City of Mirrors (4 page)

I
've always thought it odd that people sometimes refer to a moment in life as if it were a scene in a movie. Real life doesn't have a camera, lights, and a boom mike hovering around you. It doesn't have a time limit defined by the length of the dialogue. It doesn't have a corpse leaping to her feet after the director calls “Cut!” and asking “How did I do?” And it doesn't have the set laughing at her unintentionally funny question.

Mother would always remind me that in acting, reality was no excuse. “Only the hack,” she explained, “says ‘But that's how it happens in real life.'”

Yet when the black-and-white patrol cars arrived, rooftop beacons flashing in the twilight, the unnecessary ambulance parked beside the truck, and the yellow crime-scene tape encircled the area, it did look like a movie. And I was beginning to think reality was no longer an excuse in my own life.

Detective Dusty Spangler introduced herself in a voice as flat as Kansas: “I know, it sounds like a stripper's name.”

I had the feeling she used this line to put people at ease or gain more information. Her pale hair was pulled back into a stub of a ponytail. She wore almost exactly what her male partner wore. Blue blazer, a shirt, and gray slacks. Her sizable belly hung over her belt and leather hip holster. I wondered how she reached her weapon in an emergency.

After I'd told her exactly what had happened, she checked her notes and said, “So you used your mother's urn to get into the condo. You're a very resourceful woman.” She made it sound like one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

I asked her if I could leave, explaining that I didn't want to deal with the media. I knew that once they found out Jenny and I were both in the same movie, it would turn into a circus. She let me go with the assurance that I would give her my complete statement at the West Los Angeles Station.

Now I drove up the long driveway to Zaitlin's house. I had called him at the crime scene to tell him what had happened. Beyond upset, he had wanted to see me immediately.

Zaitlin and his family lived in a grand French château, always referred to without irony as “the farm house,” atop a hill in Brentwood. Three stories high, with a steeply pitched slate roof, dormers, turrets, and four useless towers, the stone mansion had spectacular views west from the Pacific Ocean all the way east to the San Bernardino Mountains, which towered over Pasadena.

When I arrived at the crest, expensive cars were parked in a driveway built to hold many expensive cars. I pulled up to the front entrance, and a valet appeared and opened my door. Rap music pounded viciously from the side yard.

I leaned my head back against the seat and remembered tonight was the birthday party for Robert and Gwyn's son. I closed my eyes. A party was the last thing I needed. Then I grabbed the urn and let the valet help me out.

“I won't be long,” I told him.

The two-story foyer was empty except for a security guard in a black suit standing in front of a massive carved-wood door. A round marble table filled the center area of the limestone floor.

Approaching the guard, I caught a glimpse of my stunned hollow-eyed reflection in a floor-to-ceiling wrought-iron framed mirror. I looked like a blond ghost holding an urn.

“Diana Pole, I'm expected,” I told him.

He repeated my name into his Bluetooth, nodded, then opened the door.

Shrill laughter and the loud voices of people trying to be heard over the relentless music hit me like a blow to the head.

The partygoers filled the enormous room, which was decorated with antique area rugs, seductive sofas obese with down, and a walk-in fireplace. Gilt-framed French paintings depicting turn-of-the-century women leisurely reading, pouring tea, taking baths, or strolling with their parasols glinted from the walls. More or less famous guests spilled out open French doors onto a veranda that led down to the gardens and a rented pavilion from which the music blared. Young attractive waiters, hope still in their eyes, circled with trays of martinis, mojitos, and expensive red and white wines. Others displayed small filet mignons on bite-size hamburger buns, caviar, iced crab, and Dodger Dogs. Everyone here was the chosen, the connected, the sought-after.

Grabbing a martini, I downed it and placed it back on the tray. The alcohol streamed through me, burning the edge off what now seemed to be a permanent chill.

“Diana, so good to see you,” Barbara Quinn, a producer who had never hired me, grabbed my shoulders and looked intently into my face. This was a new thing in Hollywood—looking intently into people's faces, creating a false intimacy. I liked the old way better—staring at the forehead.

