Lullaby Town

CHAPTER SIX

The sun was dropping fast, the way it does in the fall, and the air lost its midday warmth and took on an autumn chill as I wound my way up Laurel Canyon to the little A-frame I keep off Woodrow Wilson Drive above Hollywood.

The cat that lives with me was sitting by his food bowl in the kitchen. He's thick and black, with fine shredded ears and broken teeth and the scars that come from a full, adventuresome, male-type-cat life. Sometimes he has fits.

I said, "Is dinner ready?"

The cat came over and shoulder-bumped against my leg.

I said, "Okay. How about meat loaf?"

He shoulder-bumped me again, then went back to his bowl. Meat loaf is one of his favorite things. Right up there with Kitnips.

I took a meat loaf out of the freezer, put it in the microwave to thaw, turned on the oven to preheat, then opened a can of Falstaff. It was twenty minutes after five. Business hours were until six. I drank some of the Falstaff, then phoned the Screen Actors Guild and spoke to a woman named Mrs. Lopaka about Karen Shipley. Mrs. Lopaka confirmed everything Pat Kyle had told me and added nothing new. I thanked her, hung up, then dialed the Screen Extras Guild and then AFTRA. Ditto. I called the machine at my office, hoping that there might be a message from the phone company or from B of A. Nada. Somebody named José wanted someone named Esteban to call him back right away. José sounded pissed. I called my partner, Joe Pike.

Pike said, "Gun shop." Pike owns a gun shop in Culver City.

"We're on the job again. Backtrack to a woman and child."

"You need me?"

"Well, I'm here at the house and I'm not yet pinned down by snipers across the canyon, so I guess not yet."

Pike didn't answer.

"You know the director, Peter Alan Nelsen? He's our client."

Pike didn't answer some more. Trying to talk with Pike is like carrying on a fill-in-the-blank conversation.

I said, "Try to make conversation, Joe. It's easy. All you have to do is say something."

Pike said, "You need me, you know where I am." Then he hung up. So much for conversation.

The microwave dinged. I took out the meat loaf, transferred it to a metal pan, opened a can of new potatoes, drained them, put them in the pan around the meat loaf and sprinkled them with garlic and paprika, then put bacon over the meat loaf and put the pan in the oven on high. I like the skin on my meat loaf to be crispy.

The cat said, "Naow?"

"No. Not now. About forty-five minutes."

He didn't look happy about it

I finished the Falstaff, got another, drank most of it on the way up to the shower and the rest of it on the way back down. When the meat loaf was ready, I put out two plates and sliced off the ends for me and a center cut for the cat. He watched me put the end cuts and the potatoes in my plate and the center slice in his. He purred loudly as I did it. I sprinkled Tabasco on mine and A-1 on his, then took the beer and both plates out to my deck. There's a Zalcona glass table out there with a couple of matching chairs and sometimes we eat at the table, but sometimes we take down the center section of the rail and sit at the edge of the deck and look out over the canyon. With the rail, you are separated from the view. Without the rail, you are part of it. We eat there often.

When we were finished, I said, "Well? How was it?"

The cat stretched and broke wind. He's getting older.

I took the dishes inside, washed them, put them away, then stretched out on the couch with a finger of Knockando to read the latest Dean Koontz when the doorbell rang. It was Peter Alan Nelsen and his best friend Dani. Peter was dressed the same way he'd been dressed earlier, but Dani had shifted to buff-cut blue jeans and a designer sweatshirt with little pearl beads worked into the fabric. The sweatshirt was a pale lavender and looked good on her.

Peter walked in without being asked and said, "Whadaya say, Private Eye? You ready to rock?" He was squinting a lot and swaying from side to side and he smelled like his clothes had been doused with bourbon.

He staggered into the center of the floor and looked around and said, "Hey, this is neat. You live here alone?"

"Yeah." The cat started to growl, a hoarse sound in his chest.

Peter saw my drink. "What's that, scotch?"

I got a short glass and poured a little of the Knockando. I held the bottle toward Dani, but she shook her head. Designated human.

Peter went to the glass doors and looked out at the canyon. "Hey, I like this view. This is okay. I got a place up on Mulholland with a view. You gotta come up sometime. We'll have a party or something."

"Sure."

Peter saw the cat sitting sphinxlike on the arm of the couch. "Hey, a cat."

I said, "Be careful. He's mean and he bites."

"Bullshit. I know about cats." Peter swayed over to the couch and put out his hand. The cat grabbed him, bit hard twice, then ran under the couch, growling. Peter jumped back and shook his hand, then bent over and peered under the couch. I could see the blood from across the room. "That sonofabitch is mean."

Dani stood quietly to the side, maybe looking a little sad.

I said, "Peter, it's late. I'm tired and I was getting ready for bed. What do you want?"

Peter straightened up and looked at me like I had to be kidding. "Whadaya mean, sleep? It's early. Tell him, Dani, tell him it's early."

Dani glanced at her watch. "It's ten after ten, Peter. That's late for some people."

