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.'
'Who?'
'Joan Raiford. You know, 'I took Elizabeth Taylor to Marine World and when she saw Shamu the Whale she asked me if it came with vegetables?' I repeat, Detective Cheyney: grow up. I have no reason in the world to believe that switch is anything but a dummy. My God, how innocent do you think I am?'
Joan Raiford? Is that what he really said?, Joan Raiford?
'What's the matter?' Paladin asked pleasantly. He crossed his legs the other way. 'Did you perhaps think you saw a clear path? Me breaking down, maybe saying I'd tell everything, everything, just don't let 'em fry me, copper?'
With all the force of personality he could muster, Cheyney said: 'I believe things are very wrong here, Mr Paladin. You've got them wrong and I've got them wrong. When your lawyer gets here, maybe we can sort them out and maybe we can't. Most likely we can't. So listen to me, and for God's sake use your brain. I gave you the Miranda Warning. You said you wanted your lawyer present. If there was a tape turning, I've buggered my own case. Your lawyer would have to say just one word - enticement - and you'd walk free, whatever has happened to Carson. And I could go to work as a security guard in one of those flea-bitten little towns down by the border.'
'You say that,' Paladin said, 'but I'm no lawyer.
But ... Convince me, his eyes said. Yeah, let's talk about this, lees see if we can't get together, because you're right, something is weird. So ... convince me.
'Is your mother alive?' Cheyney asked abruptly.
'What - yes, but what does that have to-'
'You talk to me or I'm going to personally take two CHP motorcycle cops and the three of us are going to rape your mother tomorrow!' Cheyney screamed. 'I'm personally going to take her up the ass! Then we're going to cut off her tits and leave them on the front lawn! So you better talk!'
Paladin's face was as white as milk: a white so white it is nearly blue.
'Now are you convinced?' Cheyney asked softly. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not going to rape your mother. But with a statement like that on a reel of tape, you could say you were the guy on the grassy knoll in Dallas and the Burbank police wouldn't produce the tape. I want to talk to you, man. What's going on here?'
Paladin shook his head dully and said, 'I don't know.'
In the room behind the one-way glass, Jacoby joined Lieutenant McEachern, Ed McMahon (still looking stunned), and a cluster of technical people at a bank of high-tech equipment. The LAPD chief of police and the mayor were rumored to be racing each other to Burbank.
'He's talking?' Jacoby asked.
'I think he's going to,' McEachern said. His eyes had moved toward Jacoby once, quickly, when he came in. Now they were centered only on the window. The men seated on the other side, Cheyney smoking, relaxed, Paladin tense but trying to control it, looked slightly lowish through the one-way glass. The sound of their voices was clear and undistorted through the overhead speakers - a top-of-the-line Bose in each corner.
Without taking his eyes off the men, McEachern said: 'You get his lawyer?'
