one, the kind where the wristband is built into the watch, and if you want, you can set lap times in the stopwatch mode. “Are you police?”
“You have a daughter?” I said.
“Yes. A famous TV star, her name is Jill Joyce now.”
“What was her name?”
“Jillian. Jillian Zabriskie,” he said. “Why do you keep asking me these things?”
Jill dropped the coffee cup. It broke on the floor and coffee stained the rug. No one paid any attention.
“You see her in the room anywhere?” I said.
Zabriskie looked at Jill, as if he hadn’t noticed her before. He squinted even though the light was good. “That looks like her.”
I turned to Jill. She had shrunk back into her chair, her knees drawn up toward her chest, her arms hugging her elbows in against her. Her skin seemed drawn tight over the bones of her face. Her breath rasped in and out as if her windpipe had rusted.
“It’s Him, ” she gasped. Her voice was very hoarse. “You’re dead. You have to be dead.”
Zabriskie looked puzzled. “I’m not dead,” he said.
Jill shrank deeper in on herself.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t.” She looked at me. “Don’t let him,” she said. “I don’t want to.” Her voice got a sing- song in it, and the hoarseness faded and it sounded young. “I don’t want to. I don’t want you to do that to me. I don’t like it. Please, Daddy, please. Please.” She began to cry again. “Please.” Zabriskie stared at her blankly.
“Why did you never give me money?” he said. “You are my daughter and you are rich and you never give me money.”
Jill was now in a ball, as tightly coiled in on herself as she could get. She wasn’t crying so much as whimpering, in on herself, like a small child, entirely alone, in terrible trouble. I went over and put my hand on her shoulder and she shrank, if possible, a bit tighter, and then tentatively put up one hand and placed it on mine. Everyone was quiet; the only sound was of Jill’s small whimper.
The Indian said, “Jesus.”
Zabriskie seemed unmoved, in fact he seemed unaware of Jill’s response.
Jill raised her eyes toward me. “It’s Him, ”she said. “He’s the one.”
I nodded and squeezed her shoulder a little. “You need money,” I said to Zabriskie.
“Twenty-five years I worked there, and they let me go, when I got old.”
“Where’d you work?”
“Weldon Oil, night security.”
“Carry a gun?”
“Certainly.”
I nodded.
“What’d Jill do when you asked her for money?”
“Never a chance to ask. Miss Movie Star wouldn’t see me.”
“You write her?”
“Yes. ”
“Go to see her agent?”
“Yes. She’s rich. Yet she won’t give her own father anything?”
I nodded again.
“Go to Boston to try and see her?”
“Went right to the set. Sent her a note. She never answered it.”
“Tough,” I said, “to be that desperate and that close.”
“Miss Movie Star,” he said.
“Maybe when she dies you’ll collect,” I said. “There don’t seem to be a lot of heirs.”
“At my age?” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“Right.”
“You fly to Boston?” I said.
“Bus,” he said. As if the idea that he could afford to fly was as insane as suggesting he could fly there by flapping his arms.
“Long ride?”
“Three days,” he said.
