“What happened then?”
“Maggie went into labor about a month early. We weren’t ready for it—I wasn’t, anyway. She called me from her office—she was still working—and I raced over to get her and take her to the hospital. At least, I think that’s how it happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s how I reconstructed it later.”
“You don’t remember?”
“No. I never have. The car went over the center line on La Cienega and hit a truck nearly head on, on her side. The cops found me in a diner across the street, eating a cheeseburger, for Christ’s sake. They told me later that when I was taken back to the wreck to identify Maggie, I passed out. I woke up in the hospital, and I didn’t remember any of it. The last thing I recalled was negotiating with an agent about an actor Jack and I wanted for a picture, a day and a half before.”
“Did some part of you believe that you had deliberately tried to kill the baby, so that you could have Maggie to yourself?”
“A big part of me did. But I couldn’t remember any of the events leading up to the crash, so I’ve never known what I felt at the time.”
“Did you seek any therapy after that?”
“No. I just lived with it.”
“Wolf, my poor dear friend; what hell you put yourself through.”
Wolf turned and looked at him. “I’m back in hell now,” he said.
“We’ll work it out together when this is over,” Mark said.
“Over? When will that be? I’d like to make it be over.”
Mark sighed. “Wolf, you must remember that, while you are dealing with your problems in analysis, you must also deal with the problems of your daily life. You have to do both.”
“So I should call Ed Eagle?”
“I think you should. I can’t see any other way of resolving the situation without causing the most profound damage to yourself.”
“They have the death penalty in New Mexico. That’s pretty profound.”
“There are worse things than dying, Wolf. There are worse things than being in prison.”
“Name one.”
“Just one? The hell you were in after Maggie’s death. The hell you say you’re in again.”
Wolf was quiet for a moment. “You’re right about that, Mark. Tell Eagle I’ll call him in a few days. Don’t tell him my name; just tell him a friend of yours will call soon.”
“Why not now?”
“Because there’s something I have to do. And to get it done, I have to stay dead a little while longer.”
W
olf flew into Los Angeles at dawn and landed at Santa Monica Airport, having given a false name on his flight plan. He had one of the few private T-hangars on the field, the result of years on a waiting list; he taxied there and exchanged the airplane for his Mercedes station wagon, locked the hangar, and drove away. The early-shift lineman at California Aviation waved idly, taking no special note of him. Apparently the boy either didn’t know who he was or didn’t read the papers.
He drove up Bundy to the freeway and headed north, exiting at Sunset Boulevard, then after a few miles turned left onto Stone Canyon, into the plush Bel Air neighborhood, and drove past the Bel Air Hotel. No more breakfast meetings there for a while, he reflected.
A couple of hundred yards past the hotel, he turned into his driveway, using the electric opener to roll back the
gates, then again to open the garage door. Julia’s new Mercedes 500SL convertible reminded him that she would not be driving it again. He remembered the fit of happiness she had pitched when he had given it to her. Since his initial outburst of grief in Mark’s office, his emotions had been strange—dead, like Julia. He felt guilty for not being wracked with grief.
He went directly into the kitchen from the garage entrance. The first thing he saw was Julia. She was standing at the sink, wearing her green cashmere dressing gown, washing something. Hearing the door open, she turned and looked at him. Recognition and alarm widened her eyes for a moment, then she fainted.
Wolf went and stood over her, trembling with anger. The woman was Bridget, the live-in maid, and she was wearing Julia’s dressing gown.
The bitch
, Wolf thought.
She couldn’t wait to get into Julia’s clothes
. He filled a glass of water at the sink and threw it into her face. Then, as she sputtered to consciousness, he realized that he needed her goodwill, at least for a while. He bent and helped her to her feet.
“Oh, God!” she warbled. “You’re dead, and you’ve come for me.”
He sat her down at the kitchen table. “Shut up, Bridget,” he said. “I’m no deader than you are.”
“Then I must be dead, too,” she said, tears starting down her cheeks. “Am I in heaven or hell?”
“That’s a good question, but I’m not in a position to give you an answer. Believe me, no matter what you’ve read in the papers, I’m not dead. Mrs. Willett is, though, and the first thing I want you to do is to get that dressing gown back into her closet, along with anything else you might have taken from there.”
