Ellipsis

by Stephen Greenleaf

  A year ago, I’d killed Charley Sleet directly, with my own weapon. But Charley had initiated the drama, Charley had forced my hand, Charley had wanted it to be me who ended his life. Not some crooked cop, not a rapacious disease, but me. His best friend.

  But Wally wasn’t a friend, Wally Briscoe wasn’t even a line in my address book. Wally hadn’t asked for what had happened and Wally hadn’t deserved it. He was just a weak and frightened man, like millions of similar men, trapped in a world he couldn’t govern, a world he couldn’t hide from, a world that preyed upon his weakness and used it for its own ends. What I had to live with from this day onward was that a part of that venal and vengeful world was me.

  Not for the first time, I had objectified someone because it served my purposes to do so. Because of what was happening in my personal life, I had made Wally a token of my affection, a gift-wrapped charm I had given to the woman I was seeing, a sacrifice on the altar of what I thought was love. My actions, by any measure I knew and observed, were inexcusable. As far as I could remember, it was the worst thing I’d ever done to another human being. I had no idea how to atone for it, though I spent the long dark hours of night trying to find a way.

  As subtly as a rumor, dawn finally made an appearance, months after Jill had gone to bed, days after she had fallen asleep, hours after I’d moved to the chair from the couch. To wrestle my mind off my transgressions, I got up, got dressed, got fed, and called Alta Bates Hospital, taking the phone to the kitchen so as not to wake Jill.

  Lark McLaren answered in a voice that echoed my dreary mood. I asked her how it was going, knowing it couldn’t be going well. “Okay, I suppose,” she murmured wearily. “I’ll be better when I get some food in me.”

  “Chandelier still improving?”

  “That’s what they say. I don’t see much sign of it myself. I can hardly bear to look at her. And she can hardly bear to move.”

  “Doctor knows best.”

  “Not always, in my experience,” she countered grimly.

  “Mine, either.”

  “Have you learned anything?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not making much progress. How did it go with the computer?”

  She took a breath and blew into the receiver as though it needed cooling. “I got into the system okay, but I can’t find any files on a new book—nothing shows up on any of the directories. The old book does, and the research notes she made for it, but not a new one. If she’s done anything yet she must be using a secret file with some sort of coded access.”

  “Would the new book have a title?”

  “I’m sure it does—the title’s the most important part, at least for Chandelier. Titles set the mood, is what she tells people—it’s like naming a baby. The title’s the first thing she writes down and she doesn’t let anyone change it no matter how goofy it sounds. I mean, Ship Shape? The sales reps hated it. They told her Barnes and Noble would put it on the travel shelf and her fans would never find it. But Chandelier wouldn’t budge.”

  “No indication of subject matter either?”

  “Not that I could find. It could be anything. She wrote a book set in the hardware business once, because her father had worked for TrueValue.”

  “Well, keep trying.”

  “I will.”

  “Does she only have one computer?”

  “No, she has a laptop and a desktop.”

  “Did you check both?”

  Lark sniffed. “The laptop burned up in the fire.”

  “So all her research might have gone up in smoke?”

  “Maybe. But she usually downloaded into the desktop every night when she got home. She put her current thoughts on the laptop—ideas for new books, for promotion, for jacket covers, for scenes and characters she might want to use later on. But she knew better than to keep them there because she had a laptop stolen from her car when she was at a reading in Los Angeles one time. She always put the daily input on the big machine and backed it up on a Zip drive.”

  “Which you checked.”

  “Which I checked. Several times.”

  “I guess we need a geek.”

  Lark McLaren laughed, which lifted my mood as well. “Anything but that.”

  “Sorry, but if it’s okay, I’m going to send someone to the house to play around with the machine.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell the staff to be on the lookout for a pocket protector.”

  “In the meantime, take care of yourself.”

  “You, too, Mr. Tanner.”

  “Marsh.”

  “Marsh.”

