Timothy Hallinan - Incinerator

The San Fernando Valley was 8 to 10 degrees hotter than the other side of the hills, making it around 100. The Santa Anas had shouldered the smog out over the Pacific, and the Valley spread below me like the world’s biggest, driest sink.

The Moorpark address was a small hospital, obviously private, a cluster of low white buildings sheltered from the slanting afternoon sunlight by tall eucalyptus trees. There were lots of visitors’ spaces, most of them empty. I pulled Alice into one and left her there, a bright blue blemish on the asphalt.

The starched, crinkly-white imitation nurse wrapped an expensive smile around the information that Mr. Winston was in 312 and that Miss Winston was with him and that I should follow the yellow line. Sure enough, there was a yellow line on the floor. There were also blue and red lines. Fighting down an obscure desire to find out where the red line went, I followed the yellow one down a long, arctically air-conditioned corridor and around a corner. There, seated on a black leather couch with chromium armrests, was Annabelle Winston.

She wasn’t alone. With her was a youngish man who was clearly working at looking youngisher. His dark, wet-looking hair was combed straight back from a high, tanned forehead. His eyes were too close together, but he had fine bones and a broad mouth with a little too much lower lip. It looked as though he’d pouted once too often as a boy and the expression had stuck, just as my mother always predicted my eyes would when I crossed them. He was holding Annabelle’s hand in what seemed to be a brotherly fashion.

The two of them got up together as I rounded the corner. Annabelle extracted her hand from the man’s grasp and said, “Mr. Grist. Thank you for coming. Have you got anything for me?”

“You bet,” I said.

“This is Bobby Grant,” she said. Bobby Grant stuck out a tan paw, and I shook it briefly. His white linen safari shirt had enough pockets for a very long safari indeed, and his beige pleated trousers were accented with pencil-thin green and red stripes about two inches apart. He wore lizard-skin loafers with no socks. I’ve never trusted men who don’t wear socks.

“Bobby is the one who arranged the press conference,” Annabelle Winston said. “He handles all my West Coast PR.”

“Good job yesterday,” I said nastily.

“We had a real story,” Grant said in a higher voice than I’d expected. He obviously thought he was looking at me, but his eyes were focused about two inches above my head. “It’s easy when you’ve got real news,” he added, modestly minimizing his accomplishment. “A lot easier than product.” He also, I noted, sported a single gold earring, a modest loop that dangled from his left earlobe. He reached up and tugged on it, and Annabelle Winston looked on obliviously. The lesson of Harvey Melnick hadn’t taken.

“Product?” I asked. I didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about.

“We put Bobby in charge of introducing our new skinless franks a year ago,” Annabelle said. She was wearing a silk suit that could have been a twin of the one she’d worn yesterday except that it was gunmetal gray. It complemented the agate eyes very nicely. “There wasn’t much space from that one.”

“Well, wieners,” Bobby said. I wondered if he’d still call himself Bobby when he was sixty, and decided that he probably would.

“Franks,” Annabelle Winston said absently.

“Miss Winston,” I began.

“Call me Annabelle,” she said. She reached up and touched my cheek. “I feel I know you well enough for that.” She wasn’t making it easy. “You’re my main hope,” she said, making it even worse.

“I spoke to the cops today,” I said, by way of starting out.

“And they didn’t know what you were talking about,” she said.

“Well,” I admitted, “not at first.”

“Even after the papers this morning?” Bobby Grant sounded personally affronted. “My God, front page of the Times. What are these people, blind?”

“Do you see why I need you, Simeon?” Annabelle said.

This was not going right. By now I should have been back out in the parking lot, sweet-talking Alice into starting. I drew a breath.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m quitting.”

Annabelle Winston took a step back, and Bobby Grant put out a hand to steady her. Even at that moment, I’d never seen a woman less in need of steadying. Her eyes widened.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means I’m off the job. Finished. Kaput.” The word brought Velez Caputo to mind, and I shrugged it away. “You told me I was the only person on the case.”

“You are,” Annabelle Winston said, her eyes fixed on mine.

“Yeah? What’s he?” I asked, nodding toward Bobby Grant. “A skinless wiener?”

Bobby Grant’s lower lip protruded even further. I wondered how much of it he was holding in reserve. Maybe he kept it curled up, like a butterfly’s tongue.

“He’s not a detective,” she said, as though that answered everything.

“He held a press conference,” I said. “He and you,” I amended. “You announced to the whole world that you’d retained me. You didn’t even have the courtesy to let me know. I wake up in the morning, and everybody except David Frost is calling me for an interview.”

“David Frost is in England,” Bobby Grant said professionally. “If he weren’t, this is his kind of story.”

“I don’t want to be part of anybody’s story. I’m a detective. I need a certain amount of anonymity in order to be able to do my job. Not to mention the fact that the guy who burned your father wrote me a letter and delivered it to my house.”

“He did?” It was the first time I’d seen Annabelle Winston look genuinely surprised.

“Himself,” I said. “When I took the job, I acknowledged that I was willing to go looking for him. I’m not willing to have him looking for me. I’m flammable.”

“We made a mistake,” Annabelle Winston said contritely.

“What are you talking about?” Bobby Grant said. “He’s writing letters now. That could be a breakthrough,” he added, sounding like Hammond Lite.

“Bobby,” Annabelle Winston said. It was the vocal equivalent of a one-way ticket to Siberia. “Go away.”

“But, but,” Bobby sputtered.

“Just scram,” Annabelle Winston said. “Down the hall. Anywhere. This instant.” She snapped her fingers. Bobby gave her a betrayed look and faded about six feet behind her.

“We made a mistake,” she said again. “All I was trying to do was light a fire under the cops.”

“Miss Winston,” I said. “You succeeded. You also robbed me of whatever advantage I might have had in trying to find the Crisper.” She winced at the word. “What’s more, and what’s probably more serious, you pissed off the police. Before Bobby orchestrated his headlines, I had a chance at getting hold of whatever they have. Now I might as well be wearing a bell around my neck and a sign that says Unclean. They’re embarrassed. Cops are macho, you know. They don’t like to be embarrassed. It makes them feel impotent.”

She lowered her head. “Forgive me,” she said.

“I forgive you,” I said. “But I’m finished.”

“We’re finished, Miss Winston,” echoed a male voice. “You can go back in now.” I hadn’t heard the door open.

The owner of the voice was a young doctor wearing an ill-advised pencil-thin mustache. His face was the shade of gray that the relatives of patients don’t want to see. He’d been through something for which his training hadn’t prepared him.

“Is he…?” Annabelle Winston let the question hang in the air.

“Sedated,” the doctor said, touching the mustache with an experimental thumbnail. “This is the part that hurts.” He looked at me. “Changing the dressing,” he explained. “We have to put him out.”