I did.
8
THE doorman at the Charles Hotel was a young guy with a go-to-hell Irish face made red by the cold. He wore a fur-collared greatcoat and the kind of hat Russian ministers wear. He said he’d hold my car for me.
“No problem,” he said, and started the revolving door turning for Jill Joyce as she preceded me into the lobby.
“Come up for a drink,” she said.
“Last time I came to your place for a drink you attempted to molest me,” I said.
She turned with her mink coat open and her hands on her hips. She tossed her head back a little and her pelvis forward a little.
“You scared?” she said.
“Yuh,” I said.
She shook her head in disgust. “Like most men,” she said, “never had a real woman.”
I let that pass. Discussing it in the lobby of the Charles Hotel didn’t seem like a way to bring clarity to the argument.
“Buy me a drink in the Quiet Bar,” she said. “Then if I frighten you, you can yell for the house dick.”
“Okay,” I said, “but you’ve got to promise to talk with me.”
We started up the wide staircase to the second level of the Charles.
“Talk to you?” She stopped one step ahead of me and turned and looked back.
“With,” I said.
She shook her head in open amazement, and continued up the stairs, talking over her shoulder.
“What are you?” she asked. “Queer? You some kinda faggot?”
“You’re going to have to talk with me,” I said, “about yourself, your past, your fans, your lovers.”
“You get your rocks off talking?” she said. Her voice was loud. “You are a fucking queer.”
I took a quick two steps and caught her from behind and lifted her, holding her by her upper arms, up the last stair and steered her around the stairwell into an alcove near and to the left of the entrance to the bar. Her feet were still clear of the ground. She started to twist loose, but with her feet in the air she didn’t have much purchase.
“I’m tired of you,” I said. “I was tired of you halfway through lunch the first time I met you. But you need some help, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else but me. So I’m hanging in there, and I haven’t hit you yet. But I will soon if it keeps going the way it’s going.”
I gave her a little shake.
“You understand that?” I said.
Her breath was coming in little gasps.
I shook her again.
“You understand?”
Still making her gasping sound, she nodded her head.
“Now,” I said, “I’m going to ask you about things, and you’re going to answer me and we’re not going to play all this seductive teenager grab-ass that we’ve been playing. Right?”
She nodded again.
I set her down and let go of her upper arms. She leaned forward against the wall for a moment, and then turned slowly, leaning on the wall as she did, and rubbed her upper arms with her hands. Her breathing was still a series of half-stifled gasps and two bright streaks of crimson color smudged along her cheekbones.
“Limp . . . dick . . . mother . . . fucker,” she gasped, and then fell forward and began to sob against my chest. The sobbing wasn’t loud but it was wracking. Her whole body shook with it. Her arms hung straight down and still against her sides. I put my arms around her and patted her back gently while she cried. Two couples got off the elevator and came around the corner and studiously didn’t look at us. The men wore dark suits and red ties. The women wore frilly dresses with padded shoulders. Both men and women had too much hair. In from the suburbs. I had on a leather jacket and jeans and my Adidas Countries—white leather with the green stripes. An oldie but goodie. One of the women glanced back as they headed into the bar. Probably admiring the rakish cant to my watch cap.
Jill stopped sobbing after a while. But she kept her face pressed against my chest.
“Ready for that drink?” I said.
“I can’t go in there,” she said. Her voice was muffled. “I look awful.”
“You could look twice as bad,” I said, “and still look wonderful.”
She leaned away from me and raised her face. It was red and her eyes were puffy and some of her makeup was tear-washed. I revised my opinion, but kept it to myself.
“You mean it?” she said.
“Absolutely,” I said.
She fumbled some Kleenex out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes.
“Show must go on,” I said.
“Give me five minutes,” she said, “in the ladies’ room.”
“Okay.”
We walked to the ladies’ room.
“I’ll be right outside the door. You need me, you holler.”
“And you’ll come in and catch all the Cambridge ladies making peepee?”
“Cambridge ladies don’t do that,” I said.
She smiled at me softly, with her head down, moving only her eyes to look up at me. It was a wan smile, I think. Then she went into the ladies’ room and I leaned on the wall outside. For more than five minutes. One of the suburban ladies who’d admired my watch cap admired it again as she went past me into the ladies’ room, and admired it at even greater length when she came out a few minutes later.
“This a technique for picking up girls?” she said.
“Have you fallen for me because of my watch cap?” I said.
“No,” she said and walked off.
It was maybe fifteen minutes and I was beginning to wonder when I heard Jill Joyce scream, “Spenser!”
I slammed through the ladies’ room door with my gun out, did a little deke around a partition, and there I was. A startled woman in a green paisley dress was just emerging from a stall. She froze when she saw the gun and then ducked back into the stall. At the far end of the ladies’ room in front of the handicapped stall Jill Joyce stood with her mouth a little open, her eyes glittering, her arms folded across her breast, right hand holding left elbow. There was no one else in there. The other stall doors were ajar.
