Menaced Assassin

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Skeffington St. John was nursing a massive depression in his posh Century City office-temperature-controlled, furnished with antiques-careless shoes up on one corner of the hand-polished mahogany desk. Two hundred coats of the thinnest of oils, each hand-rubbed into the wood until it glowed like distant fires reflected in still water.

Outside, L.A. was being washed away by the pineapple express. This particular sort of storm system is created when a strong winter low born in the Gulf of Alaska dervish-swirls off the coast of Washington State to drag warm, waterlogged clouds up from the tropical Pacific. It explodes over Southern California, the L.A. storm drains overflow, electric power shorts out, and million-dollar houses slide off their hillside stilts to end up as kindling on the canyon floors below.

But here, high in his ark above the raging waters, St. John suffered at a perfect 72 degrees F. He looked more like a film idol than a film attorney, with his piercing blue eyes, beautifully coiffed and gleaming gray hair, impeccable clothing. Now a touch of sadness on his stern, angular, clean-cut features as he daydreamed of his lost daughter, Molly St. John-he would never think of her as Moll Dalton, not ever, never.

Oh Molly! Molly! You beautiful child who at age five would have put Shirley Temple to shame! On the particular afternoon he was remembering, Daddy had just bathed little Molly and somehow had gotten so splashed in the process himself that he had stripped to towel off also…

Thus was born Horsy, the little secret game between just the two of them. St. John naked on his back on the big round bed made popular by Playboy centerfold shoots of those days, tiny naked Molly astride his bucking-bronco hips, riding the horsy, hanging on for dear life, shrieking with delight. Gripping horsy’s pommel with her little hands as it got bigger and bigger and stiffer and stiffer, the bucking bronco bucking harder and harder and faster and faster, little Molly hanging on tighter and tighter with both little hands as she shrieked with laughter…

What an explosion, on that first dim afternoon with the shades drawn against the searing LaLa Land light! Shrieks and tears, of course-totally unexpected hot and wet and sticky stuff all over her little hands and Daddy’s lean belly…

But a week later, Daddy volunteered another half-day home from the office just to take care of adorable little Molly. Bath, splashing, naked, toweling off, big dim bedroom… This time it didn’t surprise little Molly when Daddy’s big stiff pommel suddenly spurted all white and sticky. By now it was just part of the game of Horsy…

The intercom buzzed. St. John got his feet on the floor, his mind back inside his head, and answered. “Yes, Angelle.”

“A Lieutenant Stagnaro from the San Francisco Police Department, Mr. St. John. He wants to talk with you about-”

“I don’t recall any appointment. But…”

But he recalled Stagnaro. That officious phone call that hideous night that his darling Molly… And, more recently, St. John’s letter threatening legal action to make him back off Atlas Entertainment… Better to get it over with now.

“All right, five minutes, and he’s damned lucky to get it.”

He expected the sort of bullying bureaucrat who turned timid the moment he was jerked out from behind his official shield. He got Fonzie grown-up with gray in his hair. The epitome of every ballsy Italian stud hanging around a street corner in the Bronx, moving easily, in terrific shape, with a mobile face and alert eyes that St. John was sure missed nothing.

“Mighty nice of you to give me these five minutes, Mr. St. John,” he said in a voice that wasn’t at all grateful.

“Say your say and get out, Lieutenant,” said St. John coldly, fighting down his surprise at the man facing him across the desk. “I am an attorney and I know my rights.”

But Stagnaro merely settled back in a costly designer chair as if for a long stay, hooking one leg over its arm and swinging his foot idly.

“I just bet you do, pal,” he said. “As for being an attorney-things like that can change.”

“I take that as a threat, Lieutenant.”

Stagnaro waved a hospitable arm as if this were his office, not St. John’s. “Take it any way you want.” He got a notebook from his pocket and set it open on his knee, then didn’t refer to it or write in it at all. “I have a few questions.”

St. John sighed in a long-suffering manner.

“Go ahead, then, Lieutenant.”

“You ever molest your daughter?”

It was exactly as if someone had kicked him in the scrotum. He felt his face get pale and knew his mouth was gaping, but there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it for the moment. Scant minutes ago he had been daydreaming about sweet Molly and himself and Horsy, and here was Stagnaro asking him…

“How…” He’d almost blurted out How did you know? but his attorney instincts took over. “How dare you-”

“Seeing as how you pimped for your daughter several times during her marriage to Dr. Dalton, I get the feeling you either didn’t value her enough or valued her way too much.”

It had to be bitch Gloria’s work, trying to hurt him even more by… but maybe, he thought, seeing a ray of light at the end of this particular horrible tunnel, maybe that abrogated the terms of the agreement under which he was paying her those ghastly alimony payments and she kept herself hard to find. She had put in writing that she would not divulge anything about… about him and Molly. So if she had gone public now, even a quarter century after the event…

“Such a disgusting accusation does not deserve the dignity of a reply,” he snapped belatedly. Perhaps too belatedly.

“Exception noted, Counselor-isn’t that what you lawyers like to say? So we’ll stick to the public record: the hard-core porn-film company you set up back in ’72.”

St. John’s name had appeared nowhere on those incorporation papers, and this hadn’t come from Gloria; she had walked off by then. His association with Mr. Prince had come about because she had walked off-with infant Molly and every dime he owned.

“Benny the Bullet-you remember Benny, don’t you, Counselor? He was looking at twenty-to-life for one of his little peccadillos, so he decided to fill us in on everything he knew about anything, even when he got toilet-trained. Verbal diarrhea, tell you the truth. Freedom Films came up.”

