by Samuel Holt
“You guys wait here,” I said as I parked next to Ross’s streetside stone wall. The dogs were used to that command, and made no effort to follow me. Both stood now, and watched through the window.
The first thing I noticed, when I got to Ross’s gate, was that the pool-company van was gone. Or it could merely be out of sight, tucked away in the garage.
Ken and Chuck, having parked behind me, walked over and also looked through the gate. “Big house for a writer,” Chuck said.
“Producer-writer,” I told him. “Ross has a piece of a couple of series.”
“Well, that’s not bad.”
Ken said, “We got more information on the way over. The reason Sheridan and Olsztyn were together in Sheridan’s car, they’d been hired for some sort of job.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Not regular movie or TV work,” he went on, “not according to Mrs. Sheridan. It was some private job, almost like home movies. She didn’t know much about it. But the interesting thing is, Mrs. Sheridan says her husband told her it was the same people he and Olsztyn did some work for last fall.”
I said, “Does Mrs. Sheridan know who the employer was?”
“No. Last fall they were paid in cash, so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes or union dues.”
“And so there’d be no record of the employer,” I said.
Ken gestured at the house. “Let’s talk to your friend.”
“We can try, anyway.”
I went to the side of the gate, opened the callbox door, picked up the phone, and pushed the button. I didn’t really expect an answer, and was just turning to suggest to the deputies that we try some other method of getting in when there was a click in my ear and Ross’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Ross,” I said. “It’s Sam. Let me in.”
“Goddammit, Sam, now what are you up to? After Doreen some more?”
“I want to talk to you, Ross.”
“We’ve talked. We made a deal. For Christ’s sake, won’t you just sit tight until—”
“We have to talk again,” I told him. “I have a couple of policemen with me.”
There was a quick little intake of breath, and then a brief silence. I could imagine Ross looking like Orson Welles in The Third Man when Joseph Cotten told him he'd gone to the police. What was it Welles had said? “Unwise, Holly, unwise.”
What Ross said was, “I’ll be right down.” And there was another click.
I hung up, shut the door, and said, “He’s coming down here.”
Chuck looked irritated. “He won’t let us in,” he said.
“Let’s wait and see,” Ken said.
“I can smell it,” Chuck insisted.
So could I. You never entirely forget what it feels like to be a police officer entering someone else’s home, where your power and authority are at the most tenuous they ever get. People who want to be mulish and make difficulties can do so there, on their own ground. And why wouldn’t Ross want to be mulish and make difficulties?
“Is this him?” Ken asked.
I looked, and it was. Ross never made any attempt to look as though he belonged with that big fake English house, so when he came down the steep driveway in thonged sandals and white jogging shorts and an open Hawaiian shirt of many colors and large dark sunglasses and his usual chains, he didn’t look as though he could possibly live in that great Tudor mansion up there behind him. He mostly looked like a remittance man, the owner’s raffish cousin, here for a not entirely welcome visit.
He was smiling, but edgily. “Sam,” he said as he reached the gate, “what have you done now?”
I said, “Ross Ferguson, these are Deputy Donaldson and Deputy Nulty.”
Ken said, “Mr. Ferguson, could we come in for a moment?”
Ross turned the edgy smile his way, saying, “What for? I’m trying to get some work done here.”
“We hope you could help us,” Ken said.
“With what?”
Chuck said, “Mr. Ferguson, wouldn’t it be more civilized to talk without this gate in our faces?”
“Not necessarily,” Ross said. “Officers, I have the greatest respect for the law, but I have to tell you, I don’t want to take time away from my work—I’ve got a deadline coming up here—I don’t want to take time away for a lot of nonsense.”
Ken said, “Why do you assume it’s nonsense?”
“Because you’re here with Sam.” Ross turned to me, strain lines on his neck, eyes invisible behind his dark glasses. He said, “This is Doreen again, isn’t it?”
“You know what it is, Ross.”
He turned back to Ken. “Do you know about the collision Sam had the other day?”
“As a matter of fact, we do,” Ken told him.
“Well, I think,” Ross said, “I’m no shrink, but if you want my opinion, it shook him up. Sudden reminders of mortality, all that. He’s mixed the whole thing up with a little spat my lady friend and I had, and his theories were getting so wild that when he went away to New York, Doreen came back to me rather than put up with it anymore.”
It was difficult to keep silent, but I managed. Ken and Chuck were the pros here. It was Chuck who said, “This lady friend—Doreen?—you say she came back to you.”
“She spent two nights at Sam’s house. Didn’t he tell you that?”
Ken said, “Where had she been spending her time before then?”
“With me,” Ross said.
Chuck nodded at the house up the slope. “Here?”
“For a few months. Then we had a very stupid quarrel and she moved for a while down to my other place in Malibu. That’s where Sam found her. Some National Enquirer people were hanging around, and he got all upset, saw conspiracies everywhere, and got Doreen so spooked, she went to his place. I ask no questions about how they spent the night, Doreen is over twenty-one, but by this morning she was beginning to think maybe he’d flipped, maybe after all this time he thinks he really is Packard, the great private eye, and he’s off to solve mysteries where there aren’t any.”
