Authors: Peter Robinson
Joe whistled. ‘Know how many car-rental agencies there are in LA? Know how many people per day rent cars?’
‘We’re only interested in silver Toyotas rented over the last three or four days. That should narrow things down a bit.’
‘Uh-huh. Any other bright ideas?’
‘One,’ said Arvo. ‘We know that about the only work the guy’s done is security, club bouncer, and that he thinks he belongs in the rock business. Now, we can easily find out if he’s working for any of the big, official security companies like Loomis or Brinks because he’d have to be bonded, right?’
‘Right. We have, and he isn’t.’
‘Okay. So if he is working, he’s probably somewhere they pay cash, no questions asked.’
‘Like a bar or a nightclub?’
‘Exactly. Or a strip joint. Just like he did in San Francisco.’
‘Great,’ said Joe. ‘Only about ten thousand in the city.’
‘You’re right.’ Arvo rubbed his eyes. ‘Shit. There’s got to be another way. Let’s think it through. The guy comes into town with Mr Big Shot, Gary Knox, and his entourage. He must have some pretty big ideas about himself, right?’
‘Uh-huh. Then the goose that lays the golden eggs OD’s and the party’s over.’
‘Right, and the entourage is cut loose. The band members drift off into session work, retirement, or whatever. It’s like the Stones without Mick.’
‘The Vandellas without Martha.’
‘Right. And I suppose the road crew and sound technicians find similar work with someone else.’
‘And the hangers-on, the groupies?’
‘They find someone else to fuck. Now, Mitch’s position is ambiguous, I’d guess. Nobody liked him but Gary, or so it appeared. So no one’s gonna take pity on him and give him a job. He’s got no real skills or talent and probably no money, given he got fired in San Francisco and skipped out owing the phone company.’
‘So?’
‘So he’s got a number of problems. He’s already got a car. Next, he needs somewhere to live. Then he needs a job.’
‘A job without too many questions asked,’ Joe added. ‘From what you’ve told me I doubt he’d get much of a reference from that broad in San Francisco.’
‘You’re right there. But there’s something else. Mitch is a liar and a dreamer, a big talker. He thinks he’s got talent, thinks he’s got a future in the music business. He’s also a man with a powerful will. So, do you think he’s just gonna sit on his ass strumming his guitar, or work as a nightclub bouncer, till his big break comes?’
‘If you’re thinking—’
Arvo leaned forward and put his hands palm down on the table. ‘An agent. It makes sense, Joe. Everyone in this city has an agent.’
Joe laughed. ‘That’s true enough. I even know a few cops have agents. Know how many of them there are?’
‘I didn’t say it’d be quick, just that it would be worthwhile, maybe quicker than checking all the bars. And if we concentrate on small agents representing musical acts . . . What do you think?’
‘Could be.’
Arvo smiled. ‘Unlimited resources,’ he said. ‘That’s what the Chief told me.’
‘What now?’
‘First I’m gonna go home, take a shower and change my clothes. Then we’re going to make a concentrated effort to find Mitchell Lorne Cameron.’
‘Okay, let’s go.’
And they walked out into the bright noon sun.
39
At three o’clock that same afternoon, still no closer to finding Mitchell Cameron, but at least clean and wearing a fresh set of clothes, Arvo pushed a wheelchair out of Cedars-Sinai right into a throng of newspeople waiting outside.
Sarah Broughton sat in the chair. Her right eye was swathed in bandages, and she was wearing a neck-brace. She also wore dark glasses over the bandage to protect her one good eye against the bright January sun.
As soon as she hit the street, the questions began:
‘Ms Broughton, can you tell us why you were driving down Sunset Boulevard yesterday evening without a licence?’
‘Is there any truth in the rumour that you’ve been receiving death threats?’
‘How will your injuries impact on
Good Cop, Bad Cop
?’
‘Is it true that the network is thinking of axing the series?’
