Dreams Are Not Enough (54 page)

“You ought to get a good fumigator.”

“Hello, Maxim,” Barry said, rising to help himself to another coffee cake, which wouldn’t, he knew, assuage his overpowering need for booze.

Maxim kissed Beth.

“I didn’t realize this was to be a family reunion.

And where’s our master of ceremonies, the king of drug dealers? “

PD darted an anxious glance at the closed door as if Lang might somehow have passed through the polished teak and be listening.

“It’s only five to.”

At one minute after eleven, Lang was admitted.

He greeted each of them with formal propriety, thanking them for their promptness.

“Where’s Miss del Mar?” he asked.

Though Alyssia was no longer his client, PD still felt responsible for her, and beads of moisture appeared on his forehead. What with his unanswered questions about this meeting and being in the same room with that fuck face Barry, he was already under a strain that even his considerable social savoir faire could not accommodate, and Alyssia’s tardiness was more than he could take.

“Stars and their entrances! But if you’re in a hurry, Mr. Lang, why not go ahead without her?”

“I prefer to wait until everyone is here,” Lang said courteously.

He refused coffee. PD kept up a mainly one-sided conversation about The Baobab Tree, which since its broad release two weeks earlier had drawn the top grosses country wide

At twenty-five past, when PD was surreptitiously mopping below his chin, Alyssia arrived.

Poised in the doorway with a tremulous smile, her thick tangle of black hair gleaming in the lights of the hallway, her dazzling white cleavage showing to advantage in her low-cut magenta dress, she transcended her own myth and gave no clue to the anxiety that quickened her pulse.

“Barry, you doll,” she said.

“Spy just arrived. I can’t tell you how touched I was, getting an autographed copy. I can’t wait to start it.”

She turned her sparkling blue gaze on Beth. “it’s fabulous about the baby—I’m so happy for you and Irving. Jeremy, isn’t that what you called him?”

“Jonathon,” Beth whispered. She shrank back, her cream dress fading into the slub bed white silk of her chair.

Alyssia smiled at Maxim.

“Aren’t you sportifi” His bone-thin legs were displayed by Fila tennis shorts.

“And, PD, you darling. You must have read my mind with those sweet rolls. I didn’t have time for breakfast.”

Only when PD went to serve her did she acknowledge Robert

Lang’s presence.

“Good morning,” she said, unsmiling.

“Miss del Mar—it’s always a pleasure. Allow me to extend my condolences to you and Mr. Cordiner for the loss of your child.”

Alyssia stifled a shiver. Even though she and Beth had just exchanged words about the baby, he was indeed lost—irrevocably lost-to her.

She took a sip of the coffee that PD had just handed her. It had cooled unpleasantly in the pot.

“When you’ve finished your breakfast, Miss del Mar,” Lang said, “I’d like to ask a question of you and the others.”

“Don’t wait for me. Fire away.”

He bent his head, a small bow that indicated gratitude.

“Who hired John Ivanovich?” he asked.

Tepid coffee sloshed, and she set down the Imariware cup with careful hands next to the plate that PD had heaped with small pastries.

“Ivanovich,” PD said musingly.

“I don’t know the name. Maybe my office manager took him on. But then he’d be strictly clerical.”

“We don’t have anybody new at the house,” Beth said.

“Of course my husband has a great many employees on his business payroll.”

“John Ivanovich.” Maxim quirked an eyebrow.

“Is he the newest Russian defector?”

Lang turned to Alyssia. She managed an actressy little smile.

“Guilty,” she said, her voice wavering.

“Then, Miss del Mar, I suggest you tell him you no longer need his services.”

“Mr. Lang, what possible reason can you have to ask me to do that?”

Because she was afraid, she boldly mimicked his excessive politeness.

“There’s no point to hiring him.”

“It’s my money,” Alyssia retorted.

“Who is Ivanovich, hon?” Barry asked.

“Yes,” Beth said, wetting her lips.

“I don’t understand.”

“He’s a private detective,” Alyssia said.

“Mysteries and more mysteries,” Maxim said.

“Why have you hired a detective, star-lady?”

“Miss del Mar desires to discover more about the accident in Zaire,” Lang said.

“More?” Barry said.

“Hon, when you went to Africa didn’t that doctor tell you everything?”

“I’m not positive Hap’s dead,” Alyssia said levelly.

