Hollywood Gothic

by Thomas Gifford

  Challis nodded. “The radio.”

  “And I followed the trial,” she said. “It was rather like a forties movie.”

  “The similarity occurred to me. I felt like John Garfield getting railroaded. Dust Be My Destiny, but you’re too young to remember that.” He squeezed his forehead tiredly. “It happens more and more now. I’m retreating into fantasy, I suppose … this, the plane crash, these kids, this is the first time I’ve felt alive in weeks. Maybe it’s a fantasy, too, only I’ve gotten deeper into it this time.”

  “Rubbish,” she said softly. “You’re tired, but it’s real … you really are here.”

  “But if it were real,” he said, “wouldn’t you be taking some kind of precautions? I’m a convicted murderer—”

  “Don’t forget, I followed the trial. You may have beaned your wife with an Oscar, or maybe you didn’t, but you’re not a criminal. From what I’ve heard, you could have had good cause … which is not exactly the same as saying she deserved it, but not entirely different, either.”

  “What do you mean, you’ve heard?” He couldn’t get a handle on any of it. She was being elliptical, and he was so tired.

  “I’ve been in and around the movie business all my life, grew up with it. I used to go to bed with the sounds of screenings down the hall in the projection room. I still know people who knew your wife … her mother and father, too, and I sat on her grandfather’s knee once when I was about three years old.” She got up and turned the Sidney Bechet tape over. He watched her, not quite getting it. While the tapedeck worked its way toward the beginning of the music, she said, “I dated Jack Donovan a couple of times, too. Not long before he began seeing your wife—”

  “Ex-wife,” he said, staring into the fire, listening to her deep voice and the hiss of the burning logs.

  “Yes, presumably she’s as ex as anyone can get.”

  “You’re not overwhelmed by respect for the dead.”

  “It’s a phoney attitude. Very prevalent out here, of course. All you’ve got to do out here to get some respect, my father used to say, was get the picture in the can on time and under budget and quietly drop dead. Presto, everybody agrees you should have gotten the Thalberg award. You know what they said about Louis B. Mayer’s funeral—half the people there wanted to be sure he was dead.” She came back and sat down, smiling and pulling the robe tight. “Respect for the dead should be born out of respect for the same guys living. From what I’ve heard, I didn’t have a great deal of respect for your wife.”

  “It sounds to me like you kept your ear to the ground.”

  “Not really. She got herself talked about.” Sidney Bechet soared off into “Sweet Lorraine,” and he felt her eyes boring into him. “And then she got herself killed.” She shrugged. “You knew her best. How much respect did you have for her?”

  “I’m sorry she’s dead.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do? I may be relatively sympathetic to your predicament, but I can’t hide you in the fruit cellar until they stop looking for you.”

  “I don’t know … I don’t want to go to prison. I don’t belong in prison.” He sighed, shook his head. “I guess I’ll try to escape. I don’t know how, though. I mean, who the hell knows how to do a thing like that? Escape from some goddamn dragnet.”

  “I don’t think they call them dragnets anymore—APB’s, I think. There’ll be an APB on you.”

  “Well, all right. I still don’t know what to do. And stop staring at me. What you see is someone with little bits of white bone poking out through the nerve ends.” Impatiently, trying to shake off her eyes, he grabbed at a stack of books on the table at his elbow. The Black Gardenia, The Little Sister, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Cavanaugh Quest, Frequent Hearses, The Barbarous Coast, The Maltese Falcon. “What the hell is all this? Murders, murders, murders … You must be crazy.”

  “Murder is my business,” she said. “I own a bookstore, nothing but mysteries. The Murder, He Says, Bookshop. We carry both of the novels you wrote back in the sixties, the early sixties—”

  “Does anybody ever buy them?”

  “Sure. Trivia collectors.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “There is a steady demand for any mysteries with a Hollywood background. You wrote two. I’ve even got an autographed first of The Final Cut. Your trial and conviction, you’ll be glad to know, has driven the value sky-high.”

  “How nice for you.”

