The Twenty-Year Death (40 page)

“You’re not alone.”

He ignored that. “You played it straight with me. You didn’t hold anything out.” He looked at me sharply. “Did you?”

“No,” I said, leaning forward in my chair and resting my hands on my desk.

“You see? He didn’t leave anything out,” Samuels said across the room to McEvoy as if they had been arguing about it before I got there. Samuels looked back at me. “So how come I find out you’re working the Ehrhardt murder when I told you not to?”

“Who says I am?” I said, squinting.

“I say it,” Samuels said. “And an informant who I won’t mention. You’ll understand.”

“Did you find everything you needed in here, or do you need me to get out any other files for you?”

“This one’s a real riot,” McEvoy said.

“Who asked you?” I said.

“Enough. Just tell me what you found out, Foster, and then that’s the end of it for you. Understand?

I nodded over at Sturgeon. “Do we want company while we talk?”

“Sturgeon, you wait outside,” Samuels said.

Sturgeon slumped his shoulders, and went back out into the reception room. Samuels closed the door behind him. I listened for the sound of the outer door, but it didn’t come. Sturgeon was waiting.

“So my friend at the
Chronicle
ratted me out,” I said, taking a cigarette from the pack on my desk.

“Why do you say that?” Samuels said.

I waved out my match. “Only person who could have talked.”

“You think what you want,” Samuels said. “Just spill.”

“I’m guessing you already know everything I know. There was a woman killed the same way as Ehrhardt back in December, just before Christmas. Found in Harbor City, never identified. So naturally I got to thinking that maybe they were killed by the same person. You see why I might have thought that?”

Samuels pressed his lips together and squinted. He saw all right. But it looked like it might have been the first time he saw. Maybe it hadn’t been Fisher who had ratted me out after all.

“So who was the Jane Doe?” Samuels said.

“Never identified,” I repeated, slower than before. “You can find everything I know in the
S.A. Times
for December 23.”

“Fine,” Samuels said. “What about this man under the boardwalk in Harbor City last night? Or did you think I hadn’t heard about that?”

“A different job.”

“He’s connected to another actor in Ehrhardt’s movie. I don’t like that.”

“You saying there’s a connection between their deaths?”

“Am I?”

“Don’t let me be the one to tell you,” I said.

Samuels took a deep breath then and let it out. His whole face went limp. “Look, Foster. I don’t mean to give you a hard time, but you know how it is.”

“Yeah, I know it,” I said, and held back a sneer. At least, I thought I held it back.

“Peepers,” Samuels said and stood up.

“Yeah,” McEvoy said, dropping a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Peepers.”

“Here’s a little advice, Foster. Don’t find any more bodies in Harbor City.”

I smiled.

Samuels opened the door to the reception room just as the phone rang. He and McEvoy both turned back to look at me. The phone rang again.

Samuels said quietly, “Well, aren’t you going to answer it?”

We all looked at the phone. I let it ring one more time, and picked up. “Foster.”

“Foster, you bastard, you’re a real pain, you know that?” It was Pauly Fisher at the
Chronicle
.

“Some people were just reminding me of that.”

“I don’t have anything for you on any other murders yet, but I found out who buried the story about the Jane Doe.”

“Yes,” I said, noncommittal. I looked up at the officers. Sturgeon was standing behind them, and all three of them were watching me. I gestured that it was nothing and that they should go, which worked about as well as I could have expected. I turned away in my seat a little, so that I wasn’t facing them. “Go on.”

“You okay, Foster?” Fisher said on the phone. “You don’t sound like your usual self.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re not alone, is that it?” Fisher’s voice lowered as though the people in my office could hear him.

“That’s right.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll keep it quick. That article you mentioned was by Ronald Dupree, a guy I’ve known for a thousand years. So I called Ron and asked him why the story had been buried. He was cagey at first, but I pushed and finally Ron told me the story was quashed by none other than Daniel Merton.”

I turned farther in my seat, so I was facing the grimy window behind my desk, the cord of the phone dangling over my shoulder.

“You there, Foster?” Fisher said.

