36

The only sign of the planned development on the mountain above Lake Hollywood was the newly graded dirt curving away from the main fire road. Anybody driving up the dead-end street and stopping at the locked access gate would think the cut just another fire block. In the swirling dust of the Cadillac’s high beams I flipped through Finley’s key chain until I found the one that sprung the gate’s padlock. Overhead the scissors-bright wings of an airliner sliced through the moonlit sky, trailed by the fabric-ripping sound of its engines. In the mountain beyond the gate the brush rustled and chirruped with a hundred species of animals and reptiles. To the unpractised eye the terrain might have seemed barren but even that small patch of remaining desert teemed with prickly pear, mariola, cholla and sand verbena among the rough and choking scrub brush. A mountain range rippled through Los Angeles like a spine and despite the steady encroachment of civilization the hills remained wild with coyotes and owls, which feasted on neighbouring cats and small dogs as often as jackrabbits.

At the hard lateral edge of the Caddy’s headlights the gashed hillside spilled off the road in fresh clumps of dirt and uprooted brush. No rain had fallen since the road was cut and no living thing yet had taken root or tramped the churned soil. As the road corkscrewed around the mountain it ascended to ever more spectacular views of the surrounding land and city, passing the four points of the compass from Universal City to the west through Burbank and Griffith Park to Hollywood in the south. At the peak the road terminated in a circle of graded earth and the intended future home of Tinseltown Estates.

I got out of the car and climbed over the rocks to where the land sheered away to a radiant scape of lights. From that height Los Angeles was among the most beautiful cities in the world, a luminescent grid of neon displays and street lights cut by rivers of bright white and flashing red. Traffic flowed from one far horizon to the other, branching through diminishing streams to a single pair of headlights cruising a residential street. To the east and west the city lights had no visible end, as though glass, filament, trace vapours and electricity had vanquished the earth’s landscape. To the opposing sides of north and south the lights scattered to darkness up the imposing wall of the San Gabriel Mountains or into the immense black sheet of the Pacific Ocean.

The mountain top above Lake Hollywood was the geographic core of this megalopolis of light. The valleys at the base of the mountain cradled the Southern California film industry, from Warner Brothers, NBC and Disney in Burbank to Paramount Pictures and the thousand small production companies of Hollywood itself. In the parlance of real estate agents the mountain had the defining element of the Southern California good life: location, location, location. And when the end came, as it must even for the richest and most famous, the mountain sloped conveniently into the manicured green of Forest Lawn Memorial Park, the final venue of choice for those who could afford it.

I made a pile of Dolly on the passenger seat, adding blonde curls to the heels and black cocktail dress. I dressed for a violent bit of business: dark jeans and a lightweight polyester pullover anonymous enough to toss aside if bloodstained. I felt beneath the seat for the revolver and checked the cylinder. One spent bullet in five. I left the spent casing in its chamber, flipped the cylinder shut, leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes to focus on what I needed to do. The thumps and shouts from the trunk had quieted to an occasional anguished cry for help. From the back seat I lifted a brand new gardening spade, carried it to the front of the Caddy and chopped it into the ground. The spade was short with a rectangular blade. It would make a good weapon if he tried to use it that way. But I didn’t think he’d try. If he did, I’d shoot him. I held the revolver against my thigh, popped open the trunk and stepped back.

When his eyes peeped above the rim of the trunk he whispered, ‘You’re her, aren’t you?’

‘Which her you talking about?’

‘The one who – who – who – who –’ he closed his eyes and a little shudder rattled his gelled black curls ‘– put Grimes in the hospital.’

‘This is Grimes’ gun, so if I shoot you, he’ll take the fall for it. You on good terms with him?’

‘N-n-n-n-no.’ The word shook from his mouth.

‘Then you should do what I say so you don’t get shot, don’t you think? Take off your shoes, socks too, and climb out of the trunk.’

He was very obedient. I got no bad vibes from him at all, just fear. His shoes were the slip on and off kind that had little tassels above the toes. When his bare feet came down on to the desert soil he grimaced and shifted his weight to find a foothold without rocks or burrs. ‘I – I want to apologize.’ His glasses had twisted off one ear and first looking at me to see if it was OK he took both hands and set them straight again.

‘What are you apologizing for?’

‘Grimes. If he said or did anything to make you upset.’

‘Apologies are lousy compensation. I don’t accept apologies.’

‘Fair enough. But still, this gun, there’s no reason for that. I’ve raised most of the money. We’ve been waiting to hear from you.’

‘What money are you talking about?’

A smile wrenched the corner of his mouth, like I was testing him with a question so easy it had to be a trick. ‘The two hundred and fifty grand. I mean, for the pictures, right?’

‘You think I’m blackmailing you.’

‘Yes, well, blackmail is a harsh word, but, ummmm, aren’t you?’

‘Let’s take a little walk.’

Finny peered around the darkness. ‘Where?’

‘Follow the headlights.’

