Closing Remarks
Thank you all for coming. Some of you have come quite a distance to say good-bye to Heidi, which is quite fitting. She is someone who touched every one of us in this room. I know she would appreciate your presence on this occasion, and your good wishes and fond memories.
You are all welcome to join us at the Santa Barbara Cemetery for the placement of Heidi’s ashes after the service, followed by an informal gathering with refreshments at the office of Guy Mallon Books, downtown. You’ll find a map to both locations on the back of your programs.
Thank you.
Carol didn’t say a word to me until we were at least ten miles west of the city limits and Las Vegas was just a small pile of toys on the horizon in my rearview mirror. Our air-conditioned station wagon was the quietest place on earth. We were putting the miles between our car and a certain yellow taxi, but I could feel the miles between me and Carol, too.
She wasn’t letting me into her thoughts and feelings, but I had plenty of thoughts and feelings of my own to stew in. Heidi was gone. Forever. Marjorie, that poor pathetic child, was out there in the evil world somewhere, being battered, and I had no way to stop it. I felt like a first-class chickenshit leaving town like this, but what more could I do? I had to protect Carol. I had to protect myself. I had to feel like shit.
“I am so glad to be out of there,” Carol said, finally. “That is one weird city, and that was one grueling convention. What a bunch of thugs.”
“I’m glad it’s over too,” I said.
“Over?” she responded. Her voice was sharp and high. “Over?”
I glanced across the seat and saw a look on her face like fish gone bad. She turned to me and said, “What are you talking about?”
I watched the road before me, the mountains on either side, and my fellow escapees driving west along the highway. I took another glance into the rearview mirror, where the city had disappeared altogether. “Over,” I repeated. “The ABA. Done for another year. That’s all I meant.”
“It’s not over. Heidi Yamada’s still dead.”
“That isn’t going to change,” I said.
“So we should just get used to it?”
“Carol, what’s eating you? You weren’t in love with Heidi Yamada.”
“That’s right, Guy, but you were. And now you don’t care that she was killed.”
“I do care, Carol. You have no idea how much I care. But will you please allow me to take some comfort in the fact that she wasn’t actually murdered? That it was an accidental overdose?”
“That’s what Daniel Plumley said. The big detective.”
“And Lawrence,” I reminded her. “He explained things pretty well, I think.”
“You are so full of shit, Guy Mallon. So full of shit.”
“What?”
“You didn’t hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“Daniel Plumley and Lawrence Holgerson. Two of my favorite people. Okay, let’s take their word for it. Accidental death. So Heidi had an accident, right? How careless of her.”
I sighed. “All right, it wasn’t her accident. Somebody else’s accident. But at least it wasn’t murder, and I, for one, am relieved to know that. I don’t know why, but there it is. I feel better. Not perfect, but better.”
“Sorry to bum you out,” Carol said. “Sorry to remind you that just because it may not have been a murder, technically, some person or some people committed a major crime, as a result of which somebody else is dead. She was killed. Okay, maybe not murdered, but what’s the difference? Same malice, same result. Pardon me if I’m not feeling a lot better.”
“I’m not sure about malice,” I argued. “Or about major crime.”
“If you don’t think feeding drugs to people without their knowledge is a major crime, I don’t want you mixing my drinks, ever again. It might not have occurred to you, but most intelligent people would stop to think about what might happen if Heidi were already on Valium or something incompatible with whatever that poison was. That was highly irresponsible, and whoever was behind it all didn’t really care one bit if Heidi was out for the evening or moved to the morgue. I call that malice. Come to think of it, it’s a lucky thing Mitzi Milkin wasn’t on some incompatible drug either, or we’d be missing two people as a result of some careless, malicious accident. Some unforgivable, selfish risk. But you don’t care about that anymore. You’re full of shit.”
So much for feeling any kind of better.
So much for my self-esteem.
Well, I thought, watching the dotted line before me and the dotted line behind me, and the steady stream of westbound traffic, at least we’re out of Las Vegas. Or at least that’s what I thought until I saw a yellow taxicab, also traveling west, pass me going maybe eighty miles an hour.
LV-VIP.
I didn’t point it out to Carol, who had her head back against the head rest, her eyes slammed shut.
***
There’s not much to Nipton. The town was once owned by Clara Bow after she quit acting, but even then there was nothing much there. Nowadays Nipton is just a couple of buildings. One is a general store and post office, which also has the “front desk” for the hotel, which is the other building, right next to it. The hotel itself consists of four tiny bedrooms off a common sitting room, with one bathroom in the back of the building. The scenery is alarmingly beautiful, especially in the early morning and late afternoon, when the light on the skyline of the New York Mountains makes you think that nature took lessons from Maxfield Parrish. In front of the hotel is a cactus garden, a beautiful display of living torture instruments; behind is a man-made pond surrounded by willows and cottonwoods. On the other side of the pond are a couple of trailers that nobody lives in and a scattering of big rusted machines that may have had something to do with mining or ranching long ago, but they’ve become landscape. The place is eerily quiet except for the buzz of insects in the afternoon, the croaks from the pond at night, and the glass-rattling explosions that happen about once an hour, sometimes more, round the clock, as the freight trains thunder through, only a few dozen yards from the hotel.
