“I’d like you to let me read, please,” Lucy Bardwell persisted, her expression as fixed as a museum guard’s. “It won’t take long to make my point.”
“Is this a published book by any chance, Ms. Bardwell?” Chandelier asked meanly.
“No. But I mailed a copy to myself after I finished it so I could prove from the postmark when it was written, in case anyone ever—”
“Mailing a copy to yourself proves nothing, as any reputable intellectual-property lawyer can tell you. So we don’t know where this little paragraph came from, do we, audience?”
The audience was immobile.
“This paragraph is one of many that was contained in the portions of the manuscript of Childish Ways that I submitted to you in class,” the young woman plunged on. “And this among many other paragraphs turned up in Infamy of Infants in almost the exact same words.”
Chandelier’s tone turned arch and dismissive. “Have you consulted an attorney about this, Ms. Bardwell?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Since you haven’t sued me, I assume he told you that you didn’t have a case.”
“Quite the contrary. He said I had a solid case for infringement, but he also said I didn’t have enough of a damage claim to make suing you worthwhile. In other words, he said you definitely hurt me, Ms. Wells, but not badly enough.” Lucy Bardwell offered a rueful smile to the room. “If that lawyer had ever tried to get a book published in this day and age, he’d have a better idea of how badly I’ve been hurt,” she added almost as an afterthought, accompanied by a drip of tears.
Chandelier seemed to double in size and triple in density. “Let me tell you something, young lady. With every bestselling book, every hit movie, and every hit song that comes along, some vultures like you comes out of the woods and claims they had the idea first. They make a big stink and the media hop aboard and repeat the charge and the reputation of the writer gets tarnished indelibly. But you know what, Ms. Bardwell? The vultures always lose. Sure, they may gouge a nuisance settlement out of the artist once in a while, but if the case goes to trial, the vulture always loses. The problem is, the media never cover that part of the story, do they? They’ve moved on to some other spurious allegation in an effort to get more readers or higher ratings, leaving the artist whose reputation they’ve raped trying futilely to regain her good name.”
Lucy Bardwell stood her ground. “I’m not asking for money, Ms. Wells.”
“What are you asking for?”
“An apology. And some help.”
“I have no reason to—”
“I’m not claiming you stole my idea, I’m claiming you stole my words. Since I can prove that’s the case, I want to know what you’re going to do to see that my work gets published just as yours has been. Especially since you obviously thought it was publishable.”
Before Chandelier could answer the question, there was a commotion from the other side of the room. Lark McLaren and Amber Adams were standing on either side of a third woman, who was wearing a floor-length black coat and a black hat in the shape of a floppy beret looking like something out of a silent movie featuring Gloria Swanson. The woman was clearly attempting to join the fray, and Lark and Amber were clearly trying to restrain her.
I stood up and put my hand on my weapon and walked toward the trio of women. When I got there, I recognized the woman in the beret as Viveca Dane.
“She did the same thing to me!” Viveca called out suddenly, even as Lark and Amber clutched at her arms. “Chandelier stole my character, my plot, my milieu, and my persona. She took everything I had, even my readership. Thank you for speaking up, young lady. Because someone has to stop her.”
I closed to where I could prevent Viveca from using any weapon more potent than vitriol. For her part, Chandelier was cursing under her breath and gathering her things, preparing to vacate the premises.
“But you haven’t signed books,” Kelly the assistant manager squealed as Chandelier threw on her cape and grabbed for her briefcase, then fumbled with something below the podium and emerged with a small cassette tape that she shoved in her purse.
“You should screen your audiences more carefully, my dear,” Chandelier said snidely as she strode across the room. “I don’t come to these things to be insulted.” She shouldered her way toward the door, then turned back. “I should have known something like this would happen in this town. If any of you still want signed books, they’ll be available at Baubles, Bangles & Books over in the city. Where most of the populace is still sane.”
