Dreams Are Not Enough (55 page)

“All these years dealing with her and it never got through to me how unstable she is.”

“Was Lang serious?” Beth gazed pleadingly around at the three men.

“Believe me, Lang’s always serious,” PD replied.

“So you really think he will blame us if we can’t control her?” Beth asked.

“Yes,” PD said, turning to Barry.

“It’s up to you to talk her out of it.”

“Me?”

“You’re married to the lady,” Maxim retorted.

“Almost divorced. And I’m sick of being the goat here.”

Beth turned anxiously to PD.

“She’s more likely to listen to you, PD.

She always relied on you as her agent. “

“I used to be her agent.” PD bared his white teeth in a way that suggested a smile.

“Beth, you and she are close.”

“That was a long time ago,” Beth said.

“Still, you do have a lot in common with her, Beth,” Barry said, his voice lower and meaningful.

Beth held the broken links of the chain together as if the pressure of her nervous fingers could solder gold.

“You saw how she behaved when I pleaded. I hate her!”

“We all do.” Maxim spoke for the first time since Alyssia had left.

“Didn’t she just prove she’s the only one of us with guts?”

“Where will arguing get us?” Beth asked shrilly.

“What are we going to do? I’m so terrified forjonathon I could die.”

“Ahh yes,” Maxim said.

“Those adoptive ties are strong.”

“What would you know about it?” Beth cried.

“You’ve never managed to stay married long enough to have children.”

Into the hermetically sealed atmosphere of the office came the muted howl of a siren on Sunset, and the angry voices were silent.

PD crossed his arms on the desk.

“Okay—agreed that none of us can handle Alyssia. Now what’s the course of action?”

“Lang,” Maxim said, scratching his thin, bare thigh.

“Lang?” PD exploded.

“Yes, Lang. You, PD, will go to your friend in Vegas and explain that we can do nothing with the lady, but explain also that we’re devout cowards, so we’re staunchly on his side, and none of us will ever raise a public accusatory finger. And furthermore, should Alyssia’s friendly shamus dig up anything that might incriminate him, we’re ready to do all in our power to consign her to the cuckoos’ nest.”

“Why should he buy it?” PD asked.

“Because you’re a persuasive guy. And also you’re laying the naked truth on him. Tell him that Beth’s fearful for her infant, that you’re fearful for the ten percent empire you’ve built up, that I’m fearful for my life, and that Barry’s fearful period. And not one of us is in love with Alyssia.”

“And that’s your plan?” PD asked.

“Dump her?”

“Exactly,” Maxim said hoarsely.

“Of course at the same time we’ll also be dumping Hap. We’ll let that Las Vegas prick get away with killing him.”

They avoided one another’s eyes.

The four living members of Our Own Gang had just forged an unspoken pact to ignore the murder of their fifth. With a rustling noise, they rose to their feet, exchanging over hearty farewells. Barry concocted an excuse to avoid returning to Beth’s house. Nobody made any plans to get together in the future.

It was late afternoon before she felt calm enough to call Ivanovich.

A raspy-voiced woman answered the phone.

“I’m sorry, but he’s temporarily out of town.”

Alyssia, having made up her apparently irrational mind, was primed to tell the detective to go full speed ahead. Stymied, she said on a breathless, questioning note, “Oh?”

“We work very closely,” the woman said.

“Can I help you?”

“No, it’s confidential. This is Alyssia del Mar.”

“I thought it sounded like you. When he checks in, I’ll tell him you called, Miss del Mar.”

He didn’t call back. After five days Alyssia was worn out by impatience, despair and lack of sleep. Her recent pattern of getting fifteen hours was altered drastically, and now she seldom slept as much as three. She lost more weight. Ivanovich was stalling her, avoiding her, and she had no conception how to deal with it. Murder, she would think, swimming urgent laps in the dumb, heart-shaped pool.

Murder, and the four of them are willing to let it go. But I won’t—I can’t. Why doesn’t the asthmatic bastard call?

“What about trying him again?” Juanita asked. They were eating a light dinner on the patio.

“I have.” Six times.

“The woman, she’s his partner or something, keeps telling me he’s still out of town.”

