More intriguing still was Forest Lawns’ latest feature, the Chapel of Eternity. Appropriately enough amid the graves of so many lost or forgotten greats, this strange mausoleum was designed to look like a state-of-the art feelie palace from the outside. All curves and swerves; the prow of the future pushing into the present. Inside the soundlessly revolving doors, the light was watery green. Beyond the postcard stands and receptionist’s desk and a rack of telephones that gave you a commentary, the air hissed and churned before a set of six huge Egyptian Baroque chapels enclosing six equally enormous wraiths.
You didn’t need to lift one of the telephones or read the pamphlets about payment plans on easy terms and home-visit pre-passing consultations to understand that this was the ultimate memorial for the modern deceased. A recording of your beloved’s aura would be played monthly, or weekly, or even by the hour, depending upon the kind of personalized portfolio which had been purchased. The atmosphere—at least, until you stepped within the transmission range of one of the field generators, was midways between a Buddhist temple and an ultramodern rail station. Every ten of so minutes, a large gong, presumably specially coated with antique verdigris, would solemnly clang, and the flip displays beneath a stained glass oriel would whisper up a changed set of names. This, in turn, would cause a quiet commotion amongst the dozens of other people—what were they? onlookers? mourners? celebrants?—with whom Clark was sharing this colossal space. They would then shuffle off to stand in smaller groups, or bow, or kneel, or even prostrate themselves, before their chosen altar.
After hanging back for a while, Clark finally wandered toward the chapel which was currently commemorating a Robin James Calhoon, whose aura no one else currently seemed to be interested in bathing in. There was a heady smell of bouquets, and the plinth which housed the electrics would have made a mausoleum in its own right. The swanneck which emerged from it in frolics of gilded cherubs rose to something approaching the height of a house, and the wraith which floated between the two charged plates dwarfed the muse he’d stood before that first morning he’d gone to Erewhon. Even if he hadn’t been a giant of a man, Mr Calhoon made a giant of an aura. Ill-tempered, as well. Vague flares of angry red and impatient orange shot through the coronal sheath. Clark was far more intimately touched by the guy’s presence than if they’d been sat on nearby barstools, and he had to smile to think of some grumpy businessman in a hot tweed jacket standing in front of an iconoscope with the same lets-get-this-done-and-move-on attitude he’d have displayed at family gatherings, or in the boardroom. Clark was standing, he knew, before the most awesome technological achievement of his time, but once more the whole business seemed tawdry.
They were still repeating the guy who everyone now knew wasn’t really
Lars Bechmeir’s speech on the radio like it was one of those new doo-wop songs. Only went for six minutes, and that was if you counted the many pauses and stumbles, but that was just fine, because it fitted nicely in between breaks for commercials.
Supported on the stage at the Biltmore Bowl, less, it seemed, by his pipecleaner legs or the microphone stand as by the breathless attention of all who were listening, the frail old man had spoken mainly not about himself, but about his lost wife. How it had started as just another kind of role which they had taken on as strangers because they were desperately short of work and money. How they’d shed what little there was of their past, had even submitted to have their faces changed, and had gone on those publicity tours and stood before the press and lived the kind of life which was expected of them. And, in their secrecy of knowing, had grown an alliance which had became genuine love. And all of this as a sales gimmick to promote some clever device. The rest—the darker lies, the threats and cover-ups and deaths, came later.
