“It killed my mother—made a fool of her, don’t you see? There was the alimony, but then my father and his—that woman—died in a plane crash, and there was no money at all. Mother had to sew, because she wouldn’t go on Welfare, and she’d dropped out of school to work. Do you mind if I turn off the lamp? It hurts my eyes, and we don’t really need it.”
“Go ahead.” I got the impression this was something Llona had thought a hundred times, but never said. She kept walking around the room, coming in and out of the light like a purple ghost. Every once in a while, she’d swing her round arms and rustle her dress like a little girl does.
“That’s what love does, Matt. It makes you put yourself in a position where you can be used and thrown away after.” She was standing near the sewing machine, drawing her index finger over it.
“Look, Llona,” I said, “granted, your father was a hard core louse—”
“It’s not only us,” she corrected me. Now that she wasn’t talking about herself, she was crisp and businesslike again. “Just look at the women we’ve met over the past couple of days. Why does Alice Brockway act so crazy? Because she’s a mental bigamist!”
“Polyandrist,” I corrected automatically. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course.” Llona was scornful. “Couldn’t you see her beam tonight, now that they’re together, the three of them? She wants them both, and now she’ll be able to handle it more easily.”
“More easily? She’s been doing it all along?”
“It seems obvious. She acts much more married to Green than to her real husband.”
That was something to think about. Llona’s hang-up could be serving her as a lens, letting her see things like this in sharper focus.
“Now, Melanie Marliss is different altogether. She loves herself. She’s loved herself right into the position of Goddess of Love, and now the only men who’ll come near her are the ones that want something, like Lorenzo Baker. Other men are intimidated. And what’s worse, she knows it.”
I nodded grimly. On target again. “And what’s worse than that,” I said, “she encourages it.” I could remember her flirting with me over that poster.
“That’s right,” Llona said. She thought we were arguing, and she thought she was winning. She picked up momentum in her speech and in her walking. “And, Matt, look at Wilma Bascombe, and what happened to her—and the man she loved wasn’t even alive. It’s a trap. No way out.”
“And what if it is?”
“It’s not going to catch me,” she said sternly. “I’m going to depend on me. Nobody else. I’ll pay my own way—that’s why I live like this. I’m going to get enough money, sooner or later, to do exactly what I want. And as soon as I want to do it, that’s even more important. And no one is going to take it away from me, or use me, or change my mind or slow me down.”
I finished my wine. “It sounds,” I said slowly, “like a very lonely life.”
“It doesn’t have to be!” she blurted. “People can be friends! I—I overheard what Roxanne Schick said to you. A friend is someone you can trust not to hurt you. Men and women can be friends. They can share, without owning each other’s lives.”
I stood up.
“Matt,” she said, “it shouldn’t be a big deal if, some night, two people happen to want each other. Should it?”
I joined her in the white light. That pulse was still jumping, or was jumping again, where her throat joined her pale shoulder. I kissed it gently. “No big deal,” I said.
We embraced and kissed and parted. I reached behind Llona’s neck, pulled a loose end of the ribbon, and the velvet slithered to the floor with a low whisper. It revealed Llona and a garter belt and nothing else. Her body caught the light and gave it back in a way that made it seem the light was coming from her. I held her again.
Llona was soft breasts and strong legs, gentle hands and sharp teeth. All the while, my mind remembered and respected what the woman had said, but when it was over, and she smiled at me, and I saw the glitter in her chocolate eyes, I couldn’t help thinking that whatever it was, it was at least something that felt like love.
CHAPTER 19
“...Whose fatal death did so much to bring his life to an end.”
—ORSON WELLES, “THE MARTY FELDMAN COMEDY MACHINE,” ABC
YOU HAVE TO MAKE allowances when you share a bed with someone. You have to expect an occasional jostle or sound interrupting your sleep. I knew that, but I wasn’t making allowances for the right things.
For one thing, Llona slept holding on to me, and I wasn’t used to that. For another thing, when I finally did drop off, I didn’t expect to be awakened by a loud wet crunch about six inches from my ear.
It scared me to death. My eyes jumped open, and I registered, without thinking, that the sun was up. I sat up and spun my head around wildly. Llona was looking at me like she thought I was crazy. She was eating an apple.
I wiped my brow, shook my head, and waited for my heart to slow down. “I thought somebody was coming through the wall or something,” I told Llona.
“I can’t help it,” she protested. “I always wake up hungry after.” She brushed hair out of her eyes, then held the apple out to me. “Want a bite?” I held her wrist, to steady the apple, and bit.
“What happens now?” I asked. “The landlord comes to throw us out?”
She laughed, and gestured around at her belongings. “Yes, you’ve yielded, and we must leave this glorious paradise. Either that, or we go to sleep for a hundred years.”
“Actually,” I said, “the way things have been going, that sounds pretty attractive.”
“Not if it’s just sleep,” Llona said, and I admitted she had a point.
Then she stopped smiling. “Matt,” she said, “I want to thank you for last night.”
“Hey,” I said, “if you didn’t have to say please last night, you don’t have to say thank you now.”
“I’m not talking about that,” she said.
