The Liar's Lullaby (20 page)

Back off.
Declare Tasia’s death an accident.

“Prick,” she said.

The light changed. She strode with the crowd across the crowded intersection. Sunlight slanted between buildings and the wind shirred across her skin.

Tasia could no longer speak for herself. But perhaps somebody else could speak for her. She called Ace Chennault, Tasia’s ghost.

 

 

I
N UNION SQUARE, Keyes held the phone to his ear and turned away to block out the noise from the salsa band.

Ivory answered. “News?”

“I just saw the police shrink come out of the Saint Francis and walk away.”

“You sure?”

“I got her photo. E-mail Paine. Tell him she was there to talk to Searle Lecroix.” He started walking. “I’ll send him the photos within the next half hour.”

He snapped the phone shut.

A
CE CHENNAULT HAD BEEN RELEASED FROM THE HOSPITAL, AND JO arranged to meet him for coffee near the Civic Center. She took off at a brisk walk.

The straightest route between the swanky designer stores of Union Square and the grandeur of the Civic Center took Jo through the demimonde of the Tenderloin. The neighborhood began suddenly: Under blue skies, with ultramodern hotels and skyscrapers visible a block away, the streets seemed to empty of traffic. Men shambled along the sidewalk. They were skinny. They wore saggy jeans and beanies. They were white, they were black, they had few teeth. Among the few vehicles in sight were a decrepit parked pickup and an electric wheelchair driven by a gent with a bushy white beard, whose bandanna was tied pirate-style over his ponytail.

Jo jogged across a street, holding tight to her satchel. On the far corner, a man in crooked aviator shades strutted by, hands fidgeting at his sides.

“Vicodin. Vicodin,” he chanted.

She jogged past.

“Hey, baby. Vicodin.”

No thanks.
At the St. Anthony Dining Room, the kitchen must have been about to open. Outside its doors people stood in line behind ropes that ran around the block, as if the mission were a trendy club. Across the street the Islamic Center was open as well, but the sidewalk outside it was empty. The Catholics, it seemed, had more popular food.

She passed a low- rent hotel with a buzzing neon sign. Near the door, an employee was scrubbing the sidewalk with a bucket of soapy water and a broom. On the sign, several letters were out. THEMORAL flickered on and off. Jo didn’t know whether that should be taken as a promise, or a warning.

After a few blocks she emerged onto the broad plaza that led to the Civic Center. The people of the Tenderloin thinned out, like eddies along a shore. The golden dome of City Hall shone in the distance. On the plaza, an antiques fair was set up, farmers’-market style. She walked toward the Federal Building, looking for the Starbucks, and heard a man call her name.

“Over here.”

From a bench in the distance, Ace Chennault waved at her. When she approached, he held out a cup of coffee. “Didn’t know how you take it, so it’s black.”

She sat down beside him. “Thanks. How are you feeling?”

He shrugged. His broken left arm hung in the sling. Blue cast, blue sling, blue mood. The black sutures crept along his scalp like a crusty centipede.

His boyish face looked haggard. “I was a micro-celeb for ninety seconds. But the reporters are gone and the painkillers have worn off.”

Walk around the corner,
Jo thought.
Mr. Vicodin will fix you right up.

He looked at his feet. “Actually, I’m damned lucky. I just came from the funeral home. Paying my respects to Tasia. Pretty awful.”

Jo gave him a moment. At the end of the plaza beyond the antiques market, City Hall was framed by the green boughs of trees that stood like a military honor guard.

She got her notebook. “Ready to talk?”

He took out a digital audio recorder. “Mind if I record this?”

“Not at all.”

She was surprised, yet not. She’d never had an interviewee record a psychological autopsy interview. But then, she’d never interviewed a writer facing the collapse of his high-profile publishing deal.

Chennault fiddled with buttons, struggling because of the cast. “Journalists get quotes wrong all the time. You’d be amazed. Reporters write down stuff that never came out of people’s mouths. Usually in demeaning ways.”

“I need facts, and your impressions. I have no reason to want to demean you.”

“Good. Excuse my suspicious nature, but I did just get attacked by a rock-wielding caveman.”

