Hollywood Gothic

by Thomas Gifford

  “So this is love,” he said.

  The old man was wearing a powder-blue jumpsuit, striped running shoes, and a powder-blue rain hat. He was getting wet, standing before the long window box where he was digging among the wintry roots and remains with an old wooden-handled trowel. He looked older than Challis had ever seen him, poking in the dirt, the black-dyed hair scraggly over the collar of the jumpsuit. He looked up briefly, smiled slightly like the sleeping crocodile. “Don’t worry, Towser,” he said, “it’s only our friend Tobias.” Towser was sheltering from the rain under the flower boxes. “I’m glad you’ve come to your sense, Tobias.” The old voice came slowly, scraping like a bow drawn across badly tuned strings.

  “Sol,” Challis said, “you’re getting wet, you’ll get pneumonia.”

  “Listen, Towser. Tobias is worried about me … don’t worry, I’ll be all right. Resilient old bird. I have my ups and downs, if anybody really cares … I feel a little foggy today, but there’s been so much happening with Messrs. Laggiardi—it’s all very tiring, but I’ll hold my own. I’m very glad you’re here … with … with this very brave young lady, ah, Miss …”

  “Morgan Dyer,” Challis said.

  “How do you do, Mr. Roth?”

  “As well as can be expected, I suppose.” Suddenly his attention seemed to wander. He regarded the trowel in his hand with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, then stabbed it into the dirt. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “Marty Ritt got me onto these jumpsuits, he always wears ’em, always. One of the greats, Marty Ritt … well, well, I’m glad you’ve come, yes.” He looked around, stared up the Western street. “They’ve all come down that street, Tobias. Guns blazing … Coop, Stewart, Fonda, Duke, all the greats, guns blazing.” He looked at Challis. “Well, you’re doing the right thing, I can get the machinery going right away and you can hole up right here in my little cottage … just like the movies, eh, Tobias? Yes, you’re doing the right thing.” His voice wandered off. He dropped the trowel, which hit Towser’s large, muddy foot. The huge dog gave one of his absurd tiny yelps, and Sol muttered, “Who cares who killed the rotten bitch? She’d have covered us all with her filth, her mother’s filth, just for the amusement it afforded her … my own granddaughter—ach, you’re well out of it.”

  “Sol, please—”

  “Now, this is your route, listen closely. You’ll go from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires, then to the Canaries, then to Cairo, and finally by ship to Marseilles, two passports with a change of identity in Buenos Aires. There’ll be a villa rented for you near Cannes, you’ve got money coming from us, those deferred payments Mr. Kreisler so cleverly arranged for you … hell, Tobias, I could name a dozen men, a hundred, who would pay millions for the chance I’m offering you as a favor, as a member of the family.”

  “No, Solomon, stop, for Christ’s sake! You’ve got it all wrong—I’m not going anywhere. I can’t go now, I’m too close to knowing the answers … I’m getting closer all the time, Sol, and then I won’t have to run away.” Solomon Roth looked bewildered again, his mouth working, trying to respond. Finally the crocodile jaws clamped down softly, like forgotten machinery coming to rest, with that one big incisor showing. But the eyes were alive in their red-rimmed white saucers, moving restlessly, watching. “I feel it, Sol, I’m getting close to what happened the night Goldie died. I can almost remember it sometimes, like I saw it all happen and it’s beginning to come back to me. Believe me, somebody’s going to be damn sorry when I get it clear. The thing is, Sol, it’s all tied together, everybody in the family is mixed up in it, you and me and Aaron and Kay, all of us, and it goes back a long way. Hear me out, Sol, just listen and be patient with me.”

  “You’re a fool, Toby,” the old man said, his voice unexpectedly harsh and strong. Towser’s ears pricked at the derisive sound. “A stupid and silly man, bent on bringing tragedy. Forget Goldie, forget Malibu!”

  “Don’t try to order me, Sol. Just listen.” Solomon Roth was poking aimlessly in the flower box. “I’m going to give you something to remember for me, a name … Morty Morpeth.” Sol made a face. “What do you remember about the Morpeth case? Was anyone else ever caught? What really happened … how did it all turn out?”

