I got ushered out of the room by a nurse whose weight problem was overruled by her massive cans, a sight I would have loved to tell Graham all about. He would have rolled his eyes, told me I was a pig. He’d have been right. Christ, I was missing him already and he wasn’t even dead yet. I made my way past the bacon guarding the room to the elevator and slinked outside to track down a cab.
Since I didn’t have any biddies with more money than sense fitting the bill for my stay in L.A., I didn’t have the good digs Graham got set up with. I was staying at a no-tell motel six blocks southeast from Mann’s Chinese, which was more or less my old stomping grounds before the floor fell out from under me. With no place else to go, that’s where I had the cabbie take me. But before I went back to my room, I stopped off at the package store across the street to stock up on middle-shelf bourbon. The Egyptian clerk called me “boss.” I brought the bottle back to my room and sipped it from a Styrofoam cup in front of a late-night talk show where some lunatic pop star was trying to make her insipid record sound important. Nobody did anything important anymore, even I knew that.
In the next room, somebody was getting some action. I assumed it was bought, but I never begrudged anybody their vices. Hell, I was halfway thinking about calling up Pink Dot for some beer, hot dogs, and porno mags. Thinking about Graham in that terrible state at the hospital put the kibosh on that, but quick.
When the late show was over and the bottle was depleted by half, I was about ready to crash out had it not been for the knock at my door. I don’t know about anybody else, but anybody knocking on a motel room door is cause for alarm in my book, triply so at that hour. I didn’t have a peephole, so I cracked the filthy curtains and peered out the window. It was a ginger cop with a sour puss. He wasn’t in any kind of uniform, but the guy behind him was, and the redhead showed a badge to me through the glass.
“Detective Shea, Hollywood police,” he said, just like on TV. “Are you Jacob Maitland?”
I unlocked the guard chain and opened the door for him.
I said, “Hiya, Shea,” or something like it.
“Mr. Maitland,” he answered, putting his badge away. The uniform standing a few feet behind him eyeballed me like I was going to do something. I flashed a goofy grin at him.
“Deputy Pyle,” I said.
I don’t think he got it.
Shea pressed into the room, not waiting for an invitation. At least I knew he wasn’t a vampire.
A Three’s Company repeat was on the television. Shea switched it off.
“You like movies, don’t you, Maitland?”
I tipped my cup to my mouth, disappointed to find it already empty. As I refilled it with a few fingers, I said, “That’s kind of our game, Graham and me.”
Only half-true — Graham did actually make a living doing something film related. I sat at the front desk for a water company in Worchester writing screenplays that would never see the light of day. Kind of a game, still.
“Y’know how in the movies the cops always tell people to stay in town during an investigation?” Shea asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, for one thing, that’s bullshit. We can’t make you do anything like that. And another thing, I’m going to suggest — strike that, strongly suggest — that you go on home. First thing.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “I don’t recall ever seeing that in a movie.”
“Maybe you movie people should come talk to us more often.”
“You seem pretty busy as it is.”
“You can say that again,” Shea groused. He added: “I’m really sorry about your friend.”
“He’s not dead yet.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t,” I said. “I’m a little drunk.”
“No law against it.”
“Used to be, you know,” I slurred. It’s hell feeling sober in your brain when your mouth and limbs don’t want to act like it. “Back when our girl Gracie shuffled off this mortal coil. You couldn’t drink back then, you know. Shit was illegal as hell.”
“Seems like I heard about that. Mind if I smoke in here?”
I grimaced, said, “Yes, I do. Sorry, copper. One nice thing about Graham being down and out is I don’t have to breathe that filth anymore. Don’t you get started, too.”
“No harm, no foul,” said Shea.
“No foul, no harm,” I stammered. I swallowed down the contents of my cup, made a face and hissed.
“You’re hitting that sauce pretty hard,” Shea said. “I’d like to talk to you some more, but it doesn’t seem much prudent now. Are you leaving tomorrow, like I suggested? I could interview you by phone, no problem.”
“Maybe I’m a suspect,” I said stupidly. “You’d want to keep a suspect around, wouldn’t you?”
“All right, go ahead and shut up now. I mean it. You don’t want to get yourself in trouble, kid.”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“I’m just telling you.”
“You’re not the boss of me.”
I filled my cup again. Shea sighed. The uniform lingering outside the open door looked ready for anything. I sneered at him.
“We’re going before you dig a hole you can’t get out of,” Shea said. He dug a card out of his pocket and laid it gingerly on top of the television he’d turned off. I wondered what shenanigans Jack Tripper was up to by now. “My info. Call me when you’re not falling down drunk, would you? For your buddy.”
“For my buddy,” I toasted, and that shot went down hot, too. My stomach roiled.
The detective said, “Christ, take it easy.”
“Free country, Kojak,” was what I said back.
I’m a terrible drunk. Shit, I admit it.
I woke up with a monster headache and no intention to return home whatsoever. It was fifteen past noon and after chugging a cup of gas station coffee I found a place that sold breakfast greasy enough to take off the edge so I could decide what was next. I wasn’t about to leave Graham half-dead in the hospital with Christ-knew-who gunning for his ass just to go back to my shitty job in Massachusetts like none of this nightmare ever happened. I may have felt a little arrogant for having considered it, but as far as I was concerned this was my problem now. Angel of the Abyss and Grace Baron and why nice old ladies had to die because of them.
And my friend with a chunk of skull missing for our trouble.
I was a long sight far from ready, but more than fucking able. I swallowed a pound of eggs, bacon, and pancakes like they were the medicine of the gods and stepped back out onto Hollywood Boulevard like a man reborn, ready for anything. This was my game, now. If only I knew the damn rules.
I paid for my meal, left a chintzy tip. Went outside. I wanted a drink and planned on having one. There were a dozen bars within spitting distance, just like I remembered the old neighborhood. I’d ask the bartender for gin, because gin was my thinking drink. After all, I had some thinking to do. About how to help my friend Graham, who didn’t deserve everything that had happened to him.
And the main thing I thought of to help him was finding his ex-wife, Helen.
That one was going to require a few rounds.