Eats to Die For!

by Michael Mallory

  “So you never actually believed any of what you created?” Louie asked.

  “Miss Calhern—”

  “Just call me Louie, okay?”

  The old man shrugged. “All right, Louie. Have you ever seen a picture called House of Wax?”

  “Yes. A long time ago. Why do you ask?”

  “I had a scene in the movie that got cut out. But if you look at the wax figure of John Wilkes Booth real closely, though, he might look a little familiar.”

  “You modeled for Booth?” I asked.

  “I had a short scene where I got killed by the monster because I looked like Booth, but they cut it out.”

  “Guys, this is fascinating,” Louie said, “but why are we talking about an old movie?”

  “I’m getting to that as a way of answering your question, young lady,” Hanley said. “Do you believe Vincent Price really killed those people and then coated them in wax?”

  “Of course not. It’s a movie.”

  “Right. Ol’ Vinnie, God bless him, was just an actor working for a paycheck. He didn’t believe any of the rubbish the studios hired him to do, but he managed to make the audience believe that he was an insane murderer, and believe it so completely that they got scared.”

  With some effort, Palmer Hanley leaned forward.

  “That’s what it’s all about, young lady. It doesn’t matter what I believe. It only matters what I can make others believe. And a lot of them believed that I somehow had discovered the secrets of life and could pass those secrets on to them. They believed it so completely they paid money just for the chance that they might learn what they believed I knew.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Well, what I came to know is that most people just want to be relieved of the onus of having to make their own decisions. They’ll pay good money not to be in charge of their own lives. That was the idea behind the Temple of Theotologics. My idea, anyway. Then the boys got involved.”

  “The boys?”

  “Organized crime. They were already out here because of the film and music business, and once they smelled the kind of money I was starting to make, they moved in.

  “I didn’t realize what I was getting into at first. I just saw a bunch of golf shirts and dark glasses offering to capitalize my venture. Before I knew what was happening the mob was in charge of the whole shebang and using the Temple to launder money from their other pursuits. Theotologics was a godsend for them because there are only two kinds of schemes where you don’t have to worry about taxes. They already had one, the black market, and I had the other, religion.”

  “That sounds rather cynical, Mr. Hanley,” Louie said.

  “Honey, I’m ninety-four years old, and anything good that ever happened to me over that long, long time has been taken away again in one fashion or other. I think I’ve earned the right to sound cynical.”

  “That’s the lead!” Louie cried, jumping up off the sofa.

  “Lead for what?” I asked.

  “My article! Maybe even a book! Don’t look at me that way, Dave. You don’t seriously think I’m going to walk away from the story of the decade, do you?”

  “But we have to get out of here before you can write it.”

  “Then let’s get out of here,” she said, just like that. “Hannah will help us, won’t you, Hannah?”

  The nurse nodded tentatively.

  “That’s it then.”

  “Louie, I’m for getting away from this prison as much as anyone,” I began. “But think about it for a minute. Let’s say we actually are able to escape from this building. We’re still stuck somewhere in the middle of Canada. How do we get back to L.A.? I don’t have any cash. They took my wallet, so I’m assuming they took my ID as well.”

  “Did you say Canada?” Hanley asked.

  “We’re all in a bunker somewhere in Alberta, aren’t we?”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  Louie and I exchanged looks.

  “I heard about this complex from the members of the Temple I spoke with for my article,” she said.

  “I don’t know who told you what, Miss Calhern, but we’re not in Canada.”

  Having appeared perfectly lucid up to this point, I had to assume that Palmer Hanley did not even know where he was being held. It’s not like there were any windows out of which he could look. I had to side with Louie’s source, who had also been correct about Hanley still being among the living, but under the circumstances decided it was best to humor the old guy.

  “Where are we then, Mr. Hanley?”

  “Hollywood.”

  “Sir, how can we still be in Hollywood?” I asked gently. “How could you build a place like this in plain sight?”

  “You put it in a movie studio, that’s how,” he replied.

  “A movie studio,” I repeated dumbly. Then I looked at Hannah, who had reddened.

  “My god, he’s telling the truth, isn’t he?”

  “This is Windsor Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard,” she confirmed. “They tell the people who are brought here that they are in the wilds of Canada somewhere, deep underground, as a way of dissuading them from even thinking about breaking out. It’s a very effective. Those of us who are allowed to come and go are sworn to secrecy, or else.”

  “Or else what?” Louie asked her.

  “They have information on all of us that they will use against us if we ever talk,” Hannah whispered. “In my case it’s my drug use.”

  “And they make you stay here and work for them under the threat of releasing that information?”

  Hannah looked pleadingly at Louie. “I could go to prison if they got the information to the right person in the D.A.’s office.”

  There it was again: the right judge; the right person in the D.A.’s office. How far did the tentacles of the Temple extend?

  The organization had to be brought down. The question was how.

  Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only one at present who was actually taking the time to ponder the details of our escape.

  Louie was pacing the living room, dictating her story out loud to herself and getting more and more excited with each word, while Hannah was staring self-consciously at her feet like a little girl forced by a teacher to stand in the corner.

  What’s more, my usual mental cheering squad were uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Mr. Hanley,” Louie said, stopping her pacing, “you don’t happen to have a tape recorder in here anywhere, do you? Something on which I could record an interview and take with me?”

  The old man looked at her.

  “You really are planning to break out of this place, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes, as soon as possible.”

  “And you really think you can make it?”

  “Or die trying, and I don’t intend to die.”

  “Well…well…well.”

  The old man’s fingers went to his shirt, and he struggled to undo two of the buttons. Reaching in, he pulled out a small medic alert device attached to a chain.

  “You know what this is?”

  “Your call button,” Hannah said. “Do you need medical attention? Is there something I can do?”

  “No, no,” he said, struggling to rise to his feet, and leaning heavily on the cane. “But if I press this, within about thirty seconds a small army of people will come rushing through that door there. Some of them will be concerned for my safety, like Hannah here, while a few others will be hoping this is finally my last call, so they can have the pleasure of watching me croak.”

  “Mr. Hanley, nobody wants that,” Hannah said.

  The old man smiled.

  “If you say so, honey. The point is, if I press this button, none of you has a snowball’s chance in hell of leaving this building, or even this room, without being
stopped.”

  “Why would you do that?” Louie asked.

  “He’s concerned about us,” Hannah replied for him. “He thinks we won’t make it, and he’s trying to save us.”

  “Sorry,” Hanley said, “but that’s not it at all. The truth is, I have a feeling that you will make it. You’ve made it this far, after all. No one else has ever managed that. But unless you do one thing, right here and now, I’m going to press this button and nobody’s going anywhere. And believe me, I’ll do it, because I’ve got nothing left to lose.”

  “Mr. Hanley, I don’t want to be rude,” Louie said, “but any one of us could take that thing from you before you had the chance to do anything with it.”

  “I won’t let you harm him,” Hannah declared, stepping in front of Louie.

  In the interest of preventing a cat fight over the welfare of a ninety-four-year-old man, I said: “Let’s hear him out at least. Okay, Mr. Hanley, what is it you want?”

  He mumbled the words so much that I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. A moment later I realized that his voice had become indistinct because he had choked up and was crying.

  The cries became sobs, the desperate sobs of a prisoner.

  Turning to Hannah, I asked, “Did he say what I think he said?”

  She was beginning to tear up as well, but her voice was clear. “Yes, he did,” she said.

  “Well, I didn’t catch it,” Louie said. “What does he want? Whatever it is, let’s do it so we can get out of here.”

  “He said that he would turn us all in unless we promised to take him along with us in our escape,” I told her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “That’s wonderful!” Louie was shouting. “He’ll be able to tell his own story to everyone on camera!”

  “Cameras hate me,” Palmer Hanley blubbered.

  But Louie wasn’t listening. She had already made plans in her mind for a media blitz, a book, a shot on 60 Minutes and a feature film, and we had not yet left the living room of the Master Suite.

  “Louie, I hate to be this kind of person,” I said, “but before you can accept your Pulitzer we still have to get out of here.”

  She stopped pacing. “Okay, what do you suggest?”

  I turned to Hannah. “Do you have any ideas? You know this place better than we do.”

  “There are secret exits, but opening the doors set off alarms,” she said.

  “I have a feeling the general alarm was set off as soon as you drugged Dan and Alberto. We’ll have to run for it.”

  “We won’t get very far. There are security cameras everywhere. No matter where we went, we’d be seen.”

  “Why are there no cameras in here?” Louie asked.

  Hannah looked down at her feet again.

  “They don’t want images of Mr. Hanley ever leaking out, so they make sure there are no images of him.”

  “Here’s what they don’t want a picture of,” the old man said, giving the finger to the ceiling of his apartment so strenuously he nearly lost his balance and fell over, cane and all.

  “I’ll take a picture of that!” Louie laughed. “We’ll run it with the story! God, Dave, we have to get out of here. We have to! We have to leave right now. I need this story!”

  Yeah, we had to leave right now, but how?

  I was still trying desperately to think of a way of breaking out of this maximum security church camp when a voice broke into my head. It was Moe Howard saying, Lady, if you don’t leave now, you’re not going to miss anything.

  Anyone who has seen that particular Three Stooges short (and really, who hasn’t?) knows that a moment later, one of the most titanic pie fights in the history of Hollywood breaks out.

  Pies.

  “Oh, my god!” I said, starting to laugh.

  “You okay, Dave?” Louie asked.

  “Mr. Hanley, do you shave yourself?”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed as thought it was a difficult question. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Electric shaver?”

