Angel Eyes (6 page)

"Nothing as yet," Slade said. "For the moment, at least, the identity of Solares's murderer is unknown.''

"Any guesses?" the old man asked.

"I don't deal in speculation," Slade said, annoyed that the old man still saw fit to test him. "You taught me that, Bernard. Speculation leads, more often than not, to false conclusions."

Godwin nodded. "You said that Solares got careless." He had paused to run his hand across the ruffled field of Hino crihison azalea. "Of course, there's another possibility." He watched, fascinated, as a furry bumblebee, its legs thick with pollen, took off from the center of a flower. "Someone is one step ahead of you.'' He glanced sidelong at Slade. ''Now there's a disturbing thought."

"Jesus Christ," Slade said. " 'Disturbing' doesn't begin to cover that prospect. How does the word 'disaster' grab you?"

The old man frowned to show his distaste. "You know I dislike words of that nature, Slade," he said. "They smack of defeatism. Defeat is for the weak-it is not for us. What we need now is a sound offensive strategy."

"Of course," Slade said. "Every situation has its master, every speciality has its sensei. We need Tori Nunn back. We are lost in the middle of her field of expertise.''

''Yes,'' the old man said.''And you've volunteered to get her back yourself. I appreciate that, Russell. Just make certain it isn't simply a gesture."

Slade suddenly saw how neatly he had been maneuvered into this personal involvement, despite his own conviction that personal involvement was dangerous and potentially lethal in the shadow world. In Russell Slade's opinion, emotion had no place in Mall business. That was a point he had tried to make over and over to Tori without the slightest success. It occurred to him-not for the first time, but now with increasing focus-that his sense of being in total control of the Mall was more illusory than real, and abruptly he felt the heavy yoke of servitude to this one man stamped upon his flesh like stigmata.

"One must consider the method of Solares's death,'' Godwin was saying. "Whoever killed him didn't just put a gun to his head. They made a lot of noise. They wanted us to know right away all the way back east. Goddamnit, they wanted to embarrass us." He tore off an azalea blossom and, making a show of it, used the pads of his thumb and forefinger to squeeze the petals. "There can only be one response to that." He shook the flower, and the bumblebee dropped at their feet. "Go for the throat, that's what's called for." Godwin placed the beautiful, unbruised azalea in his buttonhole. "When you've been set back on your heels, it's the only strategy that's worth a damn, take it from me."

Russell Slade, staring at the lifeless bee, wondered how he could free himself from Bernard Godwin's tyranny and still be privy to his secrets. He would discover who had murdered Ariel Solares in his own way but, being the brilliant administrator that he was, he would also devote himself to his own agenda. Why not? he thought. Bernard has his hidden agenda with his Soviet dissidents, why shouldn't I have mine?

Tori awoke to the sound of a bobwhite. It was sitting in among the bougainvilleas which, if she turned onto her right side, she could see through the open jalousied window.

For a moment she could not think where she was. Then she remembered: Los Angeles. Home.

The huge bed seemed like heaven; she did not want to leave it. She stirred, and as she did so, heard the door to the bedroom open. She saw her mother come quietly in. She was wearing a chic silk and chenille robe, calfskin slippers. She carried a tray filled with food, juice, coffee.

She smiled. "You're up, darling."

How did I get here? Tori blinked into the sunlight, closed her eyes, and remembered ...

... the scents of cigar smoke and marzipan, exhaust fumes and expensive suntan oil. Decaying earth and mold. Light and shadow, a crazy quilt of images, a jumble of sound . . . The squeal of a rat. . . the stench of fear as they were buried alive . . .

/ don't want to be back.

... the aromas of love, an intimate steam, a delicious dissolving of defenses, an intoxicating wine taken in through the pores of the skin. And then ... a death's-head blossoming, and the stench of fear again, coming to claim her ... plastique detonating, destroying her lover, shattering her aerie, her newfound peace; her sanctuary.

I don't want to be back.

"It's so wonderful to have you home again, darling," Laura Nunn said as she set the tray down across her daughter's lap. "We were so worried when we got your call. What were you doing in a San Francisco police precinct?"

But what Tori really meant was, Don't be dead, Ariel. Please come back. Greg is dead. It's more than I can bear for you to be dead, too.

