Hollywood Gothic

by Thomas Gifford

  “Now I really am going to see Aaron,” Challis said.

  “When will I see you again?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll be in touch. … The thing is, I just feel time running out, and who knows what Donovan’s going to do? I have to press on this whole thing, across the board.”

  “I know what Jack will do—he’ll go hide on that yacht and wait until it’s safe to come out. He lives for days at a time on the boat.” She looked him over. “You’d better straighten yourself up in the powder room. You’re rumpled and there’s blood on your hand.” Her eyes settled on his, and she smiled a trifle sadly. “I wonder what’s going to become of you?”

  “I’ve stopped wondering,” he said. In the quiet the rain beat heavily and a distant siren wailed in sorrow. Somebody else’s life was sliding down a canyon wall nearby.

  15

  THE RAIN WAS PATTERING LIKE clumsy insects trapped in the thick suffocating vegetation that flanked the high stone columns and the black iron gates to Seraglio, the Roth estate in Bel Air. Huge thick leaves like pods groped toward the Mustang. Squat palms, fat and with an alligator’s rough hide, loomed behind the gates, which stood open, and as the driveway of finely crushed pink rock snaked its way through the darkness, Challis saw the enlongated shapes of the high palms marching onward toward the fountain in the turnaround in front of the house. The headlamps parted the night as the small car squeezed between the trees and the moist, hungry vegetation.

  The house beyond the fountain was pink to match the gravel, gray-shuttered, three stories, gray columns, white wrought-iron furniture along beneath the windows, an old Bentley saloon, and a Mark V littered the turnaround. He pulled the Mustang up in front of the door and left the keys in the ignition. Wall sconces glowed on either side of the double white doors, and a child’s tricycle lay on its side directly in his path. He heard the chimes ring deeply, softly somewhere inside the house. In one of the thirty rooms someone moved a chair, scraping it on the wooden floor. When the door opened, he saw the familiar square, heavy-jowled face of Herbert, who wore a black alpaca coat, gray wool trousers, a white shirt, and black tie. His eyes were the same gray as the house trim and had just as much feeling, which was deceiving, because Herbert wasn’t a bad guy.

  “Good evening, Herbert,” Challis said, not knowing quite what to expect.

  “Good evening, Mr. Challis. We’ve been expecting you.” He stood back for Challis to enter past him. To hear him, you’d have thought Challis was getting home from dinner at the Bel Air Country Club.

  “Well, Herbert,” he said. “Well, well. How are you?”

  “Never better, sir, except for a touch of pleurisy now and then. The night air in winter has always been my nemesis, as you may recall. Your coat, sir?”

  “You’ve been expecting me, you say …” He felt the raincoat slip off into Herbert’s hands.

  “Mr. Donovan called with the most welcome news of your survival, sir.”

  “Doesn’t sound like him.”

  “The news was welcome to us, though Mr. Donovan, I admit, did not seem particularly gratified by your resilience. You gave him quite a fright, to hear him tell it.” Herbert put the raincoat on a hanger and looked at the Mustang through leaded glass windows. The rain had almost stopped again. “While you’re with us, it might be best for your car to be out of sight … we don’t want anyone finding you, do we, sir? I’ll have Weed put it in the garage, if you don’t mind.”

  “By all means,” Challis said, watching Herbert pick up the house telephone and dial for the chauffeur. The large foyer was quiet and polished: black-and-white parquet floor, a double stairway curving around and framing the archway leading into the huge reception room with its grand piano lost down at one end, the two walk-in fireplaces, the tapestries on the walls, the Renoirs and Matisses and the one large Breughel, the smallish Frans Hals—he couldn’t see any of that from where he stood, but he knew it was there. What he could see was the glass which ran the entire length of the room and gave the impression that Los Angeles was an elaborate family possession.

  Herbert finished with Weed, dialed again and informed Aaron that Challis was in the house. Herbert had once been an actor, a resourceful supporting man, a long time ago. If you couldn’t get Eric Blore, you got Herbert Graydon, who had come over from London with a touring company doing Ruggles of Red Gap and a drawing-room mystery and Macbeth. He liked the California climate, discovered that there was always room in the movies for someone with the right accent and a pompous, heavy-lidded, down-the-nose appearance. He played so many snotty butlers and headwaiters that he mastered the trade. During World War II, between pictures, he’d worked parties and restaurants. In the end, he’d gone into private service with the Roth family and left the business entirely. He made a guest appearance on Jack Benny’s television show, one last Bob Hope picture, and that had been that. Once, in an unlikely moment of camaraderie, he’d told Challis that he’d gotten out the day he had a million dollars in the Wells Fargo savings account.

