Uncollected Stories 2003 (23 page)

Now he was the one who must have been showing perplexity clear
enough for Paladin to read it, because the man smiled – a humorless
skinning-back of the lips from the capped teeth. "The air-conditioning in
here's pretty nice," he said, crossing his legs and flicking the crease
absently. "You guys want to enjoy it while you can. It's pretty muggy
walking a beat out in Watts, even this time of year."
In a harsh and abrupt tone utterly unlike his bright pitter-patter
Comedy Store voice, Jacoby said: "Shut your mouth, jag-off."
Paladin jerked around and stared at him, eyes wide. And again Cheyney
would have sworn it had been years since anyone had spoken to this
man in that way. Years since anyone would have dared.
"What did you say?"
"I said shut your mouth when Detective Cheyney is talking to you.
Give me your lawyer's number. I'll see that he is called. In the
meantime, I think you need to take a few seconds to pull your head out
of your ass and look around and see exactly where you are and exactly
how serious the trouble is that you are in. I think you need to reflect on
the fact that, while only one charge has been lodged against you, you
could be facing enough to put you in the slam well into the next
century...and you could be facing them before the sun comes up
tomorrow morning."
Jacoby smiled. It wasn't his howaya-folks-anyone-here-from-Duluth
Comedy Store smile, either. Like Paladin's, it was a brief pull of the
lips, no more.
"You're right – the air-conditioning in here isn't half bad. Also, the TV
works and for a wonder the people on it don't look like they're seasick.
The coffee's good – perked, not instant. Now, if you want to make
another two or three wisecracks, you can wait for your legal talent in a
holding cell on the fifth floor. On Five, the only entertainment consists
of kids crying for their mommies and winos puking on their sneakers. I
don't know who you think you are and I don't care, because as far as I'm
concerned, you're nobody. I never saw you before in my life, never
heard of you before in my life, and if you push me enough I'll widen the
crack in your ass for you."
"That's enough," Cheyney said quietly.
"I'll retool it so you could drive a Ryder van up there, Mister Paladin –
you understand me? Can you grok that?"
Now Paladin's eyes were all but hanging from their sockets on stalks.
His mouth was open. Then, without speaking, he removed his wallet
from his coat pocket (some kind of lizard-skin, Cheyney thought, two
months' salary...maybe three). He found his lawyer's card (the home
number was jotted on the back, Cheyney noted it was most definitely
not part of the printed matter on the front) and handed it to Jacoby. His
fingers now showed the first observable tremor.
"Pete?"
Jacoby looked at him and Cheyney saw it was no act; Paladin had
actually succeeded in pissing his easy-going partner off. No mean feat.
"Make the call yourself."
"Okay." Jacoby left.
Cheyney looked at Paladin and was suddenly amazed to find himself
feeling sorry for the man. Before he had looked perplexed; now he
looked both stunned and frightened, like a man who wakes from a
nightmare only to discover the nightmare is still going on.
"Watch closely," Cheyney said after the door had closed, "and I'll
show you one of the mysteries of the West. West LA, that is."
He moved the neo-Pollock and revealed not a safe but a toggle switch.
He flicked it, then let the painting slide back into place.
"That's one-way glass," Cheyney said, cocking a thumb at the toolarge mirror over the bar.
"I am not terribly surprised to hear that," Paladin said, and Cheyney
reflected that, while the man might have some of the shitty egocentric
habits of the Veddy Rich and Well-Known in LA, he was also a nearsuperb
actor: only a man as experienced as he was himself could have told how
really close Paladin was to the ragged edge of tears.
But not of guilt, that was what was so puzzling, so goddamnmaddening.
Of perplexity.
He felt that absurd sense of sorrow again, absurd because it
presupposed the man's innocence: he did not want to be Edward
Paladin's nightmare, did not want to be the heavy in a Kafka novel
where suddenly nobody knows where they are, or why they are there.
"I can't do anything about the glass," Cheyney said. He came back and
sat down across the coffee table from Paladin, "but I've just killed the
sound. So it's you talking to me and vice-versa." He took a pack of
Kents from his breast pocket, stuck one in the corner of his mouth, then
offered the pack to Paladin. "Smoke?"
Paladin picked up the pack, looked it over, and smiled. "Even my old
brand. I haven't smoked one since night Yul Brynner died, Mr Cheyney.
I don't think I ought to start again now."
Cheyney put the pack back into his pocket. "Can we talk?" he asked.
Paladin rolled his eyes. "Oh my God, it's Joan Raiford."
"Who?"
"Joan Raiford. You know, "I took Elizabeth Taylor to Marine World
and when she saw Shamu the Whale she asked me if it came with
vegetables?" I repeat, Detective Cheyney: grow up. I have no reason in
the world to believe that switch is anything but a dummy. My God, how
innocent do you think I am?"
Joan Raiford? Is that what he really said?, Joan Raiford?
