The four last things sg-1

by Timothy Hallinan

  "She was indifferent?"

  She gave me a long look while she tried to figure out what to say. "No," she said finally. "She wasn't indifferent. She just wanted to make sure that I was doing what I really wanted. If I did, whatever that was, it was okay with her.

  "She kept asking me questions. Sometimes they seemed dumb, like who was more important to me, my mother or me? Except, you see, that's not so dumb, because it's my mother who really wants me to get married. Or she'd ask me things about Herbert, like did he have a good time when he got drunk, and what didn't he want to talk about ever, and did he make love like it was fun or like he was trying to remember how he was supposed to do it, and did he seem to have a sense of humor about his underwear? Questions that made me look at him different. Wasted effort, the putz."

  "Is Sally married?"

  "Sally? Sally married?" She picked up the screwdriver and took a long pull. "Golly, do you know, I don't know." She looked stricken. "Gee, isn't that awful? That's the kind of question Sally used to ask, something that made you realize something about yourself. Oh, my God, I'm ashamed of myself. I was so busy talking to her that I hardly ever listened."

  "In every relationship there's a talker and a listener. You're the talker, that's all," I said, trying to smooth her out. "Sally is the listener." Then I shut up so I could register the little click in my brain. I looked at a morose knot of disc jockeys at the bar; ratings must have been down. "Rhoda. What's Sally's religion?"

  "Religion? That she does talk about, in the last year or so, anyway. She keeps trying to get me to go with her. I'm not much into religion, you know, I'm supposed to be a Jew but I might just as well be a Chevrolet for all the attention I pay to it. But one thing I've got less than zero interest in is trendy California cults."

  "I'm sorry to do this," I said, standing up, "but I've got to go. Listen, the meal, anything you want, it's all on my credit card, and it's already signed. Have another drink, have a burger, have whatever you like. Better still, call in sick and go home, skip the rest of the day. Wash your hair. Stop worrying about Sally. Maybe you did do all the talking, but you're a terrific person and she was lucky to have you."

  She looked up at me with her mouth open.

  "And when Herbert calls," I said, "tell him to go fuck himself."

  Sally was a Listener. Listener Simpson's mania for clarity had echoed Harker's insistence on understanding. That had been the only part of my description of Harker that had brought Skippy down from his plateau of bliss. I had to get home and review my notes.

  At the bottom of my unpaved driveway I caught a whiff of something sharp, sweet, old, and slightly sickening. I slowed down for a moment to check it out but didn't see anything. Then, in a hurry, I slogged up through the mud at a forty-degree angle, slipping and falling to my knees only twice, not bad for a wet November afternoon on an unpaved driveway that asked nothing less from the world than that it should be beamed up Star Trek-style and then let down in Switzerland, where it could be pressed into service as an Olympic ski ramp.

  That would be all right if the house at the top of it were worth getting to. It was slapped together in the twenties by an embittered alcoholic hermit who wanted to flee the madding crowd. He kept himself relatively sober long enough to build the thing-it couldn't have taken more than a couple of months-and then went on a bourbon toot that ended a year later when he saw workers paving Old Topanga Canyon about a half-mile below. He promptly tied a rope around the living-room rafter and kicked a chair out from under him.

  He hung there, mummified by the dry summer heat, like a big strip of bacon for a couple of years, sharing the house with a pair of red-tailed hawks, until he was discovered by a determined census taker. The house passed to the hermit's sister, and then to her son, who went to the Balkans and took himself a Balkan bride during World War II. He then got himself killed in the war, and ownership of the house devolved upon the Balkan bride, Mrs. Yount. The house was essentially a three-room wooden cabin, but it had the best view in Topanga, all the way from the massive red outcrop of Big Rock to the little settlement of Topanga on the way to the ocean. And there were acres of clean stars above it at night.

  Of course, to get to all of that, you had to climb the driveway. Once I made it to the top and muscled open the swollen wooden door, I looked on top of the computer, the first place I always looked because it was where I put everything. And there they were. Before I looked at them, I got a fire burning in the potbellied stove.

