the Black Marble (1977) Read online

  "Several years," she said, steadying her trembling knees as she smoked. "Since Nicholas and Alexandra"

  Then they were on Wilcox, nearing the station. She knew the day-watch crew would be gone home except for the homicide team, there because of William Allen Livingston, deceased. Certainly Hipless Hooker would be gone to get ready for his goddamn voyage with Sinbad Cromwell tomorrow. Even if Captain Hooker were there she couldn't brace him with it tonight. Not now.

  Of course, she couldn't go on working with a doper. But she couldn't help thinking of him leading her out through all that horror and chaos when her legs were shaking like . . .

  and she could not forget his heavy body shielding her from the Big Explosion. He had just thrown himself on her. And never mentioned it. She d bet the dopey bastard didn't even know he did it. But she knew.

  She couldn't tell Hooker tonight. She would have to think about it over the weekend. Tell him thoughtfully, carefully, that Valnikov was unfit for street duty. That perhaps they should make him submit to a search. A terrible, humiliating, degrading search, and find the drug, whatever it was making him behave so . . . so . . .

  "Well, I think I'll go home and make myself a Christmas dinner,'' Valnikov said cheerfully, when they parked at Hollywood Station. "Would you please sign me out, Natalie?"

  So . . . crazy!

  "But Valnikov, it's January seventh!" Crazy! That's it! Crazy!

  "My mother used to bake delicious sweets on Christmas," Valnikov smiled, shambling off in the darkness.

  Merry Christmas, she thought. On January 7th. Crazy.

  Chapter 7

  The Tragic Muse

  On Saturday, January 8th, Madeline Whitfield did something she had never done before: She visited the Huntington Library on a crowded weekend day. She had to do something. It was impossible to sit at home and watch Chester doing his last-minute work with Vickie. She had been over the hill on Friday, prowling through the boutiques, so Beverly Hills was out. It wasn't ladies' day at the Country Club, so golf was out. She had old friends she could visit, but most of their children were home from prep school on weekends and it was . . . awkward. It was always awkward for a single woman. As repugnant as it sounded, she thought about going to the Valley Hunt Club to play some mixed doubles. But no, Saturday the men dominated the courts. A single woman. Discomfiture.

  Or she could go to the Hunt Room and drink. She opted for the Huntington Library. If only she could have remained thirty-nine forever. If only the Junior League would raise the age limit for active members. There had always been something to occupy her there. Dozens of fund-raring projects for everything from planned parenthood to alcoholic rehabilitation.

  The library grounds were overrun, not just by the regular crush of tourists and weekend visitors, but by two busloads of children on charter buses. Madeline had to park three blocks away and walk to the gates.

  At least the "sustainers" of the Junior League could still be docents at the Huntington Library. Madeline adored taking tenth graders through the art gallery to point out the magnificent collection of French and English works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She loved to escort even younger children through on the rare occasions it was permitted, children from barrios and ghettos, seeing for the first time idyllic cherubic portraits of children from another time. The Beckford Children by Romney. The Young Fortune Teller by Reynolds. Children dressed and posed out of period by English artists copying the extravagant whimsical style of seventeenth-century Italians.

  The boys and girls from the barrios and ghetto would look at the priceless works of art and follow Madeline through the former mansion of Henry and Arabella Huntington, past Houdon's great bronze, Diana, who always disappointed them because the naked woman wasn't built much better than the broad leading them, and what kinda jive-ass bullshit is this when that twat on the statue don't look like no twat I ever seen. And past Venus, by Giovanni Bologna (same complaint: nice ass, no twat). Through the main gallery where, voice trembling with emotion, Madeline would show the scruffy band of children the library's most famous painting, Gainsborough's Blue Boy.

  "A ass-twitchin sissy if ever I seen one," said a young basketball star in a green and yellow apple hat.

  Then to Madeline Whitfield's personal favorite, the greatest work of Reynolds and an eternal tribute to the leading actress of the English stage: Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse. Madeline would explain to the children in great detail how Reynolds applied his paint to probe and penetrate and reveal the very soul of the great actress. Madeline would turn in three-quarter profile when she pointed out the dignity, the nobility in that famous face. Mrs. Siddons staring off with sad dreamy eyes, and pouting lips, and yes, children, some people have even said that if I turn like this, well (Madeline always blushed), that I bear a slight resemblance to the lady.

