Because the Night (31 page)

The screen went blank, then filled up with a long shot of the blond woman, now dressed in her nurse's uniform, leaning against the bedroom wall. Suddenly a man, also clothed, threw himself on top of her. The screen again went blank, then segued into an extreme close-up of a transparent plastic pillow. The muzzle of a gun was pressed to the pillow. A finger pulled the trigger and the screen was awash in red. The camera caught a close-up of a man's face. When Linda saw the face she screamed “Hopkins!” and fumbled in her purse for the gun. Her finger was inside the trigger guard when the lights went on and the man from the movie jumped out of the closet and smothered her with his body.

L
LOYD slammed down the phone in response to Dutch's news: the two women and one man that Hollywood Division detectives had leaned on with “behind the green door” and “beyond the beyond” had immediately clammed up, first threatening the officers with lawsuits, then going into repeated recitations of the phrase “
patria infinitum.
” No breakdowns, no recantings of past sins, just indignation at police scare tactics and the rapid expulsion of seasoned cops. Dutch would be deploying a new team of detectives for runs at the guru worshippers, but they would probably be in mantra comas by then. There was only himself, Linda and her magnum, and the unknown quantity of William Nagler.

Lloyd checked the clock on the kitchen wall. 7:45. Linda would still be at her “therapy” session. He could wait and call and ease his mind, or he could move. The ticking of the clock became deafening. He locked up the house and walked to his car.

Headlights flashed across the driveway as he slipped behind the wheel, and a panel truck pulled up in front of his unmarked cruiser. Lloyd got out and saw Marty Bergen step in front of the headlights and jam his hands into his pockets. A gun butt extended from his waistband.

“My lawyer glommed me a writ,” he said. “Fred Gaffaney almost shit shotgun shells.”

Lloyd said, “Amateurs shouldn't pack hardware. Beat it. I've got no stories for you.”

Bergen laughed. “When I was on the job I was in love with my piece. Off duty, I always made sure that people could see it. I was in love with it until I had to use it. Then I dropped it and ran. Jack's dead, Hopkins.”

“Tell me something I don't know.”

“It's on me. It's all on me.”

“Wrong, Bergen. It's the Department's and it's mine.”

Bergen kicked the grill of the Matador, then stumbled backward into the hood of his truck. “I
owe,
goddamn you! Can't you see that? All I ever had was what Jack gave me, and even that was all twisted. Some piece of shit took him where he shouldn't have fucking gone and made him feel things that he shouldn't have fucking felt, and it was
me
that he felt them about, and I owe! Don't make me say the words, Hopkins. Please don't make me say the fucking words.”

Lloyd sent up a prayer for all guilt-driven innocents seeking jeopardy. “What do you want, Bergen?”

Former L.A.P.D. Sergeant Martin D. Bergen wiped tears from his eyes. “I just want to pay off Jack.”

“Then get in the car,” Lloyd said. “We're going to Laurel Canyon to good guy-bad guy a suspect.”

William Nagler was not at home.

Lloyd parked across the street from his two-story redwood A-frame and walked over and knocked on both the front and back doors. No answer, no lights burning and no sounds of habitation. After checking the mailbox and finding two catalogs and a Mastercard bill, he returned to the car and his improbable partner.

“Are you going to open up this thing?” Bergen asked as Lloyd squeezed in behind the wheel.

Lloyd shook his head. “No. I don't trust the fourth estate. Just play the interrogation by ear. You ever work plainclothes?”

“Yeah. Venice Vice. I'm going to be the good guy, right?”

“No. You've got booze breath and you need a shave. You're big, but I'm bigger, so I can play savior. I'll ask the questions, you just be abusive. Just imagine yourself as a typical fascist pig out of the pages of the
Big Orange Insider
and you'll be cool.”

Bergen laughed. “You're the kind of joker who hands out compliments one minute, then rags people who hand out compliments the next, which means one of two things—you either love to give people shit, or you don't know where your own head is at. Which one is it?”

With his eyes on Nagler's front door, Lloyd said, “Don't jerk my chain. If I didn't want you here, you wouldn't be here. If I didn't understand what you have to do, I would have busted you for carrying a concealed weapon and kicked your ass back to the slam.”

