Thump! Freeze! Kill the light; wait... listen... Nothing. Just my heart and breath and the water chuckling at me through the plastic hull. False alarm.
What else? Charts: they’d tell me whether Hammond actually sailed this plaything. Let’s see: no rolled up charts overhead; maybe folded in the chart table drawer. I’d have to move those sail bags to raise its lid.
The navigator’s perch was the protruding forward end of a quarter berth running aft like a low, square tunnel under the cockpit seat above. It was hidden under two big bags stenciled STAYSAIL and 150 GENOA. I shifted the smaller bag, then heaved the big jib out of the way, uncovering a pair of feet and sprawling legs.
I froze.
The legs lay still.
I fumbled for the swing arm chart lamp and aimed it up the long, tight tunnel.
The girl lay on her back, stuffed into the narrow quarter berth, head wrenched unnaturally back so I could see just her chin, bloody cheek, and tangle of bright orange hair. One slack breast spilled out of her green bikini top. It was spattered with drying blood.
With a kind of wooden calm, I inventoried Lee’s details, remembered from the tape: slightly knobby feet, slender legs and haunches - the near one dotted with a mole just emerging from the bottom of her suit. The blue-white skin was cold to the touch.
Her feet almost reached the chart table, so I couldn’t pull her straight forward. Instead, I bent her knees slightly, grasped her hips, and pulled. She stuck fast, but my slipping fingers hooked the bikini bottom and yanked it down her cold thighs. I couldn’t help noticing the improbable orange color of her pubic mound. Her pants and thighs were wet: dying or dead, she’d fouled herself.
I’m used to people faking death: exploding squibs and Technicolor blood and then we shoot their closeups or clean them up for another take. But riddled, hacked, and bloody as they look, they always get up; it isn’t real.
Get up, Lee, that’s a print. Get up, Lee. But the body lay there, pitiful and final.
Save it for later. I’d broken into someone’s boat and now I was hovering over a corpse. Time to move.
I crept over to the hatch and stumbled up the ladder, quietly easing the cover so I could pull the boards. Metallic clink as the cover shifted a quarter-inch, then stopped. Harder: Clink! Back, then CLINK! Nothing. The hatch was locked.
Er-er-er-Rhummm! Starter motor, then the diesel firing. Somebody wasn’t through with me yet. Light rocking, then movement: we were backing out of the slip. The bow scraped a piling - this somebody was hurried or inept.
Pause.
The transmission ground, clunked, then the boat slid forward again.
We were leaving the marina.
It had to be Reverend Hammond. He had the card key for the gate and the combination to the hatch padlock. The bow dock lines and lifelines were loose when I’d arrived, so he had been there - someplace. He’d locked his main hatch before taking the boat out, so he knew I was down there. Maybe he hadn’t recognized me. The hatch was closed, the cabin dim - but maybe he’d seen me coming up the dock.
All very interesting but off the point, which was to get out.
Mixed Blessing veered to port - probably into the main channel - then overcorrected, steadied. Engine revs increased. Hammond was understandably nervous. I glanced quickly around the cabin, trying to avoid seeing the sad refuse in the quarter berth. The tiny ports didn’t even open - but the skylight hatch? No, I’d pop right out in front of him. Then I remembered the forward hatch, set into the front of the cabin trunk.
I wrenched open the door to the V-berths in the bow. The overhead hatch was now gaping. That’s where he’d come from. He must have been below when I hailed the boat. When I opened the main hatch, he’d closed himself in the forward cabin, and while I fumbled around the main cabin, he’d gone out the forward hatch. So I could too.
Then what? Go overboard, if I could do it before he reached me.
I clambered onto the aft end of the port berth and cautiously approached the open hatch to reconnoiter. Good: the forward-facing opening was invisible from the helm - but then the helmsman was invisible to me too. I poked my head out just as we veered wildly again - to port this time - then straightened. An embankment of huge cubical boulders slid by in the dusk: we were heading right down the center of the main channel. Under power like this, we should be to starboard of those buoys, but our reckless speed showed that the helmsman wasn’t observing harbor niceties.