  “Well, I’m off to see the rabid fan.”

  “Randolph Scott.”

  “That’s him.”

  “You’ll be amazed.”

  “It doesn’t take much.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  I started to hang up but Lark wasn’t finished. “Mr. Tanner?”

  “Yes?”

  “I wanted to tell you, I just love Ruthie Spring.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Meeting her is the only good thing about this whole mess.”

  “I’m glad there’s something. Speaking of capable women, where can I find Amber Adams?”

  “She’s staying at the St. Francis. I’m not sure what her schedule is today. I think she goes back to New York tomorrow, though.”

  “If you talk to her, tell her I’ll meet her at five in the hotel bar for a drink. The one that specializes in beer.”

  “I’ll tell her, but I can’t guarantee she’ll show up. Amber doesn’t pay much attention to anyone but Chandelier.”

  Half an hour later, when Jill came out of the bedroom dressed for work, I handed her the gun. “Take this with you.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  She looked at the rumpled couch and the crumpled chair. “You’ve been thinking.”

  “Right.”

  “All night. You’re afraid they’ll come after me.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m not the only prosecutor on this case, you know. There’s Cassidy. And Schmidt. And sometimes even Sisco. Getting rid of me wouldn’t accomplish anything.”

  “Crooked cops don’t tend to be rational. If you’re ready, I’ll take you to work.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll drive myself. But thanks for the offer.”

  “I’d rather take you.”

  “I know you would. But while I’m still on the public payroll, my safety is not your concern.”

  “Like hell it isn’t.”

  “Officially, I mean.”

  “Then maybe it’s time to get unofficial.”

  She laughed. “You’re cracking, Tanner. Walls are crumbling; rust is blowing away. I’ll have you eating out of my hand in no time.”

  Given the doomfilled thoughts of my night, it was hard to see it as a blessing.

  After Jill left for work, I drove out to Henry Street, which was in the Castro District not far from the Davies Medical Center. The house was a confection of white stucco and red tile, with a yard of green icing, two sprinkles of Japanese maples, and a trim of whitewashed rocks so uniformly round they could have come from a pastry gun. In spring, the flowers in the beds would be awesome. In summer, the days would be foggy and cold till well after noon.

  I knocked on the door and waited. The man who finally opened it was still in his red silk housecoat and black silk slippers. And white silk ascot, blue silk pajamas, and red silk sleeping cap complete with pointed top and ball of white fur. He was round and jolly, with bright blue eyes and short brown hair and puffy pale flesh that seemed ageless and untouched except, perhaps, by a magic face cream he’d ordered from the TV.

  He remained as cheerful as Santa as I took a brisk inventory. “Mr. Scott?”

  “Yes?”

  “My name’s Tanner.”

  I put out a hand and he took it in both of his. “Charmed.” He invited me in even before I asked him to. If he was a car bo
mber, I was a taxidermist.

  The man who called himself Randolph Scott led me into a small living room decorated in powder blues and lemon yellows, with woven rag rugs tossed over the linoleum floor, dainty knit shawls tossed over the backs of the furniture, and so many art deco fixtures on the walls and in the ceiling it gave the place the aura of a high-class brothel. Here and there a variety of cut-glass vases held enough outsize silk flowers to stock a florist. It was a sunny home for a sunny person. I figured I’d be in and out in three minutes.

  “You aren’t a Witness, by any chance, are you?” Randolph asked as I sat on the couch at his invitation.

  “Jehovah’s Witness?”

  He nodded, then took the chair across from me and crossed his legs and cocked his wrist and looked at me with eager expectation. “I have the most delightful discussions when they stop by. God is such a provocative concept, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know about God, but His missionaries certainly are.”

  He squinted for an instant, indicating his vanity didn’t admit to eyeglasses, then regained his smile. “You don’t look like a professional proselytizer, Mr. Tanner.”

  “Only to abolish the DH, I’m afraid.”

