“Thank god.” An out-of-breath Lasner, upset, his eyes slightly frantic. “Where the hell’s Bunny?”
“He went off the lot.”
“Where? There’s nobody home. I tried. What, does he have a date for chrissake? Henry took Fay to her cards. So now what? Call a cab?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Your car?” Lasner said, eyeing it. “You mind? I appreciate it.”
“You need a lift?”
“Hurry,” Lasner said, opening the passenger door. “Come to think of it, you can talk to her. If she can talk. They didn’t say.”
“Who?” Ben said, getting in.
“The cops called. There’s a crash. The Buick. Lorna said Genia took it out. I didn’t even know she could drive.”
Ben started the car and backed it out. “Where?”
“Go out Sunset. The Palisades. So who does she know out there? She doesn’t know anybody. What’s she doing there?”
At the gate, Lasner leaned over Ben to talk to the guard.
“Carl? Henry comes, tell him I got a lift home, will you?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Lasner,” he said, saluting, a Dick Marshall-army gesture.
“He takes Fay to the cards,” Lasner said to Ben, “and then she likes him to stay. I’m here late anyway, so what the hell. Then something like this happens.”
They went up Gower and made a left on Sunset.
“They got the name off the registration. Lucky Fay’s not home- you imagine, she gets the call? So Lorna says call here. Now the car’s a wreck, I guess. Not that you mind the car. I mean, family. I don’t know, you try to do something nice for somebody and she just sits there. Then it rains, she takes the car out. A night like this.”
“Maybe she was going to see somebody.”
“Who does she know?”
They had passed through Hollywood, then the long featureless stretch before Fairfax, slowing now as they came to the heavier traffic on the Strip, bright from the neon signs over the clubs.
“Who knew she could drive? Who has cars over there? Look at this,” he said, indicating the slick street. “She goes tonight, roads like this.”
“What about the other car?”
“They didn’t say. Maybe she went into a tree, I don’t know. Just come. It’s serious.”
Lasner was quiet for a minute.
“It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it? You get through all that business, survive Hitler, and then you come here and-bam.”
“They didn’t say she was dead, did they?”
“No. Just there was an accident. But they don’t on the phone, do they? Christ, imagine how Fay’s going to feel-”
“Let’s wait till we get there.”
Lasner fidgeted as they snaked around miles of houses. When they climbed into the Palisades, he pulled a note out of his pocket.
“Paseo Miramar. On the north side, they said. After Palisades Drive, into Topanga.”
“I know it.”
“What do you mean, you know it? You just got here.”
“Feuchtwanger lives there. A friend of Liesl’s father. I had to drop him off there.”
A Mediterranean villa spilling three stories down the cliff.
“And that’s where she goes for a drive? Christ, look at it.” They had started up the narrow, twisting road, slowing on the sharp curves. “And they put houses here.”
“For the views. That’s the ocean.” He nodded to the string of highway lights in the distance, the dark sea beyond.
They passed Feuchtwanger’s house, dark except for a single light in the study, not expecting visitors. But why even suppose they knew each other? A convenient turnoff up into the hills, maybe even picked at random. He imagined her at the wheel, deliberate, her eyes still blank, the light left somewhere in Poland.
“She comes up here? You know what I’m thinking?” Lasner said, a kind of echo. “It’s a hell of a thing. To do that.” He looked over at Ben, suddenly embarrassed. “Well, I don’t have to tell you.”
“No.”
At the top there was another turn, then a swarm of lights at the end of a stretch, just before the road looped back. Ben saw an ambulance and a cluster of police cars, lights trained on a splintered section of a wooden barrier fence at the edge of the cliff. One of the policemen was holding back a group of curious neighbors, the same extras, Ben thought, who’d appeared in the Cherokee alley. A flashbulb went off- maybe even the same police photographer. Now a few more shots, catching the group of ambulance workers carrying a litter up the side of the hill and onto the road.
“I made the call,” the policeman in charge said. “Sorry to bring you out, but we need an ID on her. It’s your car.”
Another cop drew back the sheet. Lasner looked down at the body, his face growing slack, then turned away, squeamish.
“A friend?”
“Cousin,” Lasner said, almost inaudible.
“You’re next of kin?”
“My wife.”
“Close enough. You’ll need to see the ME over there, make the ID. I’m sorry, but we need to do it.”
“What happened?” Ben said, staring at her face, torn by shards of glass where she must have hit the windshield, her hair matted with blood. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was open, as if it were still saying “oh.”
“She went through there,” the cop said, pointing to the broken fence. “Into the canyon. The car didn’t catch fire, so that’s one thing, but a drop like that, be a miracle you survive it. You just get knocked to hell.” He looked up at Lasner. “Sorry.”
Ben looked at the length of road, almost straight after the hairpins coming up.
“What do you think?” he said. “She swerved to avoid another car?”
The cop shook his head. “No sign of that. No skid marks either side. Course the rain didn’t help there. But you get a slippery patch here, you take it a little fast-” He raised his hand, letting them fill in the rest. “We had a hell of a time getting her out. The door stuck.”
But the curve wasn’t sharp, a gradual arc that anyone should have handled easily-unless you hadn’t driven a car in years, or never intended to turn. He looked down at the body again, trying to imagine the last minute, through the fence and then suspended in nothing, waiting for it to be over. Something no one else ever knows, the desperation for release. But what prompts it? Ben wondered, an awkward second, whether he had been part of it, the unexpected reminder, ghosts coming back.
“Reuben, it’s you?”
He turned to find Feuchtwanger, a raincoat over his jacket and tie, the slicked-back hair and wireless glasses formally in place.
“Herr Feuchtwanger.”
“Such a commotion. We saw the lights.” He looked over at Genia’s body, clearly not recognizing her. “Poor woman. Oh, these roads. Marta says it’s no worse than the corniche but me, I think a death trap.” He paused. “But what are you doing here?”
“She’s a cousin,” Ben said, indicating Lasner, huddled now with the ME.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you like to come back to the house? Some coffee?” A ritual courtesy.
“No, no, thank you. We have to-” He spread his hand to the accident scene, policemen still moving idly around. “Stay with the body. Sign things.” He looked down at her. “She survived the camps,” he said, perhaps a memory trigger.
But Feuchtwanger still didn’t know her. The sorrow on his face was impersonal, another victim.
“The camps, but not this road,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, what am I doing here? They say in English a rubberneck-it’s amusing, a rubberneck. So.” He looked toward the group of neighbors, still gawking. “Marta wanted to know-all the lights. If you need to telephone, please come to the house.”
Ben nodded a thank-you.
“And coffee one day. Tell Liesl to bring you, we’ll talk. She looked well. So strong. I thought it would kill her, too-the way she felt about him. But no, strong. The father’s daughter.” He looked down at the stretcher. “But so much death.”
Ben stood in the road, watching him walk away. The way she felt about him. But Lion was a romantic, his books filled with duchesses and men in wigs and undying love. He didn’t know she could lean her head into your shoulder, soft, not strong at all. Everybody saw what he wanted to see.