More than enough to give Nick a good tough time if the cops bought her dime-drop and went in, and anything more at this stage than the hassle and unpleasantness of a smack search would have been counterproductive from Holly’s point of view. This one, she calculated, was merely intended to drive a wedge between the loving couple. Just a little one for openers.
She’ll do better next time.
Something that Nina Miller will find much harder to ignore or to forgive.
Something spicer.
It’s remarkably easy to squeeze information out of the average man when he has a hard-on and a beautiful, skilful woman is promising him whatever his particular pleasure is. In the past two months, Charlotte Taylor – managing to pay Taylor Griffin’s bills well enough with a small cluster of unspectacular, low-life clients – has learned a good deal about how to make the right men give her the kind of unauthorized information she’s looking for.
Details, for instance, of ongoing investigations into certain unsolved crimes in the San Francisco and northern California area. Sexual offences, for example, against minors. Not full-blown rape cases, but vile, reprehensible, unforgivable crimes nonetheless.
The last kind of crime that the illustrator of Firefly, the soon-to-be major animation release, is going to want to be accused of.
Holly still remembers, sometimes, those years when she thought she was completely over Nick, free of him. At law school, after he had left New York. When she wanted, more passionately than anything – for just that brief, beautiful time – to serve the law, to serve justice, even fantasizing that maybe, in some hazy, Utopian future, she might love again and be loved, the way ordinary people seemed to manage.
That’s all in the past now, vanished almost without trace. Now, ever-increasingly, Holly’s thoughts, waking and sleeping, are revolving around Nick Miller again. Now, in bed at night with her husband, all Holly’s fantasies are about Nick. A Nick behind bars. A desperate Nick, abandoned by all those who have ever loved him. Except one.
The one person left who can help him.
Alone in her office on the eighteenth floor, inside the almost entirely fabricated world of Taylor, Griffin, Holly daydreams about sitting beside Nick in court: his lawyer, his lifeline. Sometimes, driving out to some deserted beach, or alone at home in Brentwood when Jack’s at the office and Vita, their housekeeper, is out shopping, Holly rehearses her defence strategies, considers the witnesses she’ll call on her client’s behalf when the time comes. She even acts out her closing argument and her rebuttal: the manner in which she will finally, systematically, brilliantly, wipe out the evidence against him.
Evidence she will have created in the first place. Enough to indict – not enough to convict.
‘The last woman on earth I could ever love,’ he said to her that last night in Manhattan.
And her last words to him:
‘I’ll make you sorry.’
It would serve him right if she simply built a case against him and then left him to stew. But the way Holly sees it now, if she plays this ultimate game perfectly, she will, at long last, achieve her goal. Nick will have to understand, will finally have to realize that when the chips are truly down there’s only one woman who’s going to stand by him, to protect him. Defend him.
Love him.
And he will be so grateful.
He’ll have to be so damned grateful.
Chapter Thirty-eight
On a Saturday morning, two weeks after Phoebe and William had left for Arizona, a manuscript addressed to Nick arrived at the Millers’ home and, for the very first time since reading Firefly, Nick found himself utterly captivated by a proposal.
‘It’s a translation of an Italian children’s story called Graziella,’ he told Nina later that afternoon after she had closed the Ford Realty office and they were strolling with Zoë – now two months old – in her baby carriage in Lafayette Park, ‘and it’s very beautiful.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s an adventure, I guess, only it’s just a dream. A child from a boring, ordinary kind of a home in Milan goes to sleep and finds herself lost in Venice in wintertime.’ Nick smiled. ‘It’s very dark for a children’s story – a lot darker than Firefly – but there’s this incredible, swirling sense of atmosphere and fantasy right through it. I mean, can you imagine how scary Venice in the depths of winter could be for a lost child?’
‘Sounds like Don’t Look Now for children,’ Nina commented.
Nick nodded. ‘But there’s not exactly a sense of horror, just this compelling, deliciously creepy sense of fear.’
Nina stopped walking and looked into his face. ‘It’s really grabbed you, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it has,’ Nick agreed. ‘I want to illustrate this one, Nina. I’m not sure if it’s going to appeal to the American readers in the same way as Firefly did, but it’s the only thing I’ve really been excited by since I first read your story.’
The sun came out. Nina pulled the hood further over the carriage to protect the baby. ‘Did you hear that, Zoë?’ she said. ‘Your daddy’s going to paint another book for you to enjoy when you’re a little bit bigger.’
‘If I get the job,’ Nick said.
‘Who sent it to Clare?’ Nina asked him.
‘It didn’t come via Clare. It came direct from a guy called Bruno Conti. Says he owns the English language rights and he’s looking for an illustrator for the US edition, and he thinks I may be it.’
They walked on. They both loved this flowery, pine-scented park that felt so safe, Nick often thought, in contrast to Central Park. Until Phoebe had gone to Catherine Street that afternoon in July, in fact, Nick had felt safe all the time in San Francisco. Sure, the ground beneath them did shake periodically, and each tremor was a salutary warning, made Nina and he discuss every now and again the possibility of relocating one day for Zoë’s sake. But on the whole, even with Phoebe still sick and too far away in Arizona, and despite the big trauma of the heroin search last month (the worst of its jagged edges now, mercifully, fading into the past, with no further contact by the SFPD), Nick knew that he and Nina both still felt much the same warmth for their home.
