Timothy Hallinan - Incinerator

“You can still carry out point two. You can quit. I don’t care about the nice man who got set on fire, I care about you. That Baby or whatever her name is had no right to call a press conference without telling you she was going to do it. How do you know this crazy won’t come after you?”

“I’m not his type,” I said, with more conviction than I felt.

“It even says where you live. In Topanga. Suppose-”

“He’s been burning the homeless.”

She looked around the shack, much the worse for wear since she’d left. “You almost qualify.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said, watching her. We hadn’t been talking much lately, since she’d begun to date someone else. Jealousy worked two ways.

“Well, she shouldn’t,” Eleanor began, then stopped, catching my eyes. “She shouldn’t have held that press conference, even if she does have all the money in the world. That guy…” She trailed off. “This is complicated, you know?” she asked, looking at Bravo. “I mean, I still love you. In a way.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said. I didn’t have the courage to say anything else.

Hand in hand, something we did out of habit, we went down the driveway, as she accompanied me on the first phase of the journey that would take me to the Bel Air Hotel to tender my resignation. Bravo Corrigan trotted along next to us, sniffing professionally at the bushes, a big, longhaired, raffish canine bum. At the bottom of the driveway, I noticed something unusual for a Sunday: The red flag on the mailbox was vertical, and there was a piece of paper wedged between the hinged door of the mailbox and the mailbox proper. And with Eleanor standing behind me and looking nosily over my shoulder, I opened and read the letter from the Crisper.

“Darling,” I said, calling Eleanor something I hadn’t called her in more than a year, “all the rules just got changed.”

The first thing I did was get rid of Eleanor. She protested that I’d promised her lunch, but I sold her on a rain-check and watched her coast her little Acura down the hill. After she left, I waded through the heat and back up the rutted, unpaved driveway and put in the call to Hammond.

Then came the hangover-fueled discussion at Parker Center. When it was over and Willick had retired to some upstairs cubicle to type his notes, Hammond walked with me to the underground garage.

“So now what?” he asked, lighting one of the vicious cigars he smoked to enhance his image.

“So now I quit, Loot,” I said, fanning at the smoke. I opened the iridescent blue door of my car, Alice, and got in. Hammond propped a size-twelve double-E shoe against the door to keep me from closing it.

“You’re the only one he’s written to,” he said.

“And let’s not keep it that way,” I said. I used my own foot to shove Hammond’s away and slammed the door. “What do you think, Al, that I want to be on that lunatic’s Christmas card list?”

“We’re going to check the cars on your street,” he said. “I mean, we’re already checking them.” He leaned a beefy forearm on the open window on the driver’s side. “We could be looking at a lead.”

“Look at it by yourself. I’m out. All I have to do is talk to Baby. Then I’m going to go surfing. Phone me at the beach if you need me.”

“Could be important,” he said.

“I hope it is,” I said. “I hope you nail the clown. You, not me.”

“The note’s for real,” he said, telling me something I hadn’t learned while Willick was present. “The psychologists say so.”

“Well, good for them. Here’s hoping he gets one of their addresses next time.”

“He won’t. The shrinks are invisible.”

“Well, then, here’s hoping he gets yours.” It was a nasty thing to say, but it had been a nasty morning. I twisted the key in Alice’s ignition, and she caught.

“Sure,” Hammond said. “There’s nobody living there anyway.” He lifted his arm from the window while I tried to think of anything to say.

“Thanks for last night,” Hammond said unexpectedly. “I know I was pushing it.”

“Al the Red,” I said, leaning out to thump him on the shoulder. It was okay with Hammond if you touched him, but only if you did it with your hand clenched into a fist. “Nobody’s going to get Al the Red.”

He nodded in a morose way, and I headed Alice out into the sparse Sunday traffic toward Bel Air.

The Bel Air Hotel on a Sunday afternoon, even during the worst week of the worst October in years, looked more like a postcard than it did like a real place. I crossed the bridge over the hotel’s private stream, and one of the hotel’s private swans hissed a welcome at me. Tall sycamores shaded the grounds, their broad leaves intercepting the steady rain of ash from the latest rash of fires in the Santa Monica Mountains. Even so, there was a short Hispanic man with a wet cloth and a bucket of water cleaning the ferns. He did it slowly, meticulously, with total absorption, one frond at a time, as though there were nothing more important in the world than preventing the sensibilities of the rich from being offended by the sight of ash on the ferns.

The rich themselves were in ample evidence, their sensibilities apparently intact. I’d forgotten which room Baby Winston was in, so I checked the dining room first. It was packed. Sunday is brunch day at the Bel Air. From about eleven until about five, rich people carefully underdress and pay someone to tousle their hair before heading for the Bel Air to compliment each other on their appearance, compare notes on doctors and domestics, talk deals, and get swozzled.

Baby wasn’t there. That left what I should have done in the first place. Resigning myself to the possibility that I might never develop her economy of movement, I crossed the little bridge over the moat and headed for the front desk.

“I’m sorry, but she’s not here.” The desk clerk was a motherly type in her middle forties who had chosen to celebrate Sunday by pinning a large, purple, vaguely vulpine orchid to her left lapel. The desk clerk shook her head sympathetically, and the orchid stuck its purple-specked tongue out at me.

“Perhaps she left a message,” I said. “My name is Grist.”

“Well, perhaps she did.” The desk clerk sounded as though she disapproved of the fact that she hadn’t thought of that on her own. “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” she sang to herself on a descending scale as she flipped through a stack of envelopes. “Whoopsy-daisy, here we are.” She started to hand me an envelope and then pulled back her hand and regarded me suspiciously. She pursed her mouth, working out the protocol. “Mr. Simeon Grist?” she asked, the picture of vigilance.

“Yes.”

“All right, then. This is for you.” She smiled maternally and handed me the envelope.

“Look,” I said, “you did that all wrong.”

“How do you mean, dearie?” I wondered what I’d done to become “dearie.” “Miss Winston said to give it only to Simeon Grist, and that’s what I did.” Her blue eyes were as open as the Canadian border.

“Never mind,” I said. “Love the orchid.”

Annabelle Winston’s note was an address: 13731 Moorpark, Sherman Oaks. Beneath that she’d written, Ten till six. There was no phone number.

“Well, shit,” I said out loud. Sherman Oaks was a long way to drive just to quit a case.

“Icky, icky,” said the desk clerk behind me. “There’s no need for such language.” The way she was looking at me, I was no longer “dearie.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I have no breeding at all.”

I took Laurel Canyon up over the top of the Hollywood Hills. Rainbirds chopped at the air like machine guns, shooting out long, glittering arcs of water. People were keeping the foliage green just in case, a perfect example of baseless optimism. A really hot fire creates its own winds, and the winds always blow up. Given enough momentum, a brushfire can move up a hill at twenty miles an hour, exploding everything in its path. A nice green lawn offers about as much protection as drawing the Venetian blinds.