  Herbert was watching Weed starting the car. “Quite a peculiar vehicle, sir,” he said.

  “Well, it was the best I could do in a pinch.” Herbert always made him smile.

  “Undoubtedly. Mr. Aaron is down in the hot tub. Hacker is on his way—he’ll escort you.”

  “I need an escort?”

  “Mr. Aaron asked if you were armed. I told him that I had not inquired as to personal weaponry but, to my knowledge, you had not shot your way out of prison. Are you armed, sir? Merely my personal curiosity.” Herbert rarely smiled, but when he was amused, something happened in the pale irises of his eyes. It was happening now.

  “It’s a secret, Herbert.”

  “Aha, of course. It would have been enjoyable to hold a rod again … yes, let me see, the last time was in 1943. Commandos Never Say Die. I played Cuthbert, a retired army man from Shropshire, lured into guerrilla warfare by Mr. Donlevy. As I recall, he won the war but I unfortunately died a hero’s death at the end. Such a long time ago. … Ah, I hear Master Anson …”

  The boy’s shouts preceded him like Cyrano’s nose, imploring his mother to see something from his point of view. Daffodil Roth appeared on the landing over the archway and stared down at Herbert and Challis, brushing loose strands of blond hair away from her face. She was of medium height, slender, wore French jeans and a tennis sweater. She was in her mid-thirties, twenty years Aaron’s junior, but she didn’t seem to mind. She had been a starlet once, moved over into real-estate sales, then into the agency business; but what she had always wanted was a big house, a well-to-do husband, and the power to run the establishment as she saw fit. She’d got it all with Aaron, whom she had married only a year after Kay Roth’s death. Very quickly she’d cemented the relationship by bearing a son, Aaron’s only male issue, who was at this moment standing beside her in his Los Angeles Dodgers pajamas, hands on hips, looking worried.

  “But I’ve never seen Key Largo,” he said. “It’s important and it starts in five minutes. Come on, Mom, I’ll tape it, too, okay? Then we can watch it whenever we want.”

  “It’s too late,” she said, turning back to him. “Now, not—”

  “But, Mom! It’s Key Largo. Dad said I should be sure to see it. Bogart shoots Robinson at the end—”

  “See, you already know the ending.”

  “Daffy, for Chrissakes,” Challis said, “let the kid see the movie.”

  She looked down again. “Oh, all right. But be sure to tape it, and don’t let the commercials take you by surprise.”

  “I won’t, I won’t. Watch for the white dots and use the remote pause button. Great, t’riffic, Mom. Thanks, mister!” He was in heaven, pounding off down the hallway.

  Daffy leaned on the balcony railing. “I wish someone would tell me what’s going on around here. I really do.” She came down the stairway in bare feet. Somewhere a telephone rang, muffled by distance and closed doors. She walked up to Challis, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on the mouth. H
erbert went in search of the telephone. Daffy pressed her whole body against him for a long moment, then stepped back looking cross and confused. “I’d recognize you, I think. But maybe not. It’s amazing. Goddammit, what is going on, Toby? Why aren’t you dead? I had a bad time when the news of the plane crash came out. You know me, a serious indiscretion makes a friend forever, something like that.” She took a cigarette out of a box on the mirror table and lit it with a square crystal lighter that looked like it weighed ten pounds. “While I’ve a lucifer to light my fag …” she sang, and went across the foyer and through the arch. The room was dim, lit only by the wood fires burning at each end. On the floor in front of one of the fireplaces, Daffy Roth had gotten down on her hands and knees, wearing nothing but Frye boots, and told Toby Challis to fuck her. Go ahead, she’d said, take out your frustrations … my frustrations, and we’ll both feel better. And she’d been right, of course, and the anger at Goldie had deadened. The affair had continued for some time, had never really ended: was not ended at the moment, for all Challis knew, but events had had a way of intervening. Aaron traveled a lot, as Daffy pointed out, and he probably couldn’t have cared less anyway. So far as she knew, he was screwing Phil Dorfman’s wife, Anita, anyway, ever since Phil came out of the closet and into the record business. Sometimes it was all rather confusing.

