Stardust

Chapter 37

WHEN Jill woke up it was late, nearly midnight. She must have felt like someone’s leftover meal when she stumbled out of the bedroom. Chollo had black coffee and a carafe of orange juice sent up. Jill drank both and smoked a cigarette before she said a word. Her face was pale, and her hair was matted from sleeping on it, and there was a wrinkle grooved into her cheek by a fold in the pillow cover.

“Got some brandy?” she said. Chollo came around the bar and poured some into her coffee. She sipped it.

“Ahh,” she said. “Hair of the dog that bit you.” Del Rio was still there, and so was I. Chollo was in place behind the bar.

“Want something to eat?” del Rio said in his clear voice.

Jill shivered.

“God, no,” she said. She looked at her reflection in the now-dark window. “Jesus,” she said. “Am I a mess.”

“Somebody here to see you,” I said.

“Like this?” Jill said. Her hand shook as she lifted her coffee cup, and she slopped a little of the brandy laced coffee onto her lap. She brushed absently at it with her free hand.

“Be all right,” I said. “You look fine.” Del Rio raised his voice only slightly. “Bobby Horse,” he said.

The Indian opened the door to the other bedroom and came out with Bill Zabriskie. Zabriskie had on the same woven sandals as I’d seen him in. He also had on tan polyester pants and a white Western-style shirt, hanging loose, with one of those little strings held by a silver clasp at the neck.

He squinted a little, as if the light were too bright, and then went and sat carefully down on the edge of one of the armchairs. He looked slowly at Jill without reaction. Jill looked at him the same way.

“Who’s this?” she said.

“What’s your name?” I said to him.

“William Zabriskie.”

“You ever married to a woman named Vera Zabriskie?” I said.

Jill had frozen in her chair, the half-drunk coffee in her right hand. There was stiffness in the outline of her shoulders.

“Sure,” Zabriskie said. He looked at his watch, which he wore on his right wrist. It was a cheap black plastic one, the kind where the wristband is built into the watch, and if you want, you can set lap times in the stopwatch mode. “Are you police?”

“You have a daughter?” I said.

“Yes. A famous TV star, her name is Jill Joyce now.”

“What was her name?”

“Jillian. Jillian Zabriskie,” he said. “Why do you keep asking me these things?”

Jill dropped the coffee cup. It broke on the floor and coffee stained the rug. No one paid any attention.

“You see her in the room anywhere?” I said.

Zabriskie looked at Jill, as if he hadn’t noticed her before. He squinted even though the light was good. “That looks like her.”

I turned to Jill. She had shrunk back into her chair, her knees drawn up toward her chest, her arms hugging her elbows in against her. Her skin seemed drawn tight over the bones of her face. Her breath rasped in and out as if her windpipe had rusted.

“It’s Him, ” she gasped. Her voice was very hoarse. “You’re dead. You have to be dead.”

Zabriskie looked puzzled. “I’m not dead,” he said.

Jill shrank deeper in on herself.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t.” She looked at me. “Don’t let him,” she said. “I don’t want to.” Her voice got a sing-song in it, and the hoarseness faded and it sounded young. “I don’t want to. I don’t want you to do that to me. I don’t like it. Please, Daddy, please. Please.” She began to cry again. “Please.” Zabriskie stared at her blankly.

“Why did you never give me money?” he said. “You are my daughter and you are rich and you never give me money.”

Jill was now in a ball, as tightly coiled in on herself as she could get. She wasn’t crying so much as whimpering, in on herself, like a small child, entirely alone, in terrible trouble. I went over and put my hand on her shoulder and she shrank, if possible, a bit tighter, and then tentatively put up one hand and placed it on mine. Everyone was quiet; the only sound was of Jill’s small whimper.

The Indian said, “Jesus.”

Zabriskie seemed unmoved, in fact he seemed unaware of Jill’s response.

Jill raised her eyes toward me. “It’s Him, ”she said. “He’s the one.”

I nodded and squeezed her shoulder a little. “You need money,” I said to Zabriskie.

“Twenty-five years I worked there, and they let me go, when I got old.”

“Where’d you work?”

“Weldon Oil, night security.”

“Carry a gun?”

“Certainly.”

I nodded.

“What’d Jill do when you asked her for money?”

