Hollywood Gothic (12 page)

Challis said, “Is Aaron headed for trouble?”

“Name me a big producer who isn’t—at least potentially. They’re all a little scared, what with the feds looking under this bush and that. Begelman and his funny checks are just the tip of the iceberg, as they say, and they’re right, obviously. So everybody’s a little edgy … in Aaron’s case, one independent producer leased him a ski lodge at Aspen for peanuts, a buck or something, and gave him a forty-thousand-dollar rec-vee as a Christmas present … well, the idiot writes it off as a business expense and Aaron doesn’t declare it as income, you know how it always worked. Well, the tax chummies are watching, or so we’re told—”

“But Aaron, is he into this stuff deeply? Is he headed for real trouble?”

“Look, Sol is a bigger danger for Aaron than mere G-men, if that’s what you mean. If Sol doesn’t catch him on the fiddle, he’ll be all right, I suppose. Unless something happens to put him in the spotlight … to the G-men he’s just another guy in Gucci shoes and Ralph Lauren duds, one of many. As far as I’m concerned with Marcel the Frog, I only know what’s on paper—his little private deals are really no concern of mine. I am merely saying that morally I fear the worst … it’s just that Oliver Kreisler can smell this stuff a mile away. Just remember what Harry Cohn said—‘It ain’t a business, it’s a racket.’ ”

“What you’re saying,” Challis mused somewhat numbly, “is that since I didn’t have an ironclad three-picture deal, it was less trouble to have me take the rap—”

“In light of the fact that, A, you were holding the murder weapon in your hand when the police arrived, more or less, and, B, you did seem to have a motive … I’m not saying they would have made something out of whole cloth. You were cut to fit, you must admit.” Ollie stopped sucking, pushed his glasses up his nose, and waited for Challis to come to rest. “You know how serious your situation is, don’t you? Get rid of the soft focus, this is not a movie.”

“I know, I know. But the trial is over. I was convicted. We’re not talking about heroics at the last minute to sway the jury. The jury is back home, having a TV dinner, watching
Laverne and Shirley
and wondering why Kareem doesn’t run to the other end of the court half the time … they were out two hours to reach a verdict, I was lucky they didn’t come over the railing and fucking lynch me … you’re telling me the fix was in but I shouldn’t reach for straws … well, with all respect to your better judgment, maybe I can bust it, find out who really did it.”

“And maybe not, Toby.” Ollie looked at the flat gold wristwatch and shook his head. “I’ve got a meeting at Paramount I cannot miss. But let me tell you what’s been percolating in the back of my mind while we’ve been getting the lay of the land here. The fact is, I’ve got a better idea, better than trying to buck the system we’re not only up against but are part of, as well. Realistically, you and I know you can beat anything in this business. There’s
always
a way out of any trouble. I’ve got a client shooting a picture on an island out in the Pacific … I mean it is
out
in the Pacific, a sort of sandy rock with a couple of rusty Japanese bayonets lying on the beach. Nobody but six guys wearing dried leaves for pants and running a tavern for two hundred people making the movie. They’ll easily be there another six months, maybe longer. And it could easily be two hundred and one people making the movie. … We can put you in a box of ham sandwiches and you’ll go right onto the plane we’re using. N-o-t-h-i-n-g to it and you’re a technical adviser all of a sudden. Then we fix some papers and a cover story, and you spend a couple of years in Singapore or Hong Kong working on your tan. Then you come back as somebody else. Write a screenplay or two in Hong Kong, hell, you can come back, go live in Klosters or Florence. … It could be done, Toby. Let’s put it this way, old-timer, I’d do it if I were you—this is no bullshit artist talking to you, Toby. Listen to Ollie Kreisler—I’m telling you he can make you safe, and Ollie Kreisler does not bandy words.”

Challis picked up his new raincoat. “I’ll have to get back to you, Ollie. I appreciate it—”

“The offer stands. We’re brothers, Toby. We ride together.” Ollie’s eyes almost glistened with emotion. Challis wondered if he was done.

“I’ve never resented the ten percent,” Challis said. “I want you to know that if … if I don’t see you again. Brother.” Challis grinned.

“Sometimes I wonder what you have where your soul should be.”

“It’s probably off somewhere with your sense of humor.”

“Possibly. In any case, I want you to know that I’ve never resented the ninety.”

“But, Ollie, I’ve got to have a crack at making somebody believe I’m innocent.”