  With the wood crackling, steam rising from the damp carpet, and rain throwing handfuls of tacks against the roof, I surveyed my options. There were remarkably few of them.

  I didn't have a client. I did have a grudge against Needle-nose. I'd liked Sally Oldfield. And I had some information. Whatever chain of events had culminated in the murder of Sally Oldfield had begun with the Church of the Eternal Moment.

  The obvious thing to do was call the cops.

  Generally, I'd prefer not to call the cops. If everybody called the cops, I wouldn't be in business, and I'd hate to start a trend. But nobody was paying for my time now that the ersatz Ambrose Harker had faded back into whatever woodwork he'd crawled out of, and somebody had to do something about Sally.

  So I went over to the computer, got the folded printout of my notes on the case, smoothed them open, and read over them. Then I did what I didn't want to do. I called my pet cop.

  Alvin Hammond, Sergeant, LAPD, didn't know he was my pet cop. Sergeant Hammond weighed a conservative two hundred and thirty-five pounds, ten pounds of which were bass voice and twenty-five pounds of which were potential whisker, and he wasn't given to terms of coy affection, however discreet. What Sergeant Hammond was given to was drinking lethal quantities of Scotch in cop bars, with the ultimate objective of being the last man in the room who could stand up. I'd begun risking life and liver in police bars downtown when I first became an investigator. It had occurred to me that I might need to know one cop better than you usually get to know the guy who's writing you a speeding ticket. I'd remained relatively conscious longer than Al Hammond on two or three nights, and that was the extent of the bond between us.

  "Records," said a young voice on the other end of the phone. Al had been in Records for a year as punishment for neglecting to read some well-connected alleged perp's rights to him, and he wanted to get out about as badly as most would-be transsexuals wanted to get to Denmark and the right doctor.

  "Is Al Hammond around?" You didn't call him Alvin, at least not if you wanted to remain an operative biped.

  "Sergeant Hammond is indisposed."

  "What happened? They put a new stock of magazines in the John?"

  "Is that supposed to be funny, sir?" Great. A prissy cop.

  "A thousand apologies for my lapse in taste. I thought I was talking to the LAPD."

  "Your name, sir?"

  "Inspector Grist. What's yours, son?"

  I could actually hear him sit up. "Um, Hinckley, sir. I mean, Inspector."

  "Um Hinckley? That's an unusual name. What is it, Welsh?"

  "Actually, sir, it's English."

  "Well, Um Hinckley, why don't you trot along and see if you can snap Sergeant Hammond out of his fleshy reverie and get him to the phone. Tout suite, okay?"

  "Yessir."

  "And let's have a little snap to it."

  "Yes, sir" The phone clattered to the desk.

  I flipped through my notes, put the phone down to get a pencil, and added Rhoda Gerwitz's name and phone number. When I came back to the phone, Hammond was already there.

  "There's a patrol car on the way," he said.

  "I'm in no danger."

  "Yes, you are. It's against the law to impersonate an officer. Poor Hinckley's shitting bricks."

  "It's probably the first bowel movement he's had in months, then. If his ass were any tighter he could wear it on his forehead and no one would notice. Did you lend him your magazine?"

  "The Atlantic Monthly," he said. "I never miss the
book reviews."

  "Where did Hinckley come from, anyway? Promoted directly from the Brownies?"

  "Times being what they are, we're lucky to have him. You think he's bad"-he exhaled a lungful of smoke-"you should see Willis. It takes him ten minutes to get into his uniform and fifteen to do his eyes. What do you want, anyway?"

  "Oh, you know. Catching up with an old friend. Taking notes on how a real man talks. Passing time until the videotape rewinds."

  "I'm being paid by the city," he said with exaggerated patience. "These are your tax dollars at work, here."

  "This will surprise you, but I don't want anything. I'm calling to give you something."

  "Like what?"

  "Like a Jane Doe. Recently deceased in the Sleepy Bear Motel on Sunset."

