Self-Defense (36 page)

He walked out.

Ken covered his face and shook his head.

I patted his shoulder. He looked at me,
trying to smile, then turned to Lucy. She was staring at the wall. Her eyes
were glassy.

I took her hand and gave it a gentle
squeeze. She squeezed back. Then she took a very deep breath and stood up.

She seemed unsteady. Ken was out of his
chair, grabbing her elbow, but she was okay.

I walked them out through the station. A
few cops looked up but most didn’t.

We left Ken’s Taurus in a city pay lot and
I drove them to Rockingham Avenue.

When we got in the house, Lucy said, “I’m
tired.”

“I’ll settle you in,” said Ken. The two of
them disappeared and I waited in the living room, leafing through a
coffee-table book on the great mansions of Newport, Rhode Island. A quarter
hour later, Ken came down. He’d removed his jacket and his shirt was wrinkled.

“Can I get you a drink or something?”

“No, thanks. Do you want to sleep, too?”

He made a hard, angry sound that could
have been a laugh or a cough. “I guess I should tell you what happened.”

“It doesn’t have to be now.”

“Might as well,” he said. “It’s not going
to get any easier.”

We went through the kitchen into the
breakfast room and sat down at an oak table.

“We were going to drive out to look at
some horse land I’m foreclosing on,” said Ken. “First we went out to breakfast
this morning. Lucy seemed very uptight. When the food came, she didn’t touch it.
I asked her what was wrong, and she said she couldn’t stop worrying about Puck.
Then she started crying.”

He gave a pained look. “Sure I can’t get
you some coffee?”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.... Where was I?” Rubbing his chin.
“So I said, “Why don’t we go over to his place and see if he left any
indication where he went?’ She said she didn’t know if that was a good idea, in
case people were looking for him; she didn’t want to tip them off. Didn’t want
to put me in danger either.” He wiped his eyes.

“Drug people?” I said.

“I guess. We never actually talked about
his problem. I never even realized he was addicted until later. I mean, when I
met him I knew something was wrong. Thin, always coughing, his nose running. I
wondered about AIDS.... Anyway, we ate for a while—at least I did. Then Lucy
said, Maybe we
should
go. We could look around to make sure no one was
watching the apartment, and if there wasn’t, we could go in—excuse me.”

He got up, fixed a cup of instant coffee,
and brought it to the table. “Then she said she was sure he was in some kind of
danger. Otherwise he would have called her at least once. I asked her what
danger. She said she really didn’t know, Puck tried to keep his problems to
himself, but probably some kind of debt situation. So we went to his place.
Lucy had a key.” Wiping a tear. “What a rathole. Basically an abandoned
building. The store below was vacant. To get to Puck’s place you had to climb
up some rear stairs near the trash bins.”

He ran his hands through his hair and
swallowed hard.

“We went in and there was this smell,
right away—like stale laundry mixed with badly rotting food—but the place was a
mess, open cans, crap all over the carpet, so I didn’t think anything of it. It
was a surprisingly big place—two bedrooms. But no real furniture. Lucy said the
rear bedroom was Puck’s, so we went back there. The door was closed but we
heard something behind it, like an electric shaver. We looked at each other,
scared out of our minds. Then I figured, maybe it’s good news, he just got back,
he’s shaving, cleaning up. So I opened the door....”

He blinked and put the cup down.

“Just a crack, but this
cloud
came
out at me. Flies. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them.
That
was the sound.
And maggots. The whole bed was covered with them. On the floor, on the drapes,
like someone had tossed rice all over. Then I saw—underneath a big mound of
them, on the bed—this
... thing.
The needle sticking out of it. Shiny and
clean. The only
clean
thing in there. He was—under them, on the bed. And
on the floor. It was hard to tell what was him and what was—he’d
melted
!”

Milo said, “It’s called purge fluid. Stuff
leaks out when putrefaction’s well under way. It means he’d been there for a
while.”

We were in the living room of the
Brentwood house. He’d just arrived, nearly two hours after I’d brought Ken and
Lucy back. Both of them were sleeping.

“How long?” I said.

“Hard to say, there was no
air-conditioning in the apartment. Coroner says the most we can expect is an
estimate, three- to eight-day range.”

“Well, we know it’s closer to three,
because before that he was in New Mexico. Looks like he came back soon after he
called Lowell. But he still didn’t call Lucy.”

“Came back after scoring,” he said. “Van
Nuys found a nice little chunk in the toilet tank. Mexican brown, but very
strong. Small corner chipped away.”

“Sampling the goods and he OD’d,” I said.
“Too stoned to call Lucy.”

He looked around the room. “How long’s she
been asleep?”

“Hour and a half.”

“Ken, too?”

“He went up to see how she was doing a
half hour ago and didn’t come down.”

“Escape to sleep,” he said.

“Old Buck tends to nod off when he’s under
stress, too.”

He cracked his knuckles. “Some people just
have shitty lives, don’t they? And the rest of us live off them. Hey, why don’t
we blow this joint, go to the circus or something? Did I ever tell you I once
busted a clown when I was on patrol? Peeping Tom. Never worked that into his
act.”

He got up and paced the room. “Nice place
the scamsters set up for themselves.”

“Crime almost paid.”

Ken came down the stairs, holding on to
the banister. His hair was combed but he looked sick. “Guess I dozed off—hi,
detective.”

They shook hands.

“Is Lucy awake?” I said.

“Just up. She said if you wanted to come
up it was okay. She’s at the end of the hall.”

