The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (21 page)

“Starsky and Bitch were back this morning.”

“What’d they have to say?”

“They asked if I’d remembered anyone who could pinpoint my whereabouts.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“Same thing I told them all the other times. That there wasn’t anybody.”

“Any reason you can think of that they suspect you?”

“Nope. I guess ’cause everyone else didn’t pan out.”

I picked up a red marble and a white one, put them back in each other’s spot. I glanced at the entrance to the hall that led, I assumed, back to where the bedrooms were.

“Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s okay to sit around not saying anything.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

So the two of us remained silent. I scooted my chair around to look at the TV. After a while they moved on to Peppermint Patties.

“Love those things,” Mike said. “Really.”

“Haven’t had one in a while,” he said. “Last one I had was the night they killed Denny. I remember, ’cause I offered to share it with Carrie, and she said she didn’t like ’em. Can you imagine that? Not liking Peppermint Patties.”

“Carrie was here that night?” I said. “You told me not five minutes ago you were by yourself.”

“Huh? Oh. Right. You know what? It couldn’t have been that night. I was alone that night, till I got the—”

“Bullshit.”

“Damn it. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“You promised who? Her?”

“Yeah, her, of course her.”

“Why? So she could provide an alibi for Samantha?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose.”

“You suppose.”

“Yeah.”

“So it was more important she provide an alibi for Samantha than one for you.”

“She needed one right off. I didn’t need one till later, when the cops decided to get up my ass. By that time it was too late to change her story.”

“Did you guys watch TV that night?”

“Yeah. Couple hours worth, I think. Hey, man. What’s with the third degree?”

“What’s with it is, why would Samantha find it necessary to set up a fake alibi? Did Carrie say anything?”

“No. I mean, I didn’t really think about it. Didn’t make a whole lot of difference to me, and if you remember I wasn’t exactly in the best shape those couple of days to spend a lot of time on it.”

“You sure you didn’t tell the police this?”

“I’m sure. Stop asking all these questions.”

“It’s just that I find it a little odd that you managed to keep it quiet from the cops but managed to let it slip to me.”

“Maybe I let it slip on purpose.”

“Why would that be?”

A shrug. “Friends shouldn’t keep secrets from each other.”

“You keeping any other secrets from me?”

He was. The miserable attempt at an innocent expression on his face told me that. But before I could press him—

“All done.” It was the nurse. Mike introduced us, and I immediately forgot her name. She went into the kitchen.

“So,” I said, “getting back to—”

“Drop it, okay? Carrie was here, she wasn’t with Samantha, that’s all I know. You want to see Lu or not?”

I was certain there was more he wasn’t telling me. But I’d gotten to where I could read him pretty well, and knew he was ready to stonewall. At the moment, finding out what Lu had to say was more important. “Lead the way.”

He took me to her room. She was on the pale side and she was thinner than when I’d seen her before. She was in a hospital bed, with the head section adjusted up. It must have been hell getting the thing up those stairs.

She had a TV of her own, and the same channel was on. They were still making Peppermint Patties. They went in one side of a machine naked and came out the other covered in chocolate.

“I want one,” Lu said.

“Not on your diet,” Mike said.

“Who cares about my diet?”

“You’re the worst patient I’ve ever had.”

“I am the only patient you ever had. Now go away. I want to talk to Joe.”

“In a second. Your pillows are all screwy.”

He went over and adjusted them. Not that they needed it. When he was done they looked just like they did before. She clutched his hand and patted it.

He left the room, and I pulled over a straight-back chair. “How’s your head?” I said.

“Not bleeding anymore.”

“Does it hurt?”

She shrugged. Her nightgown slipped down, exposing a shoulder. She looked down, frowned, hiked it back up. “Stupid bed. What did you ask?”

“If your head hurt.”

“Once in a while. We Chinese have a saying. Do not look down upon your position, for tomorrow you may sleep on the carpet.”

“You just made that up.”

“I did?”

“I’m pretty sure Confucius never came up with that one.”

“Him. What does he know? So. What you want?”

“I need a question answered.”

“What question?”

