now. I slid the window up and said, ‘For God’s sake come on in.’
She swung her head around and stared at me with hate in her eyes. ‘Did you send for the Fire Department?’ She coughed to clear her throat. Her cheeks had reddened; I could see she was cold. Maybe that was why she’d decided to come in.
‘Why me?’ I said. ‘Any one of those people down there might have sent for them. The whole neighborhood’s been watching you.’ This was one of the few tall buildings in a street of one-story shacks; everyone could see her. ‘Come in!’
‘You’re a shit,’ she said, and moved suddenly, swinging her feet into the room with commendable dexterity. Spotting the polystyrene cups on the mat, she went across to get a hot drink. Finding that both cups were empty, she tossed them across the room with a violence that made me shudder. She didn’t seem to fancy the Bear Claw; I suppose it was the strawberry jelly. She made for the door.
‘The Fire Chief is going to be asking you some questions,’ I called after her.
‘You answer them, you goddamned lawyer,’ she yelled. ‘You’ve always got an answer for everything!’ She slammed out through the door that leads to the back stairs, just as the sirens were dying outside in the street. She knew the way to the back entrance; it was the way she got in.
The next moment the whole room was filled with burly men in shiny oilskin coats, rubber boots, and yellow helmets. They were mad at me. ‘How is it my fault?’ I yelled back at them. ‘You let her get away.’
‘Where’d she come from?’ said a burly fire fighter, picking up the Bear Claw and chewing a piece out of it.
‘How should I know where she came from? Maybe she escaped from the zoo.’
‘You called in and said this was an emergency,’ said a rat-faced little guy who seemed to be the chief. He smelled of metal polish and mint digestive tablets.
‘Is that so? Did I interrupt a poker game or something? What am I supposed to do when someone comes into my office and wants to leap out of the window, get an entertainment license?’
The burly one tossed the remains of the Bear Claw into the wastebasket, where it landed with a loud clang. No wonder they give me indigestion: toss away an almond croissant and it makes only a soft swoosh.
Maybe if I’d been a little more diplomatic, Ratface wouldn’t have turned nasty and sent two of his men to search out violations of the Fire Department Code. ‘You should have been doing that before your own block burned down,’ I said. But these guys were young kids; they hadn’t been with the department long enough to remember that scandal. Finally Ratface came up with a clipboard reading aloud what he said were twenty-two infringements. ‘The fire escape is rusty,’ he said, jabbing at the clipboard with his finger.
‘We just ran out of Brillo,’ I said. I looked over his shoulder and read the sheet. Most of the faults were minor ones, but it looked like someone was going to have to renew the sprinkler system, put up new smoke detectors, and install some kind of fire doors. If I knew anything about the small print in the lease, it wasn’t going to be my rapacious landlord, but no matter. It wasn’t my pigeon. Two months earlier, the bottom line on that kind of work might have been enough to bankrupt me, but now it was just something to pass on to the new owner: the mighty Petrovitch. ‘These old firetraps should be torn down,’ said the guy who didn’t like Bear Claws to his buddy. ‘The whole block should be flattened. It’s just a shantytown.’
‘We can’t all live in Bel Air, buddy.’
After they all trooped out, I examined the carpet and the dirty marks that their boots had left. The carpet needed cleaning anyway, but the extra stains were not going to help me when Zachary Petrovitch came to see what kind of premises he was getting for his money.
When at last I was free to sit down behind my desk and leaf through all the work outstanding, I found there was plenty to do. A new client, hooray. A one-time soap star, drunk and resisting arrest. It took me a minute to recognize her name; there is no limbo more bleak than the oblivion to which the soapers go. Then there were two movie scripts, one dog-eared and the other pristine. This client was a writer – a nice intelligent guy until now – who had worked himself up into a roaring frenzy about a movie that was being made by a producer he used to work with. He wanted me to read the two scripts and sue the production company for plagiarism. Plagiarism! He must be living on another planet. Start seeking injunctions for that kind of larceny and Hollywood would slither to a complete standstill. Did he think those guys with the Armani suits could write connecting the letters just because they had Montblanc fountain pens? Original ideas?
None of it was more urgent than the red box file marked Sir Jeremy Westbridge. A lawyer gets used to the idea that most of his clients are on a course of self-destruction, but this Brit was something else. Every mail delivery brought word of some new and more terrible misdeed. I could see no way of keeping him out of prison, it was just a matter of whether he got ten or twenty years. The only consolation was that he had me on retainer and paid up like a sweetheart. How did I ever get into this crock? When I left high school I had everything set for a career as a car thief.
Dumping the whole stack of work back into the tray, I found myself looking at that damned window ledge, so finally I decided to go see Danny. I picked up the phone and told Miss Huth, ‘I have to see my son.’
‘No. You have an appointment at eleven-thirty.’
‘Cancel it.’
‘It’s far too late to do that, Mr Murphy. It is already eleven-twenty-two.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Mr Byron.’ She purred: she recognized his name. Women always knew his name. Budd Byron was now old enough for his early shows to be on daytime runs.
‘Oh,’ I said. I guess his old shows were on TV in Germany too.
‘I think he’s here,’ she said, and I heard the outer door buzz. ‘Shall I show him in?’ I could hear the emotion in her voice. No woman could catch sight of Budd Byron without losing her emotional equilibrium.
‘Yes, do that, Miss Huth … Budd! It’s good to see you.’ Budd was slim and tanned. He came into my office with the kind of cool, calm confidence of General MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines, Newton demonstrating the force of gravity, or Al Capone denying that he owed income tax.
Budd had been a college classmate; you maybe would not have guessed that from the hellos. Budd has a certain sort of Hollywood formality. He fixed me with a sincere look and gripped my hand tight while giving my upper arm a slap: a California salutation.
‘You’re looking great,’ I said. ‘Great.’ He was wearing Oxford brogues, custom-made gray-flannel slacks, and a jacket of Harris tweed, the heavy sort of garment worn in the winter months by Southern California’s native male population. His shirt was tapered and his collar gold-pinned to secure the tight knot of a blue-and-red-striped Brooks Brothers silk tie. The effect was of a prosperous young banker. It was the look many Hollywood actors were adopting now that so many of the bankers were going around in bleached denim and cowboy boots.
‘Coffee? A drink?’
‘Perrier water,’ said Budd. To complete the costume, he was wearing a beautiful gray fedora, which he took off and carefully placed on a shelf.
I went to the refrigerator hidden in the bookcase and brought him a club soda. ‘Cigarette?’
