Menaced Assassin

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Over the ridge in Beverly Hills, three men were sitting down to lunch in Hubley’s very swank Four Seasons. Dooley, with his back to the window, was a tall lanky writer who wanted to direct. He had a big nose and mean close-set eyes and a receding mane of hair that would have come down to his collar if he had been wearing a collar. Instead, he wore baggy fatigue pants, a rusty leather jacket, and a kelly-green T-shirt with HUNGRY? EAT THIS! in red letters across the lower abdomen. He had long arms and big basketball-player hands he used a lot when he talked.

“I’ve written three USA and Showtime originals this year, and script-doctored seven others, and I have to make an appointment to call my fucking agent,” he complained. “Way he sees it, I’m stealing 90 fucking percent of his money.”

Valli, the second man at the table, was a middle-aged actor turned producer; he had a high voice and a first-look production deal with Universal. His face was bland as mashed potatoes with a couple of rodent droppings stuck in them for eyes. His jeans were prestressed and his cashmere sports jacket had a red AIDS ribbon in the lapel. Between them the two men grossed close to a million dollars a year.

“You know what we call writers,” sniffed Valli. “The first draft of a human being.”

Dooley was buttering a roll with a lot of wrist action. “An empty cab pulled up and a producer got out.”

“Now you boys see why you need me,” interrupted St. John in a suave voice, eyes dancing with delight. “Both of you.”

As host, he was dressed impeccably in a narrow-shouldered three-piece charcoal Shetland wool and a Sulka tie that had cost $200 on Rodeo Drive. He was ready for action.

It had been almost four months since he had called Martin Prince in Vegas and told him about Stagnaro’s visit. Nothing had happened since then, nothing at all, yet everything had changed. His perception of who he was and what he was had changed. His perception of Prince and his minions had changed.

“I need personal management,” said Dooley.

“Packaging,” said Valli.

“Of course you do, dear boys,” beamed St. John. “And a great deal more besides.”

Since his realization that Prince and Gounaris had been involved in Molly’s death, he had conceived a daring scheme in revenge: to set up a personal-management and packaging entity. It would give him clout and power in this town on his own recognizance, not something that was tainted with mob money. The daring part was that he hadn’t told Mr. Prince about it. He had lain awake a lot of nights in a sweat of fear while planning it, but something had driven him on despite his terror. The only way he could hurt Prince was financially, and only in secret.

So he leaned across the achingly white tablecloth toward the writer and the producer, and spoke in his richest, most compelling courtroom voice.

“Let’s look at the menu, gentlemen. Then, while we eat, I will tell you why you need us so badly.”

Otto Kreiger’s secretary buzzed him just as he ended a twenty-minute phone call with a drug dealer he was representing on First Amendment grounds.

“Mr. Ed Farrow from the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency is holding on line two, Mr. Kreiger.”

Fucking Farrow again. The only possible hurdle to be cleared at Sixth Street, one that had surfaced only a week ago. This little nitpick, that little niggle, without ever saying exactly what was troubling him about the project. And despite anything the Planning Commission and the Board of Supes might approve, it was Redevelopment that had the final, life-or-death say-so on new development projects in San Francisco.

They hadn’t even met in person, but this was Farrow’s third call in a week. He wasn’t going to just go away. Kreiger had a nose for corruption, dealing in it so much himself, and Farrow’s voice reeked of it. The man had his hand out-Kreiger just didn’t yet know why, or how, or for how much.

“I think we ought to meet,” said Farrow suavely. “There are a few things we have to discuss. Not on the phone.”

“The phone’s been fine up until now.”

“In person.”

If the phones were tapped, or Kreiger was taping, nothing incriminating would be on record. When they got together was time enough for Farrow to show him the upturned palm.

“I have time free tomorrow at-”

“Today.” The voice hardened, and Kreiger’s features darkened. He never did like to be pushed. “In one hour.”

“I don’t have an hour this morning.”

“How very too bad for your new arcade.”

Kreiger mastered his anger: all he let be heard over the phone was his long-suffering sigh.

“One hour. Where?”

Farrow chuckled. “Kreplovski’s apartment. Where else?”

“Ah.” Farrow had style. Kreiger suddenly was looking forward to the meeting. “All right.”

