To The Bone

by Neil Mcmahon

  "Nada," the super said.

  Outside in the van, Larrabee started the engine. "Looks to me like she was trying to change her life," he said. "Going from a bad girl to a good one. A new, upscale wardrobe. And no key for the old boyfriend."

  Dreyer had used the term fiancé, but that could mean a lot of things, and it was looking like it had meant something different to him than to her. Or he might just have been lying. It seemed clear that she had been distancing herself from him.

  "I got that, too," Monks said. "But not much else."

  "Yeah, but there's something that wasn't there. An answering machine."

  "Her parents could have taken it," Monks said. But he remembered that the phones themselves were still there. It seemed odd that they would take just the machine.

  "Maybe," Larrabee said. "Or she had one of those voice-mail services. But if she did have a machine, especially if it was digital, which just about all of them are these days, the messages are likely to be recoverable, even if they've been erased."

  "What are you saying?"

  "Just my evil mind at work. Wondering if somebody else snagged it – afraid their voice might get identified."

  "Dreyer?"

  "Maybe there was something on there he got worried about. Like they'd argued, and he threatened her. He could have taken it that night, while she was knocked out. Or made copies of her keys, and come back when the super wasn't around. You got his address?"

  Monks checked in his shirt pocket and pulled out the slip of paper he had copied from the Emergency Room.

  "Haver Street. Looks like a few blocks west of Van Ness."

  Larrabee leaned out the window to check the side mirror, then pulled into traffic.

  "I can't wait to meet him," Larrabee said.

  Chapter 17

  Ray Dreyer's building was a very different order of business from Eden Hale's – an old Victorian that had been chopped up into apartments, like a lot of others in the area, and like many of them, down-at-heels. The street was lined with distinctly unglamorous cars, the sidewalk cracked and gummy. The apartment windows were not open to the light and filled with plants, like in some of the city's other areas. Most were heavily curtained. In the entry, there was an old intercom system that looked defunct. Dreyer's name was not listed next to any of the buzzers, anyway. Only a couple names were.

  They got back in Larrabee's van and punched Dreyer's number on the speakerphone. The same machine answered as last time.

  "It's Dr. Monks, Ray. Pick up if you're there. This is important."

  The phone clicked. Dreyer said, "Yeah?" in a tone that managed to sound both indolent and impatient.

  "I'm outside your place," Monks said. "I want to come in and talk to you."

  "What about?"

  "Eden."

  "We talked about Eden. I got nothing more to say."

  "Some new questions have come up," Monks said.

  "You can tell them to my lawyer. You're going to be talking to him anyway."

  "I'm going to be talking to your lawyer? What about?"

  "I'm filing a wrongful-death suit against you, dude."

  Monks stared at the phone in his hand, then dropped it on the seat and yanked open the van's door. Larrabee grabbed his arm.

  "Hang on," Larrabee hissed into his ear. "You can beat the shit out of him as soon as we get inside."

  Larrabee picked up the phone. "You're going to need a lawyer all right, Ray, but not for the reason you think."

  "Who's this?" Dreyer said suspiciously.

  "I'm a private investigator who used to be a cop, and I can have you in jail within an hour."

  'That's bullshit." His voice was scornful, but working at it.

  "She was murdered, Ray, we're sure of that now," Larrabee lied.

  "Murdered?"

  "And you were the last one with her."

  "You're fucking crazy," Dreyer said.

  Larrabee did not speak. The silence lasted perhaps ten seconds.

  "What good's it going to do me, talking to you?" Dreyer said.

  "I'm sick of sitting out here. Open the door, or not."

  Monks watched the building door steadily, his brain on hold.

  "I'll buzz you in," Dreyer finally said. "It's number seven, third floor."

  The stairway was scarred old oak, spacious, and once even grand, but now musty with the smell of invisible lives. The door to apartment number seven was open. It was a studio, with worn, stained carpet of a bilious green, an unmade Murphy bed, and a few pieces of cheap old furniture. There was a lot of stuff strewn around.

