“It won’t make any difference, Angelo. This killer is going to be one jump ahead of us. There won’t be any witnesses, and there won’t be any evidence that means a damn. We’re going to have to either track him down or catch him in the act.”
“What can I say, R.J. I like evidence.”
“You have to. You’re a cop.”
Angelo went back to looking at the corpse, but R.J. felt like Bertelli was really looking at him out of the corner of his eyes. R.J. didn’t care. He was feeling happier than he had in weeks. It looked like he was finally off the hook with the cops. After a minute, Angelo cleared his throat.
“So, um, R.J.,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Uh, ahem.”
R.J. looked at his friend. Normally, Angelo could talk to anybody about anything. “Something in your throat, Detective? Cold air in here getting to you?”
“Throat? No. Nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
“Uh—”
“Angelo, for Christ’s sake!”
“I was wondering about Casey,” Angelo said in a rush.
“Oh.” R.J.’s good mood drained out of him, almost as though Angelo’s question had poked a hole in his chest. “Seems like you ask me that a lot.”
“Yeah, well.” Angelo shrugged. “Seems like it’s, you know. There to ask. A lot.”
“Maybe it is, at that.” R.J. sighed. “What do you want to know?”
“You know. Where things stood wit you two. Hey, you don’t have to say nothin’ if you don’t want.”
“That’s good,” R J. said. “Because I don’t know what to say.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean, I thought this thing yesterday might give us a chance to talk. Get squared away, you know.”
“So?”
“So she sits at the desk all day with a phone stuck to the side of her face. Says maybe two words at the end of the day, that’s it.”
“Nothin’ meaningful, huh.”
“Not to me. It’s business on the phone, then she goes home with the two cops assigned to her. I don’t even get a good night.”
“On account of you were rushing around with this?” Angelo said, pointing his chin at the corpse.
“Yeah, maybe. No. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Angelo nodded. “Uh-huh. And I should just pick my answer there, right?”
“Shit, Angelo, I would have found a way to say good night if it had been me.”
“It ain’t you, buddy. It’s her. And she’s got a whole different set of signals.”
“What is that, some kind of Italian folk wisdom? I mean, what does that mean, a different set of signals?”
Angelo spread his hands. “I mean, this is why people talk, R.J. Because if somethin’ don’t get said, then what isn’t said, and the way it isn’t said, always means something different to everybody. Ain’t no two people the same that way, know what I’m saying?”
“Not really, no.”
“I mean, she don’t say good night, and to you that’s rejection, right?”
“That’s right. What else could it be?”
“The fuck do I know, what else? It could mean, I’ll see you later, so why bother to say good night now, huh?”
R.J. blinked. “You think she meant that?”
“Uh, not in this case, no. But you see what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, maybe. I guess so.”
“I’m just saying you gotta talk to her, R.J. That’s all.”
“How can I talk to her when she’s always on the phone?”
Angelo shrugged. “Call her.”
“What. On the phone? Call her on the phone, Angelo?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I’m sitting five feet from her all day and she doesn’t say a word, why should she talk to me on the phone?”
“What do I know. She likes the phone. Call her up, R.J.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll do that, Angelo,” R.J. said. He looked around the room, taking one last look at the body of Robert Brickel. “Let’s get out of here.”
They left the morgue and walked out to join Portillo. He was hanging up the telephone with a look on his face like he’d just won a long court case.
“Captain Davis wanted to be sure your whereabouts were accounted for,” Portillo said. “Including your lunch break.”
R.J. nodded. “He’s a thorough guy. You have to admire that.”
“I told him that a good cop must learn to live with conclusive proof.” And Portillo smiled again. “He was not pleased. I woke him up.”
“Goddamn that’s great,” Bertelli said, and he reached for the phone. “You’ve inspired me, Lieutenant. I’m gonna call Kates at home and tell him, too.”
R.J. laughed. One of the lab techs looked up at him. Laughter was not a sound they heard much here at the morgue. R J. didn’t care. He hadn’t heard it much himself lately, and it felt good.