With that final promotional plug, Chandelier was out the door, leaving a maelstrom of disappointment in her wake. I went outside, watched her stride to her majestic Lincoln, waited for her to get inside, gave a wave to Jed Filson, then returned to the store.
Viveca Dane and Lucy Bardwell were huddling near the podium, no doubt comparing causes of action against Chandelier. Kelly the assistant manager was trying to mollify customers who had already bought books by offering them a coupon good for a signed Sue Grafton as soon as the books came in. Lark and Amber and Sally were displaying various degrees of consternation, no doubt wondering whether the contretemps about plagiarism would put a crimp in their principal’s soaring career.
And then the bomb went off, blowing in the front windows and showering us all with flying glass.
Chapter 14
Lark McLaren was the first person out the door, and it was her incessant screaming as much as the shards of glass or the reverberations of the explosion that made me dash out after her.
When I spotted her, what I saw was a woman twirling frantically to and fro, not sure what to do or how to do it, sobbing and pointing and searching desperately for assistance as her voice splashed the day with terror. Beyond her was a sheet of orange flame lapping hungrily at the sky from within a cloud of roiling smoke that rose from the middle of the street. At the base of the flames was a crumpled lump of steel and glass that behind the aftereffects of the blast had become almost unrecognizable as the handsome old Lincoln.
By the time I reached her, Lark was standing so close to the wreckage she had to shield her face with her forearm to ward off the heat from the blaze. I stepped between her and the conflagration and turned her gently toward the sidewalk. Tears streamed down her cheeks, streaking them with makeup, and in the spotty light of the flames her eyes seemed ablaze themselves, matching meteorites burning toward the center of her skull.
“Help her,” she burbled between convulsive sobs. “You have to help her.”
Overwhelmed by likelihoods, Lark had become insensate by the time Amber and Sally rushed forward to help pull her away from the danger. When the three of them were safely on the curb, I turned back toward the car. Shielding myself as ineffectively as Lark had done, I moved as close to the blaze as I could, until my skin began to prickle and my eyes began to sting and my clothing became an analgesic compress that brought forth sweat and stink.
As flames pranced before me like amateur Rockettes and smoke swirled this way and that on random gusts of wind, I could see glimpses of my goal through brief chinks in the wall of flame. The bomb had been so powerful it had severed the front half of Chandelier’s car from the back, in the vicinity of the front seat. The forward portion—engine and front compartment—was scorched and twisted beyond recognition as anything other than scrap. It was impossible that Jed Filson was any longer alive, unless he had been part of the plan and had triggered the explosion from a position of safety. I disliked that thought so much I waited till it vanished.
Incredibly, the rear portion of the car, especially the rear seat compartment, seemed structurally intact. If there was hope to be had, it was there, deep within the soup of smoke and fire.
As I inched closer to the wreckage, someone tugged at my coat. When I turned, Kelly, the assistant manager, thrust a fire extinguisher at me. “Maybe this will help.”
“Maybe,” I said dubiously, regarding what looked more like a toy than a deterrent to anything as
terrible as the burning vehicle. I took the small red cylinder from her, pulled the pin, detached the small hose from its bracket, and turned back toward the car, feeling far more foolish than heroic.
“She’s alive!” Lark McLaren screamed at my back. “See? That’s her hand! She’s moving! Somebody help her, for God’s sake. Please!”
Canister in one hand and hose in the other, I took aim at the car and squeezed the trigger, producing a miniature cloud of dry white retardant that was so meager as to be whimsical. From behind my flimsy shield, I advanced toward the rear of the car.
The smells were of fuels and plastics and burning rubber. The noise was of approaching sirens and urgent warnings. I ignored as many of my senses as I could and moved ahead, energized by feelings of guilt and incompetence that warred with electric jolts of fear.
Heat greeted me, seduced me, then slapped at me. My scalp seemed to be peeling away from my skull; my hands seemed to be boiling in oil; my face seemed to be bubbling and cracking like cheap paint. I kept going, the retardant thankfully blinding me to the fix I was getting myself into. If I had stopped to think, I would have run the other way.
