Love Bites

by Adrienne Barbeau

  I scanned the crowd for paparazzi, saw a couple of flashes going off by the entrance to the dock. Dennis Hopper had just walked in. He didn’t stop for photographs, though, just pushed his way through the crowd to the pile of garbage, right where Ovsanna and I were standing. He had a baseball bat in his hand. He smashed it down on the paint cans. Flakes of dried paint scattered into the air. Then he hit the trashed TV and started crushing the large glass pieces of the monitor. By that time, the paparazzi were on him, pressing in front of me to block my view. I watched the bat swing over their heads while he continued to demolish whatever else was in the pile. For a full ten minutes. Then he walked through the crowd into the showroom, still carrying the bat. He never said a word.

  The paparazzi stayed behind, photographing the remaining rubble. I looked at Ovsanna, who was grinning back at me. “It’s art,” she said. “I’m not sure Leonardo would agree, but Dalí probably would.” She tapped one of the photographers on the shoulder, and he turned around to face us. It was Johansson, one of the regulars. Pronounced with a Y.

  “Hey, Ms. Moore, Detective King, can I have a shot?” He lifted his Canon and I shoved it down again.

  “Forget it, Yo. I’m working here. Take a look at this picture, tell me if you know the guy. I think he’s one of yours.” I showed him a Polaroid the crime techs had shot on the beach.

  “I guess he’s not gonna be shooting at the Oscars anymore, is he? Ooh yah, that’s Smooch.”

  “Smooch who?”

  “Just Smooch. I don’t know his last name. He runs with Steady Eddie, though, and that pack. I think they’re over at the Celebrity Centre, waiting for Tom to make an appearance.”

  I wondered if he’d used the word pack on purpose or if it was just his figure of speech. “Tom?”

  “Ooh yah, at the Church of Scientology. He’s supposed to be meeting Kirstie Alley over there, give her some support while she films another fat commercial. I’m heading over there as soon as Dennis comes out and finishes demolishing the sofa.”

  It didn’t make sense to expose Ovsanna to the scene at the Celebrity Centre, so I went west to Beverly Hills and dropped her off at her office, then headed east again to Franklin Avenue and the Manor Hotel, the replica of a seventeenth-century French castle that serves “the desperate few who are often the most neglected,” according to the Scientology literature. They’re talking about the celebrities.

  It’s a beautiful building, built in 1929 by Thomas Ince’s widow. Tom being the guy who owned his own movie studio in the twenties and was rumored to have been killed by William Randolph Hearst while celebrating his birthday on Hearst’s yacht. Now that I thought about it, Charlie Chaplin was on the yacht that day. I’ll bet Ovsanna was, too. I’d have to remember to ask her; she probably knows the real story.

  The building was originally called the Chateau Elysée, and everybody who was anybody in the thirties and forties stayed there: Gable, Gershwin, Bogart, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn. It’s seven stories high, has a couple of restaurants, a theatre, a gym, a screening room, and a garden room that seats four hundred people. I went to a wedding there once. Freaked me out a bit, but nobody tried to convert me.

  There were a few people standing on the front steps whose job that might be, but when they saw my badge, they ignored me. Johansson had beaten me to the location. He was talking to half a dozen photographers who were lined up behind a thick velvet rope on the sidewalk leading up to the building. Another thirty or so jostled for position behind a similar rope on the opposite side. Steady Eddie was in the smaller group. He had his back to me. He turned when Johansson pointed. His nose was covered in bandages.

  “Eddie. Oh, Eddie,” I said, “don’t tell me it was you? Last night on the beach?”

  He backed away from me a few steps, his hands going to his nose. His mustache was gone; the doctors must have had to shave it off when they worked on him. I could see now why he’d worn it. His upper lip looked like a baboon’s ass.

  “What do you know?” he asked, alarm showing in his eyes. “Did I do something wrong?” It was hard to understand him with his nose closed up, but he didn’t sound defensive, he sounded frightened. I grabbed one of his yellow suspenders and pulled him toward a side alley. He trotted along beside me until we were out of sight.

