Star Light, Star Bright Page 2

  “Obviously we passed the test.”

  “With high marks. But that means I know much about you, while you know nothing about me. For one thing, that I’ve had long experience in this kind of work.”

  “Private agency?”

  “Before my employment by Mr. Quist, public service. In Cuba I was a security officer for the government.”

  “Interesting. Fidel’s? Or Batista’s?”

  “Many years for Batista, a few months for Fidel. Both could tell you I was expert in my duties.”

  Araujo shrugged. “If you’re curious about my political opinions, I’m glad to offer them. Batista was totally corrupt, of course. But hand him a share of your take, and your life was your own. Fidel? A fanatic who really believes that for their own good every Cuban must become his personal slave.” He was warming up to his subject. “But when we replace him—”

  “We?” I said jokingly. The joke went right past him. He said, “Believe me, there are plenty of us here in the States who still have the spirit to make a free Cuba again. And hundreds of thousands in Cuba only waiting for the chance to follow our banners.”

  “Not this week, I hope. I’m sort of counting on your fulltime cooperation for the next couple of days.”

  This seemed to haul him partway down from Cloud Nine. He said good-naturedly, “No problem there, I assure you. But in all seriousness, once the liberation is properly funded, who knows when the ax will fall? A question of money, right? And such questions have a way of providing their own answers, don’t they?”

  “Not in this business of threatening letters,” I said, hauling him the rest of the way down to earth. “Two of them.”

  “Three. It was after the third arrived that the firm decision was made to call on you.”

  “Mrs. Quist’s decision?”

  “With Mr. Quist’s agreement. Having checked you out, I thought it a sensible move.”

  “And how about our friendly local police? Invited to the party, too?”

  Araujo shook his head. “Not unless we want this unpleasantness leaked to the press. Which makes it absolutely out of the question.” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand, palm down, to indicate how absolutely.

  “Mr. Quist’s policy?”

  “Yes, Troublesome for me sometimes, but necessary. I’ve seen what newspaper and television people make of any personal stories about him that come their way. Understand me, Mr. Milano. He’s extremely well-balanced—tough but fair, isn’t that how they put it?—but naturally he’s highly sensitive to the way journalists choose to treat his private life.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “I can remember those news stories about his marriage.”

  Araujo froze momentarily. He gave me a quick hard look, and I gave him a full view of my sympathetic face. He thawed. “His marriage. Yes. But as to why I believe these murder threats are no joke, there have been incidents supporting my judgment.”

  “Such as?”

  “For one thing, the butchery of a dog. Mr. Quist’s pet. Its throat was slit. That was on Thursday after the receipt of the second letter. On Friday, a carving knife from the kitchen, its blade encrusted with dried blood—I’m sure it was the knife used to kill the dog—was found driven into the door of the intended victim named in the letters. Does this pattern suggest a joke?”

  I said that, well, I wouldn’t want to bet on it either way, but it did smell of an inside job. Was it possible that among the staff serving the estate there was a psycho running loose? Had the staff been checked out one by one?

  Araujo nodded emphatically. “Better than that. Friday afternoon, I gave every one of the staff—service people and Security—a week’s paid leave of absence. With Mr. Quist’s approval, of course. By Saturday noon, all were replaced by personnel I’d stake my life on. Then yesterday, despite these precautions, the third message appeared.”

  “Yesterday? Sunday? Then it wasn’t sent through the post office?”

  “Neither were the others. The daily mail is left at the gate-house and brought by the man there to the main house. The first two messages were among the letters left on the foyer table in the main house, but unstamped, obviously just dropped there. An inside job? No question. But at least it reduced my list of suspects to those guests resident on the estate yesterday morning.”

  “How many does that make?”

  “Seven in residence. Since one—a Mr. Daskalos—is marked as victim, that would leave us six suspects. He also stands apart in another regard. He is the only guest not in the movie business.”

  “I see. So we have six guests under suspicion. And I’m supposed to gracefully mingle around and see if I can’t finger the menace. Is that it?”

