Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries)

by Al Sarrantonio

  Instead of teaching a valuable lesson, Paine said, "Goodbye, Barker."

  In his apartment Paine dialed the phone. It rang for a long time and then Gerald Meyer answered it. He sounded as though he had been in Morris Grumbach's dark green study, using the bar.

  "Dear Rebecca left for parts unknown," he said brightly. "She packed and went. Didn't leave any note for you, dear boy."

  Paine interrupted the monologue. "Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"

  He laughed. "Lord, no. She may have gone to Cape Cod, possibly to Maine, maybe even to Nova Scotia. The wonderful Grumbachs have homes everywhere. Perhaps she went to London, or Switzerland. I'm sure she'll be back before too long. Any message, old fellow?"

  Paine hung up.

  He dialed another number. Bob Petty was groggy when he answered.

  "Beauty sleep, Bob?" Paine asked.

  Petty forced himself into wakefulness. "Fell asleep in front of the TV. Hill Street Blues. Lousy show." He yawned.

  "Get anything on that picture?" Paine asked.

  "Christ, I only faxed it out to L.A. a couple of hours ago," Petty complained. "Actually, I tried to reach you before I fell asleep. I got a call back on it just as I was leaving work. Hold on."

  Petty went away from the phone; Paine heard the mumble of a television set abruptly cut to silence and then a barely audible exchange of words. The other voice sounded like Terry's. Petty uttered a curse that Paine heard clearly. Both voices receded. Finally, Petty returned to the phone.

  "Sorry about that, Jack. Terry almost washed my shirt with your information in the pocket." Paine heard the crackle of paper. "They found your bird right away. His name was Jeffrey Steppen."

  "Was?"

  "Naturally. Died in 1970. At least this one had a birth date, though. Born in 1935."

  "How did he die?"

  "Fell off a boat and drowned, north of L.A. Body was never recovered. Are you ready? Morris Grumbach owned the boat."

  "Wow."

  "Yeah, and it stays interesting. Steppen was an FBI agent."

  "Jesus. There's our FBI connection."

  "My buddy Ray is trying to find out what he can about Steppen, but don't expect much. The FBI is tight on their own people."

  "Can't thank you enough, Bobby."

  "Getting real interesting, Jack."

  Paine hung up and dialed the California number on the slip of paper in his wallet. The woman who had been yelling at Izzy said, "Hello?" Paine hung up the phone.

  He took out the packets of photos and went through them until he found the one with the man and woman and horse. A stand of eucalyptus trees bordered the field to the left.

  Paine put the picture away and began to pack.

  EIGHTEEN

  This wasn't Boston, and Paine wasn't in a limousine. Driving a rented Escort, he saw more of L.A. than he needed. Any of it, he decided, was too much. It looked like every lousy television show portrayed it: wide-open spaces filled with a multitude of facades. It looked like it had been glued together haphazardly, like Jimmy Carnaseca's practical joke. Even the sky was a facade: so wide and blue it hurt his eyes, but, when viewed from the hills above the city, revealing itself as an orange cumulus that had hurt his eyes not with its breadth, but with its sulphur dioxide content. He had been in Tucson once, a place that was supposed to be good for your lungs; but, forty miles beyond the city, from the summit of Kitt Peak where he'd gone to see the telescopes perched on that sacred mountain like God's eyes, he'd been startled to see a similar salmon-colored cloud hanging over that Arizona town. Los Angeles (there were fallen angels, weren't there?) made Tucson's smog look like fresh air. He doubted if you could see any stars—never mind the Big Dipper—from the center of L.A.

  The place he was looking for turned out not to be the seedbag apartment he'd imagined, but a tidy ranch house at the edge of the Hollywood Hills. It might even show on some outdated celebrity map, labeled the home of a rising television star.

  The house had had security, at one time. There were bolt marks bereft of paint on the chin-high wrought-iron fence where the cameras had been, and the heavy iron gate showed a sawed-out spot where a remote lock had been. The television star had moved, and the new tenants hadn't kept up the payments on the security system.

  Paine pushed the gate open and walked a path through a tiny garden of unwatered flowers to the front door.

