Eve's Men (15 page)

Heading west out of Denver, Charley followed the interstate, four smooth lanes of blacktop snaking through the mountains, often in well-lit tunnels. Soon, just past Idaho Springs, Chester grunted and motioned for Charley to turn off the freeway, onto a two-lane highway running north. On this road, they drove past a couple of turnouts, places where tourists could park and take in the spectacular scenery. And eventually Charley saw a turnout without a single car or tourist, and he judged that the stone parapet bordering it was low enough so the door of Chester’s high-riding truck could swing open above it. It crossed his mind that he was probably being fatally reckless, that in a few seconds he would be gambling with his life. Even then, he could not stop himself.

Braking and turning in, he looked over at his captor. “I’ve got to piss,” he said. “Either outside or here in the truck. Which will it be?”

Chester took hold of the magnum and brought it to rest on his lap, pointed at Charley. “Okay,” he said. ‘Jest don’t think you can git out and run. Jest shake the dew off your pecker and git back in, you got that?”

Nodding meekly, Charley opened the door above the parapet and started to get out. But even as he placed his left foot down onto the wide stone surface, he swung his right hand backwards in a vicious arc and chopped the wiry cowboy in his Adam’s apple. Then he seized him by the front of his denim jacket and, yanking him out of the driver’s door, tossed him like a sack of garbage over the parapet and down the side of the mountain.

Shocked by what he had done, Charley just stood there and watched as Chester plunged down the steep grade, frantically reaching for an occasional bush or scrub pine and fighting to get feet but falling again and tumbling, sliding, ultimately coming to rest about two hundred feet down, with the gun, incredibly, still in his hand. Without quite knowing why, Charley was relieved to see him move slightly, already struggling to sit up. And finally the little cowboy craned his neck and looked back up the mountain.

Charley waved to him. Then he got into the truck and drove off, heading back toward Denver.

Chapter Six

Sex with Brian almost always left Eve feeling good afterwards, sated and loved and fulfilled. And usually she was able to carry those feelings with her into sleep, like an armful of flowers. But not this time. This time, even as she and Brian parted and began to pull their clothes back on, Eve felt as if she’d fallen out of a cozy bed into a pool of ice water.

“Well, that was fun,” she said. “A couple of desperadoes pretending everything’s cool.”

Brian laughed. “
Desperadoes?
Oh, come on, babe, it’s not that bad.”

“No? Well, I’m just a tyro at all this, never having been a fugitive before.”

“And you’re not now. Maybe I am—but you’re not.”

“That’s reassuring coming from the only Californian who’s not a lawyer.”

But Brian refused to be baited. Continuing with his impression of a secret agent—as Eve considered it—he calmly told her that he wanted her to go forward and tell the pilot that they wished to change their destination to the Burbank airport.

“Why?” she asked.

“In case they’re on to us. Santa Barbara was just a red herring. We actually go there, we’ll probably find a welcoming committee waiting for us.”

“What do I tell the pilot?”

Brian frowned. “Oh, let me think. Why not just tell him we’ve changed our minds, that the meeting we were going to hold in Santa Barbara, now we want to postpone it? Something like that.”

“I’d feel better if I had a bath.”

“A little sticky, are we?”

She mimicked his smug smile, and he laughed. As she got up and moved past him, he smacked her on the bottom.

“Still world class,” he said.

“Will it look world class in stripes?”

“They don’t wear stripes anymore. Orange jumpsuits now. You’ll look positively fetching.”

“Thanks. That’s all I needed to hear.” With that, she opened the cockpit door and went inside.

At the airport, Brian again assumed the role of Eve’s dim-witted brother, tagging along after her in his Chicago Bears cap and sunglasses, leaving it to her to find a skycap and wave down a taxi. Following the instructions he had given her on the plane, she told the cabbie that they wanted to go to Hollywood, to some reasonably priced motel there, and he took them to the new Ramada Inn just off the Hollywood Freeway. Eve paid the cabbie and registered for their room, paying cash for two days in advance, while Brian used the lobby pay phone to call “an old friend.”

