Hot Shot (18 page)

We weren't engaged. Never had been. We were—what?—involved.

Involved. I love that word. It's a way of being committed without committing.

Thank you, Betty Bradford Mann.

So why did I feel so devastated?

And yet, under everything, I felt a budding sense of relief. Relief that one of us had finally taken our comatose relationship off its life-support system. For too long, we had been drifting apart unyoked, planets that have slowly left their mutual orbit. Now it was over. Fini.

“A relationship is like a car,” Jeff Brenner told me once, “and it takes a hell of a lot of maintenance.”

Well, I was never too good at maintenance on my car, either.

All I wanted to do now was finish the book, get my stuff out of Claudia's apartment, find a place to stay, and have Jocelyn pimp me out for another high-paying tell-all. And if Sloan was still upstairs, I'd kick her out physically if need be, by elevator or balcony.

A valet opened my door. I accepted the proffered claim ticket and was striding toward the door of the Hillshire when the whole side of the hotel lit up harsh and white as lightning.

A cameraman appeared. On the side of his videocam were the words
Hollywood Today!

Frank Grassley materialized, grinning.

My first reaction was to run, curse, and flip him the bird, but I controlled myself.
That's what they want. You run, you look like you've got something to hide. Curse at him, flip him off, and they get their money shot.

I stood. Smiled, even. It was like turning the wheel of the car in the direction of a skid—an act that made every synapse in my body scream.

“Evening, Frank,” I said pleasantly. Behind him, I saw a man in a suit pointing at us, and two uniformed Hillshire security agents break into a trot. “Your hair looks especially lustrous tonight.”

He couldn't be baited. “Kieran O'Connor,” he said portentously, “word has it that you're hiding out here to escape the person who—”

Too late; the security guards were on him like Dobies. One of them blocked me and the shot with his body; the other wedged Frank against the wall of the building.

“Gentlemen, you must leave. This is private property. Failure to leave immediately will result in criminal prosecution.”

“Word has it,” yelled Frank, “that you're hiding out here to escape the person who murdered Felina Lopez. Can you tell us why—”

“This is private property. Failure to leave immediately will result in criminal prosecution.”

The banquet crowd had frozen to watch this triumph of investigative journalism. I slipped inside as the guards began to hustle Frank down the porte cochere.

“Why won't you answer my question?” he shouted as they dragged him backward down the driveway.

I yelled back at the top of my lungs, “Frank, for the last time, I won't marry you. You're a swell guy, but I like women.”

I walked into the hotel triumphantly. Riding up on the elevator, I felt good for the first time that night. Or that day.

The feeling lasted all of forty-five seconds, until I slipped the card key into the door of my room and turned on the light.

*   *   *

I stood in the doorway for a second, paralyzed, before taking two tentative steps inside.

Cushions were upended from the sofa. The minibar hung open. Drawers were scattered like blocks. Even my pillow had been removed from its case. The bedroom door was closed, but I was sure it had been trashed as well.

No. Not trashed. There was order to this disorder.

Someone had gone through my suite methodically, looking for something.

I'd heard burglary victims talk about feeling violated, and I finally understood what they meant. My hand even went to my groin for a second.

I checked the front closet. Sloan's clothes were still there. No; some of them were gone. Empty hangers hung askew. A few items had even fallen on the floor, as if someone had pulled the clothes off in a big hurry.

Under all the clothes on the closet floor was the safe, and the door was wide open.

THREE

13

I
F IT WAS A
Betty Bradford Mann TV movie, it would have been called
Terror on the 34th Floor: Break-In in Beverly Hills.
By the time hotel security and the BHPD got there, our group had gotten so large we had to move from the manager's office to a conference room on the second floor of the hotel. Dramatis personae included me; the hotel's night manager; the head of security; some Hillshire functionaries of unknown origin; and four Beverly Hills cops, only two of whom ever spoke.

After they had me write a list of everything that was missing, they passed it off to yet another cop and plopped me in a gold banquet-room chair. One of the hotel functionaries got me a glass of water with a lemon slice in it. It felt more like a press conference than an interrogation. I cleared my throat, drank my water, and told them everything. Almost everything.