  The woman opened it, and she had the phoniest smile he'd ever seen. "Oh?" she said perkily, striking an artless pose. She looked like a cheap model fondling an auto show Buick. He had imagined her fat and blonde, but she was anorexic and her hair was long and red. She was about fifty-five, the might-as-well-be-dead age for women on the make in California. She looked vaguely familiar—someone who might have played an aging actress looking for an aging mate on The Love Boat.

  "Let me see Izzy," Paine said.

  He saw Izzy, behind the redhead, just reaching the bottom of the stairs. It looked like she had found her aging mate.

  She said, "You're not from Max Dugan's Agency—" and then she stopped. She tried to close the door on him but he put his arm against it and pushed his way in. She almost fell. He closed the door behind him and helped the redhead balance herself. He walked her toward the kitchen, where Izzy was moving around, pulling drawers open.

  When he got to the open doorway of the kitchen he pushed the woman in ahead of him. He had expected Izzy to come at him with something substantial but he had only a steak knife and he was backed against the open drawer he'd pulled it out of. As Paine entered the room, Izzy tensed back, sliding the drawer closed with his butt.

  "Get the fuck away," Izzy stammered.

  He was closer to the way Paine had imagined him than the woman was, runty, balding, but where Paine's imagination had stopped he was also tanned, and dressed in a silk robe with a Spandex brief swimsuit underneath. There were three or four gold chains around his neck.

  "Goddammit, Izzy!" the redhead yelled. She was both accusing and cheering him on. "Goddammit!"

  She backed toward Izzy, who hadn't moved, and she grabbed the steak knife from him and went toward Paine.

  He waited patiently for her. She came at him with the knife overhead like any good movie psycho, but she knew more than Paine had counted on and at the last moment she brought the knife down in a roundhouse and barely missed his side. He threw his arm out and met her at the elbow, but she proved even better, and instead of the force of contact knocking the knife from her hand, she moved with his blow and brought her wrist back and then toward him.

  This time she drew a thin serrated cut through the top of his knuckles. It was time to take her seriously. He kicked her feet out from under her and stepped on her wrist, pressing down to make her drop the knife. She didn't. She held on to it and curled it up at his ankle, cutting him again. Paine put all his weight on her wrist, and her hand began to turn purple and she let go of the steak knife. Paine kicked it away. He had a good idea what she would try next, so he bent down and punched her smartly in the mouth before she could get her teeth on him. She quit, then.

  "Jesus, why did you do that!" she screeched, rolling over on the floor, continuing to whine through the sore hand she held to her bleeding mouth.

  "I'll do it again if you don't shut up."

  "Christ! How can I work like this?"

  Izzy found his legs and tried to run past Paine, who easily blocked his way.

  "Let's talk," Paine said, putting the flat of his hand on Izzy's chest and pinning him against the wall.

  "Jesus, man, don't hurt me," Izzy begged. He looked at the redhead on the floor. "Don't do anything to me."

  "We'll see," Paine said.

  "Jesus," Izzy said. His hands clutched protectively at the front of his robe.

  Paine removed his hand from Izzy's chest and drew out the note from Les Paterna's office. He handed it to Izzy.

  Izzy gave the same intake of breath he had on the phone. In person it was more dramatic. His eyes rolled back f
or an instant. He looked at Paine; something he thought he saw on Paine's face made him loose in the knees and he buckled to the floor and began to plead in earnest.

  "Oh, Jesus, I'll get you the money. If that's what you want I'll get the thirty-three grand. That bastard Paterna. That bastard. He sold it to you, didn't he? That stinking bastard." He was wringing his hands, and now he turned on the woman on the floor. "I told you we couldn't trust the bastard, didn't I? Sooner or later, didn't I tell you that? Didn't I say the first time he got into trouble he'd sell that note? Didn't I tell you not to trust him when he didn't give it back to us?" He motioned a kick at her and turned to Paine.

  "Jesus, please. I'll give it all to you next week. The whole thirty-three. Mona's got work coming the end of this week, I've got something at Universal on Monday—I swear it. Jesus, just don't blow me away."

  "What about her?" Paine asked.

  He looked at Mona, who was sitting up, eyeing Izzy with a kind of awe.

