by Alan Russell
The water was now getting dangerously high in the tub. Jaeger motioned with his head. “You’re about to have a flood,” he said.
As Ran reached for the faucet handles, Jaeger struck. He moved so quickly Ran didn’t even have a chance to make a sound. With one gloved hand he grabbed Ran by the hair, with the other he cradled his chin. Jaeger yanked his head back with what appeared to be a minimum of effort, but the force of the impact shook the walls. Limp and unmoving, Ran sank into the water, his nose and mouth falling beneath the surface. For a minute, bubbles rose from Ran’s nose and mouth. Then they stopped.
Jaeger was willing to bet the coroner’s office would rule the death as accidental. The injuries would be consistent with a bad fall. Besides, the coroner’s office hadn’t yet recovered from the bombing. They were operating, but nowhere near peak efficiency.
It was a good time to get away with murder, thought Jaeger, and that was a good thing. The night was still young.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
Graham sipped at his Ivy gimlet. The drink was advertised as the house specialty: tamped mint leaves at the bottom of the glass topped by crushed ice, SKYY vodka, and lemon juice. He would have enjoyed the drink a lot more with Ran sitting next to him. His friend was almost half an hour late. That wasn’t like him, especially when Graham was buying.
The Santa Monica version of the Ivy was less ostentatious than the one in West Hollywood, which was frequented by celebrities and the incumbent stargazers. The movie Get Shorty had featured Danny DeVito and his omelet scene there. DeVito’s display was Gatsby updated: stars are different from you and me. Menus were something for ordinary people, not stars. Stars order whatever strikes their fancy, because they can.
“Can I get you another?”
“Not yet,” Graham told the bartender, who nodded, then went back to cleaning some glasses.
The drinking crowd was light. At another time Graham might have better appreciated the water view, tropical plants, and Gauguinesque artwork, but he’d already crossed the line from impatience to concern. He studied his cell phone display and then decided to dial Ran’s number. The call went through, but Ran didn’t answer his phone. Something wasn’t right. Night or day, no matter where he was, Ran always answered his phone. It was his lifeline. This time he didn’t pick up.
Unbidden, the thought struck Graham: he’s dead.
I’m overreacting, he told himself. Ran’s just late. Or he needs to replace the batteries to his phone. But the morbid thought clung to him, and wouldn’t be beaten back. As the minutes passed, Graham’s fears continued to grow. A drumbeat in his mind started beating, a continual pounding of the words “What the hell have I done?”
Graham had never thought he could feel worse than he had in Paris. One of his few consolations over the years was that what happened there was an accident, and that the other driver’s aggressiveness was the main cause of the deaths. But he couldn’t point his finger at anyone else this time. As little as he knew about his enemies, he did know they were ruthless, and he should have taken that into account. Somehow they had figured out that Ran was helping him, and now he was dead.
Just like in Paris, he felt overwhelmed. Body and mind roiled in turbulence. There was no relief for him. And like he had in Paris, Graham ran from his crime—not the crime scene, but the crime itself.
A detective had interviewed him, but only briefly. “So when he didn’t show up for our meeting,” Graham told him, “I called up Jackie.”
The detective didn’t press him further, accepting his story. No one seemed to think Ran’s death was anything but a tragic accident, and Graham didn’t tell them anything different.
Surrounded by strangers, Jackie turned to Graham’s shoulder to sob on. Grief made her forget how much she disliked him. Every time she cried, Graham was reminded of his guilt. For hours he remained captive. It wasn’t until Jackie’s sister showed up at eight o’clock that he was able to leave the apartment.
Once outside, Graham bent down and sucked in air, but still he couldn’t seem to get enough breath. There wasn’t enough air in the world for him.
After a minute, he straightened up. They could be watching him now. He was vulnerable, out in the open. Graham looked around and didn’t see anything. But there were a hundred spots where someone could be stalking him without being seen. What Graham did professionally with a camera, someone else could be doing with a weapon. If he hoped to get payback for his friend’s death, he needed to stay alive.
Graham thought it unlikely that the murderer or murderers would have lingered after killing Ran. They probably didn’t know about his rental. As a precaution, Graham had removed all the telltale Hertz clues. It was just another Camry. But he didn’t take any chances. He walked half a block away from the car, then suddenly turned around and sprinted to it. No one jumped out with a gun.
Inside his car, he activated the locks, started the engine, and jackrabbited off. He checked his rearview mirror, and didn’t see any pursuit. Safe, he thought, but he didn’t feel safe. And his friend was dead.
“Bastards,” he yelled, the word an explosive sob. “Bastards.”
Graham wiped hard at his nose. Grief would have to wait. He needed to think, to plan. But the more he tried to concentrate, the more his ghosts kept surfacing. They were all driving with him, Ran and Le Croc and Lady Godwin and her just begun baby.
His phone rang. He looked at the display and saw it was a local number. When he picked up the phone, Graham heard someone crying. At first he thought it was Jackie, but she didn’t have his number. It was Lanie.
Her words were tremulous, and she could barely hold them together: “Did you hear about the accident?”
