Nightlife_ A Novel Part 7

"Los Angeles, about two weeks ago. The new owner just got around to registering it with the DMV. It was already registered in California, so she didn't think there was any hurry-she wouldn't get pulled over or anything. Her name is Wanda Achison, and she lives in a suburb called Westlake Village."

"Has anyone talked with her yet?"

"As soon as we got this information I gave her a call. She sounded a little upset, because she was afraid it was stolen and we were going to take it away from her. She calmed down after a minute, though."

"Did she buy it from Rachel personally? No intermediaries or dealers involved?"

"Yes. Rachel advertised it in a local swap sheet, Miss Achison called the number, and Rachel drove it to her house to let her check it out. Miss Achison said Rachel was in her late twenties, long dark hair, five-five, one fifteen to one twenty. Rachel told her she was selling the car to pay off a credit card debt."

"That wouldn't be too unusual among people trying to start a business. Did she still have her address and phone?"

"No, but the paper did. It was a motel, and they don't have a record of Rachel Sturbridge staying there. I figured Tanya might have been the one who had signed the register, but they didn't have her down either. There must be a third person."

"Maybe," said Catherine. "Can you give me Wanda Achison's address and phone number, please?"

He read the information, and she copied it. "Thanks, Detective Crowley."

"No problem." He sighed. "Are you and Joe going down there to do an interview?"

"Joe isn't involved in the investigation anymore."

"He isn't? May I ask why?"

"Yes. He's been very cooperative, provided some information that eliminated some dead ends for us. Obviously he doesn't need a testimonial from me. But I don't think a civilian belongs in a homicide investigation."

"I've always liked Joe, and I was glad to see him," he said. "But I don't either."

"Thanks for all of your help," she said.

"Don't mention it. And let me know if you need anything else from us in San Francisco."

"I will."

She hung up the telephone, then picked up the photograph of Tanya Starling that had been made from the surveillance tape. There she was, caught from the side, entering Dennis Poole's hotel room. Catherine Hobbes stared at the face. Tanya was just a small-boned woman who appeared to be in her late twenties, her expression untroubled. The blond hair that had obscured the features for most of the tape happened to have swung to the other side of the face for this instant, so all of the features were visible. The outlines were just vague enough to frustrate the viewer's eye as it tried to focus perfectly on an image that could never be any clearer. The bright, s.h.i.+ny hair drew the mind's attention more than the face did.

Catherine opened the file and scanned the lists of other agencies that had been cooperating in this case. She found the telephone number she wanted, then called the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles to make her formal request for the driver's license photograph of Tanya Starling. She had waited long enough for Tanya to turn up or respond to her inquiries. It was time to go after her.

Catherine thought for a moment. Crowley had said that Rachel Sturbridge's car had been registered in California, so that meant the driver almost certainly was too. She dialed the number of the California DMV and requested the license photograph of Rachel Sturbridge.

13.

Nancy Mills sat in her small apartment, staring out the window. It was eight-thirty, the time of each evening that made her want to open the door and go. She could see the sky through the west window. It was taking on that beautiful shading, the lower edge of it red, then above that a blue that began as only a little bit darker than the daylight sky, but as the eye looked higher, the sky darkened into an indigo canopy, with a few stars beginning to show.

She could almost hear her mother's voice calling. This was the time of evening when she always had to come in from play, and she used to come home dirty, the dust sometimes held to her little bare legs by dried sweat. She hated having to come home when the air was full of promise and expectation. Big, important things were about to happen. She knew that they were good things, marvels and pleasures that the grown-ups kept all to themselves.

She would usually let the sky get too dark before she made it home, so she would have to come up the street running. She remembered the sound and feel as, breathing hard, she made her sneaker pound on the bottom step of the front porch, and she pushed through the screen door into the living room.

Her mother and the latest boyfriend would already be in the bedroom getting ready. Her mother's skin would be pink and moist from the shower, the tight straps of her bra making depressions in the fat on her back. She would dance to tug the panty hose up over her hips. If the girl came in right at dark, her mother would be in a cheerful mood, the morning's hangover and remorse erased by the afternoon's nap, and her mind set on the adult evening that was coming.

The bathroom would be steamy. She remembered the boyfriend picking up the hand towel from the sink to wipe off the mirror so he could see to slide the razor along his bristly jowl, leaving a swath in the white shaving cream, pink and irritated but hairless, his mouth pursed and squeezed to one side to present a smooth, tight stretch of skin to the safety razor. She thought of it as a joke name for something that left small bright cuts on his chin so he had to stick bits of white toilet paper there, and let the red blood hold it in place.

