Death of a Pirate King

by Josh Lanyon

  Not exactly conclusive proof. I flipped through the extensive photo section -- picture after picture of Paul Kane in the glowing picture of health -- and little else -- selected from film and stage roles as well as a number of candid shots. Fortune had favored him, no doubt about it. But it hadn’t all been luck. He had worked his arse off to get where he was, and there was plenty to admire in that.

  After Hawthorne’s death and the disastrous relationship with Nina, Kane grew less and less discreet about his sexuality -- and I thought I began to better understand where Kirkland’s disapproval stemmed from. As she elegantly phrased it, “If it moved, Paul screwed it.”

  In a couple of magazine interviews Kane had admitted he was bisexual and hinted that he had a taste for the kinkier side of romance. When he was photographed at Cannes in a compromising position with a male companion, his career had taken its first serious hit in over a decade. The experts at Entertainment Weekly and Variety had openly speculated that his career was over, but then The Corsair was released, and Kane ended up a bigger star than ever before.

  It was late when I finished Glorious Thing, and I wasn’t sure if I really had a better understanding of Paul Kane. I wasn’t sure if it mattered. I tossed the book aside. It landed a few feet from the bed, cover facing up with Paul Kane grinning that dashing pirate king smile at me. I turned out the bedside light, pounded the pillows into shape.

  The tune to Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirate King and Chorus” was running through my mind.

  Oh, better far to live and die

  Under the brave black flag I fly,

  Than play a sanctimonious part,

  With a pirate head and a pirate heart.

  Away to the cheating world go you,

  Where pirates all are well-to-do;

  But I’ll be true to the song I sing,

  And live and die a Pirate King.

  Somewhere in the alley below, a cat was yowling.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I realize that duck confit never goes out of fashion,” my mother said, discarding the elegant foldout brochure she had been browsing, “but I was hoping for something with a little more…verve.”

  Verve. Yes, because what’s the point of eating food that just tastes good? Not that duck confit with pomegranate molasses on crispy rice paper exactly fell into my “just tastes good” category. I’d have gone with crab puffs if it had been left to me.

  But apparently Lisa was speaking Nina Hawthorne’s language. “Of course,” Nina said, very businesslike. “I know the exact thing.” She opened a binder stuffed with gorgeous photos of comestibles -- I mean, you couldn’t call that stuff anything as plebeian as food. “Grilled New Zealand lamb lollipops with a blueberry port wine sauce.”

  “Oh my,” Lisa murmured, gazing at the sumptuous photograph. She glanced sideways at me. “Adrien?”

  Yep, she was enjoying this way too much.

  “Lamb for an SPCA banquet?” I said doubtfully.

  Lisa made a little exasperated sound. Another woman would have smacked her forehead. “He does have a point,” she said regretfully.

  Nina took it with good grace. She had taken everything with good grace, and that can’t have been easy given Lisa’s peculiarly playful mood. I studied Paul Kane’s former paramour unobtrusively. It was strange to meet someone I had been studying as though she were on my final exam. Like meeting someone in history. Like Betsy Ross, but with fewer stars and more stripes.

  She was a bit younger than Kane, but her odometer showed the wear and tear of those years of booze and pills and one-night stands. She was very pale -- almost dry looking -- and her face was very lined. Her hair was still in the crew cut she had adopted a decade earlier, but she had let it go prematurely silver. The result was striking. She was small and fine-boned -- and with that papery, delicate skin she reminded me of origami.

  “What about crispy swordfish bites with a wasabi dipping sauce?” she suggested, reaching for another binder.

  Apparently she really wanted this SPCA gig.

  “Your firm catered that party at Paul Kane’s, didn’t you?” I said, having decided we’d had enough preliminaries to get her relaxed. “I recognize the salmon canapés.”

  Nina stared at me. Her eyes reminded me of Jake’s: that tawny color that looks almost amber in certain light. Lynx eyes, I thought.

