“You caught me,” he said. “I was screening some of my old commercials for a client, some of the ones that won the Clios. I guess I take an inordinate pride in the work I did when I was — hot.” He waved an arm. Laughed. “You’re wondering where the client is, right? He’s off taking a leak.” He stared at me. “You all right?”
“Not right now I’m not,” I said. “I need to ask you some questions.”
His brow knitted, his handsome face grew serious. He nodded for me to sit down.
“Care for a beer?” he asked.
“Yeah. That sounds good.”
He went over to a wall panel, stepped deliberately on the floor, and the panel opened to reveal a dry bar. He took two bottles of imported beer from a small refrigerator and brought one of them over to me.
“Thanks.”
“You bet. Hell, you look like you could use it.”
I decided to get on with it. “What can you tell me about Stephen Elliot’s sexual tastes?”
He was obviously surprised by my question. “He was a lady-killer as far as I know.”
“No rumors to the contrary?”
He smiled. “There are always rumors to the contrary, you know that. Everybody thinks everybody else is queer, just as the old Quaker saying has it.”
“But nothing ever substantiated?”
He swigged from his beer. Even in a brown suit he seemed better suited to the deck of a yacht than an office. He shrugged. “No.”
“What about his background?”
“His background?”
“Yes, where he came from. What college did he go to? Where did he get his agency experience?”
He eyed me levelly. “Forgive my saying so, but you seem a little— Well, why don’t you try just sitting there and relaxing? You look like you’re going to jump down my throat if I say the wrong thing.”
“There’s something very wrong here, Bryce.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way Elliot spent money. You admitted he couldn’t have made it all from advertising.”
“What else?”
“His relationship with an older woman — nobody seems to know anything about her. Just that she seemed to fit into his life somehow. Know who I’m talking about?”
If he was lying, he was good at it. “No.” He paused. “Why did you ask me about his sex life?”
I had come here to take him into my confidence, to use him as a combination friend-shrink, but now I realized that I couldn’t, that I owed it to Jane to keep the photos secret.
“Why did you ask?” he repeated.
“I heard something.”
“What?”
I paused, seeing I was getting exactly nowhere. I made a show of relaxing. I even smiled. “I think maybe you’re right, Bryce. I think I’m a bit overwrought.”
“Hell, man, that’s easy to understand, what with Jane — well, you know.” He leaned forward, swigged his beer again. Then, “If it’ll comfort your mind any, I think Elliot was as straight as a ruler. He liked women too much to be anything else.”
He had just gotten done reassuring me when the door to the screening room opened and a man walked in.
The man came over in his country club style western clothes and when Bryce introduced him as Phil Davies, he shook my hand as if he were trying to choke it.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, and then I turned to Bryce, cuffing him on the shoulder. “I appreciate the beer and the talk. I guess I’m getting a little strung out is all. You know.”
“I sure do.” He grimaced. “This hasn’t exactly been my idea of a fun couple of days, either. As you know.”
We shook hands and I turned to leave. “Nice to meet you,” I said with a great deal of politeness to Phil Davies, a bald-headed, doughy-faced man.
Not that I felt any desire to be polite. Phil Davies was the man in the photograph with Jane.
15
The last time I’d done a stakeout was just after I’d started with the security company, when I did my one and only bit of husband-following. A prominent black surgeon was seeing a prominent white lady in the media. His wife was not happy. She engaged us to document what was going on. It was not the sort of work designed to enhance your self-image. After two nights I asked to be taken off the job. It wasn’t a big deal for my employer. He said all right.
Tonight I parked my Datsun in the shadows of a nearby building, waiting for the sight of Davies.
During my wait I went through anger, depression, and a real curiosity about him. How the hell had a slob like him ever coerced a beauty like Jane into bed? The answer had to be Elliot. Somehow he had convinced Jane to do it. For what reason I couldn’t imagine...
Davies came out an hour later, got into a big gray Mercedes-Benz sedan, and drove off. I stayed a comfortable half block behind.
The time was near midnight as we cruised into a shabby section of the city, not quite a ghetto, but working hard at it.
There was no way Davies lived here.
A few times, his driving getting a bit erratic, I wondered if he had suddenly become aware of me. But, no. I decided he was probably somewhat in the bag.
He got a good, long, six-block run going, apparently bored with the sluggishness of his journey, wherever it was he was headed. I had to move to keep up with him.
Five minutes later he pulled onto the driveway of a motel named the Palms. Red neon from the electric palm tree bloodied the macadam. The lights from the office made the front window look greasy and dirty.
What the hell was a man like Davies doing here?
He got out, his unsteadiness as he swung his foot free indicating that I’d been right, he was a tad potted. He waddled into the office in his cowboy sheepskin coat and pounded hard on the bell.
The man who appeared was tall, skinny, and dressed in a sort of disco style, with a too-snappy white suit and an open white shirt. He did not look pleased to see Davies. The two of them went behind the counter and disappeared into a room on the right.
I sat across the street and watched the cars go by, the noisy teenagers driving rock ‘n’ roll missiles, the older people in rusted and busted vehicles that could scarcely pass safety inspection. Inside a slob rich enough to drive a big Mercedes was doing God knew what with an aging parody of John Travolta.
As I said, I sat and waited. There was nothing else I could do, much as I would have liked to.
He came out after another hour. He was moving even more unsteadily now. He cracked his head getting into his car, then drove off, jerking and uncertain.
I let him go. I had a sense that the motel clerk could be helpful if I made him so.
The Palms was a four-story job with rusted iron railings running along the exterior hallways on each floor. Salesmen for tightfisted companies would stay here, and working-class high-livers cheating on their spouses. Again, Davies’s visit made no sense.
The office smelled of grease from an empty sack of hamburgers that sat on the desk.
David Letterman was talking to a vivacious guest, deftly putting her down and making her like it, and my friend, the forty-five-year-old disco guy, was enjoying it.
I hit the bell with the heel of my hand hard enough to startle both the clerk and myself.
“Why don’t you hit it a little harder?” he said. “Maybe you’ll win a prize.”
He came over in a cloud of Brut and hairspray, one of those gangly, vaguely criminal specimens who hang out in nightspots and occasionally get busted for small crimes. Once in a while booze or drugs or plain animal heat gets the better of them and then they commit a big crime, usually murder two, and spend several years getting hit on by cons.
This specimen wore several rings, a toupee at least one size too small, and a chain around his neck that could get you through a snowstorm in winter. He stared at me with a mixture of contempt and fear. He must have sensed that I wouldn’t mind smashing his face in.