“Hey!” I yelled.
There was no response; granted, it was hard to tell over the rumble of the machines and flood of water. I put a hand out, fingers brushing the cool cement wall, and started toward the stairs.
My foot bumped into the bottom step. I couldn’t see a damn thing; it was like a crypt in there. I swore under my breath and went up the first couple of stairs—and realized there was someone with me in the humid darkness. Someone at the top of the stairs, blocking the exit.
I could feel him—and it was definitely a him because I could smell his cheap aftershave—feel his warmth and bulk—although I couldn’t see him. I stopped midcharge and teetered off-balance for a second.
He growled, “Eva Aldrich is ancient history. Butt out or you’ll be history too.”
A couple of meaty hands planted in my chest, and he shoved me hard.
I fell back, grabbing blindly at empty air, and tumbled down the stairs, landing in a painful sprawl at the bottom, my head grazing one of the vibrating washers. Dimly I was aware of the door above me opening, a flash of afternoon sunlight, and the door banging shut again.
Shocked, I just lay there for a few moments trying to process what had happened. Luckily, it was a short flight of steps. My elbow hurt and my back felt twisted, but mostly I’d landed on my ass. Nothing broken. Nothing sprained as far as I could tell. I’d banged my head against the washer, not hard, but hard enough, and that, more than anything, was scaring the shit out of me. I stayed still in the soap-scented blackness and waited for the fireworks.
Meanwhile the asshole was getting away…
But I let the thought go, just as I had to let my attacker go.
So much for thinking the tarot card pinned to my door was a joke or a coincidence. Apparently someone didn’t want this book written. Had sent a goon to lean on me like something in a pulp novel. It was crazy. Eva Aldrich had been dead for fifty years. Half the suspects weren’t even alive anymore.
The washer above me hit spin cycle, and I edged away from the juddering motion. It occurred to me that so far my circuitry seemed okay, so I got carefully to my feet and felt my way through the darkness again to the stairs and the doorway.
I pushed the door open to flickering sunlight. Shrubbery stirred in the breeze, but there was no sign of anyone. To the right, the path led to the pool yard where a woman in a red bikini baked on a lounge chair. To the left, the path led to the parking lot behind the apartment complex. The tall gate swung gently in the wake of someone’s hasty exit.
Stepping through the gate, I studied the small dusty lot crowded with cars.
A sheet of newspaper pinwheeled on the breeze, a beer can rolled to a stop a few feet away. A blue jay gave me hell from the telephone pole above.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
I noticed Jack’s Jeep was gone, so there was no point running upstairs to tell him about the latest development. And I didn’t like the fact that this was the first line of action that occurred to me.
Withdrawing from the parking lot, I headed back to my apartment, past the nearly deserted pool yard, generator humming noisily, past the open windows of my neighbors, snatches of cartoons and talk shows. I let myself into my apartment and dug the phone out from beneath the pile of throw cushions—the L.A. Times having a habit of calling right when I finally fell into a deep sleep.
My conversation with Glendale PD went pretty much as expected. The dispatcher was sympathetic but admitted that without any kind of description of my attacker—or even a suspect—there wasn’t a lot they could do. She promised to send a patrol car over to take my report, and that was basically that.
I fixed myself a sandwich, although I wasn’t hungry, poured a glass of iced tea, and sat down with my notes.
The popular theory at the time of Eva Aldrich’s death was that her ex-husband, a gas station owner by the name of William Burack, had killed her in a fit of jealous rage. Burack’s then-current girlfriend had alibied him, and the police had never been able to prove otherwise. I studied the photos of Burack. He’d been one of those big blond bruisers who turn to fat as they age. He hadn’t aged a lot, though, dying in a car crash in 1965.
Since he was dead, I couldn’t see anyone close to Burack getting worked up at the idea of my writing a book about the case. He hadn’t had any kids and his only close relative, a brother, had died sometime in the 1980s. So if someone was threatening me to stay out of the Aldrich case, it probably wasn’t because he feared I was going to uncover proof that Burack had killed his glamour-girl ex.