‘Thing is,’ he said, getting back to the new manuscript, ‘Conti says he’s staying in Carmel, but he only just saw Firefly for the first time, and he’s leaving the country in two days’ time.’
‘What will you do?’ Nina asked.
‘Go see him, I guess.’
‘What about Clare?’
‘I’ll call her as soon as we get home.’
Clare Hawkins was against him going to Carmel.
‘I’d rather check Conti out first, Nick.’
‘Go ahead. I don’t plan on meeting him till tomorrow.’
‘It’s almost Saturday evening,’ Hawkins pointed out. ‘I’m not going to be able to find out anything about him till Monday afternoon at the earliest.’
‘Too late,’ Nick said. ‘He’s leaving Monday.’
‘In any case,’ the agent added, ‘it would be wise if I come with you to meet him.’
‘Be my guest. I’d be delighted.’
‘I’m not free tomorrow, Nick. I don’t really have any time for almost a week.’
‘Then I guess I’ll have to go without you.’
Hawkins sighed. ‘He’s really got you steamed up, hasn’t he?’
‘Not him. Graziella. You’ll love it too when you read it.’
‘Don’t make any kind of a deal, Nick.’
‘I won’t.’
‘If Conti tries to talk money—’
‘I’ll tell him I leave all that to you.’ Nick grinned into the phone. ‘Stop worrying, Clare. All I want to do is work on some rough ideas tonight, and take a drive down there tomorrow to show the guy. If he likes my sketches and suggestions, then you and he can talk business when he’s back in Italy.’
‘Where’s he based?’ Hawkins asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s the name of
his company? Does he have a company?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know much, do you, Nick?’
‘I guess not.’
‘Be careful.’
His rough, swiftly executed sketches in a portfolio, Nick kissed Nina and the baby goodbye just after eight on Sunday morning, chose the scenic ride and headed in the Land Cruiser towards Pacifica and Highway 1 south en route for Santa Cruz. He’d only made this trip twice since moving to San Francisco, both times with Nina, once with Phoebe on board, and that occasion had been a special pleasure. They’d stopped at Ano Nuevo State Park where they’d booked a hike with a ranger, and though they’d all been thrilled as big kids to see the elephant seal colony on the beach, Nick would never forget in particular the unadulterated joy on Phoebe’s face. If – when – she got well again, he promised himself as he passed Pigeon Point now, he would make sure they all took a quiet fall trip to Yosemite together.
He made only one stop at Monterey for a cup of coffee to clear his head of driving fuzz, and reached Carmel just before midday. The little hillside town was, as he’d thought it might be, crowded with late-summer-Sunday visitors, so Nick (who, like most Californian residents, generally chose to take his pleasure trips off-season) felt few regrets at having to forego the galleries and quaint streets in order to locate the address Bruno Conti had given him.
It was just outside the town, almost a mile towards Salinas. Steinbeck sprang into his mind – was seldom far away when Nick made these forays out of San Francisco. The house where Conti was staying was prettily Spanish, its roof toasted by sun, its solid whitewashed stone promising coolness within.
Nick parked the truck, grabbed his portfolio, found a bell push and rang. The door opened almost immediately, and a young woman, almost certainly Mexican, stood smiling at him, combs pulling her jet black hair so tightly off her face that Nick felt sure, in spite of her smile, that it must be painful. Her white, starched apron and flat, sensible black shoes made her, he guessed, the housekeeper.
‘I’m here to see Mr Conti,’ Nick said.
‘Yes, sir.’ Her accent was strong.
She stood back to let him through. The hallway was dim and cool, as Nick had known it would be, and there was a faint scent of jasmine and of cooking (probably last night’s lingering) in the air. The housekeeper led the way out of the hall through a narrow, whitewashed corridor, past three closed doors and under a stone archway into a sun-drenched back yard.
There was a small swimming pool, an even smaller paddling pool and a cobbled patio with a white wrought iron table and four matching chairs. No one seemed to be around.
‘Please wait here, sir,’ the Mexican woman told Nick, and indicated one of the chairs. ‘Would you like something to drink?’
Nick felt the heat of the midday sun. There were two palm trees at the other end of the pool, but there was no shade over the patio, not even a parasol. He nodded and smiled at the housekeeper. ‘Something cool would be good, thank you.’
‘Please sit,’ she said, and went back into the house.
He sat.
The garden was bordered on all sides by flowering bushes, their perfume thick in the air, their colours pleasing. As an artist and man, Nick was appreciative of nature, but he was no botanist, could identify few species much rarer than a rose, had not even, he mused as he waited in the heat, painted a single flower for its own sake since leaving college.
The housekeeper returned with a jug of iced tea, a tall glass and a little ornate silver dish of sugar cookies. Nick thanked her, and she went away again.
He poured some tea, drank a little, and waited. The light was very bright. He closed his eyes. He felt sleepy.
Children’s voices woke him. Little children, laughing, chattering.
