The Player (21 page)

Griffin kissed June on the cheek, with conviction. Then he kissed her on the lips. Then he sat back.

“I had to do that,” he said, as though apologizing, but he was smiling. “Something came over me. I don't know what it was.” If he had any lines with women, this was his favorite. It helped to play shy later in the evening, as though his official business personality, once unwound, revealed the charming little boy he once must have been.

“It was about time.”

“So?”

“Would you mind coming back to my house?” she asked.

“No problem.” They kissed again. Griffin didn't like making love in limousines—he'd done that enough when he was new to power and doing cocaine. Now he was embarrassed even to kiss with a driver watching. He resented June's eager kisses, he wanted her to be cooler, more discrete. He slipped away from the kiss without letting her know he was unhappy, patted her thigh, and let himself sit back in the seat so he could look at her. They held hands and didn't talk as the limousine drove along Sunset and back up to the hills. This was another of the pleasures of a limousine: contemplation.

There was no sign of the Charger near her house. Griffin signed for the limousine and then gave the driver thirty dollars. The tip
was included, but Griffin decided to act the part of the happy big spender.

The driver asked if he wanted a receipt. Griffin said no. The driver thanked him.

As they walked up the path to the house, his arm around her waist, he sensed a new mood in her; she was walking slowly, trying to say something. She opened the door while he kissed the back of her neck and leaned into her body.

Inside the house, she asked him if he wanted something to drink. She went to the kitchen for mineral water. When she came back, she looked like she'd found the words for the thought she'd had on the path.

“I can't sleep with you tonight,” she said. “Not here. I hope you understand.”

“Actually I was wondering about that myself.”

“Really?”

“I was feeling a little weird.”

“Why?”

“I'd be the first person to make love to you since David died, right?”

“Yes.”

“That's a powerful—I don't want to say ‘responsibility,' I don't know—that's a charged event. I was wondering how you'd be.”

“We should have gone to your house.”

If he said to her, “We still can,” he'd lose her. He knew that. He might be losing her already; the door to her grief had been opened again. If she hadn't hesitated, maybe if he hadn't broken the kiss in the limousine, and they'd undressed as soon as they'd closed the front door behind them, and they were in the bed, in Kahane's bed, they might have been able to bring the significance of the moment into the lovemaking and electrified it by not denying the truth. The first
time in a dead man's bed. Of course, he had more truth than she. He didn't say, “We still can.” He said, “Look, let's stay up and talk, tell me about your childhood or something, and then I'll go home, and we'll go somewhere this weekend.”

“Where?”

“Mexico.” He said this to get through to her, to let her know that he wanted her time and that he would give her his time, his precious time. But Mexico … why had he volunteered Mexico?

She left her chair and came to him and gave him a long hug and cried. Griffin saw her grief. Was she crying for herself or Kahane? Would she have cried like this if a truck had run over him, or if he'd died of pneumonia? Griffin couldn't tell, but he thought not. There was something of her own confusion in the tears. Her warm forehead was like a baby's against his cheek. He stroked her hair. All he could think of saying was, “I'm sorry, baby, I'm so sorry.” She broke from the hug, took a breath, and smiled at him. Her face was inches from his. He walked her to the bedroom, his arm around her waist, the friend who would soon be a lover, but not tonight. He knew that if he said, “I love you,” to her, she would have said the same thing to him. She was thinking the same thoughts as he; there was no question. Almost the same thoughts. He watched her lie down on the bed, and he pulled the comforter over her.

“Thank you, Griffin,” she said. “I don't know you very well, but I think you're one of the best men I've ever met. Did you mean it about Mexico?”

“Of course.”

“I really need that. You don't know how much I need a change.”

“We'll have a good time.” He gave her a light kiss on the forehead, just long enough for her to feel the warmth of his skin.