  Ray Dreyer was standing in the middle of it, arms folded, head cocked to one side – challenging. He was wearing the kind of nylon jogging suit favored by those who never jogged and had a cigarette toward the corner of his mouth, in a sort of James Dean imitation.

  Monks went in first and walked toward him, in a steady, even stride. On the last step, he swung his open left hand from his waist, coming hard off that foot, pivoting his hips with the swing, and then snapping them back. His palm landed across the side of Dreyer's face with a jolt Monks felt to his shoulder. It picked Dreyer up in the air, half turned him, and set him down facing the other direction. The cigarette went flying across the room and bounced off a wall. When he landed, he lurched another couple of steps with the momentum, hands flailing for something to grab. He caught hold of a threadbare couch, used it to turn himself clumsily around, and came scrabbling back toward Monks.

  "You cocksucker!" he screamed, fists clenched. "I'm having you arrested!"

  Monks stood without moving, hands ready, breathing heavily.

  Larrabee, unperturbed, walked to the smoking cigarette and ground it into the carpet with his heel. Then he sat on a corner of a table, one foot dangling. He opened his wallet and held it at eye level, showing his license.

  "Let me explain to you how this is going to go, Ray," Larrabee said. "First off, Eden dumped you to move up here. Wouldn't even give you a key to her new place. You came after her anyway. That's called stalking.

  "Then you let her die. If you'd been with her, like you were legally obligated to be, she'd have gotten to the hospital on time.

  "And now, you're trying to turn a, profit on it. You got any idea how all that's going to look?"

  Dreyer clapped his own hand to the reddening side of his face, then stared at it, as if he expected to see it dripping with blood. The look in his eyes was extremely ugly, but he was not making any more moves to fight.

  "We're your friends," Larrabee said. "We might be able to help you, if you tell us the truth. Believe me, the cops won't help. They like things to get tied up nice and neat."

  "I'm very afraid, man," he spat out with bitter sarcasm.

  "I would be if I was you," Larrabee said. "And in prison, Ray, a good-looking guy like you – let's just say your dance card's going to stay full."

  "Hey, I didn't do anything. She was my fiancée."

  "Yeah, you keep saying that. Seems like she saw it differently."

  Monks was feeling better. In fact, a lot better. He relaxed, stepped away, took a look around the place. Among the litter of clothes and junk, there was a fair amount of photography equipment. One corner of the room was piled waist-high with stacks of contact sheets and photos. Not surprisingly, most of the ones Monks glimpsed were of women.

  "I can't believe this," Dreyer muttered.

  "Believe it," Larrabee said. "Let's start with something simple. Did you take the phone answering machine from her apartment?"

  "Why the fuck would I do that? Are you telling me somebody did?"

  "I'm asking you if you did," Larrabee said. "Just like the cops will."

  "The last time I was in there was when I took her home from the clinic. Everything was just the same as always."

  "Where'd you go when you left her?"

  "Why is that important?" Dreyer said. His belligerent gaze shifted evasively.

  "It's called an alibi," Larrabee said patiently.

&nbs
p; Dreyer sat abruptly on the couch, shoulders sagging. His hands clasped together between his knees, fingers pulling at each other.

  "There's this woman, an actress. She's fan-fucking-tastic, drop-dead gorgeous. You'd recognize her name."

  "Why don't you tell us?"

  Dreyer hesitated, but then said – proudly, Monks thought – "She goes by Coffee."

  Larrabee nodded, but Monks drew a blank. "I don't recognize it," he said.

  Dreyer snorted in disgusted disbelief.

  "Coffee Trenette. She made a big splash about ten years ago," Larrabee explained. "A movie called Take Me. Haven't heard much about her since."

  "She had a little drug problem," Dreyer said. "She came up to San Fran to get away from it. I'd worked with her a few times, back when. She called me up, the day Eden had the surgery."

  "How did she know you were in town?"

  "Eden ran into her somewhere, a couple months ago."

  "Okay, she called you. And?"

  "She'd found out her boyfriend was messing around. She said, 'I'm in the mood for a revenge fuck. Is it going to be you?' I told her I had to stay with Eden. She said, Then I'll find somebody else.'

