Paladin - you understand me? Can you grok that?'
Now Paladin's eyes were all but hanging from their sockets on
stalks. His mouth was open. Then, without speaking, he removed
his wallet from his coat pocket (some kind of lizard-skin, Cheyney
thought, two months' salary ... maybe three). He found his lawyer's
card (the home number was jotted on the back, Cheyney notedit
was most definitely not part of the printed matter on the front) and
handed it to Jacoby. His fingers now showed the first observable
tremor.
'Pete?'
Jacoby looked at him and Cheyney saw it was no act; Paladin had
actually succeeded in pissing his easy-going partner off. No mean
feat.
'Make the call yourself.'
'Okay.' Jacoby left.
Cheyney looked at Paladin and was suddenly amazed to find
himself feeling sorry for the man. Before he had looked perplexed;
now he looked both stunned and frightened, like a man who wakes
from a nightmare only to discover the nightmare is still going on.
'Watch closely,' Cheyney said after the door had closed, 'and I'll
show you one of the mysteries of the West. West LA, that is.'
He moved the neo-Pollock and revealed not a safe but a toggle
switch. He flicked it, then let the painting slide back into place.
'That's one-way glass,' Cheyney said, cocking a thumb at the too-
large mirror over the bar.
'I am not terribly surprised to hear that,' Paladin said, and
Cheyney reflected that, while the man might have some of the
shitty egocentric habits of the Veddy Rich and Well-Known in LA,
he was also a near-superb actor: only a man as experienced as he
was himself could have told how really close Paladin was to the
ragged edge of tears.
But not of guilt, that was what was so puzzling, so goddamn-
maddening.
Of perplexity.
He felt that absurd sense of sorrow again, absurd because it
presupposed the man's innocence: he did not want to be Edward
Paladin's nightmare, did not want to be the heavy in a Kafka novel
where suddenly nobody knows where they are, or why they are
there.
'I can't do anything about the glass,' Cheyney said. He came back
and sat down across the coffee table from Paladin, 'but I've just
killed the sound. So it's you talking to me and vice-versa.' He took
a pack of Kents from his breast pocket, stuck one in the corner of
his mouth, then offered the pack to Paladin. 'Smoke?'
Paladin picked up the pack, looked it over, and smiled. 'Even my
old brand. I haven't smoked one since night Yul Brynner died, Mr
Cheyney. I don't think ant to start again now.'
Cheyney put the pack back into his pocket. 'Can we talk?' he
asked.
Paladin rolled his eyes. 'Oh my God, it's Joan Raiford.'