“Last year Colin, and this year your mother,” she continued. “You look devastated. A great writer. A great actress. Both gone. Is there going to be a memorial service for her?”

Memorial service?
“I … haven't had a …”

“Hold that thought. I'll be right back.” She swooped away to chase after an up-and-coming actor whose name I couldn't remember.

Ryan Johns loped toward me. He had on a fresh pair of Bermuda shorts and another loud Hawaiian shirt topped off with an expensive cashmere blazer, and his Uggs. His crimson legs and face clashed with his orange-red hair.

“Look what you did to me,” he said. “You left me out on my deck until I burned to a crisp. Where have you been? I was hoping you could drive me here. I had to take a cab. Too many DUIs. Do you know what it's like to take a cab in Los Angeles? We got lost in Mar Vista. Where the hell is Mar Vista? Can you drive me home?”

“I'm leaving right away.”

“Great, it's a dull party.”

“Have you seen Zaitlin?”

“No …” His eyes came to rest on the urn. “That's not …”

I nodded.

“Nora!” His blue eyes shined with glee. “You brought your mother to the party?” He was as delighted as if I were a school chum who'd brought a live frog to class.

A sliver of a blonde sidled up to him. “Remember me?”

“I …” He was trying to think fast.

“Hot pink leather coat? Back bedroom of your agent's house?”

“I had trouble with the buttons.”

“You passed out. We have unfinished business.” She ran a fingernail along his bottom lip, then turned and slipped away. He winced at his burnt skin being touched.

“What do women see in me?” he asked, honestly amazed.

“I have no idea.”

Ryan grabbed a drink from a passing waiter and stalked after the Blond Sliver.

“I don't know how a man can drink as much as Ryan does and be such a successful writer. But he'll never be in Colin's league.” Zaitlin's wife kissed me on the cheek.

“He has high-concept ideas,” I said.

Tall and thin, Gwyn Zaitlin had a sad elegance about her. She wore her mink-brown hair pulled severely back from her tired face. It was as if she wanted to show us every deep line and erosion that burying her soul had cost her. Some women don't have a soul to lose but she did. Of the three of us, Celia, Gwyn, and myself, she was the one who had my mother's kind of talent. But she had suffered a breakdown and began hearing voices and cowering in bushes. During that period she got pregnant; to this day she says she doesn't know who fathered her son. Her parents put her in a sanitarium in Switzerland where she was to have an abortion and get her sanity back. In that order. But even in her deepest despair it never occurred to her not to keep the baby.

I always thought the sanitarium was where her soul and talent got buried, not because of Ben, her son, but because she had returned so utterly unwaveringly normal. Hollywood normal, that is. It was as if she had been given a script and she was playing the same role over and over. Three years later she met Zaitlin, and they married. Many people thought he married her for her family's money. But as Gwyn reminded me, “Someone was going to marry me for my money, so why not the man I wanted?”

And now she was one of the town's major hostesses and a force for charities, especially rape victims. But in the land of plastic surgery, she moved through Hollywood with a raw aging face, a warning symbol that no one heeded.

“Robert's waiting for you.” She took my arm and guided me back through the party. “It's terrible about Jenny Parson. You haven't told anybody have you, Diana? I don't want my Ben's birthday ruined.”

As I shook my head, we returned to the quiet of the foyer.

Her hazel-colored eyes, like a chameleon's eerily changing their shade to fit her surroundings, fell on the urn. “What's that?”

“My mother.”

“Nora? Give it to me. I'll put it in the guest closet.”

“No.” I said too loudly, causing the security guard to glance toward us. My own vehemence surprised me. Then I realized Mother's ashes had become my mooring, something safe to hold onto in an otherwise horrific day.

She touched my cheek. “Are you all right, Diana?

“I'm really
not
losing it, Gwyn.”

“You mean as I did?” Her hand dropped away.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean that at all.” I squeezed her hand.

“I know you didn't. I don't know why I said it. I guess the death of that young actress has made me anxious. Was she any good?”

“She could've been if she'd wanted it.”