He called a cab and waited in front of the house. A few cars passed, none slowed down, the police had gone home for the night
to puzzle over his strange declamation. This seemed an interesting detail to him, that murderers didn't need to be watched as closely as thieves. Well, he said to himself, how much do you know about thieves? He wondered if he should steal something. The cab came, and he was in his own bed an hour later.

At four in the morning he woke up from his first awful dream since the murder. The dream was a terrible feeling woven through an epic of beaches, airplanes, and horses. He knew the source of this panic; here he had gone and promised June Mercator a trip to Mexico, and they were certain to be followed by the police and stopped at the airport, maybe even arrested on the plane, before it took off.

Sleep was now impossible. He went to the kitchen and made himself a hot milk and added a half inch of rum. He didn't like to drink in a crisis, but he didn't know what else to do. Cancel the trip, of course, use work as an excuse. But if he canceled, would it be as easy to sleep with June Mercator, and isn't that what he wanted? Why did he want to destroy this woman? Had he killed her lover because of the attraction he'd felt when he spoke to her on the phone the night of the murder? Would he have killed David Kahane if June Mercator had been dull on the phone?

He didn't want to cancel the trip. He could suggest San Francisco, but who cared about perfect restaurants and kissing in the fog? What would they do, drink merlot and shop for cashmere sweaters? It was heat they needed, heat he wanted, the reduction to the elements of heat, sand, salt water, suntan lotion, tequila, white cotton pants and pink shirts, high sidewalks and cobblestone streets, beggars, and the fires near the airport. There are always fires near the airport in Mexico, trash fires in the shadows of unfinished buildings.

Against the backdrop of someone else's misery he could make love to June Mercator, make love to the woman whose lover he had murdered for obscure reasons. No, obscure to a jury, clear to him still. He could make great love. There was no other place to go; fucking her in a desert resort like Palm Springs would degrade them both, it would be ugly. Kahane's ghost, if he was watching them, could justify to God the need to return in his body and haunt them if he saw them screwing where the sin was so inelegant, so predictable. Mexico and June are both unhappy, and he saw that her unhappiness would be comforted by that sad country. In Mexico he could buy her something nice, a silver ring or an old mask. It had to be Mexico.

Still tasting the rum, he tried to burn it away with a second glass of orange juice in the Polo Lounge. Levison was telling him that he liked June.

“You looked good together,” he said.

“She's nice,” said Griffin.

“How'd you come to meet a nice girl who's not in the business?”

“Friend of a friend.”

“You devil, you took her from her boyfriend, didn't you?”

“Why do you say that? No.”

“You're blushing.”

“What am I supposed to say? I like her. We're going to Puerto Vallarta for the weekend.”

“Did I give you permission to take a vacation?”

“No.”

“Good, it's about time you took a trip.”

Griffin brought the discussion around to work habits, and then to Larry Levy, and then to scripts and stories, and he hoped that Levison wouldn't think about June anymore.

At the office Jan gave him his messages. June had called, also Susan Avery, also Walter Stuckel, and Larry Levy, a few agents, a producer. It was strange to see, among the usual names, signifying
usual things, the signs of the killing. June, Avery, and Stuckel stood out in relief, an esoteric design, and he was the only initiate in the cult.

He called June first, she was at work. Maybe she was backing out of the trip. He didn't want that. He was risking her arrest, and he knew he didn't care; he needed to sleep with her in a Mexican hotel room. She answered the phone.

“How does Puerto Vallarta sound?” he asked her.

“I don't know. What's it like?”

“Let's find out. Can you leave on Friday morning? Back on Monday, maybe Tuesday?”

“Can you get reservations on such short notice?”

“Yes.” He could have made a light joke about the power of his office, but the seduction was beginning now; and it needed austerity and confidence. Unless he could crack her up with a joke, better to avoid an unsure attempt. He told her that Jan would call with the details.

“I had fun last night,” she said.

“So did I.”

Then he told Jan to book a room in Puerto Vallarta, not a high rise, and to get two round-trip first-class tickets. She asked if this was company business and he told her no.