  He frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know the reference. Is it some sort of sacrament?”

  “Only in baseball. The designated hitter. I was trying to make a joke.”

  He was unfazed by my nonsense. “What can I do for you, Mr. Tanner? And, yes, I’m legally Randolph Scott of San Francisco, changed from Joey Cox of Stockton when I turned twenty-one.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Scott. I’m here to talk about you and Chandelier Wells.”

  Impossibly, his mood became even brighter. “How nice. There’s nothing I’d like better.” Then, as if he were auditioning for a role as a manic-depressive, Randolph Scott began to cry. “Of course it’s unbearable what happened to her. I’m quite undone by it all. If I hadn’t been ill, I would have been there myself. Perhaps I could have prevented … no. That’s silly. I don’t suppose you’re bringing good news,” he added hopefully.

  “I’m afraid not totally, but the doctors say she’s improving. I understand you’re one of her most loyal fans.”

  “The most loyal,” he corrected firmly, with the first sign of psychopathy I’d seen.

  “That kind of thing is difficult to measure, isn’t it? Loyalty. Devotion. Dedication.”

  “Not if you have devoted your life to this,” he said proudly, and stood with a purposeful lunge. “Please follow me,” he ordered somberly, and led me down the hall to what I nervously assumed was a bedroom but instead was an elaborate shrine to the divinity of Chandelier Wells.

  In the center of the room were three rows of shelves that reached from floor to ceiling and were crammed full of volumes and mundane memorabilia. According to Randolph, the shelves contained all the books Chandelier had ever written, in all editions, in all the languages in which they had been published, plus various objets d’art that related to themes in her stories.

  Randolph took my amazement for admiration. “They’re signed, too. Every one. I go through the line six times on occasion. Since 1995, she’s signed them ‘to my #1 fan.’ Isn’t that special?”

  “Very.”

  When he beckoned, I followed him to the rear of the room. Behind the shelves was a small sitting area complete with chair and table and lamp and rug. Photos of Chandelier covered all of the available wall space, ranging from small snapshots that Randolph had undoubtedly taken himself to glossy publicity photos of Chandelier in a variety of professional poses in the studied formality of Karsh. Audiobooks of Chandelier’s work were piled high by the stereo, bound galleys lay scattered around the chair like discarded playing cards, and posters of blown-up book jackets were propped against the wall like the overflow in an art gallery. Most dramatic of all, a life-size cardboard cutout of Chandelier Wells, smiling broadly and extending her hand in greeting while clutching a copy of Shalloon to her chest, was welcoming a pagan into the fold.

  “This is quite a memorial,” I said with titanic understatement.

  “They’re all Chandelier’s things, you know,” Randolph announced proudly as he gazed at his cozy lair. “Even the chair is one she threw out back in ’94.”

  “How did you manage to get hold of it?”

  “I go by her house every day, the street in front and the back alley. You’d be surprised what I find tossed away for the trash. I’ve got a storage unit full of her things. I rotate them in and out of the house, to keep the memories fresh.”

  I was intrigued in spite of myself. “Do you go through her garbage?”

  Somehow I’d insulted him. “I would never do that. It would be an intolerable invasion of privacy. I only take what they leave out in the open.”

  “But you go by her house every day.”

  “When she’s in town I do. Unless I’m sick. And sometimes even then.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  His look suggested I belabored the obvious. “To see her, of course.”

  “You see her every day?”

  “Oh, no. I don’t see her for months on end. She travels a lot. On vacation or on promotional junkets. I’d love to follow along, but I can’t afford it.”

  “Does she know you do this?”

  “Oh, yes. She knows I’m there. She knows if she needs me for anything, I’ll be there at noon sharp every day.”

  I guess I didn’t believe him. “You’re at her house every day at noon?” I said dumbly.

  “I get there by ten, usually. She never goes out before ten. Not since she made it big.”

  “When was that?”

