BECAUSE THE NIGHT

339

“Yet you believe that he knows Goff?”

“Yes.”

“And you credit his statement that he has no knowledge of Goff’s whereabouts and no knowledge regarding the liquor store homicides?”

Havilland hesitated, then said, “Yes.”

Keeping his voice deliberately slow, Lloyd said, “No, you don’t. You’re shielding someone who knows something hot about Goff, and you’re scared. You want to tell me what you know, but you don’t want to compromise your ethics and jeopardize your patient’s well-being. I understand these things. But understand me, Doctor. You’re my only shot. We’re dealing with mass murder here, not petty neuroses. You have to tell me his name, and I think you know it.”

“No,” Havilland said. “That’s absolute.”

“Will you reconsider over a period of twenty-four hours? I’ll have an attorney present when I question the man, and he won’t know that you informed on him. I’ll concoct a story that would satisfy a genius.”

Havilland lowered his eyes. “God damn it, I said no!”

Lloyd felt his slow-motion strategy burst. He jammed his hands into his front pockets, closing them around open handcuff ratchets and a metal studded sap. Staring straight at the doctor, he squeezed the concealed weaponry so hard that the pain forced his words out in a wince. “You fuck with me and I’ll hit you with an I.R.S. audit and more writs, petitions, subpoenas, and court orders than you thought existed. I’ll initiate motions requesting the case files of every court-referred patient who ever crossed your door. I’ll hire shyster lawyers out of my own pocket and keep them on retainer just to dream up ways to hassle you. I’ll have badass nigger vice cops keep your office under surveillance and scare the shit out of the rich neurotics you feed from. Twenty-four hours. You’ve got my number.”

A red tide propelled Lloyd out of the office. When he took his hands from his pockets, he saw that they were bleeding.

*

*

*

Hook, line, and sinker.

Havilland walked into his private office and removed an array of bait from his wall safe. Ten thousand dollars in a brown paper bag and a newly typed psychiatric report accompanied by a snapshot. He placed the report in his top desk drawer, then looked at his watch. One-thirty. He had six hours until his next move. Leaning back in his chair, the Night Tripper closed his eyes and tried to will a dreamless sleep. 340

L.A. NOIR

He succeeded and failed.

Sleep came, interspersed with semi-conscious moments that he knew to be his memory. As each image passed through him he felt like a surgical bonesaw was slicing his body in two, leaving him the choice of going with his symbolic past or of drifting into the cloud cover of anesthesia. Off to his left was sleep; off to his right was a blood-spattered corkboard equipped with arm and legholes, a rigor-mortised ankle encircled by a steel manacle, and the Bronx ferris wheel spinning off its axis. Full consciousness was a pinpoint of light between his eyes, an escape hatch that could trigger full sleep if concentrated upon in tandem with recitation of his mantra, patria sanctorum. Three roads inward: to wakefulness, to oblivion, to his childhood void. Feeling fearless, the Night Tripper succumbed to memory and let his right side disengage.

A huge magnifying glass descended on the void, serving up details:

“McEvoy-D Block,” etched on the manacle; gouged and cauterized arteries marking the ankle; father whispering in his ear as the ferris wheel reached its apex, suspending them above blocks of Puerto Rican tenements. Straining to read the lips of the people traversing below him, he caught long snatches of conversation and shock waves of laughter. Then his two sides fused.

Havilland awoke, refreshed, at six-forty-five. His yawn became a smile when the new void embellishments passed the credibility test by returning to his conscious mind. His smile widened when he realized that his one-onone with Lloyd Hopkins was the catalyst that had supplied the fresh details. Thus fortified by sleep and memory, he picked up his bag of money, locked the office, and drove to Malibu and the acquisition of data. The rendezvous point was a long stretch of parking blacktop overlooking the beach. Havilland left his car in the service area of a closed gas station on the land side of the Pacific Coast Highway and took the tunnel underpass across to the bank of lighted pay phones adjoining the spot where he was to meet the Avonoco Fiberglass security chief. He checked his watch and walked to the railing: 8:12 P.M., the last remnants of an amber sun turning the ocean pink. Savoring the moment, he watched the ball of fire meld into a pervasive light blue. When the blue died into a dark rush of waves, he walked to the phone booth nearest the railing and dialed the number of his actress pawn.

“Hello?”