Shamus In The Green Room (34 page)

ever punishment is coming to me.”

It was unbelievable. Out of some perverse sense of duty,

Will was going to take the fall for Rafe, for all of them. So the

truth would never have to come out. So Rafe could go on with

his life. So Maren would be safe from the bad guys, if there

ever had been any bad guys. So Lisa could keep her house, her

ring, her husband, her children.

I didn’t understand people at all.

After talking for a few minutes to Smarinsky, Will put his

cell phone back in his pocket and shifted the cap on his head.

That’s when I noticed it was Rafe’s lucky cap.

“You’re going to jail, Will, for a very long time,” I said.

“Speak up, Cece. I can barely hear you.”

“You’re going to jail, Will,” I repeated. “Do you understand

that? How does that make you feel?”

He smiled, this time, for real. “Like I’m going home.”

That was exactly what Hammett had said.

The sirens were the last thing I remember hearing before I

passed out.

CHAPTER

FORTY

That was Friday.

Saturday, I spent in bed.

Sunday, I ate matzo ball soup sent over by Smarinsky’s wife.

Monday, production on Dash! was shut down permanently.

Tuesday, Roxana was supposed to show up, but didn’t.

Wednesday, my speeding ticket arrived in the mail. Two

hundred and fifty bucks, but at least my hair looked decent in

the picture.

Thursday, the tabloids were full of Will’s arrest for second-

degree murder. And I got my car back from D.J.’s. Garage.

Nate was a virtuoso. Good-bye forever, Hollywood Toyota.

Friday was the day Vincent and Annie filed for sole custody

of Alexander. And turned down my $20,000, which I donated

to the Oceans Conservancy, in May Madden’s name.

Lisa Lapelt called me that day, too, but I haven’t called her

back. I don’t think I will.

320

Saturday was the day Rafe announced he was going into

semiretirement.

Sunday was the big day.

Sunday, I took my first surfing lesson.

I showed up at dawn. There was heavy cloud cover, but that

was par for the course. According to KABC-TV, the sun would

be blazing by noon. Hog, still wearing his “I Love Soccer

Moms” T-shirt, met me in the parking lot where Temescal

Canyon meets Pacific Coast Highway, with one of Oscar

Nichols’s custom boards strapped to the top of his VW van.

The thing must’ve been twelve feet long. Hog said he didn’t

mean to hurt my feelings, but I was a big girl and its hugeosity

(his word, unfortunately apropos) was my only hope.

In the backseat of my car, I slipped out of my sweats and

pulled on my new full-body wet suit over my old Dolce and

Gabbana bikini. I emerged, hoping for a sort of Barbarella ef-

fect, but judging by Hog’s reaction, I fell a bit short of the

mark. I proceeded to slather zinc oxide all over my face, which

probably didn’t help.

By the time I was ready, maybe a dozen other surfers had

joined us in the parking lot. Others were already heading down

to the water. The waves looked dark and foreboding, but Hog

assured me that Will Rogers State Beach hadn’t seen a real wave

since the storm of ’77, which was before he was even born.

Age, I told myself, is just a number.

Rabbit arrived a couple of minutes later in a blue Impala. He

got out, tossed his Taco Bell bag into the trash, took one look at

me, and said we had stuff to do first, so I’d better peel down the

top of my wet suit unless I wanted to fry like a chimichanga.

Hog doubled over laughing. I told him what I really thought

of his T-shirt, which silenced him temporarily. He got his and

321

Rabbit’s boards off the Impala and carried them down to the

sand. Rabbit carried mine, proving chivalry was not dead.

Waxing the boards was hard work.

“Rub it on, nose to tail, rail to rail,” Rabbit said solemnly.

“There’s already a base coat down.”

The process was time-consuming, but I liked the smell of

the wax on my fingers. It reminded me of summer. Rabbit and

Hog, who had short boards, were done in about five minutes,

and spent the next ten rolling joints in the shadow of the pub-

lic bathroom, which I pretended not to notice.

Rabbit was a good teacher. He taught me the pop-up,

which he claimed was more a matter of resolve than power,

and how to hold the board, perpendicular to the body. Then

we were ready. It wasn’t hard to maneuver through the gentle

swells. I could see a bunch of surfers in the distance, already

lined up, waiting for something to happen. Once we were waist

deep, we hopped up onto our boards and started paddling out.

Almost immediately, my arms began to ache.

“How are you doing?” Rabbit asked.

“I’m not cold,” I said stoically. I wiped my nose on the

shoulder of my wet suit and kept going. We paddled maybe

ten more yards. I was exhausted.

“Sit up,” Hog instructed.

I did, my legs straddling the board.

“Now wait.”

The sea was calm. We were barely moving, barely drifting,

just floating in place. My breathing returned to normal. Min-

utes passed.

I smelled the salt air, listened to the gulls.

Nobody was talking. It was like being in a state of sus-

pended animation.

322

So calm.

So calm.

Was it calm like this the day Will pushed May Madden to

her death? I shut my eyes, tried to put the whole scene out of

my mind, but I couldn’t. May must have had a moment when

she realized what was happening to her. She must have been

scared. Had she begged Will to spare her life? Had he hesi-

tated, for even a moment, or had he known what he was going

to do to her long before the two of them stood there on that

rocky outcropping?

I’d never know the answers to those questions. What I did

know was that Will was going to be tried for May’s murder,

that he was going to be found guilty, that he was going to go to

prison.

