by Ed Kurtz
I’d barely managed a hello before a froggy voice croaked, “Mr. Woodard? This is Florence Sommer. I do so hate to trouble you, but do you think you could come see me right away? There are a few things I didn’t tell you and your associate while you were here, important things.”
“We’re just watching some of the reels we found among your father’s things,” I told her. “There were quite a few, as a matter of fact. Can I call you back after we’re done?”
“I’d rather talk to you now, if I can,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I was reticent before, but to be truthful this simply can’t wait.”
I narrowed my eyes, stepped out of the lobby to light a Pall Mall.
“What’s this all about, Mrs. Sommer?”
“Please do hurry, Mr. Woodard. I’ll put some coffee on before you get here.”
With that, the phone clicked abruptly in my ear. She’d hung up.
* * *
The picture was into the fifth reel when I went back in to explain the situation to Jake. To my surprise, he was almost too engrossed to care what I said to him, when what I said amounted to I’m going back to Sherman Oaks, take notes.
As I reluctantly left, poor Clara was being stripped naked on a tomb in a foggy cemetery, surrounded on all sides by cloaked apparitions. I prayed this wouldn’t be my last shot at seeing the rest—or most of the rest—of Angel of the Abyss.
Mrs. Sommer’s cottage was lit up from every window when I pulled the rental back in front of it for the second time that day. I checked the digital clock in the dash before I killed the engine—it was a quarter past eight in the evening.
After I made my way down the path to her door, I knocked all of once before the door opened without any clicking locks and Florence Sommer’s substantial frame filled the doorway. Her face was slick with sweat and her chest heaved as though she’d been humping it on a treadmill, a piece of equipment I was willing to bet good money she neither owned nor had ever used.
“Thank you, Mr. Woodard,” she wheezed. “Thank you for coming. I’m so sorry to have inconvenienced you this way.”
Her voice was monotone, unnatural. Almost robotic. I scrunched one eye half-closed as I pushed into the short hallway, a moment too late to grasp her blatant attempt to alert me. By then it didn’t much matter.
The arm that wrapped around the woman’s neck yanked back, dragging her violently into the kitchen where two other men waited. It took me a few seconds to register what was happening, for their faces to come into focus. They were regular faces, people you’d see in the street and instantly forget. I thought then that I’d have a hard time describing them to the police later.
Something snapped and a white star of light glinted beneath Florence Sommer’s chin. My eyes darted toward it and I saw a clean blade jutting from the hand of the one who was restraining her. She yelped hoarsely. I froze in place, staring like the aliens had just landed.
One of the men nearest the sink fired up a smoke. I wondered if he was trying to assert his dominance by doing so. Old Florence wouldn’t have minded.
He said, “Graham Woodard, yes?”
I nodded.
The man sucked deeply from his smoke, sighed the poison back out. He looked to his compatriot with the knife at the woman’s throat. Then he nodded, too.
It happened in slow-mo. Sort of. I realized what was going to happen before it happened, a sort of well-informed premonition. Then I tried to lunge for the knife, but my body wasn’t on speaking terms with my brain by then. All I managed to do was stumble forward a few paces so I could get a better look at the blade slicing a poor old woman’s neck open, right in front of me. The skin parted like a puppet’s mouth, exposing red that stayed inside a second too long before it all spilled out at once. The blood formed a curtain that draped down over her cat-hair-infused sweater, soaking it in no time at all. Florence Sommer’s tongue lolled out of her mouth and she made a wet sound that turned my stomach over twice before it seized like a fist. I wanted more than anything to throw up, but my stomach wasn’t cooperating any better than the rest of me. So instead I just screamed.
Somewhere nearby but out of my field of vision, one of her cats hissed.
“Shoulda stayed in Beantown, shit-bird.”
That was the guy by the sink again. I turned to him as the killer let Mrs. Sommer’s body slump to the dirty linoleum. She slid in her own blood, which smeared up the side of her face. She was dead.
I said, “Hey.”
It was all I had time to say in my defense. The third man, a phantom until now, produced a small black gun from the inside of his jacket. The gun went up, pointing at me. I raised my hands. Pointlessly, it seemed at the time, I memorized the gunman’s face. Gray eyes, blonde hair. Clean shaven. Vertical lines on his cheeks, like some people have. I could pick him out of a lineup if I had to.
He squeezed the trigger and the gun barked fire.
PART TWO: JAKE
14
Hollywood, 1926
In Boise, at the Knights of Columbus Lodge and, later, for the Elks, and the Masons, and the Buffaloes, little Gracie Baronsky sang, pirouetted, and acted out scenes from popular plays. She brandished an oversized lollipop at her thin audiences, serenaded them with Irving Berlin. Lifted her skirts to reveal plump bloomers in imitation of Gold Rush dancing girls, though she was only nine herself. She earned chortles and smatterings of applause. Aunt Eustace earned twenty dollars a week for her protégé’s efforts, when the week was good. And when a given week wasn’t so good, Eustace had other means for procuring Idahoan stages for her sister’s only child, her meal ticket. Everyone had to make sacrifices when the prospects looked so bright. The stage aunt lifted her skirts, too—and when that wouldn’t do, she waited in lobbies, worrying the fray of her shawl, while the starlet-to-be secured her place in another variety or benefit show in the balmy embraces of men who could determine her immediate future.