“Third floor rear. Apartment 333. The door will be unlocked but it sticks, you almost have to kick it open. I’ll be waiting inside.” The voice tightened. “I’ll only be there once, Kreiger.”

“Don’t worry your little head about it. I’ll be there.”

“This house was built by Lou Costello,” said Gloria Crowley. Her voice had a sort of throaty sensuality that seemed offhand and habitual. “Lou was the short fat one. Bud was the tall thin one.”

“Who’s on first,” supplied Dante brightly.

He could remember an interview he had once seen on TV with Bud Abbott after Costello had died. The IRS had disallowed dozens of pairs of his shoes. It had depressed Dante, somehow. He had watched their old movies religiously on afternoon TV after grade school, and had split his sides laughing.

“Mrs. St. John-”

“Please. Ms. Crowley.”

They were in the cool shadowy living room with French doors open wide to the apron of her pool. She had been doing laps when Dante arrived. The white filigree beach robe over her two-piece suit of bright harlequin colors was gray with wetness.

“His one-year-old son drowned in this pool,” she said with an odd false brightness that was like the sound of chalk on a blackboard. “Legend has it that he heard the news and then did his radio show with his partner.”

Dante didn’t know how to respond. He finally just said, “I have a few questions.”

She nodded, holding his eyes. She had the addicted swimmer’s seal-like figure, and somewhat coarsened facial features, a little too much flesh under the chin as if the monthly alimony check didn’t run to regular face-lifts. But Dante could see remnants of her daughter’s remarkable beauty in her face and oddly provocative blue eyes.

“You were divorced almost twenty-five years ago?”

“That’s right, Lieutenant. So I really know nothing at all about my ex these days.” She focused another limpid-eyed stare on him, waved a hand. He realized she was nearsighted, which explained the come-hither looks. “After all these years…”

She squirmed around in the big leather chair like a fidgety child; her bottom left skid marks. She was having a very dark drink with lots of ice in an old-fashioned glass. Dante was having iced tea without anything. It was an iced-tea day.

“The ceilings are all just slightly lower than normal because Mr. Costello really was quite a short man.”

She took another hit from the squatty glass; ice cubes tinkled. She waved a languid hand and gave a little laugh that did not tinkle.

“We have house finches nesting right outside the French doors, can you imagine? In the hanging fern pots. They’re forever bringing disgusting things for the nestlings, and their droppings get all over the patio, but…” Another of the airy gestures with her free hand.

“I was wondering, Ms. Crowley, why such an attractive woman as you has never remarried. Obviously-”

“And let that bastard off the hook?” There was sudden clarity of eye and voice. “Once Molly was grown and the support payments stopped he would be scot-free and I could not abide that. I will not abide it.”

Dante thought of a life wasted in getting even. For what? That’s what he hoped to find out here today.

“So your ex-husband pays for all this?”

“Not nearly enough, but that bastard will keep on paying as long as he lives, I’ll see to that.”

She stopped abruptly, as if realizing she was saying too much too vehemently. In the plantings that hid the property fence across the pool, the male house finch puffed up his red chest to cheep at them. He had a loud voice. Dante leaned forward in his chair. The sun glinted off the pool. He wished he could shed his clothes and dive in.

“Why did you get divorced, if I might ask?”

“The usual,” she said very quickly and airily. The dismissive hand again; it was her favorite gesture. “Growing apart. Incompatibility. Moving in different directions…”

“Nothing to do with your daughter, then.”

“Of course not.” Indignation now. Indignation he didn’t believe for an instant.

“And what was your relationship with your daughter before her death, Ms. Crowley?”

“How can you ask such a question?” Her bosom quivered with indignation beneath its scanty covering. “We were as close as two women could be. The mother-daughter bond…”

“Yet you weren’t at her funeral.”

“The bastard never even let me know she was dead!” Tears appeared in her eyes. “I was in Maui with my friend Charles, and only learned of it two days after the service.”

Dante put surprise into his face.

“But surely, as close as you and Molly were, her husband must have-”

“He…” She hesitated again. Took another hit of her drink; it seemed to loosen the reins of her caution. “He didn’t know how to reach me.” There was a long pause. “Will Dalton and I, well… we never actually met.” A longer pause, but his silence compelled further revelation. “You see, once she was in high school…” She put her feet up on a hassock; her relaxed thighs were meaty but still shapely. She made the hand gesture again. “You know children have to rebel at that age…”

“But when she was in college…”

Anger burst through her watchfulness again. “By then the bastard had won her over, turned her against me! It started when she was thirteen, expensive gifts, school programs abroad during the summer months. Things I couldn’t afford for her.” Pain spasmed her features. “He was her father, she wanted to know her father, she was so strong-willed I knew any danger would…”

She stopped again, as if a curtain had descended.