Carol and I have been to Nipton several times, because she likes to hike in the East Mojave, and I like to be wherever she is. Every time we’ve gone, we’ve been the only guests in the hotel, which has no locks and no clocks.
It was three in the afternoon when we got there. We hadn’t spoken to each other since we left the state of Nevada. I was hoping that after we left I-15 we might have something to talk about along the way, like a dead jackrabbit in the road or a Joshua tree in bloom, but nothing happened and neither of us said a word. We were the only ones on the Nipton Road, and the silence in our station wagon was charged with anger and remorse.
I parked the car in front of the store. I turned to Carol and she turned to me. We both said it at the same time: “I’m sorry.” She offered me her right hand and I shook it as if we were making a deal, and then she pulled me across the seat, into her arms.
“I really am,” she whispered. “So sorry.”
I couldn’t speak, but I nodded into her shoulder.
“Let’s go check in,” she said. “We need a nap.”
We got out of the air-conditioned station wagon and into the bright Mojave afternoon. The temperature was no doubt just as hot in Nipton as it had been in Las Vegas, but there is a big difference between a hot desert and a hot city. We held hands and walked into the dark general store, which smelled of old wood and tobacco from yesteryear. I tapped the silver call bell on the desk and we thumbed through the postcards on the rack until the old lady who ran the place shuffled through the back door and smiled at us. She wore a pink bathrobe and fuzzy slippers.
“What can I do you for?” she asked.
“We’re staying in the hotel tonight,” I answered. “Name’s Mallon.”
She pulled the book off the shelf and opened it up. “That’s you all right,” she said. “You folks been here before?”
She asks us that every time. “Yup.”
She slid a 3X5 index card across the desk. “Fill that out,” she said. “Name, address, license plate. Cash or charge?”
Carol gave her our business credit card.
“Want to buy a lotto ticket?” the old lady asked.
“Sure,” Carol said. “What’s it paying?”
“Who knows? But a lot of folks are coming over from Vegas this week to buy them. Must be high. You folks will be in the Senator’s Room.”
“You usually put us in the Clara Bow room,” I said.
“Somebody already has that room,” she told us.
“You mean we’ll have company?” Carol asked. “I hope they don’t snore. The walls in that hotel are pretty thin.”
“Well, she may not stay the night, she told me,” the old lady said. “Said she just needs a place to get some work done. What kind of work is what I want to know but it’s none of my beeswax. There’s no key. Make yourself at home. You folks been here before?”
“Thanks,” I said. “You too.”
As we were getting our suitcase out of the back of the station wagon, Carol said, “Bummer. I was planning on making you sing out loud, all night long.”
“You’re the one who makes all the noise,” I said.
“Let’s call it a duet. Don’t worry, we’ll still sing, just sotto voce.”
We kissed, and then we shlepped our stuff through the cactus garden, careful to stay away from the balls of fine spines, and up the steps to the hotel porch.
We walked through the screen door, and there she was, stretched out on a divan like the Queen of Sheba, in her hot pink pants and white silk blazer. She sat up when she saw us and gave us that huge Neiman-Marcus smile. “There you are,” she said. “I wondered when you were going to show up.”
“Hello, Mitzi,” I said.
“What brings you here?” Carol asked.
“We had an appointment, remember?” Mitzi answered. “But you left the ABA before it closed. You’re not supposed to do that. Shame on you. We have work to do.”
Carol kept walking across the sitting room, carrying her suitcase toward the Senator’s bedroom. As she walked she said, “Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mitzi, but we’re done working. Welcome to Nipton, but we’re not talking business. We came here to unwind.”
Mitzi laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, Carol darling. It’s not you I want to talk with anyway. Guy, honey, come sit down and maybe we can get through this quickly, so you and Carol can have a nice vacation. How long are you staying in this God-forsaken place?”
I shook my head, picked up my suitcase, and followed Carol across the sitting room and into our bedroom. I closed the door behind me.
“Of all the fucking nerve,” Carol said. “What a bitch!”
“Careful,” I said. “These walls are paper-thin.”
“Good. Maybe she can take a hint. Where are you going?”
“Out there to get it over with,” I said.
“You’re a sap.”
“I’ll get rid of her,” I promised.
“I want that hellcat out of Dodge by sunset.”
I nodded and went back out into the sitting room, where Mitzi was calmly reading a National Geographic. She put the magazine down on the rough-hewn coffee table and smiled at me. “Don’t worry, I’m sure we can conclude our business long before sunset. Have a seat.”
So I sat in a chair across the table from her and said, “What’s up?”
As Mitzi opened her mouth to speak, the air was split with the scream of a train whistle, followed by the din of the train itself, empty freight cars whamming by in a percussive procession that lasted and blasted for a full two minutes.
