At 4:25 the director said, “That’s it; thanks, Jilly. See you tomorrow.” And without answering, Jill Joyce walked around the set partition and stopped in front of me.
“You’ll drive me home,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
The people who’d been lounging around glancing at my gun were now busy dismantling the set wall in front of us. They swung it out to open up the set and two people moved the camera dolly around into the space where I was standing.
“Excuse me,” someone said, “coming through.”
“We’ll get my coat in wardrobe,” Jill said.
“Sure.”
I followed her off the sound stage and down the corridor past the carpenter shop to the wardrobe office. Jill went in and came out in a moment wearing a silver-tipped mink.
“Kathleen,” she spoke back through the open door, “did Ernie get me that white sable we talked about?”
A woman’s voice from the wardrobe office said, “Got it right here, Jilly.”
“Excellent,” Jill said. “I’ll come in tomorrow for a fitting.”
“Give us a little notice if you can,” the woman’s voice said.
Jill didn’t answer, nor did she appear to have heard the request for notice. We went on out through the production office and into the front parking lot where I had my car.
“You need to tell anybody, drivers, anyone like that?” I said.
Jill made a dismissive motion with her hand. “Which car is yours?” she said.
“The glorious black Cherokee,” I said. “Ideal for all-weather surveillance.”
“Well, it’s better than I expected,” she said.
I held the door, she got in, ran a hand over the leather upholstery, and, nodded approvingly.
“The Charles Hotel?” I said.
“In Cambridge. You know where it is?”
I did my Bogart impression with the flattened upper lip. “I know where everything is, sweetheart.”
She got out a cigarette, pressed in my lighter and waited for it to pop. When it did she put it against the cigarette and the pleasing smell of tobacco lit with a car lighter filled the front seat. She put the lighter back and leaned her hand against the back of the seat with the cigarette glowing in her mouth and closed her eyes. Her face was very white and still, nestled in the big collar of her fur coat. Without raising her hand to the cigarette, she took a big drag and let the smoke out slowly from the corners of her mouth. The early winter evening had settled around us, and the automobile headlights on Soldiers Field Road had a pale cold look to them. I let the motor idle while I looked at her, her hands plunged deep into the pockets of her mink, her body tucked well inside it, a little shivery from the cold as we waited for the heater. In the faint light she looked about twelve, except for the glowing cigarette, a tired child, not yet pubescent, the apple unbitten on the tree, the serpent yet to tempt her.
“I need a drink,” she said.
I didn’t say anything. Across the river lights were popping on as people came home from work. The mercury lamp street lights on our side of the river had the weak orange look they get before it’s fully dark and they turn blue-white. Wind whipped a small dervish of powdery snow off the frozen river and spun it west where the river turned toward Watertown.
“I said I need a drink.” Jill spoke around a slow drift of smoke.
“Yes, you did,” I said.
“Well for Christ’s sake, do something about it.”
“Maybe I could siphon off a little gasoline?”
“Don’t be cute with me, stupid. Just get this thing in gear and get us to the hotel.”
“I saw Gene Tierney do that once,” I said. “Smoked a cigarette just like that. Head back, eyes closed. And Sterling Hayden was her boyfriend…”
“Will you drive this fucking car?” she said.
I did.
Chapter 8
THE doorman at the Charles Hotel was a young guy with a go-to-hell Irish face made red by the cold. He wore a fur-collared greatcoat and the kind of hat Russian ministers wear. He said he’d hold my car for me.
“No problem,” he said, and started the revolving door turning for Jill Joyce as she preceded me into the lobby.
“Come up for a drink,” she said.
“Last time I came to your place for a drink you attempted to molest me,” I said.
She turned with her mink coat open and her hands on her hips. She tossed her head back a little and her pelvis forward a little.
“You scared?” she said.
