Night Kills (6 page)

    Sometime after lunch he had started smoking again. At first it had been a few puffs on a mooched cigarette. Soon enough he'd asked one of the couriers to go get him a pack of cigarettes. His plans were to put in a reasonably full day-be no more or no less cheery than he ever was-and then to start backtracking the dead woman by going to the bar where he'd met her. Maybe the bartender there could at least give him a name and therefore a starting point. ‹

    "She's gorgeous," Tim Culhane, the production manager said.

    Brolan's attention returned to the screen. "She is gorgeous. Too gorgeous."

    "You want frumpy?"

    "Not frumpy. Just somebody who won't put other women off."

    Actually the woman on the screen reminded him in some dark way of Kathleen. Desire and anger worked through him as he recognized the similarity between the women. He still couldn't believe that even when he was so deeply in trouble, Kathleen could have this effect on him.

    "Why don't we look at the next one?" Brolan said.

    Brolan sat at the front of the sloping screening room. There were twenty movie theatre seats. In front of the large movie screen was a forty-five-inch video screen. This was what they'd been using the past hour.

    The next one up was cute and perky. Brolan did not usually like cute-and-perky, but since it was the polar opposite of Kathleen, cute-and-perky looked great.

    "How about her?" Brolan said.

    "Her?" Culhane sounded surprised. Tall, muscular, thanks to weight training and running, Culhane still wore his blonde hair shoulder-length-but it was sculpted hair, Hollywood hair, and bore no kinship to the sixties or flower power or any of that. He was handsome in a somewhat overly dramatic way, always posing, and given to the sort of loose-fitting, expensive sports clothes you found on the West Coast. Brolan and Culhane had never gotten along, but the past six months had been especially bad. Brolan, who was solely in charge of promoting creative people, had passed Culhane over in favour of someone else for an executive job. Culhane was neither a forgiving nor understanding man. "She looks like the girl next door."

    "She's cute."

    "Last time I checked, you hated cute."

    Brolan sighed. "All right. Next one, then."

    The next one was redheaded and had the sort of reckless beauty that always got to Brolan. The most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in films was the young Rita Hayworth, and anybody who remotely resembled her was welcome to come into Brolan's life at any time.

    "God," Tim said. "She's great." He looked at the sheet that identified where each actress was from. "Chicago."

    "Much acting experience?"

    Culhane read silently for a few moments. "Actually quite a bit of stage work. Lot of dinner theatre but some small-theatre stuff, too. Peer Gynt and Hedda Gabler."

    Brolan nodded. He could see her as Hedda, one of his favourite creations. The remote beauty, the inscrutable motives. Not until then did he realize that Kathleen reminded him of Hedda, too.

    "Can you see her in a nice suburban dress, with a nice suburban manner, hawking ice cream?"

    "Absolutely," Culhane said.

    "Good. Then let's get her in here for an audition sometime soon."

    Moments after Tim flipped the switch on the VCR, the screen went dead. The screening room, which had a ceiling covered with acoustic tile, was quiet in an almost eerie way. That was why the door's creaking open at the rear of the room made such an unearthly noise, like fate announcing itself.

    Culhane looked up and said, "Oh, hi, Kathleen."

    Hearing her name, Brolan felt as if he were back in seventh grade. When the other boys knew you 'liked' a certain girl, but you were afraid to show them that you did. Brolan stared straight ahead, as if he found the empty screen fascinating.

    Culhane, obviously sensing the mood, took the videotape from the VCR put it back in its box, and said, "Well, I'd better be going. Think we made a good choice." He nodded goodbye.

    "Thanks, Tim," Brolan said. He had still not turned around.

    The closer she came, the more erotic her perfume got. He felt tense, angry, yet desperate to see her.

    She walked down the sloping aisle until she was two rows of seats past him. She looked so trim, her calves perfect, her ankles a dream. She turned around and faced him.

