“Of course,” I said. “Anyone would.”
“Chollo and I met her here, and she and I talked for a long while.”
“She offer to ball you?” I said.
“Of course,” del Rio said.
“And you declined,” I said.
“Perhaps that is not your business,” del Rio said.
“Perhaps you called me,” I said.
Del Rio nodded. “She said that I was the only one who could help her. That no one else would help her and that He was going to get her.
“I asked her who He was. She said she didn’t know. I asked her how she knew He was trying to get her. She said He’d called her again, the night she took off.”
“You know when that was?”
“Yes. It made the papers. Especially here,” del Rio said. “This is a company town.” He sipped his scotch, looking at the glass. “Times when there’s nothing better,” he said. I nodded and rattled the ice around in my glass a little and took a small sip.
“I asked her what He said to her. She said He said awful things.”
“That’s our Jill,” I said. “Full of hard information.”
“She said you wouldn’t protect her, that some guy named Hawk wouldn’t protect her, that the studio didn’t give a shit, and that I was all she had left. She said I had to help her.”
“What are you supposed to do?” I said.
“Make Him leave her alone.”
“But she doesn’t know who Him is.”
“This is true,” del Rio said.
“So what do you want me to do?” I said.
“Get her the fuck out of here,” del Rio said. “I don’t want her around.”
“Has she threatened to reveal all?” I said.
“She knows better,” del Rio said. “But she’s such a mess that I’m afraid she may cause trouble without meaning to, and I don’t want to have to dump her to prevent it.”
“What a softie,” I said.
“Don’t make that mistake,” del Rio said. “You want to talk with her?”
“In a minute,” I said. “What do you think?”
“About her?”
“Yeah.”
“I think she needs a shrink.”
I nodded. “How about the mysterious He?”
“I think it’s in her head,” del Rio said.
“Who killed Babe Loftus?” I said.
Del Rio shrugged, turned his palms up. “Hey, I’m a simple Mexican,” he said. “That’s your line of work.”
“And I’m doing it grand,” I said.
“Grand,” del Rio said.
“What about the harassment?” I said. “The hanged doll—that stuff?”
“I think she did it herself,” del Rio said. “She’s trying to get people’s attention.”
“It’s working,” I said.
A dark cloud had drifted up from the basin and some big raindrops splattered occasionally on the picture window. We all sat in silence.
“She drinking?” I said.
“If she cut back, she’d be drinking,” del Rio said. “You want a refill?”
I shook my head.
“Let’s talk with her,” I said.
Del Rio nodded, and Chollo went around the bar and opened the door to the bedroom. He said something I couldn’t hear and, in a moment, Jill came out. You could see that she’d been crying. Her eyes were puffy. The eyeliner was gone, or most of it was. Her nose was red. Her hair was uncombed and looked as if she’d been running her fingers through it. She was soused to the lip line and it showed in the unsteadiness of her walk.
“Well, damn,” she said when she saw me. “The big dick from Boston.” She went to the bar and put her glass out on it. Chollo went around without comment and fixed her a new drink, scotch, water, ice. She stopped his hand after he’d added only a splash of water.
“What you doing out here, Big Dick?”
Behind the bar Chollo had no expression. Del Rio put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair as if to give me my turn, see what I could do.
“Why’d you run off?” I said.
“He called.”
“The night you left?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know who he is?”
“No.”
“What’d he say?”
She shook her head.
“Did he threaten you?”
She nodded.
“What did he threaten you with?”
She shook her head again.
“Why won’t you say?”
She drank most of her drink before she answered.
“Don’t be so fucking nosy,” she said.
“How in hell am I going to help you if I don’t know what I’m trying to help you with?”
“Maybe if you’d get off your ass and catch him,” she said, “and put him away where he belongs . . . that might help, you know?”
She finished her drink, held the glass out, and Chollo replenished it. Del Rio’s dark compassionless eyes watched her carefully.
“Anything else happen that night?” I said.
She shrugged.
“Hawk make a pass at you?”
“How’d you know?” she said. She got a crafty look on her face.
“He said there was some talk of, ah, hanky-panky, but it didn’t, if you’ll pardon the expression, come to anything.”
“You bet your ass,” she said. “I’m not fucking some coon.”
“So you turned him down,” I said.
“Sure, limp dick motherfucker. He’s a tighter ass than you.”
“And that’s why you turned him down.”
“You bet your buns. Lotta men give up a year of their life to fuck me. But you goddamned pansies.” She tossed her chin at del Rio. “Him too.”
“Yes,” I said. “I understand you brushed him off tonight too.”
She nodded righteously and drank more scotch.
“When He called, the bad guy, the man who threatened you, how did he get through?” I said.
“Huh?”
“How did he reach you?”
“He just called up,” she said. “I answered the phone.”
“This was after Hawk left you,” I said. “After eleven?”