My trip to Mexico. Felina's murder. The book deal. The threatening phone call at the Wind & Sea. My meeting with Sloan Baker, Vernon Ash, Leo Lazarnick, and Betty Bradford Mann. Sloan's identical phone call. Sloan moving in. Getting ambushed by Frank Grassley. Going upstairs and finding my room trashed and Sloan gone. The cops took notes, grunting a question here and there.

“Who knew you were staying here?” asked the cop in charge. Most of the BHPD are impressive specimens, but this one could have moonlighted at Chippendales. His uniform looked like a breakaway costume, with a leather vest and G-string underneath.

“Nobody, really. Just the people who were working on the book with me. My agent, Jocelyn, but she's in New York—”

“Go through them one by one. Last names, too.”

“Jocelyn Albarian.” I spelled it. “Kitty Keyes was Felina's agent. My publisher, Jack Danziger. My girlfriend, Claudia Dubuisson. Oh, and her sister. Lydia Boudreaux.”

“And the Baker woman.”

“Yeah. Sloan Baker.”

“And the people you interviewed.” He checked his notes. “Leo Lazarnick, Vernon Ash, Betty Bradford Mann.”

“No. They had my phone number, but they didn't know where I was staying. That number didn't ring through the hotel switchboard.”

“We change it after each guest leaves,” said the night manager.

“Somebody could've traced it, I guess,” I said.

“Possibly,” said Officer Chippendales. “But quite a few people already knew where you were staying. Not to mention the guy from
Hollywood Today!
”

“Hollywood Today!”
moaned the night manager. Apparently the Visigoths would have been more welcome.

“Hey, I didn't tell him where I was,” I said. “Somebody must have tipped him off. Believe me, I don't talk to those types.”

The silent cops exchanged smirks. Dummy. I
was
one of those types.

“That threatening phone call you claimed you got,” said Chippendales. “Any idea who that might have been?”

“I didn't recognize the voice.”

“Any guesses?”

There was a large ashtray next to me, with a
BH
crest stamped in the sand. I dragged my finger through it.

“Couldn't even hazard a guess.”

I'm a terrible liar. But Officer Chippendales just shrugged and made another note. “You don't have
any
idea who could have done this?”

“Nope.” Another lie. This was professional work, and the whole tableau pointed to only one professional.

I still didn't know what Brooks Levin wanted, but if he was capable of tracking both Sloan and me down, he was certainly capable of breaking into a hotel room at the Beverly Hillshire and cracking a safe. God only knew what else he was capable of.

The image of Felina's body leaving the beach house flashed in my head. I took another sip of water.

This was serious, and it was time I started taking it seriously.

“Can I make a phone call, please?”

The night manager looked horrified. “You don't need to call a lawyer, Mr. O'Connor.”

“I don't want a lawyer. I want my agent.”

The cops smirked at each other again.

*   *   *

“Just say the word and I'll be on a plane out there immediately,” said Jocelyn. “I could be in Beverly Hills by mid-afternoon.”

I slouched on Jack Danziger's sofa, sipping coffee from a Fiestaware mug and tracing patterns in the carpet with my toe. The coffee was cold. It was six in the morning, and the adrenaline was finally beginning to drip out of my limbs. Tired and wired had been battling in my body for hours, and tired was starting to win.

I cradled the receiver under my chin. “Why?”

“Because I'm worried, Peaches.”

“Don't worry. The police said whoever it was wasn't after me, just the manuscript. I'll have to find another hideout, that's all.”

“Kieran—”

“Jocelyn, you can worry about me in New York just as well. They got one copy of the manuscript, but the one I was going to send to you was still in my car. Believe me, everything's okay. I'm just a little shaken up.”

“I'm not worried about the manuscript, idiot child, I'm worried about
you.
”

Kitty Keyes drifted into the living room, blowing on her own cup of coffee. Her hair was blowsy and the bags under her eyes hung like crepe. She didn't look like a Mary Kay lady anymore, just a tired old woman in a Little Orphan Annie hairstyle.

