Cheating at Solitaire (45 page)

“I didn't stick a knife in her heart.”

“I know,” Linda said.

“I know who did this to my hand,” Jack said. “I knew at the time. I know who gave me the drugs. They don't make you forget things, the drugs. They don't put you all the way out until the end.”

“Carl Frank came to see me,” Linda said. Then she got up out of the chair and walked to the window where Jack had last seen Kendra standing. She was not like Kendra. Not even a little bit.

Up on the television set, the issue was now whether or not Kendra Rhode had had a will, which it was possible she had had, since she came from a wealthy family, and had money of her own, and lawyers, who would insist. The talk went on and on, filling up time, filling up space. There was a war in Iraq and trouble in the economy and wildfires in California and it was as if none of it was happening. The only thing anybody wanted to talk about was Kendra Rhode, and what had happened to her.

“I should have gone to law school,” Jack said.

“What?”

“I should have gone to law school. That's what most people do when they go to a good college and get a degree in history. Law school. A partnership somewhere. I thought about it. I really did. It just seemed too, I don't know. Too everyday. I wanted something more… significant, I guess. Something that would mean something.”

“Taking pictures of Kendra Rhode and Marcey Mandret is more significant than what you could do with law school?”

“There was this cartoon I saw once, in the
New Yorker
. One of those Hamilton cartoons with all these Waspy people at a cocktail party. This woman and this man are talking and the woman says, ‘You're a lawyer? Everybody's a lawyer.' And that was the problem. It was too everyday.”

“Carl Frank came to see me,” Linda said. “He's looking for some pictures he thinks you have. Pictures of the Vegas trip that haven't been published anywhere yet.”

“There are pictures of the Vegas trip that haven't been published anywhere yet,” Jack said. “I don't see what Carl Frank wants them for.”

“He wants them,” Linda said, “and that ought to be enough. I don't like that man. I think he's dangerous. I don't like the things he does to people.”

Jack put his head back as far as it would go. They were past the will now. They were talking about the funeral, even though it was obvious in no time that they had no actual news.

“It's like a drug addiction,” Jack said. “They can't stop. They don't want to stop. They talk and talk about it.”

“Jack.”

“Never mind Carl Frank,” Jack said. “I can take care of Carl Frank.”

1

Carl Frank was an official interview, and because of that it was to take place in an official venue, by which everybody meant the Oscartown Police Station. Putting it like that would have made anybody on Margaret's Harbor laugh even twenty-four hours ago, but a lot had changed overnight. The death of Kendra Rhode had galvanized the Massachusetts State Police in a way the death of Mark Anderman had not. There were dozens of them on the island now, in patrol cars in the streets, at points of interest on foot, in the police station, as if Oscartown had suddenly become West Thirty-third Street. They were even staking out the stairwell where Kendra Rhode had died, although Gregor couldn't for the life of him see what good that was going to do now. Maybe murderers returned to the scene of the crime in Massachusetts, the way they did in romantic suspense novels, and the staties were just waiting for their suspect to turn up and turn himself in.

Silly or not, there was something reassuring about all these professional law enforcement people. Gregor didn't do a lot of thinking on Big Subjects. That was Father Tibor's department, and Father Tibor never seemed to come to any specif c answers to any specif c questions where both the answers and the questions wouldn't change next week. What Gregor did know, however, was that civilization was fragile. It took nothing at all to turn a place of comfort and safety into a hellhole, and rampaging hordes from the eastern steppes were not required. The paparazzi almost were rampaging hordes, but it wasn't their rampaging that worried Gregor. It
was their state of mind. They seemed to live in a world where common human decency had been abolished, as a matter of policy.

There was a young policeman on duty at the front desk when Gregor walked in. This was better than the first time he had visited the Oscartown Police Station, when there had been nobody on duty at the front desk, and only one comfortably padded, sleepy local policewoman watching the jail cells in the back. It said something about the survival of civilization, in a good way, that Arrow Normand hadn't just got up and walked out one afternoon because she was tired of being in jail.

