Linda pulled her chair over to where it was facing the screen. Havilland got up and threaded a length of film through the projector's feeder device, then hit the on switch and turned off the wall light. A series of blank frames flashed across the screen, followed by a jerky panning shot of a bedroom, followed by more blank frames.
Then a blonde woman in a nurse's uniform began to undress. Close-up shots caught everything fallible about her body: a small abdominal scar, networks of varicose veins, patches of cellulite. When she was naked, she did an awkward vamp dance, then lay down on a mattress covered by a single blue sheet.
A nude man joined her, averting his face from the camera. The couple moved into an embrace, broke it, and moved to opposite sides of the mattress. The woman looked bewildered and the man mashed his face into the sheet. After holding these poses for long moments, the woman rolled underneath the man and they faked intercourse.
Linda clutched her purse and said, "What is this, amateur porno film night? I thought this was going to be a therapy session."
"Shhh," Havilland whispered. "You'll catch the drift in just a few seconds."
The screen went blank, then filled up with a long shot of the blonde woman, now dressed in her nurse's uniform, leaning against the bedroom wall. Suddenly a man, also clothed, threw himself on top of her. The screen again went blank, then segued into an extreme close-up of a transparent plastic pillow. The muzzle of a gun was pressed to the pillow. A finger pulled the trigger and the screen was awash in red. The camera caught a close-up of the man's face. When Linda saw the face she screamed "Hopkins!" and fumbled in her purse for the gun. Her finger was inside the trigger guard when the lights went on and the man from the movie jumped out of the closet and smothered her with his body.
23
Lloyd slammed down the phone in response to Dutch's news: the two women and one man that Hollywood Division detectives had leaned on with "behind the green door" and "beyond the beyond" had immediately clammed up, first threatening the officers with lawsuits, then going into repeated recitations of the phrase "patria infinitum." No breakdowns, no recantings of past sins, just indignation at police scare tactics and the rapid expulsion of seasoned cops. Dutch would be deploying a new team of detectives for runs at the guru worshippers, but they would probably be in mantra comas by then. There was only himself, Linda and her magnum, and the unknown quantity of William Nagler.
Lloyd checked the clock on the kitchen wall. 7:45. Linda would still be at her "therapy" session. He could wait and call and ease his mind, or he could move. The ticking of the clock became deafening. He locked up the house and walked to his car.
Headlights flashed across the driveway as he slipped behind the wheel, and a panel truck pulled in front of his unmarked cruiser. Lloyd got out and saw Marty Bergen step in front of the headlights and jam his hands into his pockets. A gun butt extended from his waistband.
"My lawyer glommed me a writ," he said. "Fred Gaffaney almost shit shotgun shells."
Lloyd said, "Amateurs shouldn't pack hardware. Beat it. I've got no stories for you."
Bergen laughed. "When I was on the job I was in love with my piece. Off duty, I always made sure that people could see it. I was in love with it until I had to use it. Then I dropped it and ran. Jack's dead, Hopkins."
"Tell me something I don't know."
"It's on me. It's all on me."
"Wrong, Bergen. It's the Department's and it's mine."
Bergen kicked the grill of the Matador, then stumbled backward into the hood of his truck. "I owe, goddamn you! Can't you see that? All I ever had was what Jack gave me, and even that was all twisted. Some piece of shit took him where he shouldn't have fucking gone and made him feel things that he shouldn't have fucking felt, and it was me that he felt them about, and I owe! Don't make me say the words, Hopkins. Please don't make me say the fucking words."
Lloyd sent up a prayer for all guilt-driven innocents seeking jeopardy. "What do you want, Bergen?"
Former L.A.P.D. Sergeant Martin D. Bergen wiped tears from his eyes. "I just want to pay off Jack."
"Then get in the car," Lloyd said. "We're going to Laurel Canyon to good guy-bad guy a suspect." *** William Nagler was not at home.
Lloyd parked across the street from his two-story redwood A-frame and walked over and knocked on both the front and back doors. No answer, no lights burning and no sounds of habitation. After checking the mailbox and finding two catalogs and a Mastercard bill, he returned to the car and his improbable partner.
"Are you going to open up this thing?" Bergen asked as Lloyd squeezed in behind the wheel.
Lloyd shook his head. "No. I don't trust the fourth estate. Just play the interrogation by ear. You ever work plainclothes?"
"Yeah. Venice Vice. I'm going to be the good guy, right?"
"No. You've got booze breath and you need a shave. You're big, but I'm bigger, so I can play savior. I'll ask the questions, you just be abusive. Just imagine yourself as a typical fascist pig out of the pages of the Big Orange Insider and you'll be cool."
Bergen laughed. "You're the kind of joker who hands out compliments one minute, then rags people who hand out compliments the next, which means one of two things-you either love to give people shit, or you don't know where your own head is at. Which one is it?"
With his eyes on Nagler's front door, Lloyd said, "Don't jerk my chain. If I didn't want you here, you wouldn't be here. If I didn't understand what you have to do, I would have busted you for carrying a concealed weapon and kicked your ass back to the slam."
Bergen scratched his razor stubble and poked Lloyd in the arm. "I apologize for saying I didn't like your style. What I should have said was that you have style, but you don't know what to do with it."
Lloyd turned on the dashboard light and stared at Bergen. "Don't tell me about style. I read some of your early stuff. It was damn good. You could have been something big, you could have said things worth saying. But you didn't know what to do with it, because being really good is really scary. I know fear, Bergen. Two niggers blew away your partner and you ran. I can understand that and not judge you for it. But you had the chance to be great and you settled for being a hack, and that I can't understand."
Bergen toyed with the knobs of the two-way radio. "You Catholic, Hopkins?"
"No."
"Tough shit, you're going to hear my confession anyway. Jack Herzog taught me to write. He ghosted my first published stories, then edited the ones I actually did write. He formed my style; he was the one who had the chance to be great. It's weird, Hopkins. You're supposed to be the pragmatist, but I think you're really a romantic innocent with an incredible nose for shit. It's funny. Jack gave me everything I have. He made me a derivative fiction stylist and a competent journalist. He'd been writing a novel, and I was serving as his editor, helping him hold it together as he got crazier and crazier. I've never had the chance to be great. But if I had your brains and drive and guts, I'd be more than a gloryhound flatfoot."
Lloyd turned on the radio and listened to code ones and twos. "It's a stalemate, Marty, and a life sentence for both of us. But we're lucky we can play the game."
Bergen took the pistol from his waistband and rolled down the window and took a bead on the moon. "I believe that," he said.
Two hours passed in silence. Bergen dozed off and Lloyd stared out the window at William Nagler's driveway, wondering if he should make a run to a phone and call Linda; wondering also if Havilland's worshippers were in contact with each other and if the already hassled followers had alerted Nagler to the approaching heat. No, he decided finally. Havilland was too well buffered. The worshippers probably had no way of contacting Havilland or each other besides Havilland's pay phone communiques, which logic told him were rigidly pre-scheduled. His investigatory parries were buffered against discovery. Then the truth hit. He was pumping himself up with logic because Linda was part of the game and part of him, and if she fell the game was over forever.