“Did your friend have any idea why?”

“No. And after he told me, he tried to make out like it was just a rumor, and there was probably nothing to it. Which tells me it’s the truth.”

Someone cleared his throat behind me. “Yeah,” I said. “Listen, thanks. I mean it.”

“Like hell you do,” Fisher said. “We’ll talk later when you can talk.” He hung up.

That was the second time that Daniel Merton’s name had come up, first with the horse and now this. Why would the head of one of the studios, one of the richest men in California, want to keep the murder of an unidentified woman in Harbor City quiet?

I turned back and cradled the phone. “My dry cleaner. My other suit is ready.”

“Cut the comedy, Foster.”

“All right, it was my guy at the
Chronicle
. I’d asked him to look for more murders that matched the pattern, and he was calling to say he hadn’t found any.” I looked Samuels in the eye. “That’s the truth. Now if you boys wouldn’t mind clearing out, I have some real work to do.” I opened one of my desk drawers as though I were looking for a file.

“If I find out that you made my job harder,” Samuels said, “I’m going to come down on you with everything I’ve got.”

“Doesn’t look like you’ve got too much,” I said, “if you can waste your time hanging around a peeper’s office, listening to his phone calls.”

Samuels tapped a forefinger against my desk. “If your friend
calls you with anything,” he said, “you call me with it. Otherwise, you stay away from my case.”

He stalked out of the office, leaving the door open behind him.

McEvoy tipped his hat to me with one finger, nodded at Sturgeon, and then walked out. He pulled the door shut.

Like Gilplaine before them, they were telling me too much. They were telling me they didn’t want this case solved by me or anybody, that there was something to hide. That was okay with me, it could stay hidden for all I cared, only there was the matter of a broken movie star and whether my word was worth a damn thing.

I looked at Sturgeon. “You, too,” I said.

He raised his shoulders and pushed out his chest. “Now, look here, Foster. I’m prepared to pay you a lot of money—”

“That tune again,” I said, standing up. “You can’t decide if you’re sticking me up or bribing me.” I grabbed the edge of the door, preparing to close it. “Besides, you heard the detective, I’m not allowed anywhere near this case.”

“Now, see here,” Sturgeon said, “he has no right—”

“Neither do you,” I said, and I shoved him gently with the heel of my hand. When he’d cleared the threshold, I swung the door closed. I stayed close, listening, waiting for him to leave. There was no sound at first. He just stood there, trying to decide what to do. Then after another minute came the sound of his footsteps crossing the floor, followed by the outer door opening and closing. I listened for his steps in the hall to be sure he hadn’t doubled back. They were faint and grew fainter.

That should have been the end of it. There was nothing that made staying in it make any sense. But there was nothing about any of it that made any sense. And even telling myself that
Chloë Rose had been out of her mind when I had seen her last, and heavily sedated to boot, did nothing to quiet my conscience. My word was my word, and I’d given it.

I went to the safe and got out the envelope with the check in it that Al Knox had given me the day before, and put it in my pocket, still sealed. Then I stepped into the waiting room, and locked the office behind me.

Downstairs I got my car out of the garage and took it around the block, watching my rearview to make sure that neither Samuels nor Sturgeon meant to follow me. No car stayed with me the whole way, so I completed my loop out onto Hollywood Boulevard, and started for Daniel Merton’s movie studio.

The kid at the gate wasn’t Jerry, but it might as well have been.

“I’m sorry, sir, your name is not on the list,” he said, holding up his clipboard. “You’re going to have to go through the gate and turn around and come back out again. There are people behind you.”

I put on my most charming smile for him. “I was hired two days ago by Al Knox. You know Al Knox?”

The kid nodded. “He’s my boss.”

“Well, why don’t you call Al, and tell him I’m here. Dennis Foster. He’ll tell you to let me through.”

Somebody behind me let go with their horn and held it down. I checked my rearview. There was a black coupe behind me and a truck behind that. It was the truck driver who was honking.

The noise startled the kid, who ducked back into the box and picked up a phone. He came out a moment later.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Foster,” the kid said, back at my window. “Mr. Knox wasn’t in the office just now.”

