“It’s a bribe, Frank. I don’t take bribes.”
Frank poked a cigarette into his smile and lit it. “That’s one of the reasons I like you.”
“You mean because of my integrity?”
“No.” He tucked the camera under his arm. “Because I get to keep the bribes meant for you.”
Thirty-Three
THE PREVIOUS owner of the Montgomery Clift reliquary worked in the showroom of a Chrysler dealership on Santa Monica Boulevard. The showroom was a flagship, big enough to park eight display models, from a low-slung Prowler the color of egg yolk to a staid Town and Country, and even at that dead hour for car sales, between the end of lunch and the beginning of happy hour, the sales staff busily attended to customers. We spotted our guy near the Viper. We knew he was our guy because he was the only employee in the room under thirty-five and looked uncomfortable in the role of car salesman, as though he had other ambitions in life. This is not that uncommon a look on the West Side, where every other man or woman under the age of thirty is doing one thing while aspiring to something else entirely. He was a slim, dark-haired man with long, sensitive fingers and a wounded look, just the kind of guy I expected to identify with Montgomery Clift.
He turned to greet us when Frank called his name, Scott Bartlet, a practiced smile bounding to his lips. His glance flicked to our feet and back again, judging by the way we dressed our intention and ability to purchase a new car. Frank pressed a few of the multiple wrinkles from the sport coat he’d pulled from the trunk and walked toward the center of the showroom. He figured the coat and tie would make him look more like a real customer, and though I don’t think he entirely succeeded, Bartlet stepped forward to meet us.
“A friend of ours recommended you.” Frank thrust out his hand. “We’d like to take a look at the new PT Cruiser.”
“Then I’d love to show it to you,” Bartlet said. “Can I ask you what car you’re driving now?”
“A Honda. With all these SUVs on the road I feel like a rabbit in the middle of a buffalo herd.”
Bartlet laughed like a good salesman and said, “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” He stepped up to a metallic-blue PT Cruiser parked on a pedestal. “What you’ll like about the PT is that it doesn’t drive like a truck but because of the beautiful throwback design you ride higher in traffic, almost as high as most SUVs.”
The cell phone in the side pocket of my leather jacket chirped and vibrated. I pulled the phone to check the caller. The number was an unfamiliar one, but then, most of my tips come from phone boxes. I walked away from Bartlet’s sales presentation, cell phone pressed to one ear, finger plugged into the other, and said, “Hello?”
“What happened to your apartment?”
Female voice. Young voice. Theresa’s voice.
“How did you hear about my apartment?”
I must have shouted. Heads in the showroom turned.
“I didn’t exactly hear about it,” she answered.
I glanced around for the door and strode toward it. “Tell me you’re not back in Los Angeles,” I begged. “Please tell me you haven’t seen the apartment in person.”
“But I passed the audition!” From the background hiss of surf I guessed she called from a phone box on the boardwalk, her voice a wail of protest against my lack of understanding and a shriek of delight at the possibility of being cast in anything.
“What audition?”
“A film. Mischief at Malibu High. I auditioned before I left.”
I counted. Three days ago I’d put her on the bus.
“How far did you get? Because you sure as hell didn’t have time to make it all the way back home to Indiana.”
“Don’t get mad,” she said, as though that would help. “This could be my big break. You should be happy for me.”
“Where are you?”
“At the pay phones by the beach, the ones down from your apartment,” she said. “And you don’t have to yell. I can hear just fine, thank you.”
I thought it entirely possible she’d just landed a role in a porn film—or a repeat performance with the Church of Divine Thespians. Theresa would walk smiling off the edge of a cliff if someone told her it would make her a star. I told her I’d pick her up as soon as I could and disconnected just as Bartlet led Frank out of the showroom, a driver’s license I took to be Frank’s clipped to a clipboard. Frank dangled a set of car keys at me, winked, and said, “You ready to take a test drive, honey?”