  She stood looking out at the fog, smoking furiously, arms folded beneath her breasts. The overhead cables stretching from the trellised dock by the frog pond wandered off into space and fog and disappeared like lifelines that had been severed long ago. “Aaron’s a wreck,” she said in a halfway accusatory tone. “Just a wreck—you know how he gets, all the more controlled and crappy. What’s the matter? Is it Laggiardi? Or that creepy all-American nephew of his—Howard? One generation of money and all the Vitos and Sals and Dominics are Howards and Bills and Toms all of a sudden. God, what a crock! And then you come back from the dead like something from a bad movie and scare the shit out of Paddy the Irishman … so what the hell am I supposed to make of it?”

  “I just want to see Aaron, have a little chat, be on my way.” Challis hoped he was smiling reassuringly. “Just relax, Daffy, and let it pass you by.”

  “My God, the crash made you crazy!” She lit another cigarette impatiently. “What are you going to do, Toby? You can’t just give yourself up, you’ve got to get away—”

  “Do you think I killed Goldie?”

  “I haven’t the vaguest idea … what difference does it make? You’re free and you’ve got to escape, let them believe you’re dead, and start a … a new life—”

  Challis laughed. “That’s a movie, dear.”

  “Bullshit! Not anymore, kiddo. The guys who make the movies can make the movies come true … Aaron or Sol can figure something out, you’re one of the family, Toby.”

  “So was Goldie.”

  “You know about where Goldie stood with everybody around here. Sol didn’t even like her, and he’s cracked on the family, which includes you.” She came toward him. She wore a little pout and her mind was casting about in the future, transparent as crystal. There was almost nothing that could make Daffy Roth unattractive, but the transparency worked against her in the long run. “They’ll get you out of this, Toby.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. The crippled newsie on Vine Street could get me safely away to Belize City, the way things are going.”

  The telephone was ringing again. She cocked her head. “Talk to Aaron about it … if he’s got his attention span under control. You can tell how serious it is, he called Bernie and Lena Berkowitz before he went down to the tub. Can you believe it?”

  “Listen, I can believe anything,” Challis said.

  Herbert appeared in the archway, his face blocked out by the light of the foyer behind him.

  “It’s Mr. Laggiardi on the telephone again, madam. For Mr. Aaron.”

  “Which Mr. Laggiardi, Herbert?”

  “Vito Laggiardi. Not Howard, madam.”

  Daffy sighed and made a screaming face. “Tell him you’re sorry but Mr. Roth cannot possibly be disturbed the remainder of this evening.”

  “He may not be receptive to accepting no for an answer.”

  “Then tell him to shove it up his ass and hang up on him. God, he’s no better than a murderer … sorry, Toby, absolutely nothing personal … oh, what am I saying? I’m sorry. Go, Herbert, go. Oh, Toby! Yeecch. Hold me or I’ll fall down.”

  He put his arms around her lightly and pretended she meant nothing to him.

  “Who is this Howard?”

  “A chip off the old block, I guess. Laggiardi’s nephew. He wants a job at the studio, or so it seems. But I only know what I overhear by accident.” She tugged at his jacket almost wistfully.

  “What do you know about Donovan?”

  “In the first place, I don’t want to know anything about him. In the second place, I’ve only been aware of him since … well, since a couple months before Goldie died. Donovan’s the kind of guy … Okay, I’ve got it. He had us out on that old fifty-foot Chris Craft of his, it’s a beautiful boat, lots of wood and polish and pre-World War Two, he keeps it up in Castle Moon Bay, just past that big gay beach—aha, yet another clue to Mr. Donovan’s relationship with Goldie—and he actually wore a blazer with a Tuna Club patch on the breast pocket, white flannels, white shoes, white shirt, a club tie from a club he never saw the inside of … and a brand new peaked yachtsman’s cap. Gatsby lives! And is a cornball. That’s what I know about Jack Donovan.” She was out of breath and tightening her grip on his coat. Suddenly she sucked in. “Listen carefully, my love, and you’ll hear the measured tread of the Hulk himself scuttling down the hall.”

  Turning, he saw a tall, stooped, familiar figure in the archway.

  “How are you, Hack?”