  "I told her, whoa, wait, I'll be there. Eden was out of it anyway. I figured I'd slip over to Coffee's for a couple of hours. But she wouldn't let me go home. Kept cutting lines of coke. Coming up with more sex things she wanted to do."

  "A really thorough revenge fuck, huh?" Larrabee said.

  "It was thorough, dude." Dreyer smirked. "Believe me."

  Monks walked to a window and leaned against the jamb. It overlooked a scrabbly, garbage-strewn dirt yard where even the weeds seemed to be having a tough go of it. A decrepit wooden fence topped with razor wire surrounded it, but enough boards had been kicked out to make the yard a no-man's-land anyway.

  You couldn't actually say that lust had killed Eden Hale, but it was a decisive link in a chain. In fact, it seemed to figure into several links.

  Larrabee said, "Where did you think Eden was getting the money for her apartment?"

  "She said she inherited a chunk. A rich aunt."

  "And instead of cutting you in, she moved out."

  "She wanted me to come up here. I wasn't stalking her, for Christ's sake. We were still together, she just needed some space."

  "Were you still managing her?"

  "I was trying, but it's been tough. And she was taking time off for the surgery. I've mainly been marketing my images." Dreyer flapped his hands in frustration. "I've gone all over this town, knocking on doors. Back in LA, I was connected. But I can't make shit here, and the rents suck. Look at this dump. Twelve hundred bucks a month."

  "That's not so bad, if you're going to run out on it anyway."

  "Hey, fuck you, man. Where'd you get that bullshit?"

  "From back where you were so connected," Larrabee said. "What was Eden planning to do next?"

  "Same thing she'd always done. Acting, modeling."

  "Did it ever occur to you that she wasn't being straight with you? About that money?"

  "What do you mean?" Dreyer looked from one to the other of them. If he knew the truth he was doing a good job of hiding it. "Jesus Christ, what are you talking about?"

  Larrabee ignored the question. "Anybody else who might have had a serious problem with Eden? Think hard, Ray. Fingering somebody could be important for you."

  "Nobody with that serious a problem."

  "How about from the old days, when she was doing the porn?"

  "That's history. Besides, we didn't fuck anybody over. The other way around."

  Larrabee stood. "You better give us Ms. Trenette's address. We'll need to confirm that you were with her."

  "Oh, man, do you have to? She'll never talk to me again."

  "Yeah, well, you'll have your memories."

  "Do me a favor and make sure her boyfriend's not around, okay?"

  "Don't worry, that'll be our top priority."

  Larrabee and Monks walked to the door. Dreyer heaved himself off the couch and followed.

  "I'm not done with you, fucker," he told Monks.

  "If I hear another word about you, Ray, I'll see to it that you get brought in for questioning and kept in for a nice long visit," Larrabee said. "I strongly suggest you fall off the planet."

  Outside on the street, Monks said, "Do you believe him?"

  "Unfortunately," Larrabee said, "I do. But I've got a little problem with Coffee just happening to decide to jump him, out of the blue, that one particular night. Let's go see if she's home. Just in case we can get another spin on it."

  Coffee Trenette's place was very upscale, at the far west end of Lake Street, in a posh little enclave set in the hills above China Beach. It had a view of the rust-colored hills of the Marin headlands, sloping down into the Pacific, and of the great red spires of the Golden Gate Bridge. The front yard was enclosed by a high masonry wall, forming a courtyard, like in Europe. The yard was landscaped, with border gardens edged with stone, artfully placed trees, and hedges that once had been barbered into topiary. But it had gone weedy and was littered with dead foliage – the way a place looked when there were no longer people paid to take care of it.

  "Is that movie she made any good?" Monks asked.

  Larrabee grunted. "So good, it's been made about five hundred times. She plays a hooker with a heart of gold, who falls for a hit man who's trying to get out of the business, but he's forced to take on one last job and he gets double-crossed and they have to go on the run together."

  "She hasn't done anything since?"

