The Best Defense

by A. W. Gray

  Leeds had puggish features, deep creases prominent in the glow from the computer screen. “Makes two of us. Guy on a one-way ticket to nowhere, somehow hooked up with David Spencer? Wow.”

  “All through an agent,” Sharon said. “My question is … this murder was last Saturday?”

  “Reported on Saturday, by a guy here to repo that entire rig.” Leeds nodded toward the computer and work station. “Coroner places the time of death around four p.m. on Friday. Needless to say, the repo man’s merchandise is going to sit awhile.”

  Sharon placed her feet side by side. “So why are you here? I’m somewhat familiar with investigation procedure, Detective. Normally after the initial walk­through, dusting and photographing and whatnot, the crime scene sits vacant until there’s a suspect. Someone drops by every few days to pick up mail if there is any, but …”

  Leeds and his partner exchanged frowns. Leeds said, “Don’t know as I should answer that question.”

  Sharon smiled. “Oh? I thought you said we might help each other. I’ve answered all of yours so far.”

  Leeds was pensive. “Touché. We were following up on something.”

  Sharon stood her ground. “So am I. Want to trade?”

  Leeds appeared thoughtful, then reached inside his coat and brought out a green pasteboard card. “A receipt for certified mail. Was in the victim’s box this morning. Do you know a Curtis Nussbaum?”

  God, Sharon thought, can we be this lucky? “You must not have watched Court TV today. He was the prosecution’s star witness.”

  “Someone named A. Lanning receipted for the piece of mail. We assume that’s someone in Mr. Nussbaum’s office.”

  Sharon nodded. “Likely his secretary. He told me once that he was going to jump her.” Both cops stared at her.

  “You’d have to be there,” Sharon said. “Harlon Swain mailed something to Curtis Nussbaum?”

  Leeds raised the card to eye level. “There’s a notation at the bottom of this, like some people use to connect it to their file. It could be an expression. It could be the title to something he wrote.”

  “Dead On?” Sharon asked.

  Leeds raised his eyes, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “When did Nussbaum’s office receipt for that?”

  Leeds turned the card around. “Last Friday. Mr. Swain didn’t live through the night.”

  Sharon gestured around the room. “I suppose you’ve looked through all these manuscripts.”

  Leeds nodded. “To no avail. Every other title you can imagine. But no Dead On.” He pointed at the Compaq. “Unless it’s stored in there. Can you operate one of those?”

  One comer of Sharon’s mouth bunched. “I’m a computer zero.”

  “Me, too,” Leeds said. “We’ve called downtown for an egghead, but until he or she gets here …”

  Lyndon Gray came from the entryway, passed the shotgun-toting policeman, and stood in the center of the room. “I can call it up, miss, if it’s on there.”

  Sharon’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re a computer expert as well?”

  “I’m not in Olivia’s class.” Gray looked around as if waiting for applause.

  Leeds gave Sharon a questioning look.

  “Olivia is one of Mr. Gray’s associates,” Sharon said. She gestured toward the computer, palm up. “Go to it. The file is Dead On. Maybe just novel-dot-wpt, some writers identify files that way.”

  “Might take awhile. If it’s password-protected I’ll have to hack a bit.”

  “We’ve got all night,” Sharon said.

  Gray hauled a dusty chair over, sat at the work station, and clicked the mouse. Sharon blinked as the screen saver vanished. The Englishman rattled the keyboard. A list of options appeared on the monitor.

  As Gray scratched one cheek, reading the options, a high-pitched ringing noise pierced the room.

  Sharon grabbed for her cell phone as Detective Leeds dug in his inside breast pocket. “It’s me,” he said, swung open his receiver, and said, “Leeds,” into the mouthpiece. Sharon relaxed as the detective said, “Yeah, okay, give me the number.” He laid a pad on a table and scribbled with a pen. “I’ll get on it,” he said, disconnected, and looked at Sharon apologetically. “Another brick on my caseload. Excuse me while return a call, okay?”

  Sharon nodded and smiled and, as Leeds retreated to the corner, punching in a number, she leaned over Gray’s broad back and watched the monitor. The Englishman had brought up a list of files entitled “work prog.wpt.” Sharon scanned the list. Dead On wasn’t among the titles. Gray hit the mouse, and another list appeared. Near Sharon’s elbow, a second loud brinng shattered the silence.

