One of Those Malibu Nights (3 page)

Mac did so but heard no distant electronic chime. Even the doorbell was silent.

Over the top of the steel slab of the gate he could see the ruffled fronds of a couple of tall palms and some branches of bamboo. Like most of the houses in the Colony he guessed the gate led into an entrance courtyard, beyond which would be the front door proper.

He pressed the bell again and glanced round, waiting. No cars were parked on the yellow lines in front of the house that marked the owner’s parking spaces, and the blank steel door to the garage was shut. He wondered what kind of car Ron Perrin drove. A silver Porsche? A Bentley? A red Ferrari, perhaps? It was sure to be expensive and flashy because that’s the way the man was.

At last a male voice answered. “Who is it?” He sounded out of breath.

“Mac Reilly,” he said into the speaker. “Your neighbor.”

A pause, then, “Come in,” the voice said.

The steel slab slid to one side and disappeared into a recess in the limestone wall. No crazy paving for RP, only a straight dark blue concrete walkway leading past a midnight blue reflecting pool, through a tropical courtyard where the jungle foliage reached out to grab Mac as he walked by.

Perrin was waiting at the glass entry. He was a short man with the wide shoulders and hard stare of an aggressive primate. He also had the slight forward stoop of a man who lifts weights, as though permanently about to bend and pick up a two-hundred-pound barbell.

Perrin’s brow was wide, his hair was dark with a slight wave; his eyes were a light molten brown and his thick eyebrows were what a writer like Dickens might have termed “beetling.” That is to say, they joined over his nose in a distinguished frown. His nose had a sharp look to it but his mouth was full-lipped and sensual. He was in good shape and even now, in a sweat-stained tee and gym shorts, Mac could tell he was definitely a man who knew his Dolce from his Italian ice cream. He was also attractive in an offbeat way and Mac could see why beautiful Allie Ray would have been drawn to him. Power combined with money made a formidable combination.

Perrin said, “I know you. I’ve seen you on TV. Come in.”

Mac stepped inside and took a quick look around. The entry soared thirty feet to a beveled glass dome. The house itself was open plan and sleek. An all-steel kitchen to the rear; a jutting staircase of free-floating steps with no visible means of support to the left; and in front a wall of glass through which Mac could see, though not hear, the crashing ocean waves. All the windows were closed and the air-conditioning was blasting, as was a recording of Roxy Music’s
Avalon
.

Perrin’s expensive Malibu walls held a collection of even more expensive art, whose value was apparent even to a nonconnoisseur like Mac. And the furnishings were unbeachy, with serious antiques, soft leather chairs and fine silk rugs on the dark, lacquered-concrete floors.

An odd feature was the model railroad that ran around all four walls, vaulting over the glass doors, undulating through the open-slab stairs, sneaking along the baseboards and climbing the limestone in layers of splendid, and pricey, miniature rolling stock. It was a child’s, or in this case a grown man’s, dream. Mac was immediately intrigued. But Mr. Perrin had matters other than model railroads on his mind.

“Take a seat, Mr. Reilly,” he said.

Mac perched on the edge of a slippery green leather chair. He glanced at the place where he’d been standing when the redhead took a shot at him. There was a large chip in the polished concrete floor. The remains of the crystal
vase had been removed but he guessed the ricocheting bullet was still buried in the back of the bronze velvet sofa where Perrin now slumped opposite him. He looked distinctly pale as well as haggard and not at all like the rich, successful party animal everyone was used to seeing in the glossies.

Mac noticed a shredder, the cheap kind you see in drugstores, standing next to its up-tipped cardboard container. Perrin had obviously bought it recently and Mac had interrupted him in the process of shredding documents, a pile of which still waited on the floor.

“I wonder if you know why I’m here,” Mac said.

Perrin slumped forward, hands clenched between his spread knees. He nodded, still staring somberly at Mac. Then he said, “Mr. Reilly, you are looking at a frightened man.”

Now of all things this was not what Mac had expected Perrin to say. He’d thought he would bluster it out about the girl, tell him he had been mistaken, that he had been seeing things. He’d thought Perrin would offer him a drink, slap him on the back, invite him to a party and advise him to forget about it. For once he was lost for words.

Perrin was staring at him with that intense molten brown gaze. It occurred to Mac that perhaps Perrin didn’t want it broadcast around, especially to his wife, that there had been a beautiful half-naked woman in his house last night, let alone one toting a gun.

