Murder Book. Richard Rayner

when Ellen and I were going through stormy weather: not having enough money, not fucking often enough, not getting enough sleep, arguing about when and whether to have another child. I’d wanted the second youngster.

      Ward was back on screen now, about to come in with her big punch. I should have seen it coming after what happened back at the courthouse. She said, “McGrath’s father was also a detective. He resigned from the Department in disgrace some thirty-five years ago, following a case that involved none other than Charlie Corcoran.”

      “Oh, shit,” said Ellen. “I don’t believe this. They never quit, these people. . .”

      Ward told how a young woman, an actress, had got drunk and drowned off Malibu in November 1961. A lone, mysterious witness walking his dog said he’d seen Charlie Corcoran in the water with her, though Corcoran, then at the beginning of his career, denied it, and several other witnesses stepped up to say they’d been with him in Santa Barbara, where he’d been attending a charity function. No charges were brought, and my father, one of the investigating detectives, left the Department in disgrace three months later. Corcoran, meanwhile — incredibly handsome — had risen above the scandal to success, sustaining a glittering career through his thirties, forties, on into late middle age.

      Of course I’d known the story: it was the beginning of my father’s inexorable downward slide, though Ward said nothing of that, nor of certain other interesting details. For instance: my father had received a sworn and signed statement from that mysterious dog walker on the beach, while the Santa Barbara witnesses, all of them, had been on the payroll of Corcoran’s press agent.

      Ellen said, “But you told his lawyers all about this, didn’t you?”

      “Sure I did, because their investigators would have dug up the story anyway.” Its one real bearing on the Denise Corcoran case was the obligation I’d felt to slip aside from the wheel and allow Drew to drive the investigation. “And now they’re having their fun.”

      Her distress was genuine. “It isn’t fair, Billy. It isn’t right.”

      “I know it. Everything’s out of whack.”

      I was on screen again myself, denying that I’d tried to frame Corcoran. I looked angry and defensive, saying, “This is absurd,” and then it was Charlie himself, smiling, with “No comment, no comment, no comment,” and one of Charlie’s million-dollar lawyers, maybe even the one who’d slipped Ward all this, looking into the camera with a thoughtful pause before: “We didn’t bring up any of this before, because we didn’t want the trial to turn into a personal issue, and because of Detective McGrath’s great reputation. Now that it’s come out in the open — well, I’m not saying the guy is necessarily a bad apple. I’m saying this revelation may throw some interesting light on why the city has harassed an innocent man and thrown away millions of dollars on a futile case they could never have won. Sons, sadly, do turn into their fathers.”

      Storm clouds heaved and shouldered in the Sepulveda Pass. The unmarked Chevrolet followed a surge of water down the throat of a curving exit ramp choked with rain, and I stepped on the gas, reckless up San Vicente, then north toward Sunset, the hills beyond, and the gates of the house whose address I was apt to remember. A camera eye inspected me as I announced myself through the rain to the buzzing intercom. Almost to my surprise, the gate opened and I drove up the gravel drive to where four Cadillacs, five BMWs, three Rolls-Royces, and a pair of twin red Ferraris were huddled together out of the rain under a carport in the parking area. Corcoran was having a party.

      The house was spare, beautiful, an idyll, its huge windows commanding a view of the city all the way down to Long Beach. Standing by the pool at the back, I remembered, you seemed to float above the entire San Fernando Valley. Either way you were up above the world. Charlie also had a ranch in Utah and a Manhattan triplex overlooking Central Park. He kept a suite at one of the big hotels in Beverly Hills and Triumph motorcycles, each with the same lock, in airport parking garages at twelve of the country’s major cities. Sometimes he disappeared for days on end, apparently to ride his bike from St. Louis to Chicago or from Denver all the way to New Orleans, to hit the road and hear the engine sing.

      Maybe I’d misheard when I was out here the night of the murder. Maybe my ear had been only too greedy for what it thought Charlie said, for what it wanted Charlie to have said: “I lost my head, man. I killed her.” We can hallucinate, we may be wrong about the exact nature of something we touch, but no sense is as vulnerable as hearing; then again, I’d felt so sure: this guy is guilty as sin, guilty as me.

      All through the trial I never thought that I might be interested in vengeance. I tried to behave honestly and honorably, admitting the connection between him and my father, making a tactical withdrawal from the daily detail of the case. Now all my certainties slid away in the swirl and extravagant hammer of the storm.

      I was thinking about my beginnings, about how I was made in the back of that Porsche Speedster, my mother primed with schoonerfuls of Scotch whiskey. She said many times she wasn’t sure where I got my temper, Johnnie Walker Red or Black. I was thinking about Ellen and her new boyfriend. I felt under attack. I felt crazy and enraged. It was as if Charlie and his people with their power were trying to annihilate me.

      I didn’t know what I was going to say. I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to say anything at all, not about the trial, not about my father. I thought maybe I’d let my mere presence ruffle his feathers. I thought maybe I’d hit him, hurt him, or worse. I was thinking a lot of things.

      I was met at the door by the bodyguard, six-foot-five and wiry-haired, an agile hulk who looked me over with no great affection before lifting a fat cigar, rolling his lips around the butt, and luxuriating in what was less a puff than an insult. “Detective,” he said. His name was Ari Van Duzer; I’d have thought twice about picking a fight with him even had I not known that he’d been trained by the Mossad. “Don’t you think you’ve bothered him enough?”

      “Not nearly.”

      “I can’t let you in. You know that. I’m gonna have to ask you to leave, unless, of course, you have a warrant. Do you have a warrant?”

      His voice was calm while the smile leaked out of his eyes and we stood facing each other, him with the cigar still between his teeth, in the wide open space of the white entrance hall.

      Ellen had told me not to do anything stupid. Ward was only doing her job. What did I expect? Reporters sought intimacy so that they could betray you. I’d told her it wasn’t Ward I was blaming.

      There was a sculpture alone on a table in the center of the hall: twelve inches high, a girl, upright, holding a bowl; it was simple, beautiful; it looked ancient. I picked it up, felt its history and beauty in my palm. I tossed it by its feet and caught it by its head. “How much would you say this is worth?”

      “A lot more than you’ve got,” said the bodyguard, starting toward me, then backing off. He thought I might really break it. He was right.