EATING A MAMOUL, WASHING IT DOWN WITH coffee from a thermos1, Hazard Yancy sat in an unmarked sedan directly in front of Rolf Reynerd’s apartment house in West Hollywood.
The early winter twilight2 would not descend3 for another thirty minutes, but under the pall4 of the storm, the city had an hour ago settled into a prolonged dusk. Activated5 by photoelectric6 sensors7, street-lamps glowed, painting a steely sheen on the needles of rain that stitched the gauzy gray sky ever closer to the earth.
Although it might appear that Hazard lingered over cookies on the city’s time, he was considering his approach to Reynerd.
After lunch with Ethan, he had returned to his desk in Homicide. In a couple hours, on the Internet and off, working both the keyboard and the phone, he had learned more than a little about his subject.
Rolf Reynerd was an actor who only intermittently8 made a living at his craft. Between occasional multi-episode supporting roles as a bad boy on one cheesy soap opera or another, he endured long periods of unemployment.
In an episode of The X-Files, he’d played a federal agent driven psychotic by an alien brain leech9. In an episode of Law & Order, he had [137] been a psychotic personal trainer who killed himself and his wife near the end of the first act. In a TV commercial for a deodorant10, he had been cast as a psychotic guard in a Soviet11 gulag; the spot had never gone national, and he’d made only a little money from it.
An actor unlucky enough to be typecast usually didn’t fall into that career trap until he’d experienced great success in a memorable12 role. Thereafter, the public had difficulty accepting him as any character type other than the one that had made him famous.
In Reynerd’s case, however, he seemed to have been typecast even in failure. This suggested to Hazard that certain qualities of the man’s personality and demeanor13 allowed him to portray14 only mentally unbalanced characters, that he played screw-loose well because several of his own screws had stripped threads.
Despite an unreliable flow of income, Rolf Reynerd lived in a spacious15 apartment in a handsome building, in a good neighborhood. He dressed well, frequented the hottest nightclubs with young actresses who had a taste for Dom Perignon, and drove a new Jaguar16.
According to former friends of Reynerd’s widowed mother, Mina, she doted on her son, believed that one day he would be a star, and subsidized him with a fat monthly check.
They were her former friends because Mina Reynerd had died four months ago. She’d first been shot in the foot, then beaten to death with a marble lamp encrusted with ornate ormolu mountings.
Her killer17 remained unknown. Detectives had turned up no leads in her case.
Not surprisingly, the sole heir to her estate had been her only child, poor typecast Rolf.
The actor had a dead-solid perfect alibi18 for the evening of his mother’s murder.
This didn’t either surprise Hazard or convince him of Reynerd’s innocence19. Sole heirs usually had airtight alibis20.
According to the medical examiner, Mina had been bludgeoned to death between 9:00 and 11:00 P.M. She’d been struck with such brutal21 [138] force that patterns of the bronze ormolu had been deeply imprinted22 on her flesh, even crushed into the bone of her forehead.
Rolf had been partying with his current girlfriend and four other couples from seven o’clock that evening until two o’clock in the morning. They had been a flashy, noisy, memorable group at the two trendy nightclubs between which they had divided their time.
Anyway, even though Mina’s murder remained unsolved, and even if Rolf’s alibi had been only that he’d stayed home alone, playing with himself, Hazard would have had no excuse to give the man a once-over. The case belonged to another detective.
By happy chance, one of Reynerd’s party pals23 that night—Jerry Nemo—was known to Hazard from another case, which opened a door.
Two months ago, a drug dealer24 named Carter Cook had been shot in the head. Apparently25 the murder had been incidental to robbery; Cook had been loaded with merchandise and cash.
Reynerd’s buddy26, Jerry Nemo, had placed a call to Cook’s cell phone an hour before the murder. Nemo was a customer, a cokehead. He set up a meet with Cook to score some blow.
Nemo was no longer under suspicion. No one in Los Angeles or anywhere on Planet Earth was still under suspicion. The Cook murder qualified27 as classic shitcan, a case unlikely ever to be solved.
Nevertheless, by pretending that Nemo remained a suspect, Hazard had an excuse to approach Reynerd and scope him out for Ethan.