It was a summer memory tonight because of the summer sky outside. The man in the memory changed, because there were so many of them. They were both a series and a progression, the nicer, younger ones all part of earlier memories, and the older ones coming later, when her mother's body began to thicken and her skin to loosen and wrinkle. Each man was the same in every way that mattered-the drinking and the yelling-but they differed in small ways, like how much hair they had or what color it was, or their names.

The boyfriend would get ready, and be standing around getting irritable before her mother would really begin. She would go to the other bedroom she had converted to her closet in her panty hose and bra, and then begin to try on each of her dresses in front of a big mirror with a frame that was supposed to hang on a wall, but was propped against a chair at an angle.

Each night the dressing would proceed all the way to its end several times. She would choose a dress, put it on, then go into the bathroom to apply her makeup and brush her hair, and suddenly discover some invisible flaw in the way the outfit made her look or feel, and take it off again. The earrings, necklace, and shoes were specific to the outfit, so they had to go too. Then she would put on another dress and the same thing would happen. Eventually, she would announce she was ready and would emerge, suddenly impatient to go, as though someone else had delayed her.

The little girl would look at her mother in amazement. Already it was clear that they were not going to look alike. Her mother was short, with big blue eyes and skin like cream. The girl was tall and bony, with pale skin and stringy hair. Her mother would look at her on her way out the door as a kind of afterthought.

"Lock the door after us," she would say. "Don't open it for anybody."

Her mother and the boyfriend would go out and stand on the porch until the mother heard the click, and then they would get into the car. Usually they would be gone until just before dawn. The girl would sit alone in the house, feeling the loss as the sky darkened and deepened.

Often she heard voices outside her house in the calm night air as people pa.s.sed by. Sometimes they sounded as though they were young, even her age. She was forced to stay in, lying on her bed in the dark, listening, while they were out there doing things and knowing things that she could not.

She would sometimes get up and go into her mother's room to look at the pageant trophies she had won. Her mother kept them in her own room, where the girl wouldn't break them or touch them and make them corrode. She called them "my trophies," just as an owner of a show dog would.

Nancy Mills had been inside this apartment every night for weeks. She'd had one problem turn up from San Francisco, but it had just been one of those rare coincidences that Bill Thayer had been here visiting his parents and seen her. The fact that it had happened once would seem to prove that it couldn't happen a second time. It was just too unlikely. Besides, this was night. There were fewer people out, and the darkness would help protect her from being recognized. As she was pacing back and forth thinking about it, Nancy Mills had picked up her purse. She noticed it, gave herself permission, and walked to the door. She went out and closed the door behind her.

She didn't know where she was going, and it didn't matter. She had been staying out of sight since she had arrived, never going out after dark, going nowhere even in daylight but to the plaza, and she had not left this apartment for several days. She felt as though a rope had been tightened around her chest so she could barely breathe. As soon as she was on the street again, the rope seemed to loosen. The warm night air filled her lungs.

She walked to the plaza, used a pay phone to call a taxi, and waited for it outside Macy's. She said she wanted a ride to La Cienega Boulevard in Hollywood. When the dispatcher asked for the actual building number, she didn't know. When the dispatcher asked for the name of the nearest cross street, she didn't know that either, so she said Sunset. He said a yellow cab would arrive in about fifteen minutes. Nancy looked around her and began to feel bored and awkward standing alone in front of the store, so she reached into her purse and found the notebook where she had written the policewoman's phone numbers.

She carefully dialed the home number and waited, her eyes closed to help her concentrate.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Uh, h.e.l.lo," she said. "I'm looking for Catherine Hobbes?"

"This is Catherine Hobbes." The voice was high and feminine. It sounded like a teacher. Nancy wasn't sure what she had expected, but this wasn't it.

"Hi. My name is Tanya Starling. Mrs. Halloran told me that you had come by the apartment in San Francisco to speak to me, but Rachel and I had already moved away."

"Yes," said Hobbes. Her voice was tentative, almost preoccupied. Tanya knew that she was probably reaching to turn on a tape recorder or even pressing some b.u.t.ton to tell somebody to trace the call. Nancy would have to do this quickly. Hobbes said, "I have been trying to reach you. We need to ask you some questions. Mrs. Halloran didn't have a forwarding address for you. Where are you living now?"

