his ass; he could feel it, and it was being turned up. Pete was
maybe a little slow on the uptake about some things, and maybe
that was why he wasn't going to make Detective 1st for another
two or three years ... if he ever did.
Some ten years ago a really awful thing had happened in a little
nothing town called Chowchilla. Two people (they had walked on
two legs, anyway, if you could believe the newsfilm) had hijacked
a busload of kids, buried them alive, and then had demanded a
huge sum of money. Otherwise, they said, those kiddies could just
stay where they were and swap baseball trading cards until their air
ran out. That one had ended happily, but it could have been a
nightmare. And God knew Johnny Carson was no busload of
schoolkids, but the case had the same kind of fruitcake appeal: here
was that rare event about which both the Los Angeles Times-
Mirror and The National Enquirer would hobnob on their front
pages. What Pete didn't understand was that something extremely
rare had happened to them: in the world of day-to-day police work,
a world where almost everything came in shades of gray, they had
suddenly been placed in a situation of stark and simple contrasts:
produce within twenty-four hours, thirty-six at the outside, or
watch the Feds come in ... and kiss your ass goodbye.
Things happened so rapidly that even later he wasn't completely
sure, but he believed both of them had been going on the unspoken
presumption, even then, that Carson had been kidnapped and this
guy was part of it.
"We're going to do it by the numbers, Mr Paladin," Cheyney said,
and although he was speaking to the man glaring up at him from
one of the chairs (he had refused the sofa at once), his eyes flicked
briefly to Pete. They had been partners for nearly twelve years, and
a glance was all it took.
No more Comedy Store routines, Pete.
Message received.
"First comes the Miranda Warning," Cheyney said pleasantly. "I
am required to inform you that you are in the custody of the
Burbank City Police. Although not required to do so immediately,
I'll add that a preliminary charge of trespassing-"
"Trespassing!" An angry flush burst over Paladin's face.
"-on property both owned and leased by the National Broadcasting
Company has been lodged against you. I am Detective 1st Grade
Richard Cheyney. This man with me is my partner, Detective 2nd
Grade Peter Jacoby. We'd like to interview you."
"Fucking interrogate me is what you mean."
"I only have one question, as far as interrogation goes," Cheyney
said. "Otherwise, I only want to interview you at this time. In other
words, I have one question relevant to the charge which has been
lodged; the rest deal with other matters."
"Well, what's the fucking question?"
"That wouldn't be going by the numbers," Jacoby said.
Cheyney said:. "I am required to tell you that you have the right-"
"To have my lawyer here, you bet," Paladin said. "And I just
decided that before I answer a single fucking question, and that
includes where I went to lunch today and what I had, he's going to
be in here. Albert K. Dellums."
He spoke this name as if it should rock both detectives back on
their heels, but Cheyney had never heard of it and could tell by
Pete's expression that he hadn't either.
Whatever sort of crazy this Ed Paladin might turn out to be, he was
no dullard. He saw the quick glances which passed between the
two detectives and read them easily. You know him? Cheyney's
eyes asked Jacoby's, and Jacoby's replied, Never heard of him in
my life.
For the first time an expression of perplexity - it was not fear, not
yet - crossed Mr Edward Paladin's face.
"Al Dellums," he said, raising his voice like some Americans
overseas who seem to believe they can make the waiter understand
if they only speak loudly enough and slowly enough. "Al Dellums
of Dellums, Carthage, Stoneham, and Tayloe. I guess I shouldn't
be all that surprised that you haven't heard of him. He's only one of
the most important, well-known lawyers in the country." Paladin
shot the left cuff of his just-slightly-too-loud sport-coat and
glanced at his watch. "If you reach him at home, gentlemen, he'll
be pissed. If you have to call his club - and I think this is his club-
night - he's going to be pissed like a bear."
Cheyney was not impressed by bluster. If you could sell it at a
quarter a pound, he never would have had to turn his hand at
another day's work. But even a quick peck had been enough to
show him that the watch Paladin was wearing was not just a Rolex
but a Rolex Midnight Star. It might be an imitation, of course, but
his gut told him it was genuine. Part of it was his clear impression
that Paladin wasn't trying to make an impression - he'd wanted to
see what time it was, no more or less than that. And if the watch
was the McCoy ... well, there were cabin-cruisers you could buy
for less. What was a man who could afford a Rolex Midnight Star
doing mixed up in something weird like this?
Now he was the one who must have been showing perplexity clear
enough for Paladin to read it, because the man smiled - a
humorless skinning-back of the lips from the capped teeth. "The
air-conditioning in here's pretty nice," he said, crossing his legs
and flicking the crease absently. "You guys want to enjoy it while
you can. It's pretty muggy walking a beat out in Watts, even this
time of year."
In a harsh and abrupt tone utterly unlike his bright pitter-patter
Comedy Store voice, Jacoby said: "Shut your mouth, jag-off."