  “Yes,” she said briefly, dampeningly, and offered another binder to Lisa.

  And, astonishingly, Lisa leaped to the rescue, taking the binder and exclaiming, “Oh, I saw that on the news! How dreadful for you! The man was poisoned.”

  “It was not the food,” Nina said quickly.

  “No, they think it must have been something in his drink,” I said.

  Her eyes flicked to mine again. “Yes. I heard that also.”

  “I was sitting right next to him when he collapsed,” I confided.

  Lisa turned and gave me a long look -- which I ignored.

  “That must have been terrible,” Nina said politely. Hard to believe she had once been in love with Porter -- but then she had been in love a lot back then.

  “He was a big Hollywood producer,” I said. “Maybe you even catered one of his parties.”

  “Porter didn’t give parties,” Nina said. Meeting my gaze, she said, “I knew him, yes. He was a friend of my family’s.”

  “Was he the kind of person who gets murdered?” Lisa asked innocently.

  Nina turned the lynx’s gaze on her. I could see various unkind comments going through her mind, but what she said was, “No. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill Porter. He was…” She shrugged. “He was an inoffensive old sot, really.”

  I said, “Maybe the intent was to kill someone else and they poisoned Porter Jones by mistake?”

  Her laugh was jarring. “That would make more sense. I imagine half the people at that party had reason to want Paul dead.”

  “I don’t really know him that well,” I said. “His production company optioned one of my books.”

  “Congratulations,” she said politely. “Just watch the fine print on anything he asks you to sign.”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

  “Bitter experience,” she agreed. To Lisa she said, “Might I suggest our cornmeal-crusted calamari with a hot cherry pepper aioli?”

  “Oh, yummy,” Lisa murmured.

  I left them to it, concurring when requested, watching Nina while they pored over the books. I didn’t place much significance on her curtness. I’d have been pretty curt too if someone had treated the death of someone I knew as a tourist attraction. She didn’t seem particularly guilty, not that I would necessarily recognize guilt. I might mistake it for offense or wariness. But one thing did stand out: regardless of what Paul Kane thought, Nina Hawthorne still hated his guts.

  * * * * *

  After Nina gathered up her binders and departed, Lisa and I had lunch.

  “You didn’t want to observe her in action for any event,” Lisa said, serving me a slice of spinach quiche warm from the oven -- Marie Callender’s oven, that is.

  “Er…no,” I admitted.

  “You’re investigating that man’s murder, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t really use the word investigating,” I said, avoiding her eye. I picked up my fork. “I’m asking a few questions at the request of Paul Kane, that’s all.”

  “This is the case that Jake is working on.” It was not a question.

  I answered, “He’s a police lieutenant. I think he keeps tabs on a lot of cases.”

  Lisa sighed.

  I waited for her to say more, but to my relief she actually let it go. I smiled at her. “Thanks, by the way. You were great with her.”

  She preened a little. “I was, wasn’t I?”

  We finished lunch and I split for the bookstore so Natalie could have the rest of the day off.

  “The cat was in here again,” she informed me accusingly, as I glanced through the morning’s receipts.<
br />
  “Was he? Did you recommend Lilian Jackson Braun? She should be right up his alley.” I glanced up. “No pun intended.”

  She was not amused. Glaring at me, she said, “I cannot believe how hard-hearted you are.”

  “Believe it,” I said. I checked my watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be meeting Warren in twenty minutes?”

  She went.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon refreshing my knowledge of what booksellers actually did -- sleuthing turned out not to be part of the job description -- and trying to decide if it was worth calling Jake over anything I’d discovered talking to Nina Hawthorne.

  Since I’d already decided I wasn’t going to pursue the investigation, it shouldn’t have been much of a decision, but reading the biography on Paul Kane the night before had unwillingly revived my interest in the case.

  Or maybe I was just grasping for something -- anything -- to take my mind off my own problems.