“Right before he died, Dennis told a man who works for him that he’d discovered something which was going to change his life.”

“That is not a question.”

“I was thinking that, being there in the house, you might have known what it was.”

“Still not a question.” If the housekeeper thing didn’t work out, she could get a job subbing for Alex Trebek.

“Do you know anything about that?”

“Yes.”

“What is it that you know?”

“Let me think.” She closed her eyes. They were still closed when she said, “Ah.”

“What is it?”

“The club.”

“You mean like a nightclub?”

Her eyes opened. “No, not that. Some club he went to. I don’t remember. I need a nap.”

“Just try, please.”

“Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. You are very nice. You are almost as nice as Mike.” Her lids snapped shut.

Only to pop open again. “Beyonce,” she mumbled.

“Beyonce?” I said. “Is that what you said? Do you mean Beyoncé? Beyoncé the singer?”

Again her eyes closed. She did something with her head. It could have been a nod. I decided it was a nod.

“Lu? Is that who you meant? Was Dennis seeing her too? Did he meet her at some club?”

But she was asleep. I watched her until I was sure. Then I got up and stood over the bed. The pillows were still in perfect array. I adjusted them anyway.

I asked Mike if he knew of any connection between Dennis and Beyoncé. He didn’t know who she was. Not surprising, since his knowledge of popular music stopped at about 1978. I told him about Destiny’s Child. That didn’t help. Then I said, you know, the chick in the last Austin Powers movie. That did the trick. Yes, he knew who she was. No, he didn’t think Dennis had ever had anything to do with her.

Before I left I asked him if there was anything he’d “forgotten” to tell me. He said there wasn’t. I knew he was lying, and he knew I knew. I didn’t push it. When the time was right, he’d spill. I’d see to that.

I’d never been to Lawndale, but a few years back one of my murders brought me to Hawthorne. Lawndale was right next door, and it was from the same mold. The houses were well-kept, most of them, with the same Honda Civics and tricycles and pots of geraniums. And here too, you got the feeling that, once you turned off the main street, you’d passed through an invisible curtain that had dropped you a decade or two in the past. It was comforting. Also disturbing.

I was in Lawndale to visit Sean McKay, who lived there with his father. I parked across the street from the address in the file Claudia Acuna had given me, behind a Termites R Us truck. The house right across from Sean’s and his father’s was being tented. Before we started the remodel we’d done the same. Gina and the canaries and I spent a couple of days at Elaine’s. The birds enjoyed the excursion.

The McKay house was white stucco. The trim was part light green, part dark. The dark part was being applied over the light by a man who had to be Sean’s father. He had the same build and pretty much the same face. He wore a white painter’s suit and hat. When he saw me he put down his brush and took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his forearm. He introduced himself as Tom McKay and said Sean had run down to Vons for bread and milk. I skipped the strikebreaking discussion.

“You can wait inside or out back,” Tom McKay said. “Or you can stay out here and keep an old man company.”

“You’re not an old man, Mr. McKay.”

“Old enough. You’re that fellow from the TV, aren’t you? The one with the bugs.”

“That’s me.”

“That was there the night that Lennox fellow got killed.”

“Me again.”

He’d picked up his brush again and had started back in on a half-finished window frame. “And now you think Sean might have shot the man.”

“I don’t think that, sir. I just want to—”

“It’s all right. I don’t think he could hurt a fly, but he’s enjoying the attention, and that’s all right with me. Hand me that rag, would you?”

I gave him the orange mechanic’s cloth. He used it to wipe some spillage from outside a paint can.

“Go ahead and ask me what you want to ask me,” he said.

“Which would be?”

“Was Sean really here watching TV with me that night, up until he got the phone call from that Lennox fellow?”

He was concentrating hard on the spot he was painting. It must have been a tough spot. He went over it again and again.

“Was he?” I said.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the police.”

“Which is?”

“He sure was.”

“And would that be the truth?”

“It sure would.” He looked out into the street. “Here comes Sean.”

He turned to his painting gear, and I walked to where Sean was pulling his Jetta into the driveway. Sean saw me, waved, stopped the car, got out. He opened the trunk and pulled out a couple of grocery bags. They were from someplace called Royal Market.

