Box Office Poison

statements by the reporters and paparazzi that all they saw was fog. But deep in the paper the editorial knives came out. It was all about the similarities between the industry and the Powers in terms of believing they were above the law, and that the rules that applied to ordinary people didn’t apply to them. They reflected that Jondin would probably get off by going into rehab and issuing a tearful apology on The Tonight Show. Especially since “supposed” officers of the court seemed determined to impede the investigation by refusing to talk to the police. From there it segued into musing about the first Alfar Academy Award nomination.

Information about the nominations was on page two. I had managed to knock a bunch of actors off the front page of the Los Angeles Times in friggin’ Hollywood. There were pictures of the nominees for Best Actor and Best Actress, and the first Alfar nomination was felt to be worthy of a photograph too. I studied the picture of a smiling Alfar with a slightly beaky nose, and a lump that suggested it had been broken sometime in the distant past, a pointed chin, and up-tilted eyes. Since the photo was a black-and-white there was no sense of the colors of his hair, but the different shades of gray suggested he was a piebald like so many of them. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a film with Jujuran Ne Seran, but apparently he had turned in a stunning performance as the gay lover of a politician torn between love and a run at the White House.

My phone rang as I was wallowing in Hollywood news and trying to forget I was once more on the front page of a major newspaper. It was David.

“Did you see…,” we said in concert.

“You first,” I said.

“Montolbano is going in at eleven a.m. with Hank. I think you and I need to get in there as quickly as possible.”

“I agree. I don’t have a car.”

“I’ll pick you up. Can you be ready in twenty minutes?”

“Yes, but you won’t be here in twenty minutes. I’ll call the front gate to get you on the drive-on list.”

He hung up and I tossed an English muffin in the toaster and ran for the shower. I had just gotten lather all over me when I heard the phone ringing. Usually I would have just let it go to voice mail, but the photo and the implications being drawn from it had me rattled. I bolted out of the shower, ran into the living room, and grabbed the phone on the kitchen counter.

“Hello?”

“Bitch. Too good to defend decent human people. You’ll burn in hell!” It was the same voice that had called me a whore a few nights before.

The naked hatred in the voice shook me, then my initial shock and fear passed, and rage buzzed in my head.

“Fuck you!” I screamed into the phone, but they had already hung up.

The smell of burning muffin assailed my nose. I popped the charred muffin out of the toaster, turned down the setting and put in another one, then headed back to my interrupted shower. Somehow I had become the focus for the anti-Alfar fury. The vitriol had shaken me, but also made me angry. Yeah, I was so going to talk to the people at Human First.

I ate with one hand while I dried my hair and applied makeup with the other, and I was ready in thirty minutes. I then sat down to watch the local news. It was all about the shooting at Warner Bros. and the nominations. The picture of David and me kept making an appearance with much tsk-tsking and editorializing from the anchors about the secrecy of the Powers. David put in a literal appearance forty minutes after his call. His expression was sour, and his face was pinched and hollow. Clearly he hadn’t had time for breakfast.

“Told you,” I said. He made a growly sound, settled his broadbrimmed hat back on his head, and opened his umbrella. “That’s bad luck, you know.”

The growl resolved into words. “Why are you irritating me this morning?”

“Low impulse control due to lack of sleep?” I suggested.

“You always have low impulse control,” he said.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Let’s go.”

I followed him down the hall to the stairs. The metal and concrete rang hollowly beneath our feet as we hurried down. I considered telling him about the phone calls, but decided to wait until he’d eaten. It would just make him angrier, and I could imagine what he would say: “And just what am I supposed to do about it?” Which would be a fair question. No, I’d hold off until I’d done a bit more investigating.

* * *

Downtown Los Angeles was easy to spot. The skyscrapers seemed more like steel-and-glass spikes that had been driven in the heart of a tangle of single-story buildings rather than an actual city center.

LAPD headquarters was in a multistory, glass monolith in the center of downtown. The old headquarters was known as Parker Center, after a police chief who’d run the LAPD through all of the 1950s and into the 1960s. Some people wanted the new building to bear the same name, but since William Parker had a somewhat checkered history when it came to minority relations—the Watts riot had occurred during his tenure—bestowing his name on the new building was proving to be a political hot potato.

We parked, walked through the lobby, which was so long it seemed more like a runway than a lobby, and were taken up to a conference room to Detective Ernesto Rodriquez. He stood up at our entrance and studied me while I studied him. He sported a conquistador’s spade beard, which didn’t really suit his round face, but he had gentle eyes and a nice smile, with curved full lips beneath the mustache.

“Ms. Ellery, thanks for coming in.”

“My pleasure.”

“Get you anything?” he asked.

“Coffee would be great. I didn’t have time for a cup this morning.”

“Take anything?”

“No, straight.”

“A woman after my own heart.” He disappeared out the door.

I leaned in to David. “He didn’t offer you anything.”

“Somehow I think the police would be uncomfortable with having beakers of blood in their fridge,” he whispered back.

“Bet they do in New York,” I said.

“Let’s not find out, shall we?”

Rodriquez returned with two cups and settled into a chair across from me. “Mind if I tape this?” I glanced at David, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. My nod was bigger. “Great.” Rodriquez set a small recorder on the table between us and turned it on. “Just tell me in your own words what happened.”

So I did. By the end he had the strangest expression on his face. I had seen the same expression on the face of the detective in New York when I told him how a werewolf had taken a header down an elevator shaft while trying to rend me limb from limb. I’d seen it again on the face of the detective in Bayonne when I’d told him about the werewolf attack on an old retired lawyer that had ended up with five dead werewolves and a dead lawyer, and me escaping unharmed. Now here it was again.

There was a long silence, then Rodriquez said, sort of hesitantly, “You must be the luckiest person alive.”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean … I’m alive.”

“I know it seems incredible—” David began, but Rodriquez cut him off.

“Yeah, it does, but it also pretty much matches what Ms. Morales told us.”

“Ms. Morales?” I asked.

“The EMT.”

“Oh, Consuela … Connie.”

“Well, she says you saved her life when you ran between her and the shooter.”

David turned and gave me a look. I hadn’t exactly mentioned that part, figuring I would get just this reaction. I gave him an apologetic shrug. “I had to do something.”

“Let me make the argument that hiding also constitutes doing something,” he said.

“She was going to shoot that girl.”