Not until they were in their room and Eve was hurriedly stripping for a shower did she learn the identity of that friend: Stephanie Hodges, a rich old lover of Brian’s, the woman he had turned to after Kim Sanders’ death, the woman who had hidden him from the media during that unhappy time. Though Eve didn’t much care for the idea of staying with one of Brian’s old flames, she didn’t make a fuss about it, mostly because she was so eager to get into the shower and take root there.

“Her daughter’s coming for us,” Brian said. “So don’t take too long.”

Eve didn’t bother to answer, thinking at first that she would take as long as she damn well pleased. But there were things she had to know, questions she wanted answered before the girl arrived. So within a few minutes she was out of the shower, dried, and dressing, this time in black stone-washed Levis and a man’s peppermint striped shirt.

“Brian, we have to talk,” she said.

“So talk.”

“I want you to listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“All right, then.” She found herself suddenly so tense she was short of breath. “Until I get some answers, I’m not going any further. I’m not going to Stephanie’s with you.”

“Okay—answers about what?”

“
About what?
” Faced with his maddening aplomb, she was trying hard not to lose her temper. “Well, just what the hell do you think? I have to know how far you plan to take this whole thing. I mean, are you going to continue trying to sabotage the movie? And do you plan on being a fugitive for good, and if so, have you somehow got it into your head that I’ll just go along like a good little girl? A good little moron? Is that what you think?”

Brian looked genuinely puzzled. “Jesus, I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t really thought about all that. I’m just rolling with the punches, you know? Just taking things one day at a time.”

For Eve, that was answer enough, all the reason she needed to abandon ship as soon as possible. “And not worrying all that much about me, it seems. Well okay, Brian. So be it. You go on alone with the girl when she comes. I’m pulling out. And I’m going to keep the money and give it back to Charley, to cover the bail he put up.”

Brian sat down on the bed. “Just like that, huh?”

“Yes, just like that. You try to stop me and I’ll scream for the police.”

“Jesus Christ, Eve, have I ever touched you in anger?” He was shaking his head, in confusion or disbelief. “You want to cut out, fine, you’re free to go. I told you I expected it. It only makes sense.”

“I’m glad you agree.”

“I just don’t see why you’d expect me to have things all planned out. I thought we’d just go up to Stephanie’s for a few days and see which way the wind is blowing, find out what the studio’s going to do about the movie. Then I’ll have a better idea what to do.”

“Then you agree with me about the money?”

“Sure. I already told you that. I just wanted to wait until Charley put the police onto Chester for the shooting, that’s all.”

“How will you get by?” she asked.

“Forget the money,” he said. “The question is, how do I get by without you?”

Eve stood there looking down at him still sitting on the bed, his hands folded in his lap, his long legs thrown out, the bent, rueful, affectionate smile just beginning to form, the deep blue eyes as guileless as a child’s. And once again he had her. She already knew that. He had seduced her just as surely as on the jet.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “A couple of days up at Stephanie’s, and then we come down and face the music, okay?”

“Except if there’s any music to be faced, I’m the one who’ll do it, not you.”

Getting up then, he took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead and the nose and finally on the mouth, slowly and tenderly, barely touching her lips, a loving kiss, uncomplicated by sex or passion. And this was something about him that she always found surprising, that as masculine as he was—as unsubtle and insensitive as he often seemed to be—he nevertheless invariably knew just which button of hers to push, and when to push it.

“Just a few more days, all right then, honey?” he said. “I need you. I need to know you’re there.”

Nodding, she hugged him and turned her head, trying to hide the tears in her eyes.

