Mystery

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Her fingers stopped moving. Her chin jutted forward like a switchblade. The phone lowered to her side. “What do you want?”

  “To reminisce.”

  “About what?”

  “Old Hollywood,” I said. “Ancient Hollywood.”

  She recoiled as if slapped. “Don’t be rude.”

  “I didn’t mean you,” I said. “I just like vintage cinema.”

  Opening the laptop, I gave her a direct view of the screen.

  Out of the case came a cordless mouse that I rested on the lid.

  Click.

  The screen filled with opening credits. Garish green letters over black. A film title.

  Guns of Justice.

  Leona Suss said, “You need to leave my house at once.”

  But she made no effort to enforce the command.

  I said, “Treat yourself—c’mon, make yourself comfortable.”

  She remained on her feet. “You have sixty seconds and then I am going to call my police.”

  Click.

  Close-up of a black-haired beauty wearing Hollywood’s improbably haute version of cowgirl garb. Rifle in hand. Sneer on glossy lips. “End of the line, Goldie.”

  Camera shift to manicured fingers around trigger.

  Ponderous music.

  Then a long shot offering a full view of the brunette standing in front of a log-sided cabin. Obvious matte painting of mountains in the background.

  New shot: rear view of two figures facing the femme with the rifle.

  Shift to their POV: fresh-faced blond girl, equally pretty white-Stetsoned young man.

  He said, “Don’t do this, Hattie.”

  The brunette sneered, “Breathe your last, Rowdy.”

  The brunette shouldered the rifle.

  The blonde screamed.

  White Hat quick-drew a six-shooter and fired.

  A blossom sprang from the brunette’s left breast. A cardiac surgeon couldn’t have placed it more accurately.

  She looked down at the spreading splotch. Flashed a crooked, oddly engaging smile. Relaxed her fingers.

  Dropped the rifle.

  Fell to the dirt.

  Close-up on beautiful dying face. Murmurs.

  “What’s that, Hattie?”

  “Rowdy ... I always ... loved you.”

  The blonde said, “Reckon she’s gone now.”

  White Hat said, “But you’re here.”

  Long, searching look. Longer kiss.

  Fade to black.

  Leona Suss said, “And the Oscar goes to ...”

  I said, “It does have a certain charm.”

  “It’s swill, I told you that the first time. Now get the hell out.”

  I clicked the mouse.

  Another title page.

  Passion on the Pecos.

  Same dark-haired girl, different weapon.

  Long-barreled revolver. Her turn to quick-draw.

  Bam.

  A man dropped from a tree.

  Bam.

  A man dropped from the roof of a saloon.

  Bam.

  A man darted from behind a wheelbarrow, managed to fire. Ricochet whistle.

  The girl shot him off his feet.

  Click.

  Saloon interior. A white-bearded geezer put down his whiskey glass. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that, Miss Polly?”

  Across the saloon table, the brunette spun the barrel of her gun, blew at the tip of the weapon. Licked her lips. “Aw, Chappie, it was nothing.”

  “Sure looked like somethin’ to me. Who learned ya?”

  Soft, feminine giggle. “A girl does what a girl needs to do.”

  Shift to swinging saloon doors. White-Stetsoned man with oversized badge on his tailored vest.

  The girl sneered, “You!”

  “Now, just put that down and go peacefully—”

  Bam.

  Fade to black.

  Leona Suss said, “I’ll give you an autograph and we’ll call it a day.”

  Click.

  “Enough!” she shouted.

  I froze the frame.

  The cat trotted in.

  “Manfred,” she said, “this fool is boring me, go scratch his eyes out.”

  Manfred sat there.

  I said, “Guess he took the no-cruelty pledge at the pound.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “How about ‘Shut up, punk’? One of your best lines, in my opinion. In fact, here it is.”

  Click.

  “You’re boring me!”

  “This one’s different,” I said.

  And it was.

  o moving images. Text.

