Hollywood Gothic (24 page)

It wasn’t quite the story Challis had expected, but Solomon surely knew the truth. To Challis, Kay had seemed frail, unwell, but composed, friendly, little seen.

“I still don’t get it,” Toby said. “What has it got to do with Goldie ten years later?”

“Oh,” Solomon Roth said. “The diary … Kay had kept a diary. Meticulously detailed. No matter how terrible her condition, she kept a diary. Everything was in the diary, all the men, all the drugs she tried, all the sewer stuff scraped out of her diseased mind. You see, nobody knew she’d kept this detailed record, nobody at all … until Goldie …

“When Kay died in Paris, she had trunks of stuff with her. It was eventually all shipped back here, and we just stored it, no one ever opened the trunks, until Goldie did a year, eighteen months ago, and she didn’t even tell anybody she was going to do it. But she’d become very interested in Kay’s life in recent years—maybe it had struck her that she was just about the age when her mother went round the bend. I don’t know. What matters is that she got into the trunks and found the diary … diaries, I suppose, to be accurate. And it was all there, the whole story.” He puffed smoke before him, pushed his hand slowly through it.

“Jesus,” Challis said. “I was right, then. Blackmail.”

“Goldie hated her father that much,” Roth said sadly, each word pulled forth at the cost of considerable psychic agony. “She had met Jack Donovan, and in her mind she made the connection, Donovan and the diaries. He had a magazine, he knew the publishing business. I doubt if she even thought of the kind of killing she could make through the book rights, the paperback rights, world rights. What she wanted was to get back at her father, at all of us I suppose, but mainly at Aaron. She knew she finally had him.” His old face sagged like his body somewhere deep inside the robe, but the grin remained.

“My God,” Challis breathed softly. “Aaron had a hell of a motive for—”

“Don’t even think it, Toby. In the first place, killing Goldie wouldn’t have done any good. Donovan was already in on it … and he’s alive, don’t you see? No, Goldie had no interest in blackmail, none whatsoever. She wanted the diaries published. She wanted Donovan to run them in his magazine. In installments. She saw it as a circulation builder for Donovan and revenge on Aaron for herself.

“It was Jack Donovan who saw the blackmail potential. He came to us and told us that Goldie had offered the diaries to him, free and clear, for the purpose of running them in his magazine. Mr. Donovan just let that hang there between him and Aaron … then he told Aaron what was in the diaries. Aaron was suddenly faced with the whole cesspool, just dumped in his lap. Well, he had no choice but to come to me for guidance. What to do? By coming to us, Donovan had signaled that there was a way out of our dilemma. After all, he hadn’t just gone off to the printer and let us simply read it all in the magazine. He came to us … and Aaron. And let Aaron know that he needed a million dollars to prop up the magazine, to get it where he wanted it. He wasn’t asking for a gift. He was asking for an investment of one million dollars. Aaron couldn’t do that by himself, he had to come to me. It didn’t take me long to say yes. The man had us by the short hairs … he told us he had the diaries, we gave him the money on his assurance that he could control Goldie. It was indescribably sloppy on our part, we were panic-stricken, we had to stop publication.”

“And the diaries?” Challis asked.

“I leave that to Aaron—”

“You mean to tell me you don’t know?”

“I don’t know. I’m an old man, I’ve tried not to think about it.” Towser looked up, sniffed the wet night air. “It was pay up or Kay’s filth would go out to the world … can you imagine that? Kay Roth?” He shuddered. “So I don’t think Aaron did anything to Goldie, and I don’t think her death was involved in any way with all this—”

“Solomon, you’re crazy.”

“And why is that?”

“What if Donovan didn’t have the diaries? What if he’d only read them? And he finds a couple of quaking imbeciles who’ll fork over a million bucks for nothing but his assurances. But then Goldie gets fed up with Donovan’s stalling around and not publishing them, she gets pissed off and says she’s going to someone else. But Donovan’s got the million she doesn’t know about, and he keeps seeing Tully Hacker pulling his head off and spitting in the hole—you get the picture? And Aaron and you might be angry over a million dollars just thrown away … Goldie won’t listen to reason. So Jack beats her to death just before I wander in looking for my dinner! Christ, and you sit here telling me there was no point in bringing it up at the trial?”

“Now, now, Toby. Bringing it up at the trial would have wasted our million, too. And Goldie would have had her revenge. From the grave. No, we couldn’t allow that, I’m afraid.”