  “Yes. And remember this. You can be quite direct in your investigation.”

  “No objections from the customers?”

  “Movie people,” Araujo said. His tone made it plain what he thought of movie people. “They’re hoping Mr. Quist will invest in a production they plan. Knowing he requires their cooperation with you, they will at least make a pretense of cooperating. To put it plainly, Mr. Milano, they will eat shit for the sake of their precious movie.”

  The Mercedes was traveling on an expressway eastward away from the airport. This section of Miami—low buildings bathed in pink sunset, palm trees—made a nice Chamber of Commerce picture.

  Araujo said to me, “You’ve been here in Miami before?” and I said that, no, I had handled a case in Palm Beach long ago, but that was as near as I had gotten. Then I said, “Six suspects. Any of them deserve special consideration?”

  He scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “Well, two of the guests are ladies. I’d say that the killing of the dog—a large and active animal—makes those two unlikely suspects.”

  “What about a partnership? One of the gentlemen kills the dog as, let’s say, a favor to one of the ladies?”

  Again Araujo gave me that quick hard look. “I didn’t think of that. It may be worth thinking about.”

  The car looped south onto a fairly narrow road. The subtropics, lush but seemingly well-tended, pressed close on both sides here. Old Cutler Road, according to a street sign that flashed by. Across the road the sub-tropics became a long high fieldstone wall which seemed to go on endlessly.

  Araujo gestured at it. “Hesperides. Some years ago an association of very rich gentlemen built it as a—what would you call it?—a private club, I suppose. When the venture failed it was put up for sale. Mrs. Quist liked it, so Mr. Quist bought it for her.”

  We pulled through wrought-iron gates and stopped beside a gatehouse. A guard gave Araujo a respectful hello, then took the key the chauffeur handed him and lifted the trunk lid for a quick inspection. From where I sat I had a view of rolling lawns, flowerbeds, avenues bordered by royal palms, and in the distance, a complex of fieldstone buildings which gave the impression of a blueblooded New England college transplanted all of a piece to this humid and garishly sunlit clime.

  “Well,” Araujo said, “what do you think of it?”

  “Mr. Quist certainly bought Mrs. Quist a nice present,” I said.

  It could have been the lobby of an old-fashioned grand hotel minus registration desk. An abandoned hotel, not a soul in sight. Then a lithe young man appeared, dressed in what would seem to be the house uniform: white shirt, black bowtie, gray corduroy vest with scarlet piping and matching slacks. Vest and slacks were tight enough to make the most of what was unquestionably a very pretty young man. He smiled engagingly at Araujo, ducked his head at me. “Mr. Milano?”

  “Who the devil do you think it is?” Araujo said. “And don’t tell me you didn’t hear the car outside.”

  “Sure,” the young man said cheerfully. “But I was with Mrs. Quist getting told what to do about Mr. Milano. I’m supposed to fix him up in his rooms.”

  “Pablo,” said Araujo dangerously, “you don’t fix people up in their rooms, you show them to their apartments.” He said to me apologetically, “With the regular staff gone for the week
, you understand, the quality of the service—”

  I told him I was sure it would do fine, and he said he hoped so, and that we’d get together later in the evening. I traveled up one flight with Pablo and my luggage by elevator. On the way, I said to him, “Ever hold down this kind of job before?”

  He grinned at me. “Nope. But you got to start somewhere.”

  “That’s what they tell me.” The long, wide, deeply carpeted corridor one flight up showed no more life than I had met downstairs. “Where is everybody?”

  “The help?” Pablo said. “Here and there. Kitchen, dining room—”

  “The guests?”

  “Oh, them. Probably getting ready for prayer meeting down on the beach.”

  “Prayer meeting?”

  “Sunrise and sunset every day near the boathouse. Mr. Daskalos runs it.”

  “He’s a minister?”

  Pablo said cagily, “You better ask him.” Alternate doors along the corridor were numbered. Pablo pulled up before number 28, pushed it open with his foot. “This is it.”