Peter said, "Bullshit. Ten after ten ain't nothing to guys like us." He looked at me. "I figured we could go out and knock back a few, maybe shoot a little pool, something like that." He sat down on the couch and threw an arm over the back, forgetting about the cat. The cat growled, and Peter jumped up and moved to the chair across the room.

I said, "Another time."

Peter frowned, not liking that. "Hey, you don't want to party?"

"Not tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm tired and I want to go to sleep, but most of all because you're so drunk you sound like you're speaking Martian."

Dani made a soft, faraway sound, but when I looked at her, she wasn't looking at either me or Peter. Peter scowled and leaned forward in the chair. "You got some smart mouth on you."

"The rest of me ain't stupid, either."

He poured himself more of the Knockando and got up and went over to the glass doors. "I want to know what you've got on Karen."

"You mean, how close have I come to finding her in the six hours since I started looking?"

"Yeah."

"She is no longer a member of SAG or SEG or AFTRA, which probably means she no longer acts or works in front of the camera. I spoke with people I know at the Bank of America and the phone company and the police, all of whom are checking their computers for information about her past or present, but I probably won't hear from any of them until tomorrow. I talked with the man who was her theatrical agent, Oscar Curtiss, who is trying to be helpful but probably won't be. It goes like that sometimes. He wanted me to tell you that because he would like to do business with you."

Peter made a little flipping gesture with his drink. "Fuck'm."

I shrugged.

Peter said, "That's it?"

"Yep."

"I thought it would go faster."

"Most people do."

Peter poured himself another three fingers of the Knockando, took it to the glass doors, and drank it. He stared out at the canyon for a while, then put the glass and the bottle on the floor and turned back to me. It took an effort to get himself turned around, like a tall ship in a wind with a lot of sail. He said, "I'm calling you out." Marshal Dillon.

I said, "Yeah?"

He nodded. "You're goddamned right. I didn't like the way you spoke to me at the studio today, and I don't like the way you're speaking to me now. I'm Peter Alan Nelsen and I don't take shit."

I looked at Dani. She said, "Why don't we just leave, Peter? He doesn't want to party. We can go somewhere and party without him."

Peter said, "Hey, Dani, you wanna leave, leave, but I'm calling this sonofabitch out." Peter sort of swayed forward, squinting the way you do when you're seeing three or four of something that there's only one of.

He said, "C'mon, goddamnit, I'm serious," and put up his fists. When his fists went up the cat howled loud and mournful and flashed out from under the couch. He grabbed Peter's ankle and bit and screamed and clawed with his hind legs. Peter yelled, "Sonofabitch," jumped sideways, stumbled into the chair, and fell over backward. The cat sprinted back under the couch.

I said, "Some cat, huh?"

Dani helped Peter up, then righted the chair. Peter said, "Lemme alone," and pulled away from her. When he did he fell to his knees. He said, "I'm all right. I'm all right." Then he passed out.

I said, "Is he like this a lot?"

Dani said, "Pretty much, yeah."

"I'll help you get him outside."

"No, thanks. You could get the door, if you want."

"You sure?"

"I can bench two-thirty. I squat over four."

Nope. She wouldn't need the help.

Dani lifted him into the chair, then squatted in front of him and pulled him onto her shoulders and stood up. She said, "You see?"

I got the door.

She moved out past me and stopped on the porch and looked back at me. "I know it doesn't show, but he really likes you. You're all he talked about this afternoon."

"Great."

She frowned, maybe looking a little angry. Defensive for him. I liked that. "It's not easy being him. Here's a guy with all he has going, and he can't just go hang out, you see?"

"Sure."

"Everybody in his life is there because they want to screw him. Any time there's a woman, he's thinking it's because she wants to rip him off. Any time a guy says he's Peter's friend, it's because he wants to be in business with Peter Alan Nelsen, the big deal, not with Peter Nelsen, the guy." She said it as if we were just standing there, as if Peter Alan Nelsen wasn't an outsized yoke across her shoulders.

I said, "He's got to be getting heavy."

She smiled softly. "I can hold him all night."

I followed her out to a black-on-black Range Rover and opened the right front door. She eased him into the front seat and carefully placed his head on the headrest and buckled the seat belt around him. She tested it to make sure it was snug. I said, "Everybody's out to screw him but you."

She nodded, then shut the door and looked at me, and there was something soft within the hard muscle. She said, "Are you going to quit? He pulls stuff like this and most people quit."

I shook my head. "I'm liking you too much to quit."

She made the little soft smile again, then went around to the driver's side, got in, and made a U-turn onto the little road that winds down the blackness toward Laurel Canyon and Mulholland Drive.

I went back into the house and picked up the empty glasses and the Knockando bottle and cleaned up the spilled booze. The cat came out from under the couch and watched me for a while, and then he left. Off to do cat things, no doubt.

When the glasses were put away, I went out onto the deck again and looked down into the dark canyon below. It was open and free and, beneath me there, lights moved along the curving roads.

Maybe they were Dani and Peter, but maybe they weren't.