The Ticket Out (6 page)

Lockwood gave me a look. “Has it occurred to you that you might have been the intended victim?”

“It did. But all the lights were on, and Stenholm and I aren't twins.”

“What if it was dark at the time? Maybe the killer made a mistake, then tried to cover it with the lights and simulated suicide.”

I felt a wave of fear—much stronger than anything I'd felt that morning. I sat down on the bed.

I whispered, “But there's no reason to kill me.”

“Just tell us where you decide to stay, and don't leave town under any circumstances.”

“How can I be a suspect
and
the intended victim?”

Lockwood held up his stopwatch. “When I say go, I want you to show me everything you did from the time you woke up. Go.”

He pressed the stem in.

“But-”

“Go.”

I leaned over and pretended to get my clothes off the floor. I pretended to put them on, wondering if this was payback for the way the
Millennium
had savaged him. But Lockwood's face told me zero.

I
DROVE INTO
the office at dinnertime thinking about a cartoon. It was an animated short I saw at a festival once called “Bambi Meets Godzilla.” A giant prehistoric claw comes down from the sky and squashes a doe grazing at the bottom of the frame. It lasted less than a minute.
Splat!
The End. And you laughed.

My encounter with Lockwood was just as lopsided. I had braced myself for a hero's resistance and he broke me down so fast, it was pathetic. The Xerox machine, my computer, my family, the Colt: he'd gotten everything there was to get almost. He didn't even give me a chance to struggle; I never saw the claw coming.

But I wasn't squashed flat. He didn't find my copies of Greta Stenholm's Filofax. He hadn't threatened legal action, or warned me in graphic terms not to get involved. I'd expected him to play the prehistoric heavy, and he hadn't. But he did make one mistake. I discovered it after he left. When he erased my notes on the crime scene, he didn't think to look for a backup file. I always put an extra backup file on disk.

So I had the xeroxes, and I still had my notes. All I needed now was Barry's permission to go ahead. I was determined to fight him for it, but I also had to be diplomatic. I remembered what Mark said about Barry's schizy mood—and I remembered our last conversation. It wasn't smart to hang up on him.

Barry's assistant had gone for the night. I knocked on Barry's door and walked in unannounced. He looked up from what he was reading.

“Where have you been?”

“I didn't know you were expecting me.”

“We have to discuss your piece. Where've you
been?”

“With Lockwood.”

“All this time? What for?”

I sat down on the edge of his desk. “Like you, Lockwood thinks I did it.”

“I was kidding, Ann. You can't take a joke anymore.”

“I can when it's funny. Have you talked to the cops?”

“Some guy named Smith came by a few hours ago.”

“He's Lockwood's partner. What did you say?”

“Tell the pigs as little as possible, that's always been my rule.”

“Barry, Jesus, a woman was murdered!”

“And I'm sorry for it, believe me.” He pushed a folder across the desk. “I've put together the clips on the Burger King siege.”

I leaned my elbow on the folder so he couldn't take it back. I said, “I think your friend Scott Dolgin knew her. I saw him try and talk to her.”

“Yes, he told me, but he was just being a good host. As far as we can tell, she crashed the party. She wasn't on my list or Scott's, and nobody I've called knew who she was.”

“But she knew about In-Casa Productions. I heard her say it was a farce.”

Barry tapped the folder. “I want twelve hundred words on Lockwood by next week. Let's concentrate on that.”

He could act like he didn't hear me, but I'd already set the research in motion. I'd called Mark from home and he agreed to call his Industry contacts for information on the former film student Greta Stenholm.

Barry tapped the folder again. I opened it and checked out a handwritten note on top. I recognized Vivian's writing and skimmed a couple of sentences: it was cop-groupie gossip about Douglas Lockwood's love life. Vivian liked the juicy stuff.

I closed the file, smiling. “I thought you wanted an experienced reporter for this assignment.”

“I changed my mind. You're already inside his line of defense, and you have an excuse for maintaining contact. No other reporter would get that kind of access—”

The telephone interrupted him. Barry ignored it. It rang three times before I said, “Aren't you going to answer?”

