“Somebody better,” she said again and started to cry. The crying was hysterical and had the promise of duration. I looked at del Rio. He looked at me. Chollo looked at whatever he looked at. We waited. After a while she stopped sobbing long enough to get a cigarette going and sip some scotch.
“Why won’t anyone take care of me,” she said in a gasping voice and started to cry again. Through the picture window I could see that the dark cloud had moved directly over us. The occasional raindrops that had spattered on the window intensified. They came now in a steady rattle.
Del Rio said, “Would you like to see your mother, Jill?” There was no kindness in his voice, but no cruelty either.
“God, no,” Jill said, still crying, her face buried in her hands, the cigarette drifting smoke from her right hand.
“Maybe your father,” I said. “Would you like to talk with your father?”
She sat suddenly upright. “My father’s dead,” she said and continued to cry, sitting up, facing us, occasionally swigging in a gulp of scotch or dragging in a lungful of smoke, between sobs. I turned that over in my mind a little.
“Your father’s not dead, Jill. He’s here in Los Angeles.”
“He’s dead,” she said.
“I’ve talked with him,” I said. “Only a week or so ago.”
“He’s dead,” she screamed at me. “Goddamn it, my father is dead. He died when I was little and he left me with my mother.”
She drank off the rest of her drink as the echoes of her scream were rattling around the hotel room, and then she pitched suddenly forward and passed out, facedown on the floor. I reached down and took the burning cigarette from her hand and put it out in an ashtray. Chollo came around the bar, and he and I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. We put her on her back, on her bed. I put the spread over her and we left her there and carne back out into the living room.
“Lushes,” Chollo said. “Lushes are crazy.”
Del Rio was where we had left him, sitting still with his hands clasped behind his head.
“Know anything about her father?” I said.
“She told me he left when she was a kid. Coulda meant he died. I took it to mean he just left,” del Rio said. “Who’s this guy you talked to?”
“Guy named Bill Zabriskie, her agent put me onto him.”
“She sure threw a wingding when you said he was alive,” del Rio said.
“Yeah,” I said. “You got someone to run an errand?”
Del Rio nodded. “Chollo,” he said, “tell Bobby Horse to come here.”
Chapter 37
WHEN Jill woke up it was late, nearly midnight. She must have felt like someone’s leftover meal when she stumbled out of the bedroom. Chollo had black coffee and a carafe of orange juice sent up. Jill drank both and smoked a cigarette before she said a word. Her face was pale, and her hair was matted from sleeping on it, and there was a wrinkle grooved into her cheek by a fold in the pillow cover.
“Got some brandy?” she said. Chollo came around the bar and poured some into her coffee. She sipped it.
“Ahh,” she said. “Hair of the dog that bit you.” Del Rio was still there, and so was I. Chollo was in place behind the bar.
“Want something to eat?” del Rio said in his clear voice.
Jill shivered.
“God, no,” she said. She looked at her reflection in the now-dark window. “Jesus,” she said. “Am I a mess.”
“Somebody here to see you,” I said.
“Like this?” Jill said. Her hand shook as she lifted her coffee cup, and she slopped a little of the brandy laced coffee onto her lap. She brushed absently at it with her free hand.
“Be all right,” I said. “You look fine.” Del Rio raised his voice only slightly. “Bobby Horse,” he said.
The Indian opened the door to the other bedroom and came out with Bill Zabriskie. Zabriskie had on the same woven sandals as I’d seen him in. He also had on tan polyester pants and a white Western-style shirt, hanging loose, with one of those little strings held by a silver clasp at the neck.
He squinted a little, as if the light were too bright, and then went and sat carefully down on the edge of one of the armchairs. He looked slowly at Jill without reaction. Jill looked at him the same way.
“Who’s this?” she said.
“What’s your name?” I said to him.
“William Zabriskie.”
“You ever married to a woman named Vera Zabriskie?” I said.
Jill had frozen in her chair, the half-drunk coffee in her right hand. There was stiffness in the outline of her shoulders.
“Sure,” Zabriskie said. He looked at his watch, which he wore on his right wrist. It was a cheap black plastic