  It was a sitting room, and as soon as I walked into it I had a powerful sense of déjà vu. Then I caught on. The room, spacious and high-ceilinged, could have been the one at the Plaza where just twelve hours before I had dealt with Elphinstone, the insurance company’s pet fixer. Luxuriously furnished in what might be called streamlined baroque, here were the same crystal chandelier, the same sweeping drapes at the windows, the same tiled fireplace. One difference. This was obviously a working fireplace with kindling and logs stacked beside it.

  The bedroom continued the motif but provided among the pieces a glossy TV console, and on the bedside table, a telephone. Pablo opened doors to offer a view of bathroom, dressing room, and walk-in closet, all on Brobdingnagian scale. “That’s it,” he said. “You want anything, just phone.” He picked up a typed sheet of paper from the bedside table. “It’s all down here. Room service, garage, whatever.” He pointed at a folder on the desk. “Everything else is in there. Like the guest list and their rooms and phone numbers.”

  “And Mr. and Mrs. Quist’s number?”

  “Private. But you call their secretary, she’ll connect you. That’s Miss Riley.” He reached for the phone. “Want me to put a call through?”

  “Don’t bother. Do you know where Mrs. Quist is right now?”

  “Getting ready for prayer meeting, I guess.”

  “Well, whatever you guess, you find her and tell her that Mr. Milano has been on the move for the last forty-eight hours. And if she wants to get a look at him while he’s still awake, she’d better do it right now. Read me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then take off,” I said, and he took off.

  I looked through the bulky folder on the desk. An automobile map of the Miami area. A handsomely detailed map of the estate. A room plan of the building I was now in, appropriately titled Main Building. A Xeroxed guest list. The list already had its eighth name added to it: Mr. John A. Milano, Main Building, 28. Most likely the work of the very efficient Miss Riley.

  According to Araujo, six of the guests were movie people, but with one exception they weren’t movie people whose names I recognized. The exception was Michael Calderon, Main Building, 24, which placed him right down the corridor outside. Calderon, that aging stud with the mandarin mustache and an acting range limited to sullen or more sullen, was, in fact, about as recognizable as you could be, right up there on the superstar level. And he had been leading man in the last Sharon Bauer film.

  I examined the list more closely. Only one other guest was quartered in this building, a Mr. Sidney Kightlinger, Room 20. But Mr. and Mrs. Scott Rountree were stationed someplace called Cottage D. Mr. Lou Hoffman and Miss Holly Lee Otis shared Cottage C. Mr. Kalos Daskalos occupied Cottage A.

  I spread out the map of the estate. Cottages C and D were on the waterfront to the southeast of the main building, Cottages A and B to the northeast. Midway between these two pairs were a boathouse and docking area. An additional point of interest: since Cottage B seemed to be untenanted, Mr. Daskalos of neighboring A had a lot of privacy for himself up there in the northern reaches. And as designated victim, he’d be offering his assassin, if any, a lot of privacy too.

  In the process of folding the map I caught sight of an inscription in one corner: Designed and Lettered by M. Riley Herself. Efficient, talented, and with a sense of humor? Even without having cast an eye on her I was on my way to becoming a fan.

  Keeper of the keys too. Want to black Sharon Bauer’s eye nowadays, you had to phone M. Riley for an appointment.

  The first time I had ever met Sharon Bauer in her pot-reeking rented London flat off the King’s Road, she had a gaudy black eye under those oversized shades. And a shiny weal on her cheek and a split lip. That was the handiwork of her agent, a racketeer manqué named Frankie Kurtz who, with the completion of her previous picture, discovered he was slated to be her ex-agent and didn’t like it. His game plan in response was simplicity itself: first blackmail, then a forged contract, finally the muscle. Flabby as he looked, he did have muscle.

  To give him his due, he had taken an eighteen-year-old kid who was sweating out walk-ons in TV commercials and gotten her up the initial rung of the golden ladder. This he achieved by lending her out for one-night stands to anyone with movie clout until he lined up her first picture deal. That first picture made waves. The second—good story, good direction, and magical Sharon Bauer—made a tidal wave.