“Alice, I don’t like the way you been looking. Maybe we’re the ones who ought to get away.”

That same evening, the door chimes sounded just as Prime Time programming was making the ten o’clock change. Alyssia and Juanita, who were watching the outsized built-in screen in the living room, glanced at each other.

“Nobody comes by this late,” Juanita said.

“Maybe it’s Barry with some papers to sign.”

“Or another one of them kooks,” Juanita muttered. Alyssia del Mar’s address and phone numbers were tightly guarded secrets, yet nonetheless in the spate of bad publicity about her following Hap’s death there had been ugly incidents. Twice during the small hours of the night garbage had been carted up the long, steep drive and dumped by the front door. An androgynous voice phoned at random intervals to shriek, “Repent, repent!” until they let the answering service pick up every call. And yesterday, when Juanita had gone down to the mailbox, she found a creased sheet of paper. She couldn’t read the string of words, but she knew from the appearance and smell that they had been scrawled in excrement. Hastily thrusting her feet into her slippers, she said, “I’ll go.”

It was Ivanovich.

Hearing his voice, Alyssia ran to the hall.

“John, where’ve you been?

I’ve called and called all week! “

“Yes, and I apologize for not getting back to you,” he said, glancing at Juanita.

“I’ll be in my room, Mrs. Cordiner, if you need anything,” Juanita said.

Alyssia led Ivanovich to the low-slung red armchairs grouped around the fireplace.

After a long, wheezy exhalation, he said, “I’ve been told to lay off the case.”

Naturally she had suspected something along these lines.

“By Lang?” On Ivanovich’s initial visit she had told him of the bad blood between Hap and Lang.

“No names were mentioned. A woman we sometimes work with, she’s a very expensive call girl, passed on the message that in this particular case I was out of my depth.”

“He, Lang, admitted to our faces that he’d had Hap killed.”

“He did?”

“Not in words, but by implication.”

Ivanovich wheezed again.

“Well, it figures. Miss del Mar” — “Alyssia.”

He looked down at his veined hands.

“Alyssia, I told you the kind of cases we take. I’m no Mike Hammer or Lew Archer, I’m a housebroken, sedentary, middle-aged man with two kids at UCLA and a wife who works with him. We’ve never taken a homicide of any kind. And Lang’s big-time crime.”

“Is that why you’re here so late? You’re afraid the agency’s being watched?”

“It is.”

She felt a spurt of anger.

“You could’ve at least called!”

“My guess is your phones’re bugged.”

“Nobody’s been here.”

“Except the pest-control man, the United Parcel man, Jurgensen’s delivery truck, the two maids, the gardener, the pool man” — “All right, maybe it is bugged!” she snapped. Then her temper evaporated.

“John, don’t you understand? We’re talking about somebody who meant everything to me. He was murdered. Coldbloodedly murdered.”

“I don’t take homicides, Alyssia, but I know about them. Coverups happen. And with prominent people, you’d be surprised at how often the victim’s family helps with the coverup.”

“Not if they give a damn they don’t.”

“Oh, at first there’s hot thoughts of crime and punishment. Then reality sets in and the family starts considering what a public investigation means. The prying and probing into everyone’s life, including the victim’s. His sexual patterns, his frailties, his toilet habits—but I don’t have to tell you that nothing is sacred at a media circus.”

“Could you recommend another agency?”

He shook his head regretfully.

“Sorry.”

“You won’t help me at all?” For a brief moment her spine of pride melted, and she sank waif like into the deep chair.

Ivanovich said softly, “It hurts to let go, Alyssia, but believe me, it’s best all round.”

Leading him to the door, she recovered.

“I’ll have the business manager mail your check. That should be safe, shouldn’t it? How much do I owe you?”

“I’m a fan. This one’s on the house.”

Reaching inside his jacket, he handed her two clipped-together sheets of bond folded lengthwise. They were warm and slightly moist from his body.

Her expression bleak, she slowly returned to her chair and unfolded the papers. The first page was compiled in California by Ivanovich.

Scanning the single-spaced typing, she learned that though Hap Cordiner had been a private sort of guy, he had been well liked by his friends and acquaintances. They praised him in every smarmy Hollywood term. Alyssia turned to the second page.