Bergen scratched his razor stubble and poked Lloyd in the arm. “I apologize for saying I didn't like your style. What I should have said was that you
have
style, but you don't know what to do with it.”

Lloyd turned on the dashboard light and stared at Bergen. “Don't tell me about style. I read some of your early stuff. It was damn good. You could have been something big, you could have said things worth saying. But
you
didn't know what to do with it, because being really good is really scary. I know fear, Bergen. Two niggers blew away your partner and you ran. I can understand that and not judge you for it. But you had the chance to be great and you settled for being a hack, and that I can't understand.”

Bergen toyed with the knobs of the two-way radio. “You Catholic, Hopkins?”

“No.”

“Tough shit, you're going to hear my confession anyway. Jack Herzog taught me to write. He ghosted my first published stories, then edited the ones I actually did write.
He
formed my style;
he
was the one who had the chance to be great. It's weird, Hopkins. You're supposed to be the pragmatist, but I think you're really a romantic innocent with an incredible nose for shit. It's funny. Jack gave me everything I have. He made me a derivative fiction stylist and a competent journalist. He'd been writing a novel, and I was serving as
his
editor, helping him hold it together as he got crazier and crazier. I've never had the chance to be great. But if I had
your
brains and drive and guts, I'd be more than a gloryhound flatfoot.”

Lloyd turned on the radio and listened to code ones and twos. “It's a stalemate, Marty, and a life sentence for both of us. But we're lucky we can play the game.”

Bergen took the pistol from his waistband and rolled down the window and took a bead on the moon. “I believe that,” he said.

Two hours passed in silence. Bergen dozed off and Lloyd stared out the window at William Nagler's driveway, wondering if he should make a run to a phone and call Linda; wondering also if Havilland's worshippers were in contact with each other and if the already hassled followers had alerted Nagler to the approaching heat. No, he decided finally. Havilland was too well buffered. The worshippers probably had no way of contacting Havilland or each other besides Havilland's pay phone communiqués, which logic told him were rigidly pre-scheduled.
His
investigatory parries were buffered against discovery. Then the truth hit. He was pumping himself up with logic because Linda was part of the game and part of him, and if she fell the game was over forever.

Shortly after ten o'clock, a silver Porsche convertible pulled up in front of the A-frame. Lloyd nudged Bergen awake and said, “Our buddy is here. Follow my lead and when I touch my necktie interrupt me and buzz him with ‘behind the green door' and ‘beyond the beyond.' This guy had nothing to do with Jack Herzog, so don't even mention his name. You got it?”

Bergen nodded and squared his shoulders in preparation for his performance. Lloyd grabbed a flashlight and opened the car door just as a man got out of the Porsche and crossed the sidewalk in front of the A-frame. Bergen slammed his door, causing the man to turn around at the foot of the steps. “Police officers,” Lloyd called out.

The man froze at the words, then walked forward in the direction of his car. Lloyd flashed the light square in his face, forcing him to throw up his hands to shield his eyes. “It—it's—ma-my car,” he stammered. “I've got the pink in the glove compartment.”

Lloyd studied the face. Blond, bland, and cultured were his first impressions. He pointed his five cell at the ground and said, “I'm sure it is. Are you William Nagler?”

The man stepped off the curb and stroked the hood of the Porsche. Touching its sleekness gave an edge of propriety to his voice. “Yes, I am. What is this in regard to?”

Lloyd walked up to within inches of Nagler, forcing him back on the sidewalk. He held up his badge and played his light on it, then said, “L.A.P.D. My name is Hopkins, that's Sergeant Bergen. Could we talk to you inside?”

Nagler shuffled his feet. Lloyd held his light on the little dance of fear and saw that the worshipper was pigeon-toed to the point of deformity. “Why? Have you got a warrant? Hey! What are you doing!”

Lloyd turned around and saw Marty Bergen leaning into the Porsche, feeling under the seats. Nagler wrapped his arms around himself and shouted, “Don't! That's my car!”

“Cool it, Partner,” Lloyd said. “The man is cooperating, so just maintain your coolness.” Lowering his voice, he said to Nagler, “My partner's a black glove cop, but I keep him on a short chain. Can we go inside? It's cold out here.”