  I recited.

  www.iluvnoirflix.com

  Death Is My Shadow (1963)

  Starring Olna Fremont as Mona Gerome

  Stuart Bretton as Hal Casey

  Plus an assortment of eminently forgettable

  mugs, molls, mopes and miscreants

  This is one of those obscure treasures, hard to find but well worth the effort even if it means having to use a VCR (try the reissue lists of sites like blackdeath.net, mollheaven.com, entrywound.net).

  In addition to being a budget-noir masterpiece released at least a decade too late, Death Is My Shadow is the swan song for Olna Fremont, ebony-tressed bad-girl queen of the oaters. And a glimpse at how Little Miss Evil’s career could’ve developed had she been born twenty years later. It’s also the only non-western Olna ever filmed and we think that’s a shame.

  I mean think about it, can’t you just see Olna’s pheromone-dripping sensuality, Cruella de Vil persona and uncanny ability to—let’s be delicate—make ahem love to objects of destruction, placed in the capable hands of a Tarantino or a Scorsese?

  We’re talking hot.

  As in legs. As in lead.

  The plot of this one doesn’t bear retelling in depth but suffice it to say that Olna’s at the top of her psychopathic game, shifting allegiances like the sexy chameleon she is and engaging in enough firearms foreplay to get an entire NRA chapter off. The climax—and we use the term near-literally—is an explosion of hot ... bullets—that leaves the audience spent.

  Unfortunately, Olna ends up permanently spent, herself. As usual. Because in the self-righteous morality game that Hollywood has always pretended to play, bad girls aren’t allowed to win.

  But Olna doesn’t bite it before she blasts the inevitably wooden and incomprehensively cast Stu Bretton off his broganed feet. Not to mention a whole bunch of other slimy, bug-eyed denizens of the underworld straight out of the Grade D playbook.

  Olna’s moist, gotta-do-you lips, nose-cone breasts and outrageously masturbatory gun antics (we especially appreciate the scene where she kisses her derringer) are worth the price of admission. Heck, just seeing Bretton’s dead face when it’s actually supposed to be lifeless justifies the eighty-six bloody, oft-moronic minutes you’ll spend with this unintended but no less entertaining masterpiece of grit, sleaze, and cardboard characterization.

  Utterly lacking in redeeming artistic value.

  Five Roscoes.

  I said, “Everyone’s a critic.”

  Leona Suss pointed her cell phone at me and mouthed Bang.

  She glided closer, seemed to be studying the top of my head. Settled smoothly and silently on the sofa, inches from me. Flaring her nostrils, she tamped her hair and secreted Chanel. Close to seventy years old, beautiful, ageless.

  “You’re a cutie,” she purred, mussing my hair. As she released her hand, she snuck in a quick, painful tug. “I still don’t get it, are you police or really some kind of doctor?”

  “Bona fide psychologist,” I said. I recited my license number.

  “Cop psychologist?”

  “I work with them from time to time but I’m not on their payroll.”

  “What does from time to time mean?”

  “Complicated cases.”

  She chuckled. “Someone thinks I’m crazy?”

  “More like fascinating. I agree.”
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  She closed her eyes, sank back against downy cushions. “So you’re not on their payroll.”

  “That’s the point,” I said.

  “What exactly do you do for them?”

  “Get paid for deep psychological insight.”

  “What’s your insight about me?”

  “That we can learn to play nice.”

  She whistled silently. “You’re a playful fella?”

  I said, “I can be.”

  One eye opened. Her right index finger traced the outline of the ring on her left hand. Round-cut diamond, huge, white, lots of fire.

  “Nice.”

  “D Flawless,” she said. “I think the cut brings out its best qualities, don’t you?”

  She took my hand, placed it on the rock. Her skin was cool, soft. She’d used some kind of cover-up for age spots and the blemishes floated like water lilies in a deep vat of milk.

  I said, “I think everything about you works quite nicely.”

  She drew away. “Sonny, I’ve been bullshat by the best. Don’t even try.”

  “Aw shucks,” I said.

  I angled the laptop toward her.

  She said, “If you’ve got a game, name it. If you’re going to waste my time by making me sit through the crap I did when I was too young and too stupid to know any better, I’m cutting this little chat short.”