Terry Hodges came for them in a beat-up old Travel-All station wagon that looked almost brand new on the inside, even though the car itself was almost as old as the girl, who was a skinny teenager with a boy’s haircut, baggy jeans, and a sleeveless Raiders sweatshirt. When Brian had let her into the motel room, responding to her virtually inaudible knock, she had seemed almost too shy to speak. And her hangdog, apologetic look gave Eve a pretty good idea what Stephanie herself would be like: another aging Sunset Boulevard prima donna, with all the mothering instincts of a shark.

The girl was a competent driver, though, and soon they had reached Mulholland Drive, the strip of road winding along the top of the hill-sized San Gabriel Mountains, which divided the major part of the city from the San Fernando Valley. Eve of course had been on the road many times before, usually at night and in the company of men who wanted to park and show her its famous nocturnal vista of sparkling lights while running their hands up her thighs. Her ex-husband Richard had also taken her there, to show her the “handling characteristics” of his new Mercedes sedan. True to form, he never once had gone over the speed limit, an example of the mind-set that made her father recommend him so highly to her as husband material.

This day, like that one, was hot and still and so smoggy that the skyscrapers in downtown L.A. appeared to be floating in air. Though Brian had opened the front door of the wagon for Eve, she had declined, taking a backseat instead, figuring that the girl already knew Brian and that they would have things to talk about. Since then, however, it had become apparent to Eve that a good deal of the girl’s shyness was probably due to Brian himself, either because of his newfound fame or simply because he was what he was: her mother’s handsome ex-boyfriend. Brian tried repeatedly to make conversation with her, but each time she would mumble something and retreat into herself, blushing deeply.

Finally she slowed the car and turned onto a gravel lane that ran along a spur of the mountain.

“We’re just up ahead,” she said.

At the end of the lane, after passing two other houses, they came to a Spanish-style home sitting behind a tan stucco wall half-hidden by chaparral, which covered the hillsides, tinder waiting for the spark of fall. Driving on through the an open wrought-iron gate, they parked in a graveled area in front of the house, which at first looked small to Eve. But as she and Brian got out their luggage and followed Terry down a brick outside stairway, she saw that the place was considerably larger, with an L-shaped daylight basement floor running under the main part of the house and continuing at a right angle to it. Inside the angle there was a brick patio with umbrella tables and chairs scattered between a swimming pool and the low stucco parapet that edged the entire property.

On a chaise under one of the umbrellas a bleached-blond woman in chartreuse lounging pajamas lay stretched out like a corpse, one listless hand holding a cigarette, the other a half-full champagne glass. As Brian and Eve reached the patio, the woman put down the glass and struggled to get to her feet, almost falling in the process. Eve was happy to see that though Stephanie undoubtedly had been quite attractive in her day, she was now a total mess, with sagging breasts, flabby hips, and skin so sun-damaged she could have passed for a Navajo matriarch. Smiling broadly, she held her arms out wide enough to gather them all in.

“Brian, darling!” she cried. “You naughty boy!”

“Stephanie,” he said.

Standing with Terry, Eve watched as the two of them embraced.

Once Charley was back on the interstate, he turned on the truck’s hazard lights and drove well over the speed limit, hoping to attract the attention of any police cars lying in wait along the road. But none appeared. At Golden, a Denver suburb, he turned off and soon found a police station, where he wasted over twenty minutes trying to penetrate the thick head of a burly policewoman whose only concern seemed to be in demonstrating that she had bigger balls and a fouler mouth than any man in the place. Fortunately, a detective overheard what Charley was telling her, and things began to happen. Middle-aged and professorial, the detective whisked Charley away from the Amazon and into the captain’s office. Within minutes, calls had gone out to the FBI, the state police, and the police in Colorado Springs. Also, in private, Charley was able to phone the lawyer he had hired to represent him. After explaining why he hadn’t shown up at the courthouse, he told the man not to bother to drive up to Denver, that with the FBI now involved in the case, he saw no alternative except to tell them everything in exact detail. The lawyer advised him against such a course of action but said he would comply with Charley’s wishes, if for no other reason than that he was already so busy he didn’t know if he was coming or going.