The Ticket Out (33 page)

“Greta—”

Lockwood leaned across the table. He said, “I noticed you started calling her ‘Greta.' You're wasting your sentiment. Miss Stenholm was not only a blackmailer, she was a liar.”

He covered my hand. “You should know that her address and appointment books are more or less complete fabrications.”

 

I
HAD WALKED
out of the kitchen and gone to stand at the picture window. It was still night. I could see the skyscrapers of Westwood and Century City, and the lighted flatlands in between. I pressed my forehead against the glass. I almost didn't need his evidence. The minute he'd said it, I knew absolutely it was true.

Lockwood came and stood beside me. "At the party you noticed Miss Stenholm going through the office Rolodex. It's common to steal the private numbers and addresses of famous film people—there's a black market in that kind of information.”

Who's Who
of Hollywood 2001: the sheer quantity of big names should have tipped me off.

Lockwood said, “We spoke to the film people she allegedly saw in the weeks preceding her death. All of them have denied knowing her except Mr. Ziskind. He admits to knowing her but denies having seen her on the three occasions mentioned in her book. His story checked out.”

I closed my eyes and filled in the blank days in Greta's calendar.

Thursday, August 23. She leaves Lynnda-Ellen's house. Jules Silverman receives two-part extortion demand. She moves into her car and visits the Academy Library to relive her student success.

Friday, August 24. An argument at the Casa de Amor. She sees five movies on Hollywood Boulevard. Her car is vandalized, her suitcases are stolen.

Saturday, August 25. She eats breakfast with Catherine Kerr and Penny Proft. They fight over me, and Kerr's ambitions. She steals change out of the candy machines in her old apartment building.

Sunday, August 26. The cops roust her in Griffith Park for sleeping in her car.

Monday, August 27. She eats a free dinner at the pizza place. She sees
Jurassic Park III
for free at the Vine Theater. She goes to Barry Melling's party.

More squalor than stellar. No wonder the last week of her calendar was blank: fantasy and reality had split too far apart.

Lockwood put his hand on my arm. I opened my eyes. “I'm fine—I believe you.”

He said, “You understand she was mentally unstable in the latter months of her life.”

“I talked to her. I understand.”

“And you know her film script doesn't exist.”

That hit me in the stomach.

“You
do
know it.”

I couldn't think—I just stood staring. I must have looked funny, because Lockwood took my arm and led me over to the couch. He sat down and made me sit next to him.

He said quietly, “Don't be upset.”

I laid my head back. I had no idea I'd attached such importance to
GB Dreams Big.

Lockwood said, still quiet, “Add up the facts. We can't locate a copy of this supposed script. Nobody seems to have seen it, and the Hollywood trade papers never reported a sale. The people at Progressive Properties and Artists thought Scott Dolgin had it, while Dolgin thought PPA had it. Her book mentions meetings at studios, but never which studio or with what individuals. She claimed to various people that you two were best friends, and she wanted to take you to Hollywood. And yet when you met at Melling's party, she didn't mention anything of that nature.”

I lay there, feeling like a jerk. He didn't want to upset me even though he thought I'd sold him out to Barry behind his back.

Lockwood pressed my arm. “Are you listening?”

I rolled my head sideways and looked at him. He said, “I'm sorry.”

I said, “I haven't told Barry I'm not doing the piece on you. I haven't told him about our conversation at the Thalberg the other night. I'm in some trouble at the paper and I can't piss him off right now, so I'm letting it slide until the deadline.”

Lockwood said, “What kind of trouble?”

I said, “The script exists.”

Lockwood reached for my hand. “What kind of trouble?”

I held on to his hand and shifted around to face him. I had to make him see what I saw.

“Everything else might be a lie, but she wrote that script. I
know
she did. You forget that Neil Phillips worked on it—he told Hamilton Ashburn so.”

Lockwood looked skeptical.

