Stardust

Chapter 10

FROM a pay phone on Atlantic Avenue, I called a guy I knew named Harry Dobson at the Registry of Motor Vehicles and got a name and address to go with the plate number I’d lifted from this morning. Lincoln Town Car: Stanley Rojack, Sheep Meadow Lane, Dover. Then I found Morrissey the detail cop and told him I had an errand.

“She’ll be here all day,” I said, “according to the call sheet.”

“ ‘Less she gets into a funk and goes in her mobile home to cry,” Morrissey said.

“In which case all you have to do is hang around outside,” I said. “It’s better than chasing some crack dancer up a dark alley.”

“You got that right,” Morrissey said.

It was bright along the waterfront the way it only is when the snow isn’t dirty yet, and the sun is out, and the light reflected off the gray ocean and the white snow makes you squint. Even if you are wearing your Ray-Bans. This wasn’t a working waterfront. This was a stockbrokers’ and young lawyers’ waterfront. The boats along the dock were sloops and Chris-Crafts, and the long gray granite warehouses had been turned into condominiums with sand-blasted brick interiors and bleached timber showing. You could buy a blue margarita on ten seconds’ notice down here.

I got my car from where I’d parked it back of th prop truck, next to a hydrant under a sign that sad TOW ZONE. One of the nice things about working for a movie company, you could park in the mayor’s office and people would just walk around your car and smile and say “Love the show.”

I went along under the artery to the South Statio Tunnel, and through, and bore right onto the Mass Pike that cruised along the old railroad right-of-way through, and mostly below, the center of the city. We went under the Prudential Center, which wa built on the old railroad yards, and on out past Fer way, and Boston University, past the old Braves Field with its bright ugly carpet of Astroturf, where one the grass had grown. In maybe fifteen minutes I hit 128 and headed south. The roads were thick with surly Christmas shoppers, but there were no shopping centers yet between the turnpike and the Dove exit, and the pace quickened. Route 128 was clear of snow, and the exits were fully plowed and clear I didn’t even need to put the jeep in four-wheel drive. I rarely needed to put it in four-wheel drive. Sometimes I went out and drove around in snow storms just to justify it. I took Route 109 and then Walpole Street and I was in Dover.

Dover is a WASP fantasy of the nineteenth century. The streets were arched with trees, bare black limbs, now crusted with snow, but in the summer effulgent with leaves. The houses were infrequent, and often invisible at the far end of winding driveways disguised as dirt roads. The architecture was white clapboard and the voters would probably have supported Caligula. Sheep Meadow Lane was at the far end of Walpole Street, curving off to the right among trees and bushes. Along each side was the kind of white three-board fence that you see around Lexington, Kentucky, and sure enough, pushing the snow aside and grazing below it were horses, oddly shaggy in their winter coats. Parts of the pasture looked like an old apple orchard with the squat trees misshapen in their leaflessness. In several stretches along the winding road, disheveled stone walls, superseded by the neat white fencing, ran parallel to it, no longer functional; now only quaint.

It was nearly 11:00 in the morning and the winter sun was warmer than it should have been. Moisture dripped from the trees, and the plowed road was glistening with snow melt. Around a turn was Rojack’s house. It was one of those places that an architect had been given a free hand with, and too much money. He had decided that he could make a totally postmodern statement without violating the traditional forms implicit in the setting. The place looked like it had been designed by Georges Braque while drunk. It was slabs and angles and cubes and slants in fieldstone and brick and glass and timber, and it flaunted itself against the pastured landscape in self-satisfied excess. Beyond it the pasture land, studded with an occasional apple tree, rolled down toward a river. Horses moved about in the pasture. Beyond the horses and facing the pasture was a barn, newly built, that mimicked the old barns of New England the way fashion mimics clothing.

I parked in the big driveway that made a half-circle in front of the house. It was done in paving stones. Water dripped from the roofline of the house and made a pleasant winter sound as I walked up the sinuous brick path to the glass and redwood entryway. A wind chime at the entry made a small tinkle. I rang the bell. Wherever it rang in the house I couldn’t hear it. But it worked because in a minute the door opened and there was the tall mean geek I had disagreed with earlier this morning. His eyes behind the rimless glasses were expressionless when he looked at me.

“What do you want?”

“I’m with Dover Welcome Wagon,” I said. “I wanted to stop by and drop off some soap samples and the name of your nearest plumber.”

He started to say buzz off, caught himself and changed it.

“Beat it,” he said.

I took a card out of my shirt pocket and handed it to him.

“I lied about Welcome Wagon,” I said.

“Don’t get foolish because you were able to sucker punch me this morning. I’ve pulverized tougher guys than you.”

His voice had a hard nasal sound to it, the old Yankee sound, and he talked like the class bully at Deerfield Academy. A tough WASP?

“Sure,” I said. “I still need to talk with Rojack.” He wasn’t sure. He didn’t have authority to screen callers.

“Wait here,” he said and closed the door in my face. I waited in the tinkling silence, listening to the wind chimes and the roof drip. Then he opened the door again.