“You’re going too far, Ross,” I said.
He pointed at me a finger that trembled slightly. “You've gone too far, Sam, dragging real policemen into your fantasy conspiracies. Making trouble for me— If we weren’t such longtime friends, I’d be up at the house right now calling my lawyer to sue your ass from here to China.”
Ken said, “Mr. Ferguson, is your lady friend at home?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Maybe we could go up and chat with her, she could confirm your story.”
Ross looked exasperated, but then he turned and bellowed, “Doreen/”
We all looked up at the house, and there was a dramatic pause. The tiny sound I heard was Ross tapping his foot against the blacktop of his driveway, the sandal doing a muffled slap-slap. Then there was movement on the small porch at the near end of the house, and here came Doreen, very slowly, down the drive. She was in sneakers and blue jeans and a short-sleeved high-necked pale blue sweater; somewhat overdressed for the day, but not for the people presumably inside the house. She, too, was hiding her eyes behind large dark sunglasses, but her mouth was strained and sullen and obstinate.
“Come on, Doreen,” Ross called, waving an arm to hurry her. “Don’t take all day; you know I’ve got work to do.”
It was hard to say what her eyes were doing behind the glasses. Looking at me? At Ross? At the deputies? She said, “Go ahead and work, then. Who’s stopping you?”
“Sam is still at it,” Ross told her. “For all I know, he told the cops I’d murdered you.”
“Only Delia West,” I said.
He pretended not to hear that, but I saw him flinch. He said to the deputies, “You have questions? Here she is.”
“Mr. Ferguson,” Ken said, “I’ll ask you again to cooperate. Please let us in so we can conduct this conversation like grown-up human beings.”
“Absolutely not,” Ross told him. “That just stretches the whole ridiculous thing o
n for hours. You’ll have to go to a judge and get a warrant, and no judge would listen to what Sam has to say and give you a warrant. I don’t even have to stand here and talk to you.”
Chuck said, “Miss, who else is in the house right now?”
Doreen’s shoulders twitched. She said in a low, unwilling voice, “The cook and the gardener.”
I said, “Not the pool cleaners?”
“No,” she said, lower than before.
Ross said, “Doreen, did National Enquirer people follow Sam to my place in Malibu?”
“Yes.”
“Did it rattle him?”
“He fought with the photographer man, knocked him down.”
Ken said, “We’re not interested in the National Enquirer, Mr. Ferguson.” That having seemed to me irrelevant, I hadn’t mentioned the National Enquirer to the deputies, and I was glad they weren’t interested in being sidetracked by it.
“All right,” Ross said to Ken. “You don’t care about the National Enquirer. I don’t care about any of this. Doreen, did Sam fill you full of conspiracy theories?”
“Yes.” Barely audible.
“Did you come back here of your own free will?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go back with Sam?”
“No.”
“All right, then.” Ross glared in triumph at the deputies and spread his hands. can’t think of anything else to talk about. Good day to you. And Sam,” he added, turning his glare in my direction, “when you’re in your right mind once again, I may accept your apology.” With that he took Doreen by the elbow and they both headed back up the driveway toward the house.
We watched them go. What else was there to do? “Shit,” I said as Ross and Doreen disappeared onto the porch. A door slammed up there.
“Well, goddammit,” Chuck said.
What an anticlimax. I’m sure the deputies felt it, but I felt it much worse. All of my agonizing over whether or not to call the police, and once I did, what happened? Nothing. A fizzle.
Ken said, “His pals are still inside there, that’s for sure.”
I said, “You still believe me; good. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Chuck said, “Are you kidding? Deceit came off that man like body odor. ’ ’
Ken said, “I’m trying to figure out what sort of complaint you could sign that would get us in there.”
Chuck said, “What about, you say he’s harboring the people who deliberately tried to run you off the road? Or the ones broke into your house back in New York?”
Ken shook his head. “Where’s his evidence, his probable cause? It’s too thin for a judge; Ferguson is right about that part.”
I said, “I remember, years ago, back in Mineola, there’d be a situation, nothing to do, and somebody would turn to us, we were the cops, we were the last resort, and they’d say, ‘Do something, why don’t you do something?’ I’m having to bite my tongue to keep from saying the same thing to you guys.”
“We’ll talk to the B.H. police,” Ken said, “ask them to keep a special lookout in this neighborhood. We’ll hope to figure out who their target is, the middle of next week, though I’m not hopeful on that. But Sam, you say you’ve been in our position, so you have to know as well as us what we mainly have to do now.”
“Yeah, I do.” I looked through the chain link gate at the house, silent and closed. “You have to wait for somebody to break a law,” I said.
“That’s right.”
I shook my head. “I shudder to think,” I said, “what law that’s going to be.”
35
The deputies left first, while I took time to give Max and Sugar Ray a walk. I suppose I was hoping that once the official police presence had departed, either Ross or Doreen would come back out to talk to me, but of course they didn’t. What would they have to say? Ross had convinced Doreen to go along with his story, and without her to corroborate my version there was just no evidence of wrongdoing on Ross’s property, and therefore no way for the deputies—or the Beverly Hills police, this would actually be their jurisdiction—to force their way past the gate. I’d played my last card, I’d effectively closed off communication for good with both Ross and Doreen, and I’d accomplished nothing.