"I'm still on the road. I stopped for the night, checked into a motel, and started to clean out my purse. I found the piece of paper where I'd written your number, and realized I should call you."

"Then I need to have the exact location where you are right now."

"I'm in Southern California, off the freeway in a small motel. I don't know the exact address. I'm leaving for New York tomorrow, but I don't know where I'll be staying yet."

"Please listen carefully. I want you to go to the nearest police station. Give the officer in charge my number. I'll fly there to talk with you."

"You know, that's not possible tonight. Why don't you just ask me your questions right now? I mean, my memory isn't going to get any better staying up all night waiting for you."

"I'm trying to help you, Tanya. But you have to cooperate, and you have to tell me the truth."

"I called you, remember?"

"I know that you're afraid. It's not a bad thing to be right now. You had a relations.h.i.+p with Dennis Poole, and then he was murdered."

"Are you implying that I had something to do with that?"

"I don't know any such thing. Someone killed him, and they could be after you too. I want to hear your side of the story. I want to know anything you can tell me about Dennis Poole. I want to know why you decided to leave Portland right after it happened."

"This is stupid. I'm just trying to be polite, return your call, straighten this out, and get past it. Rachel and I had planned for a year to go to San Francisco and start a business together. I wasn't running. I didn't know anything had even happened to Dennis until I talked to Mrs. Halloran. She was the one who told me."

"I need to get through to you, Tanya. You and Rachel are both wanted for questioning in a murder investigation. You don't seem to be grasping the seriousness of that."

"Well, sure I am," said Tanya. "That's why I called, so you could cross my name off your list and go on to somebody who knows something."

"I don't think you're understanding me. Even if you are telling the truth and you're not withholding any information about the death of Dennis Poole, you could still be charged with fleeing to avoid prosecution, obstruction of justice, and about fifteen other things. They're all serious, and they all involve jail time. I can make sure that those things don't happen, if you will just do as I ask."

"I will, if you'll ask for something I can do. I'm a thousand miles away from you, heading in the other direction, with very little money. I can't just leave everything I own in my car and park it in a lot someplace while I sit in a police station."

"Listen carefully. Wherever you are, you're on a telephone. Just ask the operator to connect you with the local police. Tell the police you've spoken with me about going in for questioning in the Dennis Poole case. They can find where you are, bring you in, and keep your car and belongings safe. Give them the piece of paper with my number on it, and they'll call me. I'll handle everything from there. All right?"

"This isn't a reasonable thing to ask. You're trying to get me put in jail."

"I'm trying to get you into a police station to talk to you. If you're running because somebody else killed Dennis Poole and you're afraid, the police will protect you. I'll make sure they do. If you're running because you're afraid the police will hurt you, then you can stop worrying about that too. It's a lot less scary when you go in voluntarily. I'll ask them not to put you in a cell."

"I told you. I'm not running. I'm just moving, trying to get on with my life."

"This is a detour you're going to have to take sooner or later."

Nancy paused, unable to think of what to say. Finally, she said, "I . . . I really don't think I should do that without a lawyer."

"That's fine. If you'd like, you can have one before you answer any questions at all. They'll get you one. But you've got to do this, Tanya."

"Let me think about it."

"How long?"

"I don't know."

"Tanya, the police are looking for you, not just here but all over. Right now n.o.body knows why you're not making yourself available, so they have to a.s.sume that you're dangerous. If you come in on your own, no harm will come to you. If you don't, then it's hard to predict what might happen. Go find a lawyer, and ask him to come with you when you turn yourself in. Tanya?"

Tanya didn't answer.

"Tanya? Please."

Tanya thought about how much better it was to be Nancy Mills, out on a summer night in Southern California. She was too restless to stay on the line. She lifted the telephone to its cradle and pressed it down. The soft, warm breeze blew across the ear where she had held the telephone, soothing it. She was free, and she wasn't going to risk that. She saw the cab prowling along toward the front of the building, so she waved her hand and trotted to it.

She got in, rolled her window halfway down, and looked greedily out at the buildings and the people on the streets all the way to Sunset.

When the driver let her off on Sunset and La Cienega she began to walk. She pa.s.sed the big faux-ramshackle structure of the House of Blues, then several restaurants. She wasn't in the mood to go into a formal restaurant and sit in the middle of a lot of tables with men and women on dates. What she needed was a hotel bar. She knew there were a couple of hotels along the Strip that had famous nightclubs, so she decided to find them.