“Well, did you ask anyone else if they knew me? I was just here the day before yesterday.”

The truck horn had not let up.

“Look, call the office back, tell them I’m coming in, and open the gate before that truck driver ruins the soundtrack on all of the pictures being made.”

“I don’t think I can do that, sir.”

“I think you can. Just step back inside and try.”

He blinked, looked back at the truck driver, and waved his hand. “Would you quit it?” The horn kept blaring. The kid looked all around again and shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to come around.”

He hit the button that made the bar go up and then stepped in front of my car, guiding me, forcing me to turn around unless I wanted to hit him. From the other side of the booth, he triggered the exit gate, and I pulled back out onto Cabarello Boulevard.

The studio wall continued along Cabarello until the next intersection, where it turned right, maintaining the perimeter. I followed it until the next opening, a smaller gate just large enough to be used by one vehicle at a time. There were large wrought-iron gates that opened inward and would be shut at night. A heavy chain was suspended across the opening with a sign hanging from the middle that said, “Private. No Trespassing.” The security officer here was an older man with a soft belly, no doubt one of Knox’s retirees. I pulled up to the gate as another car was turned away.

“Any chance of getting in here today?” I said.

“About as good a chance as any other day,” he said.

“I should be expected.”

“Believe me, they all should be expected. You got a screen test with DeMille or Hughes or some other director that doesn’t even work at our studio but across town at the competitor’s? Or are you good friends with Chet Gelding or John Stark, or maybe it was Layla Carlton?”

“Al Knox hired me a couple days back to work a private investigation. I’m just trying to get in to see him, but the boy at the front gate couldn’t get Al on the phone.”

“Where do they find these kids?”

“Will you at least call Al?”

“You a cop?”

“Not anymore.”

He nodded. “What’s your name?”

“Foster. And if you don’t get Knox, I actually
am
friends with John Stark,” I said, and smiled.

“You can leave that one in your hip pocket. I’ll get Knox. Just a matter of knowing where to reach him. Hang on.”

He went over to the side of the gate, opened a little panel there and brought out a phone receiver. He talked a few moments, waited, talked a bit more, then hung up and closed the little panel. He unclipped the side of the chain nearest him, and walked it across the opening, clearing the path through the gate. He waved me on. As I pulled up, I said, “Thanks.”

“I guess it was about time for my daily exercise anyway,” he said.

I pulled in to the studio. Security wasn’t as useless as Knox had made it out to be. It might not have been impossible for a strange man to appear on the set of one of their movies, but it would take a little doing.

I followed the streets as best I could coming from the side entrance. I passed through the shadow of two soundstages and arrived at the four-story administrative building with the parking lot out front. I took a spot between what appeared to be an Army truck and what was for sure a Rolls Royce. I wasn’t too concerned about whether Knox was available or not; I hadn’t come to see him. Still, it was his house. I crossed the parking lot to the door on the end of the building with chicken wire glass, where three security golf carts were parked.

The officer on secretary duty today looked up as I came in. “Mr. Knox just got back in the office. I’m sorry about Billy. He’s just doing his job.”

“Aren’t we all?” I said, and continued past him and on into Al’s office.

He was on the phone. “No, damn it. This has nothing to do with my department or anybody else at the studio. It was an unfortunate but unrelated event.” He gritted his teeth and shook his head at me. “There will be express instructions as always to allow no member of the press on the lot. And you’re not to bother any of our actors either. You say whatever you damn please, but we’ll sue you for slander if you get a word of it wrong.” He slammed the phone and a ghost of a ring hung in the air between us.

“Dennis, what are you here for?” Knox said. His cheeks were red, and perspiration made his forehead shiny. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth and then put it back in his pocket. “I don’t have time for anything but business. This Ehrhardt-Rose thing is a twister just waiting to happen.”

“Fine with me,” I said. I pulled out the envelope and tossed it on his desk, much the way he’d tossed it on mine the day before.

He looked at the envelope. Then he reached for it, his eyes searching for an answer in mine. “What’s this?”