by Todd Grimson
“I didn’t say it looked bad,” Brown said—thank God the air-conditioning reached them here, quite efficiently, for outside it was nearly a hundred degrees.
“I’m going to go for an ultramodern, even futuristic look,” Lauren began. “I have this Italian interior decorator all ready to go … I needed to clear out all these antiques, sell them or put them in storage. Besides, having some of the rooms empty gives you a better idea of the space.”
Profit Brown looked around. Bluestone was off somewhere else talking to Code, who’d greeted them shirtless, with three days’ growth of beard, looking like a male model or an actor, offering them ice-cold beers.
“I didn’t say a word about the lack of furniture. All I’m thinking about … well, excuse me for saying it, but you don’t seem too busted up with grief over your friend Alvin Sender getting killed.”
“Business associate, Detective Brown. And barely that. He was into a lot of disreputable things. I’m sure he had a million enemies. I’m not really surprised he met a violent end.”
Brown just looked around again. “Amber … the girl he was with last night … the one who ran away when she saw him with an axe sticking out of his head … she says he had some videos, you know, of this Lisa Nova.”
“What about it?”
“Nothing, I guess. I just wondered if you knew who might have wanted them, those videos, ‘cause we didn’t find any there at the scene.”
Lauren appeared to think about this. Brown wondered if she was high, and if so, on what. She had a hard to read smile.
She said, “Well, the first person that comes to mind is someone I’m sure you’ve already thought of.”
“Don’t assume we’ve thought of anything. Tell me, who comes to mind? We overlook the obvious all the time.”
“Well, then … Lisa Nova herself, of course.”
“Yeah, I suppose she might want to get hold of them, if they’re like some people say. Have you ever seen this video yourself?”
“No. I’ve only heard about it. Rumors.”
“There’s a lot of rumors about that girl.”
Meanwhile, in the control room, Code couldn’t sit still, but he was amiably, even fondly dispensing his views to Detective Bluestone while Detective Gomez was outside on the grounds with Rachel Farb. (Gomez’s partner, Lancaster, was out sick.)
Code said, “So many people—just about anybody in the entertainment industry, ha, which means most of America in some metaphysical, hypothetical, in-their-dreams type of sense—would kill to get this kind of publicity. They would, quite literally, kill, they’d sacrifice a stranger at the crossroads on a moonlit night, they’d do it and it wouldn’t be enough, you know? Lisa is the chosen one, you can’t buy or plan or ever anticipate this kind of luck—maybe she did exactly that, what I was saying, maybe she sacrificed an innocent, made a pact with the devil like Robert Johnson the blues player or Frank Sinatra or some such … and now she’s gotta wait until the devil comes to claim her soul.”
“You were close to her. Would she do something like that? Does she have that kind of lust for fame?” Bluestone asked, trying to play into Code’s mood, flatter him somewhat, as he sensed a part of Code wanted to be admired for his brains, his understanding of the world, his canniness, judged not as a hustler but as something more.
“Where you been?” Code said, his answer, smiling. “Who did she know? Who did she get next to, in fact? The mystery man, the one nobody knows. Boro. I met Boro twice. I made a call for him once, to Lisa when she was in New York. He said to me, ‘I own her/ What do you think he meant by that? She’s got everything the way she wants now, even if she can hardly go outside because the paparazzi nag her like dogs after a big leopard in a tree. But she loves all that, man. All that attention. She’s a fame junkie. The whole world’s watching her now.”
“She told me she thought Boro was dead.”
“He might be. Then who killed Alvin Sender? I don’t know. That might be peripheral, a sideshow, a joke. Ask yourself this, just as a character question: What was Lisa doing with Selwyn Popcorn? What was she doing with Roy Hardway? She’s not innocent in all this. She’s impure.”
“That’s what my partner keeps telling me,” said Bluestone in a rare moment wherein he felt like confiding something in return, because he knew Code would appreciate it, and he did, it was between the two of them—at the same time as there was also, somehow, an unspoken affection for Lisa, or if not straightforward affection, then a mutual acknowledgment of her spell, her charm….