“Oh.” I felt like a jerk.
“I mean putting up with me when I went into my autobiography. I was tired. You were very sweet.”
I was puzzled. “Because you wanted to talk and I wanted to listen?”
“Nobody wants to listen to other people’s troubles. Other people’s troubles are boring. Even my own troubles are boring.”
“It wasn’t only your troubles you talked about,” I told her, touching her nose. “You had something to tell me, and you put it on the record, that’s all. You sounded like you meant it.”
She hadn’t acted like she’d meant it, though.
“Still,” she said, “I appreciate your listening, and the way you accepted what I said.”
I saw her eyebrows go up a little, and knew that last part of it was a question. “Sure,” I lied, then changed the subject. “Llona, is there anything you have to do today?”
“No,” she said happily. “And thank God! I thought I’d never live to see the day!”
“Like to help me out with something?”
She looked at me quizzically for a few seconds, then laughed, and put her arms around my neck. “You,” she said, “are a louse. How could I say no now? What do you have in mind?”
“Well, if I remember what I read in the paper correctly, Jim Bevic’s funeral is today, up in your home town. I want to go.”
“Why?”
“Crazy reasons. Stupid reasons. A hunch. His murder doesn’t fit ink’s too normal. Jerry’s death and that business in the studio yesterday seem like a plot by Mel Brooks in collaboration with Rube Goldberg.”
“Okay, but why go to the funeral? I mean, there’s no real reason to say Jim’s death is connected at all, from what I’ve heard.”
“It’s got to be connected.” I was surprised to learn how totally convinced I was of that. My brain was making decisions without consulting me again. “It’s like that fire in the studio starting the same time as the dropping of the bowling ball.” She asked me what I meant, and I explai
ned that the coincidence of an accidental fire upsetting the mischief of the ball-dropper was a lot easier to swallow than the coincidence of two mischief makers striking at precisely the same moment and upsetting each other.
“The same way I find it easier to believe Bevic was in that pool and Shelby and/or Green almost got crushed for one comprehensive reason than I do two completely separate murderers are picking on Shelby and Green. Do you follow me?”
“I think so. But what can Jim’s funeral tell you?”
“I have no idea. Maybe if I can talk to his friends and family, I could get to know him better. That’s where you can help; you can tell me about Jim from your own knowledge, and you can point me to the right people to talk to. What do you think?”
She thought it over for a few seconds. “I think,” she said at last, “that this is the stupidest conversation I’ve ever had with my arms around a naked man.”
And, of course, once she had pointed that out, it was obvious that she was right.
When (eventually) we got up, there was still plenty of time to make it to the services. We took a cab to my place, where I put on my black suit to go with Llona’s dark gray dress, then to the Network to check out a car. We brought Spot with us. He loves to ride in cars, and besides, if I’d gone without him, he probably would have called a lawyer and sued Llona for alienation of affection.
It was a nice drive. The morning sun shone over our shoulders and made designs with the shadow of the George Washington Bridge on the rippled surface of the Hudson. Later, we enjoyed the leaves across northern New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania.
Actually, in the world of TV, we never left New York. Television can’t be bothered with political boundaries. The country is broken up into something over two hundred Areas of Dominant Influence, or roughly how far the signal from a given market penetrates into the countryside before it overlaps another signal. The New York ADI is the largest one in the country, taking in twelve counties in New Jersey, fifteen in New York, and one each in Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Pike County is the one in Pennsylvania, and that’s where Llona’s home town was. It was a one-industry town, a mill town, and after the bright October leaves of the surrounding country, it seemed to be even grimmer and grayer than it was. The overwhelming impression was of squat limestone buildings garnished with soot in front of the four smoking chimneys that towered over the mill on the edge of town.
“Charming, isn’t it?” Llona said. “This is a good place to be from, if you know what I mean. That’s the grade school I went to.”
She pointed to a building that looked no different from any of the factories.
The church was at the end of the town’s main street. It was gray limestone, too; but inside were blue skies, and fluffy white clouds, and pink cherubs; serene Virgin Marys and radiant Christs. The statues of gold or marble had been covered with purple cloth, for mourning, but even so, it seemed as if all the color and beauty of the town had been gathered up and stored in the church, maybe for safekeeping.
Llona and I were a little late, so we slipped quietly into the last pew. Spot was in the car. During the service, which was in English, I was astonished to find my old altar-boy Latin complete and intact in my brain.
The priest was young, no older than Bevic had been, probably. He said all the right things: Jim Bevic had exposed corruption, and brought honor to his parents, and was a good Catholic and all that.
By the size of the crowd, and by their reactions, it was easy to tell that these people felt a real loss. The town had been proud of Jim Bevic, the Local Boy Who Made Good.
The priest gave the coffin a few last sprinkles of holy water, and gave the congregation a few last whiffs of incense, and the service was over, except for the procession out front to the hearse. The cross, the walnut and bronze coffin, the priest, then two old people, crying copiously, obviously the bereaved parents.
Walking behind the parents was a bigger, younger version of the old man. Llona whispered to me that that was Alex Bevic, Jim’s older brother, the one we should talk to.
