KW 09:Shot on Location (10 page)

23.

“Knock, knock,” said Claire.

She was standing in front of Candace’s tent, the Keys equivalent of the standard actor’s trailer. The flaps were zipped tightly shut. Nearby, bugs were buzzing, palm fronds were rattling, but no sound was coming from inside.

After a moment, a voice asked who was there. It was Candace’s voice but it was different now. The fire and the hiss had gone out of it. It was a soft and unsure voice, girlish and pouty.

Claire announced herself. The zipper came up with a rasp and Candace stepped aside to let her in. Then she quickly sealed the flap again and sat down on a cot, Claire sitting opposite. In the greenish filtered light inside the tent, she could see that the actress had been crying. In itself this was not a novelty. Candace summoned tears quite easily and often, both in her television role and in her tempestuous dealings with the world. Still, to Claire it was surprising and even touching to see that Candace might cry with no one watching, might cry just because she needed to.

Reaching out across the narrow space between them, Claire stroked the other woman’s hand and said, “It’s all right. Everybody’s tired. Everyone was ready for a break.”

Candace didn’t answer right away. Like a child she just narrowed her eyes, looked down, and shook her head. Finally she said, “No, I went too far this time. I said some pretty awful things. Everyone’ll hate me now.”

The fact that no one had been too damn fond of Candace to begin with only made the remark more painful. Claire said, “It’ll blow over. These things always do.”

“I’m just so stressed out.”

“I know, I know. The accident, the interviews--”

“It isn’t only that,” said Candace. Tightly gripping the edge of the cot with both hands, she’d pulled herself forward into an urgent posture. Her voice had become a confidential whisper, but a whisper that carried; a stage whisper. To Claire it seemed that, in a heartbeat, the actress had slammed shut the briefly opened window into her true emotions and was back to being a performer putting over a line. She paused a pregnant moment for effect, then said, “I think I’m being stalked.”

Claire strained to keep her expression completely neutral but she remembered only too well the sick game-playing of a couple of evenings before, at the meeting with the suits. Now it seemed the diva was crying wolf again, creating yet more manipulative drama, probably meant to justify her tantrum.

Claire’s skepticism must have shown, because Candace addressed it head-on. “Look, this has nothing to do with publicity or media or any of that nonsense. It just started yesterday. I look up and someone’s there. Three, four times it’s happened. Getting out of the limo. Leaving the hotel. Someone’s standing not too far away, just staring at me, a really creepy stare. No expression, never looks away. Just watches.”

Trying to be comforting, Claire said, “You know how it is around a show. There’s always some fans who are a little weird, some harmless loser guys who have a crush on you.”

“No, I know those types. I smile at them and they melt. This is different.”

“Probably just a paparazzo then.”

“No,” said Candace. “There’s no cameras. And it’s a woman.”

“A woman?”

“A blonde. Very tall, very stylish, very showy. Big sunglasses, sort of an orangey tint.”

Suddenly a notch less skeptical, Claire said, “And sandals that lace up almost to her knees?”

Surprised, hopeful, Candace said, “Yeah, that’s her. You know her?”

“I’ve seen her by the pool.”

“
Our
pool?”

Claire nodded. “We said hello. I tried to be friendly. She’s an oddball, that’s all.”

Candace was not persuaded. “It’s more than that. The way she looks at me, it scares me.”

Claire found nothing to say.

“The weirdest part,” the actress went on, “is that she sort of looks familiar. Just vaguely. I can’t place why. The hair? The posture? Something.”

Claire admitted that she had had the same uneasy impression.

“That creeps me out,” said Candace. “It really does.” Her lower lip was trembling slightly. It was impossible to tell if the quivering was caused by skill or fear, or if her imploring tone was produced by anxiety or training. “Please, Claire, do something for me. Please. I don’t know if I can stay here if you don’t. Find out who that woman is.”

24.

In his ocean-view apartment at the Paradiso Condominium, Bert d’Ambrosia still possessed a telephone that was actually wired to the wall and whose receiver was connected to the dialing part by a twisted, curling cord. The phone was of a piece with the other furnishings, giving his place the feel of a consignment shop featuring artifacts from half a century ago. A Danish modern sofa. Space-age lamps. A formica kitchen table with a pattern of turquoise and coral boomerangs. There were a few pictures on the walls — seascapes, moonlit palms — and some photos of his long-dead wife in leaning frames on the end tables.

Bert now used his antique phone to try to reach some goombahs he used to know, hoping to recruit their help in setting up a meet with Charlie Ponte. He wasn’t quite sure why he was bothering to do this. Partly as a favor to Jake, of course. But beyond that? Maybe he was just giving himself something to do, to think about. Wanting to remember what it was like to be part of things, a player, connected to the world beyond his ancient furniture and misnamed dog.

