puking on their sneakers. I don't know who you think you are and I
don't care, because as far as I'm concerned, you're nobody. I never
saw you before in my life, never heard of you before in my life,
and if you push me enough I'll widen the crack in your ass for
you."
"That's enough," Cheyney said quietly.
"I'll retool it so you could drive a Ryder van up there, Mister
Paladin - you understand me? Can you grok that?"
Now Paladin's eyes were all but hanging from their sockets on
stalks. His mouth was open. Then, without speaking, he removed
his wallet from his coat pocket (some kind of lizard-skin, Cheyney
thought, two months' salary ... maybe three). He found his lawyer's
card (the home number was jotted on the back, Cheyney notedit
was most definitely not part of the printed matter on the front) and
handed it to Jacoby. His fingers now showed the first observable
tremor.
"Pete?"
Jacoby looked at him and Cheyney saw it was no act; Paladin had
actually succeeded in pissing his easy-going partner off. No mean
feat.
"Make the call yourself."
"Okay." Jacoby left.
Cheyney looked at Paladin and was suddenly amazed to find
himself feeling sorry for the man. Before he had looked perplexed;
now he looked both stunned and frightened, like a man who wakes
from a nightmare only to discover the nightmare is still going on.
"Watch closely," Cheyney said after the door had closed, "and I'll
show you one of the mysteries of the West. West LA, that is."
He moved the neo-Pollock and revealed not a safe but a toggle
switch. He flicked it, then let the painting slide back into place.
"That's one-way glass," Cheyney said, cocking a thumb at the too-
large mirror over the bar.
"I am not terribly surprised to hear that," Paladin said, and
Cheyney reflected that, while the man might have some of the
shitty egocentric habits of the Veddy Rich and Well-Known in LA,
he was also a near-superb actor: only a man as experienced as he
was himself could have told how really close Paladin was to the
ragged edge of tears.
But not of guilt, that was what was so puzzling, so goddamn-
maddening.
Of perplexity.
He felt that absurd sense of sorrow again, absurd because it
presupposed the man's innocence: he did not want to be Edward
Paladin's nightmare, did not want to be the heavy in a Kafka novel
where suddenly nobody knows where they are, or why they are
there.
"I can't do anything about the glass," Cheyney said. He came back
and sat down across the coffee table from Paladin, "but I've just
killed the sound. So it's you talking to me and vice-versa." He took
a pack of Kents from his breast pocket, stuck one in the corner of
his mouth, then offered the pack to Paladin. "Smoke?"
Paladin picked up the pack, looked it over, and smiled. "Even my
old brand. I haven't smoked one since night Yul Brynner died, Mr
Cheyney. I don't think ant to start again now."
Cheyney put the pack back into his pocket. "Can we talk?" he
asked.
Paladin rolled his eyes. "Oh my God, it's Joan Raiford."
"Who?"
"Joan Raiford. You know, "I took Elizabeth Taylor to Marine
World and when she saw Shamu the Whale she asked me if it
came with vegetables?" I repeat, Detective Cheyney: grow up. I
have no reason in the world to believe that switch is anything but a
dummy. My God, how innocent do you think I am?"
Joan Raiford? Is that what he really said?, Joan Raiford?
"What's the matter?" Paladin asked pleasantly. He crossed his legs
the other way. "Did you perhaps think you saw a clear path? Me
breaking down, maybe saying I'd tell everything, everything, just
don't let 'em fry me, copper?"
With all the force of personality he could muster, Cheyney said: "I
believe things are very wrong here, Mr Paladin. You've got them
wrong and I've got them wrong. When your lawyer gets here,
maybe we can sort them out and maybe we can't. Most likely we
can't. So listen to me, and for God's sake use your brain. I gave you
the Miranda Warning. You said you wanted your lawyer present. If
there was a tape turning, I've buggered my own case. Your lawyer
would have to say just one word - enticement - and you'd walk
free, whatever has happened to Carson. And I could go to work as
a security guard in one of those flea-bitten little towns down by the
border."
"You say that," Paladin said, "but I'm no lawyer.
But ... Convince me, his eyes said. Yeah, let's talk about this, lees
see if we can't get together, because you're right, something is
weird. So ... convince me.
"Is your mother alive?" Cheyney asked abruptly.
"What - yes, but what does that have to-"
"You talk to me or I'm going to personally take two CHP
motorcycle cops and the three of us are going to rape your mother
tomorrow!" Cheyney screamed. "I'm personally going to take her
up the ass! Then we're going to cut off her tits and leave them on
the front lawn! So you better talk!"
Paladin's face was as white as milk: a white so white it is nearly
blue.
"Now are you convinced?" Cheyney asked softly. 'I'm not crazy.
I'm not going to rape your mother. But with a statement like that
on a reel of tape, you could say you were the guy on the grassy
knoll in Dallas and the Burbank police wouldn't produce the tape. I
want to talk to you, man. What's going on here?"
Paladin shook his head dully and said, "I don't know."
In the room behind the one-way glass, Jacoby joined Lieutenant
McEachern, Ed McMahon (still looking stunned), and a cluster of
technical people at a bank of high-tech equipment. The LAPD
chief of police and the mayor were rumored to be racing each other
to Burbank.
"He's talking?" Jacoby asked.
"I think he's going to," McEachern said. His eyes had moved
toward Jacoby once, quickly, when he came in. Now they were
centered only on the window. The men seated on the other side,
Cheyney smoking, relaxed, Paladin tense but trying to control it,
looked slightly lowish through the one-way glass. The sound of
their voices was clear and undistorted through the overhead
speakers - a top-of-the-line Bose in each corner.
Without taking his eyes off the men, McEachern said: "You get his
lawyer?"
Jacoby said: "The home number on the card belongs to a cleaning
woman named Howlanda Moore."
McEachern flicked him another fast glance.
"Black, from the sound, delta Mississippi at a guess. Kids yelling
and fighting in the background. She didn't quite say I'se gwine
whup you if you don't quit!, but it was close. She's had the number
three years. I re-dialed twice.
"Jesus," McEachern, said. "Try the office number?"
"Yeah," Jacoby replied. "Got a recording. You think ConTel's a
good buy, Loot?"
McEachern flicked his gray eyes in Jacoby's direction again.
"The number on the front of the card is that of a fairly large stock
brokerage," Jacoby said quietly. "I looked under lawyers in the
Yellow Pages. Found no Albert K. Dellums. Closest is an Albert
Dillon, no middle initial. No law firm like the one on the card."
"Jesus please us," McEachern said, and then the door banged open
and a little man with the face of a monkey barged in. The mayor
had apparently won the race to Burbank.
"What's going on here?" he said to McEachern.
"'I don't know," McEachern said.
"All right," Paladin said wearily. "Let's talk about it. I feel,
Detective Cheyney, like a man who had just spent two hours or so
on some disorienting amusement park ride. Or like someone