City of Lost Girls

by Declan Hughes

  She was not the kind of girl he did this to.

  He wonders what her reaction would have been if he’d said that to her.

  He had felt bad about it all, even while he was doing it. He feels bad now, trying to make a joke about it. It was like…it was as if he’d been trying to kick the booze, had succeeded, nothing for years, actual years, and then one afternoon, the middle of the afternoon for God’s sake, he suddenly decided to drink a bottle of whiskey. No prelude, no provocation, no great temptation, no sense of desperate urges being long suppressed and then at last indulged.

  Maybe she had reminded him of the second Point Dume girl. He had liked her as well; she had been intelligent, she liked to read—he remembered he had given her new editions of Gavin Lambert’s L.A. novels, and he’d had to break into her apartment afterward to remove the dedication pages. Not that there was any crime in giving a book to someone who subsequently disappeared, not that they weren’t linked anyway by dint of working on the same movie, but still: any extra reason to connect him with her would have been unwelcome and unnecessary. He’d taken the empty blue bottle of Prosecco he had given her as well. And perhaps she was the only one he’d had to kill because he realized he’d told her more than was wise. The only one who hadn’t disgusted him. Until now.

  Of course there were many differences also. It’s true all three Point Dume girls were extras, but they were just part of the crowd. They weren’t even the only female extras. Whereas this one was so focal. For God’s sake, he was jeopardizing the entire production. He really wonders if he has lost his reason. He has Broken His Pattern. That’s how the criminal profilers, the Quantico brigade, would put it, he supposes. Bunch of hucksters and faith healers, God alone knows what pseudo-psychological toss they’d come up with about him, especially since as a child he had never started a fire or tortured an animal or wet the bed. He would have to be the exception that proved their rule. But it’s true, he’s operating without a map now. He hadn’t wanted to fuck her, he hadn’t grown to despise her, he hadn’t even plied her with Prosecco—after he’d located the bottles in Mitchell’s, there wasn’t a branch in Kildare Street anymore, he’d had to go all the way out to Sandycove, practically to the Forty Foot to get them. But they sat in the house, ignored, while he strangled her to death on the front seat of his car.

  The question is, why? And it appears there is no answer more compelling than: he had felt like it. But once he’d pointed the car up the drive, with her chattering on about In a Lonely Place or Peeping Tom and not for second doubting his intentions which in any case were not fully formed until he had crunched through the gravel outside the empty house and come to a halt, and in the moment, suddenly, almost abstractedly, as if she were a radio station he was changing, he reached for her tiny neck, he could have held it in one hand she was so slight, like a slender young bird, and squeezed and snapped and watched the light in her eyes gutter and fade and waited and waited and…nothing. Try as he might to summon it up, he couldn’t feel the transfer of her light, the light of her eyes. There had been no contact, no transmission, no communion. And therefore, no salve of grace. Not then, and not afterward, when he reran it for himself. All he felt, then and later, was bad, like…like he always imagined a person who had killed someone would feel, like he had never really felt before.

  He knows that’s why he decided to do it again as soon as possible. Or rather, he had decided against ever doing it again, had firmly resolved with the help of whatever grace he could muster, and then he had been at the party, had had a few drinks, and there she was, all Abercrombie & Fitched and Ugg-booted and candy-pink lip-glossed, in all her Southside Queen Bee glory. He knew he’d have no difficulty despising her, and he knew she’d leap at the chance to do a bit of starfucking, particularly once she figured out that Josh Tyler was mysteriously unsusceptible to her charms, so when he told her he was sneaking out the door to go drink champagne at Club 92 and he had room on the broom for one more, she had her tongue down his throat before he could get the car out of the carpark. He told her he wanted to stop off for something he’d forgotten, and she nodded, all the while leaning and stroking and kissing him whenever they came to a halt, and he found to his surprise that he was actually quite amenable to her charms himself, so much so that when he pulled in the drive of the house and she took his hand and pushed it down the waistband of her pink Juicy Couture sweats, he had to gird himself to resist.

