The Ticket Out (24 page)

I bent down to look at the floor. Lockwood saw what I was doing and aimed the flashlight for me. I found patches of green fuzz. It was heavy and stiff like carpet fiber, except none of the theater carpets were green. Cigarette butts and cigar stubs were scattered everywhere; they were flattened by age and the shoes that had crushed them. I picked up one of the butts. It was nonfilter and had faint lipstick stains around the tip. The old paper crumbled and spilled dry tobacco.

Lockwood picked up some green fuzz. I leaned closer to him. “How much do you know about MGM?”

Lockwood shook his head.

“In its heyday it was run like a fascist state. It had its own police force and internal spies. They bugged employee offices and monitored left-wing political activity—they even kept track of the actresses' periods. Louis Mayer had a private elevator that he used to keep his meetings and movements secret. The elevator ran from his office on the top floor to these screening rooms. This was probably an entrance.”

I tapped the maroon door. Lockwood sat back on his heels and studied it. He ran the flashlight beam back and forth over the whole surface. I watched him get to the bottom sill, stop, and frown at the door.

A voice reached us, muffled by walls. “Detective! Detective, sir!”

Lockwood stood up, and we took a shortcut through theater C to the lower lobby. The security guard from before was looking for us. He seemed flustered. He was with an old guy wearing a tool belt.

The guard explained that he'd gone to disarm the emergency system so that Lockwood and I could move freely. He discovered that someone had tampered with the alarm fuses. Someone had also tampered with the emergency door leading outside from the passages. Lockwood asked the guard to show us. He and the maintenance guy led us back through theater C and along the passage to the outside exit. There was a steel door at the bottom of a long flight of cement stairs. The catch on the door had been jammed so the door could be opened from the exterior.

The four of us walked up the staircase into the night air. It was more parking lot back there, a high wall and Culver Boulevard. Lockwood asked the two men about Louis Mayer's private elevator. The maintenance guy, a veteran, said that they'd discovered the elevator shaft in the late '60s when a wall in theater C started to leak. The elevator had been taken out and the shaft sealed. Its approximate location was the ladies' restroom next to theater C.

Lockwood thanked the men and asked how soon the alarm system would be fixed. They said a couple of hours, and took off.

Lockwood backed up to survey the rear of the building, then sat down on the top step of the emergency stairs. I sat down beside him. He shined his flashlight down the staircase.

I said, “Someone is using the basement to hide.”

Lockwood put his finger to his lips. I lowered my voice. “Should I not talk?”

“Please, talk—but try a different subject. I need to think about this.”

It was a perfect opening. I gathered my nerve and said, “I wish you'd let me write your story. You really should defend yourself. From what I've heard, you did the right thing at the siege.”

Lockwood was silent. I said, “If it's because you don't trust me—I'll have the rest of the blackmail money in two months maximum.”

He said, “It's not that.”

No, I actually knew it wasn't that. The signs that he trusted me, at least some, had been there since morning.

I said, “All right, I'm the enemy and you hate me. But I can still write a great piece.”

Lockwood squeezed my wrist and didn't answer. The light was too dark to see his face clearly, but he looked like he was smiling.

I said, “I can be objective—”

Lockwood moved the flashlight; he
was
smiling. I said, “Is something funny?”

He shook his head. “It isn't about trust or liking. Other journalists have offered to write my side of events.”

“Really?”

“I have a few supporters in the media, believe it or not.”

“So why didn't they?”

“Because I wouldn't let them.”

“Why not?”

Lockwood's smile went away, and he paused. He said, “People who commit crimes lie. I'm used to lying—I'm not only used to it, I expect it.”

I said, “Unlike gullible me.”

Lockwood squeezed my wrist again. “You're a bad liar, baby, that's why good liars fool you.”

I flashed back to the scene with Barry tonight. I could do a certain kind of lying when I had to. I'd left Barry with several wrong impressions.