Nagler brushed a lock of lank blond hair up from his forehead. Lloyd eyed him openly and added competent and smart and very scared to his initial assessment.

“What's a black glove cop?”

As if on cue, Bergen walked over and stood beside Lloyd. “We should toss the vehicle,” he said. “This bimbo's a doper, I can tell. What are you flying on, citizen? Ludes? Smack? Dust? Give me thirty seconds inside that glove compartment and I'll get us a righteous dope bust.”

Lloyd gave Bergen a disgusted look. “This is a routine questioning of burglary victims, not a narc raid, so be cool. Mr. Nagler, can we go inside?”

Nagler's feet did another fear dance. “I'm not a burglary victim. I've never been burglarized and I don't know anything about any burglaries.”

Lloyd put an arm around Nagler's shoulders and moved him out of Bergen's earshot. “All the houses on this block have been crawled,” he said. “Sometimes the guy steals, sometimes not. A snitch of mine heard a tip that he's a panty freak, that he checks out all the pads he crawls for lingerie. What I want to do is check for fingerprints on your bedroom drawers. It will only take five minutes.”

Nagler jerked himself free. “No. I can't allow it. Not without a warrant.”

Pointing at Bergen, Lloyd whispered, “He's the senior officer, I'm just a forensic technician. If I can't print your drawers, he'll go cuckoo and frame you on a drug charge. His daughter O.D.'d on heroin and it flipped him out. He's about one step ahead of the net, so it wouldn't do to rile him. Please cooperate, Mr. Nagler, for both our sakes.”

Nagler looked over his shoulder at Marty Bergen, who was now squatting and examining the front wheel covers of his Porsche. “All right, Officer. Just keep that man
away
from me.”

Lloyd whistled, drawing Bergen away from his hubcap scrutiny. “Mr. Nagler is going to cooperate, Sergeant. Let's make it quick. He's a busy man.”

“Dopers always are,” Bergen said, walking over. He gave the Porsche a last glance and added, “I'll bet it's hot. We should check the hot sheet. We could get us a righteous G.T.A. bust.” Leaning into Lloyd in a pseudo drunk's weave, he whispered, “What's my job inside?”

Seeing that Nagler was walking ahead to open the door, Lloyd faked a coughing attack, then said sotto voce, “Toss the pad for official papers, especially anything pertaining to property in Malibu. See if you can find something illegal to squeeze him with. Be menacing.”

Nagler unlocked the door and turned on a light in the entrance foyer. He pointed inside and shivered, then wrapped his arms around himself and moved his inwardly bent feet together so that the toes were touching. Lloyd thought of a frightened animal trying to protect itself by curling into a ball and blending in with the scenery. The fear in the man's eyes made him want to strangle John Havilland for his complicity in that fear and strangle himself for what he might have to do. He caught Bergen's eyes and saw that his bogus partner was thinking along parallel lines and hoped that his rage would hold for the duration of his performance. When he felt his own rage subside in a wave of pity, he resurrected it by thinking of the guru-shrink slipping through loopholes in the legal process and said, “Let's sit down and talk for a minute first, Mr. Nagler. There's a few questions I have.”

Nagler nodded assent. Lloyd walked through the foyer into a living room furnished with plastic high-tech chairs and a long sofa constructed of beanbags and industrial tubing. Bergen sauntered in behind him, going straight for a portable bar on casters. Sitting down in a lavender armchair that creaked under his weight, Lloyd saw western movie posters beam down at him from all four walls. Nagler perched himself on the edge of the sofa and said, “Will you
please
make this fast?”

Lloyd smiled and said, “Of course. This is a charming living room, by the way.” He pointed to the posters. “Are you a movie buff?”

“I'm a free-lance art director and an amateur filmmaker,” Nagler said, leveling worried eyes at Marty Bergen. “Now please get to your questions.”

Bergen chuckled and poured himself a large shot of Scotch. “I think this pad sucks, and I think this bimbo is just holding down this art director gig as a front for his dope racket.” He downed the drink and poured another. “What are you dealing, citizen? Weed? Speed?
Dust
? That's it, Hoppy! This is a
dust bust
!”