  She turned. Detective Leeds was still in the corner, hunched over his phone. This call had to be for her. She dug the phone from her purse, opened it up, and said breathlessly, “Yes?”

  A male voice, oddly familiar, asked, “Sharon Hays?”

  “Yes?” she said again.

  “Did you leave a message with Mathis Security earlier, for a Charles Hager?”

  “Chuck Hager, yes.” Sharon turned her back on the computer and inclined her head, listening.

  “Why did you want to speak with Mr. Hager?” the voice said.

  “That depends,” she said. “Who wants to know?”

  “This is Detective Leeds with the …”

  Sharon’s eyes widened. She turned slowly, as if in a trance, as Leeds did a slo-mo turnaround as well. The two gaped at each other, both with their cell phones pressed to their ears.

  Leeds dropped his receiver to his side and grinned sheepishly. “Sharon Hays. I thought that name was familiar.”

  Sharon lowered her phone as well. “And I thought the voice was familiar. You’re returning calls for Chuck Hager?”

  “After they’re relayed,” the cop said. “From his business phone, home phone, wherever.”

  “That’s the other case you’re working on?” Sharon asked.

  Leeds tilted his chin, nodding.

  “Jesus,” Sharon said. “Meaning, Chuck Hager is another stiff at the morgue?”

  Leeds spread his hands, palms up, and pressed his cell phone’s antenna down. “‘Fraid he is,” the detective said.

  Harlon Swain had been a man in his fifties, a harmless-looking guy with a brush mustache and graying, unkempt eyebrows. Deep lines in his face reflected a lifetime of hunching over keyboards as he poured out his life’s blood on paper, crafting page after page as he waited for his break to come along. Well, finally it had. The poor, poor little schmuck, Sharon thought.

  She stood inside the icebox at the L.A. County Morgue, drawing Detective Leeds’s overcoat closer around her shoulders. Harlon Swain’s body was stretched out on a gurney with a sheet up to its waist, its legs beneath the fabric bent out at odd angles. A row of autopsy stitches ran up the center of the chest. They’d done the whole bit, peeling back the scalp, sawing through the skull, weighing the brain. The autopsy report stated that Swain had suffered from stomach cancer. There was a jagged hole in the left side of the chest, through to the sternum, obliterating the nipple. The first autopsy Sharon had observed, back when she was a prosecutor, had made her queasy. She looked away. “Did the lab people collect fragments?” she asked.

  Standing behind her and to her left, Leeds inhaled through his nose. “Some pretty good ones, nearly intact. A shell casing as well. An amateur, this one.” He was in his shirtsleeves, his breath fogging, seemingly oblivious to the cold.

  “Panic hurries people. I think you’ll find that this person had never shot anyone before.” Sharon raised her lashes to look at the detective. “Please tell me it’s a thirty-eight-caliber,” she said.

  Leeds offered a craggy smile. “You’ve been reading my mail.”

  She cast her gaze over a row of tables, bodies sprawled grotesquely, a black man with the bac
k of his head blown away, a Hispanic woman with a garrotte still tightened around her neck. She showed a questioning look. “And the other guy…?”

  “Over here.” Leeds led the way to the fourth gurney down. Sharon followed at a leisurely pace. She was tired, and her legs ached from spending the day in spiked heels. She suspected that by dawn’s early light, she’d be at the point of exhaustion.

  Chuck Hager had a sheet up around his neck. He wasn’t as handsome in death as when she’d seen him in Dallas or on the L.A. Criminal Courts front steps, but he was still good-looking. A lock of hair hung over his forehead at a rakish angle. “Where was he?” she asked.

  Leeds poked his hands into his pockets. Keys and chains jingled. “Alley off of Main Street just south of the Hollywood Freeway.”

  “Shot?”

  Leeds shook his head. “Knife on this one. Opposed to the other one, professional. Up underneath the point of the breastbone. A little left-hand twist …” Sharon reached out and bunched the sheet, and gave the detective a questioning look. He nodded. She pulled back the sheet. The wound was in the shape of a three-quarter pie. “No autopsy?” Sharon asked.

  Leeds gestured around the room. “You see all these. M.E.’s work eight-hour shifts, around the clock. Still might take a day or so.”

  Sharon folded her arms and poked her hands inside the overcoat’s sleeves. God, she was freezing. “Do you have influence, to push this one through?”