“Testing?” I said.
She laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh; it was off-key and it wobbled up and down the scale, teetering on hysteria. I slid my gun back under my arm out of sight, inside my jacket.
“I wondered if you’d really burst into a ladies’ lounge.”
“You through in here?” I said.
She did her fluty laugh again.
“For now,” she said.
I jerked my head toward the door and started out. She followed me. We walked across the lobby and into the cocktail lounge. There was a bar with stools along the left wall. In the rest of the room were couches and easy chairs grouped around low cocktail tables. We got a grouping for two in a corner near the big windows that opened out onto the courtyard. In the summer there were umbrellas out there and tables and jazz concerts on Wednesday nights. Now there was a huge Christmas tree and the residue of vigorously removed snow. People walking from the shops to the hotel hunched stiffly against the cold.
The waitress came by. Jill ordered a double vodka martini. I had a beer. When she came back with the drinks she brought two dishes of smoked almonds. I nodded toward the bartender. He nodded back and gave me a thumbs-up gesture.
“Why two?” Jill said.
“Bartender knows me,” I said and took a handful of nuts. Jill took a long pull on her martini. She looked at my glass.
“Beer?” she said.
“Very good,” I said.
“You don’t have to be a wise guy,” she said. Her eyes were only a touch red now, and her makeup was all back in place. Her eyes were the color of cornflowers.
“I know,” I said. “I do it voluntarily.”
She
drank another third of her martini and with only a third left her eyes already began to flick about looking for the waitress.
“Aside from the doll hanging,” I said, “what instances have there been of harassment?”
She drank the rest of her martini, and again her eyes flicked around the room. I looked over at the bartender, who saw me and nodded. Jill shook a cigarette from the pack she’d placed on the table and put it in her mouth and leaned toward me. There were matches in the ashtray. I lit her cigarette, blew out the match and put it in the ashtray. I put the book of matches beside her cigarettes.
“What instances of harassment have there been?” I said. When interrogating a suspect, cleverly rephrasing the question is often effective.
“I think this is harassment,” Jill said, her eyes searching for the waitress. “We have a nice evening together and you just want to talk about icky business.”
“Icky business is my profession,” I said. “Tell me about the harassment.”
The waitress arrived with another double martini.
Jill said, “Ah.”
The waitress looked at my beer, saw that it was nearly untouched, and went away. Jill dipped right in. I waited. Jill looked at me with her lovely innocent cornflower-blue eyes. I crossed my legs and tossed my foot a little to pass the time.
“Phone calls,” Jill said. “Mostly phone calls.”
“From a man?”
“Yes.” There was surprise in Jill’s voice, as if only men would ever call her.
“Where’d the calls come?”
“You mean where did I get them?”
“Un huh.”
“On the phone in my mobile home. Here, at the hotel.”
“There’s been enough press about this show so that anyone would know you were staying here. How about the mobile home. How would he get that number?”
“I don’t know. How, for Christ’s sake, would I know?”
“Is it listed?”
She shook her head in disgust and flapped her hands in front of her, the cigarette smoking in her right one.
“Spenser, I don’t know about stuff like that. I don’t know if it’s listed or not. Some gopher takes care of that. Ask Sandy, or the UPM.”
“UPM?”
“Unit production manager, for God’s sake. Why didn’t they get somebody who at least knows something about the business.”
“What’s the name of the unit production manager?”
“Bob,” Jill said. She was well into the second double martini.
“Bob what?” I said.
Jill flapped her hands again and shook her head.
“You think I memorize lists of names? I have to memorize sixty pages of dialogue every week. I don’t have time to get chummy with every member of the office staff.”
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” I said.
“Where’s that from?” Jill said.
“Some play,” I said. “What did this caller say when he called?”
“Different stuff. Sex stuff, mostly.”
“Like what?” I said.
“That a turn-on for you?” Jill said. “Having me talk about it?”
“Sure is,” I said. “This whole conversation is more exciting than dinner with Jesse Helms.”
Jill frowned beautifully, a lovely vertical frown line appearing briefly between her eyebrows and smoothing out at once.
“Whoever he is,” she said. “Mostly this guy told me what he’d like to do to me when he got me alone.”
“Abusive?” I said.
She was sipping her martini now; apparently the edge of need had softened.
“Actually,” she said, “no. It wasn’t, it was more, you know, ah, romantic.”
“Romantic?”
“Yeah, lovey-dovey. Except he used all the dirty words. But he used them, like, romantically.”
I nodded.
“And you don’t, I suppose, have even a guess as to who he might be?” I said.
“If I did, you think I wouldn’t have already told you? What kind of dumb jerk question is that?”
“The kind if you don’t ask, you feel like a fool when it comes out that you should have asked.”