“Sure.”
“Are you telling me that anyone, without even giving a name, could call up the Charles Hotel at, say, eleven-thirty at night and be put right through to your room, no questions asked?”
The crafty look got a little fogged over; her brows furrowed. She wasn’t a deep thinker sober, and she was a long distance past sober. She opened her mouth once, and closed it again. She looked at del Rio. She drank some scotch. I waited.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
“Jill,” I said, “the only way anyone can call your room is to be on a call list, and identify themselves. You know that. I know that. I’m on the list. Otherwise half the city of Boston would call you up every day. You’re a star.”
“You’re goddamned right I am,” Jill said. “And you better, goddamn it, start treating me like one.”
Her breath seemed short. Her face was reddening.
“Somebody better,” she said.
She let her head drop and took hold of her drink with both hands and then her shoulders sagged forward.
“Somebody better,” she said again and started to cry. The crying was hysterical and had the promise of duration. I looked at del Rio. He looked at me. Chollo looked at whatever he looked at. We waited. After a while she stopped sobbing long enough to get a cigarette going and sip some scotch.
“Why won’t anyone take care of me,” she said in a gasping voice and started to
cry again. Through the picture window I could see that the dark cloud had moved directly over us. The occasional raindrops that had spattered on the window intensified. They came now in a steady rattle.
Del Rio said, “Would you like to see your mother, Jill?” There was no kindness in his voice, but no cruelty either.
“God, no,” Jill said, still crying, her face buried in her hands, the cigarette drifting smoke from her right hand.
“Maybe your father,” I said. “Would you like to talk with your father?”
She sat suddenly upright. “My father’s dead,” she said and continued to cry, sitting up, facing us, occasionally swigging in a gulp of scotch or dragging in a lungful of smoke, between sobs. I turned that over in my mind a little.
“Your father’s not dead, Jill. He’s here in Los Angeles.”
“He’s dead,” she said.
“I’ve talked with him,” I said. “Only a week or so ago.”
“He’s dead,” she screamed at me. “Goddamn it, my father is dead. He died when I was little and he left me with my mother.”
She drank off the rest of her drink as the echoes of her scream were rattling around the hotel room, and then she pitched suddenly forward and passed out, facedown on the floor. I reached down and took the burning cigarette from her hand and put it out in an ashtray. Chollo came around the bar, and he and I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. We put her on her back, on her bed. I put the spread over her and we left her there and came back out into the living room.
“Lushes,” Chollo said. “Lushes are crazy.”
Del Rio was where we had left him, sitting still with his hands clasped behind his head.
“Know anything about her father?” I said.
“She told me he left when she was a kid. Coulda meant he died. I took it to mean he just left,” del Rio said. “Who’s this guy you talked to?”
“Guy named Bill Zabriskie, her agent put me onto him.”
“She sure threw a wingding when you said he was alive,” del Rio said.
“Yeah,” I said. “You got someone to run an errand?”
Del Rio nodded.
“Chollo,” he said, “tell Bobby Horse to come in here.”
37
WHEN Jill woke up it was late, nearly midnight. She must have felt like someone’s leftover meal when she stumbled out of the bedroom. Chollo had black coffee and a carafe of orange juice sent up. Jill drank both and smoked a cigarette before she said a word. Her face was pale, and her hair was matted from sleeping on it, and there was a wrinkle grooved into her cheek by a fold in the pillow cover.
“Got some brandy?” she said. Chollo came around the bar and poured some into her coffee. She sipped it.
“Ahh,” she said. “Hair of the dog that bit you.”
Del Rio was still there, and so was I. Chollo was in place behind the bar.
“Want something to eat?” del Rio said in his clear voice.
Jill shivered.
“God, no,” she said. She looked at her reflection in the now-dark window. “Jesus,” she said. “Am I a mess.”
“Somebody here to see you,” I said.
“Like this?” Jill said. Her hand shook as she lifted her coffee cup, and she slopped a little of the brandy-laced coffee onto her lap. She brushed absently at it with her free hand.
“Be all right,” I said. “You look fine.”
Del Rio raised his voice only slightly.
“Bobby Horse,” he said.
The Indian opened the door to the other bedroom and came out with Bill Zabriskie. Zabriskie had on the same woven sandals as I’d seen him in. He also had on tan polyester pants and a white Western-style shirt, hanging loose, with one of those little strings held by a silver clasp at the neck.
He squinted a little, as if the light were too bright, and then went and sat carefully down on the edge of one of the armchairs. He looked slowly at Jill without reaction. Jill looked at him the same way.
“Who’s this?” she said.
“What’s your name?” I said to him.
“William Zabriskie.”
“You ever married to a woman named Vera Zabriskie?” I said.
Jill had frozen in her chair, the half-drunk coffee in her right hand. There was stiffness in the outline of her shoulders.