“Like you. I know you always thought I was the one with the talent. But it wasn't true. I'm glad you've gone back to acting. And I'm glad Robert is here to help you.” We paused by his closed office door. “How is Celia these days?”

Gwyn was the sort of wife who could live knowing that her husband had a mistress. The problem was that Celia had once been a dear friend to her in the pre-Zaitlin days. She had even gone to Switzerland to visit her. But now they saw each other only by chance. Since I was still Celia's friend, I never knew when Gwyn wanted to talk to me about her as Robert's mistress or as my friend. Conversing with her could be a minefield.

“She's fine,” I said simply.

“Really? I heard Robert on the phone telling her how to take care of a swollen eye.”

“She took a spill, fell off her five-inch heels, and got a little bruised. That's all.” I regretted telling the lie, feeling I was betraying Gwyn while protecting Celia.

“She never liked being shorter than us.” She smiled, opening the door to Zaitlin's overly decorated office.

Robert was wearing an expensive silk jacket, jeans, a striped shirt, and no tie. Looking exhausted, he sat behind his desk, talking on the phone. He waved us in. Beth Woods, the director, still wearing her leather Mossad jacket and cargo pants, slumped on a dark green velvet fringed sofa, her elbows resting on her knees and her head hanging down. She looked as if she'd just vomited. On the wall behind her hung a Chagall painting of a voluptuous woman floating through the sky with a horse.

“Diana.” Beth glanced up, acknowledging me. “This is awful.”

As I nodded, Zaitlin snapped into the phone, “How the hell do I know what we have to be careful of? I want to be ready in case we do have to be careful. Try to get this through your head—an actress in my movie is found dead by another of my actresses whose very famous mother has just died. This will be all over the media.” He slammed down the phone. Nobody says good-bye anymore in Hollywood. Jenny certainly wasn't given the chance to, I thought.

“The cake is going to be served soon,” Gwyn announced.

Zaitlin stared at her. We all did. “You're worried about the goddamn birthday cake being served while I'm trying to save a sixty-million-dollar film?”

“No, I'm worried about our son.”

There was always the tension of Ben between them. Ben who carried a total stranger's DNA.

Zaitlin let out a long sigh. “I'm sorry, Gwyn. This won't take long. I'll be there for the presentation of the cake.” The only times I ever heard Robert apologize for anything was when speaking to his wife.

After Gwyn left, Zaitlin's eyes narrowed in on the urn. “What's that?”

“My mother.” I sat down, facing his desk and resting the urn on my lap.

He placed his hand over his shaved head as if to keep the top of it from exploding. “You weren't carrying that around when you discovered Jenny, were you?”

“Actually, I was.”

“Oh, shit,” Beth moaned, running her hands through her already disheveled spiked hair.

“It's bad enough you found Jenny. But to find her while carrying around Nora Poole, for God's sake? This is a media wet dream.” Zaitlin's face grew red, and a vein protruded on his forehead. Struggling to regain his composure, he asked, “What did you tell the police?”

“Just what I knew. Not much.” Then I explained what had happened, including how I got into Jenny's condo by using the urn as a ruse.

Despite herself, Beth laughed. “You are a natural actress, Diana.”

“Why didn't you just leave when she didn't answer the door?” Zaitlin demanded.

“You asked me to go there and help her with her lines. But then I became worried about her.”

“She wasn't your problem!” he snapped.

“You made her my problem!” I snapped back.

“Could she have committed suicide?” Beth asked, trying to break the tension.

“Not unless she jumped out of a window from the third floor then put herself in a garbage bag and threw herself into a dumpster,” I told her.

Blanching, she collapsed back into the depths of the sofa.

“Murder could mean a long investigation. You never know what the cops will dig up.” Zaitlin's fingers tapped his desk nervously.

“What could they dig up?” I asked.

“What do you usually dig up in a horror movie? The unexpected. Like learning you used Nora's ashes as a ploy. How do we get in front of that?”

“I wasn't thinking about the media at the time. Is there something I don't know? Or should know?”