Astonished, Buckman said, “But there is no Jason Taverner file.”
“Apparently someone else had it out,” Peggy said. “Anyhow they just put it on the wire, so they must have just now gotten it back. There’s no note of explanation; Data Central merely—”
“Go away and let me look at it,” Buckman said.
Quietly, Peggy Beason left his office, closing the door behind her.
“I shouldn’t have talked to her like that,” Buckman said to Herb Maime.
“It’s understandable.”
Opening the Jason Taverner file, Buckman uncovered a glossy eight-by-five publicity still. Clipped to it a memo read: Courtesy of the Jason Taverner Show, nine o’clock Tuesday nights on NBC.
“Jesus God,” Buckman said. The gods, he thought, are playing with us. Pulling off our wings.
Leaning over, Herb looked to see, too. Together, they gazed down at the publicity still, wordlessly, until finally Herb said, “Let’s see what else there is.”
Buckman tossed the eight-by-five photo aside with its memo, read the first page of the file.
“How many viewers?” Herb said.
“Thirty million,” Buckman said. Reaching, he picked up his phone. “Peggy,” he said, “get the NBC-TV outlet here in L.A. KNBC or whatever it is. Put me through to one of the network executives, the higher the better. Tell them it’s us.”
“Yes, Mr. Buckman.”
A moment later a responsible-looking face appeared on the phone screen and in Buckman’s ear a voice said, “Yes, sir. What can we do for you, General?”
“Do you carry the Jason Taverner Show?” Buckman said.
“Every Tuesday night for three years. At nine o’clock sharp.”
“You’ve aired it for three years?”
“Yes, General.”
Buckman hung up the phone.
“Then what was Taverner doing in Watts,” Herb Maime said, “buying forged ID cards?”
Buckman said, “We couldn’t even get a birth record on him. We worked every data bank that exists, every newspaper file. Have you ever heard of the Jason Taverner Show on NBC at nine o’clock Tuesday night?”
“No,” Herb said cautiously, hesitating.
“You’re not sure?”
“We’ve talked so much about Taverner—”
“I never heard of it,” Buckman said. “And I watch two hours of TV every night. Between eight and ten.” He turned to the next page of the file, hurling the first page away; it fell to the floor and Herb retrieved it.
On the second page: a list of the recordings that Jason Taverner had made over the years, giving title, stock number, and date. He stared sightlessly at the list; it went back nineteen years.
Herb said, “He did tell us he’s a singer. And one of his ID cards put him in the musicians’ union. So that part is true.”
“It’s all true,” Buckman said harshly. He flipped to page three. It disclosed Jason Taverner’s financial worth, the sources and amounts of his income. “A lot more than I make,” Buckman said, “as a police general. More than you and I make together.”
“He had plenty of money when we had him in here. And he gave Kathy Nelson a hell of a lot of money. Remember?”
“Yes, Kathy told McNulty that; I remember it from McNulty’s report.” Buckman pondered, meanwhile mindlessly dog-earing the edge of the Xerox page. And then ceased. Abruptly.
“What is it?” Herb said.
“This is a Xerox copy. The file at Data Central is never pulled; only copies are sent out.”
Herb said, “But it has to be pulled to be Xeroxed.”
“A period of five seconds,” Buckman said.
“I don’t know,” Herb said. “Don’t ask me to explain it. I don’t know how long it takes.”
“Sure you do. We all do. We’ve watched it done a million times. It goes on all day.”
“Then the computer erred.”
Buckman said, “Okay. He has never had any political affiliations; he’s entirely clean. Good for him.” He leafed further into the file. “Mixed up with the Syndicate for a while. Carried a gun but had a permit for it. Was sued two years ago by a viewer who said a blackout skit was a takeoff on him. Someone named Artemus Franks living in Des Moines. Taverner’s attorneys won.” He read here and there, not searching for anything in particular, just marveling. “His forty-five record, ‘Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up,’ which is his latest, has sold over two million copies. Ever heard of it?”