  She came into the house with him, clawing him every which way, breath hot and hands sticky. He insisted on the lights being kept off, and he led her down to the kitchen at the back of the house, and sat her at the table in the dark, and he found his way to the American double-doored fridge, and just as he opened the door, she asked him what he had forgotten, and he said, your friend, and the fridge cast a light across the table and there, sitting opposite her was her missing coworker, sleeping, or not sleeping, no, not sleeping, dead, in fact, and there, standing opposite the cold body was the living girl, shaking, screaming, tears and snot erupting from her face like boiling-over milk. He hit her on the back of the head with the Prosecco bottle because she was sturdy enough, a hockey player he guessed, and he didn’t want to struggle with her while he strangled her.

  He didn’t feel quite so bad in that moment. He was drunk, to begin with, and so he had found it funny, not ha ha, but deeply, sublimely, poignantly comic, that moment beforehand, the last moment of hope, when the live one leaned across and touched the dead one’s hand as if to nudge her awake, and the weight of her head tipped her limp, lifeless body onto the table with a dull thud. He thought the memory of her friend standing and shaking and howling would linger fondly with him always.

  In the morning, he feared that it would: he had not slept, and he felt nothing but dismay and revulsion at his grotesque behavior. He hadn’t even witnessed the second girl’s eyes as she died, had sacrificed the very reason he killed for a cheap pantomime of stage-managed vulgarity, had forfeited the very possibility of grace. Worse, with two out of three Fates gone, and the amount of footage that was potentially unusable putting the future of the movie in real doubt, he was beginning to wonder whether he had fallen in love with his own destruction (he had made a vow to himself way back: if not quite never again, certainly never in Dublin).

  It appears that he can make all the resolutions he wants, but to no avail: when it comes to action, he will do whatever he doesn’t want, whatever he wants very much. And a part of him knows that he wants very much to kill a third time, because…why? Because it would be the final act that would give a wholeness, an organic perfection, to everything he has ever done? Because he wants very much to bring it to a climax, third of three and the last of all, Three-in-One, One-in-Three, to honor the sacred mystery of the Trinity, the culmination of his life’s work in one vessel of flesh and bone and blood? Yes, but most especially, because he needs the balm, the salve that sanctifying grace would bring him, and he knows of no other way to receive it than from the dying eyes of a lost girl.

  THE FILM ENCYCLOPEDIA, 6TH EDITION

  THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO FILM AND THE FILM INDUSTRY

  edited by Ephraim Katz, Ronald Dean Nolan

  Donovan, Jack (John). Director, Screenwriter. Born on June 16, 1964, in Dublin, Ireland. ed Trinity College, Dublin (Music); Royal Irish Academy of Music. A trained singer, he sang several tenor roles in opera productions in Ireland and the UK. His debut film was a low-budget, high-energy rendering of Verdi’s La Traviata called Scarlet for You (1990) set in contemporary Dublin, which won much critical acclaim and proved a surprise American success. (Donovan himself sang the role of Alfredo Germont in the film, but has not sung professionally since.) He won international accolades with his next film, A Terrible Beauty (1992), a visionary tale of political violence and taboo sexuality which won an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. His first full American picture, Ocean Falls (1994), a haunting romance among surfers and Hollywood hopefuls, loosely adapted from The Slide Area and The Go
odbye People by Gavin LAMBERT, was much admired, and Donovan won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Studio assignment The Armageddon Factor (1995), an espionage thriller adapted from a bestselling novel, featured A-list stars and was a massive commercial success. This enabled Donovan and his longtime producer, Maurice FAYE, to raise the budget for The Dain Curse (1997), a dreamlike, disturbing adaptation of the Dashiell HAMMETT novel that divided critics and performed indifferently at the box office, though netting Donovan another adapted screenplay nomination. Twenty Grand (1999) was a mystical road movie set in the Sierra mountain range, described by the director as an homage to Michelangelo ANTONIONI. It pleased neither critics nor audiences. Donovan spent three years directing opera in New York and Rome and working as a script doctor before a triumphant return in 2003 with The Man in the High Castle, a provocative adaptation of Philip K. DICK’s alternative history novel. The film was an international success and was nominated for seven Oscars, winning four, including best picture and best adapted screenplay. He followed this with a big-budget historical extravaganza, The Last Anniversary (2005), which has been described as a disaster on the scale of Cleopatra and Heaven’s Gate. Along with producer Maurice Faye, Donovan has worked with the cinematographer Mark CASSIDY on every film (with the exception of The Armageddon Factor). Frequently ranked among other independent directors who came to prominence in the nineties, including Quentin TARANTINO, Paul Thomas ANDERSON and David FINCHER. Donovan is divorced, and has homes in Dublin, Los Angeles, New York and Rome.