But Idaho, the elder woman knew, was peanuts. Nobody in Boise would have thought twice about the pictures when little Gracie was prancing around the lodges, but that was before the Empire Theatre opened its doors to reveal the wondrous spectacle that was Intolerance. Then they knew, Eustace and Gracie. They knew the heartland was dried up, a dustbowl. It was time to Go West.
It was time to make Grace Baronsky a real star.
* * *
Frank stood in the doorway in a threadbare seersucker suit with a wilting dandelion protruding from a buttonhole. He smiled abashedly, and Grace stifled a laugh by covering her mouth.
“I almost never wear it,” he said by way of apology. “My ma’s funeral was the last time, I guess. Only suit I ever owned.”
“I think you look delectable.”
“Is that a good thing to look like?”
His cheeks reddened. Grace shook her head, grabbed her bag, and went out to the walkway with him. When they reached the curb, she looked out at the half dozen cars parked on either side of the street and said, “Which one is yours?”
“None of ‘em,” Frank answered. “I walked here.”
“Nobody walks in Hollywood, Frank.”
“They do if they don’t have a car.”
“That’s what taxicabs are for.”
“I only earn so much, Grace—a taxicab would cut into our entertaining budget.”
“God almighty,” she said with a small chuckle. “You’re really not the Hollywood type, are you?”
“I’m just an apprentice electrician,” he said. “I’m no type at all.”
She squinted at his square face in the lean light of the street lamp and tried to find falsehood, a chink in his armor. When she found none, she swung her hip out and walked around him, due west.
“Come along then, Mr. Electrician. I know a grand place to walk to.”
* * *
Over roast lamb with currant jelly, the imminent star and the apprentice electrician looked to fellow diners like a lady and her valet, but neither of them noticed or cared. Frank devoured his meal w
ith relish, as a man starved, while Graced picked at hers and asked pointed questions of her escort.
“Do you make it a habit,” she began, “to invite actresses to dinner in your racket?”
“I have a heap of habits,” said Frank, “but no, that ain’t one of them.”
“What led the charge then, Custer?”
“The truth?”
“Not one of the most seen habits in my racket, but sure—why not?”
“You seem lonesome,” he said, and he stabbed the second-to-last piece of his lamb into his mouth.
Grace knitted her brow and paused, stricken silent for a moment. When she recovered, she said, “I’ve heard it said that the bigger the city, the more lonesome its people.”
“You weren’t lonesome back east?”
“Boise is hardly back east…” she said, deflecting. “I guess I was. I guess everybody is, in their own way. Aren’t we all just kind of trapped up here?” She tapped her temple with her index finger. “There’s a lot of skin and bone between my brain and yours, and all those miscommunications and different perspectives, besides.”
“Why, Miss Baron. I didn’t know you were a philosopher, to boot.”
“I’m a clever old girl, all right.”
“A clever, lonesome girl.”
“We’re back to that.”
“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “I was only trying to be honest. Maybe it’s just the character. The girl you play in the movie, I mean. Seems like I sort of know her a bit better than I know you.”
“Poor Clara,” Grace lamented. “She is a lonely sort, isn’t she? But I’d hate to get confused with her.”
“You don’t come from any abyss,” he assured her. “An angel, maybe. But just the regular kind.”
“The kind that strums harps on clouds?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I never went in for all that Sunday school hocus pocus. Just the pretty kind, I suppose. The good kind.”
“I wouldn’t want to be any kind of angel,” Grace said. She poked at what remained of her supper, moving the pieces around the plate. “I thought angels were what used to be people. The good ones, sure. But, you know. Dead.”
“Like Clara.”
“Forget Clara. You’ve got Grace here with you, Frank. I’m real. Alive and real, and yes, a little lonesome. You can’t fix that, and I wouldn’t think there’s anyone who can, but we’re here together right now and this is a very lovely meal and for Christ’s sake let’s not talk about the damned picture.”
His eyes blinking, Frank sat up straight, knife and fork still in his hands, and sputtered for a few seconds before he ultimately erupted into a peal of throaty laughter. He laughed so hard that people at the adjacent tables started to pause their own conversations to have a look. When he finally began to catch his breath again, Frank laid his silverware down on the edges of the plate, wiped his mouth with the napkin in his lap, and said, “It’s a real horror, isn’t it?”
Grace’s mouth twitched, turned up into something like a smile.
“Oh, you noticed?”
“All I do is wire the lights, doll. I’m no critic. But I’ve worked a few shows so far and I’ve seen a mess of ‘em, and by God this one…”
“Jack Parson says he’s found the secret to turn it into art.”
Frank smirked.
He said, “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”
“Don’t you want to know the secret?”
“Tell me.”
“Darkness.”
“I don’t follow.”
She showed her palms and shrugged. “There you have it,” she said.
“A real horror,” Frank repeated.