  Guy had still not called. I wondered just how much support from his friends Peter Verlane required? But I knew -- or at least, I thought I knew -- that Guy’s withdrawal probably had more to do with me than Verlane.

  Luckily the afternoon was busy, and I hadn’t time to brood. By the time I pulled the ornate security gate closed and locked the front door, I was beat. I’d have liked nothing more than to get takeout from someplace and watch one of my favorite flicks from my collection of pirate movies, but I remembered that Partners in Crime was meeting that night.

  I went back downstairs and assembled the chairs in a circle, set up the coffee machine, and hunted up extra red pencils. I finished off the orange-pineapple juice while I glanced through the newspaper.

  Porter Jones’s murder was already off the front page, which probably said more about his noncelebrity status than the effort LAPD was making to solve the case. There didn’t appear to be much headway in the investigation since Jake and I had last spoken on Friday night.

  Friday night. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  * * * * *

  Detective Paul Chan, Jake’s former partner in homicide investigation, was the first of the Partners in Crime group to arrive.

  Chan was middle-aged and putting on weight. He smelled of cigarettes as he set down a couple of packages of Oreo cookies on the counter, and I deduced his latest effort to quit smoking had crashed and burned.

  “I’m thinking of self-publishing,” he informed me.

  Two packages of Oreos? What was Chan thinking? Golden Oreos did not count as a second selection. I could hear the womenfolk bitching now. And he hadn’t brought any cream or milk. I’d have to supply that again -- along with the sugar and paper plates and cups and napkins. Did these people think I was made of money?

  I said, “Ah. Did you hear back from --?”

  “I’ve heard back from everyone in New York publishing,” he said. “What it gets down to is nobody’s interested in a book about what real police work is like.”

  Well, no. Because it was apparently dull as ditchwater. At least the way Chan wrote it. I said, “Well, self-publishing is one option. Or you could try rewriting --”

  But he was already on another track. “I saw Jake the other day.” His brown eyes met mine. “He said he’d talked to you.”

  I didn’t quite understand his intent expression. “Yeah,” I said vaguely.

  “He said you were on the scene when that Laurel Canyon homicide went down.”

  “I’m lucky that way,” I said.

  “So are you two square again?”

  I halted, mid-ripping open the cookies, and stared at him. “Well, he’s pretty square,” I said. “I’m just a rectangular guy.” With latent triangular tendencies.

  Chan said painstakingly, “I mean…are you two okay again?” Adding quickly and uncomfortably, “Friends?”

  For an instant I didn’t have an answer. My mind was totally blown by the news that Jake had apparently confided -- no, that couldn’t be right. Jake had apparently been bothered enough by our falling-out that he’d let Chan see it. And Chan must have deduced…or Jake must have said…

  Chan must have noticed and maybe drawn some weird conclusion.

  Because…

  Because anything else was…not even in the realm of possibility, right?

  So why was I standing there feeling sort of warm and…utterly idiotic? Because Jake had apparently been sorry enough to lose my friendship that he’d let his partner know? Pathetic was what this was.

  But I said gruffly, “Yeah, we’re okay.”

  “That’s good,” Chan said, more uncomfortable by the minute. “So what do you think of Alonzo?”

  “I think he’s a freaking moron.”

  “He’s not a moron,” Chan said soberly. “He’s a little rough around the edges, but he’s got good instincts.”

  “I don’t know about that. He was sizing me up for a pair of bracelets not too long ago. I may still be high on his hit parade for all I know.”

  Chan said easily, “He probably just sensed you were hiding something.”

  I stared at him, but he didn’t seem to realize what he’d just admitted to knowing.

  “Anyway,” he said, flipping through the copies of his story, “Jake’s staying involved on this one. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  I said slowly, “Do you think Jake would try to influence the outcome of an investigation to protect a friend?”

  Chan stared at me. “You mean if the friend was guilty?”

  “I’m just talking theoretical.”

