They liked to be activists, these people.
I prowled my house, restless, my mind a jumble of Tabari and Doreen and Ross and the people from Barq and some unknown person who was to be kidnapped and put on trial somewhere in the Middle East.
Was Tabari the person to be tried?
Entering my bedroom, I stood by the window and looked out at the pool, gleaming in sunlight. A brief cloud went over, and then there was sunlight again.
Doreen, swimming back and forth in that water out there, a lithe fish in the sunlight, fleeing from sharks when the clouds came by.
I sat on the edge of the bed. With one hand I reached for the phone, while the other hand opened the bedside table drawer and pulled out that folded piece of paper.
Ken Donaldson’s phone number.
33
Ken took notes while Chuck simply watched my mouth as I talked. It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and we sat out on the lawn in the sporadic sunshine, the house spread whitely on one side and the land dropping away toward Thurston Circle on the other. Max and Sugar Ray, having been assured by me and by their own sense of smell that the deputies were all right, lay on the grass beside us, listening, hoping for something nice to happen. Neither Ken nor Chuck interrupted me, and when I was finished, Ken said, “I must admit, Mr. Holt, I have trouble figuring out how your mind works.”
I didn’t like that retreat from California first-name-itis. I said, “What do you mean?”
“You’re saying you lied to us. You’re saying you lied to the New York police. You’re saying you covered up a murder. Two days ago, when all you wanted to report was an attempt on your life, you insisted on having your attorney present. Today, when you want to confess to three felonies, maybe more, you’re willing to talk to us alone.”
“When this all started,” I said, “I wasn’t sure you’d take me seriously.”
“If you’d told us all this, we would have.”
“I didn’t make the connection, not right away. Ross showed me that tape over three months ago.”
Chuck said, “Sir, do you believe there was an actual murder on the tape?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I think the scene was faked, but the girl at the end was very dead.”
Chuck nodded. “And you believe the man on the tape who looked like your friend wasn’t your friend.”
“That’s right. I’m pretty sure now he was this actor who just died, Beau Sheridan.”
Ken said, “Is there a phone I could use?”
“In private?”
He smiled thinly. “If I needed privacy,” he said, “I’d go to the car and call in. In fact, I’d prefer you present.”
“Sure,” I said, and raised my voice: “Robinson!” When he appeared in the back doorway I called, “Could we have the phone, please?” He nodded, and went away.
While we waited, Chuck said to Ken, “I’m trying to think who’s coming to town next week.” To me he said, “He told you it was next week, right?”
“He said everything would be over just about a week from now.”
“Tuesday or Wednesday, next week.” Chuck frowned at his partner again. “Anybody special you can think of?”
Ken shook his head. “This town is always full of big names. That doesn’t narrow it.”
“Middle East,” Chuck said. “Arabs or something, from Sam’s description. Maybe they’re after Omar Sharif.” I was pleased to hear my first name being used again.
Robinson was coming across the lawn with the cordless phone, an item he held in his fingertips to express the disdain he felt for all innovations since about 1952. (Except Cuisinart; that he likes.) Putting the phone in the center of the table, he said, “Will there be anything else?”
“San Pellegrino,” I told him. “You gentlemen want Tab?”
“Sure,” said Chuck. “Thanks.”
“I’ll try that water of yours,” Ken said. An adventurous sort.
“Certainly,” Robinson said, and went away as Ken picked up the phone and dialed.
Chuck said, “Sam, tell me about your pal’s house. Who’s his next-door neighbor?”
“I don’t really know. He’s up in the hills in Beverly Hills, a big house, big houses on both sides, some rough ground out back. Hilly, upslope. I don’t know how much of it is his, or whose land is next to him up there.” I gestured in the direction of Thurston Circle, saying, “Like here. I own a kind of triangle of land down that way, and I couldn’t tell you exactly who my neighbors are. You see that Russian olive?”
“That tree down there on the left?”
“That’s a couple feet the other side of my boundary line. I have no idea who owns it, maybe that gray house down there, or maybe somebody back up this way on Bellagio.”
Meantime, Ken was on the phone, talking quietly, and now he said, “Hold on,” and turned to me, saying, “Delia West. Was she married or single?”
“Divorced, I think,” I said. “She used to be married to a stuntman.”
“Was West her married name?”
“Yeah. He was Eddie.”
“Was?”
“No, not like that,” I said. Robinson was coming out with our liquids, on a tray, in two bottles and a can, with three ice-cube-filled glasses. “So far as I know he’s still alive. I just meant I haven’t seen him since the show went off the air.”
“All right. Was it Edward? Edwin?”
“Sorry, I don’t know. His guild could tell you.”
“Thanks,” he said, and went back to his conversation on the phone as Robinson arrived and poured for us all. He didn’t mind Chuck drinking Tab so long as no food of his own preparation was involved.
“I guess it’s like the hostages,” Chuck said, watching Robinson pour.
I frowned at him. “What is?”
“The Americans in Iran, that whole bunch held hostage. They got out, they came back, they wrote a lot of books about it. Probably that’s what your pal is thinking. All he has to do is make it through the rough part, then write a book.”
Robinson went away again with the tray. I said, “That’s why I almost didn’t call you guys, I didn’t want to queer Ross’s pitch.”
Chuck nodded. “A lot of people think that,” he said. “They’ve got a friend, gonna sail his homemade balloon across the Pacific, gonna make just one million-dollar deal with the Colombian drug importers, gonna spray-paint their name on the inside of the polar bear cage. Their friends know they shouldn’t do it, but friendship says you gotta leave the guy alone. Ken and me, we’re the ones scrape them off the pavement.”
I suddenly remembered a few parallel incidents from years ago, back when I was on the force in Mineola. “What a waste,” we’d say to each other while the body bag was carried out. “And his pals knew about it. Why didn’t they stop him? Why didn’t they call us ahead of time?” I was wincingly aware of what Chuck was trying to tell me, and I had absolutely nothing to say.
Ken hung up. He said, “There is no missing persons on anybody called Delia West. The deaths of Beau Sheridan and Michael Olsztyn are considered a straightforward one-car vehicular accident.”
“What would they have called my death, yesterday?” I asked him.
He grimaced. “Yes, of course,” he said. “That part of the Ventura Freeway where they bought it is raised about fifteen feet above the surrounding area. They were in a Honda Accord belonging to Sheridan. Some bigger heavier vehicle could have just sideswiped them off the highway and through the chain link fence.”