"What good's it going to do me, talking to you?" Dreyer said.
"I'm sick of sitting out here. Open the door, or not."
Monks watched the building door steadily, his brain on hold.
"I'll buzz you in," Dreyer finally said. "It's number seven, third floor."
The stairway was scarred old oak, spacious, and once even grand, but now musty with the smell of invisible lives. The door to apartment number seven was open. It was a studio, with worn, stained carpet of a bilious green, an unmade Murphy bed, and a few pieces of cheap old furniture. There was a lot of stuff strewn around.
Ray Dreyer was standing in the middle of it, arms folded, head cocked to one side – challenging. He was wearing the kind of nylon jogging suit favored by those who never jogged and had a cigarette toward the corner of his mouth, in a sort of James Dean imitation.
Monks went in first and walked toward him, in a steady, even stride. On the last step, he swung his open left hand from his waist, coming hard off that foot, pivoting his hips with the swing, and then snapping them back. His palm landed across the side of Dreyer's face with a jolt Monks felt to his shoulder. It picked Dreyer up in the air, half turned him, and set him down facing the other direction. The cigarette went flying across the room and bounced off a wall. When he landed, he lurched another couple of steps with the momentum, hands flailing for something to grab. He caught hold of a threadbare couch, used it to turn himself clumsily around, and came scrabbling back toward Monks.
"You cocksucker!" he screamed, fists clenched. "I'm having you arrested!"
Monks stood without moving, hands ready, breathing heavily.
Larrabee, unperturbed, walked to the smoking cigarette and ground it into the carpet with his heel. Then he sat on a corner of a table, one foot dangling. He opened his wallet and held it at eye level, showing his license.
"Let me explain to you how this is going to go, Ray," Larrabee said. "First off, Eden dumped you to move up here. Wouldn't even give you a key to her new place. You came after her anyway. That's called stalking.
"Then you let her die. If you'd been with her, like you were legally obligated to be, she'd have gotten to the hospital on time.
"And now, you're trying to turn a, profit on it. You got any idea how all that's going to look?"
Dreyer clapped his own hand to the reddening side of his face, then stared at it, as if he expected to see it dripping with blood. The look in his eyes was extremely ugly, but he was not making any more moves to fight.
"We're your friends," Larrabee said. "We might be able to help you, if you tell us the truth. Believe me, the cops won't help. They like things to get tied up nice and neat."
"I'm very afraid, man," he spat out with bitter sarcasm.
"I would be if I was you," Larrabee said. "And in prison, Ray, a good-looking guy like you – let's just say your dance card's going to stay full."
"Hey, I didn't do anything. She was my fiancée."
"Yeah, you keep saying that. Seems like she saw it differently."
Monks was feeling better. In fact, a lot better. He relaxed, stepped away, took a look around the place. Among the litter of clothes and junk, there was a fair amount of photography equipment. One corner of the room was piled waist-high with stacks of contact sheets and photos. Not surprisingly, most of the ones Monks glimpsed were of women.
"I can't believe this," Dreyer muttered.
"Believe it," Larrabee said. "Let's start with something simple. Did you take the phone answering machine from her apartment?"
"Why the fuck would I do that? Are you telling me somebody did?"
"I'm asking you if you did," Larrabee said. "Just like the cops will."
"The last time I was in there was when I took her home from the clinic. Everything was just the same as always."
"Where'd you go when you left her?"
"Why is that important?" Dreyer said. His belligerent gaze shifted evasively.
"It's called an alibi," Larrabee said patiently.
Dreyer sat abruptly on the couch, shoulders sagging. His hands clasped together between his knees, fingers pulling at each other.
"There's this woman, an actress. She's fan-fucking-tastic, drop-dead gorgeous. You'd recognize her name."
"Why don't you tell us?"
Dreyer hesitated, but then said – proudly, Monks thought – "She goes by Coffee."
Larrabee nodded, but Monks drew a blank. "I don't recognize it," he said.
Dreyer snorted in disgusted disbelief.
"Coffee Trenette. She made a big splash about ten years ago," Larrabee explained. "A movie called Take Me. Haven't heard much about her since."
"She had a little drug problem," Dreyer said. "She came up to San Fran to get away from it. I'd worked with her a few times, back when. She called me up, the day Eden had the surgery."
"How did she know you were in town?"
"Eden ran into her somewhere, a couple months ago."
"Okay, she called you. And?"
"She'd found out her boyfriend was messing around. She said, 'I'm in the mood for a revenge fuck. Is it going to be you?' I told her I had to stay with Eden. She said, Then I'll find somebody else.'
"I told her, whoa, wait, I'll be there. Eden was out of it anyway. I figured I'd slip over to Coffee's for a couple of hours. But she wouldn't let me go home. Kept cutting lines of coke. Coming up with more sex things she wanted to do."
"A really thorough revenge fuck, huh?" Larrabee said.
"It was thorough, dude." Dreyer smirked. "Believe me."
Monks walked to a window and leaned against the jamb. It overlooked a scrabbly, garbage-strewn dirt yard where even the weeds seemed to be having a tough go of it. A decrepit wooden fence topped with razor wire surrounded it, but enough boards had been kicked out to make the yard a no-man's-land anyway.
You couldn't actually say that lust had killed Eden Hale, but it was a decisive link in a chain. In fact, it seemed to figure into several links.
Larrabee said, "Where did you think Eden was getting the money for her apartment?"
"She said she inherited a chunk. A rich aunt."
"And instead of cutting you in, she moved out."
"She wanted me to come up here. I wasn't stalking her, for Christ's sake. We were still together, she just needed some space."
"Were you still managing her?"
"I was trying, but it's been tough. And she was taking time off for the surgery. I've mainly been marketing my images." Dreyer flapped his hands in frustration. "I've gone all over this town, knocking on doors. Back in LA, I was connected. But I can't make shit here, and the rents suck. Look at this dump. Twelve hundred bucks a month."
"That's not so bad, if you're going to run out on it anyway."
"Hey, fuck you, man. Where'd you get that bullshit?"
"From back where you were so connected," Larrabee said. "What was Eden planning to do next?"
"Same thing she'd always done. Acting, modeling."
"Did it ever occur to you that she wasn't being straight with you? About that money?"
"What do you mean?" Dreyer looked from one to the other of them. If he knew the truth he was doing a good job of hiding it. "Jesus Christ, what are you talking about?"
Larrabee ignored the question. "Anybody else who might have had a serious problem with Eden? Think hard, Ray. Fingering somebody could be important for you."
"Nobody with that serious a problem."
"How about from the old days, when she was doing the porn?"
"That's history. Besides, we didn't fuck anybody over. The other way around."
Larrabee stood. "You better give us Ms. Trenette's address. We'll need to confirm that you were with her."
"Oh, man, do you have to? She'll never talk to me again."
"Yeah, well, you'll have your memories."