“Phillips stinks, I know.” I counted off five fingers. “He lied to me about who he was, he skipped out on his Fairfax place with those boxes, he's talking to Jack Nevenson on the Sony lot, he lives at the Casa de Amor under a fake name—and where the hell
is
he? But why would he lie to Ashburn about
GB Dreams Big?
I can't think of a reason, can you?”

Lockwood thought about that. “If he wanted to juke his career, it's the last lie he'd tell. If the script didn't exist, then Miss Stenholm's Hollywood hopes wouldn't exist, which means she couldn't help Phillips. You might be right.”

I got excited.

“She wrote it because she
had
to write it, and I know why. I understand what Greta wanted—I know who she
was.
Look, we were born on the very same day two years apart. We were both raised on a prairie. We both craved movies and the big, wide world—we both fell out with our fathers, partly because of that. I started at the
Millennium
the same year she graduated from film school. We
did
go to Hollywood together, only I didn't know it.”

Lockwood was looking out the picture window. He said, “You aren't the same type. I think she was cold, and more mercenary than you'd like.”

“Maybe. Was Edward Abadi a real emotion or part of her career plan? I don't know.”

Lockwood shrugged.

“Penny Proft calls her ‘Little Miss I-Live-For-My-Art.' Steve Lampley said she only had one idea in her head. Making movies—that's all she wanted, that's all she cared about. But she wasn't realistic about how to get it. I haven't done the research yet, so I don't know details. But I think she thought she could succeed on her own terms, the way talented men can. I think her looks hurt her. Five years after film school she's a wreck, living in her car, delusional, a blackmailer, and a liar, raging about the condition of women.”

Lockwood said, “She couldn't write a film script in that state.”

I shook my head. “She wrote it before she was too far gone. She started months ago when she read about Georgette Bauerdorf. I think Georgette focused Greta's whole life. She could avenge Georgette and Edward Abadi, write a woman's adventure story, and salvage her career all at once. I think that script will tell us what Greta Stenholm thought and felt. I think it will tell us about her five years in Hollywood. I also think it's a message to me. In the script, Georgette's best friend finds the killer. In real life, Greta cast
me
as her best friend. It's my job to help find the killer, hers and Georgette's.”

Lockwood said, “If Jules Silverman is so powerful, how would it help her career to expose him?”

“The script exists, Detective. I will bet you the nine hundred dollars I owe the blackmail fund that GB
Dreams Big
exists.”

Lockwood smiled at me. “I'll take that bet. If you win, I'll replace the nine hundred dollars myself.” He checked his watch.

I dropped his hand and stood up. “Don't tell me the time—I don't want to know.”

Lockwood pulled me back down beside him. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.

I didn't understand what he was doing. I said, “Aren't you going to work?”

Lockwood leaned forward and kissed me.

I couldn't believe it; I leaped up off the couch. Lockwood tried to hold on to me, but I was headed for the door.

He jumped up and followed me across the room.

I broke into a run. I opened the front door, stopped dead, did a complete turn, shut the door, and stood facing it like a fool.

Lockwood walked up behind me, but didn't touch me. He said, “What's wrong?”

Like a dope, I said the first thing that came to me. “I thought you went for lawyers.”

I hid my face against the door. Lockwood pulled me around and kissed me again. He kissed me until I gave in and kissed him back.

 

B
UT
I
JUST
couldn't do it.

I had wanted him for the longest time—it was a relief to finally let my feelings go. The real experience of his mouth and his hands was a strange and intense pleasure—more intense than anything I could've imagined, if I'd allowed myself to imagine. But I found I couldn't respond with everything I had. My mind wouldn't give in. It was running wild with counterthoughts, and disbelief. Was this
me,
making love to
Douglas Lockwood
? Between my desire for him and my resistance against him, I felt like I was going to implode.

He started walking us toward the bedroom. He was taking off his tie. Suddenly I couldn't stand it anymore. I pulled free of him and backed away. He tossed his tie on the chair. If I'd thought he was handsome before, it was nothing like he looked with his mouth wet and his hair mussed up.