“Mr. Reilly,” Perrin said finally, “someone is trying to kill me. He’s been following me for the last few weeks. He’s on my tail wherever I go.”

Again he surprised Mac. “How d’you know he wants to kill you?”

Beads of sweat trickled slowly down Perrin’s neck and Mac wondered whether it was from a workout he might have interrupted or from genuine fear.

“I just know it,” Perrin said.

“So why haven’t you reported it to the police?” Mac knew this would have been the move of an innocent man. Or at least a man with nothing to hide.

Perrin lifted his shoulders in a bewildered shrug, spreading his arms wide. “You’ve no doubt heard my wife is divorcing me? What if it’s her? Maybe she wants me killed? How can I tell that to the cops? Her attorneys would have me locked up in a second. They’d say I was trying to screw her out of the money they claim is rightfully hers.”

“I hear it’s half your fortune.” Mac kept his tone light but he was still wondering what Perrin was hiding.

“Mr. Reilly, do you know my wife?”

“I’ve seen her movies.”

“Hah. Of course you have. The famous Allie Ray. One of the world’s most beautiful women. But behind that elegant blond façade she has turned into the most grasping avaricious soul on this earth. And maybe on a couple of other planets too.”

Mac stared at him, surprised. This was not the image Allie Ray, America’s girl next door, projected.

Perrin fell silent, obviously still smoldering. Then he added bitterly, “She married me for my money and I was dumb enough to fall for it. She’d married two other rich guys before she got to me. Sure, I wanted the trophy wife, the one everybody else wanted.” He glared at Mac. “I scratched my way up from the gutter, Reilly, y’know that?”

He got up and began to pace, twisting his hands together, as though he were hurting inside. “I thought she loved me,” he said, sounding almost piteous, if a man that powerful was capable of such a thing.

Mac sat silently, waiting for him to spill the truth, which he knew was what usually happened when you acted like a fly on the wall and just let them get on with it. Perrin was a sad man, no doubt about it, but he still hadn’t mentioned the Naughty Angel with the gun.

Perrin was pacing again, actually wringing his hands now, agonized, Mac guessed, at the thought either of parting with his wife or his money.

Perrin glanced up. “Y’know how much I’ve offered her, Reilly? Eighty million bucks.
Eighty mil
, buddy. Plus the Bel Air house that I shelled out twenty-five mil for and on which she lavished another fuckin’ fortune. But is that enough for Mary Allison Raycheck? The girl from Texas with a no-good alcoholic father who beat her with his belt
every Saturday night when he got back from the bar? And the hard-drinking depressed mother who neglected her?”

Perrin shook his head vehemently. “For the media’s sake I helped invent and perpetuate the story that she was raised a lady, all sugar and spice. And of course now she is that lady. She heads up a couple of worthy charities, though I’d bet she doesn’t part with a cent unless it’s tax deductible.”

He slumped onto the sofa again and put his head in his hands. “She wants it all, Reilly. And to get it, I believe she wants me dead. And that’s why you have to find out if she’s after me.”

Mac thought about the blond movie star he had seen in magazine photographs, though there were none of her here in the beach house. Always smiling, often pictured holding the hands of sick children in hospital beds, or hosting parties at her Bel Air mansion in aid of the latest political candidate, and patronizing the smartest restaurants in town while arranging for them to donate their leftover food to homeless shelters. And always with a photographer handy. That was one way of looking at Allie Ray.

The other way was of a girl from a poor and abusive background who knew as a child what it was to have no money for doctors, never to have enough food and no pretty clothes. And no love. Maybe Allie was only giving back some of what she had been fortunate enough to acquire. Maybe Allie really cared and Perrin was maligning her so he could hang on to his fortune.

One of them had to be a liar. Mac thought he would certainly like to hear Allie’s side of the story.

Meanwhile, RP had not called on Mac. Mac had called on him. So why was the guy suddenly spilling his guts to a perfect stranger? Plus there was still the matter of the Naughty Angel to be explained.

“I would like to hire you to find out who is following me,” Perrin said, fixing Mac with that sad-puppy gaze again. He went to the desk, took a business card and handed it to Mac. “I don’t want to end up dead. And I don’t want my wife to be known as a killer.”

He sat there, waiting for Mac to speak and maybe pass judgment.