He pressed
Play
and held the recorder up, staring at her intensely.

“For the record,” Jo said, “is Ace your legal name?”

“You accusing me of using an alias?”

“Getting the quote right.”

He smiled. “Sorry. Ace is a nom de plume
.
” The smile turned charmingly rueful. “Anson isn’t a great name for a rock ’n’ roll journo.”

“And Chennault?”

“All mine.”

She wrote it down. “Did Tasia talk to you about her marriage?”

The smile mutated again. “You’ll have to wait to read about it in the book.”

She flattened her expression. “Please.”

“Sorry, Doctor. Journalistic privilege. I will tell you two things. Tasia was off her rocker, and the revelations will be explosive.”

“Would you like that phrase to go in my report?”

Now he flashed his teeth. “Please.”

She guessed that this was a new form of viral marketing. She hated it.

“Did Tasia ever speak about a stalker?” she said.

He blinked sharply, as if he’d been poked in the eye with a stick. “Who was after her?” He pointed to his crusty sutures. “This guy?”

“I don’t know. The police are trying to piece it together. Did she ever talk about somebody threatening her? Somebody, that is, within the realm of what we call consensus reality.”

“Besides ‘They,’ you mean. No.” He leaned back, pensive. “Wait. There was this one time.”

A man approached them. “No sitting, folks.”

He was a rent-a-cop dressed in black tactical gear. He waved them along like a couple of vagrants.

“It’s a park bench in Federal Plaza,” Jo said.

He looked away. “Not during the antiques market. Private event.”

He had a buzz cut and a pierced eyebrow. His black flak jacket said MONDO SWAT. He was about eighteen years old.

Chennault pulled a face and gestured to his sling. “No mercy for the wounded?”

Still looking away, the kid waved again. “Everybody has to keep walking. Those are the rules.”

Chennault spat a laugh. “
Jawohl
, Herr Himmler.”

He stood up. “Doesn’t matter I got these stitches from chasing down the intruder at Tasia McFarland’s house, does it? That we’re trying to get to the bottom of the biggest case in the United States? Gotta follow those orders.”

The rent-a-cop looked at him with sharp surprise. Chennault ambled away from the bench toward City Hall. Jo followed him.

He shook his head. “See what public education hath wrought. Clueless about the irony of booting citizens out of a public place.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, now he’s regretting it. I gave him something to think about.” He eyed Jo. “And if you think Tasia liked me because I’m not scared to speak up, you’re right.”

Touchy, touchy,
Jo thought. And needy for attention. Also in physical pain.

“Is that why you gave her a copy of
Case Closed
?” she said.

“Tasia had the celebrity habit of believing every conspiracy theory she heard. I wanted to educate her about the Kennedy assassination. And the moon landing, and other fake ‘conspiracies,’ but she mostly cared about Jackie.”

“You said somebody might have threatened her,” she said.

“Concert in Tucson, last month. I was watching the show from the wings. Right after she made her entrance on the zip line, there was this guy in the front row. Just standing there, while everybody else was cheering and clapping. Staring at her. It was creepy.”

That was less than nothing. “Just staring?”

“Yeah. Until he climbed the barrier and tried to rush the stage. Pulling off his clothes.”

“Security stopped him?”

“Yeah. White guy, pudgy, maybe late twenties. They tossed him back, he melted into the crowd.”

If that’s all the incident amounted to, Jo doubted there would be any record of it. She also noticed that as Chennault answered questions, his memory for detail improved remarkably. She wondered if he was exaggerating. Overly helpful witnesses were an occupational hazard. She listened to everything people told her with a high index of suspicion.

“I hear that you stopped by Tasia’s house the night before she died, and she refused to speak to you.”

His poked-in-the-eye look returned. “It ever occur to you that Searle Lecroix might have an ulterior motive for saying that?”

“Such as?”

“Trying to scotch an autobiography that might not portray him in the most flattering light. Making me look bad to help his own cause.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I think nobody’s considered the possibility that Searle wanted out of his relationship with Tasia, but couldn’t do it while they were on tour. I think nobody’s figured out how convenient it was that Tasia died and Searle didn’t have to break up with her. And that he played the heartbroken hero that night on the baseball field, begging people for help, but actually did nothing to save her.”