I went up the stairs. Lucy’s room was pale
blue with white trim, smallish, with a canted ceiling and a big four-poster
with lace-edged covers. She was sitting on the edge, staring out the window.

I sat next to her. She didn’t react. Her
eyes were dry and her lips were chapped.

“I’m so sorry, Lucy.”

“Gone,” she said. “Everything.”

I patted her hand. Fingers cold as Puck’s
junkie digits.

“Heard the doorbell,” she said.

“That was Milo.”

She nodded, then kept the movement going,
a faint rocking.

“No surprise,” she said. “Guess I always
knew, but...”

“It’s never easy.”

“Like being stripped... one thing at a
time... empty world.”

I squeezed her fingers.

“He can come up,” she said. “Milo.”

Almost pleading.

I stepped out to the landing. Milo and Ken
were still in the entry. It didn’t look as if either of them had moved.

“She’d like to see you.”

He bounded the steps two at a time. When
we were alone, Ken touched his belly and gave a squeamish look. “Stomach’s off,
can’t hold on to anything. Maybe I’ll finally take off some blubber.”

I smiled.

“Gained way too much. Fifteen pounds
during the last year. My divorce. It hasn’t been a friendly one. Kelly—my
wife—met another guy. She’d been complaining about being bored, so I suggested
she take some classes at the junior college. She met him there, some
out-of-work construction guy. I tried to get her to go to counseling, but she
wouldn’t. When I finally realized we were going to break up, I tried to keep it
amicable, for the kids. But she bad-mouthed me to them.”

“That doesn’t help the kids.”

“It’s been going on over a year, and we’re
still in court. Her dad’s got lots of money, lawyers on retainer. She says she
won’t give up until she has everything.”

He gave another cough-laugh. “That’s why I
was motivated to get in touch with Puck and Lucy. Now this.”

Milo returned. “She fell asleep again.”

“I’d better go lock the door,” said Ken.

Milo said, “Why?”

I told him.

“Oh.” Turning to Ken: “Call me if you need
anything.”

“Thanks, detective. Are they treating what
happened as an accident?”

“Probably.”

“Guess it was,” said Ken. “Sometimes it
seems like everything is.”

Outside at the curb, I asked Milo if
Lucy’d said anything.

“She held my hand and took turns smiling
and crying. Think she has any chance coming out of this reasonably intact?”

“She’s pretty tough, but this... she’s
topping off the stress scale.”

“Beautiful day,” he said, looking at the
sapphire sky. “I had time to make some calls. The surf shop’s closed, meaning
the Sheas may have split, too. Still nothing on Trafficant, and if your Mr.
Mellors is a bad guy, he’s been a careful one. Nothing on NCIC. In fact, I
can’t find any record of him at all.”

“What’s going on?” I said. “Everyone’s
just disappearing.”

He rubbed his face. “We all do,
eventually.”

I returned home and tried Columbia University.
They’d never heard of Denton Mellors. Either he’d lied about his educational
background or was using a false name. Pen name? I got the number for the
Manhattan Book Review
and called the magazine.

The man who answered let out a
stuffed-sinus laugh. “Mellors? And who are you, Lord Chatterley?”

“Sometimes I feel like it.”

That cut off his laughter. “He’s not one
of ours. We have no grounds to keep.”

“He definitely wrote for you,” I said.
“Reviewed M. Bayard Lowell’s last book.”

“That sounds
awfully
like ancient
history.”

“Twenty-one years ago.”

“Well, that’s paleo
lith
ic, isn’t
it?”

“Is there anyone on your staff who was
working on the magazine at the time?”

“We’re not a magazine,” he said, miffed.
“We’re a review—a state of mind, actually. And we have no permanent staff. Just
Mr. Upstone, myself, and a
bevy
of freelance hopefuls.”

“What does it take to be a reviewer?”

“One has to recognize the proper criteria
for judging books.”

“Which are?”

“Style and substance. Now, I fail to see
the importance—”

“I work for a law firm out in L.A. Mr.
Mellors has come into an inheritance. Nothing big, but he still might want to
know about it.”

“How nice for him.”

“Was Mr. Upstone around when Mr. Mellors’s
review came out?”

“Mr. Upstone has
always
been
around.”

“May I speak with him, please?”

“If you’re
good.
”

“I promise.”

He laughed. “Cali
for
nia... how can you
live
there?”

A few minutes later, a cross-sounding
tobacco voice said, “Mason Upstone.”

I repeated my request.

Upstone broke in. “I won’t tell you a damn
thing. Haven’t you ever heard of the right to privacy?”

“I’m not—”

“That’s right, you’re not. Tell your
friends at the CIA or the FBI or whoever it is you’re with to do something more
constructive than spying on creative people.”

Slam.

I went out on the deck and tried to relax.
The sky out there was even bluer, but I couldn’t unwind.

I couldn’t stop bad things from happening
to Lucy, but I should have been able to deal with a dream....

Lowell, Trafficant, Mellors.

I pulled out the clipping on the Sanctum
party and read it one more time.

Lowell holding court.

Trafficant with his own circle of
groupies.

Had they tried to outdo one another the
night of the party?

Had Karen Best been the victim of that
competition?

There had to be some way to connect the
pieces.

I ran my eyes down the names of
partygoers. The usual Westside showbiz list, no indication any of them had a
relationship with Lowell. With one exception: the film producer who’d financed
construction of the retreat, Curtis App.

His name had come up before. I shuffled
through articles till I found it: A PEN fund-raiser at App’s Malibu house had
been the site of Lowell’s reentry into the public eye.

Fund-raiser for political prisoners.