When we reached the ocean, I woke him.
“Where do I go from here?”
He sat up and got his bearings. “Right on the Coast Highway. Wake me up again when we get to Malibu.” He shut his eyes and went back to sleep.
The blue sea glittered in the deep light of the winter afternoon. A few surfers in black wetsuits paddled out into the water and rode the slow waves back in, like children who dared the sea by wading a few feet into the surf and running back.
We reached Malibu, a strip of fast food places, surf shops, and bars. I woke Tom. He directed me off the highway down a narrow two-lane road that cut between meadows where horses grazed in the shade of big oaks. Here the light had a nimbus of gold and poured like a stream through the silty air. Tom had me turn down a dirt driveway to a small stucco house hidden from the road by a row of overgrown Italian cypresses. He stretched and opened the door.
“What’s this?” he asked, picking up a card from beneath his leg. I glanced at it. It was the card that Tony Good had given me with his phone number.
“An admirer,” I said.
He inspected the card, tossed it aside and got out of the car. I followed him to the door of the house. He fumbled with some keys and then let us in.
The living and dining rooms were combined into a single space. There was a counter along one wall, revealing the kitchen. A corridor led off from the main room to bedrooms and bathrooms. The place smelled of old fires and the fireplace held the charred remains of the last logs burned in it. The concrete floor was covered by threadbare carpets. A few sticks of old furniture were scattered haphazardly through the room. On the whole, the house was dark, chilly and quiet.
Tom looked at me and grinned. “What do you think?”
“Not exactly what I expected.”
“I like to be comfortable. Rennie’s house is like a museum.”
His nap had sobered him up. I said as much.
“Booze doesn’t have a big effect on me,” he said as if he believed it. “It’s warmer outside.”
We went into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a half-full bottle of Chardonnay. He led me outside to a covered patio. Weightlifting equipment was lying here and there, as were pieces of driftwood, sea shells, empty bottles of wine and beer. A bike leaned against a wall next to a battered surfboard and a wetsuit. A jock strap hung from a nail above a pile of firewood. Tom sat down on a canvas chair and invited me to pull up a chair next to him.
“I should get back to L.A.,” I said.
“You can stay for a little while.”
I pulled up a chaise longue and sat. An orange cat appeared at the far end of the yard and watched us.
“That your cat?”
“Only when she’s hungry.” He took a swallow of wine and passed the bottle.
“I don’t drink.”
“Never?”
“I’m an alcoholic.”
Tom grinned at the cat and said, “Isn’t that the point?”
The cat loped across the yard and came to the edge of the patio. She yawned and began to groom herself with quick, fastidious flicks of her tongue. Tom leaned forward, pulled off his blue polo shirt, and then sank back into his chair. His skin was as tawny as the little cat’s fur. Even at rest, his elegant muscles seemed to quiver. He was kin to the little calico licking her paws at the edge of the patio; a great golden cat. He rolled his head toward me, lazily, and sketched the faintest smile at the comers of his lips. I imagine Narcissus had watched that smile form on the surface of a lake.
“It’s quiet here,” I said, to say something. “You come here to think.”
“Thinking’s not what I do best. That’s Sandy’s job. All my brains are in my face.”
“Rennie doesn’t much like Sandy,” I observed.
He smiled distantly. “Sandy’s all right. He knows what I am.”
“And what’s that?”
“A hustler,” he replied. “Like Gaveston. You don’t need brains to be a whore. Just a little luck and good timing.”
“Rennie must see something else in you.”
His face seemed to darken. “She knows, too,” he said, then added, mockingly, “but she forgives me.” He picked up his wine bottle and drank some more. “Poor Rennie,” he muttered. “She brought me out here to shove me in the face of every producer who ever told her that she didn’t have the looks to be a star. I’ve got the looks,” he said, more to the cat than to me.
“She thinks she can turn you into an actor.”
He set the wine bottle between his legs. “Who the hell cares.”
“You did the play.”
“I knew a guy like Edward,” he said, lifting the bottle and drinking. “Someone I met in the joint.” He studied my face and grinned. “Don’t look so surprised, you’re a lawyer — don’t you know an ex-con when you see one?”
“Not always.”
