“We’re sorry to trouble you, Mr. Mahler,” Driscoll said as he gave him his card. “We understand you’re making a movie down here.”
“That’s true,” Mahler said. He glanced at the card, then took a closer look at the two of them. The Chinese man who’d admitted them into the house stood just behind him, his hands behind his back in a casual pose, his eyes missing nothing. Dressed all in black—turtleneck, slacks, even his high-tops—he was the picture of some latter-day palace guard.
Deal noted a speck of shaving cream on Mahler’s ear, sensed a wavering in his gaze as their eyes met, but maybe the latter was just a trick of the lighting. They were in the vast living room, the place still gloomy, even with a couple of parchment-shaded floor lamps burning. There were banks of big windows flanking the fireplace on one wall, but the sun had yet to clear the jagged desert peaks visible in the east.
“So what is it, a Western?” Deal asked.
“Actually,” Mahler said after a moment, “it’s a contemporary piece. We’re using one wing of the estate to do some interior shooting.”
Driscoll nodded. “Your wife’s place, I understand.”
Mahler nodded, apparently surprised by what Driscoll knew. “There’s quite a bit of film history connected with this location,” he said. “
The Devil’s Due
was shot in this very room, with Constance MacKenzie and Humphrey Bogart. You remember the famous death scene?” He pointed. “Right over there by the fireplace?”
Driscoll glanced over, shrugged. Deal couldn’t tell if that meant he remembered. “You make a lot of films, Mr. Mahler?”
Mahler gave him a look. The man was gathering strength, Deal thought. “It’s my first, Mr.…”
“Driscoll,” the ex-cop said. “Vernon Driscoll. This is John Deal.” No one offered to shake hands.
Mahler nodded. “Most of my life I’ve spent getting people into movies,” he said. “I’m really an agent.” He waved his hand about. “I’m just down here indulging a whim.”
“I’ve never seen a movie being made,” Deal said, letting the suggestion linger.
“Not very exciting, I’m afraid.”
“It’d be worth it, just to see what goes on,” Deal said.
Mahler gave a shrug of his own. “We’re having to keep our sets closed,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Deal said, feeling his innate distrust growing. “Why’s that?”
Mahler let out his breath with a sigh. “Tell me, Mr. Deal, is that it? Is that why you sought me out? Because you’d like to watch a movie being made?”
Driscoll cut in. “No, Mr. Mahler, it isn’t.”
Mahler turned back to him then, and the two men faced each other for a moment. Deal noted a movement out in the hallway, saw a familiar hulking shape appear briefly in silhouette, then disappear.
“There’s a phone number on the back of the card there,” Driscoll said. “I wonder if you’d mind taking a look at it.”
Mahler’s eyes stayed on Driscoll for a moment, but finally he gave in, turned the card over. Deal watched intently, but if the man had a reaction to what was written there, it was not visible. When Mahler looked up, his gaze went to Deal.
“I owned a portable phone with that number,” he said.
“
Owned
…?” Deal said. He felt menace creeping into his voice, saw Driscoll shoot him a warning glance. He tried to force himself to be patient. What he wanted to do was jack this scumbag up by the balls, squeeze him until he sang opera.
“I lost it,” Mahler said, still looking at Deal. “Or else it was stolen. I haven’t seen it in several days.” His face brightened with false cheer. “Maybe you’ve found it?”
Deal shook his head. “Did you lose it down here?” he asked.
Mahler pursed his lips. “Back in Los Angeles,” he said. “I haven’t missed it,” he said. “I think it’s a dead area down here, to tell the truth.”
“No,” Deal said. “There’s cellular service here. We checked.” He thought he saw a glimmer of approval on Driscoll’s face: Deal the detective, grinding the guy the proper way.
There was a pause as Mahler seemed to gauge Deal’s intentions. “Well, that’s good to know,” Mahler said finally. “But if that’s all, gentlemen, I’ve got a busy day coming up…”
“You represent Paige Nobleman?” Driscoll cut in.
Mahler broke off, fairly glaring back at him. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because, Mr. Mahler,” Driscoll said, “that’s what we’re doing here. She hired me to do some work for her down in Miami, and then she disappeared. I thought you might have heard from her.”