  Leeds’s mouth canted wryly. “They bitch about it. I’d have to justify, such as, I could put the case to bed if they’d hurry it up.”

  Sharon stepped back and stood with her head down, thinking. Lyndon Gray was still at the writer’s shack, wrestling with the computer. Sharon had ridden downtown in the detective’s car, and had used the cell phone to contact Mrs. Welton. The Englishwoman was now at the beachside mansion, making long-distance calls. Be a lot of weary folks tomorrow, Sharon thought.

  She smiled at Detective Leeds. “Could you go the extra mile to please a lady? I can’t swear it’ll solve your case, Detective. But it damned well might.” Leeds stretched his neck, peering to the front. Visible through plate glass, a white-coated M.E. spoke into a recorder as he loaded squishy internal organs onto a scale. “Well,” Leeds said, “I’m not popular in this department anyway, Miss Hays. I’m known as a pushy guy. To tell you the truth, the coroner stays constantly pissed at me.”

  26

  Curtis Nussbaum parked his Land Rover in his exposed aggregate driveway, got out, and looked to the south. Christ, the beauty, stars twinkling bravely through the smog at the northern rim of the San Gabriels, the Ventura Freeway snaking its way toward the Valley, headlights brilliant pinpoints, passing each other going in opposite directions. Nussbaum squinted; he thought he could make out the Mullholland Drive exit from the freeway, the twisty road past hidden mansions and breathtaking lookouts, the route into Hollywood. He left the boxy four-wheel-drive vehicle and walked up on his wide front porch. His hands shook and his feet were numb.

  He punched his code into the security panel, heard the click of tumblers, and pushed his way into his entry hall. He stood on marble tile, a six-foot grandfather clock on his left with the pendulum rocking back and forth. Photographs in expensive frames lined the walls: Nussbaum with Dave Selznick in the old days, their arms around Angie Dickinson’s waist; another shot of Nussbaum along with Swifty Lazar—Christ, Nussbaum thought, the prick finally died and gave the rest of the world a chance—at Lazar’s Oscars party, with Jimmy Stewart, Kirk and Michael Douglas in the background. Christ, the times back then.

  He went through his den, past low-slung leather couches, glass cases filled with pewter cups, paper-thin China plates and saucers, crystal goblets which hit notes like xylophones when tapped with a spoon. In front of his bar lay a bearskin rug, the beast’s mouth open in a permanent expression of shock. The toe of Nussbaum’s shoe struck the bear’s heavy skull; he stumbled and nearly fell, clutched the edge of the maple bar for support. He dug frantically underneath, came up with a liter of Jack Daniel’s, filled a tumbler with shaking hands. He used tongs to drop three ice shards into the whiskey, then turned up the tumbler and glugged. The liquor burned going down. Nussbaum rolled the glass across his forehead. Christ, the mistakes, piled one on top of the other, the pretty female lawyer, her expression calm as she questioned him on the witness stand …

  Music drifted through the high-ceilinged den, coming from the back of the house. A Broadway show tune, class which the movies would never see again, Nancy Kwan, her strong voice belting the lyrics. Grant Avenue, San Francisco, California, You Ess Ayy, Christ, Flower Drum Song, when Broadway was great and pictures were greater still.

  Nussbaum moved toward the sound, the liquor steadying his walk, calming his nerves. He moved down a carpeted hallway, went through a door, and stood in darkness. The click-click-click of a projector was soothing to his ears. The room slanted downward away from him, six rows of cushioned theater seats, the projector beam expanding toward the silver screen, dust motes drifting in the light like confetti.

  Nancy Kwan had had the star power, Christ, the dancing, perfectly muscled calves and thighs flashing as she led a chorus-line troupe through Chinatown. Visible over a front-row seat back, shadowy in the light from the projector, was a massive wealth of hair, long and fluffy, falling to slim, elegant shoulders. Nussbaum forgot the pressure, the testimony, for an instant as he hurried down the aisle to sit beside the woman, Christ, continuing to marvel over her, the legs in black tights, the firm chin, the most beautiful Oriental features since Nancy Kwan. She didn’t seem to notice his presence, just watched the screen as if frozen as Nussbaum pushed down the adjacent seat and sat beside her. He shifted his drink from one hand to the other and palmed her thigh. Still she didn’t move.