They all stared at her, and Beth asked, “You have some sort of clue he’s alive?”

“I’m not sure. Call it feminine intuition.”

“Miss del Mar,” Lang said in an icy tone.

“Do you understand me?”

“About Ivanovich?” she replied.

“Frankly, no. Why should I fire him?”

“I’m telling you to.”

“That’s an order, not a reason. I don’t respond well to orders.”

“Harvard Cordiner is dead,” Lang said.

“Yes, Mr. Lang—but it’s not easy for the people who cared about him to accept.” PD, the agent, found himself attempting to placate both sides.

“Miss del Mar.” Lang spoke softly.

“On stage and on the screen, the actor springs up after his death. In actuality, alas, such is not the case. Mr. Cordiner died on a road near a small town called Lunda, formerly King Baudoinville. He was driving at night, a dangerous thing to do in that part of the world. His jeep skidded into a fallen mahogany tree and burned.”

“So many details,” she whispered.

“Way more than Art told me. How can you possibly know so many details?”

Lang didn’t reply or move. He was so still that a freeze-frame might have captured him on film.

PD found himself staring into Lang’s eyes, yet wanting to look away.

The eyes had the same peculiar, shrunken pupils as on the night in Vegas when he’d read Barry’s article. Then it had seemed odd to PD that Lang’s fury was directed not at that miserable loser of a writer, Barry, but at Hap. Lang had blamed Hap because the piece made him look ridiculous and at the same time had thrown in accusations that Hap had welched out on his obligations to Meadstar.

Suddenly PD’s head felt light, as if he might pass out. He was remembering his dead father tugging at his mustache and using the heavy Italian accent that he lapsed into when emotional: . accidents happen to whoever Lang thinks owes him. Never anything provable, but that doesn’t mean the people aren’t dead. Lang was rising to his feet.

“Mrs. Gold, Mr. Cordiner, Mr. Cordiner, Mr. Zaffarano.” He inclined his head to each of them.

“I’m grateful to you for coming here this morning. And I feel secure that the four of you can convince Miss del Mar that she has reached the heart of the matter about the unfortunate accident, and that for her to continue her investigation is not only unnecessary but also most foolish.”

Lang didn’t quite close the door, and after he left, the cooled air seemed to pulsate as all of them stared at the crack.

Maxim’s fingers were tensed on his bare thighs, his eyes shut tight.

Barry clutched the bowl of his unlit pipe—it was one of the Dunhills Alyssia had bought him a year earlier in New York to celebrate his signing the contract for Spy. Beth breathed shallowly and tugged the gold chain of her beige alligator purse with sharp, unconscious movements.

PD’s hands, too, were busy. He had unlocked the top drawer of his desk and was surreptitiously fingering his boyhood rosary as he prayed for the departed soul of his slain cousin. Then he pushed back his chair, going to close the door. Turning, he stared at Barry.

“I was there when he read your manuscript,” he accused hoarsely.

“He already had it in for Hap. He went into a cold rage. A few days later, Hap’s dead in a car crash.”

Alyssia gave a little whimper, but the others ignored her.

“That’s Lang’s method,” PD went on.

“He arranges accidents for people he thinks have cheated him—or made him look an asshole. The point of your story was that Hap had jerked him around.”

“That wasn’t the point. And / didn’t arrange that Hap do the film,” Barry said defensively.

“You knew all about Lang and his ilk. Why did you put a clean guy like Hap in a package with him?”

Maxim turned to Barry.

“Lang had the right idea,” he said.

“Except he picked the wrong Cordiner to do it to.”

“You knew something was rotten. Maxim,” Barry snapped.

“I saw you. All your time on that film was spent soothing those two guns els of Lang’s.

And it’s hardly my fault you went millions over budget, is it? “

Alyssia didn’t hear the sparring voices. He’s dead, she thought. So much for hallucinations. So much for hereditary second sight. All I was doing was playing mental leapfrog over the fixed and unalterable truth. Hap’s dead. Lang had him killed.

The tightness in her chest was swelling against her lungs and she could breath only with severe pain. By far the most anguished of the five, her imperative from earliest childhood to hide all weakness made her appear the least affected. Her hands were loosely folded on her magenta silk lap, her expression serene.

Beth yanked at her chain.

“It’s too awful to believe.”

