Cold Heart

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘Cindy died last night, Mr Vallance,’ Lorraine said, watching him closely. ‘Suicide, it seems.’

  For a moment, Vallance did not react. Then he said, looking straight at her, ‘I’m . . . sorry to hear that.’ His eyes were curiously shuttered, and Lorraine’s skin crawled. Cindy’s death had not been news to him, whatever he wanted her to believe.

  ‘You and Cindy had a close friendship, I believe,’ Lorraine said.

  ‘You could say that.’ He was guarded.

  ‘Was it your child, by the way?’ Lorraine asked casually. ‘The baby she lost?’

  ‘No,’ Vallance said curtly. ‘It could have been any number of people’s, but it was not mine – that I can be sure of.’

  ‘Really? But I have seen you in action, Mr Vallance, so to speak.’

  He turned those wide eyes on her and they were beautiful, a wonderful, dazzling blue that flashed like lightning. If only he could have brought that look, or the strength of feeling behind it, to his performances, he might perhaps have reignited his dying career.

  ‘You didn’t answer me, Mr Vallance. I have seen you in the videos that Harry Nathan made and, as far as I could tell, you . . .’ She gestured eloquently with her hand. ‘You were very aroused. Oh, of course, I’d forgotten.’ She touched her forehead, feigning surprise at her absent-mindedness. ‘There was the one where you strapped on a—’

  He leaned forward, almost spat at her, ‘I want those fucking tapes, you hard-nosed bitch.’

  ‘They most certainly are fucking tapes.’ Lorraine laughed, and then leaned forward. ‘Perhaps you’d be happier if it really was your own hard prick, and not some plastic strap-on number. You might get a whole new career for yourself. What’s the matter, Mr Vallance, can’t you get a hard-on? Is that the—’

  He slapped her across the face. She took the blow and paused a moment before she swung her right fist and caught him full on his perfect nose. He flopped back into the chair, one hand to his face while he fumbled with the other for a handkerchief. She watched him feeling the bridge of his nose gingerly, afraid she’d broken it, staring at the fine trickle of blood on his hand before he put the handkerchief to his face.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Vallance. I only just heard about Cindy and . . .’

  She looked carefully at him: his head was bowed and he was weeping, covering his face with the white cloth. Lorraine picked up the glass of water and held it out to him, but he shook his head and turned away from her. It was about three minutes before he composed himself, checked his nose again and looked at the spots of blood on the handkerchief before he put it back in his pocket. He reached for the glass of water and raised it to his lips, his hand shaking badly. He sipped carefully, then slowly replaced the glass on the desk.

  ‘How did she do it?’ he asked flatly.

  ‘She took some cord, wrapped it round the shower head and then round her throat – only a short distance, but enough. She was kneeling, as if she was praying, according to the servants.’

  He sighed, and reached for the water again, drained it and held the empty glass in his hands. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe she wasn’t as tough as I thought.’

  ‘Nobody ever is,’ she said, and he looked up. ‘Can I ask you frankly, Mr Vallance, do you think Cindy killed Harry Nathan?’

  There was a moment’s silence, and Lorraine had the impression of a curtain falling at the back of the man’s eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘Yes, I do. She would never have been convicted, of course. Harry should have kept right away from women – he just wasn’t himself with them, they made him dirty, sucked him dry. I used to tell him that he ought to regard women as liquor to an alcoholic, that they were something he would have to cut right out of his life, just accept that they brought out negative things in him, things he didn’t need.’

  ‘Harry was different then, away from female company? ‘

  Vallance gave a strange, bitter-sweet smile. ‘He was such a prince when he could cut loose from all that, the kindest, funniest, most generous guy you could meet, and so damn talented . . .’ God, Lorraine thought, he sounded like some high-school girl gushing over her first beau. ‘Cindy never gave a damn about Harry,’ Vallance went on. ‘She never gave a damn about anyone but herself. She wanted his money, and she thought . . . I guess she thought she’d got it.’ His quick correction didn’t escape Lorraine. Could Vallance have had anything to do with Cindy’s death? Was it possible that he and Kendall had acted together:

  ‘But, Mr Vallance, although you say you and Harry were such good friends, I have to say that I know he was blackmailing you.’

  He laughed softly. ‘That’s what I mean. The women changed him, made him dirty, selfish. That’s not the way he started out, but it was sure as hell the way he finished up. Once Harry stopped making money, I doubt if there was anyone he knew that he didn’t put the squeeze on. He wouldn’t think of it as blackmail, though – he would probably have been shocked if you called him a blackmailer. Conman might be a better description.’

  ‘Did you pay him?’

  He stared at a point on the wall. ‘I guess so. I paid Harry in women, but he also paid me his way – sometimes my rent, phone bills or whatever. He liked me to have to ask him for hand-outs, but he could be generous.’

