Broken Heart: David Raker #7

by Tim Weaver

  He glanced at my business card. ‘The way they end?’

  ‘The last ninety seconds.’

  I saw it before it arrived. For whatever reason, he was going to deny that he knew anything. Sure enough, he said, ‘I’m not sure I know what you’re talk–’

  ‘I saw your posts online.’

  He looked at me straight – but his eyes gave him away.

  ‘I know you’re Microscope,’ I said.

  48

  His living room was small and compact. Two bookcases almost filled one wall, their shelves lined with novels, reference books and Blu-rays, and where there was space either side there were film posters, or photographs of what I assumed was Walker’s young son. Thin, four-foot-high surround-sound speakers sat in the corners of the room, like black plastic totem poles, and a fifty-inch LCD was perched on a cabinet and paused on a scene from a film I didn’t recognize.

  One wall of the living room had been knocked through to the kitchen. As I continued scanning the room, I noticed another long row of DVDs beside the TV cabinet, some silver film cans, and a laptop being recharged.

  ‘Do you want something to drink?’ he asked.

  ‘Water would be great.’

  As he went to the kitchen, one of the bookshelves caught my eye. Any Hosterlitz film available on DVD, Walker had, including the ones that had starred Lynda Korin. But as far as I could see, he didn’t have any of the six ‘lost’ films. I thought of the Post-it note I’d found in the box at Korin’s house, with the Kill! timecode on it. Kill! was one of the lost films. If Walker didn’t have access to all eleven films, he didn’t have access to Kill!, and that meant what Korin had written on the Post-it note – the two lines of random letters – would still be unresolved.

  That last thought lingered as he returned with my water, offered me the sofa, then dragged a chair across from the kitchen and perched himself on the edge of it. Reintroducing myself, I gave him some background on the search for Lynda Korin. Anything he didn’t need to know, I left out. Anything that might make him jumpy, I left out. Anything that I thought might compromise him in any way, I left out. He asked occasional questions, but mostly he just listened to me.

  ‘Which brings me to the films he made between 1979 and 1984,’ I said.

  Walker nodded.

  ‘I’ve seen three of them: Axe Maniac, The Drill Murders and Death Island. They’ve all got the same ending – or, at least, an ending that’s almost identical.’

  He nodded a second time.

  ‘I understand he made eleven films during that time, and six of those are gone for ever – the so-called “lost” films. But, on that forum, you said you’ve seen all eleven, including the six that are unavailable. Were you telling the truth?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  I looked at him. ‘I don’t see them on the shelves here.’

  He was already shaking his head. ‘Because you can’t get them on DVD. They’re called the “lost” films for a reason – they’re lost to the general public.’

  ‘But not to you?’

  ‘No, not to me.’

  ‘Are they at the BFI?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  I glanced around the room and my eyes came to settle on the film cans near the TV. ‘Is that them?’

  He laughed, as if I’d insulted him. ‘No.’

  ‘So where are they?’

  ‘With respect, why would I tell you anything?’

  I eyed him, annoyed by his tone, irritated by his obstinacy. While I was sitting here, trying to negotiate answers out of him, Egan and Alex and Zeller would be regrouping. I glanced at my watch. It was after 2 p.m. already. I tried to strike a conciliatory note. ‘I just want to find Lynda Korin. That’s all.’

  He looked at me for a moment.

  ‘Mr Walker?’

  ‘I don’t even know who you are,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve told you who I –’

  ‘A business card doesn’t tell you who a person is.’

  I thought of Alex Cavarno. He was right about that.

  Gesturing to the laptop he had recharging, I said, ‘You can read about some of my cases online. I’m not trying to dupe you here.’

  He got up and grabbed his laptop, yanking the power lead out of the side and returning to his seat. It took about half a minute before his eyes flicked up from the screen to where I was sitting. He’d obviously found a press report about one of my better-known cases.

  ‘You were the one who found the Snatcher?’ he asked, referring to the case, in 2012, through which I’d first come into contact with Melanie Craw.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Who’s employing you to find Lynda Korin?’

  ‘Her sister.’

  His eyes remained on the laptop.

  I pressed on. ‘Have you ever heard of “Ring of Roses”?’

  He looked up at me again. ‘Yes. I read something about it online.’

  ‘At the end of October, on the Cine website?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Was that the first time you’d heard the name?’

  ‘Yes. Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘I’m not sure it exists.’

  He looked taken aback. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think Robert Hosterlitz was writing a script – or, if he was, he never finished it. He had no production facilities at his home – not even as much as a camera – so he wasn’t shooting something on the cheap either. He was diagnosed with cancer in December 1984. People tell me he was a drunk, addicted to painkillers, sick … I think whatever he told his wife about “Ring of Roses” being a film was basically a lie.’

  I thought of what he’d written on the back of the angel photograph. I hope you can forgive me, Lynda.

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Walker asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

  His eyes returned to the laptop screen, rereading whatever article it was that he’d found online about me. Then he snapped it shut.

  I tried again. ‘Like I said to you, I’m not attempting to hide –’

  ‘I’m writing a book.’