“Sol, I don’t know what to say. I guess good night will have to do.” Challis stood up, watched Towser prick his ears and growl.

“Good night, Toby.” Challis was walking away. “Come see me tomorrow, Toby. We’ll get you out of this.” His voice faded away in the fog.

H
ALFWAY UP THE LONG, SLOW
rising terraces, a yellow light blurred through the fog, soft light, like something growing on a milky culture. Challis walked toward the edge of the jungle growth which Manuel and Pepe spent their waking hours day after day, year after year, trimming back, holding at bay. He reached the barrier of huge, thick leaves and creeping, winding vines and stood with his hands in his pockets, smelling the jungle. In the halo of light they stood watching him. Illuminated from below, the shadows giving them an unusually expressive look, were the two dinosaurs. Raindrops dripped from their tiny heads. They watched him as if they were shy, ready only to keep their distance and wait for him to go. Tons of concrete, their huge abbreviated legs sunk in the black jungle floor, they watched. A long time ago Solomon Roth had wished for them, snapped his magic fingers, and they had appeared. Elves from the studio had come in the night, and by morning Solomon Roth had had his dinosaurs, the first dinosaurs in Bel Air in millions of years.

Daffodil Roth was pacing the hallways. She was smoking a cigarette, and when she turned to see Challis, she batted both arms at the blue clouds. “My God, I wish I knew what’s going on around here.” Her small blue eyes darted from Challis to the door to the sound of a log crackling in the other room. Her feet pattered on the parquetry. “Sol goes wandering off into the night, he won’t take the goddamn cable car, and he’s going to slip on the wet grass some night and break his neck, and nobody’s going to hear him … Toby, please, what’s going on?”

“You’re asking me? I’m the one who just escaped from jail.”

“Well, I’m going crazy, Aaron tearing around here like a madman—doesn’t anybody ever go to sleep in this house? Now, where are you going? You haven’t told me anything.”

“Daffy, you’ve got to calm down …”

She jerked away from him and headed back down the hallway. “You’re no help, you never were. For Christ’s sake, Toby, stay and have a drink with me. Please?”

“I’ve got things to do …” A longing flared in his throat, a desire.

“He’s right, Mrs. Roth.” Hacker stepped out of the shadows in the foyer. He didn’t make much noise, not for so large a man.

“Someday!” Daffodil Roth shook a tiny fist at Tully Hacker. “Soon. God …” She marched off toward the kitchen. Hacker watched her go, his arms folded, his hat square on his big head.

“She resents me,” he said matter-of-factly. “I guess I don’t blame her. But if she had any sense, she’d come to terms with having me around.” He shook his head at the silliness of it. “Weed is bringing your car, Toby. You’d better make tracks, get done whatever you’ve got to do.” He sighed, walked beside Challis toward the front door. They went outside. “She’s right. Nobody ever seems to go to bed around here.”

“Where’s your room, Hack?”

“Upstairs. I’m wired to the closed-circuit TV system, about a dozen different alarm systems, room like an armory. Pity the poor bugger who picks this place to break in. He’ll just go out with the garbage in the morning.” He laughed abruptly. Weed arrived with the cancerous Mustang and melted away, nodding. Challis got in, and Tully closed the door for him. “Listen, Toby, I got a couple of messages for you. Aaron says I’m supposed to run you out of town. Or shoot you if you turn up here again. But he’s nervous, and I have to guess what he really means, you know how he is. Menopause, maybe. But Solomon says he’s got a passport man … you can be gone in twelve hours and nobody’ll ever find you. All you’ve got to do is give us the word. It’s not a bad offer, you gotta admit that. You do what you think best, but the old man, he’s real fond of you, Toby … he means what he says, you know that. Okay, amigo?” He stepped back from the car. “Take care of yourself, you hear?” He smiled and went back into the house. Challis didn’t envy him. Not with Daffy to deal with.

By the time he’d reached the Bel Air gate, the leak in the roof had begun again like a metronome and the windshield had fogged up. Hunched over the steering wheel, he maneuvered onto Sunset, where the traffic was thin and cautious, hooked around to the left, and headed into the darkness of Beverly Glen Canyon. A muddy film was running downhill, but the mudslide and fallen trees had been cleared away, and ten minutes later he’d crested Mulholland and slid down the other side into the valley. It was midnight, and Ventura Boulevard was a wet, uninspiring sight. He pulled to the curb in front of the Murder, He Says, Bookshop.