  "There were a couple of others that didn't amount to much," Larrabee said. "The way that tends to happen, they get into drugs, they get attitude, they get unreliable and hard to work with. The people in charge find another hot young star. I don't think she'd be living up in San Francisco if she had anything going."

  The black iron gate was unlocked. They walked to the front door and rang the bell. A woman wearing loose white pajamas answered it immediately.

  Monks did not have to be told that this was Coffee herself. She was beautiful, all right – sinewy body, coppery skin, and a thick silky mane of ebony hair that fell halfway down her back. She might have been African, Latina, Eurasian, or any combination.

  But he sensed something cold, almost dead, back in her eyes – a knowing look that was beyond cynical, an awareness that from where she was, there was no place left to go. He had seen it in the eyes of junkies.

  "Ray called me and told me you'd be by," she said. "I'll do this once." She did not move out of the doorway or invite them in.

  "We'd just like to confirm that Ray Dreyer spent the night before last with you, Ms. Trenette," Larrabee said.

  "Confirmed. Anything else?"

  "We'd appreciate a chance to chat a bit. About your acquaintance with Ray and Eden, that sort of thing."

  "Why in the world," she said scathingly, "would I chat with people like you?" She turned away and closed the door. It did not slam, which somehow resounded even more loudly than if it had.

  Walking back to the van, Monks put his hands in his pockets. "My bad karma, catching up. I should have gone to her movie."

  Larrabee nodded distractedly. "I'm thinking about where to go with this. There's nothing to take to the cops, yet. Just suspicion, and that's worthless. Especially-" Larrabee paused, and cleared his throat.

  "Especially coming from a doctor who's feeling the heat?" Monks said sourly.

  "Sorry. But yes. You got anything planned for this afternoon?"

  Monks shook his head. "Sit around and chew my own liver."

  "How about visiting Eden's parents? Sacramento, what's that, an hour-and-a-half drive, maybe two?"

  "I'm not so sure they'd want to talk to me," Monks said.

  "I can't see that you've got anything to lose."

  Monks exhaled, then nodded. People had told him that before.

  They reached the courtyard's iron gate. They paused, looking the place over once more. It was st
ill, empty, almost desolate. Monks supposed that movie stars, especially ex-movie stars, led often-quiet lives, just like anybody else. But this place had the same feel as what he had seen in her eyes.

  "Coffee looks used up," Monks said.

  Larrabee closed the gate quietly. "That's a good way to put it," he said. "Used up."

  Chapter 18

  They bought deli sandwiches and took them back to Larrabee's, eating while he tracked down the address of Eden Hale's parents. Monks opted for Italian meatballs in a thick red sauce, messy but just the ticket. He finished every bite, swabbing the plate with the last bits of bread. He had not realized he was so hungry. The Hales lived in Citrus Heights, an area of Sacramento. Larrabee called and spoke briefly to Mrs. Hale, asking if she was willing to meet. Monks gathered from what he overheard that she was reluctant – apprehensive at why a private investigator wanted to talk to her. Larrabee assured her, with professional skill, that he would explain. He did not say anything about Monks coming along.

  They exchanged the van for Larrabee's Taurus, a car he liked because it was so inconspicuous. The drive to Sacramento was a straight shot on Interstate 80, across the Bay Bridge, through Berkeley and the suburban sprawl east, out into the open of Fairfield and Vacaville. Even though it was early in the summer, the fields and foothills were already brown and parched.

  Traffic was bumper to bumper, most of it traveling at eighty miles an hour or trying to, and squeezing even tighter together over the long narrow causeway into West Sacramento. Monks had a musty memory of a lesson learned in physical chemistry classes – that molecules forced closer together by heat and pressure would move faster and faster, until they finally boiled over or exploded.

  Neither of them was familiar with the freeways in Sacramento proper. The spiderwebs of interchanges turned into an all-out free-for-all that had them battling their way through the maniacally confident locals. Signs would appear with the suddenness of flashcards, sending them careening across several lanes of traffic, desperate to make an exit or else they'd end up trapped in the speeding streams to Stockton, Tahoe, or Reno.