  I stopped, puzzled. ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ve been working on it for years. It’s about Hosterlitz.’

  I came forward on the sofa. ‘About his films?’

  ‘About his life.’

  ‘A biography?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I studied him, waiting for him to continue, remembering how – when he’d answered the door to me – he’d denied that he knew anything about the repeated scenes in Hosterlitz’s movies, until I made it clear that I’d found out that he was Microscope. I recalled too that there had been posts on the forum where Collinsky had asked if he could get in touch directly with Microscope, to talk about the repeated scenes – and Walker had shut him down straight away.

  He was trying to protect his book.

  ‘You’re trying to keep the book secret?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know about secret. But I’ve been trying to chart the course of Hosterlitz’s life and there are things in it that … they just …’ He stopped for a moment. ‘There are things in his life that just don’t make any sense.’

  49

  ‘What do you mean, “things that don’t make sense”?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ Walker said, ‘and until I’ve figured out the truth, I’m keen to keep my work under wraps.’ He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure whether he could trust me or not. ‘Okay, look,’ he continued softly, a little guarded. ‘Did you know that his father, Hans, contributed money to the Nazi Party in 1930?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  He nodded. ‘He renounced the Nazi ideology only a couple of years later – it was part of the reason why he moved the family out to the States in 1933. He claimed that he was drawn in by Hitler’s promise to revive the economy and tear up the Treaty of Versailles, but when he saw what the Nazis really stood for, he said
he was ashamed to have contributed a single penny to their cause. Anyway, there’s an interview with Robert Hosterlitz in the LA Times in 1954, just after he won all those Oscars for The Eyes of the Night, where he talks about his father.’ Walker paused, going to his laptop. ‘Let me just find it.’

  I wondered where he was going with this.

  ‘Here,’ Walker said. ‘Hosterlitz says, “My father wasn’t a fascist. He hated fascism. He made an error of judgement at a time when Hitler hadn’t been clear on the full extent of his beliefs, and my father admitted as much every day of his life until he died in 1938. I think if he were alive today, he would have voted Republican – but he would have looked at a lot of Democratic policies and thought, “That really makes sense to me.” I feel like I maintain those same political views.’ Walker stopped; looked at me. ‘Does any of that seem a little off to you?’

  Immediately, I thought of something Glen Cramer had said: I’m telling you, Bobby Hosterlitz wasn’t any communist. No way. He was a moderate. I looked at Walker. ‘Hosterlitz seems to be describing himself as centre-right.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But he was accused of being a communist.’

  ‘Exactly. That was the whole catalyst for him leaving the States in the first place. It was why his career was flushed away.’ He gestured to the screen. ‘But how could he have been a communist if he was voting Republican?’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he lied to the journalist.’

  Walker was shaking his head. ‘I’ve spent over a decade trying to put this book together. I’ve spent half my holiday entitlement flying out to Los Angeles to make Freedom of Information requests. I’ve tracked down anyone from the time who might remember anything, and eighteen months back, I found some documents dealing with Republican Party donations between 1950 and 1960. None of that sort of information had to be officially disclosed before the law changed in 1971, so it took me three years to find those records. Hosterlitz is in them.’

  ‘He was a Republican Party contributor?’

  ‘Correct. He made a three-thousand-dollar donation in the run-up to Eisenhower’s 1952 election campaign. That would be over twenty-five thousand dollars today. That’s not exactly a small amount of money.’

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily change anything,’ I said, although I wasn’t sure if I believed what I was saying now or not. ‘I guess there’s an argument that maybe he contributed to the Republican campaign as a way to hide his real views.’

  ‘Or maybe he wasn’t actually a communist.’

  ‘Sixty years on, I’m not sure if we’ll ever get to find out.’

  Walker was shaking his head again. ‘How did he even end up on the radar of the House of Un-American Activities in the first place?’

  I shrugged. ‘The committee had been all over Hollywood like a rash since 1947. Sooner or later they were bound to get around to Hosterlitz. That article in the National People just helped them focus their attention.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Walker said. ‘It was the article in the National People.’

  I looked at him, momentarily confused.

  He shuffled forward. ‘You said yourself, the HUAC had been going after Hollywood since 1947, yet Hosterlitz was never named by anyone who took the stand, and the HUAC never subpoenaed him until the article came out a couple of months after the Oscars in 1954.’

  I started to see what he was driving at. ‘So what are you saying? That you think the article in the National People was a plant?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

  ‘Someone was setting him up?’

  ‘Yeah. Someone phoned the National People – and they fed them the story about Hosterlitz being a communist.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They knew, at worst, he’d be dragged before the committee and have his credibility destroyed in front of the nation. At best, he’d be blacklisted. At the very best, he’d get sent to prison, or would choose to flee the country. Whatever happened, whether he was guilty or not, he’d end up tarred as a communist and his career would be finished. His work, his life – it would all be ruined.’

  ‘But why would someone want to destroy Hosterlitz’s career?’