Our African correspondent received mixed reports. The population of Lunda as well as those in surrounding villages appear to have been primed to obscure the facts. For one example, the matter of the subject’s work. Three different informants used the exact same phrasing: he had come “to make plans for a Hollywood movie.” Arthur W. Kleefeld, MD, director of a nearby free health-care facility that he and the subject had founded together, told our investigator emphatically that the subject had no further interest in filmmaking and had intended to make the facility his career.

The Kleefeld report is also muddied. Kleefeld states that the subject left the facility on the morning of April 17, 1980, with the clear understanding that he would spend the night at Lunda, therefore he was not alarmed when subject did not return that evening. Only when subject remained away after lunch the following day did Kleefeld become concerned enough to search. He found the accident site and brought back the subject’s body. As per request of the subject, Kleefeld arranged for Episcopal burial at the center.

This conflicts with the statements from the two facility employees and the Episcopalian minister. Reverend James Iboe. It should be noted that these statements were taken separately. All three concur that the coffin was already interred when Reverend Iboe arrived to conduct the services. Furthermore, the cook, Mr. Peter Mzelie, states that Kleefeld was highly secretive about the subject’s corpse, not permitting anyone to see it, placing it in the coffin himself.

As to your information’re Kenyan visitors in the area. The police emphatically state there were no foreigners. This is substantiated by both local inhabitants and government officials in Kinshasa.

The accident itself is the single issue on which there is no dissension. All those interviewed agreed that a fallen tree blocked the road, and that the subject’s jeep had hit it with damaging force, causing the engine to ignite andAlyssia was aware of a well-defined nausea. If she read another typed word, she would vomit. Crumpling the papers in her hand, she knelt on the marble hearth. Her hand shook and she wasted three of the foot-long fireside matches before one caught.

Briefly, as the papers fluttered and stirred, glowing poisonously, she saw a burning jeep. What’s the point of endangering Maxim, Barry, Beth,

PD?

He’s dead.

The following day, she and Juanita left the country.

Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Malibu reverberated with Industry condemnations of Alyssia del Mar, who had not given a single interview, had not appeared on early-morning news or late-night talk shows-who had totally abdicated her promotional duties to Hap Cordiner’s last film. It wasn’t even as if she were in depression after the stillbirth. People returning from holiday or location reported that she was seen water-skiing at Puerto Vallarta, buying out Mary Quant’s in London, gambling for high stakes at the casino in Monte Carlo, dining on lobster bisque and prune souffle at Baumaniere in Provence, selecting sapphires at the Paris Van Cleef’s, bidding on antique jewels at Sotheby’s, sipping Dom Perignon with Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, perching on the edge of her gilt chair at the Ungaro collection.

In actuality she was at Lake Como.

She had taken another lease on the nineteenth-century villa with the peaked roof where she and Hap had shared three sun-drenched Italian autumns. The place was now her jail and her refuge. She had not left the grounds once.

Alyssia sat facing the view of the lake, which today was the ugly grayish-brown of an elephant’s hide. She held War and Remembrance open on her lap, but she was reading about the wartime escapades of the Henry family. Alone, she inhabited a dim, underwater world. When she was with Juanita or the married couple who came with the villa, she revved herself up, conversing, smiling when it seemed appropriate, eating at least part of the meals set before her, strolling down the villa’s raked dirt path to the lake.

Her eyes moved to the desk. She saw with a dulled surprise that there was a heap of the fat, outsize quilted envelopes in which Magnum, the business manager and PD’s office forwarded her letters. She hadn’t opened any of those big folders in—how long was it? Accumulations of unopened mail were a sign of poor mental health.

Putting aside the Wouk novel, she moved to the desk.

She had been dispatched the usual assortment. Fan letters with the sender’s return address, and hate mail, which was always anonymous.

The polite or peremptory requests for her appearance at benefits, the solicitations from those charities to which she previously had been generous. The queries from the business manager about credit card charges as well as a note inquiring whether he should send her annual check to Zaire, adding a punctilious reminder—as he did every year—that since the medical center was not an accredited nonprofit organization, her donation would not be tax deductible.