The Suspense Is Killing Me

by Thomas Gifford

  “You could tell me what you know about my brother. Bechtol thinks he might still be alive. He said you’re one of the people I should talk to about that.”

  He didn’t seem to hear me. “You think I like lookin’ like this? for Chrissakes, what am I, crazy? Fuckin’ gold chains make me look like a fuckin’ bondage freak from Keokuk. Shirts too tight make me look fat—hell, I am fat. And that miserable cunt of a wife, Samantha, Sammy she likes to be called, Sammy Shit I call her—what did I do to deserve her? What sins were so terrible? You think I want to raise the kid in a sandbox full of cocaine? My problem is an occupational hazard. I’m forty-eight, I’m a carryover from the Stone Age. The stoned age, right? I mean I got no fuckin’ guts, right? They bought me a long time ago …” Sweat was beading up on his swarthy bald head. “You know how much money I made last year? Way over a million bucks. Now I spend my life dealing with what? The second, third generation of these freaked-out little bastards with all their whining and butt-fucking and electric guitars and keyboards and plug-in MTV brains, the deejays on the take as much as ever. I’m selling this crap and calling it entertainment and music and fun … It’s disgusting. I’m underpaid, my soul is in limbo.” He kept on eating and talking like an old-time speed freak. “Now JC Tripper, he was different, one of the greats, the American Joe Cocker, a legitimate legend, y’know, Joseph Christian Tripper, a Harvard man … a Renaissance man, fuckin’ A, we’re not gonna see his like again … The dope, of course, did him in, more or less …”

  “Did you ever meet my brother?”

  “Coupla parties, shook hands, award ceremonies. He was a pretty private guy—well, hell, what am I telling you for? But I didn’t like know him.” He probed at the knish, cut it in half, and opened wide. You had to hand it to him, the man could put it away.

  “So what’s with you and Bechtol?” I asked. “Why am I here? Not that I’m not fascinated by your list of complaints—”

  “Admit it,” he said. “You didn’t like me at the start.”

  “You noticed that?”

  “I had to win you over.” He smiled as winsomely as possible. “I’m sensitive to that kind of thing. Vibes, y’know. Bad karma. You like me better now, would you say?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I like you better.”

  “Thanks, pal. It’s important to me. So what’s on Bechtol’s mind … what’s on Bechtol’s mind … well, who knows? The man’s a genius, a great writer, am I right?” One of the greats. A giant—”

  “All right already.”

  “We’re very simpatico, Bechtol and me. So, Lee—you don’t mind if I call you Lee, right?—so, Lee, we were talking about your brother, Bechtol’s running all these stories past me, and I’m getting into it, telling him things I’ve heard …” He shrugged. “You know.”

  “No time to be coy and demure, Freddie. I don’t know, that’s the point.”

  “The murder stuff.” He sniffled and busied himself with the last of the knish and the cole slaw. “It’s hard to talk about this stuff with, y’know, you.”

  “And why is that, Freddie?”

  “Well, I keep hearing about what happened in Tangier and it always comes back to murder. Somebody got murdered back there in Tangier … now, was it your brother? Or some other poor asshole who got it in the back so your brother could do a fade? And maybe you, the faithful brother, were the, ah, well, the hit man … your brother’s keeper … and they hustled you off to the nuthatch in Switzerland and papered over the whole thing … heh, heh …”

  “All so JC could disappear.” I shook my head.

  “Listen, people high in the Magna Group were scared shitless about all of it for a long time. Serious anxiety.” He had begun to squirm and look at his watch.

  “What were they afraid of?”

  “Afraid of? Afraid of?”

  “That’s right, Freddie. That’s the question.”

  “Don’t you think the idea of murder is just a little scary? Murder scares me. You? Maybe not. But put it together: JC Tripper is dead … the brother disappears … secret cremation … The whole thing is covered up but there are rumors right away … is JC really dead? Did somebody off him for reasons unknown? Or did he just die? And why in some utterly half-assed place like Tangier? It’s like an old Claude Rains movie. Turns out they’re not such hot record-keepers over there in Tangier, everything’s a little hazy in Tangier … Sounds like a great JC Tripper song, right?” He laughed softly, suddenly comfortable with himself.

