XPD. Len Deighton

      MacIver beamed. ‘If he’ll have you! … The son of my best friend! Jesusss! He’ll have you in that production office, Billy, or I’ll pull out and take my story somewhere else.’

      ‘Gee, thanks, Mr MacIver.’

      ‘I call you Billy; you call me Miles. OK?’ He dug his hands deep into his trouser pockets and gave that slow smile that was infectious.

      ‘OK, Miles.’ Billy snapped his spectacles on.

      ‘Rain’s stopping,’ said MacIver. ‘There are a few calls I have to make …’ MacIver had never lost his sense of timing. ‘I must go. Nice talking to you, Billy. Give my respects to your dad. Tell him he’ll be hearing from me real soon. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to Bernie and have him call you and fix a lunch. OK?’

      ‘Thanks, Mr MacIver.’

      ‘Miles.’ He dumped his cigarettes into the ashtray.

      ‘Thanks, Miles.’

      ‘Forget it, kid.’

      When Miles MacIver got into the driver’s seat of the Chrysler Imperial parked outside the Stein home, he sighed with relief. The man in the back seat did not move. ‘Did you fix it?’

      ‘Stein wasn’t there. I spoke with his son. He knows nothing.’

      ‘You didn’t mention the Kaiseroda mine business to the son, I hope?’

      MacIver laughed and started the engine. ‘I’m not that kind of fool, Mr Kleiber. You said don’t mention it to anyone except the old man. I know how to keep my mouth shut.’

      The man in the back seat grunted as if unconvinced.

      

      Billy Stein was elated. After MacIver had departed he made a phone call and cancelled a date to go to a party in Malibu with a girl he had recently met at Pirate’s Cove, the nude bathing section of the state beach at Point Dume. She had an all-over golden tan, a new Honda motorcycle and a father who had made a fortune speculating in cocoa futures. It was a measure of Billy Stein’s excitement at the prospect of a job in the movie industry that he chose to sit alone and think about it rather than be with this girl.

      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