I reached for the kitchen matches.
Then he understood… and yet he just grinned at me-with those teeth that were yellow, green-caked decayed things, plus a few gaps. “You wouldn’t, you fuckin’ candyass. You don’t have the balls.”
I lit the match.
And now, finally his eyes showed fear-some small fraction of the fear his victims had felt. Soaked with the booze, he began to tremble, as if a chill had overtaken him.
I was holding up the match, flame dancing like a little orange-and-blue demon. “What are you afraid of? You already died in a hotel fire once, Arnold.”
“What do you want, Heller? You want me to come forward? Want me to confess? Well, fuck you!”
He threw the wine bottle and I easily ducked it; it shattered on the wall behind me. I straightened-the match was still burning bright, had burned about halfway down.
“Do you believe in heaven, Arnold? Do you believe in hell?”
“No!”
“I’m not sure about that, either-but I do know you deserve hell.”
The flame was fat now, burning within a quarter inch of my fingers, leaping orange, jumping blue.
“What the fuck are you doing, Heller? We’re just a couple of old men!”
“You’re old enough,” I said.
And tossed the match.
The next morning I received a call from Gil Johnson. I was staying at my son’s house in Malibu; I was out on the deck, watching young women (they apparently weren’t called “girls” anymore) bob around in bikinis down on the beach.
“Mr. Heller,” Gilmore said, his tone grave, “I have something terrible to report.”
“Oh?”
“Seems Arnold Smith was burned to death last night, in his hotel room.”
“Really?”
“No one else was injured-fire was confined to the tiny room that Smith lived in for the last four years. Horrible, horrible… Somebody went up and down the halls banging on doors, yelling fire-over the sound of Smith screaming, apparently… Everybody was evacuated.”
“Everybody but Smith?”
“Everybody but Smith. I guess a fire station was just a block and a half away. Only the one room was involved in the blaze, but the whole interior of Smith’s was a charred mess… Must have been a regular inferno.”
“Jeez.”
“The manager of the hotel says Smith was a heavy smoker and of course I knew he was a heavy drinker. But I guess there’d been three or four minor fires already in his room… from him falling asleep with a cigarette in his hand. They think maybe he spilled some booze and… Still, there definitely will be an arson investigation.”
“Really?”
“Yes. See, I’ve been talking to the cops about this-you’ve heard of that famous detective, John St. John?”
A blonde and brunette came bounding out of the water and flopped onto towels, on their tummies. “Yeah, Jigsaw John, the Dahlia’s his case now,” I said. “You’ve told St. John about Smith, you mean?”
“Yes. I was going to try to get Smith to tell St. John about what this guy Morrison did. But St. John, based on what I’ve told him, thinks Smith may be… or I guess now it’s ‘may have been’… the Short woman’s killer. Or, as I suspected, an accomplice. Which makes Smith a suspect in an unsolved murder.”
“Ah. Which means there has to be consideration of the death possibly being something other than accidental.”
“You don’t miss much, do you, Mr. Heller? Plus, the cops are wondering who went through the hotel warning everybody.”
“Was he seen?”
“No, but none of the residents take credit-they all just booked outa there.”
I grunted, studying the brunette, who had turned over onto her back, and whose breasts seemed unlikely. “It’s a puzzle.”
“Sure is. Anyway, I still need to go ahead with this.” He sighed, cleared his throat. “I guess I’m up to us getting together later today, like we planned.”
I sipped my glass of iced tea. “Well, that’s the thing, Gil. I’ve been giving this some thought. I’m thinking maybe I might want to do a Dahlia book myself, someday.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean-”
“I’m afraid it does. I’ve got to save what I know for my own book.”
“Oh. Well. I guess I can understand that…”
“Good.” Now that little blonde down there, turning over; those looked real.
“… I have to say, Mr. Heller, it is a strange coincidence.”
“What is?”
“Smith dying in a hotel fire, with you in town, before I could get the two of you together.”
“I suppose. But if you like, there is one thing I can tell you about the Dahlia case-you know, just as one author to another.”
Hopeful expectation colored the writer’s voice. “Any insight you can share, Mr. Heller, any scrap of information, would be appreciated.”
Those girls down on the beach-they were about the same age Elizabeth Short had been, when she died; and they were out here in La La Land, no doubt with similar hopes and dreams. I hoped they’d fare better than the girl from Medford, Mass. But the way the world was going, I had no faith they would.
“Mr. Johnson,” I said, “this goddamn case is just filled with coincidences.”