Double Image

by David Morrell

  “My God,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” Toler said, “she could have been a star. But I never saw her in another movie.”

  “This was her last. She disappeared.”

  Coltrane watched, awestruck as a member of the raiding party tugged the rope and made her stumble, a movement that she accomplished with the grace of a dancer while still making it look like a stumble. In fact, all of her actions had similar grace. Her body had a sensual fluidness that caused every gesture, no matter how trivial, to be impossible to look away from. When she spoke, Coltrane wasn’t prepared for how wonderfully full-throated and sonorous her voice was. Whatever Hispanic accent she had brought to Hollywood, she had worked hard to eliminate. She had re-created herself, and yet there remained the slightest hint of the origins she was trying to disguise.

  Coltrane was so enthralled that he had trouble concentrating when other actors were featured in the story. Bruce Cabot pursued the raiding party, overcoming brush fires, thunderstorms, swollen rivers, buffalo stampedes, avalanches, and ambushes in his determined effort to save the sister of the woman he loved (the structure of the film was obviously indebted to the cliffhanger serials that Seitz had directed in his youth). Meanwhile, the wagon train overcame similar obstacles. A young man had taken over Bruce Cabot’s role as expedition leader and was proving himself to be such a hero that Mary, praying for Cabot to come back with her sister, had fallen in love with Cabot’s substitute. Seitz crosscut between the two sets of adventures. To build suspense as to whether Rebecca’s character was still alive, her screen time was reduced after an Indian, angered by her insolence, grabbed her long black hair and wielded a knife to cut it off.

  Watching Cabot scale a cliff and race through a forest, Coltrane waited with mounting frustration for Rebecca to reappear, and when she finally did, the Indian was hurling her off a cliff into a river. The fight between Cabot and the Indian was suspenseful, but all Coltrane cared about was another glimpse of Rebecca, who made him inhale sharply when he saw her wading from the river, her wet clothes sticking to her, her soaked dark hair slicked back against her head and hanging down her back. Every curve of her body was emphasized. It was as if she were one with the water, her body gathering substance as she emerged from it, retaining the fluid grace of the waves. She was Venus rising from the water. With her head tilted back, every magnificent detail of her face was pronounced, and if it had earlier seemed questionable that Bruce Cabot would instantly fall in love with Mary Beecham, there was no strain of credulity at all when he triumphed over the Indian and hurried to help Rebecca, only to see her wading from the sensuous waters and to be overcome with attraction.

  In the end, he brought Rebecca back to the wagon train, where he announced that he and Rebecca were going to be married. But Rebecca’s sister had a surprise of her own—she was going to be married to the man who had taken Bruce Cabot’s place. Hugs and kisses. A good laugh all around, no hint whatsoever of the sexual complexities embedded in the story. As the camera panned to the snowcapped mountains, the music reached a crescendo. The End appeared. The screen went black.

  In the darkness, Coltrane heard the camera whirring. He heard a chair creak as Vincent stood in the darkness, presumably to go into the projection room and shut off the machine.

  “You said Rebecca Chance disappeared after making this movie?” Vincent’s disembodied voice asked.

  Coltrane was so enraptured by what he had seen that he had to force himself to speak. “That’s right.”

  “When I told you I didn’t know much about Winston Case, I neglected to tell you all of what I did know,” Vincent said.

  “Oh?”

  “This was his last picture, too. He disappeared after producing it.”

  16

  C OLTRANE RETURNED TO P ACKARD ’ S HOUSE AT TWO IN THE morning. His circles of confusion not only had come back but were more severe than ever. His mind was filled with a welter of overlapping blurs. Surely the police would have known that Rebecca Chance wasn’t the only person associated with The Trailblazer to disappear. Why hadn’t Winston Case’s disappearance also been noted in the newspaper? The two incidents would have reinforced each other and made a good story. Had the studio covered it up? Or had Winston Case’s “disappearance” been merely a retreat from the movie business, which would have been the same as vanishing from the face of the earth, as far as Hollywood was concerned.

  In his kitchen, the red light on his answering machine was blinking.

  Uneasy, he pressed the play button.

  “Mitch, are you . . . I’m beginning to worry.” Jennifer sounded as if she’d just walked swiftly from somewhere or was having trouble restraining her emotions. “Have we got a problem? Duncan Reynolds phoned me at the magazine to ask when he could expect the issue that features your collaboration with Packard. He happened to mention that you’d talked to him from New Haven the day before and that you’d be back in Los Angeles last night. That was certainly news to me. Without him, I wouldn’t even have known that you have a telephone and an answering machine over there and what your number is. If you don’t want to see me, fine. I have no intention of crowding you. But whatever’s going on, we still have to work together. I need those photographs. You don’t have to bring them over. Just FedEx them. But for heaven’s sake, do something.”

  17

  I APOLOGIZE ,” Coltrane said the next morning.

  Jennifer motioned him toward a chair in front of her desk, then closed the door to her office.

  “Things have been a little hectic,” he continued. “I had to meet with Nolan. Then I went to see McCoy in the hospital.”

  Jennifer’s stern blue eyes assessed him. “How is he?”