"What's the matter?" Paladin asked pleasantly. He crossed his legs the
other way. "Did you perhaps think you saw a clear path? Me breaking
down, maybe saying I'd tell everything, everything, just don't let 'em fry
me, copper?"
With all the force of personality he could muster, Cheyney said: "I
believe things are very wrong here, Mr Paladin. You've got them wrong
and I've got them wrong. When your lawyer gets here, maybe we can
sort them out and maybe we can't. Most likely we can't. So listen to me,
and for God's sake use your brain. I gave you the Miranda Warning.
You said you wanted your lawyer present. If there was a tape turning,
I've buggered my own case. Your lawyer would have to say just one
word – enticement – and you'd walk free, whatever has happened to
Carson. And I could go to work as a security guard in one of those fleabitten little towns down by the border."
"You say that," Paladin said, "but I'm no lawyer.
But...Convince me, his eyes said. Yeah, let's talk about this, let’s see if
we can't get together, because you're right, something is weird.
So...convince me.
"Is your mother alive?" Cheyney asked abruptly.
"What – yes, but what does that have to – "
"You talk to me or I'm going to personally take two CHP motorcycle
cops and the three of us are going to rape your mother tomorrow!"
Cheyney screamed. "I'm personally going to take her up the ass! Then
we're going to cut off her tits and leave them on the front lawn! So you
better talk!"
Paladin's face was as white as milk: a white so white it is nearly blue.
"Now are you convinced?" Cheyney asked softly. 'I'm not crazy. I'm
not going to rape your mother. But with a statement like that on a reel of
tape, you could say you were the guy on the grassy knoll in Dallas and
the Burbank police wouldn't produce the tape. I want to talk to you,
man. What's going on here?"
Paladin shook his head dully and said, "I don't know."
In the room behind the one-way glass, Jacoby joined Lieutenant
McEachern, Ed McMahon (still looking stunned), and a cluster of
technical people at a bank of high-tech equipment. The LAPD chief of
police and the mayor were rumored to be racing each other to Burbank.
"He's talking?" Jacoby asked.
"I think he's going to," McEachern said. His eyes had moved toward
Jacoby once, quickly, when he came in. Now they were centered only
on the window. The men seated on the other side, Cheyney smoking,
relaxed, Paladin tense but trying to control it, looked slightly lowish
through the one-way glass. The sound of their voices was clear and
undistorted through the overhead speakers – a top-of-the-line Bose in
each corner.
Without taking his eyes off the men, McEachern said: "You get his
lawyer?"
Jacoby said: "The home number on the card belongs to a cleaning
woman named Howlanda Moore."
McEachern flicked him another fast glance.
"Black, from the sound, delta Mississippi at a guess. Kids yelling and
fighting in the background. She didn't quite say
I'se gwine whup you if
you don't quit!
, but it was close. She's had the number three years. I redialed twice.”
"Jesus," McEachern, said. "Try the office number?"
"Yeah," Jacoby replied. "Got a recording. You think ConTel's a good
buy, Loot?"
McEachern flicked his gray eyes in Jacoby's direction again.
"The number on the front of the card is that of a fairly large stock
brokerage," Jacoby said quietly. "I looked under lawyers in the Yellow
Pages. Found no Albert K. Dellums. Closest is an Albert Dillon, no
middle initial. No law firm like the one on the card."
"Jesus please us," McEachern said, and then the door banged open and
a little man with the face of a monkey barged in. The mayor had
apparently won the race to Burbank.
"What's going on here?" he said to McEachern.
"I don't know," McEachern said.
"All right," Paladin said wearily. "Let's talk about it. I feel, Detective
Cheyney, like a man who had just spent two hours or so on some
disorienting amusement park ride. Or like someone slipped some LSD
into my drink. Since we're not on the record, what was your one
interrogatory? Let's start with that."
"All right," Cheyney said. "How did you get into the broadcast
complex, and how did you get into Studio C?"
"Those are two questions."
"I apologize."
Paladin smiled faintly.
"I got on the property and into the studio," he said, "the same way I've
been getting on the property and into the studio for over twenty years.
My pass. Plus the fact that I know every security guard in the place.
Shit, I've been there longer than most of them."
"May I see that pass?" Cheyney asked. His voice was quiet, but a
large pulse beat in his throat.
Paladin looked at him warily for a moment, then pulled out the
lizardskin wallet again. After a moment of rifling, he tossed a
perfectly correct NBC Performer's Pass onto the coffee table.
Correct, that was, in every way but one.
Cheyney crushed out his smoke, picked it up, and looked at it. The
pass was laminated. In the corner was the NBC peacock, something
only long-timers had on their cards. The face in the photo was the face
of Edward Paladin. Height and weight were
correct. No space for eye-color, hair-color, or age, of course; when you
were dealing with ego.
Walk softly, stranger, for here there be tygers.

