Fourteen

You had to hand it to Quentin Mallory. He had the Gothic touch. He had christened his beach house Ghormenghast after the Mervyn Peake novel and the fact that .001% of his visitors ever got the point was precisely the point.

It nestled—or perhaps clung would be a better word—to a promontory of bleak rock on a piece of shoreline north of L.A. that was deservedly unfashionable. Despite rising land values, nobody else had built anywhere near it. Most of the trees around it were dead or dying and the cruel sea snapped at its skirts. Was it my imagination or were those Charles Addams bats flitting around us?

I parked the Corvette in some dense shrubbery behind the house, where it couldn’t be seen by anyone approaching the place on supposedly legitimate business. Mike made a move to join us but Daddy was firm.

“Stay and guard. Stay! Good boy!”

We were making real progress with this ‘Stay!’ business. Maybe it was the slight Chinese inflection I had introduced. It produced a slight curl to the lip—his not mine—but he stayed.

Holmes and I moved purposefully, I hoped, towards Ghormenghast …

As we approached, a door yawned open and standing there, like a baby’s first tooth stood Petit. He moved aside to let me enter, then closed the door behind us both.

“I’ve done as you asked, Mr. Watson,” he said, oddly formal. “All the inside doors are locked and bolted, except the main living room that looks out over the ocean. That’s the only room anyone can get into. I’ve left the front door obviously ajar. Will there be anything else?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Grandhomme.” I returned the formality. “I suggest you return to your own room and lock yourself in. What happens from now on need not concern you. I shall try to see to it that the right thing happens. And I am most grateful to you.”

We exchanged courtly bows and he disappeared into the recesses of the house. A few moments later I heard the key turn in a lock.

“You know, Watson,” said Holmes, “I always thought that, if I had not decided to track down the criminal element in our society, I might have made an excellent burglar. I’m sure I should have risen to the top. And with my present advantages … But then, where would have been the amusement in that?

“Still, we had our moments, did we not, old fellow—entering premises with burglarious intent, when the normal channels were closed to us? Ah, the game, Watson, the game!”

And with that, he drifted off to examine the setting of our little drama.

Through the floor to ceiling windows that opened on to the ocean it was clear that Mother Nature had been recruited to create an appropriate setting. The storm front that had been hovering around the area had now decided to pay a return visit. Ominous black clouds were playing tag with the moon and the man on timpani was tuning up somewhere in the hills behind us, while in the distance lightning was saying something in semaphore. All in all, Hitchcock would have been hard put to find a better setting for a dénouement.

Now, how best to set the scene? The room was large and open in its layout with a casual arrangement of sofas and easy chairs. A grand piano stood near the windows that took up the whole of the main exterior wall. I could just imagine Mallory sitting there playing Wagner loudly to a chorus of seabirds, while the white muslin curtains danced, Gatsby-like in the breeze that gently ruffled his designer hair.

All very charming but where were the heavy velvet drapes the private eye is supposed to hide behind, while the guilty party confesses all? Nowhere to be seen, that’s where. Under the piano? I think not. Too undignified to extricate oneself at the moment critique. It somehow didn’t fit in with my image of Marlowe to see him hopping around with cramp while struggling with the Bad Guy.

Seeing me look around hopelessly, Holmes came up with the solution.

“As I’m sure you noticed, old fellow, these are French windows that open outwards. I feel sure the mechanism can be so ordered that one of them will not close properly. This will enable you to take cover in the oleander bushes I noticed on the terrace outside. From that point of vantage you will be able to hear what transpires in the room itself and make your entrance in timely fashion.”

Well, of course, that would have occurred to me momentarily but I was grateful for Holmes’s intervention, for even now I could hear the sound of a car approaching and see the glare of its headlights, as it turned off the highway on to the promontory that defined Cormorant Cove. I consulted my tired old Timex. 11:30 on the nose. If my plan was working, it should be Nickly Parmentieri and, indeed, the macho roar of the exhaust pre-empted the arrival of an open top Beemer. Just the sort of overt statement I would have expected from him. But then, I was more than a little jealous, if the truth be known.

The reflection from the headlights flashed briefly across the window, as he turned the corner of the house into the parking lot. Once the car was safely out of sight, I slipped out of the window and took up my position in the bushes Holmes had indicated. From there, as he had predicted, I had a clear view of the whole room and in two steps I could be inside. Holmes, I noticed, had taken up a position behind the piano. He nodded in my direction to indicate that I could not be seen. The stage was set. All we needed now were our actors.

We didn’t have long to wait.