A falsehood which destroyed the truth … A conspiracy of suffering … It was hard not to imagine the old man hadn’t been working over some of these phrases for many years—perhaps he was drawing on the Shakespearean performances he’d once delivered in touring theater—and they were spoken in a crackling whisper, only adding to their potency. Then came the moment when he unclasped his hand to point waveringly toward Herbert Kisberg, when the quiet storm of his rage had been palpable. And the way his eyes had pooled and flesh seemed to barely cling to his face as he described a place where terrible acts had been performed not in the name of science or knowledge, or even mere money, but out of a desire to control and deceive…
He’d been fading by then. Each sentence grew slower and weaker. Much of what he said—the repeated use of the word Thrasis, which many at that moment had assumed to be some spasm of the throat, and the mention of Doctor Penny Losovic’s name alongside Herbert Kisberg’s—only made proper sense afterwards. The thing which came out at the time was how the two lonely actors who’d been employed to become Lars and Betty Bechmeir had, as they cut supermarket ribbons and attended premiers of these new entertainments called feelies and unveiled plaques at the fake-filled museum which supposedly documented their past, grown increasingly afraid. They lived only because they acted out a lie, and that lie, and the terror which lay behind it, began to prey on Betty Bechmeir’s mind. I loved that woman more than anything … He’d muttered with a falling sigh. She killed herself because she could no longer bear the falsehood of what we were living. She knew that it would destroy her if she didn’t destroy herself. And, look, see how it has destroyed me … As you see me here now … I am what I tell you I am. This, at least, is not a lie …
At that point he’d collapsed to the stage. And the one crucial name which the man who’d once been called Otto Frings couldn’t mention, but which Barbara Eshel, listening live to the broadcast in that printroom lock-up with Dale as they tried to compose their one-off edition of LA Truth had added, was that of a brave screenwriter, grieving husband, fearless investigator and all-round guy-in-a-white-hat called Daniel Lamotte.
Clark turned away from the colored swirl of Mr Calhoon’s wraith and checked his wrist for a Longines watch he no longer possessed. But the gong was sounding again, the displays were flicking over and the wraiths were changing, and he knew that it was time to pay April Lamotte his last respects.
There had been spaces before in the main car lot, but now it was entirely full, and a couple of guys, one so small as to appear dwarfish and the other so tall that they could only have been put together as a joke, were directing further arrivals toward the overflow behind the Human Resources and Communication building. The service was due to take place in the Temple of Sighs, the largest and most expensive by the hour of Forest Lawns’ mock-European chapels, but there were still going to be problems with getting everyone in. Erewhon’s previously invisible neighbors had all decided to put in an appearance today. So, by the look of it, had half LA. In a rare show of cross-party unity, even the Republican and the Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives were there. But everyone, even the stars and starlets, were looking for the man of the hour, and his arrival didn’t disappoint.
Daniel Lamotte arrived at the front of the colossal temple in a brand new, canary yellow Rolls Royce convertible. With him was a woman who looked somewhat like April Lamotte, although she was plumper, older and lacked her younger sister’s dress sense. This was May Lamotte, who’d arrived from nowhere and right onto the front pages a few days back. She had the no-bullshit air of a successful radio pastor’s wife, or the kind of secretary a rich man might employ to actually do secretarial work. She certainly looked to have knocked Daniel Lamotte back into shape. They were both suitably dressed in black, and looked suitably grave, and suitably famous, as they climbed from the Rolls to an explosion of cameras.
Standing well back as he watched Daniel Lamotte work the crowding mourners, Clark couldn’t help noticing the guy’s ticks and mannerisms—those long hands with bitten nails, that smile which didn’t seem either sufficiently pained or believably happy, the dragging way he moved, that thing he did with his neck. At least the guy’s beard was well-trimmed now, he didn
’t look particularly pale, and he’d put on some weight. He’d got himself a new pair of glasses, too, and in a different style. They were steel framed and rounded, more scholarly. After all, he was a serious writer and these were serious times. Truth was that, with or without the glasses, there was little you could say that he and Clark had in common apart from the ears and a shared tallness and less than perfect teeth. But Clark couldn’t help feeling the way he’d used to in a theater when he saw someone else performing a role he’d done himself. Not that he generally thought the other guy was making a regular hash of it, but he couldn’t help feeling he’d done a far better job himself.
