“Or you can just open the door,” I added.
“Marty ...”
“One,” I yelled.
“O’Leo ...” Leilani started to say.
“Two.”
Leilani held her hands out in front of her like she was directing traffic. Her gaze shifted back and forth between me and the door as if following some madcap ping-pong match.
“Three,” I said, and sighed.
Nothing.
I turned to Leilani. “You really should Zumba,” I said.
“What?”
“Shit, this is goddamn’ heavy,” I muttered. But I picked up the stand, took two steps back and started swinging it around as if I was launching a hammer.
I took three good turns and just as I let the stand fly, I saw the curtains flutter and the door slide open.
Too late.
The base of the stand caught O’Leo square in the chest and sent him sprawling backwards into the house, arms flailing. He issued a pained “Oooomph” and I heard a loud crack as his skull connected with a heavy pine dining table. It looked like IKEA. But then they all do.
“Oh my god,” Leilani said, walking in behind me.
Blood was colouring his wiry hair. There wasn’t too much, though he was clearly down for the count.
“Fuck him,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder at Leilani. “Who else is here?”
“What? I don’t... what do you mean?”
“Is Shush here? She must be. She wouldn’t trust anyone else with money. What about ElronD?”
“Marty, what... what are you talking about?”
She’d recovered a bit. A bit.
“You’ll need bigger stomping boots than those for the likes of me,” I said.
Leilani looked at her feet, then up at me. She shook her head some more.
“My shoes are big, Martin.”
I turned back around. Shoshona Elaine stood there with a gun in her hand and that twisty little smile on her kisser.
It made me very sad.
“I really hoped I was wrong,” I said.
“You’re smarter than you used to be, Martin,” Shushie said.
“I’d pretty well have to be. You’re twice as crazy, though.”
She laughed. “Crazy is as crazy does,” she said and waggled the gun at me.
“Thank you, Shushie Gump.”
“Grab the bag, Lani,” Shushie ordered.
“Lainie and Lani?” I asked. “You preparing a Don Ho tribute act?”
Shushie shrugged. “We are a pair.”
A bit sheepishly, Leilani slipped the Dodgers bag off my shoulder and brought it over to Shushie. Shush gestured at it and the tall girl put it down on a coffee table - also IKEA - and unzipped it.
“What the fuck?” she said.
She pulled out a San Pedro Beach Bums beach towel that was folded around an object. She unfurled it on the table.
Shushie started to laugh.
“That’s pretty good, Martin. No, that’s very good.”
“I don’t get it,” Leilani said. She picked up the Burning Bright mug with my face on it and held it up in the air.
“Just how stupid do you think I am?” I said. I pointed at the mug. “Though that really is collectable. The towel, too. Maybe not twenty-five large, but have a look on eBay.”
“You bastard,” Leilani spat.
“Enough,” I said.
“You think?” Shushie said. “I’ve still got the gun, you know.”
“Shush. I’ve been in The Business since I’m six years old. I’ve done like thirty cop shows over the years. Not to mention I was fourth lead in The ‘Nam, thank you very much. You think I don’t know a prop gun when I see one? Now let me ask you the only thing I want to know: is there even really an ElronD?”
“There most definitely is, Martin. Oh, yes.”
“And is he, is he ...?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. What does that say about me?
“Is he, is he ...” Shushie teased.
I looked at her imploringly.
Shushie twisted her lips in that familiar way. I flashed back to long ago Mexico and felt sick and sad and old.
She laughed very loudly. Then all trace of levity fell off her face.
“I withdraw my earlier statement, Martin,” she said. “You’re not even one little bit smarter.”
That’s when she shot me.
~ * ~
Kendall Arlo is the best agent in Hollywood. Not the most famous or successful or rich, but definitely the best.
She’s my agent - who else would be at my hospital bedside?
Gotta love this town.
“Hey, big guy,” she said.
“Do not, under any circumstances, ever call me that again,” I said, bringing the world back into focus. “Cedars?”
“They took you to Kaiser, but I had you transferred here once things seemed okay.”
“You’re a gem, Kendall. I take it that means that I am okay?”
“She shot you in the calf.”
I peered under the cover at my bandaged leg.
“Holy cow! What a shit shot.” I remembered Shushie pointing the gun square at my chest. Then it occurred to me. “So how come I’m so groggy? Why does my head hurt?”
