Incinerator

by Timothy Hallinan

  “It's a two-point policy,” she said. “First, plug your phone back in and say something boring to everyone who calls. That was Henry Kissinger's policy. Whenever he was asked a question he didn't want to answer, he began his reply with the words, 'As I said yesterday,' and everyone stopped taking notes. Just tell whoever calls that you've given an exclusive statement to someone else. At least it'll get them off your tail.”

  “And the second point?” I realized I was still holding Sister Carrie. It felt heavier than a broken promise, and I dropped it to the floor. It landed with the substantial thump of serious literature.

  “Quit the case.” She put down her cup. Bravo's ears went up, as they always did, at the clink of crockery.

  “That's not so easy,” I said.

  “And why not? This guy could wind up burning you.”

  “Abraham Winston was a good man. He didn't deserve to be cooked on the sidewalk. And she's right, the cops haven't been doing all they could, or even half of all they could. It's just a bunch of bums as far as they're concerned. Remember the Skid Row Ripper? They never worked that one out, either.”

  Eleanor gave me an eloquent Chinese shrug, a shrug with thousands of years of equivocation behind it. “So hang yourself out to dry,” she said. “There's still point one. Plug in the phone.”

  I did, and it rang. I looked at her questioningly, but she'd already gotten up to get more coffee. “Boring,” she said, over her shoulder. “Just be boring.”

  I picked it up.

  “Mr. Grist?” said a voice I almost recognized. “Please hold for Mr. Stillman.”

  I covered the mouthpiece. “Norman Stillman,” I said in agony.

  “He could be interesting,” Eleanor said without looking around. She was pouring.

  I doubted that, but I hung on. I had met Stillman before. In fact, I'd worked for him, and not very happily, when one of the stars he employed had gotten himself into trouble. His company, imaginatively named Norman Stillman Productions, gave the television audience what it wanted, which is to say blood and guts and sex and sensationalism and depravity, all under the banner of family entertainment. Stillman's sole virtue, in my eyes, was that he actually liked the shows he produced.

  There was a muffled click, and Stillman came on the line. “So, Mr. Grist, you're famous at last,” he said unctuously. It wasn't hard to picture him in his big, fat office with nautical charts all over the walls and a big brass-and-wood wheel from a nineteenth-century sloop mounted above the desk.

  “You can't imagine how I've hungered for it, Norman,” I said. “It's a dream come true.” I shrugged helplessly at Eleanor.

  Stillman judiciously measured out a laugh. “Well, when I saw your name this morning, the old penny dropped.” He sounded paternal and jocular. When Norman Stillman sounded paternal and jocular, it was time to button your wallet and count your change.

  “Was I in Variety!”

  There was a moment of silence, during which Stillman decided to take it lightly. “I read the Times, too, Mr. Grist,” he said. “I must say, I had hoped time would have mellowed you.”

  Eleanor handed me a fresh cup of coffee. “You were saying something about a penny,” I reminded him.

  “A penny? Oh. Oh, yes, the famous dropping penny. Only figurative, of course. I had something considerably more substantial in mind.”

  Eleanor sat down opposite me, her eyebrows raised. I waited. Stillman didn't say anything. After a moment, I started to whistle. I've found it irritates the hell out of the person on the other end of the phone.

  Stillman said, “A few minutes, Dierdre.” I was willing to bet that Dierdre, his long-suffering secretary, wasn't even in the room. Then he said: “Do you know Velez Caputo?”

  “Personally?” I mouthed at Eleanor, “Velez Caputo.” Eleanor made a sign in the air that looked like a backward S with two vertical strokes drawn through it.

  “I wouldn't expect you to know her personally,” Stillman said avuncularly.

  “And your expectations would be correct,” I said.

  “But you know who she is.”

  Indeed I did. Velez Caputo was a svelte, acutely intelligent middle-thirties Chicana who helped 20 or 30 million Americans waste their afternoons five days a week. Into her viewers' living rooms, with chronological predictability, Caputo brought an unending parade of rapists, batterers, batterees, bigamists, trigamists, transvestites, and people who enjoyed dressing as members of other species, who spent ninety minutes happily calling national attention to what should have been their deepest secrets. And Americans tuned in by the millions to see the country's newest subculture: the proudly weird.