“I only borrowed it,” she whimpered.
“And Bridget, I don’t want you to leave this house for the next week, do you understand me?” He had learned long ago not to cajole the woman; she responded best to direct orders.
“Yessir, Mr. Willett,” she said.
“Good. Now get yourself dressed and go about your work. If the telephone rings, you answer it and deal with whoever it is. Nobody, but nobody, in L.A. knows I’m still on this earth, and I want to keep it that way for a while, do you understand?”
“Yessir, I do,” Bridget said. The woman was bright; she could handle the callers.
He had a thought. “If somebody asks for Mr. Amadeus, I’ll take the call.”
“Yessir,” she said, then hurried herself from the kitchen.
He fixed himself a bowl of cereal and took it into his study. Everything here was much the same as in the Santa Fe house. Wolf had discovered long ago that he was incapable of owning a second home; what he had was two first homes. He sank into the Eames lounge chair, put his feet up on the ottoman, ate his cereal, and thought. When he had finished eating, he glanced at his watch—a quarter to seven—then made a telephone call.
Hal Berger, his business manager, answered the phone himself; he was a bachelor and had no servants. Wolf had always wondered if he was gay. “Hello,” Hal said grumpily.
“You ought to get up earlier and get the worm, Hal.”
There was a long silence, then: “I don’t know who you are,
putz
, but if you call me again, I’ll have the cops on you.”
“I’m who I sound like,” Wolf said, “and reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
“Why should I believe that?” Hal asked suspiciously.
“Gee, I don’t know, Hal, am I supposed to tell you you’ve got a wart on your ass that nobody but me knows about?”
Finally, astonishment. “Wolf, it’s really you, isn’t it?”
“Why don’t you get over to Stone Canyon and find out? I might even tell you what’s going on.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Hal said. He lived up in Coldwater Canyon, not far away.
“Wait a minute,” Wolf said, “I want you to call some people first.” He needed his editor and composer. “Get hold of Jerry Sachs and Dave Martinelli and ask them to meet you here right away. Tell them it’s something about my estate. Urgent.”
“Jerry left for Rome yesterday; a job.”
“The sonofabitch didn’t waste any time, did he?” Wolf hadn’t worked with another editor for years.
“You know Jerry; he’s always short of money. He didn’t have the guts to call me until he was at the airport.”
Wolf thought for a minute. “What’s that kid’s name who used to be his assistant, then went out on her own?”
“The little looker? Whats-her-name?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Jesus, uh…Darling, or something; no, it’s Dear.”
“Deering, Jane Deering. Have you got her number?”
“I’ll find her.”
“Don’t break your ass getting over here, Hal. Shave and shower, have some breakfast. I’ll leave the gate open; you park around back and come in through the kitchen. Tell the others to do that, too.”
Hal Berger was there in half an hour, shaved and showered. He hugged Wolf. “Man, am I glad to see you!”
“You just didn’t want to lose a client,” Wolf said, hugging him back.
“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Hal held him at arm’s length. “Is Jack alive, too? And Julia?” he added, almost as an afterthought.
Wolf shook his head. “No, just me. I’ll explain when the others arrive; I don’t want to go through it twice.”
“Sure, I understand. Jane and Dave should be here shortly.”
There was the sound of a car pulling up out back, then another.
“Go meet them,” Wolf said. “Tell them I’m alive; I don’t want anybody else fainting on me. Bridget keeled right over.”
Hal left, then came back a moment later with the editor and composer.
Wolf shook hands with them both, then waved them to a sofa. “I owe you both an explanation,” he said. “Let’s get that out of the way, then I’ll tell you why I asked you here.”
“What about Jack?” Dave Martinelli asked.
“Jack and Julia and another man—I don’t know who—are dead. They were murdered in the Santa Fe house while I was stuck in a hotel at the Grand Canyon, waiting for my airplane to be repaired,” he lied. That would be good enough for now.
“I’m awfully sorry, Wolf,” Jane Deering said.