  “Listen to him, Towser, time is running out, he should be thinking about Buenos Aires, and here he is babbling about that little pervert. You know, if it hadn’t been for Aaron, Morpeth’s villainy might never have been discovered. Aaron was learning the business, spending several months in each department, and he’d shown a real aptitude for accounting, cost control, keeping track of budgets. We didn’t have computers then, of course, we had people in there, accountants who kept books, honest books, not like the rest of this industry—Maximus stood for things, principles, Toby, and it still does!” He thrust his jaw forward pugnaciously, waiting to deal with any contradictions. “When I think—why, if it hadn’t been for Aaron snooping around, God only knows how much a vermin like Morpeth could have stolen, but”—he beamed triumphantly—“Aaron caught on to it … of course, by then Morpeth had bolted, he must have had the thief’s sense of being closed in on. We saw the situation, the money was gone for good, we did what we could to keep it quiet—we couldn’t let it get out that we’d been looted, confidence would have been shaken … then the man’s corpse was found and we were able to prevail on some of our friends to hush that up. We didn’t want that kind of muck clinging to Maximus, eh? Did we?”

  “So none of the money was ever recovered,” Challis said. “Who killed Morpeth?”

  “His foul accomplices, I presume. Who else? They took the money—”

  “But the murderers were never found?”

  “The man, this nobody, was dead,” he said imperiously, the slant eyes narrowing, lids slipping down like shades. “Who really cared who killed him? We were interested in our money, but it was hopeless, it wasn’t worth pursuing.”

  “But you can’t keep playing God every time somebody dies!” Challis felt the anger, alive, throbbing.

  “And why not, Toby?” he said soothingly. “Do you think that I don’t know what is best for Maximus? Maximus comes first. Ours is a closed society, that’s always been my view … people come and go, even I will be gone someday … even I, but this industry is much like a nation within our great country, and our nation is divided into our own states, duchies, principalities—the great studios—”

  “You should hear yourself,” Challis said. “You really should.”

  “Now, now, you’re getting all worked up over something that doesn’t concern you. Come on, let’s go sit in the bandstand.” He took Challis by the arm, Towser following, and led the way to the white bandstand with the naked trellises and blistered, scabrous paint. Morgan with her long strides got there first. The rain tapped on the wooden roof.

  “Sol, it was your damned closed society that decided I could take the fall for Goldie’s murder, nothing personal Toby-old-chum-old-kid, but it’s awfully convenient to stick you in the bin for this one—shit!” He slammed the side of his fist against a white pillar. The whole edifice shook.

  “Toby …” Morgan whispered.

  “And now we’re taking you out of the bin and giving you back your life in a very nice wrapping … who can say, maybe better than it was before. My advice, take the new life …”

  Challis leaned on the wooden pillar, stared up the desolate street, shook his head. He brushed Morgan’s hand away.

  “Sol,” he said, “I can’t even tell if you’re all there anymore. I mean, you just rattle this stuff off like a grocery list, and you’re crazy. Anywhere else in the world, they’d put you away.”

  “But we’re here,” he said. He smiled.

  “You’re one of a kind. You’re crazy and arrogant and moralistic, you’re an old bastard. You’ve been playing with my life as if it just didn’t matter what happened.”

  Solomon Roth smiled, nodded, as if to reassure the man who was yelling at him. Indulgent.

 
“Okay, now it’s your turn, old man. I’m gonna lay some very nasty facts on you, and we’ll see how well you can take it.”

  “Please, Toby …” he said. He sat down on a freestanding porch swing that some anonymous property man thought went well with the bandstand, the village square, the tall elms and maples that cast shade on sunny days.

  “You remember the diaries you never saw but paid a million dollars to suppress?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, see if you can play God with this. It was all a put-up job, Sol. Aaron got you to pay the million to save his own ass, not the studio’s, not Kay’s, but his own. Oh, the diaries could have soaked Maximus with plenty of dirt, that was true enough, but not for the reason you were told. Aaron was the villain of the diaries. Oh, Christ, was he!”

  Solomon Roth’s recovery began to dissipate at once. His hand groped for the armrest and his eyes began to float and jerk, from Challis to Morgan. He looked like a man who had deep in his heart expected the worst, and on hearing it, found it even worse than he’d feared.