We didn’t get to talk to him until after more of the same at the cemetery. Llona, Spot, and I got an unexpected honor when the funeral director waved the big, black Network car into the cortege right behind the flower truck.
Whenever I got the chance, I’d exchange a few words about Bevic with a fellow mourner. The only thing I learned was that I was kind of sorry I never got to meet the fellow. The impression I got was that he was a good person, but not too good to be true. Everyone thought enough of Jim to tell the truth without censoring himself for speaking ill of the dead.
Llona steered me to people to talk to, like the editor he had worked for at the local paper, an old girlfriend of Bevic’s, and the retired principal of the high school they’d attended.
I was still trying to find a tactful way to approach Alex Bevic when he solved the problem by approaching us.
“Llona?” he said, and smiled. Llona had told me that Alex Bevic kept the mill in business practically singlehanded. He was their globe-hopping salesman. He had the right tools for the job. He had a warm voice, and the same honest features his father had brought over from Eastern Europe. “It was nice of you to come.”
Llona said, “Hello, Alex. Sorry that this has to be the reason I’m seeing you again. Where’s Julie?”
“In Chicago,” Bevic said. “With her new husband.”
Llona said, “Oh,” and flushed.
There’s nothing like a bit of foot-in-mouth to get a conversation rolling along. First, Llona apologized for bringing the whole thing up, then Alex apologized for being so blunt. Then I said my name and stuck out my hand for Alex to shake, whereupon Llona apologized for not introducing me, and Alex apologized for not introducing himself.
“I guess I must still be in shock, a little,” he said. “I only just got back to the States from Upper Volta two days ago. That’s when I first heard about Jim.”
“What were you doing in Upper Volta?” A stupid question, but it was out of my mouth before I realized it.
“Selling them insulators for a power plant,” he said. “I haven’t even been back to my own place yet—Mom and Pop are pretty broken up, and I’ve been staying with them.”
I liked him, and saw there was no need to try to finesse information from him. I told him about the Network, and why I was there.
He had his face tight in a grimace when I finished. “That’s pretty hard to believe,” he said.
“I know.”
“Well, sure, I’ll help you all I can, of course. The bastard killed my brother, right?”
I held up a hand. “That’s only what I think,” I cautioned him. “I’ve been known to make a mistake.” The understatement of the decade.
“I know. That part’s all right, I just don’t think I know anything that will help. The last time I spoke to Jim, he was thinking about going down to Costa Rica.”
“He went,” I said. “In fact, he went straight from there to L.A. You don’t happen to know,” I said, not hopefully, “why he went down there, do you?”
Sometimes, I get lucky.
“Sure I do. I was the one who gave him the idea as a matter of fact.”
I wanted to grab him by the lapels and yell at him to tell me, but I exercised restraint. I swallowed and said, “Why, Alex? What idea did you give him?”
Llona was as worked up as I was; I could hear her heavy breathing.
Alex said, “For years, Jim wanted to do a book about that guy that ripped all the stars off with the uranium scandal—”
“Ollie McHarg,” I said.
“That’s right, McHarg. And I happened to find out, when I was down there a few months ago, that that’s where McHarg is.”
No jumping to conclusions, Cobb! Facts first. “How did you find out?” I asked.
“No big deal, really. I got friendly with someone in the government, you know, and one night we went out for a few, and he got to complaining how his country
was getting to be a dumping ground for fugitives from American justice. I said he was exaggerating; the only one I could think of was Vesco.”
But challenged, Alex went on to tell us, the government official told of a few others who were taking advantage of the fact that these two friendly American neighbors, Costa Rica and the United States, happened not to have an extradition treaty. McHarg, though, took no chances. He maintained a strict incognito, and backed that up with liberal portions of bribe money.
Llona shook her head. “I can’t believe that the U. S. Government didn’t even know he was there,” she said.
“Llona, they knew he was there,” I told her. “But since they couldn’t touch him anyway, why reveal it and embarrass themselves?” She shook her head again. I turned to Alex. “Didn’t you tell this to the police? This is important.”
“What police? I haven’t even seen any police.”
That seemed unbelievable until I thought it over for a second. The police have a lot of work to do, so they have to work to a routine or they’d never be able to handle it all. One of the first steps in that routine is Talking to the Relatives, and Alex had been out of the country while they were doing it. They would have gotten to him eventually-one of the later steps in the routine is Go Back to Start of Routine.
“Okay,” I said, “you will. If you don’t mind, I’m going to tell a policeman friend of mine about this as soon as I get back to New York.”
Alex glanced at his watch, then over his shoulder to where his parents were still being consoled by the young priest.
“They—uh—wouldn’t have had to wait too long to find out, in any case,” Alex said. He took another glance. I asked him what he meant. “The only reason my government friend found out about all this is because his brother is a journalist, too. It seems that McHarg was too big a ham and a con man to enjoy being out of the public eye, so he approached my friend’s brother about collaborating on a book about the swindle. That’s why I told Jim...he’d...better hurry...” Alex caught his face as it was about to break, and turned tears into a kind of half-baked sneeze. I wanted to tell him to go ahead and cry, but he probably wouldn’t have taken it too well.
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