Stardust (17 page)

37

W
HEN
Jill woke up it was late, nearly midnight. She must have felt like someone's leftover meal when she stumbled out of the bedroom. Chollo had black coffee and a carafe of orange juice sent up. Jill drank both and smoked a cigarette before she said a word. Her face was pale, and her hair was matted from sleeping on it, and there was a wrinkle grooved into her cheek by a fold in the pillow cover.

“Got some brandy?” she said. Chollo came around the bar and poured some into her coffee. She sipped it.

“Ahh,” she said. “Hair of the dog that bit you.”

Del Rio was still there, and so was I. Chollo was in place behind the bar.

“Want something to eat?” del Rio said in his clear voice.

Jill shivered.

“God, no,” she said. She looked at her reflection in the now-dark window. “Jesus,” she said. “Am I a mess.”

“Somebody here to see you,” I said.

“Like this?” Jill said. Her hand shook as she lifted her coffee cup, and she slopped a little of the brandy-laced coffee onto her lap. She brushed absently at it with her free hand.

“Be all right,” I said. “You look fine.”

Del Rio raised his voice only slightly.

“Bobby Horse,” he said.

The Indian opened the door to the other bedroom and came out with Bill Zabriskie. Zabriskie had on the same woven sandals as I'd seen him in. He also had on tan polyester pants and a white Western-style shirt, hanging loose, with one of those little strings held by a silver clasp at the neck.

He squinted a little, as if the light were too bright, and then went and sat carefully down on the edge of one of the armchairs. He looked slowly at Jill without reaction. Jill looked at him the same way.

“Who's this?” she said.

“What's your name?” I said to him.

“William Zabriskie.”

“You ever married to a woman named Vera Zabriskie?” I said.

Jill had frozen in her chair, the half-drunk coffee in her right hand. There was stiffness in the outline of her shoulders.

“Sure,” Zabriskie said. He looked at his watch, which he wore on his right wrist. It was a cheap black plastic one, the kind where the wristband is built into the watch, and if you want, you can set lap times in the stopwatch mode. “Are you police?”

“You have a daughter?” I said.

“Yes. A famous TV star, her name is Jill Joyce now.”

“What was her name?”

“Jillian. Jillian Zabriskie,” he said. “Why do you keep asking me these things?”

Jill dropped the coffee cup. It broke on the floor and coffee stained the rug. No one paid any attention.

“You see her in the room anywhere?” I said.

Zabriskie looked at Jill, as if he hadn't noticed her before. He squinted even though the light was good.

“That looks like her.”

I turned to Jill. She had shrunk back into her chair, her knees drawn up toward her chest, her arms hugging her elbows in against her. Her skin seemed drawn tight over the bones of her face. Her breath rasped in and out as if her windpipe had rusted.

“It's
Him,
” she gasped. Her voice was very hoarse. “You're dead. You have to be dead.”

Zabriskie looked puzzled.

“I'm not dead,” he said.

Jill shrank deeper in on herself.

“Don't,” she said. “Don't.” She looked at me. “Don't let him,” she said. “I don't want to.” Her voice got a singsong in it, and the hoarseness faded and it sounded young. “I don't want to. I don't want you to do that to me. I don't like it. Please, Daddy, please. Please.” She began to cry again. “Please.”

Zabriskie stared at her blankly.

“Why did you never give me money?” he said. “You are my daughter and you are rich and you never give me money.”

Jill was now in a ball, as tightly coiled in on herself as she could get. She wasn't crying so much as whimpering, in on herself, like a small child, entirely alone, in terrible trouble. I went over and put my hand on her shoulder and she shrank, if possible, a bit tighter, and then tentatively put up one hand and placed it on mine. Everyone was quiet; the only sound was of Jill's small whimper.

The Indian said, “Jesus.”

Zabriskie seemed unmoved, in fact he seemed unaware of Jill's response.

Jill raised her eyes toward me. “It's
Him,
” she said. “
He's
the one.”

I nodded and squeezed her shoulder a little.

“You need money,” I said to Zabriskie.

“Twenty-five years I worked there, and they let me go, when I got old.”

“Where'd you work?”

“Weldon Oil, night security.”

“Carry a gun?”

“Certainly.”

I nodded.

“What'd Jill do when you asked her for money?”

“Never a chance to ask. Miss Movie Star wouldn't see me.”

“You write her?”

“Yes.”

“Go to see her agent?”

“Yes. She's rich. Yet she won't give her own father anything?”

I nodded again.

“Go to Boston to try and see her?”

“Went right to the set. Sent her a note. She never answered it.”

“Tough,” I said, “to be that desperate and that close.”

“Miss Movie Star,” he said.

“Maybe when she dies you'll collect,” I said. “There don't seem to be a lot of heirs.”

“At my age?” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

“You fly to Boston?” I said.

“Bus,” he said. As if the idea that he could afford to fly was as insane as suggesting he could fly there by flapping his arms.

“Long ride?”

“Three days,” he said.

“Pack the gun in your luggage or carry it on?”

“Packed . . . what gun?” His empty eyes got smaller. “Why you asking me this?”