“This way,” he said. I stepped in. He closed the door behind me. The house inside was all angles and slants. I followed him through an open hallway that appeared to cut the house diagonally. Rooms full of glass and stone and costly furniture opened off it as we went. I got a glimpse of Oriental rugs and the kind of early-twentieth-century Mission Oak furniture from a factory in Syracuse that sells for $25,000 a chair. I also got the impression of a lot of Tiffany glass before I came out into an English conservatory, all glass, fully enclosed, heated, and furnished in white wicker with floral cushions.

Rojack sat on the wicker couch among some huge fluted ferns. He was wearing a Black Watch plaid shirt open at the neck, pressed chino pants and mahogany colored penny loafers with no socks. On the couch next to him was a stack of manila file folders. On the coffee table before him was a laptop computer, its screen aglow with printing. He was drinking coffee from a white china cup that had a gold strip around the rim, and there was a full coffee service in silver on the table next to the computer.

He was a good-looking man, short dark hair brushed straight back, dark expressive face. Medium sized, in shape. His nails glistened as he lowered the coffee cup and looked directly at me.

“A private detective,” he said.

“Sad but true,” I said.

“Randail’s dying to throw you out,” Rojack said.

“Why should he be different?”

Rojack nodded. “You are often unwelcome?”

“I often bring bad news,” I said.

“That is usually unwelcome. Do you bring bad news to me?”

“No,” I said. “I bring questions.”

I felt like I was trapped in a Hemingway short story. If I got any more cryptic I wouldn’t be able to talk at all.

Rojack nodded, carefully. It was as if everything he did he had learned to do.

“Sit down,” he said. “Will you have coffee?”

“Yes, please. Cream, two sugars.” Asking for decaf seemed somehow inappropriate.

Rojack nodded at Randall. Without expression he poured some coffee for me, added a splash of cream and two lumps of sugar, put a small silver spoon on the white saucer and handed the coffee to me. Outside, the bright pasture sloped away to the riverbank in the midday sunlight, while the water ran across the glass roof of the atrium in thick rivulets and dripped rhythmically down the sides. Somewhere in the house there was a wood fire burning. I could smell it. After he gave me the coffee, Randall stood back against the archway that led to the atrium and waited with his arms folded. He was wearing a white warm-up suit with a cobalt stripe down the arm and leg seams, and some sort of off-white canvas slippers. The zipper on the warm-up suit was down about halfway, and he appeared to be wearing a lisle tank top underneath. Without uncrossing his arms he inspected the nails on his right hand.

“What questions do you have for me, Mr. Spenser?

”First let me tell you my situation,“ I said. I drank a little coffee. It was good. What’s a little rapid heartbeat now and then.

”I have been employed to do a couple of things for Jill Joyce, the television star with whom you were trying to speak this morning.“

Rojack nodded. Randall aalrnircd his nails. I sipped a bit more coffee.

”One,“ I said, ”I’m supposed to protect her from harassment, hence my unkindness to old Randall here.“

Rojack nodded again. Randall examined the nails on his left hand.

”Second,“ I said, ”I’m supposed to find out who’s been harassing her.“

We all paused.

”Hence, as it were, my visit here.“

”You think I am harassing Jill Joyce?“

”No,“ I said. ”I don’t know what you are doing with Jill Joyce. But I need to know, in order to do what I was hired to do. So I thought I’d come out and ask.“

”Even though you had reason to assume that Randall would be, ah, angry with you?“

”I can live with Randall’s anger,“ I said.

Rojack smiled without any humor. ”Perhaps,“ he said.

We all thought about that for a moment. ”What has Jill told you about our relationship?“ Rojack said.

”She says she doesn’t know you.“

Rojack was too carefully practiced in his every mannerism to show surprise. But he was expressionless for a moment and I guessed that maybe my answer had affected him.

”She is a liar,“ Rojack said, finally.

”She certainly is,“ I said.

”What do you wish to know?“

”Anything,“ I said. ”I can’t get her to tell me her birthday. I don’t even know enough to ask an intelligent question. Tell me anything about her, and it will be progress.“

”She is a drunk,“ Rojack said.

”That I know.“

”And, I don’t know if the term is used anymore, a nymphomaniac.“

”I don’t think it is, but I know that too.“

”She uses drugs.“

”Yeah. “

Rojack shrugged. ”So what else is there to know?“

”How do you know her?“ I said.

”At a cocktail party,“ Rojack said. ”The governor had a party in the State House rotunda for the stars and top executives of Fifty Minutes, when it first came to town to shoot the pilot. Three years ago. I went-I am a substantial contributor to the governor’s campaigns-and I met her there. I gave her a card. A couple of days later she called and said that she was alone in town, living in a hotel, and wanted someone to take her out and help her not be lonely.“

Far down in the pasture, at the edge of the stream, one of the horses put his head down and drank. He was a red roan horse, and he made an ornamental contrast to the white pasture and the black trees, blacker than usual with the snow melt glistening on their sides.

”I was pleased-most men would be. I took her to dinner at L’Espalier. We had wine. We went to the Plaza Bar. We came home here…“ Rojack made a shrugging hand-spread gesture; among us men of the world, it would be clear what happened next.