  "I kin dig it," the stringbean in the apple hat nodded. "She do look somethin like that dumpy consti-pated broad in the pitcher."

  But there'd be no docent tours for Madeline today.

  Just a leisurely stroll about the grounds where Henry and Arabella Huntington once lived so sumptuously. Just to make this day pass. Just to avoid thinking about tomorrow, when Vickie would become a champion.

  Madeline strolled first through the cactus garden where some 2500 species never failed to surprise her though she had come this way perhaps a thousand times. Spined cactus, spineless cactus, giant cactus, creeping cactus. Cactus which flowered at night. Easter Echinopsis, with night flowers like trumpets. Living rock, a spineless variety which protects through camouflage. Milk barrel, Cow's horns, the shaggy Desert fans, the massive Golden barrel as old as Madeline. The magnificent yuccas, over twenty feet tall.

  There was no natural landscape on earth as quixotic as this. An alien landscape. As a child she imagined it as a garden on the moon.

  It was too other-worldly today. She even passed the Japanese Gardens, wanting to avoid the exotic. She wanted to feel comfortable today. To belong. She headed for the Shakespeare Garden. Madeline needed the reassurance of Elizabethan flowers and the forest of azalea and camellia surrounding the north vista.

  Here she felt safe. She'd played hide-and-seek through every path as a little girl, breaking the rules to pluck a pink camellia and pin it in her hair. She could run splashing in the Italian fountain in those days, able to see clear to Mount Baldy every day of the year. That was how she always wanted to remember Old Pasadena: a child doing cartwheels in the grass, surrounded by azalea and camellia, the mountaintops snowy and smog-free and as reassuring as Old Pasadena itself. Before the decline.

  There was no place to sit today. Tourists occupied every bench. But there was an escape: Few tourists bothered to walk north by the orange and avocado groves. There wasn't much up there, just the mausoleum, the last vain act of Henry and Arabella Huntington.

  Five Japanese tourists were there, taking pictures. She sat on the cool marble bench. It was always cool, the marble of the mausoleum, even in summer. She waited until the tourists left, then climbed the few steps and imagined the pinched dour face of Arabella Huntington, glaring at the world through bottle spectacles, swathed in black, hiding under a black hat anchored by a dozen glinting hat pins. Madeline could imagine Arabella walking these grounds. The incredible story went that she never wanted to see a gardener or servant as she walked, preferring to dream that all the beauty around her was manicured by God. When the hell did they work? As she slept? And there you lie, Arabella. And do you give a damn whether or not Victoria Regina of Pasadena is a champion tomorrow?

  Then Madeline Whitfield sat on the mausoleum steps and wiped her eyes because those ghetto and barrio children didn't see a whit of beauty in Lawrence's Pinkie. Not a whit. And what would they say if they knew that she would not sleep this night with or without sixty milligrams of sedative, because of an honor to befall a dog. Well, it might just make more sense to those ohildren than the Gainsborough or Reynolds or Romney she showed them.

  They said that Cons
table's Salisbury Cathedral and View on the Stour was only the way some old dead white punk wanted things to look like, but you know nothin ain't never looked like that.

  Would her dream for Vickie make any less sense to a group of ghetto schoolchildren than Constable's dream? Or Turner's? Or Arabella Huntington's?

  Don't laugh at my dream, and I won't laugh at yours, Arabella.

  On Saturday, January 8th, Philo Skinner spent a frantic, destructive, furtive day at his kennel grooming Tutu and working with her, trying desperately to prepare her in a single afternoon, having to run to the toilet every time the phone rang. No, Mavis, I wont be home early. No, god- damnit, there are no little birds here. Call every goddamn one of them. Call Pattie Mae's house if you think I have her here. Call every kid that ever worked for us. Call the fucking chief of police . . . No, wait, just don't call anybody. Jesus Christ! I am here alone catching up on the book work! And cleaning the shitty kennel because we can't afford Saturday help, and . . . no, don't come, I don't need any help. I'll see you tonight. What do I have to do, lay you to prove I wasn't screwing around this afternoon! Yeah, that's right, I couldn't do it twice in one day! Bang went the phone on the cradle. He needed an Alka-Seltzer. That cunt! Tongue like a stripping knife. Philo Skinner lit his forty-ninth cigarette of the day and began coughing.

