Potshot

"Tell me about Steve," I said.

She leaned forward a little, resting her elbows on her thighs, and put her face into her hands.

I waited. She sat. Maybe overreaction was endemic. Or maybe she was a very dramatic person. Or maybe Steve was more than someone she knew at work.

After awhile I said, "How you doing?"

Without taking her face from her hands, she shook her head.

"Take your time," I said.

The lady walking her possum turned the corner at Wilshire and disappeared. One of the gardeners across the street was edging the grass now, with a noisy power trimmer.

"Did he suffer much?" Sara said finally.

"He was probably dead before he knew he'd been shot," I said.

I didn't know that, but I saw no reason not to say it.

"Did she do it?" Sara said.

She was still in her position of official mourning and as she talked she rocked a little, forward and back.

"She?" I said.

"Mary Lou. Did she kill him?"

"I don't know. You think?"

She raised her head.

"I think that she would do anything."

"Really?" I said.

"You wouldn't see it. You're a man."

"And you're a woman," I said.

"What?"

"Just trying to hold up my end of the conversation," I said.

"Well you wouldn't. She'd fool you. Blue eyes. Cute. Sweet. She'd show you her dimples and ask for your help and you'd be falling over yourself like some big puppy."

"Woof," I said.

"You can laugh at me if you want to," Sara said, a little pouty. "But it's true."

"Probably is." l said. "Why do you think she might have killed him?"

"Because she couldn't control him, though she never stopped trying. She resented authenticity. She was frightened of the untamed self."

The sky was cloudless. It was 75 and bright. I could smell olive trees.

"His?" I said.

"His, her own…" Sara made a you-know-what-Imean gesture and her voice trailed off.

"How untamed was that?" I said.

"As untamed as yours… or mine."

"That untamed?" I said.

"You're laughing at me again."

"That was just a quizzical smile," I said. "You know this, how?"

"We were… friends."

"Not just someone you knew at work."

"I'm sorry," she said. "That was reflexive. I've become used to evasion."

"The world is too much with us, lately."

"My God, a literate detective?"

"Goes with good-looking," I said. "You and Steve were close friends."

"Yes."

"Do you know if he had any source of income other than Fairfax High?"

"Well they ran that camping business out in the desert. She did, really."

"Anything else?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Well Mary Lou is paying me a fair sum to investigate," I said. "Without complaint. Life insurance?"

"I suppose so, but I can't imagine that it was huge… a teacher's salary. She's paying you?"

I nodded.

"Did Mary Lou know you and Steve were good friends?"

"I don't know what she knew. She was no trembling virgin herself."

"Mary Lou?"

"See, you're shocked aren't you? Any woman could see through her."

"Why that untamed vixen," I said.

"It was all right for her, but not for Steve."

"Gee that doesn't sound fair," I said.

"No," she said, pouty again. "It wasn't."

The landscaper finished his power trimming and the sudden quiet was almost intrusive. Then as my ears adjusted I could hear the traffic on Wilshire. I kept at Sara for as long as I could stand to, but I had learned what I was going to learn from her and I finally said good-bye and went back to Beverly Hills.

Chapter 27

THE HOTEL ROOM was awash with tissue paper and shopping bags. Amid it all, and somehow above it, Susan was trying on some new duds, and examining them carefully in the mirror.

"Would you have any interest in exploring my authentic untamed self?" I said.

"Your what?"

"My untamed self," I said.

"God, if I haven't encountered it yet, I don't think I want to."

"You got something against authenticity?" I said.

"No. I'm just afraid I'll get hurt."

"Maybe later when I've calmed down," I said.

"Maybe," Susan said. "What brought on this sudden attack of authenticity?"

I told her about Sara.

"We assume Sara was having an affair with Steve Buckman?" Susan said.

"Yes. But a fully authentic one," I said.

"What would an inauthentic affair be?" Susan said.

"One which used a battery-powered device?"

"Do you like this skirt?" Susan said.

"I'm not sure," I said. "Better take it off and put it on again."

"Is lechery authentic?" Susan said.

"You bet," I said.

Susan put on a blouse.

"So if we are to believe What'shername…"

"Sara."

"Mary Lou were fooling around with other people, and at least from Whosis's perspective…"

"Sara," I said.

"From Sara's perspective Mary Lou was, and perhaps is, a bitch."

"Sara's perspective may be somewhat skewed," I said, "by her being a nitwit."

Susan examined in the mirror the way some new pants fit her. She smiled. Apparently she was pleased. Me too.

"That skews a lot of perspectives," she said.

"Present company excluded," I said. "You wa

"Let's go someplace I can wear my new clothes," she said.

There was always something in her eyes that suggested we'd have more fun than we could imagine, whatever we did.

"Does this mean I have to cancel the reservation at Fat Burger?"

She said that it did. She also declined Pink's for a chili dog and we ended up at The Buffalo Club on a dark stretch of Olympic, in Santa Monica. We sat together on the same side of the booth and had a Ketel One martini, or two, and studied the menu. We ordered some oyster shooters and pot roast and ate them. That is, I ate them. Susan had two shooters, and half her pot roast, cutting the other half away before she started and carefully putting one half on her butter plate lest, God forbid, she should eat it by mistake and balloon to 130. I helped. I had her leftover oyster shooters, and the pot roast from her butter plate, and virtuously declined dessert.

Outside I gave the ticket to the valet and held Susan's hand while we watched the desultory traffic plod by in the dark. A silver Lexus pulled up and two men got out. The valet went forward and the first man shook his head. He looked like a mature surfer. Long blond hair, pale blue eyes, sun-darkened skin, which didn't fully conceal the broken veins of a boozer on his cheeks. He was wearing a pair of brown slacks, a brown shirt buttoned to the neck, a small diamond stud in his right earlobe and a camelhair jacket. The jacket was unbuttoned. The guy with him was all edges and angles. Small, lean, hard, pale, with spiky hair and a sharp hooked nose. His eyes were like the windows in an empty house. He had on big shorts and a flowered shirt that hung over his belt. The surfer stopped in front of me. He stood very close.