“I’m doing a tell-all with Rachel Farb,” Code said, looking into Bluestone’s face. “My contribution to the Lisa Nova cult. Tell me: Do you think I’m scum?”
“I don’t know enough about you to judge you,” the homicide detective replied. “For instance, I don’t necessarily see very deeply into what you’re doing right here, in this house.”
“Uh-huh,” Code said, maybe a bit offended, or simply embarrassed, scratching his nipple and frowning, finishing off a beer gone warm. “I completely understand what you’re saying,” he said, but the momentary communion had slipped away.
Bluestone and Brown sent Detective Gomez to make some phone calls, tasking her with tracking down definitively Lou’s daughter, Celia, who had not come west for her father’s funeral: why not? She was supposed to be in North Carolina, where she was going to school, but no one had talked to her yet. Or was she in Israel? Nobody knew. Find her. She’s a loose end. Think how meaningful it might be if it turns out she’s secretly here in L.A.
Bluestone and Brown drove over to where Lou’s house was, they were in the neighborhood—that fire had never been satisfactorily explained. The house hadn’t burned all the way down. The wall on which Veronica had hired the Mexicans to paint the giant death’s-head moth still stood. It was hot as hell, but they got out of the car and walked out to take a closer look.
“She owned that art gallery, didn’t she?” Profit Brown asked rhetorically, not caring if Bluestone answered or not. “And her son was some kind of artist, or at least he’d been an art student, he was a wanna-be… a fuck-off.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I don’t know,” Brown said, coat off, red tie loosened, kicking some pieces of doll’s bodies or something that had been half rescued from the flames and then discarded. He was thinking.
“Let’s go see the widow,” Bluestone said.
They stopped to pick up Sno-Kones on the way. Jesus, it was hot. Especially when you were stuck in traffic, gas fumes levitating up like wobbly mini-mirages; wearing sunglasses didn’t seem to affect one bit the overwhelming desertlike brightness shining off the concrete.
Veronica was sitting on the front porch, in the shade, wearing sunglasses and a little black dress, her ash blond hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, her skin so white, so pale, translucent … with bruises on her legs.
“I’m still in mourning,” she said, and removed the sunglasses when Bluestone removed his. “I heard about Alvin Sender,” she said. “Do you have a suspect, or are you just revisiting everyone who has any possible connection to the larger unsolved case?”
“Jesus,” Profit Brown said. “You got an attitude today.” He sounded like he was developing one himself.
Some Latin kids were playing, young enough so they seemed to require no props, just running from one place to another, talking in sped-up, excited voices, sometimes shrieking with laughter, the little girls screaming just to scream.
“Listen,” Veronica went on, “Lou and I were all right. He had an affair. I forgave him. Maybe he had others through the years—a man in his position has a lot of opportunities—but for the most part they meant about as much to him as masturbating to Playboy magazine. I think Lisa Nova got him somehow involved with this Venezuelan gangster Boro, and I don’t know what happened after that. My son Jonathan … was an artist, and I’m afraid he tended to think of his whole life as performance art, like somebody was following him around, filming it; he would turn around now and
then to make deadpan remarks. He wanted to find out what happened to his father, and he got in over his head. I don’t even necessarily think Nova had anything to do with any of it beyond bringing Lou and Jonathan to Boro’s attention. I’ve never met her, but I don’t have the impression she’s exactly capable of masterminding a complicated plot.”
“Hard to say,” Profit Brown said, sweating profusely, wiping his face with a clean sky blue handkerchief.
“My husband was a fine man,” Veronica continued, still somewhat inexplicably antagonistic, “and I know he’d want people to remember him for the great movies he produced, like Monkey on My Back or Stone the Sinner, with Dirk Young.” She seemed to forget what she was going to say next; she paused, almost stammered, then wouldn’t go on.
When it was clear she’d finished, Bluestone said, changing the subject completely, almost as if he’d heard or understood nothing, “Where is Steve Zen today?”
“He’s inside, sleeping. I don’t want to disturb him; he didn’t sleep well last night in the heat.”
