Stardust

“Tell me a little about her, Mr. Craig.”

“About Jill? Well… brilliant talent, truly. And a real pro. A pleasure to work with. I consider Jilly not only a client but a friend.”

“No,” I said, “I’m talking about Jill Joyce, the former Jillian Zabriskie.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I put my left ankle over my right knee and laced my fingers behind my head. My New Balance ru

“I’ve worked with her too, Mr. Craig.”

“Ken.”

“And I know what you must know… that she’s an imperial pain in the ass.”

Craig stared at me politely for a moment and then his face slowly creased into a smile.

“Of course she is,” he said. “But she is also the number one television star in these United States.”

“Which means she’s a valuable commodity.”

“Exactly,” Craig said.

“So tell me about her as, what we investigators like to call, a person.”

Craig frowned.

“You know, what’s she like? What causes her pain? What gives her happiness?” I said.

“Talk about her not as a client but as a friend.”

Craig continued to frown. “I don’t…” he said and paused and seemed to be trying to regroup. “I don’t really think… ah…”

“These questions too hard for you, Ken?”

“Well, perhaps I shouldn’t, you know. Perhaps I’m not at liberty… ”

“Perhaps you don’t know,” I said. I could feel the telltale stirring in the trapezius muscles. I was tiring of the television business. “Perhaps that stuff about her being client and friend was bullshit, and you don’t know how to say anything that isn’t bullshit.”

“Wait just a minute,” Ken said. “I’m responsible for Jill’s professional life. Her personal life is hers.”

“You ever meet her family?”

Craig looked surprised. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know she had any.”

“Un huh.”

188

“Well, that’s not quite true. She has a father. I met him once.”

“Run into him at Spago?” I said.

Craig snorted. “Hardly,” he said. “He came here once. Looking for money, as I recall. Said he couldn’t get a response from Jill. We ushered him out, politely.”

“What did he want the money for?” I said.

“Down and out, I assume. He didn’t look very successful.”

“What was his name?” I said.

“Zabriskie, ah, Bill, Bill Zabriskie.”

“He live around here?”

“I don’t know,” Craig said. “I assume he lives somewhere in Los Angeles.”

“You have any thoughts on why someone would threaten Jill, or harass her, or attempt to kill her?”

“Certainly no one in the industry,” Craig said. “She’s a television money machine.”

“The industry,” I said.

“Yeah, you know, the business.”

“Of course,” I said. “How about motives other than money?”

“Such as?” Craig said.

“I know this is hard,” I said, “but maybe passion, jealousy, rage, unrequited love, unrequited lust, revenge, stuff like that.”

“Well,” Craig was thinking carefully, “Jill, as you pointed out, can be difficult.”

“Like life itself,” I said. “What do you think? Any disgruntled lovers, angry suitors, any history of wacko fans? Anything that might help?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Spenser, I really can’t be much help. Jill’s a wonderful girl and I love her madly, but…” He shrugged. “I try to keep my clients’ private affairs separate from our professional relationship.”

“But you know her TVQ,” I said.

“I resent that,” Craig said.

“I don’t care.”

“What makes you think you’re some kind of East Coast tough guy can walk in here and insult me?”

“I am some kind of East Coast tough guy,” I said. “And a man would have to have a heart of stone not to insult you.”

“You better just watch your step, pal,” Craig said. He stood up as he said it and looked as menacing as the angora rat that had yapped at me in his waiting room.

“That’s the problem with you television guys,” I said. “You have no sense of reality. Look at me. Look at you. Consider the plausibility of standing up and telling me to watch my step.”

Craig stared at me for a moment, then he pressed the button on his intercom and said, “Jasmine. Would you come in here and show Mr. Spenser out, please.”

“Ah,” I said, “at last a worthy adversary.” Jasmine came in, smiled at me like a klieg light and held the door open. I started out.

“When we go through the waiting room, Jasmine, try to stay between me and that savage guinea pig.”

“I’ll be with you,” Jasmine said, “every step of the way.”

Chapter 27

THERE were seven Zabriskies in the L.A. books, but only one William. I tried him first and he was the one. He lived in an apartment building in Hollywood, on Vermont Avenue, south of Franklin. It was built during what L.A. thinks are the old days, around 1932, under the impression that it was going to be a Moorish palace. It was named The Balmoral and it was built in a squat U shape around an open courtyard with a fountain in the middle that didn’t work. There were architectural curlicues along the entire top of the building and each window had a white marble lintel set into the brown stucco. Most of the windows were open in the heat and here and there a dirty curtain fluttered wanly in the languid air.

Occasionally there was a fan, and an air conditioner protruded from one window. A sidewalk of concrete stairs led through the center of the courtyard, Y’d around the dry fountain and led to the glass front door, which had chipped gilt letters that said THE BALMORAL. Some newspapers, still rolled, were yellowing inside the doorway. There were a few tired-looking yucca trees declining on either side, and the vestiges of untended plantings scrabbled for life on the hard-baked soil of the courtyard. It smelled hot, and it sounded hot with the slow drone of insects amplified by the three enclosing walls. Through the open windows I could hear a television playing. The door was supposed to lock automatically, but the frame was warped and the door didn’t close tight. I pushed it open and went in. I was wearing a light sport coat to hide my gun. It felt like a mackinaw in the glassed-in entry. I could feel the sweat begin to form along my backbone and trickle down. William Zabriskie was listed on the first floor, number 103. I went into the lobby; it was littered with discarded junk mail and reeked with heat. Once it had been ornate, with carved wood paneling and marble floors. The paneling was warped now, with its oak veneer peeling off. The marble floors were deeply stained and there were dried yucca leaves in the corners. I stood for a moment in the silent stifling lobby. It was old. The building was old. The yucca leaves in the corner were old. The twocolor flyers for supermarket sales seemed as if they were probably there when the building was built. The windows across from the door were shut and looked as if they wouldn’t open. No air stirred. The light filtering through the windows was grayed by its passage through the dirt on the windows. What light got through highlighted the dust motes that moped in the still air.

“Old,” I said. My voice was harsh in the heavy stillness.

I went down the acrid, dingy corridor and knocked on number 103. When the door opened I felt the faint stir of air from an open window inside. Zabriskie was a tall old man with no shirt. He wasn’t fat, but age had made his muscles sag and the skin hung loose and dry as parchment beneath the thin scatter of gray hair on his chest. His hair was gray too, longish and combed straight back all around. He was still handsome, though the line along his jaw had blurred, and there was too much skin around his eyes so that he seemed heavy-lidded. He seemed familiar until I realized that Jill took after him. He was wearing white polyester pants-the kind that don’t take a belt and close by a buttoned tab over the middle. On his feet he had woven sandals. He looked at me without comment, his eyebrows raised a little in inquiry. I gave him my card.