The only problem with the pass was that it was salmon pink.
NBC Performer's Passes were bright red.
Cheyney had seen something else while Paladin was looking for his

pass. "Could you put a one-dollar bill from your wallet on the coffee
table there?" he asked softly.
"Why?"
"I'll show you in a moment," Cheyney said. "A five or a ten would do
as well."
Paladin studied him, then opened his wallet again. He took back his
pass, replaced it, and carefully took out a one-dollar bill. He turned it so
it faced Cheyney. Cheyney took his own wallet (a scuffed old Lord
Buxton with its seams unravelling; he should replace it but found it
easier to think of than to do) from his jacket pocket, and removed a
dollar bill of his own. He put it next to Paladin's, and then turned them
both around so Paladin could see them right-side-up-so Paladin could
study them.
Which Paladin did, silently, for almost a full minute. His face slowly
flushed dark red...and then the color slipped from it a little at a time.
He'd probably meant to bellow WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?
Cheyney thought later, but what came out was a breathless little gasp:
“ – what – "
"I don't know," Cheyney said.
On the right was Cheyney's one, gray-green, not brand-new by any
means, but new enough so that it did not yet have that rumpled, limp,
shopworn look of a bill which has changed hands many times. Big
number 1's at the top corners, smaller 1's at the bottom corners.
FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE in small caps between the top 1's and THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in larger ones. The letter A in a seal to
the left of Washington, along with the assurance that THIS NOTE IS
LEGAL TENDER, FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. It was a
series 1985 bill, the signature that of James A. Baker III.
Paladin's one was not the same at all.
The 1's in the four corners were the same; THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA was the same; the assurance that the bill could be used to pay
all public and private debts was the same.
But Paladin's one was a bright blue.
Instead of FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE it said CURRENCY OF
GOVERNMENT. Instead of the letter A was the letter F. But most of
all it was the picture of the man on the bill that drew Cheyney's
attention, just as the picture of the man on Cheyney's bill drew Paladin's.
Cheyney's gray-green one showed George Washington.
Paladin's blue one showed James Madison.

An unpublished one-minute play auctioned off at the Hasty Pudding
Theatre on April 23, 1990 to benefit the American Repertory Theater's
Institute for Advanced Theater Training .

DARK STAGE. Then a spotlight hits a papier-mache globe, spinning all
by itself in the middle of darkness. Little by little, the stage lights COME
UP, and we see a bare-stage representation of a living room: an easy
chair with a table beside it (there’s an open bottle of beer on the table),
and a console TV across the room. There’s a picnic cooler-full of beer
under the table. Also, a great many empties. GOD is feeling pretty good.
At stage left, there’s a door.

GOD – a big guy with a white beard – is sitting in the chair, alternately
reading a book
(When Bad Things Happen to Good People)
and
watching the tube. He has to crane whenever he wants to look at the set,
because the floating globe (actually hung on a length of string, I
imagine) is in his line of vision. There’s a sitcom on TV. Every now and
then GOD chuckles along with the laugh-track.