Blue Screen (17 page)

A
RLO DELANEY
’
S
widow lived in a small apartment in a square and graceless white brick apartment building on Woodman Avenue a couple of blocks north of Ventura Boulevard. She acted as if she wasn’t happy to see us. But I think she was. It gave her a chance to bitch.

We sat in her stale living room with a view of the Hollywood Freeway. She offered us sherry. We declined. She had some.

“Ever since Arlo…” She shook her head. “It gets harder as the day wears on.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jesse said.

She nodded and looked at her lap.

“Loss,” she said, and sipped some sherry. “Loss.”

She was a thin woman with pale skin and too much bright makeup. Her blond hair was too short and too colored. It looked brittle. She wore white slacks that were too loose, and a blue-and-yellow flowered blouse with the shirttails tied in front. Her slippers were lined with blue fur.

“I know you have spoken of your husband’s death too often,” Jesse said. “But could you go through it again? We may have some fresh leads on it.”

“What kind of police are you?” she said. “I forgot what you told me on the phone.”

I was pretty certain that she was not on today’s first glass of sherry.

“My name is Jesse Stone,” Jesse said. “I’m the chief of the Paradise, Massachusetts, Police Department. This is Sunny Randall. She’s a detective.”

“You from Massachusetts, too?” Mrs. Delaney said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

She nodded carefully. No one had said I was a police detective. On the other hand, no one had said I wasn’t. Her glass was empty.

“Are you sure you won’t have some sherry?” she said.

“No thank you,” I said.

Jesse shook his head.

“Sherry’s good for you,” Mrs. Delaney said. “Calms your nerves. Stimulates blood flow.”

She poured herself some more.

“Do you have any thought,” I said, “about who might have killed your husband and his partner?”

“Do I have a thought? Do I have a
thought
? I don’t think of anything else. Five years he’s been gone, and I still think about him all the time.”

Jesse nodded. “Hard business,” he said. “Who do you think might have done it?”

“I know who did it, for God’s sake. I’ve always known.”

Jesse and I waited. Mrs. Delaney drank some sherry, and swallowed and looked at her lap.

“Who is it?” Jesse said after a while.

“The whore,” she said.

“What is the whore’s name,” Jesse said gently.

“She calls herself Erin Flint.”

“The actress,” I said.

“The whore.”

“She calls herself Erin Flint?” Jesse said.

“She’s a guinea. Her real name is Boverini.”

“Why did she kill him?” Jesse said.

“Oh, maybe she didn’t pull the trigger,” Mrs. Delaney said.

Her glass was empty. She refilled.

“But it was her,” Mrs. Delaney said. “Hadn’t been for her, my Arlo would be alive….”

Tears welled.

“And so would I,” she said.

Her eyes remained moist, but she didn’t cry.

“Tell me about her part in it,” Jesse said.

She drank some sherry. There was no hint of impatience in Jesse’s manner. We needed to get her pretty soon. In a while she’d be too drunk to talk.

“She got her hooks in Arlo a long time ago. Long before she was Miss Movie Star.”

“They had a relationship?” I said.

“You could call it that, I guess,” Mrs. Delaney said. “She was fucking him.”

“And you knew that?” I said.

She drank and nodded, looking at her glass. It was a little cut-glass pony. At the rate the sherry was going in, it would have been more efficient to drink from a beer glass.

“I got vaginal dryness,” she said.

Jesse and I both nodded. His face showed nothing.

“So sex is painful for me. Was painful for me.”

She seemed to feel that was sufficient explanation and looked at her sherry glass some more.

“So Arlo went elsewhere for, um, release?” I said.

She nodded. “I guess I couldn’t blame him,” she said to me. “You know how men are.”

I nodded as if I did. She drank some more sherry.

“It’s not like I missed it much anyway,” she said. “Never did see why everybody made such a big fuss about it.”

“Sex?” I said.

“Yeah. I never thought it was much fun.”

I nodded carefully. Jesse was blank.

“How did he meet her?” I said.

“Erin the whore?” she said. “His firm represented her pimp. Isn’t that a nice business for a law firm, representing pimps and whores.”

“So he knew her pimp,” I said.

“I guess.”

“Did he ever mention the pimp’s name?”

“Gerard something,” she said.

“He tell you about him?”

“Later, after he got into trouble.”

“Tell us about the trouble,” Jesse said.

We were both being careful in the way we asked questions. She was the kind of witness who would go wherever you led her, and lie to you because she thought you’d like it. Or because it would enlist your sympathy.

“She wanted to be a movie star,” Mrs. Delaney said.

“Erin Flint,” I said.

Mrs. Delaney nodded and poured some more sherry. She didn’t seem to have gotten drunk yet. Maybe she had built a tolerance. Or maybe she was always drunk and had been when we arrived and was just planing on the booze.

“Yes, the whore. And she tried to get Arlo to put her in the movies, and Arlo tells her it’s not so easy. And the pimp gets himself involved and I think he threatened Arlo.”

“What did he threaten to do?” I said.

“I don’t know. But Arlo was kind of scared.”