He didn’t need an excuse for the purpose of satisfying Reynerd. Using just badge and bluster29, Hazard could spin a hundred stories convincing enough to persuade the party boy to open the door and answer questions.
Should Reynerd directly or indirectly30 disclose his obsession31 with Channing Manheim, however, or in the unlikely event that Reynerd revealed an intent to harm the movie star, Hazard would have to [139] refer the situation outside the Homicide Division for investigation32. Then he would need a credible33 intradepartmental explanation as to why he had been interviewing Reynerd in the first place, when information regarding Manheim had fallen into his lap.
By pretending that Reynerd’s snow-blowing buddy, Nemo, remained a suspect in the Carter Cook murder, Hazard could cover his ass28.
After licking powdered sugar and mamoul crumbs34 from his fingers, he got out of the car.
He didn’t bother with an umbrella. Considering that he presented nearly two linebackers’ worth of surface area to the rain, he would have needed a bumbershoot the size of a beach umbrella to shelter himself completely.
Approaching the apartment house, he proceeded briskly but did not run through the downpour. The building didn’t set far back from the street.
Besides, Hazard seldom accommodated himself to the world, for the world usually moved out of his way. He hardly noticed the rain.
Inside, he ignored the elevator and climbed the stairs.
He’d once been shot at in an elevator. He’d ridden up to the sixth floor, the doors had slid aside, and the perp had been waiting.
Targeted in an elevator, you don’t have much room to dodge35: As a place in which to be shot at, only a telephone booth and a parked car offered worse circumstances.
Hazard had been shot at while sitting in a parked car, but never while standing36 in a telephone booth. He expected that it was only a matter of time.
Waiting outside the elevator, the shooter had been packing a 9-mm pistol. And he’d been pants-wetting nervous.
If the freak had been either calm or armed with a shotgun, the outcome for Hazard would have been much bleaker37 than what happened.
[140] The first round had slammed into the cabin ceiling. The second blew a hole in the back wall. The third winged the stranger who had shared the elevator with Hazard.
As it turned out, the stranger, an IRS agent, was the intended target. Hazard had just been in the wrong place at an inconvenient38 time, marked for death only because he was a witness.
The IRS man had not recently dragged the gunman through a cruel audit39 or anything like that. He’d been jumping the shooter’s wife.
Instead of returning fire, Hazard had gone in under the pistol. He wrenched40 it away from the assailant, drove him across the hallway, hammered him into the wall, and compacted his testicles with a knee. Not accidentally, he broke the guy’s arm.
Later, for a few months during the divorce proceedings41, he dated the shooter’s wife. She wasn’t a bad woman. She’d just gotten mixed up with bad men.
Now, Hazard climbed to the second floor of the apartment house, not entirely42 comfortable with the confining nature of the stairwell.
At Apartment 2B, he rang the bell without hesitation43.
When Rolf Reynerd opened the door, he proved to be a perfect match for Ethan’s description, down to the methamphetamine shine in his cold blue eyes and to the tiny flecks44 of foamy45 spittle in the corners of. his mouth, which suggested that he was so routinely amped that he might, in a moment of toxic46 psychosis, spin wildly around his apartment under the misapprehension that he was Spiderman squirting silky filaments47 from his wrists.
Hazard flashed his ID, spread a garden-growing load of crap about Jerry Nemo being a suspect in the death of Carter Cook, and got into the apartment so fast that rain still dripped from his earlobes.
A product of weight training and protein powders, Reynerd looked as if he would have to eat a dozen raw eggs every morning merely to sustain the muscle mass in his right triceps.
Of the two of them, Hazard Yancy was the bigger and no doubt the smarter, but he cautioned himself to remain wary48, alert.
[141] Reynerd closed the apartment door and escorted Hazard into the living room, expressing a sincere desire to cooperate, as well as a sincere conviction that his good friend Jerry Nemo was incapable49 of harming a fly.
Regardless of how fly-loving Nemo might or might not be, Reynerd troweled on the sincerity50 as thickly as he might have done had he been wearing a purple-dinosaur costume, teaching little life lessons to preschoolers on an early-morning TV program.
If his acting51 had been this dreadful when he’d appeared on those soap operas, the writers must have been frantic52 to script Reynerd into a deadly car accident or a lightning-quick terminal brain tumor53. The audience might have preferred a bloody54 end for him, by shotgun in an elevator.
