Stardust (13 page)

27

T
HERE
were seven Zabriskies in the L.A. books, but only one William. I tried him first and he was the one. He lived in an apartment building in Hollywood, on Vermont Avenue, south of Franklin. It was built during what L.A. thinks are the old days, around 1932, under the impression that it was going to be a Moorish palace. It was named The Balmoral and it was built in a squat U shape around an open courtyard with a fountain in the middle that didn't work. There were architectural curlicues along the entire top of the building and each window had a white marble lintel set into the brown stucco. Most of the windows were open in the heat and here and there a dirty curtain fluttered wanly in the languid air. Occasionally there was a fan, and an air conditioner protruded from one window. A sidewalk of concrete stairs led through the center of the courtyard, Y'd around the dry fountain and led to the glass front door, which had chipped gilt letters that said
THE BALMORAL.
Some newspapers, still rolled, were yellowing inside the doorway. There were a few tired-looking yucca trees declining on either side, and the vestiges of untended plantings scrabbled for life on the hard-baked soil of the courtyard. It smelled hot, and it sounded hot with the slow drone of insects amplified by the three enclosing walls. Through the open windows I could hear a television playing. The door was supposed to lock automatically, but the frame was warped and the door didn't close tight. I pushed it open and went in. I was wearing a light sport coat to hide my gun. It felt like a mackinaw in the glassed-in entry. I could feel the sweat begin to form along my backbone and trickle down. William Zabriskie was listed on the first floor, number 103. I went into the lobby; it was littered with discarded junk mail and reeked with heat. Once it had been ornate, with carved wood paneling and marble floors. The paneling was warped now, with its oak veneer peeling off. The marble floors were deeply stained and there were dried yucca leaves in the corners. I stood for a moment in the silent stifling lobby. It was old. The building was old. The yucca leaves in the corner were old. The two-color flyers for supermarket sales seemed as if they were probably there when the building was built. The windows across from the door were shut and looked as if they wouldn't open. No air stirred. The light filtering through the windows was grayed by its passage through the dirt on the windows. What light got through highlighted the dust motes that moped in the still air.

“Old,” I said. My voice was harsh in the heavy stillness.

I went down the acrid, dingy corridor and knocked on number 103. When the door opened I felt the faint stir of air from an open window inside. Zabriskie was a tall old man with no shirt. He wasn't fat, but age had made his muscles sag and the skin hung loose and dry as parchment beneath the thin scatter of gray hair on his chest. His hair was gray too, longish and combed straight back all around. He was still handsome, though the line along his jaw had blurred, and there was too much skin around his eyes so that he seemed heavy-lidded. He seemed familiar until I realized that Jill took after him. He was wearing white polyester pants—the kind that don't take a belt and close by a buttoned tab over the middle. On his feet he had woven sandals. He looked at me without comment, his eyebrows raised a little in inquiry. I gave him my card.

“I'm working on a case involving Jill Joyce,” I said. “I understand you're her father.”

“From whom?” he said.
Whom.

“Several sources,” I said. “May I come in?”

Zabriskie hesitated a moment, then backed away from the door and nodded for me to enter.

The apartment was neat. The lace curtains stirring listlessly in the faint-hearted air from the open window were white. There was a living room, a kitchenette, and a bedroom. Through a door that was partially ajar, I could see the hospital corner of a neatly made bed. In the living room was a couch with plaid upholstery and wooden arms. A chair matched it. There was a foot locker in front of the couch with some magazines in a neat pile, and a small lace doily. Clean dishes rested in the drainer on the counter next to the kitchen sink.

I sat in the plaid chair. My shirt was soaked through and my jacket was nearly so. If I didn't find air-conditioning soon my gun would rust.

“So why have you come to see me,” Zabriskie said carefully.

“I'd like to talk with you about your daughter.”

“No,” he said. “Don't speak of her that way. Call her Jill Joyce.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because I wish it so,” he said.

“Besides that,” I said.

“She never speaks of me as her father,” he said.

“You left when she was pretty young,” I said.

“I left her mother,” Zabriskie said. “Any man would have.”

“You stay in touch with Jill?”

“I tried. Her mother interfered. After a time I stopped trying. But I was always there for her.”

“Did she know that?”

He shrugged. Hot as it was there was no sweat on him.

“A father is available to his child,” he said.

“Though the child may not necessarily know that,” I said.

“I am here for her now,” he said.

“You ever see her?” I said.

“I see her often,” Zabriskie said. “On the television.”

“Does she ever see you?” I said.

“No.”

Zabriskie sat perfectly still.

“When's the last time she saw you?” I said.

“Nineteen fifty-five,” he said.

“She would have been how old?”

“She was four. It was her fourth birthday. I gave her a present—a stuffed cat—and I kissed her on the forehead and said good-bye and left.”

“And you haven't, ah, she hasn't seen you since.”

“No,” Zabriskie said.

