“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Walker missed a panel,” he said in an ominous monotone.
Damn. Was this my fault? When I told him to lie low, I had only meant that he should avoid Concubine Aimee. I should have known that you needed to be a lot more specific with Walker.
“Why?” I said aloud. “Did he forget? Has someone gone to look for him? I might know where he is if there’s still time to go get him.”
“No, the panel started an hour and a half ago,” Nate said. “And I know exactly where he was then—the police were interviewing him.”
“Damn.”
“They probably still are. They’re closing in.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “They’ve interviewed all of us.”
“They wouldn’t disrupt the convention this way if they weren’t looking pretty seriously at him.”
“I don’t actually think making the convention run smoothly ranks very high on Detective Foley’s priority list.”
“God,” Nate moaned. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s talk about Ichabod Dilley.”
“What about him?”
“You never told me you knew him,” I said.
“Didn’t I? Well, you never really asked,” Nate said. “I don’t recall denying that I knew him.”
I wanted to tell him that he’d implied it, but I suspected that would bog the conversation down into a long discussion of semantics, instead of letting me find out anything useful.
“How well did you know him?” I asked instead.
“How well did I know anyone in those days?” he said. “Especially from that side of my life. The private side.”
“Private in what way?”
“Nothing…sinister, if that’s what you mean,” Nate said, looking alarmed. “Weekdays I was a hard-working, buttoned-down little writer. Very corporate. Nothing to alarm the studio execs. Weekends, I’d drive up to San Francisco and hang around Haight Ashbury. Go to concerts. Get stoned.”
“I see,” I said
“Don’t laugh,” he added, although I could have sworn I hadn’t let any sign of amusement cross my face. “I wasn’t always the staid, boring guy you probably think I am from seeing me on the job.”
Actually, you were, I felt like saying. In fact, you used to be worse. I’ve seen the photo. Aloud, I decided to stick to vague platitudes.
“People change.”
“Life changes them,” Nate said. “Professional responsibilities.”
Professional responsibilities like creating the Metatarsal Knights, I thought, but I nodded solemnly.
“So you met Ichabod Dilley while you were slumming in Haight Ashbury,” I said.
“My script called for a psychedelic artist,” he said. “You know—like a Grateful Dead poster. The studio hack kept bringing in things that looked like you’d smeared lime green paint on a Renoir. So I said I’d find someone.”
“Dilley.”
“I put him up in my own apartment the whole time he was working on those damned paintings,” Nate said, with sudden heat. “The whole time he was supposed to be working on them. I found out later, he’d done the first Porfiria comic book—maybe the first several—while I was down on the set, making excuses for why the rest of the paintings weren’t ready yet. And then, when he finally finished the damned things, I let him stay in case they decided at the last minute that they needed changes, or maybe another painting. When the movie was finally over, I thought I’d never get rid of him. Took weeks before I came home one day and found he’d disappeared. Taking half my wardrobe—the hipper half, of course—but I considered it cheap at the price.”
He fell silent. Brooding over those long-lost bell-bottoms, I supposed.
“And then the thugs started showing up,” he added.
“Thugs?”
“Guys claiming he owed them money. One of them actually beat me up when I said I had no idea where he’d gone. Which was true. I finally found a gallery that was showing a couple of Dilley’s paintings, and started referring the thugs there, and eventually they stopped showing up.”
“And then what happened?”
“What happened? Nothing. End of the story of Nate and Ichabod.”
“You never saw him again?”
Nate shook his head.
“I figured he’d drifted back to San Francisco. Turns out he died, not long after that. Of course, I didn’t hear he’d died until a couple of years later. The QB had me do a movie treatment based on the comics. Asked her why she didn’t just have him do it, and she said he wasn’t a screenwriter, and anyway he was dead.”
And did Nate’s helping the thugs find him have anything to do with Dilley’s death? Probably not something he’d admit, even if he suspected it was true, so I didn’t see any point in asking.
“So you did the movie treatment,” I said.
He nodded.
“First of many,” he said. “Every time fantasy was in, we’d do another damned treatment. When Star Wars came out in ’77 we set it on another planet. In ’82, when Schwarzenegger did Conan, we stuck in a barbarian warrior. Princess Bride’s a big hit a couple of years later, and we did a tongue-in-cheek version. Anne Rice gets hot, and we do one where Porfiria’s an immortal vampire. I suggested an animated version once, but she never went for that.”
“Sounds like the TV show’s more authentic than the movie treatments.”
He nodded.
“What would Ichabod Dilley think, if he were here?” I asked.
Nate didn’t answer at first. Just when I was about to repeat the question, he spoke up.
“He wouldn’t recognize it,” he said, smiling and shaking his head. “Maybe when he realized it was supposed to be based on his stories, he’d have a big laugh at what life does to you when you’re not looking. But then, Dilley’s dead, and what the hell do I know. I’ve got a panel,” he said, standing up abruptly. “I’ll see you.”
A little early to be heading out for a panel, I thought, but maybe he’s still allowing plenty of time for getting lost in the hotel.
“Still asking questions?”
I glanced over to see that Francis had come in.
“Yeah, still trying to make sense of what happened,” I said.
“The murder happened yesterday,” Francis said. “Every time I see you, you’re asking a lot of questions about things that happened twenty or thirty years ago. Do you really think all that has anything to do with the murder?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But it’s rather intriguing, finding out about everyone’s wild escapades in the seventies.”
“Wild escapades?” Francis said. “What kind of wild escapades?”
He sounded alarmed. Why, I had no idea. It wasn’t as if any of the aging boomers’ youthful misdeeds could spill over and taint his current clients, who had been in grade school at the time.
“Apparently Nate inhaled,” I said. “And Tammy Jones didn’t play hard to get.”
“Ah, well,” he said. “Those were the times, weren’t they?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t there. Is that what things were like, back then?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, either,” Francis said. “I’m afraid if you want to hear exciting tales of rebellion and protest, I’m the wrong person to ask. I led a rather quiet life then.”
And it hadn’t gotten appreciably noisier since, I thought, with a sudden flash of sympathy. I wasn’t sure I remembered ever hearing anything about his private life.
Then again, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. If I were a better person, perhaps, I would think of some tactful, sympathetic way to draw Francis out on the subject of his quiet youth.
Later. When I had more time, I promised myself. I would sit down with Francis and have a long, friendly talk. Draw him out of his shell and get to know him better. Maybe while Maggie and Nate and the QB were off in Hollywood, Francis was still in college studying philosophy or poetry. I’d find out later. Right now, I needed to see what I could do about Walker’s problem.