“Yeah,” Castile said, the images from the TV wavering across his face, “you’re right. Just my luck. Meyers’s daughter.”
23
We talked about a number of things after that. One of them was money: I told him how I wanted to be paid-one thousand now, the rest later-and he liked that, liked the idea of not having to pay any more than that up front, since it showed I had faith in my ability to keep my end of the bargain, to keep him alive so that I would eventually get the rest of the money. I explained that while the later payments should be cash, the first thousand needed to be a check (it’s necessary for me to report some income to the IRS each year) and went into other details about how the check was to be handled, which I won’t go into here.
Another thing we discussed was what he’d been doing to protect himself.
“I’m carrying a gun,” he explained.
“Where?” I asked. Even in the dim light cast by the TV screen, it was apparent he wasn’t concealing a weapon in an outfit that still consisted of a sweatshirt with the word DIRECTOR on it and jeans, same as he’d been wearing when we met hours before.
“It’s in my suitcase,” he said, sheepishly. “I know what you’re thinking… lot of good it’s doing me there. I can see it now, me saying, ‘Excuse me, while I go get my gun out of my suitcase.’”
“Not at all. You can’t go around with a gun on you while you’re working on the film set. You wouldn’t need it, anyway.”
“Are you armed?”
“I left my gun outside.”
“Shouldn’t you get it?”
“Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”
“How can you know that?”
“Hey, I been through this with you before, Castile. Pay attention: we’re snowbound here, and unless Turner and his partner want to kill everybody in the place, you should be safe. And I can’t see Turner or any pro doing that.”
“He could sneak in during the night and then leave.”
“Then we’d be snowbound with a corpse and we’d all have to stick around while the authorities looked into it.”
“Why would that matter to this Turner?”
“Because he’d be leaving his partner behind. As a suspect. I’m not saying we shouldn’t take precautions. Turner’s an idiot, and he might try to fake your death to look like an accident or something.”
“Jesus. What can we do?”
“Wait a minute…”
“What…?”
Footsteps were echoing in the nearby open shaft area, and I put my hand up to silence Castile.
“Jack…?” The voice was Janet’s.
She was wearing a robe, a thin flowered robe that obscured her good figure, and she didn’t have her glasses on; she looked sleepy, as if she’d just woke up. Or somebody woke her up.
“Can I talk to you a moment, Jack?”
“Sure. Excuse me, Castile.”
I took Janet by the arm and walked her into the adjacent room, another living room area, where we stood in the darkness and spoke.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“What?”
“Afraid. I don’t know why, exactly. I just woke up and was afraid.”
“What woke you?”
“I thought I heard voices.”
“Castile and I were talking.”
“I don’t think you’re what I heard. I know, I know, I’m only one level up from here, and the rooms are sort of open… but I don’t think you’re who I heard. The sound came from above.”
“Are some of the others sleeping on the upper floors?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s what it was. Somebody upstairs from you, talking.”
“Maybe I dreamed it. It sounded like… arguing.”
“Maybe it was. Harry and Richie and Waddsworth have a little triangle going, I understand.”
“I’ve noticed. So it was them, maybe.”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“Fine, but I’m scared. I woke up alone and was scared, that’s all. I expected you to be there. You said you’d be coming up.”
“It’s only been an hour or so since you went up, kiddo. I’ll be up soon.”
“Okay. I’m sorry to be a baby.” She gave me a kiss. A nice one. Just a little bit of tongue, this time, teasing.
“I’ll be up,” I said.
She touched me.
“You’re up now,” she said.
“You’re not scared, you’re just horny.”
“Maybe that’s it,” she said, and I could sense, if not entirely see in the unlit room, her pretty smile.
“Shoo,” I said.
She let go of my hand, slowly, and drifted reluctantly off, disappearing into the dark.
I rejoined Castile.
“What was that all about?” he said.
“She was just wondering when I was going to come up.”
“I see. Is there any possibility…”
“That she isn’t the sweet child she seems to be? Sure. I told you before: there are women in Turner’s business.”
“You don’t think she’s been listening or anything…”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I don’t know.”
“Are you sleeping with her tonight?”
“I’ll be in the same bed. I’m not going to be getting any more sleep tonight than you, though. Where’s your room, anyway?”
“Not near Janet’s. It’s on the third floor.”
“I’ll move Janet and me next door to you and your wife. How’ll that be?”
“That’ll be fine with me. Is that one of the precautions you were talking about taking?”
“Yes.”
“What will you tell Janet?”
“I don’t know yet, something. But we’ll be next door. Count on that. How much does your wife know about all this?”
“Well… she knows I was involved with those slasher films, as middleman… and about the three o’clock phone call from the guy saying he… but I never told her about the relationship between the slasher films and that guy, his daughter… I just didn’t think Millie could handle that. All she thinks is that my life was threatened, and that I’ve been acting very paranoid since. Jesus. I’m scared. Really scared.”
“That’s what Janet said. That she was scared.”
“She did? Why, I wonder?”
“I don’t know. She had a bad dream, I think. She thought she heard something.”
And then, like punctuation to what I’d said, something landed heavily, thuddingly, out in the open area of the building, the central shaft area, a whump sound with overtones of brittle breaking sounds, like a bag of laundry that had been heaved onto the cement, only somebody had left something breakable in some of the coat and pants pockets, something made of china perhaps, some things that would shatter when hitting the cement…
I held Castile back with an arm, reached over with my free hand and flicked on a small lamp on an end table.
There was a naked body in the center of the floor, out in the open area. Oh, not exactly in the center, maybe, but close. The body was that of a man, and he’d hit face down, but twisting as he did, so that the trunk of him was visible, and there was no mistaking who it was.
Frankie Waddsworth, superstar of porn, wouldn’t have to sweat getting it up, anymore.
24
“Jesus,” Castile said.
I was kneeling next to the body. Castile was keeping his distance, though he was close enough for us to be able to speak in hushed tones. The only light was from the one lamp in the room where we’d been talking, and it made Castile cast a long, irregular shadow, helping make the already eerie, absurd situation all the more unsettling.
“So much for my nothing’s-going-to-happen-tonight theory,” I said.
“How can you… touch him?”
I was examining the body.
“Well I’m not getting a kick out of it,” I said. “But it’s not going to kill me, either.”
“You have such a soothing way of putting things,” he said.
“Thanks.”
I could find no wounds of any kind-bullet or knife or anything else, although if he’d been killed, say, with a long narrow needle or something, the wound wouldn’t be readily visible, particularly in this lousy light. One thing was obvious enough: his neck was broken; he’d landed on it, after apparently having fallen the entire four floors.