  They say the sheets of Puerto Vallarta are cobblestone. And that you can see a flower-covered bridge where Richard used to sneak across at night to see Liz when he was still married to the other woman. They say a gringo can live down there like a sultan with a houseful of whores for $200 a month.

  "How many months can I live like a sultan, Tutu, with seventy thousand bucks?"

  The little dog wagged and whimpered every time he spoke to her.

  "I'll tell you, Tutu," he said, trimming her leg furnishings.

  "Hold still, sweetheart, that's it. I'll tell you, sweetheart, a man can't live long enough to spend seventy thousand tax- free American greenbacks. That's how long."

  Then he put down the shears and held Tutu's face in his tobacco-stained fingers and said, "I'd take you with me if I could, you know I would."

  Then he broke out in a coughing spasm and went to the sink to spit up a massive wad of phlegm. The little schnauzer cried mournfully when he left her side even for a moment. Tutu was the only creature on the face of the earth who loved Philo Skinner.

  _ _ _

  On Saturday, January 8th, Valnikov got blind drunk on Stolichnaya vodka. And sat for the better part of the day and night in front of his stereo set listening to Feodor Chaliapin singing the farewell from Boris Godunov. When he got too drunk to understand the words he listened to the Osipov Balalaika Orchestra. When he got tired of that he did what he always did before falling unconscious. He listened to heartbreaking Russian Gypsy songs.

  Then he lapsed into a deep drunken slumber and dreamed about the rabbit hopping through the snow. He knew there was no escaping the hunter. He knew the hunter would kill the rabbit and cut his throat, and break his jaws, and peel the face back away from the skull with the muscle hissing as it tore in the powerful hands of the hunter. As always, he sobbed while he dreamed.

  Chapter 8

  The Cathedral

  In many ways the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena was not unlike the Russian Orthodox cathedral on Sunday morning, January gth. Thirty men were crawling all over the arena floor laying a thousand square yards of vivid red carpet and placing stanchions joined by yellow ribbon. Sprays of chrysanthemum and bouquets of carnation and Black Swan gladiolus were for this ceremony as well. Only the incense was lacking. The ikons were certainly there-by the thousands.

  The ikons wore the faces of Alaskan malamutes, Belgian sheepdogs, Welsh terriers, dachshunds, beagles, Samoyeds, chow chows, pugs and Pekingese.

  In addition to ikons there were medals and medallions with the faces of Pomeranians, Dobermans, boxers and Basenjis. Added to ikon and medallion were more secular objects, such as letter openers bearing the likenesses of Vizslas and Brittany spaniels. There were paintings, posters, plaques of bloodhounds, coonhounds, Alatas and bull mastiffs. There were T-shirts, pinup posters, glow-in-the-dark key chains, cups and plates bearing the faces of collies, poodles, St. Bernards.

  The concessionaires were ready for action, all right. One tasteless concessionaire experimenting with plastic rosary beads actually sold several before the sponsors closed him down and banished him. That very day, there were two prayerful exhibitors with those beads, fingering the likeness of a plastic Italian greyhound.

  There, in the cathedral of the West Coast dog world, before the light of dawn, with a thousand other souls, was a man infinitely more tense than any dog owner, or any member of the Oakland Raiders or Minnesota Vikings. Philo Skinner had already smoked 13 of what would be a record 105 cigarettes that day.

  Philo had been one of the first in line during those brisk predawn hours. But within ten minutes of his arrival, the campers, vans, and motor homes were backed up in a queue of headlights which extended from the west side of the arena to Santa Barbara Avenue. Some of those dog handlers in the trucks chatted breezily on C. B.'s, some sat in the back of their vehicles and drank coffee, read the Sunday Times, readied themselves for what would be a long long day for hundreds of people and well over two thousand beasts.

