Hollywood Gothic (11 page)

None of the other secretaries or assistants looked up as she led him back to the corner office. Before she knocked on the door, she said in a perfectly modulated voice, “Would turkey on whole wheat be all right?”

“Wonderful. And a beer. Any kind of beer.”

She nodded, opened the door, and said that Mr. Benson was here. As she passed him, she caught his eye, shook her head gravely, and muttered, “Ned Tannen.” Then she astonished him with a wink and closed the door behind her.

“My God, she smells good.”

“She is a top-drawer girl,” Ollie said, half-sitting on the slab of glass which rested on two pink-veined marble columns and served as his desk. “Very good Park Avenue firm … family, I mean. And now,” he said, forcing himself to remain in characteristic repose, “what the fuck is going on here?” His voice rose an octave but was immediately yanked back to the lower register where it belonged. “It goes without saying that I’m glad to see you. At least, I think I am.”

Challis began the recitation with the plane crash, the storm raging outside. As he talked, he paced the immense room with its Calder mobile and bank of windows beyond which Beverly Hills looked gray-green in the steady downpour. The trees in the office swayed gracefully in the breeze of the air changer, and Challis saw himself reflected in the steel-framed movie posters filling any wall space not already covered with dull, oiled bookcases. Kreisler’s foot, encased in a highly polished black penny loafer, swung in the space between the pink marble columns. He wore a pale gray sweater and brown gabardine slacks, and he listened without flickering a muscle.

Challis heard himself dwelling on the woman who had come to his aid on the mountain. He didn’t want to mention her name to anyone, but he did want to make clear what a creature she was, how she’d thrown herself unequivocally into the battle. Just talking about her gave him a lift, made him think that there could be a way out.

Finally Ollie interrupted: “Cut to the chase, cut to the chase.”

Challis finished up quickly, describing his parting with Morgan and the acquisition of Eddie’s car. Ollie clicked a cough drop around in his mouth and stared at him. “I don’t know whether you’re lucky or not. But, on balance, I’m persuaded that you probably are. Certainly lucky to have survived the crash, to have found this Wonder Woman type. But the rest of it is going to take some thought. Did you have anything in mind that I might do to help?” He stood up and yawned as if this sort of problem came his way with boring regularity. His telephone buzzed, and he answered it, listened, sighting down the barrel of a gold fountain pen. “I won’t say I’m insulted by that figure, Leon, but I’m sure Jerry would be insulted, so I’m insulted for him. You’ve offended me by proxy. So let me tell you … no, please, Leon, may I continue? Thank you. It’s Jerry’s third original for a major, and given what those pictures are doing I think it’s only fair to advance by hundred-thousand-dollar increments. We both want to be fair, don’t we, Leon? So the tab on this one is three hundred thousand, with the normal consideration on points which—shall we be open and frank, Leon?—which we both know doesn’t amount to what Jerry calls diddley-squat. So tell your krauts that’s how it stands and save us both some time. … Yes, thank you, Leon. And
hasta la vista
to you, too.” He leaned back against a bookcase and said, “Well?”

“No, I haven’t any suggestions for ways you can help. … That poster, Ollie, I never noticed that poster before.
The Man in the Fog.
Why do you have that up in here?”

“It’s a very handsome poster, for one thing, and rarer even than
Laura
posters. And the director, Harry Dyer—you remember Harry Dyer, don’t you, Toby?”

“He died on the beach at Santa Monica. He went there to plink at the gulls with an air rifle …”

“You don’t say? That has an apocryphal ring to it, doesn’t it? Anyway, Harry Dyer was a client here when Maxie Trautwein founded the agency. Maxie had this poster in his office for years, and when Maxie died, I made off with it. … See, down here in this billow of fog, you can see where Dyer signed it. ‘For Max, who resents giving me ninety percent of his earnings, Harry Dyer.’ But what this bit of trivia has to do with your problems …” Ollie Kreisler sat down on a cream-colored couch of nubby fabric and put his feet up on a coffee table.

“It’s a coincidence,” Challis blurted out. “It was Harry Dyer’s daughter, Morgan—she was the woman on the mountain.”

“Look, you know how tiny this world is. Nothing ever surprises me here, the same faces keep going by. It’s like a shooting gallery.” When Ollie spoke, Challis smelled the wild-cherry cough drops. “Her husband, or former husband, Sharpe, was involved in a couple of deals we put together out of this office … lawyer, Charlie Sharpe, that’s it. I had some meetings with him, somehow it came out that Harry Dyer would have been his father-in-law. He said he’d never seen a Dyer picture. Well, that pretty well fixed him in my mind—that and the fact that I once saw him at the Bistro with a white-belt-and-shoe combination. God! I fear for our industry sometimes. Anyway, so she’s the one who did the facial, the hair job. It’s a small world.”