Mahler took a moment, then walked over to one of the broad windows and stared out toward the mountains, which had begun to shade from blackness into various purple hues. The very highest of the peaks seemed to glow, backlit now by the sun.
“The last I heard from Paige, she was in Miami,” Mahler said. “She’d just returned from the hospital where her mother had died.” He turned back to them. “She was extremely distraught. She said she’d had a row with her sister and told me she wouldn’t be returning to Los Angeles as planned.” He threw up his hands. “She wouldn’t say why.
“We’ve been involved with some tricky negotiations with a British film company concerning a part for her and I told her it was important that she hold to her schedule, but she was too upset to listen. When I tried to get back to her, I found out she’d left her hotel.” He shook his head in concern. “I’ve been worried myself. Paige hasn’t been herself lately, and then all these family concerns…” He trailed off.
“Was there something specific that was troubling her?” Deal asked.
“Just the usual,” Mahler said. “I think she was having troubles with the fellow she’d been seeing…and she’d hit the wall for an actress, too old for the obligatory sex interest roles, not quite well enough established to be in the running for the more serious parts, what few there are for women…” He shrugged. “That’s why these negotiations were so important.” He gazed out at the mountains again, the very picture of concern. “Paige just seemed to be losing heart,” he said.
“You think she was capable of doing harm to herself?” Driscoll asked.
Mahler turned, looking as if it pained him to consider the possibility. “You know, gentlemen, you and I have jobs,” he said. “We have good days and bad days, of course, but we get up every morning knowing we’ve got an office to go to, calls to make, things to do.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “But an actor…” He broke off. “It’s a terribly tough business,” he said. “I’ve seen so many ruin their lives with drugs, drinking, impossible love affairs. Even the successful ones. So many of them seem to recognize how shifting are the sands their existences are founded upon.” He folded his hands in front of him and gave a wistful smile. “I know it must seem like a terribly glamorous life from the perspective of two private detectives from Florida. But the reality is quite otherwise, I can assure you.”
Driscoll nodded as if a grave truth had been passed along to him. “Well, I appreciate your concern, Mr. Mahler.” He gestured at the card again. “We’ll probably be out here in California for a few days, but if you hear anything from Ms. Nobleman, you could leave a message for us at that number.”
Mahler glanced at the card again, then stopped. He looked up at Driscoll, puzzled. “Are you sure this is right?” He gave the card back to Driscoll, who held it up to the light, puzzled. “Sorry,” Driscoll said, glancing sheepishly at Deal. “One of yours.” He showed him the DealCo emblem on the card he’d handed Mahler by mistake. “Always getting these things mixed up,” he mumbled, fishing in his wallet. He found one of the D & D Investigative Services cards with the corny hunting cap and magnifying glass logo, handed the card back to Mahler. “You’ll let us hear from you?” he repeated.
Deal could only imagine what the man thought. Confronted by two private detectives who have a sideline in the construction business? Whatever intimidation factor they might have walked in with, it was surely gone.
“Of course,” Mahler said, turning the full force of his smile upon them now.
He was about to turn away again when something seemed to occur to him. “I don’t suppose I could ask just what sort of work you were doing for Paige, could I?” He’d struck what seemed to be an avuncular pose. “She’s like a daughter to me, you know.”
“I’m afraid that’s privileged information,” Driscoll said. “I would like to speak to her, though.”
“The moment I hear anything,” Mahler assured them.
And then he motioned for the man in black to show them out.
***
“Sorry about the card,” Driscoll said. He was at the wheel of the car that Terrell had had waiting for them at the Palm Springs airport, guiding them back down the driveway toward the farm-to-market road that had brought them through the desert to the isolated compound.
Deal shrugged, still going over what they’d heard from Mahler. “He wasn’t going to tell us anything, no matter what.”
Driscoll nodded, gave him a look. “You did pretty well in there.”
Deal found himself smiling. “I’ve been studying your technique, Driscoll. Slow but sure.”
“That’s the ticket, pardner.” Driscoll smiled back. “No sign of the big guy?”
Deal shook his head, distracted by something he couldn’t put his finger on. “There was somebody in the hallway for a moment, but I couldn’t be sure,” he said absently.
“So what’s your take on Mahler?” Driscoll asked.