  "That block, we call it Sinset."

  "Clever."

  "These are the jokes," he said. "You don't like them, go back to the VCR."

  "I don't like them, I call the Times. They might be interested in an unsolved murder."

  "I'm interested. If you were here you could see how my ears are standing up. You could see me reaching for a pencil and a clean sheet of paper. You could see me dreaming about getting out of here and making lieutenant."

  "I don't want to talk on the phone," I said. "I've got some notes that I want to give you. When can I see you?"

  "You know who she is? You know who bought her the big ticket?"

  "The big ticket?" I said. "Al, are you on TV? Is there a Sixty Minutes crew in the room?"

  "What have you got?" he asked impatiently.

  "Some facts that might keep you awake."

  "This is straight?"

  "Straighter than Carrie Nation."

  "Not here, then. I'd like to keep it to myself until I can pop it at the morning meeting. I get off at nine. How about the Red Dog?"

  The Red Dog was one of Al's bars, all Scotch and sawdust on the floor. The male-hormone content at any given moment was higher than that of the East German women's Olympic track team.

  "The Red Dog," I said. "Nine-thirty."

  "What's her name?"

  "And her address," I said. "But not till the Red Dog. You're buying."

  "Wear a white carnation so I'll know you."

  "In the Red Dog? We're talking about multiple fractures for dessert."

  "Yeah," he said, hanging up.

  I didn't have anything to do in the meantime, so I did it. After I hung up I tried to avoid the refrigerator, which was waving its handle at me to remind me of the three sixteen-ounce bottles of Singha Beer inside, resting innocently on their sides. I reviewed my notes and looked at my watch. After eleven minutes I stopped reviewing my notes, got up, and reviewed the refrigerator. It looked the same as ever on the outside, my shopping list scrawled on the door in erasable Magic Marker. It looked the same on the inside, too, until I closed the door. When I did, there were only two bottles of Singha inside.

  Ten minutes later, and feeling considerably better, I was reopening the refrigerator door when the phone rang. "Balls," I said to the beer. I tracked across the living room and picked up the phone.

  "Al?" I said.

  "Who the hell is Al?" said a voice that I remembered only too well. "This is Ambrose Harker."

  Chapter 9

  With my left hand I hit the record button on the answering machine and vamped until the red light came on.

  "I've seen many unexpected things on my journey through the world," I said, "but even to me it seems improbable that life is full of people named Ambrose Harker. And yet, apparently it is." The light blinked once and then glowed steadily. "Which Ambrose Harker is this?"

  "I owe you money," he said.

  The open refrigerator sent out a siren call that would have lured Ulysses onto the rocks even if he'd been tone deaf. "That's right," I said, "you do. Can you hold on for a second?"

  "No." He hung up.

  I looked at the receiver and then replaced it. "You'll be back," I said. I got up and opened a beer. I primed myself with several cold ounces and then primed the answering machine. By the time the phone shrilled at me, the tape was already running.

  "It's your nickel," I said as I picked it up. I'd always wanted to say it to someone.

  "It's a quarter," he said, literal as ever. "I need to talk to you."

  "You need to talk to me'? What a surprise. You hire me to watch someone, she gets killed, and then you vanish from the face of the earth, leaving me with nothing but a borrowed business card. How'd you know he was eating at Nickodell's anyway?"

  "He always eats at Nickodell's. He's in the music business."

  "And you're Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

  "My name doesn't matter."

  "Maybe it doesn't matter to you. To me, it matters. Sally Oldfield matters."

  "Listen, that wasn't supposed to happen. Nobody was more surprised than I was."

  "You were so surprised that you knew about it before I called to tell you. It must have been a terrific shock."

  "I know you're not going to believe me now."

  "Of course I'm going to believe you. You've got a phony name and phone number and you're involved in a murder, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to believe you. What about trust? What about the fellowship of man?"

  "Honest to God. I didn't have anything to do with the murder."

  "So who's the guy with the needle nose?"

  There was a pause.

