"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."
"Do me a favor and make sure her boyfriend's not around, okay?"
"Don't worry, that'll be our top priority."
Larrabee and Monks walked to the door. Dreyer heaved himself off the couch and followed.
"I'm not done with you, fucker," he told Monks.
"If I hear another word about you, Ray, I'll see to it that you get brought in for questioning and kept in for a nice long visit," Larrabee said. "I strongly suggest you fall off the planet."
Outside on the street, Monks said, "Do you believe him?"
"Unfortunately," Larrabee said, "I do. But I've got a little problem with Coffee just happening to decide to jump him, out of the blue, that one particular night. Let's go see if she's home. Just in case we can get another spin on it."
Coffee Trenette's place was very upscale, at the far west end of Lake Street, in a posh little enclave set in the hills above China Beach. It had a view of the rust-colored hills of the Marin headlands, sloping down into the Pacific, and of the great red spires of the Golden Gate Bridge. The front yard was enclosed by a high masonry wall, forming a courtyard, like in Europe. The yard was landscaped, with border gardens edged with stone, artfully placed trees, and hedges that once had been barbered into topiary. But it had gone weedy and was littered with dead foliage – the way a place looked when there were no longer people paid to take care of it.
"Is that movie she made any good?" Monks asked.
Larrabee grunted. "So good, it's been made about five hundred times. She plays a hooker with a heart of gold, who falls for a hit man who's trying to get out of the business, but he's forced to take on one last job and he gets double-crossed and they have to go on the run together."
"She hasn't done anything since?"
"There were a couple of others that didn't amount to much," Larrabee said. "The way that tends to happen, they get into drugs, they get attitude, they get unreliable and hard to work with. The people in charge find another hot young star. I don't think she'd be living up in San Francisco if she had anything going."