  “It was a JC Tripper song,” I said. “I watched him working on it. The last song he ever wrote. The famous lost valedictory of JC Tripper … it’s a legend because nobody ever knew what happened to it.” I felt a chill along my spine and it wasn’t the air-conditioning.

  “That was the whole story all right.” He smiled and pushed his plate away. “ ‘Everything’s Hazy in Tangier.’ Imagine what it would be worth if it ever turned up …”

  “Imagine,” I said.

  “Everything’s hazy in Tangier,” he said, reciting the words slowly, “or is it really clear … in Tangier … maybe all the haze and smoke and fog … exists in here … in my mind, in the daze and the smoke and the fog … of a mind on fire … in Tangier …

  “How do you know those words? Nobody knows those words—”

  “You know them,” Rosen said.

  “I was there. You weren’t. How, Freddie?”

  “It came in the mail, my friend.”

  “When did it come in the mail, Freddie?”

  “About a month ago. Sucker just came in the mail.”

  “What makes you think it’s real?”

  “Oh, it was JC’s handwriting. No doubt of it. We had all that checked out.”

  “Where was it posted?” My heart was down to about three beats a minute. I wasn’t ready for this. “Who’d had it all these years?”

  “One of the secretaries opened it. Put it on my desk. I was out of town, up in Vegas, some damn place. I got back, fuckin’ girl never even put a flag on it. I got to it a couple days later. The envelope was long gone. There was no covering letter, nothing. Just some handwritten sheet music. Oh, it’s a mystery, pal.”

  “You told Bechtol?”

  “Listen, I’m a good soldier.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A good soldier gets his marching orders, he marches.”

  “Why Bechtol?”

  “Marching orders, my man.”

  “Who gives you your orders?”

  “Who do I work for?” He signaled for the check.

  “What is this cagey thing you’re doing?”

  “I’m just someone in the middle. I keep thinking about murder … rumors of murder.” He shrugged. “It all scares me. It all comes out of the past and yells ‘boo’ at me and I’m scared. People dyin’ around here … dig?”

  “ ‘Rumors of Murder.’ Another JC Tripper platinum hit.”

  “He recorded that one, Lee. Man, I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

  “ ‘The Look in Your Eyes.’ What are we doing, Freddie? Carrying on a whole damn conversation in JC’s titles? Y’know, Fred—you don’t mind if I call you just plain Fred, do you?—some of the murders are more than rumors … some are absolutely real—”

  “I know that. The real murders, those are the scariest of all …”

  “Sally Feinman was tortured before she was killed. Do you know why, Fred?”

  “Come on, Lee.”

  “It couldn’t have been much fun in that cistern out in Pacoima … what if he was still just barely alive when they stuffed him in the cistern? Poor old Shadow.”

  “That’s the understatement of the eighties, Lee. And it’s exactly why I am staying as cagey as I can while still being a good little soldier—”

  “I’m getting tired of the soldier shtick, okay?”

  “Sorry. But it’s fitting as a metaphor. Or I could call myself a pawn. How’s that?”

  “We’re talking about my late brother,” I s
aid. “I don’t like any of this—”

  “Look on the bright side. Maybe he’s not so late. Maybe JC himself sent the song … maybe he’s gonna come out of hiding after all these years—why not? Crazy dude, JC.”

  “JC’s dead,” I said. “Anybody hanging around in those days could have grabbed that song … it was a mess back then.”

  “Listen, if that works for you, go with it. I gotta haul ass, man. We gotta pick up the Deuce and get you back to your jalopy.” He eased his bulk along the booth, the buttons of his shirt screaming for mercy.