“God,” she exclaimed when the noise died down. “I don’t know how you can stand this place.”
“We come here to feel the earth move.” I said. “So. Get to the point.”
“Guy, I have the most marvelous idea,” she began.
“Don’t try to sell me anything, Mitzi. Just tell me what this is so I can give you a simple answer.”
“I can’t help it, I’m so excited,” she gushed.
“My answer’s getting simpler by the minute,” I said.
“Okay, listen,” she said. “Heidi Yamada is dead, right?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake.”
“Darling, we have to put on a memorial service. We have to. She was important to us. To me, to you, to all of us. It’s the right thing to do. We must.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m with you so far. So what’s in it for you, I wonder.”
“May I be frank?”
“Be frank,” I said. “Frank and fast.”
She took her time with a lingering smile. “I’m thinking festschrift,” she said. “A collection of eulogies. A festschrift is an anthology of—”
“I know what a festschrift is.”
“So? What do you think?”
“Of what?”
“We have a memorial service, we invite lots of Heidi’s colleagues and associates, you know, people who matter, and get them to give eulogies at the service, and we publish a volume containing all those speeches, and we fill it full of beautiful pictures—I have some sensational photos—and of course wonderful design, and we sell it to them all, because they’ll all want lots of copies, and we’ll charge plenty because it will be the most elegant, elaborate—”
“Ongepotchket,” I said.
Mitzi grinned. “Exactly.”
“You go ahead, Mitzi. Fine. But I don’t want anything to do with it. That’s not the kind of publishing I do.”
“Of course, dear. It’s my book. But I want you to arrange the memorial service. That’s more your department.”
“Why don’t you do it?” I asked.
“It wouldn’t be appropriate,” she said. “It might look self-serving.”
“Of course. That would be self-serving. So you want me to arrange the funeral. Sorry to sound self-serving, but what’s in it for me? I assume you expect me to pay for all this?”
“I should think you’d want to do this memorial service for Heidi, Guy. After all, she was so special to you.”
“It might cost quite a bit,” I said. “I mean there’s the flowers, the venue—”
“The Mission,” Mitzi said. “It has to be the Santa Barbara Mission. Heidi would want that.”
“Reception afterwards—”
“The El Encanto,” she said. “Such a lovely view of the harbor from there.”
“You’ve got this all thought out,” I said. “How long have you been planning this affair?”
“Let’s just say I have a certain flair,” Mitzi said. She smiled at me. I swear to God, Minnie Mouse meets Eleanor Roosevelt.
“I still don’t know why I should spend all this money,” I said. “I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Sweetheart, I paid you ten thousand dollars for those poems you ghostwrote for Heidi. Come on, now.”
“Heidi paid me for those, not you.”
“I paid Heidi,” Mitzi snapped back. “The money came from me and it went to you and you wrote the poems and the poems are now with me. The point is, you have ten thou to spend, and I’m telling you how to spend it.”
I took a deep breath. Little people get pushed around a lot. Mitzi was a big person. I am a little person. That meant she could tell me what to do. Right?
“Forget it,” I said. “You’re a ghoul.”
She took her briefcase off the coffee table, opened it up, looked inside, then apparently changed course and closed the briefcase. “Well,” she said, “that’s that. You’re making a big mistake, Guy Mallon. A big mistake.”
“I’ll live with it. Shall I show you to the door? Do you have things to pack?”
“Oh I’m not quite ready to leave,” she answered. “My ride won’t be back here till six o’clock. We have another couple of hours together. Let’s try to make them pleasant.”
“How did you get here?” I asked. “Didn’t you drive?”
“Oh Lord no,” she answered. “I came in a taxi.”
***
Carol walked out of the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her. “I’m going next door to buy a sixpack of beer,” she announced. “Guy, can I have your wallet?”
I fished in my pocket and pulled out my billfold. I tossed it across the room and she snagged it out of the air. She nodded to me and left the hotel.
“I don’t think your wife likes me,” Mitzi said after Carol was gone.
“She’s not my wife,” I said.
“Well that’s okay. It’ll give you and me a chance to talk privately.”
“I think we’ve finished talking,” I said.
“Think again,” she answered. “You have something of mine, and I want you to give it to me now, whether or not we plan to publish this book together.”
“I don’t have anything of yours,” I said. “I earned that ten thousand dollars, and I’m going to keep it.”
“I’m not talking about the ten thousand dollars,” she said. “I’m talking about a certain roll of film. According to Lawrence, you still have that roll of film packed in your suitcase, and now it’s time to hand it over.” She held out her hand.
I didn’t move.
She dropped her hand, sighed, and fished in her briefcase. She brought out an orange Fast Foto envelope and threw it on the coffee table. “You can have those back,” she said. “I never imagined, Guy, that you were into that sort of thing.”
