Deadline (19 page)

I said, ‘Thanks for coming.'

‘Thank Bobby,' Nimble said. He had a deep, rich voice. ‘I done it for him. I don't have a lot of time, doc. So say what's on your mind and I can be moving along.'

‘You arrested my wife,' I said.

Larry Nimble nodded. ‘I figured it was that when Bobby asked for this meet. Yeah. I busted Mrs Lomax and a guy called Dole.'

‘You freed her the same night,' I said.

‘Yeah. So?'

‘She bought cocaine from you,' I said. ‘How come you sprung her?'

Nimble looked at Bobby Stone and said, ‘Duh? This guy serious?'

Bobby shrugged. ‘I think maybe this is territory I don't want to enter. Hear no evil.' He got out of the car and slammed the door. I saw him pace up and down, hands in his pockets. The
Ralph's
sign burned behind him.

I turned my attention back to Larry Nimble. ‘You want to explain?'

Nimble adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. ‘Are you wearing a wire?'

‘A wire? Christ, no.'

He stared at me for a time, as if he wasn't sure he wanted to talk. Then he said, ‘Bobby Stone says you're OK. Fine. Look, doc. I work a hard shift. I lay my life on the line day after day. There are people out there who'd take great pleasure in shooting me straight between the eyes. The way I figure it, I ain't gonna make it to no pension. Am I getting through?'

‘Money changed hands,' I said.

‘That's a fucking quaint way of putting it,' Nimble said, and laughed. It was a bass sound, a thud of a laugh, jazzy. ‘Every day of my life is a hassle, doc. I get tense. I get migraines. I'm sick to my stomach. I'm bleeding inside. I drink two pints of low-fat milk and six cartons of yogurt a day. I gobble Zantac like it's going out of production. I don't eat solid food. I used to live on burgers and fries, but I ain't well, because this fucking work is eating me up. And I'll tell you something – the remuneration ain't exactly an incentive. So. You figure it.'

‘Who paid you?'

‘I only take cash, doc. No credit, and no promissory notes.'

I took my wallet from my pocket and looked inside it. ‘I have a hundred and twenty dollars, that's all.'

‘It's less than my asking price. What the hell, Bobby says you're a good guy.'

I gave him six twenties. He stuffed the bills in his coat pocket without looking at them.

‘We're going back to last March,' he said. ‘Your wife and this guy Dole meet me at Joolie's, which is this dump on Sunset. I never saw your wife before. Dole comes recommended to me through another source. It don't matter who. They want to buy, I want to sell. Supply and demand. Capitalism. They want an ounce. I got that. No sweat. We go out to my car, the deal is done, and
jiminy fucking ker-ricket
– I bust them!' He laughed again and slapped his hands on his knees. ‘I always get a kick outta their faces when that happens. Jaws slump about six miles.
Whoooooeeee
and down.'

‘You booked them and took them in,' I said.

‘That's it. Did some prelim paperwork. Then the lawyer turns up.'

‘Resick.'

‘Tod Resick, right.'

‘And Resick runs errands for Nardini, right?'

Nimble paused. He slid his fingers beneath his glasses, massaged his eyelids. ‘Sure, Resick's the gopher for the big guy. He's like Nardini's fucking glove-puppet. Anyway, he makes it clear he wants to spread some bills. Take care of biz on the q. t. We settle. He's in and out like a fucking rattler through a hollow log.'

‘How much?'

‘Trade secret. Let's just say my ulcers were really giving me shit that night, OK? Your wife and this guy Dole, they get to go home.'

‘And you killed the whole thing.'

‘I killed it. But I was careless. I let some paperwork get away from me and it's sucked into the system before I can get it back. It don't matter. Anybody asks, I say it was a wrongful arrest. Nobody's ever gonna ask, though. This fucking city is awash in crime. We got it coming out the woodwork. It's a terminal condition. You think anybody's gonna lose sleep over a dope rap that's been thrown out by the arresting officer? Fuck no.'

I gazed a moment at Bobby Stone, who was leaning over the hood of the car. He'd pulled out a corner of his shirt and was using it to dab at a stain or mark on the metal. He kept the Cutlass shiny. He was compulsive when it came to his car.

‘Tell me about Dole,' I said.

‘What's to tell? I asked him his name, he told me, and I wrote it down.'

‘Did you see ID?'

Nimble shook his head. ‘I asked. He said he didn't have any.'