“He’s full of more shit than a Christmas turkey,” Deal said. It would have been the clincher, of course, seeing the big man who’d been driving Paige that night. But all his instincts told him it wasn’t necessary. “I don’t know why, but he’s got her. She’s in that house somewhere,” he said. “At the very least, he knows where she is.”
Driscoll sighed and nodded. “I feel the same way,” he said, throwing up his hands. He’d had to stop while a set of electric gates swung open at the end of the lane, allowing them to cross over a cattle guard and back out onto the gravel public road.
“So what are we going to do?” Deal asked.
“We could always try going into town,” Driscoll said. He swung the car out through the gates, then turned south, in the opposite direction from the way they’d come. “We could talk to the cops, see if we could get someone to come out and take a look.” But the way he said it didn’t inspire Deal with much confidence. It might be better than trying the same tactic over the phone, the very prospect of which had sent them flying out here, but just thinking of where to begin the story they’d tell the local authorities made him match Driscoll’s doubtful stare: “
Hey, you know the millionaire who lives down the road in Xanadu? We’d like you to go down and bust him for murder and kidnapping. We’ll explain it all to you on the way
.”
Deal glanced at Driscoll. “Assuming she’s there, and even if we could convince somebody to come out,” he said, “what’s to stop them from moving her someplace in the meantime?”
“What I figure,” Driscoll said, “we let everybody wake up and start making their movie or whatever it is they’re doing, then I find a way in and have a look around without Kato and his gang watching. Unless you have a better idea.”
Deal shook his head. The road was moving through rugged territory, climbing toward the mountains more steeply now, paralleling a high chain-link fence that cut the nearby underbrush. The fence was at least eight feet tall, topped with inward-leaning strands of barbed wire, one course of reinforcement cable running along the bottom. Formidable as it looked, it had been constructed for the purpose of keeping things in, Deal knew. There was no evidence that the thing was electrically charged, no sign of sensors or other electronic devices.
He knew why it had been put there because he’d seen similar fencing at a series of hunting preserves his father had dragged him along to in Central Texas. The idea was to keep the prey of choice—deer, antelope, longhorns, even exotics such as ibex and gazelle—contained in a space just large enough to provide some semblance of sport without leaving the issue of the successful hunt in doubt for the well-heeled patrons.
Deal had once seen a deer, pursued by a hunter in a Jeep accompanying their party, make a magnificent leap toward freedom on a hillside not far from Austin. The deer had come up about a foot shy, however, had hung its hindquarters up on the barbed wire, and the man who thought of himself as a hunter had shot it while it thrashed madly about in the concertina wire.
All his father’s reassurances about how much more humane it had been to put the animal out of its misery than to allow it to cut itself to ribbons on the fence fell on deaf ears for Deal, who was twelve at the time. He’d jumped out of their own vehicle and ran at the Jeep, leaping over the side to flail at the so-called hunter, who was readying himself for a second shot at the dying animal, had to be pulled away kicking and screaming by his father. Deal had never gone “hunting” again, and he hadn’t seen such a fence since, not in all those years.
Gazing at it now as its posts flashed by, paralleling the rapidly deteriorating road, he could only imagine Paige Nobleman somewhere within its confines, as helpless as that deer, and Marvin Mahler as corrupt and brutal as the hunter he’d wanted to bring down at twelve.
As their car made its way around a steep turn, he caught a glimpse of the red-tiled compound lying behind them. “I’m going in with you,” he said.
Driscoll gave him a look. “You’ve already done your part, you know. You got us out here, you went inside, looked around. I can take it from here.”
Deal stared at him. He’d met the man who was responsible for Barbara’s death, who’d ordered them killed, who was likely planning the same for Paige, all his instincts told him so. But still, there was that nagging doubt.
He stared down, realized he still held the card Driscoll had handed Mahler: DealCo and the other particulars of his so-called normal life on one side, the cel-phone number Driscoll had scrawled on the other. Runes from two impossibly different dimensions of existence flipping alternately before his eyes as he turned the card idly, over and over. And then he stopped, fixing on something that had been nagging at him since their conversation with Mahler earlier.
“He called us ‘two private detectives from Florida,’” Deal said, raising his gaze to Driscoll abruptly.