Nicky Parmetieri came round the door as carefully s a paintbrush applying a final coat. Though, come to think of it, I couldn’t remember seeing a paintbrush carrying a gun before. He moved round the room, keeping his back always to the wall, until he’d checked out every inch of it. I was watching a man who’d done this a time or two before.

Finally, he settled by the piano and took in the view, which by now was truly spectacular. Sheet lightning was moving steadily in from the ocean and, every time Nature’s house lights blinked on and off, I could see battalions of white capped waves marching like Storm Troopers towards the shore below us. It was an effect Wagner would have killed for and it would surely have inspired him to come up with a stirring little dirge. Somehow—this being Hollywood and all—it seemed eminently appropriate for our very own film noir.

Nicky reached into his pocket for something that was badly distorting its immaculate line. The object appeared reluctant and it caused him to put his gun down on the piano lid, so that he could use both hands.

Finally, he pulled a package some four inches square wrapped in gray chamois leather. He placed it carefully on the piano and unwrapped it as though it was the Shroud of Turin. Which, in a sense, it was. For there, gleaming against the gray of the leather and the polished black of the piano was the Borgia Bird.

As if on cue, there was the brightest flash of lightning yet and I could have sworn the Bird’s eyes blazed with anger. The timing was so dramatic that it caused Nicky to step back involuntarily. Then, realizing what he’d done, he caught himself and smiled a foolish little smile. Good job the Family hadn’t seen their star pupil frightened by a little lightning.

It must have been the brightness of the lightning that prevented any of us from seeing the headlights of the next car to arrive. The occupant was in the house and moving towards the door of the living room before Nicky heard them. Quickly, he re-wrapped the Bird and then posed himself nonchalantly against the piano. Anyone entering the room would see him against the dramatic backdrop. A powerful man with the power of Nature at his command. Very Otto Kruger or Dan Duryea.

“Come in, Mr. Chan, I was expecting you.”

Oh, that Kai Ling (or whatever). What a sense of humor!

Nicky had probably never heard of Charlie Chan.

“Well, I’ve been called a few things in my time but never Mr. Chan. Are you sure you’ve got the right house, darling. Or are you auditioning for something?”

And Linda Grace made her entrance. And ‘entrance’ was the only word for it. Where Nicky had slunk, she sashayed. I hadn’t seen it done that well since Mae West but there was something vaguely pathetic about it, nonetheless. This was an assertive action to boost her own confidence in herself.

Nicky’s “What the hell are you doing here?” can’t have done much to aid the process.

Her eyes widened at his tone but she pressed on, as though she hadn’t noticed.

“What is this, darling, premature Alzheimer’s? You asked me to meet you here. Remember? You said that the situation had changed and that we had to make our plans right away. So here I am. When do we leave, Nicky? I can’t wait to get away from Hell House and that decaying old vulture. Where are we going to—Rio? Tahiti? Anywhere. I don’t care. My fans will miss me, of course, but God knows I gave them my all for all those years. To hell with them. It’s our time now, babe—just you and me …”

And then she tried the move that had never failed her yet. She rubbed herself up against Nicky and leaned up with eyes closed to be kissed.

There are few sights sadder than a beautiful woman—and make no mistake, Linda Grace was still a beautiful woman—waiting to be kissed and then not being kissed. It took her several beats before she realized there was nothing doing and another few before she could accept it.

Slowly her eyes opened and she took a step back. But then the look of a dead lizard in Nicky’s eyes would have caused anyone to think twice.

“What’s the matter, Nicky? Why are you looking at me like that? It’s something bad, isn’t it?”

Nicky put his hands on her shoulders, as you would when trying to talk sense into a wayward child.

“Look, Linda, I wasn’t expecting you and I was going to tell you this later but maybe now is as good a time as any. Things have changed—changed for the better, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got a really big deal going through that will tie things up nicely and get me outta here. I’ve got a buyer for the goddam Bird …”

He turned from her and picked up the package from the piano. Once again he unwrapped it as carefully as if it had been his first born and, once again, the Bird flamed in that dimly-lit room. And—I know it sounds corny as hell—but I swear the lightning flashed on cue, making the Bird seem to blink at it surroundings.

“The only thing they don’t know is that the Bird I’m going to hand over will be a copy I’ve had made—not this little beauty.”

And he stroked its golden head. For a moment I thought he was about to kiss it.

“So I get the deal and I get to keep the Bird. And any time I want my fuck-you money, I’ve got it right here. As good as Fort Knox and a lot less trouble.”

That, I thought, was a debatable subject for another time and place. So Mallory had been a prodigal intermediary indeed. Replicas Anonymous. Somehow I thought Nicky was underestimating the sagacity of our mutual oriental buddy—not to mention his scalpel-happy associate. But that was his problem.

