“What do you think?” she asked, bright-eyed, her smile tentatively proud.
“Ship it,” I said.
But what she did was call it in, and somebody in New York took down the copy word-for-word (“… period, paragraph…”), all twenty-five hundred of them.
We took a late lunch at Nate ’n Al’s, both casual, though she’d traded her T-shirt and Levi’s for a white blouse and gray skirt. I still had on the lime-green polo and darker green Jaymar slacks I’d worn over to her place this morning. We laughed in the face of death by sharing a huge pastrami and Swiss cheese sandwich.
“You really like it?” she said eagerly.
“I love pastrami.”
She giggled. “No. You know…”
“I think,” I said grandly, Russian dressing dribbling down my mouth, “you will be the first Hollywood columnist ever to win the Pulitzer.”
She beamed, her blue eyes bright; her dark brown hair bounced at her shoulders, none of that bouffant noise. “You’re not teasing?”
“No. It’s a well-substantiated piece. What now?”
“Now I wait to hear from my editor.”
“Will he get back to you on a Saturday?”
“For this story, you bet.”
But she didn’t hear till deep into Sunday. I was back at my bungalow, and Sam had come over to use the hotel pool. I was in my swim trunks and a Catalina pullover, about to follow him out, when the phone rang.
She was in tears. And angry.
“Cocksuckers,” she said.
Flo didn’t swear lightly, so I knew at once her story had been nixed.
“What did your editor say?”
“He said I did a ‘damn good job of research.’ But even though the Herald Tribune is a Republican paper, this is an election year, and the story would seem a ‘gratuitous slap’ at the president and his brother. They’re killing it.”
“Christ, how the hell do you write off exposing a movie star’s murder as a gratuitous fucking slap?”
“I think this is more than just editorial policy. I… Nate, I know it’s more.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have contacts in the administration.” She wasn’t crying now, at least not sobbing, though she snuffled some. “They say the Trib sent the story over by telex and asked them to confirm or deny the reporting about Bobby and Jack. They refused to do either, which was bad enough, but you can bet some pressure was put on, behind the scenes.”
“Always is. Can you take it elsewhere?”
Her sigh seemed endless. Then: “If a paper as right-leaning as the Trib won’t print the thing, who will? I might find a magazine to use it, but I would likely lose my job. And I like my job. Anyway… I used to like my job…”
“I’ll come right over.”
“No. No, not today. I want to be alone today. We were up very late last night, remember…”
I did. We’d been giving those carpetbaggers a run for the money.
“… and I just have to zonk out. Get some sleep. I’m gonna pop some pills in the glorious Hollywood tradition, and just go away for a while… Bye, Nate.”
“Bye, baby.”
That was a fitting way for Flo to write -30- on this story, wasn’t it? Pop some sleeping pills? Zonk out like Zelda, aka Marilyn Monroe, the former Norma Jeane?
My son overheard this, my end anyway, and he gave me a worried, earnest look, the kind you can summon when you haven’t been in the world as long as the grown-ups.
“Jesus, Dad! What the hell happened? You sound really upset.”
I just shook a finger at him. “I’m fine. Don’t you go using bad fucking language, just because you hear me doing it.”
We went swimming.
The moon was nearly full. What its ivory touch could do with a godforsaken landscape was impressive-the narrow, rocky beach, the ribbon of concrete, the barren cliffside with scrubby brush hanging on for dear life. The ocean, as choppy tonight as it was vast, sported waves whose white peaks were like angels dancing on the void.
The two-story beach cottage the A-1 used as a safe house was nothing so grand as the Lawford villa on Sorrento Beach, also on the Pacific Coast Highway. But we were way north of that, between Sunset and Temescal Canyon. The modest clapboard, close enough to the ocean to require stilts, had no immediate neighbors, and was nicely isolated from any police presence.
The beach house had once been Fred’s, back when he was doing sport fishing (there was a marina a few miles up the highway). But now that my partner was getting on in years, he rarely went out, and then just for the sun and solitude. So we’d converted the property into one of our safe houses.
Part of the bottom floor was a carport, and I slipped the Jaguar in next to the nondescript dark blue Chevy Impala that Roger Pryor had driven out here. Presumably his employees were making use of the several panel trucks his agency owned. The two floors were set up as individual apartments, in case we needed to use the place for two witnesses or clients or whatever.
To get to the first-floor digs, you came around the side, on a little wooden-plank balcony-type walkway. The night was cool, especially considering how hot the day had been; I was in the ninja/tennis pro getup again, with the Browning nine-mil in my waistband under the unzipped Windbreaker.
I had a key but figured knocking was more polite. Wouldn’t want to walk in on the guy jacking off or taking a dump or pursuing some other undignified if necessary human activity.
Roger cracked the door, his blandly boyish countenance creased with worry, his thinning blonde hair looking slept on. He was in a green plaid sport shirt and tan slacks and socks, looking like a high school shop teacher, except for the lack of shoes and the. 38 revolver in his right hand.
“Nate,” he said. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”
He opened the door.
We were immediately in a living room with an assortment of secondhand furnishings-the A-1 did not splurge on its safe houses, knowing that those staying there were generally lucky to have anywhere to camp. But it wasn’t unpleasant. Homey, in a road company Leave It to Beaver fashion.
The small kitchen, at left (windows on the ocean were at right), was open onto the comfy living room area, with its couch and recliner and portable, rabbit-eared TV on a stand (Bonanza was on), all sharing a round braided rug.
Roger rested the. 38 on the kitchen table, its Formica modernity out of place against the ancient brown cabinets and a humming Century of Progress-era refrigerator.
“Cold one?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“There’s just beer. None of that soda shit you go for.”
“I’ll take a beer. We’ll pretend I’m a big boy.”
The sounds of the Cartwrights on the Ponderosa were annoying me, so I took the liberty of going in and switching off the set. This made more prominent the sound of surf rushing to shore, not far beyond the windows.
We wound up sitting in the little kitchen. That put the. 38 on the table between us. I didn’t blame Roger. I’d be cautious, too, if I were him. That’s why I brought the nine-mil.
He asked, fairly pleasantly but with a slight edge, “So how much longer am I going to have to be cooped up here?”