  Lorraine waited. Vallance was digging deep inside himself, and she knew from his body language that it hurt: he seemed to have shrivelled, as if he was ageing in front of her.

  ‘So why did you put up with it?’

  His shoulders lifted. ‘It didn’t happen overnight, darling. Our sort of relationship goes back a long way.’ Again there was a pause, and Vallance sat back, as though watching a movie playing on her office wall.

  ‘I knew Harry before any of them – we used to share an apartment.’ What a surprise, Lorraine thought. ‘We used to work out together - this is before anybody worked out. Harry always kept himself in shape. We’d pick up these little girls and bring them home, and we’d both come on with the heavy romance, and they’d think they’d met these two really great guys.’ Vallance almost chuckled. ‘And then, after a while, of course, we’d get them in bed and give them all the I-never-met-anyone-like-you-before crap, and then as soon as we’d fucked them, Harry used to put on this crazy voice and yell, “Grand Central Station, ladies and gentlemen!”’ Vallance produced an odd, caterwauling yodel like an Appalachian railway porter. ‘“All change!” And then, of course, I’d fuck his and he’d fuck mine. Sometimes the girls’d kick up a fuss, and Harry’d say,’ Vallance’s face contorted with amusement, ‘“A fuck is only a fuck, my dear, but a friend is a good cigar.”’ He laughed, slapping his thighs. ‘That was when Harry started all the goofy kind of comedy he used to do later on. All that came right out of that apartment we used to have, I swear it.’

  Jesus, Lorraine thought: Vallance imagined he was not only Harry Nathan’s heroic friend, ideal lover, but also his muse. The reality, however, was painfully clear: Vallance couldn’t get sex with Harry, so the next best thing was sex with the women who did, and preferably thirty seconds after Harry had pulled out.

  ‘Presumably all this fun and games had to stop when Harry got married?’

  ‘You bet it did,’ Vallance said bitterly. ‘What he ever saw in that fucking Swedish bitch, God knows. She was great-looking, of course, but, Christ, they all were.’

  ‘So, you didn’t see so much of Harry after that?’

  ‘Oh, I saw him okay,’ Vallance said. ‘Harry was innocent, and he just assumed we’d all be friends. He started making a lot of money with his movies, but Sonja just pissed on all that too. I used to go out to the house most weekends, watch her spending Harry’s money doing the place up like fucking Versailles. Then when she finished the house, she started saying how bored she was, so Harry bought her the gallery. Anyone else would have got down on their knees in gratitude, but Sonja said Harry did it to stifle her talent, to make her play shopkeeper when she wanted to be alone, to create . . .’

  ‘But she must have had talen
t of some sort,’ Lorraine said. ‘I mean, she has quite a reputation now.’

  ‘You can sell just about anything on the modern art market, Mrs Page, provided it’s full of enough neurosis, sickness and self-possession, and Sonja Sorenson had all those things to burn.’

  ‘So what happened? Why did they get divorced?’

  ‘Well, Sonja was miserable. Nothing was ever right for her, and first it was Harry’s fault, and then it was my fault,’ Vallance said, and something in his voice told Lorraine that he was about to embark on another pack of lies. ‘She started blaming me for everything, trying to turn Harry against me, saying I was at the house too much, saying I was just taking money off him. Sonja got more and more up her own ass, and then they couldn’t have kids, and by the time they finished up she was in her forties and she looked pretty terrible.’

  ‘She didn’t look so bad at Forest Lawn,’ Lorraine said, thinking of the elegant woman she had seen at the funeral.

  ‘That’s just clothes,’ Vallance said dismissively, turning round to lean against the sill.

  When Vallance was lying, an airy nastiness entered his voice, and Lorraine knew he was lying now. She was quite certain that his account of the Nathan marriage was as biased, distorted and selective as it was possible to get.

  ‘So, did you encourage him to leave her?’ she asked.

  Vallance sat down again, brushed at his immaculate suit and adjusted his perfectly knotted tie. ‘Let’s just say I helped along what was going to happen anyway. Kendall was on the scene by then, and she was digging Sonja’s grave from the minute she walked through the door.’

  Lorraine pricked up her ears.

  ‘So you and Kendall helped things along together?’ she suggested. ‘Did you get along well with Kendall?’

  Vallance fell silent. He got up again and straightened one of her prints without looking at her. ‘Not really. Kendall didn’t get along with anyone.’ He seemed disinclined to say any more. The changes in his mood were rapid: sometimes he seemed to want to talk, then something he didn’t like would come up and he would sink into silence.

  ‘But would you say she was another of those self-absorbed, selfish sort of women Harry seemed to go for?’ Lorraine asked, pretending sympathy with Vallance’s point of view.