I said, “Could we talk?”

It sounded so lame; I knew I was destroying the mood. He nudged me toward the bedroom.

I said, “I can't!”

He saw that I was serious, and his face changed. I took hold of his sleeve and led him to the couch. He was willing to be led, but he wouldn't sit. He lay down on his back, put out his arm, and made me lie down next to him. I lay down on my side. There was just room for both of us. The whole front of my body pressed into his left side, but I was stiff from tension. He took my arm and draped it across him. Reaching up, he switched off the lamp.

He said, “It's because I'm a cop.”

I said, “Until tonight I didn't think you'd noticed me.”

Lockwood laughed; it was quiet. I had never seen him laugh before. He said, “Your Colt first caught my attention.” He paused. “No, I believe it goes back further than that.”

And so he told me the story of the Burger King siege.

His account was more detailed than what I'd read, but the gist was the same. Juan Pablo Marquez had terrorized a restaurant full of people for two hours, until he lost it and fired into the kitchen where his former girlfriend worked. The customers panicked and Lockwood couldn't get off the shots he wanted. He was sorry for Marquez's death but it didn't trouble his conscience. Marquez played by the rules of crime and punishment, and Lockwood might have died himself.

It wasn't the shooting and killing that changed his life: it was the controversy that followed. Not because of his treatment in the media, although that had made his professional life more difficult. A grand jury was after him even though he'd only passed through Rampart Division on a case. Trash like Dale Denney lipped him off, something that didn't happen before the publicity. The controversy hadn't derailed his career, however—I'd been misinformed about that. He could have taken the lieutenant's exam years ago; he just didn't want to be a lieutenant. He didn't want to push paper or run a division: he wanted to solve murders.

What the controversy changed was his attitude toward his work. It had started him thinking about the larger context of law enforcement. He'd spent three months in Mexico, thinking and reading. He decided that L.A. had become impossible to police, and that LAPD wasn't the cause, or the solution. The Department had serious problems—problems of philosophy and practice, problems of leadership and budget. But what could they do about economic and social factors that produced poverty and a permanent criminal underclass? Or do about a widespread disaffection with authority, which extended to police officers themselves? Or do about the cynicism of lawyers who played on race prejudice to free a guilty client? Or do about a Juan Pablo Marquez who took strangers hostage because his love life went bad?

The police were swamped by problems that weren't police matters. He'd always known it, like most cops did—but he'd never had time to reflect on the bigger picture. And his reflections had changed him. He'd always been such a strict law-and-order guy; he'd always felt so responsible. Now he'd begun to see how much couldn't be solved by the criminal justice system. Now he didn't know how he felt about police work in general. Catching killers was essentia], but he didn't believe in the job like he used to. He had lost his faith.

He stopped talking and stared at the ceiling. I didn't ask if that's what ended his marriage; I didn't want to bring up other women. I said, “But how did that lead to here?”

He tightened his hold on me. I put my head on his shoulder—it was more comfortable. His shirt smelled of aftershave and laundry starch. I had stopped feeling tense.

He said, “When we met at the crime scene, I didn't automatically think ‘liberal pain-in-the-ass.' It's surprising how fast your ideas can change, once the process is under way.”

He'd liked my looks, he said. He'd liked my bare feet and bed hair. He even didn't mind the lies; he was too busy trying to figure out my game. But the Colt had clinched it: the Colt upset all his preconceptions about journalists. It made him want to know more. He'd fixed it so I never dealt with his partner, only him. He'd talked to my family right off, when there were a hundred party guests to interview. He'd let me keep the sap and everything; he'd left the money in the attic. After the guy tried to kill me, he'd waited down the street to see if I'd call him back and admit I was afraid. And he'd gone along with my plan to trap Dale Denney to see if I'd really do it. He'd done all that to test me. He wanted to see who I was and what I'd do next; he'd taken chances with his case to find out. His only worry was that he repelled me because he was a cop.