Lockwood was talking. “In my experience, it's a rare criminal who isn't aware of his own lies. You see the pathological cases, sure, the guys who've lost touch with reality. But people usually know they're lying when they lie to me. They know what the truth is, they're just choosing to hide it. But they can be trapped with evidence. That's why we have courts and trials—to present evidence to neutral arbitration and prosecute the guilty.”

I said, “That's the theory.”

“I agree—that's the theory.” Lockwood played with the flashlight beam.

“But the media is a different breed of liar. Criminals have fallen from truth, whereas the media doesn't seem to give a damn about it. The truth has no power with them unless other considerations make the truth convenient to tell. They run with the herd and call it ‘reporting the facts'—even when the herd changes its mind the next day.

“I'm accused of many things by the people I arrest, but I don't dignify them with an answer. If I did, it would give them credibility they don't have. The media would love for me to defend myself because it would give them credibility. It would mean I acknowledged their charges as something that should be dealt with. But I don't acknowledge it. People who know the facts know I did what was possible in the circumstances.”

I said, “Some say you did better than that.”

Lockwood shook his head. “If nobody had died, that would have been better.”

He realized he was just playing with the flashlight, and switched it off. He didn't talk for a minute; but he wasn't done.

“The media hates me now, and I couldn't change their minds if I wanted to. I think they hate me in part because they've painted me as evil and they know I'm not. It also goes beyond me—this is also about LAPD in general, and Rampart. I've been advised to ask forgiveness publicly, even if I'm not sincere. But then the dishonesty would come full circle. I'm not looking for forgiveness or vindication—I didn't do anything wrong. I want no part of notoriety I didn't ask for, or an image that the media fabricated in bad faith.”

I said, “But if you don't defend yourself, they win.”

“They win either way, is what I'm saying. If I play, I lose. My words on a page have the same weight as their words on a page. The game is rigged and can't be redeemed. I won't waste my time with it.”

I sat looking at him. There was no self-pity in his face. He wasn't angry or bitter: he'd said all that in his normal way. And I understood exactly what he was talking about.

I grabbed the railing and pulled myself up. Lockwood said, “Where are you going?”

“Home to bed—I'm overstrained.”

He stood up and stopped me. “What's the matter?”

I blurted, “Did the siege scandal change you?”

I felt the abruptness of the question, but Lockwood didn't hesitate. He said, “Yes, it changed me.”

“How has it changed you? What were you before? Did it wreck your career and ruin your life?”

Lockwood glanced down the emergency staircase. “Let's solve these murders first.”

“If I help, will you talk to me?”

He said, “You've already helped.”

“So will you talk to me?”

Lockwood nodded.

I started to clap my hands. Lockwood reached out and held them closed. He said, “I'll talk to
you.
Not to your newspaper—

T
HE
L
OS
A
NGELES
District Attorney's office today confirmed rumors of a secret grand-jury probe into the ongoing Rampart corruption scandal. The announcement came after weeks of speculation. Sources close to the probe say that Douglas Lockwood, the LAPD detective involved in the controversial ‘Burger King Siege' of last December, has been called to testify about his Rampart links.”

Jesus,
I thought.
Shut up!

I covered my ears to stop the sound of the anchorman's voice. The TV boomed through the student union and added to the racket of kids between classes.

I shifted around, trying to get more comfortable. All the couches were taken and I was napping in an armchair. But the chair was lumpy, the fabric made my skin itch, and I was surrounded by eating, drinking, yakking kids. I opened my eyes to check the time. It was only ten-thirty. I was so tired and over-amped that I wanted to scream.

I'd slept a total of forty-five minutes all night. Lockwood had been right about how nerves accumulate. After I got home from Sony, I just bounced around the mansion—I didn't even feel like lying down. I'd talked to the surveillance guys a bit; mostly I stared out of windows and replayed the end of the evening.

