Authors: Peter Robinson
‘I know where Birmingham is. Know
what
it is, too. Other side of the tracks.’ She pointed to her formidable chest. ‘Hamtramck. My daddy was a drunk and my mother was a saint. What do you want to know, Mr Arvo Hughes?’
Arvo smiled and shook the strong, dry hand she held out, then he told her what he knew about Mitch. ‘Can you help?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I know Mitch. Mitchell Cameron. Haven’t seen him for a while, but I know him sure enough. One of the meanest sons of bitches I ever had the misfortune to employ.’
Arvo took out his notebook. ‘When was this?’
‘About eighteen months ago. Sometime last summer, anyway.’
‘What did he do?’
Martha paused for a moment and asked the bartender for a glass of milk. When she got it, she took a sip, made a sweeping gesture around the club and said, ‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with this business at all, son, but the last thing you want is trouble. Sure, sometimes you get a customer cuts up a bit rough. When men get all excited they have a way of thinking with their dicks. And believe me, none of them are big enough to hold enough grey matter to understand a simple “No.” So you need a bit of muscle around.’ She laughed. ‘Helps if they’re eunuchs, of course, but hell, most of ’em have taken so many steroids they might as well be.’
Arvo laughed. ‘How did Mitch fit in?’
‘Well, Mitch was different. For a start, he wasn’t so much muscular and threatening physically as he was mentally intimidating. He had killer’s eyes and a scary presence. To put it simply, he scared the shit out of most people and never even had to lift a finger. Not that he couldn’t if he wanted. That was the trouble.’
‘He hurt someone?’
‘Real bad. Damn nearly killed a guy. Not that it would’ve been any great loss, but like I said, the last thing we want in this business is the place swarming with cops.’
‘What happened?’
Martha tossed back the last of her milk, saw Arvo looking puzzled and grinned. ‘Stomach,’ she said, patting her corseted midsection. ‘Never has been quite what it should be. I blame it on too much borscht when I was a kid. Anyway, why drink the profits? What happened? The usual. Some drunken asshole gets a bit too fond of one of the dancers, and all of a sudden he’s in love. A case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak, if you get my point.’ She winked. ‘Anyway, he’s grabbed the girl and he’s pulling her towards his lap when Mitch goes over. Instead of being Mr Diplomacy like he should and ushering the guy out with apologies and promises of good times to come, what does Mitch do? He breaks the guy’s arm, is what. Just like that. Where the guy has his arm stretched out, dragging the girl, who’s crying and pulling back, Mitch just puts the arm over his knee like it was a stick of firewood and snaps it. You could hear it crack over the music.’
Arvo shook his head in sympathy.
‘And that was just for starters,’ Martha went on. ‘As if that wasn’t enough he hits the guy flush in the face and breaks his nose. Blood all over the place. Then he starts banging the guy’s head on the table.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Do? Well, luckily for us the guy was playing away from home – some asshole at a weedkiller convention or something – and he didn’t want his wife and kids to know he’d been sniffing around strange pussy. So we got him to the hospital, told them he’d been mugged, and got him taken care of. It wasn’t too hard to dissuade him from bringing the cops in. I got rid of Mitch.’
The music stopped and the dancer took a bow, almost falling off the stage as she did so. Martha pulled a face of disgust at the girl but said nothing. Arvo guessed the poor anaemic dancer didn’t have much longer in this job.
Martha laughed.
‘What?’ Arvo asked.
‘Just remembering. The girl, the dancer the asshole was grabbing. I think she and Mitch had a thing going. She kind of liked the attention, anyway. I think it excited her. Mitch was her hero for the night.’
So the girl had been impressed by Mitch’s use of violence. Enough, Arvo wondered, to make him think, as his mind became more unbalanced, that the way to a woman’s heart was to kill for her? ‘Do you remember her name?’ he asked.
‘Candi, I think. With an “i.”’
Arvo made a note of it. Hadn’t Carl Buxton mentioned a Candi, too? ‘Would you happen to have her address anywhere?’
Martha shook her head. ‘Sorry, honey. Candi’s
ancient
history. She was only with us a couple of weeks, as I remember, and we never did get around to the paperwork.’
‘How did Mitch react to being fired?’ Arvo asked.
‘Pretty well. Admitted he got out of line. Begged for another chance, of course. Who doesn’t? When he saw he wasn’t going to get it, he said he’d got a better job lined up anyway and then he up and left.’
‘Was there a job?’
‘Search me.’
‘Did he make any threats of revenge?’
‘Nope.’
‘And there were no unusual incidents afterwards?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know anything about him?’ Arvo asked. ‘His private life, his background? That sort of thing.’
Martha shook her head. ‘Sorry. I never socialize with the hired help.’
‘Do you know if he’d ever been in trouble with the police?’
‘I’d say he’d be hard-pressed not to have been, wouldn’t you? But I can’t say for certain. He sure as hell didn’t put it in his résumé.’
‘What about a mental institution?’
She shook her head. ‘He always seemed in control to me, even when he broke the guy’s arm. Cool as anything. But I suppose there are all kinds of mental illness. He was very manipulative, but that’s hardly a mental illness, is it, or most of our politicians would be in the crazy house.’ She shook her head. ‘Again, I can’t say I know anything about it. Sorry.’
‘Parents? Family?’
‘No – Oh, wait a minute. One of the girls had been talking to him and she said she felt sorry for him because his parents died when he was young and he’d been raised by foster- parents. He had a brother and a sister, too, but I never saw them. Something wrong with the brother, some sort of disability.’
‘A mental disability?’
‘No. Physical. Blind or something. Sorry, I can’t remember.’
The music blared up again as another dancer hit the stage.
‘You must have had some personal details?’ Arvo said. ‘Maybe from his employment application?’