  "Oh, come on," I said. "That question can't come as a complete surprise. What did you think I was going to ask you?"

  "I can tell you," he said, lowering his voice. "I can tell you everything."

  "You also said something about money."

  "I owe you for two days," he said. "That's eight hundred dollars."

  "I'll bet you've got a plan," I said, "about how you're going to pay me and explain everything to me and tell me your real name and then we'll both just sit back and have a good laugh over how complicated it all seemed."

  "My name is Fauntleroy," he said unexpectedly. "Ellis Fauntleroy."

  "This week."

  "No, that's my real name."

  "Well, why don't you come up here and show me your driver's license? Then we'll call each other by our right names for a while to get into practice and then you can tell me what you've got to say."

  "I can't come there. What if they're watching you? I could get killed just for being in the same room with you."

  "Who's they?"

  Silence. Then he said, "You know."

  "And you're telling me they're after you?"

  He swallowed in his usual amplified manner. "I'm telling you that I'd be dead if they saw us together. You're going to have to come to me."

  A gust of wind slapped the front of the house hard, and the rain rattled down. It was five-fifteen and dark. I didn't want to go anywhere until it was time to meet Hammond at the Red Dog.

  "Same objection," I said. "If they're watching me, they're going to see us together, aren't they?"

  "Not if you're careful. A detective as expensive as you, you should be able to spot a tail."

  "How do I know I'm not walking into something?"

  "You don't." No apologies and no attempt to persuade. That was reassuring in a backhanded kind of way.

  "Why did you call me now?"

  "Because I know too much. They made a mistake when they made me the one who hired you. I was the last person they should have chosen, and now they're worrying about it."

  "Where do they think you are now?"

  "They don't know. They haven't started to wonder yet."

  I looked down at the cassette, its little hubs rotating slowly. "This is all very enlightening, but I could really use a name or two. Like exactly who hired you."

  He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker. "First we talk," he said. "I need something out of you. If I get it, you'll get something out of me."

  "You mean you really didn't call to pay me my money? Human nature is such a disappointment."
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  "The money's here. Are you going to come or not? I haven't got all night. I've got to get someplace where they can see me or they're going to start looking for me, and I'll be in even worse trouble."

  I weighed it. There was no question in my mind that he was frightened. Harker, or Fauntleroy, was too unimaginative to be an actor. On the other hand, I could have been making an appointment to get my head blown off. I've grown fond of my head.

  "You still there?" he said impatiently.

  "How come it's always raining when I talk to you?"

  "Ask the weatherman. I'm at the TraveLodge in Santa Monica, room three-eleven. You know where it is?"

  Another motel. "Near Pico and the freeway."

  "I'll be here for forty-five minutes." The line went dead.

  I turned off the recorder in the answering machine and thought about it. A motel room with Ambrose Harker/Ellis Fauntleroy didn't sound like my idea of paradise, or even Florida. If I went, I might come back with part of me missing. If I didn't go, I'd probably never get back on the trail of the guy who'd murdered Sally Oldfield. Mentally I flipped a coin, giving Sally heads. Sally won. That's the trouble with flipping coins mentally.

  I'd wasted seven minutes. No point in changing; I'd just get wet again. I grabbed the keys, slalomed down the driveway, and started Alice.

  As I hit the bottom of the canyon and turned left onto Old Topanga Canyon Boulevard, the rain eased up enough to let me see that the creek had risen to the danger point. One more night of heavy rain and we'd all be listening to the radio to find out which roads had washed away and what the alternative routes were, if any. For the seventeen millionth time I wondered why I hadn't moved into town years ago.

  At the intersection of New Topanga and Old Topanga, flares blossomed in the darkness. I slowed down to a near-stop, inching along behind a long line of other fools who didn't have enough sense to stay in out of the rain. An old white VW van lay on its flattened top at the side of the road. There were people in it. The cop with the flashlight told me to keep moving, as though I were about to leap from the car for a closer look. By the time I made the right onto New Topanga and started skidding down toward the sea, I'd lost more than twenty minutes.