“The funny thing, Ollie, is that she followed the trial very closely.”

“I hope you know I did my best for you when I testified, Toby. I had to admit that you and Goldie had a fiery marriage in the grand old Hollywood tradition. I mean, everybody admitted that, but think of the stuff I left out—the time you threw that Waterford rose bowl of Connie’s at her, for instance. Connie always said she wished you’d hit her, because then the rose bowl wouldn’t have broken. I did my best, Toby—”

“She not only followed the trial,” Challis went on, nodding away the glittering shard of Ollie Kreisler’s guilt, “but she said she’d actually met Goldie … and had dated Jack Donovan.”

There was a knock at the door, and Margo entered with a tray of sandwiches and four bottles of Olympia Gold. She wore an enigmatic smile which revealed a glimmer of white tooth. Ollie thanked her; when she was gone, he leaned toward Challis, said, “I’d throw you to the cops in exchange for one night with Margo. I think you should know where you stand, Toby. Have a sandwich and don’t worry. She’s from the old school. She would never fuck a Jew. Which is why I hired her. Margo keeps me humble.” He poured a glass of beer and pushed it across the coffee table. “Please sit down, Toby. You’ve seen Beverly Hills in the rain before.”

Challis sat down. Sinking into the couch, he had to fight the weariness, the tension. “Has your house slid down the side of the canyon yet?”

“Terribly amusing, old fellow. On a par, I’d say, with your remarks about Manson doing his night work in my neighborhood.” He took a small bite of turkey sandwich and watched while Challis crammed his mouth full. “It surprises me about Ms. Dyer and Jack Donovan. Don’t try to talk with your mouth full—the disguise is brilliant, but your eating habits will give you away. Now, if Jack Donovan had been found murdered—not such an awful idea, either—Morgan Dyer would have gotten my vote as suspect number one.” He sipped some beer.

“What are you talking about?” Challis moved his hand to brush crumbs from his mustache, realized he had no mustache.

“Well, Max Trautwein told me the story,” Ollie said, making a sudden face. “Good Lord, I forgot to take my cough drop out of my mouth. I’ve eaten it.” He seemed to be accusing Challis, then went on: “And Max was right on the spot when it happened, and he was close to Harry Dyer, naturally. You see, Toby, it was Jack Donovan who wrote the last big piece on Dyer, the one that accused him of all sorts of unsavory misbehavior. The story Max told me was that the studio fed Dyer to Donovan to get somebody else off the hook, not an uncommon practice in those days. I’m not sure actually if Donovan wrote the piece or if he was the leg man for the bone-picker who did, but the point remains the same. A dead Donovan would have led, I’m afraid, to Morgan Dyer, which illustrates my point—namely, that life out here is like a big movie with a single cast, a closely monitored, tightly contained world with its own laws, natural and otherwise.” He sipped the foam off his beer and bit another small edge from his sandwich.

“She didn’t say anything about Donovan and her father,” Challis said, remembering her comment about wanting to revenge her father.

“Well, you’d hardly expect her to, would you? Though it is odd that she’d date the man … but then, I’m rather old-fashioned. I’ve always had an unwavering belief in the restorative powers of a feud, real honest-to-God bad blood, as long as you get even in the end. Donovan is the sort of man who can inspire bad blood, I suppose, though I personally don’t mind him all that much.” Ollie stroked his finely sculptured chin and looked through his gold aviator glasses at the poster from
The Man in the Fog.
“A certain kind of Irishman, a street fighter with an overlay of civilized manners. But he’s got the soul of a bomb-throwing gunrunner operating out of a Belfast alley. He’s always having parties out on his yacht, raising money for the orphans of the ‘troubles’ … you know damn well the money goes to buy
plastique
or gelignite or automatic weapons, you just
know
it. It’s his nature … he’s just the sort of Errol Flynn type who would appeal to your late wife.”

Challis swallowed a dry cud of turkey and said, “You do think I was framed, don’t you Ollie? They tell me you think the fix was in—”

“Is that what they say? My, my.” He finished the last of his sandwich and patted his mouth with the linen napkin Margo had provided.

“Well, is that what you think? Don’t be shy.”

“It’s my gut feeling, Toby,” he said after a moment’s thought. “But I hesitate to say it, because a man in your position can hardly be blamed for grasping at any straw he can find. And my opinion is a particularly insubstantial straw … there’s no real hope inherent in my gut feelings. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“For God’s sake, Oliver, now
you
cut to the fucking chase.”