“Come on, guys, let’s go home. We’ve done enough for one day.’’
Once again, rather than do a lot of backing and filling, I drove on uphill from Ross’s house to the next intersection. I was about to turn left there when I noticed that same glint of gold way up to my right that I’d spotted the last time. (That's gold, Zack, I thought; your conference room is definitely yellow.) It was some sort of large shallow dome farther uphill, seen obscurely through a filter of scrub pines and other weedy trees, and what it looked most like was the first sight of the flying saucer in a science fiction movie.
Oh, come on, I told myself. The situation with Ross was ridiculous and melodramatic enough already, I didn’t need extraterrestrials as well. But curiosity had me now, and I was in no hurry to get home and face the fact there was nothing left for me to do about Ross, so instead of turning left, downhill, toward Sunset Boulevard, I turned right and drove up past the Dead End sign to see what that golden dome was all about.
One curve from the intersection and I couldn’t see it anymore, but it was definitely still up ahead somewhere. A second curve, still climbing, and all at once there was a guard shack and a barrier ahead.
It was exactly like a border post on a small road between two European nations. A small square wooden building painted light green stood beside the road. A long pole, banded in red and white, lay across the road at just about hood height. A black and white police car—Los Angeles County, I thought—and two blue sedans and a white van were parked in a blacktop area behind the little building. As it all came into sight, two uniformed men—one in blue, one in brown—emerged from the building, looking at me through their reflecting sunglasses and resting their right hands on the gunbutts at their sides.
I took my foot off the accelerator, and the Chrysler immediately slowed. Max put her front paws on the dashboard, the better to lean forward and look at this interesting thing, while Sugar Ray climbed over from the storage area to the backseat and stared forward, with the alert expression that means he’s thinking of barking.
“Cool it, fellas,” I said, and moved my foot toward the brake. There was something just too tense about those guys. I don’t ever want to put any officials into the position of having to apologize to my next of kin, so I was prepared right then to stop, shift into reverse, and go back where I came from.
Except that just as I was tapping the brake, one of the uniformed men made a down-patting motion, obviously telling me to stop right there, to go neither forward nor back. So I complied, and even shifted into park. The dogs watched, tensing up a bit themselves, sensing the atmosphere, Max with her nose actually touching the windshield, Sugar Ray edgily moving back and forth on the rear seat, trying to get a better view.
One of the men stayed where he was, well back, in front of the car and a bit to the right. The other one moved off to my left and then came forward. They both kept their hands on their guns.
I pushed the button and my window lowered all the way. Sugar Ray immediately stuck his head into the space, close enough to my left ear to hear him snuffle. “Sugar Ray!” I said sharply. “Sit down!”
They both sat on their haunches, reared up on their stick-straight forelegs, watching with utter intensity.
It was a police uniform this one wore, dark blue, with silver badge. His belt was loaded down with all the gear of a cop; in addition to the gun, there was a walkie-talkie, a large notebook, a pair of handcuffs, and several small black leather pouches. As he approached I said, “Yes, officer?”
“May I help you, sir?”
Never has that question been asked with less good will. The only time I could remember myself ever being that tense on duty was once back in Mineola when a guy had gone berserk and murdered the three peopl
e in his immediate family plus two neighbors before barricading himself into his house. My partner Doug Walford and I were the first to respond to the squeal, and when we got out of the patrol car in front of that ordinary suburban house on a hot humid summer day, with a middle-aged woman in a sundress lying facedown dead on the lawn, I felt just about the way this cop here looked.
I’m an actor? Never have I tried so hard to act innocent. “Just taking the dogs for a drive, officer,” I said. “I saw that dome up there, wondered what it was.”
“Private road from here on, sir,” he said. He had made sure to glance at the floor in back, ignoring Sugar Ray.
“There’s no sign down at the comer.”
“No, sir, there isn’t. Just a dead end sign.”
“I suppose that keeps most traffic away,” I agreed. “Except rubbemeckers like me.” I stuck my head partway out the window, wondering if I could see the dome from here. “Mind telling me what that is up there?”
“You could make a K-tum right here, sir,” he said. “Just back around, and you can continue on your way.” For an Easterner like me, L.A. cops do seem to overdramatize a lot, but that’s their style and they didn’t ask me for a review. “Okay,” I said, smiled at him as falsely as he’d been calling me “sir,” and prepared to back up.
“Wait a second,” he said.
Now what? I looked back at him, and he was frowning at me. “Aren’t you—?”
Good; the salvation once again of having a known face. Taking off my sunglasses so he’d be sure he was right, I said, “Sam Holt. I used to play Jack Packard on television.”
“I thought I recognized you.” It was astonishing how thoroughly he’d thawed, all at once. He even cracked a small smile before turning to his partner and calling, “It’s okay.” The partner nodded, but didn’t move, and his hand stayed on his gun.