  “In pain, but feisty as ever. If he keeps improving, his doctor’s going to release him in a couple of days.”

  “Good,” she said flatly.

  “And it looks as if the district attorney isn’t going to make trouble for me.”

  “Excellent,” Jennifer said without inflection. “And sometime during the rest of the day, couldn’t you have found a chance to let me know about all these good things that were happening?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Maybe I’m not looking at this properly. Maybe I was foolish to think that it wasn’t just you but the two of us who ran from Ilkovic, that I had a right to hear what you just told me. As it happens, I already know about McCoy—because I went to see him. And I know about the district attorney—because I phoned Nolan.”

  Coltrane raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I could have done this better. In New Haven, I got so involved in my memories about my grandparents that I felt too low to talk to anybody. When I got back . . . I’ve been trying to sort some things out and . . . Here are the photographs.” He set the portfolio on the desk.

  “Thank you.”

  “I feel as if somebody else took them.”

  “But the fact is, you did, and they’re wonderful. A lot of terrible things have happened, Mitch, but that doesn’t mean you have to turn your back on the good things.”

  Coltrane sighed. “Look, I know I was wrong not to keep in touch. I don’t want any tension between us. What do you say we go to dinner tonight? We’ll have that talk we said we were going to have. And maybe I’ll show you a surprise.”

  18

  A S C OLTRANE HEADED UP A SHADOWY , tree-lined, curving street in Sherman Oaks, Jennifer looked at him, baffled. “Where are we going?”

  “To the movies.”

  “Up here?”

  “It’s an out-of-the-way theater.”

  “Well, you did say this was going to be a surprise. I might as well lie back and enjoy the ride.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  Dinner had been at a place called the Natural Food Café—low-fat foods, no pesticides, no preservatives—a welcome change from Coltrane’s recent fast-food dietary assaults on his body. The grilled salmon, wild rice, and steamed vegetables had tasted wholesome and soothing.

  H
is conversation with Jennifer had also been soothing, a lot of issues having been settled: his confusion about himself, her confusion about him.

  “When I saw you that night—covered with mud and ashes and what looked like blood—when I saw what you had done to Ilkovic, I couldn’t . . . I felt as if I didn’t know you anymore.”

  “I didn’t know myself.”

  “And then I couldn’t get over that you’d misled me, that you hadn’t told me what you were planning to do.”

  “I’m not sure I realized what I was planning until I was actually doing it. There’s a lot to be confused about.” He touched her hand. “The best thing I can suggest is that we share our confusion and try to move on together.”

  Jennifer studied him for the longest time. “Yes.”

  He stopped in front of the Tudor house on the street above the glinting valley. As Jennifer got out of the car, tightening her shawl against a chill evening breeze, she shook her head. “What are we doing here?”

  Vincent Toler, wearing a blue cashmere pullover, emerged from the house, his cane clicking on the concrete walkway.

  Jennifer looked increasingly bewildered.

  “Good evening, Mitch.” The elderly man sounded cheerful.

  “Good evening, Vincent.”

  “And this is Jennifer?” Vincent offered his wizened hand. “Welcome.”

  Jennifer shook his hand, not sure what was going on. “Thank you. Vincent . . .”

  “Toler. I understand you’re a movie fan.”

  Jennifer turned toward Coltrane, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “You mean we really are going to see a movie? You’re coming with us, Vincent?”

  “No, the two of you are coming with me.”

  Jennifer immediately looked baffled again as Vincent guided them toward the house.

  “I collect old movies,” Vincent explained. “Last night, Mitchell watched The Trailblazer with me.”

  “I’m beginning to understand. Over dinner, I heard about . . .” Jennifer looked at Coltrane. “So this is where you saw it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to be predictable and boring.”

  “You’re definitely not that.”

  They entered Vincent’s living room, which he explained had been converted into a screening area for a once-famous director who had owned the house in the fifties.

  “What was his name?” Jennifer asked. When Vincent told her, she shook her head. “I don’t think I ever heard of him.”

  “His specialty was comedies. His sense of humor fell out of fashion. Sic transit gloria.” Vincent’s tone was filled with melancholy. “At least George B. Seitz died before he fell out of fashion.”

  “Mitch told me how much he enjoyed The Trailblazer. He made me wish I’d seen it with him. Now that I know the movie we’re going to watch, I can’t wait.”

  “Oh,” Vincent said. His Vandyke beard emphasized the drop of his chin. “I hope I’m not going to disappoint you.”

  “Disappoint me?”’

  “You won’t be seeing The Trailblazer.”

  Coltrane frowned. “We won’t? But I thought—”

  “I know many collectors of vintage films. I made some phone calls this morning and managed to track down the other movie you’re interested in.”

  “You’re kidding.” Coltrane sat forward. “You’re telling me you actually found a copy of—”

  “Jamaica Wind.”

  19

  T HE PROJECTOR WHIRRED , the screen glinted with a black-and-white drawing of palm trees, and South Seas music started playing. Beneath the title, the director’s name appeared.

  “Never heard of this man, either,” Jennifer said.

