The Player (24 page)

Griffin imagined what would happen if he was arrested in Mexico. The Los Angeles Police, or the Pasadena Police, would get a search warrant for his apartment, and then they would find the postcards, just as they would have found them if the Writer's aim had been true in the alley in Beverly Hills. What would have happened then? They might have traced the postcards back to Griffin's killer. Griffin stopped himself from following this track, it was a waste of time. He could always think about this in prison.

He felt sorry for June. Even if June's lawyer helped her without one error, the case was too juicy to go unnoticed, they'd be celebrity killers in every paper in America. Who knows if someone on the beach wasn't taking pictures of them with a hidden camera, to sell to a news service? Their paunches might be famous. June could never recover from the suspicion, even if Griffin declared on the stand that he acted alone, and used some kind of insanity plea, with the postcards as the key to explain the paranoia that had led to a senseless killing. No one—no lawyer, no jury, no press agent—could recover June's innocence. The arrest would destroy her right to grieve Kahane's death in her own way; reporters would find the people she worked with, they'd say she bounced back too quickly from his murder, not a month later and she was in Mexico with his killer! Maybe a good prosecutor
could prove to a jury that even without tangible evidence, motel receipts, telephone bills, it is still reasonable to assume that Griffin and June had known each other for a long time before the killings, because it was entirely unreasonable to imagine that she would fall so quickly in love with a man who claimed to have seen her for the first time at Kahane's funeral. The truth was more sordid than the lie that could send her to jail. A trip to Puerto Vallarta! Margaritas on the beach! Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Someone would buy the rights to the story, once they were both in jail. It wouldn't be a movie, it was the sort of morality play that television liked to put on, they'd spread it over two nights, they'd make a big meal of the trial. Monday night, the affair with June and the murder of Kahane. Tuesday night, the brilliant work by Susan Avery. All the cat-and-mouse games with her, they'd be good for a half hour of screen time. What would they start with? Griffin would begin the show with Kahane's pitch. How would they construct the first meeting with June, what would the jury think had happened? They'd have to show him meeting June before he killed Kahane. He'd have to have slept with June before the murder, too. The phone call from June telling him that Kahane was at the movies. The trip to Pasadena—would they include the Japanese piano bar? That would make a nice scene, thought Griffin, although it was probably too subtle for television. And who would play Griffin? Michael Douglas? Val Kilmer would be terrific, thought Griffin, he could play the office politician, the smarm, the manipulator. Or John Malkovich? He could play the paranoid. And what if they told the story as it happened? How would they figure in the postcards? Would they be lost in the story? If Griffin killed for love, then the postcards didn't fit. If Griffin killed because he was crazy, then passion didn't fit. Would the actress play June as if she were innocent or guilty? What an awful moment, when June gets arrested and has no idea what is
happening. When she is fingerprinted and photographed. When she is put into a cell until a friend or her father bails her out. And the first conversation with Griffin, is he out on bail, too? No. Having left the country once, they'd be seen as risks, bail would either be too high for anyone to pay, or else bail would be denied. When would they see each other? Of course they wouldn't share lawyers, they wouldn't share strategies, so they wouldn't see each other again until and unless they were tried together. And if they weren't tried together, maybe he'd never see her again, as long as he lived. If the television movie of his crime told the truth, would they know about the gunshots in the alley? Of course. The police would find out everything.

Would they find out who sent the postcards?

