beard who always carried a pocketful of sliced carrots wrapped in waxed paper.
'Tell me something,' the reporter said. He waggled a carrot slice at Lucas, in a friendly way. 'Between you and me-background, not for attribution, whatever. Are you looking forward to hunting this guy?'
Lucas thought for a second, glanced at the last television reporter, who was out of earshot, and nodded. 'Yeah. I am. There's not been much going on.'
'After busting the Crows, the other stuff must seem small-time…' The reporter gobbled the carrot stick in two quick bites.
'Nah,' Lucas said. 'But this is… interesting. People are dying.'
'Will you get him?'
Lucas nodded. 'I don't know. But we'd be better off if we could get to Stephanie Bekker's lover. He knows things he doesn't know he knows…'
'Wait a minute,' the reporter said, slipping a slender notebook out of the breast pocket of his sport coat. 'Can I attribute this last part? Can we go back on the record just for that?'
'Okay. But just that bit: Mrs. Bekker's friend-quote me as calling him a friend-has actually seen the guy. He might think he's told us about her, calling nine-one-one, sending the note, but he hasn't. A good interview team would find things in his memory that he has no idea are there. And I'm not talking about giving him the third degree, either. If I could get him ten minutes on the telephone, or if Sloan could… I think we'd have a hundred- percent-better chance of breaking this thing in a hurry.'
The reporter was scribbling notes. 'So you want him to come in.'
'We want anything we can get from him,' Lucas said. He unlocked the Porsche's door and opened it. 'Off the record again?'
'Sure.'
'Loverboy's our only handle, that's how bad we need him. There's something wrong with this case, and without his help, I don't know how we'll find out what it is.'
His anger with Jennifer came back as he drove across town, replaying the scene in the hall. She knew about scenes, knew about drama, knew psychology. She didn't have to be the one who asked him for an interview. She was jerking him around, and it was working. The optimism, the lift of the last few days, was gone. He accelerated out the Sixth Street exit onto I-94. Go home and go to bed, he thought. Think it over. But his eye caught the sign for the Riverside exit, and without good reason, he took it, then turned left at the top of the ramp and headed down toward the West Bank theater district.
Cassie Lasch was sitting on the floor of the ticket lobby of the Lost River Theater. She was wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt and was digging through a gray plastic garbage bag. Lucas pushed through the revolving door into the lobby, and, as she looked up at him, he stopped short.
'The actress,' Lucas said. He paused, his eyes still adjusting to the dim light. 'Lasch. Cathy.'
'Cassie. How are you, Davenport? Want to help? I'm looking for a clue.'
Lucas squatted next to her. The weather was too cold for a T-shirt, but the woman seemed not to notice. Her arms were strong, with long, round muscles that carried up to her neck. And she was tanned, as much as a redhead could tan, too smoothly, by artificial lights. A lifter, Lucas thought. 'What clue?'
'The cops were here all morning and I forgot to tell them…' She stopped rummaging through the garbage for a moment. A tiny scrap of paper was stuck to the side of her jaw, and her red hair had fallen over her eyes. She brushed it back and said, 'Nobody asked about the guy who tried to get on the guest list last night. Remember, I told you that the ticket-office lady tried to call Elizabeth about the freebee, and couldn't get her?'
'I remember,' Lucas said, nodding. He reached over to her cheek, peeled off the scrap of paper, showed it to her and flicked it away.
'Thanks… uh…' She'd lost her thought, and she smiled up at him, her crooked tooth catching on her lower lip. Her face was just the slightest bit foxy, and mobile. Freckles were scattered lightly over the bridge of her nose.
'The guest list,' Lucas prompted.
'Oh, yeah. This guy says he's some big-time reviewer and wants on the list as Elizabeth's friend. I asked the ticket-takers this morning and they said they didn't give out any freebees last night. Whoever called didn't show up. That could be a clue.' She said it seriously, intently, like a Miss Marple with terrific breasts.
'Why is that a clue?'
'Because maybe if he knew Elizabeth, he went over there… I don't know, but he didn't show up.'
Lucas thought for a minute, then nodded. 'You're right. The list is in here?'
'Somewhere. On a piece of notebook paper from one of those teeny brown spiral notebooks. Probably wadded up.'
'So let's dump it out,' he said. He picked up the garbage bag by its bottom and shook it onto the lobby rug. Most of the litter was paper, much of it soaked with Coke and 7-Up, and toward the bottom, they found a paper coffee filter full of grounds.
'Ugh. Maybe you shouldn't have done that,' Cassie said, wrinkling her nose at the mess.
'The hell with it,' Lucas said. 'We need the list.'
They spent five minutes pawing through the sodden trash, working shoulder to shoulder. She had, Lucas decided, one of the better bodies he'd ever brushed up against. Everything was hard, except what was supposed to be soft, and that looked very soft. Every time she leaned forward, her breasts swelled forward against the thin fabric of the T-shirt…
Jesus Christ, Davenport, you're ready for the peep shows…
He smiled to himself and picked up a cardboard cup. Inside was a paper wad the size of a marble. He unwrapped it, turned it around. At the top somebody had written 'Guests' and, under that, 'Donaldson Whitney, LA Times.'
'This it?'
Cassie took it, looked at it and said, 'That's it. Kelly-the ticket-window lady-said the guy was from LA.'
Lucas stood, the cartilage in his knees popping. 'Got a phone? Someplace quiet?'
'There's one in the office, but there're a couple of people in there… There's another one in the control booth. What do we do about this garbage?' She looked down at the pile of trash on the floor. The coffee grounds were smeared where Lucas had stepped on them.
He frowned, as though seeing it for the first time, and said, 'I don't care. Whatever you want.'
'Well, fuck that, I didn't put it there,' Cassie said. She flipped her hair and turned away. 'C'mon, I'll show you the control booth.'
She led him down a hall to the theater auditorium. In the light of day, the place was a mess. Black paint was scaling off concrete-block walls, the seatbacks were stained, the overhead light rack was a tangle of electrical wires, ropes, spotlights, outlets and pulleys. At night, none of that would be visible.
The control booth was at the back of the auditorium, up two short flights of stairs. The booth itself was built out of plywood, painted black on the outside, unfinished inside. A barstool and a secretary's swivel chair sat in front of a control panel. Extension and computer cords were fixed to the walls and floors with gaffer tape. A phone was screwed to the wall to the left of the control panel.
Cassie noticed him looking around and said, 'No money for luxuries.'
'First time I've been in a theater control booth,' Lucas said.
She shrugged. 'They mostly look like this, unless the theater's getting government money.'
Lucas used his credit card to call Los Angeles, Cassie leaning against the control panel, arms locked behind her back, listening with interest. Whitney was not at his desk, Lucas was told. He pressed, was switched around, and eventually talked to an arts copy editor who made the mistake of picking up a ringing telephone. He said that Whitney was on vacation.
'In Minneapolis?' Lucas asked.
'Why would he be in fuckin' Minneapolis in April?' the copy editor asked crossly. 'He's in Micronesia on a skin- diving trip.'
'Well?' Cassie asked, when Lucas had hung up.
'Well, what?'
'Was it him last night?'
'Uh, I appreciate your help, Miss Lasch, but this is police business…'