  “This bandstand,” Sol said. “This pretty little bandstand, all white with bunting on the railing … forty-some years ago, Kay wore a gingham dress, little puffy sleeves … she got the townspeople together to celebrate the Fourth of July even though it was the Depression and the banker was a mean old man … do you remember that picture, Miss Dyer? Your father was the cameraman on that picture … hmmmm, yes, and the banker turned out to have a heart of gold … he didn’t foreclose on Kay’s father, the lumberyard, and he played the tuba in the town band and Kay led the parade down this street to the bandstand for the finale … it was a better world … back then, a better place.”

  “I’ve got the diaries, Sol,” Challis said. “I’ve got them.”

  “What? I don’t understand.” The old man covered his eyes with a wrinkled hand. “Oh, no, Toby. You …”

  “I got them from Donovan’s boat last night.”

  “You’ve killed again? Oh, no … oh, no.”

  “We didn’t kill anyone, Mr. Roth,” Morgan said. Thunder rasped above the mountains. It was raining harder. “I was there, too, Jack was already dead.”

  “Listen to me, Sol. The diaries, Kay’s diaries, they told the truth about Aaron … the kind of man Aaron is, what he did to Kay, driving her to booze and dope and stealing from her … Listen, dammit, it’s my life at stake, Aaron couldn’t let the diaries come out, he couldn’t let you know what kind of man he was and is. Who killed Goldie, Sol? Is Aaron a murderer? Did he kill his daughter? Or did Donovan have to do it for him? She knew all about her father, she’d always know what a rotten bastard he was, that’s why she always hated him. And when she found the diaries, she knew she had him at last. But she made the mistake of going to an unscrupulous opportunist like Donovan, who had his own uses for them, and then, once he had his million from you two suckers, somebody had to make sure Goldie didn’t start talking. So who killed her, who should have been tried and convicted? Donovan or Aaron?”

  Solomon Roth stared off into the slanting gray rain; his fingertips drummed erratically on the arm of the swing. Slowly, the old chain couplings creaking eerily in the stillness, he swung to and fro. Finally he got unsteadily to his feet, turned slowly toward the steps.

  Challis said, “And where does Morpeth fit in? Somebody must know, somebody … and it’ll fit, I’ll make it fit if I have the time, it’s part of the whole thing. Morpeth, Goldie, Donovan, and Maximus …” The old man was carefully descending the steps one at a time. “Maximus is going to get dirty now, Sol … you can walk away from me, but I’ve got the diaries.”

  Sol was several feet from the bottom step, moving toward his cottage. The rain was blowing, and water dripped from his face.

  “You know how rotten Aaron really is, Sol? He paid a debt by putting Kay into Vito Laggiardi’s bed. Sol, your whole bloody corrupt world is coming apart … why not help me? You know something, you know, you must know.”

  He turned to face Challis. He was standing on the wet grass.

  “I do know, Toby.” His face seemed ineffably sad. “I know who killed Goldie … you can’t hurt me, Toby. You can’t hurt me anymore because I understand all of you, all of you.” He walked haltingly on toward the cottage, his voice trailing away. “You and Aaron and Goldie and Donovan and Kay, and … and …”

  He reached the cottage and the door swung open. Towser looked up attentively.

  Tully Hacker stood in the doorway, watching.

  27

  “DO YOU HAVE TO BE quite so hard on this family?”

  In other circumstances it might have been a bleakly funny line, but there was an emotionless distance in her voice, not so much an accusation as an observation. They were walking back along the Western street. It was deserted.

  “Morgan, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop giving me this bullshit—do you think you could handle that? Try to remember that I’m the one they let take the fall … every cop in California is looking for me, New York hoodlums are telling me they want to cut my eyes out, and now he says he knows who killed my wife. And you ask me if I have to be so hard on the poor Roth family.”

  “You’re right, of course,” she said, “but it gets so violent … the violence scares me more than … than … the rest of it. The way things are going, Toby, are you sure you’re right? Don’t close me out just because you’re angry with me—say we, yes, we, do find out who killed Goldie, what if we can’t do anything to clear you? Why burn your bridges behind you? Sol wasn’t kidding, he can get you out of the country … I know he can, Toby, that’s the way it works here.”

  “Sure, sure, Sol can fix it, men like Sol can fix everything in this crazy damned world, because it’s their world, who the hell cares who killed old so-and-so, he’s dead now, heh-heh, what the hell difference does it make—it all makes me want to scream.”

