Because the Night (32 page)

Nagler fretted his hands and pleaded to Lloyd with his eyes. Bergen guzzled Scotch, then blurted out, “Jesus, I'm gonna be sick. Where's the can?”

Lloyd waved an arm toward the back of the house as Nagler drew his feet together and slammed the edge of the sofa with outwardly cocked wrists. Bergen took off running, making gagging sounds and holding his hands over his mouth. Lloyd shook his head and said, “I apologize for my colleague, Mr. Nagler.”

“He's a terrible man,” Nagler whispered. “He has a low karma consciousness. Unless he changes his life radically, he'll never go beyond his low efficacy image.”

Lloyd noted that the recitation of the mini-spiel had had a calming effect on Nagler. He honed his own spiel to razor sharpness and said, “Yes, I do pity him. He has so many doors to go beyond before he finds out who he really is.”

The razor drew blood. Nagler's whole body relaxed. Lloyd threw out a smile calculated to flash “kindred soul.” Thinking,
hook him now,
he said, “He needs spiritual guidance. A spiritual master is just the ticket for him. Don't you agree?”

Nagler's face lit up, then clouded over with what looked to Lloyd like an aftertaste of doubt and fear. Finally he breathed out, “Yes. Please get on with your business and leave me in peace.
Please.
”

Lloyd was silent, charting interrogation courses while he got out a pen and notepad. Nagler fidgeted on the edge of the sofa, then turned around when footsteps echoed behind him.

“Achtung,
citizen!”

Lloyd looked up from his notepad to see Marty Bergen hovering next to the sofa, holding a glass freebase pipe out at arm's length. “Thought you were cool, didn't you, citizen? No dope on the premises. However, you overlooked the new possession of drug paraphernalia law recently passed by the state legislature. This pipe and the ether on your bathroom shelf constitute a misdemeanor.”

Bergen dropped the pipe into Nagler's lap. Nagler jerked to this feet and threw his hands up to his face; the pipe fell to the floor and shattered. Bergen, florid faced and grinning from ear to ear, looked at Lloyd and said, “This is fucking ironic. I wrote an editorial condemning that law as fascist, which of course it is. Now I'm here enforcing it. Ain't life a bitch?” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wad of paper. “Check this out,” he said.

Lloyd stood up, grabbed the papers and walked over to the shivering worshipper. Steeling himself against revulsion, he said, “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have legal counsel present during questioning. If you cannot afford counsel, an attorney will be provided. Do you have a statement to make regarding that paraphernalia, Mr. Nagler?”

The answer was a series of body shudders. Nagler pressed himself into the wall, trembling. Lloyd put a gentle hand on his shoulder and felt a jolt of almost electric tension. Looking down at the worshipper's feet, he saw that they were twisting across each other, as if trying to gouge the ankles. The brutality of the posture made Lloyd turn away and seek out Marty Bergen for a semblance of sanity.

The image backfired.

Bergen was standing by the bar, guzzling Scotch straight from the bottle. When he saw Lloyd staring at him, he said, “Learning things you don't like about yourself, Hot Dog?”

Lloyd walked to Bergen and grabbed the bottle from his hands. “Guard him. Don't touch him and don't talk to him; just let him be.”

This time the answer Lloyd got was Bergen's grin of self-loathing; a smile that looked like a close-up of his own soul. Taking the bottle with him, he walked to a small den off the living room hallway and found the phone. He dialed Linda's number and let it ring ten times. No answer. Checking his watch, he saw that it was 10:40. Linda had probably gotten tired of waiting for his call and had left.

Lloyd put down the phone, knowing that he had wanted the comfort of Linda's voice more than her confirmation of Havilland's prints on the magnum. Remembering Bergen's wad of paper, he reached into his pocket and extracted it, smoothing it out on the desk beside the phone.

It was a real estate brochure listing properties in Malibu and the Malibu Colony. Attached to the top of the front page were “complimentary” Pacific Coast Highway parking stickers for the period 6/1/84 to 6/1/85. A soft “bingo” sounded in Lloyd's mind. Beach area realtors gave away the hundred-dollar-a-year resident stickers to their preferred customers. It was a solid indication that Nagler had property in Malibu—property that he let John Havilland use, but held the deed to for tax purposes and secrecy. Havilland would undoubtedly
not
let his worshippers confer with him at his office or Beverly Hills condo—but a beach house owned by an
especially
trusted worshipper would be the ideal place for individual or group meetings.