Take almost any city boy and walk him barefoot through the desert and you’ll understand how the word tenderfoot came about. Finny didn’t so much walk over the barbed earth as try to hop above it on the tips of his toes. I didn’t take any pleasure in his torment. His torment was just beginning. The sight of the spade arrowed into the ground stunned him into a terrified stillness.

I circled to stand in the glare of the headlights. ‘Pick it up.’

He forgot how rough the ground was, took one step and another with no herky-jerk in his legs at all. He squinted at me, slack-jawed, then turned back to stare at the shovel. He couldn’t bring himself to reach out and touch it.

‘The night before they fished my husband from the lake you attended a sex party at Damian Burke’s estate.’

‘I can’t, I wasn’t, you can’t really mean this, can you?’

I didn’t point the gun at him, I just tapped it against my thigh to remind him it was there. ‘Pick up the shovel.’

He looked at the gun, then the shovel, then the gun again before reaching with heart-sick reluctance to grasp the handle. ‘This is ridiculous! I mean, what, I’m supposed to be digging my own grave here? I wasn’t even there the whole time, just the start, I didn’t have anything to do with, I wasn’t there at the end.’

‘Are you nervous because you’re an accessory to murder? Or because you were an active participant?’

‘I didn’t, I didn’t, I mean, it wasn’t supposed to end like that, look, I never imagined anything like that would, what happened, it just, boggles.’

‘Dig,’ I commanded.

Though the steel is hot rolled into a curl the back rim of a shovel is not designed for the bare foot. It’s not easy to dig a hole in hard dirt without boots or shoes. Each of the organs is connected to a particular spot on the sole of the foot, and when you put the arch of your foot to the back rim of a shovel and kick down you can feel it up through your hip and into your kidneys. I didn’t expect Finny to dig all that fast. I just wanted him to dig.

‘I’m a fair-minded person. Maybe you could tell me why I shouldn’t believe you hired Grimes to get my husband deported, and when that didn’t work, had him killed?’

‘No, really, I’m not a violent guy, the whole idea of blood makes me just, incredibly nervous, I mean’ – he leaned the shovel against his hip and held his trembling hands out straight – ‘are these the hands of a killer?’

‘Don’t give me acting. Everybody in this town can cry on cue. Give me reasons. Start with the night Gabe took pictures of Danavitch.’

‘I’m, I’m, I’m, I have to throw up, OK?’ He barely had time to bend at the waist. His face swelled to a terrible, bloated red and when his stomach wrenched again and again he gasped with the strangled panic of a drowning man.

I’m not a sadist. I didn’t enjoy watching him suffer. Part of me wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, tell him he was going to be OK. Some people are capable of killing but most aren’t and if I read Finny right he was part of the most. But he knew what happened and his silence made him complicit. So I didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything except wait while he wretched and fumbled at the last for a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. Sometimes you have to spill a little fluid if you want to get the sickness out.

‘Dig,’ I said.

He scrambled to retrieve the shovel and scratched the blade against dirt. The faltering edge of the headlight beams cast his face in shadow. He was crying, I think.

‘Tell me about the night with Danavitch.’

‘I can’t, I mean, I wasn’t there, I, I only learned what happened the next morning, when Earl called. He said he’d seen something next door, noted the licence plate, wanted it traced and I had a guy who could do that. Earl is Burke’s –’

‘I know who Earl is. So you called Grimes.’

‘I did, yes. Information like that, it’s his, his business. He asked somebody at the DMV to run the plates and when Burke heard they belonged to a photographer it was like somebody had, I don’t know, driven a stake through his heart. Earl wanted to go kill the guy right away, but that’s just Earl, I mean, he always wants to kill something.’

I barely heard his voice over the scraping of the shovel as he dug. He wasn’t making much progress. About three inches under the topsoil the mountain turned to hardpan so solid he’d need a pick-axe to break it up. ‘Drop the shovel and kneel down in the dirt.’

‘Lady, no, I mean, I’m telling you everything, don’t, please, I’ll, no, it’s not fair, I’ll do anything you want just don’t, don’t…’ He dropped the shovel and kneeled.

I figured I had his full cooperation then. No need to torture him any further. It wasn’t mercy that moved me. I would have kept him digging all night if it served my purpose. I stood out of the glare of the headlights and let him see me as a human being. I even smiled at him. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, not if I can help it, but I really need your help on this, because some things I just don’t understand.’

‘Can I, can I help?’

‘First thing I don’t understand is the dog. Put ten men in a room with ten hookers, make it a freebie and seven would do something illegal. But bestiality is a whole different category, isn’t it? No question in most people’s minds, it’s not simply perverse, it’s a violation of humanity, not to mention the poor dumb animal. So when I first saw the pictures of that girl and her dog, I thought these had to be the dumbest, sickest people alive.’

Finny nodded aggressively, he wanted to leave me in no doubt he agreed, he said, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

‘But then another thought kept going around in my head, What if it wasn’t stupid? What if Finley had set it up to blackmail Burke and Danavitch?’