  "Jesus, kill her, fuck her, do whatever you want. I'll get you the money, just don't hurt me."

  "Shut up," Paine said to Izzy.

  "Oh, God, oh, Jesus, just tell me we can talk, say you won't blow me away before we talk."

  "Shut up."

  "Oh, Jesus, Jesus."

  Izzy moaned, holding his head in his hands.

  Paine pulled out a kitchen chair from the table and said to Izzy, "Sit down."

  "Oh, God, oh, Jesus."

  Izzy did as he was told. As he passed Mona, she grabbed his leg and sunk her teeth into the calf. Izzy gave a womanly scream and threw his hands into the air, falling across the kitchen table with Mona's mouth still attached to the back of his shin.

  Paine kicked Mona and she let go of Izzy, cursing him through her broken lip. "Motherfucker. Tell him to kill me, fuck me." The tear in her lip made her wince. She lowered her invective to a mumble. "I'll fuck you, you shit."

  "Oh, God!" Izzy sat bent over his middle, clutching the back of his bleeding leg.

  "What do you do—TV comedy?" Paine asked, gaining a sullen stare from Mona and a reprieve in Izzy's self-absorption.

  "Answer me carefully," Paine said. He made himself sound like somebody who had, in fact, come there to blow their fucking heads off.

  "Anything you want," Izzy grimaced. "Anything—"

  "Motherfucker—" Mona spat at him.

  Paine took out the photos of Paterna, Druckman and Steppen and handed them to Izzy.

  If anything, Izzy's intake of breath was even more dramatic this time. "You've got all three." He looked more puzzled than alarmed. "I don't get it. Did he send you?" He handed the photos to Mona.

  "He's not here to do us," Mona immediately snapped at Izzy.

  A light came into Izzy's eyes. "Let me see your piece." The fear in his voice was gone.

  Paine did nothing.

  Nursing the back of his leg, Izzy practiced a tiny smile. "Let's see it, big shot."

  "I don't have a gun," Paine said. "I'm going to do you with my bare hands."

  "Magnum, P.I.!" Izzy cried triumphantly. He stood, winced with pain and sat down holding his leg. "Magnum, P.I. —that was the show!" He snapped a finger. "There was another script they called me in on, last-minute job. Setup just like this. Guy coming in from the side, doing a little free blackmail by giving another guy his own note to collect on." He looked up at Paine. "Paterna sent you, right?"

  "Paterna's dead."

  Confusion filled Izzy's face. "Then maybe you found the note, figure a little action for yourself—"

  "Shut up, Izzy," Mona said. She was eyeing Paine like a falcon. "This guy's a jerk. He doesn't know anything."

  Paine took out the second packet of photographs and handed it to Izzy. The result was the normal dose of surprise. Izzy handed them to Mona and said, "For somebody who knows nothing, he's got plenty."

  "I told you to shut up, Izzy." She handed everything back to Paine. "Get out," she said.

  "Now wait, Mona," Izzy said. "If Paterna's dead, maybe we should find out—"

  "Fuck you, Izzy." Her sharp eyes stayed on Paine. "He's a P.I. and he knows nothing." She stood finally and put on the bad-actress smile she had greeted Paine with at the doorway. "Good-bye," she said, waving her hand theatrically at the front hallway.

  Paine shrugged and began to walk toward the front. "Fine," he said. "If it means anything to you, at least three people have already been murdered in this mess, including Les Paterna." He took one of his cards out of his pocket and tossed it on the floor. "I'm getting out of this lousy town of yours and going back to New York. You're on your own. You were afraid enough of dying ten minutes ago, but if you want to be brave now, be my guest."

  He looked at Izzy, who had taken his cue from Mona and smiled happily. "Bye-bye, P.I.," he said.

  He was getting his boarding pass when he was paged over the loudspeaker system.

  He took the courtesy phone and Izzy said, "Paine?"

  "Change your mind?"

  "Maybe." In the background, Mona was yattering at him as usual; finally Izzy just yelled, "Shut up!" and came back on the line.

