"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 I ought 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 172
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, let’s 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.
173
"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 slipped some LSD
into my drink. Since we're not on the record, what was your one interrogatory? Let's start with that."
"All right," Cheyney said. "How did you get into the broadcast complex, and how did you get into Studio C?"
"Those are two questions."
"I apologize."
Paladin smiled faintly.
"I got on the property and into the studio," he said, "the same way I've been getting on the property and into the studio for over twenty years.
My pass. Plus the fact that I know every security guard in the place.
Shit, I've been there longer than most of them."
"May I see that pass?" Cheyney asked. His voice was quiet, but a large pulse beat in his throat.
Paladin looked at him warily for a moment, then pulled out the lizard-skin wallet again. After a moment of rifling, he tossed a perfectly correct NBC Performer's Pass onto the coffee table.
Correct, that was, in every way but one.
Cheyney crushed out his smoke, picked it up, and looked at it. The pass was laminated. In the corner was the NBC peacock, something only long-timers had on their cards. The face in the photo was the face of Edward Paladin. Height and weight were
correct. No space for eye-color, hair-color, or age, of course; when you were dealing with ego. Walk softly, stranger, for here there be tygers.
174
The only problem with the pass was that it was salmon pink.
NBC Performer's Passes were bright red.
Cheyney had seen something else while Paladin was looking for his pass. "Could you put a one-dollar bill from your wallet on the coffee table there?" he asked softly.
"Why?"
"I'll show you in a moment," Cheyney said. "A five or a ten would do as well."
Paladin studied him, then opened his wallet again. He took back his pass, replaced it, and carefully took out a one-dollar bill. He turned it so it faced Cheyney. Cheyney took his own wallet (a scuffed old Lord Buxton with its seams unravelling; he should replace it but found it easier to think of than to do) from his jacket pocket, and removed a dollar bill of his own. He put it next to Paladin's, and then turned them both around so Paladin could see them right-side-up-so Paladin could study them.
Which Paladin did, silently, for almost a full minute. His face slowly flushed dark red...and then the color slipped from it a little at a time.
He'd probably meant to bellow WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?
Cheyney thought later, but what came out was a breathless little gasp:
“ – what – "
"I don't know," Cheyney said.
On the right was Cheyney's one, gray-green, not brand-new by any means, but new enough so that it did not yet have that rumpled, limp, shopworn look of a bill which has changed hands many times. Big number 1's at the top corners, smaller 1's at the bottom corners.