Wolf had forgotten how attractive she was—small, dark, a terrific figure in tight jeans and a T-shirt; she never seemed to wear anything else the few times he had met her. “Thank you, Jane.”
Dave Martinelli spoke up. “It’s bad enough losing your wife, but your partner at the same time—that’s terrible. Why did they think the other guy was you?”
“They were in my house. A friend who knows us all well made the identification. The guy was apparently my size.”
“There’s no mistake about Julia and Jack?”
“None. One mistake is understandable; he wouldn’t make three.”
“When’s the funeral?” Jane asked.
That gave Wolf pause. It astonished him that he hadn’t thought about it. “Not for a while,” he said. “There’s something I haven’t told you. Only five people, besides my housekeeper, know I’m alive. You’re three of them.”
There was a short silence.
“Why?” Jane asked finally.
“My lawyer and the Santa Fe police think it’s better that way for a while. They want the killer to think I’m dead.” He didn’t have a lawyer yet, and the
police
thought he was dead, but what else could he tell these people—that when it became known he was alive, he would be the chief suspect?
“I see,” Jane said gravely.
“How can we help?” Dave asked.
“I’ve got to finish
L.A. Days
, and I’ve got to do it fast,” Wolf said. “Dave, where are you on the score?”
“I’ve laid down a piano track to the rough cut,” the composer said, “and I’ve had most of the scoring done. I’ll have to trim to the final cut, of course.”
“Once we get a final cut, how long before you can record?”
“How pushed for time are you?”
“As pushed as I can get. I want to get an answer print
to Centurion as soon as humanly possible. If I don’t, they’re liable to take it away from our company and cut it themselves.”
“Ouch,” Dave said. “They’d love to get their fat, sticky fingers on it, wouldn’t they?”
“They’ve already been on the phone,” Hal Berger said. “I told them I didn’t even know where the rough cut was, maybe in Santa Fe.”
“That’s good,” Wolf said. “Tell them it’s in the Santa Fe house, where Jack and I were working on it, and the police have sealed it for at least two weeks. Tell them you’ve already tried to get in there and couldn’t.”
“Okay.”
“How much time do you need to trim to my cut and record, Dave?”
Martinelli thought for a moment. “If the final is close to your present cut, and you don’t mind paying a hell of a lot of overtime to musicians, I can do it in three days.”
“I think the final cut will be close, and you can have as much overtime as you want,” Wolf said.
“I don’t know about the overtime, Wolf,” Hal piped up. “We’re over budget as it is.”
“Thanks for being a businessman, Hal, but I’ve got no choice.”
Jane Deering spoke up. “What about me?” she asked. “How can I help?”
“I’d like you to cut the picture with me,” Wolf replied.
“Jerry went to Rome, I heard,” she said.
“Jane, if Jerry were here, he’d be cutting it; we both know that. But he’s not here, and if you can work night and day for the next few days, I’ll back you with the union for an equal screen credit. I’ll also pay you what Jerry was getting. Hal will show you his contract.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Jane said. “If I can get my sister to stay with my little girl.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’m not married; I just have a little girl. She’s eight.” She got up. “I’ll call my sister; can I use the kitchen phone?”
“Sure. And Jane, I’d appreciate it if you’d move in here. You can have the guest house.”
“Okay, but I’m going to need an hour or two a day with Sara—that’s my daughter.”
“Sure, whenever you like. The other twenty-two hours are mine, though.”
“Deal,” she said. “I’ll call my sister.”
“Jane, I know you’ve got an agent, and I know he’ll be pissed off if you do this without your talking to him first, but I’d appreciate it very much if you’d wait until we have the cut before calling him. You can trust me about the money.”
She nodded and disappeared toward the kitchen.
Wolf turned back to the composer. “Dave, I’ll call you the minute we have a final cut. Why don’t you go ahead and book studio time and musicians for…” He looked at the day on his wristwatch: Saturday. “Wednesday of next week?”
“Okay,” Martinelli said. “If you need more time and have to reschedule, give me as much notice as you can. It’ll save money.” He got up, shook hands with Wolf and Hal, and left.
“A good man,” Hal said.
“Damn right.”
“You think you and Jane can pull this picture together by Wednesday?”