He soon found himself with another.

“So you see, kid, it’s a chance of a lifetime. I got to take it.”

He gave her the crooked boyish grin that probably worked just about as regularly as Linda’s physicality but this time his audience wasn’t buying the show.

“In a minute you’ll be telling me that where you’re going I can’t follow, what you’ve got to do, I can’t be any part of and that I have to understand that the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Well, Nicky, my love, I’m not buying into this Casablanca crap. We’re in this together. I’ve put everything on the line for you, you arrogant little schmuck!”

“Now, c’mon, kid … We’ve had some good times, a few laughs. Nobody said it was for ever.”

“And don’t call me kid! You’re no Bogie.”

I somehow doubted patience was Nicky’s strong suit. Now the spoiled child came out and at the same time you could see in the set of his face the mean man he would age into. The mouth tightened and there was nobody home behind the eyes.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Linda. I really shouldn’t call you, kid, should I? You haven’t been a kid for many a long day. How many days, Linda? Hundreds?

Thousands? Let’s take a look, shall we?”

Suddenly he grabbed her by the hair and wound his hand deep in it. With the other he seized her upper arm so hard that she gasped. Then he turned her around so that they could see themselves reflected as a couple in a large Venetian mirror close to the piano.

The glass had that hazy texture, so that they seemed to be floating to the surface of a lake.

“Take a look, Linda. Take a good look! I’m thirty. You’re what? Fifty? And I’m being kind. Why would I settle for Second-hand Rose when I can have the pick of the crop?” And he pushed her in front of him, so that she was almost touching the mirror. The table light on the piano flared up at her face, cruelly exposing the powdercaked lines around her eyes, the grooves each side of the mouth where her lip gloss cunningly continued where the natural lip line left off. It was a moment when all the perfumes of Arabia and all the skills of Elizabeth Arden wouldn’t save a woman from facing Old Mother Time.

I could read the shock in her eyes. She’d never let herself see this kind of truth. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, Linda Grace was a truly beautiful woman but Time was slowly calling in its IOUs. And woe betide the man who brings a woman to that realization.

Nicky Parmentieri was too young and thoughtless to realize that. He was also too insensitive to see that the woman who turned away from the mirror when he released her was a different one from the one he had made to face it.

Now Linda’s was the empty face, while Nicky was becoming angry and excited.

“Listen, baby, you were great—the best. But you’ve had your moment. Mine’s ahead of me. When the deal’s through, I’ll see you right, I promise. You name it. But this is it. Sayonara. End of the road. Get it? What do you say?” And then a mouse with icy feet ran up the small of my back as I saw Linda’s eyes. I’d seen that wide open expression only once before, where the whites are visible right around the pupils. That was Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, when she comes down the staircase and says—‘I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. De Mille’. And, to tell you the truth, I’d thought she was simply an old silent star over-acting. But Linda Grace was now living that part—or one very like it.

“Oh, Jerry,” she said, moving slowly around Nicky and never taking those stare-y eyes from his face. Nor could he seem to shift his gaze. She was mesmerizing him.

“Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”

“What are you talking about? Who the hell is ‘Jerry’?”

But I knew. Linda Grace had retreated to the security of the movies, where life was lived as it was supposed to be lived and you knew what you had to do and how it would all turn out. Jerry was the Paul Henreid character who played opposite Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, where the plain Jane gets the gorgeous guy.

But now she was into something else …

“Nothing can harm us now. What we have can’t be destroyed. That’s our victory—our victory over the dark. It’s a victory because we’re not afraid.”

Bette Davis again. Dark Victory this time. Those hours in the cheap seats hadn’t been wasted after all. But where was she going with this?

Somebody who was now distinctly afraid was Nicky Parmentieri. I could see the perspiration on his forehead even from where I stood and this was not a humid night. Linda kept circling him and as she did so, he kept turning to face her. It was the mongoose and the snake and I had no idea which was which.

“OK, Linda, you’ve had your fun. Cut out all that movie crap and get real. We’ve both got our lives to get on with.”

“But the movies are real, darling. It’s the rest that’s shit. And talking of lives—you’ve just had yours. Nobody leaves Linda Grace. I’m the one who leaves. Goodbye, Nicky!”

There was the sound of a shot, then another. If a director had asked Nickly to register amazement, he could never have done it half as well as he did at that moment. The eyes widened even more than Linda’s, the mouth opened and he turned to clutch at the piano.

It was only then I realized that in her movements around Nicky and her persistent eye contact Linda had managed to scoop up his gun from the piano without his noticing.