I think it was the Op who said it. The detective’s job is to

write stories. We use the bits and pieces we have. Sometimes we

write stories that save the people who need saving. Sometimes,

no matter how clever the story, those people can’t be saved.

The best stories, however, are the ones that help punish the

guilty. Whether they’re true or not is irrelevant.

“Look alive, Cece,” Rabbit said. “Anticipate what’s coming.”

That day at the car wash, I’d anticipated what was coming.

That’s why I’d brought Rafe’s mini-microphone with me, so

I could record whatever Lisa Lapelt might let slip. She hadn’t

admitted anything outright about the blackmail, but she’d

wound up implicating all of them—herself, Maren, Rafe, and

Will—and with Diana’s testimony, it might have been enough.

But in the end, I’d tossed the tape I’d made that day into a

Dumpster.

The story needed rewriting. The ending was wrong. The

right people didn’t get saved.

323

I don’t mean Lisa. I wasn’t sure she was worth saving. But

she had children who needed her. They were worth saving.

Which meant she wasn’t worth destroying.

And Rafe?

And Maren?

They were destroyed already.

Rabbit called out my name. A set of waves was coming our

way. Quickly, he helped me turn my board around so I was

facing the shore. He held it firmly in place as the first wave

flowed under us.

“You’re going to get this next one, okay? It’s coming,” Hog

said. “This is it! Go! Now!”

Rabbit gave me a serious shove, and as I felt the wave start

to carry me along, I pushed myself up with my arms. When

the wave began to curl, I jumped into a halfhearted crouch.

“What the fuck is that? Pop the fuck up!” a voice com-

manded me.

I was scared. I felt it everywhere—in my stomach, in my

legs, in my chest. Then I stopped being scared, and that’s when

it happened. I stood up, catching the wave for a maybe a sec-

ond, maybe two. Then, just as quickly, the nose of the board

was caught by the wave’s front end and hitting the point of no

return, hurled me into the churning foam. As the water rushed

over my head, the roaring sound obliterated any sense of time

or place. I covered my head, praying my board wouldn’t whack

me. I had no sense of where its 144 inches and extremely sharp

fin were in relation to my body.

When I surfaced, the board was floating in front of me,

well out of the concussion zone.

“Wa-hoo!” Hog yelled, giving me a high five.

Rabbit grinned, then blew his nose into his fingers.

324

We surfed for the next few hours. I had Rafe Simic to thank

for that, but I never saw him again. Our lives had intersected

for a time, but that time was over. He lived in Fiji for several

years, and when he returned, he became a face on a screen

again, a picture in a magazine. Which was exactly as it was sup-

posed to be. Real life didn’t suit him.

Afterward, Gambino was waiting for me on the sand. We

had a breakfast date.

“How’d she do?” he asked Hog.

“She sucked, like all groms. Maybe a little less.”

Rabbit spit out saltwater. “She don’t give up easy.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Gambino said.

He helped me out of my wet suit and grabbed a towel out

of my bag. “I got a postcard from Caracas, Venezuela, of all

places, today,” he said, drying off my back.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked, looking over my shoulder.

“Yeah. Turns out we have a friend in common. Someone

who says she’ll be eternally grateful to you.” He turned me

around by the thin straps of my bikini. “Her mother, too.”

I looked into his eyes, and for the second time that day

stopped being scared. “Maybe we can visit them on our honey-

moon.”

“There has to be a wedding first,” he said.

“I’ve got the dress,” I said. “I’m ready.”

Hog piped up, “Tonight’s gonna be a full moon.”

Then he and Rabbit slapped each other on the butt and

made those low, growling noises. But I wasn’t paying attention.

I was already somewhere else, far away, rewriting the ending of

my own story.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks, as always, to my sage editor, Carolyn Marino, and su-

perlative agent, Sandy Dijkstra, as well as to the dedicated peo-

ple in their offices, in particular Taryn Fagerness and Samantha

Hagerbaumer.

Thanks are also due to Deborah Michel and Didi Dunphy

for their support and plot-tuning expertise; Captain David

Campbell of the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office, who showed

me around the place and indulged my many questions; Don

Herron, whose Dashiell Hammett Walking Tour of San Fran-

cisco was as spellbinding as I’d always heard; and the impas-

sioned William P. Arney, current resident of 891 Post, Sam

Spade’s apartment, recently designated a literary landmark.

There are many excellent resources on Hammett’s life and

work. Of particular use were Julian Symons’s Dashiell Ham-

mett; Jo Hammett’s Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers;

Richard Layman’s Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett;

and Diane Johnson’s Dashiell Hammett: A Life.

I could never forget Lawrence Block.

Margaret Waite introduced me to Palos Verdes and to the

real Maren, who shares nothing with her fictional counterpart.

My husband indoctrinated me into the cult of Hammett

and got me up on a surfboard. This book is for him.

About the Author

SUSAN KANDEL
is a former art critic for the
Los Angeles Times
.

She has taught at New York University and UCLA, and served as

the editor of the international journal
artext.
She lives with her

family in West Hollywood, California.

You can visit her website at
www.susankandel.com.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive

information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

A L S O B Y S U S A N K A N D E L

Not a Girl Detective

I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason

Credits

Designed by Jeffrey Pennington

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and

dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be

construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,

living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SHAMUS IN THE GREEN ROOM. Copyright © 2006 by Susan

Kandel. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

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