The Four Last Things

Chapter 9

With my left hand I hit the record button on the answering machine and vamped until the red light came on.

"I've seen many unexpected things on my journey through the world," I said, "but even to me it seems improbable that life is full of people named Ambrose Harker. And yet, apparently it is." The light blinked once and then glowed steadily. "Which Ambrose Harker is this?"

"I owe you money," he said.

The open refrigerator sent out a siren call that would have lured Ulysses onto the rocks even if he'd been tone deaf. "That's right," I said, "you do. Can you hold on for a second?"

"No." He hung up.

I looked at the receiver and then replaced it. "You'll be back," I said. I got up and opened a beer. I primed myself with several cold ounces and then primed the answering machine. By the time the phone shrilled at me, the tape was already running.

"It's your nickel," I said as I picked it up. I'd always wanted to say it to someone.

"It's a quarter," he said, literal as ever. "I need to talk to you."

"You need to talk to me'? What a surprise. You hire me to watch someone, she gets killed, and then you vanish from the face of the earth, leaving me with nothing but a borrowed business card. How'd you know he was eating at Nickodell's anyway?"

"He always eats at Nickodell's. He's in the music business."

"And you're Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

"My name doesn't matter."

"Maybe it doesn't matter to you. To me, it matters. Sally Oldfield matters."

"Listen, that wasn't supposed to happen. Nobody was more surprised than I was."

"You were so surprised that you knew about it before I called to tell you. It must have been a terrific shock."

"I know you're not going to believe me now."

"Of course I'm going to believe you. You've got a phony name and phone number and you're involved in a murder, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to believe you. What about trust? What about the fellowship of man?"

"Honest to God. I didn't have anything to do with the murder."

"So who's the guy with the needle nose?"

There was a pause.

"Oh, come on," I said. "That question can't come as a complete surprise. What did you think I was going to ask you?"

"I can tell you," he said, lowering his voice. "I can tell you everything."

"You also said something about money."

"I owe you for two days," he said. "That's eight hundred dollars."

"I'll bet you've got a plan," I said, "about how you're going to pay me and explain everything to me and tell me your real name and then we'll both just sit back and have a good laugh over how complicated it all seemed."

"My name is Fauntleroy," he said unexpectedly. "Ellis Fauntleroy."

"This week."

"No, that's my real name."

"Well, why don't you come up here and show me your driver's license? Then we'll call each other by our right names for a while to get into practice and then you can tell me what you've got to say."

"I can't come there. What if they're watching you? I could get killed just for being in the same room with you."

"Who's they?"

Silence. Then he said, "You know."

"And you're telling me they're after you?"

He swallowed in his usual amplified manner. "I'm telling you that I'd be dead if they saw us together. You're going to have to come to me."

A gust of wind slapped the front of the house hard, and the rain rattled down. It was five-fifteen and dark. I didn't want to go anywhere until it was time to meet Hammond at the Red Dog.

"Same objection," I said. "If they're watching me, they're going to see us together, aren't they?"

"Not if you're careful. A detective as expensive as you, you should be able to spot a tail."

"How do I know I'm not walking into something?"

"You don't." No apologies and no attempt to persuade. That was reassuring in a backhanded kind of way.

"Why did you call me now?"

"Because I know too much. They made a mistake when they made me the one who hired you. I was the last person they should have chosen, and now they're worrying about it."

"Where do they think you are now?"

"They don't know. They haven't started to wonder yet."

I looked down at the cassette, its little hubs rotating slowly. "This is all very enlightening, but I could really use a name or two. Like exactly who hired you."

He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker. "First we talk," he said. "I need something out of you. If I get it, you'll get something out of me."

"You mean you really didn't call to pay me my money? Human nature is such a disappointment."

"The money's here. Are you going to come or not? I haven't got all night. I've got to get someplace where they can see me or they're going to start looking for me, and I'll be in even worse trouble."

I weighed it. There was no question in my mind that he was frightened. Harker, or Fauntleroy, was too unimaginative to be an actor. On the other hand, I could have been making an appointment to get my head blown off. I've grown fond of my head.

"You still there?" he said impatiently.

"How come it's always raining when I talk to you?"

"Ask the weatherman. I'm at the TraveLodge in Santa Monica, room three-eleven. You know where it is?"

Another motel. "Near Pico and the freeway."

"I'll be here for forty-five minutes." The line went dead.

I turned off the recorder in the answering machine and thought about it. A motel room with Ambrose Harker/Ellis Fauntleroy didn't sound like my idea of paradise, or even Florida. If I went, I might come back with part of me missing. If I didn't go, I'd probably never get back on the trail of the guy who'd murdered Sally Oldfield. Mentally I flipped a coin, giving Sally heads. Sally won. That's the trouble with flipping coins mentally.

I'd wasted seven minutes. No point in changing; I'd just get wet again. I grabbed the keys, slalomed down the driveway, and started Alice.

As I hit the bottom of the canyon and turned left onto Old Topanga Canyon Boulevard, the rain eased up enough to let me see that the creek had risen to the danger point. One more night of heavy rain and we'd all be listening to the radio to find out which roads had washed away and what the alternative routes were, if any. For the seventeen millionth time I wondered why I hadn't moved into town years ago.

At the intersection of New Topanga and Old Topanga, flares blossomed in the darkness. I slowed down to a near-stop, inching along behind a long line of other fools who didn't have enough sense to stay in out of the rain. An old white VW van lay on its flattened top at the side of the road. There were people in it. The cop with the flashlight told me to keep moving, as though I were about to leap from the car for a closer look. By the time I made the right onto New Topanga and started skidding down toward the sea, I'd lost more than twenty minutes.