  “You know better than that,” he said scornfully, and went back to sorting through his papers.

  I wanted to ask him if he had any ideas about the case, but Jean and Ted Finch arrived at that moment.

  Jean was jubilant. “We did it! We’ve got an agent!” she crowed, waving a copy of an e-mail.

  “We haven’t signed yet,” Ted corrected quickly, “but we’ve got an offer for representation.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  Jean and Ted had been writing and rewriting their ghastly first novel Murder, He Mimed for as long as I’d been hosting the group. There were many things I loathed about Murder, He Mimed, but my number one objection was that their main character, a gay gossip columnist by the name of Avery Oxford, bore an unsettling resemblance to me.

  I seemed to be the only person who saw it, though. The one time I’d suggested it to the group, everyone had burst out laughing. The fact that Avery was thirty-two, had black hair, blue eyes, a cop friend by the name of Jack O’Reilly, and a penchant for getting involved in murder investigations was apparently just a coincidence. For four years I’d lived in dread of the Finches finishing that damn book, and now not only had they finished it, they’d apparently tracked down the only literary agent on the planet demented enough to want to represent it.

  Jean -- reading my response correctly -- glowered at me. “No, we are not kidding. It’s a wonderful book, and now that we have an agent, I know we’ll sell it to one of the big publishers!”

  Ted beamed at her fondly. “What we’re really hoping,” he admitted, “is that maybe we’ll have the same luck as you, Adrien, and someone will option our book for the movies!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  On Wednesday morning, I gave Al January a call and asked if he had Marla Vicenza’s phone number.

  I sensed his surprise. I’m sure he wondered why I wasn’t asking Paul Kane for Marla’s contact info, and I mentioned casually that I’d tried Paul’s number a couple of times that morning without success. That was a lie, but January seemed to accept it. He said, “He’s probably at the studio today. I think he mentioned something about it on Sunday.”

  I was in luck. January was in a loquacious mood. We chatted casually about sailing and boats, and I managed to work my way around to Langley Hawthorne and Porter’s affair with Nina.

  I said -- stretching the truth a little, “I read Bonnie Kirkland’s bio on Paul. I hadn’t realized he and Nina also had an affair.�
��

  Al made a sound of disgust. “That book was garbage. The woman is a homophobe.”

  “She sure seemed to take Nina’s side in the breakup.”

  “There wasn’t any reason to take sides,” Al said. “They were both kids. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

  “Nina must have been on the rebound after Porter?” I suggested.

  “I never did quite understand the thing with Porter,” Al admitted. “Who can fathom the heart of an adolescent female?”

  Even the ones not doing drugs. I made assenting noises like a few years of rubbing shoulders with les femmes in high school and university gave me Man of the World status.

  January said, “After the affair with Porter broke off -- after Langley insisted it end -- Nina got involved with Paul. They were both very young and…very stupid. I think in a way Paul was swept off his feet. He came from a poor working class background. Nina was beautiful, young, and the daughter of southern aristocratic privilege. For a kid from a slum in Bristol, it was like American Dream 101.”

  “And Hawthorne disapproved of that relationship as well?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  I could hear the smile in his voice at my obvious surprise. “Not at all. Langley was very fond of Paul. Paul was his discovery, his protégé, and he admired the way he worked his way up from nothing. He thought the future was full of great things for Paul. He thought he was going to be the Cary Grant of our generation.”

  “Was Kane’s sexuality under wraps back then?” Considering how voracious he seemed these days, I wondered how successful he would have been at concealing his cosmopolitan tastes.

  “Jaded, aren’t you?” He chuckled. “Yeah, Paul was pretty much in the closet back then. Conventional wisdom held -- still holds really -- that coming out as openly gay is the kiss of death in Hollywood as far as marketing yourself to mainstream audiences. Back then we didn’t have anything like Logo or here! And even if we had, being relegated to TV was considered a fate worse than death.”