The policewoman recognized him on sight, and stood up. “Mr. Demarkian. Mr. Frank is already here. He's in the conference room.”

“Is that the same room I was in this morning?” Gregor asked. “Biggish table, peeling veneer?”

“I couldn't say for sure,” the policewoman said. “But I'd be surprised if this place had two conference rooms. It's like a fairy tale around here, don't you think so? I'm used to Boston. We have real law enforcement there.”

Gregor was sure that Jerry Young was “real law enforcement,” just at a level Margaret's Harbor usually required, which was different from the level Boston usually required. He said nothing about it, though, and let the policewoman lead him down the narrow back corridor to the door he was sure he recognized. She swung it open and he looked inside. It was the room he had been in with Arrow Normand. This time, there was only one person waiting for him. Carl Frank had declined to bring an attorney.

The policewoman shooed Gregor inside, and Gregor let himself be shooed. He heard the door close behind him just as Carl Frank stood up, being polite in a way that very few people bothered with anymore. He was an interesting man, especially considering the people he worked with. His clothes were expensive without being fashionable. In fact, if Gregor had had to guess, he would have said that Carl Frank's
clothes were expensive because they were not fashionable, that he had gone to a lot of trouble to blend into the background in one sense while being impossible to ignore in another. He was, in other words, a very serious person. He was not the public relations flunky for a minor motion picture.

“Mr. Frank,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“They aren't going to bring in that local kid in the cop uniform?” Carl Frank said. “I suppose that's all to the good. He's a nice kid, but he doesn't have a clue.”

Gregor Demarkian pulled out a chair and sat down. Carl Frank sat down again at his own. Most people couldn't stand the sound of silence. If the investigator just shut up, they would start talking and find themselves unable to stop. They would confess to the present crime and to a few more they'd committed, right down to the Raisinets they'd stolen from their lab partner in high school biology. Carl Frank was not one of these people. Gregor was ready to believe he would be able to stay quiet indefinitely.

“You know,” Gregor said, “if somebody had introduced me to you before any of this happened, and told me that you were the public relations man for this movie, I wouldn't have believed him. You're not the public relations man for this movie.”

“Oh, but I am,” Carl Frank said. “I'm good at it too. It's where I started in this business. Although we ought to be clear. I'm the public relations man for this filming. It's not the movie I'm concerning myself with, it's people's behavior while they're making it. After the film is made, it's no business of mine what kind of publicity it gets.”

“All right,” Gregor said. “Let me try again. You're not just the public relations man for this… filming. And that's not your principle job here.”

“No.”

“Are you what you're rumored to be?” Gregor asked. “Are you Michael Bardman's hit man?”

“Sometimes. When it's necessary. It isn't usually necessary. Michael Bardman is the most important producer in
Hollywood, maybe the most important Hollywood has seen in fifty years. It's not just that everybody wants to work for him, it's that most people can't afford to piss him off too much. Too many of the movies that do get made are his productions.”

“All right,” Gregor said. “Then let me ask you something off topic a bit. What does Michael Bardman want with this movie? I'm not entirely clear on it, but from what people tell me it sounds like something fairly minor. Much lighter than Bardman usually produces. No science fiction. Few special effects. So what are you doing here?”

Carl Frank didn't blink. “The script was written by Christa Hall Grande.”

“And? ”

“Christa Hall Grande spends her real life as Mrs. Michael Bardman.”

“Ah,” Gregor said. “All right.”

“Not that Michael is an idiot,” Carl Frank said. “This movie is expensive, but not particularly expensive. It will come in under sixty million even with all the screwups, unless you're intending to arrest Marcey Mandret for murdering Kendra Rhode. Which, by the way, is the kind of rumor I hear.”

“She's a person of interest,” Gregor said. “She would have to be. She was on the scene in both deaths. In the second one, she was right there.”

