Star Light, Star Bright Page 3

  “For twenty thousand Yankee dollars? Why not?”

  “Twenty thousand?” She sounded shocked. “Is that what Andrew said he’d pay you?”

  “Already paid me. That’s about seven dollars a minute. I worked it out on Andrew’s personal jet coming down here. And the meter keeps running to midnight Wednesday.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Johnny.” One of the things about her was that voice, down there in the lower registers and always slightly hoarse. “And will you please look at me?”

  I opened one eye barely enough to make out a blurred oval of face framed by dark hair. Glimmering sapphire-blue eyes. No nose to be seen through the blur. Laurencin used to paint them like that, no noses. A lightweight, Laurencin, but her women had a storybook enchantment.

  I said, “What’s with these sunrise and sunset devotions on the beach? Kondracki been born again? Or is he still playing guru to the softheaded set?”

  “He’s a guide to The Path. And those are Adorations.” She said it very patiently, putting in emphasis where needed so that even a dull brain could absorb it. “And somebody here wants to kill him. Somebody is really out to kill him.”

  I said, “People who really intend to kill people just kill them. They don’t work out a whole scenario which invites the victim to get out of range before the event. Most likely somebody wants to throw a scare into your Mr. Kondracki.”

  “It’s not Kondracki. It’s Kalos Daskalos now. It means ‘the good teacher.’”

  “Whatever. But if the good teacher thought he was set for execution here, he’d be gone already. Like me, however, he doesn’t really believe it.”

  “But he does.”

  “All right, then why doesn’t he just pack up and go? For that matter, why don’t you all take off? That would close the case as soon as you’re through those big iron gates out there.”

  “He won’t go,” Sharon said helplessly. “He’s not afraid to die. He believes it’s just part of The Path. And if he won’t go, I won’t.”

  “How about your husband? Doesn’t he have any vote?”

  “You don’t have to sound so angry about it, Johnny. Andrew says this is his home, and he’s not going to be driven out of it by any threats. You can’t blame him, can you?”

  I fumbled in my jacket pocket for my cigarettes, and she thrust her hand into the pocket and came up with the pack and my lighter. Along the way we made finger contact that shocked the tiredness right out of me. She sat down on the edge of the couch, lit the cigarette and stuck it between my lips. There was no aura of Fleurs de Rocaille emanating from her. Just a body scent and warmth that was even more heady.

  I said, “Why did you marry Quist? It wasn’t money, I know that much. You were up to half a million and a percentage for your pictures, and you didn’t know what to do with that. So what was it?”

  “I had to marry him.” She was being very reasonable about it.

  “Of course. He chained you to the wall, heated up the irons—”

  “Please. After you and I—”

  “You split,” I said. “Not I.”

  “All right, then. After that, I went to Acapulco and stayed with Kalos. We had our Gatherings there.”

  “Is that what they call it now?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t what you think. There wasn’t any sex. Kalos doesn’t approve of sex outside marriage. It was just believers in The Path getting together.”

  I said, “Where does Quist come in?”

  “He has companies in Mexico, and they had a big party for him in Acapulco. Kalos took me there. There was a whole crowd around me, and then somebody came over and said Mr. Quist wanted to meet me. He was in a wheelchair and it was hard for him to get through the crowd. Then Kalos pointed at him and said to me: ‘That is the man you will marry. Tell him so.’ And I did. And that’s how it happened. We were married that weekend.”

  I said, “I am dreaming all this.”

  “No. The Path led me to him, Johnny.”

  I said, “You must have been whacked out of your mind. You must have been flying right through the sound barrier.”

  She vigorously shook her head in denial. “No. Since we—Since that time in Devon, I haven’t been on anything.”

  “No pills, no coke, no booze? Not even pot?”

  “Nothing at all. Kalos is against anything that leads you off The Path.”

  I flipped the cigarette butt into the fireplace and draped my arm across my eyes to block out the sight of her. I said, “Your husband paid me twenty thousand dollars just to come down here for a couple of days to ease your fears. Can you imagine what he paid for that heartwarming introduction to you?”