New problem: standing on the V-berth, I could just get head and shoulders through the hatch. Hauling up and out of here would be clumsy, noisy, and slow - if I could do it. Considering the alternative, I could.
I took a deep breath and heaved up on stiff arms like a gymnast, feet swinging uselessly; then fell forward onto the deck with an appalling racket. I wriggled out and came up on my knees in time to see him leave the wheel and run forward. As he grabbed the shrouds and stumbled onto the side deck, the now unattended wheel turned and the boat swerved sharply to port. I was tossed against the starboard lifelines.
I grabbed a stanchion and stood up to meet his rush. The swing to port had moved the staysail boom to starboard; he hit it knee-high and pitched forward on his face as I dove over the starboard rail.
I hit the water, surfaced, bobbed frantically in the sixty-degree chop, fighting to get oriented. If I got confused, I could swim straight out to sea in the darkness. Mixed Blessing continued to port, turning a full circle. He was heading back. I spotted a flashing light and swam toward it, thinking like a robot: never mind the water never mind the cold never mind the boat arm over arm over arm over arm. The embankment was forty yards away.
I touched down, scrabbled up a slimy concrete “boulder,” then another, another. When I paused to look back, I could see the boat sliding by to port. It began another circle. Using the great concrete cubes for cover, I scratched and scrambled toward the road at the top.
The boat made another pass and I crouched shivering in the lee of a boulder until it had glided by. I started climbing again, sneakers slipping on the greasy surfaces. At the top, I dropped flat and looked outward. Without running lights to follow, the boat’s course was hard to see in the near-dark. I stared for over a minute until I was sure it was heading due south, past the outer breakwater.
For a very private burial at sea, no doubt.
* * * *
Reaction time.
I tottered through the little concrete park on the embankment, shuddering, making little dog noises in my throat. I kept recalling bluish dead legs, sailboat claustrophobia, furious bulk hurtling at me through the dusk, water like the electric chair, graceful menace of the circling boat. Feet, knees, hands scoured by the concrete sea wall, noisy sneakers leaking brine.
Step after step through the chill, too wretched to be furtive, I emerged into the ghastly orange blaze of sodium streetlights. No one about anyway. I scuttled past shuttered boat yards and yacht brokers up to the boulevard and over to my patient Rabbit, now alone in the public lot.
In out of the wind. Head on the steering wheel for ten seconds, twenty breaths. Then up the empty freeway, heater blasting, teeth clacking, pounding the wheel in frustration and grief.
Inexplicable grief: I never met the girl. Never saw a corpse before either. Young corpse; fragile; broken; flesh like cold plastic; razor stubble under my hand where I grabbed her calf. Toenails painted once; now peeling. Faint greasy sheen of sweat or suntan oil. Sloping breast more obscene now than in that film.
Oh why?
My forebrain fuse blew mercifully and my driving center continued without the rest of me. Lanes were changed, signs noted, off-ramps negotiated. The Rabbit stopped on red, went on green, broke no laws, and deposited me at my door in Laurel Canyon. Clothes off, I crept into bed, and escaped into sleep in sixty seconds.
Chapter 8
The morning after was a liquorless hangover complete with aches, shakes, and nausea. I was surprised to be alive and wishing I were dead. Outside, the bleak overcast tha
t is L.A.’s only alternative to sunny blare. Inside, the ceiling fluorescents lit Sally’s kitchen like a bus station. Sally sat very quietly across the table, still bundled in a sweat suit after her three-mile morning run.
“Eat the eggs, Stoney.”
“No.”
“Then eat the toast at least. Come on now, drink the coffee too.” I made a vague effort to obey. “Good boy.”
Leaving me to it, Sally produced cheerful noises at the sink. The coffee nerved me for toast, the toast for eggs, and so I convalesced through breakfast.
“Any more coffee, Sally?”
“Sure.” She put a hand on my shoulder as she poured. “More toast?”
“No thanks, but that was good.”
She sat down again. “You sound better.”
