Free Fall in Crimson (22 page)

"You want pieces of this turkey for some kind of television?"

"Just to show how things like this are done." Her laugh was abrupt and humorless. "Things like this are not done like this, fellow. I have busted fifteen bones in this line of work, which comes out to one a year since my first stunt where I fell off a cliff onto the roof of a stagecoach. I know
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good from bad. These people here are nuts. Peter, Josie, Mercer, Tyler, all of them. The money is almost gone and they keep making up new story lines. Peter calls it free association. How did you get mixed up in this?"

"Lysa Dean sent me here, for Take Five Productions."

"Now there is one hard-case lady. I doubled for her three times. No. Four. Drove a convertible into a culvert. Red wig. Broke my collarbone when the safety belt snapped. Can't remember the name of the film. It was very big at the time. When she was very big. She has-like they say-carved out a new career."

"Linnnnda?"

"Shut up, sweetie. We're talking. I saw you go up with Joya. How'd you like it?"

"Very very much. Not like I thought it would be."

"Me too. I hear Joya cut out, after turning us in for something she made up. She and I never got along at all. She'll be lucky Peter don't send Dirty Bob down to Ottumwa to slap her loose from her shoes."

"Something about tapes, wasn't it? Videotapes?"

"This is no kindergarten, and the people Kesner brought here are not churchgoers. When you have toys around, people will play with them. When you have candy around, people will eat it. If Joya didn't like it, she could have left any time. She didn't have to try to make trouble. She didn't as it turned out. The two they sent here looked around and took off. If they were after like controlled substances, it might have been something else."

"Linnnnda?"

"Hush, baby. You could get to fly again tomorrow, or at least help out with the ground crews, because we're shorthanded again. Make it out here early, like practically dawn." She leaned toward Jeanie and snuffed at her and frowned and said, "You smell musty, sweetie. Linda's going to take you in to the Lodge and give you a nice hot bath." She got up and pulled Jeanie to her feet and led her out, looking back to wave and smile at me.

The babble of conversation and the clatter of spoons in the coffee cups died for a few moments as they left and-then picked up again. There was a smell of burning grease, and a drifting odor of garbage. I went back through the night to my car and drove back to town. I stopped at the Burger Boy microphone, put in my order, and drove around to the window. A plump girl gave me the paper bag and took my money. I drove over to a parking slot, turned off the lights, and let the radio seek out a strong signal.

It was an FM station in Ames, Iowa. When it began on the local news, I was reaching to turn it off when the announcer said, "The two teenagers who died in a one-car accident this evening on State Road One Seventy-five just west of Stafford have been identified as Karen Hatcher, fifteen, and James Revere, seventeen, both of Rosedale Station. The vehicle, a late-model pickup truck, was headed east at a high rate of speed when it failed to make a curve five miles west of Stafford, traveled two hundred feet in the ditch, and then became airborne for another hundred and ninety feet, ending upright in a field. Both passengers received multiple injuries. The Revere boy was pronounced dead at the scene, and Karen Hatcher died while en route to the hospital ...

Legislators today issued a statement that the anticipated bond issue will not be validated-"

I punched it off. I felt a little curl of visceral dread which slowly, slowly faded away.

It was, I told myself, no part of my ball game. If a plump little girl had gotten herself into more emotional trauma than she and her boyfriend could handle without spilling themselves all over an evening landscape, that was too bad. And this year three hundred and eighty-six thousand people would die as a result of lung damage and heart damage from cigarettes. And that was too bad too. Death and despair and misery were all unfortunate. There were a lot of Peter Kesners and Desmin Grizzels and Lindas and Jeanies and Josephines at large in the world, and my only function was to use some of Ron Esterland's money from his paintings to ease his curiosity about the death of his father. And get back as soon as possible to the pliant pleasures of my executive hotel-manager woman. And figure out what to do with my motorcycle business.

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Lecturing oneself does not cure the megrims. It does not create the indifference one seeks.

When I parked and went into the lodge, the old dragon was behind the desk. She said, "You'll have to be out of Thirty-nine by tomorrow morning."

"How about the others?"

"They've been told. All the rooms are reserved. All you people have to be out."

"If that's the way you want it."