  We picked up Freddie II and listened to his chatter about computers. Neither one of us knew what the hell he was talking about.

  When he pulled up next to the old Caddy, Freddie turned to me, put his hand on my shoulder.

  “You’re okay, Lee. Really okay. You listened to all my shit, you were very patient with me.”

  “Talk about understatement,” I said.

  “So I’m gonna give you a little present.”

  “No coke, no thanks.”

  “Bad stuff,” came from the backseat. “Throw away.”

  “Just a name,” Rosen said. “Save you some digging. Cotter Whitney the Third. I’m only a soldier. Cotter Whitney is the commander in chief, you might say.”

  Freddie the Deuce was waving to me as they disappeared through the carved gate toward home, toward Sammy the Shit.

  Eight

  I DROVE BACK TO THE Bel Air Hotel with the cool breeze in my face and the shadows creeping across Sunset Boulevard. The traffic moved smoothly on the undulating surface and I let the Caddy drive itself. I figured it knew the way. It gave me time to think about Stryker and his A-rab in Paris who’d said he knew JC’s escape route, Morris Fleury and the file on me that Sally Feinman had been going to give him but which was now we-knew-not-where, and Freddie Rosen who’d found JC’s last song in the mail a month ago … twenty years after JC died.

  It was a heavy load of thinking because it was so laden with implications, all of which seemed to involve me. Did anyone really think I’d killed my brother? Or killed someone else so my brother could take a powder? And who was killing people now? Why? Sally Feinman and Shadow Flicker—was there going to be a next? Was it going to be me?

  What exactly had Bechtol gotten me into when he dispatched Heidi Dillinger to bring me back alive? Was I supposed to find JC per our agreement? Or was there some other role I was playing but didn’t know about? Was half a million, assuming I lived long enough to collect the second half, enough?

  The shadows were deep on the grounds of the hotel. The smell of flowers and vegetation was heady and thick. It was a far better example of hacienda building than Freddie Rosen’s place. The black swan, haughty as all get-out, hadn’t yet knocked off for the day. I wondered who represented the swan. Mike Ovitz, if I knew my swans. The swan had a deal you were bound to respect. I cross the little bridge, checked for messages, and was given an envelope. My name was handwritten in microscopic letters and the stationery bore the hotel’s imprint. Who else but Heidi Dillinger?

  I went to my room, ordered some ice and a bottle of Scotch, and took a quick shower. When I came out there was a knock at the door, room service with the goods. I avoided looking at the bill, which I signed, then I poured myself a drink and called Heidi Dillinger’s room. There was no answer, so I rang the desk to see if she’d left word as to when she might be returning.

  The guy told me that he’d already given me the envelope she’d left for me. I said I hadn’t looked at it yet. He explained in a tone appropriate for explaining the details of toilet training to a moron that Ms. Dillinger had suddenly checked out an hour ago. It was business, she’d said, and she’d left the envelope. He was sure there was something more pertinent if I’d only open the envelope and peruse the contents. He sounded as if the strains of his occupation had him very near the abyss. He was still talking to me when I hung up on him.

  I’d been looking forward to spending the evening with her and now she was gone and I felt sorry for myself. I was also very, very tired. I’d lost three hours during the flight and Morris Fleury had used up most of the previous night. I opened the envelope and read the note while I lay stretched out on the big bed. I could hear the little night sounds outside as darkness fell.

  Tripper

  Sorry to leave you in the lurch like this but the siren call of Herr Doktor Bechtol was heard in the land. So, I’m off. What can I say after I say I’m sorry? But I’ll be popping up when you least expect me. I guarantee it.

  I found out what I could about the fate of your friend Flicker. Didn’t amount to much. Someone cut his throat. Etc., etc.

  There is an open investigation but the feeling I got was that it was all drug-related and not of any great interest to the cops. I mean, they are trying but they are not knocking themselves out. A newspaper reporter told me that the cops are shy of digging too deep because “the guy was a music-business parasite, had mob connections, was a druggie, and nobody wants to open all those cans of worms.” You get the idea?