  “For good reason, I’m told.” In the darkness, Vincent came back from the projection booth. “The collector friend who loaned me these reels says that this director didn’t have a quarter of the skills that Seitz had.”

  “Apparently not,” Jennifer said. “Hawaiian music in Jamaica? God help us.”

  Coltrane gripped his chair when Rebecca Chance’s name appeared.

  Cameraman.

  Screenwriters.

  Produced by . . .

  “Winston Case?” Jennifer sounded surprised. “Wasn’t he the first owner of . . .”

  “Packard’s house.” Coltrane kept his gaze fixed on the screen. “Rebecca bought it from him. And Packard bought it from her.”

  “And took thousands of pictures of her,” Jennifer said. “What on earth was going on?”

  “I’m hoping this movie will help us find out.”

  When Coltrane had developed his prints updating Packard’s series about L.A. houses, he had gone over each of them with a magnifying glass, searching for the slightest imperfection in the darkroom process: a bubble in the emulsion, a water spot. His concentration had been intense. But it didn’t equal the intensity with which he now stared at the images before him. Vincent was right: The direction of Jamaica Wind was clumsy compared with Seitz’s work on The Trailblazer. Coltrane didn’t care. The movie’s faults didn’t matter. Rebecca Chance was in this movie. That was what mattered.

  The plot was about English pirates fighting to unseat a corrupt British governor-general. The lean, dashing, mustached hero alternated sword fighting with kissing the heroine, the daughter of the governor-general’s aide.

  “This is terrible,” Jennifer said.

  Coltrane concentrated harder on the screen.

  “Look at that beach,” Jennifer said. “It obviously isn’t in Jamaica. It looks more like Santa Monica. I think I see the curve of Malibu in the background.”

  The camera kept whirring, images glinting.

  “But wait a minute,” Jennifer said. “Now it’s a different beach. That tropical foliage isn’t just a bunch of ferns and palm trees they stuck in the ground. They’re real. Where do you suppose . . . I bet they went down to Mexico.”

  “There she is.” Coltrane sat up.

  Rebecca Chance emerged from a cluster of vines and totally dominated the screen. She turned a piece of junk into a work of art. She made the director’s clumsiness become insignificant.

  Coltrane felt as if a hand pressed upon his chest, but the sensation wasn’t threatening—it was stimulating. Rebecca Chance wore a flower-patterned sarong that exposed about the same amount of cleavage as the heroine’s, but the heroine looked like a boy compared to her. Rebecca’s lush dark hair hung down to her bare shoulders. Her left leg was exposed to her exquisite knee. Her feet were splendidly bare. It turned out that she, too, was in love with the hero and was spying for him. A chase through a tropical forest reached a climax when Rebecca found herself trapped on a cliff above the sea and escaped by making a spectacular dive into the ocean. Later, when she waded from the ocean, Coltrane inwardly gasped at the parallel between this scene and the scene in The Trailblazer where she was thrown from a cliff and waded from a river. Both scenes were similar to some of the photographs that Packard had taken of her rising from the ocean, the same erotic association with water and waves. In the end, she was killed when she showed the hero and his men an underwater passage into the fortress. The hero and his men displayed appropriate grief and anger, pressed on with their assault, defeated the governor-general, and freed his prisoners, one of whom was the heroine. Hugs and kisses. Sad words about Rebecca’s passing. Homilies about freedom. Music up. Fade out.

  “What junk,” Jennifer said.

  “What a beautiful woman,” Coltrane whispered.

  “I’m sorry, Mitch. I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said, she has incredible screen presence.”

  “No question. She could have been a star.”

  As Coltrane continued to stare at the blank screen, Vincent turned on the lights, then excused himself. “I’ll go make some coffee.”

  The moment he was out of earshot, Jennifer told Coltrane, “But we didn’t learn anything to help us understand why Packard took so many pictures of her, then hid them.”

  “We didn’t learn that
, but we did learn something. Did you recognize the cliff she dove from?”

  “Should I have?”

  “It’s the same cliff she stood on when Packard photographed her,” Coltrane said.

  “One cliff’s pretty much the same as—”

  “No, this one has a distinct rock formation farther along its edge. It reminds me of a cat arching its back.”

  “I didn’t notice any rock formation in any of the photographs of her on the cliff.”

  “I guess I’ve had more time to study them.”

  Jennifer frowned. “You saw a similar rock formation on the cliff in this movie? You watched it that closely?”

  “To make sure, I’ll ask Vincent to replay the scene.”

  “Yes,” Jennifer said without enthusiasm, “by all means, ask him to replay it.”

  20

  I HAD A GOOD TIME ,” Coltrane said. To go to dinner, he had picked Jennifer up at the Southern California offices on Melrose. Now he stopped next to Jennifer’s BMW in the almost-deserted parking area behind the building. “I’m glad we finally had a chance to talk.”

  “We need to talk more,” she said.

  “I know what you mean. What Ilkovic put us through, I don’t think we’ll ever get over.”

  “The person I had in mind was Rebecca Chance. We need to talk more about your interest in her.”

  “How about tomorrow night?” Coltrane asked. “New Year’s Eve.”