Shamus In The Green Room (12 page)

looked out at the water. “Guy used to have a rowboat, but it

was stolen last year.”

“Stop it, Rafe,” I ordered. “I’m not leaving until you talk

to me.”

“What is it that you think you know?”

“Aren’t you going to mike me?” I demanded.

“I deserved that. I said I’d explain everything. But not

here.”

“Yes, here.” I noticed some gang graffiti carved onto the

bridge’s wooden post. Nobody’s immune.

“Back at my house,” he said. “C’mon.”

That’s when it occurred to me to be scared. “I’m not going

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with you to your house.” I wanted to stay exactly where I was,

where everybody could see us.

“Have it your way,” Rafe said, shrugging. “What do I care

anymore?”

“Stop with the melodrama.”

Rafe ran his fingers through his blond hair. It was still wet

from the shower. “I got a letter from Maren around three

weeks ago.”

“Go on.”

“Hadn’t heard from her in years. It was short. She said she

was in big fucking trouble.”

“Why should you care?” I demanded. “You just said you

hadn’t heard from her in years.”

“We had a past. We had a bond.”

Another bond.

“She said she wasn’t going to see me again,” he went on,

“that she needed to disappear. And that I should prepare my-

self for anything. That I shouldn’t be sad. I shouldn’t worry.

I should be happy.” He lowered his voice. “She was saying good-

bye. I thought it was a suicide note. I told Will. He thought so,

too. But we didn’t know where she was, how to find her, how

to stop her.”

“Did you show it to Captain Donaldson?”

He nodded. “Him and Smarinsky.”

“And they agreed?”

He nodded again.

“But it wasn’t a suicide note,” I said. “Because that wasn’t

Maren we saw, was it?”

He was silent.

“Answer me, Rafe. That wasn’t Maren, was it?”

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He was barely audible. “No.”

I exploded. “Do you realize what you’ve done? That you’ve

committed a crime? That you’ve lied to everyone—to the po-

lice, for god’s sake—and that you’ve implicated me? How dare

you?” Just then, something occurred to me. “Oh, my god.

Does Will know?”

He shook his head.

“Will never saw the body?”

“He said he couldn’t face it.”

I felt sick all over. “He trusted you! And now he thinks his

sister is dead! How could you do this to him?”

“For all I know, she is dead by now. It’s complicated, Cece.”

“That’s an understatement.”

He turned to go, but I grabbed his arm. “I’m not finished

here. You haven’t explained why you did it.”

He pulled away from me. “You don’t understand. Maren

had a way of getting in over her head. She’s always been at-

tracted to danger. She hung out with some really bad people.”

“So?”

“So I read between the lines. I had to help her.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I’m an actor. Like I explained to you before, I know what

people are saying even when they’re not saying it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, exasperated.

“She needed to run away. Not to exist.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maren Levander had to die.”

Slowly, irrefutably, it hit me. “Are you saying you helped

Maren stage her own death?”

He looked at me, his defenses down. “You can’t say no to

Maren.”

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“Jesus, so you killed some innocent woman so you could

pretend she was Maren?”

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head fervently. “Of course

not. I can’t believe you’d think something like that of me. Jesus.

But when I got to the coroner’s office and they showed me

the picture they’d found in her pocket, that picture of me and

Maren from the old days, I understood what I was supposed

to do.”

“You were supposed to identify the woman as Maren.”

“Yes.”

It was as if she’d put a spell on him.

Like Elvira, the dangerous redhead in Hammett’s Op stories.

The price of loving her was death.

In “The House on Turk Street,” she seduces a bank mes-

senger into stealing $100,000 for her, then blithely gets him

killed; in “The Girl with the Silver Eyes,” she gets an informant

named Porky Grunt to stand in front of the Op’s car and

empty his gun at him in a lunatic attempt to save her. The Op

was the only man able to resist her. Only the Op was as cold

and hard as she was. But Rafe was no Op.

I chose my words carefully. “Your loyalty to Maren is mis-

placed, Rafe. You need to do the right thing here.”

“Haven’t you ever done the wrong thing for the right rea-

son, Cece?”

“That isn’t the point. Did you ever stop and ask yourself

who she was?”

“Who?”

I closed my eyes. “The dead woman. Or how she happened

to appear just when Maren needed her? Can you possibly be

that naive?”

“You can stop right there. Maren had nothing to do with

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that woman’s death.” He looked as if he truly believed what he

was saying. But that’s what he got paid for.

“Rafe. Think about it for a minute. What other possible ex-

planation can there be?”

He took my hands. “I don’t know, but I know Maren. I know

her better than anybody. She’s been involved in some shady

stuff, I’ll admit that. She got mixed up with the wrong people,

maybe even broke a few laws. But she isn’t a killer. I know that to

the bottom of my soul. I’m asking you to trust me.”

“Like Will trusted you?”

“You have to let it go, Cece.”

“Let it go?” I asked incredulously. “How can I—”

But he wouldn’t let me interrupt.

“I’m hoping Maren made it out alive. I’m praying she did.

If she did, what I did, the lie I told, was worth it. Whoever the

other woman was, whatever happened to her, we can’t help her

now. It’s too late.”

Maybe I couldn’t help the other woman, but I also couldn’t

forget about her, as if she’d never existed. How could I just for-

get about her?

Who was she?

How had she died?

Then it hit me, like a ton of bricks.

Maren.

Maren could tell me.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Cece.”

“Cece who?”

“Open the door or you’re dead.”