“Are you aware of his record?”
“I know there were some misunderstandings.”
“You could call them that, I guess. He was a trainer and masseuse, but he kept getting these complaints that he became overly familiar. There were a couple of rape charges that for one reason or another never went to trial. Plus one conviction for prostitution, possession of a controlled substance, assault—”
“You’re not going to tear him down to me,” Veronica said with asperity, putting her sunglasses back on. “He and I get along, we’re good for each other, but I wouldn’t expect you to understand or even try”
“Can we come inside for a moment? Not to wake Steve up, I promise, but to use your telephone?”
“I’m sorry, no. It’s a mess.”
“We won’t even look,” Bluestone said. “It’s just something I forgot to tell Detective Gomez down at the station.”
“No. You can’t come in. It’s just too messy. I’d be embarrassed. There’s a pay phone around the corner at the Korean grocery.”
“Everyone’s got secrets, don’t they?” Profit said back in the car, and Dave Bluestone agreed.
“I wonder if Steve was really in there sleeping or not.”
Profit Brown shrugged. “She was telling us stories, that’s for damn sure. ‘My husband was a fine man.’ Shit.”
When they’d interviewed Steve Zen before, he’d been excessively friendly. He said he’d always wanted to be a cop himself. He was a type they’d often seen: sleazeballs who thought it was a big joke to butter up the police. Like they were tricking you. People never realized how many hundreds of times you saw the same fucking acts.
The detectives were tired; they felt disillusioned and out of their depth. Everybody was lying, everybody was telling some part of the truth. Poor Gomez was still working, staying late, a tiny Band-Aid on her eyebrow covering the spot where she’d had three stitches put in after being kicked by Lisa Nova during Phil Lancaster’s ill-considered roust.
TWENTY-ONE
Richard sometimes affectionately called Mona “Glamorpuss,” sort of kidding, but it pleased her; she liked the way his regard could make her feel. When they fucked, perhaps she exaggerated her histrionics with some corner of her consciousness, wanting to make him feel powerful—as well as, effectively, to spur him on—but it all worked, the sex charge was very strong. If everything else went wrong, they could always rediscover their love by going to bed.
It took a while, after the fuck, for things to go sour again. They smoked cigarettes and drank bourbon. Looked up at the ceiling fan.
Some bebop jazz was playing somewhere, from the neighborhood. Wardell Gray on the sax. “Twisted.” His signature tune.
Richard and Mona were both completely naked, except for her pearl necklace and earrings. She lay on her stomach, head up, resting on her elbows, forearms down, Richard’s left hand idly, slowly fondling her buttocks, her thighs. He was on his back, looking up, knowing her by touch, like the blind.
Finally she said, “You’re not going to do it, are you?”
“Do what?” although he knew.
She didn’t speak to him. Her face gradually changed as she thought about her situation … maybe she overdramatized it, but she started crying, no sobs, just tears, her hair was unkempt with fuck-sweat, and now she just let the tears roll down her cheeks.
“Glamorpuss,” he said affectionately, touching her head, trying to defuse her, to reach her sentimentally.
“I just can’t go on like this anymore,” she said. “If we can’t be together, I’d rather be dead. I mean it. You don’t understand how unhappy I get when you’re not here. It’s like the house is haunted or something … all the bad demons whisper to me in the middle of the night, and I wake up and turn on the light, I’m afraid to go back to sleep … I can’t stand it. I’m so alone.”
“I’m here for you,” Richard said. “I just don’t want to murder someone. Things aren’t perfect, but … I don’t think they ever are. This way we have money, I can buy you things, keep this house, and if you can be patient, if you can only wait a little while … she’s not that healthy, her stomach hurts her all the time, something’s really wrong….”
“I can’t wait,” said Mona, intoxicating herself, shaking her head back and forth, getting up, standing up, walking over to the dresser, sniffling. “It’ll never happen, those rich bitches never get out of the way. I was born unlucky, and I’ve come to this … I love you but I can’t have you, lately you’ve been coming by less and less, I can’t go on like this, I’m sick of it, I hate it!”
