Al Sarrantonio - Cold Night

He angled back his chair, pulling open a small drawer in his desk. Inside was a thin machine. He lifted it out. Also in the drawer was a row of microcassettes. He looked them over briefly, then selected one. He removed a cassette from the machine and put in the one he had chosen.

"We would have been able to hear this through the speakers you destroyed. I hope the little speaker in the machine does the tape justice."

He pushed a button, and there was the hiss of rolling tape. There was a beep followed by Paine's voice saying, "What made you look for me here?" Rebecca Meyer's voice, sounding distant but clear, answered, "I called you at home. Your wife answered and said you might be here."

There was more conversation, followed by rustling sounds and panting, and then Paine heard himself say, "I have a problem there." Barker's face was filled with amusement. "That's the way," Rebecca Meyer breathed heavily a few moments later. "That's it."

There was more. Paine listened to it for a few moments and then he looked at Barker's face and Barker smiled. He turned off the machine and the sounds went away.

"There's a copy of this tape in another place," Barker said, "so please don't destroy this machine. It's very expensive and you couldn't afford to pay for it." He removed the tape and replaced it with the one that had been in the machine. He put everything back into the drawer and closed it.

"As you realize," Barker said, "this tape is useless to me as far as you are concerned. But it could do considerable damage to Rebecca Meyer. She's in the middle of a rather delicate divorce at the moment. Her husband, Gerald, and his many lawyers would love to get hold of this."

"You and Gloria Fulman used it as a lever on Rebecca to get her to drop the case."

Barker shrugged. "Let's say they had a sisterly chat over the telephone." He plucked a third cigarette from his case, looked down at it. "You're fired, of course. I'd like you to leave immediately."

Paine thought about hitting him. He thought about hitting him until his teeth slid out of their gums and his mouth was full of blood. He thought about hitting him until that ugly crippled loser little-boy look came back into his eyes. He wanted to see Manny Barkewitz, the proto-Barker, the scared, bitter human mold that had made the less-than-human thing in front of him. If he did that, if he made Barker see that he was still the scared bitter little boy that everybody beat up on, that nothing had changed, that for all his faking, all his makeup and careful tailoring and false practiced looks, he was still a cripple, then perhaps Barker would truly own himself. Perhaps if he saw that we are all cripples, and that we all get beat up, and badly, and that ultimately the bully who does the beating isn't the fat kid with pimples who lives on the next block, or the tall kid with thin blond hair over his collar and a $1.98 switchblade out to impress his friends because he can't impress himself, but the cold night itself, perhaps then he could truly put Manny Barkewitz to rest.

Instead of teaching a valuable lesson, Paine said, "Goodbye, Barker."

In his apartment Paine dialed the phone. It rang for a long time and then Gerald Meyer answered it. He sounded as though he had been in Morris Grumbach's dark green study, using the bar.

"Dear Rebecca left for parts unknown," he said brightly. "She packed and went. Didn't leave any note for you, dear boy."

Paine interrupted the monologue. "Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"

He laughed. "Lord, no. She may have gone to Cape Cod, possibly to Maine, maybe even to Nova Scotia. The wonderful Grumbachs have homes everywhere. Perhaps she went to London, or Switzerland. I'm sure she'll be back before too long. Any message, old fellow?"

Paine hung up.

He dialed another number. Bob Petty was groggy when he answered.

"Beauty sleep, Bob?" Paine asked.

Petty forced himself into wakefulness. "Fell asleep in front of the TV. Hill Street Blues. Lousy show." He yawned.

"Get anything on that picture?" Paine asked.

"Christ, I only faxed it out to L.A. a couple of hours ago," Petty complained. "Actually, I tried to reach you before I fell asleep. I got a call back on it just as I was leaving work. Hold on."

Petty went away from the phone; Paine heard the mumble of a television set abruptly cut to silence and then a barely audible exchange of words. The other voice sounded like Terry's. Petty uttered a curse that Paine heard clearly. Both voices receded. Finally, Petty returned to the phone.

"Sorry about that, Jack. Terry almost washed my shirt with your information in the pocket." Paine heard the crackle of paper. "They found your bird right away. His name was Jeffrey Steppen."

"Was?"

"Naturally. Died in 1970. At least this one had a birth date, though. Born in 1935."

"How did he die?"

"Fell off a boat and drowned, north of L.A. Body was never recovered. Are you ready? Morris Grumbach owned the boat."

"Wow."

"Yeah, and it stays interesting. Steppen was an FBI agent."

"Jesus. There's our FBI connection."

"My buddy Ray is trying to find out what he can about Steppen, but don't expect much. The FBI is tight on their own people."

"Can't thank you enough, Bobby."

"Getting real interesting, Jack."

Paine hung up and dialed the California number on the slip of paper in his wallet. The woman who had been yelling at Izzy said, "Hello?" Paine hung up the phone.

He took out the packets of photos and went through them until he found the one with the man and woman and horse. A stand of eucalyptus trees bordered the field to the left.

Paine put the picture away and began to pack.

This wasn't Boston, and Paine wasn't in a limousine. Driving a rented Escort, he saw more of L.A. than he needed. Any of it, he decided, was too much. It looked like every lousy television show portrayed it: wide-open spaces filled with a multitude of facades. It looked like it had been glued together haphazardly, like Jimmy Carnaseca's practical joke. Even the sky was a facade: so wide and blue it hurt his eyes, but, when viewed from the hills above the city, revealing itself as an orange cumulus that had hurt his eyes not with its breadth, but with its sulphur dioxide content. He had been in Tucson once, a place that was supposed to be good for your lungs; but, forty miles beyond the city, from the summit of Kitt Peak where he'd gone to see the telescopes perched on that sacred mountain like God's eyes, he'd been startled to see a similar salmon-colored cloud hanging over that Arizona town. Los Angeles (there were fallen angels, weren't there?) made Tucson's smog look like fresh air. He doubted if you could see any stars-never mind the Big Dipper-from the center of L.A.

The place he was looking for turned out not to be the seedbag apartment he'd imagined, but a tidy ranch house at the edge of the Hollywood Hills. It might even show on some outdated celebrity map, labeled the home of a rising television star.

The house had had security, at one time. There were bolt marks bereft of paint on the chin-high wrought-iron fence where the cameras had been, and the heavy iron gate showed a sawed-out spot where a remote lock had been. The television star had moved, and the new tenants hadn't kept up the payments on the security system.

Paine pushed the gate open and walked a path through a tiny garden of unwatered flowers to the front door.

The woman opened it, and she had the phoniest smile he'd ever seen. "Oh?" she said perkily, striking an artless pose. She looked like a cheap model fondling an auto show Buick. He had imagined her fat and blonde, but she was anorexic and her hair was long and red. She was about fifty-five, the might-as-well-be-dead age for women on the make in California. She looked vaguely familiar-someone who might have played an aging actress looking for an aging mate on The Love Boat.