LaBrava (7 page)

“You remember those pictures?”

“I bet I’ve seen every picture you were in.” There. It didn’t sound too bad. She was still looking at him.

She said, “Really?” and slipped her glasses off to study him, maybe wondering if he was putting her on. “On television? The late show?”

“No, in movie theaters, the first time.” He didn’t want to get into ages, how old he had been, and said, “Then I saw some of them again later. I’m pretty sure about
Deadfall
and
Nightshade
because I saw ’em both in Independence, Missouri, just last year.”

“What were you doing in Independence, Missouri?” With that quiet, easy delivery.

“It’s a long story—I’ll tell you sometime if you want. What I could never figure out was why you never ended up with the guy in the movie, the star.”

She said, “I was the spider woman, why do you think? My role was to come between the lead and the professional virgin. But in the end he goes back to little June Allyson and I say, ‘Swell.’ If I’m not dead.”

“In
Deadfall
,” LaBrava said, “I remember I kept thinking if I was Robert Mitchum I still would’ve gone for you instead of the guy’s wife, the widow.”

“But I was in on the murder. I lured what’s his name out on the bridge. Was it Tom Drake?”

“It might’ve been. The thing is, your part was always a downer. At least once in a while you should’ve ended up with the star.”

“You can’t have it both ways. I played Woman as Destroyer, and that gave me the lines. And I’d rather have the lines any day than end up with the star.”

“Yeah, I can understand that.”

“Someone said that the character I played never felt for a moment that love could overcome greed. The only time, I think, I was ever in a kitchen was in
Nightshade
, to make the cookies. You remember the kitchen, the mess? That was the tip-off I’m putting belladonna in the cookie batter. Good wives and virgins keep their kitchens neat.”

“It was a nice touch,” LaBrava said. “I remember he takes the cookies and a glass of milk out to the greenhouse and practically wipes out all of his plants in the death scene, grabbing something to hold onto. Gig Young was good in that. Another one,
Obituary
, I remember the opening scene was in a cemetery.”

She looked up as he said it and stared at him for a moment. “When did you see
Obituary?
”

“Long time ago. I remember the opening and I remember, I think Henry Silva was in it, he was your boyfriend.”

She was still watching him. She seemed mildly amazed.

“You were married to a distinguished looking gray-haired guy. I can sorta picture him, but I don’t remember his name.”

“Go on.”

“And I remember—I don’t know if it was that picture or another one—you shot the bad guy. He looks at the blood on his hand, looks down at his shirt. He still can’t believe it. But I don’t remember what it was about. I can’t think who the detective was either, I mean in
Obituary
. It wasn’t Robert Mitchum, was it?”

She shook her head, thoughtful. “I’m not sure myself who was in it.”

“He seems like a nice guy. Robert Mitchum.”

She said, “I haven’t seen him in years. I think the last time was at Harry Cohn’s funeral.” She paused and said, “Now there was a rotten son of a bitch, Harry Cohn, but I loved him. He ran Columbia. God, did he run it.” She looked up at LaBrava. “I haven’t been interviewed in years, either.”

“Is that what this is like?”

“It reminds me. Sitting in a hotel room in a bathrobe, doing the tour. Harry would advise you how to act. ‘Be polite, don’t say
shit
, keep your fucking knees together and don’t accept any drink offers from reporters—all they want is to get in your pants.’ Where in the hell is Maurice?”

LaBrava glanced toward the door. “He said he’d be right back.”

There was a silence. He had been in the presence of political celebrities and world figures. He had stood alone, from a few seconds to a few minutes, with Jimmy Carter, Nancy Reagan, George Bush’s wife Barbara, Rosalynn Carter and Amy, not Sadat but Menachem Begin at Camp David, Teddy Kennedy a number of times, nameless Congressmen, Tip O’Neill was one, Fidel Castro in New York, Bob Hope . . . but he had never felt as aware of himself as he did now, in front of Jean Shaw in her blue bathrobe.

“I was trying to think,” LaBrava said, “what your last movie was.”

She looked up from the paper. “Let’s see, I made
Let It Ride
at Columbia. Went to RKO for one called
Moon Dance
. A disaster . . .”

“The insane asylum.”

