“Joni…none of my business, but…how the hell did you become an actress, anyway?”
“Oh, it was Art. Art my husband, not art the pursuit of which. He discovered me. I was working at Disneyland… not in one of those fucking suits! You should see them pour the sweat out of those things at the end of the day…I was a waitress in a German-theme joint and I guess he liked the way I looked in a peasant blouse. Gave me a screen test.”
“And you passed the audition.”
She was kicking in the water. “You ever think about me, Jack?”
I didn’t lie. “Sometimes.”
“I loved you in my way, Jack. I didn’t want you to die over there. I really didn’t want any of you boys to die.”
“All three of us?”
She shook her head, smirking humorlessly. “So I married three times. And got the benefits. If you feel like looking at me like you feel sorry for me, do it because of that. Do it because my life was such a hopeless dead-end that the best I could come up with was to go after a serviceman’s crappy monthly check.”
And benefits. Three times. But I didn’t rub it in.
Her gaze was at once sweet and patronizing. “Jack, you were a nice kid. Naive. You didn’t understand that sometimes people do things, to survive, that look crazy or immoral to other people. Maybe you can understand better now, how a young girl could get fucked-up enough to-”
I held a hand up. Shook my head. “You don’t owe me explanations. It was a long time ago. We’re different people now.”
“Jack, maybe it helps to finally air this out…”
This shit was getting old. I flat out asked her, hoping maybe, just maybe, her eyes would tell me something. “Do you want your husband dead?”
“What?”
“If you had a choice between me stopping something fatal happening to your husband, and-”
She gripped my arm. Other than when we shook hands, it was the first time she’d touched me.
“ No,” she said. “Help him.”
“Did you sign a prenup?”
“What?”
“Do you stand to benefit if he dies?”
She just looked at me. “I don’t remember you being such a prick.”
“ Do you benefit? It’s not like it’s a foreign concept to you. Maybe you’re taking it to a new level.”
“That’s fucking cruel…”
I put a hand on her shoulder. Tight but not enough to hurt. “I don’t like being near you, Joni. It stirs things up in me, none of it good. You need to understand something-you need to believe me: if you are behind this, I don’t give a shit.”
“What?”
“If you want him dead, I’ll walk away. I wouldn’t kill him for you, but I’d walk away.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I’m fairly well-balanced, considering. I’m giving you an out. Tell me to go and I’ll go. If I stay, I can probably save him.”
“ Stay! Stay.” She stroked my face. It was like pleasant razor blades. “ Please. If you have even one tiny memory of me that you cherish…stay.”
“You didn’t answer me. Would you benefit if he died?”
She sighed. Turned away from me and stared into the gentle ripple of the pool where she’d been absently kicking. “There was no prenup. But, Jack-we live in California. Community property. I get half anyway, if I ever decide to bail on him.”
“Maybe you want it all.”
She set those big brown eyes loose on my face. “All I want is the life I have right now, Jack. It’s the kind of life I dreamed about as a young woman-a really nice house, swimming pool and everything, no kids, plenty of money, a husband who is nice to me but gives me lots of space. I was never looking for a white knight, Jack. Just a life of comfort. A life that didn’t suck. And I fought to get that life.”
“Tell me about it.”
Her upper lip curled a little. “You know what your problem is, Jack? You don’t know whether you want to fuck me or kill me.”
I got out of the pool. To dry off a little, I had to dump the nine millimeter out of the towel, and it bounced on the deck chair webbing. Got her attention.
“Is there an all-of-the-above?” I asked her.
And I gathered my gun and went up to my room.
SEVEN
After my evening swim, I got dressed and made my way down to the Spur’s lobby, taking along a western paperback I’d been reading, Valdez Is Coming, to pass the time while I waited for Stockwell to get back from the film shoot.
With the lobby’s slots and poker machines making their ringing whirring music, concentrating on the book wasn’t easy. But I only had to sit forty minutes before Stockwell showed, around a quarter past midnight, with his producer Kaufmann striding at his side, a supportive hand on his friend’s shoulder.
The director seemed beat, his eyes so puffy they got lost in the folds of flesh; he was smoking and-for all his tiredness-moving fast, in the midst of a jocular conversation with the producer, who appeared far less frazzled, even energetic. Kaufmann’s light polo shirt and darker blue slacks looked comparatively fresh next to Stockwell’s sweated-out t-shirt and dirt-smudged jeans.
My sense was that Kaufmann was bucking up his pal, providing encouragement after a hard day’s shoot.
I could understand the need for that-even based on my brief visit to the set, I could see that the burden of pressure was on the director, who had to keep moving and working and handling this problem and that, while a producer was mostly dealing with paperwork, phone calls and personnel.
I managed to catch up with them before they got to the elevators.
“Mr. Stockwell!” I called, and when both men turned, I said, “Art, I need a moment please.”
Kaufmann threw me a mildly irritated glance, then nodded at the director and, resigned to being excluded, stepped onto a waiting elevator.
We moved through a doorway into the swimming pool courtyard. No one else was out there-Joni had long since gone up to their room, apparently-but the underlighting of the pool was still going and it cast glimmering otherworldly blue-green on us as we took two deck chairs near the pool.
Stockwell said, “You weren’t around the set long. Did you find anything out?”
“That would be overstating it,” I admitted, “but I’m convinced the attempt won’t be made on location.”
Stockwell shivered, though it wasn’t remotely cold out. The watery reflection on his face was kind, taking some years off his gone-to-seed leading-man looks, like a softfocus camera lens. “At least it’s an ‘attempt’ now-my murder. Not a foregone conclusion.”
“I followed our man around this afternoon,” I said. “He wasn’t doing anything overt that might have been connected to the job he’s here to do. More like killing time.”
“Than like killing me, you mean? What’s the hell is he up to?”
“I believe he plans to create an accident for you here at the hotel.”
Stockwell frowned, as frustrated as he was fearful.
“ Where in the hotel?”
“Very likely your room.”
“Shit. What about J.J.?”
I shrugged. “He might not take her out as collateral damage, but he could.”
