The Sellout by Andrew Diamond

Author:Andrew Diamond [Diamond, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

19

“The problem is,” McElwee said as they exited the diner, “I don’t know where she lives. It’s not something you ask your longtime lover over dinner or in bed.”

“Relax, Joe.” Veronica stepped to the curb and hailed a cab.

McElwee thought the driver braked a little too hard, a little too eager to pick up the curvy woman in the tight red dress.

Veronica opened the door for him, then slid in herself.

“Where to?” asked the cabbie.

“The Astor mansion, Beverly Hills,” she replied.

“Gotcha.”

I should have known, thought McElwee. In the Turnerverse, everyone in LA would know where the famous Astors lived. Up in the hills, high above the petty material struggles of the bustling City of Angels.

The mansion turned out to be a white castle-like house behind a well-trimmed hedge. The iron gate guarding the cobblestone drive stood open. The grass of the broad front lawn was cut as short and smooth as a golf fairway. A gardener wearing a newsboy cap pushed a wheelbarrow beneath tall palms, collecting fallen fronds and occasional weeds.

The cab pulled up behind the two cars parked by the steps of the marble entrance. The brown Rolls, thought McElwee, must be Dorothy’s car. She had mentioned she had a driver. The black Cadillac probably belonged to Walter.

“Three fifty-five,” said the cabbie.

McElwee paid him and the two got out, Veronica hiking the tight dress down her thighs to as decent a length as it could reach.

The mansion’s heavy double wood doors stood open. The maid sweeping the hall inside glanced up at them as they entered. She said nothing, but nodded her head toward the right rear of the house. McElwee wondered if there’d been so many cops going in and out since the murder that the staff had given up keeping track of visitors.

Surely, though, no one could mistake Veronica for a cop. Not in that dress. If the maid took a couple like him and Veronica in stride, perhaps there were other things going on in this mansion that an investigator should know about.

Veronica followed the sound of male voices to the rear study. There she found a man of forty or so with a pencil moustache sitting in an upholstered chair, smoking a cigarette in a long black tapered holder. His dark hair was short on one side, long on the other. Stringy bangs covered his right cheek and chin. His black silk pajama bottoms, printed with yellow and orange tropical birds, matched his smoking jacket.

A brown-skinned man of twenty-five or so, wearing a tight white tennis shirt and shorts, sat on the floor in front of him, rubbing the older man’s bare feet. On the ottoman to the right of this pair, a sullen blond-haired boy of seventeen sat shirtless in blue swim trunks.

If this was Walter, if this was how he carried on in Dorothy’s own home, McElwee understood her disgust.

“Hello, Joey.” The words seemed to ooze from the man whose feet were being rubbed. “I see you’ve finally found yourself a real woman.

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