Authors: Ed Gorman
"Hell, yes, I do. Lilly probably told you he isn't capable of something like this, but... Did she tell you about the time he killed my dog?"
Puckett shook his head.
"It was a couple of years ago. Lilly had been indulging him, as usual, ever since he got out of the asylum. He was into the agency for well over two hundred thousand dollars—he had to live in Malibu, he had to have a
Maserati
, he just knew he'd have a new series in no time, all the bullshit you hear from people on the way down—and one day I just said enough is enough. No more toys, no more loans for
Cobey
Daniels.
"I told Lilly that he should go find a regular, nine-to-five job, unthinkable as the idea sounded. There was a PR firm looking for somebody at that time, and
Cobey
would have been perfect. Shit, the kid was twenty-six, and he hadn't worked steadily in over five years. Anything he had coming from
Family Life
syndication money he'd already borrowed against—from us and two or three banks.
"Anyway,
Cobey
found out that I'd cut him off—he'd forced Lilly into telling him—and next day my Irish Setter, a goddamn dog I loved like a son and I'm not just being corny—next day I find Prince dead out in my back yard. Somebody had shot him with a high-powered rifle from up in the hills to the west of my place."
"And you think it was
Cobey
?"
"Who the hell else would it have been? Lilly?" He scowled. "Of course it was.
Cobey
."
"Did the police investigate?"
"Yeah, for what it was worth. They didn't find out dick."
"Did you confront
Cobey
?"
"I tried, but you know how Lilly is about him." Preston frowned. "She never had any children, Lilly didn't, and I know she probably doesn't strike you as a Betty Crocker kind of woman, but I think she's got this need to mother somebody. And that was
Cobey
. She took him in when he was a little kid and virtually became his mother. But I'm sure you know that
story. Anyway, no way would Lilly let me give that little fairy what I should have. I had to make a choice—Lilly or
Cobey
. And I chose Lilly."
A yacht went by. A white-haired man, who looked not unlike Wade Preston, waved. Preston waved back. "I grew up around here. Oak Park. That's why I keep a yacht here. Like to see all my old friends." The matinee-idol grin again. "It's fun to play the role of movie star to the locals."
Puckett looked out on the blue water. A yacht would be nice. Just himself and Anne. Going nowhere slowly and loving the hell out of it.
"
Cobey
disappeared for several months," Puckett said, bringing his attention back to Preston.
"Yes, I remember. Lilly was a lot of fun to be around while he was gone—as you can imagine."
"Do you have any idea where he might have been all those months?"
"Sorry, Puckett, I don't. Seems to me he just couldn't face the fact that, like most child stars, he'd run out of time and out of luck. He was a has-been. It's a bitch, but it's how the business works.
"I mean, I had to give up the spurs and saddle when I was forty-two. Nobody wanted me anymore. Now there's a cable network that's talking about rerunning the last three years of my series and, if that happens, then my career may take off all over again, and I'll make a little jack doing all the fan shows and conventions for over-the-hill cowboys. In fact, I just got done putting in an appearance with one of my local fan clubs. God, those pathetic bastards make me shudder."
He was actor pure and simple, Puckett thought. Ask him a question about anybody or anything and somehow he can immediately turn the conversation back to himself.
"Now," Preston said, "I'm going to kick you off this yacht of mine and maybe go water skiing with the girls out there."
Puckett smiled. "I guess AIDS really has cramped your style."
Preston patted his belly. "Well, at least I've got a lot of memories. Poor bastards starting out today could be dead by the time they're old enough to have any memories."
Preston put out his hand. Puckett shook it.
On his way back to his rental car, Puckett saw at least twenty women in bikinis. He thought of Anne and tried not to feel unabashed lust. He really didn't want to be a guy like Preston. The man was in equal parts amusing and sad; sad in the rough and bluff way only a middle-aged man can be.
1
A
t 2:35 that afternoon, Puckett was in the lobby of the hotel where Veronica Hobbs was staying. He had invited her to come down and meet him in a nearby restaurant, and he put an edge on his voice so that she'd know it was more than a mere "invitation."
While he waited for her, he sat in a comfortable armchair in the lobby watching sales representatives hurry in and out. They were all, men and women alike, stuffed inside suits fresh out of dry cleaning bags; splashed and splotched with deodorant, after-shave (called perfume for the women), hair spray and a variety of confections to make their breath smell pleasant.
Their eyes were narrow and dark from too little sleep; and their arms weary from toting suitcases, briefcases and massive presentation cases. Their stomachs would still be hurting from last night's too spicy meal, their bowels constricted from too little fiber, and their mouths raw from too much liquor.
To raise their bodies from the dead this morning, they had required caffeine, nicotine and a certain amount of pro forma bitching—the
effing
bed was too soft, the
effing
plane landed
so
effing
late last night, the
effing
client's a real asshole and
probably'll
only give me five minutes max anyway.
This small army of sales representatives would keep on selling until it dropped, until its endless supply of replacements topped the hill and took its place. Ancient Greece had had its peddlers, and so would the far, starry planets that mankind ultimately settled on...