  It was right after the third picture was completed in London that I got a call direct from the head man of Corinthian Productions—the agency had served him well in such matters over the years—to get the hell to London fast and untangle Bauer from whatever the hell she was tangled in, without a word getting out about it.

  What she was tangled in, of course, was Frankie Kurtz, and it didn’t take too long to comb him out of her hair and Corinthian’s. She should never have fallen for the blackmail in the first place; the people she had been involved with were big enough and mean enough to have laid Frankie away for keeps if their names were dragged into the open, and Frankie knew it. The forged contract committing her to a life sentence as his property was so clumsily forged that he would have been hanged for it by any court that got a look at it. As for the muscle, I came to the conclusion later that week—thus adding therapist to my newfound roles of lover and surrogate father—that my girl must be made to understand that Frankie wasn’t the only one ready and willing to use it. It took a little doing to get him up to that Chelsea flat, and with Sharon cowering against its locked door, to provide her with the necessary bloody demonstration.

  But immediately after events in London were closed out, there were those two incredible weeks in the hideout in Devon. Johnny-and-Sharon time. Fourteen days. One fortnight. No pills. She had brought a big enough assortment of them in her jewel case to stock a chain of drugstores, and I simply dumped the load into the fire the first night. Light wines and beers were in order, but no hard stuff. No need for it, as I proved to her. All defenses down, all chemical trips canceled, it was just the total coming together, in bed and out, of Johnny-and-Sharon. Big Daddy and The Dependency Kid. Two dreamlike weeks of it, the only unpleasant interludes being those long distance calls of hers to her witch doctor in Acapulco, Walter Kondracki, once astrologer to the stars, now their coven master. I didn’t know he ranked me until that last call on that last day. I woke up to it too late, sprinting after the Jaguar as it headed away from the house to the highway, wildly shouting her name until, pulling up winded, I stood there being soaked through by a pouring rain, trying to get a handhold on reality. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t Johnny-and-Sharon. Or that pillow talk about whether she could survive life in bad old New York City, or whether I open a West Coast branch of the agency. Reality, in fact, seemed to be somebody named Walter Kondracki.

  Kondracki.

  Daskalos.

  Prayer meetings? Of course, that would be Pablo’s way of look
ing at it. But sunrise and sunset prayer meetings out there on the open beach?

  A good question. And it started others ricocheting around my skull. Through them I heard a knocking on the sitting-room door, and I said, “Come in,” and walked into the sitting room as she came in and closed the door behind her.

  The Dependency Kid. Gila Bend, Arizona, was her birthplace, but a section of Gila Bend tourists weren’t encouraged to visit. A drunk German handyman father, a slattern Mexican maid-of-all-work mother, but somehow when those Teutonic and Latin genes had gotten together they had made a miracle.

  The miracle and I stood there looking at each other across the room, and I had a feeling that all we needed was Dooley Wilson at the piano, working his way through the vocal of “As Time Goes By.”

  I fixed my mind on the picture of her Jaguar heading down the lane to the highway, spraying wet gravel into my face. I said, “You’re looking well, Sharon.”

  “You are too, Johnny.”

  “And now that we’ve cleared that up,” I said, “answer one question. Is Kalos Daskalos somebody who used to be Walter Kondracki?”

  “Yes.” she said.

  Ask an honest question, get an honest answer.

  When she felt no real threat in a question she promptly became an honest-answer freak. That was why, when I suggested to Corinthian’s P.R. man in London that I ought to keep her out of sight until those bruises healed up, he gave me his instant blessing. Otherwise, the international paparazzi would not only have photos of the bruises but also her candid explanation of where they came from. That P.R. man had gotten himself an ulcer trying to steer her safely through interviews and never quite making it.

  The couch before the fireplace was long and wide. I stretched out on it, folded my arms on my chest, closed my eyes, and gave myself up to being tired. The tiredness was so bone-deep that it hurt.

  “Johnny”—she was standing over me—“if you knew it was him, would you have come here?”