For a moment, Graham wondered if she was talking about Ran, but then realized she didn’t even know him.
“No.”
Her answer was jumbled in one long run-on sob: “Therewasabadaccident—mylimo—mystand-in—myfriend—Ineedyou.”
He understood her last three words, and those were enough.
For once, Graham didn’t mind having to deal with the security at the studio lot. He hoped they were as vigilant with everyone trying to gain entry. Graham was even escorted over to the set. Lanie was waiting for him behind the locked doors of an office. They didn’t say anything to one another, just held each other in a tight hug. Graham’s already wet shoulder got another workout before he hustled her away.
In the car, she told him about the accident. It had occurred in Malibu on a quiet stretch of road just a few miles from the Grove. Two of the limousine’s tires had blown out, and the limo had gone over the side of the road. There were no survivors.
“Piper had a fight with her boyfriend,” Lanie said, “so I offered to put her up at my place. Since you were going to pick me up, Piper took the limo.”
Piper Francis had been Lanie’s stand-in for five years. A stand-in does a lot of the star’s dirty work. Directors often figure out how they want to shoot a scene using a stand-in. Lighting and camera people block their shots with the stand-in. Usually a stand-in bears a resemblance to the star. According to Lanie, Piper could have been her sister. She had the same complexion and hair, and was the same height and build. Piper hadn’t only been Lanie’s stand-in. Over the years, they had become good friends.
“Maybe it was just an accident,” she said. “But when I heard, I panicked. The police say it was an accident, though.”
She said the last words as if trying to convince herself that was the case.
“Let me tell you about Ran’s accident,” Graham said.
When he finished, Lanie said, “What will we do?”
“GALA,” Graham said, then explained his shorthand. “Get away from LA.”
“I have a getaway home in Ojai,” Lanie said. “No one knows about it.”
Ojai was a town off the beaten path about two hours north of
Los Angeles.
Graham voiced his doubts: “No one?”
“Not even your sort. My property is up in the foothills of Upper Ojai Valley. It’s surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest and is very secluded. I don’t know my neighbors and I can’t see their homes. And I never take visitors. You’ll be my first.”
“What about staff?”
“The gardener comes every Thursday. That’s it.”
Graham still wasn’t convinced. “People in town would have seen you and talked.”
“I don’t go into town. The property is my Zen retreat. It’s very Eastern in a very Western setting. Trees, rocks, and nature are my companions. There are no phones, and no power lines.”
Maybe it was just his frame of mind, but to Graham, her retreat sounded more like a cemetery than a home. He didn’t say that aloud, though. Without a better alternative, he got on 101 going north. The farther they traveled, the quieter each of them seemed to get, both of them lost in their own grief. Traffic on the freeway was slow, and the cause eventually became apparent. On the side of the road were two damaged cars, a California Highway Patrol cruiser, and the paramedics. Traffic accidents were a daily event on LA’s freeways, but it was always as if no one had ever seen a wreck. Drivers slowed down and rubbernecked. No one, it seemed, could look away from an accident.
Graham hated the slowdowns. They always made him think about his own crash.
As she stared at the accident, Lanie asked, “Why?”
Graham knew she was talking about the accident that had claimed the life of her friend. “I would guess it was an ambush. They identified the limo as the same one driving you back and forth to the Grove. Mistaken identity killed Piper. You were the one who was supposed to die.”
“Why?”
“You’re a loose end. I am a loose end. And so was Ran. Today the loose ends were supposed to be tied up.”
Lanie said, “Maybe . . . maybe I should . . . make some calls.”
“To the vice president?” Graham asked.
“Don’t ask me any questions.”
“Excuse the hell out of me.”
“You’re still looking for your goddam story.”
“No, I’m looking to keep us alive.”
“I won’t betray a trust. If you were in my position, would you put a secret into the hands of someone like you?”
Graham wished he could be insulted, but she was just turning the camera on him and what he did.
“To stay alive,” he said, “yes.”
“Staying alive isn’t enough.”
Lanie had proved that during her suicide attempt. They had slept and wept together. He had saved her life, but he still hadn’t earned her trust.
“I need to tell you a story,” said Graham.
He took a deep breath. He had never thought he would tell his secret to anyone but the Abbot. It was the five-hundred-pound gorilla he was always chained to. It moved him, he didn’t move it. The very notion of telling another being made him feel as if he were stepping through an opening, with no idea of how far he would fall.
Graham started talking anyway.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
Even after two hours of lovemaking, Jaeger couldn’t quite shake his feeling of annoyance.
He didn’t make mistakes. He was a craftsman at his work. And yet he had erred: Lanie Byrne still lived.
Jaeger wondered if she had gone into hiding. Lanie had taken the day off from work. If she was in mourning for her friend, she was doing her grieving away from the Grove. Jaeger thought it possible she was with the paparazzo. The man had balls. He had used himself as bait, and somehow had identified Jaeger as the enemy. The Israeli had lied to Jaeger when he said that he only recognized him because of his scar. His photos had told a different story. He had keyed on Jaeger and to a lesser degree the brothers. The photographer had known what to look for, but how?