  “Not bad, Toby. I reckon you’re glad to be up and around yourself.” The voice coming from the high wide shape was soft, a little gravelly, and devoid of any inflection beyond just a hint of the rural boyhood Tully Hacker had spent in Kansas during the late twenties and thirties. You could look at Tully Hacker and see much of the warfare of an era: Anzio, Italy, France, Germany with two wounds and a pocketful of medals, then the LAPD for twenty-five years. Tully Hacker was what they used to call a “hat” in Los Angeles, one of the plainclothes police detectives who made up the rules as they went along. The Miranda law had completely loused up Tully Hacker’s career. But when a confused little hubcap man named Mendoza got scared and put a bullet through Tully’s knee one night in the Coliseum parking lot during a Rams exhibition, Tully had blown bits and pieces of Mendoza from the fender of the 450SL all the way to the Orange County line. It was his last shootout and left him with a leg which wasn’t going to do much more bending. But once you were on the outside, you didn’t worry about Miranda and reading people their rights. In a private army, a man was free to be a man, and once in a while you could drop a body into a drainage ditch like in the old days. The way it turned out, Tully Hacker didn’t join Roth’s army. He was Roth’s army, which wasn’t bad for a guy almost sixty with a bum leg and sometimes a touch of angina.

  “Is the master ready to see me?” Challis began extricating himself from Daffy’s grasp.

  “Always enjoy seeing you, Toby. Just follow me … that is, if you’ve finished with him, Mrs. Roth.”

  “How about fucking yourself, Tully?” She had turned away and was looking at all three of them reflected in the window.

  “What kind of talk is that for such a pretty lady?” Hacker asked kindly. There was a distant chuckle in the back of his throat that helped define the place where lovely ladies were placed in his universe.

  “Daffy,” Challis said. “I’ll stop in before I leave—”

  “Don’t bother.” She wouldn’t look at him. “Just get away from here. We’ll let the rest of it take care of itself … just get safe somewhere.”

  He followed Hacker.

  “How’s the leg, Hack?”

  “Leg? Wha
t leg, Toby?” He put the brown felt Borsalino on and snapped the brim. He smiled at Toby from behind heavy horn rimmed glasses. “After you,” he said. They crossed the patio toward the dock. The rain on the grass smelled good. Daffy was standing in the same place, cigarette glowing, watching them through the glass. A blue light from an upstairs room where Bogey had just arrived in Key Largo looking for Lionel Barrymore and finding Lauren Bacall.

  Hacker pressed the button which started the cable car on its way back up from the distant lower shelf of lawn where Aaron Roth went to soak in his hot tub and meditate on his life. The engine whirred. Hacker got a cigar case from his pocket and lit a Monte Cristo. He always smoked Monte Cristos. Challis knew the aroma. “Well, well,” Hacker said as he puffed. “You’re a lucky man. You just may be a survivor, Toby. You never know. I always thought it was the hard men who survived, but you never know. I wouldn’t call you hard. You’ve got that soft civilized quality, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Why, I don’t mind. You’re right.” Challis waited, said, “Been to the bridge lately, Hack?”

  It was a long-standing joke between them. In the old days Hack had used his own colorful interrogation techniques. He’d stake out a corner or a bar or a drugstore, anywhere his quarry was known to hang out. When the guy he was looking for wandered by, Hack would get him like a moray eel coming out of his hole. Snap. Hack would climb into the backseat of the unmarked car. His partner drove. “Never handcuffed them,” Hack had told Challis. “You don’t handcuff him, and the fella knows what’s going on. He knows we’re going to kill him, and we don’t want those marks on his wrists … those cuff marks, you see, mean cops, and if you are going to kill a fella, you don’t want those marks pointing at the cops. So, we’d drive him out to, say, the North Broadway Street bridge. We don’t say anything to him. Just let him do the shaking there on the seat beside you. Then we get him out of the car and hustle him over to the bridge railing, hoist him up, and get him hanging out over the bridge … you hold him by the heels. Yeah, sure, once in a while you wind up holding an empty pair of shoes, bound to happen every now and then. But usually the guy is dangling upside down with the blood running to his head and he’s watching the quarters and dimes falling out of his pockets, falling past his head … well, a fella in a position of that type doesn’t stay hard very long. They’ll tell you pretty much anything you want to know … funny thing, they’re usually real grateful when you pull ’em back up. They don’t remember you as the guy who hung ’em over the bridge in the first place. To them you’re the guy who saved their lives. Part of the psychology of being a hat, I guess.” He’d told Challis the story a long time ago, at a bar in Marina del Rey where they were looking for Goldie. Aaron had sent him to help Challis, who’d been distraught. They hadn’t found Goldie, but Hacker had gotten him drunk and taken him back to the house in Malibu to sleep it off. When he’d wakened Hacker had been sitting on the deck reading Alan Moorehead’s The March to Tunisia with a jug of Bloody Marys ready for the recovery. Goldie hadn’t come back for a week.