I returned to the kitchen, fetched a fresh glass, and filled it, this time for me. I went back out and pulled the chair off him and slipped his wallet out of his pants pocket, then helped him squirm up to a seated position on the floor, leaning against the wall. There was a driver’s license in the wallet. It told me that his name was Danny Lyles and that he lived in Long Island City, not far from Charlie Burke’s neighborhood. I told him not to get any ideas as I went through his other pockets. I found an electronic pass card and two key rings. In the down coat that Lyles had taken his detour into the front room to grab, I found a vial of pills and a baggie of pot. Thick. No stems, no seeds.

“Are you familiar with the Rockefeller drug laws, Danny? A stash like this can ruin your day.”

He wasn’t impressed. From the looks of things-especially his nose-his day was already ruined. I kicked an ottoman over to where the man sat wheezing on the floor, and took a seat. I took a long, satisfying sip of the water.

“Okay. I’m ready.”

40

DANNY LYLES WAS Marshall Fox’s former driver. Also his bodyguard. Not a towering sort but plenty of muscle. A free-weights guy. He’d held the position for a little over a year, a year he described to me as one of the wildest of his life. In addition to being Fox’s driver and protector, Lyles had also been his occasional night-crawling buddy. Lyles described himself as “a party hound” but admitted that he held a backseat to Marshall Fox in that department.

“Marshall was dangerous hungry, man. You’ve got no idea.”

Roughly a month before Cynthia Blair’s murder, Lyles had taken on additional duties, though in a completely unofficial and secret capacity. He became Rosemary Fox’s lover. Lyles told me that he’d had no illusions the evening when Rosemary first came on to him. He knew what she was all about. After a separation of eight months, Fox had recently started making overtures to his wife; he wanted Rosemary to take him back, to give the marriage another go. Rosemary had Marshall on the hook and she knew it. Lyles said that he’d gotten a phone call from Rosemary asking that he come by the apartment. He did, and she sat him down on the living room couch and demanded that Lyles fill her in on all of her husband’s escapades over the months of their separation. Lyles balked at first. He played the loyalty card. But Rosemary trumped it easily. She possessed her own set of cards, and she knew exactly how to lay them out to her own best advantage.

“Right behind you, man. Right there on the couch. She’s one superior pain in the ass, no question about it. But I’m telling you, you’ve never met anyone’s got the goods like that, I swear.”

Lyles admitted to me that he had known all about Fox’s affair with Cynthia Blair. He was pretty certain he’d been the only one who did know.

“I drove the guy everywhere. I knew everything he did. I’ll tell you, when he found out she was pregnant, he got more drunk off his ass than I’d ever seen. The man was out of his gourd, he was so pissed off. It was all pretty trippy for me. Even though I’m shagging his old lady on the side, we’re still partying together. I mean, he was clueless. I was also seeing this other chick at the time. Tracy Jacobs. You’ve seen her. She’s all hot shit now on that show. Century City? She plays the clueless wife of that older guy? Perfect casting, man. Girl couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag, then she lands a plum role in a show like that. Anyway, one night right after Marshall’d found out about Cynthia and how she was planning to have the kid, he tagged along with me and Tracy. He ended up going way over the top. He was drinking like no tomorrow, popping uppers. The guy was a mess. This is all before Tracy’d gotten her show, by the way. She was nobody at this point to Marshall. Just another bad actress all goo-goo to be hanging out with Marshall Fox.”

As Lyles described it, somewhere along the way, Marshall had started getting nasty with Tracy. At first he argued with everything that came out of her mouth, but soon he was trying to put the moves on her.

“He’d do that sometimes, man. Show his mean side, then start trying to get in their pants. It kind of freaked Tracy out. Marshall got a real bug up his tail about Tracy, and I had to pull him off her before he hurt her. He’s got this ugly streak, man. You don’t want to see it. It all sort of cooled down, but the evening was pretty much tanked. Then when I was dropping her off at her place, Marshall suddenly got out of the car and went after her again. I’m telling you, though, it was the whole damn Cynthia thing. He just needed someone to take it out on. Anyway, I had to pull him off of her and shove him back in the car and all that crap. Tracy cut things off with me after that. That’s how it goes, I guess. Thing is, though, she ended up getting me fired. How’s that for fucking irony?”

I went back into the kitchen and fetched more water. I tried Megan’s number but got no answer. Lyles was tugging against the lamp cord when I came back out.

“How about you loosen this up, man. My circulation’s cut off.”

“Go on with your story. If I like it, we’ll talk then.”

He grumbled a bit but went on. Lyles said that several days after Cynthia Blair’s body had been discovered at the base of Cleopatra’s Needle, he got a call from Tracy Jacobs. She was extremely upset and talking about contacting the police to tell them about Marshall Fox’s violence.

“The thing is, like I said, she didn’t know a thing about Marshall getting that girl pregnant. All she knew was that he’d scared the hell out of her that night we all went out. I got her to hold off on calling the cops. I lied and told her that Marshall had an alibi for the night Cynthia got killed. Thing was, he didn’t. Cynthia had actually been up to his place the night she was killed, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell that to Tracy. She said it was her duty to contact the police and all that shit, but I got her to agree to hold off for a day. I didn’t know what to do. Crazy as he was, Marshall didn’t kill that girl.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Some things you just know, and I know that. But all the crap he was going through, the last thing he needed was Tracy getting the cops all excited about him. So I called Mr. Ross.”

“Alan Ross?”

“Yeah. I guess you can say he’s Marshall’s boss.”

“Why would you call him?”

“Ross is the guy Marshall always goes to when he’s in any kind of a fix. He’s connected, he’s smart. He’s one of those take-charge guys. I just thought it made sense.”

“And what did Ross say?”

“He said he’d take care of things. Just like I knew he would. Cool as a cucumber, that guy. He got Tracy’s phone number from me and told me not to sweat it.”

“And that was it?”

“Hell no, that wasn’t it. The next thing I know, Marshall’s all over my ass. He’s ready to kill me. He’s saying Tracy called up him and his lawyer and threatened to tell the police not just about him and Cynthia but about her being pregnant with his kid. I swear to you, I never breathed a fucking word to anyone about any of that. Especially Tracy. Not even that the two were screwing each other. No way she got it from me. But Marshall was ready to take my head off. He fired me on the spot and said if he ever saw me again, he would kill me. Meanwhile, Tracy flies off to Los Angeles, and the next thing you know, she’s on Century goddamn City. It’s totally nuts. This whole fucking show business is nuts.”

I took a minute with Lyles’s story. Then I took another one. There was a piece of his story I didn’t like. I could tell he was giving me the truth, but something wasn’t fitting. It was the same thing that hadn’t fit for Danny Lyles.

I asked, “You’re absolutely positive you didn’t tell Tracy Jacobs about Fox and Cynthia Blair? Or maybe she overheard you two talking about it.”