It was small consolation to Jaeger that he had gotten to the pictures first and destroyed all of them. He should have been anonymous to the paparazzo. Pilgrim must have known that someone like Jaeger would be coming for him. Maybe he had seen him from a distance while Jaeger had been working his trail. The tar pit meeting had been designed to bring Jaeger in close. Photos would have provided the paparazzo with something tangible in the event he tried to take any of his speculations to the authorities. Without them, he had nothing, or nothing that could ever be proved.
The paparazzo was in a maze he would never find his way out of, but it bothered Jaeger that the man had played tag with him and was still alive. Soon, though, he would have to surface. And when he did, Pilgrim would find that Jaeger had the exits to all of his holes covered. Every contingency had been planned for. Pilgrim would be dead before he got any closer to figuring out the puzzle.
The woman next to Jaeger nestled closer. Angelica looked up at him and smiled. She had no idea that he was the least bit troubled. In her presence, he kept a fatuous smile on his face, as if he were smitten. Angelica ran her hand along his firm chest.
“This is what I call a layover,” she said.
Jaeger nodded, feigning total agreement. Angelica’s eyes went a little cross-eyed looking back at him. He could tell that she was already beginning to think she was in love. His English businessman persona was rather irresistible. Earnest, yet boyish; wealthy, but not snobbish.
“More champagne?” she asked with a giggle.
“Perhaps in a few minutes, darling.”
While she had thrashed under him, Jaeger had been thinking about ways to make Pilgrim surface. Everyone had their pressure points. All Jaeger had to do was ratchet them up. The Israeli’s death would be plaguing him now. He would know that they could easily strike at someone close to him. Jaeger considered using his father as bait, or that former girlfriend they had uncovered. Guilt worked well with Pilgrim. It wasn’t an emotion you would associate with a paparazzo, but it was clear he had never gotten over Paris. What a fool.
Tomorrow, Jaeger would begin turning up the pressure on him. The only problem was that Pilgrim wasn’t taking calls again. But there were always ways to get messages to people, thought Jaeger. Strong messages.
“Are you all right, John?”
Angelica was looking at him again with her cow eyes, her expression one of too tender concern.
“Why, yes.”
“Because you’ve been quiet.”
“Perhaps because I am satiated beyond words.”
“It was special, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“It feels so right being here in your arms.”
Jaeger made some appropriate sounds of agreement, but he was tired of her drivel and looked for a way to end it. He reached for the remote control on the nightstand.
“Do you mind if I turn on the telly for a few minutes, dear? The Tokyo and Hong Kong markets are open now, and I need to get a read on their activity.”
Her head bobbed up and down in quick agreement, and Jaeger started channel surfing.
“CNN’s channel 30,” Angelica said.
Jaeger entered the numbers. Lanie Byrne materialized on the screen looking upset.
“. . . he came at me,” she said, “swinging a knife. I started running away, and that’s when he pulled a gun and started shooting. I thank God I’m alive.”
The face of a talking head appeared on the screen. “Miss L was able to escape her attacker, the same man she believes has been stalking her for months.”
The correspondent’s face was replaced by another. Jaeger found himself looking at his own picture on television. The shot was dark and blurry. It was unlikely that even people who knew him, and there were few of those, would be able to recognize him from the photo. He was wearing a hat and dark tinted glasses, but somehow his eyes were visible in the picture. And so was his scar.
Jae
ger tuned in late to what the talking head was saying: “. . . allowed them to get a picture of the suspect. Last week Ms. Byrne’s security cameras at her estate captured her stalker on film as he tried to gain entry to her property. Los Angeles police are asking your help in locating this man. He is described as about five foot eleven, one hundred eighty pounds, with well-groomed sandy blond hair, and has a scar running down the left side of his face. Police warn you that the suspect is believed to be armed and dangerous.”
Jaeger’s picture finally disappeared from the screen, replaced by footage of a distraught Lanie Byrne. With tears running down her face, she spoke to the camera.
“I’m terrified,” she said. “The man looked and sounded absolutely normal, and then he tried to kill me. I want him caught, and I am offering a one hundred thousand dollar reward for information that will lead to his capture.”
The fucking paparazzo had done this, Jaeger thought.
He felt a body tensing next to him. Jaeger turned and looked at Angelica. She froze even more under his glance. As bad as the image was, it was easy to see the resemblance when you were lying down next to the suspect.
“Just my luck,” Jaeger said. “Because of my scar, everyone in Los Angeles is probably going to think I’m that crazy person.”
Angelica appeared to relax a little.
“He does look a tiny bit like you,” she said.
Because the story involved Lanie Byrne, Jaeger knew his face was going to be plastered everywhere. Bad picture or not, it was a face people were going to be looking for. There was a bounty on him.
“If you really think so,” Jaeger said, “then you’re probably not alone. Maybe I should go visit the constabulary tomorrow and have them write something exonerating me.”
Angelica let out some pent-up air. For several moments she had been very frightened, but, of course, it had just been a case of mistaken identity. She should have known.