  “I thought of that afterward. And I asked him about it.”

  “Let me guess. He said there wasn’t any payment.”

  “That’s right.” She pulled my arm away from my eyes. “Look at me, Johnny. Andrew said so. And Kalos said there must have been some evil force in me that made me even ask. Maybe there was.”

  I said, “There’s an evil force in the Internal Revenue Service too. After you ran out on me I made a little study of the good teacher. Seems that the IRS had a lot of questions to ask him about undeclared income some years ago.”

  “I know about that. So does Andrew. But it all happened before Kalos found The Path.”

  I shoved her upright. Both my knees made popping sounds when I got to my feet. Seen in close-up this way, she had a clearly defined nose, short, straight, and flawless. And full lips, the lower perhaps a little too full. But then, hadn’t some keen observer once remarked that in all great beauty there is some small imperfection?

  I said, “Let’s put aside the transcendental crap and talk sense. Whatever’s going on here, your boy is better off elsewhere. There’s a flight to New York at ten, and I can be on it with him.”

  “I told you he won’t leave here, Johnny. Ask Andrew. He already had it out with Kalos. Will you please talk to Andrew right now?”

  “No. First a couple of hours’ sleep. Then Andrew.”

  Sharon said in distress, “But he’s expecting you now. Besides, I thought you’d have dinner with everybody and get a look at them. Dinner’s always eight o’clock here.”

  “On your way out arrange with somebody to bring me a personal wake-up call at nine-thirty and have a sandwich and coffee along. I’ll see Andrew at ten.”

  “He won’t like that, Johnny.”

  “Possibly not,” I said. “But that’s what can happen to a client who pays cash in advance.”

  It was Pablo who arrived with my wake-up call and my collation, an assortment of bite-sized finger sandwiches, each with a different-colored but similarly tasteless filling. I washed down a few of these samples of rich-man’s junk food with tepid coffee and briefly considered, and rejected, a needed shave and a change to less rumpled clothing. It went against the grain to prettify myself for this first meeting with His Majesty.

  According to Pablo, Mr. and Mrs. Quist occupied the south wing, ground floor. On the ground floor, which still looked as awesomely desolate as Grand Central at 2 A.M. I traveled south until I came to a transverse corridor displaying a series of massive doors. I knocked on the first one, and it was opened by a rangy young woman with a snubnosed, heavily freckled, very much alive face. Unkempt blond hair partly draping the face gave her something of a sheepdog appearance.

  “M. Riley?” I said. “Cartographer and humorist?” and she said, “My God, recognition at last. It’s J. Milano, I trust?”

  I said it was and that the J stood for Johnny among my friends, and she said that the M stood for Maggie.

  “Maggie,” I said. “Fine. I like it.”

  “You probably like corned beef and cabbage too,” she said, which, as it happened, I did.

  She led me through an anteroom into the sitting room beyond. Sharon was sunk into a huge armchair there, her legs tucked under her, an orange-colored binder of papers on her lap. The London flat had been stacked high with these brightly colored bind
ers. Movie scripts offered by the hopeful. Araujo sat at a table in the center of the room, brooding over a chessboard. On the other side of the table, backed against it, stood a wheelchair. Its occupant’s bald, deeply tanned head, a horseshoe of close-clipped gray hair bordering it, was all I could see of him. Playing without the aid of a board, Quist was calling his moves with quick authority. Araujo taking his brow-furrowed time with each move, looked more and more gloomy about his prospects.

  “Virgilio’s good,” Maggie confided to me sotto voce, “but it’s no contest. It’ll be over right quick.” So it was. Araujo grunted to indicate surrender and irritably started to place the pieces in their case. The wheelchair was battery-operated, as I saw when Quist spun it around to confront me. He had a good face, tough and smart, strong-featured and deeply lined. Not a bad copy of a Roman senator out of Caesar’s time who had seen it all and had, along the way, developed a finely honed sense of the ridiculous.