Well, he'd either be there or he wouldn't. Either way, I decided to cancel my appointment with Al Hammond. Things were moving again, and as long as they continued to move I'd work for free. Instead of hurrying, I concentrated on observing the laws of physics that would keep me on the road.

The ocean was a mess, white-capped and choppy, and the rain guttered down again as I headed up the Pacific Coast Highway and made a right onto Ocean Boulevard. At least there'd been no more heavy traffic. The neon of Santa Monica scattered itself into broken reflections on the wet pavement, and the sidewalks were empty. Bad night for restaurants. I realized I was hungry and remembered that I'd left most of my lunch sitting on the table opposite Rhoda Gerwitz.

With three minutes to go I swung into the TraveLodge parking lot and ran for cover. This wasn't just rain; this was the kind of deluge that city idiots say will be good for the crops, and farmers swear at. Using my highly trained powers of deduction, I guessed that room 311 would be on the third floor and got into the world's slowest elevator. By the time the doors slid open again, I'd had plenty of opportunity to review my life in detail and to wrap the fingers of my right hand around the automatic I'd taken from Alice's glove compartment. Using my left, I rapped at the door to 311.

"It's open," Harker called from inside. "Come in."

"Sure," I said. "Right after you open it."

I stepped back, clutching the gun in my windbreaker pocket, and waited. After a moment the door swung open and Harker stood there.

"I was about to leave," he said.

"Might have been a good idea. Open the door all the way. Slam it against the wall."

He did. He was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt, his tie partly unknotted. He hadn't shaved in days. His left hand was in his pocket.

A double bed covered in an unappealing shade of pumpkin stood against the far wall. "Take your hand out of your pocket," I said, "and hold your other hand in it. Good. Now, back up slowly and sit on the bed."

He did as he was told. I pushed at the door and it banged against the wall again.

"Nobody here?" I said, stepping into the room.

"You think I'm crazy?"

"One question at a time. That the bathroom?" I gestured at a door to my right.

"No," he said nastily. "It's the sitting room. I always insist on a suite."

Through the open door behind me I heard the rain increase in volume to a dull roar. "Let's go take a look," I said. "You first."

"Oh, come on," he said. "I told you I was alone."

"But that's a lie," I said pleasantly. "I'm here too. How can I trust you when you can't even tell the truth about something as simple as that?" I took the gun from my pocket and gave it a little wave in the direction of the bathroom. "After you, darling."

He grumbled, but he did it. I made him stand in the bathtub with his back to me while I checked the dressing room and the closet. All empty.

"Well, golly, Ambrose," I said, following him back out into the living room, "I'm sorry about all this. But these days, you know, a girl can't be too careful."

"You want me to sit on the bed again?" he asked sullenly.

"Let's not pout. The bed looks very comfortable. Sit, sit."

He did, and I reached behind me to close the door. There was a blur of movement to my right and the man who had come in and positioned himself behind the door while we were in the bathroom caught me at the base of the skull with something hard and heavy. As I headed for the carpet I saw Harker start to stand up, and then there was nothing but darkness and the mermaids singing, each to each.

It was the smell that woke me up.

My skull was clanging "The Anvil Chorus" and there was a red film over my eyes, but the smell pushed its way through. It was a sharp smell, but not fresh. It was a smell I hated.

I'd been lying facedown on the polyester carpet, and the blood from the cut on the back of my head had run down over my face. I had to wipe it from my eyes before I could focus.

What I saw was a two-year-old's view of the world: carpet, table legs, and the bottom of a pumpkin-colored bedspread. Fighting the gravity of Jupiter, I lifted my head and saw a pair of black shoes dangling over the edge of the bed.

I laid my head back down on the carpet and said, "Shit." Sleep seemed like a good idea. I closed my eyes. Then whatever obscure corner of my brain was still up and about sounded the alarm to let me know that sleep was, all things considered, not really such a good idea. A fragment of Jack London pushed itself in front of me, something about people dozing off happily in the snow.

It took me maybe two minutes to get to my hands and knees and another minute, with some help from the table, to stand up. I had to wipe my face again before I could look around. Scalp wounds bleed ambitiously.

Ambrose Harker or Ellis Fauntleroy lay on the bed, clutching a pillow to his middle. He looked startled. The pillow had a couple of little black holes in it. The smell in the air was cordite, the stuff that makes guns go bang.

I held my head in one hand and picked up the pillow with the other. It was heavier than it should have been because it was saturated with blood. The pillow had functioned as a silencer and Harker's stomach had functioned as a target. Both had functioned flawlessly.

I let the pillow drop, and Harker made a rasping sound that trailed off into a gurgle. It was the last sound he ever made, and like all the others, it was louder than life.

My gun was gone. I should have known it would be gone. It didn't take an advanced degree in ballistics or an I.Q. much higher than room temperature to guess whose bullets had made such a travesty of Harker's viscera and whose prints were all over the gun.

After I washed the blood from my face I wiped everything I remembered touching and locked and closed the door behind me. A lot of good it would do. Somebody had the gun, and it wasn't anybody who wished me well.

On the drive home I had all I could do to turn four oncoming headlights into two and wonder where I'd put the iodine. By the time I'd scaled the driveway on all fours my head was slamming alarmingly and I was beginning to get mad.

The door to the house was open.

The message light on the answering machine blinked accusingly, but there was no way to know whether it had been Al Hammond or Mrs. Yount who'd called, because the cassette was gone. II — Judgment