“But you've been there for her if she needed you, all this time?”

“Yes,” Zabriskie said.

I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. It didn't clear the sweat but it smeared it around for a moment.

“Did you remarry?” I said.

“Yes,” Zabriskie said. He smiled. “Three more wives,” he said.

“You don't have any idea why someone would wish to hurt her?”

“Jill?”

“Yes.”

“No. Jill is a lovely girl, and very successful.”

I nodded. I rolled my lower lip over my upper one. It wasn't much but it was all I could think of to do.

“Still married?” I said.

“Not at the moment,” Zabriskie said.

I did my trick with the lower lip again. Spenser, master interrogator, never at a loss.

“Okay,” I said. “Well, thanks a lot, Mr. Zabriskie.”

I stood up.

“You're welcome,” Zabriskie said. He stood up.

I walked to the door and opened it. I smiled at him. He smiled at me. Serenely. I went out. He closed the door.

28

I
stood in Forest Lawn Cemetery and looked down at the marker. Candace Sloan, it said. B. 1950 D. 1981. The headstones stretched out around me in all directions, measuring the green sweep of the hillside. Behind me the rental car was parked on the drive. My suitcase was in it with the big red letters spelling
ADIDAS
on the side. In an hour and a half I'd be flying to Boston. In six or seven hours I'd be with Susan.

There were flowers at many of the grave sites. And there were a few other people looking at gravestones the way I was. The only sound was the swish of the water sprinklers as they arched repetitiously over the green grass; and, more distantly, the sound of traffic on the Ventura Freeway; and, over all, the hard silence—made more resounding by the hints of punctuation.

I could feel the high hot California sun on the back of my neck as I stood with my hands in my hip pockets staring down at Candy's grave. I hadn't been there for the funeral. The last time I'd seen her was in a degenerating oil field, faceup in a hard rain with the blood washing pinkish off her face.

I pursed my lips a little.

Above us the sky was bright blue. There were a few white clouds and they were moving very lazily west toward the Pacific. Some sort of bird chittered somewhere. On the freeway a truck shifted gears on a grade. Still I stared down at the grass in front of the headstone. She wasn't there. Whatever there was of her there didn't matter. She probably wasn't anywhere. I looked up and back, toward the Valley and beyond the Valley, toward the mountains. There wasn't any smog today, and the snowcaps on some of the highest peaks were clear to see, white above the clay color of the mountains.

None of the stuff that anyone had ever written seemed useful. I had nothing much to offer either. The bird chittered again. Above me the clouds drifted west, and the sun imperceptibly followed. The sky stayed blue, the earth below stayed green. I looked again briefly at the gravestone and blew out my breath once, and turned and walked back toward my rental car.

“Some bodyguard,” I said, and even though I spoke softly, my voice sounded very loud in the still burial ground and the words seemed to hang there as I drove away.

29

R
EALITY
again. Outside Quirk's office, looking down into an alley off Stanhope Street, the temperature was maybe fifteen. The grime-streaked snow was packed like concrete in the rutted areas where the plows couldn't get because there were always cars. Inside Quirk's office was Marty Riggs, the big executive from Zenith Meridien. He had hung up his long scarf. He was holding forth intensely to an audience composed of Quirk; me; Sandy Salzman; Milo Nogarian, the executive producer; Herb Brodkey, a lawyer for Zenith; and Morris Callahan, a lawyer for the network.

“Who the hell was guarding her?” Riggs said. He was every inch the captain of a damaged ship, angry and indomitable in the face of near disaster.

“Spenser assured us the guy was very good,” Salzman said.

I looked at Quirk. His face was expressionless. He was carefully looking at a paper clip, manipulating it in his fingers, apparently trying to straighten it out with only one hand.

“Well, where is he? He's so good, why isn't he here?”

Quirk glanced at me and smiled faintly. Riggs saw him.

“Something amusing you, Lieutenant?”

“Whether Hawk's good enough hasn't got anything to do with whether Hawk's here, if you see what I mean. It's, you might say, ah . . .” He revolved his hand at me to fill in.

“Non sequitur,” I said.

“Don't get cute with me, Lieutenant. This is your case and so far you haven't shown me anything.”

“Actually, Mr. Riggs, it's not my case. You asked for this meeting, and being a courteous person and a dedicated public servant, I agreed. But my case is who killed your stuntwoman. What happened to your star is missing persons—unless she turns up dead.”

“Bureaucracy,” Riggs said. “Herb, I told you we should have arranged a meeting with the commissioner.”

Brodkey looked like Fernando Lamas. He had a rich tan and his nails gleamed. He had probably last been in criminal court when they indicted Fatty Arbuckle. He made a placating gesture at Riggs.

“I understand you've interviewed the bodyguard,” Brodkey said.

“Sergeant Belson did,” Quirk said. “He knows Hawk. It's easier that way.”