He twisted those hands anxiously again. “I’ll pay double whatever your usual fee is. Triple, even.” His eyes clouded as he thought about what he’d just said. “Make that double,” he amended hastily. RP was a businessman first and foremost.

Mac got up. He walked over to the upturned boxes of files. “You trying to hide financial records from your wife?” he asked. “Is that what this is?”

Perrin hurried after him. “Yup, yes, that’s all it is,” he said quickly.

Looking down at him, Mac realized that Perrin was considerably shorter than he was. “Mr. Perrin,” he said finally. “Who was the tall red-haired woman who was here last night? The one with a Sigma .40 handgun.”

Perrin’s face was suddenly suffused with color, a vein throbbed in his neck, then he got himself under control and said, “I was out until one o’clock last night, Reilly. There was no one in my house. There was no redhead with a gun. I already told that to the guard at the gate.”

Perrin turned his eyes away. He knew that Mac knew he was lying. He walked back to the sofa and slumped down again.

“Would you care for a drink?” he asked with a sigh.

Mac shook his head. “I don’t drink in the mornings.” He thought quickly about the job offer. With the TV show likely not to be picked up he could surely use the money, but there was something he didn’t like about this scene. Perrin was lying to him about the redhead, and probably also about his wife, though Mac would bet, under all his bluster, he was still in love with her.

“Thanks for offering me the job,” he said, “but I can’t do it. I’m off to Rome in a couple of hours.” He walked to the door. “I’ll be away for about a week.”

Perrin hurried anxiously behind him, sneakers squeaking on the expensive modernist lacquered floor.

“You’re going to
Rome?”
His voice was as squeaky as his sneakers. “But you
can’t.”
He was shouting now. “I’ve offered you the job. I need you to find out what the hell’s going on.”

“Thanks a lot for the offer, Mr. Perrin.” Mac turned and they looked at each other. Mac handed him his own business
card. “Call me when I get back and we’ll talk about it some more. Meanwhile my advice to you is to go to the police, tell them you suspect you’re being followed. They’ll take care of things for you. They’ll come up with the truth.”

“Don’t they always,” Perrin said bitterly. Then added, positively, “No police.”

Mac felt Perrin’s eyes following him as he strode down the deep blue cement path. The steel gate remained shut and he waited, without looking back, for Perrin to open it for him. Soundlessly, it slid back.

He stepped out into the fresh clean air and the sunshine. The gate slid shut behind him, locking in a frightened man.

Allie Ray Perrin was on her way to Malibu. The morning was gray with the kind of fog that left droplets on your hair and was known euphemistically in California as a “marine layer.” Driving slowly over Malibu Canyon, Allie knew from experience that it was unlikely to shift before three p.m. even though behind her in the San Fernando Valley the sun was shining just as always. It was one of the penalties—or delights, take your choice—of living at the beach.

Still, she drove with the top down on her Mercedes 600 convertible, snuggling into her cashmere hoodie, uncaring about the mist. The large dark glasses were L.A. de rigueur, sun or no sun, though she doubted anyone would recognize the unmade-up woman they glimpsed quickly in passing as the glamorous movie star they knew from the screen. Except
for the paparazzi, of course, who hounded her like bats out of hell. But today she had escaped them, taking the back route out of her Bel Air home, cutting across Mulholland to the Valley, then over the canyon to Malibu.

It wasn’t her husband she was going to see though. She had been watching Mac Reilly’s program Thursday nights and she thought he seemed a man of integrity. A man you could trust. And if anyone needed that sort of man right now, it was Allie Ray.

Turning left onto Pacific Coast Highway, commonly known as PCH, she idled through the fog, denser now she was at the shore. The guard at the Colony gate recognized her car immediately and the bar swung up. She waved to him as she drove in and he waved back. There were no grand iron gates here, no high stone walls. Low-key was the watchword at the Colony. Everyone liked it that way. Life at the beach, Allie thought wistfully, was nice.

At the T junction leading to the Colony’s only street, she made a right rather than the left she normally took to her own place, heading instead for Mac Reilly’s house. Checking the number, she found it at the very end, stuck like a worn green barnacle to the Colony’s glossy façade. A shiny red Prius was parked outside. She parked behind it, glancing doubtfully at the exterior of the house. It appeared to have been painted recently, yet somehow it looked shabby.