Blind instinct now drove him to reach for what was no longer there. His hand scrabbled pointlessly over the polished surface and encountered only the Borgia Bird in its wrapping. As he fumbled at it, the chamois fell away and he had the golden object in his had for a fleeting moment before Linda began firing again, this time into his unprotected back.

Nicky fell at her feet—not in the gradual, balletic fashion of a movie death but ludicrously and all at once, like a marionette when the puppet master has removed his hand.

Linda emptied the magazine into him, then stood staring down at him.

Then she looked up and for an instant I thought she could see me but it was the lens of a movie camera in her mind that had her full attention.

“With all my heart, I still love the man I killed.”

Davis couldn’t have delivered the line better—even though she had delivered it first in The Letter.

The storm chose that moment to deliver its first clap of thunder. It was virtually overhead and for a moment it deafened me. Then it began to roll around the neighboring hills, like busybody neighbors passing on gossip.

“Bravo!”

The voice was both ironic and metallic.

The doorway was now filled by Kane’s wheelchair. In it he sat, tapping his wizened arm on the metal armrest, as if in applause. Behind him, still in the shadows, stood the figure of Nana. How long had they been there? How much had they seen?

“Poor little Nicky. You wouldn’t listen to any of us, would you? Well, this is what happens when you play out of your league.”

He turned to address his daughter.

“Nana, my dear, I believe Mr. Parmentieri has something that belongs to me. I believe he placed it on the piano when he began the scene with my about-to-be-ex-wife. Would you be so good as to bring it to me?”

Something in his voice brought Linda back from wherever she had been. She turned her face in his direction and it was like that moment in She when time and nature suddenly catch up with Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Linda Grace had aged ten years in as many minutes. It was the face of an old woman that tried to focus on Kane.

Then instinct seemed to take over. She snatched up the Bird and held it to her like a precious baby.

“Oh, but you can’t have this. Nicky and I need it. It’s our meal ticket. You see, we’re going away together, me and Nicky. Going to start over in ________. I can’t remember where. Where is it, Nicky? Where are we going to start over …?”

That was when Nana shot her.

A small gun had somehow appeared in her hand as she crossed the room and it didn’t take much detecting to guess that this was the .22 that had killed Mallory.

They say that a .22 is unreliable at anything but close range but then, Nana Kane had been practising lately. Her shot was right on the money—in more ways than one. It took Linda right in the heart and a small red carnation began to blossom in her cleavage, until it turned into a full, then over-blown rose and she sank slowly and elegantly to the floor. It was almost certainly the best death scene the lady had ever played.

Nana walked over to the body and bent down. She bent down as Nana Kane but when she stood up again and turned towards her father, she had the face of Anna. She also had in the palm of her hand the remains of the Borgia Bird. The shot that took out Linda Grace had taken the Bird with it.

“Oh, Daddy,”—it was the voice of a little frightened girl—“I couldn’t help it. The nasty lady wouldn’t give it to me, so I had to do it. I didn’t mean to hurt the birdie. Really, I didn’t.”

She went over to him with tentative steps and laid what was left of the Bird in his lap. Then she stood back, as if a little distance would protect her from the heat of his anger.

I looked at Kane’s face. But where I had expected to see malice and fury there was only sadness and defeat. He held the fragment up and, once again, it was as though the creature was a lightning conductor.

The storm was now right above us and the thunder and lightning were simultaneous this time. The flash showed for a brief instant what Kane had seen. The Bird was hollow, the thin metal casing packed with stone or cement to give it the required weight.

With surprising strength, a strength born of frustration, Kane hurled it from him. It seemed to travel in an arc in slow motion and my eyes followed it until it reached the mottled Venetian mirror in which the images of Nicky and Linda were reflected. Their bodies seemed almost posed in a Romeo and Juliet tableau of death, until with a crash, the image shattered, like a stone disturbing the surface of a pond.

Now the crazy paving image showed Nana. Gone was the frightened Anna. This was the vengeful Nana standing over the bodies and venting on them the varied gutter vocabulary I had heard that night in Birdland. The expression on that twisted face scared me almost more than anything I had seen so far. And what scared me even more was when she loosed off another two shots into the bodies of Linda and Nicky. Isn’t there some rule about not shooting a man—let alone a lady—when she’s down? If not, there should be.

It was time to call a halt. There was nothing more to be gained here. Two people were dead and there was no bird. Perhaps there never had been. Perhaps it was all for nothing.

I pulled open the French window and stepped into the room. Holmes materialized at my side.

“Party’s over, kiddies.”

