Nightlife Read online

  She would sometimes get up and go into her mother’s room to look at the pageant trophies she had won. Her mother kept them in her own room, where the girl wouldn’t break them or touch them and make them corrode. She called them “my trophies,” just as an owner of a show dog would.

  Nancy Mills had been inside this apartment every night for weeks. She’d had one problem turn up from San Francisco, but it had just been one of those rare coincidences that Bill Thayer had been here visiting his parents and seen her. The fact that it had happened once would seem to prove that it couldn’t happen a second time. It was just too unlikely. Besides, this was night. There were fewer people out, and the darkness would help protect her from being recognized. As she was pacing back and forth thinking about it, Nancy Mills had picked up her purse. She noticed it, gave herself permission, and walked to the door. She went out and closed the door behind her.

  She didn’t know where she was going, and it didn’t matter. She had been staying out of sight since she had arrived, never going out after dark, going nowhere even in daylight but to the plaza, and she had not left this apartment for several days. She felt as though a rope had been tightened around her chest so she could barely breathe. As soon as she was on the street again, the rope seemed to loosen. The warm night air filled her lungs.

  She walked to the plaza, used a pay phone to call a taxi, and waited for it outside Macy’s. She said she wanted a ride to La Cienega Boulevard in Hollywood. When the dispatcher asked for the actual building number, she didn’t know. When the dispatcher asked for the name of the nearest cross street, she didn’t know that either, so she said Sunset. He said a yellow cab would arrive in about fifteen minutes. Nancy looked around her and began to feel bored and awkward standing alone in front of the store, so she reached into her purse and found the notebook where she had written the policewoman’s phone numbers.

  She carefully dialed the home number and waited, her eyes closed to help her concentrate.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh, hello,” she said. “I’m looking for Catherine Hobbes?”

  “This is Catherine Hobbes.” The voice was high and feminine. It sounded like a teacher. Nancy wasn’t sure what she had expected, but this wasn’t it.

  “Hi. My name is Tanya Starling. Mrs. Halloran told me that you had come by the apartment in San Francisco to speak to me, but Rachel and I had already moved away.”

  “Yes,” said Hobbes. Her voice was tentative, almost preoccupied. Tanya knew that she was probably reaching to turn on a tape recorder or even pressing some button to tell somebody to trace the call. Nancy would have to do this quickly. Hobbes said, “I have been trying to reach you. We need to ask you some questions. Mrs. Halloran didn’t have a forwarding address for you. Where are you living now?”

  “I’m still on the road. I stopped for the night, checked into a motel, and started to clean out my purse. I found the piece of paper where I’d written your number, and realized I should call you.”

  “Then I need to have the exact location where you are right now.”

  “I’m in Southern California, off the freeway in a small motel. I don’t know the exact address. I’m leaving for New York tomorrow, but I don’t know where I’ll be staying yet.”

  “Please listen carefully. I want you to go to the nearest police station. Give the officer in charge my number. I’ll fly there to talk with you.”

  “You know, that’s not possible tonight. Why don’t you just ask me your questions right now? I mean, my memory isn’t going to get any better staying up all night waiting for you.”

  “I’m trying to help you, Tanya. But you have to cooperate, and you have to tell me the truth.”

  “I called you, remember?”

  “I know that you’re afraid. It’s not a bad thing to be right now. You had a relationship with Dennis Poole, and then he was murdered.”

  “Are you implying that I had something to do with that?”

  “I don’t know any such thing. Someone killed him, and they could be after you too. I want to hear your side of the story. I want to know anything you can tell me about Dennis Poole. I want to know why you decided to leave Portland right after it happened.”

  “This is stupid. I’m just trying to be polite, return your call, straighten this out, and get past it. Rachel and I had planned for a year to go to San Francisco and start a business together. I wasn’t running. I didn’t know anything had even happened to Dennis until I talked to Mrs. Halloran. She was the one who told me.”

  “I need to get through to you, Tanya. You and Rachel are both wanted for questioning in a murder investigation. You don’t seem to be grasping the seriousness of that.”

  “Well, sure I am,” said Tanya. “That’s why I called, so you could cross my name off your list and go on to somebody who knows something.”

  “I don’t think you’re understanding me. Even if you are telling the truth and you’re not withholding any information about the death of Dennis Poole, you could still be charged with fleeing to avoid prosecution, obstruction of justice, and about fifteen other things. They’re all serious, and they all involve jail time. I can make sure that those things don’t happen, if you will just do as I ask.”

  “I will, if you’ll ask for something I can do. I’m a thousand miles away from you, heading in the other direction, with very little money. I can’t just leave everything I own in my car and park it in a lot someplace while I sit in a police station.”

  “Listen carefully. Wherever you are, you’re on a telephone. Just ask the operator to connect you with the local police. Tell the police you’ve spoken with me about going in for questioning in the Dennis Poole case. They can find where you are, bring you in, and keep your car and belongings safe. Give them the piece of paper with my number on it, and they’ll call me. I’ll handle everything from there. All right?”

  “This isn’t a reasonable thing to ask. You’re trying to get me put in jail.”