  When those vans, campers, and motor homes began roaring onto the floor of the vast arena, Philo Skinner was operating on instinct alone. By rote, he turned off the headlights and drove slowly to his favorite spot on the side of the arena where they showed the terriers. His hands were so slithery he dropped the steel-mesh exercise pens on the concrete floor. A handler next to him offered to help but Philo waved him away, lit a cigarette, sat down in a green canvas director's chair and watched the throngs arriving. There were squads of sleepy janitors who would be kept busy scooping up mountains of dog crap. But where the hell were the food concessionaires? Philo desperately needed some coffee. He was cold. Some judges were arriving already. He'd never been able to figure out why they got there so early. The freelance photographers who would be snapping pictures all day for the dog magazines were here. The dog owners paid to have their pictures taken and paid to have them put in the magazines.

  The handlers and kennel workers were everywhere. All around him tables and cages were clanging against concrete. Then came the roar of engines as the trucks drove outside after delivering their animals.

  Something was different today: a smattering of television sets for Super Bowl XI. Something Philo was counting on if his plan would work to its optimum.

  Perhaps the exhibitors were present for something resembling a religious ritual, but the handlers weren't. Many were not about to miss the other ceremony taking place across town. In any event, there was not one healthy young giant from Minnesota or Oakland who was as tense, excited and prayerful as the long-legged asthmatic with dyed black hair who was trying to look dog show respectable in a three-button herringbone coat, gray woolen slacks and a paisley tie. Except for white patent-leather shoes, the real Philo Skinner clothing was underneath: the red silk underwear.

  Oh, God, why didn't he bring another shirt? Philo Skinner, eyes dilated from it all, lungs rattling and creaking, was giving off an odor a whole can of aerosol spray couldn't hide. Philo Skinner had smelled his sweat and the sweat of other men, but the smell he was exuding was something else again: the smell offear.

  Somehow, sitting there in his director's chair, mildly paralyzed, Philo seemed more sensitive to the roar of action than he'd ever been. He was detached, drifting, numb, yet his mind was darting about like his dilated gaze. The handler two stations down had a Yorkshire with a touch-up. What would the handler say if Philo were to stroll down there and whisper in his ear, "Okay, dogmeat, lay fifty bucks on me or I'll tell the judge to suck his finger and run it across that bitch's withers. You little shitbag! Think you can pass off that dyed Yorkie? Maybe you can out there, but nothing gets past Philo Skinner! Not today! Philo Skinner's been in this rac
ket thirty years. Philo Skinner's been there, baby!"

  Better yet, let the Yorkie handler get in the ring, then whisper in his ear. "How would you like a suspension for that little dye job? Fuck the fifty bucks. Give me a hundred, you stinking little heap of dog shit! Think I don't know? I've been there. I'm Philo Skinner, Terrier King."

  An exhibitor was sitting with his handler three stations down, frantically ripping through the show catalogue with a pencil, handicapping dog, handler, and judges with as much desperation as any horse player Philo had ever seen at Santa Anita. And here there was no money to be won by the dog owners, only great amounts to be spent.

  "Hi, Mr. Skinner!" Pattie Mae yelled, clunking across the arena floor in a dead run, lucky she didn't break her dumb neck. Jesus Christ! She was wearing a worn-out cotton blouse, no bra, and a faded, wraparound skirt which barely wrapped around her terrific round ass, pantyless, no doubt. And platform clogs with ankle thongs! Seven goddamn inches high! He had told her not to wear jeans to her first show, to dress conservatively. Jesus Christ, she had a daisy in her lint- covered hair!

  "Gosh, this is exciting, Mr. Skinner!" she said.

  "Pattie Mae, take the van out to the parking lot and then come back. It's all unloaded."

  "Where do I take it, Mr. ..."

  "Just drive the fucking thing out there and park it anywhere! Lock it up and come back here as soon as you can."

  "Yes, Mr. Skinner," she said cautiously, looking at his dilated eyes, perhaps smelling him already.

  He was still debilitated by the fear and tension. He lit another cigarette. Every handler around him was already set up. The handlers and their kennel employees were hard at work at the grooming tables. The dogs were being creamed with cholesterol, and the breeds with white coats were being cornstarched. The legs and beards and furnishings were being combed and brushed and trimmed. All around him was the whir of hair dryers, the buzz of electric clippers, the hiss of hair spray. (A no-no but everyone used it with impunity.) The incessant click of scissors and shears. The eleventh-hour show grooming being accomplished.