“I quit right after that. I tested for a picture that was shot right around here, a lot of it at the Cardozo Hotel. I thought sure I was going to get the part. Rich widow professional virgin, my first good girl. But they gave it to Eleanor Parker. It didn’t turn out to be that much of a part.”

“Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson,” LaBrava said, impressing the movie star.

She said, “That’s right,
A Hole in the Head
. Frank Capra, his first picture in I think seven years. I really wanted to work with him. I even came here on my own to find out what rich Miami Beach widows were like.”

“I think you would’ve been too young.”

“That’s why Frank gave it to Eleanor Parker. Before that, half the scripts I read had Jane Greer’s prints all over them.” She said then, “No, the last one wasn’t
Moon Dance
. I went back to Columbia— oh my God, yeah—to do
Treasure of the Aztecs
.”

“Treasure of the Aztecs,”
LaBrava said, nodding. He had never heard of it.

“Farley Granger was Montezuma’s bastard son. In the last reel I’m about to be offered up to the gods on top of a pyramid, have my heart torn out, but I’m rescued by Cortez’s younger brother. Remember?”

“The star,” LaBrava said. “I can’t think who it was.”

“Audie Murphy. I took the first flight I could get out of Durango and haven’t made a picture since.”

“I imagine a lot of people liked it though.”

“You didn’t see it, did you?”

“I guess that’s one I missed. How many pictures did you make?”

“Sixteen. From ’55 to ’63.”

He could think of four titles. Maybe five. “I might’ve missed a couple of the early ones too,” LaBrava said, “but I saw all the rest. I have to tell you, whether it means anything to you or not, you were
good
.”

Jean Shaw raised her eyes to his, giving him that cool, familiar look. “Which one was your favorite?”

AT 8:10 P.M. JILL WILKINSON
told Pam and Rob, the crisis center night staff, she was getting out before anything else happened. Three consecutive shifts without sleep was about it for hanging in and being a loyal South County employee. She said if she didn’t go home to bed within the next hour, they’d be admitting her to Bethesda Memorial for intensive rehabilitation due to social-service burnout. South County would have to scrounge around for another wide-eyed, dedicated supervisor willing to work a seventy-hour week. Good luck. They didn’t stay wide-eyed long. During the past twenty-four hours:

First there was the big blond creep with the Mickey Mouse badge and the very real gun. (The Delray cops were good guys; they did think it was sort of funny, but only after informing Mr. Richard Nobles that if he ever came in here and bothered Jill again they would fucking break his jaw on both sides of his you-all mouth and that was a promise.) Then Earl, smoking, had set fire to a mattress during the night—after they were absolutely sure he had no cigarettes or matches on him. Walter continued to drive them nuts asking if they’d ever seen an eagle, until he was finally shipped off to Crisis Stabilization. A girl who had shaved her hair back to the top of her head, shaved off her eyebrows too, locked herself in the john most of the morning while two alcoholics threw up in wastepaper baskets. A consumer waiting to be interviewed got into the case of john paper stored in the counseling office (there was no room for it anywhere else) and streamed several rolls of it around the office. And then there was the smiling Cuban who gave his name as Geraldo Rivera and walked into the center naked except for sporty perforated shoes and tan silk socks. He was sort of cute.

At first he said he had no English. Jill picked up the phone to request a bilingual Delray Police officer and he said wait, some English was coming back to him. He said perhaps he was suffering from amnesia. He remembered dressing to go to the jai alai, but must have forgotten to put his clothes on. He said this is the fronton where they play, isn’t it? Jill told him they played just about everything in here except jai alai. She left him for a minute and he wandered through the offices, God, with his limp dong hanging free. The new girl, Mary Elizabeth, said wow, she had never seen one like that before, so dark compared to the rest of him. The drunks opened watery eyes to watch without comment. What else was new? Walter, who had not yet been shipped off when Geraldo arrived, asked him if he had ever seen an eagle. The Cuban said yes, in fact his mother was an eagle. He said he had been stolen by an eagle when he was a small baby, taken to its nest and fed the regurgitated meat of rabbits. They wrapped the Cuban in a sheet, which he seemed to like, rewrapping himself different ways until he settled on leaving one arm free, toga-fashion. He seemed to quiet down.