  “I’m trying to get you into a police station to talk to you. If you’re running because somebody else killed Dennis Poole and you’re afraid, the police will protect you. I’ll make sure they do. If you’re running because you’re afraid the police will hurt you, then you can stop worrying about that too. It’s a lot less scary when you go in voluntarily. I’ll ask them not to put you in a cell.”

  “I told you. I’m not running. I’m just moving, trying to get on with my life.”

  “This is a detour you’re going to have to take sooner or later.”

  Nancy paused, unable to think of what to say. Finally, she said, “I . . . I really don’t think I should do that without a lawyer.”

  “That’s fine. If you’d like, you can have one before you answer any questions at all. They’ll get you one. But you’ve got to do this, Tanya.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tanya, the police are looking for you, not just here but all over. Right now nobody knows why you’re not making yourself available, so they have to assume that you’re dangerous. If you come in on your own, no harm will come to you. If you don’t, then it’s hard to predict what might happen. Go find a lawyer, and ask him to come with you when you turn yourself in. Tanya?”

  Tanya didn’t answer.

  “Tanya? Please.”

  Tanya thought about how much better it was to be Nancy Mills, out on a summer night in Southern California. She was too restless to stay on the line. She lifted the telephone to its cradle and pressed it down. The soft, warm breeze blew across the ear where she had held the telephone, soothing it. She was free, and she wasn’t going to risk that. She saw the cab prowling along toward the front of the building, so she waved her hand and trotted to it.

  She got in, rolled her window halfway down, and looked greedily out at the buildings and the people on the streets all the way to Sunset.

  When the driver let her off on Sunset and La Cienega she began to walk. She pass
ed the big faux-ramshackle structure of the House of Blues, then several restaurants. She wasn’t in the mood to go into a formal restaurant and sit in the middle of a lot of tables with men and women on dates. What she needed was a hotel bar. She knew there were a couple of hotels along the Strip that had famous nightclubs, so she decided to find them.

  She walked along the sidewalk beneath huge lighted billboards of the beautiful people in movies. Paintings of giant women covered the brick sides of tall office buildings.

  The dry air was electrically charged, as though it would soon reach some peak voltage and emit sparks. The cars were nose-to-tail on Sunset, moving ahead in small surges. She could feel the eyes on her, not one man that she could see but many at once that she knew were there behind the glare of headlights or beyond dark tinted windows. She knew that when one of them looked, he was evaluating, trying to see if she was Someone, or even the one they had been searching for. The once-over lasted only for the time it took for her image to move from the windshield to the rearview mirror, but then the man in the next car was already looking at her.

  Nancy’s anticipation grew until she reached the Standard Hotel. It was low—only three stories. She stepped in the front entrance, trying to see everything but also trying to look as though she knew where she was going. She saw two security men—this was Sunset Boulevard, and what stepped in off the street could be literally anything—and smiled at them as she moved past the front desk. There was a girl with a pretty white face and gleaming straight black hair standing there to check people in, and behind her head was a greenish glass panel like a huge aquarium, where another girl who was naked napped on a clear inflated mattress, so that she appeared to be floating there.

  This was the kind of place she had imagined. It was a sign of her magic that she had made it here. While she was still in her stuffy little apartment off Topanga Canyon she had only conceived a sense of how she wanted to feel, and what sort of place would make her feel that way, then moved toward it. She kept going until she found herself in the rooftop bar.

  On the way to the ladies’ room, Nancy studied the other women she could see standing near the long curved bar and sitting at the tables. They all seemed young, thin, and attractive. A few of them wore skirts or pantsuits, but most of them wore tight jeans and tank tops. Nancy felt reassured. At the moment when the urge had taken her she had been wearing a good pair of pants she had bought in Aspen and a Juicy Couture velour jacket over a little T-shirt she had picked up in San Francisco, so she was all right.

  She studied her reflection in the mirror, brushed her hair, and wiped off her makeup. She had been wearing daytime shades, so she put on thicker eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara, darkened her lips as she listened to the chatter in the ladies’ room. She could tell that these were not women staying at the hotel but local women who came here for the social scene. That was fine—so had she.

  Nancy needed to set herself apart somehow, and be in a place where she didn’t have to compete for attention with all of these women. She went to the bar and waited for a couple of orders to be filled so she could survey the room to evaluate the men and let them see her, then ordered her martini. When she had it, she took it outside, onto the big open stretch of blue Astroturf surrounding the pool.

  She sat on one of the white lounge chairs and gazed down the slope at the city, the billions of tiny distinct lights shining upward from the streets and buildings to make the air above the city glow.

  The first man to follow her out had long, skinny limbs covered in an off-white suit and a black T-shirt. He had glasses with thick black frames, and hair that had receded into a widow’s peak. She glanced up at him and sipped her drink.

  “Aren’t you the girl from behind the front desk?”

  “No,” said Nancy. “She’s still there. Go check.”

  “I mean the one who pretends to be asleep. The naked one.”

  “I know you do,” said Nancy.