He read the name of the realtor on the front of the brochure—Ginjer Buchanan Properties. The phone number was listed below it. Lloyd dialed it on the off-chance that an eager beaver salesperson might still be at the office. When all he got was a recorded message, he called information and got a residential listing for a Ginjer Buchanan in Pacific Palisades. He dialed that number and got another machine, this one featuring reggae music and the realtor's importunings to “leave a message at the tone and I'll call you from the Twilight Zone.”

Thinking of the Los Angeles Police Department as both the keepers and inmates of the Twilight Zone, Lloyd rifled the desk drawers looking for official paper pertaining to Malibu property. Finding nothing but stationery and invoices for movie equipment, he walked down the hall looking for other likely rooms to toss. The bathroom and kitchen would probably yield zilch, but at the end of the hallway stood a half-opened door.

Lloyd walked to it and fumbled at the inside wall for a light switch. An overhead light went on, framing a small room filled with haphazardly discarded movie cameras, rolls of film, and developing trays. The floor was a mass of broken equipment, with plaster chips torn loose from the walls. Noticing a Movieola that remained intact atop a metal desk, Lloyd peered in the viewfinder and saw a celluloid strip showing a pair of inert legs clad in white stockings.

He was about to examine the equipment more closely when singing and chanting blasted from the living room. Walking back to investigate, Lloyd saw and heard a hellish two-part harmony.

Marty Bergen was standing over a kneeling William Nagler, strumming an imaginary guitar and singing, “They had an old piano and they played it hot behind the green door! don't know what they're doin', but they laugh a lot behind the green door! Won't someone let me in so I can find out what's behind the green door!”

When Bergen fell silent, fumbling for more verses, Nagler's chanting took precedence, “
Patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum.
” Muttered in a droning monotone punctuated by the worshipper's banging of his prayer-clasped hands against his chest, the words seemed to rise from a volition far older and darker than John Havilland or his murderer-father.
“Patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum.
”

Bergen snapped to Lloyd's presence and shouted above the chanting, “Hi, Hoppy! Think I'll make the top forty with this? Green Door Green Door Green Door!”

Lloyd grabbed Bergen and shoved him to the wall and held him there, hissing, “Shut the fuck up now, and don't drink another drop. Go toss the rest of the pad for Nagler's I.R.S. forms and income tax returns. Don't say another fucking word, just do it.”

Bergen tried to smile. It came out a death grin. “Okay, Sarge,” he said.

Lloyd released Bergen and watched him ooze off the wall. When he shambled away, the chanting became the dominating aspect of the room, “
Patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum.
”

Lloyd knelt in front of the worshipper, watching his trance grow deeper with each blow to the heart, memorizing every detail of the flagellation in order to justify his next move. When Nagler's glazed eyes and heaving lungs were permanently imprinted in his mind, he swung a full power open hand at his head and saw the trance crumble as the worshipper was knocked off his knees screaming, “Doctor!”

Lloyd, knocked loose of his own equilibrium, pinned Nagler's shoulders to the floor and shouted, “Havilland's dead, William. Before he died he said that you were a chump and a fool and a dupe.”

Nagler's glazed eyes zeroed in on Lloyd. “No. No. No.
Patria infinitum. Patria infin
—”

Lloyd dug his fingers into the worshipper's collarbone. “No, William, you can't. You can't go back.”

“Doctor!”

“Shhh. Shhh. You can't, Bill. You can't go back.”

“Doctor!”

Lloyd dug his fingers deeper, until Nagler started to sob. Withdrawing his hands altogether, he said, “He talked about how he used you, Bill. How he got you to pay his phone bills, how he made you his slave, how he laughed at you, how your movies were shit, how. you had all that expensive equipment, but you did—”

Lloyd stopped when Nagler's sobs trailed off into a terrified stutter. “Hor-hor-hor-moo-hor-moo.”

“Shhh, shhh,” Lloyd whispered. “Take it slow and think the words out.”