“I don’t know,” Herb said.
Buckman gazed up at him for a time. “I never heard of it. That’s the difference between you and me, Maime. You’re not sure. I am.”
“You’re right,” Herb said. “But I really don’t know, at this point. I find this very confusing, and we have other business; we have to think about Alys and the coroner’s report. We should talk to him as soon as possible. He’s probably still at the house; I’ll call him and you can—”
“Taverner,” Buckman said, “was with her when she died.”
“Yes, we know that. Chancer said so. You decided it wasn’t important. But I do think just for the record we should haul him in and talk to him. See what he has to say.”
“Could Alys have known him before today?” Buckman said. He thought, Yes, she always liked sixes, especially the ones in the entertainment field. Such as Heather Hart. She and the Hart woman had a three-month romance the year before last…a relationship which I almost failed to hear about: they did a good job of hushing it up. That was one time Alys kept her mouth shut.
He saw, then, in Jason Taverner’s file a mention of Heather Hart; his eyes fixed on it as he thought about her. Heather Hart had been Taverner’s mistress for roughly a year.
“After all,” Buckman said, “both of them are sixes.”
“Taverner and who?”
“Heather Hart. The singer. This file is up to date; it says Heather Hart appeared on Jason Taverner’s show this week. His special guest.” He tossed the file away from him, rummaged in his coat pocket for his cigarettes.
“Here.” Herb extended his own pack.
Buckman rubbed his chin, then said, “Let’s have the Hart woman brought in, too. Along with Taverner.”
“Okay.” Nodding, Herb made a note of that on his customary vest-pocket pad.
“It was Jason Taverner,” Buckman said quietly, as if to himself, “who killed Alys. Jealous over Heather Hart. He found out about their relationship.”
Herb Maime blinked.
“Isn’t that right?” Buckman gazed up at Herb Maime, steadily.
“Okay,” Herb Maime said after a time.
“Motive. Opportunity. A witness: Chancer, who can testify that Taverner came running out apprehensively and tried to get hold of the keys to Alys’s quibble. And then when Chancer went in the house to investigate, his suspicions aroused, Taverner ran off and escaped. With Chancer shooting over his head, telling him to stop.”
Herb nodded. Silently.
“That’s it,” Buckman said.
“Want him picked up right away?”
“As soon as possible.”
“We’ll notify all the checkpoints. Put out an APB. If he’s still in Los Angeles we may be able to catch him with an EEG-gram projection from a copter. A match of patterns, as they’re beginning to do now in New York. In fact we can have a New York police copter brought in just for this.”
Buckman said, “Fine.”
“Will we say that Taverner was involved in her orgies?”
“There were no orgies,” Buckman said.
“Holbein and those with him will—”
“Let them prove it,” Buckman said. “Here in a court in California. Where we have jurisdiction.”
Herb said, “Why Taverner?”
“It has to be somebody,” Buckman said, half to himself; he intertwined his fingers before him on the surface of his great antique oak desk. With his fingers he pressed convulsively, straining with all the force he possessed, one finger against anoth
er. “It always, always,” he said, “has to be somebody. And Taverner is somebody important. Just what she liked. In fact that’s why he was there; that’s the celebrity type she preferred. And”—he glanced up—“why not? He’ll do just fine.” Yes, why not? he thought, and continued grimly to press his fingers tighter and tighter together on the desk before him.
26
Walking down the sidewalk, away from Mary Anne’s apartment, Jason Taverner said to himself, My luck has turned. It’s all come back, everything I lost. Thank God!
I’m the happiest man in the whole fucking world, he said to himself. This is the greatest day of my life. He thought, You never appreciate it until you lose it, until all of a sudden you don’t have it any more. Well, for two days I lost it and now it’s back and now I appreciate it.
Clutching the box containing the pot Mary Anne had made, he hurried out into the street to flag down a passing cab.
“Where to, mister?” the cab asked as it slid open its door.
