Death of a Blue Movie Star (19 page)

Nicole whimpered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry….”

Anger swept through Traub. He drew his hand back in a fist. But he looked around. A beefy, T-shirted assistant
stirred. The cameraman took a step toward them. Traub waited a moment and released her hair.

Nicole’s hand rose to her head and massaged her scalp. Traub gave her a fake smile again and patted her cheek. She flinched, waiting for a slap. He laughed and slipped the vial of coke between her breasts. “There’s my—”

She tossed her hair and walked away.

Traub called after her, “—good girl.”

“Shoes,” Nicole said to Rune. “A lot of times I think about shoes.”

“Shoes? Like on your feet?”

“Yeah. You know. Just shoes.”

Rune and Nicole were sitting in one of the dressing rooms at Lame Duck, which wasn’t a room at all but just an area set off from the rest of the studio with cracked and mouse-gnawed Sheetrock. They were on the fourth floor, the floor above the bombing. Nicole had said the company had decided not to move, which she thought was real tacky, what with Shelly being killed just below them. “Danny says we’re got a sweetheart deal with the landlord. Whatever that means.”

Rune had snuck up to the dressing rooms after the incident with Traub. There she’d set up the camera and zoomed in for a close-up of Nicole’s face. She’d lowered her voice to sound like Faye Dunaway’s in
Network
and asked, “When you’re on the set with the cameras rolling and you’re with a man, doing it, what do you think about?”

“Just one man?”

“I mean, with anyone.”

“Danny likes to shoot with two men a lot.”

Rune said, “Okay, say you’re on the set with two men.”

Nicole nodded to show she understood the question and started talking about shoes.

“I think about Ferragamos a lot. Today, before that thing with Johnny I was picturing this great pair. It has a nifty bow on the side, real small and cute.” Nicole was dressed in a shiny silver jumpsuit with a wide, white belt. She wore cowboy boots with metal rivets on the side. Her hair was teased up high. Rune noticed that her scalp was slightly red from where Traub had grabbed her.

“I love shoes. I have about sixty pairs. I don’t know. They calm me down. For some reason.”

“Sixty?” Rune whispered in astonishment.

“That was one difference between Shelly and me. I spend everything I make. She put it all in mutual funds and stocks, things like that. But, hey, I like clothes. What can I say?”

“I saw a couple of your films. You looked like you were really turned on, really into it. And you were just faking?”

Nicole shrugged. “I’m a woman; I’ve had lots of practice faking.”

“You must think about something other than shoes.”

“Well, there’s technical stuff to worry about. Am I at the right angle, am I looking at the camera, did I shave my underarms, am I repeating the same words all the time?”

“Who writes the dialogue?”

Nicole glanced nervously at the camera. She cleared her throat. “We make up most of it. Only the thing is, you’d think it’d be easy. You just look at the camera and talk. But it isn’t like that. You kind of freeze up. You know
what
to say, the words and all, but the
how to say it
part, that’s what’s so hard for me.”

Rune said, “You sounded okay to me. And I’ve seen a couple of your films.”

“Yeah?” Nicole turned her face, glowing with purple and beige makeup, toward Rune. “Which ones?”

“Bottoms Up
. And
Sex Wars
. Oh, and
Lusty Cousins
.”

“That was an old one,
Lusty Cousins
. Kind of a classic. I got mentioned in
Hustler
. I have to say I was kinda happy
with the way it worked out. I rehearsed that one for a week. Shelly made us.”

Rune glanced outside into the empty corridor.

“Did Shelly ever write plays?”

“Plays? Yeah. That was another one of her hobbies. She’d send them out and they’d come back with a rejection letter.”

“Did she ever have anything produced?”

“Naw, I don’t think so. But one she wrote a few months ago was supposed to be real good. Some theater was interested in it.”

The Haymarket Theater, Chicago, Rune bet, recalling the note on the copy of the play in Tucker’s office.

“
Delivered Flowers?
”

“Yeah. I think so. That might have been it.”

“You know what it was about?”

“Naw.”

Rune said, “I interviewed Danny Traub. I was talking to him about Shelly.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he said that he really loved her. That they were this like team.”

“Danny said that?”

“Yep.”

“He’s lying,” Nicole said.

“That’s sort of what I thought too.”

“He didn’t give a shit for Shelly. Or for anybody else except himself. Did he, like, tell you about the times he propositioned her—which was every other day?”

“No. Why don’t
you?
”

Nicole looked at the camera. “Maybe if you could shut that off.”

Rune clicked the switch.

“He was always …”

“Harassing her?”

Nicole shrugged as if there was a fine line between
coming on to some woman and harassing her. “It wasn’t like he was stalking her. But he was pretty hung up. She thought he was a little toad. She hated him. He’d come parading onto the set and start putting everybody down. Wisecracking and insulting everyone. You know how he does that? Talking
about
you, not to you, even when you’re right in front of him. And since he pays them—and, man, he pays good—they all put up with it.”

“But not Shelly.”

“Oh, no way. Not Shelly. Hell, she laughed at him. A couple weeks ago Danny was ordering the director around on the set and Shelly called him a pissant. I don’t know what that is exactly—you ever hear of it? Anyway she called him that, then walked off the set. Boy, was he mad. All these veins and stuff stood out on his face. I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”

“I saw the fight you guys just had.”

“Me and Danny? You saw that? That’s not even a fight hardly.” She took a brush and started working on her hair. It was hard work—there was a lot of spray. “Johnny’s a sweetheart. He’s just not doing too well right now. He’s an alcoholic and he does way too much coke. He oughta retire. He was really a star in the seventies. He’s kind of big, you know.”

Rune said, “I saw.”