  “No, I’m too damned wrinkled for an electric shaver. I do it the old fashioned way. If you’re looking for a straight razor, son, forget it. I used one of those three-blade plastic things.”

  “What I’m looking for is the shave cream.”

  “What are you up to?” Louie asked.

  “Hannah, you know where these cameras are located, right?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah, they’re all over, and they’re not that hard to spot. Little black half-circles. on the ceiling. Why?”

  “Folks, we’re going to give the communications room of the Temple of Theotologics pies in the face. Where’s your bathroom, Mr. Hanley?”

  He pointed behind him, and I dashed in that direction, finding several other rooms, including an enormous walk-in closet, before getting to the palatial bathroom. The toilet wasn’t made of gold, but that was just about the only economizing in sight.

  I might be able to stand being a prisoner in this kind of environment.

  On the marble counter I found a can of Gillette Foamy and was delighted to find it was nearly full. Rushing back out, I looked back and forth between Louie and Hannah, trying to guess their weights. The difference between the two was probably negligible.

  “I need a volunteer, and you’re it,” I said, pointing to Hannah. “Get on my shoulders.”

  “What?”

  I crouched down.

  “Hurry, get in my shoulders, like we’re at the beach or something.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You know where those cameras are, now come on!”

  With a great show of distaste, she straddled my head, and I struggled to stand up, nearly throwing her off behind me in the process.

  “I didn’t realize you were into this sort of thing,” Louie said.

  Ignoring her, I made it to my feet and handed Hannah the shaving cream.

  “Squirt a blob of this in your hand,” I instructed. “When we get in the hallway, tell me where the closest security cameras are and I’ll run you there, and you smear it all over them.”

  “This is really stupid,” Hannah said.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s my specialty. Now come on.”

  I started for the door while she maintained her balance by holding onto my hair. I would have to crouch a little to get through, and I only hoped my legs were strong enough to not collapse out from under me.

  Louie rushed up to open the door, which fortunately was taller than the standard size, since this was the Master’s Suite.

  “She’s right, Dave,” Louie said, “this is stupid, but I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  “Hang on, Hannah,” I said, easing through the door, and then shouting. “Okay, where to first?”

  “Turn right, about fifteen feet,” she said, and I started jogging. I could hear her filling her hand with shave cream, followed by her shout of “Stop!”

  I stopped, and she slathered the first camera with the Foamy.

  “About face, past the door, and another fifteen feet,” she commanded, and we repeated the action.

  Within a minute we had “pied” five cameras up and down the corridor.

  “Okay, that’s that, now let me down,” she demanded, and I was only too happy to get her weight off of my shoulders. I didn’t even mind that she wiped her hands clean on my shirt, since it wasn’t really my shirt. It belonged to the Temple.

  We ran back to the Master’s Suite and I said, “Okay, everyone out and hide somewhere.”

  “How about the room where they held us?” Louie asked. “Hannah has the key.”

  “Good idea. We can do the pie trick in there, too. Mr. Hanley, could I have that thing around your neck?”

  “My alarm?” he asked.

  “Yes. We’re going to have a little diversion.”

/>   He lifted the devise off and handed it to me.

  “Okay, all of you go to the other apartment, I’ll be there in a second.”

  They took off down the hallway. I pressed the button, threw it into the now-empty Master Suite and closed the door until it was just slightly ajar. Then I took off after them.

  By the time I got back to the apartment, Hannah was already on Louie’s shoulders and soaping up the visible cameras, while the unconscious forms of Dan and Alberto continued to sleep on the floor.

  “What did you do?” Palmer Hanley asked me.

  “I hit the alarm button.”

  “But that’s going to bring every damn guard in the building down here!”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I know. Hannah, when you’re done with the foam I’ll need your card key to the suite.”

  Louie let her down and practically beamed when Hannah cleaned her soapy hands off on her shirt.

  As Hannah gave me the card key, the first sounds of approaching guards were heard in the hallway. I counted to five, and then crept out.

  “Where are you going?” Louie asked.

  “Back to the suite. If I’m not back in sixty seconds, you guys are on your own.”

  “Shit, Beauchamp!”

  “Sixty seconds,” I reiterated, then crept down the hallway, and saw the last few guards of what I presumed was a small army of uniformed guards flooding into the Master’s Suite.

  When the last one had disappeared inside, I ran down, slammed the door and locked it from the outside. The chorus of cries coming from the other side of the door was sweeter than the Andrews Sisters on their best day.

  Running back to the apartment, I said: “Okay, I think we’ve got a chance now. But Hannah, do you think you could get some more of that knock-out juice, just in case we need it?”

  She nodded. “All the drugs are kept in the lab.”

  “Lab? On what are they experimenting?”

  “Well, we call it the lab, but it’s more like an infirmary,” Hannah said. “Though there is some sort of laboratory in the back. Even I’m not allowed in there. It’s top secret.”