Shooting for the Stars

by R. G. Belsky

  “And then one day I turned on the TV, and there she was. Laura Marlowe. My daughter, the movie star. I’ve got to admit that I was proud. This beautiful woman in Hollywood was the same little girl I’d known all those years ago. I thought about trying to contact her, to tell her how happy I was for her—but I never did. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to just walk into her life as her father again after so much time.

  “But then, like I said, she reached out to me. I thought it was going to be awkward, but it wasn’t at all. It was as if we’d known each other for a long time. We talked about everything. I guess I told her the things she wanted to hear. She said she wanted me back in her life. She needed someone she could trust. She had all this money and all this adulation, but she seemed sad. I was able to help her, at least for a while. I was her father. There was a bond between us that Beverly couldn’t break up with all her lies and manipulation.

  “It was very clear to me that she had real problems. I guess that came with all the pressures of being Laura Marlowe. It was me who got her into a hospital before she died. I knew she was headed for disaster if we didn’t do something. I tried to help. I really did. But Beverly . . . well, Beverly was never going to let me get away with it. Everything came to a head after I got Laura into the hospital. The movie studio was going crazy about her not being on the set of Once Upon a Time Forever. Beverly was terrified that they might try to replace her and also that the press would find out about Laura’s problems. I thought my daughter’s health was the most important thing. I wanted her to stay in the hospital until she got well. But Beverly and the movie studio and all the other money people around her were too strong for me to fight. They wanted her back working on the movie.

  “I guess the only thing I am grateful for is that I did get to spend time with Laura before she died. And I was even there at the end, the night she was murdered. I’d gone to the hotel to try and convince her one more time to let me help her get away from all the things that were making her so unhappy. But I was too late. That image of her—lying mortally wounded on the street—still haunts me. After she died, I had to take care of everything at the hospital. The kid Holloway was a mess and couldn’t help at all. Beverly was away on this damn Laura Marlowe cruise. So I did what I had to do, and then I left for good. Let Holloway and Beverly have all her money. I didn’t care about the money. All I cared about was Laura.

  “I have no idea who killed my daughter or why. But I’ve always thought that, if I was still around more at the end, maybe I could have prevented it. If I wouldn’t have waited so long to come back as Laura’s father. Maybe I would have made a difference in her life, maybe things wouldn’t have ended up the way they did for her. I’ll never know for sure. But it’s a question I’m going to have to live with all my life.”

  * * *

  Laura’s mother didn’t seem particularly interested in talking to me again.

  I tried calling her several times without any success. I finally reached someone who said she was in Palm Beach, Florida, and would get back to me when she returned. I knew they had telephones in Palm Beach, so I asked for a message to be passed on to just give me a quick call back. But she never did.

  The more I found out about Beverly Richmond, the more I disliked her. She was too worried about maintaining the Laura Marlowe image to deal with the fact that her daughter had ever been a real person. I didn’t even get the feeling when we talked that it mattered to her to find out who really murdered Laura. She seemed happy to just let the memories stay the way they were.

  So I went to the next person on my list.

  Edward Holloway.

  Chapter 40

  I WANT the truth about Laura,” I said to Holloway when I found him again at Sardi’s. “The one thing that’s pretty clear out of all this is that Laura’s life was no fairy tale. Especially at the end. She was spinning out of control. She was a mess. Maybe there’s a clue there to whoever murdered her—and why. You were there with her back then. You say you loved her. So what the hell was going on?”

  You never know how it’s going to work out when you play it like that with someone during an interview. I’ve had people break down in tears and tell me all their secrets. I’ve also had them clam up, cut off the interview, or storm out of the room. I even had one who tried to take a punch at me. I didn’t figure Holloway was going to punch me. I thought he might storm off in anger. But he didn’t. He was one of those who talked. He’d probably wanted to talk about it for a long time.

  “I loved Laura,” he told me. “I really did love her.”

  “Did Laura love you back?”

  “That’s a difficult question.”

  “No, it isn’t. The answers are either A) yes or B) no.”

  Holloway’s face was tan, and his hair was groomed neatly. But I knew the hair was false, and the tan probably was too. When he smiled, his teeth looked like they’d been bought and paid for. Then, of course, there was all the plastic surgery he’d told me about. Fake hair, fake teeth, fake face. I wondered if anything about Holloway was real.

  “It was never that easy with Laura,” Holloway said. “She was a very complicated person. I tried to make Laura happy. I’m not sure she was ever happy in her entire life. It just kept getting worse instead of better. She had everything, yet she acted as if she had nothing.”

  “So what was happening during those last months of her life?” I asked.

  “Well, I was only with her for a year and a half. I knew right from the start that it was going to be a very high-maintenance relationship. She was one of the biggest stars in the world. Me, I was just this lucky guy who crossed paths with her one day and got to marry her. It was never easy. But in the end, it got worse. She was in such bad shape.