  “I never miss Velez's show,” I said, “unless I can help it.”

  Eleanor laughed, but Stillman was beyond listening. “Velez has a concept, a brilliant concept, one that will make television history. What are the two most popular kinds of shows on the air today?”

  “Norman,” I said, sipping my coffee, “how the hell would I know? The last time I watched television, Raymond Burr could still see his feet.”

  “True-life crime shows and game shows,” he said promptly.

  “That's depressing.”

  “So what do you think Velez's concept is?” He liked to ask questions.

  “A true-life crime game show,” I said. Eleanor held her nose. Bravo looked at her expectantly, waiting for the next move in the game.

  “A true-life crime game show,” Stillman said triumphantly. “What do you think?”

  “I'm speechless.”

  “So do you see where I'm going?”

  “To the bank, probably.” I drained the rest of my coffee and held the cup out. Eleanor poured part of hers into it.

  “The format's already in the can. Three contestants, Velez as hostess, of course, footage from some true-life crime with clues planted here and there, three suspects. One of them is the real-life crook.”

  I drank the coffee and grimaced. Eleanor, despite her New Age convictions, put enough sugar in her coffee to rot a tyrannosaurus's teeth.

  “The home audience sees one or two clues the contestants don't see, just to make them feel smart,” Stillman said rhapsodically. “The audience always has to feel smarter than the contestants,” he added, reciting the time-honored dictum of game-show producers all over the world. “The jerks should always be sitting at home slapping their foreheads and swearing over how much money they'd be winning if they were in the studio.”

  “And the winner gets a date with the crook.”

  “That's what's so brilliant,” Stillman said. “The winner gets a reward that's posted at the beginning of the show. Remember Wanted posters?”

  I looked at my watch. If I was going to quit the case, now was the time to do it. “Look,” I said, “you can't imagine how exciting this is, being on the inside like this. It's almost as good as having a subscription to Broadcasting. But what's it got to do with me?”

  “Advisers,” he said, a bit petulantly. “We'll need advisers. Somebody to help us reconstruct the crime scenes, plant the clues, guide Velez in her prompts to the contestants. So whaddya say?”

  “I'd say it's a lot of work for a penny.”

  “Twenty-five hundred a week,” he said.

  I began to whistle again. Eleanor winced. I can't whistle on key.

  “Three if you work out,” Stillman said, a bit too hastily. “Maybe thirty-five if the show goes.”

  “If the show goes? Norman, have you got a show or not?”

  “I told you,” he said, sounding huffy, “the format's in the can, plus we've got Velez. Come on, it's a certified check. There's just a few little wrinkles to work out.”

  “Like selling it?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “We still have to sell it, of course.”

  I waited. He waited, too. While I was waiting, I polished the phone with my shirt. I was working on the earpiece when I realized he was talking, so I put it back to my ear.

  “... only exploratory, of
course, just to see if you're interested. You're at the top of my list.”

  “Norman,” I said. “The sun is approaching its zenith. I have a beautiful woman with me. It's Sunday, for Christ's sake. Why in God's name are you calling?”

  He put a lot of work into a manly chuckle. “That's why I thought of you,” he said. “ 'Sharp,' I said, 'the boy's sharp.'”

  “Well, now that we've settled that I'm sharp,” I said, “what do you really want?”

  There was the kind of silence that liars loathe.

  “Ah,” Stillman said reluctantly, “there was one other thing.”

  “I thought there might be.”

  “First,” he said.

  “What do you mean, first? If there's only one other thing, how can what you're about to say be first?”

  “See?” he said. “See why I called you? 'Sharp,' I said. 'The boy's sharp.'”

  “See?” I echoed. “See how sharp I am? See why I'm going to hang up?”

  “Okay, there's two things. About this dinkus with the lighter fluid.”