I was convinced that someone was using the Thalberg basement to hide. Lockwood had disagreed. Someone was using it to pass through, he said, but there was no practical place to
hide
—not in the screening rooms, or the upper floors. I'd said there was plenty of access between the theaters and the floors above it: three elevators and two staircases connected them. He'd said the lobby was guarded and the fire escapes were grilled and locked; the only way in and out of the building without trouble was the basement. I wasn't convinced. Why use the basement at all, then? Come in by the west ramp, leave by the south emergency stairs, or vice versa: what did it get you? A tricky escape hatch, Lockwood said.

But people had disappeared, I argued—where did he think they were? The more time wore on, the more dire things looked. And why, I had asked, did he care about Neil John Phillips and his boxes of old MGM memos?

I knew I'd made progress with Lockwood. He'd agreed to talk to me: that was an important concession. But it didn't mean he was going to answer all my questions.

He wouldn't comment on Phillips's boxes. He refused to say who or what he suspected; he wouldn't agree that the SC crowd was key to Greta Stenholm's death. He'd only discuss concrete measures. They were fixing the Thalberg's alarm system. He'd issued a broadcast listing Isabelle Pavich as a possible kidnap victim. He'd attended roll calls at Culver City PD to get their help locating Mrs. May, Scott Dolgin, and Neil Phillips. Mrs. May was a priority. He wanted to search her bungalow and bag the bloody clothes.

He'd left it between us like this: if anything crucial happened, he'd call me or I'd call him. Otherwise I should be careful and we'd talk when we talked.
Be careful,
I'd thought for the billionth time. Careful of what? Of who?

By dawn I had worn myself out on hypotheticals. I decided to take a swim. I swam until I couldn't lift my arms, then collapsed on the bed and slept for a whole forty-five minutes.

I was back on the road at 7
A.M.

Catherine Kerr had slammed her door on me. Hamilton Ashburn was in transit between his house and the set, and his cell phone didn't answer. Penny Proft made a couple of lame jokes and invited me to breakfast. The receptionist at PPA said that Len Ziskind and Jack Nevenson weren't in yet. I'd dodged past her to check their offices; she started dialing the cops. I left the building voluntarily and drove up to the Writers Guild on Sunset. The Guild registered written material to protect it from plagiarism. I claimed to be Greta Stenholm's sister and tried to finagle a copy of GB
Dreams Big.
The desk person just laughed at me.

From there I'd swung down to the Casa de Amor and talked to the surveillance guys sitting across Washington. They hadn't seen anybody we wanted.

At that point I was totally out of ideas. Then I'd remembered a name Mark gave me way back at the start: an Academy librarian, film teacher, and screenwriter named Steve Lampley. Lampley knew Greta from Kansas.

I'd found Lampley's phone number and called him at home. He was giving a lecture at a college in Malibu. Could he meet me out there beforehand? Unlike everyone else that morning, Lampley had seemed anxious to talk.

I sighed. The nap just wasn't happening.

I sat up, stuck out my legs, stretched, and checked around. I saw an older guy walk into the student union and stand looking for someone. On the phone Lampley told me “black suit and salt-and-pepper ponytail.” This guy had both. I waved an arm. He spotted me and headed over.

He was small and fortyish, with a grievance on his face. I could even guess what the grievance was. He didn't want to be lecturing at Podunk colleges; he wanted to be earning seven figures per screenplay.

I pointed to an alcove away from the TV set. He nodded and we went and sat down on a couch.

Lampley said, “I just realized I might have killed Greta.”

I'd barely gotten settled. I dropped my bag and just stared at him. He said, “You were one of her best friends so I'll tell you first.”

I tried not to gape. First Catherine Kerr and her news: Greta wanted to take
me
to Hollywood. And now
I
was one of Greta's best friends? I'd play it as close to the truth as I could.

I said, “Greta and I weren't
friend
friends. I mean—”

Lampley cut in. “No one was really friends with Greta—you don't need to explain. We both know she only had one idea in her head and nothing else mattered, certainly not friendship. But she talked about you more than anyone else before she ... toward the end.”

He had a hard time with “end.” It was the only sign of whatever emotion he felt. He was a tight, controlled guy.