I picked up the envelope and pulled out the photos. They were bedroom shots of the clerk at Fast Foto, conjoined in various ways with somebody who looked like Mr. T, or at least what I imagine Mr. T looks like with his clothes off: built like the Normandie and sporting an erection the size of the Chrysler Building.
“I don’t have to ask where you got these,” I said.
“No you don’t. Now let’s have the other roll.”
“Which roll is that?”
“You know perfectly well what roll I’m talking about.”
I didn’t move and I kept my mouth shut. I hoped she couldn’t hear my pounding heart or smell my fear.
But she appeared to be just as nervous as I felt. Her smile had vanished. She said, “Let me level with you, Guy. I’m in trouble. I have presold a lot of copies of Out of My Face which I won’t be able to deliver as advertised.”
“You can’t still publish the book?” I asked.
“I can publish it, and I intend to. But I sold autographed copies, and that bitch refused to autograph them. Now there’s no way she can sign the fucking things, so I have to come up with something else, something even better.”
“Go on.”
“In a way I have an excuse for not being able to deliver. How can a dead poet sign books? So I’m off the hook as far as that goes. But a lot of my customers are going to want their money back, and the money’s already spent. See what I’m talking about?”
“And how will some pictures help?” I asked. “And why do I care?”
“I want to combine Out of My Face with the festschrift. It’s going to be fantastic! It won’t have the autograph, and that’s too bad, but it will have so many other goodies I can’t stand it! Pictures of most of the people Heidi wrote about, all taken during the last weekend of her life, some of them even taken during the last evening of her life. And on the cover—oh this is so terriff—a beautiful photo of the poet at rest. What do you think?”
I did my best to control my gag reflex. The horror of this woman! “How long have you had this planned?” I asked.
She was back to the coy smiles. “Well, when Heidi said she wouldn’t sign the books—actually she said she’d sign them if I paid her another ten thou, but fuck that—I knew I had to do something. That’s how I decided on the photos. The ABA photos of all the principal players, the people those poems are about.”
“And your cover idea?”
“Let’s call that a happy accident. Heidi at rest. On Elvis Presley’s bed! Can you beat it?”
“So—”
“So let’s have that roll of film.”
Another freight train filled the sitting room with its roar, and that gave me a little time to think, but it wasn’t easy to think under the circumstances.
I wondered what could be taking Carol so long to buy a six-pack of beer.
Mitzi had her hand out again, palm up, fingers tickling the air. “Film, Guy. My film.”
“Your film?” I said.
“Lawrence told me you have it.”
“Your film?”
“Gimme.”
“That’s Marjorie Richmond’s film,” I said. “She gave it to me and told me to hold onto it. It doesn’t belong to you.”
Mitzi stood and towered over me. “Guy, wake up. I paid Marjorie to take those pictures. That photography was work for hire. The pictures, the film, and all the rights to same are my property. Give me my property.”
“You hired Marjorie?”
“Quit stalling. Let’s get this over with.”
“Where is Marjorie now?” I asked.
“I have no idea. She left town.”
“In a cab,” I guessed.
“Yes, in a cab.”
“LV-VIP.”
“I’m tired of small talk,” Mitzi snapped. She began to pace. “I’m going to have that roll of film, and it will be far pleasanter if you just hand it over.”
“Or?”
“You don’t want to find that out.”
Carol walked into the hotel and set a six-pack of Heineken on the coffee table. She took a seat in the other armchair and said, “Who wants a cold one?”
“Mitzi, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bring Carol up to speed, so she’ll understand why I’m so tempted to give you a roll of film.”
“What?” Carol responded. “You can’t give that away. That belongs to Marjorie. You’re holding it for her, not for—”
“The film is mine,” Mitzi said, her voice feigning weariness. “I don’t want to go through all this again.”
I soldiered on. “So here’s the deal. Mitzi hired Marjorie to take a bunch of embarrassing pictures, which she wants to put into Out of My Face, which will also contain tributes to Heidi by a lot of the same people, and it will also have a picture of the poet on the cover, a picture of her dead.” I turned to Mitzi for confirmation, and she nodded. “If we don’t give her the roll of film, which she claims is hers anyway, there could be some unpleasantness. I’m guessing a certain cab driver—”
“My dear friend Booter,” Mitzi said. “You’ve met him, I believe. He’ll be here at six to pick me up. Me and the film.”
“Wait a minute,” Carol said. “You hired Marjorie to take pictures of Heidi?”
“Let’s don’t go through all this again,” Mitzi answered.
“And what about the poison? Your idea?”
“I’m done talking,” Mitzi said. “I’m not answering any questions, so don’t bother to ask.”
“So Charles Levin had nothing to do with that,” I said. “Lawrence’s story about all those signed and numbered firsts was a total lie?”
Mitzi asked, “What do you mean, signed and numbered firsts?”
I exchanged nods with Carol: confirmation. Levin and Sonora weren’t involved. It was Mitzi’s doing. Lawrence was her lackey.
“Good work, Mitzi,” I said. “So you forced Heidi to drink two glasses of champagne, knowing full well that would be her last drink.”