  He gestured with his glass toward the screen. “That will be you someday.”

  “Shh!” She placed a silencing finger to her lips. “The last time, I want to remember it all.”

  “You have the same moves,” Nussbaum said. “The high kicks, I’ll never forget them, the first time I saw you at Caesar’s …”

  “Shh!” she said again. “Right … here, it’s what I want to remember.” On-screen, Nancy Kwan held a perfect split, left leg outstretched with her toes pointed, balanced on a vegetable cart which rolled down the sidewalk of Grant Avenue. The woman seated beside Nussbaum sighed. “To be able to hold that pose, that long …”

  “You can.” Nussbaum’s voice was a fierce whisper. “You will. Just a few more months, more auditions …” She swiveled her head to look at him, perfect almond­shaped eyes, coal black corneas. “They don’t make that kind of movie anymore, Curtis. You know it. I know it. Stop bullshitting me.”

  He fervently squeezed her leg. “You can be the revival.” He followed the curve of her hip, sent his gaze on past her knee, her tensed calf, tiny foot in a spike-heeled pump perched on a … “What’s that?” he said.

  She scooted down in the seat. “What’s what?” She looked at him, followed the line of his gaze down to her foot. “Oh,” she said. “It’s a suitcase.”

  Nussbaum swirled his whiskey around in irritation. “I know what it is. What’s it for?”

  “It’s got my clothes inside. The ones I brought. The silk kimonos, all that Japanese crap, I left in the closet.”

  “Your legacy …”

  “Your fantasy is what you mean. I’m going back to Vegas, Curt, while I’m still young enough to get a job.” She stood and gripped her suitcase handle, clicked the handle upward. “Been nice knowing you.” She bent to kiss the top of his bald round head.

  Nussbaum stood, sneering. “How do you think you’ll survive?”

  She glanced toward the back of the viewing room. “I think that’s a bigger problem for you than for me. Surviving. Bye, now.” She jiggled away, pulling her luggage on wheels.

  Nussbaum stood, furious. “You d
o not go. You owe me.”

  She continued to strut, turning toward the exit, bumping the suitcase up on the next-to-bottom step. “And you owe him,” she said.

  He hurried after her, drink sloshing around and spilling on the floor. “I do not owe a goddamn—”

  The projector quit running, the film whirring to a standstill, plunging the room into blackness. There was a click, and the overheads came on, blinding the agent for an instant. He closed, then opened his eyes. The woman was halfway up the steps to the door. “You owe him.” She nodded toward the back of the room.

  Nussbaum swiveled his head to look, fright clutching at his windpipe. Just inside the viewing room stood Benny Yadaka. He wore Docker pants and a light cotton shirt. He came down the stairs two at a time, pausing beside the woman for long enough to kiss her cheek. “Hi, big brother,” she said, then continued along.

  Yadaka went down two more steps, then stopped and turned to her. “Won’t be long, sis. Just wait in the car. Your flight’s at eleven, right?” She nodded and he nodded. Then she left the room. Yadaka continued on down the aisle, whistling. He said, “Curtis, you going to throw such bullshit around, try a woman hasn’t been the places my sister has. She knows better.”

  Nussbaum was rooted in place. He looked wildly behind him, Christ, but he’d designed the room with only one way in or out, make it tougher for the starlets to leave …

  Yadaka walked up to Nussbaum, put a hand on his chest, and gave a little push. “Sit down, Curt. We’re going to visit.”

  Nussbaum sank down, bourbon dribbling on his knee. Yadaka took the seat beside him. “Now, look,” Nussbaum said.

  “No, you look.” Yadaka took the drink from Nussbaum and set the tumbler on the floor. “You got shaky nerves, Curtis, you’re spilling that crap around.”

  Nussbaum leaned back and covered his eyes. “I’m expecting guests.”

  “You’re not expecting shit, unless it’s another day on the witness stand with the woman frying your ass. If I’d had her for a lawyer, I likely wouldn’t have had no juvenile record.” Yadaka sadly shook his head. “You people. You run around them movie studios thinking you’re a tough negotiator. You think you’re tough, Curtis? l should show you some things, standing on a street comer at twelve years old with them tongs flashing steel in your face. That’s tough. You don’t make a pimple on my baby sister’s ass being tough, that’s how hard you are. Now.” Yadaka beckoned. “Tell me about my money.”