    "Kilgore has added thirty percent to his next year's advertising budget," she said.

    "Great."

    "That's pretty big news, isn't it?"

    Kathleen always liked to be complimented.

    "It's very big news," he said. "Good work." He had to remember that he was her boss as well as her lover. Or at least one of her lovers.

    She said, "That isn't really why I came in here."

    "No?"

    "No. I wanted to say that I'm sorry about this morning."

    "Oh." He cleared his throat, not knowing exactly what words to shape.

    "I'm still in love with you," she said.

    Seventh grade again. Or at least not adulthood. He felt embarrassed and happy beyond imagining and terrified, all at the same time. Maybe especially terrified because falling in love with Kathleen was scary stuff.

    "I love you, too," he said.

    "Maybe we can get through this."

    "I hope so."

    She had come no closer to him. Nor he to her. "I'm really trying to work through some things. I-I'd like a little more time."

    How could he say no, after she'd come to him with such an air of reconciliation?

    "All right," he said.

    She smiled. "Do I have to give you a dollar to come over here and kiss me?"

    She didn't even have to give him fifty cents.

    

    

    Half an hour later Brolan was in his office finishing up the last-minute duties of the day-looking at a stem letter from the Screen Actors Guild about the impending actors' strike; calling a client and doing a little hand-holding, the man concerned that his bills were running too high (in fact, per-hour profitability on this particular account had been sinking steadily) when the intercom buzzed.

    "Yes?" he said.

    "Line three."

    "Any idea who it is?"

    "Sorry. He wouldn't give a name."

    Brolan thought a moment. "All right. Three?"

    "Right."

    She clicked off.

    Brolan picked up the phone. "Hello?"

    "You don't know who I am."

    "All right."

    "But I know who you are."

    "I see."

    "And more significantly, Mr. Brolan, I know what you've done." Brolan felt acid beginning to eat up his stomach and run up to his chest. Boiling.

    "I really should hang up," Brolan said.

    "But you won't."

    "What makes you so sure?"

    The male voice-muffled somehow-said, "Because you want to hear what I'm going to say next."

    "And what will that be?"

    "That you killed Emma."

    "I don't know any Emma."

    "Of course you do, Mr. Brolan. We're both grown-ups here. We shouldn't try childish games."

    "Who is this?"

    He reached in his desk drawer for some antacid tablets.

    "I want you to meet me tonight, Mr. Brolan."

    "Where?"

    "At the end of this conversation, I'll give you the address."

    "What if I don't show up?"

    "Then I go to the police. Would you like that, Mr. Brolan?"

    Brolan's throat was starting to constrict. "I'll have to think this over."

    "Nine o'clock, Mr. Brolan."

    And then the man gave him the address.

    "Did you write that down, Mr. Brolan?"

    It was the turn of the other man to pause. "We pay for our sins, don't we Mr. Brolan?"

    With that he hung up.

    Brolan had two more antacid tablets.

    

    

    AFTER WORK Brolan went home. The first thing he checked was the freezer. The woman was still there, blue-tinted and almost embryonic in the way she was hunched over. In the kitchen he had a cheese sandwich and a handful of potato chips and a Pepsi. High school repast He tried watching the local news, but after it was clear that there would be no mention of a missing woman, he went upstairs, changed into jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and a pair of Nikes. Restless, he decided to kill the remaining two hours before his appointment by driving around. He did that sometimes when nothing else made any emotional sense-just drove, one with wind and darkness, ego and identity vanished. He was probably never more relaxed than at these times.

    The address he'd been given turned out to be near North Oaks, a relatively recent development that sat on the edge of the suburbs. By nine, snow flurries had started flecking his windshield, and the wind was so hard, it rocked his car. As he drove through a small business district with a strip mall and some other stores on the other side of the street, he thought of Christmas time, the way people bent into the furious wind, hurrying on their way home to warmth and shelter. How innocent his life of even twenty-four-hours before seemed now. No dead women in freezers.

