“Flabby nudes? The naked truth? Do you know the kind of people I’m facing, Peter? They are locked into hyper-cool. They compete with each other to buy superexpensive sports cars, just for bragging rights. Their women fit the perfect waist-to-hip ratio, like they order them from a catalog. They can smell blood in the water from a mile away. They can taste failure, like eels taste sickness and death.”
Where is that coming from? Peter asked himself.
Weinstein’s cheeks tightened to form deep dimples around his lips, beyond anger and into desperation. “If I let our investors meet Arpad now, the way he is, I’m sunk. We’re all sunk. He’s going through a crisis.”
“What sort of crisis?” Peter asked.
Weinstein shrugged that off. “I need assurance, cool, stability, savoir faire. I don’t think dull wit and flabby nudes are going to cut it.”
“Then why did you ask me?” Peter said, his voice breaking. “You know my reputation. That’s all I’ve ever been good for.” He had had enough.
“Because I thought you might still have something to add,” Weinstein said.
Peter made as if to tear the sheet of paper in half, but Weinstein snatched it from his hands. “Fuck it. A meeting tonight, bigger money than even Mr. Benoliel can dream of. And this.” Weinstein swiftly and neatly rolled the paper. “Got a rubber band?” he asked.
HALF AN HOUR after he saw Weinstein out the door, Peter sat in the kitchen, vibrating with anger and wondering if he knew what in the hell he was doing, with Weinstein or with anyone else in his life. He tried to sip ginger ale, but his hand was shaking so badly it spilled. The phone rang.
He looked at it for a moment, sick of talk, any talk, then set down the glass and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
It was Michelle. “Joseph is doing poorly,” she said. “He wants to meet with you. He won’t tell me why. Can you be here?”
Peter drew himself together. “Of course,” he said. “My car’s in the shop. I’ll go pick it up and be right over.”
The garage sent a Jeep. The Porsche was all fixed and ready to roll. But he would have to be back before it was dark.
If he dared.
CHAPTER 33
“THANK GOD YOU made it,” Michelle said as he climbed the steps.
She was seated with legs crossed on a wicker peacock chair on the long shaded veranda. It was three o’clock and she held a martini in one hand.
“What’s up?” Peter asked.
She shrugged. “He won’t tell me. Emotionally, he’s been going downhill for a week now,” she said, and added, through prim lips, “Sometimes I wonder if I even know the man.” Then she bucked up and set the glass on a round, glass-top table. “Between you and me and the alcohol.”
“Of course,” Peter said. Beside the glass, he saw that she had arranged a pile of silvery pushpins to form a clownish, grinning face, like a jack-o’-lantern.
“I should quit,” she said, lifting the glass again. “I don’t drink much, but I should quit completely. It’s false, isn’t it, the way it takes the stress off? Because the stress is still there.”
“You just don’t feel it as much,” Peter said.
“You quit a long time ago,” Michelle said, looking up at him with heavily made-up and inquisitive green eyes. He had not seen her use so much makeup before: rouge-pinked cheeks, false eyelashes, mascara. It bordered on the grotesque.
“It would have killed me,” Peter said.
“You’re strong.” She changed expressions, brightened. One moment she was somber, the next, friendly and curious. “How did the interview go?”
“I’ve got a job,” Peter said, smiling. “Thanks to you.”
“I try,” Michelle said distantly. “Joseph might be pleased to hear about that. He likes you, you know.”
“I know,” Peter said. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint him, or you.”
“How in hell could you disappoint us?” Michelle asked, astonished.
“I may be losing it again,” Peter said. “It’s as if I’m trying to sabotage everything.”
“Like last time?” Michelle asked, leaning forward.
“Worse than last time. I’m seeing things.”
She reached out and brushed the back of his hand. One of her long nails briefly scratched the skin there, leaving a white mark. “What makes you think you’re losing it? Joseph sees things all the time.” She smiled as if that might be a joke—or might not. “He won’t confide in me. It’s as if I can feel the storm clouds, but . . . I don’t know where they’re coming from. He talks in his sleep, sometimes. We all get old, I guess.”
