Robert’s hands trembled as he lifted the water glass to his lips and then set the glass down again. “He goes, shut your fucking mouth or I’ll kill you Sure, I go, just don’t hurt me. Then he cuts me here,” the boy touched the scar across his chest. “He says, take off your pants. I take them off, still lying there on the ground. Then he goes, turn over. The next thing I know he’s fucking me, not using any lube or nothin’, just sticking it in. Jesus, that hurt, but if I scream or something he stops and pushes the knife into my neck, so I just bite my lip.” The boy bit his bruised lips, flinched, and then continued. “He’s really hurting me. It’s like he’s just fucking me to hurt me, not to get off or anything. I guess he came or something ‘cause he was lying there on top of me. Then he starts saying these crazy things like, I’m going to cut off your balls, and, I’m going to shove this knife up your ass. Shit like that. But it sounds like he’s gonna do it, really. So I start crying.” Robert stopped and looked at us. “He turned me over, still sitting on me and he’s got the knife and I’m telling him, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me.”
I heard Josh’s quick breathing beside me. “He reaches into his pockets and pulls out this smelly rag. Next thing, he shoves it on my face and it’s all wet and cold and then…” He broke off and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “I woke up in your car.”
The boy lay his head back into the pillows. “I’m real tired,” he said. “Are you guys the cops?”
Cresly nodded. A few minutes later, Robert was asleep.
26
We were at the kitchen table. Cresly and Freeman were deep into a six-pack of Bud while I drank coffee. Josh sat with his back against the wall, quietly watching us. The little apartment was still except for the ticking of the clock above the stove and, from the bedroom, the faint, ragged noise of Robert’s breathing.
Cresly said, “If the kid sticks to his story, we got an ADW.” He rubbed his icy eyes. “You tell me how we turn that into Tony Good’s murder.”
“Zane killed Fox and Blenheim, too,” I said, hearing the tiredness in my voice. “He killed them all.”
Cresly lit a cigarette. “One thing at a time.”
“I asked Freeman to keep an eye on Zane,” I began, “because I thought that Blenheim might try something. That’s when I still believed that it was Blenheim who killed Fox and Good. But then Freeman — you tell him.”
Freeman covered a yawn. “I tracked him for a week,” he said. “Three times he went out to pick up a hustler. I didn’t think I had to go make sure he got what he paid for, so I just hung around Santa Monica waiting for him to finish.” He sipped his beer. “Third night I noticed that he always came back by himself. I got curious, so I drove around looking for the kid he’d picked up that night. I found him. He was holding up a wall, spitting out pieces of his mouth. He split when he saw me. Can’t say that I blame him.” He smiled wanly at his bottle.
“Everybody needs a hobby,” Cresly said in a flat voice. The cold eyes were thawing — from exhaustion, I thought.
“When Freeman told me,” I said, picking up the story, “it got me to thinking about Zane and Blenheim. They both liked boys.” I glanced at Cresly, who frowned. “But everyone knew about Blenheim,” I said, echoing what Larry Ross had told me. “If it had been Blenheim who picked Jim Pears up, the fact that Fox saw them wouldn’t have been that serious. Probably not serious enough to make Blenheim a target for blackmail, much less to give him a motive to murder. But Zane, if it had been Zane in the parking lot that night…”
“In Blenheim’s car,” Cresly said, and reached for another beer. “That what you’re thinking?”
I nodded. “The rented cars, the disguises. It all fits. Zane took Blenheim’s car that night to go cruising. He got lucky at dinner with Pears, and took him to the car. Then Fox found them, got the license plate and traced it to Blenheim.”
“That’s how Blenheim found out,” Freeman said. “When the Fox kid came to the theater looking for Goldenboy. He musta known it wasn’t Blenheim-”
“No confusing Sandy Blenheim and Tom Zane,” I added, picking up the cup of cold coffee.
“Blenheim figured it was Zane,” Freeman said. “Talked to Zane about it. Zane told him to arrange the meeting with Fox.”
“Fox met him at the restaurant,” I said. “Let him in through the back. They went down to the cellar. That smell tonight, ether, you said. In the transcript of Pear’s prelim the waitress who found Jim with Fox’s body said the room they were in smelled like someone had broken a bottle of booze. It was ether. Zane knocked Fox out, then killed him.
“Jim Pears, meanwhile,” I continued, my exhaustion gone, “thought that Fox was there to see him.”
“Why?” Cresly growled.
“That’s another story,” I replied. “Just listen to me. I’ve been in that cellar. You can hear footsteps when someone is walking in the kitchen overhead. Zane heard the footsteps, knew someone was coming. He hid himself. When Jim Pears came down, he knocked him out like he knocked out Fox and the kid tonight.”
“With the ether,” Cresly said, sounding interested in spite of himself.
“Right. Then he saw it was Pears,” I said. “He dragged Pears into the room where he had killed Fox, smeared Pears with blood, put the knife in his hand, and let himself out through the back door.” I paused, remembering another detail of Andrea Lew’s testimony. She’d said she’d looked for Jim out back. That meant the door had been left unlocked — by Zane. In that detail was the whole story, if only I’d paid attention. “Jim came to and then the waitress found him,” I continued. “Jim claimed he didn’t remember anything. The reason was because there was nothing for him to remember. But that didn’t occur to anyone, so we all wrote it off as traumatic amnesia.”
From his silent corner, Josh whispered, “He was innocent.”
We all turned to look at him. “That’s right,” I said. “Innocent but with no way of explaining why.”
“So that’s Pears,” Cresly said. “What about Good and Blenheim?”
“Blenheim first,” I said. “Blenheim knew everything. Irene Gentry — Zane’s wife — told me that Blenheim was acting crazy toward Zane just before Good’s murder. She was lying, mostly.” I stopped and the implications of what Rennie knew sank in for the first time. I pushed it aside for now. There would be time to think it all out later, but there was no denying that it hurt. “But there was some truth in it — Blenheim was probably pushing Zane around, a kind of blackmail, to get Zane to do things that would line Blenheim’s pockets.”
Cresly squinted. “What, taking money from him?”
I shook my head. “No, working him. Milking Zane for all he was worth because Blenheim got his cut, and it was probably more than ten percent.”
“So Blenheim had to go,” Freeman said. “But first Zane set it up so that it looked like it was Blenheim who killed Fox and who killed Good.”
“Zane and his wife,” I corrected. “She came to me the night Good was killed, saying Zane was in terrible danger. I chased through Hollywood looking for Zane while he was taking care of
Blenheim and Good. I was part of the alibi.”
Cresly smiled, nastily. “Zane’s wife, huh? You bi, or what?”
I let it pass.
“Zane had the motive to kill,” I said, “and when Freeman told me that he liked to beat up his pick-ups, well, then it seemed like he had the capacity, too.”
Cresly belched, softly. “No way to prove any of this unless Zane or his wife start talking. They won’t,” he added with dead certainty. “Even if we bust him for what he did tonight. Why should he?”