“I believe it. Be satisfied with me. Go to my island, help make a movie.”

“You know what I mean. But thanks for the information.”

“You heard none of it from me.”

“One last thing—would you have recognized me?”

“No. You’re perilously close to becoming the invisible man, and there are dangers in that, too, old man. So be careful.” He walked Challis to the door.

“So long, Ollie.”

On his way out, Margo stopped him at her desk. “Mr. Benson, let me validate your parking ticket.” He handed it to her. She licked several little stamps and stuck them on the back of the pasteboard. She looked up at him primly, handed it back. “You remind me of someone … around the eyes.”

“It’s Errol, everybody says that. Errol …”

“Flynn?”

“Leon.”

“Oh, Mr. Benson …”

“You know, Margo, you smell wonderful. Don’t ever change that.”

“Why, thank you.”

“But Mr. Benson has got to keep moving.”

“Even your voice.” She put her glasses on. “It’s funny …”

“It’s a small world,” he said, closing the door behind him.

C
HALLIS WALKED ACROSS SUNSET TO
the Hamburger Hamlet next to Schwab’s. It was chilly, and the rain surged in the gutters, coming down out of the hills above Sunset. From the look of things, there would be no joy in Trousdale Estates tonight. It was that odd, depressing hour of the late afternoon, and the constant rain was blowing as the wind picked up, curling around the collar of his spotless raincoat and wetting his neck. He bought the late edition of the
Times
and sat in the outdoor section facing the street, the heating elements overhead glowing red, and ordered coffee. He kept his raincoat on, watched the traffic, and wondered what Ollie had meant when he said being an invisible man had its own dangers, too, old man. Invisibility struck him as the one crucial advantage in doing what he had to do—a requirement, actually. But some antecedent of Kreisler’s remark echoed in the back of his mind, just out of reach. …

His thoughts were wandering when he noticed Margo, wearing a chic belted trench coat and a matching rain hat, bending into the storm and coming across the street toward him. She swept the sidewalk café with her eyes and passed out of his vision when she entered the restaurant. He hunched over his coffee and studied the front-page stories about the continuing storm damage. Had she seen him? Had she somehow recognized him? The way she had looked at him … What the hell was she doing in a Hamburger Hamlet, anyway? From the corner of his eye he saw her being ushered into the outdoor section. Linda Ronstadt’s home was in danger of being washed into the Pacific, but she said she wasn’t leaving, she was going to fight it out. Game girl. She was a neighbor of his; she had, in fact, provided him with some of his nicest impure reveries. Margo was seated against the wall, where she could watch him; he had to contort himself to keep her at the edge of his vision. Butterflies were turning into killer bees in his stomach, and the fear of recognition made him sweat. Why didn’t she say something? What was the silent surveillance in aid of? His coffee was cold and growing a provocative white scum; he stirred it, turning the scum to chunks. She was still watching him. He wanted to leave but felt paralyzed. A waitress brought her a Bloody Mary. He waited.
He
was buried deep in the paper, the story simply noting that searchers were still seeking the wreckage of the plane. No picture, and his name mentioned only once. Tomorrow morning it would be different, and he shrank at the thought. She was still watching him.

Fog was blowing down out of the hills. The traffic lights on Sunset were blurring, growing larger, like balloons inflating. A tall man strode briskly up to the railing and waved vigorously. “Margo, it’s me … Margo, over here.” He was laughing. “For God’s sake, honey, put on your glasses.” He shook his head and made for the entrance. Challis sighed, stood up, folded his newspaper, and looked directly at Margo, who was fumbling with her purse, retrieving her glasses. Then he walked past her, made way for her date at the door, and went back to the pay telephone.

“Good afternoon, the
Times
,” the lady said.

“Editorial, please.”

“Editorial,” another voice said.

“Pete Schaeffer,” he said. The restaurant was dark, purveyed a burnished oxblood look that jarred with its name. The tables were filling, and the business at the bar looked good; he wondered if he’d see anyone he knew. He almost looked forward to the next test, but the tension in his stomach wouldn’t go away.

“Schaeffer here.”

