I heard Josh’s
quick breathing beside me. “He reaches into his pockets and pulls out this
smelly rag. Next thing, he shoves it on my face and it’s all wet and cold and
then...” He broke off and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “I woke up
in your car.”
The boy lay his
head back into the pillows. “I’m real tired,” he said. “Are you guys the cops?”
Cresly nodded. A
few minutes later, Robert was asleep.
Cresly said, “If
the kid sticks to his story, we got an ADW.” He rubbed his icy eyes. “You tell
me how we turn that into Tony Good’s murder.”
“Zane killed Fox
and Blenheim, too,” I said, hearing the tiredness in my voice. “He killed them
all.”
Cresly lit a
cigarette. “One thing at a time.”
“I asked Freeman to
keep an eye on Zane,” I began, “because I thought that Blenheim might try
something. That’s when I still believed that it was Blenheim who killed Fox and
Good. But then Freeman — you tell him.”
Freeman covered a
yawn. “I tracked him for a week,” he said. “Three times he went out to pick up
a hustler. I didn’t think I had to go make sure he got what he paid for, so I
just hung around Santa Monica waiting for him to finish.” He sipped his beer. “Third
night I noticed that he always came back by himself. I got curious, so I drove
around looking for the kid he’d picked up that night. I found him. He was
holding up a wall, spitting out pieces of his mouth. He split when he saw me.
Can’t say that I blame him.” He smiled wanly at his bottle.
“Everybody needs a
hobby,” Cresly said in a flat voice. The cold eyes were thawing — from
exhaustion, I thought.
“When Freeman told
me,” I said, picking up the story, “it got me to thinking about Zane and
Blenheim. They both liked boys.” I glanced at Cresly, who frowned. “But
everyone knew about Blenheim,” I said, echoing what Larry Ross had told me. “If
it had been Blenheim who picked Jim Pears up, the fact that Fox saw them wouldn’t
have been that serious. Probably not serious enough to make Blenheim a target
for blackmail, much less to give him a motive to murder. But Zane, if it had
been Zane in the parking lot that night ...”
“In Blenheim’s car,”
Cresly said, and reached for another beer. “That what you’re thinking?”
I nodded. “The
rented cars, the disguises. It all fits. Zane took Blenheim’s car that night to
go cruising. He got lucky at dinner with Pears, and took him to the car. Then
Fox found them, got the license plate and traced it to Blenheim.”
“That’s how
Blenheim found out,” Freeman said. “When the Fox kid came to the theater
looking for Goldenboy. He musta known it wasn’t Blenheim—”
“No confusing Sandy
Blenheim and Tom Zane,” I added, picking up the cup of cold coffee.
“Blenheim figured
it was Zane,” Freeman said. “Talked to Zane about it. Zane told him to arrange
the meeting with Fox.”
“Fox met him at the
restaurant,” I said. “Let him in through the back. They went down to the
cellar. That smell tonight, ether, you said. In the transcript of Pear’s prelim
the waitress who found Jim with Fox’s body said the room they were in smelled
like someone had broken a bottle of booze. It was ether. Zane knocked Fox out,
then killed him.
“Jim Pears,
meanwhile,” I continued, my exhaustion gone, “thought that Fox was there to see
him.”
“Why?” Cresly
growled.
“That’s another
story,” I replied. “Just listen to me. I’ve been in that cellar. You can hear
footsteps when someone is walking in the kitchen overhead. Zane heard the
footsteps, knew someone was coming. He hid himself. When Jim Pears came down,
he knocked him out like he knocked out Fox and the kid tonight.”
“With the ether,”
Cresly said, sounding interested in spite of himself.
“Right. Then he saw
it was Pears,” I said. “He dragged Pears into the room where he had killed Fox,
smeared Pears with blood, put the knife in his hand, and let himself out
through the back door.” I paused, remembering another detail of Andrea Lew’s
testimony. She’d said she’d looked for Jim out back. That meant the door had
been left unlocked — by Zane. In that detail was the whole story, if only I’d
paid attention. “Jim came to and then the waitress found him,” I continued. “Jim
claimed he didn’t remember anything. The reason was because there was nothing
for him to remember. But that didn’t occur to anyone, so we all wrote it off as
traumatic amnesia.”
From his silent
corner, Josh whispered, “He was innocent.”
We all turned to
look at him. “That’s right,” I said. “Innocent but with no way of explaining
why.”
“So that’s Pears,”
Cresly said. “What about Good and Blenheim?”
“Blenheim first,” I
said. “Blenheim knew everything. Irene Gentry — Zane’s wife — told me that Blenheim
was acting crazy toward Zane just before Good’s murder. She was lying, mostly.”
I stopped and the implications of what Rennie knew sank in for the first time.
I pushed it aside for now. There would be time to think it all out later, but
there was no denying that it hurt. “But there was some truth in it — Blenheim
was probably pushing Zane around, a kind of blackmail, to get Zane to do things
that would line Blenheim’s pockets.”
Cresly squinted. “What,
taking money from him?”
I shook my head. “No,
working him. Milking Zane for all he was worth because Blenheim got his cut,
and it was probably more than ten percent.”
“So Blenheim had to
go,” Freeman said. “But first Zane set it up so that it looked like it was
Blenheim who killed Fox and who killed Good.”