“I think it—the trial, the getting rid of one expendable screenwriter—was the best possible solution to the fix that the industry, and particularly Maximus, found themselves in. Figuratively, you’d shit on the rug. That’s the way it
looks
to me, that’s the way it
feels, smells.
But the point is, I have no evidence to support my belief. Maybe I’m just harking back to the old days, when the fix was in on everything. … If the cover is ever removed from all the movie-industry suicides and accidental deaths, let alone murders, something far worse than the creature from the Black Lagoon is going to come waltzing out—that’s probably what I’m thinking of and why I’m thinking you were a convenient patsy. Am I living in the past, my boy? Or do things never change, after all? I hear about some murders in the rock business these days—Jesus, the rock business! Talk about getting your hopes dashed and your hair curled! And nobody ever seems to get caught … or it gets hung on poor Juan, the gardener, who did it all while zapped out of his poncho on angel dust. Well, shit, old sock, one leaps to the conclusion that the fix is in. I have been told in the dark and murky depths of the Bel Air Hotel’s jungle garden, late at night, who murdered Marilyn Monroe, and damned if I don’t believe it, but there ain’t gonna be no trial, trust me. In your case, who the hell was going to make waves over dinky little Toby Challis?”

Challis was on his feet, pacing, catching the odd glimpse of his strange new self in the windows. “But the Roths made waves,” he said. “What more could they have done? Sol paid for my defense, pulled out all the stops—”

“Hilary Durant? Land sakes! Forsake your innocence and let me tell you that Hilary Durant is not a prime example of pulling out all the stops—Hilary has been at a full stop for years. And whatever you’re up to now, stay away from dear old Hilary. I grew up with the little creep … as a child he always wanted to play doctor with the other little boys.” He plucked another cough drop from a tiny enameled box and placed it on his tongue, made it disappear. “You haven’t insisted on my advice, but let me tell you the way my mind is working. Start with the presumption that you didn’t kill Goldie, that we don’t know who did, and that you were set up as the natural patsy to take the heat off somebody else. If you didn’t kill her, somebody else obviously had a motive … but since they had your nuts in a hammerlock, they—the cops—didn’t try to figure out who else might have wanted the lady dead. That’s what you’ve got to do, pin down the other fellow’s motive. … Toby, I’m betting that Jack Donovan’s up to his keester in all this.”

“Are you saying you think Donovan killed her?”

“Jesus, Toby! Of course not! How the hell do I know who killed her?” He sucked the cough drop and glared at Challis. “I’m merely saying that you might probe the idea of Donovan.”

Traffic was thickening down on Sunset. Challis could see the house Shirley Temple had bought for her parents. The gray stone Getty mansion brooded glumly in the rain like a sluggish pet wondering where its master had gone.

“I saw Donovan and Aaron Roth at Ma Maison a couple of weeks ago—‘closeted’ is the appropriate expression. The room was full of people trying to figure out if David Begelman had ever had his fingers in their bank accounts, and Roth and Donovan were deep in conversation, enraptured with one another. Then Marcel Onions—the French director who has his black little heart set on doing the Billy the Kid spectacle—Marcel came over and they looked as if they’d been caught smooching in the men’s room at the Sports and Health Club … and I had assumed that Aaron didn’t approve of his daughter consorting with an operator like Donovan. Maybe her death brought them together like
Love Story,
who knows? In any case, Onions joined them for coffee, and now I hear that he’s a cover subject for Donovan’s magazine,
The Coast.
A cover … Onions? I say that that makes no sense, he’s nothing like a big-enough deal, if you get my drift. How do I hear this tidbit? From a staffer at the magazine—I mean, little itty-bitty Marcel is a client of ours and the cover is happening and I don’t know about it … which gives me pause—imagine my surprise, if you will. Of course, my only real concern re Marcel is keeping him away from ten-year-old boys and seeing that Roth lives up to the points deal on the Billy the Kid thing, which he keeps threatening to put into turnaround … now Aaron wants to set up one of those phoney development deals, pay Marcel a million dollars to develop two projects, only not really develop them, then write the million off as a loss and have Marcel kick back half a million, which he can sink into oil and natural gas. Marcel can put his half-million into the harem of small boys he’s always wanted, and nobody’s lifted a finger for the money.” Ollie clicked his cough drop against several thousand dollars’ worth of bridgework. “But who knows how it will all turn out … still, my contention is that there’s something a little brown around the edges of the Donovan/Roth rapprochement.”