"You know what really pissed me off about that?" he asked eventually. "I liked you. You were no danger to anybody. Just a scuffling lowlife, snouting for cash, not doing anyone any real harm."
"Thanks," I said. "I always wondered what they'd put on my tombstone."
"I thought we understood each other, that you knew the lines not to cross. When I heard what had gone down at Transvirtual, and that you were involved, that's what really got to me. It was personal. A feeling of betrayal."
"You don't know the half of it," I said. "Believe me."
Travis stood up. "The coffee's on you," he said. "I'll check my mailbox at seven tomorrow morning. If what I find there is interesting, you can have forty-eight hours—though you call me if you see those guys again."
He looked up at the sign above the restaurant, peered into the deserted interior. The chef was leaning on the counter, watching a porno film on a television propped at the end. The avidity of his interest made the prospect of eating food cooked by his fair hands somewhat unappealing. One of the Happy Spatula's two customers was shooting up at a table in the corner: The other looked like he might already be dead.
"I used to come here," Travis said. "Years ago."
"Me, too," I said. "Things change."
He turned away. "They surely do."
I WAITED at the table. Five minutes later Helena appeared. She looked a little subdued. I tried to apologize for the comment I'd made about being a team, but she shrugged it off in that female way that's supposed to say it doesn't matter, but actually means that a lot more than a straightforward apology is required.
"So what now?" she said when I'd told her how it had gone. "How do you think you're going to find the guys in the suits? Seems like they were after the woman who killed this Hammond character. They've got her. They're out of your life."
"I don't think so," I said. I tried to remember if I'd ever told Helena about a certain memory of mine, a memory that stopped dead at a point I couldn't breach. "Everything hangs on Hammond. The closer we get to him, the more chance we have of finding a way to get to those guys."
Helena pulled her coat around her shoulders. "So?"
Rather than check out what the piece of paper had revealed about Nicholas Schumann, I pulled another of the sheets out and turned the organizer back on. I told it to save the results of the last job and queue an email of it to Lieutenant Travis, for delivery the next morning. Meanwhile I scanned in the second paper, and asked the organizer to see what it could find.
As I waited, I looked up to see Helena smiling at me. "What?"
"You," she said. "Always with your head halfway up some machine or other."
"They like me," I said. "Most of them, anyhow."
"Your answering machine seemed a little ambivalent."
"Only because I broke up an inter-species romance. It was hitting on my coffeemaker."
"You always were a prude."
A name appeared on the organizer's screen: Jack Jamison.
Helena peered at it. "What's he doing there?"
"No idea: I'm shit with names. Who is he?"
"Oh, you know—that actor. Fifty-something: always plays the senator you can trust. Gay, but in denial."
I remembered: stalwart of National Question-Asker Magazine, much-loved bete noire of homosexual rights groups, everyone's favorite character actor and nowadays getting a few bigger parts. Meanwhile the machine continued to spill text up onto the screen, translating the block of letters that took up the rest of the page.
Helena leaned in close, and we read them together. We finished at the same time, and looked at each other.
It got very quiet.
I took out my phone and called Melk. He was working at a party, and said he'd call me back in two minutes.
"That can't be true," Helena said. "No way."
"It makes sense," I said. I wanted to lean away from her, but I couldn't. I could smell her, and it was like catching a tendril of someone else's cigarette smoke during the two weeks when I once quit. You don't want a cigarette, and you're not having one, no way—but you're very glad they still exist. Not very romantic, but there you go. I don't do massage and I don't want to go out with you either.
Melk called me back. The address was up in the Hollywood Hills, about forty minutes away. He knew it by heart: presumably a previous client. He hung up immediately—in a hurry to go back to wrangling farts before someone got embarrassed.
I stowed my stuff and sat poised for a moment, not really sure what to do first. Then suddenly I understood that Helena's coolness probably had nothing to do with me. "Shit, Helena," I said. "I'm sorry."
"About what?"