  "I'm thinking maybe we can deal." Paine imagined him fingering his gold chains over his blue bikini swim trunks. "I'm thinking—"

  Mona's voice sounded, close by, and Izzy yelled at her. "Give me the phone, motherfucker!" she shouted.

  "Get away, bitch!" Izzy told Paine to hold on and the fight continued until Mona began to scream, "You opened up my lip again, motherfucker! How am I going to work?" "Sorry," Izzy said into the phone. "I give you something, you give me something, Paine. Here's yours: Paterna, Druckman, Steppen, all the same man. Now tell me: you sure Paterna's dead?"

  "Is that what you want?"

  Silence on the other end.

  "Paterna's dead. Somebody hung him a couple of days ago, made it look like suicide."

  "He called me a week ago, said someone had threatened to kill him."

  "You thought that's who I was?"

  "Yeah."

  "Did Paterna call you after Morris Grumbach committed suicide?"

  "Grumbach didn't kill himself. Whoever called Paterna told him he'd killed Grumbach."

  "Do you have any idea who it was?"

  "You give me one, Paine. Know any cops in New York or L.A. you trust?"

  Paine thought of Petty's friend Ray. "One on each end."

  "You sure? This is nasty stuff we're talking about here. I've been living on this for twenty-five years."

  "I can take care of you."

  "Come and talk."

  Paine started to answer, but the phone went out. He called the number back, but no one answered. The last thing he had heard was Mona calling Izzy bad names in the background.

  The car ride was even less pleasant the second time. The sky had turned from high phony blue to low, angry clouds.

  It was sticky and hot. Paine's jacket stuck to his arms. The back of his neck felt like smog had pooled there. To his left, somewhere, was the big ocean that washed California, sought to purify it, but he didn't have the time to let it wash him clean.

  The first drops of smog-laden rain spattered his windshield as he topped the hill within sight of the house. He braked where he was and pulled inconspicuously to the curb. Three LAPD cruisers and an ambulance were parked at various angles around the front. The first had done a movie brake job, leaving tire marks on the street and fishtailing till the front of the car pointed at the gate. The others had performed less perfect versions of the maneuver. A news crew was out of its van, its lights making an angry, rainy afternoon into bright daylight as two body bags were carried from the house over the sad trampled garden and into the tomb doors at the back of the ambulance. Following the body bags, fully aware of his moment of television immortality, strutted a plainclothesman bearing two clear-plastic bags filled with coils of rope crudely noosed at the ends.

  "Shit," Paine said.

  Inconspicuously, he backed the car down the hill and drove back to the airport.

&
nbsp; NINETEEN

  The bags filled with Ginny's clothes were back on the chair.

  He went into the apartment. He heard her in the kitchen, moving things around; she came out into the living room and blinked at him and said, "Hello, Jack."

  It was not the same way she had said, "Good-bye, Jack."

  She had a mug of coffee in her hand, and she became aware of it. She began to sip from it, changed her mind and lowered it.

  "I just made some," she said, not looking at him, indicating the kitchen with her free hand.

  "Your little deal fall apart?"

  She looked down at the mug of coffee, and then she raised her eyes and looked at him directly. She was trying to be defiant, but it wasn't working and she knew it.

  "We started fighting by the time we got to Roger's place in Montauk," she said. "He. . ."

  "It was his fault?" Paine said, a sarcastic edge in his voice.

  "We . . . fought. Look, Jack. I came back because I've thought about a lot of things and—"

  "Forget it, Ginny."

  "I thought about us really trying to make it work. If the two of us just give in—"

  "We've been through this. Forget it."

  Now she was defiant. "Goddammit, Jack, what do you want me to say?"

  "I've thought a lot about this, too, and I want you to finally admit to yourself that you don't love me." She started to protest but he continued through it. "You've never loved me, Ginny. That's the problem, it's always been the problem." He singled each word out. "You don't love me. You've never been able to admit that to yourself. You always thought that if you messed with me a little more, changed me around a little more, that I'd be what you wanted. You've never looked at me and said, 'Here's Jack Paine, he's really fucked up, but I love him.' I never tried to change you, Ginny. I saw you that first time, and I fell in love with you, and that was it. I took you, Ginny, but you never took me."