He tossed the empty bottle at the cat. She scampered but it caught her broadside. With a shriek, she hopped into the underbrush.
“I knew this guy,” he continued, “only he wasn’t a king, more like a queen, understand? A real lady.” He laughed. “She was pretty and proud, like Edward.”
“Were you lovers?”
He lurched forward in his chair. “Hell, no. I was just a punk trying not to get raped in the showers.” He looked at me. “That’s another story. But this queen was married to this big white dude.”
“What happened to her?”
“The niggers got her,” he said. “Beat the shit out of her, raped her, just to get back at her old man. She walked around for days like she had a broken bottle up her ass. Her old man didn’t want her anymore. He said she led the niggers on. She never complained, never said anything bad about anyone.” He stroked his chest, fitfully. ‘‘She just bought some pills and went to sleep.”
“Suicide?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at me. “Like that kid you were defending. What’s his name, Pears.”
“He wasn’t successful,” I replied.
“That’s a shame,” Tom said. “I’d kill myself before I went back to the joint.”
“What were you in for?”
“Being young and dumb,” he said. “I’m going to get some more wine.” He stood up.
“I’ve got to get back into town,” I said, also standing. “You want a ride?”
“What’s your hurry?” he asked, moving toward me. “You don’t think I brought you out here just to talk?”
He unbuttoned my shirt and laid his hand against my chest. I stepped away. His hand dropped to his side.
“Don’t you want me?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t much like myself afterwards.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
He looked at me and then yawned. “You don’t know what you just turned down.”
“I think I do,” I replied and walked away.
I pulled out of the long, dusty driveway and Tom’s house disappeared behind the screen of trees. I rolled down the windows and the air poured in, blowing the card with Good’s number across the seat to the floor. At the traffic light, I picked up the card and examined the drunken scrawl. There wasn’t much to choose between Tom Zane and Tony Good, I thought, remembering Good’s come-on at the party.
“You’re kinda cute, Henry. You got a lover?”
No, that’s what Josh Mandel said over the telephone the night Jim tried to kill himself. I looked up at the light as it flashed from red to green. That seemed wrong. Even drunk, Josh would never have said something as obvious as that. I crossed the intersection and merged into the traffic on the Coast Highway. And then I remembered something. There had been three calls that night. I had answered two of them. The third caller hung up before I could reach the phone. A car horn blared behind me. I glanced at the speedometer and saw that I had slowed to twenty. But my mind was racing, and, suddenly, I understood.
I stopped at the first phone I could find, which was in a bar called “Land’s End.” The receptionist at the Yellowtail informed me that Josh had called in sick and would give me neither his prognosis nor his home phone number. According to information, his number was unlisted. The cheerful male voice that gave me this data was sympathetic but would also not give me his number. The next call I made was to Freeman Vidor.
“I tried to call you,” Freeman said, after the preliminaries. “That Mandel kid has run off.”
“What do you mean, run off?” I asked, pressing a hand against my ear to drown out the background whine of Tammy Wynette.
“Hey,” Freeman said impatiently. “He’s gone, man.”
“You’re sure?” A thin woman in a halter and blue jeans smiled at me suggestively from her bar stool. I looked away.
“He was going to meet me this morning to tell me about that key,” Freeman said. “He didn’t show. The restaurant said he called in sick.”
“Yeah, I talked to them.” The halter had moved herself back into my line of vision. She gave me the finger.
“I went over to his place and looked around.”
“You broke in, you mean.”
“Whatever,” Freeman said.
I glanced at my watch. “I want you to meet me at his apartment in about a half-hour.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said, with mock offense.
“There might be a clue to where he’s gone.”
Now, truly offended, Freeman said, “You think I wouldn’t pick up on that?”
“It’s not just what you see,” I said. “It’s what you know.”
“If you think screwing the guy gives you better insight — “ Freeman began.
“I’m sorry, Freeman. I want to look around for myself, okay?”
“It’s your money,” he said, unmollified. “Thirty minutes.”
“Right.”
On my way out, the halter stopped me. She was drunk. Even in the black and red bar light she looked bad. “You talking to your boyfriend, honey?” she sneered.
“That’s about the size of it,” I answered.