"Bringing you here. I just ... I didn't think."
She shrugged. "We used to come here a lot, even after that. It's no big deal."
"We came here because you had to. And to prove something. That was then. I just didn't think about how you might feel about it now."
She looked up at the sign, much as Travis had done. Breathed out heavily. "You're right," she said. "On the whole, I'd prefer to be somewhere else."
We headed over the crossroads and to the nest of dark streets behind it, looking for a car to boost. A little way down was a scabby white Dirutzu in need of a wash. Helena sniggered as I tried the handle. It was open.
"What?" I said. "You think I've forgotten how to do this?"
She shook her head, pointed to the other side of the alley. "I met the owner earlier," she said.
I turned and looked down at a guy who was currently sleeping the sleep of the just, or of the unconscious, in the gutter. Cheap suit, bad tie, strange mottled bruising on his forehead.
I laughed, reached in his pockets for the car keys. Two minutes later, we were gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"How do you want to do this?"
"There's only one way" I said. "Or he isn't going to talk to us."
"What happens if he isn't alone?"
"We take that as it comes. Try not to kill anybody, dear."
Helena nodded, took a step back. I pushed the doorbell. A buzzer of alarming complexity went off inside the house: I have a horrible suspicion it was playing the theme from a movie, just to remind you whom you were coming to see.
A padding sound approached, and then a muffled voice called out: "Who is it?"
"Charisma delivery" I said.
A chain rattled, and the door opened a few inches to reveal Jack Jamison standing in a purple bathrobe. Jeez, I thought, this guy really works at it. I kicked the door, stuck my gun in his face, and shoved him back into the hallway. Helena flooded in behind me, ran quickly past us to check out the rest of the house.
Jamison backed away from me, eyes wide, hands held up. "Please. Whatever you want. I've got money. I've got things. Just don't hurt me. I've got a six a.m. call."
It was a long hallway. I kept him walking backward until we came to a door. "Open it," I said.
He did, revealing a split-level living room the size of Nebraska. I shoved him hard, sending him tumbling back into the room. I don't actually like doing this kind of thing, but you've got to keep them frightened. Once they start getting their courage back, they remember they're in the right, and then you're fucked.
I got Jamison into a chair and lined the gun up with the middle of his face. Helena entered the room, shut the door. "All clear," she reported.
"Tell us about Ray Hammond," I told Jamison.
"Who?" He stared at me with the cornflower-blue eyes I'd seen projected several feet across movie screens, and pulled his robe tighter across his gym-flat stomach. He was getting it together far too quickly. "I don't know who you're talking about."
I flicked the safety off my gun. Jamison's eyelids flickered; he'd been in enough cop movies to know what I was doing. I placed one boot heavily in the center of his chest and pressed the barrel against his forehead.
"You're going to make a mess," Helena observed.
"I don't give a shit," I said. "Listen to me, Jamison. I have the names of two witnesses who've seen you on clandestine dates with women. I also know you're a regular client of the super-secret Sleep Easy escort agency, and that you exclusively consort with professional females. The guy you were spotted with in Aspen three months ago was a heterosexual actor hired by your manager, and I have it on good authority that not only do you go on secret deer-hunting trips upstate with old college buddies, but that you have been heard on more than one occasion to gleefully shout 'Yo—we really killed that motherfucker dead.' You are not gay, Jamison, and if you don't start talking to me very fucking quickly, the whole world is going to know it."
Jamison stared back at me, neck spasming. For a long moment it was very quiet, and then something changed in his face—almost as if he were falling out of a complicated character role.
"And if I tell you?"
"We're out of here and you never see us again."
"Would you mind taking your foot off my chest?"
"It would be my pleasure," I said. "It's actually kind of uncomfortable." I stepped back, still keeping the gun trained on him.
"You won't need that," Jamison said. "And to be honest, your lady friend looks rather more intimidating than you."
"Don't you start," I said. "Just tell us about Ray Hammond."