Panting with fatigue, he climbed inside, shut the door manually. “803 Norden Lane,” he said, “in Beverly Hills.” Heather Hart’s address. He was going back to her at last. And as he really was, not as she had imagined him during the awful last two days.
The cab zoomed up into the sky and he leaned gratefully back, feeling even more weary than he had at Mary Anne’s apartment. So much had happened. What about Alys Buckman? he wondered. Should I try to get in touch with General Buckman again? But by now he probably knows. And I should keep out of it. A TV and recording star should not get mixed up in lurid matters, he realized. The gutter press, he reflected, is always ready to play it up for all it’s worth.
But I owed her something, he thought. She cut off those electronic devices the pols fastened onto me before I could get out of the Police Academy building.
But they won’t be looking for me now. I have my ID back; I’m known to the entire planet. Thirty million viewers can testify to my physical and legal existence.
I will never have to fear a random checkpoint again, he said to himself, and shut his eyes in dozing sleep.
“Here we are, sir,” the cab said suddenly. His eyes flew open and he sat upright. Already? Glancing out he saw the apartment complex in which Heather had her West Coast hideaway.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, digging into his coat for his roll of paper money. “Thanks.” He paid the cab and it opened its door to let him out. Feeling in a good mood again, he said, “If I didn’t have the fare wouldn’t you open the door?”
The cab did not answer. It had not been programed for that question. But what the hell did he care? He had the money.
He strode up onto the sidewalk, then along the redwood rounds path to the main lobby of the choice ten-story structure that floated, on compressed air jets, a few feet from the ground. The flotation gave its inhabitants a ceaseless sensation of being gently lulled, as if on a giant mother’s bosom. He had always enjoyed that. Back East it had not caught on, but out here on the Coast it enjoyed an expensive vogue.
Pressing the stud for her apartment, he stood holding the cardboard box with its vase on the tips of the upraised fingers of his right hand. I better not, he decided; I might drop it like I did before, with the other one. But I’m not going to drop it; my hands are steady now.
I’ll give the damn vase to Heather, he decided. A present I picked up for her because I understand her consummate taste.
The viewscreen for Heather’s unit lit up and a female face appeared, peering at him. Susie, Heather’s maid.
“Oh, Mr. Taverner,” Susie said, and at once released the latch of the door, operated from within regions of vast security. “Come on in. Heather’s gone out but she—”
“I’ll wait,” he said. He skipped across the foyer to the elevator, punched the up button, waited.
A moment later Susie stood holding the door of Heather’s unit open for him. Dark-skinned, pretty and small, she greeted him as she always had: with warmth. And—familiarity.
“Hi,” Jason said, and entered.
“As I was telling you,” Susie said, “Heather’s out shopping but she should be back by eight o’clock. Today she has a lot of free time and she told me she wanted to make the best use of it because there’s a big recording session with RCA scheduled for the latter part of the week.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” he said candidly. Going into the living room, he placed the cardboard box on the coffee table, dead center, where Heather would be certain to see it. “I’ll listen to the quad and crash,” he said. “If it’s all right.”
“Don’t you always?” Susie said. “I’ve got to go out, too; I have a dentist’s appointment at four-fifteen and it’s all the way on the other side of Hollywood.”
He put his arm around her and gripped her firm right boob.
“We’re horny today,” Susie said, pleased.
“Let’s get it on,” he said.
“You’re too tall for me,” Susie said, and moved off to resume whatever she had been doing when he rang.
At the phonograph he sorted through a stack of recently played albums. None of them appealed to him, so he bent down and examined the spines of her full collection. From them he took several of her albums and a couple of his own. These he stacked up on the changer and set it into motion. The tone arm descended, and the sound of The Heart of Hart disc, a favorite of his, edged out and echoed through the large living room, with all its drapes beautifully augmenting the natural quad acoust-tones, spotted artfully here and there.