‘You took him at his word.'

‘Yeah. Look. Everything's rushed. It's bedlam downtown. Everybody's crazy. Shouting. Pushing. Swearing. People throwing up. Pissing their pants. Fistfights. You don't worry about niceties like ID. That comes later. You just want to get back on the streets because there's always another sucker to pop, and he's waiting out there in the dark. ID? Fuck that shit.'

‘Describe him,' I said.

‘Lookit, I think you've had your hundred-and-twenty-bucks worth.'

‘It's the last question I'll ask,' I said. ‘I give you my word.'

Nimble sighed. ‘OK. About this high. Five-five maximum. Muscular little fucker. Gray hair sorta swept back. Blow-dried. He was a salesman type. Glasses kind of like that old rock guy used to wear. The dead guy, what was his name? Buddy Holly? You know, heavy frames. Oh, yeah, and he smoked a cigar that was about half the size of him.' He reached for the door handle, opened the door, stepped out. He bent down and looked in at me. ‘Good luck, doc. Whatever it is you're doing.'

I said nothing. I was picturing the man called Dole. Muscular.
Gray hair sorta swept back. Glasses. Cigar.
I saw him, I conjured him in my mind. I thought of trick mirrors, Disneyland, haunted houses, holographs, cops who broke the law even as they pretended to maintain it. This was the world I'd entered.

I watched Bobby Stone get back in the car.

‘You through, doc?'

‘Yeah, I'm finished.'

‘Was he helpful?'

‘Yeah.' My ribs were aching again. I gazed through the windshield at Larry Nimble strutting towards the front of the market. I had an urge to go out and call him back and ask him more questions about the man who'd been arrested in Sondra's company; but I knew the answer, I didn't need to ask Nimble anything else.

Bobby Stone said, ‘He's crooked.'

‘So's this town,' I said.

‘Ain't that the truth.' He smiled at me. ‘You ain't gonna tell me, are you, doc?'

‘Some other time, maybe,' and I opened the door. ‘Thanks a lot, Bobby.'

I raised a hand in farewell and looked once again across the lot. There was no sign now of Larry Nimble. He'd faded into the texture of the same twilight where he'd first taken shape. He might just as well have walked off into another world altogether.

I tapped the roof of the Cutlass with the palm of my hand and Bobby gave his horn a single short blast. I walked back to my car. The withering sun came off the big window of the market, a yellow rectangle.

Emily Ford hadn't lied to me about the coke bust. She'd told me the truth as far as it went. But truth was selective in her world. If Petrosian was way beyond the investigation of a mugging, why had he been sent to talk with me? And then the attacker himself turned out to be one of Emily Ford's personal courtiers … what did it all mean?

Only one thing, so far as I could see.
You think you can come up with just a wee bit more belief in me?
she'd asked.

No.

7.57 p.m.

The city finally edged into darkness. Lights burned in the high towers of commerce as cleaning crews swept through, or ambitious executives toiled after-hours in the hope of promotion and bigger offices.

I took the lock of Sondra's hair from the breast pocket of my jacket and held it in the closed palm of one hand. How light it was, lighter than any bird. I realized how worried she must have been, sick to her heart about the cocaine affair, wanting to tell me and not knowing how, accusing herself for her own act of folly, ashamed and despising herself for keeping a secret from me.

I wondered if I'd failed to detect little signs of stress in her, if I'd overlooked any peculiarities of behavior. I couldn't think of any giveaway tics, odd mannerisms, prolonged gloomy silences that hinted at things hidden. I guessed if I looked back long and hard enough I'd encounter some small instance of unusual behavior: but my brain was lead, and I could only think of where I was headed and what I'd do when I got there – and how time was blowing away like filaments of some very fragile plant.

I reached my destination and slid the cellphone from the dash and put it in the hip pocket of my pants. Then I got out of the Honda and locked it. The house was Beverly Hills Absurd, a mock-Tudor-style building with exposed beams: Tudor and palm trees, olde England and cacti, an uneasy mix of worlds. There were six or seven cars parked in the long driveway: I noticed a Bentley, a Range Rover, an Alfa Romeo, a new VW Bug, red and shiny, a Lincoln Continental, and something sporty and low-slung I didn't recognize – a Morgan, maybe. Globed lights hung around the entranceway. I heard music from the house.

