BECAUSE THE NIGHT

405

Lloyd stopped when Nagler’s sobs trailed off into a terrified stutter. “Horhor-hor-moo-hor-moo.”

“Shhh, shhh,” Lloyd whispered. “Take it slow and think the words out.”

Nagler stared up at Lloyd. The look on his face wavered between grief and bliss. Finally the bliss prevailed long enough for him to say, “Horror movie. Doctor John made a horror movie. That’s how I know you’re lying about what he said about me. He appreciates my talent. I edited the movie and Doctor said—he said . . .”

Lloyd stood up, then helped Nagler to his feet and pointed him toward the sofa. When Nagler was seated, he studied his face. He looked like a man about to enter the gas chamber who didn’t know whether or not he wanted to die. Knowing that the bliss/death part of the worshipper had the edge and possessed the potential to produce lucid answers, Lloyd quashed his impulse to bludgeon Nagler into grief/life. Sighing, he sat down beside the ravished young man and stabbed in the dark. “Havilland isn’t really dead, Bill.”

“I know that,” Nagler said. “He was here this morning with—” He stopped and flashed a robot smile. “He was here this morning.”

Lloyd said, “Finish the thought, Bill.”

“I did. Doctor John was here this morning. End of thought.”

“No. Beginning of thought. But let’s change the subject. You don’t really think I’m a policeman, do you?”

Nagler shook his head. “No. Doctor John told me that there was a three percent leak factor in our program. I know exactly what the leak was—it came to me while I was chanting. You’re an Internal Revenue agent. I paid Doctor John’s phone bills while he went skiing in Idaho last December. You checked the records out, because you’re with big brother. You also cross-checked my bank records and the Doctor’s, and saw that I sent him a big check last year. He probably forgot to report it on his tax return. You want a bribe to keep silent. Very well, name your amount and I’ll write a check.” Nagler laughed. “How silly of me. That would leave a record. No, name your amount and I’ll pay you off in cash.”

Lloyd gasped at Nagler’s recuperative powers. Five minutes earlier, he had been a groveling mass. Now he held the condescending authority of a plantation owner. A “horror movie” and the wrecked equipment in the back room were the dividing points. Thinking, Break him, he said, “Didn’t it surprise you that my partner knew enough to sing you that song?”

“No. A song is a song.”

“And a movie is a movie,” Lloyd said, reaching into his pocket. “Bill, it’s 406

L.A. NOIR

time I came clean. Doctor John sent me to test your loyalty.” He held out the mug-shot strip of Thomas Goff. “I’m the replacement for the old recruiter. You remember this fellow, don’t you? There’s a guy on Doctor John’s program who looks just like him. I know all about the meetings at the house in Malibu and how you bought the house for the Doctor and how you pay the phone bill. I know about the pay phone contacts and how you don’t fraternize outside the meetings. I know because I’m one of you, Bill.”

First grief, then bliss, now bewilderment. Lloyd had kept his eyes averted from Nagler, letting him feast on Thomas Goff’s image instead of his own. When he finally reestablished eye contact he saw that the man had fingered the mug-shot strip to pieces and that his spiel had turned him into clay. Feeling like a bullfighter going in for the kill, Lloyd said, “I also lied when I said that Doctor John said that your movies were shit. He really loves your movie work. In fact, just today he told me that he wants you to both star in and direct the script he’s working on. He tol—”

Lloyd stopped when Nagler’s grief took him over. “Patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum patria infinitum.”

Lloyd thought of Linda and got up and walked toward the den and the telephone. He had his hand on the receiver when a tap on his shoulder forced him to jump back, turn around, and ball his fists. It was Bergen, looking eerily sober. “I couldn’t find any I.R.S. papers,” he said, “but I did find our pal’s diary under his bed. Renaissance weird, Hopkins. Fucking gothic.”

Lloyd took the morocco bound book from Bergen’s hands and sat down on the desk. Opening it, he saw that the first entry was dated 11/13/83, and that it and all the subsequent entries were written in an exquisitely flourished longhand. While Bergen stood over him, he read through accounts of Havilland’s “programming,” picking up a cryptically designated cast along the way. There was the “Lieutenant,” who had to be Thomas Goff; the “Fox,” the “Bull dagger,” the “Bookworm,” the “Professor,” the

“Muscleman,” and “Billy Boy,” who had to be Nagler himself. The entries themselves detailed how Havilland ordered his charges to fast for thirty-six hours, then stand nude in front of full-length mirrors and chant their “fear mantras” into tape recorders, until “subliminal dream consciousness” took over and led them to babble “transcendental fantasies” that he would later sift through for “key details” to translate into

“reality fodder.” How he paired them off sexually at the “Beach Womb,”

interrupting the couplings to take vital signs and “stress readings”; how he