“No, I don’t know the guy. I don’t recognize his voice. I don’t have any idea who he is.”
“Any letters?”
She shook her head. The martini was gone. She gestured at the waitress.
“No.”
“Get any recordings of his calls?”
“No.”
“Not on any answering machines, or anything?”
“I don’t have answering machines,” Jill said. The waitress brought her a third martini. I didn’t have too much longer before talking with her would be useless.
Jill giggled. “I don’t know how they work.”
“You get any fan letters that seem odd?” I said.
“They’re all odd,” Jill said. “I mean, for crissake, fan letters.”
“Any unusually odd?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read them. Ask Sandy.”
“Sandy reads them?”
“Sandy, or some girl in the office. I don’t have time for it. Somebody reads them and writes up a little cover, saying how they sound. You know? If there’s a trend.”
“Do you read that?” I said.
“No, they send it to my agent.”
“Whose name is?”
“My agent?”
“Un huh.”
“Why do you want my agent’s name?”
“So I can talk with him,” I said. “See, I’m a detective. That means I make an attempt to detect what’s going on, by asking questions. By looking for, ah, clues. Stuff like that.”
“You’re making fun of me,” Jill said.
“One would have to have a heart of stone . . .” I said.
“I get you in bed, I’d show you something,” Jill said. She got another cigarette and leaned toward me while I lit it, her eyes fixed on me in a look that, I think, was supposed to make my blood race.
“What’s your agent’s name?” I said.
She leaned back and blew smoke out at me in disgust.
“Ken Craig,” she said.
“He in L.A.?”
“Yes.”
“How about relationships? Any that have ended lately?”
“Relationships?”
“Yeah. Marriages, lovers, business arrangements, anybody that you’ve cut loose that might be mad at you?”
Jill was holding the martini glass in both hands and resting it against her lower lip. She gazed at me over it, her eyes closed a little so that she had a smoky look.
“There are things a girl doesn’t talk about to a man,” she said.
“Aren’t you the same woman who expressed an interest in something this long?” I said. I made the measuring gesture with my hands.
Her eyes widened and seemed to get brighter. The rim of her glass was still pressed against her lower lip; the tip of her tongue appeared above it and darted laterally, back and forth.
“Maybe I did,” she said.
“And now there’s things a girl doesn’t discuss with a man?” I said.
She tilted the martini glass up suddenly and drank the rest of it in a long swallow. She put the glass down with a thump and stood up.
“I’m going to bed,” she said.
The brightness left her eyes and they seemed unfocused now.
“I’m not saying another word to you. I’m going to bed.”
“My loss,” I said. She walked toward the elevator without another sound. I glanced at the bartender. He spread his hands, palms down in a don’t-worry-about-it gesture. I left my beer half drunk and
followed her out.
9
AT 6:10 the winter morning was as bright as a hooker’s promise and warmer than her heart. The temperature was already in the thirties and by noon the plowed streets would be dark and glistening with snow melt. I was in the lobby of the Charles Hotel, fresh showered, clean shaven, armed to the teeth, and dressed to the nines: sneakers, jeans, a black polo shirt, and a leather jacket. The collar of the polo shirt was turned up inside the collar of the jacket. I took off my Ray-Bans to see if I could catch another glimpse of myself in some lobby glass, but there wasn’t any. I’d have to live on memories till we got to a mirror. I could go outside and look at myself in the smoked glass windows of the Lincoln Town Car parked out there, but the slight curve of the window enlarged things, and when you’re a fifty regular you don’t want enlargement.
At the far end of the lobby a solitary desk clerk shuffled paper behind the counter. A tall guy with rimless glasses was admiring the huge floral display in the middle of the lobby. Faintly, I could smell coffee, as, in the recesses of the building, the kitchen began to crank up for breakfast. Past the floral display, to the left of the wide staircase, an elevator door opened and Jill Joyce came out, along with a bulky black man in a blue blazer. The black man carried a walkie-talkie. He nodded when he saw me and moved away, and she was mine for the day.
Jill was wearing jeans which appeared to have been applied with a spray gun, high emerald boots with three-inch heels, a white blouse unbuttoned to exactly the right depth of cleavage. She had her black mink coat thrown over her shoulders. Until you got very close she looked as if she weren’t wearing any makeup. Close up I could see that she was, and that it was so artfully applied that it gave the illusion of fresh-faced innocence, with a touch of lip gloss. She was carrying an alligator bag that was either a large purse or the carrying case for a small tuba. She handed it to me.
“Good morning, cute buns,” I said.
“I was hoping you’d notice.”
We went out through the revolving door. The tall guy with the rimless glasses went out through the swinging doors to the left of the revolving door and when we reached the sidewalk he said, “Miss Joyce.”
Jill shook her head.
“Not now,” she said. “I’ve got a six-fifteen call.”
Stardust Page 5