“Is this man getting special treatment?” Riggs snapped.

“Not like you are,” Quirk said softly.

“This is a difficult case, Lieutenant. Just tell us what you know.” It was Callahan, the network lawyer. He had white hair and a big nose and the look of a man eager to get the 7:30 shuttle back to New York. Even if it was on time there was still the ride to Greenwich.

“Hawk took Miss Joyce back to the hotel as usual,” Quirk said. “It was about six-fifteen. He sat with her while she had a couple of drinks in the bar, and then he started to turn her over to hotel security. But she insisted that he take her up to her room himself. When he did she went in and left the door ajar. He started to close it when she screamed. Hawk went into the room, and when he did she closed the door and stood in front of it and laughed and said she wanted to see what he'd do if she screamed.”

Quirk looked at me. “It is, I understand, a ploy she's used in the past.”

No one said anything.

“Miss Joyce then insisted that Hawk make love to her. He declined, courteously he says.” Again Quirk looked at me. I didn't say anything. “She was starting to disrobe,” Quirk said.

“In front of the goddamned buck nigger?” Riggs said.

“His name's Hawk,” I said.

“Well, what are we, touchy?”

“Call him Hawk,” I said.

“I'll call him what I goddamned please,” Riggs said. “I've got more to take up with you later.”

“Call him Hawk,” I said, “or I will bounce your ass down two flights of stairs and out onto Berkeley Street.”

“You heard that, Lieutenant? You heard him threaten me.”

“Call him Hawk,” Quirk said. He kept his gaze on Riggs for a moment and no one spoke. Then Quirk continued. “Hawk was apparently sincere in his disinterest. While she was disrobing he moved her forcibly but, ah, graciously, as I understand it, from the door and left. He told hotel security on his way out that they had her for the night, and he went home.”

Quirk looked around the room. Riggs was still angry and struggling to find circumstances in which he could be commanding. The lawyers sat like lawyers, being careful. Salzman was leaning back in his chair, his legs out before him, his arms folded across his chest.

“Sometime that night, she left the hotel. Probably went out the back door, down the steps to University Road, to dodge the Cambridge prowl car out front, cut through JFK Park, walked up to Harvard Square. She got a cab near the Harvard Coop. He took her to Boston, to the Four Seasons Hotel. Said he dropped her off there about 10:00
P.M.
She registered, under her own name, gave them an American Express card and went upstairs. She had no luggage. In the morning she had breakfast sent up about quarter to seven, and that's the last anyone has seen of her.”

“And you have failed totally to find a single clue as to where she might be,” Riggs said.

“Completely,” Quirk said without expression.

“Do you have any idea who Jill Joyce is, Lieutenant? What she means to the American public? The amount of money her absence costs?”

“Save it for missing persons, Mr. Riggs,” Quirk said. “I do murders.”

“Goddamned bureaucrat,” Riggs said only half aloud.

Quirk had been tipped back in his chair. He let it tip slowly forward and put his hands very lightly on the top of his desk.

“You are a very big deal in the TV business,” Quirk said, “and the governor thinks you're the cat's ass, and I've been trying to help out because there's been a lot of heavy hitters juicing your case. But you are not a big deal in the Boston Police Department. I am. And I don't think you're the cat's ass. So you either shut your trap or I'll make you go sit in the corridor until the grown-ups are through.”

Riggs' mouth opened like a carp. He seemed like he was having trouble getting his breath. He looked at the lawyers. Neither looked at him.

“I'll speak to your superiors,” Riggs mumbled. But there was no heart in it.

“Good,” Quirk said. “They like that. Gives them something to do.” He looked at me. “You talk with Hawk?”

“No. I just came in from the, ah, coast last night.”

“How nice for us,” Quirk said. “You have anything to offer on this thing?”

“She wouldn't go alone,” I said.

“No?”

“No. She needed somebody to take care of her, and it needed to be male. She might have scooted out alone, but she'd have had to know that a man was going to be around somewhere.”

“What do you think?” Quirk said to Salzman.

Salzman shrugged. “I make film,” he said. “I'm in so far over my head with the rest of this stuff that I don't know which way is up.”

“Who's got this in missing persons?” I said.

“Lipsky,” Quirk said. “I'm hanging around because it might be connected to the murder investigation.”

I nodded.

“You talked about Jill Joyce with Susan?” Quirk said.

“Sure,” I said.

“This theory about a man, Susan buy that?”

“Haven't asked her,” I said. “Last night when I came home we barely spoke of Jill Joyce.”

“Hard to imagine,” Quirk said.

“Didn't even know she was gone,” I said.

“We called L.A., yesterday morning,” Salzman said. “Hotel said you'd checked out.”

“I suppose you'll be looking for her too,” Quirk said.

I nodded.

“Lipsky will be pleased to know he's not alone on this,” Quirk said.

“Like you,” I said.

“Just like me,” Quirk said.