"That's the way I want it. That's the way the town wants it. The best thing you can all do is get out of town and stay out, all of you. It might be the healthiest thing you can do."

"Like the Old West, huh? Don't let the sun set on yuh, stranger?"

"Nobody is in any mood for jokes tonight."

"Anything to do with the Hatcher girl?"

She froze for a moment. "I bet you'd even joke about that too. Jamie was my sister's only grandson. You people are vile. You are wicked. You are an abomination in the eyes of the Lord God. Drugs and rapine and fornication and a bunch of preverts!"

"Now wait a minute!"

"I don't have to wait on you, mister."

And there was nothing else to say, because there was no one to say it to. She had ducked out of sight back somewhere behind the counter. It is possible to feel the guilt that is assessed only by association. Maybe each one of us has enough leftover unspecified guilt so that it is always available in case of need.

I plodded up the creaking staircase, through a smell of dust and carpet cleaner, belching an echo of Burger Boy onions. Before I reached the second floor I heard the yelling and the thumping.

The noise was coming from 25. There was a thud, a grunt, a curse, a heartbreaking moan of anguish. I tried the knob. It was locked. I backed off, raised my leg, and stamped my heel against the door just above the knob. It ripped the bolt out of the old wood and swung open just in time to reveal Peter Kesner, in his underwear shorts, holding Josie Laurant against the wall, his left hand at her throat, while he landed a big swinging blow against her left thigh with his balled fist. They both stared at me, Josie through streaming tears.

After only slight hesitation, he went back to the task at hand. His splayed left hand held her flat against the wall. She tried to writhe her hips and legs out of the way, but he kept on thumping her with those big swings.

I took three steps and caught his wrist as he wound up to swing again. "Hey! Enough already, Peter!"

Sixteen

"THIS IS a private domestic argument, McGee!" Kesner yelled. When he took his hand away from her throat, she sagged to the floor. She was wearing a pale yellow terry robe, floor length, with a big white plastic zipper from throat to hem. Her face was bloated and streaked.

"It's too noisy to keep private," I said.

He came at me, grunting and swinging. He looked insane. He swung at my head, and I had time to get my fists up by my ears, elbows sharply bent and angled toward him. He was very slow, but those fists were hard and he swung them with all his might. I can move very quickly, and so, as soon as I had read his timing, I was able to let him waste his punches by getting my elbows and forearms in the way of his wrists. His little gold glasses fell off. It was my earnest ambition to pick the right moment, step quickly inside, and chop-chop-left in the gullet and a right hand deep into the soft white gut. But I realized how badly he was wheezing and gasping. The blows were softening. His mouth was sagging open. He was in that peak of physical conditioning which would cause him to get winded by changing his socks. So I let him flail away, and when he took
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an exceptionally hard, high swing at my head, I ducked below it. He went all the way around, got his legs tangled, and went thumping down like the dummy tossed from aloft.

As he lay there on his face, Josephine Laurant Esterland came crawling over to him on her hands and knees. She raised her fist and popped him in the back of the skull. She shrieked and sat, hugging her fist in her lap, rocking back and forth.

"Had enough?" Kesner asked me in a breathless, hollow voice.

"I give up," I said. The room door was ajar. I went over and closed it. I rolled Peter over, sat him up, helped him to his feet, and walked him over to the bed. He sat there, and I flexed my arms to relieve some of the pain and the numbness where he had hit muscle and bone.

Josie stood up slowly and carefully. She said, in loyal explanation, "He never marks me. I never show my thighs onscreen. They're too short and fat. He never marks me." She turned and glared at him. "Every cent? Every damn cent gone? What happened to the budget? What happened to that mealy little accountant person?"

"Shut up, Josie."

"That means the house is gone too, you son of a bitch. You can't finish without money. You're not half through the story boards. Jesus Christ! It finishes me! Don't you care?"

"Shut up and get out of here."

"You are unbelievably mean and cruel. I'll be lame for days. You impoverish me and then you beat me when I object."

"Leave!" he yelled, pointing to the connecting door.

She hobbled to it, head high, slammed it behind her.

"You shouldn't break in on a domestic discussion, McGee."

I straddled a chair, facing him. "How much did you have to pay Dirty Bob?"

"What do you mean? He's on salary."

