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 LA 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.»