costumes and looked as Indian as Meryl Streep. Despite the cheap theatrics, the food was excellent. Robin made her way -daintily but inexorably - through lentil soup, tandoori chicken, cucumbers in yogurt dressing, and a dessert of sweetened milk balls coated with candied silver foil. Hoping she wouldn't notice the masochism, I punished my palate with extra-hot curry.
I let her do most of the talking and contented myself with nods and smiles. It was a continuation of the deception born with the kiss in the car - I was miles away - but I pushed aside my guilt by rationalising that knavery conceived in love was sometimes kinder than honesty. If she saw through it, she said nothing, perhaps engaging in a loving artifice of her own.
After dinner we cruised Wilshire to the beach and looped down to Pacific Coast Highway. The sky was inky and starless; the ocean, a rolling meadow of black satin. We drove in silence toward Malibu, and the breakers provided a rhythm section for Almeida as he coaxed a samba, out of his guitar.
We stopped at Merino's, just past the pier. The interior of the club was hazy with smoke. From a corner stage a four-piece group - drums, bass, alto sax, and guitar - was embroidering Coltrane. We ordered a brandy apiece and listened.
When the set ended, Robin took my hand and asked me
what was on my mind. I told her about Milo's call, and she listened gravely.
'The kid's in trouble,' I said. 'If it has anything to do with the Slasher, huge trouble. The hell of it is I don't know if he's a survivor or a suspect. Milo wouldn't give me the time of day.'
'That doesn't sound like Milo,' she said.
'Milo hasn't seemed like Milo for a while,' I reflected. 'Remember how he didn't show up for the New Year's thing and never called to explain. Over the last few weeks I've phoned him at work and at home, must have left a dozen messages, but he hasn't returned one of my calls. At first I thought he was on some kind of undercover thing, but then his face was all over the tube when they found the last Slasher victim. It's obvious he's distancing himself from us - from me.'
'Could be he's going through a rough time,' she said. 'Working on that case has got to be incredibly stressful for someone in his position.'
'If he's stressed, I wish he'd turn to his friends for support.'
'Maybe he just can't open up to someone who hasn't been through it, Alex.'
I sipped my brandy and thought about it.
'You might be right, I don't know. I've always assumed the gay thing wasn't any big deal for him. When our friendship took hold, he brought it up, said he wanted to clear the air, claimed he'd made his peace with it.'
'What did you expect him to tell you, honey?'
There was a half inch of brandy left in the snifter. I rolled the stem between my fingers and watched the liquid shift like a tiny golden sea at storm.
'Think I've been insensitive?' I asked.
'Not insensitive. Selectively unaware. Didn't you once tell me that people do that all the time, that we use our minds as filters, to keep things sane?'
I nodded.
'You have to admit, Alex, it's unusual for a straight guy and a gay guy to be as close as you two. I'm sure there are
whole segments of Milo that he keeps to himself. Just as you do. Both of you have had to do some heavy denying to keep the relationship going, haven't you?'
'Like what?'
'Like do you ever actually think about what he and Rick do in bed?'
I was silent, knowing she was right. Milo and I talked about everything but sex. Up, down, over, and around the topic, but never squarely on it. It was denial of the first order.
'The funny thing,' I said, 'is that this afternoon, when I was reviewing my notes on Jamey and asking myself if I could have done anything differently, I fantasised about introducing him to Milo. The kid is gay - or thought he was then - and I wondered if having him meet an adult homosexual who'd made a good adjustment would have been helpful.' I frowned. 'Pretty damned naive.'
My throat was tight, and the last of the brandy went down hot and rough.
'Anyway,' I said bitterly, 'the two of them got together without any help from me.'
We cleared our heads with a walk along the beach, got back in the Seville, and drove home in silence. Robin rested her head on my shoulder; the burden was comforting. It was just past midnight when I pulled north onto Beverly Glen, ten after when I unlocked the front door.
An envelope fluttered in the draught and settled on the parquet. I picked it up and examined it. It had been hand-delivered by a Beverly Hills messenger service at 11:00 P.M. Inside was an urgent request to phone the law offices of Horace Souza as soon as possible next morning ('Re: J. Cadmus') and a number with a mid-Wilshire exchange.
Finally there was someone who wanted to talk to me.
RISING EARLY, I had the paper in my hands a minute after it landed. There was a teaser at the bottom of the front page - 'POSSIBLE BREAK IN LAVENDER SLASHER CASE' - but it contained no new information other than that LAPD, the Beverly Hills Police, and the sheriff's department were expected to announce new developments at a joint press conference later in the day. The rest was rehash - stale facts, interviews with the victims' still-aching families, a dispassionate chronology of the serial murders that had begun a year before and continued with bimonthly regularity.
The Slasher's victims were boy hookers, ranging in age from fifteen to nineteen. Most were runaways from Middle America. All six had been garroted with lavender silk and mutilated after death. The killings had been carried out at an unknown place, the bodies then dumped at various locations around the city. There was a westerly pattern to the dumping, with the first corpse discovered in a back-alley trash bin off Santa Monica Boulevard, in the heart of
Boystown, the sixth near a hiking path in Will Rogers State Park. Four bodies had been found in West Hollywood - the sheriff's bailiwick - the last two in West L.A. Division. Geographically Beverly Hills was sandwiched between the two turfs like a sweetmeat, but it had been passed over.
I put the paper down and called Horace Souza's office. It must have been a private line because he picked up the phone himself.
'Doctor, thank you for returning my call so promptly.'
'What can I do for you, Mr. Souza?'
'A former patient of yours, James Cadmus, is a client of mine. I'm representing him in a criminal case and would greatly appreciate talking to you about it.'
'What's he charged with?'
'I'd prefer to discuss the matter in person, Doctor.'
'All right. I can be at your office in an hour. Where are you located?'
'Don't fuss with directions, Doctor. I'll have someone pick you up.'
At eight the doorbell rang. I opened it and came face-to-face with a chauffeur in grey livery. He was in his early thirties, tall and rangy, with a strong nose and a weak chin. In the shadow of the nose a thick black moustache had sprouted, covering most of his mouth. His face was pale and freshly shaved and bore several razor nicks along the jawline. His peaked cap had been pushed back so that it rested precariously atop a thatch of long brown hair that flowed over his collar. Satin-edged trousers tapered to needle-toed bullhide cowboy boots. His eyes were dark and, at first glance, lazy. But when they locked onto mine, I sensed plenty of analysis despite the absence of movement.
'Dr. Delaware? I'm Tully Antrim, here to take you to Mr. Souza. I didn't wanna scratch the car, so I parked it a ways down.'
I followed him off my property and down the access road, walking quickly to keep up with his long stride.
A hundred yards above Beverly Glen was a turnaround
shadowed by tall trees. On it sat twenty feet of Rolls-Royce - a gleaming, black Phantom IV limousine, I'd seen a picture of one like it in a spread on Prince Charles and Lady Di's wedding. That car had belonged to the mother of the groom.