“Possibly we’re leaping to heinous conclusions, Beth,” Barry soothed.

“Weren’t the details specific enough for your great, poetic brain?”

Maxim inquired.

“If we’d asked, my guess is he could have told the brand of gasoline they used to ignite the blaze—God, how I hope Hap was dead before they lit it.”

A peculiar gasp came from Alyssia, but her voice retained its normal pitch, a well-trained, cool instrument.

“Art Kleefeld mentioned there were strangers around.”

The other four turned to her. The flesh of their faces hardened subtly. Though PD and Maxim now openly loathed Barry, and disliked each other for the parts each had played in inveigling Hap into doing The Baobab Tree, they were all locking her out. No non-Cordiners permitted in this private domain of grief, enmity and horror.

After a couple of beats Barry asked, “Strangers? Were they visiting the center?”

“Art never saw them. He said he assumed that they were big brass visiting the locals.”

“But you’re saying they were Lang’s hit squad?” PD asked.

“It’s obvious.” How could her body still continue functioning when inside she was as cold and dead as Hap?

“But what’s incomprehensible to me,” Barry said, “is why Lang would make a covert admission to us, of all people, that he’d had Hap killed.”

A link between Beth’s nervous hands snapped loudly. She stared down at the broken chain.

“Eighteen carat,” she whispered.

“Good for it,” Maxim said.

“Now, Beth, will you explain to your genius brother, who has always been remarkable for his capacity to avoid unpalatable facts, why you have broken an eighteen-carat-gold purse chain.”

Beth said, “Lang’s threatening us, Barry, don’t you see? He’s reminding us he can have people killed. He’s telling us he doesn’t want any investigations that might become public property.”

Once again the foursome stared at Alyssia.

She couldn’t catch her breath. I’m fine. The pain in my chest—ahh, the pain—is merely a psychosomatic symptom. I am fine.

“PD’s right,” Beth said in a low, frightened voice.

“Accidents are Lang’s way. And they don’t have to happen to the person—they can happen to somebody he cares about.” She paused, looking at Alyssia.

“You are going to get rid of the detective, aren’t you, Alyssia?”

Alyssia didn’t hear. She was accusing herself of causing some of the production delays by her attacks and by the limits she’d imposed because of her pregnancy. Maybe I was seeing a ghost unable to rest.

Beth cleared her throat.

“Alyssia, whatever else, now you know for certain Hap’s dead. So there’s no point keeping on.”

“Yes, hon,” Barry said.

“It’s perilous.”

“Exactly why I’m not firing Ivanovich,” Alyssia said. But that wasn’t the entire reason. Guilt was one part of it. And mistaking the shadow of a ficus tree for a man was another. She couldn’t let the Cordiners see she was a crumbled cookie. Besides, how could she let Hap’s murder slip by the boards?

“But what about the rest of us and our families?” Beth’s voice rose alarmingly.

“What about my baby?”

“Doesn’t it matter to any of you that we just heard Lang confess he had Hap killed?”

“Is that what you’re attempting to accomplish?” Barry asked.

“To bring Lang to justice?”

“If that’s it,” PD interjected, “take it from me. Grand juries never touch guys like Lang. The small fry are put behind bars, but people of his caliber never even get indicted.”

“In case PD’s being too cryptic, Alyssia,” Maxim said, “let me spell it out. The Langs of the world control the courts; they own the judges.”

“You’re all afraid, aren’t you?” Alyssia said.

“Hap wasn’t a coward, but the rest of you are.”

Maxim snapped his fingers.

“Listen, bitch, Hap’s my blood and sinew.

If I thought I could get Lang, nothing would hold me back. “

Alyssia stared at him until he looked away.

Then she got to her feet, sauntering across the large Kirman rug.

She paused at the door.

“Great seeing you all,” she said with light malice.

“Let’s do it again real soon.”

She ran down the wide, print-hung corridor, slowing to cross the waiting room, where she ignored a trio of agency clients watching her from the deep chairs.

As the elevator door closed on her, she collapsed against a mirrored wall, her hoarse gasps filling the enclosed space. The elevator halted. She pulled erect, waiting with a faint smile for the blue-jacketed attendant to bring her car. Driving a block west on Sunset, she turned onto a side street and parked. There, hunched over the steering wheel, she shuddered, gasping for air.

After Alyssia had left, PD was first to speak.