  “Ah. As a great man once said—Jesus, I think it might have been you, Norman—'The old penny drops.'”

  “You'll be great on the air. Will you do Velez's show tomorrow? It's about the people who track serial murderers. The title is 'In Death's Footsteps.' Or maybe it's 'Footprints.' Whaddya think? A thousand, cash.”

  “No. I'm not going on Velez's show.”

  “I knew you'd say that,” Stillman said promptly. “I told Velez you'd say that. What about two thousand?”

  “No. And second?”

  “Um,” he said. I visualized him shining the buttons on his nautical blazer. Norman owned a yacht solely as an excuse for his taste in clothes and interior decorators. “Has any other producer called you?”

  “Norman,” I said unctuously, “is there any other producer?”

  “Not who's worth talking to.”

  “So talk.”

  “If you get this dinkus,” he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “you hold back a couple of things for me. There's nobody who can handle this kind of thing like Norman Stillman Productions. You play ball, we'll do ninety minutes live on network the night after the dinkus gets jugged. We already got the title.”

  “I don't want to hear it.”

  “'The Fire Within,'” he said obliviously. “Or something like that. Bring me the right stuff, we're talking six figures.”

  “As in three comma three figures?” Eleanor arched her eyebrows.

  “You got it.”

  “What's the first figure?” I asked, just out of curiosity.

  “Ahhh,” Norman Stillman said, “that's a detail. That's for the bookkeepers.”

  “Have your bookkeeper call me,” I said.

  “Hey,” Stillman said apprehensively. He was working up to something better, but I didn't hear it because I hung up.

  “Who would have thought it?” I asked. “I get hired to find someone who's torching the homeless, and people start throwing money at me. Come on, I've had cases that began and ended in Beverly Hills, and no one's ever mentioned six figures before.”

  “Six figures sounds good to me,” she said. “You've never had this kind of media attention before, either.”

  “Public television hasn't gotten to us yet,” I said, feeling momentarily optimistic.

  “It's their pledge week,” she said. “They're on documentaries about baby pandas and the giant sea slug. They're concentrating on endangered species. And Yanni.”

  “I'm an endangered species,” I said, taking an emotional nosedive. “I'm in danger of being put out of business.”

  “You can still carry out point two. You can quit. I don't care about the nice man who got set on fire, I care about you. That Baby or whatever her name is had no right to call a press conference without telling you she was going to do it. How do you know this crazy won't come after you?”

  “I'm not his type,” I said, with more conviction than I felt.

  “It even says where you live. In Topanga. Suppose—”

  “He's been burning the homeless.”

  She looked around the shack, much the worse for wear since she'd left. “You almost qualify.”

  “I'll be okay,” I said, watching her. We hadn't been talking much lately, since she'd begun to date someone else. Jealousy worked two ways.

  “Well, she shouldn't,” Eleanor began, then stopped, catching my eyes. “She shouldn't have held that press conference, even if she does have all the money in the world. That guy ...” She trailed off. “This is complicated, you know?” she asked, looking at Bravo. “I mean, I still love you. In a way.”

  “I'll be careful,” I said. I didn't have the courage to say anything else.

  Hand in hand, something we did out of habit, we went down the driveway, as she accompanied me on the first phase of the journey that would take me to the Bel Air Hotel to tender my resignation. Bravo Corrigan trotted along next to us, sniffing professionally at the bushes, a big, longhaired, raffish canine bum. At the bottom of the driveway, I noticed something unusual for a Sunday: The red flag on the mailbox was vertical, and there was a piece of paper wedged between the hinged door of the mailbox and the mailbox proper. And with Eleanor standing behind me and looking nosily over my shoulder, I opened and read the letter from the Crisper.

  “Darling,” I said, calling Eleanor something I hadn't called her in more than a year, “all the rules just got changed.”

  5

  The Brotherhood of the Pumpkin

  The first thing I did was get rid of Eleanor. She protested that I'd promised her lunch, but I sold her on a rain-check and watched her coast her little Acura down the hill. After she left, I waded through the heat and back up the rutted, unpaved driveway and put in the call to Hammond.