“Can you make sense out of all this?”
“I’m still turning it over. That poor girl.”
I sipped my coffee, trying not to see the image of human debris tangled in the quarter berth. “I never met Lee Tolman, but something about her really got to me.”
“I know.”
“I liked her, even if she was a bit off center.”
Sally started clearing breakfast. “Where does all this leave you?”
“Sherlock Holmes said something to me.”
“One of your voices?”
“Mm. He said it makes perfect sense. We have only to learn how.”
“Maybe, maybe not. You’re sure it was Hammond?”
“Oh yes; he had the gate card and the combination to the hatch padlock. Besides, he was familiar with the boat. You can’t just sail any strange boat, you know; it’s not like driving a car.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” She rinsed the plates.
“And I think he recognized me.”
“You said it was almost dark.”
“But I’d talked to him about Lee just a few hours earlier, and I stood on the dock for a while before going on board. He could have seen me through a window. I called out several times; perhaps he recognized my voice. And think of this: Lee was already down in the cabin, dead. If he hadn’t recognized me, he would have come on deck, passed the time of day, and sent me on my way. No, Hammond knows I found Lee’s body.”
“But he doesn’t know you’re alive. When he last saw you, you were falling into twenty feet of ice water.”
“It was only forty yards to shore.”
“And almost dark. You said he circled several times before he gave up.”
“True.”
“So maybe he doesn’t know whether you got out or not.”
“Easy enough for him to find out.” Sally slapped the dish towel on the drain board and turned to me: “Then you’d better tell the police.”
“Tell them what - that I broke into someone’s boat? There was no one else on the dock to prove Hammond took the boat out. You can bet Lee’s body’s somewhere in the Pacific. And that boat’s all fiberglass and plastic - very easy to clean up. By now, there’s no evidence whatever.”
“The girl is missing.”
“She was missing two weeks ago. What does that prove about Hammond? No, I can’t go to the police.”
Sally looked thoughtful as she stowed plates on the top cupboard shelf, an easy reach from her five-foot, ten-inch height. Then she leaned against the counter, crossed her arms, and confronted me. “You don’t want to go to the police.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t.”
“You’re going to play Sherlock Holmes.”
“I have an obligation.”
“To what?”
Very hard to say the next thing. “I’m responsible for Lee’s death. No, listen: yesterday I told Hammond I was looking for her. Hours later, he killed her. What else can I make of that?”
“You can’t be sure. Besides, what can you do?”
“Get some help, to start.”
“Such as?”
“You.” Sally looked puzzled. “I’ve been thinking: you sold a computer to that big real estate company.”
“Commercial Properties, Inc. In Century City.”
“Are you friendly with the customer?”
“Too friendly. He kept trying to talk me into bed.”
“Would he give you a rundown on Denise’s studio? How much it’s worth; what her chances are of selling it.”
“That’s what they bought the computer for. They can run an analysis on almost any commercial property in town. But what’ll it tell you?”
“Denise is afraid she won’t be able to sell her lot. That’s the only hold the extortioners have on her. Her hope of selling’s based on what Harry Hummel tells her - and he’s not exactly Bernard Baruch.”
“You want a professional judgment. Okay. Speaking of Denise, you’ll have to tell her about Lee’s death.”
I nodded glumly.
Sally embraced me gently. “I guess you have to do this, Stoney. Please, please be careful.”
She kissed me slowly and I took some comfort from the feel of her under her sweat suit. But only some. She left to shower and dress.
* * * *
I postponed the dreaded call to Denise by phoning Jerry the director.
“What’s up, Winston?”
“Just checking in - you know. How’d the rest of the shoot go?”
“It didn’t. Hammond never showed up after lunch.”
“Oh? When did he leave?”
“I don’t know; I was with you, remember? Nahan had a shit fit when he heard we had to pay the crew anyway. Cheap bastard.”
“What did he say?”
“Nahan doesn’t talk to us peasants. Just turned around and stalked out. But you shoulda seen his face. Hee hee, I loved it!”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Uh, Winston?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you calling about?”