“What’s next, Uncle Hank?”
“I think we go to Detective Bertelli’s list of suspects, R.J. In fact, it has occurred to me—you remember this Minch person?”
“The guy that edits the film magazine. Yeah, I remember. What about him?”
“He lives in La Crescenta, R.J.”
R.J. shrugged. “And?”
“And La Crescenta is just a few miles from where the body was found. Maybe three freeway exits.”
“Damn.”
“Yes. I think we have a new hot suspect.”
CHAPTER 29
La Crescenta is maybe a thousand feet higher up than Glendale. Through the window of Portillo’s car, R.J. noticed the smog thin out and then disappear as they climbed higher, driving up the freeway. They took an off-ramp and turned onto Foothill Boulevard, the main street in the area.
SCREEN SCREAM magazine had an office on Foothill Boulevard near a gas station and an Armenian grocery store.
“This is unofficial,” Portillo said as he nosed the car into a spot in the cracked blacktop of the almost empty parking lot. “I had better wait here.”
“I’m gonna go along,” Bertelli said. “Unofficially.”
R.J. glanced at Angelo, who shrugged. “That way, if this guy is it, I got a gun. Which you aren’t licensed to pack out here. But hey—youse can do all the talking.”
“Hell, butt in if you want, Angelo,” R.J. said. “It’s your lead.” He opened the car’s door. “I just hope we don’t need your equalizer.”
They didn’t. But it was a near thing.
The office wasn’t much. Just one small room with a big closet. The closet was bulging with back issues, clippings, stacks of newspapers. The office was equipped with a computer, a telephone, a VCR and monitor, and Ed Minch.
Ed Minch wasn’t much more than a beard and an attitude. He could work three fingers on his right hand. His left hand was strapped to his wheelchair. So were his legs and his head.
Their suspect was a quadriplegic.
“What the fuck do you want, asshole?” Minch snarled as R.J. stutter-stepped to a surprised stop in the doorway.
R.J. shook his head and looked at Angelo, who shrugged. It was obvious from one look that Minch could not have committed the murders. Still, who knew that he might know about them?
R.J. had stopped in shock when he saw the wheelchair. Now he moved on into the room. “Are you Ed Minch?”
The head twitched slightly. There was a little whee noise and the chair spun to face R.J. “No. Ed Minch was a human being. I’m a roadkill that won’t go away. What the fuck is it to you who I am?”
“I need to ask you a few questions.” R.J. reached for one of his business cards. “My name is—”
“I know who you are, shit-for-brains. And I don’t give a rat’s ass what you need.” The whee noise came again and the chair spun away, back to the monitor.
“Jesus Christ,” Angelo said from his spot in the doorway. “Is this guy for real?”
The chair spun again, and then shot ove
r to Angelo. R.J. had to jump back out of the way, or his toes would have been pulped.
“For real?” Minch said, coming to a stop practically in Angelo’s pocket. “For real? You think somebody could make this up? You’re stupider than star-boy here, and he’s dumber than a brick.”
R.J. stepped closer. “Minch, listen—”
Whee. The chair whipped around so quickly R.J. didn’t jump in time. The footrest banged him hard in the shins.
“What I’ll listen to is your receding footsteps, Brooks. You and your pet dago monkey can just disappear. I have to work for a living. Not that this in any way resembles living.” He gave a kind of cough that might have been some sort of laugh, and the chair lurched forward, straight at R.J.
R.J. jumped back again as the chair sped past him.
“Good reflexes,” Minch said, “for somebody who couldn’t find his ass using both hands.”
“Goddammit,” R.J. snarled, “people are dying, Minch.”
“Our whole culture is dying, Brooks. Turning to shit, and we’re all just shoveling flies at it. These people dying doesn’t make a bit of difference either way. They’re just foot soldiers. Pawns in the struggle to tear down two thousand years of Western civilization.” He spun the chair again. As R.J. heard the whee he instinctively jumped back. “Besides,” Minch said with acid sweetness, “there are worse things than death, you know.”