Peter looked across the broad green lawn, embarrassed. “Well, it’s worse for me.”
Cloud shadows chased over the estate.
“Tell me about it,” Michelle said. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and gave him a sidelong look. “I care, Peter. I listened before, I can listen now.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Start with yesterday,” Michelle said. “As good a place as any.”
“What I’m seeing or not seeing, that isn’t the worst of it,” Peter said. “It’s the pattern. It’s caring and losing and then breaking down. Don’t ever have kids, Michelle.”
“I won’t,” Michelle vowed.
“No matter how much of a selfish bastard you think you are, kids come along and they dismantle you, they rebuild you. You put everything you are into them, all your hopes and fears. It’s as if you have to reach out and protect everybody—the whole family, the whole world. I used to lie in bed afraid that I’d lose one or both of my children, afraid of what that would do to me, to me and Helen.”
“Well, that must be common enough,” Michelle observed.
“Yes, but I still didn’t keep track, didn’t listen to my own fears. I lost my focus. I was off on a trip . . . doing research for a book. A stupid little book that wasn’t going to go anywhere, no matter how much research I did. And a bit of the dark world came and took her.”
Helen calling on the phone, Daniella was missing. Flying back on a commuter plane from San Francisco. Getting into Burbank Airport, Helen picking him up curbside, rushing home . . . to sit and wait, talk to police officers, digging for photographs, writing down descriptions for the Amber Alert, slowly working their way up after four days to Detective Scragg.
Just four days, and then they were talking to Robbery Homicide.
“Dark world?” Michelle repeated, incredulous. “Devils and demons? She was murdered, Peter.”
“It’s a metaphor. Kipling,” Peter said. This was getting him nowhere.
“I’d still like to know what you’re seeing. Maybe it can help me understand Joseph.”
Peter squinted across the lawn. “I don’t get you,” he said. “It doesn’t mean a thing, because it can’t be real, right?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes he sleepwalks. Screams in the middle of the night. The doctor says it might be a reaction to his blood-pressure medicine. It’s worse at night, but now it happens in the daytime, too. When you aren’t here. When you’re here, he’s on his best behavior.” Michelle rubbed her hands and stared at her knuckles. “He talks about you like a son.” Her face went blank. “So I guess that makes me your mother, and that makes me responsible for both of you. See? I can feel responsible, too.”
“He hasn’t told me any of this.”
“Well, he wouldn’t, would he? It’s up to me, when you’re gone, to bear up under that particular brunt.” She sat back in the chair, eyes like flint. “I don’t think anybody here is going nuts. You or Joseph. But there is a mystery. Two big strapping males start worrying about their sanity and spending big money on gurus in Pasadena.” Now she stood. In her short-sleeve white blouse and pleated slacks, she looked like a Howard Hughes protégée, about to portray Amelia Earhart. She might have been a ghost herself, an actress visitor from Salammbo’s past, from the 1930s. “Go to him.”
“Of course.” He got up from the chair and
headed for the door.
“I still can’t get my Trans to work inside the house, past the veranda,” Michelle called after him. “Ask Weinstein about that.”
“I will,” Peter said.
* * *
JOSEPH WAS SEATED in front of the open French windows in the upstairs room. He wore a sweatshirt and what looked like ski pants. “Happy hunting?” Joseph asked as he heard the door close. He did not turn to look.
“Pretty decent,” Peter said. “They’re giving me a job. I owe it to you and Michelle.”
“Michelle did the legwork, as she is most talented in that department,” Joseph said. “Come sit. Don’t make me bend my neck. I’m stiff all over today.”
“Why not get out and get some exercise?” Peter asked.
“Because I’m . . .”
For a moment, Peter thought he could anticipate what Joseph was going to say: losing my mind. But Joseph pulled his words back and amended them to, “That Sandaji woman’s assistant has been pestering me ever since your visit.”
“For more money?”
“No. Apparently you impressed her maidservant or whatever she’s called.”