“Kitty just got here.”

“Let me talk to her. Is Jack available yet?”

“No. He's still in the kitchen, talking to the police.”

“Fine. Now give Kitty the phone and go get some sleep.”

I surrendered the phone and paced the living room aimlessly.

Jack Danziger might have been a sleaze merchant, but he'd recycled his lucre. No zebra-skin rugs or gold-leaf pool tables here. The room was masculine, with a refined eye, accented with good heavy furniture and a couple of reproduction Hepplewhite chairs. At least I assumed they were reproductions. If they weren't, I wouldn't plant my butt on them for fear of snapping off a leg.

A baby grand was topped with fresh flowers and some framed photos, mostly candid shots of Danziger with his friends: skiing, sailing, Oscar night at Dani Janssen's house. A few of the shots were of beautiful women, Danziger's hand invariably slipped around one smooth hip. One of the women—a bowl-cut blonde with an oversized chest—looked familiar, but I couldn't place her.

“No, I'm fine, we're all just a little upset … Mm-hm … Oh, that won't be necess— Oh, I know, we're all concerned about that … Of course not…” Kitty patted a stray wisp of strawberry hair back into place absently. “No, I'm setting the whole thing up … That's right … Well, the hotel will, of course … Completely safe, I guarantee you … All right, I'll have him call you as soon as he's done with the police. Good-bye, dear.”

“Sorry to get you over here so early in the morning,” I told her.

“Oh, please. Once the police called, I wouldn't have been able to get back to sleep. I usually don't get any more than four hours a night, anyway. My husband used to tell me, ‘Kitty, you're full of more p-and-v than a hummingbird.'” She sat down beside me. “How are you, dear?”

“Tired of that question more than anything.”

“You look tuckered.”

“Kitty, I don't know what I'm going to do next.”

“Get some sleep, is what you're going to do. Don't worry, dear.” She smoothed my hair. “Get some rest. We'll talk about it over lunch. I've taken care of the whole thing. And try not to think about it too much.”

Right.

*   *   *

Jack Danziger's guest room was equipped with a bed that felt like God's own four-poster. Porthault sheets, a pile of marsh-mallowy pillows, and a quilted duvet with a six-inch loft. After Claudia's no-nonsense futon, the glorified army cot at the Wind & Sea, and the sofa at the Beverly Hillshire, I wanted just to lie there and enjoy it for a while, but I fell out as if I'd been drugged.

When I woke up again, it was eleven-fifteen and the room was flooded with light: one of those perfect clear-sky days that makes winter-weary New Englanders swear they're going to move to California. Birds chirped in the sycamores outside the window. Somewhere downstairs, a television was playing. I lay there for a few more minutes, savoring the very wombness of the bed. When I finally groaned my way out of the sheets, it was noon.

The clothes I'd worn to the opening of Café Canem, including my coffee-soaked shirt, were in a messy pile at the foot of the bed. I pulled them on and checked myself in the mirror over the bureau. I looked as rumpled as my shirt. Oh, well. I ran a few fingers through my hair, trying to tame the black Irish cowlicks, and padded downstairs barefoot.

No one was in the living room. The drapes had been pulled back on the picture window, revealing a U-shaped driveway, a stand of trees, a lawn so green it could have been dyed, and more prime Hancock Park real estate across the street.

And news vans.

Three of them. One had the familiar
Headline Journal
logo on the side. The other two were from the local news stations, with huge antennas on top wound with snaky neon-orange cable. One of the doors was open, and I could see a technician inside munching a sandwich, silhouetted against several TV screens.

My entourage. They were sticking to me like a case of the crabs. I followed the sound of the TV into a dining room and pushed open the swinging doors to the kitchen.

A woman in chef's whites was standing at a butcher-block island, chopping green peppers at the speed of light, guiding the knife with her knuckles. If I tried that, I'd end up with knuckles tartare. Several brown bags sat on the sinktop, next to a half-flat of strawberries that was waiting to be rinsed and hulled. She looked up from her chopping.