“Yes, and while you’re doing that, I’m going to ask you a few questions.”
He arched an eyebrow, then sank back in the booth. “You want my opinion?”
I sighed. “I think I can guess what you’re going to say.”
A kind of mourning touched his eyes. He looked older, tired. “I’m afraid I think she killed him. The police evidence is pretty overwhelming.”
“Maybe it’s all too pat.”
His expression was more kind than patronizing. “Yes — maybe.”
“Can I ask you a few questions?”
He smiled wearily. “Sure.”
“I need to know the names of any close friends of Elliot’s.”
He smiled. “He was ambitious enough not to have any friends per se. He didn’t have time for any; they were baggage to him. Besides, he might have to step on somebody, and he didn’t want to feel guilty about it.”
“You say he and Jane split up.”
“Right.”
“You know why?”
“Stephen didn’t want to be tied down. That simple. He had looks, money, and he was the most selfish bastard I’ve ever known.”
“You don’t sound very fond of him.”
He stared at me carefully. “Am I making myself a suspect? Don’t answer that. Whether I am or not, I want to have my little say here. For all my faults, I’m a reasonably charitable man. I take a real interest in most people’s problems and I try to help them out. There wasn’t an ounce of that in Stephen, and for that reason alone I didn’t like him.”
“Any other reason you didn’t like him?”
“You really are turning me into a suspect, aren’t you?”
“I need to know the truth, Bryce.”
He sighed. “Sure there were other reasons I didn’t like him. For one thing, I was jealous.”
“Why?”
“People saw me as pathetic. The agency bore my name, but everybody knew that he was really the main figure, not me. That’s a kind of impotence. But I sure as hell didn’t kill him.”
“Well, if he didn’t have any friends, can you think of anybody who might have wanted him dead? Besides Jane, I mean?”
“I thought about that on the way over here. I guess the first guy I should tell you about is an art director named David Baxter.”
“Why would Baxter want him dead?”
“Baxter’s wife was sleeping with Stephen. She works for me. Baxter found out about it a week ago. There was a very ugly scene in our parking lot.”
“Can you give me Baxter’s address?”
He did. “Anybody else?” I asked.
“This isn’t a suspect, but it’s somebody he hung out with. A media rep named Carla Travers, who sells time for Channel Six.” He snorted. “Do you know about media reps?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Some of them are the worst sort of people you’d ever want to meet — stupid, lazy and really treacherous. They make used car salesmen look like altar boys. They’ll tell any kind of lie to make a sale.” He smiled bitterly. “There’s this little game they play. If the ratings say they’re in last place, some of the sales managers just juggle the figures until they look good. It gets ludicrous — ‘we’re number one,’ but among midget Tasmanian transvestites, that kind of crap. Agencies are pretty well-connected against them because we have our own media buyers who know all about the false claims they make.” Another head shake. “The people I really feel sorry for are the small retailers. The bad reps really feed on them.”
“Aren’t there any good media reps?”
“Oh, sure, of course. Some very good ones. Honest, professional, honorable, but...” He frowned. “But too many of them peddle gossip and lies instead of helpful information.”
I smiled. “Other than that you’re crazy about them.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling back, “other than that. Anyway, Carla Travers may be able to help you. She and Stephen had an odd kind of relationship.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’m not sure, actually. I once saw him spit in her face — he didn’t know I’d looked in a door by accident. But after that I saw them together several times at the Conquistador.”
The bar he mentioned was the latest fashionable place for media people and the more successful actors.
“You were being literal, about spitting in her face?”
“Quite literal.”
I glanced at my notebook again. “Anything else you can help me with?”
He shook his head. “No.”
I stood up. “Why don’t I give you a ride back to your car?”
Van Morrison thundered on the jukebox. He was probably my favorite singer. “Blue Money.” I wanted to stay and listen and think nice things about my son and my future as an actor and remember what it had been like to hold Jane Branigan during the night when the lightning scared both of us and drew us closer together in a naked, silky, pagan embrace.
Suddenly I felt an urgency to be alone. I made a quick trip of taking Hammond back to his car.
5
She was waiting for me when I got home — in the gloom of my parking lot. A chill wind was working up as I slammed my car door. Her headlights snapped on and her four-year-old Chevrolet started dogging my tracks as I walked to my apartment. She pulled up beside me.
“Hi,” she said. In the gloom I could see that she was attractive. I could also see from the way her red hair touched the top of her car that she must be at least six feet. She wore a white turtleneck and a blue blazer. She was probably a few years younger than I.
“Hi,” I said.
“You’re Dwyer, aren’t you?”
“That’s me, okay.”
“You cold?”
“Cold?”
“Yes. Cold. The weather, I mean.”
Boy, was I enjoying myself. “Yeah. I am kind of cold, now that you mention it.”
“Would you care to get in?”
“Your car?”‘
“Yes.”
It was crazy enough to interest me, to divert me from reality. I shrugged, walked around the car, got in.
The first thing she said was, “I probably didn’t do that right, did I?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The way I talked to you and all. That probably wasn’t the right way.”
“Right way for what?”
“The right way to get a story.”
I sighed. “You mind if I smoke?”
She smiled an affecting smile. For the first time I noticed that one of her eyes strayed just a tad, like Karen Black’s. For some reason I find that not only cute but sexy.
She showed me her own pack. “You mind if I smoke?”
We lit up.
“Over there all right?”
“Over there?” I asked.
“To park.”
“Sure. Over there looks like a swell place to park.”
She drove maybe six feet into a parking space that faced a retaining wall. Nice spot. In the rearview mirror I could see the dying pink of the dusk sky.
“I probably have to get better at this, don’t I?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, “I don’t really see all that much room for improvement.”