  FILMS (as director-screenwriter): Scarlet for You (Ire.) 1990; A Terrible Beauty (Ire./U.S.) 1992; Ocean Falls (U.S.) 1994; The Armageddon Factor (U.S.) 1995; The Dain Curse (U.S.) 1997; Twenty Grand (U.S.) 1999; The Man in the High Castle (U.S.) 2002; The Last Anniversary (U.S.) 2005.

  CHAPTER 7

  Maurice told me I’d get what I needed, so I tell him I need five minutes with Mark Cassidy and Conor Rowan. While I wait, I reread the text Anne Fogarty had sent me earlier. It would have made a dead man blush, among other things. I don’t know if I am blushing when I’m greeted by the unlikely sight of Mark Cassidy with his arms full of orchids, but whatever my face is doing he takes as a reaction, and nods in eye-rolling acknowledgment.

  “What can I say, sometimes you’ve got to play the exception to prove your rule. And I’d be lying if I said I never bought my wife the odd flower. But don’t spread it around. A girl can lose her reputation so quickly on a set like this.”

  Had I known Cassidy was married? Perhaps I had formed the notion that he was not the marrying kind. But then it had been so long since I’d seen the Gang of Four, there were no doubt many things I had to catch up on.

  “Are the flowers for your wife?”

  “They’re not, they’re for poor Madeline. I feel a little responsible since it was one of my lighting stands she ran into this morning. Even if it was her own fault. Do you know where she is? I can’t get her on the phone.”

  “I’m looking for her myself.”

  “Well, in that case, you wouldn’t mind dropping these with her, would you? I need to get back on set. I have a trainee camera person holding the fort, but it’s only a matter of time before Jack goes through him for a shortcut.”

  “Will do. Did Maurice talk to you?”

  “No.”

  “He was going to ask you to give me a couple of minutes of your time.”

  Mark Cassidy, with blond hair cut like a public schoolboy’s, short at the back and sides and long in front, bows slightly, as if to say at your service, and inclines his long, hollow-cheeked face in my direction, and pushes his fringe out of his eyes; the expression he presents is characteristic of him, somehow managing to appear polite and insolent at the same time.

  “The Ocean Falls shoot in Malibu. There were three female extras, surfer girls? They would have appeared in the beach party scenes. And they went missing?”

  Cassidy wrinkles his brow slightly, as if what I’m saying seems vaguely familiar.

  “Their names were Desiree LaRouche, Polly Styles and Janice Holloway,” I say. (I have never forgotten their names.) “Do you remember them?”

  Mark Cassidy considers the names for a while, then shakes his head.

  “No, those names are not familiar. But I would rarely even know the extras’ names. Why are you interested? Oh, because of Nora and, ah—”

  “Nora and Kate, yes. Because it’s happened before.”

  “Isn’t it a bit early to assume Nora and Kate are missing?”

  “It probably is. But it’s already caused chaos for you, no doubt.”

  Mark shrugs.

  “Nothing I can’t handle. There are always fires that need to be fought. You have to expect it. Maurice and Jack like to get excited and stamp their feet. They must feel it helps. I react the opposite way. Whatever it takes. But going back to Ocean Falls…you know, I was all business in those days. If it didn’t happen in front of the camera, forget it. The only reason I remember you is because you were in The Dain Curse. People used to have affairs and all sorts, and I was totally oblivious. I see a lot more now, of course. But we’re all older, so what goes on has got a lot less interesting. Not to mention visually appealing.”

  “So no footage of the girls ended up in the movie?”

  “There were two beach parties with about a hundred extras. It’s possible. But at best, they would have been faces in the crowd.”

