XPD. Len Deighton

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      At first Billy Stein spent some time searching through old movie magazines in case he could find a reference to Bernie Lustig or, better still, a photo of him. His search was unrewarded. At 7.30 the housekeeper, who had looked after the two men since Billy Stein’s mother died some five years before, brought him a supper tray. A tall, thin woman, she had lost her nursing licence in some eastern state hospital for selling whisky to the patients. Perhaps this ending to her nursing career had changed her personality, for she was taciturn, devoid of curiosity and devoid too of that warm, maternal manner so often associated with nursing. She worked hard for the Steins but she never attempted to replace that other woman who had once closed these same curtains, plumped up the cushions and switched on the table lamps. She hurriedly picked up the petals that had fallen from the roses, crushed them tightly in her hand and then dropped them into a large ashtray upon MacIver’s cigarette butt. She sniffed; she hated cigarettes. She picked up the ashtray, holding it at a distance as a nurse holds a bedpan.

      ‘Anything else, Mr Billy?’ Her almost colourless hair was drawn tightly back, and fixed into position with brass-coloured hair clips.

      Billy looked at the supper tray she had put before him on the coffee table. ‘You get along, Mrs Svenson. You’ll miss the beginning of “Celebrity Sweepstakes”.’

      She looked at the clock and back to Billy Stein, not quite sure whether this concern was genuine or sarcastic. She never admitted her obsession for the TV game shows but she had planned to be upstairs in her self-contained apartment by then.

      ‘If Mr Stein wants anything to eat when he gets home, there is some cold chicken wrapped in foil on the top shelf of the refrigerator.’

      ‘Yes, OK. Good night, Mrs Svenson.’

      She sniffed again and moved the framed photo of Charles Stein which MacIver had put back slightly out of position amongst the photos crowding the piano top. ‘Good night, Billy.’

      Billy munched his way through the bowl of beef chilli and beans, and drank his beer. Then he went to the bookcase and ran a fingertip along the video cassettes to find an old movie that he had taped. He selected Psycho and sat back to watch how Hitchcock had set up his shots and assembled them into a whole. He had done this with an earlier Hitchcock film for a college course on film appreciation.

      The time passed quickly, and when the taped film ended Billy was even more excited at the prospect of becoming a part of the entertainment world. He found show-biz stylish and hard-edged: stylish and hard-edged being compliments that were at that time being rather overworked by Billy Stein’s friends and contemporaries. He rewound the tape and settled back to see Psycho once more.

      Charles Stein, Billy’s father, usually spent Wednesday evenings at a club out in the east valley. They still called it the Roscoe Sports and Bridge Club, even though some smart, real-estate man had got Roscoe renamed Sun Valley, and few of the members played anything but poker.

      Stein’s three regular cronies were there, including Jim Sampson, an elderly lawyer who had served with Stein in the army. They ate the Wednesday night special together – corned beef hash with onion rings – shared a few bottles of California Gewürztraminer and some opinions of the government, then retired to the bar to watch the eleven o’clock news followed by the sports round-up. It was always the same; Charles Stein was a man of regular habits. A little after midnight, Jim Sampson dropped him off at the door – Stein disliked driving – and was invited in for a nightcap. It was a ritual that both men knew, a way of saying thank you for the ride. Jim Sampson never came in.

      ‘Thought you had a heavy date tonight, Billy?’ Charles Stein weighed nearly 300 pounds. The real crocodile-leather belt that bit into his girth and bundled up his expensive English wool suit and his pure cotton shirt was supplied to special order by Sunny Jim’s Big Men’s Wear. Stein’s sparse white hair was ruffled, so that the light behind him made an untidy halo round his pink head as he lowered himself carefully into his favourite armchair.

      Billy, who never discussed his girlfriends with his father, said, ‘Stayed home. Your friend MacIver dropped in. He thinks he can get me a job in movies.’

      ‘Get you a job in movies?’ said his father. ‘Get you a job in movies? Miles MacIver?’ He searched in his pocket to find his cigars, and put one in his mouth and lit it.

      ‘They’re making a movie of his war memoirs. Some story! Finding the Nazi gold. Could be a great movie, dad.’

      ‘Hold the phone,’ said his father wearily. He was sitting on the edge of the armchair now, leaning well forward, his head bent very low as he prepared to light his cigar. ‘MacIver was here?’ He said it to the carpet.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ said Billy Stein.

      ‘When was MacIver here?’

      ‘You said never interrupt your poker game.’

      ‘When?’ He struck a match and lit his cigar.

      ‘Five o’clock, maybe six o’clock.’

      ‘You watching TV tonight?’

      ‘It’s just quiz shows and crap. I’ve been running video.’

      ‘MacIver is dead.’ Charles Stein drew on the cigar and blew smoke down at the carpet.

      ‘Dead?’

      ‘It was on Channel Two, the news. Some kid blew off the top of his head with a sawed-off shotgun. Left the weapon there. It happened in one of those little bars on Western Avenue near Beverly Boulevard. TV news got a crew there real quick … cars, flashing lights, a deputy chief waving the murder weapon at the camera.’

      ‘A street gang, was it?’

      ‘Who then threw away a two-hundred-dollar shotgun, all carefully sawed off so it fits under your jacket?’

      ‘Then who?’

      Charles Stein blew smoke. ‘Who knows?’ he said angrily, although his anger was not directed at anyone in particular. ‘MacIver the Mouth, they called him. Owes money all over town. Could be some creditor blew him away.’ He drew on the cigar again. The smoke tasted sour.

      ‘Well, he sold his war memoirs. He showed me the advertisement. Some movie producer he met. He’s selling him a story about Nazi gold in Germany in the war.’

      Charles Stein grunted. ‘So that’s it, eh? I wondered why that bastard had been going around talking to all the guys from the outfit. Sure, I saw a lot of him in the army but he wasn’t even with the battalion. He was with some lousy military police detail.’

      ‘He’s been getting the story from you?’

      ‘From me he got nothing. We were under the direct order of General Patton at Third Army HQ for that job, and we’re still not released from the secrecy order.’ He ran his fingers back through his wispy hair and held his hand on the top of his head for a moment, lost in thought. ‘MacIver has been writing all this stuff down, you say, and passing it to some movie guy?’

      ‘Bernie Lustig. MacIver was going to introduce me to him,’ said Billy. ‘Poor guy. Was it a stick-up?’

      ‘He won’t be doing much in the line of introductions, Billy. By now he’s in the morgue with a label on his toe. Lustig – where’s he have his office?’

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