  She sprang to her feet. “In fact, if you don’t get your ass in gear right now, I’m going up to my room and fetching my Glock. I’m sure you know what that is, seeing as you’re a police groupie.”

  “Lightweight, well made,” I said. “Model 19?”

  “A 22 and I know how to use it. You may be cuter than most girls can stand—you may know how to play dress-up—what is that, Brioni—no, Zegna, I know the stitching, Mark bought them like candy. But to me you’re a punk and you’ll stay a punk and that’s how my police will view you when I tearfully tell them how you wangled your way past my retarded maid then tried to attack me.”

  I said, “That sounds like one of your movies. So does the crack about someone thinking you’re crazy. Wasn’t that what Mona tried in Death Is My Shadow? Acting nuts so no one would suspect premeditation?”

  “Piece of crap,” she said. “That review was too kind.”

  “I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”

  Click.

  She said, “Oh, Jesus, you’re an idiot.”

  But she stayed there, eyes fixed on the screen.

  Once an actress.

  Text gave way to a slide show.

  Leona as Olna in a white dress. Malevolently lovely face wrapped in a matching scarf. Graceful fingers clutching the stem of a Martini glass.

  Olive and pearl onion bobbing in a crystalline bath.

  Olna wearing that same outfit plus oversized sunglasses.

  Olna, bare-shouldered and strategically draped by a bedsheet, smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder. The barest suggestion of teeth between glossed lips. Heavy-lashed eyelids drooped in postcoital torpor.

  Next to her, the “inevitably wooden” Stuart Bretton lay staring up at nothing. Muscular arms pumped. Squarely handsome, wavy-haired visage blank as dirt.

  Olna pointing a gun.

  Close-up on the weapon: double-barreled derringer. Side-by-side barrels. Stubby, nasty-looking weapon, the snout barely long enough to extend past her gloved hands.

  Close-up on Stu Bretton’s face. Caricature of surprise.

  Close-up on Stu Bretton’s beefcake physique, facedown on the bed, a bloody blotch between his shoulder blades.

  Close-up on Olna Fremont’s face. Surprised.

  Long shot of cops, uniformed and plainclothed and armed.

  Olna. Beautiful, peaceful. The bullet hole centering her smooth, white forehead the period on a final sentence.

  I said, “Life imitates art but only to a point. They let you keep your face.”

  Leona reached for the laptop.

  I drew it out of reach, continued to give her a full view of the last scene she’d ever filmed.

  She said, “Why the hell shouldn’t I go get my Glock?”

  “I’m sure if you tried, you’d score a hit. Where’d you learn? Kansas?”

  She smiled. “Rural life can be wonderful. And daddies love little girls eager to learn. Did you know gophers explode like little meatballs?” She rose to her feet, tussled my hair again. Took the time for a harder yank and studied my reaction.

  When I moved to stay her hand, she pulled out of reach, flipped her hand like a geisha fan, and slapped my face.

  Smiling as if she’d pulled off a first-take masterpiece performance, she glided toward the door. “Unless you’ve got a death wish, you’ll be gone when I return.”

  I said, “Unless you’ve got a death wish, you’ll cool it with the D-list acting and pay attention.”

  She came toward me, fists at chest level, poised to strike.

  “Bad idea, Leona. Family’s the glue that holds society together.”

  She stopped short but kept her arms up. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’ve done at least one thing well. Those boys of yours get along great. Be a shame to change that.”

  One arm dropped, then the other. She gazed around her roomful of treasures.

  Sat back down.

  said nothing for a while. Allowed her thoughts to take over.

  Whatever drifted through her mind clouded her eyes. She sat trance-like. For a moment I thought she’d dissociate. She shook herself clear. “If you have something to say, spit it out.”

  “One thing we can agree upon, Leona. The cops aren’t geniuses. Truth is, they’re pretty limited intellectually. So sometimes when a case gets interesting, I go off on my own and discover things that elude them.” I shrugged. “Sometimes my discoveries turn out profitable.”

  “Ah, the inevitable,” she said. “You’re a whore but a high-priced one. Okay, let’s get down to business: What do you think you might know and how much are you fantasizing you can get for it?”