  “Okay, what’s going on, Eddie? What happened to your nose?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I woke up this morning and it was broken, and my face was ripped open. Someone must have attacked me last night, but I blacked out. I don’t remember.”

  “Someone must have attacked you? How about you attacked someone, Eddie? Huh? Someone famous? You don’t remember that?”

  He backed away from me again, his hands up in protest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t even find my camera. Did someone take pictures? Have you got my camera?”

  “I don’t need pictures, Eddie, I was there. Last night, on the beach in Malibu. You attacked Ovsanna Moore. You and your buddies. Does that jog your memory?”

  “Oh no. Oh no. Ovsanna Moore? Oh no, I don’t remember that. Oh, please, I’m telling you the truth. Are you sure it was me?” Sweat appeared on his bald scalp and trickled down his nose.

  “It was you all right, Eddie. You had your collar on. I know what you are, Eddie, you can drop the charade.”

  “I . . . I . . . You know about my collar? You know about that?” His face had gone pale. He slumped down the wall and sat on the ground, staring up at me. “It’s not a charade. You’ve got to believe me, I don’t remember anything from last night. What did I do to her? Did I hurt her?” Blood started leaking through his bandages. I didn’t want him to stroke before I found out what I needed to know.

  “Calm down, Eddie, you’re gonna have a heart attack. Yeah, I know about the collar. I guess I don’t know how it works exactly, because I figured you’d know what I was talking about, but you really don’t, do you?”

  “I don’t. I swear I don’t. I don’t remember being on any beach. I don’t remember seeing Ms. Moore.”

  “What the fuck, Eddie? Why do you use it if you don’t remember what happens when you do?”

  “I remember how it feels, that’s all. It feels great, Detective King. Suddenly I’m powerful and fast and strong. I can feel my muscles. And I’m free! I can do anything. Run and hunt—it’s all instinct. No money worries, no fighting for the sleaziest shot of Lindsay or Jesse James and the Nazi girl. It’s a fantastic high. Except I didn’t remember about Ms. Moore. Is she all right? Did I hurt her?”

  “You were tracking her, Eddie. You and a pack of your buddies. The only reason she’s okay is because I got there and ran you off. But one of the other guys with a collar wasn’t quite so lucky. You recognize him?”

  I flashed the snapshot in front of him and watched his eyes roll back in his head. Luckily he was sitting down. I slapped his face a couple of times, which couldn’t have felt good with the broken nose, and finally got him to focus. Yes, he said, he knew him; his name was Cyril Sinclair, and he was one of the regular paparazzi working the L.A. scene. Everyone called him Smooch. Eddie didn’t know Smooch well, but he had his address on a business card in the camera case Eddie’d left in his car. I helped him up and we walked around the corner to where he was parked. Tom and Kirstie must have left already, because the crowd had dispersed. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to talk to the other photographers. Without any wounds to help me identify them, I wouldn’t know who else might have been on the beach. Eddie didn’t remember them being there. And if their talismans worked like Eddie’s, they wouldn’t remember, either.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Peter dropped me off and I went straight into Thomas’s office. I needed something the cops could identify as belonging to Thomas: his business card or a sheet of letterhead or something. Something to further incriminate Smooch as the Cinema Slayer. Thomas’s robe was monogrammed, but Maral had brought it to my office the day before, and she’s not a good liar; I didn’t want t
o risk the cops questioning her about it.

  I found the perfect item in Thomas’s bathroom drawer, hidden under a dog collar and some silk scarves. Leave it to Thomas to keep his sex toys close at hand. I’m surprised he even bothered to hide it.

  It was a sterling silver cock ring with the initials TDW carved on it. Thomas DeWitte.

  Absolutely perfect.

  I found something else in his wastebasket in the closed cabinet under his sink. Something I didn’t understand. The room had been cleaned since he was killed and no one should have been using it, especially not opening cabinet drawers to dispose of anything. It looked like part of the figure of a man. It was the broken half of a burnt, greenish yellow candle. The word and was cut into the wax, but it was almost obliterated by pinpricks. Whatever word had preceded it was on the missing half, and the candle had been burned down past the word that followed. It looked like more of Maral’s hoodoo workings, but why was she leaving anything in Thomas’s room?

