"I may take you up on that. Let's see what's needed and then we can talk some more about it."
When we got back home, they went out again. I stood at the window watching them leave. The silence in that room was very loud. I was happy for Cass, but knew tonight marked in some profound way the beginning of the end of our relationship as it had been for so many years. She had a lover now, someone who wanted to hold her and hear her secrets. Letting go of the curtain, I sadly wondered if she had played catch with him yet.
Feeling a wave of middle-age self-pity break over me, I shook myself like a wet dog and decided to do some reading – Veronica's letter, Ivan's information.
The dog was planted in my favorite chair, sound asleep and making unattractive wet sounds. More than once he had snapped at me when I tried to rouse him from said chair. I wasn't about to go through that again. I sat on the couch and pulled some reading glasses out of my pocket.
I heard a noise upstairs. There had been a series of break-ins around the neighborhood. That made any sound ten times more suspect when you were alone in the house. I stood up slowly and walked on tiptoe to the staircase. I listened for more, but nothing came. There was a hammer on a side table and I picked it up. For a while I had considered buying a gun for the house, but that only made you part of the problem. The hammer would have to do.
At the top of the stairs I saw a light on in my bedroom. I hadn't turned it on. Stupidly, I strode over and kicked the door open. Veronica was sitting in the rocking chair by the window. Heart racing, anger and relief chased each other around in my stomach. "How did you get in?"
"I know how to open doors."
"You know how to open doors. That's great! Welcome to my house, Veronica. Why didn't you just call and say you were coming?"
"Because I was afraid you'd tell me not to. You didn't answer my letter."
"I just got it!" I went to the bed and sat down. There was this hammer in my hand. I looked at it and dropped it on the floor.
"I was so scared, Sam. I thought you'd never want to talk to me again. I was going crazy." Her voice cracked on the last word. When she spoke again, it was too loud and agitated. "But this is my life! Not yours or anyone else's! Why am I always apologizing for what I've done? Don't you think I feel bad anyway? Don't you think I look back and say, 'How could you have done that? What got into you?' "
I turned and looked at her. "Did you write on that gravestone?"
She stared at me, shook her head. "What are you talking about? What gravestone?"
"Forget it. Never mind." But the problem, the new worry was I didn't know if she was telling the truth. She'd already lied to me, acted in porno films, broken into my house . . . What else was Veronica Lake capable of doing?
As if reading my mind, she said, "You don't trust me at all anymore, do you?"
"You're not who I thought you were."
"Who is, Sam? Who is?"
The next morning Veronica and Cassandra met. It went very badly. Veronica and I had slept, fully clothed, in my bed. In the middle of the night I woke up and saw her, wide awake, staring at me. I got up and went into the guest room.
Cass was in the kitchen eating breakfast when I got downstairs. I told her Veronica was there and she raised an eyebrow.
"I didn't know she was coming."
"Neither did I. We'll talk about it later."
Veronica appeared a few minutes later looking like hell. I introduced them. Cass tried hard to be friendly and warm but Veronica was withdrawn. She wouldn't eat anything and answered Cass's questions with short, curt sentences that were just short of being rude. It was one of the most uncomfortable meals I had sat through in a long time. Luckily Ivan came by and the two kids drove off to happier lands. When they were gone, I suggested we take the dog for a walk.
It was overcast and chilly outside. Veronica wore a light shirt. I offered her a jacket but she wouldn't take it. Crossing her arms over her chest, she walked with her head down.
"Did you read the letter I sent? No, you didn't have time. There was nothing in there except poetry by Neruda. Can I say it to you?
And our problems will crumble apart, the soul
blow through like a wind, and here where we live
will all be clean again, with fresh bread on the
table. . . .
Because the dark-faced earth does not want suffering;
it wants freshness-fire-water-bread, for everyone:
nothing should separate people but
the sun or the night, the moon or the branches.
We walked on silently. A car passed and honked its horn. I jerked and looked up quickly. It was a neighbor, giving a big wave. I waved back.
"Do they like you around here, Sam? Do you have a lot of friends?"
"No. Just people to wave to. You know me – I'm not very social."
"But I'm your friend. I'd do anything for you!"
She said it with such anger that my own reared and shot right back. I wish it hadn't. "And that's the trouble, Veronica. You were friends with Donald Gold and look at what it led to."
She gasped, stopped, and put a hand to her cheek. "You son of a bitch!" She ran down the street before I could say anything else. Stopping once, she turned and looked at me, then started running again.
He don't look dead to me. But maybe that's 'cause we're in L.A.; out here they tan your body before showing it."
"Frannie, shut up. The guy's dead."
"That's right – he and his dad are playing Ping-Pong together in hell."
We moved past the open coffin of David Cadmus and sat down on some folding chairs nearby. There were only two other people in the room – a smoky-looking brunet and a guy whose beeper kept going off. Welcome to L.A.
A day before, McCabe had called to tell me David Cadmus had been murdered in a drive-by shooting. "Boy, that completes the Cadmus circle, huh? Like father, like son."
He said he had friends with the Los Angeles police who would fix it so we could have a look around Cadmus's house before anything was removed. We were on a plane six hours later.
What was strange was that the last time I had seen Cadmus, he had been white as a sheet. In death, he had the deep tan of a beach volleyball player.
Los Angeles is a town where you take your chances, but other than my editor Aurelio Parma having been held up at gunpoint at the American Booksellers Association convention, I'd never known anyone there directly touched by crime.
After a minute or two of silence, Frannie leaned over and said, "Let's get out of here. I don't have that many respects to pay to the Cadmus family."
Outside he pulled a pair of snappy-looking sunglasses out of a pocket and slid them on.
"Nice glasses."
"Armani. What else? You want something, you get the best."
"Then how come you rented a Neon, Giorgio?"
He kissed the air between us and walked over to the beige rental car that looked like a large lump of bread dough on the rise. "Hey, this car's okay, Sam. It gets about a thousand miles to the gallon and that's what matters out here."
Inside it was like a microwave oven. Thank God the seats were made of cloth or else our asses would have melted onto them like grilled-cheese sandwiches. Frannie turned on the air-conditioning but that only made it hotter.
We drove out of the funeral home parking lot onto Pico Boulevard. "Cadmus's house is not far from here. About ten minutes. There's a fabulous place for ribs on the way – you ever been to Chickalicious? They also make these hot wings . . . well, you'll taste them."