When the heat seemed impenetrable and the extinguisher too hot to hold, I stopped spraying and looked. Five yards in front of me, the rear portion of the car was on its side, perhaps from a secondary explosion in the gas tank. What I was looking at was the top of the car, not the side, which meant the only way I could extract Chandelier would be to lean over the roof and pull her out through the window hole. As I was trying to summon the courage to do just that, I wrapped the extinguisher with my handkerchief to make it bearable to hold. It was then I saw what Lark had seen—a hand rising out of the gap in the steaming shell of sheet metal. Chandelier was reaching for help, which meant she was reaching for me.
I took three steps toward the car. Flame taunted me from all sides, impervious to the dregs from the extinguisher, seeming even to feast on them. Tossing the canister aside, I leaned forward to see if I could see Chandelier, extending my hand to where I thought I had last seen hers. My arm draped over the fire like beef on a spit; my face could have served as a griddle. The gases erupting from the wreckage seared enough of my inner and outer tissue that I was coughing and choking and crying simultaneously, rendering myself effectively blind.
Just then, like when the film breaks at the movies, everything went black. As I felt myself sag to the ground, helpless to do otherwise, I was engulfed in a thundercloud that seemed to fall on me from all sides, as if the bomb had brought forth a volcano from the inner earth. My reflexes told me to curl in a ball for protection, which is what I was doing when two gloved hands grabbed me under my arms and began to drag me away from the blaze. I struggled inanely for a moment, reluctant to surrender, then let him do his duty, which was to handle me like a baby.
When I was back to the curb, he put me down. From flat on my back, I looked up at the masked man in red helmet and black respirator and tried to thank him. My voice croaked like a bullfrog.
The fireman nodded and reached behind him as though he had an itch he needed to scratch, then produced a more formidable nozzle than the one I had carried.
“There’s a woman alive in the backseat,” I shouted, loudly enough for him to hear me over the wail of several sirens.
His helmet nodded in understanding, then he advanced on the Lincoln once more, this time with chemical spray shooting out of the hose from a canister three times the size of mine. Quickly, he was joined by others. Together, they looked like Star Wars extras. I watched them approach the flames with a mix of envy and relief, then lay back on the concrete to let it cool me.
Dumb with fatigue and rigid with pain, I rolled to a sitting position and watched the firemen do their work. Two of them were dousing the fire with chemicals, one was attacking with hose and water, and two more were reaching through the rear window to haul forth a form that was unrecognizable as Chandelier or as anyone else. When she saw the charred clothing and smoking hair, Sally Rinehart began to scream. Lark McLaren hurried to comfort her, and Amber Adams started to swear a blue streak. When an EMT got out of an ambulance and came over to ask if I was okay, I lied and said I was.
Minutes later, an ambulance roared off, carrying Chandelier Wells to the hospital. It was only then that I thought of Filson. When I looked toward the front half of the Lincoln, I saw a fireman staring down into the wreckage, then shaking his head. “This one’s done,” he said, loud enough for me to hear. A small part of me was relieved that Filson hadn’t turned traitor to his boss.
As a pair of police cars squealed to a halt down the block, Lark McLaren squatted beside me and tapped me on the shoulder. She was flushed and smudged and breathless, but back in control and routinely efficient. “Are you all right, Mr. Tanner?”
“Close enough. How’s Sally?”
“She’s getting herself together.”
“Good. Anyone else hurt?”
“No. Just …”
“Filson.”
“Yes.” Her voice was as soft as goose down.
“How’s Chandelier?”
“I don’t know. She looked awful but she was breathing. She even waved at me from the stretcher, I think. They’ve taken her to Alta Bates. I’ll go there when they’re finished with me here.”
“I guess this means the tour is canceled.”
“She never cancels. Only postpones.”