“You fell and smacked your skull on an IKEA bookcase. But the bullet wound was clean. Through and through.”
“Still watching those old ER box sets, eh, Kendall?” • She smiled. “You’re okay, Marty. Lucky, but okay. Yet again.”
I slowly sat up, decided that Dr Agent’s diagnosis seemed on-fhe-mark.
“What happened to Shush?”
“Who?”
“Shushie ... Shoshana. My ex. The lady with the bad aim.”
“In the wind. She ran right after she shot you. The police will find her. They got the other girl. Quintangelo.”
“So that’s her real name,” I mused.
“Leilani Quintangelo,” Kendall said, nodding.
I shot her a look.
“What?” she asked. “She’s an actress. You can IMDb her.”
“Maybe later.” I leaned back against the pillow. “What happened to O’Leo?”
“Who?”
“The little guy who I laid out on the floor.”
“They didn’t find anyone else there, Marty. Quintangelo turned herself in. The police will need a statement if you’re up to it. There’s a lieutenant waiting in the cafeteria. I just schmoozed him over lunch. I paid, of course.”
“You’re one of a kind, Kendall.”
“Yes. I am. Is there anything I need to know before you talk to the detective? Any ... spillage?”
“Nothing that needs special mopping, I don’t think. Though I don’t like the thought of Shushie still out on the loose.”
“Were you really married to her?”
“I was very young.”
“Not me,” Kendall said. “Never.”
That made me feel so much better.
“She has quite a history,” Kendall said.
“Tell me about it.”
“No, I don’t think you realize. She’s been in and out of institutions for the better part of a decade.”
“What? Prison?”
“Psychiatric.”
“Shit,” I shat.
“She had some kind of major breakdown about ten years ago. I couldn’t get her records, of course - well, I can, but it will be really expensive - but she’s definitely got more than just issues. The police are pretty familiar with her, too.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have my minions. You ever know me to go into a meeting unprepared?” Kendall said.
I smiled, but I wasn’t feeling light-hearted. “I spent a few days with her and didn’t have a clue. I mean, Shush has always been crazy, but this is ... something else.”
I lay back and stared at the ceiling for a while.
“Marty? Shou
ld I get the doctor?”
“No, I’m okay. Just pondering. You’d think after all my years in the business - in LA - my psycho-meter would be more finely tuned. Kendall, how do you tell the genuine crazies apart from ...?”
“The rest of your ex-wives?” she suggested.
“For a start.”
Hush ... Hush, Sweet Shushie
“I better let them know you’re up, Marty. You’re sure there’s nothing else you need to get straight about before you tell your tale?”
“No, I should be safe with the truth this time. They probably won’t believe me anyway.”
Kendall nodded and made for the door.
“Hey, Kendall?”
She stopped.
“Can you use your ... minions, whatever they cost, to look into something for me?”
“Sounds important,” she said.
“I don’t know ...” I had to confess.
~ * ~
ElronD - the capital “D” at the end is right there on the California birth certificate - Leonard Horowitz was born thirty-seven weeks after my lost weekend in Twentynine Palms with Shushie. He weighed seven pounds, two ounces, and entered the stage at eight minutes past eleven in the morning. He was delivered by a Dr Karen Kendel-Smith, who has a stereotypically terrible signature. The document was in one of three envelopes sitting atop my dining-room table. (I bought it second-hand, from an independent furniture shop in Mar Vista.)
A normal, full-term pregnancy is forty weeks, of course. Had ElronD simply come early? No way to know. Yet.
The second envelope in the package that Kendall had hand-delivered to me contained a couple of dozen photos. They were of ElronD, all taken very recently. Except for one: an archive photo from the Times. Kendall’s minion had tracked it down, along with everything else. It was of a six-year-old ElronD at Universal Studios. Apparently there’d been a malfunction and ElronD had been hurt on the Back to the Future ride. The photo showed a smiling little boy being given a signed Hoverboard by Michael J. Fox and a free lifetime pass to the park in compensation.
I thought I recognized something familiar in the little boy’s eyes, his smile.
The third envelope was the only one of the three that was sealed.
“How did you do it, Kendall?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Only for you, Marty. I wouldn’t for anyone else.”
Just a plain white envelope. Nothing written on front or back.
“Are you sure you want it?” she’d asked before she left.
“No,” I said. “Not sure at all.”