  “A whore?” I said. “I’d like to think of it as freelance investing.”

  “Think what you want. Spread your legs and let’s get it over with.”

  I let her stew some more. When her neck tendons grew rigid, I said, “One thing I learned from this case is that life really does imitate art. If you can call what you used to do art. The first time we met you I found you interesting, so I did a little research. Learned about that fall you took from a horse five years ago. All that pain and the prescription drug problem it got you into.”

  “It happens. Big deal.”

  I said, “Kind of ironic. You make all those movies, do all that serious riding and never get hurt. Only to get thrown by a twenty-year-old nag at a charity moonlight walk for the actors’ hospice.”

  “No good deed,” she said. “So what? I’m fine now.”

  “You tried to get fine by yourself, but when that didn’t work you had the smarts to check yourself into rehab. Awakenings, out in Pasadena, near the racetrack. You knew what you needed but going public was humiliating so you borrowed Connie’s identity and paid cash. Or maybe you just don’t like Connie, figured it was a way to stick it to her. Either way, the staff at Awakenings I.D.’d your picture. They remember you fondly. Only thing they didn’t like was your choice in new friends. Steven Muhrmann, your basic shiftless L.A. lowlife, pugnacious, no capacity for insight, and no motivation to change because he was there by court order. The staff was concerned he might corrupt you.”

  I laughed. “Talk about a bad clinical guess, huh? Stevie couldn’t play in your league in every sense and from the moment you and he hooked up you called the shots. But he ended up as more than a boy-toy. When you confided your plans for Mark’s retirement, he said, ‘I know just the girl.’ ”

  She sat there, inexpressive.

  “And Stevie’s girl turned out to be perfect, Leona. Beautiful, pliable, not too bright. Exactly what Mark had always gone for. I was
puzzled by your motivation. Why would a woman, even a tolerant woman, encourage her husband to troll the Internet for a mistress? And Mark had always been capable of finding his own bimbos. A fact you made sure to tell Lieutenant Sturgis and me minutes after we met you. We figured you as long-suffering. But that wasn’t it at all, Leona.”

  No answer.

  I said, “My first guess was logical but wrong—occupational hazard of being a shrink. I figured you assumed Mark would fool around anywhere, you might as well attempt some sort of control. Pure Hollywood: Everyone wants to direct. And maybe by getting involved, you could keep an eye on how much money he paid her.”

  Her eyes had turned dead. A cheek muscle twitched.

  “Who better to know which of Mark’s buttons to push? Hence Cohiba, adventure, et cetera, all those buzzwords. All the misspellings and grammatical errors to make the essay sound like a bimbo’s literary output. Because Mark always liked ’em dumb and you’d already read his essay—hell, Leona, I wouldn’t be surprised if you worked the keyboard while Mark sat there like the horny old cyberdummy he was. You let him think he’d discovered ‘Mystery.’ After you’d planted Stevie Muhrmann as a gopher at SukRose so he could embed the cues in Mystery’s profile. Elegant, Leona. But the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like going overboard just to play Hitchcock. Then there was the expense of setting Tiara up as Mark’s mistress. Even if you did ride herd on it. Even if Stevie took a big chunk and rebated some back to you. Why encourage Mark in the first place? There had to be more.”

  She blinked.

  “Want to hear my second guess, Leona? The one that panned out?”

  She swiveled toward me. “I should do your work for you, you weaselly little scammer?”

  I said, “Gustave Westfeldt.”

  “Who?”

  I repeated the name.

  She threw back her head, laughed. Got back up. “Now I know you’re full of shit. Get the hell out of here.”

  “Something funny about Gustave Westfeldt?”

  “What’s funny is I never heard of him and you’re utterly full of shit. Out!”

  “You do know him, Leona.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me who I—”

  “Actually you do,” I said. “And you’d better listen hard.”

  Her mouth worked. Fingers clawed velour.

  “You don’t know him by name, Leona, but you know him. I was a little better informed, had picked up on the Gustave part but had no idea about Westfeldt. Despite all those years of first-rate libations—”