Jo held her counsel. Chennault’s eyes cut back and forth, avoiding her gaze. The light in his eyes was injured and sly.

“Maybe you ought to ask Lecroix about that fat fan who rushed the stage in Tucson. The answers he gives you might surprise you,” he said.

A man shuffled past them, shirtless, white hair blowing in the wind like wild flames. His bare back was the canvas for a green tattoo.

Chennault gestured at him. “See that?
Semper Fidelis.
It means ‘always faithful.’ ”

Jo ignored Chennault’s condescension. As if a physician would be unfamiliar with Latin phrases, or most Americans with the motto of the United States Marine Corps.

“Your tattoo says something similar,” she said.

He nodded, his sad eyes reddening. “Know how few people can abide by those words these days? Ask Lecroix about that. I think that’s what Tasia’s death is about.” He turned to go. “
Semper
. Think about that.
Always
is what counts.”

 

 

I
N THE MUSTY HOTEL ROOM, above red neon letters spitting THEMORAL, Noel Michael Petty put on a jean jacket and watch cap. Oakley sports sunglasses, like Major League Baseball players wore. Looked in the dingy mirror, made two fists and shook them.

But things were near catastrophe.
Shh. Tasia is bad. She’s dangerous.
NMP stuck the computer in a backpack. He needed to get online, needed to see if there were any messages for him.
Hush, precious love, don’t tell, they’ll ruin you, they’ll ruin everything.

Mr. Don’t-mess-with-me got the car antenna he’d torn from the old pickup truck, telescoped it down, and put it in the pocket of the jean jacket. Looking at the walls of the hotel room, Tasia’s beautiful hideous cow face, her kissing Searle, waving to the president, NMP inhaled and left to begin the hunt.

T
HE CABLE CAR CLATTERED UP RUSSIAN HILL. JO STOOD ON THE outside steps and hung on against the steep angle. She drank from her ever-ready stainless steel coffee mug. Apartment buildings and struggling pedestrians slid past. The cable car crested the lip of the hill and stopped at the corner. She hopped down. Immediately a Japanese tour group swarmed aboard, eager, smiling, dressed spotlessly in Burberry. The gripman rang the bell. Jo crossed the street and saw another group, clustered on the sidewalk outside her house.

Cameras. Boom mikes. Makeup and cigarettes.

Her face heated. How the hell did the press get her address? And if she threw herself headfirst into the hedge, would they see?

She veered across the street, pulled out her phone, and hit speed dial. A second later she heard, “Tang.”

“They found me. The press is parked outside my front door.”

“Christ.”

“How? Somebody from the police department?”

“I hope not.”

Jo continued along the sidewalk beside the park across the street from her house. In the middle of the press pack was a blond mane. Jo thought her head might explode.

“Edie freakin’ Wilson’s here. What am I supposed to do, hide until dark, when they go in search of alcohol?”

“Beckett, I’m sorry. But you’re going to have to soldier through it.”

“I know. And dammit, I can’t run from my own house.” She hung up.

At the far end of the block an engine revved. She glanced up. In her head she heard a bugle, heralding the arrival of the cavalry. Gabe’s 4Runner was waiting at the corner. Behind the wheel, he waved for her to hurry.

She picked up her pace. And a man in a wrinkled black shirt, who was sitting on her lawn, pointed.

“Hey,” he called. “Jo Beckett.”

The herd turned around. She kept going.
Shit.

“Doctor.”

“Jo, wait.”

Gabe’s truck was a hundred yards away.

“Jo, did Tasia kill herself?”

Edie Wilson’s strident voice carried on the breeze. “Who killed Tasia McFarland, Dr. Beckett?”

They swarmed from the sidewalk between parked cars and streamed across the street. Ahead, Gabe pulled out and drove toward her.
My getaway driver,
she thought, with a surge of affection.

“Why are you running away? What are you trying to hide?” Wilson called.