He lay down on the couch, removed his shoes, made himself comfortable. She did a damn good job when she taped this, he said to himself, half out loud. I’m as exhausted as I’ve ever been in my life, he realized. Mescaline does that to me. I could sleep for a week. Maybe I will. To the sound of Heather’s voice and mine. Why haven’t we ever done an album together? he asked himself. A good idea. Would sell. Well. He shut his eyes. Twice the sales, and Al could get us promotion from RCA. But I’m under contract to Reprise. Well, it can be worked out. There’s work in. Everything. But, he thought, it’s worth it.
Eyes shut, he said, “And now the sound of Jason Taverner.” The changer dropped the next disc. Already? he asked himself. He sat up, examined his watch. He had dozed through The Heart of Hart, had barely heard it. Lying back again he once more shut his eyes. Sleep, he thought, to the sound of me. His voice, enhanced by a two-track overlay of guitars and strings, resonated about him.
Darkness. Eyes open, he sat up, knowing that a great deal of time had passed.
Silence. The changer had played the entire stack, hours’ worth. What time was it?
Groping, he found a lamp familiar to him, located the switch, turned it on.
His watch read ten-thirty. Cold and hungry. Where’s Heather? he wondered, fumbling with his shoes. My feet cold and damp and my stomach is empty. Maybe I can—
The front door flew open. There stood Heather, in her cheruba coat, holding a copy of the L.A. Times. Her face, stark and gray, confronted him like a death mask.
“What is it?” he said, terrified.
Coming toward him, Heather held out the paper. Silently.
Silently, he took it. Read it.
“Did you kill Alys Buckman?” Heather rasped.
“No,” he said, reading the article.
Popular television personality Jason Taverner, star of his own hour-long evening variety show, is believed by the Los Angeles Pol Dept to have been deeply involved in what pol experts say is a carefully planned vengeance murder, the Policy Academy announced today. Taverner, 42, is sought by both
He ceased reading, crumpled the newspaper savagely. “Shit,” he said, then. Sucking in his breath he shuddered. Violently.
“It gives her age as thirty-two,” Heather said. “I know for a fact that she’s—was—thirty-four.”
“I saw it,” Jason said. “I was in the house.”
Heather said, “I didn’t know you knew her.”
“I just met her. T
oday.”
“Today? Just today? I doubt that.”
It’s true. General Buckman interrogated me at the academy building and she stopped me as I was leaving. They had planted a bunch of electronic tracking devices on me, including—”
“They only do that to students,” Heather said.
He finished, “And Alys cut them off. And then she invited me to their house.”
“And she died.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I saw her body as a withered yellow skeleton and it frightened me; you’re damn right it frightened me. I got out of there as quickly as I could. Wouldn’t you have?”
“Why did you see her as a skeleton? Had you two taken some sort of dope? She always did, so I suppose you did, too.”
“Mescaline,” Jason said. “That’s what she told me, but I don’t think it was.” I wish I knew what it was, he said to himself, his fear still freezing his heart. Is this a hallucination brought on by it, as was the sight of her skeleton? Am I living this or am I in that fleabag hotel room? He thought, Good God, what do I do now?
“You better turn yourself in,” Heather said.
“They can’t pin it on me,” he said. But he knew better. In the last two days he had learned a great deal about the police who ruled their society. Legacy of the Second Civil War, he thought. From pigs to pols. In one easy jump.
“If you didn’t do it they won’t charge you. The pols are fair. It’s not as if the nats are after you.”
He uncrumpled the newspaper, read a little more.
believed to be an overdose of a toxic compound administered by Taverner while Miss Buckman was either sleeping or in a state
“They give the time of the murder as yesterday,” Heather said. “Where were you yesterday? I called your apartment and didn’t get any answer. And you just now said—”
“It wasn’t yesterday. It was earlier today.” Everything had become uncanny; he felt weightless, as if floating along with the apartment into a bottomless sky of oblivion. “They backdated it. I had a pol lab expert on my show once and after the show he told me how they—”
“Shut up,” Heather said sharply.