Authors: John R. Maxim
“
There's another message for you, Ms. Farrell. A Ms.
Fene
r
ty called a short while ago. She says it's urgent and
you have the number
.”
Molly snatched at her purse and found the torn page
from the telephone book, hopeful that Carla might have
gone to DiDi's house. And was there now. She could
only guess why. Perhaps to feel closer to Lisa. Or perhaps
someone had tried to get to DiDi.
It would be better, she realized, not to make these calls
from her hotel. But Molly had no car with which to get
to a distant phone. And please God, come to think of it,
don't let Ca
rl
a have gone to get that Chevrolet.
No. She would hav
e
had to take a taxi all the way to Burba
n
k. She could just as easily have taken the taxi to DiDi's house. Molly punched out the number. D
iDi
an
swered on the second ring.
“
It's me
,”
Molly said.
“
Is everything okay
?”
“
Hi, M
.
.
.”
DiDi stopped herself.
“
Can I talk on
the phone
?”
Molly appreciated her discretion. But she'd decided that
a wiretap was unlikely.
“
It's all right. Is Carla there, by
chance
?’'
“
Ah
.
.
.
should she be? I haven't seen her since she
left
.”
“
Just wondered. She went out a while ago. What's
urgent, DiDi
?”
”
I had a phone call you won't believe. Were you and
Carla up in Burbank last evening
?”
“
Tell me about the call
.”
“
It was this man. He said to tell Carla that the Russian
was shot by a man named
.
.
.
”
“
Hold it
,”
Molly snapped. She thought quickly.
“
Are
your father's men still there with you
?”
“
They're right here
.”
“
Is there a neighbor's phone you can use? Not one of
your house mates'
.”
“
Kevin's place. He's still sacked out on the porch
.”
Molly asked for the number. She said she'd call it in
ten minutes. DiDi's bodyguards were to go first an
d
make
sure the street was clear. She broke the connection,
grabbed a pocket recorder, then hurried downstairs to
the
lobby phone. It would have to do. The remaining minutes
passed slowly. She rang Kevin's number. DiDi picked up.
“
Can the bodyguards hear you
?”
she asked.
“
They're waiting outside. But I'm afraid I
already
told them
.”
“
No sweat
.”
But she grimaced.
“
Start from the
beginning
.”
“
That man, H
i
ckey, who was cut up last night? He's
the one who came here claiming to be a cop
.”
”I know
.”
“
He killed Lisa
.”
“
He might have. Tell me about the call
.”
“
And another man was shot there. A Russian named
Rykov
?”
“
How did you know that name
?”
“
The man who called knew it. He said Rykov was shot
by two men driving a white Lexus. Its license number
is.
...
Do you have a pen
?”
“
I'm getting this. Go ahead
.”
DiDi read the tag number from her notes.
“
The two
men were Harry Bunce and Peter Ma
r
ek
.”
She paused to
spell both names.
“
Peter Marek, if you're ready for this,
is the son of Theodore Marek. The art dealer? R
i
cha
r
dson-
Ma
r
ek
?”
The firm name was vaguely familiar. Perhaps she'd
seen a catalog in Anton Zivic's shop.
“
Except
,”
DiDi paused for effect,
“
Theodore
Marek's
real name is Tadeusz Ordynsky
.”
She spelled that name as well
.
“
Ordynsky was, and is, a fugitive war criminal
and an art thief. Somehow Lisa found that out. He had
her killed by that man, Hickey, who was cut up last night
in Burba
nk
. Then he sent these other two to silence Hickey
but Ca
rl
a beat them to it
...
says this guy
.
.
.
and they
ran into this Rykov who is, by the way, a KGB agent. Do
you believe this
?”
“
Parts of it
,”
she said thoughtfully.
“
Carla didn't
kill Hickey
.”
DiDi hesitated. ”I guess I'm sorry to hear that
,”
she
said.
“
This man
,”
Molly
asked, ''Was
he the same one who called before? The German accent
?”
“
You mean Paul Ba
nn
e
rm
an
?”
“
Um
.
.
.
yes
.”
“
No
,”
she said.
“
This one sounded like that FBI agent,
Harris, who you said was a phony. Two real ones have been here, by the way. They seemed more interested in you two than in Lisa.”
“
How much did you tell them
?”
“
Almost nothing. That you picked up some of her
things and left
.”
