Because of the weather, the plane to Washington was delayed two hours so I sat in airport hell wondering once again why there is nothing to do in airports. Why hasn't some enterprising genius yet realized all us bored ticket holders would adore, flock to, pay hard cash for . . . any diversions that lasted longer than a cruise through the magazine racks or dull necktie store?
In contrast to Boston, Washington was going through an ugly heat wave that melted your brain into raclette cheese. Who wants to leave the great god air-conditioning to go listen to some thriller writer read from a book they've already read?
When it was over, I ate sushi across the street from my hotel and stared at a couple nearby. Watching them was like seeing a terrific film in a foreign language with subtitles: No matter how much you enjoy it, you know it would be even better if you understood what was really being said. Looking at the passion and electricity between them, I knew I wasn't in love with Veronica, although it was still a possibility. I loved seeing her, but not all the time. She seemed full of the kind of engaging contradictions I like in a woman: tough in her profession but vulnerable and affectionate with me, strong-minded and intelligent but also curious about the workings of the world and thus open to suggestion. One of the best things about our relationship was how well we communicated, including long conversations in bed after sex – that dangerous, sometimes magical time when people tend to tell the truth more than usual.
In Chicago, she was waiting for me in the hotel room. Sitting on the edge of the bed with the TV remote control in her hand, she was wearing a crisp white T-shirt, black skirt, white socks and black Doc Martens tie-up shoes. Her hair was back in a ponytail and the whole package made her look eighteen years old.
I walked over to the bed and put a hand on her shoulder when she started to stand up. She turned off the television and smiled at me.
"I hope you don't mind me sneaking into your room, Mr. Bayer. I'm your biggest fan. Will you sign my heart?"
I moved my hand to her cheek. "It's nice to touch your face again. I'm glad you're here."
Her eyes were all eagerness. "Are you really? You weren't worried or anything?"
"I'm worried and everything, but I'm still glad you're here."
From Chicago we went to Denver, then Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and finished in San Diego. One radiant morning in Seattle while walking by the water, I told Veronica all I knew about Pauline Ostrova and the book I wanted to write. I told her about Frannie McCabe and growing up in Crane's View, what came after, and then about some of the people who had mattered along the way.
We were sitting at a Starbucks coffee shop when I finished. The air outside was cool and crisp, full of delicious smells that kept changing with the breeze – wood smoke, ground coffee, the sea. Veronica wore a pair of large black wire-rimmed sunglasses that made her look alluring and powerful. Her face was so changeable. One moment she was Lolita, the next, the president of some multinational conglomerate.
"Thank you."
"For what? You look famous in those sunglasses. Aren't you Veronica Lake?"
"I mean it, Sam. Thank you for telling me your story. It's a dangerous thing to do. Telling someone leaves you open and vulnerable. I think I've done it a total of three times in my life."
"Think you'll ever tell me?"
She slipped off the glasses and put them on the table. Tears glistened in her eyes. "I don't know yet. Whoever says I love you first, loses. That line has always frightened me. You already know I love you. If I tell you my story too and then things go wrong between us, I won't have much left."
"You sound like a member of one of those tribes that believe if someone photographs them, they lose their souls."
She put the heels of her hands to her eyes and rubbed them back and forth. "Your story is your soul. The longer you're with someone, the more you trust them, the more you're willing to tell. I believe when you find your real partner, you tell them everything until there's nothing left. Then you start from the beginning again, only this time it's their story as well as yours."
"No separation of church and state? You even have to use the same toothbrush?"
Her voice was low but very firm when she spoke. "You buy two blue toothbrushes exactly the same and keep them in a glass so you never know which is which. Yours is mine and mine's yours."
"Those are pretty tight quarters."
The offices of Black Suit Pictures were in a modern high-rise a few streets back from the ocean in Santa Monica. You parked way below the building and rode up in an elevator to an altitude you did not want to visit in that forever shaky part of the world. Two nights before in San Francisco, a small earthquake had jolted us very much awake minutes after we got into bed. Sex that night was more "please hold me" than anything else. We laughed about it, but that didn't stop either of us from sitting up very straight any time we felt the slightest anything the rest of the time we were in California.
A beautiful receptionist was facing the elevator so that the moment the door slid open, you were blasted with one of those million-white-teeth smiles that are supposed to make you feel welcome and comfortable.
"Can I help you?"
"I have an appointment with David Cadmus. My name is Samuel Bayer."
"Would you have a seat while I call?"
I sat on a slinky leather couch and looked around. Nothing new. The place looked like every other film producer's office I'd seen: tony furniture, the requisite posters of the films the company had made. I recognized the titles of some. Two had been genuine hits.
I almost laughed when David Cadmus entered the reception room because he looked exactly as he had twenty-five years before. Same spiky porcupine haircut, square eyeglasses, white dress shirt buttoned to the top. Yet his "look" was today's ultimate cool, as opposed to ultimate asshole when we were young. Black chinos, dress shoes . . . I'm sure the labels on his clothes were Prada or Comme des Garcons rather than Dickies, but the result was the same.
I stood up. He kept his hands in his pockets. We looked at each other. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the receptionist watching us. We hadn't even said hello but were already in a High Noon standoff.
"He didn't do it."
Without thinking, I cocked my head quizzically to one side. "Excuse me?"
"My father. He didn't kill Pauline Ostrova."
According to his son, by the time Gordon Cadmus fell in love with Pauline he had forgotten how to laugh. Certainly there's a lot less to laugh at as we grow older, but that's beside the point. Here was an immensely powerful man who controlled half the crime in Westchester County. People did what he said without thinking. He had private bank accounts in countries whose names you couldn't even pronounce. He had what he wanted, he'd achieved his dream. But he was a morose sourpuss, convinced years before someone actually shot him that one day he would be murdered.
So shocking to the Cadmus family was the sound of the old man's laugh – a surprisingly deep and delighted har de har har – that both son and mother froze when they heard it. In their separate bedrooms on that Saturday afternoon, the boy had been reading Famous Monsters of Film Land magazine, the mother one of Jack Paar's autobiographies. Within seconds, both appeared at their doorways, both wearing similarly worried expressions.
"Did you hear that?"
"Yes! You think something's wrong?"
"Dad never laughs."
"Maybe we should go see."
At the top of the long staircase, they bent clown to see Gordon Cadmus at the front door, talking to a girl.