“I never forced anybody to do anything,” she shot back. “I drank a glass of that stuff too, remember.”
“Right,” Carol said. “That was the glass you were going to offer her for seconds, but since she had already polished off two you didn’t need that option. You drank your glass to give the impression that you had no idea what was in it. Put you to sleep, but you knew it was temporary. You also knew Heidi’s dose was permanent.”
Mitzi stopped pacing and responded with an icy stare. I checked my watch. Quarter to five.
Mitzi sat back down. “Really, you two,” she said. “Be kind to yourselves. Just hand over the film, so Booter doesn’t have to extract it from your bowels. Do you know what he does for fun? He likes to smash beer bottles against his forehead. Please don’t make him mess up this cute little hotel just because of your foolish pride.”
We sat in silence for a while and then I said, “Don’t you have enough pictures? Marjorie was shooting all weekend long, and your friend Booter has all of those pictures, right? He busted into Marjorie’s room and tore it apart and left with all of her film. Why do you need one more roll?”
Mitzi looked at me as if I were part naive, part dumb, part sneaky. “The cover shot, obviously.”
“You mean Heidi dead?”
She nodded wearily.
“Mitzi, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I don’t have that roll. The police have that roll. That’s the truth.”
“That’s not what Marjorie told me,” Mitzi said.
“Marjorie lied to you,” Carol said.
“You stay out of this. I have no intention of being double-teamed.”
“It’s true,” I said. “Marjorie’s last roll of film was in her camera, which she handed over to the police. They gave her back the camera, but they kept the roll of film. That’s the roll with the dead poet. Sorry.”
“Who wants a beer?” Carol said again. “I’m going to have one. Anybody else?”
“I’m in,” I said. “Mitzi?”
“Okay.”
Carol twisted the tops off of three Heinekens and handed them around. We drank in silence. We were done by the time the next train came through.
Carol opened up the other three bottles. I checked my watch. Five-fifteen. We sipped our beers. There was nothing to say. The afternoon was as quiet as a grave until we heard an automobile pull up outside, tires crunching in the gravel parking lot next door.
Mitzi rose and went to the front door of the hotel. She looked out and waved, then turned back to us. “Booter’s here early,” she announced. “Are you going to give me that film, or shall I tell him to come in?”
***
The man named Booter walked through the hotel door wearing a Stanley Kowalski tee shirt with the words BITE ME across his chest in black block letters.
Mitzi said, “Booter, darling, you’ve met these nice people.”
He nodded and cracked his knuckles. There was something different about him. No watch cap today, and his skull was bald and shiny. Same pig nose, though, and same eyes: all business.
“I’ve seen you before,” I said.
“I remember it well,” he answered.
“No, I mean before that. Back when you had a mustache.”
“Mitzi told me to shave it off.”
“It was tacky,” Mitzi said. “And recognizable. I heard that security was looking for him at the convention center after that little prank in the Random House aisle. Looking for a big bald man with a big bushy mustache.”
“Hence the watch cap,” I said.
“That thing’s hotter’n hell,” Booter said.
“So that was you at Julia Child’s demonstration,” I said. “Made the explosion and then slammed a custard pie in Charles Levin’s face.”
He grinned.
“That’s my Booter,” Mitzi said. “He’s a man of many talents, aren’t you darling?”
Booter shrugged and said, “You got that film?”
Carol said to Mitzi, “So you’re the one who stole all those invitations to the Random House party.”
“No, I was at your booth at the time, as you may remember,” Mitzi answered. “Lawrence took the invitations. I distributed them of course, made sure everyone had one. Everyone who mattered.”
“To have lots of suspects in case Heidi just happened to die?” Carol asked.
“To get more photographs of more people,” Mitzi explained. “For the book. Speaking of which, would one of you two like to go get Booter that film so we can be on our way?”
“I’ve told you, Mitzi, that the roll of film with the dead body pictures is at the police station in Las Vegas. That’s the truth.”
Mitzi rolled her eyes and pointed at the Senator’s Room. “That’s their room, Booter dear,” she said. “You’d better go through all their luggage. I believe it’s two suitcases, a briefcase, and a Penguin bag. Do your stuff and then let’s go back to Las Vegas where the buildings are air-conditioned and people tell the truth.”
Booter strode across the sitting room and reared back as if to put a shoulder through our bedroom door.
“That won’t be necessary,” I told him. “There’s no lock on the door.”
“Shit.” Booter opened the door as if he wished it were locked. He left the door open while he got to work disassembling our luggage.
“So you’ve known Booter a long time?” I asked Mitzi.
“We go back a long ways,” she answered. “Back when I lived in Las Vegas he was my partner in crime, you might say. My manager.”
“He’s still your partner in crime. What was he, your pimp?”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
Another train barreled across the desert, its noise filling the hotel. Mitzi put fingers in her ears and looked, for a few seconds, like a tired old woman.