    He had no trouble finding the address. It was an impressive duplex designed to resemble town houses. No lights shone on either side. He rolled to the kerb and shut off the engine. Wind continued to rock the car. He had another forbidden cigarette, and as he sat there smoking it, he sensed eyes on him. Knowing eyes, watching.

    Taking only a few drags before flicking the cigarette into the darkness, Brolan got out of the car and started up the walk. Actually few lights shone in the entire prosperous middle-class neighbourhood. He wondered if everybody there was elderly.

    At the door he raised an ornate brass knocker twice and let it fall. It sounded metallic in the chilly silence.

    No response.

    This time he used his knuckles.

    Still nothing.

    The impression of eyes watching him remained. He wondered for the thousandth time since the phone call who the caller was and how he knew about the dead woman and why he thought Brolan had killed her.

    His hand fell to the knob and turned it. He pushed inward and felt the door start to open.

    This didn't make much sense. Who left their front doors unlocked this way? Images from a thousand TV cop shows came to him. He'd walk inside and find the man who'd called him sprawled dead on the floor. The killer had left the door open on his way out.

    Frightened but curious, he pushed his way inside.

    Darkness, a shadowy gloom illuminated only by ghostly streetlight through gauzy curtains. The shape of fashionable furniture dark against the greater darkness. He inched inward, keeping the door behind him ajar in case he needed to run. The floor was hardwood. Even walking on tiptoe he made a certain amount of noise.

    Once his eyes began adjusting to the gloom, he could see more clearly. The living room looked like a popular-culture display in a museum. The walls carried several framed blow-ups of movie stars, from Gary Cooper to Marilyn Monroe. An enormous TV screen sat between two sections of built-in bookcases that were filled with VHS tapes, everything neatly filed and apparently alphabetized. He got close enough to read some of the tides on the books in the other cases. They ran from tides as serious as Andrew Sarris's surveys of American film to books about Saturday matinee serials.

    He was just about to explore the other parts of the duplex when he heard a thrumming against the hardwood. At first he didn't recognize the sound. But within moments his mind registered: wheelchair.

    And so it was: a wheelchair bearing a small, somewhat twisted man rolled into sight, there in the ghostly light from the street. The man wore a dark turtleneck and what appeared to be jeans. His hair was combed back in a trendy way.

    Brolan would have felt pity for such a man except the man was making it very difficult for him to do so.

    The man was pointing a.45 at Brolan's chest.

    "You're Mr. Brolan?"

    "I've got to tell you. Guns scare the hell out of me. I wish you'd put that thing down."

    "In due time, Mr. Brolan. I have some questions first." A kind of unreality came over Brolan. He was standing in a darkened room with a crippled man in a wheelchair. The man held a gun on him. Back home Brolan had found a dead woman in a freezer chest. Images burned and faded; all this was like a fever dream he prayed would end soon.

    "I want to talk about Emma," the man said.

    "I don't know any Emma."

    "She was hired to walk about and bump you in a certain bar the other night."

    "Hired? What the hell are you talking about?"

    "Hired," the man said. Then he added, "Why did you kill her?"

    Carefully Brolan put a hand to his head. Despite the chilly night and despite the fact that the duplex was not exactly warm, Brolan's head was wet with sweat. As were his back and his shorts. "Do me a favour."

    "And what would that be?"

    "Don't say that anymore. That I killed her, I mean. I don't know who you are, and I don't know who she was, but I didn't kill her."

    "But she did bump into you the night before last?"

    "Yes."

    "And then what happened?"

    Brolan shrugged, his eyes focused on the.45 in the man's hand. Wind rattled windows; sleet sprayed like tossed sand against the glass. "We had words. I was pretty drunk. I don't remember. But it wasn't anything serious." He smiled at the craziness of all this. "It certainly wasn't something you'd kill somebody for."