  “Last week a collector in La Jolla offered me a thousand dollars for that particular volume. I’m thinking it over.”

  “Only in America,” he moaned.

  “Only in Hollywood,” she said.

  5

  HE WOKE WITH A CHISEL of bright, glaring sunlight prying his eyes open. From the window he could see out across the lake, where the morning light flowed down the mountainside in a thick wave, as if the Disney people had already been hard at it. His trousers, shirt, sweater, and underwear were laid out on a chair, clean. The torn knee had been stitched up. While he dressed his aching body, he breathed deeply at the window. The night in a warm bed seemed to have softened him, made him feel the aches and pains more intensely. The snow was melting and leaving wet spots on the driveway. It dropped from the eaves like a metronome, and fir trees that had been white and heavy-laden the day before were now dark green, wet. He was admiring the view and trying to ignore the realities which were groping their way toward the center of his consciousness when he heard the soft rapping on the bedroom door.

  “Good morning,” Morgan Dyer said, sliding swiftly into the room and closing the door behind her. She was wearing faded Levi’s, a heavy cardigan sweater with a belt and with shoulders halfway down her arms, tennis sneakers. “Sleep well?”

  “Fine. But I feel like sasquatch has been using me for a soccer ball. I’ve led a sheltered and sedentary life until the day before yesterday—is that right? Day before yesterday? Whenever …” He pulled up the covers, straightened the pillows. “I really appreciate all this, washing these things … a place to sleep, no policemen in the middle of the night. I … well, I’m not quite sure how I can repay you—”

  “Don’t be silly, you’re talking rubbish again—what could you do in your position, put in a good word for me with the warden?” She went to the other side of the bed and got the tangled blankets smoothed. “But we do have to decide what we’re going to do with you. Unless you’re planning to just wander off into the mountains, sort of mystically, in which case something will probably eat you tonight and your problems will be over. Otherwise your problems are just beginning. First, there are all these children who have seen you. The first time they see a picture of you, they’re going to start talking about good old Bandersnatch.”

  Challis stroked his beard, smoothing the unkempt, wild patches back toward his ears. “I think I can fix that one. Are they up yet?”

  “Having breakfast. The plump one is really something—Edward G. Robinson—he just took over in the kitchen, scrambled eggs, fried bacon. Funny, though, when he came out of the bathroom, he was smoking a cigar.” Her green eyes flickered. “I asked him what he wanted for breakfast, and he pointed his cigar at me and said, ‘More, yeah, that’s what I want, more.’ Unnerving, first thing in the morning.” She regarded him quizzically across the bed. “What do you suggest?”

  “Send Edward G. up to see me, and do it privately, not in front of the rest of them.”

  He brushed his teeth with a brush dangling from a rack in the bathroom connecting to the bedroom. In the mirror he saw that his flat blue eyes were clear and bright for the first time in months; staring at the face, it occurred to him for the first time just how famous the trial had made it, and what the papers and television were going to do with it once they realized he had survived the plane crash. The trial coverage had only been a starter. The manhunt would be carried out on another scale altogether, and his face would be everywhere. … He spit o
ut the toothpaste, wiped his mouth, and went back to lie down on the bed, scrunching pillows behind him. He glanced at the bedside table. Death of a Ghost, Smallbone Deceased, The Locked Room, The Schirmer Inheritance, Death Under Sail. He shook his head.

  Ralph came in, minus his cigar. He came with the confidence of a natural take-charge guy, dark, bouncing, hyperactive.

  “Sit down, stop jiggling, and listen to me.” Challis waited while Ralph calmed down, with only one foot still nervously tapping the floor. “Now, look, Ralph, you’ve saved my life—if you hadn’t found me out there, I’d have gone into shock, either frozen to death or gotten pneumonia and died from that … I owe you a lot, I owe you everything, Ralph.” He watched Ralph stir uncomfortably, half-smiling, eyes downcast. “Now, you know who I am and you know I know you know …” Challis chuckled. “Right? Okay. I’m going to try to escape, because I didn’t do what they say I did. And I’m going to depend on you to keep the kids from talking about me to anyone. Anyone. Can you do that? Can you keep them from talking about Bandersnatch? No matter who asks them?”