‘No no no, not me, I didn’t set up anything, I don’t have those kinds of thoughts. Burke told me he was going to party with Danavitch and the girls and I did guess by that he meant prostitutes but no, blackmailing him wasn’t my idea and I didn’t learn about the dog until later. I mean, stupid, stupid, stupid.’

‘Why would Burke need to blackmail Danavitch?’

‘Not blackmail, no, wrong word. Insurance. That’s the way Burke put it. Danavitch was just mesmerized by the Hollywood thing, that was how we got him to commit to Tinseltown Estates in the first place. But he was starting to flip-flop on the zoning issue, promising us it was a done deal one day and then complaining that it would kill him politically if he pushed it through the board. Burke wanted to make sure he didn’t back out of the project.’

‘Why would it hurt him politically?’

‘Half the no-growth nuts in the state live in his district. I mean, you’ve heard of the People’s Republic of Santa Monica? To the real estate community, the entire Westside is the Union of Soviet Socialist Communities. No matter how much we donate to his campaigns, Danavitch has to pretend to be a low-growth politician, and, well, just look at where we are. This is the biggest privately held plot of undeveloped mountain land between the city centre and the Pacific Ocean.’

‘What would happen if you lost Danavitch?’

‘We’d lose the project.’

‘I still don’t get what Burke was thinking. Danavitch could just deny it, you know, a dog, nobody would believe it. Did he expect to use the girls as a witness?’

He bit his lower lip and shook his head like he really didn’t want to say this but he did anyway. ‘Well, no, there were the video tapes.’

‘What video tapes?’

‘Burke has the whole house wired for video. You can’t even use the facilities without some camera peeping you.’

I laughed at that. Burke didn’t have a moral problem with blackmail, he just didn’t like being on the receiving end. The way I was laughing, Finny didn’t look too comfortable; he kept inching away from me a kneecap at a time.

‘You start with the idea of blackmailing Danavitch and get blackmailed by somebody else. I’m sorry, I just think that’s funny. How did the blackmailer contact you?’

He gulped at the air, swallowed, gulped again. ‘Something came in the mail first, not the photographs themselves but, what do you call it, when all the pictures are really small and on one page?’

‘A proof sheet.’

‘Right, that’s it. Then a few days later, Earl fielded a call from someone who claimed to have access to the negatives.’

‘And you assumed it was the same guy who took the photos?’

‘We thought it might be his partner but we really didn’t know. This voice on the phone, he didn’t make it sound like blackmail, he just said he knew how damaging they could be if published and he wanted to help us. He thought he could broker a deal, get the photographer to give them up for a price. According to Earl, he made it sound like he was doing us a favour.’

‘How much?’

‘A million bucks.’

At least Gabe hadn’t died for a pittance. That much money could turn almost anyone into a blackmailer – or a murderer. ‘And you were going to contribute, what, the two-hundred and fifty thousand?’

‘No, that came later.’

‘A separate blackmail demand?’

Finny looked hopeful, expecting now to live. He nodded like a beaten dog wags its tail. ‘Three days after the, you know, the body was found.’

‘The same voice?’

‘No voice at all. A written note this time, like the kind you see in the movies, with the letters all cut up out of newsprint? That was why I sent Grimes after you. I thought you had inherited the negatives and were trying to make a new deal. I mean, aren’t you?’

‘Why would I need a new deal?’

‘Your husband, maybe you thought my company would be safer to blackmail because, because…’

‘The first deal got my husband killed.’

‘Exactly. Seems logical, right? I mean, right?’

‘Tell me about the night you murdered my husband.’

‘No, not me. I didn’t, I didn’t set it up. I was just, like, there.’

‘Who set it up?’

‘Burke. The party was a trap. But nobody ever said anything about, oh God, I mean, murder? I didn’t agree to that. Sure, I knew they were going to beat him up, they even said they wanted to plant some coke on him and call the police, get him deported.’

‘Where did they murder him? Tell me how it happened.’

‘They told me they didn’t kill him, he must have crawled into the lake on his own, I didn’t see it, I didn’t see anything, I don’t know anything, I just, I just, I just –’

I pointed the gun at his face. He threw his arms over his head and curled into a ball, as though that was going to do him any good against a bullet.

‘I didn’t see it! I didn’t want any part of it but Burke bragged he wasn’t just a movie star, he did his own stunts, and it was just insane, the photographer was already bleeding when we got next door because of what Earl had done to him but that wasn’t enough. He tied him up and he, it was just sickening, I mean, the guy already told them what they wanted to know, what was the point? But still he didn’t stop, he just kept hitting him, wanted me to help drag him back to the house but I just, ran, I got in my car and took off.’

‘Back to what house?’

‘Burke’s! Back to Burke’s house.’

I left him barefoot on the top of the mountain, didn’t have enough decency to leave him his shoes for the walk down. Maybe he’d hedged about his role in things but he’d told me the basic truth. His confession should have gratified me. I’d learned most of what I needed to know to take revenge in clear conscience. But I didn’t feel clear, I didn’t feel clean and I didn’t feel like I had much conscience.