‘Was it a publicity stunt?’
‘Ms Broughton, why were you in the car with Stuart Kleigman? Why had his wife and children gone to stay with family in Santa Barbara?’
‘Do these letters have anything to do with Jack Marillo’s murder?’
‘Ms Broughton. What’s the connection between the body you found on the beach and the murder of Jack Marillo?’
‘Are you being stalked, Ms Broughton?’
‘Could you comment on the statement made by Luanna Costello, the famous psychic, that someone has put a curse on
Good Cop, Bad Cop
?’
‘Is it true that the killer cut the hearts out of both victims and mailed them to you?’
And so it came from all sides – from the
Los Angeles Times
to the
National Enquirer,
from CNN to KFMB – boom microphones, mini-cassette recorders, TV cameras. Just the way it had been when she arrived at LAX after the news of Jack’s murder.
Sarah kept her head down as Arvo helped her into the unmarked car, scanning the crowd and the surrounding area as he did so. He drove her the short distance round the block to Ma Maison Sofitel, the nearest hotel, on Beverly Boulevard.
Security at the beach house would be difficult to organize because the area was so open, Arvo had explained, so Sarah had agreed that even a hotel would be better than the hospital. At least it wouldn’t smell of antiseptic.
Arvo accompanied Sarah up to her room, then, after checking the locks on the door and window and assuring her that she would be well guarded, he left, reminding her to lock up after him.
One of the hotel employees had picked up some books that Sarah had requested in advance and placed them on the coffee-table: Alan Bennett’s
Writing Home,
the latest William Boyd paperback and a Sharon McCone mystery by Marcia Muller. Beside them lay a
New Yorker
magazine and a copy of last week’s London
Sunday Times
. After all, they hadn’t got Mitch Cameron yet; she might be here for a while.
Alone, Sarah set the deadbolt, put the chain on and leaned against the door to take a deep breath. Then she went into the bathroom, took the bandages off and examined her bruises for the first time. By the looks of them, her eye had a whole rainbow of colours to go through yet. Arvo was right, though; the writers could probably work her injuries into the show the way they had written in Jack’s murder. Now the painkillers were wearing off, her face and head had started to ache.
Back in the room, she stood and looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window. It framed a spectacular and panoramic view from the eastern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, on her left, through Beverly Hills to the Hollywood Hills to her right. The sky was pale blue, with a few swirls of cloud over the hills, and today there was hardly any smog to obscure the scene.
Dotted all around the ragged purple-brown horizon were clusters of buildings, signs of human habitation everywhere. To the far right, Sarah could just about make out the HOLLYWOOD sign. In the foreground were the streets of West Hollywood, mostly residential areas of small bungalows and low-rise apartment buildings, along with the trendy shopping streets like Melrose and La Brea.
As she scanned the view, inhibited by the damn neck-brace, Sarah had an odd, disembodied feeling, as if she were slipping into a dream. It was as if the hotel wasn’t there, and she was suspended in mid-air over Hollywood. Her senses felt enhanced, as they had sometimes when she was stoned. But her mind was clear. She knew what was happening. Had known since she remembered Mitch calling her ‘Little Star.’
Somehow, the terror of the chase or the car accident itself had jogged her memory and released a flood of information.
Sarah turned away from the window, feeling a little dizzy, and paced the room. God, she was tired; she hoped they caught the stalker soon. They were close; she could sense it in Arvo’s manner, in the way he had hurried off after bringing her to the room, like a hound on the fox’s scent. It was the thrill of the chase, the whiff of blood. She wanted her life back. All of it.
She helped herself to a gin and tonic from the minibar and sat down on the sofa. She didn’t really want a drink, but she felt restless. It was something to do, and it might help take the edge off her nerves now the sedative had worn off. She thumbed through
The New Yorker
but couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything. There was nothing on TV, either, except soap operas.
