Killing Moon

She finished the contents of her glass, put it on the bar and signalled to Ben for one more. ‘And, because I always fall for what I can’t get, I’ve invested money I don’t have in a movie project with an enticingly big part for an older lady. A project with an intelligent script, actors who can actually act, and a director who’ll give people food for thought, in short, a project that any rational individual would realise is doomed to failure. So that’s me, a daydreamer, a loser, a typical Angelino.’

The man with the J-shaped scar smiled.

‘OK, I’m all out of self-deprecation here,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Harry.’

‘You don’t talk much, Harry.’

‘Hm.’

‘Swedish?’

‘Norwegian.’

‘You running from something?’

‘That what it looks like?’

‘Yeah. I see you’re wearing a wedding ring. You running from your wife?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Ah. You’re running from grief.’ Lucille raised her glass in a toast. ‘You wanna know the place I love the most? Right here, Laurel Canyon. Not now, but at the end of the sixties. You should’ve been here, Harry. If you were even born then.’

‘Yeah, so I’ve heard.’

She pointed towards the framed photos on the wall behind Ben.

‘All the musicians hung out here. Crosby, Stills, Nash and... what was the name of that last guy?’

Harry smiled again.

‘The Mamas and the Papas,’ she continued. ‘Carole King. James Taylor. Joni Mitchell.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Looked and sounded like a Sunday-school girl, but she laid some of the aforementioned. Even got her claws into Leonard — he shacked up with her for a month or so. I was allowed to borrow him for one night.’

‘Leonard Cohen?’

‘The one and only. Lovely, sweet man. He taught me a little something about writing rhyming verse. Most people make the mistake of opening with their one good line, and then write some half-decent forced rhyme on the next one. The trick is to put the forced rhyme in the first sentence, then no one will notice it. Just take a look at the banal first line of “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” and compare it with the beauty of the second line. There’s a natural elegance to both sentences. We hear it that way, because we think the writer is thinking in the same sequence as he writes. Little wonder really; after all, people are inclined to believe that what is happening is a result of what’s gone before, and not the other way around.’

‘Hm. So what happens is a result of what will happen?’

‘Exactly, Harry! You get that, right?’

‘I don’t know. Can you give me an example?’

‘Sure.’ She downed her drink. He must have heard something in her tone because she saw him raise an eyebrow and quickly scan the bar.

‘What’s happening, at present, is that I’m telling you about how I owe money on a movie in development,’ she said, looking through the dirty window with the half-closed blinds at the dusty parking lot outside. ‘That’s no coincidence, rather a consequence of what will happen. There’s a white Camaro parked next to my car outside here.’

‘With two men inside,’ he said. ‘It’s been there for twenty minutes.’

She nodded. Harry had just confirmed that she was not mistaken in what she guessed to be his line of work.

‘I noticed that car outside my place up in the Canyon this morning,’ she said. ‘No big surprise, they’ve already given me a warning and told me they’d send collectors. And not the certified type. This loan wasn’t taken out at a bank, if you follow me. Now, when I walk out to my car these gentlemen are probably going to want to have words with me. I’m guessing they’ll still make do with that, warnings and threats, that is.’

‘Hm. And why tell me this?’

‘Because you’re a cop.’

Once more he raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I?’

‘My father was a cop and, clearly, you guys are recognisable the world over. The point is I want you to keep an eye out from here. If they get vocal and turn threatening, I’d like you to come out onto the porch and... you know, look like a cop, so they beat it. Listen, I’m pretty sure it’s not going to come to that, but I’d feel safer if you kept an eye out.’

Harry studied her for a moment. ‘OK,’ he simply said.

Lucille was surprised. Hadn’t he allowed himself to be persuaded a little too easily? At the same time there was something unwavering in his eyes that made her trust him. On the other hand, she had trusted the Adonis. And the director. And the producer.

‘I’m leaving now,’ she said.

Harry Hole held the glass in his hand. Listened to the almost inaudible hiss of ice cubes melting. Didn’t drink. He was broke, at the end of the line, and was going to drag this drink out and enjoy it. His gaze settled on one of the pictures behind the bar. It was a photograph of one of the favourite authors of his youth, Charles Bukowski, outside Creatures. Ben had told him it was from the seventies. Bukowski was standing with his arm around a buddy, at what looked like dawn; both were wearing Hawaiian shirts, their eyes swimming, pinpricks for pupils, and grinning triumphantly, as though they had just reached the North Pole after a gruelling journey.