If that was the aim, the early results were disheartening. A few of the numbers he tried were either out of service or now belonged to people speaking languages he couldn’t understand. Of the former associates he did manage to reach, a couple expressed frank amazement that Bert was still alive. They claimed to be happy to hear from him but could or would do nothing for him. With Charlie Ponte, everything came down to favors granted and favors owed; why waste a favor on an old man who hadn’t mattered much for decades?

In his own mind, Bert was becoming embarrassed. He’d told Jake and Joey he could do this. He’d believed it himself. What if he couldn’t get it done? How would he explain his failure? Sensing its master’s subtle agitation, the chihuahua grew antsy as well. It started running manic circuits around the living room, past the torch lamp, underneath the breakfront, stopping now and then to sniff at pee stains left eons before by its predecessor, seeming to contemplate the archaic vapors as if they held the key to some crucial and abiding mystery.

Bert kept making calls.

---

Paolo, the front desk clerk at The Nest, was a sunny young man with stiff blonde hair above coal-black eyebrows and hollow disks the size of dimes in both his earlobes. Over the preceding weeks and months he’d worked up a deliciously gossipy rapport with Claire Segal, since she was the babysitter who’d settle up the cast members’ bills if they flaked out, who’d pay for their breakage of glassware and pillaging of mini-bars, who’d apologize for their occasionally drunken or boorish behavior toward staff and other guests. He would have liked to answer her questions about the tall strange woman with the crazy sandals, but all he knew was that she’d checked out just an hour or so before.

“You know her name?” Claire asked.

Paolo looked discreetly around, past the potted ficuses and the vases filled with hibiscus blooms, and spoke softly. “I know the name she registered under. But it’s obviously fake. Sorda Randy.”

“Say again?”

He did.

“Spell it.”

He did.

“That’s a ridiculous name.”

“Agreed,” said Paolo. “But it’s funny, whenever people use fake names, like if it’s a closeted guy down here for a fling, they’re almost always really ridiculous. Either like
John Smith
or something over the top, something made up after a few too many drinks. Like people want you to know they’re playing games. Like
look at me, I’m being naughty.
People are funny, right?”

“Hilarious.”

“Actually,” said Paolo, “I thought that woman was with the show. She seemed so L.A.”

“I thought so too. She said she wasn’t from there.”

“Ah, so you spoke with her.”

“For about two seconds. It was strange. She drew my eye then cut me off.”

“I know the type,” said Paolo. “
Stare at me, be fascinated, but leave me alone.
Some weird power game.”

“Well anyway,” Claire said hopefully, “I guess she’s gone now.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“You just told me she checked out.”

“Right. But she didn’t look like she was leaving town.”

“How does leaving town make people look?”

“Well, usually they’re dressed for sitting on a plane. Which she wasn’t. But okay, leave that aside. It’s more something in their eyes. Like you can almost see their brain switching gears, already forgetting their time down here and thinking about where they’re going back to and what they have to do there. You know, they’re gone before they’re gone. She didn’t look that way. Her eyes were totally still here.”

Claire considered, then said, “You spend a lot of time observing people, don’t you?”

“What else I have to do all day? Oh, and one other thing about this woman. Her bag was really heavy. For its size, I mean. It was just a soft little shoulder kind of bag, but it was heavy. And she didn’t seem to like me touching it. I lifted it, you know, just to hand it to her, but she grabbed it away.”

“Any idea what was in the bag?”

Paolo shrugged. “You know better than I do what a woman traveling alone might carry in her bag. But it was way heavier than a lipstick, I’ll tell you that.”

25.

Bert had worked the phone for a couple of dispiriting hours before he finally reached a sentimental hit-man who agreed to help him out. The problem then was that he helped him out too well, too efficiently. He called Bert back within five minutes and told him that Ponte would meet with him and his friend at seven o’clock that evening. That was barely three and a half hours from the current time and it took nearly that long to drive from Key West to Miami.

Bert was suddenly in a major hurry. To be almost ninety and in a major hurry is not a healthy combination. Blood pounds in veins whose walls have worn thin. Objects get fuzzy at the edges and floors no longer seem quite flat. Bert blinked away the lightheadedness and called Joey. Joey called Jake. Jake swallowed hard but there wasn’t enough time for fear to really build. He asked if Joey would be coming along. Joey declined; he’d met Ponte before and didn’t care to repeat the experience. Jake said he’d rent a car. Joey said there wasn’t time for that. He should take the El Dorado.

