Crashed

“Good, good. Nice to know that the criminal element gets to bed early. I always think of them as nocturnal.”

“If you had to take a guess, where would you say Thistle is?”

He mulled it for a second. “Hollywood. She knows some of the sidewalk entrepreneurs well enough to score small on credit. She probably bought something and crashed in some squat. She’s too smart to have gone home. She would have figured that’s the first place Trey would have checked.”

“About Trey,” I said. “How well do you know her?”

“Know her?” We were standing next to Doc’s car, parked beside the driveway the girls had gone down. He tilted his head back at me, and the streetlight filled the lenses of his glasses. “Well, I didn’t deliver her or anything. I can’t claim to have carried her around like a papoose. But I think I know her pretty well. She accidentally shot herself when she was ten or eleven and they brought her to me because they knew I wouldn’t report the gunshot wound. I’ve treated her on and off ever since.”

“Accidentally?”

“Unless she was trying to kill herself by blowing off a toe. The house was bristling with guns. She picked one up and fooled around with it.”

“And they had you treat her after that.”

“I was a pediatrician, remember?” A little steel came into his tone. “She was a child.”

“Lower your head,” I said. “I want to see your eyes.”

Doc brought his head down, and there were his eyes again, warm and kindly as ever. “Am I under suspicion again?”

“I’ve told you about my commitment to Thistle,” I said. “And now I’ve got my doubts about Trey, and I want to know for sure who I’m talking to. It’s helpful to see your eyes.”

“Well, then,” Doc said, and took off his glasses. It made his eyes look smaller.

“Here’s one edge of the problem. The person who trashed Thistle’s apartment today was Trey’s guy. Eduardo.”

“Steroids, probably,” Doc said. “He was sent to find her, he didn’t, and it hit the rage button. These guys are always a couple of seconds away from tearing a Buick in half.”

“It’s not so much his reaction that gives me pause. It’s the timing. He was there about an hour before I told Trey that Thistle was missing, and she put quite a bit of effort into being surprised by the news. So was she lying to me, or is it possible she didn’t know Eduardo was there?”

Doc said, “Ah.”

“Here’s where things get shaky. Oh, and just to make things clear, I’m trusting you here, and it would be good policy for you to bear in mind that, despite the fact I inspire mirth in children, I’m a career criminal. And as much as I may like you personally, if I find out you’re fucking around with me, I’ll take you to pieces and scatter the bits from here to Tijuana in a pattern that spells out he shouldn’t have.”

Doc nodded. “Noted.”

“Background, okay? Just to set things up. Since all this started, which I guess was only the day before yesterday, I’ve been operating on the thesis that the problems with the production were being caused by a member of the crew, who was, in turn, reporting to someone who wanted to cripple the movie, someone who wanted to bring Trey down. A crook, in other words.”

“Sounds plausible.”

“Well, I know who the person on the crew was. And I know that she and at least one of the crooks murdered somebody last night.”

The avuncular Milburn Stone facade slipped a bit. “Murdered?”

I told him about Jimmy.

“Oh, criminy,” he said. “I had no idea.”

“Nobody did, except Trey and me. So it worries me that Trey may have lied to me about knowing that Thistle disappeared. Because why Jimmy was murdered isn’t an issue: he was killed, I’m about ninety percent sure, because he saw who delivered that little present to Thistle, after the girls left. And who isn’t an issue, because I know who it was. But how is an issue. How did they know who he was? He was just a Chinese guy sitting in a car, in front of the apartment house.”

“Unless they knew somehow that …” Doc said and then trailed off.

“That’s right. And Trey and I were alone in her living room when she authorized me to put Jimmy out there. And, of course, there’s every chance in the world that Eduardo heard it, since he’s attached to her by an invisible rope.”

“And if he heard it, then what?”

“Then one of two things. Either he sold Trey out and told the people who killed Jimmy and then went to ransack the apartment on their behalf. Or, and this is the one that worries me, he did it all on Trey’s orders.”

“Slow it down,” Doc said. “Are you suggesting that Trey is sabotaging her own movie?”

“I’m suggesting that it’s one possible explanation for everything that’s happened.”

Doc hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and gave them a snap. “But why? She needs the money. It’s part of her plan.”

“Money would be the answer,” I said. “Something that would make more money than actually finishing the movies. But the only thing I can think of that would pay her anything substantial is a huge insurance loss.”

Doc nodded. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“Well, forget it. Tatiana made it very clear to me. Thistle is completely uninsurable.”

He turned his head and looked down at the sidewalk. I didn’t think he was going to reply, but then he said, “And you believe Tatiana.”

The question stopped me. I had believed her, certainly. There was something plausible and solid about her. As there was, I thought, about so many crooks. “I’ll find a way to check it,” I said. “But I don’t know. The way Trey held Thistle’s feet to the fire yesterday, threatening her with her contract and everything. Seems like she could have had her default right then.”

“This is your area,” Doc said. “I’m a simple pediatrician.”

“Okay, one more question, purely about Trey. How do you think she really feels about her ex-husband?”

“That one’s easy,” he said. “She hates the ground his shadow falls on. She’d pay scalper’s rates for a front- row seat at his execution.”

“Not likely, then, that they’d be working together.”

“Here’s how unlikely it is,” he said. “I’ll bet you five thousand dollars right now that he’s dead within eighteen months.”

I shook my head. “A lot earlier than that.”

“Omaha,” I said to the guard.

“Long way,” the guard said, although it sounded like a guess.

“That’s why they need me. Hard to run an office that far away without having a man right there.”

“Johnny on the spot,” the guard suggested. He was a liberally weathered fifty-five or so, with a richly veined nose and enough alcohol on his breath to float an olive. His name tag said CARL.

“Johnny on the spot,” I said admiringly. “Exactly. Boots on the ground. Local talent. ZIP code savvy. You gotta know the territory.” I was, just conceivably, over-extending.

“You the man,” Carl contributed, offering proof, if further proof were needed, that here was one more expression that needed permanent retirement.

I resisted offering Carl a knuckle-bump and said instead, “So anyway, Jack said to me, ‘Just show all this stuff to Carl, and he’ll let you go on up.’ ” I paired the homemade business card with the bogus driver’s license and held them nice and steady in front of Carl’s eyes. It took him a second to home in on them. “I just need to drop something off,” I said.

“Kind of late,” Carl said.

“Damn airplanes,” I said. “You know how it is.”

“Do I ever.” Carl snorted. “Damn airplanes,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, heading for the elevators. I half expected him to call me back, but all he said was, “Damn