Hollywood Gothic (30 page)

“No.”

“You know they could, Toby. You don’t want to get caught for another murder you didn’t commit … go back to prison for good, for the rest of your life. I don’t want them to catch you, Toby. Don’t you understand?”

“But the point is, I’ve got to find out what happened to Goldie.”

“Oh, Christ, who cares, Toby? Who the hell cares?”

When he got her back to her house on the slipping mountainside above Sunset, they were waiting for him.

T
HE THREE MEN WEREN’T CALIFORNIANS
. They waited calmly in Morgan Dyer’s driveway, sheltered by three black umbrellas, one smoking a pipeful of Cherry Blend Challis could smell the moment he got out of the car. They wore conservative gray suits, a plaid and a pinstripe and a plain flannel, white shirts, and ties. One wore a hat with a plastic rain cover. A block-long Lincoln limo, in black, stood sedately on the sharply canted street. Challis parked behind it. The men watched them but did not move. They looked as if they had come from a galaxy long ago and far away.

“Don’t stop,” Morgan said anxiously. “They’re waiting for us.”

“Well, they’re not cops.”

“They don’t even look human. Let’s go.”

“Where? What is it I’m supposed to do? Where should I go? No, I’m going to see who these guys are.” He opened the door and smelled the tobacco. “Come on. Look at those umbrellas …” Rain slanted down from the hillside. The foliage dripped and he got his shoes muddy in the street.

The man with the pipe spoke with his teeth clamped on the stem. “Miss Dyer, good afternoon. My name is Carl Phillips, these two gentlemen are my associates.” He nodded to the other men, who came forward, flanked him. Youngish men all of them, clean-cut, fair skin, like overage college boys. “And you are Mr. … ah?” He smiled tightly and the pipe wobbled for an instant.

“Mr. Streeter,” Challis said.

“Of course, Mr. Streeter.”

“What is it, Mr. Phillips?” Morgan asked.

“Nothing to concern yourself with, miss. We have some business with Mr. Streeter.” He smiled engagingly from Morgan to Challis. “We’ll be going now, if you don’t mind, Mr. Streeter.” He reached for Challis’ arm.

“Touch me and I’ll scream, you bully. I don’t believe I know you, Mr. Phillips.” He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Very amusing.” Phillips chuckled.

“You’re dribbling ashes,” Challis said.

“Well, well, well,” Phillips said, rubbing his hands together. “Shall we go, then? Ted … John, would you see Mr. Streeter to the car?”

“Of course, Carl.” Ted and John came forward.

“Where am I going?” Challis asked. “Carl? Ted? John? Or is it a fun kind of surprise?” He thought: Be flip, be tough, don’t let them smell fear.

“Are you kidnapping Mr. Streeter?” Morgan frowned.

“Good heavens, what a thought!” Carl was clearly shocked.

“Well, where are you taking him? When is he coming back?” Morgan’s frown deepened to a scowl.

“Not to worry, not to worry. He’ll be fine. If you’ll just excuse us, the sooner we go, the sooner we’ll be back.” Ted and John were trundling Challis toward the limo, the umbrellas moving like June bugs in lockstep.

“Remember,” Challis said over the roof of the car. “My last thoughts were of you.” Then he disappeared into the darkness behind the impenetrable black windows.

“Quite a kidder, isn’t he?” Carl smiled at her, his teeth even and white, the pipe still in place. “We’ll be gentle with him, miss. No reason he shouldn’t be back for dinner.”

“You don’t sound like you mean it.”

Carl Phillips just flashed his Colgate smile and went away. Standing alone in the driveway, the rain falling softly, she watched the limo move off. She felt like the party had ended. Then she went inside and began reading Kay Roth’s diaries again.

Nobody said anything in the cavelike interior of the Lincoln. The aroma of the tobacco hung like taffy, sickening in the closeness. Down the hill, across Sunset, right on Santa Monica, left into Century City, right into the crowded driveway of the Century Plaza Hotel. An attendant in a funny outfit opened the rear door and Carl and Ted escorted Challis into the football field of a lobby with the sunken cocktail lounge and the waitresses in short skirts and mesh stockings. Rain blew across the broad patio beyond the glass walls. Palm trees bent in the wind, overlooking the parking lot, where the heroes of Twentieth Century-Fox had acted out their fantasies, the fantasies of the world’s moviegoers, in the long ago.