So it happened that late one January afternoon a ghostwriter from New York, who’d written on many subjects but never crime or criminals, and who in fact had never knowingly met a criminal until the day before, was driving a thirty-year old Cadillac convertible, top-down, muffler rumbling, in the company of an ancient Mafioso and his fussy little dog, en route to a sitdown with a notoriously callous Mob boss, where he intended to accuse one of the boss’s loyal soldiers of an out-of-bounds and cowardly act that he himself, however vaguely, intended to avenge or at the very least unmask.

Around twenty miles up the Keys, as if he was reading Jake’s own thoughts, Bert said, “Ya sure ya wanna do this, kid?”

Jake glanced briefly at him, said nothing, kept driving. The tires crunched over the tiny bits of coral debris that always found their way onto the road.

“Ya want, we can turn around.”

Jake said nothing for fear that his voice would sound terrified or otherwise bizarre. He just hunkered into the El Dorado’s cushy seat and drove. The sun was behind them, putting fierce glints on certain facets of tin roofs. Tiny inlets inched in from the Gulf; here and there they all but lapped at the edge of the highway.

“Ya know the rules, at least?” Bert asked.

Jake admitted that he didn’t.

“First rule: Be polite. Call him Mr. Ponte. Don’t talk tough, you’ll sound ridiculous. Don’t ever mention the police. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Second: Very important. Always remember the whaddyacallit, the psychology of the situation. Ponte’s a dick. A selfish bastard. But he’s seen the
Godfather
movies. They all have. So he likes to see himself as like some kinda sawed-off Marlon Brando, a righter of wrongs. Kiss his ass on that, he’ll like it.”

“Got it.”

Jake waited for additional advice, but Bert said nothing more. After a few minutes the younger man glanced over and saw that his passenger had fallen asleep. His head had rolled back against the cracked leather headrest and air was whistling peacefully through his enormous nose. The dog was napping too, serene in the fragrant paradise of its master’s lap.

At the foot of Seven Mile Bridge, the El Dorado roared against the incline like an old propeller plane on a shallow takeoff. Jake was halfway to Miami.

---

Three short three blocks from The Nest, in an alley off of Whitehead Street, there was a guesthouse called Hannah’s Hideaway, whose quaint pale-yellow Victorian exterior, with its chastely curtained windows and elaborately innocent gingerbread, served either as camouflage for, or ironic comment regarding, the highly permissive and varied goings-on inside. At this secretly rollicking hostelry, the tall blonde woman with the amber sunglasses was now checking in.

Once again she used an assumed name, though this time a far less colorful one: Jane Evans. Once again she laid down a substantial deposit in cash and once again she declined to show a credit card or driver’s license. It was Key West and it was a tough economy and no one could afford to turn down business.

Having registered, she strolled through an oasis of a courtyard toward her room. Nude men, glistening like ducks on a rotisserie, lay sun-crisped on poolside lounges; their oiled body hair flashed like tinsel too near a lamp and about to catch fire. A pair of tattooed women luxuriated in a hot tub, rubbing tension from each other’s shoulders, cooing in a language that seemed to be Sanskrit. The sensual hijinks seemed to mean nothing to the tall blonde woman. She kept a steady pace as she passed the pool and let herself into a small cottage behind a low hibiscus hedge.

She locked the door behind her, pulled the curtains tightly shut, and sat down on the bed, cradling her small bag between her knees. Reaching in, she produced a small silver picture frame closed up with a garnet clasp. Carefully she opened it so that it would stand up on her bedside table. In the frame was a photo of a handsome young man. He carried a surfboard under his arm and seemed just that moment to have emerged from the sea. His hair was wet and stiff with salt, droplets shone on the faint stubble of his chin. He both did and did not resemble the woman who so lovingly displayed his picture. His features were his own, but the structure of his face — the placement of the eyes, the angle of the jaw — might almost have been traced from hers.

Reaching into her bag a second time, she came out with a gun. It was not a ladies’ gun and it was not a fancy gun — just an ugly, stubby .38 Police Special with a dull blue-black finish and a few scuffs on the butt. She’d bought it second- or third- or fourth-hand from a shop in East Los Angeles, and she’d chosen it because it was like the one that the young man in the photograph had used to kill himself.

She lifted the gun, placed the muzzle gently, almost caressingly, in the soft hollow beneath her ear, as she imagined the suicide must have also done. Then she pulled it away and sighted down its short barrel at the idle TV set in a corner of the room. Teasing herself with a phantom squeeze of the trigger, she made a dry clicking sound at the back of her throat, then put the weapon in her room safe and went outside to have a swim.