  “Toby, I understand how you feel.” She wiped rain from her face. She looked as if she’d been crying. They turned the corner by the Executive Building. The press party was breaking up. “It’s fine to have principles, but can you afford them right now? You’re talking about a long time in prison, Toby, and if they tack Donovan on, too … you might as well be dead.” She bit the words off cleanly, analyzing his situation, but he saw it, the personal concern, in her eyes. “Why not just take Sol’s offer—”

  “Morgan, try to understand. I’ve got the Roths in a nutcracker and I’m closing it, nice and steady, and the crunch is coming, and I’m going to leave them in pieces … or die trying. Something has happened to me, Morgan, I want to put some blood in the scuppers … and I don’t really care who gets hurt—do you get it? I want justice, sure, but I also want some revenge … a lot of revenge.”

  She swallowed hard, looking straight ahead. “Do I know you?”

  “Not very well, I’m afraid. We’ve met under unusual circumstances, haven’t we? But when this is over, then we’ll have time—”

  “God, Toby, will I want to know you?”

  When they arrived at the Mustang, she leaned across the stick shift, and he felt the warmth of her breath. “Kiss me,” she said. “The bad is beginning to outweigh the good … kiss me.”

  He kissed her. She opened her mouth desperately, pulling him in. He felt the rain on her face, touched his fingertips to the smooth skin, felt her eyelashes flickering. He leaned back and stared out into the parking lot. “I’ve got too much riding on this as it is.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said.

  Backing out, he saw Aaron’s empty parking space. The Corniche had been there earlier, now it was gone. At the guard’s station, he stopped. The door slid back. The same guard stayed inside out of the rain.

  “Did Aaron Roth just leave? I had a message for him—”

  “Like a bat outta hell, he left! You’ll never catch ’im … look at that No Parking sign over there, all bent funny. He hit it with that Rolls’ fender, gave it a hell of a whack, lost a hub cap.” He jerked his head toward th
e corner. “I brought it in here. … Never seen him drive like that before—say, did you find Mr. Philbin?”

  Challis gunned the Mustang down the driveway and out into traffic. It was a pretty night, lights reflecting on the wet streets, wipers clicking, traffic lights looking like Christmas. It was a perfect night for a movie: he’d written lots of rainy-night scenes, seen a thousand more. Christ, it was raining in the Mustang.

  “Where are we going? Aren’t you hungry?”

  He laughed, shook his head. “Nervous stomach. We’re going to find Priscilla Morpeth, bless her old soul. There isn’t anybody else left.”

  “Toby, I’m thinking an awful thought …”

  “What else is new?”

  “No, I mean awful. Aaron said he never knew Priscilla, right?”

  “Right. Morty was his chum—”

  “But, Toby, Aaron just said something about her being tucked away up there in that trailer park … up there, that means north, so he’s up-to-date on Priscilla, whether he’s met her or not. Now, why should he know that, what business is it of Aaron’s? I don’t like that, Toby … it scares me.”

  “I think maybe that’s it,” he said quietly. “I think maybe you’ve just cracked Aaron’s nuts, my love!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Aaron has made a mistake. I don’t know what it means, but Priscilla must know something to be getting paid off about. Aaron … Jesus, he’s gone to get her, goddammit, I know he has. Morgan, I think he’s going to kill her!” Suddenly he was dripping with sweat. “We’ve got to hurry,” he said almost to himself.

  When he turned off the highway and began to wind upward and inland, they were plunged into a deeper darkness. There were no other cars, no other lights, nothing but the blackness of the forested hillsides. The smell of the ocean faded, was replaced by earth and trees. There was a faded wooden sign painted Lucky Strike green back in the days before Lucky Strike green had patriotically gone to war. The paint was peeling in spots and the sign was wet beneath the two headlights in their block metal shades, “VARNER’S TRAILER PARK” in big white letters, and beneath it, very small but still legible, the inscription “Established in 1934 for folks like you and me.” Challis pulled the Mustang into the gravel drive. Down the road, just over the rise of a hill, the lights of the town glowed dimly in the rain. There was a neatly painted office in a small wooden frame building which stood guarding the entrance. No Los Angeles razzmatazz, no neon lights, no gaudy bullshit. It might still have been 1934. Challis drove up even with the door of the office. A man came out beneath a black, very old umbrella: shiny button eyes, a grizzle of white hair on his bony head and chin, a pipestem shape, a baggy sweater, a cigarette butt stuck on his lower lip. He looked as old as the century, but spry, like he might have come west with the Joads themselves.