Tori pushed the dark thoughts away from her as if they had an insupportable weight. She forced herself to sit up and say, with a mixture of apprehension and fatalism, "Where's Dad?"

"Ellis is at the office." Laura Nunn settled the tray around Tori. "He sends his apologies, but you know your father, he's like quicksand-" She put her hand over her mouth. "Did I say quicksand? Well, of course I meant quicksilver." She gave a small, embarrassed laugh. "I never understood how a human being could get along on three hours sleep a night. But Ellis is a creature of habit. He still sleeps from three to six, and not an instant more."

Tori studied her mother: so beautiful as a young woman, so exquisite as a mature one; and now, in her early sixties, her hair was still a long chestnut cascade, her eyes brilliant green, her skin, devoid of makeup, without serious line or flaw. It was difficult to believe that any time had passed for her. Ah, well, Tori thought, that was L.A. for you. With a combination of good genes and even better plastic surgeons, the society here had banished age just as surely as God had banished Adam and Eve from Eden. Except that here sin was accepted-cherished, even, as a trait of success; hadn't Ellis Nunn's favorite twist on a phrase always been. In Los Angeles, nothing succeeds like sin? And, like undergoing a skin peel, it was acknowledged that you could always shed your immediate past, as long as you played the game. You could continually get away with stepping on the people you didn't need, as long as you kissed the asses of the people you did need.

Laura Nunn snapped out the linen napkin, placed it over the bedcovers. "Now, Maria has gone to great pains to cook everything you love."

Tori looked at the flower pattern Limoges china, the 1930s Tiffany silverware. They brought back dizzying images of her youth, growing up within the boundaries of Diana's Garden, this modern-day Xanadu that her parents had built.

Mistaking her hesitation, Laura Nunn said,''Darling, it would be a sin to leave all this delectable food. You know what a marvelous cook Maria is, and she's always had a tendency to spoil you."

Tori gave her mother a distant smile, slipping on a childhood mask so familiar she did it without being altogether aware of it. As soon as she took her first bite of food, she found that she was famished.

Laura Nunn watched Tori devour her breakfast with the kind of pleased attention one normally gives to one's key light, the light that illuminates the star. "Ellis promised he'd be home early today. Now, you promise me, darling, you won't get into a fight with him."

"/ never get into a fight with him," Tori said as if in knee-jerk response.

Laura Nunn rose. "Perhaps you'd like a little time to yourself."

"No." Tori reached out, drew her mother back down to the side of the bed. "I'm just a little . . . disoriented." She smiled. "Of course I won't get into a fight with Dad. That's all over and done with. I promise."

"Good." Laura Nunn smiled at her daughter. "Now we can get to what really matters. Your happiness. I see that you're still alone. I was half expecting you to show up with a boyfriend or, well, a male friend of some kind.''

Tori felt her heart contract. "Mother, I appreciate your concern. But I rather think I've given up men for a while.'' She saw her mother blanch, then laughed despite herself. "No, no. What I meant is, for me moment at least I feel like being on my own."

"Oh, darling, that's so sad," Laura Nunn said. There was a role in Possessed, one of her films, where she played the mother of an innocent outcast, that Tori thought her mother kept falling into. Or was that an unfair assessment? "But you must have companionship-everyone must. It's like heat or light, an essential one simply cannot live without."

As usual, Tori thought, Laura Nunn's opinion was the world's opinion. But perhaps she should not be so hard on her mother. It was true that she carried her mother's expectations for herself as if they could be a cure for her own heartache. "People do it

all the time, Mom," she said with a minimum of conviction. Just another knee-jerk response.

"But of course they do," Laura Nunn said. "That hardly makes it right. I want you to be happy. That's all I've ever wanted for you and . . . for Greg."

"Whereas Dad-"

"Now, darling, you promised. Your father's like a dog with a bone. I'm afraid he'll never put anything like that away." Laura Nunn looked at her daughter, then hugged her. "Oh, Tori, you're so much like him in so many ways."

''Well, perhaps that's why he disapproves of me so strongly.'' She had meant it to come out in a light tone, but the bitterness was unmistakable.