  “You didn’t notice anything odd about Nora or Kate, did you?”

  “I noticed they looked a lot like Madeline. But you’d expect that, with Jack. All for love.”

  Mark’s two-way radio goes off. I wonder briefly if it has been triggered by the abrasive cynicism of his tone. No love lost any longer between Mark and Jack.

  “Got to get back,” he says. “I’m sorry I can’t be any more help. I hope you find the girls soon, Ed.”

  I take the flowers from him and tell him if anything else occurs to him, to give me a call. I stand in the yard for a while, trying not to feel stupid while people beam at me they way they always do at a man with a big bunch of flowers. I feel stupid.

  Madeline King appears from the direction Mark Cassidy has just gone, Conor Rowan by her side. Before I get a chance to give the flowers to Madeline, Conor pushes in front, gruff, surly smile in place.

  “Mossy said you were looking for me. I don’t have much time, Ed. And I don’t remember those girls in Malibu. I remember they went missing, but that’s about it. It was America, it was L.A., I think I thought shit like that was supposed to happen, you know what I mean? And it didn’t really affect the day-today of the shoot. Not like this pair today.”

  “Anyone they might have had a fling with, a relationship, a drink?”

  “I wouldn’t have noticed. We were all flat out. Jack maybe, but I never know what Jack gets up to. Learned early on not to notice.”

  “Anything you can tell me about Nora and Kate?”

  Conor looks at me through boiling eyes.

  “Yeah. The only excuse they could have, the only one I’d be willing to accept for them not showing up today, is if they’re dead.”

  Madeline snorts with nervous laughter. Conor’s two-way goes off, and he points to it and walks back toward the set. His exit line comes over his shoulder.

  “And they still should call and let us know where their bodies are buried.”

  I don’t know if I blushed at Anne’s text, but Madeline certainly blushes at Conor’s remarks, and blushes again when I thrust the flowers at her.

  “Oh Ed, you shouldn’t have,” she says

  “Compliments of Mark Cassidy,” I say.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I didn’t think he was the type either.”

  “And it was my own fault.”

  “Yeah, he said that.”

  “Of course he fucking did, I can hear him, the cynical bollocks,” Madeline says, laughing. “Still. Nice flowers though. More than some people’d buy you.”

  “How is Ja
ck, is he all right?”

  “Ah, he’s Embattled Man today. The world is agin him. A lot of temple rubbing and brow clutching. And groaning. Not to mention shouting and roaring. I don’t blame him, given all that’s happened, but…”

  “But staying out all night on the lash wouldn’t help at the best of times?”

  “Something like that. He’s being a pain in the hole, but he’ll be grand.”

  “Do you have some time? I need to talk to you, ask you a few questions.”

  “Get your detective thing on? Sure. What do you want to do about Jenny?”

  “Is she still on the costume truck? Don’t suppose we can just leave her there, can we?”

  Madeline shakes her head.

  “There’s not enough room, the ladies are getting grumpy and it’s very hot. Fur will fly. What do you reckon, is she really in danger?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to feel it. In the sunlight, it seems ludicrous. But we have to act as if she is. Two girls are still missing.”

  Madeline’s hand shoots up to her swollen face, and her eyes widen, and for a moment I flash back to a darkened house two blocks back from Venice Beach, and a woman, not much more than a girl really, making the same gesture, betraying the same fear in her eyes, with pretty much the same kind of bruising. Only her marks didn’t come from a lamp stand, but from a human hand.

  “I can’t think of anywhere she would be safe,” Madeline says. “There’s no one I could trust to look after her, no one I’d burden with it. I mean, they could put themselves in danger, right? Who’d sign up for something like that?”

  I ARRANGE TO meet Tommy Owens in a café in Parnell Square. As I leave the Nighttown set, one of the security goons I had thought looked familiar smiles at me. When I nod back, he lifts up his radio and points it at me as if it were a gun and makes a plosive sound with his lips the way small boys do when they’re playing soldiers. I can’t work out whether his intention is to threaten me or if he’s a bit simple; I finally plump for the latter, and give him a smile. My mistake.