  Sharon had predicted a stormy greeting from him if I held to my own schedule. Instead, he seemed apologetic. “I must have given you a long hard day,” he said abruptly. He bore down on the arms of the chair and strained to get himself to a standing position. I was about to move forward and lend a hand, but seeing that the others remained unmoving I simply watched and waited. There were a couple of metal canes in a golf bag arrangement slung on the back of the chair. Balancing himself precariously, Quist drew them out, and with their help made his way the few steps toward me. He was wearing Bermuda shorts, and I couldn’t help glancing down at those spindly, twisted legs supporting the heavily muscled torso. Quist caught the glance. “Rheumatoid arthritis,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “No more than I.” We shook hands, and he had a powerful grip. “We can cut short the ceremony. Mrs. Quist, of course, is a most appreciative former client. Virgilio you’ve met. This is my almost indispensable Miss Riley. Now let’s move the troops into action.”

  He steered me—there was some question of who was steering whom—to a seat at the table, then made his slow way back to the wheelchair. Maggie took a place at the table. I followed suit. Sharon hunched deeper into the armchair.

  “Well,” Quist said to me, “any ready-made solution to our nasty little problem?”

  I said, yes, just get Daskalos off the scene.

  “Except that he doesn’t want to be gotten off,” Sharon said from her chair, and Quist said placatingly over his shoulder, “Of course, dear. That’s understood.”

  “Not by me,” I told him. “And I’m sure I’m not the only one here who knows who and what the man really is.”

  “Who and what he was,” Quist corrected, and Maggie remarked to the ceiling, “‘There are more things in heaven and earth—’”

  I looked from one to the other. “Two votes for Mr. Daskalos? He does exercise that old black magic, doesn’t he? But suppose I suggest, before I fall under the spell, that he’s the one behind your nasty little problem.”

  Maggie looked blank. Araujo looked inquiringly at Quist. Quist looked inquiringly at me. “For what conceivable reason?”

  I turned to Araujo. “Have you come up with anything that puts Daskalos outside suspicion?”

  “No. But please understand. The kind of person he appears to be now—”

  “Obviously a saint,” I said.

  Sharon came up behind Quist. She said to me, “Johnny, why make any such judgment before you’ve met him and the others? Or seen the letters. Or what happened to Rufus.”

  “Rufus?” I said, and Quist said, “The dog.” He reached out and drew Sharon around to his side. “Dear, if we don’t weigh every possibility—”

  “Oh, please,” Sharon said. “You know Kalos wouldn’t hurt any animal, much less kill it. Or write freaked-out letters to himself. Maggie, where are those letters?”

  Maggie plowed through the contents of an attaché case on a sideboard and returned with an envelope which she handed me. On it was typed To K. Daskalos. In it were three sheets of paper. I said to her, “Only one envelope?”

  “This was the last one. Kalos didn’t think of saving the others.”

  The notes were typed on heavy bond paper, a date at the head of each message, no signature following it.

  Monday, January 16

  I am in Hell. You have put me there and you must join me there. That will be the end of your Path. There is no return from Hell.

  That opening sentence tantalized me. Faust? It certainly had a Faustian ring to it.

  Thursday, January 19

  What was done to the dog shall be done to you. Hell waits. Soon you will enter it.

  I said to Quist, “Where was your dog killed?” and he answered with an effort, “In my office.” He cleared his throat. “A brutal piece of work. But the note coming up is really the clincher.”

  Sunday, January 22

  Now count the hours. Your final hour on earth ends midnight of this Wednesday.

  I said, “Short and sweet,” and Quist said, “At any rate, short. Did Virgilio tell you that on Friday a watchman here found a bloodied carving knife thrust into Daskalos’ door?”

  “He did. Also that you want to keep the police out of this. But if there are fingerprints on that knife—”

  “None,” Quist said. “Otherwise the police would have already been here to help identify them. If that’s your point.”

  “Something like that,” I admitted. “What about the typewriter? It doesn’t take an expert to see that everything here’s been done on the same machine—same dropped o’s and crooked t’s in each one—and if there’s any possible lead to that machine—”

  “Much more than a lead,” Araujo cut in. All eyes swiveled toward Maggie. She said to me ruefully, “It’s my machine. That dropped o and crooked t. My big old Hermes. I’m sure the stationery is mine too. Right out of my desk drawer.”