“Sure,” Zabriskie said. He looked at his watch, which he wore on his right wrist. It was a cheap black plastic one, the kind where the wristband is built into the watch, and if you want, you can set lap times in the stopwatch mode. “Are you police?”
“You have a daughter?” I said.
“Yes. A famous TV star, her name is Jill Joyce now.”
“What was her name?”
“Jillian. Jillian Zabriskie,” he said. “Why do you keep asking me these things?”
Jill dropped the coffee cup. It broke on the floor and coffee stained the rug. No one paid any attention.
“You see her in the room anywhere?” I said.
Zabriskie looked at Jill, as if he hadn’t noticed her before. He squinted even though the light was good.
“That looks like her.”
I turned to Jill. She had shrunk back into her chair, her knees drawn up toward her chest, her arms hugging her elbows in against her. Her skin seemed drawn tight over the bones of her face. Her breath rasped in and out as if her windpipe had rusted.
“It’s Him,” she gasped. Her voice was very hoarse. “You’re dead. You have to be dead.”
Zabriskie looked puzzled.
“I’m not dead,” he said.
Jill shrank deeper in on herself.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t.” She looked at me. “Don’t let him,” she said. “I don’t want to.” Her voice got a singsong in it, and the hoarseness faded and it sounded young. “I don’t want to. I don’t want you to do that to me. I don’t like it. Please, Daddy, please. Please.” She began to cry again. “Please.”
Zabriskie stared at her blankly.
“Why did you never give me money?” he said. “You are my daughter and you are rich and you never give me money.”
Jill was now in a ball, as tightly coiled in on herself as she could get. She wasn’t crying so much as whimpering, in on herself, like a small child, entirely alone, in terrible trouble. I went over and put my hand on her shoulder and she shrank, if possible, a bit tighter, and then tentatively put up one hand and placed it on mine. Everyone was quiet; the only sound was of Jill’s small whimper.
The Indian said, “Jesus.”
Zabriskie seemed unmoved, in fact he seemed unaware of Jill’s response.
Jill raised her eyes toward me. “It’s Him,” she said. “He’s the one.”
I nodded and squeezed her shoulder a little.
“You need money,” I said to Zabriskie.
“Twenty-five years I worked there, and they let me go, when I got old.”
“Where’d you work?”
“Weldon Oil, night security.”
“Carry a gun?”
“Certainly.”
I nodded.
“What’d Jill do when you asked her for money?”
“Never a chance to ask. Miss Movie Star wouldn’t see me.”
“You write her?”
“Yes.”
“Go to see her agent?”
“Yes. She’s rich. Yet she won’t give her own father anything?”
I nodded again.
“Go to Boston to try and see her?”
“Went right to the set. Sent her a note. She never answered it.”
“Tough,” I said, “to be that desperate and that close.”
“Miss Movie Star,” he said.
“Maybe when she dies you’ll collect,” I said.
“There don’t seem to be a lot of heirs.”
“At my age?” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
“You fly to Boston?” I said.
“Bus,” he said. As if the idea that he could afford to fly was as insane as suggesting he could fly there by flapping his arms.
“Long ride?”
“Three days,” he said.
“Pack the gun in your luggage or carry it on?”
“Packed . . . what gun?” His empty eyes got smaller. “Why you asking me this?”
“No reason,” I shrugged. “Just knew you’d brought a three fifty-seven with you and wondered if it was a problem getting it cross country.”
“No,” he said.
I could feel a great sadness settling in on me.
“You left-handed?” I said.
His eyes were very beady now, shrunk to suspicious points of hostility. I could feel Jill’s hand press down on mine. She had stopped whimpering. Chollo behind the bar, the Indian, del Rio, all were motionless, some kind of frozen tapestry, silent witness to something awful being dragged into the light.
“What about it,” he said.
“Nothing, just noticed you wore your watch on the right wrist, and I wondered. Once a detective, always a detective.” I smiled my big friendly smile, old Pop Spenser, just a chatty guy, making small talk with an old man. How charming.
“I got a license for that gun,” Zabriskie said. He was in trouble and dimly he knew it. He should have shut up, but the really stupid ones don’t.
“It’s a three fifty-seven magnum, right?”
“So what?”
“Colt?”
“Smith & Wesson.”
“How about that,” I said. “Made right out in Springfield, probably, practically next to Boston. Like bringing your gun home.”
“I got a license.”
“You bring it with you to kill your daughter?” I said.
“I didn’t kill nobody,” Zabriskie said.
“You killed Babe Loftus,” I said. “By mistake.”
The room crackled with silence. Nobody breathed. The rain had stopped long ago, and the sky had cleared, and below us in the basin the lights of Los Angeles gleamed like the promise of a thousand eyes. Jill’s fingernails dug into my hand.
Stardust Page 18