The curtains hadn't been drawn; I saw people standing around in a downstairs room in the manner of guests idly chatting over the first ice-breaking cocktail of the night. A small party was happening here, maybe a dinner. It wasn't a good time for me to call. But time, in my case, was neither bad nor good. It was a substance to which I was addicted, but the stash kept diminishing. I craved more of it, more minutes and seconds.

I walked to the door, rang the bell. I heard the chimes way inside the house, Westminster-style. The man who answered looked at me with an expression of vague recognition that yielded to surprise, then to a smile that may have been forced or genuine, I couldn't tell.

‘Jerry?
Jerry Lomax
? What are you doing here?'

‘I just want to talk. I won't take up much of your time.'

He looked at me through his curiously dated black-framed glasses. ‘Sure. But you chose the wrong evening, Jerry. Can't it wait? I'm entertaining some people.'

‘Then you can entertain me, Gerson,' I said, and before he could object, I slipped past him into the enormous marbled foyer of his four-point-something-million-dollar mansion in the world's most tacky suburb.

8.10 p.m.

Leo Gerson said, ‘Whatever's on your mind, can't it keep?'

I ignored him and moved across the foyer. He caught me by the arm. He was strong for his size, but I managed to shrug him off.

‘Jerry, how many ways can I say it? I have company.'

‘I noticed. I need something to drink.'

‘You been hitting the bottle?'

I wished. How I wished this was all some alcoholic hallucination. At least I'd know a time of waking would come. I'd be hungover, but I'd have Sondra beside me.

I saw a maid emerge from a room with a tray of canapés. I smelled cheese and garlic and anchovy. I went in the direction of the room she'd come from, the kitchen. My footsteps echoed on the floor. The foyer had a high ceiling from which a profusion of chandeliers dangled some twenty-five feet overhead. I had the impression of electric shards hanging in mid-air, like bad-taste Christmas decorations.

I said, ‘I've no intention of gatecrashing your soirée, Leo. I'll find something to drink in here.'

Visibly exasperated, Gerson came after me as I went into the kitchen, a large room of stainless steel surfaces, a stove with eight burners, and an exhaustive assortment of culinary implements hanging from hooks. I opened the refrigerator, a big Sub-Zero model, and rummaged inside. I found a bottle of peach-flavored mineral water, twisted the top off, and held the bottle to my mouth. I was dehydrated: tension had dried me out.

Gerson lit a cigar. He pointed it at me in the manner of some jungle republic dictator addressing a subordinate. ‘I had you figured for a guy with more manners, Jerry. What's the idea, barging in all whipped up into a frenzy? Where's the fire, for Christ's sake?'

I wiped the back of my hand across my lips and said, ‘Cocaine.'

Gerson ripped a paper-towel from a roll on the wall and rubbed the lenses of his glasses with it. He had red indentations on either side of his nose. The cigar dangled from his mouth. Smoke, rising upward, made him blink. ‘What about cocaine? You been snorting some?'

I said, ‘The
bust.
Remember?'

He showed no surprise. He put his glasses on again just as a woman came into the kitchen. She was about twenty, very tall, and her pale blue dress was short and tight. She slinked up to Gerson and placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘People are asking for you, Leo,' she said. She had a whispery, little-girl voice, the kind that seemed to cling to the air around her like static electricity to cashmere.

‘Gimme a minute, Shantee,' he said. He growled his words; a man used to issuing commands. He patted the woman's buttocks, and she licked the lobe of his ear even as she looked at me, checking me out, trying to fit me into her frame of reference. Was I important? Could I advance her career, whatever that was?

Finally, she blinked at me in a dismissive way and said to Leo, ‘Hurry back, Leo, I'm waiting for you,' and she eased her way out of the kitchen.

‘Is she one of your artistes, Leo?'

‘Come on, Jerry. You know damn well what she is. She's a wannabe who doesn't have the talent to go anywhere. She's deluded. She's dead meat in the making.'

Gerson tossed this line away in a callous manner. The young woman was mattress fodder in a city of good-looking wannabes who changed their names to sound exotic –
Shantee.
They swarmed like wasps looking for jam, and some of them settled on people such as Gerson, who could give them a boost up the ladder of opportunity. Or so they imagined. But there was always a price – they had to be seen hanging on his arm at parties and they had to fuck him. They were more bracelet than human being. Leo, with his own record label and all the attachments of money, was a star-maker and a scalp-hunter.