I sat in the back while Frank drove, camera bag zippered open on the seat beside me. Bartlet twisted sideways in the front passenger seat to talk up the technical specifications of the car, gallantly addressing his comments to me as well as to Frank. “Notice all the looks you get driving this car,” Bartlet said. “Let me tell you folks, if you don’t want people to notice the kind of car you drive, if it makes you uncomfortable having people admire your wheels when you pull up at a stoplight, then I suggest you look for a different car.”
“Like a Honda,” Frank said, a smile cracking out the side of his mouth.
“Nothing wrong with a Honda. A Honda is a reliable car,” he observed, in the way that he might say a girl has a good personality.
“You never did ask who sent us,” Frank said.
I put the viewfinder to my eye and checked the exposure.
“I sell a lot of these cars so I assumed it was a happy customer.” Bartlet glanced back at me, realizing something was up but not knowing what, expecting a joke or a message from a friend.
“The Church of Divine Thespians,” Frank said.
“Stop the car right now.” Bartlet bit the knuckle of his fist, his cheeks blotching scarlet. “No, turn the car around and go back to the dealership.”
“Relax, Scott,” I said. “We’re not from the church itself.” I was afraid the guy might implode right there on the front seat, wanted to put him more at ease. “But we know about the church and your former affiliation with it.”
Frank scissored a business card from the breast pocket of his sport coat, said, “Frank Adams, features writer for Scandal Times. You ever read us?”
“Oh God.” Bartlet sank low in his seat. “You’re the tabloids.”
“That’s right, Scott, the big, bad tabloids.” Frank sounded gleeful, as though he enjoyed terrorizing car salesmen. “You can choose to cooperate with us, either for attribution or as an anonymous source, or you can tell us to fuck off and find a photo of your mug in next week’s edition above the headline ‘Former Actor Accused in Dog Molestation Case.’ ”
“Oh God,” he repeated, his voice a low moan.
“He’s kidding about the dog molestation. At least, I think he’s kidding. You’re kidding, aren’t you, Frank?”
“I’ve printed worse.”
“He has,” I admitted. “I’ve read it.”
“Let’s start with the locket, the one with Montgomery Clift’s bone inside it, the reliquary.” Frank had trouble pronouncing the word, asked, “Did I get that right?”
“If I’m caught talking to you, it’s not just that I’ll never work in this town again.” Bartlet shaded his face with the palm of his hand. I think he wanted to hide his face from the camera, didn’t know the hand made him look like a criminal being led into the courthouse. “I was told that I couldn’t sell the thing. I was told all kinds of terrible things would happen to me if I ever sold it or talked to anyone about it outside the church. I mean, it was like I sold my soul to the devil when I bought it. It was that heavy. The friend who brought me into the Thespians, he won’t even talk to me now that I’ve gone apostate, as he calls it.”
“Tell me what happens when you and other Thespians get together, where you meet,” Frank said.
“This has to be off-off-off-record. You can’t print my name with this. You can’t mention my name at all.”
“You’re a former member of the Thespian cult. You heroically escaped the brainwashing techniques of a dangerous organization and now you’re rightfully
fearful of retaliation.” Frank glanced over to see how the car salesman was taking the extemporaneous pitch. “You can’t reveal your identity for your own protection.”
“We’ll do one of those face-in-shadow portraits to run with the story,” I suggested. “You know, like an undercover cop.”
“Or Mafia informant.” Bartlet wiped his mouth and stared out the window. Looking for a way to escape, probably. “Oh God, how did I ever get into this?”
“That’s a good place to start,” Frank said. “How did you get into this?”
“I want to be an actor. I mean, I am an actor. I just don’t work very much. I received fabulous notices back in Maryland, where I got my B.A. in theater arts, but the competition here is just killer. I mean, everybody here was a star in whatever Podunk little town they come from.”
“It’s the big leagues,” Frank agreed.