  “The girl from last night looked just like you. She’s beautiful, and so are you.” He paused for a moment, studied her, and then said, “You and I aren’t going to be friends, are we?”

  “Nope. Thanks for the compliment, though.”

  “You’re welcome. Good night,” he said. He turned and walked back into the bar.

  After ten more minutes, another man came out. He walked to the pool, bent over and touched his hand to the water to test the temperature, then straightened, turned, and seemed to notice her. He was dark-skinned, with wavy black hair, and she imagined him to be Brazilian. When he spoke, the impression was destroyed. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t see you there.” He had an accent from New York, maybe New Jersey. “Have you been in the pool yet?”

  “No,” she said. She made a quick decision. “I just came out here to be alone.”

  “Me too. Would you like to be alone together?”

  “No, I like to do it the usual way.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, see you.”

  He walked back into the bar. This wasn’t very promising, she decided, so she went back into the bar too. She moved to the wall, scanned the men in the room, and decided to choose one. He was standing a few feet to her right, looking over at her, when their eyes met. He was about thirty, with hair that must have been blond when he was a child but had turned brown later as hers had, and now lightened only when he had spent time in the sun. “Hello,” she said. “Do I have spinach stuck on my teeth?”

  He came closer. “Sorry if I was staring. What’s the attraction out there?”

  “It’s really clear tonight. It’s L.A., and you expect some smog.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Otherwise you feel like you’re not getting your money’s worth.”

  “They might have flown you to Bakersfield, and just told you it was L.A.”

  “There’s smog there too. And when it clears, you’re still in Bakersfield.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it. Or somebody’s.”

  He took a step closer and leaned against the wall beside her. “Are you here on business?”

  “Me?” she said. “No. I’m here for a cold martini.”

  “I can see you got one,” he said. He lifted his drink toward her, a faint gesture to simulate clinking glasses. “Here’s to it.” He took a sip. “What I was trying to say was, you’re a gorgeous person, and are you busy for the next few days doing work-related tasks all the time, or are you interested in meeting someone like me, getting married, and bearing my children?”

  She made a show of appraising him, looking from his toes to his face and down again. Then she shrugged. “It depends. Where would I have to live?”

  “We could live anywhere you want. Right now, I’m based in Miami. But it’s negotiable.”

  “Based? What are you? A navy?”

  “No. I just sell sound-imaging machines to doctors and hospitals, and that’s where the office is. I’m Brian Corey.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Marsha.”

  “No last name?”

  “Corey. I’m going to be Marsha Corey, right?”

  “True,” said Brian. “Will you join me at a table, or do we have to keep our distance until after the wedding?”

  “Now that we’re engaged, you’re welcome to sit with me, if you’d like.”

  They stepped to a small empty table nearby. He moved a chair so he could sit beside her and look out over the city. “I hate to descend to this kind of question, but where are you from?”

  “I live here now.”

  “At this hotel?”

  “No, this is just where my martinis live. I recently moved to Los Angeles. I used to live in Chicago.”

  “Why did you move here?”

  “Because I was cold. There are a lot of songs about Chicago. But is there one that says you’ll freeze your ass off? No.”

  “Oh, I thought you might have come here to be an actress.”

  “You mean you think I might be stupid.”

  “I can only hope. But you are beau
tiful, and you did move to Los Angeles, so it was a possibility.”

  “Are you disappointed that I’m not an actress?”

  “No. I don’t think that kind of career would leave enough time for me and the children.”

  “Very smart of you to think ahead.”

  “Ah, yes. Thinking ahead. Have you got plans for dinner yet?”

  “Gee, we’re barely engaged, and already you want me to cook.”

  “No, I was going to take you to dinner, if you’re willing.”

  “After the kids and moving to Miami, dinner seems pretty easy. I’m willing.”

  “We can drive out to La Parapluie, which is in Beverly Hills, where I happen to have a reservation for dinner in about a half hour. Or we can have another drink first, and take our chances that by the time we get there it will be so late that we won’t need a reservation.”

  “A quandary. My drink is dead, but since you mentioned dinner, I’m beginning to get hungry.”

  “Let’s try to have it all. We’ll go down to La Parapluie, and order drinks at dinner.”

  “Whatever you say, dear.”

  Brian Corey had rented a car to make his sales calls, and the valet parking attendant brought it. He was an experienced driver who knew enough to get off Sunset right away, and they were in La Parapluie within ten minutes. It was a large, noisy room with lots of white walls and linen and some bright mediocre minimalist paintings, but the waiter brought Nancy a martini with a tiny iced carafe of vodka on the side, so she forgave the restaurant its decor.

  While they were sipping their drinks, Brian said, “I’ve been thinking about this since I met you, so I’ve got to say it: you really are beautiful.”

  “Thank you. I was rather pleased when I got you into the light, myself. I guess it’s a marriage made in heaven. What do you like on this menu?”

  “I’ve only been here one time, but I had the swordfish, and it was good.”

  “I’ll try it, then.”

  “Anything you’d like. For tonight, you’re the queen of my expense account.”

  “I’ll have to tell you up front I’m not going to buy an ultrasound machine.”