  “We didn’t tell the public any of this, of course. The studio had this image of what a star should be. Laura Marlowe was America’s darling. Beautiful, innocent, always smiling for the camera—the girl who had it all. You weren’t supposed to do anything that would ever damage that perception of her. So we tried to ignore all the problems. We lied about them, we hid them, and we pretended they didn’t even exist. I’m still doing that now, I guess.

  “I’m not proud of myself for my actions. I’ve played it over in my mind so many times. Should I have done things, could I have done more to help Laura? I still think about that a lot. But at the time, I thought I was doing the right thing for her. I really did.

  “By the end, the studio was pretty much at the end of its patience with her. Once Upon a Time Forever had already been put on hiatus a couple of times because of her problems. The studio executives said she had to finish the picture. She needed rest, she needed help, she belonged in a hospital. But they put all sorts of pressure on us to get her back to work. Beverly was terrified Laura’s career would be over if she didn’t do what they wanted. So she came to me and begged me for my help. She said Laura wouldn’t listen to her anymore. She asked me to convince her to go back to work.

  “That’s what I did. She began to cry. She said she never wanted to be a movie star. It was always her mother who had all the ambition. She said we should leave Hollywood, leave her mother, leave them all. I said we could talk about it later. But she had to go back and finish this picture now. There was no choice. Not for any of us.

  “Later, after she was killed, I thought back on all of these things. It ate me up with guilt for years. I don’t know that it had anything to do with what happened to her. She was killed by someone with a gun. On the one hand, that didn’t have anything to do with her state of mind then. But I always wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t made her go back and finish that picture. I’ve never been able to come to grips with that. Those what-might-have-been thoughts, they can tear you up inside. Anyway, that’s the real story about Laura Marlowe. That’s what happens when you strip away the fairy tale.”

  I wrote it all down in my notebook. I wondered if he�
��d ever told this to anyone before.

  “Did you know about her being in Russell Zorn’s cult?” I asked.

  “Not until I read it in your article the other day.”

  “Laura never told you about it?”

  “We had this agreement, me and Laura. On our first date together, she told me she wanted it to be the first day of the rest of our lives. She said she wanted us both to forget all about our pasts. She said she wanted her life to be about the present and the future. So we never talked about what happened before we met. I know that may not seem normal, but Laura was not a normal woman. So all that stuff about her living in the desert with that cult and calling herself Clarissa or whatever—well, that was news to me too. I was as stunned as anyone when I read it.”

  “What about Thomas Rizzo?” I asked.

  “The same. Never heard of him—at least not with her—until I read your article. I still find that hard to believe. I mean what would Laura have been doing with a crime boss like that? They had absolutely nothing in common. He killed people for a living, and Laura was the most nonviolent person I ever met. I just don’t see it.”

  “Well, Laura was young and very beautiful. Rizzo was a man. I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out what he was looking for.”

  “And Laura? Why would she do it?”

  “For a lot of reasons. The most obvious was it helped her to become a star. I know it’s a nice Hollywood fairy tale to say she just got a lucky break when she became famous so fast. But I think it was more than just luck. Rizzo was an important man with a lot of influence in the entertainment industry back then. I think he used his influence to get Laura her big break. Maybe that’s why she was sleeping with him.”

  Holloway shook his head slowly.

  “You don’t believe it?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s probably true.”

  “What’s wrong then?”

  “I prefer the fairy tale.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said.

  The restaurant was starting to fill up now. A few B-level celebrities stopped by to say hello to Holloway.

  “Can I ask you one more question?” I said. “It’s kind of ­personal.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what you told me the other day about plastic surgery. I’m considering giving it a shot. I’m pushing forty now, and I’d like to look at least a little bit younger. How exactly does it work?”

  He was happy to talk about it. It was a big topic with him. He described the procedure in great detail. I sat there listening and looking like I was really interested.

  “Does it really give you an entirely new look?” I said when he was finished.

  “A better one.”

  “But it’s still you?”

  “Of course, that’s the key to a good plastic surgeon. He doesn’t change your appearance. He improves it. He takes what you give him to work with, and then he gives you something better from that.”

  “So in other words, the way you look now—that’s kind of the way you looked when you were a lot younger?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Some things are different?”

  “Of course.”

  “But anybody who knew you a long time ago—let’s say back when you married Laura—would still recognize you today?”

  “That’s what good plastic surgery is all about,” he smiled.

  * * *

  Sometimes it’s the things you weren’t looking for—not what you go after—that make all the difference.

  I’d gone to see Holloway because I was hoping he’d tell me more about what was happening to Laura in those final days before she died.

  And he had, whether he realized it or not.

  When I’d asked him if she ever talked about being with Russell Zorn and the cult in the desert before they met.