Startled, Nick opened his eyes as they ran, barefoot, past the patio on their way to the paddling pool. There were three of them, two girls and a boy, all aged about six or seven, colourful towels tied around their waists. The boy, his hair white gold, clutched a big beachball, which he threw into the water. One of the little girls, a pretty little dark-haired charmer, looked in Nick’s direction and waved a hand, beaming at him. He smiled and raised a hand in response, then glanced back to see who else was coming out to join them. There was no one.
The children shed their towels simultaneously and hovered for a moment at the edge of the paddling pool. They were all naked. The second girl, a blonde not quite as pale as the boy, turned around to smile at Nick before she and the others got down into the water. He smiled back. The dark child waved at him again, and for the second time he responded.
He did not hear the small click and whir of the Nikon camera.
Nor did he see the figure crouching at the edge of the garden, concealed by hibiscus, scarlet lobelia and California fuchsia.
He took another drink of his iced tea and settled back to watch. Small children unsupervised around water made him nervous. He wondered if they were Bruno Conti’s own family, wondered how much longer it would be before the man arrived.
The children played for quite a while, in and out of the pool, tossing their plastic beachball back and forth to each other, before the boy held onto the ball for a longer moment than previously and then threw it out of the pool towards Nick.
Nick stood up, happy to oblige, retrieved the beachball and tossed it back into the water.
The camera clicked and whirred again.
The game continued. From time to time the boy – always the boy – threw the ball, quite deliberately, in Nick’s direction, and each time Nick got up out of the chair and tossed it back, always making a decent-sized splash and eliciting shrieks of laughter from whichever child got wettest. They were beautiful children, especially the dark-haired girl, and Nick thought, for a moment or two, of pulling out a pad and pencil and making a few sketches of them, but then he decided against it. None of them had yet spoken to him – which he figured probably stemmed from parental lessons about caution with strangers – so aside from throwing the ball back to them every now and again, he kept an eye on them for safety’s sake but left them otherwise alone.
He was hot. The main pool looked cool and smooth and tempting. Nick picked up his portfolio from the ground by his chair, started to open it, wanting to remind himself of Graziella, the reason he’d come, but then that seemed too much effort and he put it down again.
He looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock. A wave of irritation passed through him and he stood up and wandered over to the paddling pool.
He crouched down near the edge.
‘Will you kids be okay on your own for a moment?’
‘Sure, mister,’ the boy answered, and the two girls giggled.
Behind the flowering plants, the Nikon took several more shots.
Nick straightened up, turned around and walked slowly back towards the house, stepped through the white stone archway and stopped.
‘Hello?’he called.
No one answered. Nick listened, but heard nothing. He wandered a little further inside.
‘Is anyone here?’ He pitched his voice a little louder.
There was no response at all. He knocked on one of the closed doors, waited a beat, then opened it. A sitting room, painted white, with cane furniture and pink cushions that matched the curtains. It looked almost too clean and free of clutter to be a home. He closed the door again and walked through to the dim, square front hall.
‘Mr Conti?’ he called, much louder this time. ‘I’ve been waiting almost an hour.’
Not a whisper. Nick’s irritation grew.
He remembered the kids in the pool. What in hell was he supposed to do? Sit out there, baking and nursemaiding them for the rest of the afternoon?
Quickly, he walked back out into the garden.
The children were gone, their ball and towels with them. Not a trace remained except for their wet footprints on the smooth stone by the pool, and those were fast drying in the sunshine. The surface of the
water in the paddling pool was perfectly smooth.
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Nick said aloud to himself.
He looked around. There was a little too-warm tea left in the jug, but at least it was still there, otherwise he might have begun to feel that the whole last hour had been a figment of his imagination, some kind of noon heat illusion. But the tea was there, which meant, instead, that either Bruno Conti had been unavoidably detained and that his housekeeper was unreliable, or that Conti was himself both ill-mannered and undependable.
Either way, he knew he should have listened to Clare.
Chapter Thirty-nine
I took my portfolio, left a terse note for Conti on a small round table in the hall, drove into Carmel, had a sandwich and a Coke and called Nina to let her know what had happened.
‘I’m going to take 101 on the way back,’ I told her. ‘I should be home by around five.’
‘Don’t rush,’ Nina said. ‘Drive safely.’
‘I love you,’ I told her. ‘Kiss the baby for me.’
We sat at home all that evening anticipating an apologetic call from Conti, but there was no word either that night or the next day. I felt rattled, not so much because of the wasted journey, but because the Italian story had really got my creative juices flowing, and being jerked around that way was frustrating.
‘I’ll make some calls,’ Clare Hawkins told me on the phone.
‘Aren’t you going to say you told me so?’ I asked her.
‘I never expected him not to show,’ she said.
Clare is a kind woman.
The cops came to the house two afternoons later while Nina was upstairs in the nursery feeding Zoë.
I opened the door to them myself. Three this time. Two inspectors from Juvenile Division and a detective from Carmel. Bad dream time again, only worse than before.
They told me they wanted me to go with them for questioning.
Nina came into the hallway, the baby in her arms. I looked at her face. She looked confused, sick. She looked the way I felt.
Too Close Page 16
