“How are they treating you?” I asked.
“Not bad, so far. Of course, I'm a model prisoner. No reason not to be- shall I tell you about my mother? She really was a piece of work.”
“Eventually,” I said. “But first, tell me about your love for animals.”
The smile left his face and returned, stiffer. I could hear a director shout, “Loosen up, go with the feeling, Reed!”
“Well,” he said, crossing his legs, “they do love me.”
“I know. The reason I'm asking is the day I visited you I noticed how well you got along with Mrs. Green's bullmastiff.”
“Samantha and I are good buddies.”
“Mrs. Green said Samantha's very protective of her.”
“She is.”
“But not around you.”
“I lived there,” he said. “I belonged. But yes, you're right. I do have a special rapport with animals. Probably 'cause they sense I'm at ease with them.”
“Did you have lots of pets as a child?”
“No,” he said. “Mom.”
“She wouldn't let you have any?”
He shook his head. “Never.” White-toothed snarl/smile. “Mom was an extremely neat woman.”
“And after you left home- how old were you, by the way?”
“College. Eighteen.”
“Ever return home?”
“Not a chance. I-”
“Did you get any pets once you were living on your own?”
“Couldn't. The places I rented wouldn't let me. Then my job got in the way.”
“Accounting.”
He nodded. “The old nine-to-five. It wasn't fair to leave an animal alone all day. When I went back to school and got serious about acting, same thing. I did do some work as a groomer for a while.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, just for a few months, one of those mobile van things. One of the many things I did in order to pursue my craft.”
“Starving actor.”
“Yes, I know I'm a clichÉ, but so what?”
“So am I, I guess. L.A. shrink.”
He chuckled.
“So,” I said. “Grooming must have increased your skills with animals.”
“Definitely. You learn how to touch them, how to speak to them. With animals, ninety-nine percent is nonverbal communication. You feel right about yourself, they'll feel right about you. And working with them, you learn to read them.”
“To know which ones are hostile, which are friendly?”
“Exactly.”
“Nonverbal,” I said. “Interesting. Was Hope Devane's Rottweiler easy to read?”
He looked at his feet. Flipped his hair. “We're going to get right into it?”
“Any reason not to?”
“I don't know,” he said. “Oster says I should talk freely to you, but he's just a P.D.”
“You don't have confidence in him?”
“He seems fine, but…”
“You don't trust him?”
“Sure I do. Twenty feet farther than I can throw him.” Another white-toothed grin. “Which is about fifteen feet more than I'd trust most lawyers- actually, he's smarter than I expected from a civil servant. And what's my choice? I am a starving actor.”
I jotted down notes, looked back up at him.
“The Rottweiler,” I said. “How'd you handle her- she was a bitch, wasn't she?”
“Very much so.” Smile. “Gave her some meat sprinkled with paregoric.”
“Through the gate?”
He nodded.
“She just took it from you?”
“Just like that,” he said. “Amazingly easy. Because I'd driven and walked by the house when she was out in the yard and she barked plenty. But she must have smelled the meat because the minute I started up the lawn, she quieted. And by the time I got to the gate, she was sitting there with her tongue out. Lapped it up.”
“Was this during the day or at night?”
“At night. Maybe eight o'clock.”
“The night Professor Devane was killed?” Use the passive voice, keep him at ease…
Nod.
“Was anyone home?” I said.
“They both were.” Big smile. “That was the beauty of it. The street was so dark, those big trees, no one walking. I leaned my bike against the tree, walked up their front lawn, gave the meat to the dog, and just rode away.”
Long silence.
Finally, he said, “So easy.”
I nodded. “You came back later?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Around ten.”
“Because that was the time of her nightly walk.”
The smile dropped off. “She walked between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty. Same route, black sweats one night, gray the next. Black, gray, black, gray. Like a machine. I didn't know if she'd walk without the dog or call it off. But she did- does that tell you the kind of person she was? The poor Rottie's barfing its guts out and she just goes about her routine? If she'd veered off-schedule, who knows, I might never have gone through with it.”
“Really?”
He stared at me. Broke into the widest grin yet. “Nah, eventually it would have happened.”
“In the script, huh?”
He looked down at his feet again. “Yes, that's a good way to put it.”
“If you don't mind, let's back up a bit, Reed.”
“To what?”
“Mandy Wright.”
“Mandy who?”
I smiled, crossed my legs. “She bothers you? More than Devane?”
“No.” He exhaled. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me what happened. How she set you up.”
He cracked his knuckles loud enough for the deputy to turn around. Flipped his hair, combed his fingers through it, let it cascade around his handsome face and flipped it once more.
The deputy turned again, frowned, faced the wall.
Muscadine said, “Whew…”
“Still hard to talk about,” I said.
“Yeah… you hit the nail on the head. The basic issue is the setup. That fucking committee hearing.”
“The blood test.”
“Exactly. Devane hated my guts for whatever reason, must have decided right then to harvest me. Incredible, isn't it? Like a bad dream- for months I was walking around in a nightmare.”
“Tell me about it.”
“The nightmare?”
“Everything. Starting with Mandy.”
“Mandy,” he said. “Mandy the working cunt. She told me her name was Desiree.”
“Did you know her before you met at Club None?”
“No, but I knew hundreds like her.”
“How?”
“L.A. woman,” he said. “Like that Doors song.”
“Did she pick you up?”
“In retrospect, she must have. At the time I thought I was picking her up.”
“Where?”
“Club None.”
“You go there often?”
“Once a week or so. I was taking some night acting classes in Brentwood, used to drive home on Sunset. Sometimes I dropped in and had a beer. They must have been watching me. Stalking me.”
He started to cry, covered his face. “Shit,” he said through gigantic fingers. “To be prey-the violation.”
“Spooky,” I said.
“Sickening.”
He looked up.
I nodded.
“The degradation,” he said. “They cheapened me. I wouldn't treat a dog that way.”
I let him compose himself. “So you went into Club None and saw Mandy- Desiree- and-”
“She was at the bar, we made eye contact, she smiled, bent over, showed me her tits. Luscious tits. I went over, sat down, chatted her up, we moved to a table. I bought her a drink, had myself another beer, we talked. Next thing her hand's on my knee, and she's saying let's go back to my place.” Smiling. “It's happened to me before.”
“Did you go to her place?”
“We never got there. She must have slipped something in my beer 'cause the last thing I remember is getting into my car and then… God, I still can't believe they fucked me like that!” Big shoulders shook.
Acting? Maybe, maybe not.
“Then what, Reed?”
“Then I woke up in an alley a block from my house with the goddamnedest pain in my back and the stink of garbage in my nose.”