  “We had this agreement, me and Laura . . . we never talked about what happened before we met,” Holloway said to me. “So all that stuff about her living in the desert with that cult and calling herself Clarissa or whatever—well, that was news to me too. I was as stunned as anyone when I read it.”

  There was only one problem. I’d never told him her name in the cult was Clarissa. It wasn’t in the paper either. I’d put it in the original article I wrote, but somehow it had gotten edited out before publication. So how did Holloway know that her cult name was Clarissa?

  There were two possibilities.

  One, he was lying when he said she’d never talked about her past or her time in the cult with him. She had revealed it after they met. But he never talked about it—and he still wouldn’t admit it—because he was concerned it tarnished the image he and everyone else had carefully constructed of her as this American golden girl.

  The second possibility was even more intriguing.

  I made a phone call when I got back to the office. I asked the person at the other end if she had a computer. She didn’t, but said she could get access to one. I said there was a picture I wanted to email her. I asked her to call back when she got to the place with the computer.

  I googled Edward Holloway’s name, downloaded a picture of him onto my computer, and stared at it.

  A good plastic surgeon never changes the features of the person—he just makes them better, Holloway had explained to me at the restaurant. If someone who knew him a long time ago saw him now, they’d just think he looked good. That he hadn’t aged very much. That was the key to good plastic surgery.

  A few minutes later, my phone rang.

  “Are you at a computer?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sally Easton said.

  I attached the photo of Edward Holloway to an email, typed in the address she’d sent me, and pushed the send button.

  It didn’t take long to get her answer.

  “That’s him,” she said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, no question about it.”

  “His name is Edward Holloway.”

  “That wasn’t his name when I knew him back at Russell’s farm.”

  “But you’re sure it’s him?”

  “Yes, he’s the one who ran off with Clarissa.”

  Chapter 41

  I HAD a story. A good story. Edward Holloway—New York social figure, Broadway public relations–man and producer, and husband of the legendary Laura Marlowe—had been a member of the same radical cult as her. The whole story of how they met was all a lie. It was another dramatic development in the debunking of the Laura Marlowe legend.

  The problem was I was pretty sure there was an even better story out there. A story I didn’t have yet. If I wrote this one now, I might blow my chance to get the rest of the story.

  I wished I could talk to my editor about the dilemma. But I knew I wasn’t going to get any help from Stacy.

  Over the years, I’ve had some really good editors. My first city editor was a legend in the New York newspaper world, a colorful character named Paul McDermott who talked out of the side of his mouth like Humphrey Bogart and smoked big cigars all day long. He was famous for his boozing and brawling, as well as his journalistic skills. The legend was that once in the days before computers he picked up one of the metal spikes that were used to collect used wire copy and used it like a sword to chase a reporter around the room. Another time a dispute with the copy desk chief over a displaced comma degenerated into a wrestling match, with the two of them rolling around the floor of the newsroom.

  But McDermott had a sensitive side too. In my first year at the paper, I blew a crucial stakeout assignment. I was supposed to stand outside a building until a key murder witness came out. I did just that for hours, until the call of nature intervened. I found a nearby coffee shop, used the bathroom, and then ran back to the stakeout location. While I was gone, the witness had come out and another paper got the story. I was de
vastated and wondered if I would be fired. Especially when McDermott called me into his office the next day. But he didn’t fire me. He said bad breaks like that happen to even the best of reporters sometimes. He said I’d get a better story the next day. He said I shouldn’t get too down about it, because he thought I was a terrific reporter with a great future in the newspaper business. When I told him that I’d been afraid my gaffe might have cost me my job, he just smiled. “I’ve never fired a reporter for taking a piss, kid,” McDermott said.

  Of course, that was a long time ago. There weren’t too many editors around like Paul McDermott anymore. They were mostly like Stacy Albright now.

  * * *

  I sat at my desk in the newsroom for a long time, trying to figure out what to do next.

  Then my telephone rang. It was Lt. Marty Dahlstrom, the cop I’d talked to when I was in Los Angeles. I’d gone to see him again before I left LA and told him about the possible astrology connection I’d found in the four celebrity murders. He told me now that they were still looking into the astrology angle. Nothing definite yet, but it did look like a promising lead, he said. If something did develop, he promised he’d give me the exclusive before it was released to anyone else in the press. I guess he felt he owed me a favor.

  “I’ve got something you might be interested in,” Dahlstrom said. “I checked out all those names you gave me on Laura Marlowe and Rizzo and all the rest. I did find a connection between Rizzo and one guy you mentioned.”

  I wasn’t sure who he was talking about.

  “Edward Holloway?”

  Of course, that would make perfect sense. Holloway kept popping up everywhere in this story. He’d met Laura in the cult. He’d made up the whole story of how they met. He was also another surviving member from the Sign of the Z cult. Holloway had lied to me and everyone else about a lot of things. Maybe he had a reason. Maybe he was connected to the other deaths, and they all had something to do with what happened to Laura.