Challis took a deep breath that turned out to be a shallow breath because nerves were constricting his chest, making him feel and sound like a man who pants into the telephone. “Pete, you’re not going to believe this …”

Ten minutes later Pete Schaeffer acknowledged that he was convinced. “Jesus, Toby,” he whispered, “we just sent another guy to Cresta Vista to look for you. The betting down here is that you wandered away in a daze and probably drowned in Little Fawn Lake. The last stiff they found in Little Fawn Lake was Muriel Chess … or was it Derace Kingsley’s wife? I forget. That was back in the forties—anyway, you’re not in the lake. Look, I’m going to go put a couple hundred on your surviving, okay?”

“Make it four hundred,” Challis said. “I deserve a piece of the action.”

“Shit yes—hey, when are you going to give yourself up?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. Anybody but the mountain lady know you’re alive?”

“Kreisler.”

“Don’t tell me—he said he’d get you top dollar at Universal for your story and
National Inquirer
serialization rights?”

“He was very nice about everything, nothing like that.”

“Then call Lazar … call Scott Meredith. This could be the break you’ve been waiting for.”

“Pete, this situation has its serious side …”

“I know, I know, but you mustn’t be such a sobersides. What do you want from me, anyway?” Schaeffer’s high voice almost got lost somewhere behind his forehead when he whispered.

“I’ve got some questions. I need some advice. Meet me somewhere …”

“Listen, I told you when you married Goldie, what did I say? I’ll tell you, I said don’t come crying to me if it doesn’t work out, and it didn’t work out, and here you are, crying to me. Meet me at Pink’s, we’ll have a chili dog, and I promise not to bring the cops. I can’t get away for a while—say, eight o’clock. What do you look like?”

“Clean raincoat and a half-assed tan. No beard.”

“Ugh.”

He walked back to the parking garage. The fog was thicker, and traffic was crawling, blocking the intersection each time the light changed. He nearly ran over a man who loomed unexpectedly out of the fog, stepped obliviously into the path of the Mustang. Until the final, almost fatal moment, the man in the fog had been invisible.

And it occurred to him what Ollie Kreisler had meant. It was something from Harry Dyer’s old movie about the man in the fog. Somebody, Zachary Scott maybe, had said that a man in the fog was invisible, and somebody else, probably Geraldine Fitzgerald, had said that an invisible man, a man who was believed dead, was the easiest man in the world to murder. No one can die twice. Challis was surprised that it had taken him so long to remember it. “Sweet Lorraine” had been the song from that picture: Lorraine had been the killer and also Harry Dyer’s wife. A tidy little in joke for the family and friends. And now Morgan Dyer played the theme song on tape, at home, in the Mercedes. Challis smiled to himself. Life was a movie. Out here, anyway, he thought, if no place else.

He worked the Mustang onto Sunset and headed east along the rain-blunted, sadly gaudy Strip. Pat Collins the Hip Hypnotist still turning people into chickens in front of their families, still at it after all these years, babbling along underneath the blond beehive … Filthy McNasty’s … the Dirty Grunts live at the Roxy, one week only … Dino’s, the restaurant that grew famous on the old television show
77 Sunset Strip …
used cars, a thousand restaurants … Cyrano’s, where Goldie had thought the waiter faking French was so cute … Roy’s for six-hundred-year-old chicken, and Butterfield’s, where you ate quiche and fruit salad in the sunshine. Up in the hills, all the houses clung to the rain-soaked mud, trying not to begin the long sorry slide into their neighbors’ backyards, the houses on stilts with rain running anxiously across the patios and making tiny, destructive little rivers weakening the underpinning of the Hollywood Hills … in the houses you could hear the occasional creak as the timbers pulled and the rain beat incessantly on the rooftops. Somewhere up there, Morgan Dyer was listening to Sidney Bechet’s “Sweet Lorraine.”

Eddie’s ragtop had a small tear that let the rain draw a bead on the back of the seat just behind Challis’ head. The rain bounced in a steady drumbeat off the hood, and the wipers made it almost impossible to see. He drove slowly: an accident on Sunset Boulevard was not on the agenda. Finally he pulled off and drove a couple of blocks to Santa Monica, drove back west, and parked in the Tropicana Motel parking lot. Inevitably he saw Tom Waits standing in the doorway of the office, watching the rain slam angrily into the lot. He was wearing a cap, a plaid shirt, and a black suit from the Salvation Army. Challis could almost smell the booze on the suit.

He turned the radio on. The Lakers were playing in New York at the Garden, and Chick Hearn sounded pissed off. Chick Hearn always sounded pissed off, though, and the Lakers were winning. At the half there was a news broadcast that brought it all up-to-date.