“And?” I said.

“And nothing. Arlo didn’t like to talk about it, her being his whore and stuff…didn’t keep him from doing it, a’course.”

“So do you think it was Gerard who killed him and his partner?” Jesse said.

“I don’t know. But it was because of the whore, I know that.”

“How?” Jesse said.

“Because I’m a woman,” Mrs. Delaney said. “A wife and a woman. And a woman knows other women.”

Jesse looked at me without expression.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Did you tell the Los Angeles police this?”

“Of course not,” she said.

“But you’re telling us,” I said.

“I can talk to a woman,” she said.

“The other detectives were men,” I said.

“Detective Sanchez,” she said with an exaggerated accent. “And Detective Munoz. Do you think I’m going to sit here with two muchachos and talk about vaginal dryness?”

I glanced at Jesse.

“It’s good I came along,” I said.

S
HE EVER HEAR
of K-Y gel?” Jesse said when we were riding back through Beverly Glen.

“I’m not sure it would have made much difference.”

“She didn’t like it anyway,” Jesse said.

“Erin might not have been the first,” I said. “You think there’s anything to what she says?”

“It doesn’t contradict anything we know,” Jesse said.

“Her brain is pretty well pickled,” I said.

“And it hasn’t given her a sunny outlook.”

“You’re just mad because she doesn’t like men,” I said.

“That’s probably it,” Jesse said.

At the foot of Beverly Glen we turned left onto Sunset. It was the Beverly Hills expensive part of Sunset, and got more so as we drove east toward Rodeo Drive.

“It’s like we’re in a maze,” I said. “Every time we talk to a new person we get more information that leads us nowhere.”

Jesse nodded. We turned down Rodeo Drive. It was early evening by now, after sundown. The lights in the luxury homes were clearly visible in the gathering darkness. I was driving through Beverly Hills, headed for a luxury hotel with a man whom I found very attractive. We had not had romantic contact since we slept together three thousand miles east. Jesse had been pleasant and professional and easy, as if we were friends, which we were fast becoming, more than lovers, which we had already been, at least once. Despite the easiness and the professionalism, however, there was between us a kind of erotic tension that we both accepted without comment. We both knew we’d revisit it.

We crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and little Santa Monica, and drove through the implausibly chic shopping area to the Beverly Wilshire. We were both on expenses.

“Does police travel in Paradise usually include hotels like this?”

“They do for the chief,” Jesse said.

“Who approves the travel expenses?” I said.

“The chief,” Jesse said.

We gave the car to the valet and went into the lobby.

“Want a drink?” Jesse said.

“As long as it’s not sherry,” I said.

We turned right into the bar and sat at a small table. The unremarked tension between us became a little more insistent. Jesse had a tall scotch and soda. I got a Cosmopolitan. We touched glasses. The bar was nearly two-thirds full. It was a good-looking crowd, well-dressed generally, and not loud. I always liked not loud.

“I suppose the next stop is your pimp friend,” Jesse said.

“My friend?”

“You’ve met him,” Jesse said. “I haven’t.”

“Okay,” I said. “We talk to my pimp friend. It will not be an easy conversation. My pimp friend is not cop-friendly.”

“Cronjager feels bad because he had to fire me,” Jesse said. “He’ll provide us a jurisdictional presence.”

“Wow,” I said. “A jurisdictional presence?”

Jesse nodded.

“Now and then I impress myself,” he said.

We were quiet, sipping our drinks, looking at our fellow drinkers. There was nothing ill at ease in our quiet. But the unobtrusive force of the tension tightened. We had another drink. I looked at my watch. Six-twenty.

“I assume we are off duty,” I said.

“We are,” Jesse said.

“So we are now just a couple of pals sitting around having drinks together.”

“Yes.”

“There is a boutique I have always wanted to go to,” I said.

“A boutique?”

“I’ve been out here half a dozen times and I’ve never been.”

“A boutique?” Jesse said.

“It’s open until nine tonight.”

“All of a sudden you’ve turned into a girl?” Jesse said.

“I’ve done that before,” I said.

Jesse smiled.

“I remember,” he said. “What’s the store?”

“Jere Jillian,” I said.

“In Beverly Hills,” he said.

“Right up the street.”

“And you’d like me to go with you.”

“I would,” I said.

Jesse grinned.

“Is it fabulous?” he said.

“Fabulous,” I said.

I
FELT ODD
walking up Rodeo Drive with Jesse. Of course, walking up Rodeo Drive with anyone is odd. Rodeo Drive is odd, the logical result of intersecting movies and fashion.

“This is ridiculous,” Jesse said.

“I know,” I said. “Don’t you love it?”

“Fabulous,” Jesse said.

There were a lot of couples looking in windows of idiotically chic stores. Many were Asian tourists. And I realized what the odd feeling was. Jesse and I felt like a couple. I looked at him. If he felt it too, he wasn’t showing anything. That didn’t mean much; as far as I could tell, Jesse never showed anything. Almost never.