  I asked, “Where do you keep that machine?” but before she could answer, Quist abruptly said in the voice of exhaustion, “Show it to him, Maggie. And help any way you can.” He turned to me, huge beads of sweat suddenly gleaming on his forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning in the Annex. At ten. Now, if you’ll all excuse me—”

  Company dismissed.

  Steering me along the outside corridor Maggie said, “You have to understand that when he gets like that it means the pain’s setting in. Bad.”

  “What’s he do about it? Go heavy on the painkiller?”

  “No, he won’t let himself. Some mild sedative at most. And there’s a Jacuzzi in his bathroom. And of course Sharon holds his hand.”

  “Would you rather be the one holding it?”

  She broke stride for an instant. “Are you detecting now? Or is that a dirty mind spinning its wheels?”

  “Not dirty. Devious. You might as well get used to it. Were you on Quist’s payroll before his marriage?”

  “A couple of years before. But let’s get one thing straight. I’ve never had designs on Andrew, I’ve never gone to bed with him, I never expect to.”

  “That makes three things. Do all these doors along here open on Quist’s apartment?”

  “Most. Those are Sharon’s rooms. The next are Andrew’s. Then mine. But ease up, Milano.” She stopped and faced me. “You just kicked over a large can of worms. I’d like them all back in place before we proceed further.”

  “Sure. I’m sorry I kicked over your worms, ma’am.”

  “You should be. It’s not just that I respect Andrew too much to involve him in something smelly, it also happens that Sharon and I are totally simpática, and for very good reason.”

  “Very close friends?”

  “Very. I’ll admit it took time. When Andrew brought her home my first thought was, oh Jesus, here comes Hollywood. And what did she turn out to be? A little lost lamb. That’s what you found out too, wasn’t it, Milano?” She looked knowing. “And I’m not talking about her as just your client. I gather that was the least part of it.”

  “Do you mean she told you about us?�
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  “Who else could she tell? And when a female as vulnerable as that makes it with Sir Galahad she sure as hell yearns to tell somebody. But the point is that you know her at least as well as I do. So you must know I’m telling the truth about our relationship. Hers and mine.”

  I said, “It’s people like you that make detecting easy. Where’s Quist’s office?”

  “There.” She pushed open a door, and when I remarked on all these unlocked doors providing ready access to evil-doers she said too sweetly, “But, you see, this isn’t really the Hesperides Hilton. It happens to be a private home.”

  “A mighty big one,” I said. “And that’s a mighty big chip on your shoulder, isn’t it?”

  It served to cool her off. “Well, maybe so. But there’s always been that talk about Andrew and me. And it always makes me so goddam mad.”

  “Don’t let it,” I said. “You ought to know that kind of talk comes with the territory.”

  Except for its handsome Oriental carpet, there was nothing luxurious about Quist’s office. Plain businesslike furniture, some file cabinets. Across the room, a pair of slatted glass doors showed a dimly lit area beyond. “A terrace,” Maggie explained. “It runs the length of the building on this side.”

  “And I suppose that bleached-out patch in the carpet there—”

  Maggie seemed mesmerized by it. “Blood. A whole pool of it. Her luck, Sharon had to be the first one to walk in on the mess. It really hit her hard. And Andrew was crazy about that dog.”

  “What kind was it?”

  “Irish setter. A big good-natured slob if ever there was one.”

  “So Sharon was the first to walk in on the mess. Who was next?”

  Maggie thought it over. “A couple of the help. Then one of them phoned the Annex, where I was with Andrew, to tell us, so I guess we were next. Then everybody else piled in here.”

  “What is this Annex?”

  “Next building that way.” She waved southward. “Gym, pool, sauna, the works. Closed to the public until noon. Andrew sometimes uses it in the morning, and he likes his privacy there. That’s where you meet with him tomorrow.”