“There’s so much competition, it’s hard to get a decent audition. Just cattle calls, you know, where you show up with a hundred other people to audition for a one-line part in something that turns out to be a student film.”
“You wanted an edge.” Frank knew how tough it was to find work as an actor. He’d heard it hundreds of times. Every struggling actor told a similar story.
“Anything. An edge, a break, a little freaking hope. This friend of mine—”
“What’s his name?”
“No names. You want to make a right turn here, take Wilshire back. I can’t be gone too long.”
Frank showed he was a good sport and turned.
“This friend, he gets cast in everything. I mean, television, feature film, even a freaking music video. So we were drinking beers one weekend at the Whiskey Bar. You know the Whiskey Bar?”
Frank nodded and turned again to circle back. The Whiskey Bar was a hotel bar where the rock-and-roll set and certain actors hung out, actors who had perfected the twenty-four-hour hangover-with-a-suntan look, a common look among those who party nonstop in L.A.
“We were just chilling, you know, the bar was rocking and six or seven beers into the night I was bitching up a storm about how hard it was for me to find work when my friend, he pulls this necklace from under his shirt, points to the case at the end of the chain, and says, ‘Fredric March.’ ”
“You mean, the actor, what did he win that Oscar for, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?” Frank was grinning. Despite his lampooning the stars for a living, he loved to display his knowledge of trivia. “And one other one, The Best Years of Our Lives, right?”
“Starred in Anna Karenina, too, opposite Greta Garbo,” Bartlet said. “He was in the original filmed production of Death of a Salesman, played Willy Loman long before Dustin Hoffman.”
“You’re right, I forgot that one,” Frank said. “And your friend, what did he mean by the name? That he had a little piece of bone from Fredric March’s body inside?”
“This is too weird to believe.” Bartlet shook his head as though he didn’t believe it himself. “He started laying down this rap about how the locket and bone inside were his magic talisman, that he’d been struggling like me to find work until six months before, when he’d met this guy from the Church of Divine Thespians. After that, after he’d bought the relic, his luck magically changed.”
I asked, “Did you meet Sven?”
When he turned his head I snapped the shutter.
“You know about him?”
“A little.”
“Then you should know that no one meets Sven. Sven talks to you over the phone.” He put his hand in front of the lens to block the next shot.
“You met the other guy, then, the one with the good build, sandy-blond hair worn over his back collar.” I cranked the focus to his palm, lit in a shaft of light from the side window, the top of his head and one ear visible but blurred in the background. I hadn’t been looking for that shot but the image was perfect for what we needed. I took it.
“You mean Eric. He’s the one who sold me the locket.”
“Last name?”
“Never knew it.”
“Phone number?”
“He called me.” He kept his hand in front of my lens and turned to Frank. “Can you ask her to put away the camera? It’s not that I don’t trust you guys, but I don’t trust you guys.”
I capped the lens.
“What did Sven talk to you about?” Frank asked.
Bartlet pulled his hand back to his lap but kept his eye on my camera. “He talked a lot about what he calls the Hidden Mind Principle, that we all have a higher mind other religions have sometimes confused for soul, and if we learn how to tune into the higher mind through certain exercises, then it will direct us toward our chosen fate, which is what we most want for ourselves. He says the hidden mind is like the homing instinct in certain birds, that if we can tune in, it will lead us to fame and fortune as certainly as a homing pigeon will make it back to the roost.”
“Let me guess.” Frank made a humming sound in the back of his throat, the theme song to one of those television quiz shows. I never saw him happier than when a tabloid story was breaking and it was his to run with. “The exercises you need to reach your higher mind involve the purchase of one of these lockets, supposedly with the bone of a dead celebrity inside it.”
“You already knew,” Bartlet said, surprised. He didn’t understand how obvious the scam looked to an outsider.
“Just a lucky guess,” Frank said. “How much did you pay for it?”
“Ten thousand.” He mumbled the sum into his fist.
“Dollars?”