What would the Writer do when Griffin was charged with a writer's murder? He would know everything, as soon as the postcards were introduced in court or mentioned on the news. He might even be the best choice to write the script. No. With the publication of the postcards there would be a hunt for him. He would be famous as the creep who drove the executive to murder. Would anyone have sympathy with his private war against Griffin? Griffin was stirred by a hopeful thought: He could prove that the Writer's pursuit had passed over from the mail to direct violence. There was the gunplay in the alley. No one knew about that except Griffin and the Beverly Hills Police. They must have known that the shattered glass in the alley was from a Mercedes, and Griffin had the receipt from the auto-glass shop. More trouble for Griffin, of course; why hadn't he gone directly to the police as soon as he was shot at? Yes, why hadn't he? How could they have connected the alley with Kahane? Griffin couldn't remember what his reason had been, unless he was afraid that Walter Stuckel would make the connection, but what was there to see, what was the pattern? Dead writer, and executive shot at in an alley. It would have been easy to get out of, no reason for anyone to
hear about it. If they'd asked him why he'd been driving in the alley, he could have told them he was using an old shortcut, he'd thought of going to Santa Monica Boulevard, four long blocks south, but had changed his mind and turned back to Sunset. No. They wouldn't have liked that answer. There is no good reason on earth not to run to the police when someone shoots at you unless you have something to hide. If he tried to lie, they would ask him about the postcard delivered to his table at the Beverly Hills Hotel. How would they know about that card? They would have gone to the hotel to find out if he'd been in any kind of fight.

Griffin watched the Mexican policeman, the vendors, the tourists, the sea, a cruise ship, the clouds. He had made too many mistakes. He had lied to too many people. When the first card arrived, no, when the third card arrived, the card with the death threat, he should have gone straight to Walter Stuckel, straight to Levison, and showed it to them. He should have asked for help. He shouldn't have worried about the cards' effect on his job. And now it was too late to show the cards to anyone.

What if the Writer didn't have an alibi for the night of Kahane's murder? Could Griffin get him blamed for the killing? Impossible. It was a desperate thought, and Griffin felt shame for it.

The beach was almost empty now. The vendors were gone. A few drunk couples sat at the thatched bar, waiting for the sunset. The Mexican policeman was gone. When had he left? Griffin stood up, feeling dizzy. He picked up his towel, his sandals, his magazines. In a comedy these details could make an audience laugh, or at least set the character as fussy, someone the audience had no need to take seriously. Griffin walked back to the room, hating himself, feeling sorry for himself, and then hating himself for the self-pity. He worked so hard that he never really had the time or the need to take his emotional temperature; surely that was one reason he'd taken no
vacations for so many years, anything to avoid a long look at who he was. The Writer wouldn't understand that, he wouldn't believe that Griffin had an unconscious, like anyone's, the usual cesspool.

June called to him from the balcony as he walked through the gardens by their wing.

“There's a message for you.”

“Oh, no, we haven't even been here six hours.”

“It's from your lawyer.”

“I'll be right up.”

Before he knocked on the door, he let out as long a breath as he could, and then breathed in slowly. He smiled hard and tapped on the door. June opened it, wearing a white T-shirt and tan shorts. Her knees and shins were pink from the sun, but it didn't look painful. She gave him the message pad, but he knew the number. He called the hotel operator, and she put him through immediately. It annoyed him that she didn't have to take the number and call him back when she made the connection; he needed an illusion of distance to stay sane.

He spoke to his lawyer's secretary. He was gone for the day.

“Do you know what this was about?”

“Sorry, Griffin.”

The connection was perfect; she might have been downstairs. What is it, fiber optics? he asked himself, and then answered, Don't think about this now. “Does he want me to come back?”

“I don't think so.”

“He didn't leave a message for me in case I called?”

He saw June watching him. He had to let the panic go. He breathed out another lump of unhappy air.

“Griffin, you're on vacation. Call him tomorrow morning.” Griffin always forgot her name, and she was always so casual with him.

“Everything's okay?” He couldn't stop.

“Griffin, you're in Mexico, go get drunk.” It was the style of some secretaries to assume great ease with him, playing the wise sister. He knew she knew what the call was about, but for all the friendliness, she was not a friend, she was a woman careful of her job, and she would never tell him. Besides, he could never remember her name. He said good-bye. She said,
“Adios.”

He put the phone down.

“What did he want?” asked June.

“I don't know. He's gone for the day.”

“Do you think it's important?” She wanted it to be important, she liked the idea that the long arm of the movies reached him at an instant, anywhere. It made her weekend more interesting, he was that much more impressive.