Laura took Tori's hands in hers. "Oh, my dear, he doesn't disapprove of you. I can't think where you get your notions. It's just that he was so ... disappointed"-was that a catch in her throat, or merely that she had almost used another, more appropriate, word?-"when Greg . . . failed to live up to his expectations."

"Jesus, Mom," Tori cried, "Greg didn't fail to live up to Dad's expectations. Greg was killed."

"Well, your father-"

"I know. He could never tell the difference.'' All at once she was aware of how soft her mother's hands were against her own callused ones.

"Now I've upset you. Darling, I never meant to."

What part was Laura Nunn playing now? Tori wondered numbly. "You haven't upset me," she said, slumping back into her pillows. "I'm just . . . tired." If her mother could use euphemisms, why couldn't she?

"Of course." Rising, Laura Nunn picked up the tray. "You get some sleep, darling. I've left instructions with everyone that you're not to be disturbed. There'll be no vacuuming on this floor today."

That was something, Tori thought. Her mother was notorious for demanding that her house be vacuumed daily, including Sundays. Tori had always harbored the suspicion that in years past she had had this done at least in part to keep her children from sleeping late on weekends. Sleeping late was, in Laura Nunn's opinion, a sign of laziness.

"Mom, will you be here this afternoon?"

Laura Nunn smiled. "I've got a meeting at the studio at three.'' She always said ''the studio,'' whether it was Paramount or Warners or Disney. Just like the old days. "Traffic's sure to be impossible that time of day-the stockbrokers are all marching off like lemmings to their health clubs or tennis matches, so I can't imagine I'll be home before six. But I'll have Maria bring your dinner up herself well before then.''

"No, don't," Tori said. "I'd like to wait until you get home, have it in the dining room."

Laura Nunn smiled the smile that one hundred million people the world over knew by heart. "We'll see, darling. Now get some rest, all right?"

When she was alone, Tori breathed a sigh, as if holding her breath the entire time she and her mother had been together. It was as if she had been in the presence of a high wattage spotlight. She felt flushed, her skin slightly singed from being so near the preternatural heat. She wondered, fleetingly, how her father had dealt all these years with his wife's power over people.

Actors were different from mere mortals. They tried on and discarded identities and emotions as easily as others did clothes. This chameleon quality so essential for success on the screen made for complex, unsettling, and, at times, eerie family relationships. It was often like being lost in a wilderness of mirrors.

The trouble with actors. Tori had learned at an early age, was that they never stopped acting. You never knew whether they were doing something-such as inducing an emotion in you-because they were genuine or because it was some form of unconscious exercising of their art. She did not envy her father's life with her mother.

The lace curtains blew against the window sash, bringing into the room the scents of the jacaranda, the lilac bushes, the bougainvillea outside. Drapes whipping, blown inward by a wind through a hole rent by plastique . . . scorched fabric and flesh ... the scent of death clogging her nostrils like pollen . . . Ariel, we hardly had time. ...

Convulsively, Tori threw the bedcovers off, let her feet touch the Isfahan carpet. She stood, felt a brief wave of dizziness, went immediately into prana, breathing deeply, slowly, completely.

She felt as if she had driven all night from San Francisco to Los Angeles, from the darkness into the light, from monochromatic fluorescence to multicolored neon. The sun struck her across the face, and she closed her eyes, breathing in the scents as if they were memories: cars and chrome, miniskirts and oversized jewelry, hot-rodding in the Valley, hot groping in the backseat, lipstick as bright as any neon sign, kohl as black and thick as pitch: desperate attempts to escape her sadness, her prison - Diana's Garden. I don't want to be back.

She stripped, showered in very hot, then very cold water. Dressed in a sleeveless shirt and shorts, she put on minimal makeup, then ventured out into the hall. It was quite still. She could imagine the servants tiptoeing around the estate so as not to wake her. She put her hands on the polished antique mahogany banister, peered over the pillar railing down to the great entrance below. A sea of Carrara marble, bronze busts of Cesare Borgia, Niccolo Machiavelli, Cosimo de'Medici, Ellis Nunn's pantheon of the Florentine Renaissance. It amazed and saddened Tori that Michelangelo, DaVinci, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Cellini, had no place in her father's historical perspective, as if the Italian Renaissance was an age best remembered for its politics and internecine warfare.