“What danger is that?” Dante asked.

“Oh…” The hand wave, meant to be light and airy, was forced and static. “Corruption of values… materialism…”

“Child molestation?” he said in a tone to match her own.

She sat bolt upright as if wasp-stung.

“I didn’t say that!” she yelped. She had her feet on the floor, was halfway out of her chair.

“Will Dalton did.”

She paused, then sank back like a deflating balloon. All of the alarm and anger were leaking out of her.

“He said that?”

“He didn’t know. Suspected. From the way St. John looked at her… acted with her… more like a suitor than a father.”

“Just like that bloody bastard!” She caught herself again, looked over at him almost slyly. “Of course, that’s just… just Skeffington’s way with any woman. Like a tic, a reflex…”

“Will thought your daughter was unaware of whatever happened to her when she was a child, had blocked it all off…”

The idea seemed to disorient her and please her at the same time. For a giddy moment he thought he had her: there had indeed been something for little Molly to block off. Then she shook her head, almost like a fighter shaking off a punch, and again had control of herself. Lost her. It happened. She heaved a long, somewhat theatrical sigh.

“I’m afraid I have nothing to say about that, Lieutenant.”

“Terms of the alimony payments, maybe? If you talk about something that… might have happened, he can cut you off…”

She stood up. There was an odd dignity in her stance.

“I suppose you think I’m one of these pathetic women who are willing to give up her own future happiness just to stick it to her ex-husband. It’s not that, Lieutenant. The only way I could hurt him, back then, was financially. Nobody would have believed…”

“You hurt him by taking his daughter away from him.”

“He got her back.”

“And now she’s dead.”

A single tear rolled down her left cheek. She smeared it impatiently with the back of her hand.

“Yes, she is. Dead. And still the only way I can hurt him is financially.” Her face puckered up, but no more tears came. “For what he did.”

Dante made an instant decision. Sometimes you had to give something away to get something you needed. She had what he needed, he was sure of it.

“I think he’s mixed up with some very bad people. I think they had something to do with your daughter’s death. I can’t prove it yet. But-”

“Are you saying Skeffington knows they were involved and still has kept on with-with them?”

“If they were involved, I can’t see how he wouldn’t know it. And they’re bad enough he’d be afraid to cut himself loose.”

She started to curse in a low, hoarse voice. It was like the mindless swearing of soldiers under stress. Suddenly she demanded, “You think telling you will help to… to get them? Whoever they are?”

“I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think that. I wouldn’t have told you what I have if I didn’t need whatever you know to use as leverage on your ex-husband.”

“All right.”

Just like that. In the same low flat tones she had used to curse, she told Dante what she had walked in on that sunny California afternoon so many years before.

“I grabbed her up in my arms, naked as she was, and ran out of the house with her. I can still hear him crying out behind me.” She paused. Her eyes were focused on the past. “Screaming, almost. As a woman screams.” Her eyes came back to Dante. “I never saw him again without a lawyer present. I got uncontested custody, child support, alimony. He got no visitation rights, nothing. It was in the agreement that if I ever told anyone about… about that afternoon, I forfeited all rights to alimony. I would have had nothing to live on…”

“So when Molly was thirteen, you let her-”

“Damn you, I had to! I was afraid of losing her, not the money! Then I lost her anyway. Forever.” Her face tightened, she began slamming her clenched fist on the arm of her chair and chanting through clenched teeth, “Bastard, bastard, bastard…”

Dante said quietly, “Thank you, Ms. Crowley.”

There was no break in her litany. But as he walked out into the searing sunlight like a man leaving the dimness of a terminally ill patient’s sickroom, she called after him. He paused, turned.

“They say that Lou Costello’s radio show that night, Lieutenant, started, ‘Heeyyy, Abbott-I just took a shower wit’ my shirt, socks, and underwear on.’”

They stared at one another in the gloom; then Dante nodded at her, and was gone.