Eve's Men (21 page)

In the mirror behind the bar, Charley’s gaze occasionally connected with the almond-shaped eyes of the Asian woman, who would then smile warmly at him. She had long, upswept black hair and the delicate features of a Thai or Vietnamese. Much of the time she seemed on the verge of smiling, which gave her a look of amused sophistication largely undone by her taste in clothes: skintight purple velour slacks and a green sateen blouse topped off with pound of junk jewelry. Charley would have figured her a prostitute had she been younger, or conversely, if she had
looked
older, more used up.

In any event, before long the bartender brought him a fresh drink “compliments of the dragon lady,” and since this was a first in his life—a woman unknown to him buying him a drink in public—Charley felt he couldn’t simply smile at her in the mirror and leave it at that. And anyway, the woman interested him. So he picked up his new drink and moved down the bar, taking the stool next to hers. In heavily accented English she told him that her name was Mary Lee and that she had bought him the drink because he looked so troubled and she wanted him to know that he had at least one friend in the world. He asked her why the bartender called her the dragon lady, and she said she often wondered the same thing, which made him laugh, which in turn brought a lovely smile to her face. They went on drinking and talking, and Charley learned that she was a movie theater cashier on her day off, that her family had been wiped out in Vietnam, and that she had been in America for twenty years and had divorced the marine sergeant who had married her and brought her over.

Later, Charley took her down the street to a steakhouse, where they had dinner and brandies. Afterwards, he walked her to her apartment, and when she invited him in, he declined.

“Why?” she asked. “You don’t tink I’m sexy?”

“Oh no, I think you’re very sexy. It’s just that my life is pretty complicated right now.”

“You spend anudder hour wit me, dat make your life more complicated?”

“I’m afraid so.”

She looked at him with open disgust. “You know what? I tink you a fag. I tink you a dirty fag.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” he said. “Anyway, thanks for the drink.”

As he turned away, she repeated her charge, loud enough for a couple across the street to stop and look. He kept on walking.

When he got back to the hotel, there was a note for him to phone Waldo Trask. After dialing the number on the note, he waited through six rings before anyone answered. It was the lesbian.

“Yeah? Teddy here.”

Charley asked for Trask. Without responding, the woman left the phone. Finally Trask came on.

“After you left, I started thinking,” he said. “And it finally came to me, the name up on Mulholland. It’s Stephanie Hodges. I don’t know her exact address, but I can give you directions. You want to try it?”

“You bet I do,” Charley said.

Chapter Nine

Charley did not arrive at Stephanie’s until ten in the morning. He had just driven through the open gate and parked when the front door of the house flew open and Eve came running out, only to stop dead when she saw who it was. Recovering immediately, she smiled and came over to the car as he got out.

“Charley!” she said. “God, I’m glad you’re here.”

Confused by then, Charley just stood there with his hands hanging at his sides as she gave him a gingerly kiss on the cheek.

“I thought you were Brian,” she said.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“Oh, you haven’t—really. But I can’t imagine you’re very happy to see me again. How on earth did you find us?”

“Dumb luck, mostly. You say Brian isn’t here?”

It was if he’d jerked her awake. Suddenly she looked fearful and worried. “No, he certainly isn’t. And I’m afraid he’s gone off the deep end again, Charley. When I heard your car, I thought maybe he’d changed his mind and come back.”

“From where? Why? What’s he done?”

She shook her head despondently, her eyes suddenly moist. “Oh, it’s crazy. I’m not even sure. I just got up. Come on in. Stephanie—the lady of the house—she’s in a state of shock. Her daughter Terry, who’s only eighteen—Brian took her with him. And they took both cars for some reason.”

Charley followed her into the house. She was wearing a black T-shirt and khaki shorts and did indeed look as if she’d just gotten out of bed. Her hair was a mess, a lush, dark brown tangle, and she wore no lipstick or eyeliner. Still, she somehow managed to look as beautiful as ever.

“Stephanie’s downstairs and at the other end,” she said, leading the way though the house, which was typical California Spanish, but older than most, Charley judged, better built than the contemporary staple-gun variety.

As they walked, Eve looked back at him. “What really pisses me is that I was planning to leave today,” she said. “I was going to take the money you gave him and send it back. But now you’ll never know. You’ll never be sure.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Again she looked back, this time with a rueful smile. “I imagine you would.”

“About Brian,” he said. “What he’s up to? Tell me what you know.”

“Well, the people making the movie about Kim Sanders—Wide World Studios—the studio head lives in Bel Air. With a telescope, you can see his house from here. Stephanie says he’s got a world-class art collection and that right now Brian’s on his way there to destroy it.”

Charley groaned. “Jesus. Won’t he ever quit?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Charley followed Eve down a hallway that ran past a small study and a bedroom with glass doors on the other side, through which he could see a patio and swimming pool. At the end of the hallway, they entered a large bedroom that looked, like its king-size bed, unmade, lived in. An unhealthy-looking woman with blond hair sat sprawled in an easy chair, dabbing at her swollen eyes with a wadded handkerchief. On the lamp table next to her there was an open champagne bottle, an empty glass, cigarettes, and an ashtray.

Eve introduced Charley to her and the woman nodded vaguely, as if she weren’t quite sure what was going on.

“My baby,” she said. “The son of a bitch has taken my baby with him, and she’s gonna wind up in prison right along with him.”

“You sure about what he’s doing?” Charley asked. “The art collection?”

Stephanie nodded. “I heard them leave about a half hour ago. And when I got up, I found this under my door.” She handed Charley a sheet of lined yellow paper.