“Thought you were going to Vons.”

“And cross the picket line? Not me. It’s a little ritual, Dad’s and mine. He’s not very big on unions. So I tell him I’m going to Vons, and we don’t get in a fight, and I bring the stuff home and tell him I remembered I had a coupon for Royal or something. Come on inside.”

He opened the door and led me in. The place was neat. The furniture was decent. There was a row of bowling trophies on the mantel.

“Your dad must be quite a bowler,” I said.

“Those are mine. From when I was younger. Come in the kitchen.”

He put the grocery bags on the floor, started unloading. He’d gotten quite a bit more than bread and milk. Oranges, Milanos, Glad Bags.

“You’re surprised I’m a bowler,” he said.

“A little.”

“Is it because I’m gay?”

“I really hadn’t given much thought to your sexuality. It’s because I just don’t associate people trying to claw their way to the top in the entertainment business with bowling.”

“It’s very relaxing.”

“Knocking over all those pins. Yes, I guess it must be.”

“You bowl, Joe?”

“Not very well. By the way, did you kill Dennis?”

“Of course not. I was sitting at home watching TV with Dad, just like I told the police about a thousand times.”

“But you had reason to.”

“So did you. So did dozens of people, most of them people who weren’t even there that night.”

All of the groceries were put away. He opened a can of Pepsi, poured himself a glass, asked me if I wanted any. I shook my head. He drank down half of it, put the glass on the counter.

“This place,” I said. “It doesn’t fit my picture.”

“I’m supposed to be living up in West Hollywood or somewhere like that.”

“Somewhere closer to the studios. And to the action.”

He smiled, picked up his Pepsi, drained it, rinsed out the glass and put it in the dish drainer.“Staying here with Dad. It centers me, you know?”

“Plus it provides an alibi when you need one.”

His smile was preoccupied.“It’s handy that way. What did you really want to see me for today?”

“I guess I wanted to get a sense of you. When we weren’t running around in dishwashing gloves freaking out over a dead body.”

We had a lovely little conversation, there in the kitchen. He told me about growing up in his blue-collar neighborhood, starting to realize he was different from the other boys, hiding it behind teenage bombast. How it was a blessing that he was so good at bowling, because it let him get points for sports from the other boys while doing something he at least liked. How he went to El Camino College and got interested in making movies, and how his father staked him for a couple of years while he got his career going. And how after that he’d lived off a rich old man who, when he died, turned out not to be as rich as everybody thought. That was when Sean moved back home.

“So?” he said when he’d brought me up to date. “What sense do you get?”

“That you’re basically an okay guy, but you’re hiding something.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that you killed Dennis. But I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

I heard footsteps. Tom McKay walked in. He’d lost the painter outfit and had on cutoffs and a white T-shirt.“Gonna shower up,” he said. He looked at the empty grocery bags still on the floor, smiled, turned to me. “Staying for dinner?”

“Love to, but I’ve got plans.”

He knew I didn’t, but since he’d only made the offer to be polite, it didn’t much matter. “Good enough. Nice to meet you.” And he was gone. A minute later, so was I.

I called Mike. He wasn’t there, but the nurse said Lu was asleep and she wasn’t going to wake her to ask about any rap music star. I didn’t think Beyoncé did any rapping, but the nurse was younger than me and maybe knew things I didn’t.

I dug out the phone number I’d gotten a million years ago at Voom. Dialed it, got a teenager, asked for Sarah.“Maaa! It’s for you!” The phone clunked onto something hard, and a few seconds later got picked up. I identified myself, said I was in the neighborhood, Sarah expressed delight. I got an address.

Fifteen minutes after that I was pulling to the curb in front of a good-looking house on a Torrance cul-de-sac. I rang the doorbell and was greeted by a teenager with a stud in her nose and blond pigtails. Sarah appeared behind her and invited me in. “Joni, this is Joe Portugal,” she said. “He was in a band with your father when I was just a little older than you. Joe, this is my youngest, Joni.”