Stardust

Chapter 9

AT 6:10 the winter morning was as bright as a hooker’s promise and warmer than her heart. The temperature was already in the thirties and by noon the plowed streets would be dark and glistening with snow melt. I was in the lobby of the Charles Hotel, fresh showered, clean shaven, armed to the teeth, and dressed to the nines: sneakers, jeans, a black polo shirt, and a leather jacket. The collar of the polo shirt was turned up inside the collar of the jacket. I took off my Ray-Bans to see if I could catch another glimpse of myself in some lobby glass, but there wasn’t any. I’d have to live on memories till we got to a mirror. I could go outside and look at myself in the smoked glass windows of the Lincoln Town Car parked out there, but the slight curve of the window enlarged things, and when you’re a fifty regular you don’t want enlargement.

At the far end of the lobby a solitary desk clerk shuffled paper behind the counter. A tall guy with rimless glasses was admiring the huge floral display in the middle of the lobby. Faintly, I could smell coffee, as, in the recesses of the building, the kitchen began to crank up for breakfast. Past the floral display, to the left of the wide staircase, an elevator door opened and Jill Joyce came out, along with a bulky black man in a blue blazer. The black man carried a walkie-talkie. He nodded when he saw me and moved away, and she was mine for the day.

Jill was wearing jeans which appeared to have been applied with a spray gun, high emerald boots with three-inch heels, a white blouse unbuttoned to exactly the right depth of cleavage. She had her black mink coat thrown over her shoulders. Until you got very close she looked as if she weren’t wearing any make-up. Close up I could see that she was, and that it was so artfully applied that it gave the illusion of fresh-faced innocence, with a touch of lip gloss. She was carrying an alligator bag that was either a large purse or the carrying case for a small tuba. She handed it to me.

“Good morning, cute buns,” I said.

“I was hoping you’d notice.”

We went out through the revolving door. The tall guy with the rimless glasses went out through the swinging doors to the left of the revolving door and when we reached the sidewalk he said, “Miss Joyce.” Jill shook her head.

“Not now,” she said. “I’ve got a six-fifteen call.”

He moved very smoothly for a geek, and he was in her path and saying, “Miss Joyce, Mr. Rojack wishes to speak with you.”

I moved between Jill and the tall guy. “What is your wish?” I said to Jill.

“I want to go to work,” she said.

“Miss Joyce prefers to go to work,” I said to the tall guy.

The tall guy’s voice flattened out like a piece of hammered tin.

“Buzz off,” he said.

“Buzz off?” I said. “Buzz? Off? Which one are you? Archie? Or Jughead?”

The tall guy’s face reddened, but not enough. He was very pale with short white-blond hair and a big Adam’s apple. He put one hand, his left, gently on my chest.

“Just back off, cowboy,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

I didn’t like him putting his hand on me, but defending my honor was not the first order of business here.

“Let’s go,” I said to Jill.

I moved to the left of the tall guy, keeping Jill behind me. My car was parked on the walkway, back of the limo with the tinted windows. As we moved, one of the windows slid silently down and a guy with a fine profile looked out.

“Randall,” the guy with the fine profile said, “get rid of him.”

The tall guy smiled. The hand on my chest slid over and gripped my leather jacket. He started to turn his left hip in toward me when I kneed him in the groin. He grunted and started to sag. I turned my left shoulder in on myself and brought up a left uppercut that straightened him against, then bounced him off the car. His head banged against the edge of the car roof and he slid down the door and sat with his legs sprawled in front of him on the cold brick of the hotel turnaround.

Behind me Jill said, “Jesus,” softly.

I bent and looked into the car at the man with the profile. He wasn’t showing it to me. He was showing me full face, and there was a gun in his hand.

“Wow,” I said. “A Sig Sauer, just like the cops are getting.”

Profile said to me, “What the hell is your name?”

“Zorro,” I said. “I forgot my cape.”

“Never seen anyone deal with Randall quite like that.”

“Randall’s too confident,” I said. “Makes him careless.”

“Perhaps this will have been good for him.”

“I surely hope so,” I said.

Profile looked past me at Jill Joyce.

“I’ve been trying to reach you, Jill,” he said. She didn’t look at him. “You’ve not returned my calls.”

“Come on,” Jill said to me. “We’re late already.”

I straightened.

“I won’t be put off, Jill,” the Profile said.

Jill started to walk away. I straightened from the window.

“See you around,” I said.

“Yes, you will,” the Profile said.

“Tell Randall,” I said, “that hip throw went out about the same time buzz off did.”

“Perhaps he knows that now,” the Profile said. “I’m sure you’ll see him again too.”

I followed Jill and got there in time to hold the door for her. As I pulled out around the Town Car, I saw the Profile getting out and walking around toward where Randall sat on the cold bricks.

We drove out past the Kennedy School and right onto JFK Street and headed out across the Larz Anderson Bridge.

“What was that in the car?” I said. “Darryl F. Zanuck?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“About many things, I think that’s true,” I said. “About the guy in the car-I don’t believe you.”

The Anderson Bridge looks like a bridge that would connect Cambridge to Boston. It is short. The river here was maybe a hundred yards wide. The bridge arched the way bridges do over the Seine, and was made of brick, or seemed to be, having enough brick dressing to fool your eye. To the right the river was broad and empty up as far as Mt. Auburn Hospital where it meandered west and out of sight. Downstream, looking left, it was spanned by the Western Avenue Bridge and the River Street Bridge before it meandered east near Boston University. The ice on the river still held, but the warmer weather would have its way and by late afternoon there would be water on top of the ice.

“Really-fans. They think they know you, and they are so insistent sometimes.” Jill stared out the window of the Cherokee as she talked. They were shooting on location today, in the Waterfront Park near the Marriott Hotel. I turned east onto Soldiers Field Road in front of the Business School. Jill stared at the big snow-covered lawn and the red brick Georgian buildings in a self-important cluster around it. “What’s that?”

“Business School,” I said.

“Which one?”

“Harvard Business School,” I said. “There are people in there who would suffer dyspepsia if they heard you ask which one. They don’t even use its abbreviated name. Mostly they call it the B School. Graduates platoons of people each year who are Captains of Industry at once.”

“Don’t sound so critical,” Jill said as we slid under the Western Avenue overpass. “What are you captain of?”

“My soul,” I said. “Who’s the guy in the Lincoln?”

“Why won’t you believe what I tell you,” she said. “I probably met him at some reception when we were slugging the series, and he thinks he’s in love with me.”

“We’ll see him again,” I said.

“I’m sure you can take care of that,” Jill said. “You certainly hit that other man hard enough.”

“That guy’s better than he looked,” I said.

“How can you tell?”

“He was very confident. He was used to winning.”

“Well, he certainly underestimated you,” she said.

“Next time he won’t.”