“Jean Baslan,” Peter remembered. “I doubt she was impressed.”
“Well, somebody was. Sandaji would never call directly, not even me, her benefactor.”
“Wary of filthy lucre?” Peter offered.
“She enjoys her money. But she spends too much time dealing with troubled people and she probably likes her privacy. How’s that for insight, Peter?” Joseph afforded him a wan smile.
“Pretty good,” Peter said.
“My producer instincts. Now cheer me up. Tell me about your job.”
Peter outlined the generalities of the commission, and told him about the awful pitch scribbled by the consultants in Palo Alto and the dicey meeting with Weinstein at the Glendale house. He felt not the slightest inclination to tell Joseph about his ghosts. Here, in the clean old room with its dark, expensive furniture, the view of the endless lawn, back at Salammbo, life felt normal. He could be half convinced it was all an inside job. Psychological. Falling back into an old, old rut. Well, he had survived that before, he could do it again . . . and so on, as he rolled out the story of his visit to San Andreas.
“Jesus,” Joseph said when Peter finished. He made a face. “They actually have their switchboard thing in the gas chamber?”
“They’re proud of it, in a weird way. I’m trying to convince them that stunt is a little too juvenile for the open market. A certain amount of respect is called for when you go big time.”
“Spoken like a true king of exploitation,” Joseph said. “Are they heedless nerds?”
“They seem to have social skills,” Peter said. “Arpad Kreisler . . . he’s pretty interesting.”
“Head on his shoulders?”
Peter nodded.
“A new beginning,” Joseph said.
“Maybe.”
“Well, we might not need you here much longer,” Joseph said. “That would set you free to watch over my investment.” He swallowed. “Michelle’s investment.”
“I can still help out here when I’m needed,” Peter said, suddenly uneasy, as if about to wake up from a nice dream. “Gratis. You’ve both been good to me.”
Joseph motioned for Peter to move his chair and sit directly in front of him, in the pool of sun coming through the window.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Joseph asked.
“Pretty sure,” Peter said. He would confess his worries to Michelle, but not Joseph; that’s how it was.
Joseph checked him over through narrowed eyes, and for a second, Peter wondered what was going on. Joseph’s look as much as said, What do you know? “Well,” Joseph drawled, pulling back this scrutiny, “one last errand, and then I’d like you to put all this behind you. Go through that gate, and don’t come back.”
Peter was surprised into a moment of silence.
“It’s not about you,” Joseph continued. “My past is about to return and sit on my lap, and it’s not pretty. I’ve made some fairly big mistakes, one in particular. I should have known . . . producer’s instinct. But cojones ruled.”
“You’re sounding a little scary, Mr. Benoliel.”
“As I said, this doesn’t concern you,” Joseph said mildly, as if speaking to a favored child. “Do this for me. Go back to Sandaji. She apparently has some questions, her handmaid was vague about what sort. Maybe she needs your masculine services. Even Mother Teresa must have had her moments.”
“I doubt that very much,” Peter said, drawing his brows together.
“You have time to go see them, for me?”
“I think so,” Peter said.
“This evening?”
“Okay.”
“And what will you do if they clue you in to some cosmic mystery, some further answer to my original question?”
“Tell you all about it. If you don’t lock the gates.”
“I’ll never lock the gates on you, Peter. But it’s time for you to move on. Still, if they clue you . . .” He nodded and set his jaw. “Call and tell me. And if something happens to me . . . watch out for Michelle.”
“Of course I will,” Peter said. “But nothing’s—”
“I mean it,” Joseph said. “Promise me you’ll humor an old man. You’ll watch out for her.”
Peter nodded, at a loss what to do now. Joseph waved him off and stared blankly out the window. “Tie up the loose ends. And thanks, Peter.”
“My pleasure,” Peter said. As he opened the door, Joseph—as he often did—issued a dramatic set of parting words. “Don’t believe what you read in the papers.”
“Right,” Peter said.