A colored busboy swept the plates away like a phantom while a girl with a red bowtie appeared to inquire about dessert. Frank winked at Grace, letting her in on the code. He ordered a ginger ale, imported. Grace made it two. The girl returned shortly with two old-fashioneds.
“To your health,” Grace toasted.
“And may your star shine in Hollywood forever,” said Frank.
“Just keep the lights on me, baby.”
* * *
On the walk back, Grace hummed “Me and My Shadow” while Frank kept pace with her small, quick steps. His hands were stuffed in his trouser pockets and a cigarette smoldered between his grinning lips. Her bungalow was still four blocks off, as blocks in Hollywood went, when a hiss sounded between a nickel-and-dime store and a shuttered diner, in the narrow alley. Frank paused, peered into the shadows.
“That you, Petey?” he called out.
Grace stopped a few feet up, went silent and stared.
“Frank?”
“What’s the idea, Petey?”
Frank edged toward the alley and Grace stepped forward as a loud report split the air with a flash of bright white light. The flash only lasted a second but lingered, ghost-like, in Grace’s eyes. She screamed and Frank doubled over, rolling away from the alley and backing up against the front of the diner.
“Frank!”
“Get back,” he croaked. “Go home, Grace.”
“You chasing girls now, Frank?” a voice jeered from the darkness. “Oughtn’t be spending money on gashes when you’re in the red, boy.”
The alley oozed out a squat figure, a fireplug of a man whose face was obscured by the brim of his hat. In his hand was clutched a small revolver. Grace’s breath hitched in her breast as she shot her eyes from the gun back to Frank, who was fighting to produce one of his own from the inside pocket of his threadbare coat. The gunman saw Grace first, turned to her so that the revolver was aimed at her. Her neck flushed hot; the lamb and whiskey did somersaults in her gut.
“Don’t,” she squeaked.
The man Frank called Petey lurched forth, scanning the dark street around her. The shadows seemed to seize Grace by the temples, squeezing in on her like a vise. Then another shot rang out and the gunman grunted. He bent at the knees and threw his torso backward. The gun dropped from his fist and clattered on the sidewalk. The echo of the metal against stone crashed in Grace’s ears as loudly as the shot.
The hat fell from the man’s head and he stepped awkwardly to the side. His greasy brown hair spilled rivulets of blood down his brow like red ribbons. It ran into his eyes and his jaw fell open with a yawning groan before he collapsed and lay still. Behind him, Frank still held up his own weapon, a jet-black pistol. His free hand grasped his right side. Blood leaked between his fingers.
“Are you all right?” he said, his voice tremulous.
“God, Frank,” she said. “You’re shot.”
“Get home, Grace,” Frank said. “Get home. Now.”
There was muffled shouting in the middle distance. A dog barked. Grace took one last look at the dead man between her and Frank and spun on her two-inch heel to speed over the four blocks home.
She was behind a double locked door before she realized she must have left her bag at the scene, as it wasn’t with her now. Dropped it in her panic, she thought. Her breath came in short, spastic gusts. She didn’t dare switch on the lights.
It was the second killing Grace had ever witnessed, and it occurred to her that it didn’t get easier to see it.
15
Los Angeles, 2013
“I need you to wake up, dude,” I said. I was trying to sound assertive. In response, all Graham did was beep—or at least that’s what all the sci-fi machinery he was plugged into did. “I’m supposed to be your wingman here. The sidekick. I’m Robin, for fuck’s sake.”
The one eye not mummified by all the bandaging encasing his head stayed closed and disturbingly bluish. I couldn’t tell if his chest was rising and falling at all, but it sure didn’t look like it was. But the machines kept on beeping and the oxygen pump kept on pumping. I didn’t figure they went to all that trouble for a corpse.
Florence Sommer was dead, her throat slashed. Graham was supposed to be dead too, but apparently he hadn’t gotten the memo. Somebody went to the trouble of putting a b
ullet in his head, and from what I gathered that usually got the job done. Not so here. By the time I’d arrived at Good Samaritan he’d been through the worst of it—it in this case being a bullet that split his skull and nicked his brain—but the stubborn son of a bitch forgot to die. I told him I loved him for that, and I added “no homo” for good measure when I realized one of the nurses was listening in.
That would have gotten a rise out of him if he’d heard me. He didn’t.
“Goddamnit, Graham.”
He didn’t like me much. Like a champ he acted like he did when he didn’t have to, but I knew better. I got on his nerves. I got on a lot of people’s nerves, and for the most part I couldn’t really care less. With Graham, I cared. I liked the guy, even if the feeling wasn’t mutual. My grandmother would have said he was a good egg, because that was what he was. Somehow, despite it all, I still considered him a friend. Probably the best I had. And here he was, in a coma with tubes in his nose and mouth and veins and head. One in his dick, too; a goddamn catheter. Maybe a vegetable. They didn’t know yet. I wanted to break something.
I finished out the old movie after he took off to catch lead with his noggin. It was incomplete, but still pretty long. I never made it a habit to watch movies with no sound, but this was important, so I paid attention. My general analysis was that it was a weird fucking movie. Not just because it was silent, though that added to the vibe. More of a Tarantino man, myself, Death Proof notwithstanding.