Play It Again (10 page)

“Can do,” R.J. said.

* * *

Parker and McDonald’s Funeral Home sat on 44th Street just two blocks off Times Square. For over a hundred years they had taken care of show people. Belle had specified them in her will, but she hadn’t needed to. R.J. knew who they were. So did everybody.

They knew how to handle crowds too, but this crowd was pushing them to their limit.

R.J. took a cab over to the funeral home. Henry Portillo and Hookshot rode with him. The cabbie stopped three blocks away and told them, in his heavily accented English, that he couldn’t get any closer and the gentlemen might want to walk the rest of the way.

But R.J. had only one foot out the cab door when the first of the news hounds hit him like a greasy squall. Within two steps he was in the eye of a hurricane.

He could see nothing but a forest of arms waving at him as if in a high wind. He could only hear his name shouted at him from a hundred mouths and snatches of self-important monologue blurted into microphones. “Sole heir and leading suspect” seemed to be one of the catchphrases, almost as if somebody had handed out a tear sheet with those words on it.

Portillo and Hookshot formed a barricade in front of him, and the three of them pushed their way through. Hands clutching microphones still blew in at R.J. from over their linked arms.

“Mr. Brooks! Is it true—”

“How did you feel—”

“What is your response to—”

“Mr. Brooks—”

“What was it like—”

“How did you
feel
—”

“Did you really—”

“The police say—”

With a block to go he’d had enough. He stopped walking and held up a hand for quiet. “Ladies and gentlemen! Please, just a moment, ladies and gentlemen!”

They didn’t exactly get quiet, but they got quieter. When R.J. felt that all eyes were on him, he took a breath and looked squarely into the nearest camera. “Blow it out your asses,” he said and turned to go.

He heard Hookshot snort out a short laugh, and Portillo whispered, “Feel a little better,
chico
?”
And to his surprise, R.J.
did
feel a little better.

The feeling didn’t last. Soon they were inside the funeral home. The smell turned R.J.’s stomach into a roiling knot. There was no mistaking it, that death smell, the sickly-sweet chemicals. He’d smelled it before, but this time it was too close, too personal.

His mother.

The dark, wood-paneled hall seemed to funnel the smell, the soft music, the feeling of death, and bring it straight into his gut with a hard, sharp jab.

He was conscious of Portillo beside him; Hookshot had slipped away to work the crowd, talk to his boys. But Hank stayed with him as the service droned on.

R.J. found that he couldn’t hear the words of the service, just the tone of voice: monotonous, cloying, deeply regretful without any real emotion. It was being played for the cameras.

And cameras there were. About two-thirds of the mourners were media coyotes. At the back of the room he saw Casey Wingate. She was sitting quietly, dressed in a dignified dark wool suit that still managed to show off her legs. He assumed that at least one of the cameramen at the back was working for her, but Casey herself looked more like a mourner than a coyote. Her stock went up with R.J.

He made it through the service without strangling any reporters.

As they headed out for the rented limo now parked at the curb—all part of Parker and McDonald’s star package—he saw Hookshot standing beside the door. They locked eyes; Hookshot gave his head one half-shake. Nothing.

He and Portillo shoved their way out the door to the limo. A howl went up from the reporters, like a pack of hounds baying at the moon.

One or two got close enough to shove a microphone at him and shout a question.

One of these was a very average-looking man in a careful suit and styled blond hair. On his dark suitcoat was a lapel tag that read
“CABLE INDEPENDENT NEWS.”
The man brutally elbowed a cluster of reporters out of the way and put his microphone right under R.J.’s nose.

“Mr. Brooks,” he shouted, “how does it feel—”

But R.J. ignored him, just like all the others, and crawled into the limo with Portillo.

CHAPTER 12

R.J. moved numbly through the service at graveside. He was mildly surprised that it was hitting him so hard, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

When it was over, a rising tide of reporters shoved him back to the limo. He hadn’t given them their soundbite yet, and they were starting to turn mean. But he made it into the backseat of the big Caddie, and as soon as he was joined by Hank and Hookshot, he signaled the driver to get going.

They drove in silence for about five minutes. Then Hookshot cleared his throat.

R.J. looked at his friend.

“None of my people saw doodle-squat, R.J.,” he said. “Sorry.” He shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t show.”

R.J. nodded. “He showed. He was there. I could feel him. I just couldn’t find him.”

Uncle Hank put a hand on his shoulder. “We may have been asking too much of ourselves, to stay alert on such an occasion.” He shook his head sadly. “She was—your mother,” he
said. And R.J. wondered what the man had been thinking of saying in that tiny hesitation.

“What now, R.J.?” Hookshot asked.

R.J. looked out the window. It was a bright, warm afternoon. He felt like sleet should be coming down in cold sheets of misery.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I need a little time. I have to go through her stuff.”

Again he felt Hank’s hand on his shoulder; not hard, just a gentle pressure to say
I’m here.

“I must get back to Quantico,” Portillo said. “But I will be back on the weekend. And I may have something we can use.”

R.J. looked up. He felt like he should be taking charge of finding the killer, pointing Portillo and Hookshot down likely paths, but he couldn’t focus enough.

“What do they have in Quantico that we might want?” he asked.

Henry placed a blunt brown finger against his forehead. “The BSU—Behavioral Science Unit. They have a program I can use to work up a profile of the killer.”

“You believe that shit?” asked Hookshot. He raised one scarred eyebrow halfway up to his hairline.

