Free The Remake by Stephen Humphrey Bogart Page B

And then just line hum for a moment until the dial tone came back on and the machine hung up.
    R.J. tried to imagine what her face had looked like when she spoke to him down the long wire. He couldn’t. Maybe there had been some small touch of softness there around her mouth. Maybe a hint of nostalgia in her eyes. Most likely, though, just the same cool amusement.
    He tried to picture her in the overstated tackiness of the Beverly Hilton. Compared to the Pierre, it was a fat drunk in a madras suit, Shriner’s hat, and a tie with glowing red light-bulbs. Still, it was kind of tasteful by L.A. standards. It shouted money, but it was old money for Hollywood, at least thirty or forty years old. Maybe Casey would fit right in, with her ironic detachment.
    R.J. almost smiled at the thought. But she had left no room number, no invitation to call back, and that took the smile out of him.
    R.J. sat heavily in the chair beside the answering machine. Ilsa was still making smacking noises at her dish. I should probably eat something, too, R.J. thought.
    But he wasn’t hungry.

CHAPTER 11
    R.J. ended up in a restaurant, anyway. Even though he wasn’t hungry.
    He sat beside the phone for ten or fifteen minutes. He replaced Casey’s message twice more, just to hear her voice. Jesus, I’ve got it bad, he told himself. He rewound the tape, drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair for a minute. R.J. knew he had to do something to break the mood or he would end up down in that warm-looking bar.
    He hated like hell to think about going that way again. He’d lived inside a bottle too long, fought too hard to crawl out of it. If he had even one drink now—Well, he was sure he could quit again but it was hard, too hard to think about. Some people could tell their troubles to strangers over a glass of beer. For R.J. the stuff was poison.
    Poison. That goddamned lawyer. Murray Goddamn Belcher. Without consciously thinking about it, R.J. realized he’d been turning the thing over in his mind. Something bothered him. Who murdered a guy three thousand miles from home? Sure, German tourists got killed in Florida. But this was different. Poison.
    That meant somebody hated the guy. Enough to kill him in a bad way. A sneaky way. Hated him enough to plan ahead and get poison and figure out how to get it to him—in a hotel room? Why not at home in L.A.? Easier to plan—and who knew Murray Belcher in New York?
    R.J. didn’t really know. Maybe it made sense. Maybe Murray had lots of enemies in New York. Maybe all over the country for Christ’s sake. But it didn’t add up.
    Or maybe it did. R.J. didn’t know enough to be sure.
    For the first time, he wanted to.
    R.J. picked up the phone and dialed Angelo Bertelli.
    “Hiya, copper,” he joked when Angelo picked up. “This is your favorite hard-boiled gumshoe.”
    “No kidding? Columbo, calling me? Hows about that!”
    “I need a couple of hints on something, Angelo. You want some dinner?”
    “Hey, I could do that. Say Ferrini’s, half an hour?”
    “I’ll be there.”
    “Ciao.”
    R.J. shrugged on his coat and headed out, feeling better. This wasn’t really his problem, but doing something was better than sitting around stewing. Besides, if he was still the leading suspect after all this time, Kates was never going to solve this thing. And that meant R.J. was going to have it hanging over his head for the rest of his life.
    Ferrini’s was a cozy place down on Mulberry Street. Angelo liked it because Ferrini liked Angelo. And just incidentally they made the best marinara sauce in Manhattan. R.J. took a cab down to the restaurant. He was taking a lot of cabs lately. He wondered if that meant something. Maybe he was getting old. Maybe he was lonely, so lonely he needed to hear the surly Pakistani babble of a New York cabdriver.
    Whatever. R.J. paid off the cabbie on the sidewalk in front of Ferrini’s and went in.
    It was a dim joint, depending mostly on candles for light. The decor