Which meant that someone else had.
Washing the ham sandwich down with iced tea, I considered this theory objectively. It made sense, right? Someone unconnected to Burack didn’t want me digging into the old case. Because someone, somewhere, still had something to lose if the truth about a half-century-old homicide were to be revealed.
Since there’s no statute of limitations on murder, there was an obvious motive for keeping the identity of Eva’s killer secret: her killer was still alive.
But Jack also had a point. Most of the principals in the Aldrich case were now in their seventies. Not that trial and prison would be any more appealing at age seventy than at age twenty, but it was hard to picture a member of the Geritol set scurrying around tacking tarot cards to my door and shoving me down stairways.
Besides, no senior citizen had knocked me down in the laundry room—unless it was Jack LaLanne. There had been a size and a force—and a voice—to my attacker that had indicated an adult male in his prime.
Well, on the bright side, assault and threats would make pretty good publicity for the book. Assuming I lived to write it.
I was still wound too tight to work and my muscles were beginning to stiffen up after their collision with a cement slab. I set aside my notes and occupied myself with tossing out old newspapers, vacuuming, reshelving all my reference books. I paused in the bathroom and swore at my reflection. A colorful bruise was making an appearance where my forehead had caught the edge of the washer.
Great. I’d just got rid of the last set of abrasions.
It was sometime after eight that a thump on my door sent me jumping out of my chair—and nearly my skin. Which pissed me off no end. I hated feeling wide open; it was happening way too much these days.
Eye to the peephole found a miniature Jack adjusting his tie as though it were too tight. That explained the Police! Open Up! knock. He was in official persona.
I unlocked the door, opened it.
“A chain would be a good idea,” he remarked.
I stepped back and Jack stepped inside. He looked around curiously, and I remembered that this was the only time he’d actually been in my place. He’d picked the right night; usually it looked like a cyclone had hit it.
“Would you like a beer?” I asked.
“No, I can’t st—” He broke off, staring at the discoloration on my forehead. “What happened to you?” Then his face changed, uncomfortable as he leaped to the wrong conclusion about what had happened to me.
I said shortly, “Someone threw me down a flight of stairs.”
“Oh. Right.” His eyes looked dark in the soft lighting of my apartment. “I heard you had some trouble today.” He hesitated. “Maybe I will have a beer.”
I got a cold beer from the fridge and brought it to him. He was sitting on the sofa glancing through the photos of the cast of suspects in the Aldrich case. He took the beer with absent thanks and continued looking through the photos.
He paused at one. “Now here’s a familiar face. Tony Fumagalli.”
“Tony the Cock,” I agreed. “The Early Years.”
“Don’t tell me he’s involved in this?”
I nodded. “Eva was engaged to him for about six months. She broke it off a few days before her death. No one seems to know what went wrong, but by all accounts it wasn’t an amicable split.”
“He’s not an amicable guy. Or he wasn’t. He was one of those old school gangsters like Mickey Cohen or Johnny Stompanato. He’s in some kind of old folks home now.”
“He’s got Alzheimer’s,” I said. “Currently residing at Golden Palms Nursing Home in Santa Barbara.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve done your homework.”
“Yeah, well.” It bothered me that this surprised him.
For a minute our eyes held. Jack seemed to notice he had a beer in his hand and took a swig.
“So,” he said, lowering the bottle. “Why don’t you tell me what happened this afternoon? Assault and battery in the laundry room?”
“They sent a uniformed officer by,” I said. “I filled out a report.”
He nodded, noting and dismissing. “What happened?”
I told him exactly what had happened.
“Did you get a look at the guy at all?”
“No. Not a glimpse.”
“What did he sound like?”
“Big.”
He grinned and that damned dimple showed. “Did he have an accent or anything that might help in identifying him?”