  Walker shrugged. ‘Jealousy. Spite. Money. There are all sorts of reasons.’

  Could it have been Zeller who set him up? Cramer?

  I felt a dull thump behind my eyes. They were both around at the time of the HUAC hearings in the 1950s – but what exactly did they hope to gain from planting the story? Back then, Hosterlitz was one of the hottest directors in Hollywood. He’d just come off The Eyes of the Night, he was a multiple Oscar winner, he was still contracted to AKI for another movie. Saul Zeller, as de facto president of the studio, would want him tied to American Kingdom for as long as possible. Cramer himself had said many times over, in many different interviews, that without Hosterlitz he never would have had a career. Neither man should have been hostile towards Hosterlitz. And yet, hours earlier, I’d been handcuffed to a radiator while Zeller’s son told me he was going to torture me, kill me, and bury me where I would never be found.

  ‘Mr Raker?’

  ‘David,’ I said softly, but my thoughts had already shifted forward again, to the true-crime book I’d found in Egan’s basement.

  Maybe it’s to do with that.

  I looked at Walker, recalling the section that had been left behind in the book.

  where he died in San Quentin State Prison, aged thirty-nine. It remains one of the most brutal and controversial cases in a long history of notorious Los Angeles crimes.

  A man dying in San Quentin aged thirty-nine, at some point before the book’s release in 1982. A reference to a Los Angeles crime. I’d done a web search already using all of that information and it had taken me nowhere.

  ‘David?’

  I turned to Walker. ‘Do you know anything about San Quentin?’

  He seemed momentarily thrown by the change of direction. ‘Are you talking about the prison?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s north of San Francisco, I think.’

  ‘There’s a case that might be relevant to Hosterlitz …’ I stopped. It might be relevant to Egan, to Alex, to Zeller. Maybe to Cramer too. I pushed on: ‘Thing is, I don’t know what the case is, or even when it took place. All I’ve got to go on is the death of an inmate at San Quentin, aged thirty-nine.’

  Walker was frowning, clearly confused, and as I played back what I’d just said to him, I understood why: I sounded vague, borderline incoherent.

  ‘I’m trying to think of notable San Quentin inmates,’ I said.

  He was still looking at me like I might be losing it. After a while, he said, ‘Charles Manson?’

  The Manson Family murders had all happened in and around LA. But that couldn’t be what the torn-out pages had been about. I’d found an account of Manson’s crimes earlier on in the same book. The case wasn’t anything to do with Manson.

  It was something else.

  I sat there for a moment, trying to come up with something, and then my eyes fell upon the DVD cases of Hosterlitz’s films.

  ‘Have you really seen all of the films he made after 1979?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All eleven of them.’

  Walker studied me for a moment, concern in his face, perhaps thinking that he’d entrusted the secrets of his Hosterlitz biography to someone unstable; a man for whom there was no clear path from one question to the next.

  ‘What do you make of the way they end?’

  ‘The repeated ending? I don’t know. That’s why I wanted that journalist to ask Lynda Korin about it.’ He paused for a moment, considering me. ‘But I’ll tell you this: the footage that plays on the TV set at the end – that’s California.’

  ‘The section filmed from inside the car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘At one point, if you study it closely, you can see a slight reflection in the windo
w of the vehicle that the footage is being filmed from. The reflection is of a Cadillac Coupe DeVille – and it’s got blue and yellow Californian licence plates. That was the type of plate they used out there between 1969 and the mid eighties.’

  ‘So it’s California, but not LA?’

  ‘It probably is LA,’ Walker said, ‘but there’s not really enough to go on, so I can’t be one hundred per cent sure. It’s kind of a best guess.’

  ‘Do you think Hosterlitz shot the footage himself?’

  ‘That would be the natural assumption.’

  I tried to imagine when he might have shot it, and there was really only one possibility: in the time before he left the States in 1970. He couldn’t have recorded it during his trip out to LA in December 1984 because the footage appeared in all eleven films he released in the five years before that. In theory, at least, he might have been able to do it during his and Korin’s original holiday in Minnesota, during the summer of 1979, but if he’d disappeared for a week, just like he did that Christmas, Wendy surely would have remembered it.

  What interested me more than all of that, though, was how Walker knew the films in such detail, right down to the reflections that were visible in windows for fractional periods of time. It suggested he really had seen all eleven films, over and over again. It suggested he had access to them. It probably meant they were close by.

  He just didn’t trust me enough to show me yet.

  I went to my phone and found the photographs I’d taken of the wooden angel pictures, then handed him my mobile.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you recognize the angel?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It never featured in any of Hosterlitz’s films?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘It belonged to Lynda Korin. Or maybe Hosterlitz himself. Swipe through to the next picture.’

  He did as I asked. ‘ “I hope you can forgive me, Lynda.” ’ Walker looked up. ‘Is that Hosterlitz’s handwriting?’

  ‘I think so. He wrote it on the back of one of the photos.’

  ‘What is he asking forgiveness for?’

  I thought of what Alex had told me in the Portakabin. Robert Hosterlitz isn’t the man you think he is.