Susan Avery was not in. Griffin left his name and then regretted it. He couldn't call back and say, “Cancel that message.” No cop taking phone calls would throw away a message. Then he decided it was good he had called, if Avery was on his trail, if she had evidence, if there was a witness, he should appear calm and reasonable. Or should he be outraged? He didn't know.

Walter Stuckel was in, and he asked if he could see Griffin privately, he didn't want to talk on the phone. Griffin told him to come up. Stuckel was there in three minutes.

“I have friends in a lot of different places,” said Stuckel after he shut the door.

Griffin wanted to say to him, “I'm getting tired of your act.” All he was able to say, given the politics of the moment was, “And?”

“What happened in Pasadena?”

“When?” Griffin said this softly, and he placed his voice high, to sound annoyed, hurt, mystified.

“Don't make fun of me.”

“They called me in to look at mug shots.” This was a perfect answer, Griffin's answer was literal; he ignored even the possibility that there was any doubt about his first visit to Pasadena. Stuckel's tone of voice called for the truth about that first visit; it trumpeted the assumption that he already knew the answer in a general way and that now, because he was Walter Stuckel and knew how to talk to people, how to make them confess, Griffin would tell him the specifics. But, of course, Griffin knew he meant what happened the night they screened
The Bicycle Thief
at the Rialto. Griffin would never answer that question.

“Mug shots?” Griffin couldn't tell if Stuckel knew about the visit to Avery. He must; otherwise, this meeting made no sense.

“Yes, in case I recognized anyone who might have been in Pasadena the night that writer was killed.”
That writer
—this was a good touch, and Stuckel was already being put off-balance. “It was fascinating. It was just like the movies.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I think they have someone who saw what happened from a distance, but he, or she, didn't get a good look at the killer. That's why you're here, isn't it? You know something.”

“There's a chance they think it was you.”

“That I killed the guy?”

“You fit the description.”

“They haven't said anything to me.”

“Of course not.”

“Well, aren't you supposed to know your accusers?”

“Maybe you should get a lawyer.”

“Why?”

“In case they come for you.”

“I had a drink with the guy, Walter, that's all. This is ridiculous.”

“If you went to Pasadena with the intent to kill, you could go to the gas chamber.”

Griffin held back a smile; this was starting to sound like
Habeas Corpus.
“I went to Pasadena with the intent to hire.”

“That's what you keep saying.”

“Why would I have killed him?”

“I'm just telling you what they think.”

After Walter left, the travel agent called to give Griffin the itinerary for the trip. She'd found a second-floor room at an older hotel, with a view of the beach. Griffin called June and told her to be packed by seven
A.M
. He thought of asking her to dinner the night before they left; he could cancel an old appointment, but he didn't want to sleep with her until they were in Mexico, and there was no point in going to dinner now without going to bed afterward. It would be the most romantic if they flew on separate planes and met for dinner in a bar overlooking the Pacific, but maybe there was a way to make checking in romantic. Well, they were going first-class, so she'd be studiously casual about the better service. If they sold perfume duty-free on the plane, he'd buy her some. He'd ask her to put it on, in the plane. She'd resist, he'd insist, and he'd smell it, he'd put his face to her neck. And he'd pay people to carry the bags, he'd hire a taxi, he wouldn't take the hotel bus, he'd keep June apart from the tourists. He would treat her like a movie star.

He watched the lights on his phone. One line was blinking; someone was on hold. One line lit up for a moment and then went off; someone had left a message, or reached a wrong number, or Jan had picked up the phone and reached a busy signal. One line had been on for five minutes; Jan was probably talking to a friend. He could lift the receiver and listen in, but this was something he had never done, never even considered. He wondered why this had never occurred to him before. Did it mean he wasn't really interested in Jan, or that he was too busy to pry into her life, or that he was moral? But how can you be moral if you've never faced temptation? Was he tempted to listen in on Jan? He put his hand on the receiver and punched the button next to her line. He lifted the receiver a quarter of an inch and then set it back in place. He renounced the urge.