by Tim Weaver
I looked for a light switch, but couldn’t find one, so swept the torch from side to side. There were two tables, placed length-wise next to one another. One was full of junk – rust-speckled equipment I struggled to recognize even under the glare of the torch – but when I got closer, I realized they were parts: obscure chunks of metal that looked like they’d been ripped from an old car engine.
The other table was covered in a sheet.
I placed the angel on the floor and whipped the sheet away. It turned out it wasn’t a table at all, but a refrigerator and a bookcase.
I went to the refrigerator first.
It was full of 35mm film cans.
A plastic temperature gauge hung from a hook inside and read 3°C, and on the bottom of it, a label read: Acetate film = 0–5°C. On top of the film cans there was a series of ziplock bags. I counted twenty. One contained a videotape with a VHS-C logo on it. The other nineteen all held the same thing: reels of Super 8 film. The 8mm stock must have been what Hosterlitz had shot in his spare time. Korin had talked about him owning a Super 8 camera, and he’d told her in the letter that he’d left it in the garage for her along with the boxes.
I moved on to the bookcase.
It was full of archaic hardbacks, browned and worn. I took one out at random and found it was coverless. The title page read: Film Noir 1940–1959. It had been bookmarked with different colour Post-it notes and, when I opened it to see which pages the Post-its were marking, I saw that they were all passages or chapters dealing with Hosterlitz’s films. They talked about his techniques, his trademark use of close-up, his long takes, his dialogue. Korin had underlined sections and added notes to the margins in red pen, but it was hard to read anything she’d written. I’d seen her hand before and it had never been as opaque as this – so had she deliberately made it difficult to decipher?
If she had, it had to have been an insurance policy against people finding the books, a way to conceal her thoughts. But why did it matter? When I removed another book called Film Styles, and a third, Narrative: A Beginner’s Guide, I saw there were Post-its inside those too, and similar, handwritten notes. I checked the rest of the shelves and found books on the history of cinema, technical manuals, film encyclopedias. Korin had marked various sections in all of them, paying particular attention to passages that dealt with the techniques that Hosterlitz had employed during his most successful years as a director.
Outside, the sirens had begun to get louder.
I put the books back, got to my feet and shone the torch out across the rest of the room. Hidden in the shadows, at a diagonal from me in the corner, was what looked like another table. It was disguised with a blanket but, underneath the cover, the surface of the table appeared to be littered with objects. I couldn’t see what they were, but the blanket had formed a series of peaks and troughs as it fell around whatever Korin had left there.
Grabbing the blanket, I pulled it off.
But this wasn’t a table either – or, at least, not in the traditional sense.
It was a flatbed editor.
A movie editing table.
Instantly, I remembered the end of Hosterlitz’s letter to Korin, where he’d talked about leaving something else in the garage unit, as well as all the boxes.
I bought it after I went to see Zeller and Cramer in LA. Once you get into the garage, you won’t be able to miss it.
He must have been talking about this.
There was a picture viewer in the middle – about the size of a small, portable television – and then countless plates and rollers. The film reel was placed on to one of the plates, it was fed through the rollers, and then a prism projected the image of the film on to the viewer. Before digital, this was how all movies had been cut together: yards and yards of negative being fed through from one side to the other, the film’s editor using the viewer to help make precise cuts – marking it with a chinagraph, chopping it, reassembling it into an edit.
I glanced at the fridge full of film, and then at the shelves on the bookcase, full of technical manuals and ‘How To’ guides. She’d made notes all over them. She’d underlined things. She’d studied her husband’s work and other directors’.
Because she was teaching herself.
She was teaching herself to edit film.
What Korin said to me in the caravan flooded back. But I could only have you begin to look for me when I was ready for you to start looking. It took me ten months to get to that stage, because Robert left instructions. But they were so hard. It’s so hard.
My eyes dropped to the floor.
Beneath the editing table was a cardboard box. I bent down and pulled it out. Inside was an old typewriter. The E was broken on it, and I remembered the typewritten timeline I’d seen on the wall of the caravan that Hosterlitz had compiled for Korin, which had been missing all its E’s. The typewriter had been his.
Next to that was a portable DVD player, scratched and dusty, and DVDs of all the Hosterlitz films that Korin had removed from their cases and taken from her house. As I pulled the DVD player out of the box, I saw that it had a lead and plug attached. I opened it up. The screen had fingerprints on it, small scratches too, and when I popped the disc drive, I found a DVD on the spindle.
It was marked Version 12.
There was one other thing in the box. A dark blue plastic folder containing a stack of white paper. As I quickly started going through the paper, I heard the wail of sirens again, clearer for a second above the beat of the rain on the roof.
The paper stack consisted of invoices and receipts, letters that Korin had written on the typewriter – clearly keen to avoid using the Internet or email – the missing E’s filled in by hand. They were all correspondence with the same company, and the same person – a place called CineLab UK in Manchester, and a technician called Greg Plumstead. Under their corporate logo, at the top of one letterhead, it said they were specialists in transferring 8mm, 16mm and 35mm film to digital formats like DVD and Blu-ray. I glanced at the fridge on the other side of the room, home to 35mm film cans and nineteen ziplock bags of 8mm.