Paladin jerked around and stared at him, eyes wide. And again
Cheyney would have sworn it had been years since anyone had
spoken to this man in that way. Years since anyone would have
dared.
"What did you say?"
"I said shut your mouth when Detective Cheyney is talking to you.
Give me your lawyer's number. I'll see that he is called. In the
meantime, I think you need to take a few seconds to pull your head
out of your ass and look around and see exactly where you are and
exactly how serious the trouble is that you are in. I think you need
to reflect on the fact that, while only one charge has been lodged
against you, you could be facing enough to put you in the slam
well into the next century ... and you could be facing them before
the sun comes up tomorrow morning."
Jacoby smiled. It wasn't his howaya-folks-anyone-here-from-
Duluth Comedy Store smile, either. Like Paladin's, it was a brief
pull of the lips, no more.
"You're right - the air-conditioning in here isn't halfbad. Also, the
TV works and for a wonder the people on it don't look like they're
seasick. The coffee's good - perked, not instant. Now, if you want
to make another two or three wisecracks, you can wait for your
legal talent in a holding cell on the fifth floor. On Five, the only
entertainment consists of kids crying for their mommies and winos
puking on their sneakers. I don't know who you think you are and I
don't care, because as far as I'm concerned, you're nobody. I never
saw you before in my life, never heard of you before in my life,
and if you push me enough I'll widen the crack in your ass for
you."
"That's enough," Cheyney said quietly.
"I'll retool it so you could drive a Ryder van up there, Mister
Paladin - you understand me? Can you grok that?"
Now Paladin's eyes were all but hanging from their sockets on
stalks. His mouth was open. Then, without speaking, he removed
his wallet from his coat pocket (some kind of lizard-skin, Cheyney
thought, two months' salary ... maybe three). He found his lawyer's
card (the home number was jotted on the back, Cheyney notedit
was most definitely not part of the printed matter on the front) and
handed it to Jacoby. His fingers now showed the first observable
tremor.
"Pete?"
Jacoby looked at him and Cheyney saw it was no act; Paladin had
actually succeeded in pissing his easy-going partner off. No mean
feat.
"Make the call yourself."
"Okay." Jacoby left.
Cheyney looked at Paladin and was suddenly amazed to find
himself feeling sorry for the man. Before he had looked perplexed;
now he looked both stunned and frightened, like a man who wakes
from a nightmare only to discover the nightmare is still going on.
"Watch closely," Cheyney said after the door had closed, "and I'll
show you one of the mysteries of the West. West LA, that is."
He moved the neo-Pollock and revealed not a safe but a toggle
switch. He flicked it, then let the painting slide back into place.
"That's one-way glass," Cheyney said, cocking a thumb at the too-
large mirror over the bar.
"I am not terribly surprised to hear that," Paladin said, and
Cheyney reflected that, while the man might have some of the
shitty egocentric habits of the Veddy Rich and Well-Known in LA,
he was also a near-superb actor: only a man as experienced as he
was himself could have told how really close Paladin was to the
ragged edge of tears.
But not of guilt, that was what was so puzzling, so goddamn-
maddening.
Of perplexity.
He felt that absurd sense of sorrow again, absurd because it
presupposed the man's innocence: he did not want to be Edward
Paladin's nightmare, did not want to be the heavy in a Kafka novel
where suddenly nobody knows where they are, or why they are
there.
"I can't do anything about the glass," Cheyney said. He came back
and sat down across the coffee table from Paladin, "but I've just
killed the sound. So it's you talking to me and vice-versa." He took
a pack of Kents from his breast pocket, stuck one in the corner of
his mouth, then offered the pack to Paladin. "Smoke?"
Paladin picked up the pack, looked it over, and smiled. "Even my
old brand. I haven't smoked one since night Yul Brynner died, Mr
Cheyney. I don't think ant to start again now."
Cheyney put the pack back into his pocket. "Can we talk?" he
asked.
Paladin rolled his eyes. "Oh my God, it's Joan Raiford."
"Who?"
"Joan Raiford. You know, "I took Elizabeth Taylor to Marine
World and when she saw Shamu the Whale she asked me if it
came with vegetables?" I repeat, Detective Cheyney: grow up. I
have no reason in the world to believe that switch is anything but a
dummy. My God, how innocent do you think I am?"
Joan Raiford? Is that what he really said?, Joan Raiford?
"What's the matter?" Paladin asked pleasantly. He crossed his legs
the other way. "Did you perhaps think you saw a clear path? Me
breaking down, maybe saying I'd tell everything, everything, just
don't let 'em fry me, copper?"
