Timothy Hallinan - Incinerator

“ ‘Alacrity’?” I asked Eleanor.

“Keep reading,” she said.

At a press conference called immediately following the LAPD announcement, Abraham Winston’s daughter, Annabelle, denounced police inaction on the case to date. “The victims are dispossessed persons,” Miss Winston said, reading from a prepared statement. “That does not lessen the agony they experienced. If these people had lived in Bel Air or in Beverly Hills, rather than on the streets, someone would be in jail by now. Instead, five people are dead and my father will probably die within a matter of hours. I have no faith in the ability of the Los Angeles Police Department to bring the murderer to justice. Therefore, I have hired a private investigator who will report to me, and I have put the resources of Winston Enterprises at his disposal. At the least, I hope my action will goad the police into a renewed effort. At the most, I believe that the man I have hired will bring this monster to justice.”

“Where are you?” Eleanor asked.

“Something about monsters and justice. I wonder who wrote this stuff for her.”

“A PR man,” Eleanor said. “You don’t just call a press conference, you know. Somebody has to know which press to call.”

“Sweet bleeding Jesus,” I said, reading ahead.

“I was waiting for that,” Eleanor said. “Read it out loud.”

“In response to reporters’ questions, Miss Winston, who was nicknamed Baby by the media during her reign as one of America’s most prominent debutantes, identified the investigator she had retained as Simeon Grist of Topanga. Mr. Grist, thirty-seven, came to prominence several months ago in the breakup of an interstate ring that was trafficking in children for immoral purposes. Several suspects are now in custody, awaiting arraignment in that case. One of them is a former LAPD sergeant.”

“See what I mean?” Eleanor said. “Double whammy.”

“ ‘Attempts to reach Mr. Grist for comment were unsuccessful,’ ” I read. “That’s because I was out getting poisoned with Hammond. They called again this morning, though.”

“Don’t talk to them until you know what to say,” Eleanor said. “What about your answering machine?”

“I didn’t check it.”

“If you had,” Eleanor said, “you’d have known that I called to tell you that your name was on the radio last night.”

“Radio?”

“And television. And now print. Home run.”

“I haven’t got a friend in the world,” I said.

“You’ve got Baby.” Eleanor’s tone wasn’t pleasant.

“Swell. An ex-debutante with a checkbook. I feel like the last candle before the ice age.”

Eleanor sat back and regarded me as though I were a new and unpromising life-form. Jealousy hadn’t been a factor in the early stages of our relationship, but it had found its way in when I began cheating on her, for reasons I still didn’t understand. Now that we were no longer together, the jealousy remained, vestigial, like the knee-jerk reflex in an amputated leg.

Balancing my cup unsteadily in my hand, I checked the machine. I had urgent messages from channels Two, Four (twice), Five, Seven, Nine, Eleven, and Thirteen. Also CBS News in New York and six local radio stations.

“Just what every private detective wants to be,” I said. “Public.” I changed chairs and sat on a large, uncompromising lump.

“If I might suggest a policy,” Eleanor said, softening enough to lean forward. She looked good enough to spread on toast.

“Suggest until you’re blue in the face,” I said, fishing the lump out from under me. It was Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, one of the challenges I’d promised myself I’d get through in what had looked like a nice, slow summer. “I haven’t got a clue.”

“It’s a two-point policy,” she said. “First, plug your phone back in and say something boring to everyone who calls. That was Henry Kissinger’s policy. Whenever he was asked a question he didn’t want to answer, he began his reply with the words, ‘As I said yesterday,’ and everyone stopped taking notes. Just tell whoever calls that you’ve given an exclusive statement to someone else. At least it’ll get them off your tail.”

“And the second point?” I realized I was still holding Sister Carrie. It felt heavier than a broken promise, and I dropped it to the floor. It landed with the substantial thump of serious literature.

“Quit the case.” She put down her cup. Bravo’s ears went up, as they always did, at the clink of crockery.

“That’s not so easy,” I said.

“And why not? This guy could wind up burning you.”

“Abraham Winston was a good man. He didn’t deserve to be cooked on the sidewalk. And she’s right, the cops haven’t been doing all they could, or even half of all they could. It’s just a bunch of bums as far as they’re concerned. Remember the Skid Row Ripper? They never worked that one out, either.”

Eleanor gave me an eloquent Chinese shrug, a shrug with thousands of years of equivocation behind it. “So hang yourself out to dry,” she said. “There’s still point one. Plug in the phone.”

I did, and it rang. I looked at her questioningly, but she’d already gotten up to get more coffee. “Boring,” she said, over her shoulder. “Just be boring.”

I picked it up.

“Mr. Grist?” said a voice I almost recognized. “Please hold for Mr. Stillman.”

I covered the mouthpiece. “Norman Stillman,” I said in agony.

“He could be interesting,” Eleanor said without looking around. She was pouring.

I doubted that, but I hung on. I had met Stillman before. In fact, I’d worked for him, and not very happily, when one of the stars he employed had gotten himself into trouble. His company, imaginatively named Norman Stillman Productions, gave the television audience what it wanted, which is to say blood and guts and sex and sensationalism and depravity, all under the banner of family entertainment. Stillman’s sole virtue, in my eyes, was that he actually liked the shows he produced.

There was a muffled click, and Stillman came on the line. “So, Mr. Grist, you’re famous at last,” he said unctuously. It wasn’t hard to picture him in his big, fat office with nautical charts all over the walls and a big brass-and-wood wheel from a nineteenth-century sloop mounted above the desk.

“You can’t imagine how I’ve hungered for it, Norman,” I said. “It’s a dream come true.” I shrugged helplessly at Eleanor.

Stillman judiciously measured out a laugh. “Well, when I saw your name this morning, the old penny dropped.” He sounded paternal and jocular. When Norman Stillman sounded paternal and jocular, it was time to button your wallet and count your change.

“Was I in Variety!”

There was a moment of silence, during which Stillman decided to take it lightly. “I read the Times, too, Mr. Grist,” he said. “I must say, I had hoped time would have mellowed you.”

Eleanor handed me a fresh cup of coffee. “You were saying something about a penny,” I reminded him.

“A penny? Oh. Oh, yes, the famous dropping penny. Only figurative, of course. I had something considerably more substantial in mind.”

Eleanor sat down opposite me, her eyebrows raised. I waited. Stillman didn’t say anything. After a moment, I started to whistle. I’ve found it irritates the hell out of the person on the other end of the phone.

Stillman said, “A few minutes, Dierdre.” I was willing to bet that Dierdre, his long-suffering secretary, wasn’t even in the room. Then he said: “Do you know Velez Caputo?”

“Personally?” I mouthed at Eleanor, “Velez Caputo.” Eleanor made a sign in the air that looked like a backward S with two vertical strokes drawn through it.