“Wow,” Carol said. “Lot of traffic out there.”
“So Mitzi,” I asked, “how did you get home on Saturday night after that party? You were really out of it.”
She chuckled. “I have no idea how I got home. I suppose some kind soul took care of me. I hope I wasn’t taken advantage of, but if I was, I’ll never know.”
“What about Sunday morning? What was it like waking up from a bender like that?”
“I didn’t wake up till noon. I haven’t slept that late since I used to stay up all night. I was supposed to meet Marjorie inside the convention hall at ten, but I didn’t get there till two.”
“By which time she had left?”
“No, she was there. She was sitting on a bench out in the lobby, crying. She had your badge on. She said you had walked off with her camera case, her wallet, her room key, her everything. She was furious.”
“Shit. Poor woman. I had to go down to the police station.”
“So I took her with me back to my suite at Circus Circus.”
“That was good of you.”
“I got her in my room and locked the door and started asking her some questions. She told me what had happened the night before. Damn shame about poor Heidi. Told me she got some great shots. That’s when she informed me that you had the roll of photographs taken at the party—including the shots of Heidi dead on Elvis’ bed. I practically wet my pants!”
“You’ve got strange taste, Mitzi.”
“The rest of the film was in her room, she said. But you had the room key. And you had the most important roll. That’s when I’m afraid I got a little out of sorts and slapped her around a bit.”
“You hit Marjorie?”
“Well, she was beginning to annoy me. I mean that was careless of her, giving you the roll of film. She said it was to keep it away from the police, but that was before there were cops on the scene, and I could see she was shining me on. I wouldn’t put it past her to keep those shots for herself. But I hit her hard enough that I’m sure she wasn’t lying to me about where that film was. That’s why I know Booter will find it, and we’ll be out of here. After Booter takes you two for a walk in the desert. He loves the desert. Collects rattlesnakes.”
I glanced at Carol. She had no expression on her face. I know that expression. “Then what happened?” Carol asked.
Mitzi ignored Carol and spoke directly to me. “Well, finally Marjorie told me she knew where you’d be that evening, the Ingram party. So I gave her instructions: go find Guy, get your wallet and camera case and room key and that roll of film, and then go to your room and get the rest of that film, and bring all the film to me personally, back at my suite.”
“And so—”
“So, after we had a nice dinner thanks to room service, I called her a cab. The cab driver came to our room, and Marjorie left with him.”
“Booter.”
“That’s right.”
“Did Marjorie know who Booter was?
“Of course not.”
“And she never came back to your suite.”
“No. According to Booter she tried to leave town with some piano player, then she tried to get you to steal all of my film. Booter did the right thing, bless his heart. He drove her outside the city limits. And left her.”
“Dead or alive?”
“Goodness, Guy! Booter’s not a murderer.”
“Likes rattlesnakes, though, right?”
Mitzi smiled. Someday I hope I stop having nightmares about that smile of hers.
“Then Booter returned to Marjorie’s room and took the film that was rightfully mine, except for the one roll that he’s getting right now as we speak.”
“How did he get into Marjorie’s room?”
“He’s a professional. I don’t ask him questions like that. Ah, here he comes now.”
Booter came out of our bedroom slapping an orange envelope against his hand. It was the inner envelope from the Fast Foto package, the one that contained the negatives of the prints Lawrence had thrown away. “This is all there is,” he told Mitzi. “I looked through it all. This is it. I have to go get something out of my cab, and then I’m taking these people for a nice walk.”
I got up from my chair and followed Booter out onto the porch in front of the hotel. He turned and pointed a thick finger at my right eye. “You stay put,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere. It would just mean extra work for both of us. I’m bigger than you, obviously, and I’m faster, and I tend to get real mad real easy.”
He turned, walked down the steps, and out into the cactus garden on the way to his cab.
***
I suppose if I’d had any time to think about it, I might have wimped out again and I probably wouldn’t be alive today. But I didn’t have any time for making decisions. I let him get to about the middle of the cactus garden and then I tore off after him, down the porch steps and along the path as fast as I could run. He must have heard me coming, because he picked up speed, but that worked to my advantage because when I dove the last few feet and caught his ankles in my arms, he had enough momentum to send him down, face-forward, into a large barrel cactus. His heels kicked my face and that felt great.
You should have heard the scream.
I backed away and watched him rise and turn toward me. There was blood popping out all over his face and his throat and his arms and hands. He howled and started toward me, his arms outstretched and his eyes shut tight from the pain. I whistled and he picked up speed. I let him get as close as I dared, then dropped to the ground and rolled into his lower legs so that he tripped again, this time onto a tall cholla cactus, which broke off and went down with him into the gravel and dust.
He disengaged himself from the cholla and tried to rise, but his hands were too full of spines to support his weight. He rolled over onto his back, and he had spines all over his body. He was leaking blood. His BITE ME shirt was a war zone. His face was the worst though. And he couldn’t touch it with his hands, because they were covered with spines too.