Furniture, carpet, blinds, photographs of birds: Everything in the apartment was black-and-white. On the TV, in an old black-and-white movie, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert showed Reynerd how it ought to be done.
In black slacks and a black-and-white sport shirt, the sincere friend of Jerry Nemo had coordinated55 his wardrobe with the decor.
At the suggestion of his host, Hazard settled in an armchair. He perched on the edge, the better to get up fast.
Reynerd plucked the remote control off the coffee table, pausing Gable in midspeech and Colbert in reaction. He sat on the sofa.
The only color in the room was provided by Reynerd’s blue eyes and by the bright designs that enlivened the two bags of potato chips that flanked him on the sofa.
The bag to his left offered Hawaiian-style chips. The bag to his right held a sour-cream-and-chive variety. Mr. Gourmet56.
Hazard had not forgotten Ethan’s enigmatic but intense warning about snack-food containers.
Both bags were open, standing upright, plump enough to be full. Hazard detected the faint oily aroma57 of the chips.
If the bags contained handguns as well as chips, Hazard wasn’t able [142] to smell the weapons. He couldn’t see them, either, because the bags, made of foil, were not transparent58.
Reynerd sat with his hands palms-down on his thighs59, licking his lips, as though he might reach for a salty treat at any moment.
With a nod to indicate the frozen image on the TV, the actor said, “That’s the perfect medium for me. I was born too late. I should have lived back then.”
“When’s that?” Hazard asked, for he knew that suspects often revealed the most when they seemed to be rambling60.
“The 1930s and ’40s. When all films were black-and-white. I’d have been a star in those days.”
“Is that right?”
“I’m too strong a personality for color films. I explode off the screen. I overwhelm the medium, the audience.”
“I can see where that would be a problem.”
“In the color era, the most successful stars have all been flat personalities61, shallow. They’re an inch wide, half an inch deep.”
“And why is that?”
“The color, the depth of field made possible by modern cameras, surround-sound technology—all that stuff makes flat personalities bigger than life, provides them with a powerful illusion of substance and complexity62.”
“You, on the other hand—”
“I, on the other hand, am wide and deep and so alive to begin with that the further enhancement of modern film technology puts me over the top, makes a caricature of me.”
“That must be frustrating,” Hazard commiserated63.
“You can’t imagine. In black-and-white film, I would fill the screen without overwhelming the audience. Where are the Bogarts and Bacalls of our age, the Tracys and Hepburns, the Cary Grants and the Gary Coopers and the John Waynes?”
“We don’t have them,” Hazard acknowledged.
[143] “They couldn’t succeed today,” Reynerd assured him. “They would be too powerful for modern film, too deep, entirely too glamorous64. What did you think of Moonshaker?” Hazard frowned. “Of what?”
“Moonshaker. Channing Manheim’s latest hit. Two hundred million dollars at the box office.”
Perhaps Reynerd was so obsessed65 with Manheim that sooner or later in any conversation, he would bring the subject around to the star.
Wary nonetheless, Hazard said, “I don’t go to the movies.”
“Everybody goes.”
“Not really. Fewer than thirty million tickets have to be sold to generate two hundred million bucks66. Maybe just ten percent of the country.”
“All right, but other people see it on TV, on DVD.”
“Maybe another thirty million. Pick any particular movie—at least eighty percent of the country never sees it. They have lives to live.”
Reynerd seemed to boggle at the notion that movies were not the hub of the world. Although he didn’t reach for a gun in either of the chip-bag holsters, his displeasure with this turn in the conversation was evident.
Hazard got back in the actor’s good graces by saying, “Now, in the black-and-white era you’re talking about, half the country went to the movies once a week. Stars were stars in those days. Everybody knew Clark Gable’s movies, Jimmy Stewart’s.”
“Exactly,” Reynerd agreed. “Manheim would have faded away in the black-and-white era. He would have been too thin for the medium, too flat. He’d be forgotten now. Worse than forgotten—he’d be unknown.”
The doorbell rang.
Sounding puzzled and mildly annoyed, Reynerd said, “I’m not expecting anyone.”
[144] “Me neither,” Hazard said dryly.