  Then came the hangover-fueled discussion at Parker Center. When it was over and Willick had retired to some upstairs cubicle to type his notes, Hammond walked with me to the underground garage.

  “So now what?” he asked, lighting one of the vicious cigars he smoked to enhance his image.

  “So now I quit, Loot,” I said, fanning at the smoke. I opened the iridescent blue door of my car, Alice, and got in. Hammond propped a size-twelve double-E shoe against the door to keep me from closing it.

  “You're the only one he's written to,” he said.

  “And let's not keep it that way,” I said. I used my own foot to shove Hammond's away and slammed the door. “What do you think, Al, that I want to be on that lunatic's Christmas card list?”

  “We're going to check the cars on your street,” he said. “I mean, we're already checking them.” He leaned a beefy forearm on the open window on the driver's side. “We could be looking at a lead.”

  “Look at it by yourself. I'm out. All I have to do is talk to Baby. Then I'm going to go surfing. Phone me at the beach if you need me.”

  “Could be important,” he said.

  “I hope it is,” I said. “I hope you nail the clown. You, not me.”

  “The note's for real,” he said, telling me something I hadn't learned while Willick was present. “The psychologists say so.”

  “Well, good for them. Here's hoping he gets one of their addresses next time.”

  “He won't. The shrinks are invisible.”

  “Well, then, here's hoping he gets yours.” It was a nasty thing to say, but it had been a nasty morning. I twisted the key in Alice's ignition, and she caught.

  “Sure,” Hammond said. “There's nobody living there anyway.” He lifted his arm from the window while I tried to think of anything to say.

  “Thanks for last night,” Hammond said unexpectedly. “I know I was pushing it.”

  “Al the Red,” I said, leaning out to thump him on the shoulder. It was okay with Hammond if you touched him, but only if you did it with your hand clenched into a fist. “Nobody's going to get Al the Red.”

  He nodded in a morose way, and I headed Alice out into the sparse Sunday traffic t
oward Bel Air.

  The Bel Air Hotel on a Sunday afternoon, even during the worst week of the worst October in years, looked more like a postcard than it did like a real place. I crossed the bridge over the hotel's private stream, and one of the hotel's private swans hissed a welcome at me. Tall sycamores shaded the grounds, their broad leaves intercepting the steady rain of ash from the latest rash of fires in the Santa Monica Mountains. Even so, there was a short Hispanic man with a wet cloth and a bucket of water cleaning the ferns. He did it slowly, meticulously, with total absorption, one frond at a time, as though there were nothing more important in the world than preventing the sensibilities of the rich from being offended by the sight of ash on the ferns.

  The rich themselves were in ample evidence, their sensibilities apparently intact. I'd forgotten which room Baby Winston was in, so I checked the dining room first. It was packed. Sunday is brunch day at the Bel Air. From about eleven until about five, rich people carefully underdress and pay someone to tousle their hair before heading for the Bel Air to compliment each other on their appearance, compare notes on doctors and domestics, talk deals, and get swozzled.

  Baby wasn't there. That left what I should have done in the first place. Resigning myself to the possibility that I might never develop her economy of movement, I crossed the little bridge over the moat and headed for the front desk.

  “I'm sorry, but she's not here.” The desk clerk was a motherly type in her middle forties who had chosen to celebrate Sunday by pinning a large, purple, vaguely vulpine orchid to her left lapel. The desk clerk shook her head sympathetically, and the orchid stuck its purple-specked tongue out at me.

  “Perhaps she left a message,” I said. “My name is Grist.”

  “Well, perhaps she did.” The desk clerk sounded as though she disapproved of the fact that she hadn't thought of that on her own. “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” she sang to herself on a descending scale as she flipped through a stack of envelopes. “Whoopsy-daisy, here we are.” She started to hand me an envelope and then pulled back her hand and regarded me suspiciously. She pursed her mouth, working out the protocol. “Mr. Simeon Grist?” she asked, the picture of vigilance.