Jere Jillian was all glass and stainless steel. Anything that was neither was white. In the window was a huge blowup of a glamorous woman purported to be Jere herself. There were a few dresses in very small sizes hanging on display. Several perfectly dressed saleswomen in tight clothes and very high heels stood around, trying not to laugh at my attire. Several other customers moved reverently among the garments, closely attended by a salesperson.

“Place looks like a whorehouse,” Jesse murmured.

“But a very elegant one,” I said.

The nearest saleswoman accosted me as soon as I was through the door. The others not with customers lingered in place, smiling at Jesse, covertly checking themselves in the many mirrors. My salesperson had long, honey-blond hair that fell forward on one side of her face and covered one eye, like an old movie star whose name I couldn’t remember.

“Are you lookin’ for anything special?” she said.

And so it began. Jesse sat quietly in a low, white chair that appeared uncomfortable and watched me. I hadn’t shopped with a man since Richie. I felt myself almost wallowing in it. Except for the exotica of my surroundings, it seemed so normal. There were two other men sitting with equal boredom and discomfort. Shopping Rodeo Drive isn’t pretty.

My salesperson’s name was Amber. Of course.

“Oh, that’s perfect for you…. Look at yourself…. I have just exactly the shoes for that dress…. What do you think, sir?…Doesn’t she look fabulous?”

“Fabulous,” Jesse said.

Finally we had narrowed my selections down to three, and it was time to try on. During the narrowing process, Jesse had sat motionless in his uncomfortable chair and said nothing except an occasional “Fabulous” when asked. He seemed content, but there was something in his face, some brightness that made me wonder about him. We’d had two drinks each before we came to Jere Jillian, so it wasn’t that he was drunk.

The dressing room was small, with the kind of saloon doors that leave your feet visible as you changed. The floor had a good carpet. There was a small bench and a lovely three-way mirror. Jere had class. Amber hung my selections on a hook and backed out.

“I’ll be right outside,” Amber said. “Call me if you need anything.”

The first dress I tried wouldn’t do, and I knew that immediately when it was on me. But the other two I couldn’t decide. I tried each one twice, and then, wearing one of the two contenders, I called Amber. She opened the door immediately. I handed her the reject dress.

“I’ve got it down to two,” I said.

“You’re absolutely right,” Amber said. “This one isn’t quite right for you, now that I see you in that one.”

“You can put that one back,” I said, “and would you ask the man I’m with to step over here.”

“Of course,” Amber said. “He’s so good, sitting there so patient.”

“He is,” I said.

Amber hustled off, and I stood in the door of the dressing room in one of the two dresses. When Jesse arrived, I stood on the balls of my feet to simulate heels.

“Pretend that my bra straps aren’t showing,” I said. “What do you think?”

“Fabulous,” Jesse said.

“No, really. It’s important to me; I can’t decide.”

“You look beautiful in it,” Jesse said.

I turned around.

“How about the back?”

“Front and back,” Jesse said. “Beautiful.”

I had been naked with this man, had sex with him. But somehow this ritual moment seemed the most intimate thing we’d done. I almost blushed.

“Is it at all too tight around my butt?” I said.

“No.”

Our eyes met for a moment, and I realized that he felt the intimacy, too.

“Okay, stay right there,” I said. “I’m going to try on the other one.”

I closed the door and slipped the dress up over my head, trying to be careful of my hair. The door opened behind me. I slid the dress off and looked and it was Jesse.

“I’m in my underwear,” I said.

“Flesh-toned,” Jesse said.

“Appropriate under light, Southern California clothes,” I said. “Why are you in here.”

“I thought it was time for us to have sex again,” Jesse said.

The room was small. He was very close.

“Here?” I said.

“Yes.”

“In Jere Jillian?”

“Uh-huh.”

“In the dressing room?” I said.

“The very place,” Jesse said

He put his arms around me.

“Standing up against the wall?” I said.

Jesse glanced briefly around the room.

“Seems our best bet,” he said.

“With Amber lurking outside?”

“Adds to the excitement,” Jesse said. “And, as a special feature, this perfectly situated three-way mirror.”

“We’d be fools not to, I guess.”

“Fools,” Jesse said.

“But
quietly
!” I said.

I giggled. He kissed me. I kissed him back. We pressed together. He began to help me with my underpants. And then we were fully engaged. We were both agile and strong. Standing up was okay. The three-way mirror showed me a Sunny Randall I had never quite seen before. It made me uneasy. But it was sort of interesting.

Outside the dressing-room door, Amber said, “Do you need any help?”

I held myself still inside to answer her.

“No thanks,” I said in a perfectly normal voice.

“Is it too big, at all?” Amber said. “I have a smaller size.”

“Oh,” I said, “God no. If anything it might be a little small.”

In my ear Jesse whispered, “Hey!”

“I could get you a size larger,” Amber said.

With Jesse pressed against me, I could feel him shake with repressed laughter. I laughed too. And pressed together, fully connected, standing up and moving against the wall, with Amber lurking hopefully outside the door, we giggled covertly together in an intimacy I had never shared with anyone.