He nodded. “I do. The Bureau has been having very good results finding serial killers with this workup. I think it can help
us.”

“Uh-huh,” Hookshot said. He didn’t sound convinced.

* * *

They dropped R.J. at Central Park West and 79th and he walked to his mother’s apartment.

The building was not on everybody’s list of top ten celebrity apartment buildings, and Belle had preferred it that way. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful old building, with a great view of the Park, and very secure.

The uniformed doorman was an ex-cop who packed a piece he wasn’t afraid to use. He knew R.J., although there hadn’t been that many visits.

“Morning, Mr. Brooks,” he said, touching his cap.

“Hey, Tony,” said R.J.

“Sorry about your mom. She was a grand lady.”

“Yeah, thanks. Uh—I guess I have to go through her stuff.”

The doorman nodded and reached into his pocket. “I been expecting youse,” he said. He placed a key in R.J.’s hand. “You know where it is,” he said, with a touch of—was it disapproval? That R.J. hadn’t been a more dutiful son? He probably thinks I should have come every week for Sunday dinner, R.J. thought dourly.

“Yeah, I know where it is, Tony,” said R.J., a little harder than he had to.

Tony shrugged. “I guess the place is yours now.”

R.J. nodded and thought, What the hell. He put a fiver in Tony’s hand.

“I guess it is. Thanks for the key.”

“Forget about it,” said Tony.

The elevator let him off on the seventh floor and he let himself into the apartment.

And then he just stood and looked around.

How did you do that? Go through her stuff? Where did you start? What did you look for?

Her stuff. The apartment was furnished sparsely but elegantly. So very much like her.

No designer had been here. This place had been
hers,
and the things in it were for her comfort.

And it had not been entirely his fault that he had been here so rarely. She did not like other people in this place. Although she was very social when the mood was on her, she did not socialize here. It was her Fortress of Solitude, and she was extremely fussy about who she let in.

R.J. took a deep breath. The place even smelled like her. Well, he thought, gotta start somewhere.

He moved through the rooms: living room, bedroom. He peeked into the bathroom. Back to the living room, the kitchen. The spare bedroom, which she called her office.

He sat in the high-backed swivel chair at his mother’s desk. It was a rolltop, a beautiful piece of furniture.

The top of the desk was neat. There was a clean blotter, a pencil holder, a stapler, a small calculator—the kind with the roll of paper to print out your figures.

At the back of the desk were a row of small drawers, tiny pigeonholes, and some vertical slots for storing correspondence. R.J. riffled through the envelopes standing in these. Mostly bills, bank and broker statements. There was a stack of unused envelopes, the kind with the stamp already on.

He opened the largest drawer, the one in the center.

Inside sat a stack of old-looking letters, wrapped in a faded red ribbon.

He slid the top letter out and opened it.

Dear Belle,

Well Christ almighty, it sure
seems
like you must have planned it. Don’t get so flustered, sister, you’re not the only one in the soup.

I’m enclosing a check, a big one. Do what you think is right with it.

I guess I’ll see you when you get back out here to the Coast.

The scrawl at the bottom of the page was his father’s signature.

More interesting was the date at the top: just six months before R.J. was born.

He opened the next letter. Again, it was from his father to his mother.

Glad you like your new apartment, although that’s not what I thought you’d do with the check.

Some of the boys upstairs at the studio are very worried about you having this kid. They say it will kill your career, and do a lot of damage to mine. You don’t want that, any more than I do, kiddo.

So the story they’ve come up with, after a long sitdown with your agent and my agent, is that we got married secretly last year while we were shooting
Double Negative.
Then we can secretly get married for
real
as soon as you can get your smooth pink rear end out here to Hollywood.

I know it’s not exactly moonlight and roses, Belle, and I’m sure not going down on one knee, but the PR guys think this could be a terrific boost for both of us, and I’m all for that.

How about it, kid?

R.J. felt like he was rooted to the chair with a grand piano on his lap. He couldn’t stand up to save his life.

There couldn’t be any doubt about it: His parents had gotten married as a PR move because his mother was already pregnant. With him.

So much for the storybook romance crap he’d heard all his life. So much for the old issue of
LIFE
he still had, with the cover photo of the two of them, looking so lovey-dovey. Just another posed shot. Another scene played out like the studio wanted it.

What was that like? An arranged marriage—arranged, not by parents who “only want the best,” but by a bunch of potbellied, cigar-smoking weasels with too many consonants in their names.

They had married because of him. Jesus, had they even
liked
each other? Attracted to each other, sure. The rough, macho leading man, idol of millions; and the long-stemmed American beauty on her way to the top. Instant sack time.

But had they liked each other? Cared about each other? Held hands when they were alone, or only for the cameras? Had they done everything just for the cameras and lived totally separate lives on their own? Had their whole life together just been an elaborate movie set?

When it came down to that, then who the hell was he?

His head was spinning. Christ, he’d come here looking for answers, and all he had was a whole truckload of new questions.

He sat there for a long time, holding the letters in his hand.

* * *

It was getting dark outside when R.J. snapped out of it. He was left with the realization that he had never really known his mother.

He was long used to not knowing his father, who had died too long ago, when R.J. was just a kid. They hadn’t had much time together, what with the old man’s busy work schedule and all.

Sometimes R.J. thought he knew the old man better from his movies than from real life. But he was comfortable with that. It was just one of those things. Lots of people never knew their dads, especially in Hollywood.