“Well, I hope she’s all right. When you talk to her, tell her I’m sorry her bodyguards screwed up.”
“I’m sure nothing more could have been done.”
“Something more can always be done. That’s why I don’t like the work.”
Lark turned away, then looked back. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I shouldn’t have expected you to help. I wasn’t thinking of the danger, I’m afraid. I was just thinking of Chandelier.”
“Don’t worry, that’s not why I did it.”
She started to go, then stopped again. “Jed was a little cavalier about the job, I think.”
“I think I was, too.”
“But in a way he saved her life.”
“How so?”
“That funny old car? The Lincoln? He bought it from an African dictator when he first took the job. Mobutu, or one of those. Chandelier wanted a Mercedes, but Jed insisted on the Lincoln. It was built like a tank, he said—steel plates welded all around the rear seat. Cost a fortune to ship over here, but he said it would be worth it if anyone ever made a try for her.”
I looked at the part of the wreckage that had remained intact. “I’d say he was right.”
Just then a pair of Berkeley cops broke out of a pack by the bookstore and started walking our way. We stopped talking till they arrived.
The taller one looked at Lark. “You’re the secretary?”
“Administrative assistant. Yes.”
“Let’s talk.”
He motioned for her to follow him, which she did after patting me on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at the hospital,” I said at her back. She waved to show she’d heard me.
The second cop was short and stout and black, with a mustache and a bald head and a uniform two sizes too small. He winced when he sat on the curb beside me. “Disk,” he said in explanation, then got out a notebook and consulted it. “You’re Tanner.”
“Right.”
“You look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“Tried to pull a Rambo, I hear.”
“I’m not sure what I was trying to do.”
“Need medical treatment?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.” He looked at his notebook again. “You’re a PI.”
“Right.”
His eyes left the notebook and scrolled over my face. “You’re the guy who shot Sleet a year or so back.”
“You knew Charley?”
“Some.”
“He was my best friend.”
“Which makes it odd that you drilled
him.”
“Odd isn’t the word for it.”
He started to say something else, but gestured toward the Lincoln instead. “What happened out here?”
“Blew up.”
“Bomb?”
“Probably.”
“See it happen?”
“Nope.”
“Know who did it?”
“Nope.”
“What’s your relationship to the victim?”
“I’m working for her.”
“Full-time?”
“No.”
“Doing what?”
When I tried to smile, my face wouldn’t let me. “Bodyguard.”
He chuckled mordantly. “Nice job.”
“Could have been worse.”
“Not for you.” He pointed toward the front seat. “The dead guy your partner?”
I shook my head. “Full-time chauffeur. Met him yesterday for the first time.”
“Where?”
“Jimbo’s.”
“Why there?”
“On the job. Publication party.”
He nodded as if he understood. “Former feeb, I hear.”
“So do I.”
“Any chance this was terrorists?”
“Not much.”
“Personal grudge?”
“Maybe.”
“Sex thing?”
“Maybe.”
“What else?”
“Disgruntled groupie.”
“The Wells woman some kind of star?”
“Writer. Big seller.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, I only read Moseley. Got anything at all we can use?”
“Not yet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
His voice hardened and his hand gripped my arm till it hurt. “She’s our job now, Tanner. Your job is to forget about it.”
I looked at my swollen hands, then at the black hunk of scrap still smoking in the street. “That’s going to take a while,” I said.
Chapter 15
By the time the cops were through with me it was pitch-dark. Traffic was still being rerouted around the crime scene like fireflies circling a haystack. A scruffy band of onlookers was still debating the causes of the blast—the fatwa against Salman Rushdie made the list (Steinway had The Satanic Verses on sale), followed by animal rights activists (Chandelier sometimes wore fur), and the Hayward branch of the Aryan Nation (three books back, Chandelier had come out against white supremacy). If I’d had any ideas on the subject, I would have kept them to myself, but as it happened, I didn’t. All I knew for sure was that I’d been hired to do a job and hadn’t done it.
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