"I don't know how much you know about my career," he said, and I tried hard not to roll my eyes. "But there was a dry patch, about ten years ago. I was fortunate to play a large number of excellent roles in my youth, with many of the great directors, but then it all went wrong for a little while. I don't really know what happened: But over the period of a couple of years it all started leaking away. From star to supporting, then the slide down to television. In the end even people's answering machines wouldn't take my calls. It was an extremely difficult time, and without the support of certain very dear friends I don't know how I could have gotten through it."
I sat on the sofa next to Helena. I sensed this might take a while. "Yeah—and then?"
"I was having dinner with the son of one of my old friends. He was thinking of changing careers, becoming an actor, and quite frankly his father had asked me to talk him out of it. I felt I was in a unique position to give him the truth about the profession, and so I'd agreed."
"And somebody saw you."
"Indeed. One of the other patrons in the restaurant recognized me and took a photograph of the two of us—which he subsequently sold to Global Interrogator magazine. They ran a little piece, intended—I assume—as a smear."
"But it didn't work out that way."
"I denied the implication, of course—simply because it wasn't true. Many of my best and most talented friends are gay. It makes no difference to me. But in retrospect I realize this served only to fan the flames. In no time the National Question-Asker and Pan-Universal 'Hey, What's Happening?' magazines had joined the fray, doing the time-honored dance of claiming my 'gayness' was interesting in some way, while steering clear of explaining exactly why. Opposing factions of gay rights activists started getting involved, some wishing to 'out' me, some fighting for my right to stay 'in.' It all turned into a bit of an issue, in the tabloid press at least."
"With no one particularly interested in the truth."
"Quite, and by that stage, neither was I. All publicity is worth having, as I'm sure you're aware. It reminded the business I was still alive. Within a few weeks I was being offered cameos on television shows. A year later I was back as a supporting actor, and agents were having fistfights over who got to represent me. At the moment I am in the second week of filming my first starring role in ten years. I play the President." He winked. "No more mere senators for me."
"Congrats. And then?"
"Would you or your companion like a drink? A beer perhaps?"
"I thought you'd never ask," Helena said.
There was a fridge hidden in the table in the center of the room. When Jamison had served us each with one, I prodded him, but gently: I was beginning to like the old coot.
"Ray Hammond," I said.
Jamison frowned. "Yes. Well, it was all going swimmingly. All I had to do was deny everything, while occasionally apparently giving people reason to disbelieve me, and the attention kept flooding in. But then a man started bothering me. His approach was rather more subtle than yours, I must say. Letters at first, and then phone calls. Warnings that something was coming. Then he came to my house and presented certain facts in much the same way as you just did. He gave me a straightforward choice: Pay him, or lose everything."
"How?"
"People are obsessed with secrets— other people's secrets. What other people wish to keep hidden or invisible, that's what they most want to know. Though their interest is prurient, the readers of the checkout-counter magazines are on my side. We have a contract of vulnerability, and their knowledge of my 'secret' creates a bond. They pry open my life, and we share the pearls between us."
"So it was blackmail."
"Yes. Quite a steep sum, every month. As I started to get more successful again, the amount increased. It was becoming unbearable, and the man himself was becoming more and more odd."
"In what way?"
"From the outside he appeared much the same. Controlled, powerful. But his eyes were turning inside. Something was changing inside his head, I believe, which made it more difficult for him to do what he was doing. As an actor, you learn to look for such things. He was becoming less confident, losing his understanding of his role."
"But he kept on collecting your money."
"Until last week." Jamison looked up at me. "I didn't kill him, you know, if that's what this is all about."
"We know you didn't." I finished my beer, stood up. "How did Hammond get on to you in the first place?"
Jamison looked away. "I'm afraid I really don't know. Luck, I suppose. Sleep Easy's database is supposed to be impregnable. But perhaps one of their staff was persuaded to talk. I can't have a woman living here, you understand—it would rather give the game away. So I out-source my . . . 'exercise.' "