But then the receipts and invoices stopped.
Halfway in, the stack of paper became something different. It became a single, ninety-page document, bound together with two brass fasteners on the side. I swallowed hard as I realized what it was.
Alex, Egan, Zeller – they thought Hosterlitz was finished. They thought, in retirement, he was too sick, too washed up, to do anything that might harm them. ‘Ring of Roses’ was just the name of a building, long buried in a past they’d managed to suppress.
But they were wrong.
It had never just been a building.
I looked down at the film script, at its title page, the corners curled, the paper browning. There were six words typed on it.
Six words that Saul Zeller never thought he’d see.
Ring of Roses by Robert Hosterlitz.
75
My heart was racing. I found a power point next to the flatbed editor and plugged in the portable DVD player. Setting it atop the table under which the cardboard box had been stored, I turned the volume all the way up and pushed Power. As the disc began to whir noisily and I waited for it to load, I started turning the pages of the script. They were old, yellowed, and curled at the corners. But they were intact.
AGAINST BLACK:
NARRATOR
(V. O.)
If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
CAPTION: Psalm 139:8
FADE IN:
INT. CAR. DAY
We are passing a nondescript street watching homes, apartments and stores blur past. The footage is being shot on a Super 8 camera. It gives the whole thing a home-movie feel. But then the car starts to slow down.
From the portable DVD player, sound began to play softly. I looked up. It was tinny through the speakers and there was no imagery at all – just the hum of a car engine, and then traffic noise, and then the sounds of a city, fading in one
after the other. Against a black screen, the titles appeared in plain, stark white – RING OF ROSES – and then faded out again, to be replaced by more words, in the same typeface: A FILM BY ROBERT HOSTERLITZ. Seeing his name sent a charge of electricity through me. The sound had settled into the gentle rhythm of a car travelling. I shuffled closer to the seven-inch screen, the script open on my lap.
‘If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.’
His voice came through the speakers, almost in a whisper. It was him. It was Hosterlitz. He’s the narrator. On screen, the Bible quote appeared, just as it was written in the script, just as he’d spoken it, and then it all faded to black.
After a beat, the movie started.
I felt myself tense. It was Super 8 footage, just as the script described – but not only that. It was the footage Hosterlitz had shot of Pierre Street in Van Nuys; in fact, exactly the same footage he’d run on the TV in his horror movies. Except this footage didn’t end after ten seconds. It carried on – the street, buildings, people, other cars, continuing to blur past. After a minute, the car finally started to slow down and – in the glass of the window – there was a brief but absolutely clear reflection of a taxi meter.
He filmed it from the back of a cab.
As soon as that was gone, there was the squeal of brakes and the taxi came to a halt. The camera tilted to its right and directly outside the window was a fountain. Circling the fountain was a beautiful bed of pink, yellow and red roses.
The Ring of Roses orphanage.
The film snapped to black.
A brief pause, and then another male voice: ‘My name’s Raymond J. Callson. I was an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department for thirty-two years.’
Callson.
The detective on Kerekes’s murder.
The action returned. Callson looked like he was in his early sixties. He had grey hair, perfectly parted, and was well turned out in a collared shirt and jacket. He was in some kind of office. Behind him, through the windows, I could see the LA skyline. After introducing himself, a date came up at the bottom of the screen.
29 DECEMBER 1984.
Hosterlitz’s trip to LA.
He didn’t just go there to confront Zeller and Cramer. He’d gone there to interview Callson too. But this footage hadn’t been taken on his Super 8. From the hint of scanlines at the top and bottom and the way the colours bent and warped slightly, he must have hired what he thought would be newer, better equipment. In 1984, he would have had access to early camcorders, running off VHS or Betamax tapes. I glanced at the fridge again, recalling the VHS-C inside it.
That must have been the Callson interview.
Callson talked for a minute or two about his experiences of being a cop in LA, until Hosterlitz asked him, ‘Are there any cases that have stuck with you?’ and Callson started to nod.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I can think of one case right off the top of my head.’
It snapped to black again.
Before the next scene started up, I looked down at the script, trying to see how closely the action onscreen was mirroring the directions written down. It was an exact replica. Everything that was happening in the film was in the script.
The tinkling sound of a music box.
I looked up again.
The camera was close in on something in the foreground, the object completely out of focus, while in the background a music box – in focus – was playing quietly. Then everything switched, back to front, the music box disappearing into a blur in the background of the shot, while the object – close in – pinged into sharp focus.
The object was the wooden angel.
‘Életke Kerekes was born on 22 December 1918 …’
Hosterlitz. He’d started to narrate again, his voice low and crackly, like a television reception that needed tuning. He filled in the background on Kerekes, her marriages, kids, her job at American Kingdom, while different shots of the angel were intercut with stock footage – immigrants arriving in the US, the mass migration of people from the Midwest to LA in the first half of the twentieth century. This must have been what was in the 35mm film cans.