“No reason,” I shrugged. “Just knew you'd brought a three fifty-seven with you and wondered if it was a problem getting it cross country.”

“No,” he said.

I could feel a great sadness settling in on me.

“You left-handed?” I said.

His eyes were very beady now, shrunk to suspicious points of hostility. I could feel Jill's hand press down on mine. She had stopped whimpering. Chollo behind the bar, the Indian, del Rio, all were motionless, some kind of frozen tapestry, silent witness to something awful being dragged into the light.

“What about it,” he said.

“Nothing, just noticed you wore your watch on the right wrist, and I wondered. Once a detective, always a detective.” I smiled my big friendly smile, old Pop Spenser, just a chatty guy, making small talk with an old man. How charming.

“I got a license for that gun,” Zabriskie said. He was in trouble and dimly he knew it. He should have shut up, but the really stupid ones don't.

“It's a three fifty-seven magnum, right?”

“So what?”

“Colt?”

“Smith & Wesson.”

“How about that,” I said. “Made right out in Springfield, probably, practically next to Boston. Like bringing your gun home.”

“I got a license.”

“You bring it with you to kill your daughter?” I said.

“I didn't kill nobody,” Zabriskie said.

“You killed Babe Loftus,” I said. “By mistake.”

The room crackled with silence. Nobody breathed. The rain had stopped long ago, and the sky had cleared, and below us in the basin the lights of Los Angeles gleamed like the promise of a thousand eyes. Jill's fingernails dug into my hand.

“You thought it was Jill,” I said. “It had been so long.”

The old man stood up.

“I'm going out of here now,” he said.

Bobby Horse moved silently in front of the exit door. Zabriskie stopped and turned and looked slowly around the room.

“You read about the harassment, and the bodyguard, and all. You figured people would assume her death was linked to whoever had been bothering her. You could shoot her and go back to L.A. and sit tight and in a while you'd inherit her money.”

There was no expression on Zabriskie's face. He seemed solely interested in whether there was another exit.

“I'll bet,” I said, “when the cops match up the bullet they took out of Babe with the test bullet they fire from your gun, it'll match.”

The old man decided that there wasn't another exit. He looked down at Jill.

“You're an unloving and unnatural daughter,” he said. “If you had given me some money . . .”

He put his left hand almost tiredly under his loose shirt and came out with the .357. Behind the bar Chollo didn't seem to move, except suddenly there was a gun in his hand, and it fired, and Zabriskie slammed backwards over the coffee table and bounced against the wall and slid slowly to the floor. By the time he hit the floor Chollo's gun was out of sight again. Jill, in her tight coil, turned her face against the chair and moaned.

“Quick,” I said to Chollo. He smiled modestly.

Del Rio said, “Can you get her out of here and back to Boston?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you need money?”

“No. How about this, can you clean this up?” I said.

“I own the hotel,” del Rio said. He smiled slightly. “Among other things.”

I bent and edged my arms under her and picked Jill up from her chair. She put her arms around my neck and placed her face against my shoulder.

“Bobby Horse will drive you,” del Rio said. “She's going to need a lot of attention. I want you to give it to her. On the other coast. You need money, call me.”

“I won't need money,” I said.

The Indian opened the door and I went through carrying Jill.

Behind me del Rio said, “Adios.”

I paused and half turned and looked back at him and the still motionless Chollo.

“Si,” I said.

38

I
took Jill up to Maine, to a cabin on a lake that I'd built with Paul Giacomin nine years before. The cabin belonged to Susan, but she let me use it. We got there on a Thursday, driving straight from the airport, and on Saturday morning while I was making breakfast Jill still hadn't spoken.

The snow was a foot deep in the woods, and the other cabins were empty. Nothing moved but squirrels and the winter birds that hopped along the snow crust and seemed impervious to cold. I kept a fire going in the big central fireplace, and read some books, and did push-ups and sit-ups. I would have run along the plowed highway, but I didn't want to leave Jill.

Jill was silent. She sat where I put her, she slept a lot, she ate some of what I gave her. She smoked and had coffee and in the evening would drink some. But she didn't drink a lot, and she spoke not at all. Much of the time she simply sat and looked at things I didn't see and seemed very far away inside.

I ate some turkey hash with corn bread, and two cups of coffee. Jill had some coffee and three cigarettes. It didn't seem too healthy to me, but I figured this might not be the time for rigorous retraining.

“I came up here, about nine years ago,” I said, “with a kid named Paul Giacomin.”

It was not clear, when I talked to her, if Jill heard me, though when I offered her coffee she held out her cup.

“Kid was a mess,” I said. “Center of a custody dispute in a messy divorce. It wasn't that each parent wanted him. It was that neither parent wanted the other to have him.”

I put a dab of cranberry catsup on my second helping of hash.

“We built this place, he and I. I taught him to carpenter, and to work out, read poetry. Susan got him some psychotherapy. Kid's a professional dancer now, he's in Aix-en-Provence, in France, performing and giving master's classes at some dance festival.”

Jill had no reaction. I ate my hash. While I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes, the phone rang. It was Sandy Salzman.