Unfolding it, he read:

Stephanie,

Please don’t worry about me. It has to be done, what we’re doing. I’m in Brian’s hands, so I’ll be all right. I know I will. If all goes well, we’ll be home soon.

Love,
Terry

Charley looked at Eve. “You seen this yet?”

She took the note from him. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“I meant to show it to you,” Stephanie told her. “Really, I was going to—I just don’t know what I’m doing. I’m so scared. My baby’s gonna wind up in prison because of him—I just know she will.”

Charley pulled a coffee table around and sat down in front of her. “Stephanie, listen, maybe we can stop him. Maybe it’s not too late.”

“I wish I could believe that.” She reached for the champagne bottle, then set it back down. Her hands were shaking noticeably.

Eve meanwhile had read Terry’s note. “Why would he take her with him? I don’t get it?”

“Maybe he needed both cars,” Charley said. “But first, Stephanie, how do you know where he’s headed? I mean, this guy’s art collection?”

“I guess in a way I’m to blame,” she said, reaching down and picking up a newspaper supplement. “For some reason I save all these
Calendars
, the magazine section of the Sunday
Times
. A month ago they ran this story on Kevin Greenwalt, the new president at Wide World Studios.” She opened the supplement and showed them the article. “His old man was a mogul at Universal. He’s the one who started the collection. And now the kid carries on with it. Some of the paintings are really valuable. And I guess Brian figures that since they’re out to ruin his reputation, it’s only fair to ruin something of theirs. Get even, you know? Send them a message.”

“Greenwalt’s place—it’s the one the telescope’s trained on, isn’t it?” Eve said.

Stephanie nodded. “I was kidding with Brian about it only yesterday. I never dreamed he’d just go right ahead and do it.” Unsuccessfully, she tried to snap her fingers. “Just like that.”

Though Charley wondered what telescope they were talking about, he didn’t take the time to find out. “Do you have any guns here?” he asked. “Do you know if Brian took any with him?”

Stephanie shrugged. “There’s my second husband’s gun case in the game room. But I don’t know if Brian took any. I didn’t think to look.”

Charley got up. “We’ll look on the way out. And maybe you better come along,” he said. “If we do intercept them, you’re the best bet to talk your daughter out of it.”

“Oh no, I can’t go with you. I just can’t.” Dropping the magazine, Stephanie held up her hands for them to see. “Look how shaky I am. I can’t do anything. I really can’t.”

“It’s up to you.” Charley picked up the magazine and started for the door. “We’ll do what we can.”

Eve led him to the game room, where he saw that the glass case had been left open, with a key in it. Two of the rack spaces were empty.

“Oh Christ,” he said. “I don’t like the looks of this. I can’t believe he’d take guns. What’s he on—drugs again?”

Eve shook her head. “Not that I know. Come on, let’s hurry.”

She led the way out onto the patio and up the outdoor stairs, the two of them running by now. Seconds later they were in Charley’s car, roaring down the cul-de-sac to Mulholland Drive, where Eve told him to turn left. Considering what might lay ahead, for himself as well as for Eve, Charley thought the weather at least could have cooperated, served up yet another typical Southern California summer day, clear and warm, with a touch of the sea in the air. But this was a Midwest day, already in the nineties, only dry as hemp, with a Santa Ana blowing in from the desert, replacing the smog with sand and dust. There was a distant wail of fire engines, and to the west, beyond the next rise, a column of smoke angled out to sea.

“Turn left again at Beverly Glen,” Eve said. “It goes straight down to Bel Air. It’s probably four or five miles to the house.”

“You think it’ll be hard to find?”

“Afraid so. The streets are all about twenty feet long and have chic little names, not numbers. It’s all very woodsy and countrified.

“Great.”

Eve looked over at him. “You mind telling me what we’re going to do? What we
can
do?”

“I’ve got no idea. Try to intercept him. Try to talk some sense into him. And if we can’t—I don’t know—kidnap the girl and call the police on him.”

“You think we should do that?”

“It’s high time somebody did something, wouldn’t you say?”

Instead of answering, Eve lit a cigarette. “I just can’t believe he’d go this far,” she said. “And the cunning bastard, he knew enough not to let me in on it. He knew I wouldn’t go along.”

“This Terry, what’s she like?”

“Timid and introverted. Plain. Worships Brian.”

“Enough to go this far? To risk jail?”

“So it seems.”

“What kind of cars do they have?” Charley asked.

“An old nine-eleven Porsche and an even older station wagon—the big kind for pulling trailers. Like a truck.”

“A Travel-All?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

As Charley turned onto Beverly Glen and headed down toward Bel Air, he asked Eve to glance through the
Calendar
article and give him the gist of it. So for a short time they drove in silence as she pored over the story. Then she summarized: “Well, as you saw, there’s this nice big picture of Greenwalt and his wife in front of a Jackson Pollock—Jesus, what that must be worth! The wife is a Bryn Mawr graduate in fine arts and, quote, ‘one of Hollywood’s rising young hostesses.’ The basic part of the collection—and the valuable part—are all abstract expressionists like Pollock and de Kooning and so on. And then he’s got a lot of rising young turks too, names you never heard of, like Willis, Hensen, Andrews…”

“Never heard of any of them.”

“No kidding.”

“Does the article say anything about the physical layout of the place? The security system?”

The paintings are all in what was once a ‘grand room’ or ballroom. And Greenwalt isn’t worried about thieves, it says. The gallery, as he calls it, is fireproof and burglarproof and most of the paintings are too huge to carry. The sculptures in the outdoor sculpture garden are so humongous you’d need a crane to move them, according to Greenwalt.”

“Anything about the household staff?”

“Not a word.”

“How about the studio and his movie work? Anything about
Miss Colorado?
”