Lael’s teenage son, Tommy, opened the door, stepping

quickly out of the way so as not to be trampled by his younger

half sisters, Nina and Zoe, who were obviously intent on am-

bushing me before I could get as far as the living room. Not

that the entry hall wasn’t a destination in and of itself. In its

current incarnation, it resembled a homeless encampment, the

walls lined with ripped cardboard boxes, the floor covered with

threadbare quilts. Tommy was sleeping there while his mother

fixed up his bedroom. Fixing up rooms was Lael’s passion, if

not her talent. Her ramshackle Beachwood Canyon compound

(I use that word advisedly) was testament to that fact.

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“Since when did you people get so serious about security?” I

asked, hugging the girls, who smelled like candy apples.

“We were robbed last night!” Zoe squealed. “Mommy

bought us new lip gloss!”

“Get off Cece now,” Nina ordered her younger sister.

“Your mother didn’t mention a word about it to me.”

“I’m in the kitchen,” Lael called out. “Come see the Snow

Queen!”

Lael was poised in front of what looked like a ziggurat of

yellow sponges.

“It’s taken me all day to figure out how to construct the

sleigh. The Snow Queen’s going to be reclining, pulled by four

swans, all wrapped up in blankets. The party’s in Malibu at six-

thirty.” She looked up at the clock anxiously. “Once I get the

buttercream right, I’m home free. But for some reason, batch

after batch tastes like pumpkin.”

“You were robbed?”

“It was nothing. The birds are done. Want to see them?”

“They have blue eyes,” Nina said proudly.

Lael opened the refrigerator to show me four exquisitely

sculpted sugar-paste swans lying on a paper plate. “I used a

toothpick,” she said.

“I can’t believe you’re so calm, Lael. Were you home when

they broke in?”

“We were at Tommy’s baseball practice. But then the baby

started fussing, so we left. Tommy was going to catch a ride

home with some friends. Did I tell you he has a girlfriend now?”

“Christine,” Zoe said, bursting into giggles.

“Anyway, when we walked inside, I knew something wasn’t

right.”

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Given the usual mess, I wondered how anybody could tell,

but I kept my mouth shut.

“I put the kids in the car and locked the door, then went

back inside. The stereo was gone, and the big TV, and that was

it. They left my jewelry, not that it’s worth anything.”

“What did the cops say?” I asked.

“That I could pretty much forget about getting my stuff

back,” she said. “And that I should change the locks, which I

did this morning. That’s that, I suppose.”

“Very philosophical.” I gave her a hug of condolence, then

produced the bat-wing-sleeve sweater. “Who’s the big date

with?”

She blushed. “The cop. He knows Gambino. He was

adorable.”

It should be noted that Lael never met a man she didn’t

consider adorable, and vice versa. She had long, straight blond

hair, Marilyn Monroe’s body, and no use whatsoever for

clothes, although she did bow to convention by wearing them.

She loved perfume, scented bath oils, and knitting long scarves.

She was invariably disheveled. This, however, had proved to be

no impediment whatsoever to her bustling love life.

“Do you have a minute, Lael?”

She shooed the children out and closed the door behind

them.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Let me guess. More trouble with the movie star?”

She knew the story up until the coroner’s office. I filled her

in on the Mayor, and Barker, and this afternoon’s conversation

with Rafe.

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She whipped off her cat’s-eye glasses and shook them at

me. “It seems to me I’ve doled out this particular bit of advice

before. But for the sake of clarity, I’ll reiterate.”

I tapped my foot.

“Don’t do it, Cece. Don’t do what you always do. Talk to

Gambino. The police have to be informed. I realize Rafe Simic

is gorgeous, but come on.”

“It isn’t that, and you know it. What if he’s right? That’s

what I’m worried about. What if he’s done the one thing he

could do to save Maren’s life, and my going to the police winds

up getting her killed?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“You know how cops are,” I said. “They show up, make a

lot of noise, ask a lot of questions, and suddenly everybody

knows Maren’s not really dead. So the bad guys kill her.”

“Oh, come on. What bad guys?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Some people she got involved

with.”

“What about the real dead woman?”

“Yeah, well, that’s the other problem.”

“Someone out there must be looking for her,” Lael

protested. “It isn’t right.”

“There’s nothing left of her. I don’t know how on earth she

could ever be identified now. And nobody matching her de-

scription was reported missing.”

“That was days ago. Maybe the situation’s changed.” Lael

paced a little bit, then licked something off her fingers. “Can’t

you ask Gambino?”

“I don’t think that’s going to go over very well. And I

can’t bother him now. There’s a situation at work. He’s having

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problems.” I didn’t want to say more. Not until I’d spoken to

him. Lael knew not to push it.

“Maybe I could ask Officer Murray,” she said coyly.

“No way. I know you want to help, but it’s bad enough one

of us is in over her head.”

“Honey, you know I like the feeling.”

One of the many reasons we were kindred spirits.

t

T h e M a l t e s e F a l c o n . C h a p t e r s e v e n . T h a t

was what I’d been looking for the other night when I couldn’t

sleep. It came to me as I drove home.

In the seventh chapter of The Maltese Falcon, the hard-

boiled P.I. Sam Spade tells the duplicitous Brigid O’Shaugh-

nessy a long and involved story about a man named Flitcraft.

Flitcraft, a husband and father of two, works in real estate

in Tacoma. One day, he leaves his office to go to lunch, and he

never returns.

Like a fist, Spade says, when you open your hand. Nothing

left. Gone.

What happened was this: going to lunch Flitcraft approached

a construction site, and just as he passed by, a beam fell ten sto-

ries down, smacking the sidewalk in front of him. The beam

didn’t touch him, but a piece of sidewalk chipped off and hit his

cheek, taking off a piece of skin. This near-miss experience

changed everything. In an instant, Flitcraft understood that life

was governed by blind chance, that a sudden, random event could

shatter even the most carefully laid plans. So he decided to get in

sync with that randomness by simply walking away from his life.