With all the force of personality he could muster, Cheyney said: "I
believe things are very wrong here, Mr Paladin. You've got them
wrong and I've got them wrong. When your lawyer gets here,
maybe we can sort them out and maybe we can't. Most likely we
can't. So listen to me, and for God's sake use your brain. I gave you
the Miranda Warning. You said you wanted your lawyer present. If
there was a tape turning, I've buggered my own case. Your lawyer
would have to say just one word - enticement - and you'd walk
free, whatever has happened to Carson. And I could go to work as
a security guard in one of those flea-bitten little towns down by the
border."
"You say that," Paladin said, "but I'm no lawyer.
But ... Convince me, his eyes said. Yeah, let's talk about this, lees
see if we can't get together, because you're right, something is
weird. So ... convince me.
"Is your mother alive?" Cheyney asked abruptly.
"What - yes, but what does that have to-"
"You talk to me or I'm going to personally take two CHP
motorcycle cops and the three of us are going to rape your mother
tomorrow!" Cheyney screamed. "I'm personally going to take her
up the ass! Then we're going to cut off her tits and leave them on
the front lawn! So you better talk!"
Paladin's face was as white as milk: a white so white it is nearly
blue.
"Now are you convinced?" Cheyney asked softly. 'I'm not crazy.
I'm not going to rape your mother. But with a statement like that
on a reel of tape, you could say you were the guy on the grassy
knoll in Dallas and the Burbank police wouldn't produce the tape. I
want to talk to you, man. What's going on here?"
Paladin shook his head dully and said, "I don't know."
In the room behind the one-way glass, Jacoby joined Lieutenant
McEachern, Ed McMahon (still looking stunned), and a cluster of
technical people at a bank of high-tech equipment. The LAPD
chief of police and the mayor were rumored to be racing each other
to Burbank.
"He's talking?" Jacoby asked.
"I think he's going to," McEachern said. His eyes had moved
toward Jacoby once, quickly, when he came in. Now they were
centered only on the window. The men seated on the other side,
Cheyney smoking, relaxed, Paladin tense but trying to control it,
looked slightly lowish through the one-way glass. The sound of
their voices was clear and undistorted through the overhead
speakers - a top-of-the-line Bose in each corner.
Without taking his eyes off the men, McEachern said: "You get his
lawyer?"
Jacoby said: "The home number on the card belongs to a cleaning
woman named Howlanda Moore."
McEachern flicked him another fast glance.
"Black, from the sound, delta Mississippi at a guess. Kids yelling
and fighting in the background. She didn't quite say I'se gwine
whup you if you don't quit!, but it was close. She's had the number
three years. I re-dialed twice.
"Jesus," McEachern, said. "Try the office number?"
"Yeah," Jacoby replied. "Got a recording. You think ConTel's a
good buy, Loot?"
McEachern flicked his gray eyes in Jacoby's direction again.
"The
number on the front of the card is that of a fairly large stock
brokerage," Jacoby said quietly. "I looked under lawyers in the
Yellow Pages. Found no Albert K. Dellums. Closest is an Albert
Dillon, no middle initial. No law firm like the one on the card."
"Jesus please us," McEachern said, and then the door banged open
and a little man with the face of a monkey barged in. The mayor
had apparently won the race to Burbank.
"What's going on here?" he said to McEachern.
"'I don't know," McEachern said.
"All right," Paladin said wearily. "Let's talk about it. I feel,
Detective Cheyney, like a man who had just spent two hours or so
on some disorienting amusement park ride. Or like someone
slipped some LSD into my drink. Since we're not on the record,
what was your one interrogatory? Let's start with that."
"All right," Cheyney said. "How did you get into the broadcast
complex, and how did you get into Studio C?"
"Those are two questions."
"I apologize."
Paladin smiled faintly.
"I got on the property and into the studio," he said, "the same way
I've been getting on the property and into the studio for over
twenty years. My pass. Plus the fact that I know every security
guard in the place. Shit, I've been there longer than most of them."
"May I see that pass?" Cheyney asked. His voice was quiet, but a
large pulse beat in his throat.
Paladin looked at him warily for a moment, then pulled out the
lizard-skin wallet again. After a moment of rifling, he tossed a
perfectly correct NBC Performer's Pass onto the coffee table.
Correct, that was, in every way but one.
Cheyney crushed out his smoke, picked it up, and looked at it. The
pass was laminated. In the corner was the NBC peacock,
something only long-timers had on their cards. The face in the
photo was the face of Edward Paladin. Height and weight were
correct. No space for eye-color, hair-color, or age, of course; when
you were dealing with ego. Walk softly, stranger, for here there be
tygers.
The only problem with the pass was that it was salmon pink.
NBC Performer's Passes were bright red.
Cheyney had seen something else while Paladin was looking for
his pass. "Could you put a one-dollar bill from your wallet on the
coffee table there?" he asked softly.
"Why?"
"I'll show you in a moment," Cheyney said. "A five or a ten would
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