  “Sure, they’ll do whatever I tell ’em. They’re not the brightest kids in the world, see, but they know me, the guy who takes care of them when things are going against them. And if I tell ’em they dreamed there was a Bandersnatch, then it was a dream, see.”

  “Shake on it,” Challis said, taking the boy’s hand.

  “If I don’t see you again …”

  “You’ll see me again.”

  “Yeah, but if I don’t … well, good luck, okay?”

  “Okay, Ralph.”

  Without a backward glance, Ralph jumped off the bed and bolted. Morgan reappeared in the doorway with a huge mug of coffee. “Is everything all right?” Challis nodded. “You never existed at all, is that it? Edward G. does seem to have a slightly hypnotic effect on them.” Challis nodded again. She put the mug down on the table. He smelled the coffee, remembered the cave and the warmth of that fire, the pages of Penthouse curling as the flames licked at the naked girls. He didn’t think about that other coffee smell, the day he got back to Malibu ahead of schedule.

  An hour later he watched from behind the bedroom curtains as the sheriff from the tiny mountain resort town of Cresta Vista arrived in a light blue police van with the departmental crest on the doors. The sheriff was a tall man wearing a blue fur-collared jacket and a fur hat and aviator shades. He stretched to something near six and a half feet once he was properly unfolded, and he walked with a slight limp, as if he’d long ago gotten used to a football knee. There were damp spots all over the driveway where snow had melted. For a while the sheriff stood looking at the lake, then the house, which was when Challis caught sight of the disaster in the snow.

  From where he stood, the footprints in the snow made perfect, unmistakable sense. Strung out in a ramshackle row were the small footprints of the children, just spread out enough to be identifiable. Beside them, deeper and larger, were the tracks of a man. The sheriff reached back into the car and brought out a two-way radio’s microphone. Cupping it in his hand, he began talking, his eyes raking the house, the snow-covered lawn, the lake, which glared feverishly in the sunlight. How could he miss the footprints? They were so obvious. … The windows in the village of Puma Point glared in the sun at the far end of the lake.

  Below, Morgan opened the front door. “Jeff,” she called, “what are you waiting for?” Challis saw her step outside, hugging herself in the cold. “I’ve got a house full of people who need rescuing. Come on in—I’m so glad you were in the office when I called. …” The sheriff’s hard face broke into a broad grin, taking ten years off his age. He turned his back on the footprints in the snow and called:

  “Where are those little devils, Morg? Let’s get ’em out here …” She beckoned him toward the house, and Challis tiptoed to the bedroom door. The kids were banging around, getting ready to go.

  “Everybody’s fine,” Morgan was saying, “cleaned up, rested, fed … This is Ralph, who sort of runs the show.”

  “How’s it goin’, Ralph?” The voice was hearty.

  “Fine, see, it’s goin’ fine.”

  “Wha—” The sheriff was taken off guard by Edward G.

  “Have you got time for a cup of coffee, Jeff?”

  Challis thought: For God’s sake, don’t overdo it.

  “I’d love one, Morg, you know me, I run on the stuff … but we got a bunch of parents waiting down at the bottom of the mountain to see these kids. Give me a rain check.”

  “You got it.”

  “You know, it’s amazing,” the sheriff said, “the way these kids got through alone. Their leader, poor bastard, wandered into town last night, half-frozen … he’s in the hospital right now.” He shook his head. The bedroom door was ajar and Challis saw them standing at the foot of the stairs. The kids began piling out of the house. The sheriff watched them go, lingered. “You know, Morg, they could have run across that plane crash, the same general idea … I don’t suppose they mentioned anything about it?”

  “Are you kidding? I’d have noticed anything like that—have they found the crash site yet? Good God, talk about irony—going to prison for life and you get killed in a plane crash. Makes you wonder.”

  “They haven’t found it yet, but they will. Roads are still blocked, but now while it’s clear they’ll get the choppers in there, they’ll find it.”