"Oh, I don't mean for what he's doing now. I mean for the long ride when he and the Senator went over to Citrus City and beat Esterland to death, so he wouldn't outlive his daughter and leave all that good money to his foundation. I'd think he could bleed you forever for something like that."

He peered at me. "Friend, you've got to be covered with needle marks."

"Anne Renzetti knew the terms of the will, and she told Josie. Ellis had terminal cancer, and Romola was going to get all the money, and the support would stop, and Josie wouldn't be able to support you any more. That's when you went after Romola and set up the hideaway where you two could be together."

He looked toward the closed door and back at me. "Lower your damn voice, you idiot! Who are you? I think Dez was right about you. What do you want?"

"Then she had the bike accident, and when you knew she was really going to die, you explained to good old buddy Dez how nice it would be for everybody if the old man went first. Then the money would come to the daughter, and on her death to Josie, and you would be able to stay in the trough."

"Not so damn loud!"

"If you were doing the talking, you could keep your voice down."

"I see what you mean. All right. About Esterland, it just happened to work out lucky for me. I don't know who killed him. You have Dez all wrong too. I wouldn't say there wasn't a time when he might kill somebody, but that's all behind him. He's a good citizen. Who are you anyway?"

"A consultant, like Lysa's letter says. Two birds with one stone. Ron Esterland told me if I ever ran into you, I should ask about his dad, about you arranging to get him killed."

"Friend of his?"

"And of Anne Renzetti. They both think you arranged it, Peter."

"You're getting loud again!"

"Because you're not saying anything interesting."

"All right, all right. That's a very high-strung lady beyond that door there." He lowered his voice
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even further. "Don't say anything else about Romola, please. It's a terrible guilt load for me. I had a wonderful father-daughter relationship with that lovely child. She was the one who decided it had to turn into something else. Neither of us could stand the thought of hurting Josie. I found us a pad. It wasn't against the law, McGee. I know just how I'm going to handle it in my autobiography. Tender, gentle, sensitive. Two people caught up in forbidden sexual obsession, secret meetings spiced with guilt and shame. Honest to God, when she ran over that dog and fractured her skull, I thought it was God's judgment on both of us. I'll never forget her. Never.

She had the most beautiful damn body I've ever seen on any woman."

"That's very touching, Peter."

"So get off me about that other."

"What if Grizzel and Hanner decided on their own to do you a little favor? What if it could be practically proven?"

"Proven?" He studied me, his expression wary and dubious. "Look, I may have done some bitching about the situation, and I suppose somebody could have grabbed that ball and run with it. Would that be my fault? What kind of proven?"

"Not airtight. Ron says his dad went to Citrus City to make a buy of an illegal substance, to relieve his pain, intending to pay with Krugerrands. I don't know the details, but it has something to do with tracing those gold pieces to Hanner or Grizzel or you."

"Not to me! Jesus! No way can that be true."

"There's a rumor around that Grizzel killed Hanner."

"You show up here pretending to be a big fan of my work, and then you hit me with all this shit.

Anybody can hear rumors. I heard a rumor too. I heard he had a woman a while back who caught Dez's eye, and Dez was always able to take Curley's women away from him. Then she is supposed to have said something to Dez that she should not have known unless Curley had talked a lot more than he should have, about something involving the two of them. And then Dez waited until the right time. Maybe while he was waiting for the right moment, Curley ran into the sea gulls."

"Have you thought of writing for pictures?"

"McGee, I hate a smartass, especially when he takes shots at my work. Nothing about this conversation is important. I'll tell you what is important. I am going to finish this picture. There's enough left to do the final flight scene early tomorrow. With the footage I've got, there are a lot of directions I can go in. I can use voiceover to pull it together plotwise. There are scenes in the can that really sing. On Movieola, no score, they sing. They've got my imprint. A hundred years from now, kiddo, people will be going to see Free Fall in the basements of museums, to see the unmistakable mark of Peter Kesner. The dynamics of each scene, unfolding, the people working in a kind of magic rhythmic counterpoint in their relationships to one another, and with the cuts underlining the tempo of the score. We fold up shop here tomorrow and head home, and in eight or ten weeks, eighty-hour weeks, I'll put it together. That's what's important, not you coming here bugging me with this Esterland bullshit. What's with this Ron? He didn't make the will?"