He sat there in his motorized chair, unable to move except for one hand, and it occurred to R.J. that two large guys with a gun were helpless in front of him. The chair darted around as fast as this guy’s mind. R J. hadn’t taken one normal step or finished one sentence since he hit the door.
“Part of the decline of Western civilization,” R.J. said slowly, “comes from relaxing our moral values. And murder is not a moral thing, Minch.”
The guy in the chair practically smiled. “Good! Wonderful! That was almost human thought! I’m astounded, Brooks. Listen! The sound of one hand clapping!” And he flopped his one half-good hand on the metal tray attached to the front of his chair.
“The point is, however,” Minch said, lurching the chair closer to R.J. and looking up at him, “that this is not murder, but execution. Justice. It’s a dying society kicking back at its own murderers. This is totally justified self-defense. Naturally it’s too little too late—I’d like to see every studio in town running knee-deep in blood. Of course, I’d have to measure that with someone else’s knee.”
The chair lurched and R.J. jumped. Minch spun over to Angelo. “What about you, you dumb bag of bird droppings? Do you have any thoughts that didn’t come from the wop version of GQ?”
Bertelli looked down at Minch. “I’ve got one,” he said. “You might not like it much.”
Minch made the coughing noise again and spun away. “Oh, you never know what I might like, Rocky. Go ahead and slug me, that may be the only way I can get off.”
As Minch went zipping past, R.J. leaned forward. The batteries that powered the chair were perched on a shelf on the back side, about eight inches off the ground. R.J. yanked the power lead off the batteries’ terminals and the chair groaned to a halt.
“Hey! You stupid son-of-a-bitch, what are you doing?”
R.J. grabbed the handles of the chair and turned Minch around to face them. “I’m leveling the playing field,” he said. “We might be able to keep up with just your mouth.”
“Not likely,” Minch said. “Plug me back in, you scum-sucking Neanderthal orangutan.”
“Not until you answer a couple of questions,” R.J. said.
“Oh, this is great. This really is. Did you bring a sap? Besides the Guinea gorilla leaning in the doorway, I mean. We already know he’s a total sap. You could get him to hold my hand down so I can’t defend myself while you beat me.”
“Minch. Shut up. Please?”
“Shut up. Sure, I’ll shut up. Why the fuck shouldn’t I shut up? All I have left is my voice, but the great R.J. Brooks wants me to shut up, so I’ll shut up for the traitorous butt-licking son-of-a-bitch.”
R.J. shook his head as if he could shake loose some of the poison pouring out of Minch. “What the hell have you got against me, anyway, Minch?”
“You could have stopped them and you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t stop them. Anything I tried would just give them more publicity. Sell more tickets. Nobody can stop them.”
“At least somebody is trying.”
R.J. looked down into Minch’s eyes. The light burning there was almost twice as bright as any R.J. had ever seen. But it wasn’t burning clear. Minch was about a half step out of a straight jacket. Maybe being in the chair had done it to him. Maybe he’d always been like this. It didn’t matter. The only thing they were going to get out of him was more of what they’d already had, and R.J. had had enough.
“All right, Minch,” he said.
“All right? ALL RIGHT? It damn well isn’t all right!” He waved his hand feebly. “You don’t get it, do you, Brooks? I didn’t think you would, but I was hoping. Well, there goes the optimist in me.”
He gave his dry hacking little laugh again and lurched sideways. “As Time Goes By means something, Brooks. Something special, pure, good. Not just to me, but to all of us, our whole culture. Millions of people, all around the world. Because it stood for something. It was a rallying cry for the last great moral battleground—and the good guys won. It was important, goddammit—maybe one of five or six movies in history that are really important.”
He slapped his hand on the tray. It was a feeble slap, but if the intention behind it counted for anything, it would have brought the building down. “And now those goddamned soulless leeches want to sodomize it! Like putting a Nike swoosh on the Pieta, for Christ’s sake! Can’t anybody else see that? See that it’s wrong, beyond wrong, it’s actually EVIL!”