“Dan, Dan…” Timmy Townsend’s presence and voice were unmistakable as he barged through the crowd toward the man of the hour like an on-form quarterback. Famous writer and successful producer shook hands in a fresh flurry of photographs, and you could see how Timmy found it harder than ever to keep his face from cracking into a broad grin. The fact that Senserama were still prepared to go ahead with a radically revised version of Wake Up and Dream was seen, in the words of Variety, as a rare and heartening act of corporate contrition, and Timmy seemed unfazed to find himself clasping the hand of an entirely different Daniel Lamotte from the one he’d first met a week before—so much so that Clark wondered for a moment if it was possible that he hadn’t noticed. But the truth, like most things in this city, was simpler and grubbier: it simply suited Timmy and Dan, along with most of Los Angeles, for things to be exactly as they were.
Herbert Kisberg had already resigned from the Governorship and his position on the board of Senserama, just as he’d stepped away from the Liberty League’s presidential candidacy and his many other offices, creating precious space for others to move in. As fresh witnesses of what was now known as The Thrasis Conspiracy emerged, the IRS, the Federal Grand Jury, California Secretary of State, the Attorney General’s Register of Charitable Trusts and even the Patents Office were all waiting to hear from him. Others were also in line, including some of the biggest players in LA, and there had already been fresh suicides. Maybe Kisberg might find the courage to do the same, but on balance Clark could think of few better punishments than the slow death by orders of appropriation, attachment and continuance which the State and Federal legal systems were preparing to inflict on him.
The police were still unraveling the full extent of Doctor Penny Losovic’s activities. The Bechmeir Trust, it now appeared, owned many out-of-the-way and semi-derelict premises across Los Angeles County. Bodies had been found in some. Evidence of torture in others. Weird combinations of technology in most. Photographs of Doctor Losovic smiling at the back of school groups at the museum, or shyly handing over checks to grateful good causes, kept cropping up in the papers. Parents were already using her instead of Lizzie Borden to scare their children into eating broccoli, and regular guys from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power were reporting that many people were refusing to let them into their homes. Her mother had apparently died giving birth and her father, an impoverished art dealer, had struggled to give her the best upbringing he could. By all outward signs, he’d succeeded, and everyone who’d survived their encounter with Penny Losovic now testified how she’d been a skilled physician and dedicated charitable administrator, and what exactly did that tell you about the American Dream?
Now the mourners were filing in. Clark kept by the back, and in shadow. The place was a murmuring sea of hats and heads. Now that he was here, and like most other funerals he’d ever been to, and every single wedding, he found himself wondering why he’d bothered. The words, the hymns, all the expensively imported religious furniture, meant nothing to him. And here they were, celebrating the life, the compassion and neighborliness and sheer healing generosity (the pastor, who had a regular radio slot, made much of her having once been a nurse) of a woman who had cold-bloodedly tried to kill him. But all she’d been doing, when push came to shove, was to try to protect her and her husband’s lives, and Clark realized, for all his long-ingrained cynicism, that this was something he could almost forgive her for. Compared with some of the other people he’d encountered, April Lamotte had been pretty straight with him. He remembered the smell of her hair, and the things she’d said as they sat in the Delahaye at that Mulholland overlook. This city isn’t good for any of us. People, when they first came here from back east to make movies, they said it was because of the quality of the light. But what they didn’t talk about was the quality of the darkness. I mean whatever’s lurking underneath … All of it was true. Like so many others, she’d tried to flee Los Angeles, and had failed. And he was still alive, still here. So maybe there was something for him to mourn when you pushed aside all the bullshit.
Another hymn, then her coffin was processed back down the aisle on its flower-bedecked chromium trolley, out into the sunlight toward the waiting hole which some machine had trenched beside an encampment of awnings. A few final words, then, amid the small shivers of relief and reconnection which characterize the end of all funerals, the crowd began to disperse. The conversations, what he caught of them, mostly seemed to be about the best place to lunch. The actual internment, he noticed, happened with a dull electric buzzing now that everyone’s back was turned. He walked back over and watched the flower-strewn coffin descend into its velvet-lined pit; the last red carpet of all. Then he bent down and dug with his fingers in search of some earth. But the turf here was too dense and well-watered. He felt instead in his pockets, and found a few grains of sand. He scooped them out and let them scatter down across April Lamotte’s remains.