‘Sure.’
‘Do you still have it?’
‘I think so. In the office.’
‘May I—’
But Martha was already on her feet. ‘Wait here,’ she said. Then she turned and added to the bartender, ‘Give him a shot of bourbon while he’s waiting. On the house.’
Arvo accepted his drink, thanked the bartender and swivelled his stool to watch the show.
She was a bouncy blonde with a bright toothpaste smile, very large and impossibly firm breasts, and a perky, energetic dancing style. She certainly looked healthy enough, and Arvo found her act about as sexy as watching an aerobics class. But then, he reflected, some people found aerobics classes sexy. Hadn’t most of the people who watched that ‘20-Minute Workout’ years ago been men? It took all sorts.
Martha came back with a sheet of paper in her hand. She handed it to Arvo and he looked over the scant information. She was right; it didn’t say much. It did, however, give a Social Security number, a reference address, from another bar by the looks of it, and an address and telephone number on Collingwood.
Arvo pointed to the address. ‘Where is that?’ he asked.
‘He’s not there any more,’ said Martha. ‘I can save you the trouble of going there. We mailed a couple of forms to him, internal revenue stuff, but they came back return to sender.’
Arvo nodded. ‘Can you remember exactly when that was?’
Martha frowned. ‘Not exactly, no. But I’d guess it was about six, maybe nine, months ago.’
‘Where is Collingwood, anyway?’ he asked.
‘It’s down past the end of Market Street. In the Castro.’
Arvo looked up from his notebook with wide eyes. ‘The Castro? Isn’t that—’
Martha waggled her left wrist. ‘Sure is, honey.’
34
Sarah didn’t get Arvo’s message because stars simply don’t get most of the messages people leave for them. Given that they are protected by a gauntlet of secretaries, bureaucrats, gofers, security guards and highly guarded phone numbers, it isn’t surprising. Sometimes it seems the only people who
can
get through to them are the crazies.
So Sarah wasn’t thinking about Mitch when shooting finished for the day and everyone disappeared into the night. Had she been thinking about him, it is doubtful that she would have remembered much anyway, as she had hardly noticed him; to her, he had been just another vague shape in the haze, someone to hold open a car door while she smiled, stumbled in and fell over the seat.
It was almost nine, and Stuart should be waiting for her over in his office. At night, the lot was well lit and there were enough people still coming and going, some of them security, that Sarah didn’t feel especially afraid.
It had been a frustrating evening spent filming a short, simple scene over and over again until Sarah got sick to death of saying, ‘Please, Mrs Sanchez, you must understand we’re not here to cause you any trouble.’
She blamed herself for not concentrating hard enough, as she had told Stuart at lunch, but if truth be told, everyone was so stunned by Jack’s murder that no one was firing on all cylinders. But, as Stuart had said, the series goes on, and you’re either on the bus or you’re off it.
Sarah sighed. Sometimes she wished she were back in rep performing old chestnuts by the likes of Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan, with the occasional Restoration comedy thrown in for good measure. There were times when she almost missed the poky digs with the peeling wallpaper, the toilet next door flushing loudly at all hours of the night, the hot water that never worked, the cold toast and runny egg for breakfast and the overcooked roast beef and soggy sprouts for dinner.
Instead, she spent her days surrounded by union technicians in fake courtrooms and precinct offices with computer-produced backdrops for views, speaking trite, witless dialogue.
Still, she told herself, the money was good, and instead of the poky digs she had the beach house. Or used to have.
As she turned a corner by a row of trailers, she heard the hum of a studio cart come up behind her and slow down. She suddenly felt exposed, found herself looking for the best direction in which to run. A group of technicians stood outside one of the sound stages having a smoke, and she knew she could make a break and dash over to them if she had to.
She tensed as the cart drew up alongside her, but it was only Geoff, one of the lighting technicians, a fellow Brit from Newcastle, slowing down to ask if she wanted a ride. Gratefully, she took him up on his offer. But even then she found herself wondering if
he
could be the one. He dropped her off at the administration block and waited outside until she had gone through the door.
She checked in with the security guard at reception, who told her nobody would get past him. Stuart wasn’t back yet, so she waited in his office, watching
Murphy Brown
.
She turned the TV off when
Murphy Brown
finished at nine-thirty and looked out into the long corridor to see if Stuart were coming. Though there were still some people working, most of the office workers had gone home and the place had that eerie, deserted feel of the
Marie Celeste
. It even looked like a long deck on an ocean liner with cabin doors on either side.
She checked her watch again. Quarter to ten and still no sign of Stuart. What the hell could be keeping him?
At ten o’clock, she started pacing the office, looking out the door every few minutes. At a quarter past ten she finally saw Stuart turn into the corridor from the stairwell.
He was out of breath when he got to the office. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Hope you weren’t worried.’
‘What happened? Long meeting?’
‘Accident on the freeway, is what. I tried to call you here, but the fucking car phone’s gone kaput.’
Sarah smiled. ‘Not to mind. Ready?’
‘Let’s go.’
They got into Stuart’s Caddy out front and waved to the guard at the gate as they left the lot. Because Sarah was regarded as being safe at the studio, and her friends were in danger, Zak the bodyguard had kept an eye on Stuart during his trip to Hollywood and his meeting there. Now he would have driven on before them to check out Stuart’s house.
The freeway was busy, but not unusually so, and before long they were coasting Sunset heading into Brentwood.
Flat-roofed, all white stucco, plate-glass, and sharp angles, Stuart’s house was a modernist monstrosity, at least to Sarah’s taste. Though she would never tell him so, she thought it looked like a dental clinic.
On a slight incline, the house was reached by a semicircular driveway that turned off a residential street, ran past the front door, then rejoined the road again.