  “How are the roads from here on down? I’d like to get back to civilization today or tomorrow.”

  “Now, that’s what I can’t understand, what’s so all-fired wonderful about civilization? And what’s so civilized about LA, anyway?”

  “Jeffrey …” she said in a warning tone.

  “Right. Well, there are some snow and mud slides, but tomorrow it ought to be smooth sailing. Unless we get more storms. Terrible weather—Malibu’s really catching it. Keep your radio on. Or give us a ring in Cresta, just to make sure …”

  They went outside, and Challis went back to the window. So no one was looking for him yet. And even when the wreckage was found, there would be time spent searching through the mountain forests for him, or his body. The sheriff stood by the van chatting for another moment, then made sure all the kids were accounted for, and squeezed himself in. Ralph was sitting by the window in front, waving to Morgan as they drove away. Challis watched the receding automobile, its red light flashing cheerily on top, until it was gone around the distant curve of trees.

  After a late-morning brunch of eggs scrambled with shrimp, tomatoes, celery, and curry powder, they settled down in the sunken living room. The wind had risen, and even the whipsawing sound of it made him cold. He built a fire and she put a tape on the Tandberg deck. Frank Sinatra was singing “I Cover the Waterfront” and Challis thought of the first time he’d heard the recording, a long time ago, a college boy who could never have dreamed what lay ahead.

  “Tell me the whole story,” she said, sitting down cross-legged on the floor before the fire, leaning against the couch. “Maybe we’ll think of what you should be doing … and maybe not.” Her face seemed to say that she’d already given it some thought and drawn a blank.

  “The day Goldie was murdered,” he said, as if giving the title of his oral report. The sound of his voice was familiar, going over the same ground.

  “I had an apartment in West Los Angeles where I’d been living since moving out of the Malibu house. I’m not complaining, it was a nice apartment, big palm trees outside the window of the room I wrote in. I could see Century City, and Westwood and Beverly Hills were two minutes away. … I was sitting at my desk, it was just before noon, and the fog hadn’t burned off yet. I was looking out the window, waiting for those triangular Century City towers to take shape through the fog, and the telephone rang. I was expecting a call from my agent about a screenplay deal that had been perking for about three months, fifty grand up front, and it was important to me. I’d already had three calls from other guys, an actor and a writer, and all they wanted to talk abou
t was Joe Namath’s knees, could he take the Rams to the Super Bowl. … I couldn’t think of anything to say about Joe Namath’s knees. Another guy called to ask me if I’d heard about the fella who was half-black and half-Japanese. I said no. He said every December seventh the fella attacks Pearl Bailey. That was the kind of morning it had been, the phone rings, and I pick it up thinking about the fifty grand …

  “Well, it was Goldie. She was sitting on the deck at Malibu, I could hear the surf in the background. She was kind of up, you knew the adrenaline was going, pumping hard. She wouldn’t just chat, she was too high, she couldn’t slow things down and get her attention span under control, but the point was, she wanted me to come out and have dinner with her that evening.”

  “Was that usual?” Morgan asked. “Did you still see much of her?”

  “That’s just it, it wasn’t usual at all. We tended to be pretty self-conscious with each other … things had gotten pretty bad between us. So I hadn’t been back out to the beach house since I’d left. I asked her why, what was the big deal. She said—and this is a quote, so far as I can trust my memory—‘I need your advice, Toby. This time I’m going to fix the bastard once and for all.’ Unquote. I didn’t even ask her who she meant, because I assumed she was referring to her father, Aaron Roth. She always called him ‘the bastard’ in the same tone of voice, pure venom out of an old Spider Woman movie. She always spoke of or to him in the snottiest possible way … so that was it, she was finally going to fix Aaron once and for all.”

  Morgan said, “But could you tell what the fixing of Aaron Roth was going to involve? How do you really fix somebody?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did she hate her father? I mean, you make it sound like more than a daughter’s spite.”

  “Oh, it’s always been more than spite. The thing about Goldie was that she always identified strongly with her mother, Kay—”