Challis felt a slight pressure on his elbow which tilted him toward the elevators on the left. “We’ll go right up, Mr. Streeter. You’re expected.” They waited in a crowd of Japanese vacationers. Challis had never before seen so many cameras dangling from so few people. Everyone smiled.

By the time they disembarked, they were the last passengers. It was the top floor. Carl led the way, knocked on a door, and went in. The suite stretched into the fog and rain, dull green carpet only slightly larger than a polo field. There was a fully stocked bar with bamboo stools, three groupings of Italian-modern couches and chairs, a dining table laid with china, silver, and crystal for eight, and a variety of oils in frames worth more than the paintings.

“Why don’t I ever get a room like this, Carl?” Challis said.

The reply came from the one dim corner of the room. There was a tall figure behind the gigantic, ornately carved pool table.

“Because you can’t afford five hundred dollars a day,” the man said. He stepped out of the shadow, laid his pool cue on the green. He was wearing a pearl-gray pinstripe suit. His tie against the pale blue shirt matched the shred of handkerchief peeking out of his breast pocket. He looked like a page from
Gentlemen’s Quarterly.

“Vito Laggiardi, as I live and breathe.”

“Well, you have the advantage of me there, haven’t you? Carl, would you fetch Mr. Woodruff, please? I hope I haven’t spoiled your afternoon, but this is a necessity.”

“Not for me, it’s not.”

“A point well-taken.” He moved across to a tufted leather couch that gave onto a view of what was left of the Twentieth backlot: a street from
Hello, Dolly!
and the lions resting in front of the New York Public Library, Santa Monica Boulevard and Olympic heading out toward the ocean but disappearing in the fog long before that, to the left a smudge of wet green from the Rancho Park golf course. “Lovely weather you have here in California. This I can get in New York.”

“Like hell. New York is offering six inches of snow and high winds today.”

“Try not to be so contentious. Please, sit down, relax.” Laggiardi flickered two percent of his Palm Beach tan smile. The smile meant nothing. The scimitar nose looked sharp enough to cut a silk thread. He gave the impression, as he had that day in Donovan’s office, of a Borgia prince taking time from his busy round of murder and conspiracy to interview candidates for the papacy. Something about him reminded Challis of Aaron Roth. “Always remember that no one ever truly enjoys the company of an asshole.”

Challis sat down on the couch. “I’ll try to remember that, I will sincerely try, but I have trouble with social abstractions.”

“There’s nothing abstract about an asshole and something very palpable about the cure. … Ah, Bruce. Over here, please join us. Would you like Bruce to get you some coffee? A drink? Some Perrier?”

“I had my heart set on Famous Amos and Ovaltine.”

“It would only give you pimples. Bruce, this gentleman is some sort of comedian apparently. Do we know who he is yet?”

“Why don’t you just ask me, Vito?”

“Ask him, Bruce.”

Bruce Woodruff was the young man who had attended his master in Donovan’s office. He was still the color of typing bond and still wore the unfortunate mouselike mustache. He had changed to a dark blue suit and he was sweating into his collar. Looking at him, you felt sure that under his clothing he was floating in perspiration and his armpits were caked with talcum. He was breathing a little hard.

“Well”—he fidgeted as he sat down in a chair so low as to make escape impossible—“uh, what is your name?”

“My name is Eddie Streeter.”

“That’s the point, Mr. Laggiardi,” he said, turning moistly in his chair, struggling with the thirty extra pounds stuffed under his vest. “He’s not Eddie Streeter. That, uh, wreck of a car he drives is registered to an Eddie Streeter, but this is not Eddie Streeter. Uh, Streeter is a … a little creep who parks cars at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

“Big deal,” Challis said. “Big detective work. He may not work for a hot ticket like your Vito, but he’s not about to drown in his own sweat
like some people.
Vito, you didn’t bring me here to insult your hired hand … what the hell do you want?”

Woodruff’s chubby fingers tightened in his lap. Turning to check Laggiardi’s reaction, he exposed the boil on his neck. It was an angry red and the tight collar exacerbated it. He was grinding his teeth and sweating like a man who’d like to mount a machine gun on the balcony and go to work on the populace below.

“The matter of your identity aside for the moment,” Laggiardi said, looking like a man sitting calmly in the path of a gently blowing air conditioner, “there is another matter. Or two, even. Ah, Bruce. A Perrier and lime, please. Too much lobster and egg mayonnaise for lunch.”

“You don’t have to explain to me.” Challis sighed.

“Of course, you’re quite right there. I think I was making conversation, trying to relieve you of your apprehension.”