“I know. Pretty stupid.” Bartlet clasped his hands together, thumbs toward his chest, as though he was about to pray. “You’re supposed to hold the relic between your palms like this, close your eyes, and concentrate on the Hidden Mind Principle. The relic is supposed to act, I don’t know, like some conduit of higher energy, because the person it came from was the living embodiment of the hidden mind, you understand? Only it didn’t work for me.”
“Why not?”
“Probably because while I was holding on to the thing, trying to get my thoughts tracked onto the higher mind, I kept thinking, this is really stupid, I’ve just spent my entire life’s savings on a piece of Montgomery Clift’s tibia.”
The pole sign marking the Chrysler dealership loomed ahead. Frank turned into the lot. “But I’m sure the Thespians offer some kind of support group to help you get over the resistance, other people like yourself trying to channel fame and fortune and feeling a little less certain that kissing a celebrity’s bone instead of some producer’s ass is the right way to go about it.”
“I wish,” he said.
“No meetings, no coffee klatches, nobody you can call when you’re sweating with doubt?”
“Nothing like that. It’s not AA. It’s private. You’re not supposed to know who else belongs, it’s all supposed to be supersecret because it’s offered only to the chosen few. Sven says other people aren’t necessary. Just the basic teaching and the instrument, which is what he sometimes calls the relic, because no one can find your higher mind for you, only you can do it. And if you can’t find it, then you aren’t meant to find it, understand what I’m saying?”
Frank understood. The structure of the Church of Divine Thespians could have been inspired by a revolutionary group, the lower tiers broken into discrete cells that had no direct contact with each other and no traceable access to those higher in the organization. The PT Cruiser rolled to a stop. Frank killed the engine, trying to think of another angle.
“What about a shrine?” I asked. “Did you hear anyone talk about a sacred place, maybe where the bones were stored?”
“Sure. Steve Reeves Ranch, somewhere in the hills near Canyon Country. But that’s just a rumor. It’s strictly inner-circle stuff, reserved for the special few, the high priests and big stars. Not even my friend has been invited.” He elbowed open the door and stuck one foot outside, then leaned across the seat as though giving a confidence. “Sven supposedly conducts rit
uals there, where he channels the energies of the bones, what he calls higher-mind triangulation, which is supposed to help you focus into your own higher mind.”
“Higher-mind triangulation?” Frank asked, not sure he’d heard correctly.
“Sure. You’re holding on to one fragment of bone that’s supposed to help you find your higher mind, right?” He waited for our uncertain nods and then continued. “He’s conducting a ritual with the main set of relics, helping you to focus. It’s like you’re the first point on a triangle, he’s the second point, connected to you at the base, and where your lines of energy converge out there in the cosmos, that’s where your higher mind is. Only one problem.”
“Only one?” Frank asked.
“It didn’t work for me. Maybe my higher mind left the galaxy.” Bartlet pushed out of the car and circled the hood to get the keys from Frank. “So what do you think?”
The question confused Frank and he thought a moment before he asked, “About what?”
“The car,” Bartlet said. “With your good credit, I can cut you a really sweet deal.”
Thirty-Four
ISPOTTED Theresa rummaging through a rack of T-shirts at an open-air vendor’s shop on Ocean Front Walk, not far from the block of pay phones where we were supposed to meet. She looked in need of some new clothes, wearing the same slacks, bare-midriff blouse, and calfskin jacket that she’d worn to Café Anastasia the day I’d met her. She’d put a lot of miles on those clothes since then. I stuffed into my camera bag the mail I’d collected from the box below my burned-out apartment and heeled the Rott. When the girl heard my voice she dashed from the rack and wrapped her thin arms around my waist. She was happy to see me, it seemed. Just when I thought I’d need to get the crowbar from my car to pry her off she pushed away and announced she was hungry, if I didn’t feed her within the hour she’d starve to death. Not only is it surprising that most of us find a way to survive our teenaged years, it’s a miracle that those living with teens survive, too.
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