Reynerd glanced at the windows, where the sodden67 gray twilight slowly expired beyond the glass.
He shifted his attention to the television. Gable and Colbert remained frozen in flirtatious68 argument.
At last Reynerd rose from the sofa, but then hesitated, looking down at the bags of potato chips.
Watching this peculiar69 performance, Hazard wondered if the actor was approaching that amped-out condition in which a meth freak can slide precipitously from a peak of hyperacute awareness70 down into a haze71 of disorientation, into crushing exhaustion72.
When the bell rang again, Reynerd finally crossed the living room. “These geeks are always coming around selling Jesus,” he said irritably73, wearily, and opened the door.
From the armchair, Hazard couldn’t see who fired the shots. The hard boom, boom, boom of three rapid reports, however, told him that the killer was packing a high-caliber piece, maybe a .357, or bigger.
Unless Seventh Day Adventists had adopted hard-sell techniques, Reynerd had been mistaken about the purpose of the caller.
Hazard came up from the armchair on the second boom, reached for his bolstered74 pistol on the third.
As mortal now as even Gable and Bogart had proved to be, Reynerd jolted75 backward, went down, casting a Technicolor splatter across the black-and-white apartment in which he had been so wide, so deep, so alive.
Moving toward the actor, Hazard heard running footsteps in the public hall.
Reynerd had taken three rounds point-blank in his broad chest, including one that must have punched significant scraps76 of his heart muscle through an exit wound in his back. He’d been mortuary material even as he fell.
The death-blinded blue of the actor’s shock-widened eyes seemed [145] less cold than they had been in life. He looked as if he needed some Jesus now.
Hazard stepped over the body, out of the apartment. He saw the shooter reach the end of the hallway. The guy leaped down the stairs two at a time. Hazard went after him.
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thermos
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| n.保湿瓶，热水瓶 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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activated
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| adj. 激活的 动词activate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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photoelectric
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| adj.光电的，光电效应的 | |
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sensors
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| n.传感器，灵敏元件( sensor的名词复数 ) | |
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intermittently
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| adv.间歇地；断断续续 | |
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leech
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| n.水蛭，吸血鬼，榨取他人利益的人；vt.以水蛭吸血；vi.依附于别人 | |
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deodorant
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| adj.除臭的；n.除臭剂 | |
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Soviet
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| adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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demeanor
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| n.行为；风度 | |
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portray
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| v.描写，描述；画(人物、景象等) | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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jaguar
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| n.美洲虎 | |
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killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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alibi
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| n.某人当时不在犯罪现场的申辩或证明；借口 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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alibis
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| 某人在别处的证据( alibi的名词复数 )； 不在犯罪现场的证人； 借口； 托辞 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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imprinted
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| v.盖印（imprint的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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pals
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| n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙 | |
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dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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buddy
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| n.（美口）密友，伙伴 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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bluster
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| v.猛刮；怒冲冲的说；n.吓唬，怒号；狂风声 | |
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indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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bleaker
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| 阴冷的( bleak的比较级 )； （状况）无望的； 没有希望的； 光秃的 | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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audit
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| v.审计；查帐；核对；旁听 | |
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wrenched
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| v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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flecks
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| n.斑点，小点( fleck的名词复数 )；癍 | |
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foamy
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| adj.全是泡沫的，泡沫的，起泡沫的 | |
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toxic
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| adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的 | |
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filaments
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| n.（电灯泡的）灯丝( filament的名词复数 )；丝极；细丝；丝状物 | |
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wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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tumor
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| n.（肿）瘤，肿块(英)tumour | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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coordinated
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| adj.协调的 | |
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gourmet
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| n.食物品尝家；adj.出于美食家之手的 | |
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aroma
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| n.香气，芬芳，芳香 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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commiserated
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| v.怜悯，同情( commiserate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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glamorous
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| adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的 | |
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obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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bucks
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| n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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67
sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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68
flirtatious
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| adj.爱调情的，调情的，卖俏的 | |
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69
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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70
awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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71
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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72
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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73
irritably
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| ad.易生气地 | |
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74
bolstered
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| v.支持( bolster的过去式和过去分词 )；支撑；给予必要的支持；援助 | |
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75
jolted
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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