Barry shook his head. “It's been ringing all day—every news organization in town wants to talk to us.”

I'd seen reporters on the street when Lockwood drove me to the House of Pies. A lieutenant had been briefing them, but Lockwood's presence caused a bigger stir than the murder. He'd referred all questions back to the lieutenant and refused interviews to the on-camera people. I missed the evening news so I didn't know how the murder, or Lockwood's reappearance, was treated.

The phone stopped ringing. I said, “Doesn't everyone have their hands full with Rampart?”

Barry said, “Rampart's getting old, and she was a foxy blond killed in a rich neighborhood.”

“Good thing we have the exclusive.”

“You're not doing her.”

I leaned toward him. “Scott Dolgin is a typical—”

“You don't know anything about Scott.”

“I know that he's not news.
I want Greta Stenholm.”

Barry took a deep breath and came on with his tone of patronizing omniscience. “Ann. Doug Lockwood is our only concern now. This newspaper's mission, one of them, is to get dirty cops off the streets of L.A. I think we can pressure Lockwood into retirement if we make it a big enough issue.”

I forgot to be diplomatic. I thumped the desk with my fist.

“Look, yesterday I realized I was sick of my job. You said yourself that my reviews had gotten bitchy, and I was going to ask you for a break. Now I don't want a break. Now I have an opportunity to write a real blood-and-guts story about Hollywood. I care more about movies than I do about the LAPD—”

Barry broke in. “You've made that clear at editorial meetings.”

I thumped the desk again. “Because it's not my fight! I have nothing earth-shattering to add on the subject of police brutality and corruption. I can't imagine Lockwood will talk to me, or what's left to say about dirty cops. But I'm not doing
him
unless you let me do
her.
If I can't do
her,
I'll—”

The phone started to ring. Barry lifted the receiver and dropped it back in its cradle.

I smiled. “—I'll go somewhere else with two stories that any editor will pay money for.”

Barry shook his head. I decided it was time for a bluff: I stood up to leave. He grabbed my jacket and pulled me back down. He said, “You're not getting it. She was murdered at
my
party—it's an embarrassment for everyone involved.”

“I don't see why. It's not your fault she crashed the gate.” I brushed his hand off and picked up the Burger King file.

Barry said, “I don't want the piece.”

“Then I'll call an editor I know at the
Times.”

I started to walk out. Behind me, Barry said, “Wait.”

I turned around; Barry was tugging at his hair. I stood there and watched him. We'd played brinksmanship before. If Mark was right, and my position with Barry was precarious, I'd find out now.

A minute went by on the wall clock, and another minute. One minute more and Barry nodded. “But do Lockwood first. I want twelve hundred words by next Tuesday.”

He waved me out of the office and picked up the telephone. As I shut the door I heard him say, “Scott, it's me.”

 

G
RETA
S
TENHOLM
had lived a block south of Hollywood Boulevard over by the Chinese Theater.

I made a left off La Brea and cruised for a place to park. The city had renovated the Boulevard, but her street was residential Hollywood in all its eclectic squalor. Front lawns were worn through to dirt and paved over for driveways. A few bungalows survived, squeezed in by dingy apartments in every style from '30s Spanish to '60s Tiki Village. 7095 Hawthorn was a four-story building with mosquelike minarets. Eroded Moorish carvings framed the front door and ground-floor windows.

I parked outside and walked up the front stairs. They led to a lobby lined with mailboxes, and a long dim hall. The mailboxes were numbered with a black pen. Stenholm's apartment was number 1. I jiggled the lock on her mailbox. It was old and I thought it might give, but it didn't. The building manager lived in apartment four.

I walked down the hall and rang the buzzer to number four. A man cracked the door with the chain on. I could only see a bloodshot eye and a patch of three-day beard. I said, “Greta Stenholm—”

He didn't let me finish, “—can go to hell.”

“Why do you say that?”

The guy coughed; I smelled cigarettes on his breath. “First, she gets her apartment broken into, and I gotta replace the doorknob. Then after I let her slide on rent, she takes advantage of my good nature and I have to kick her out for delinquency. Then just when I think I seen the last of her, she's here Saturday stealing change from my candy machines.”