“She was drunk the first time and coming out of a bad chain reaction the second,” Carl Frank said. “And I don't have to hear rumors about that one. That's the kind of thing I check out myself.”

“Assuming she wasn't,” Gregor said, “would you think she'd be capable of it?”

“It depends what you mean by ‘it,' ” Carl Frank said. “Pushing Kendra Rhode down some stairs? Hell, yes. I was capable of it. The woman was a pest. Shooting Mark Anderman in the head? I doubt it. Drugged up and scared and crazy, a spur-of-the-moment thing, anybody could do that. But anything that took even a second more thought, and
from what I hear this took at least that much, no. Not at all. She may be a charter member of the Twits Club, but her real problems are ignorance, disorganization, and a complete lack of self-esteem. Or self-respect, for that matter. She was the one I wasn't opposed to hiring when this project started, if you want to know the truth. She gets seven point five a picture and she can almost always be cajoled into behaving like a professional. I'll admit I underestimated the ampliflication effects of having the other twits around.”

“Let's go down the list,” Gregor said. “Stewart Gordon.”

“He gets five,” Carl Frank said, “and he's worth it. He has a cult following that's hard to beat. He's thoroughly professional. Gets to work every day on time, knows his lines, knows his moves, gets the job done, stops at a bar for a couple of beers on the way home, keeps it to a couple of beers. I wish every actor in the world was like Stewart Gordon. If they were, there'd be no need for me.”

“Could he have committed these murders?”

“Could he? Sure. But why would he? I know he's been playing father-mentor to Marcey and sometimes to Arrow, but he's not so old-world that he'd kill off their boyfriends. Never mind kill off the men pretending to be their boyfriends. I think he thinks he's going to convince the both of them to go back and finish high school. Or something. It's that kind of a relationship.”

“What about Arrow Normand?”

“Ah, the principle twit,” Carl Frank said. “Well, she's getting fifteen for this movie—”

“Really?” Gregor was surprised. “I don't keep up with these things, but I'd gotten the impression that her career was somewhat on the wane.”

“If you mean that she's in a downward spiral without much choice but to self-destruct, your impression is entirely valid. My guess is that that girl has about another year, or maybe two, before she becomes radioactive. And with all this, it may happen sooner. Five years ago, she'd have gotten thirty million to make a movie.”

“Fifteen is still not minor money.”

“No, it isn't,” Carl Frank said. “And I wasn't the only one who told Michael he could get her for less if he held out for it. I think he felt sorry for her. That Michael felt sorry for her. Hell, pretty much everybody does. She's young, and ‘stupid' is giving her more credit than she deserves, but she's a nice enough girl, she's not a raving bitch to people or anything. It's just that she was always just one of those things. She's not particularly talented. She can't act worth a damn, and her singing voice is weak. It has to be teched up when she records and when she performs. She's not even particularly pretty. She was just young, that was all, and she was in the right place at the right time, and she was willing to wear not much in the way of clothes when she made music videos, and for a few years there wasn't much in the way of competition. Now she's not as young as she was and there are people coming up who are younger and better looking and actually talented. She hasn't released an album in two years. She hasn't made a movie or a video, either. And she's got a family that spends money like water.”

“But you don't think she killed Mark Anderman.

” “No,” Carl Frank said. “And neither do you. She wasn't even available to kill Kendra Rhode, although I think she could have done it and made a case for justifiable homicide. The woman was absolutely poison to someone like Arrow Normand. Arrow could never understand that people like Kendra could get away with things that she herself couldn't.” “

Like getting caught without wearing underwear?”

Exactly like getting caught without wearing underwear.” Carl Frank stared at the ceiling. “Of all the things that have come down the pike these last five years, that's the one I'm never going to understand. Do these girls get it at all? Do they understand that showing that part of themselves and getting it caught on camera is toxic to any hope they ever have of being taken seriously? Do they have mothers?” “