All the time I had been in the shrubbery I had had Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson by my side, cocked and ready to roll. Now I used them to cover Nana.

“Drop the gun on the floor, Miss Kane.” Nothing like a little formality to remind people we live in a civilized society—occasionally. “Nice and easy on the floor there.”

She turned—and Anna said:

“Oh, hi, Jack, where did you come from? You really should have been here sooner. You could have helped me. I told you about the terrible things Nana’s been doing. She was fucking Nicky until that bitch Linda came along with her painted eyes and her big boobs. And Nicky was so sweet. And then she stole Daddy’s precious Bird and gave it to that creep Perlman to give to Nicky. But then I don’t know what happened. The Bird got lost somehow. We thought Mr. Mallory might have it but he didn’t and he was awfully nasty about it, so she had to kill him. So Nicky had to have it, don’t you see? But he didn’t have it, either. So what can you do, Jack? Birdie fly away … Birdie go bye-bye.”

Then she laughed the piercing, spine-chilling laugh of a demented child.

And then she shot me.

I guess all the words and the flickering expressions crossing her lovely face had mesmerized me, as they were intended to. Anna-Nana-Anna. Now you see her, now you don’t. But Nana had won in the end.

The bullet took me in the right shoulder and I’ve been shot often enough to know the routine.

You know you’ve been hit but the body’s immediate reaction is to numb the place, so you don’t feel a thing. It’s later that it begins to hurt like hell—if you’re lucky. If you’re not, then you still don’t feel a thing. Ever.

I tried to raise my own gun but Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson seemed to have put on weight. I did just manage to pull the trigger. Nothing. The damn thing had jammed.

Then I found myself on the floor, slumped against the open window. Nana was walking towards me with that loony smile on her face and that cute little gun in her hand. She’d have a busy day tomorrow carving all those new notches on it. Pity I wouldn’t be around to see which one was mine.

Now her image was beginning to come and go, in and out of focus. I told myself—Marlowe wouldn’t faint at a time like this. Sam Spade wouldn’t pass out. Hang in there, Watson! At least go our cracking wise. But I couldn’t think of a single funny thing to say. Life itself was one big joke but it would take too long to explain that to a mad lady.

Then I saw Holmes do the strangest thing. He put his lips together and seemed to be whistling. Funny thing to do at a time like this, Holmes, I felt like saying. I hope it’s your favorite Wagner. Let me go out like a Valkyrie. That’s right. Jack Watson, Last of the Valkyries.

I saw Nana raise the gun until I was looking down the long thin tunnel of its barrel. So T. S. Eliot was wrong. The world did end with a bang. I just hoped I wouldn’t whimper.

Suddenly in my dimming peripheral vision I sensed a blur of movement. Something had passed my shoulder and was now attached to Nana Kane’s arm. It was also making familiar growling noises and she was screaming in the key of—was it C? For some reason she also seemed to have dropped her gun at my feet. I picked it up with my left hand and levered myself upright by leaning on the window frame.

Nana Kane seemed to have acquired Mike. Or perhaps Mike had acquired Nana Kane. As he hung there, those great limpid eyes—Mike’s not Nana’s—found mine, as if to say—“OK, boss, what do I do now?”

I told him he had probably better let go. After all, I did know where she’d been.

Mike dropped to the floor and padded over to sit at my feet. Ah, those dog training classes are worth every penny. Mike’s going to one as soon as I can afford it.

“Thank you, Holmes,” I muttered. I didn’t care if anyone else heard but no one did. Nana was rocking to and fro, nursing her arm and whimpering like the overgrown, if lethal, schoolgirl she really was. Linda and Nicky seemed to have no comment. And Kane …?

Kane was sitting in his chair, as always, but now slumped to one side. Since I’d known him it had never been what you might call a pretty face but now it was as though gravity had pulled one side of it down. He was still breathing—just about—but he had had a massive stroke. Only the eyes were alive but the being that was Osgood Kane was trapped for whatever time he had left in this sad sack of skin and bone as surely as if he had been buried in an underground prison with—what was Wilde’s famous description? ‘That patch of blue that prisoners call the sky.’

The phone was by the piano and I risked putting Nana’s gun down long enough to dial left handed. Nobody here was going no place. At least, no place of their own choosing.

McNulty picked up his cell phone on the first ring.

“A delivery for you, you Irish Mick,” I said. Then it seemed a good time to faint.

That bottomless black pool had never looked so inviting. As I sank, I could swear I heard Holmes’s voice say anxiously—

“You’re not hurt, Watson. For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!”

And somehow it seemed to me that he had said that to me somewhere before but, then, how could he? Still, it pleased me strangely.