He started to close the door. I stuck my shoe in the crack. “Wait! When was her apartment broken into?”

“Last winter.”

“Was she hurt? Was something stolen?”

He grunted and leaned on the door. I leaned on it from my side. “When did you evict her?”

“June.”

“Where'd she go?”

He said, “Like I give a rat's ass?” He kicked my shoe and slammed the door shut.

I knocked again, and kept knocking. He turned up his TV to drown me out. I walked back to apartment number one and knocked there. I pressed my eye to the old brass peephole. The glass was funky and I couldn't see inside.

Someone walked into the lobby from the street.

It was a short swarthy man. He wore a Hawaiian shirt untucked over white pants, and loafers with buckles. Before I could move, he walked up and rapped at Stenholm's door. I nearly gagged on the smell of his cologne.

He said, “You Greta Stenholm?”

I tried to ease past him. “Yes, I mean, no—”

He grabbed my arm and pushed me into the utility room. He pinned me to the wall, pulled an envelope out of his waistband, and laid it alongside my cheek. My mind said to kick him, but I couldn't. My legs froze—I froze.

He said,
“Take it.”

I couldn't lift my arm. He jammed the envelope into my coat pocket. I heard the pocket rip.

“My client says to forget the second part. It isn't doable.”

He gave me a shove and let go. That unfroze me. I kicked out and caught his shin. The guy didn't blink: he raised a fist and slugged me right in the face. My head hit the wall, my knees hit the floor, and the room went black.

I
WAS UNCONSCIOUS
for a solid half hour. I'd been punched before, and I took a pretty good one, but I'd never been hit that hard ever. When I came to, I couldn't even sit up. My head spun and I felt hot all over. All I could do was lie there and stare at the brooms.

I felt a lump pressing my hip and remembered the envelope. I reached for it, bit open the flap, and counted the separate bundles. I handled everything as best I could by the edges. It was slow work, lying on my side. I counted twice to make myself believe it.

The envelope contained twenty thousand dollars. The money was still in its original bank wrappers. Twenty thousand-dollar bundles in new hundred-dollar bills.

Twenty thousand bucks in cash.

I managed eventually to stand up. Using the broom rack for support, I stuffed the money in my jeans. My head hurt so bad that my eyes watered. I felt my way out of the utility room, wiping the tears off as I went. How I found the car I couldn't say. How I got home I couldn't say. Los Feliz wasn't far from Hollywood but the trip was a blur. I remembered stopping a couple of times to rest.

Three reporters had staked out the mansion. As I pulled into the drive, they surrounded my car and started asking questions. I told them no comment, go away. They kept at me. I lost my temper and told them to fuck off. The tone turned ugly. One guy threatened to ram my car. I locked the doors and prepared to wait them out. Feeling hot and dizzy, I lay back on the seat and fainted again.

When I woke up at midnight the reporters were gone.

 

I
ROLLED OVER
in bed and slowly opened my eyes. I was looking at French doors, a balcony, and bright blue sky. The light hurt. I covered my eyes and tried to think where I was. What did I do after I parked...

It came back to me. I was upstairs in the mansion. I had crashed on the foldaway couch when I realized I couldn't face the pool house at night. I'd decided not to sleep there until they caught the killer. Or I stopped feeling weird about living where someone had died—if I ever did.

I uncovered my eyes and checked the time. Early. I wanted more sleep, but I knew I couldn't.

I sat up.

The movement jarred my head. It started to ache. It made my teeth and jaw ache.

I had dumped my clothes beside the bed. Reaching down, I felt around and grabbed the envelope. I smoothed the blankets and emptied the money out in a pile. I arranged the bundles into two rows of ten. Then I rearranged them to make a G and an S.

The money proved two things. It proved that she
did
blackmail someone; it wasn't just a logical leap based on the spanking picture and her empty wallet. And it proved that the blackmail wasn't related to her death. You wouldn't pay her off a day after you'd murdered her.