  I walked out of his office and into mine. Tyrone Power was sitting there. If I’d been human, my heart would have stopped. I palmed the cock ring out of his sight and stared at him. He looked just as gorgeous as he had before he staged his death on the set of Solomon and Sheba in Madrid in 1958. I never understood why he felt he had to “die” after I turned him or why he didn’t wait to have me turn him until after he’d finished that film. He was enjoying working with Gina Lollobrigida and George Sanders. He could have insisted King Vidor get all his scenes in the can first and save the crowd scenes for last so they wouldn’t have had to replace him, but he didn’t. He begged me to do it in the middle of the shoot. Yul Brynner looked good in the role, but come on, he wasn’t Ty Power—even with hair. King said later, “With Power, it would have been a marvelous picture. Without him, it turned out to be an unimportant, nothing sort of film.” All Ty’s ever said about it is that after doing Nightmare Alley and The Eddie Duchin Story and Witness for the Prosecution, he got on the set of Solomon and Sheba and couldn’t face another costume epic.

  It would be fun to screen the film for Peter sometime, to see if he could find Ty in the long shots they’d managed to keep.

  He was wearing a black cashmere sweater and black slacks. His lashes were so thick that he might have been wearing black mascara, but I knew that wasn’t the case. Tyrone Power was a man’s man, and contrary to what you’d expect, he wasn’t terribly vain. He wasn’t wearing his hair slicked back with the left side part any longer, either. It was tousled and a little curly, just as thick as it had been the last time I’d seen him. He looked good.

  “Chatelaine,” he said, rising from the chair to kiss me on both cheeks. “You look stunning.” He was right; I’d gone all out that morning, knowing the press was going to be at that art performance. The red Hervé Léger was worth the thirty-four hundred dollars I’d paid for it, even if it felt like I was wearing a full-body girdle.

  “As do you, Ty. How did you get in here? You didn’t just walk in, did you? The girls downstairs would have recognized you.”

  “They did. Indeed they did. One of them—Ilona, is it?—thought I was my son, and the other thought I was that good-looking actor on Lost. Nestor Carbonell. I hate to admit it, but there are times when a fan is so sure I’m Nestor, I’ve signed his name on torn pieces of paper. Took me months to get the spelling right.”

  “Well, at least they’re not fainting because they think they’ve seen your ghost. What are you doing here, Ty?” I hadn’t seen him for years. Not since he came to ask permission to turn Roddy McDowall. “You have someone you want to turn? Let me guess—Sophia Loren.”

  “No. Not at all. Why on earth would you expect me to turn Sophia?”

  “Well, you talked about her nonstop in the sixties and seventies. And she’s always said you were her ideal man. . . .” I stopped and stared at him, waiting for some juicy bit of gossip.

  “Her acting, Ovsanna. I talked about her acting. She’s a brilliant actress. For years I thought she was one of us. She’s as mesmerizing on-screen as you are, or Theda. And she managed to overcome the stigma of her beauty and be recognized for her talent, something I spent my entire career trying to achieve. But no, I’m not interested in turning her. She’s had a remarkable life; we should leave it at that. Not all of us revel in being what we are, like you do.”

  “Are you sorry I turned you, Tyrone?” I’d never heard him talk like this before. It’s been difficult for some of my clan to give up their celebrity, even though they might not have achieved stardom at all had they not been turned at an early age. Still, having to live in the shadows after you’ve blossomed in the spotlight is a big adjustment.

  “No, Chatelaine. I’m not sorry. I miss interacting with my children and I wish I could know my grandchildren, but I’m not sorry. When your father dies in your arms at a young age and then someone offers you the opportunity to live forever . . . no, I’m not sorry.”

  “Well, you didn’t just drop by for a chat about old times. Why are you here, Ty? What can I help you with? Would you like to sit?” I motioned to the sofa and moved to my desk and sat down. Ty stayed standing.

  “No, thank you, Ovsanna. I’m here because I want to talk to you about Thomas’s job. I’d like you to consider me for the position.”