“As I said, just... checking in.”
“You sound kinda weird. What are you snorting at 8:30 A.M.?”
“Well, thanks, Jerry. Take it easy.”
If Hammond had gone straight to the yacht club, he’d have been there two hours ahead of me. Plenty of time.
My call to Denise raised only a cleaning woman who said Denise was at the studio. Hm, that’s unusual.
Sally strode in, blasted shiny by a strenuous shower and disguised again as an executive. “I have a call in Century City. I’ll see that real estate guy afterward.”
“Thanks, Sally.”
“Then I’m going to work out at the health club.”
“You’ll get muscle-bound.”
“Not where it counts.” Another gentle kiss, and then she was out the door.
* * * *
Sunshine was replacing the overcast as I threaded the Rabbit through the morning rush, toward Tolman Studios. A massive figure was coalescing in the seat beside me: Doctor Samuel Johnson.
He trained his one good eye on Hollywood: “Those trees, Sir, are absurd.”
“Which, the palm trees?”
He peered at the offending growths: scabrous trunks arcing fifty feet up to crowns of puny fronds. “Being too ill-made for either beauty or shade, they provide neither a pleasing prospect nor an umbrageous passage.”
“They don’t even produce cocoanuts.”
Doctor Johnson wiped his sizable nose absently on the sleeve of his rusty greatcoat. “Then what is the good of ‘em?”
“I’ve never known.”
“Harrumph.” He blinked and squinted repeatedly in the growing glare. “I had an idea to see Africa once, but desisted from it. The tropics, Sir, are frivolous.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“In proportion, Sir, and I see no proportion here.” He beat a tattoo on his thick knee with stumpy fingers.
“How’s the dictionary coming?”
“Well enough, except for W, which is troublesome.” Doctor Johnson heaved his bulk around to inspect me, knocking his great grey wig askew on the low Rabbit roof. “But you did not confine me to this less than cap
acious coach to inquire after my lexicography.”
“I wanted some advice on a question of duty.”
“When a man questions his duty, it is often because he is ill-disposed to do it.”
“But what is my duty?”
The massive head cocked and the one good eye half-twinkled: “You do not believe in justice?”
“I wish I could.”
The eye escalated to full twinkle. “And what did Mistress Sally say?”
“She guessed I had to do this. But that doesn’t mean I agree with her.”
“What a man is loath to say himself, he hopes to hear from others.”
“You’re fast with a proverb.”
He half-bowed with clumsy good humor. “My stock in trade, Sir. Do not evade my point. You know, in fact, what you must do.”
“The question is how?”
“Why, Sir: if you but study the play and the players in it, then cunning will bring you to them and wit prescribe questions for ‘em; and if you reflect on their answers and observe their demeanor, then reason will unravel the plot and action procure a fit ending.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“In fact, Sir, such sentences are exhausting. Boswell did me no service in tidying my conversation for his book. The reputation that resulted has been an onerous burden.”
“But in short, you agree with Holmes: discover the logic that solves the puzzle.”
“I seldom speak ‘in short,’ but yes.” Doctor Johnson fanned himself with a greatcoat lapel. “If I remain in your climate, Sir, I shall be cooked like a Sunday joint. May I return to my harmless drudgery?”
“Oh, of course; thoughtless of me.”
The massive body was turning to smoke. “Not at all. I remain ever your most humble and obedient ....”
He was gone and suddenly the Rabbit felt positively roomy.
* * * *
At the studio, Gladys Dempal said Denise was upstairs at the editing rooms. I passed along the looming corridor, up the stairs, and left toward the four little cells at the back of the building. The first door now proclaimed HARRY HUMMEL LIMITED.
Still an apt description of him. “Christ, Winston, aren’t you ever home? I’m tired wasting quarters on your goddam machine.”
I looked past him into the room. “Hello, Denise. I’m afraid we have to talk.”
“All right.”
“Could we go someplace?”
“Harry can hear.”
“It’s about Lee.”
“He knows the whole story. I showed him the tape, remember?”