Holly’s name, and Salaman thought he was sleeping with a star, bragging around town about it. I flew to Miami the end of August to put a stop to it.”
“Why didn’t you put a stop to it?”
“I did. At least I thought I did. I gave her twenty-four hours to crawl back into the woodwork and stop damaging my client.”
“Holly wasn’t your client at the end of August.”
“I know, but I was hoping to get her back. And I anticipate what you’re going to say, that I was too soft- hearted. I should have turned Hilda and Gaines over to the police, and saved us all a lot of tragedy. I’ve always been too softhearted where women-”
I cut him short. “What happened after that?”
“Nothing. I paid the detective off, with my own money, and flew on home.”
“Will he confirm your story?”
“Certainly, if you could reach him. Only, he’s retired to Honolulu.”
“What’s his name?”
“Smith. I forget his first name.”
“I know a police detective named Wills,” I said. “If I can’t get the truth out of you, he can.”
“The truth is all I’ve been telling you.”
“Tell me more of it.”
“You can’t get blood out of a stone, Bill.”
I picked up my phone, dialed the police station, and asked for Lieutenant Wills. The desk sergeant said I could probably get him at home.
Speare seized my arm and spilled whisky-flavored words over my face. “Listen, no cops, the publicity would ruin me. Hang up.”
He spoke with the sincerity of panic. I hung up.
“You got to understand, Bill. How could I tell it was going to turn out the way it did? I thought I was acting in Holly’s best interests. She married an old man for his money. I thought she’d be better off working, in fact I know it. I know my clients like a book, better than they know themselves.”
“What did you do? I think I know, but I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
“Nothing much. I brought Gaines and Hilda back here and kept them on the hook for a while, wondering what to do with them. Some way or other they got the idea that I’d be pleased and happy if Holly’s marriage didn’t work out too well. I talk too much sometimes when I’ve been drinking-”
“I’ll translate that. You blackmailed Gaines and Hilda into coming out here and trying to break up Holly’s marriage.”
“That’s a rough way to put it, Bill. Gaines needed no urging. He had his own ideas about Holly May. I think he got delusions of grandeur traveling with her double. He told me one night when he was high that he was going to take her away from Ferguson and marry her himself.”
“What was he high on?”
“Heroin. They both take heroin when they can get it.”
I stood up behind my desk. Speare sat down quickly, for fear I was going to hit him. I almost hit him anyway, with my left hand. “That was a fine plan you had, turning loose two hopped-up criminals on your ex-client.”
“It wasn’t such a good idea, Bill. I didn’t know it was going to turn out this way.” His face had broken up like crackleware. “Look. I’ll make a deal with you. Forget about this little business, keep my name out of it, and I’ll give you something you
“I have everything I really want.”
“You don’t have Gaines and the woman,” he said softly.
“You know where they are?”
“I might.”
“Let’s have it.”
“I said a deal. If this thing spills in the L.A. press, I’m a nothing man, I’m dead. I’m back selling stockings from door to door.”
“Have you sold stockings from door to door?”
“Not in recent years, but my uncle does. I guess I can always get my old job back, if you insist on ruining me.” He watched me through his pathos. He was sobering up. “Do I deserve to be ruined, Bill?”
“Stop calling me Bill.”
“Whatever you say. Do we make a deal?”
I gave it some thought. It didn’t take much thought, with the entire country being ransacked for the pair.
“It’s a deal. Give me Gaines and the woman, and I’ll forget you. With pleasure.”
“I can’t guarantee Gaines for sure. Hilda says he ran out on her. But she should be able to lead you to him.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Oh yes. I’ve talked to her. You think I blackmailed
“What for, or need I ask?”
He hung his head. His bald spot shone like a wet egg. He covered it with a hand that was pocked with droplets of sweat. “She threatened to wreck my reputation unless I gave her money. I guess she’s afraid to spend the ransom money. Or else Gaines really did run out on her. I’ve been putting her off with peanuts for the last two days, and incidentally slowly going crazy. She’s sitting there like a ticking bomb. Last night she threatened to shoot me-”
“Sitting where? Where is she?”
“I’ll tell you. Is it a deal?”
“I said it was.”
He raised his eyes to my face and studied it. “I guess I can trust you. I got to trust somebody. Anything to get her off my back. She’s holed up in a beach shack between the Palisades and Malibu, on 101 Highway.” He gave me the address. “It’s a brown shingle shack on the right-hand side of the highway, just a few hundred yards past a drive-in named Jack’s. I was supposed to meet her there tonight, with five thousand dollars.”
“What time tonight?”
“Now. I’m supposed to be there now.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“All right. Whatever you say. Now that we’ve got this business settled, how about a short one to celebrate?”
“I don’t keep liquor here.”
“Do you mind if I run out for a quick one? I need a drink but badly.”
“Go ahead.”
He scuttled out. I telephoned Ferguson.
Speare never did come back. His silver racing car was still parked in front of my office, helmet and goggles on the seat, when Ferguson and I left. Ferguson drove, and I talked, from Buenavista to Malibu.
Beyond the deserted beach, the ocean was the color of iron. The moon had shrunk to a sliver of itself. At Zuma we could hear the surf thundering in like doom.
“It’s a beastly situation,” Ferguson said.
“They get that way sometimes when you let them lie for a quarter of a century.”
“Please don’t moralize. I’ve had the whole thing out with myself. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t already thought.”
“Have you had it out with your wife?”
“Yes. She’s going to stay with me whatever comes. This thing has brought us closer somehow-closer than we were. I know now that she loves me.”
“You’re lucky to have such a woman.”
“I realize that, Gunnarson. Both Holly and I have realized a number of things. I thought I could start a brand- new life at the age of fifty-six, as if I hadn’t already had a life. Holly was doing the same thing in her way. She tried to turn her back on everything, her family, the whole past. But the past has its revenges.