“Never a chance to ask. Miss Movie Star wouldn’t see me.”

“You write her?”

“Yes. ”

“Go to see her agent?”

“Yes. She’s rich. Yet she won’t give her own father anything?”

I nodded again.

“Go to Boston to try and see her?”

“Went right to the set. Sent her a note. She never answered it.”

“Tough,” I said, “to be that desperate and that close.”

“Miss Movie Star,” he said.

“Maybe when she dies you’ll collect,” I said. “There don’t seem to be a lot of heirs.”

“At my age?” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“Right.”

“You fly to Boston?” I said.

“Bus,” he said. As if the idea that he could afford to fly was as insane as suggesting he could fly there by flapping his arms.

“Long ride?”

“Three days,” he said.

“Pack the gun in your luggage or carry it on?”

“Packed… what gun?” His empty eyes got smaller. “Why you asking me this?”

“No reason,” I shrugged. “Just knew you’d brought a three fifty-seven with you and wondered if it was a problem getting it cross country.”

“No,” he said.

I could feel a great sadness settling in on me. “You left-handed?” I said.

His eyes were very beady now, shrunk to suspicious points of hostility. I could feel Jill’s hand press down on mine. She had stopped whimpering. Chollo behind the bar, the Indian, del Rio, all were motionless, some kind of frozen tapestry, silent witness to something awful being dragged into the light.

“What about it,” he said.

“Nothing, just noticed you wore your watch on the right wrist, and I wondered. Once a detective, always a detective.” I smiled my big friendly smile, old Pop Spenser, just a chatty guy, making small talk with an old man. How charming.

“I got a license for that gun,” Zabriskie said. He was in trouble and dimly he knew it. He should have shut up, but the really stupid ones don’t.

“It’s a three fifty-seven magnum, right?”

“So what?”

“Colt?”

“Smith & Wesson.”

“How about that,” I said. “Made right out in Springfield, probably, practically next to Boston. Like bringing your gun home.”

“I got a license.”

“You bring it with you to kill your daughter?” I said.

“I didn’t kill nobody,” Zabriskie said.

“You killed Babe Loftus,” I said. “By mistake.”

The room crackled with silence. Nobody breathed. The rain had stopped long ago, and the sky had cleared, and below us in the basin the lights of Los Angeles gleamed like the promise of a thousand eyes. Jill’s fingernails dug into my hand.

“You thought it was Jill,” I said. “It had been so long.”

The old man stood up.

“I’m going out of here now,” he said.

Bobby Horse moved silently in front of the exit door. Zabriskie stopped and turned and looked slowly around the room.

“You read about the harassment, and the bodyguard, and all. You figured people would assume her death was linked to whoever had been bothering her. You could shoot her and go back to L.A. and sit tight and in a while you’d inherit her money.”

There was no expression on Zabriskie’s face. He seemed solely interested in whether there was another exit.

“I’ll bet,” I said, “when the cops match up the bullet they took out of Babe with the test bullet they fire from your gun, it’ll match.”

The old man decided that there wasn’t another exit. He looked down at Jill.

“You’re an unloving and unnatural daughter,” he said. “If you had given me some money…”

He put his left hand almost tiredly under his loose shirt and came out with the .357. Behind the bar Chollo didn’t seem to move, except suddenly there was a gun in his hand, and it fired, and Zabriskie slammed backwards over the coffee table and bounced against the wall and slid slowly to the floor. By the time he hit the floor Chollo’s gun was out of sight again. Jill, in her tight coil, turned her face against the chair and moaned.

“Quick,” I said to Chollo. He smiled modestly.

Del Rio said, “Can you get her out of here and back to Boston?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you need money?”

“No. How about this, can you clean this up?” I said.

“I own the hotel,” del Rio said. He smiled slightly. “Among other things.”

I bent and edged my arms under her and picked Jill up from her chair. She put her arms around my neck and placed her face against my shoulder.

“Bobby Horse will drive you,” del Rio said. “She’s going to need a lot of attention. I want you to give it to her. On the other coast. You need money, call me.

”I won’t need money,“ I said.

The Indian opened the door and I went through carrying Jill.

Behind me del Rio said, ”Adios.“

I paused and half turned and looked back at him and the still motionless Chollo.

”Si,“ I said.