BECAUSE THE NIGHT

401

Lloyd smiled and said, “Of course. This is a charming living room, by the way.” He pointed to the posters. “Are you a movie buff?”

“I’m a free-lance art director and an amateur filmmaker,” Nagler said, leveling worried eyes at Marty Bergen. “Now please get to your questions.”

Bergen chuckled and poured himself a large shot of Scotch. “I think this pad sucks, and I think this bimbo is just holding down this art director gig as a front for his dope racket.” He downed the drink and poured another.

“What are you dealing, citizen? Weed? Speed? Dust? That’s it, Hoppy! This is a dust bust!”

Nagler fretted his hands and pleaded to Lloyd with his eyes. Bergen guzzled Scotch, then blurted out, “Jesus, I’m gonna be sick. Where’s the can?”

Lloyd waved an arm toward the back of the house as Nagler drew his feet together and slammed the edge of the sofa with outwardly cocked wrists. Bergen took off running, making gagging sounds and holding his hands over his mouth. Lloyd shook his head and said, “I apologize for my colleague, Mr. Nagler.”

“He’s a terrible man,” Nagler whispered. “He has a low karma consciousness. Unless he changes his life radically, he’ll never go beyond his low efficacy image.”

Lloyd noted that the recitation of the mini-spiel had had a calming effect on Nagler. He honed his own spiel to razor sharpness and said, “Yes, I do pity him. He has so many doors to go beyond before he finds out who he really is.”

The razor drew blood. Nagler’s whole body relaxed. Lloyd threw out a smile calculated to flash “kindred soul.” Thinking, hook him now, he said,

“He needs spiritual guidance. A spiritual master is just the ticket for him. Don’t you agree?”

Nagler’s face lit up, then clouded over with what looked to Lloyd like an aftertaste of doubt and fear. Finally he breathed out, “Yes. Please get on with your business and leave me in peace. Please. ”

Lloyd was silent, charting interrogation courses while he got out a pen and notepad. Nagler fidgeted on the edge of the sofa, then turned around when footsteps echoed behind him.

“Achtung, citizen!”

Lloyd looked up from his notepad to see Marty Bergen hovering next to the sofa, holding a glass freebase pipe out at arm’s length. “Thought you were cool, didn’t you, citizen? No dope on the premises. However, you overlooked the new possession of drug paraphernalia law recently passed by the 402

L.A. NOIR

state legislature. This pipe and the ether on your bathroom shelf constitute a misdemeanor.”

Bergen dropped the pipe into Nagler’s lap. Nagler jerked to his feet and threw his hands up to his face; the pipe fell to the floor and shattered. Bergen, florid faced and grinning from ear to ear, looked at Lloyd and said,

“This is fucking ironic. I wrote an editorial condemning that law as fascist, which of course it is. Now I’m here enforcing it. Ain’t life a bitch?” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wad of paper. “Check this out,” he said.

Lloyd stood up, grabbed the papers and walked over to the shivering worshipper. Steeling himself against revulsion, he said, “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have legal counsel present during questioning. If you cannot afford counsel, an attorney will be provided. Do you have a statement to make regarding that paraphernalia, Mr. Nagler?”

The answer was a series of body shudders. Nagler pressed himself into the wall, trembling. Lloyd put a gentle hand on his shoulder and felt a jolt of almost electric tension. Looking down at the worshipper’s feet, he saw that they were twisting across each other, as if trying to gouge the ankles. The brutality of the posture made Lloyd turn away and seek out Marty Bergen for a semblance of sanity.

The image backfired.

Bergen was standing by the bar, guzzling Scotch straight from the bottle. When he saw Lloyd staring at him, he said, “Learning things you don’t like about yourself, Hot Dog?”

Lloyd walked to Bergen and grabbed the bottle from his hands. “Guard him. Don’t touch him and don’t talk to him; just let him be.”

This time the answer Lloyd got was Bergen’s grin of self-loathing; a smile that looked like a close-up of his own soul. Taking the bottle with him, he walked to a small den off the living room hallway and found the phone. He dialed Linda’s number and let it ring ten times. No answer. Checking his watch, he saw that it was 10:40. Linda had probably gotten tired of waiting for his call and had left.

Lloyd put down the phone, knowing that he had wanted the comfort of Linda’s voice more than her confirmation of Havilland’s prints on the magnum. Remembering Bergen’s wad of paper, he reached into his pocket and extracted it, smoothing it out on the desk beside the phone. It was a real estate brochure listing properties in Malibu and the Malibu Colony. Attached to the top of the front page were “complimentary” Pacific