As soon as she tasted the gin, she thought of the tour. Gin and tonic had been Sarah’s drink then, and the taste brought back memories. So did hotel rooms. They acted on her the way the ‘madeleine’ did on Proust.
Sometimes on tour, she would sit up all night with the band playing poker, smoking, drinking, maybe listening to late-night radio stations in Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New Orleans or Phoenix. She couldn’t remember the places, just the one composite hotel room, the pills, the joints, the drunkenness and the hallucinatory quality of it all: someone fucking in the bathtub while one of the sound tekkies puked down the toilet; someone, maybe Gary or the lead guitarist, whatsisname, going crazy and trashing the room.
Now she had the memories back, they didn’t matter. She knew now that she hadn’t really lost her memory in the first place, hadn’t blocked out incidents. The whole thing had been
exactly like
her memories of it. That was it. There
was
no more. The entire experience had been a blur; it
was
vague. That was exactly the quality that life had possessed above all others at that time: a kind of hallucinatory, jump-frame vagueness. What seemed blurred now
had been
blurred then. In fact, things were perhaps a little clearer
now
than they ever had been at the time.
It had been a long walk on the wild side for her – more of a stagger, really – and if she had slept with a few people she shouldn’t have, so what? Chalk it up to experience. After all, she hadn’t caught any diseases, and she had
come through
.
She also remembered the incident that had finally driven her to run away from the tour madness and into a different kind of madness of her own, the incident she had begun to tell Arvo about in hospital. Thank God she had stopped herself in time.
It had been a very hot day and the band was staying at a hotel in Anaheim. They were supposed to be playing at the stadium there the next night. Gary needed some designer-drug cocktail or other, and Mitch had found a guy who lived over in the trailer park across the road. Someone who dealt a little.
So, they had gone over. Gary, herself, Mitch and his brother. Inside, the trailer was hot and stuffy. One of the windows was open an inch, but it didn’t help much. Someone had stuck yellow plastic daisy and sunflower appliqués on the walls beside the crude drawings of cocks and cunts, the kind of thing she’d once seen in a gents toilet in Bognor Regis one drunken night long ago.
Sarah was sitting in a battered armchair, she remembered, the kind with the seat so worn and low that it’s difficult to get out of easily, especially if you’re as spaced as she was. There was a fat woman at a table by the door silently removing her bright red nail polish, head bent so she showed at least three chins. She was wearing shorts and a black tank top that strained at its seams over her bulk. The acrid smell of acetone infused the hot, stale air.
The man from whom Gary was buying the drugs was skinny and wore only a pair of garish Hawaiian shorts. He had no hairs on his chest and a tattoo of an anchor on his upper right arm. His teeth were bad, like a speed-freak’s; his long hair was greasy, and he hadn’t shaved for a few days. He smoked one joint after another. The other man in the trailer looked like a biker to Sarah, with a full beard, beer gut, black T-shirt and torn, oil-stained jeans. The smell of oil and grease formed an undertone to the nail polish remover and marijuana smoke. Like the woman, he too remained silent.
The only ones doing the talking were Gary and the skinny guy. Sarah remembered wanting to leave, but she was so out of it, and so deep in the armchair, that she couldn’t muster the energy.
Seven of them in there, then. And the dog. A bow-legged, mean-eyed, ugly pit-bull with a black-and-white snout. It looked like the dog equivalent of a shark, Sarah thought – single-minded, merciless, vicious – and it scared her the way it kept coming over to her and sniffing. She asked the biker to tell it to go away but he ignored her. So did the skinny guy and the fat woman too. They all snorted a sample of the designer drug. All except Sarah, who had just about had it by then, and Mitch’s brother, who never touched drugs.
Everyone got more bright-eyed and excited. God knew what was in the cocktail, but they either seemed to find every word a priceless witticism or every sentence a pronouncement of the most profound importance. It was all getting to seem very silly to Sarah, who was coming down fast now, and she was trying to work up the energy to get out of the damn armchair.