I’d always believed he’d taken so many photographs of the angel because the angel had been given to him by Kerekes. And maybe that was a part of it – but it wasn’t the only reason. It had also been to help him find angles he liked, to see what lighting worked, to visualize how it would look through the Super 8 lens.
The movie switched again, this time to some historical footage of Venice, where Kerekes and her children had lived during the fifties. Hosterlitz’s narration contrasted it with the opulence of the places that the Hollywood elite frequented. His last shot was a photograph of the Pingrove Hotel. ‘Her house in the slum by the sea was modest,’ his commentary continued, ‘but she made the best of it. She gave her children a home. And, at work, she’d seen an opportunity – and had taken it.’
A film poster for Tiger Goes to Town appeared.
It was the first movie AKI adapted from one of Kerekes’s stories. Then more posters appeared, one after the other, showing all the films which had been inspired by her stories. Over the top of it all, Hosterlitz was talking softly about her, referencing her abilities, the way she was a woman ahead of her time, and how she rose to prominence in a world dominated by men. ‘Her talent, beauty and single-mindedness, brought her to the attention of the Hollywood elite.’
Snap to black.
‘I met her at the Blue Orchid, the same night Glen Cramer did.’
And, for the first time, Hosterlitz appeared onscreen.
He was poorly lit. I thought maybe he was in the council garage he’d bought, but wherever he was, it was hard to look at him. He was desperately ill. He’d thinned right down to the bone, his colour gone, his clothes hanging off him. He was staring into the camera. It looked like he’d been crying.
‘She was beautiful,’ he said, and the hint of a smile ghosted across his face. ‘Her beauty wasn’t a thing she used as a crutch or a weapon, to stand out or to get on. I wouldn’t have blamed her for using it that way, because Hollywood was – is – a monster waiting to eat you up, and you have to use any advantage you can. But it was more than that. She was more than that. Her beauty was just there. It was in everything she did – as a storyteller, as a mother, as a friend.’ He stopped and then began to cough, softly at first, and then harder, his face creasing up in pain. When it was over, silence rang out and he sat there, looking into the camera, shoulders rising and falling. ‘I think I loved her from the first moment I saw her.’
It cut to a photograph of the Blue Orchid nightclub, as it was back in the early 1950s. He was doing the lead-up to her death. I reached forward and pushed the Fast-Forward button, conscious of the sirens closing in now. For a while, Hosterlitz mostly used a mix of still photography and stock footage, until the night Kerekes died, when the film returned to the interview with Ray Callson.
I reached forward and pressed Play.
They were talking about the scene in the hotel room. I wanted to watch more of Callson – he was compelling, heartfelt – but I didn’t have the time. After a couple of minutes, I hit Fast-Forward again.
The action sped through more of Callson, and then – like a punch to the throat – there was a series of photographs from the crime scene, which he must have kept, even after retiring from the LAPD. Pictures of Martin followed too – front on, his shirt, his fingers, the scratch marks on his arms. The empty whisky bottle. The sleeping pills. It moved to his mugshot. He looked younger than sixteen, his fingers small around the placard that listed his name, age, date of birth and booking ID.
Then they were gone.
There was more Super 8 footage – which Hosterlitz must have shot during the same 1984 trip – of the duck pond at Franklin Canyon, where the three men had met afterwards, and then Hosterlitz appeared onscreen again. I hit Play. He must have recorded these to-camera sections late on, because there was a stark difference between
his voice here and his voice in the interview with Callson.
‘Zeller made me believe I’d killed her,’ Hosterlitz said, almost wheezing the words into existence. You could hear the sickness in his voice, vibrating in the timbre of his words. ‘And I believed him. I didn’t doubt him for even a second. I think, perhaps, a part of me even felt I wanted to carry that burden. I wanted to feel the full impact of what I’d done. I’d hit her. I’d knocked her out. I’d laid hands on a woman who had allowed me into her home, who had trusted me with her kids.’ He raised his head, eyes on the camera. ‘Cramer made me believe she found me weird and creepy, but I should have known. I should have known.’ He shook his head, and the tears came again, and then it became hard to watch. He was a frail old man crying for what he’d done and what he’d lost. ‘She wouldn’t have said those things,’ he whimpered. ‘That wasn’t Elaine. I should have known.’
For the first time, through the open doorway of the annex behind me, I saw a faint hint of blue light in my peripheral vision. Shit. The police. They were in the valley now. I could see them coming as well as hear them.
I pushed Fast-Forward again.
More of Callson, who must have been talking about the investigation, the way it was solved, then a shot of the National People front page: SEX-OBSESSED HOSTERLITZ OUTED AS A RED. Photographs of Zeller and Cramer followed, which didn’t need explaining – they’d planted the story. From there, the action showed the slow descent of Hosterlitz’s life. There was a mix of stills and archive footage of him in London, in Germany, and then back in the US in 1966. More photos of Cramer from the mid 1960s – which I guessed must have been a reference to the conversation he’d had with Hosterlitz, the ‘joke’ Cramer had made. Finally, there was a fade to black and a slow fade in again: we were back in Van Nuys, watching the same Super 8 footage of Hosterlitz travelling in the direction of the orphanage.