Puckett knew a lot about sales reps because that's what his father had been—thirty-seven years with General Electric, opening new markets on the wholesale level—until all the anxiety, all the bad, rushed meals, all the Pall Malls, all the Booths Gin, all the thousand-deaths-you-died-every-single-day-on-the-road had taken their toll and the doctor said stomach cancer and there were Puckett and his mother on opposite sides of the white, starchy hospital bed, holding the old man's trembling hands and trying not to notice how often he cried though he tried hard not to.
And then, scarcely three weeks after it had been diagnosed, he was gone, utterly, utterly gone, so much unsaid between Puckett and his old man, so much undone, that even in a hotel lobby on a bright, after-the-rain, spring afternoon, Puckett couldn't help but get tears in his own eyes because even though the old man was nearly twelve years dead, Puckett thought of him every single day of the year, and realized all over again how much he loved him and missed him.
"Hi."
He looked up. Veronica stood there. She wore a yellow spring blouse and designer jeans. Her blonde hair shone from washing. She should have looked very pretty. Instead, she looked exhausted and terrified.
"Hi," he said, standing up.
"I'm ready if you are."
"Good," he said.
The restaurant was packed with Loop workers taking refuge from the long and frantic day. While the setting itself was nothing special—overly familiar framed photos of
"Chicago, City on the Make," as the late novelist, Nelson Algren, had referred to it; vinyl covered booths; and the sort of indoor-outdoor carpeting that seemed to be born dirty—the food was great.
Puckett had a burger, fries and a malt. He was doing his standard Salute to Cholesterol.
"God, you're so thin," Veronica said. "How do you do it?"
He smiled. "The anxiety diet. It works great."
She smiled, too. "Apparently."
He waited until they were finished eating before getting into anything serious.
"I need to talk to you."
His tone startled her, and she looked at him with real apprehension. "About
Cobey
?"
"About you and
Cobey
. And Beth Swallows."
"About Beth Swallows?"
"Last night, when we were talking to Cozzens, I got the sense that you knew her."
"Knew her? Of course not."
He felt she was lying. He wondered why. "Any lies you tell will only hurt
Cobey
. Unless that's exactly what you want to do."
"Why would I hurt
Cobey
?"
He shook his head. "Why don't you just tell me the truth, Veronica?"
"You mind if I smoke?"
"If that'll help, fine."
She took a pack of cigarettes from her purse and lit one with a small, delicately crafted, gold lighter. Such splendid design for something that helped give you lung cancer...
She dropped her gaze a moment. He had the sense she was composing herself.
She said, "Do you think I might have killed her?"
"It's a possibility."
"Cut her head off that way?"
"Insane people are capable of anything."
"You think I'm insane?"
"If you'd killed her, you were, at least, insane at the time. And that kind of insanity would have given you enormous strength."
"Then you're saying I could be the killer?"
He sighed. "Veronica, I'm not saying anything. I'm asking. I want to help
Cobey
. He may be the killer, for all I know at this point. But I want to find out what really happened."
"I didn't kill her."
"Good."
"But I suppose that guilty people always say that, don't they? That they're innocent, I mean?"
"Usually."
She nodded. She looked very sad now. "He's never been very good at being faithful."
"I'm sorry, Veronica."
"I mean, the strange thing is, I think he honestly tries to be."
He just watched her. She seemed on the verge of tears. "So, anyway, I just started following him one day." She gave him a quick, forlorn smile. "You would have been proud of me. I bought new clothes so that he wouldn't recognize me, and I bought this big, floppy hat and these huge, Joan Crawford kind of sunglasses, and I waited in the lobby of his hotel. When he came out, I—" The quick, forlorn smile again. "It's actually a lot of fun, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"Following people around."
"Not always. I knew an investigator who decided to follow his best friend around and then spring all these photos on him at his next birthday party. Unfortunately, the man went right to the investigator's house and spent all afternoon in the investigator's bedroom with the investigator's wife. I don't think that would be fun."
"I suppose that should be a funny story, but it's actually very sad," Veronica said.
"Yes, it is, actually."
She tilted her coffee cup toward her and peered into it, as if it were a tea cup and she was trying to read her fortune in the leaves.
"There's one difference," she said. And looked up at him. "Between the private investigator and me, I mean."
"Oh?"
"I knew what I was going to find."
"You mean, you knew you'd find that
Cobey
was being unfaithful?"
"Right. But even more than that. I knew who he was going to be with, too."
"You knew about Beth Swallows?"
"Yes."
"How?"
She hesitated again, but only briefly. "Did you ever read any of the biographies about John Lennon?"
He shook his head.
"Well, a few of his biographers insist that Yoko Ono saw to it that John started having a sexual relationship with their very pretty secretary because this way John would take care of his need to wander, and Yoko would be in control of the entire situation. She told the secretary that she wanted this to happen. But then John started falling in love with the secretary and Yoko was furious."
"You're saying that you set up the Swallows girl with
Cobey
?"
"Yes."
He sat there and stared at her and realized, in a terrible way, what one of his old bosses at the Secret Service had always told him: that we really don't know each other, that treachery often hides in what appears to be innocence.