He’d finally gone to find Thrasis a few days earlier, and it had struck him that there was a new bustle as he headed out through the morning streets of LA. Seemed like there were more people on the sidewalks, and the queues outside the feelie houses were already lengthening, but the biggest crowds were around the street corner sellers who normally hawked star maps. He got a glimpse of one customer, a large lady in a pink two piece suit with matching handbag, dog and umbrella, detach herself from the melee and triumphantly uphold her precious scrap of poorly printed paper. It was LA Truth’s latest edition.
Up past Cawston Ostrich Farm and the Hotel Raymond and the growing sprawl of Pasadena, then out through pines and on into the mountains. Here was the overlook where April Lamotte had died, where many sightseers had now placed bouquets, and here was the general store where the mangy one-eyed dog was barking at the limos, and this was the turn which led to the pine cabin. What was it called? His memory was getting as creaky as the rest of him. But it didn’t matter—you could look it all up in the scandal rags, and a striped police evidence saw horse blocked the way.
He’d driven on as the Ford’s engine strained, the air thinned and the landscape flattened until all that was left was space, and dust, and emptiness. Soon, even the road had faded with the mountains into the shimmering heat. Soon, he was wondering why he’d come. Then there it was: a sign scoured by the wind, the paint scrawled so faint you’d scarcely know it was there. He stopped the Ford by a low rise of mining slag and got out. Heat struck his face and burned up through his shoes.
A nothing place. Hard to tell which of these fallen ruins and jutting foundations came from the mining village Thrasis had once been, and what had been put up, and destroyed, more recently. Rusted chains creaked their pulleys. A bucket swayed over a dark hole which he had no desire to explore. Had there once been some presence here? Had the spilled blood of Indian sacrifices and the bodies of trapped miners and the terrors brought by Penny Losovic and her colleagues somehow empowered this landscape? Whatever it had been, it was gone.
He picked up a handful of sand, let it hiss through his fingers. Then he walked back to his car, climbed in, and turned the starter. Nothing happened. He tried again, then got out and lifted the hood. The radiator shimmered, dry and hot. He glanced around. He’d come here alone. There was no way he could reach anywhere before nightfall.
He sat down. His lips were already cracked, his mouth
felt swollen and his clothes were stuck to him with wasted moisture. Then he saw something. A mirage, maybe. Or a dust devil. But it was too large, too real, and it was coming his way. He stood up, and felt his legs tremble, and wondered where you were supposed to run when you were already nowhere. But the shape remained, flashing and floating. And from it, unmistakably, now came the sound of an engine.
Clark stood and waited as the sightseeing bus rumbled toward him from across the desert. Then, he began to laugh.
Barbara Eshel and Dale fitted in so well amid all the handsome people loitering around their expensive cars at Forest Lawns that it took him a puzzled moment as they walked toward him before he realized who they were. Dale had invested in a decent new suit, had gone to the barbers, and had shaved off his ill-advised beard, whilst Barbara was a testament to the enduring fact that nothing became a good-looking woman better than the plain black outfits of mourning, just as long as they were nicely cut. Clark also detected a new intimacy between them from the way they walked, hands almost touching. The both looked happier, as well. He wished he could see their auras, for they truly would have glowed. Or, he thought, as Dale shook his hand and Barbara leaned forward to kiss him, or his private dick instincts were returning and he was simply detecting the signs of recent sex.
“You’re looking great, Barbara.”
“You’re not so bad, yourself, Clark.”
“I’m alive, anyway. Or someone who looks like me is.”
She nodded, bit her lip. “Look, Clark, we’d already agreed, or I thought we had, that there was no way I could go into how April Lamotte had tried to fake her husband’s death. It would have been too much…” She waved a hand, in search of a word.
“Truth?”
“If you want to put it that way. I saw how it would work when Dale and I were preparing the typeset and listening to the Broadcast from the Biltmore, and what they were saying about the fire at the old MGM. To have Daniel Lamotte right there in the middle of the picture, struggling to find out the truth about Thrasis and then why his wife had been killed… There couldn’t be two of you, Clark. It was the only way.”
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