“But Danny’s right. He’s no good anymore. Lame Duck’s the only place he can work. Nobody else’ll hire him. I guess even Danny’s lost patience. I mean, that’s pretty much one thing you need with a guy—they’ve got to get it up.” Nicole shrugged. “Sort of in the job description, you know?”

Rune paused. Water dripped somewhere. Outside, a motorcycle driver ran through his gears in a tenor roar. She leaned forward and whispered, “Do you think he could have killed Shelly?”

“Danny?” Nicole laughed, started to shake her head.
Then she stopped. The smile faded and she rummaged around in her purse. “You want some blow?” The blue vial appeared. “Johnny always has good stuff.”

Rune shook her head.

Nicole inhaled a line, sniffed. After a moment, she said, “Why would he do that?”

Rune was studying the Sheetrock, the uneven angles, the bent nails, the ragged sawing job. After a moment she asked, “You know what’s kind of odd?”

“What?”

“That, when I said that—about Danny killing Shelly—you didn’t seem really shocked.”

Nicole considered that for a moment. “I don’t like Danny. He’s obnoxious and all he thinks about is women and coke and his cars. But, I’m like, all
I
think about is clothes and coke. So I can’t really, you know, cast stones.” Her eyes darted. She was debating.

“Go on,” Rune said, keeping her voice low. “I have this feeling there’s something you want to tell me.”

She looked at her watch, then leaned close. Rune smelled perfume and Ponds cold cream and Listerine. “Don’t tell anyone, but I want to show you something.”

Nicole rose and shoved open the warped paneling that served as the door. They stepped into the gritty hallway and walked to a service elevator. “We’re going to the basement,” Nicole said, closing the accordion grate. She pressed the first-floor button.

They got out in a filthy lobby and walked to a door that opened onto a flight of stairs descending into the dark.

Rune said, “Looks like it goes down to a pit, like a dungeon.”

Nicole gave a cold laugh. “That’s
exactly
what it is.”

She stared into the dark for a few seconds, then started down the stairs. “I don’t think anyone’s down here. I hope not.”

It was a long descent. They walked a full minute, with just a rickety wooden handrail for support. The only light came from two dim bulbs screwed into huge, wire-cage fixtures meant for lamps much larger. The steps were spongy from rot.

From the foot of the stairs a corridor led to a dark, low tunnel made of rock and uneven smears of concrete. Pools of greasy water mottled the floor. Iron rods stuck out of the stone at various points. Someone years ago had poured red paint, like blood, around the rods—probably as warnings. Cobwebs and the feathery carcasses of insects filled the corners. Rune coughed several times; the air stank of fuel oil and mold.

They continued down the tunnel.

“This used to be a boiler room or storeroom,” Nicole said, stepping through a doorway and clicking on a light switch. Fluorescent tubes flickered overhead, then burst into light. The two women squinted in the brilliance. It was a square room, twenty by twenty. The walls were the same stained, sloppy concrete and stone as the tunnel. Rings hung from the ceiling on chains. Stained leather vaulting horses sat in the corner and there was a complicated wooden rack covering one wall.

“A gym?” Rune asked. She walked over to a trapeze made of wood and chromed steel. “I keep thinking I should work out but I don’t really feel motivated. I think basically exercise should have a purpose—like running from somebody who wants to beat the hell out of you.”

“This isn’t a workout room, Rune,” Nicole said softly.

“No?”

The actress walked to a tall, battered metal locker and opened it. Took a long, thin stick from it. It looked like the sort of pointer a teacher would use.

“See, in the movies I make sometimes we do a little fake S and M. We take a cat-o’-nine-tails made out of yarn or a riding crop that’s wrapped in foam rubber. Some
guys get off watching girls in leather bras and garters and black stockings making men lick their high heels. But that’s all silly stuff. Somebody really into S and M’d take a tape like that back and ask for a refund. Real S and M uses things like this.”

Nicole whipped the thin stick down onto a vault. It whistled and bounced with a slap like a gunshot. Rune blinked.

“Hickory,” Nicole said. “Doesn’t look bad, but it raises welts. It’ll break the skin. You could kill somebody with this if you hit them enough times. I’ve heard about it happening.”

“And you’re telling me that Danny’s into that?”

“I came down here one time and saw him making one of those flicks. He sells them privately. I don’t think the regular tapes Lame Duck makes do it for him anymore. He needs something like this to get it up.”

“What was he doing?”

“It was terrible. He was beating this girl and using needles—I mean, they’re sterile and everything but, still, Jesus. And what happened was she started begging him to stop. But he just went crazier when he heard that. He was, like, totally out of control. I think he wanted to kill her. She passed out and a couple assistants grabbed Danny and took the girl to the hospital. She was going to go to the cops but he paid her off.”

Nicole looked around the room. “So you like asked if he’d kill Shelly? I don’t know. But I can tell you he likes to hurt people.”

Rune picked up a thin chain with sharp alligator clips on each end. The clips were crusted with blood. She set them down.

Nicole shut off the lights, and they walked down the corridor to the stairs.

Which is when Rune heard the noise.

She whispered, “There, what was that?”

Nicole paused on the second step. “What?”

“I heard something, back there. Are there other rooms like that?”

“A couple of them. In the back. But they were dark, remember? We didn’t see any lights.”

They waited a moment.

“Nothing.” Nicole was halfway up the stairs before Rune put her foot on the lower step. Then she heard it again, the noise.

No, she decided, it was actually two noises. One was similar to what she’d heard before: the ominous swishing of the hickory stick as it swung down on the leather bench.

The second was maybe just the sound of air escaping from a pipe or steam or distant traffic.

Or maybe it was what Rune thought it sounded like—the sound of a man’s restrained laugh.