“I have never needed to use this before,” Sy said, looking down at the gun in his hand. “I bought it for Elenor but she would not take it.”
“Guess it’s not her weapon of choice,” Deirdre said.
Sy ignored that. He braced himself with his other hand on the door as Deirdre rounded a corner a little too fast.
“I drove all over,” Deidre said, “thinking I’d leave it in a backyard, under some bushes, buried in mulch. But these people”—she pointed up one of the driveways, where a gate led to hidden backyards—“have gardeners. Automatic sprinkler systems. Motion sensors and alarm systems.”
She heard a clicking sound and glanced across at Sy. He was cocking and uncocking the gun that he held in his lap, pointing at her leg.
The car brushed the curb and Deirdre jerked the wheel. There was a deafening pop. Deirdre screamed and locked her hands on the wheel as the car slew to one side of the road and then to the other. A sulfurous smell. Was she hit? She slammed on the brakes and steered into the skid, narrowly missing a parked car.
At last she got the car under control. She took a quick glance down into her lap. In it were beige plastic shards. Pieces of dashboard.
Her heart pounded like a jackhammer and her fingers ached. That’s when she realized Sy was gesticulating at her. Waving his hands, including the one holding the gun. Saying something. Shouting probably. But her ears were ringing.
Finally the ringing abated. She looked across at Sy. He was calm now, staring at the gun, white as a sheet. “Gun is loaded,” he said.
No kidding. Deirdre’s forehead and the back of her neck were coated with cold sweat, and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. As if there weren’t enough oxygen in the car to fill her lungs. She rolled down the window. Took some deep breaths.
She glanced across again at Sy. He looked as terrified as she felt. He had the bluster to threaten, but maybe not the nerve to pull the trigger. Either way, as long as he had that thing in his hands he was dangerous.
Her heart still pounding, she turned north on Beverly Glen. The two-lane residential street, most of its houses hidden by tall bushes, climbed slowly. Deirdre steadied herself. Keep on talking.
“So then I thought, maybe I could hide it somewhere in a park,” she said as she drove past a small park, barely big enough for a few picnickers to lay out their blankets. “In a public restroom or behind a storage shed or in a trash bin. But I couldn’t trust it to remain unnoticed for long. So I thought: How do they do it in the movies? They stash things in lockers in bus or train stations. But do they still have storage lockers? And is there even such a thing as a bus or train station within striking distance of Beverly Hills? Which got me thinking about a locker at a country club.”
Her ears popped as they climbed higher and higher. Farther up, the houses were more modest and the road narrowed. Finally she turned onto Mulholland right behind a red Porsche that was moving fast. Deirdre kept on its tail, hoping she was making an impression, that the driver would remember her if anything bad happened.
“Which could have worked except I don’t belong to a country club.”
Sy held on to the door. He looked like he was about to be carsick. The gun was still in his hand, pointed at her, his finger still on the trigger.
“It’s not much farther,” Deirdre said. “Would you quit messing with that thing? I know you don’t want to shoot me while I’m driving.”
“I do not want to shoot you at all.”
Deirdre turned tighter than she needed to coming around a bend. Tires screeched and Sy braced himself against the door. But still he held on to the gun. The turnout was just ahead. At least in a few moments they’d be out of the car.
She still hadn’t caught her breath when she pulled the car off the road and into the same parking area where she’d spun out, day before yesterday. There were no bikers there today, just a battered, orange-and-white VW bus and an older couple standing at the opposite end of the overlook, taking in the view of the Valley.
Dust settled around Deirdre’s car. She started to open the door.
“Not yet.” He had the gun steady and pointed directly at her. “First, where is it?”
Deirdre swallowed. “It’s over there.” She pointed to the tree twenty feet down off the side of the road, its base crowded with mementos of people who’d been injured or lost their lives.
Sy took the keys from the ignition, grabbed Deirdre’s umbrella, and got out of the car. He motioned for her to get out, too. She did. He looked around, casting a nervous glance in the direction of the couple. They weren’t paying attention to anything but the view.
“Suicide Bend,” Sy said, reading the sign and edging closer to the guardrail. He looked over, then gazed up toward the tree branch where the car bumper twisted in the wind. “I guess you are not the only person who got hurt here.”
Deirdre limped over to the stretch of guardrail closest to the tree. “I threw it from here.”
Sy stared down the steep incline. “Go get it.”
“I can’t—”
“Then you should not have thrown it.” Sy passed her the umbrella she’d been using in place of her crutch.
Deirdre sat on the guardrail. “Or we could just leave it there and it will be our little secret. I’ll never tell.”
Sy gave her a long, steady look. “You know I cannot risk that. Think of this as part of your role as your father’s literary executor.”
Deirdre almost laughed. What she was about to do was a gross perversion of the role her father had bestowed upon her. “You’re only going to change what he wrote.”
“It will still be Arthur Unger’s story. Boy from the Bronx makes good. Think about how he would feel if the choice were between dooming it to obscurity or twisting it a bit and making it a smash.”
“You must have tried that argument out on him.”
“And I think he would have come around. Eventually. But not everyone is as patient as I am.”
The worst part was, Deirdre knew Sy was right. She set the tip of the umbrella into the wet soil at the top of the embankment and swung her legs over. Next to the teddy bear and beside a fresh bouquet of flowers, she could see the glint of shiny foil in which she’d wrapped the manuscript. If she gave it to Sy, no one would know that the father of Bunny’s son had been a sixteen-year-old kid. Henry could go on pretending to be a friend of the family, taking his son under his wing like a big brother. No one would know that Henry killed Tito.
What would her father have wanted? She knew the answer to that. He’d have wanted to be played by Jack Nicholson.
What mattered to Deirdre? That took her a few moments.
She turned back to Sy. “Will you tell me one thing?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you kill my dad?”
“No.” Sy’s voice was firm. She wasn’t sure if it was regret or annoyance that flickered across his face. “But I will say that I did, if it comes to that. I will be very convincing. People who confess to protect people they love can even come to believe the lie.”
“Bunny killed him, didn’t she?” Deirdre said.
Sy’s expression didn’t change, but that told her all she needed to know.
Deirdre stood, set the tip of the umbrella in the harder-packed soil farther in from the guardrail. Carefully she began to descend toward the base of the tree.
ALMOST TWO YEARS
LATER, WEDNESDAY,
March 11, 1987
Chapter 44
Silver-haired Johnny Carson bounced a pencil on his desk and raised a hand in a salute to his audience. “My guest tonight is one of the most glamorous movie stars of all time. When her name was on the marquee, bam, they came. Her new movie is about to open, and it’s both a public and a very personal triumph. Would you please join me in welcoming the one, the only”—the camera shifted to a robin’s-egg blue curtain that drew aside—“Elenor Nichol.”