He turned those burning eyes on R.J. again. “Can’t you at least see that, Brooks?”
“I see it,” R.J. said. “But you’re right. You’re an optimist. I’m not. You think you can save Western civilization by stopping this remake. I don’t believe that. I don’t even think I can stop the remake. But I can save a couple of lives if I stop this killer. Maybe that’s not as much. It won’t take the mustache off any Mona Lisas. But it’s all I can do, Minch. So how about it? What can you tell me that might help?”
Minch stared at him for a long time. Then the light dimmed in his eyes and he flopped his head back down, away from R.J. “Go to hell,” he said. “Get the fuck out of my office.”
Feeling helpless, R.J. looked over at Angelo.
Bertelli shrugged. “Hey, what the fuck,” he said. “Sometimes you just crap out.”
“You ought to be used to it,” Minch muttered. “Plug me in on your way out, huh?”
R.J. shook his head. But he reattached the wires to Minch’s battery.
Then he headed for the door. He stopped in the doorway and looked back. But Minch was already wheeling back to the monitor and popping a tape in with practiced clumsiness.
As the sound came up—grand music mixed with explosions. R.J. closed the door behind him and walked down the five small steps behind Angelo, out into the bright sun of the parking lot.
CHAPTER 30
R.J. was busy the next few days. Still, he tried to call Casey a couple of times every day. She was always on another line. She left him a couple of messages with Portillo, but they never connected.
So R.J. tried to concentrate on catching the killer. There were other suspects. None of them seemed as promising going in as Minch had. Over the next few days, R.J. and Angelo checked them all out. And all of them fizzed out after only a couple of minutes of questioning.
There were people Janine had screwed over in personal and business matters, a lot of them. She left wounded bodies in her wake like a Sherman tank on a rampage. But most of the people in the business had that weird brand of Hollywood fatalism you only see in the industry.
Life goes on, they said. They’d shake
their heads and say, Should have seen it coming. All part of the game. Besides, Janine’s big now, and she can do what she wants. Anyway, can’t afford to hold it against her. Some of these people, badly mauled by Janine Wright once, were doing business with her again.
Then there were the personal ones. There were a number of jilted lovers. But most of these, once they were sure no word would ever get back to Janine, admitted they were relieved when she broke things off. She was, apparently, a demanding and unrewarding lover.
Without exception, the people on the list would be happy to hear Janine Wright was dead. But all of them, like victims of a terrible beating, were too cowed to do anything about it.
By the end of the week the list was finished. Most of the interviews blended into one ugly sketch of Janine Wright. She was ruthless, dominating, vindictive, coarse, and almost evil. But they had known that. And no matter how much she seemed to deserve to be murdered, R.J. was no closer to finding who was killing those around her.
One interview stuck out in R.J.’s mind. He and Angelo, in a rental car paid for by the NYPD, had driven far out into the Valley to an address in Thousand Oaks. It turned out to be a retirement home.
The man they had come to see, Fred Goss, had known Janine Wright since her start. He had been her partner at first—it was Goss who had the experience in movies and had interested Janine in doing them. And then, when Janine Wright was on her way up, she had dumped him, cut him off without a nickel, and tossed him away like an old newspaper.
They knew all that before driving to Thousand Oaks. It seemed like a pretty good motive for murder, worth the hour’s drive out the Golden State Freeway to see Goss. Until they pulled into the parking lot of Golden Hills Retirement Home.
R.J. put the car into a slot in the lot, but left the motor running. He turned to Angelo in the passenger seat beside him. “What do you think?” he asked.
Bertelli shrugged. “Who knew? So the guy is old. I’ve known lots of mean old guys.”
“Mean enough to hack off Jason Levy’s head?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. They get brooding on something, it turns ’em all sour inside.” He looked out the window. “Of course, this would have to be an exceptionally strong mean old man.”
The Remake Page 18