“I mean just saying ‘hi.’ It doesn’t sound official.”
“Sounded pretty official to me.”
“Really?”
I looked at her. Frowned. “Do you mind telling me what the hell we’re talking about?”
“See? You didn’t think I was worth a damn, did you?”
“Maybe you did a wonderful job. But first of all, before I can judge that, I need to know what the hell you were trying to do.”
“I was trying to come on like a reporter.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.”
God, it was all nutsy.
“You ever watch `Lou Grant’?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“It was my favorite TV show. Especially Linda Kelsey. She was really good.”
“Yes, she was.”
“Anyway, after I got fired, that’s the idea I had. To be a reporter.”
There was something tirelessly and endearingly wacky about her. At other times I would have felt properly swayed. Now all I could feel was sorry for both of us. This woman, fetching as she was, belonged in a home of some kind.
“Why don’t we start with the basics?” I said.
“Like what?”
“Your name.”
She laughed. “See, that’s how nervous I am. I forgot to tell you my name.”
“You still haven’t.”
She laughed again. “See, as soon as I saw you, I got so nervous I forgot everything I was going to say. I just started gibbering. That’s a word my mother always uses. Gibbering.”
“Do me a favor, all right?”
She shrugged. There was a neurotic quality in the shrug, though I couldn’t exactly tell you what I mean. “Shut up.”
“What?”
“Let’s just sit here and smoke our cigarettes. I’ve OD’d on talking for now.”
“But I haven’t told you my name yet.”
I turned on the radio and put my head back and closed my eyes and took the smoke deep into my lungs and held it there. She was tuned to a Top 40 station that was playing a Michael Jackson song. I felt perfectly safe. She was nuts, but she was harmless. With my eyes shut, I became aware of her perfume. It was a gentle scent, sweet. It fit her.
After a while she cleared her throat. She said, “My name’s Donna Harris and I’m the publisher and editor of a newsletter called Ad World.”
I opened my eyes. She sounded much more together now, and as soon as she mentioned being associated with an advertising publication, I began to understand why she was here.
“I have nothing to tell you,” I said.
“Are you angry?”
I just stared at her.
“I didn’t mean to make you mad.” She frowned. “See, dammit, there I go. I can’t really be assertive when I need to be.”
I didn’t say anything this time either. She had another go at it. “Maybe Jane Branigan didn’t kill Stephen Elliot.”
I must have looked curious about her remark.
“I’ve been doing a story on Elliot for my newsletter. I had an appointment with him this afternoon at his house. When I got there I saw the police and I started asking questions. One of the policemen was real helpful. He mentioned you and he mentioned Jane. I just looked you up in the phone book.”
I’d make a lousy spy. I left too many easy trails for people.
“I’m not an expert on advertising,” I said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of your newsletter before.”
“Oh,” she said, as if I were the world’s leading dope. “The first issue hasn’t been published yet. That’s why this is such a break for me.”
For the first time, she touched me. Literally, I mean. She put out a hand and placed it on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that coldly. I just meant—”
I sighed. “I know what you meant.”
“Just that—”
“Just that Stephen Elliot being killed will make a big story for your inaugural issue.”
“Yes. Exactly.” She paused. “Especially if I can help solve the murder, scoop everybody else.”
So that was it.
I sat there in the darkness, listening to her heater bang away at the chill, watching a perfectly lovely woman prove herself over and over again certifiable.
“How long have you been a journalist?” I decided to have some mean fun with her. Right now it was the only game going.
“Why do you ask?”
“Curious.”
“Well, not real long, I admit.”
“How long?”
“Oh, roughly two weeks, more or less.”
“More or less.”
She hurried on. “But I’ve done a lot of writing. Copywriting.”
“I see.”
“I’ve won a Clio and probably fifteen Addys.”
I smiled, liking her despite myself. “You get fired?”
In a very tiny voice, she said, “Yes.”
“So you decided to start a newsletter?”
She nodded.
“Being a journalist isn’t easy.”
“Neither is finding another advertising job. I’ve really been trying hard. After the agency I was with lost their biggest account forty-one ad people were dumped on the market — including me.” She shrugged again. Neurotically. “I’ve either got to make this newsletter thing go or— I’ve only got five months’ worth of money saved up. At most.”
“Something will come along.”
“You don’t think much of the newsletter idea, huh?”
“Not really.”
“I figured it out. If I can sell four hundred subscriptions throughout the state at fifty dollars a year, I can easily pay the printing bills and have a decent salary left over.”
My father used to have notions like that. A lot of schemes that the whole family found sweet but hopeless.
“You going to work on it?” she asked.
“The case?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose.”
“You don’t think she did it.”
I looked at her. “I hope not.”
“Maybe we could work together.”
“I don’t think so. Sorry.”
“Maybe I could be helpful.”
I rolled down the window several cracks. The heater was getting to me. “You’re very nice,” I said. “You really are. And I hope you find a job soon.”
“Shit,” she said.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.” There were tears in her voice. “When I was married that’s how my husband treated me. Every idea I had was ‘charming’ to him. Which translated to the fact that I was crazy. I admit I get carried away sometimes but—”
She must have heard herself. Her panic, there in her four-year-old Chevrolet.
I reached over and patted her hand, and for just a moment I wanted to keep touching her. She had a wonderful hand.
I got out, then put my head back inside. “I wish you luck. I really do.”
“You still in love with her?”
Her question rattled me. I tried to think of an appropriate answer. Maybe the real answer was one I didn’t want to admit. Then I said, “I don’t know.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe after all this is over you can get back together with her.”
“Yes. Maybe.”
“Well,” she said.
I closed the door, walked away.