Nagler stared up at Lloyd. The look on his face wavered between grief and bliss. Finally the bliss prevailed long enough for him to say, “Horror movie. Doctor John made a horror movie. That's how I know you're lying about what he said about me. He appreciates my talent. I edited the movie and Doctor said—he said …”

Lloyd stood up, then helped Nagler to his feet and pointed him toward the sofa. When Nagler was seated, he studied his face. He looked like a man about to enter the gas chamber who didn't know whether or not he wanted to die. Knowing that the bliss/death part of the worshipper had the edge and possessed the potential to produce lucid answers, Lloyd quashed his impulse to bludgeon Nagler into grief/life. Sighing, he sat down beside the ravished young man and stabbed in the dark. “Havilland isn't really dead, Bill.”

“I know that,” Nagler said. “He was here this morning with—” He stopped and flashed a robot smile. “He was here this morning.”

Lloyd said, “Finish the thought, Bill.”

“I did. Doctor John was here this morning. End of thought.”

“No. Beginning of thought. But let's change the subject. You don't really think I'm a policeman, do you?”

Nagler shook his head. “No. Doctor John told me that there was a three percent leak factor in our program. I know exactly what the leak was—it came to me while I was chanting. You're an Internal Revenue agent. I paid Doctor John's phone bills while he went skiing in Idaho last December. You checked the records out, because you're with big brother. You also cross-checked my bank records and the Doctor's, and saw that I sent him a big check last year. He probably forget to report it on his tax return. You want a bribe to keep silent. Very well, name your amount and I'll write a check.” Nagler laughed. “How silly of me. That would leave a record. No, name your amount and I'll pay you off in cash.”

Lloyd gasped at Nagler's recuperative powers. Five minutes earlier, he had been a groveling mass. Now he held the condescending authority of a plantation owner A “horror movie” and the wrecked equipment in the back room were the dividing points. Thinking,
Break him,
he said, “Didn't it surprise you that my partner knew enough to sing you that song?”

“No. A song is a song.”

“And a movie is a movie,” Lloyd said, reaching into his pocket. “Bill, it's time I came clean. Doctor John sent me to test your loyalty.” He held out the mug-shot strip of Thomas Goff. “I'm the replacement for the old recruiter. You remember this fellow, don't you? There's a guy on Doctor John's program who looks just like him. I know all about the meetings at the house in Malibu and how you bought the house for the Doctor and how you pay the phone bill. I know about the pay phone contacts and how you don't fraternize outside the meetings. I know because I'm one of you, Bill.”

First grief, then bliss, now bewilderment. Lloyd had kept his eyes averted from Nagler, letting him feast on Thomas Goff's image instead of his own. When he finally reestablished eye contact he saw that the man had fingered the mug-shot strip to pieces and that his spiel had turned him into clay. Feeling like a bullfighter going in for the kill, Lloyd said, “I also lied when I said that Doctor John said that your movies were shit. He really loves your movie work. In fact, just today he told me that he wants you to both star in
and
direct the script that he's working on. He tol—”

Lloyd stopped when Nagler's grief took him over. “
Patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum.
”

Lloyd thought of Linda and got up and walked toward the den and the telephone. He had his hand on the reciever when a tap on his shoulder forced him to jump back, turn around, and ball his fists.

It was Bergen, looking eerily sober. “I couldn't find any I.R.S. papers,” he said, “but I did find our pal's diary under his bed. Renaissance weird, Hopkins. Fucking gothic.”

Lloyd took the morocco bound book from Bergen's hands and sat down on the desk. Opening it, he saw that the first entry was dated 11/13/83, and that it and all the subsequent entries were written in an exquisitely flourished longhand. While Bergen stood over him, he read through accounts of Havilland's “programming,” picking up a cryptically designated cast along the way. There was the “Lieutenant,” who had to be Thomas Goff; the “Fox,” the “Bull dagger,” the “Bookworm,” the “Professor,” the “Muscleman,” and “Billy Boy,” who had to be Nagler himself.

The entries themselves detailed how Havilland ordered his charges to fast for thirty-six hours, then stand nude in front of full-length mirrors and chant their “fear mantras” into tape recorders, until “subliminal dream consciousness” took over and led them to babble “transcendental fantasies” that he would later sift through for “key details” to translate into “reality fodder.” How he paired them off sexually at the “Beach Womb,” interrupting the couplings to take vital signs and “stress readings”; how he forced them to kill dogs and cats as “insurance against moral flaccidity”; how the “Lieutenant” interrupted their REM sleep with late night phone calls and brutal interrogations into their dreams.