Having worked herself up, she tore the pearl necklace off her throat, pearls rolling around on the hardwood floor, and she opened the top drawer of the dresser and said, turning so he could see what she had, “I’m gonna cut my wrist, and you won’t be able to stop the bleeding. I want you to hold me while I die. Just do it! No phony stories!” and as he scrambled to stop her, concerned, his face going from anger at her ploy to real worry, she held the knife away from him, and, turning her body away, she cut her wrist a little, it bled, he grabbed at her, saying, “Stop this, please Mona, I love you,” and he didn’t want to hurt her, she was stronger, she was wild, he couldn’t hold her, she groaned and twisted the knife-holding hand away, now saying, in a terrible voice, screaming, “I hate you! Leave me alone! Let me go!” and then she turned on him, slashing at him, the tip grazing his neck as he tried to catch her arm, maybe she was horrified by what she had done, but she relaxed her arm just as he caught up to it, prepared for the wild strength she’d been demonstrating, he grabbed her wrist just as she stopped the knife’s arc and it all went wrong, it was as if she stabbed herself with his hand holding her wrist, the blade went in just to the side of her left breast, in the middle of her chest, it stopped her, she looked at him, sorry for him, she said “Richard” in a soft voice, and he held her as she collapsed, he touched the hilt of the knife but it was buried deep and snug, he cried out “No!” but then tried to comfort her, he wept but tried to compose himself for her sake, her eyes still saw him as he caressed her cheek, brushing the hair out of her face. He said, “Mona, Mona, baby, I love you, don’t go,” and she died, the knife stuck there, between her breasts. When Richard at last made another effort to pull it out, he succeeded, and, as the wound was unplugged, there now flowed, over her ribs and onto the floor, over her stomach, a quantity of rich wine-colored blood. Mona’s eyes were open, somewhat astonished, her lips parted … for Richard’s kiss, which he now gave. He held her, rocking, talking gently, soothingly, as if she were just asleep. Two figures, alone.
TWENTY-TWO
Her new girlfriend, Danica, had come to pick up Rae the night before, to go to the mountains for the weekend. So Chuck had spent the night with Lisa, and they fucked, and talked, and slept, and in the morning he made smoothies for them, he said he had a smoothie every day.
Lisa swam, and they talked some more, and called Larry Planet. The
y wanted to shoot one more scene: Richard in jail. Richard told the police the simple truth, not trying to excuse himself, but of course they wanted to take what they had, they didn’t want to see any complications. He’d stabbed her, it was manslaughter or worse. Richard’s wife, Elaine, came to visit him, and she was better-looking than one might have expected, though definitely older than he was, and she said, “I knew you had someone like her, and it was all right. But you couldn’t control her, could you?” No, Richard admitted, a certain almost-nobility now with him since he’d stopped lying or hiding anything. A man who had nothing to hide, nothing to lose. “I loved her,” he said, breaking the last tie with Elaine, you could see it,
she still might even have stuck with him if he hadn’t said this, insulting her by throwing it in her face. Elaine said, “You never learned, glamorpuss; you make a bargain, you have to give some things up. You can’t just have everything at once.” Richard let her get the last word.
They’d need a jailhouse set and some other actors. Larry Planet asked if they had anybody in mind. Chuck said, “What about Angela Bennington for Elaine? Tell her it’s small but memorable. She can do it in a day.”
“Good,” Larry said, “I like her. The audience won’t totally hate her, though they’ll see Richard’s point.”
Chuck drove Lisa downtown to buy her some antique mirrors. They had to really speed to get away from this one female stringer, who was trying to follow them in her Saab.
People recognized them, and Lisa tried to study Chuck’s cool way of dealing with the constant attention, just having everyone aware of you, watching you—it made her feel slightly paranoid and exposed. All that crazy witch stuff on TV. She didn’t feel very safe. On the other hand, there was a feeling of belonging to the aristocracy of fame. Ordinary people were just background. Anything a “civilian” did or said was graceless, dumb; anything she and Chuck said or did had a rightness to it, a gracefulness… oh, Lisa was confused.