  The answer was automatic. “False Hope. Nineteen eighty-nine. Six hundred and ten thousand copies printed; four hundred and eighty-three thousand copies sold. In hardcover.”

  “What about paperback?”

  His smile was as smug as if he’d written the book himself. “One million six. She’s over three million now, of course.”

  “The paperbacks cost, what? Five bucks?”

  “Back then, yes. They’re six now.”

  “And she gets what?”

  “Five percent.”

  “That’s not much, is it?”

  His jaw thrust out like a spatula toward quiche. “I’ll say it’s not. She’s getting screwed, big time. I don’t know why Amber doesn’t make Madison House take the softcover rights to auction.”

  “Still, five percent of six dollars is thirty cents, times three million is nine hundred grand. That’ll buy a lot of pens and pencils.”

  He shook his head.” It’s not the money,” he said, repeating the axiom I’d first heard from Lark. “Everyone thinks it’s about money, but it’s not.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “The status. The legacy. The comparison with other writers. Barbara Winston gets a full fifteen percent royalty on her hard/soft deal with HarperCollins and she’s not half the writer Chandelier is. And she gets a bigger advance as well. Of course she doesn’t earn out—Chandelier is the only writer of romantic suspense who actually earns back her advance. But you don’t hear about that, do you? All you hear about is the precious millions that hacks like Barbara Winston receive from the idiots who publish her. Ms. Wells lets too many people take advantage of her, is the problem. Amber should put a stop to it, but for some reason she doesn’t.”

  “You know Amber?”

  “Not really. Just what I read in the trades. Publishers Weekly, mostly,” he added when he saw my look.

  “I’m surprised Chandelier’s getting ripped off. I heard she was as hard as nails.”

  His voice softened as if he were talking about an infant. “Oh, she tries to be. And she seems that way sometimes. But deep down she’s a pussycat. Would you believe she gives me a trinket whenever she sees me?” He pointed. “See that shelf? I call them my treasures. They’re things Chandelier gave me herself. Her very own possessions that she said I can keep.” In the umbra of his rapture,
I examined the shelf myself.

  If I hadn’t known they were treasures, I would have assumed they were junk. There were lipsticks and compacts and brooches and bracelets. And key chains and coffee cups and writing pens and bookmarks. And on and on, arrayed on trays of black velvet like ancient artifacts, all junk Chandelier Wells clearly had no use for, all nostrums that made life worth living for the former Joey Cox.

  “Would you like to see the outfits?” he asked quietly.

  “What outfits?”

  “The ones I wear to the signings. They’re exact in every particular. I have at least one ensemble for every one of her books.”

  “I’ll have to pass on the outfits,” I said. “Let’s talk about what happened to Chandelier two days ago.”

  “Do we have to?”

  “Just for a minute.”

  His eyes filled with tears for a second time. He pulled a silk hankie from his sleeve to dab at them. “It’s so tragic. I’ve been to the hospital three times. I bribed a nurse to give me updates every two hours.” He paused. “They say she’s going to be fine. She is, isn’t she?”

  “I think so, over time. Do you have any idea who might have done something like that to her?”

  His expression turned stern and judgmental, reminiscent of my ninth-grade music teacher. “I have many ideas. But no proof.”

  “Give me some examples.”

  “Her ex-husband is a brute. And Viveca Dane is a jealous harridan. And Lisette Malcolm, well, don’t get me started on Lisette.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “The former editor of the newsletter, among other things. Before I took over and made it intelligible.”

  “Lisette didn’t take it well?”

  “She was livid. She threatened to burn down my house. Lord knows what she tried to do to Chandelier.”

  “Chandelier fired her?”

  “She had Lark McLaren do it. But of course Chandelier made the decision.”

  “Where’s Lisette hang out?”

  “In Hayward. She’s a librarian. And a very spiteful person.”

  “I’ll have a talk with her.” Though only as a last resort.