Then their twenty-year-old potential suicide, manic depressive, climbed up on a file cabinet and punched through the screen to shatter the glass of the ceiling-high window in the main office. They brought him down bloody, blood smearing the wall, an arm gashed from wrist to elbow. Sometime while the paramedics were taking him out to the van, the naked Cuban disappeared.

They called Delray Police to report a missing consumer who might or might not be running around their catchment area wrapped in a South County bed sheet and might or might not answer to the name Geraldo. They would take him back whoever he claimed to be.

There was no positive response from the police.

About five o’clock, when first Jill fantasized going home at a normal hour, seeing herself barefoot, alone, sipping chilled Piesporter, she discovered her wallet and ring of something like a dozen keys missing from her bag. The only person she could think of responsible was the naked Cuban.

Mary Elizabeth left about 6:45. She came back in with Jill’s ring of keys and wallet, the wallet empty. Found them, she said, right out in the middle of the parking lot. She had kicked the keys, in fact, walking to her car.

Something was strange. Jill had looked outside earlier, front and rear. If the keys and wallet weren’t there a few hours ago, how could they be there now?

Well, if the guy was chronically undifferentiated enough to walk naked into South County thinking it was a jai alai fronton . . . yes? . . . play with a bed sheet, rip off her wallet and keys . . . who knows, he could have sneaked back during a lucid period, basically a nice guy, thoughtful, knowing she would need her keys, her driver’s license . . .

It was a guess that she could accept.

Until she was driving home to Boynton Beach—FM top-forty music turned low, the dark, the muted sound relaxing—and began to wonder if there might not be more to it.

What if that whole number, the guy walking in naked, had been an act? To get her keys, find out where she lived . . . imagining the naked, possibly-undifferentiated Cuban now as a thoughtful burglar. Did that make sense?

None.

Still it was in her mind, the possibility, as she mounted the circular cement stairway to the second floor, moved along the balcony walk past orange buglights at the rear doors of the apartments and came to 214.

Would it be cleaned out?

Jill held her breath opening the door. She had paid almost seven hundred for the stereo and speakers, God, over three hundred for the color television set. Her two-hundred-dollar bike was on the front balcony . . .

The apartment was dark. A faint orange glow in the kitchen window showed the sink and counter. She moved past the kitchen, along the short hallway to the living room. Saw dim outside light framing the glass door to her private balcony. Saw her bike out there. Felt the television set sticking out of the bookcase. She let her breath out in a sigh, feeling exhaustion, relief. Thought, Thank you, Jesus. Not as a prayer but a leftover little-girl response. And sucked her breath in again, hard, and said out loud, “Jesus!” Still not as a prayer. Said, “What do you want!” with her throat constricted. Seeing part of an outline against the glass door. Only part of the figure in the chair, but knowing it was a man sitting there waiting for her.

She turned to run out. Got to the hallway.

And a light came on behind her.

A lamp turned on in her own living room. The goddamn deceiving light that made her stop and turn, feeling in that moment everything would be all right because, look, the light was on and the unknown figure in darkness would turn out to be someone she knew who would say gee, hey, I’m sorry and offer an incredible explanation . . .

She knew him all right. Even in the two shades of blue uniform. The blond hair . . . Coming toward her, bigger in this room than he had looked last night, not hurrying. Still, it was too late to run.

Nobles said, “Bet you’re wore out. I swear they must work you like a nigger mule at that place, the hours you put in. See, I figured you wouldn’t want me sitting out in the car, so I come on in. I been waiting, haven’t had no supper . . .” He stretched, yawning. “I was about to go in there, get in the bed. How’d that a been? You come home, here I’m under the covers sleeping like a baby.”

That thin coat of syrup in his tone.

Jill concentrated. All the words, the dirty words, the sounds in her mind, screaming obscenities, she kept hold of them as he spoke, as he grinned at her; she knew words would be wasted. She concentrated instead, making an effort to breathe slowly, to allow the constriction in her body to drain, and said nothing. She would wait. As she had waited nearly a half hour for the police while a psychopath dumped over file cabinets, tore up her office . . . She knew how to wait.