“Wait here,” he said and closed the door in my face. I waited in the tinkling silence, listening to the wind chimes and the roof drip. Then he opened the door again.
“This way,” he said. I stepped in. He closed the door behind me. The house inside was all angles and slants. I followed him through an open hallway that appeared to cut the house diagonally. Rooms full of glass and stone and costly furniture opened off it as we went. I got a glimpse of Oriental rugs and the kind of early-twentieth-century Mission Oak furniture from a factory in Syracuse that sells for $25,000 a chair. I also got the impression of a lot of Tiffany glass before I came out into an English conservatory, all glass, fully enclosed, heated, and furnished in white wicker with floral cushions.
Rojack sat on the wicker couch among some huge fluted ferns. He was wearing a Black Watch plaid shirt open at the neck, pressed chino pants and mahogany colored penny loafers with no socks. On the couch next to him was a stack of manila file folders. On the coffee table before him was a laptop computer, its screen aglow with printing. He was drinking coffee from a white china cup that had a gold strip around the rim, and there was a full coffee service in silver on the table next to the computer.
He was a good-looking man, short dark hair brushed straight back, dark expressive face. Medium sized, in shape. His nails glistened as he lowered the coffee cup and looked directly at me.
“A private detective,” he said.
“Sad but true,” I said.
“Randail’s dying to throw you out,” Rojack said.
“Why should he be different?”
Rojack nodded. “You are often unwelcome?”
“I often bring bad news,” I said.
“That is usually unwelcome. Do you bring bad news to me?”
“No,” I said. “I bring questions.”
I felt like I was trapped in a Hemingway short story. If I got any more cryptic I wouldn’t be able to talk at all.
Rojack nodded, carefully. It was as if everything he did he had learned to do.
“Sit down,” he said. “Will you have coffee?”
“Yes, please. Cream, two sugars.” Asking for decaf seemed somehow inappropriate.
Rojack nodded at Randall. Without expression he poured some coffee for me, added a splash of cream and two lumps of sugar, put a small silver spoon on the white saucer and handed the coffee to me. Outside, the bright pasture sloped away to the riverbank in the midday sunlight, while the water ran across the glass roof of the atrium in thick rivulets and dripped rhythmically down the sides. Somewhere in the house there was a wood fire burning. I could smell it. After he gave me the coffee, Randall stood back against the archway that led to the atrium and waited with his arms folded. He was wearing a white warm-up suit with a cobalt stripe down the arm and leg seams, and some sort of off-white canvas slippers. The zipper on the warm-up suit was down about halfway, and he appeared to be wearing a lisle tank top underneath. Without uncrossing his arms he inspected the nails on his right hand.
“What questions do you have for me, Mr. Spenser?
”First let me tell you my situation,“ I said. I drank a little coffee. It was good. What’s a little rapid heartbeat now and then.
”I have been employed to do a couple of things for Jill Joyce, the television star with whom you were trying to speak this morning.“
Rojack nodded. Randall aalrnircd his nails. I sipped a bit more coffee.
”One,“ I said, ”I’m supposed to protect her from harassment, hence my unkindness to old Randall here.“
Rojack nodded again. Randall examined the nails on his left hand.
”Second,“ I said, ”I’m supposed to find out who’s been harassing her.“
We all paused.
”Hence, as it were, my visit here.“
”You think I am harassing Jill Joyce?“
”No,“ I said. ”I don’t know what you are doing with Jill Joyce. But I need to know, in order to do what I was hired to do. So I thought I’d come out and ask.“
”Even though you had reason to assume that Randall would be, ah, angry with you?“
”I can live with Randall’s anger,“ I said.
Rojack smiled without any humor. ”Perhaps,“ he said.
We all thought about that for a moment. ”What has Jill told you about our relationship?“ Rojack said.
”She says she doesn’t know you.“
Rojack was too carefully practiced in his every mannerism to show surprise. But he was expressionless for a moment and I guessed that maybe my answer had affected him.
”She is a liar,“ Rojack said, finally.
”She certainly is,“ I said.
”What do you wish to know?“
”Anything,“ I said. ”I can’t get her to tell me her birthday. I don’t even know enough to ask an intelligent question. Tell me anything about her, and it will be progress.“
”She is a drunk,“ Rojack said.
”That I know.“
”And, I don’t know if the term is used anymore, a nymphomaniac.“
”I don’t think it is, but I know that too.“
”She uses drugs.“
”Yeah. “
Rojack shrugged. ”So what else is there to know?“
”How do you know her?“ I said.
”At a cocktail party,“ Rojack said. ”The governor had a party in the State House rotunda for the stars and top executives of Fifty Minutes, when it first came to town to shoot the pilot. Three years ago. I went-I am a substantial contributor to the governor’s campaigns-and I met her there. I gave her a card. A couple of days later she called and said that she was alone in town, living in a hotel, and wanted someone to take her out and help her not be lonely.“
Far down in the pasture, at the edge of the stream, one of the horses put his head down and drank. He was a red roan horse, and he made an ornamental contrast to the white pasture and the black trees, blacker than usual with the snow melt glistening on their sides.
”I was pleased-most men would be. I took her to dinner at L’Espalier. We had wine. We went to the Plaza Bar. We came home here…“ Rojack made a shrugging hand-spread gesture; among us men of the world, it would be clear what happened next.
”So you were going steady?“
”I don’t enjoy your manner very much, Spenser.“
”Damn,“ I said. ”Everybody says that. Did you and Jill Joyce spend a lot of time together?“
”We were intimate for several years. Then she stopped seeing me.“
”Why?“
”I don’t know. I had done her several favors. Perhaps once they were accomplished she felt no further need of me.“
”Tell me about the favors,“ I said. My cup was empty. I put it down on the coffee table. Automatically Rojack picked up a small napkin from the coffee service tray and put it under my saucer.
”Some were merely routine: reservations at a restaurant, tickets for a sold-out event, a drunken driving charge-I have a good deal of influence.“
”Congratulations. Were there any favors weren’t routine?“
Rojack leaned back thoughtfully and gazed out at his trees and horses. He looked healthy and very satisfied. He was talking about himself, and he took it seriously.
”I suppose one must define routine,“ Rojack said. I waited.
”There was a somewhat salacious piece of gossip that I was able to keep out of the papers.“
I waited.
”It involved a young driver on the show and Jill in an elevator.“
I nodded encouragingly. There was no need to prod him. He liked talking about the things he could fix. He’d tell me all there was. Maybe more.
”And there was a young man whom she’d known before she went to Hollywood.“
Rojack said Hollywood the way that a lot of people did, as if it were a place where one might actually run into Carole Lombard on any corner. As if it were glamorous. The sun had edged up to its low winter zenith as we’d sat talking, and now it shone directly in on the atrium from above and reflected in whitely from the unlittered snow. Everything shone with great clarity.
”Apparently this young man had been calling Jill, trying to see her, and Jill wanted nothing to do with him. But he persisted until Jill spoke to me about it, and I sent Randall to ask him to stop.“