She walked along the sidewalk beneath huge lighted billboards of the beautiful people in movies. Paintings of giant women covered the brick sides of tall office buildings.

The dry air was electrically charged, as though it would soon reach some peak voltage and emit sparks. The cars were nose-to-tail on Sunset, moving ahead in small surges. She could feel the eyes on her, not one man that she could see but many at once that she knew were there behind the glare of headlights or beyond dark tinted windows. She knew that when one of them looked, he was evaluating, trying to see if she was Someone, or even the one they had been searching for. The once-over lasted only for the time it took for her image to move from the winds.h.i.+eld to the rearview mirror, but then the man in the next car was already looking at her.

Nancy's antic.i.p.ation grew until she reached the Standard Hotel. It was low-only three stories. She stepped in the front entrance, trying to see everything but also trying to look as though she knew where she was going. She saw two security men-this was Sunset Boulevard, and what stepped in off the street could be literally anything-and smiled at them as she moved past the front desk. There was a girl with a pretty white face and gleaming straight black hair standing there to check people in, and behind her head was a greenish gla.s.s panel like a huge aquarium, where another girl who was naked napped on a clear inflated mattress, so that she appeared to be floating there.

This was the kind of place she had imagined. It was a sign of her magic that she had made it here. While she was still in her stuffy little apartment off Topanga Canyon she had only conceived a sense of how she wanted to feel, and what sort of place would make her feel that way, then moved toward it. She kept going until she found herself in the rooftop bar.

On the way to the ladies' room, Nancy studied the other women she could see standing near the long curved bar and sitting at the tables. They all seemed young, thin, and attractive. A few of them wore skirts or pantsuits, but most of them wore tight jeans and tank tops. Nancy felt rea.s.sured. At the moment when the urge had taken her she had been wearing a good pair of pants she had bought in Aspen and a Juicy Couture velour jacket over a little T-s.h.i.+rt she had picked up in San Francisco, so she was all right.

She studied her reflection in the mirror, brushed her hair, and wiped off her makeup. She had been wearing daytime shades, so she put on thicker eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara, darkened her lips as she listened to the chatter in the ladies' room. She could tell that these were not women staying at the hotel but local women who came here for the social scene. That was fine-so had she.

Nancy needed to set herself apart somehow, and be in a place where she didn't have to compete for attention with all of these women. She went to the bar and waited for a couple of orders to be filled so she could survey the room to evaluate the men and let them see her, then ordered her martini. When she had it, she took it outside, onto the big open stretch of blue Astroturf surrounding the pool.

She sat on one of the white lounge chairs and gazed down the slope at the city, the billions of tiny distinct lights s.h.i.+ning upward from the streets and buildings to make the air above the city glow.

The first man to follow her out had long, skinny limbs covered in an off-white suit and a black T-s.h.i.+rt. He had gla.s.ses with thick black frames, and hair that had receded into a widow's peak. She glanced up at him and sipped her drink.

"Aren't you the girl from behind the front desk?"

"No," said Nancy. "She's still there. Go check."

"I mean the one who pretends to be asleep. The naked one."

"I know you do," said Nancy.

"The girl from last night looked just like you. She's beautiful, and so are you." He paused for a moment, studied her, and then said, "You and I aren't going to be friends, are we?"

"Nope. Thanks for the compliment, though."

"You're welcome. Good night," he said. He turned and walked back into the bar.

After ten more minutes, another man came out. He walked to the pool, bent over and touched his hand to the water to test the temperature, then straightened, turned, and seemed to notice her. He was dark-skinned, with wavy black hair, and she imagined him to be Brazilian. When he spoke, the impression was destroyed. "Oh," he said. "I didn't see you there." He had an accent from New York, maybe New Jersey. "Have you been in the pool yet?"

"No," she said. She made a quick decision. "I just came out here to be alone."

"Me too. Would you like to be alone together?"

"No, I like to do it the usual way."

"Oh," he said. "Well, see you."

He walked back into the bar. This wasn't very promising, she decided, so she went back into the bar too. She moved to the wall, scanned the men in the room, and decided to choose one. He was standing a few feet to her right, looking over at her, when their eyes met. He was about thirty, with hair that must have been blond when he was a child but had turned brown later as hers had, and now lightened only when he had spent time in the sun. "h.e.l.lo," she said. "Do I have spinach stuck on my teeth?"

He came closer. "Sorry if I was staring. What's the attraction out there?"