I balanced it on my palm. The paternity report inside must have been thin: it felt like there was only a single sheet of paper. Was that meaningful?
Kendall’s minion had somehow extracted a DNA sample from ElronD.
I started to open the envelope.
I put it back down.
I paced for a while, then picked up and put down the envelope several more times.
After a while, I took all the material Kendall gave me - including the still-sealed envelope - and stuck it in a box of papers I’ve been meaning to deal with for years at the back of my bedroom closet.
My philosophy? Ignorance may or may not be bliss, but it’ll do.
<
~ * ~
JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT
Case Conference #2
DO YOU HAVE many female patients upstairs?”
Dr Parrish gave a flicker of a smile at Stanhope’s words. “What an interesting question,” he said. “I must say I have noticed how you become more attentive when the story I’m telling happens to be about a mentally unstable woman instead of a man. Could it be that I’ve uncovered some hitherto unrealized predilection of yours?”
Stanhope immediately became defensive. “It’s not that,” he replied. “It’s just that ... well ...” He was obviously finding it difficult to find the right words. Parrish allowed the struggle to continue, relishing the journalist’s discomfort in the process. Eventually, he decided to put the man out of his misery.
“You’ve never really understood women anyway, is that it?” he said with a knowing smile. “They’ve always been a bit of a mystery to you? A bit illogical? Ruled by their emotions - that sort of thing?”
“Yes - that sort of thing.” Stanhope seemed reluctant to be drawn further on the subject, but Parrish was having none of that.
“Tell me, Mr Stanhope, are you married?”
Stanhope shook his head.
“Girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Most certainly not.”
“But that worries you, does it - that last question? I can see from the way you physically recoiled when I asked it.”
Stanhope responded by leaning forward and fixing the psychiatrist with a stare. “I’m not so much worried as irritated, Dr Parrish. After all, I am meant to be interviewing you, and so far you’ve been the one asking all the questions.”
Behind his desk, Lionel Parrish beamed and held out his hands, palms upward. “I am simply saying what comes into my head,” he said. “But if it makes you feel any better, please don’t worry. You will find out all you wish to know in good time. Meanwhile, would you care to venture a guess regarding the veracity of that last case report?”
The fountain pen was poised again, ready to make a mark on the piece of paper where Parrish was keeping a record of Stanhope’s successes and failures, his right or wrong answers.
“Oh, it has to be true,” Stanhope said without hesitating. “The kinds of things that go on in the show business community, that story doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“I see,” said the doctor, making a mark on the paper and putting his pen back into his pocket. “Now let’s get back to what we were talking about.”
“And what exactly was that?” Stanhope asked.
“Why, you and the opposite sex, of course,” Parrish replied with a raised eyebrow. “Or rather, your fascination with female mental disease. It does fascinate you, doesn’t it? Don’t try to deny it - I am a doctor, you know. I can tell these things. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you’ve been out with a few ladies you’ve found difficult to control.”
Stanhope smirked at that. “Haven’t we all?”
Parrish’s expression became grave. “No, Mr Stanhope, we haven’t. Did you ever try and control any of those women?”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Did you berate them? Shout at them?” Parrish paused, letting his words sink in, delighting in the way he appeared to be deflating the already cowed-looking reporter. “Did you ever hit them?”
“No,” was the reply. “I’ve always been against physical violence of any kind.”
“Just psychological brutality, then?”
“No.”
“We have quite a lot of victims of that upstairs, you know.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, if it wasn’t, then why did you imply that it was?”
“I didn’t!” Stanhope was shouting now. “I didn’t! It was you! You’ve just made out that that was what I meant. I’ve hardly said anything and you’ve manipulated my words to make me look like a wife-beater!”
“Whereas you, of course, have never manipulated anybody’s words in your life, have you, Mr Reporter?”
Those last words weren’t exactly a snarl, but they were delivered with sufficient vehemence that Stanhope would probably have pushed himself through the back of the chair had it not been of such stout construction.
“My goodness me, I do believe I’ve touched a nerve!” Parrish held out a hand. “My dear chap, I’m terribly sorry if I’ve upset you, I can assure you that wasn’t my intention at all.”
Whether or not Parrish was telling the truth, all Stanhope could find to mumble in reply was, “That’s okay. I think it’s probably just a bit of everything getting to me.”
Psychomania: Killer Stories Page 27