MICHELLE LOOKED BACK at Peter as they walked down the long front steps below the veranda. “Joseph and I haven’t had sex in years, Peter. I’m okay with that. There’s been far too much sex in my life. But this other stuff—this brooding—that worries me.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Peter said.
“What, afraid of the fate that lies in store for all old men?”
Peter sniffed.
“I assume you’re leaving soon to go to that Sandaji woman. Can you drive me over to Jesus Wept?”
“Sure. Or we could walk.”
She looked up. “It’s going to rain. That woman’s creepy, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” Peter said, detecting a hint of covetousness he had not heard from Michelle before. Is everyone a little off these days? Phil was the starting pistol. Then Sandaji. Then me. Now Joseph and Michelle. We’re all in Wonderland.
“Anyway, drive us over and leave from there. I’ll walk back. I want your opinion.”
Peter wondered how much time Michelle spent at the other house. This was the first occasion she had invited him to see what she was doing. How she occupied her time when Joseph was being moody . . .
Despite his tastes in women—he thought without apology that twenty-five to thirty was the age range of perfection—he had never had much faith in May-December relationships.
Peter opened the Porsche’s door for Michelle.
“I’ve always loved this car,” she said, slipping into the low seat with otterlike grace and pulling in her legs. “I hate our Arnage. It’s a boat.” Her lip curled. “I feel embarrassed driving it.”
“Sell it,” Peter advised. “You could buy ten or twenty of these, and I could use the parts.”
Michelle smiled. A whistling freshet lifted her hair. An offshore deck of mottled clouds was moving inland. Sprinkles fell by the time they swung around the low hills and U-turned by the huge bronze statue of El Cid that dotted the long exclamation mark of oleander hedge. They approached the Mission-style mansion down a sloping drive.
“Did you know there’s enough poison in that oleander to kill a small town?” Michelle asked. “Make a note for your next mystery.”
“I haven’t written a mystery in years,” Peter said. That had been Phil’s forte. Involved, c
omplicated mysteries with what seemed to the average reader a large number of loose ends. They had not sold well.
“I could help,” Michelle offered. The look she gave him just as they pulled up by the row of five garage doors was at once speculative and blank. She tossed back her hair in a way that Peter knew from experience meant a woman was considering making a pass. The blankness, he suspected, was a combination of not wanting to show her hand too early and possibly of not being certain or happy about her plans. Something drove her forward anyway. “You should do what you need to do,” she told him. “I’ve known you for years, Peter. Old friends. And now I do mean old. Time is running short.”
It really was Wonderland. For the first time with Michelle, Peter felt acutely uncomfortable. He had long ago learned how to turn down passes both overt and covert from women of all walks in life without arousing too much resentment. Still, the fact that he was thumbing through his mental three-by-five card file of polite rejections was disturbing. He had always thought Michelle was too smart and too classy to advance this little card onto the table.
Joseph would smell it on them both, even if it never went beyond a simple pass—he would know it right away, producer’s instincts.
Still, where women were concerned, Peter had always been dangerously curious. He followed Michelle up the two tiers of steps to the huge, wrought-iron-studded door. Michelle swung it open with a shove of one fine, long-fingered hand; it was not locked.
“Welcome to my beast,” she said. They entered the mansion. Their footsteps, crossing the black slate floor, sharpened in the sonic retrospect of the entry, transformed into a suggestion of razors. “I just can’t figure out what to do with this place. The more I spend and the harder I try, the uglier she gets.”
Enough light filtered in from high windows over the front door to light their way, but the circular foyer was still gloomy and unwelcoming. Staircases descended in heavy swoops to each side. Iron railings on the stairs and along the balustrade were a marvel of dark, eye-snagging difficulty.
Michelle swung her arm up to the balcony. “See what I mean?” she said. “I could hang klieg lights up there and she would still depress me. But you should have seen what she was like before. The fire made such a mess of her. I’ve torn down walls, opened up rooms, painted, fixed floors . . . Like most old ladies, you can lift and tuck, but you can’t hide bad bones. Still, I’ve always thought she has potential. Don’t you?”