just a crush, nothing serious. Amira was the better actor. She never so much as looked at me in public. She told Boni if I ever laid a hand on her, she would knock me flat. Boni laughed about that, she said. So you see, we thought we were getting away with it. After her performance, in the middle of the night, she’d slip up to my suite on the roof, and we’d be together. It was our secret.”

“There aren’t many secrets in Vegas,” Stride said.

“No. Later, I realized he probably bugged my suite. We thought we were so smart, and he knew all along what was going on between us.”

“Tell me about that night.”

“That night,” Walker murmured. “That horrible, horrible night” He brought his right hand up and touched the frozen side of his face, rubbing it, as if he might feel something there. “After her last show, we were going to Europe. We planned to get married and spend six months traveling the world.”

“But Boni knew?”

Walker nodded. “He and I spent the evening together in his office. We did that a lot. I always thought Boni was charming. We had fun together. But the hours wore on, and there was something wrong. There was something different about him. As it got later, I knew Amira would be waiting in my suite, and I wanted to go to her. Boni kept finding excuses to keep me there, and I just watched the clock. Then Leo Rucci arrived. Boni’s enforcer. He always scared me, because you knew he was nothing but a vicious thug underneath his suit. Boni asked Leo to escort me back to my suite, and I protested, but Boni insisted. And as I left, Boni kissed me on both cheeks. I remember what he said.
’God be with you, Walker
.’ Right then, I knew. I knew it was going to be bad.”

Stride didn’t say anything. He remembered standing on the balcony of MJ’s apartment, looking down at the rooftop suite of the Sheherezade.

“Leo followed me into the suite. I tried to stop him, but he just laughed. I expected to find Amira there, but it was quiet, and I thought she had come and gone. And then—I could see the door to the patio was open. I had this terrible feeling. I went outside.” Walker choked up. “She was in the pool. The water was red and cloudy. I just stared down at her. All I could think was that I was the one who killed her. By falling in love with her.”

“What did they do to you?” Stride asked, guessing what had happened next.

Walker looked down at his useless limbs in the chair. “Leo took me into the basement and put me in a limousine. He said they were taking me to the airport, and I was to leave the city and never come back. That wasn’t enough for them, of course. The two men in the car—they took a detour into the desert. Do you know what it’s like to have your knees broken with a baseball bat, Detective? Or to have your skull fractured by brass knuckles? I would have given them any amount of money to kill me, but they were very careful about that. Boni didn’t want me dead. He wanted me to know what he had done to me.”