St. John rallied again. “If I did give free legal advice to some acquaintances in setting up a small corporation, there was nothing illegal about it. And in the early seventies-”

“A quarter of a mil and points to set up the fuck-film company is the way I heard it.” Stagnaro winked at him across the desk. “Never declared, Counselor. I haven’t talked with the folks over at the IRS… yet. But I bet they’d love to try to make a net-worth case out of it.”

He’d owed the shylock a lot of money and that Benny person had come around talking about electric drills and kneecaps. All that bitch Gloria’s fault, she’d stripped him naked and he’d had to borrow from the leg-breakers because nobody else would lend him enough to keep his nascent legal firm afloat…

“Why… are you here?” he asked hollowly.

But Stagnaro said, “My five minutes are up, Counselor.” He stood, leaned across the desk. “Atlas Entertainment,” he said. “Kosta Gounaris.” He dropped his voice lower. “Martin Prince.”

St. John jerked back as if Stagnaro were a viral infection. “What…”

“Maybe you have the impression that I’m a homicide cop, Counselor. I’m not. I head up the SFPD’s Organized Crime Task Force. Anything organized, not just the mob; but the thought of dropping on somebody like Martin Prince gets me so excited I have to go buff my nails. And you’re gonna help with my impossible dream, pal, ’cause you got short eyes.”

“Short… eyes?”

“Old penitentiary term for your kind of pervert. You like to do it with little kids-short people. But the big people you’re dealing with, they don’t like pedophiles.”

He turned back at the door, spoke quietly, almost sadly.

“Your daughter is dead, St. John, murdered, and you just don’t seem to give a fuck who did it. But I do. And when push comes to shove…” He made his hand into a pistol with the thumb cocked, the forefinger a gun barrel pointing at St. John. “I push you for information and I get it, or…” His cocked thumb fell onto the firing pin of flesh at the base of his forefinger, and the finger shot St. John dead. “They shove you right off the edge of the world.”

Then he laughed, a chilling laugh that hung in the temperature-controlled air long after he was gone.

St. John sent Angelle home early, poured himself a brimming snifter of Paradis, sat back down behind his desk with the bottle. The $350-a-liter cognac tasted like wormwood.

He knew these men were hard, he knew they could even be brutal, but not… not Molly! Kosta had even come to her funeral, the others had sent flowers and cards…

Kosta. Gid. Martin-yes, he was one of those permitted to call Mr. Prince “Martin” to his face. They knew how proud he was of Molly. He had boldly demanded she be made junior corporate counsel overseeing the San Francisco operation as a condition of his setting up the complicated deal on Atlas Entertainment. They had said yes, and he had told them how to take over the shell of the existent entertainment corporation for their own purposes.

They would never order Molly’s death. Kosta himself was in love with her, for God’s sake. Had been shattered by her death. Had felt it had been one of those tragic senseless killings where Molly had died because she was there, and for no other reason.

He felt salt tears on his cheeks. Sweet Molly…

The policeman had made it up to shake him up, that was it.

Through the tears his eyes moved around the office. All of this was because in those lean years after bitch Gloria had taken sweet little Molly away from him, he couldn’t meet the vig on their loan to him, and they’d become his silent partners. They’d kept him alive with their referrals. If the businesses were a little… well, grungy, those early contacts had led to bigger and better work. Now he had seven attorneys under him, none of whom knew anything about his… affiliation with Mr. Prince.

He shivered slightly as he finished his cognac. It tasted better going down by now. He seemed finally able to let his mind think the unthinkable. And in that instant he knew- knew — that Mr. Prince had ordered sweet little Molly’s death; and if Kosta hadn’t been in on it, at least he’d known or suspected it might happen.

Then why hadn’t he himself suspected it? These were ruthless men, he’d always known that. And he’d always known, in his secret soul, that he’d been valuable to them because of, well, his breeding, his manners, his appearance of impeccable class. He’d even had the sense, occasionally, that Mr. Prince coveted those qualities himself, qualities mere money couldn’t buy. He had always been flattered by Mr. Prince’s attention.

But now, thought of that attention made his long tapered hands tremble. What if Mr. Prince had his office bugged? What if they knew Stagnaro had been there, were listening to a tape of their conversation right now? Would they…

For one pitiless moment he saw himself as they must have seen him all through those years: his Anglo-Saxon good looks empty, vain, a straw man for Mr. Prince, the real power behind his law firm. A soft man, not as sharp as they. A man who got along with everyone because he feared to offend anyone. A man who loved little children…

He was almost scrabbling for the phone, calling Charriti HHope, whose talent agency he had used for many years.

“Charriti? I need a blond female, about four foot six…”

Charriti HHope’s voice said, with a trace of asperity, “Short notice.” He almost heard a sigh over the phone. “How young does she have to be, sweetie?”

“About ten-if you have one who is… convincing.”

Charriti gave a throaty chuckle. “Pretty soon you’ll be telling me you want ’em for diaper commercials.”

St. John hung up, sat there unconsciously rubbing his hand forward and backward over the surface of his hand-rubbed antique desk. Contemplating the little girls wearing jumpers that rode up off their naked chubby thighs as they clung to his pommel playing Horsy. And how at the ultimate moment, just as he had planned to teach his beloved little five-year-old Molly to do on that magical afternoon bitch Gloria had ruined all those many years ago, they lowered their sweet little heads to…

What had become of them now?

He knew, only too well. When a bit shopworn, they were graduated to porn flicks, then were passed on for stable work in Miami or Vegas and, as their bloom faded, ended their useful days under fat, sluggishly thrusting government officials in one of the less appetizing hot countries to the south…

And Molly, Molly was dead. Oh God. Nothing in his life was going to work for him ever again. And if he wasn’t very, very careful, he might soon be dead himself.

Unless…