“I'm not going back until Monday.” He took off his rubber sandals. As he stood up, he could see over the balcony to the garden below. The policeman who had followed June was there, resting against a palm tree, smoking a cigarette. “Let me take a shower,” he said, “and then we'll see the town.”

She wore a white cotton dress, some kind of knit. Griffin always wanted to call it jersey, but he wasn't sure. She wore the silver earrings from the beach. He didn't know her perfume, but it was flowery, young. Bonnie Sherow wore something heavier; why didn't he know the names of these things? He supposed Bonnie's perfumes were more sophisticated than June's, but the ordinary, the popular, made him happy so often. To be part of everyday life, to be part of the flow. Why else work in the movies?

They walked along the waterfront avenue in the town. There were droves of college kids everywhere, most of them drunk, sitting at tables in bars that were made to look like Mexican cantinas. Fake Mexico in Mexico, because the owner was a fan of
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Everything was a stage set now.

June told him her life story. She was adopted. This upset him, he had orphaned her a second time. She grew up in Philadelphia, went to private school in Maryland, college in Vermont, the semester in Japan, then to New York, a job with a magazine, a boyfriend had moved to Los Angeles, she followed, they broke up, she ran into Kahane, she got the job at the bank, that was two years ago. She was twenty-nine. She loved her father and spoke of him with respect. He was some kind of moderate tycoon, a powerful athlete, a great host.
She fought with her mother. She had a brother at Stanford Law. Her parents' natural child. Yes, there was some resentment.

They ate a bad meal at a large restaurant, and then walked some more, up the streets that led to the hill overlooking the town, behind a big church.

Griffin looked around and was sure the police had stopped following them after they'd left the hotel. As they climbed a steep set of stairs, he turned June to him and pinned her to the locked gate over the door of a liquor store.

“What are you doing?” she asked, but she knew.

The kiss scared him. It might have been the best of his life, it might have been the first time he'd ever really kissed someone as an equal. What was it? Was it Kahane or was it June? Was he tasting the man he'd killed, or was she tasting the killer and, through him, her dead lover? He realized that she was larger and taller than most of the women he'd ever kissed, larger than Bonnie Sherow. He'd slept with actresses, but they usually curled into him, looking for protection. There were delicate women with thin bones who received him, but he always felt like a trespasser. Yes, Kahane was between them now; they were both kissing something between them, a ghost, something they shared. They were on the same side of the mirror. He could do anything. He lifted her dress, she kissed him harder. He put his hands in her underpants, she grabbed his shoulders. He stopped. She took his arm and they continued up the stairs. They turned down a new street. He pressed her into a doorway and unbuttoned his fly. He pulled her dress up above her waist and rubbed himself against her wide, soft belly. He wasn't sure if she could come in this position, and he lowered her dress.

“What's wrong?” she asked. Was she willing to let him come against her in the alley? Yes.

“Let's go back to the hotel.” He knew she thought he was scared of lying down in the street.

In the room he poured mineral water into champagne glasses and walked to the balcony, looking for the police. The garden was empty. June hugged him from behind and hooked her chin over his shoulder. He brought a hand to her leg and gathered her dress in his fingers, pulling it up until he could slip into her underpants again.

They lay on the bed and watched the tops of the palms, and the roof beyond the garden. It was hot in the room.

“Let me turn on the air conditioner,” he said.

“No. I like it like this. Don't you?”

“Yes.”

Bonnie would have turned on the air conditioner. Bonnie would have taken a shower as soon as they came back. Bonnie wouldn't have let him jack off against her stomach in a Mexican alley in the middle of the night.

They held their silly, fat bodies together and sweated. He didn't want to go inside her. He stroked her with his hand, softly, and she came. He let her rest, and then he helped her come again. She pushed him onto his back, and he watched her watching him. It was a look between life-forms, between two bodies of organized cells, and he tried to let her see the murder in his eyes. She kissed him, and he supposed that all she saw was pain.