“Studio's up my ass,” Salzman said. “Network is talking cancellation. Where the fuck is she?”

“She's with me,” I said.

“I know that, when the hell does she reappear?”

“Later,” I said.

“I've got to talk with her,” Sandy said. “Put her on the phone.”

“No.”

“Dammit, I've got to talk with her. I'm coming up.”

“I won't let you see her,” I said.

“For crissake, Spenser, you work for me.”

“You can't see her,” I said.

“Somebody from the studio, Riggs, somebody from business affairs?”

“Nobody,” I said.

“Dammit, you can't stop me.”

“Yes, I can.”

“I'll bring some people.”

“Better bring a lot,” I said.

“Spenser, I've got authorization, from Michael Maschio himself, to terminate your services as of this moment.”

“No,” I said. “You don't see her. Her agent doesn't see her. Michael Maschio doesn't see her. Captain Kangaroo doesn't see her. Just me, I see her. And Susan Silverman. Nobody else until she's ready.”

“Spenser, goddammit, you got no right . . .”

I hung up. In fifteen minutes I had a similar conversation with Jill's agent, who must have been calling before sunrise, West Coast time. At 9:45 I talked on the phone with Martin Quirk.

“We got the gun killed Loftus,” he said without preamble when I answered the phone. “Registered to a guy named William Zabriskie. LAPD found him in the trunk of a stolen car parked in the lot of Bullocks Department Store on Wilshire Boulevard. Gun was on him. Been shot once through the heart.”

“How'd they come to check with you?” I said.

“Anonymous tip,” Quirk said.

“Got a motive?”

“No,” Quirk said. “Why I'm calling you. Ever hear of this guy?”

“He's Jill Joyce's father,” I said.

“The hell he is,” Quirk said.

I was silent.

“And?” Quirk said.

“And I don't know what else, yet. I need a little time.”

“I don't have any to give you,” Quirk said. “I got lawyers from Zenith Meridien and the TV network and the governor's office and the Jill Joyce fan club camped outside my office. The D.A. wants my badge.”

“Marty,” I said, “he molested her as a child. She saw him killed.”

The silence on the line was broken only by the faint crackle of the system.

“You got her up there with you?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of shape she in?”

“The worst,” I said.

“Susan seen her?”

“Not yet.”

More crackle on the line. Behind me Jill was watching the fire move among the logs.

“You can't keep her up there forever,” Quirk said.

“I know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I don't have a long-range plan. Right now I'm figuring out lunch.”

“How long you need?”

“I don't know.”

“You know how Zabriskie got killed?” Quirk said.

“Yes.”

“You planning on sharing that with me?”

“Only off the record.”

“Gee, I love being a homicide cop,” Quirk said. “Get to ask people lots of questions and they have no answer.”

“It's L.A.'s problem,” I said.

“True,” Quirk said.

Again we were silent, listening to the murmur of the phone system.

“I'll do what I can,” Quirk said.

“Me too,” I said.

We hung up.

Susan Silverman showed up at noon. She came in along the driveway too fast, like she always did, in her white sports car, only this time there were three mongrel dogs in it with her. They came out as she held the door for them, gingerly, sniffing carefully, the two junior dogs watching the alpha dog. After a moment of sniffing, they apparently established it as appropriate territory because they began to tear around, noses to the ground, investigating squirrel scent and bird tracks. Susan had brought with her a trunkful of groceries, and she was starting to unload them when I came out of the house.

“Time for that in a moment,” I said and put my arms around her. She smelled of lilacs and milled soap and fresh air. She hugged me and we kissed and then we carried in the bags.

Susan smiled at Jill when she went in, and said, “Hi.” Jill gazed at her without reaction. We went to the kitchen end of the cabin to put the groceries away.

“She talk yet?” Susan said.

“No.”

“What's she been doing?”

I told her. Susan nodded.

“What do I do with her,” I said.

“You can't help her,” Susan said. “If you're right about her life she needs more than you can ever give her.”

“I know.”

“But you may be able to help get her to a point where she can be helped,” Susan said.

“By giving her time?”

“Yes, and space, and quiet. Try to get her healthy. Eat more, drink less, some exercise. But don't push it. All of her addictions are probably symptoms, not causes, and will yield better to treatment when the source of her anguish is dealt with.”

“Thanks, doctor,” I said. “Care to shtup me?”

“How could I resist, you glib devil, you?”

“Can you wait until evening?”

“Anxiously,” Susan said.

I had left the door ajar for the dogs, and now they nosed it open and came in, sniffing vigorously around the cabin, their eyes bright from their return to the woods. One of them sniffed at Jill as she sat there, and she turned and bent down toward it. It licked her face and she reached out suddenly and began to pat it. Susan nudged me and nodded, but I'd seen it already.

The other two dogs joined the first one and Jill took turns patting them. One of them reared on his hind legs and laid his forepaws in her lap and licked her face again. Jill put her arms around him and hugged him, her face against the side of his muzzle. Tears moved on her face. The dog looked a little anxious as she rocked sideways holding him in her arms, but then he discovered the salty tears and lapped them industriously, making no attempt to escape.