  That came as a complete surprise. Ty had been living in Baja for many years; he owns a matador school there. I remembered he said his students were always amazed at how quickly he healed if a bull got too close. “Thomas’s job? You want to work for me in development? Why?”

  “Because I think I’d be good at it. Remember, I produced several of the movies I starred in, even though I didn’t take a credit. And it would give me the opportunity to help actors I think deserve to be seen. And truthfully, it might be a way for me to spend time with my children. If I can find a project Romina or Ty Jr. is right for, I could cast them.”

  “Oh, that’s taking a huge risk, Ty. It’s one thing for my receptionists or people on the street to mistake you for someone else, but your own children? They’ve spent their lives surrounded by pictures of you, watching your films. You’ve barely aged in the last fifty years. Believe me, you still look like their father. There’s no way you could make it work. I think you need to wait many more years before you come back to Hollywood again. Either that or find some way to completely disguise yourself.”

  “Like this?” he said, anger creeping into his voice. And before I could respond, he’d pulled off his sweater and shifted into a panther.

  Wouldn’t you know he’d become a beautiful, black-haired creature.

  But . . . he looked ridiculous with his pants halfway down his haunches and his paws standing in his huaraches. I kicked him in the ribs and held his muzzle closed with both hands while I commanded him to stop screwing around and get himself under control. Actors are children, I don’t care how many hundreds of years old they are. Myself included—sometimes.

  He shifted back, apologized, and adjusted his clothing. I didn’t mind seeing him without the sweater.

  “I’m sorry, Ty,” I said, handing it to him. “It’s not going to work. Once again, you’re a victim of that gorgeous face.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  It didn’t take me long to get the warrant for Smooch’s home address. The Captain knew a judge who owed him a favor.

  Cyril “Smooch” Sinclair had a loft in Koreatown. The top floor of a four-story building. One big open space, about sixty by one hundred feet. The manager of the building ran the flower shop on the ground floor. He used his spare key to let me in.

  It was a great space for a photographer. The ceiling had to have been eighteen feet high at least, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on the north and south walls to let in plenty of natural light. One of those big rolls of white backdrop paper hung from a rod in front of the east wall, with black, red, and blue rolls stacked on the floor behind it. Someone had created an interior room by using cedar planks to wall off a ten-by-ten-foot space in the southwest corn
er. The cedar gave off a great smell. A naked red lightbulb jutted out from a fixture attached to the door. Smooch had his own darkroom.

  The rest of the space had minimal, modern furniture. A queen-size mattress on a frame, no box springs, no headboard, covered in a white duvet with a wide black stripe across the center. Black shams on the pillows. A freestanding claw-foot tub—I thought that was sort of sexy—a black vanity under the sink, and a tall white Pottery Barn cupboard next to it. One of those rolling clothes racks held Smooch’s wardrobe, and behind it, a black-and-red shoji screen blocked the toilet from view. A black leather and chrome sofa, a small flat-screen TV on a glass coffee table in front of it. The kitchen took up the northeast corner. Smooch must have liked to cook; he had some pretty fancy gear on the counters—copper pots, a wok, an indoor grill. The table was only big enough for two.

  Photography equipment was scattered all over the place, but the only other furniture was one long, freestanding bookshelf made out of the same cedar as the darkroom. It took me a minute to realize Smooch had all his books alphabetized and categorized: biography, history, photography, and . . . wolves.

  Lots of books about wolves. The guy definitely had a fetish. I Danced with a Werewolf; Werewolves Wear Heels; What You Always Wanted to Know About Werewolves and Couldn’t Find Anyone to Ask. Maybe I should borrow that one. The Complete Unabridged and Unadulterated Encyclopedic Compendium of Werewolves. That could come in handy, too. The Werewolves’ Wine Companion. Confessions of a Recovering Werewolf. Werewolves on the Wagon. Cyril Sinclair had more than a fetish; he had a problem. He even had books about Hitler’s werewolves, the guerrilla force Himmler organized to assassinate German collaborators. And the Wolfenstein video games. Those he kept in the history section.

  I could see already how he was going to make my story for the Captain believable. Recovering alcoholic, addicted to gaming, decides he’s a werewolf and attacks Ovsanna in a delirious rage.