"Todd never had anything to do with that kind of thing. And you can quote me."
"Well somebody in that house did. I have copies of photographs of every inch of the place. There are occult symbols hammered into all the thresholds, did you know that? Several symbols -- probably East European in origin -- were removed from the area around the back door around the time Mr. Pickett died. He may even have been responsible for their removal. Do you have any comment to make about any of that?"
"Yes. It's preposterous. And if you try to tie Todd to any of that kind of stuff you're going to be in deep trouble."
"That's a risk I'm willing to take. But I am going to write the book, Ms. Frizelle, with or without your assistance."
"I doubt you can do that, Rooney. You got that information because you were a cop. You can't go using it to make money."
"I wouldn't be the first and I won't be the last," Rooney said. "Frankly, I don't see what the hell your problem is, unless you were planning to do it yourself. Is that it? Am I rainin' on your parade here?"
"No. I have no intention of writing my own version of events."
"Then help me do mine," Rooney said, his tone perfectly reasonable. "I'll throw a piece of the action your way if that's what this is about. How does five percent sound?"
"Don't make this any worse than it already is. I don't want your blood money. Have a little decency, for God's sake. Todd is dead. So are a lot of other people. This isn't the time to be thinking about making a profit."
"I'm not going to do a hatchet job on him. I swear. Your ex-client's reputation is perfectly safe with me. Okay, so I hear he did a few drugs. A lot of coke, I hear, especially when he worked with Smotherman. And the plastic surgery. Again, no big deal. I mean, I'll have to write about it, but I won't make him look bad. I promise you."
"Why the hell would I rely on your promises, Rooney?"
There was a brief silence.
"So that's a no?" Rooney finally said.
"Yes. That's a big, fat no."
"Well, don't say I didn't ask."
"And for the record, Mr. Rooney, let me say this: if you do want to try and write this book, you go ahead and try. I promise you will have so many lawyers crawling up your ass you'll think they're breeding up there."
"Very nice. Very ladylike."
"Nobody ever mistook me for a lady, Rooney. Now get the hell off my phone. I need to call my lawyer."
SIX
The call from Rooney stirred Maxine up. She contacted her lawyer, Lester Peltzer, as she said she would, and organized a conference call with several other lawyers in town whom she respected, so that everyone could give her the benefit of their very expensive opinion. Unfortunately, they all agreed on one thing: she didn't have a hope in hell of stopping Rooney going ahead. When the book was written and being set for publication, that was a different matter, one of the lawyers pointed out. If he wrote something libelous, then they could go after him, and if it was obvious that he'd got access to police files then LAPD Internal Affairs might get riled up and take him to court. But there was no guarantee. The LAPD had a lousy record when it came to policing themselves.
"So right now he's free to say whatever he wants to say?" Maxine raged. "Just for profit?"
"It's the Constitution," one of the lawyers pointed out.
"It's not against the law," Maxine's lawyer pointed out lightly. "You've made a good deal of money yourself over the years."
"But I didn't lie to do it, Lester."
"All right, Maxine, don't get your blood pressure up. I'm merely pointing out that this is America. We live and die by the rule of Mammon." He drew a deep breath; put on his most rational tone. "Maxine, ask yourself whether taking this guy to court over some book that'll be off the shelves in two, three months is worth your time and temper. You may end up giving him more publicity by suing him than he would ever have got if you hadn't. You'll make an issue of it and suddenly everybody's buying his damn book. I've seen it happen so many times ... "
"So you're saying I should let him do it?" Maxine said. "Let him write some shit about Todd -- "
"Wait, wait," Lester said. "In the first place, you don't know he's going to write shit. Maybe he'll be respectful. Todd was a very popular actor. An American icon for a while."
"So was Elvis," Maxine pointed out. "It doesn't mean some sonofabitch didn't write about every dirty little secret Elvis ever had. I know, because I read the book."
"So what are you afraid of?"
"That the same will happen to Todd. People will write bullshit, and in the end it'll be the bullshit that's remembered, not the work."
Lester was usually quick with an answer, but this silenced him. Finally, he said: "Okay, let me ask you something. Do you think there's anything Rooney knows-as a matter of fact-which could be really destructive to Todd's long-term reputation?"
"Yes. I do. I think -- "
"Don't," Lester said. "Please. Don't tell me. Right now, I think it might be simpler for everyone if I didn't know."
"All right."
"Let's all go away and think about this, Maxine. And you do the same thing. I can see your concern. You've got a legacy here you want to protect. I think the question is-do you do that best by drawing attention to Rooney with a lawsuit, or by letting him publish and be damned?"
The phrase caught Maxine's attention. She'd heard it before, of course. But now it had new gravity, new meaning. She pictured Rooney publishing his book, and then having his soul dragged away to the Devil's Country for his troubles.
"Publish and be damned?" she said. "You know, that I could maybe live with."
Tammy hadn't seen a human face, real or televised, in four days; not even heard a voice. The Jacksons, her next-door neighbours, had gone off for a long weekend the previous Thursday, noisily departing with the kids yelling and car doors being slammed. Now it was Sunday. The street was always quiet on Sunday, but today it was particularly quiet. She couldn't even hear the buzzing of a lawn-mower. It was as though the outside world had disappeared.
She sat in the darkness, and let the images that had been haunting her for so long tumble over and over in her head, like filthy clothes in a washing machine, over and over, in a gruel of grey-grimy water; the madness she'd seen and heard and smelled; over and over. The trouble was, the more she turned it all over, the dirtier the washing became, as if the water had steadily turned from gray to black, and now when she got up to go to the bathroom, or to climb the stairs, she could hear it sloshing around between her ears, the muck of these terrible memories, darkening with repetition.
So this was what it was like to be crazy, she thought. Sitting in the darkness, listening to the silence while you turned things over in your mind, going to the kitchen sometimes and staring into the fridge until she'd seen everything that was in there, the rotted things and the unrotted things, then closing it again without cleaning it out; and going upstairs and washing the bathroom floor then going to lie down and sleeping ten, twelve, fourteen hours straight through, not even waking to empty your bladder. This is what it was. And if it didn't go away soon, she was going to be a permanent part of the madness; just another rag turning in the darkness, indistinguishable from the things she'd worn.
Over and over and --
The telephone rang. Its noise was so loud she jumped up from the chair in which she was sitting and tears sprang into her eyes. Absurd, to be made to weep by the sudden sound of a telephone! But the tears came pouring down, whether she thought she was ridiculous for shedding them or not.