“Forget it. Apprehension gives me the will to live. You know how it is … you must always be apprehensive, afraid the cops’ll finally nail you, or some poor bastard you goosed with a rusty crowbar—now, that’s an apprehension inducer.”

“No, I never feel it. I pay people to feel it, recognize it, fix it. Take Bruce …”

“No, thanks.”

“Bruce is, for all his sweat, an apprehension fixer.” Bruce arrived with the Perrier. “Thank you, Bruce.”

“What has he got against me, anyway?” Bruce asked. “There’s no need to be insulting.”

“You heard him. Be nice. He may not look it, but Bruce can break your face in no time at all.”

“Bruce? This Bruce? Come on, Vito …”

“Enough of the bullshit,” Bruce muttered menacingly.

“Christ, he’s lowering the tone of the whole afternoon.”

“Well, it is time,” Laggiardi said. Bruce went a few feet away to flex his muscles. He suddenly seemed to have more muscle than Challis had assumed. “Time to lower the tone …” He smiled his little nonsmile, a trifle sadly. He took a swallow of Perrier and looked out the window. “Last night you murdered a business associate of mine. You were also hanging around his office the other day. Yesterday? Well, you were there. Jack Donovan was a business associate and a friend from the old days, way back when he was starting out—was that in Jersey, Carl? Well, wherever it was—”

“I can see you two were very close.”

“Excuse me, but a word to the wise … don’t keep interrupting me with this cheap private-eye garbage. I’m trying to talk to you. Now, before I go on, I’d like to know why you iced my friend Jack. Save yourself a truckload of trouble and answer me.” He waited. Woodruff was looking out the window, trying to burst the seams of his suit.

“I don’t know this Donovan, I’ve never spoken with him, and I certainly didn’t kill him. That’s about that, I guess.”

“Not really, not yet. No, because I’ve already caught you in a little white lie. You may not have spoken to Mr. Donovan in his office, but you spoke with him last night at that nutty bookstore your girlfriend runs. Then you tried to kill him with your bare hands.”

“Who told you that? It’s crazy.”

“Jack called me himself to tell me about it.”

“Did he habitually call you when someone took a poke at him? Phone lines must have been humming.”

“No, he didn’t. Only in your case he made an exception. He said he knew who you were.”

“Bullshit, Donovan wouldn’t know—”

“You’re digging a very deep hole. But let me conclude my thought. Jack said that you had told him who you are. He was very confused, very much afraid, because among other things, you were involved with Goldie Challis, who was also an associate of ours. As you can see, a web of complicated relationships. Jack told me that you claim to be Toby Challis, Goldie’s murderer. And the whole world knows Challis is loose somewhere. If you are in fact Mr. Challis, then you are twice a murderer.”

“And your kind of guy, right?”

“We know damn well you killed him, Mr. Challis.”

“You don’t know I’m Challis. Did you ever see the picture in the papers? Then you can see I’m—”

“Why did you kill him?”

“I didn’t kill him.”

Laggiardi drank some more Perrier and softly cleared his throat. “But you were there, on his boat?” Challis nodded. “All right, now we’re getting somewhere. Listen carefully … why did you go to the boat?”

“Because I had pretty much decided that he had killed my wife. I thought we could discuss it.”

“Maybe he’d want to give himself up, clear you? That kind of thing? You’ve been under a good deal of pressure, Mr. Challis. I appreciate that, I assure you. But why am I to believe that you didn’t cancel Mr. Donovan’s ticket?”

“I don’t know. My own bet is that you had one of your pink and wholesome homicidal maniacs kill him because he was of no more use to you. He’d succeeded in prying open the gates of Maximus for you—the way I see it, you exchanged a fistful of Donovan’s balls for poor Aaron’s … and little Howard, the CPA, gets to pretend he’s a big-time TV executive.”

“I don’t quite follow this. Do you follow this train of thought, Bruce? I don’t quite follow this.”

“No, Mr. Laggiardi, I don’t follow it at all.”

“It must be comforting to know that no matter where you are, Vito, somewhere Bruce is sweating in your service.”

“Make him stop that, Mr.—”

“Aw, fuck yourself, you goddamn miserable sweating steaming pile of shit!” Challis felt himself bubbling over, saw red. He lunged up off the couch, reaching toward Woodruff. “Laggiardi, I hate your suit, your tie, your stupid matching hankie, and your moronic attempt to impersonate a human being … now I’m leaving your padded cell!” He stormed around the edge of the couch. Laggiardi was smiling imperceptibly.