  But I do have a lead for you, proving once again that research is my middle name. Donna Kordova is Flicker’s widow. They split up a month ago but they stayed close. She’s bound to know things we don’t and some of it might be useful. Shouldn’t be too tough for a guy like you—that charm, that smile. Her address is on the enclosed sheet.

  Keep digging. Be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

  I like that in a man.

  Yours till Niagara Falls

  Dillinger

  She had the tiniest handwriting I’d ever seen, each stroke straight up and down, utterly precise. I wondered what that meant. She’d have been excellent, say, at inscribing The Lord’s Prayer on the heads of pins.

  There was something about her. She was growing on me.

  I liked that in a woman. Whatever it was.

  I know how ridiculous it sounds but it took me three hours to find the Marina City Club. Don’t laugh if you haven’t tried it yourself. It was a jungle out there. There was a thick, wet, chilly morning fog inching its way across the Malibu beach when I got to the very end of Sunset. I looked around for Jim Rockford’s beat-up old trailer but couldn’t find it. He was just the guy I could have used, too. I headed south following the directions I’d squeezed out of the guy at the desk. He’d intimated with a grin that it would be quite a drive with a maze waiting for me at the end.

  There was the Santa Monica Pier pointing like an accusing finger into the fog where the Japanese fleet might be waiting. Reality had gone to hide in the hills. I wondered how people dealt with the fog on a regular basis. It was like taking a nap and waking up on Mars. There was Venice, and Marina del Rey, and I felt as if I must be closing in on San Diego. I smelled oil. On the side of the road a truck was burning like a huge flare guiding us on our way. Christ, get me out of here!

  With a sigh of relief I finally saw a promising road sign and staggered off the freeway and plunged into the maze. I stopped at two liquor stores and a gas station asking directions. In time I drove through yet another set of gates, these manned by an elderly gunslinger who wasn’t looking for any trouble and wanted only my name and the name of the resident I was visiting. I told him I was Chevy Chase and he didn’t bat an eye, didn’t put a warning shot across my bow, just wrote it down. It turned out that Donna Kordova had only arrived the day before yesterday. I was her first visitor.

  The maze and the fog inside the boundaries of the Marina City Club kept me at bay for awhile. I was a bulldog that morning, however. And I really wanted a break before having to find my way back onto the freeway. So I stuck with it and finally found her. I rang the doorbell and while I waited I looked out across the marina at the masts of the sailboats and the various antennas of the cabin cruisers. I heard the ghostly lap of the water sucking at the piers, the hulls softly bumping. Sea gulls squawked, swept in and out of the billowing fog.

  T
he door opened behind me. I turned around and saw a thin, rather pale woman with mousy light-brown hair cut short and gray eyes the size of silver dollars. She was wearing a T-shirt with something I hadn’t seen before spread across the front of it. It was the stylized logo of A Damned Good Thrashing. It must have been a very new T-shirt. The logo was a smiling, trusting face. With a bullet hole between the eyes. She folded her thin white arms across the bottom of the logo. Any expert on body language would have told me I was in for tough sledding.

  “Who and what are you?” Her voice was high and cracked like a dry stick. She licked her lips. Her mouth was very dry. “If you’re a reporter, you’re in the wrong place. If you’re not a reporter, you’re in the wrong place. I am not expecting guests.” She stepped back and began to close the door.

  “Please, I’m not a reporter. I was a friend of your husband’s. A long time ago. My name’s Tripper. Lee Tripper.” I smiled as bashfully as I could. “You know … the brother. I’ll bet you even knew JC back then—”

  “Wait. Let me get this straight. You’re JC Tripper’s brother and you knew Shadow?”

  “That’s right. I just thought I’d stop by and pay my respects. I was awfully sorry to hear about Shadow—”

  “And you’re not a reporter? This isn’t some sleazy trick?”

  “No, no, take a look at my driver’s license.”