“
Nothing about Sur La Mer
?”
“
They never asked. They just
.
.
.”
DiDi fell silent, as if she'd remembered something else.
“
They just what
?”
“
Not them. The man who called. You know who else
he sounded like
?”
Molly waited.
“
He also sounded like the man I spoke to at Sur La Mer. The one who said Lisa was never there
.”
For a time, in the chill of the night, Nellie thought she
was still at the lake.
Her eyelids flicked open, sleepily, as she felt her arm
being raised. Far to the east, she could see the first gray
sliver in the predawn sky and, near the window, the dark
branches of a tree waving as if to greet it. She felt the
covers being brought up over her shoulder. Tom's hand
brushed against her cheek. She murmured softly, and
smiled
.
In seconds, she was dozing deliciously.
She did not sleep for long. The murmur of a cool lake
breeze had begun to take on a mechanical sound. More like
that of an air-conditioner. In the distance, she could hear the
throaty growl of passing trucks. Her eyes snapped open.
The glow in the east was lighter than before, although
far from blue. She knew that she was back.
Nellie turned one ear toward the heavy curtain that
she
'd
drawn across her cot and listened for Alan and Bar
bara. She was prepared, if she'd heard them stirring, to
try to go away again. To allow them another hour or two
of privacy. She wouldn't mind another toss with Tom her
self. Besides, she wanted to be sure that she could
do it.
Go away, that is. At will. Without benefit of her bench or her chair.
She heard other sounds now, soft whispers, but they
did not seem to be coming from the bed on the other side
of the curtain. They were farther away and muted. Nellie
frowned. She slipped one arm from under her blanket and
felt for the briefcase which she'd taken to bed with her.
It was gone. She realized at once that it wasn't Tom who
had lifted her arm. It was Alan, wanting those silly papers
again. He had taken them into the bathroom and closed
the door. She heard Barbara in there with him.
Nellie eased herself out of bed and cleared her throat, loudly, in a way that would tell Alan and Barbara that she
was awake and that they were about to be scolded.
Su
mn
er Dom
m
e
ri
ch knew a Pizza Hut on Sunset that practically never closed. He stopped to buy two large pies,
one pepperoni, one sausage.
It bothered him to buy from a competitor, especially
because his company and Pizza Hut had been in this big
race to see who opened the first franchise in Moscow and
Pizza Hut had won. But it was not his fault that no
n
e of
his own stores were open. Anyway, no one would know
the difference now that he'd taken them out of the Pizza
Hut boxes and written them up on his own order form.
It said that someone named Jackson had ordered them.
There wouldn't be any Jackson at the hospital, probably,
but there was a good chance that someone else would take
them if he gave them a deal. Someone is always hungry for a pizza. And this way no one would wonder why he
was there. Dommerich put his hat back on and drove to Queen of Angels.
There were two men with cameras and one security guard at the entrance to the emergency room. All three
were smoking. We didn't order any pizza, they said. Try
the waiting room.
At least a dozen people were sitting or pacing there.
Two cops were questioning a black man with a bandaged cheek. A doctor was talking to a young couple who looked
worried. The woman was holding a teddy bear. A big,
tough-looking man, probably a detective, was talking on
a wall phone. A much smaller man stood near him, sucking on a pipe that wasn't lit. There was no sign of Ca
rl
a.
But she might be with her friend, he thought. Or in the
ladies room or the chapel. Dommerich decided to wait a
few minutes. Then he would roam the hallways looking
for a room with a policeman standing guard. He hoped
they didn't only do that on TV.
“
We were, u
m
.
.
.
trying not to wake you
.”
Alan Weinberg looked up at Nellie from the edge of
the tub. Barbara sat at his side. She, like her husband, had
papers in her hands. More were spread over the tile floor
at their feet. Alan's expression, thought Nellie, was that
of a boy caught reading a girlie magazine.
Hands on hips, Nellie shook her head in theatrical dismay. Alan was more like George Bancroft than he knew.
George used to save his most salacious fan letters, the
ones making indecent proposals, and tuck them into scripts he was supposed to be studying. She was about to instruct
Weinberg on the proper use of a laz
y
morning by two
people who love each other but Nellie saw the grin that
now split Barbara's face. The grin said that giving them
a few hours to themselves had been, by no means, a
wasted gesture.