“Zane and his wife,”
I corrected. “She came to me the night Good was killed, saying Zane was in
terrible danger. I chased through Hollywood looking for Zane while he was
taking care of
Blenheim and Good.
I was part of the alibi.”
Cresly smiled,
nastily. “Zane’s wife, huh? You bi, or what?”
I let it pass.
“Zane had the
motive to kill,” I said, “and when Freeman told me that he liked to beat up his
pick-ups, well, then it seemed like he had the capacity, too.”
Cresly belched,
softly. “No way to prove any of this unless Zane or his wife start talking.
They won’t,” he added with dead certainty. “Even if we bust him for what he did
tonight. Why should he?”
By the look on
Freeman’s face, I could see that Cresly’s questions had stumped him, too.
“Nope,” Cresly continued,
picking up his beer. “Old Zane’ll hire someone like you, Rios, to cut a deal
with the D.A. If he pleads to anything, he’ll walk with probation. Or maybe
just continue the case until our victim there,” he jutted his chin in the
direction of the bedroom, “disappears.”
He drained his beer
and set the bottle down with a thud.
*****
After Freeman and
Cresly left, Josh and I made up the couch in the living room and got into it.
We lay there in the dark. I thought of Jim Pears who said he was innocent, and
was, and Irene Gentry who pretended to be, and wasn’t. Depending on what she
knew she was an accomplice to at least two of the murders.
Now I let myself
think about Rennie. She had played me for a fool with consummate skill. It was
a flawless performance. Her task had been formidable: the seduction of a gay
man. Since sex, the most direct avenue, was closed to her, she had had to
resort to other methods. But she was a brilliant actress, keenly observant of
the emotional states of those around her and capable of seemingly profound
empathy. She understood me immediately from our first meeting when she told me
I had the face of a man who felt too much. A born do-gooder. A rescuer. All she
had to do was play a lady in distress.
Her role jibed with
what she and Zane had planned from the outset, to divert the suspicion to
Blenheim. They must have worked it all out months earlier, when I first came to
town to defend Jim Pears. When Blenheim approached me about buying the rights
to Jim’s story, what he really wanted was to find out how much Jim remembered
and what I knew. The three of them had conspired together at first.
Then, later, Rennie
and Zane saw their chance to get rid of Blenheim and close the book on the Fox
murder once and for all. So Rennie made Blenheim out to be the bad guy.
Fortunately for her I disliked Blenheim enough to be an easy convert. After
that, it was just a matter of timing.
But now things had
unraveled. Why? Rennie was fearless but Zane proved to be the weak link.
Another fragment of remembered conversation passed through my head, the actress
at the cocktail party who referred to the Zanes as the Macbeths. There was a
crucial distinction, though. Lady Macbeth goaded on her husband out of her own
ambition. Irene Gentry acted from love. The only time I had ever seen her break
character was the day she told me she loved Zane. What a terrifying love that
must be to lead her into such darkness.
“You’re thinking,”
Josh said.
“I know. I can’t
sleep.”
“Me neither,” he
replied. There was a pause. “Do you want to make love?”
I kissed his
forehead. “I don’t really feel like it.”
“Okay,” he said. “What
are you thinking about?”
I couldn’t think of
a way to tell him about the darkness, not yet, anyway, so I said, “Tom Zane
told me he skipped out on a court appearance fifteen years ago. There’s a
warrant for his arrest out somewhere. I’ll have to tell Cresly about it.”
There was a long
silence and then Josh said, “Is that all you were thinking about?”
“No.” I turned and
faced him, trying to make his face out.
“It’s about Jim,
isn’t it?” he asked. “You feel bad because you didn’t believe him.”
I held him close,
not answering.
“I feel the same
way,” he whispered. “I feel terrible about him.”
“Not your fault,” I
murmured. Then we were quiet again, each with his own thoughts. A long time
later we slept.
*****
Someone was tugging
at my shoulder. I opened my eyes to Josh’s worried face and a sunny room.
“Robert’s gone,”
Josh said.
I pulled myself up
and stared at him. “What?”
“I got up and went
into the bedroom to get to the bathroom. He’s gone.”
“Shit.” I swung my
feet over the edge of our makeshift bed to the floor. I got up and walked into
the bedroom. The bed was disheveled but empty. “What time did you come in here?”
“Just now. I mean,
ten minutes ago,” Josh said, coming up behind me. “He took some things, too.”
I looked at Josh. “What?”
“All the money in
my wallet. Some clothes.” He paused and sucked in air. “The leather jacket you
gave me.”
“I’m sorry, Josh,”
I said.
Josh attempted a
smile. “He left me his.”
“Great.” The boy’s
jacket, cheap vinyl, was tossed across a chair. “I’d better call Cresly. They
might be able to find him.” “They won’t,” Josh said, softly.
I nodded and went
to make my call.
*****
Cresly and Freeman
arrived just before noon. I put down the tuna sandwich I was eating and
answered the door. Their faces were grim.
“No luck?” I asked,
as they came into the kitchen.
Cresly’s eyes were
at their iciest. “I can’t believe the kid just fucking walked out of here,” he
said.
“We were asleep,” I
said.
“Yeah,” he replied,
accusingly. “Asleep.”
“Look, Cresly, if
you’d put him in a hospital instead of bringing him here—” I began.
“Cut it out,”
Freeman snapped. “The kid’s gone.”