I thought back to the close darkness of the laundry room. “He didn’t have an accent that I noticed. I’d say he was a native Angeleno. His voice was deep, mature.” I thought it over. “He sounded confident,” I said. “Like maybe he did this for a living.”
“Hired muscle?” Jack glanced instinctively to the glossy of Tony Fumagalli in his sleazy prime.
I shrugged. “It’s possible. But anyone can hire a thug. It wouldn’t have to be someone connected to Tony the C—” I caught Jack’s eye and for some reason swallowed the rest of the word. “Tony F.”
Was that a gleam of amusement in Jack’s gaze? He said, “Yeah. And Fumagalli did have a rock ha—solid alibi for the Aldrich homicide.”
Okay, it wasn’t just me.
“He was in Vegas at the Tropicana gambling away a small fortune,” I agreed. “But he could have hired someone to kill Eva.”
“That’s true, but whoever whacked Aldrich didn’t appear to be a professional. That was not in any way an execution-style murder. She was stabbed thirteen times. That kind of MO can indicate a couple of things: a disturbed psyche and/or a perceived personal grievance.”
I knew he was right, which was why the ex-husband had been the favorite suspect. The method of Eva’s murder had indicated a certain level of rage or passion that one just didn’t associate with cold-blooded mob bosses.
“Were you able to find anything out?” I asked.
“I was in court most of the day.” He stared at the stack of photos. “I talked to a couple of people. It’s a very cold case. Frozen, in fact.”
“It’s a Hollywood legend.”
“Oh yeah. There are all kinds of wild theories about who might have offed Aldrich. Everyone from her astrologer to the commies.”
“But the most popular theory is her ex-husband, Will Burack.”
“Right.” He studied me meditatively. “You know it usually is the current or former spouse—or boyfriend—in a homicide.”
“I know. And I know the cops tagged Burack as the most likely suspect. But Burack’s dead, so who objects to my looking into this very cold case?”
“I don’t know.” Jack drained his beer bottle and rose. “I take it you’re not planning to back off from this book?”
“No.” I rose too, only half joking, “I’d have to give the advance back. And I already spent it.”
“Right.” He was all business now. “Well, let me give you some advice. Change your routine. And keep changing it. Swim in the afternoons instead of the morning. Don’t use the back parking lot as a short cut. Try a different market besides Whole Foods—and pick a day besides Tuesday to shop. The dead bolt is good, but get a chain on the door and don’t open the door until you see who’s on the other side.”
“Thanks for the advice.” I didn’t think Jack just happened to hit on Tuesdays or Whole Foods market as a hypothetical example of my shopping habits. I wasn’t sure I should be flattered by this attention to detail; it seemed more like Jack on the job rather than Jack romantically interested.
Anyway, I had a lot more important things to focus on—like the fact that while Jack apparently agreed there was a threat here, he didn’t seem to see a way to neutralize it—unless I was willing to drop the book.
I opened the door and Jack stepped out into the warm smoggy night.
He suddenly turned back to me. “Look…Tim. I really was going to call you.” He cleared his throat. “The thing is…I’m not interested in a—a serious relationship.”
I stared at him, heat flooding my face—my entire body—mouth dry, heart slamming against my collarbone. I managed to get out, in a voice that didn’t sound anything like mine, “Neither was I.”
He had the grace to wince. “I know. It’s just…you seemed kind of…vulnerable.” His eyes moved to the bruise on my forehead. “I didn’t think it was fair—”
I quit worrying about being polite on the off chance I ever ran into him around the complex again. “You don’t have to make excuses for not wanting to see me, Jack,” I said. “In fact, I kind of prefer the excuses I made up myself.”
I moved to shut the door, but his hand shot out, stopping it midswing. “I don’t think I explained that very well.”
“You underestimate your communication skills.”
“I really like you, Tim. I hope w—”
“Likewise. ‘Night.”
The door closed firmly, cutting off his subdued “Good night.”
I stood for a moment listening to him walk away. Silence filled the hollow place in my chest where my heart had used to beat.