From the street the main room where the party had been located was dark, but behind it there was a light shining in the hallway and a shadow moved. Maybe she was still there. He stood under the eaves, out of the rain, and knocked several times. A police car passed slowly, the driver staring at him. The shadow appeared in the hallway and came hesitantly across the darkened room. The door opened on a chain lock.

“Oh, hello.” It was Morgan’s partner. “You came back.” She was thinking out loud. “The party’s over.”

“I wondered if Morgan might still be here …”

“Gosh, I’m just cleaning up. Morgan left me to do it all alone, wouldn’t you know.” She made a face. “She said she wasn’t feeling well.”

“When did she go? Maybe I could catch her before she goes to bed.”

“Say, you’re the man who came with her, aren’t you? And then you and Mr. Donovan had an … altercation? That’s a civilized word. What was going on?” She took the chain off, opened the door. “Would you like to come in? Eat the last of the canapés? Anchor Steam Beer?”

“Thanks, but I have some business to do.”

She looked at her watch. “Pretty late for business, isn’t it?”

“Night work,” he said. He smiled at her. She had pigtails and freckles and bangs over bright, curious eyes.

“Well, far be it from me to keep you from your appointed rounds,” she said. “Morgan left about an hour after you slugged Mr. Donovan. She really looked white and faint, to be fair to her.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“I don’t think so. I had the party to keep going, and the author got drunk and that was a trial. He started signing other writers’ names to his book … Raymond Chandler, Earl Derr Biggers, it was a problem. But it was understood that she was going home. I mean, she felt crummy.”

“What did Donovan do?”

“He left, too. Before she did. Stormed out, practically at a run, after he talked with Morgan a bit.”

Challis thanked her, and with a wistful, middle-of-the-night smile she said it was a shame he didn’t have time for a frolic among the canapés.

It was late, and there was no point in getting Morgan out of bed. He could do this alone. It was better to do it alone, anyway. He headed the Mustang out toward the Pacific Coast Highway. The night was dark. Anybody with a brain was home in bed.

Was Donovan the murderer?

He went back through the story Solomon Roth had told him, checking it out against what few facts he knew, what he’d been able to learn about Kay Roth from Goldie. It was the oldest of Hollywood stories, and there was no point in challenging it. Kay’s eccentricities, the disappearances, the comeback, her death. It all fit. And Goldie’s willingness to use it against her father fit, too. Everything Sol said rang true, and anyway, why would he lie? Insofar as Toby went, Sol still felt a loyalty and friendship; but the fact was, preserving the family’s dignity was more important. It wasn’t anything to argue about, it simply was. If Toby got caught in a squeeze, the family came first. Solomon Roth had his priorities.

So that was a blind alley. But Donovan … Donovan fit perfectly into the pattern Sol had revealed. His greed had backed him into a corner: he’d taken the million dollars, yet Goldie expected him to carry out her plan to run the diaries. The million had been paid to stop that happening, but the million was no good if it didn’t stop Goldie. The whole thing had been so crazily thought out. The Roths had just panicked and run scared, buying their way out of it and making it Jack Donovan’s problem. Then Donovan had panicked: how to stop Goldie? He must have been aware that the Roths were counting on him … maybe he even thought the million was a payoff for shutting Goldie up for good. Why hadn’t Aaron or Solomon gone to Goldie themselves? Wouldn’t it have been worth one last try? But even as the thought crossed Challis’ mind, he knew it wouldn’t have done any good, wouldn’t have deflected Goldie from her target. And they all must have known that—Aaron, Solomon, Donovan. But Donovan had the million, and with it the responsibility to talk Goldie out of it. To keep the diaries from being published. And if he failed, Tully Hacker would be waiting to take him to the bridge.

He took the Mustang up a winding canyon road and down the ocean side with the wind off the water turning the soft rain to spray against the windshield. Piles of mud encroached on the twisty road from time to time, and if he hadn’t been tired and anxious he’d have gone another, safer route. But he was tired and he was anxious, and he finally felt as if he was getting close to something like the truth. At the Pacific Coast Highway, his vision blurred and he sat for a moment with his eyes closed. Borrowed time. He was on borrowed time, and the events of the past two days were draped across his mind like clothes on furniture in a deserted room. Behind, beneath each cloth lurked a shape, unidentified and inevitably ominous. He waited for a pickup truck to pass, and turned out into the rain-slick empty highway. The surf roared off to his left, and the wind was pushing the car around.