I knew he’d be back on his feet eventually, and I hadn’t figured out what to do when that happened. At the moment, my attention was caught by a little orange envelope that had dropped from his hand with the first tackle.
I picked it up.
Off in the distance I heard the approach of a freight train. I ran the fifty-odd yards to the track and looked back.
He was on his feet. He was coming toward me. He was trotting, even though I could tell that every step was excruciating.
I looked to the right. The train was barrelling in at a fast-paced crescendo. I crossed the track and waited. Come and get it.
Booter and the train were both only a few feet away from me when I laid the yellow envelope on the track.
The whistle screamed bloody murder and the freight train charged between us. Blam blam blam blam rattle blam rattle blam rattle blam rattle rattle rattle rattle blam blam blam blam rattle blam rattle blam rattle blam rattle rattle rattle rattle blam blam blam blam rattle blam rattle blam rattle blam rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle.…
The train rattled away down the track. On the other side, I saw Booter heading back toward the hotel, walking carefully but purposefully. Slowly. He had murder on his mind, I knew. He wouldn’t be able to outrun me, he knew that. He was going for easier prey.
This time I wouldn’t be able to tackle him. He’d be on guard, and who wants to hug a porcupine anyway? So, duh, I picked up a board that was lying by the tracks, and when he got to the cactus garden again I charged like a knight.
Right in the back. Down he went. He missed the cacti this time, but the spines he already had were driven deeper into his flesh.
I took a big chance and kicked him in the balls. Ouch. I ruined my right shoe, and I’m still limping, but it was worth it.
That’s when I heard the wail of a siren and looked up to see a California Highway Patrol car turning into the hotel lot. The vehicle stopped, the siren shut off, the doors opened. Out of the driver’s side stepped a tall officer in his tan uniform.
And out of shotgun stepped Detective Daniel Plumley, Las Vegas Police Department.
Poor Booter was on his back whimpering, with his knees spread apart. He tried to hold his crotch but his hands were useless. So I kicked his crotch again, this time with my left foot. I’m right-handed so this wasn’t as strong a kick, and Booter’s scream wasn’t as loud as the first one.
***
It took about twenty minutes for the ambulance to get there. The late-afternoon shadows turned the New York Mountains purple while we waited. Booter lay bleeding into the dirt. The highway patrolman had made him as comfortable as he could, but there was no dealing with those wounds without moving him, and it made sense to wait for the paramedics to do that. So we stood around the body—the patrolman, the detective, and I—listening to it twitch and whimper.
“That was really a stupid thing to do, Guy,” Plumley said, when the patrolman went back to his car to call in his report.
“Because I might have killed him?”
“Shit no. I wish you had killed him, since I’m not allowed to. No, all I mean is, you might have gotten hurt.”
“I figured I was going to get hurt anyway,” I said. “I didn’t think I had any options.”
“It was also stupid for you to kick a man when he’s down, right in front of two officers of the law. Fortunately Mr. Chips was looking the other way.”
“How about you?” I asked.
“I didn’t see anything either,” Dan said.
The old lady from the store shuffled over to us in her bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. She had a tumbler of wine in her hand. “What’s all the racket?” she asked. “Looks like this fella got careless with the cactus. Should I go get some Band-Aids?”
“We’ve called an ambulance,” Dan told her.
“Well, I’ll leave it in your hands,” the old lady said. She took a sip of her wine. “I got to get back to ‘Miami Vice.’” She turned and shuffled away, back to the store.
The ambulance showed up and the team of paramedics got to work on the human pincushion. He cried out at every touch until they gave him an enormous shot of something to shut him up. It took them about half an hour to cut off all his clothes, dress his wounds, wrap him in a clean sheet and a blanket, place him on a gurney, and hoist him into the back of their vehicle. They handed Booter’s wallet and keys to Dan Plumley, who said, “I’ll be driving that cab back to Las Vegas and I’ll check in with the suspect at the hospital. You taking him to Sunrise?”
One of the paramedics nodded and said, “Suspect?”
Plumley corrected himself. “Patient.”
The patrolman, the detective, and I went through the cactus garden to the hotel, where Carol and Mitzi were standing on the porch.
Carol was grinning at me.
Mitzi was weeping.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” the patrolman asked.
Mitzi nodded.
“Did you know that man?” Dan Plumley asked her.
“Of course not,” she answered. “He’s a cab driver.”
“But you’re crying.”
“Only because now I don’t have a way to get back to Las Vegas. I’m stranded here without my ride.” She looked at me and Carol, then back at the detective. “This is not a place I want to be.”
The highway patrolman said, “Ma’am, I have to go back to Las Vegas now anyway. I can give you a lift.”
Mitzi looked at me as if for permission. “I guess we’ve concluded our business,” I said. “Thanks for coming all the way out here. We’ll see you in Santa Barbara and we can iron out the details there.”
“And those, um, negatives…?” she asked.
“I’m afraid they got run over by a train.”