”So you were going steady?“

”I don’t enjoy your manner very much, Spenser.“

”Damn,“ I said. ”Everybody says that. Did you and Jill Joyce spend a lot of time together?“

”We were intimate for several years. Then she stopped seeing me.“

”Why?“

”I don’t know. I had done her several favors. Perhaps once they were accomplished she felt no further need of me.“

”Tell me about the favors,“ I said. My cup was empty. I put it down on the coffee table. Automatically Rojack picked up a small napkin from the coffee service tray and put it under my saucer.

”Some were merely routine: reservations at a restaurant, tickets for a sold-out event, a drunken driving charge-I have a good deal of influence.“

”Congratulations. Were there any favors weren’t routine?“

Rojack leaned back thoughtfully and gazed out at his trees and horses. He looked healthy and very satisfied. He was talking about himself, and he took it seriously.

”I suppose one must define routine,“ Rojack said. I waited.

”There was a somewhat salacious piece of gossip that I was able to keep out of the papers.“

I waited.

”It involved a young driver on the show and Jill in an elevator.“

I nodded encouragingly. There was no need to prod him. He liked talking about the things he could fix. He’d tell me all there was. Maybe more.

”And there was a young man whom she’d known before she went to Hollywood.“

Rojack said Hollywood the way that a lot of people did, as if it were a place where one might actually run into Carole Lombard on any corner. As if it were glamorous. The sun had edged up to its low winter zenith as we’d sat talking, and now it shone directly in on the atrium from above and reflected in whitely from the unlittered snow. Everything shone with great clarity.

”Apparently this young man had been calling Jill, trying to see her, and Jill wanted nothing to do with him. But he persisted until Jill spoke to me about it, and I sent Randall to ask him to stop.“

”And he stopped?“ I said.

”Randall can be very convincing,“ Rojack said. Leaning on the archway, Randall looked as pleased with himself as Rojack did. He was one of those rawboned, square-shouldered Yankee types with long muscles and big knuckley hands-all angles and planes, as if he’d been designed to go with the house.

”What’s this guy’s name?“ I said.

Rojack looked at Randall. ”Pomeroy,“ Randall said. ”Wilfred Pomeroy.“

”Where’s he live?“

”Place out in Western Mass., Waymark, one of those Berkshire hill towns.“

”Waymark?“

”Un huh.“

”What was Jill’s connection to him?“

Rojack pursed his lips for a moment. ”Pelvic,“ he said.

I nodded.

”So,“ I said, ”why were you after her this morning?“

Rojack picked up his coffee cup, saw that it was empty, gestured toward Randall with it. Randall came over, took it, filled it, put it back. During which time I watched the red roan horse browse beneath the soft snow.

Randall took a sip of coffee. He held the cup in both hands, like people do in coffee commercials, and then they say ahhh! He didn’t say ahhh! He stared for a moment into the cup and then he raised his eyes.

”We agree,“ he said, ”that Jill has many failings.“ I nodded. At the end of the pasture, the red roan browsed too close to a chestnut with a red mane. The chestnut stretched out its neck and took a nip at the roan. The roan shied, kicked at the chestnut, and moved away. The peaceable kingdom.

”But what you probably don’t see is the Jill that is so…“ He searched thoughtfully for the right adjective. He spoke as if every word were being reported to an eager world. ”Compelling,“ he said. ”When she is intimate with you she is totally intimate, she is completely yours and her…“ Again he examined a choice of several words, turning them over the way a housewife buys fruit. ”Her aura is so enveloping… it’s quite hypnotic.“

”So when she dumps you it’s hard to believe,“ I said.

”And harder still to accept,“ Rojack said.

”You tried calling, and stopping by, and such.“

”Without success,“ Rojack said.

”So you thought you’d get her early, and you brought Randall along to help you reason with her.“

”I always bring Randall along, everywhere,“ Rojack said.

”You been calling her anonymously, sending scary messages?“

”No. I’ve called her, yes; but she knew it was me, and she always hung up on me. The calls were not… criminal. I have written her, but again, there was nothing of an harassing nature.“

He actually said ”an harassing.“

”You haven’t threatened her?“

”No.“

”Dirty tricks of any kind?“

”Spenser, I am a man who does not find any need to resort to dirty tricks.“

”Too important for stuff like that,“ I said.

”Quite simply,“ Rojack said, ”yes.“

We sat wordlessly for a moment or two in the sunflooded glass room.

”Anything else you can tell me about Jill? “ I said.

Rojack shook his head.

”Sort of funny,“ I said. ”She got you to chase Wilfred away. Now she’s got me to chase you away.“

”I don’t plan to be chased away, Spenser. I am not a man who is used to being dumped, as you put it.“ Again the sunny silence. I shrugged. And stood. ”You seem very physical, Spenser. Do you work out?“

”Some,“ I said.

”Perhaps I can show you our gym, before you go. Perhaps,“ Rojack smiled, a formal gesture of self deprecation, as sincere as a congressman’s handshake, ”I can impress you.“

”Sure,“ I said.

Rojack stood and let me out of the atrium. Randall followed.