She turned to the patrolman. “Can you wait just a minute? I’ll go inside and get my briefcase.”
While she was in the hotel Carol said to me, “What’s going on?” Then she turned to Detective Plumley. “Didn’t you come out here to arrest that woman? She’s the one who—”
“I can’t arrest anybody outside the State of Nevada,” Dan said. “And I know this will disappoint you, but I still consider the death of Miss Yamada an unfortunate accident. No, Miss Maloney, I came out here to arrest that cab driver. I’ve been looking for him since we talked this morning. Since yesterday afternoon, actually. And by the way, thanks a million for that phone call. Of course I couldn’t arrest him here, technically, but by the time he wakes up he’ll be in a hospital in downtown Las Vegas. That’s my turf.”
“You want us to make a statement about that mugging last night?” I asked.
“No, that won’t be necessary for the time being. If that becomes necessary I’ll contact you. Meanwhile, we have a bigger charge to nail him on. Attempted murder.”
“Who?” I asked.
But before he could answer Mitzi came smiling out of the hotel. She shook my hand and said, “Guy, thanks a mill.” She offered Carol her hand, but Carol didn’t take it. Mitzi told Plumley, “Thank you, Officer.” Then she turned to the patrolman and said, “Shall we?”
The CHP grinned back at her, his eyes drifting down over her body, and the two of them walked across the cactus garden, got into his vehicle, and drove off into the evening.
***
I went to the store to buy a bottle of gin and some ice.
Plumley went to the cab to check it out.
Carol went inside to freshen up. Long day.
We met back on the porch and I served cocktails. Plumley said, “Miss Richmond’s clothes are all in the trunk of his cab. Just like she said. And there was a loaded pistol in the glove compartment.”
“What happened to Marjorie?” Carol asked. “Where is she?”
“Sunrise Hospital,” he said. “I hope they don’t stick that cabbie in her room, come to think of it.”
“What happened?” Carol asked again. “My name’s Murphy, by the way.”
“Miss Richmond came into the station yesterday afternoon,” Plumley told us. “She was wearing a yellow slicker and nothing else. Not even shoes. Fortunately I was out in the lobby when she showed up, and fortunately she remembered me, because I would never have recognized her. She was a mess, frankly. Poor woman.”
“What—”
“That cab driver,” he answered. “Took her out in the desert Sunday night and left her there, naked. And barefoot. He had beat her up pretty bad. It took her till almost noon yesterday to get back to the highway. Lucky for her, the first person to come along was a Mormon kid with an old slicker in the back of his pickup. She had him bring her to the police station. Like I say, damn lucky I was out in the lobby when she got there or they’d have just thrown her in the tank or back out on the streets.”
“She was lucky,” I agreed.
“If you want to call it that. Anyway she told me what had happened, told me about the cab. LV-VIP. He’s an independent, not even registered, so he was hard to trace. Thank God you called me. Lucky for you, too.”
“Is that what you were doing when you were supposed to be buying beer?” I asked Carol.
“That’s why I needed your wallet,” she answered. “I needed this man’s business card, which you’re so fond of flashing around.”
“How did you know we were in such trouble?” I asked. “I had no idea.”
“It came through loud and clear to me,” she said. “Even though I was in our room with the door closed. She said she had some photographs—‘sensational photos,’ she called them—and I thought those might be Marjorie’s. Then when she said she’d come here to Nipton in a taxi cab, well shit.” She turned to Plumley and said, “You didn’t seem all that glad to hear from me at the time.”
Plumley chuckled. “My mistake. But as soon as you mentioned the cab I was all ears. You told me this morning you’d been mugged by a cabbie driving a yellow vehicle with the logo LV-VIP on the side. That matched the description Miss Richmond gave me. You had me hooked on that one.”
“You didn’t waste any time getting here,” I said. “Thank God.”
“I called CHP and arranged to have someone meet me in Stateline. I took a helicopter there.”
“We’re sure grateful,” I said. “You want another drink?”
“No, I’ve got a long drive ahead of me,” Plumley said. “And cab drivers aren’t allowed to drink.”
***
Carol and I were the only guests in the Nipton Hotel that night, so we moved our stuff into the Clara Bow room, our favorite. Then we drove over to Searchlight, Nevada, twenty-five miles south of Nipton, for cheeseburgers and beer in a combination coffee shop and casino.
Driving back afterwards, though a forest of Joshua trees in the moonlight, Carol held my hand, called me her hero, and sang me our private love song. I won’t tell you what it is.
Later, standing on the hotel porch, she said, “I’m not pissed off anymore. But I guess we’re just going to let her get away with it, right? With killing Heidi?”
“No way,” I said.
“But Detective Plumley doesn’t have any interest in opening up the case, so I guess there’s not much we can do about it.”
“Mitzi Milkin won’t get away with it,” I said. “Believe me. I’ve got her nailed.”
“You’re not the law,” Carol reminded me.
“I’m better than the law,” I answered. “I’m a publisher.”