  ‘Was she ever,’ Vallance said, with a scornful laugh, rising to the bait. ‘Have you seen Kendall lately? All set up in her fancy art gallery, with her fancy friends and her fancy clothes and her fancy voice? Kendall was her maiden name before she married Harry. Her real first name is Darken. Doesn’t play quite so well, does it? She came to LA as just another little piece of white trash and got a job as a secretary to some decorator, and then it was an antique dealer, and the next thing Sonja - God, she was dumb - gave her a job in the gallery. I guess she thought Harry would never look twice at her - she wasn’t his type and she looked like shit. Big hair and big shoulders and these terrible tacky little suits, but my, that little lady was quite some operator.’

  Clearly there was no love lost between the two of them, and Lorraine rapidly revised her theory of Kendall and Vallance acting together to get rid of Nathan and Cindy. ‘You mean in a business sense?’ she asked, deliberately misunderstanding him.

  ‘You could say that. Kendall has been in business since she was in diapers - the business of promoting Darken Kendall Nathan. She acted at first like she worshipped Sonja, studied her clothes, copied the way she talked, and, of course, she changed her name just as soon as she could, said it was because Sonja used to call her by her surname, like as a pet name, when they were working together. Kendall started to play up all this great artist garbage too, and Sonja’d lost the plot anyway, by this stage - her hormones had curdled, I reckon, over this whole no-kids stuff.’ He gave a sigh of irritation with these unsavoury feminine preoccupations.

  ‘Sonja said she had to start working again so she locked herself in the studio for about a year and Kendall just waved her hankie and said bye-bye. She took over the gallery, of course, and worked her ass off there until she was running it. Gradually she took over Harry too.’ Clearly this turn of events had not suited Vallance.

  ‘Of course, Harry’s mother,’ Vallance continued, well into his stride now - Lorraine had been waiting for them to get to old Mrs Nathan - ‘hated Sonja’s guts, and she rammed Kendall down his throat. Kendall started sweet-talking the old lady, and Abigail thought she was just the sweetest girl, and so maternal. Every time Sonja went out of town, Kendall would just suggest to Harry that he invite his mother, so diplomatic’

  ‘How long did this go on?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘Well, they had a thing behind Sonja’s back for a long time, but Harry wouldn’t leave Sonja until Kendall announced she was pregnant. He had to tell her then.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  Vallance dug his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘I don’t know. She just left. All I knew was she flew to New York, and she never came back. She tried to claim some share in the gallery, but his lawyers made such a fucking production out of the whole thing that she backed down. That was the way Sonja was. If she didn’t get what she wanted immediately she just walked away.’

  A full two minutes passed. Then Lorraine asked, ‘So he remained at the house, Sonja went to New York, and they started divorce proceedings?’

  ‘Yes. Harry and Kendall got married and had their kid, but the kid died and Harry was losing money. He changed. He was never the same again.’

  ‘Why did you hang on?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘Jesus Christ . . . you want me to spell it out?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  He sighed and looked at a point above Lorraine’s head, then back to her. His wide-set eyes were like a sick dog’s.

  ‘I loved him, and when he didn’t need me any more I let him use me. When he ditched Kendall for Cindy, I went through it all again. He used me, just as much as he used Cindy, used everyone he ever knew. But I still loved him.’

  Loved him enough not to want anyone else to have him? Lorraine wondered suddenly whether Vallance could have killed Harry. In a way, he had loved Nathan longer than anyone else, had been obsessed by him and, in his own mind, been betrayed by him too.

  ‘Anyway,’ Vallance said, seeming to drag himself with an effort back into the present, ‘I guess I’d better go.’ Lorraine stood up to walk to the door with him, sorry for him in spite of her revulsion. He had walked in like a movie star, and was walking out so weak and jaded.

  ‘Can I just ask you one final thing?’ she said, as she opened the door and Vallance fumbled with his shades. ‘Were you at home last night?’

  He knew at once that she was asking him if he had an alibi for the time at which Cindy Nathan had died, and he was not so emotionally battered that he could not reply at once.

  ‘Yes, I was,’ he said. ‘A number of my friends called, as it happens.’

  He had put on the dark glasses now, and Lorraine could not see his eyes. ‘Okay,’ she said. She walked with him past Decker’s desk, and showed him out. He left without a smile or a handshake, and without looking back.

  Lorraine raised one eyebrow at Decker. ‘Well, guess who the most beautiful man in the world wanted to shove his dick up?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, you can be so fucking crude,’ Decker said huffily.

  Lorraine leaned on his desk, and grinned. ‘He was in love with Harry Nathan himself Then she gestured towards her office. ‘Come in and chat to me. I want to discuss a few things that came up this morning.’

  Decker collected his notebook, and asked her whether she was doing all this work pro bono or if they were going to be paid.

  Lorraine sighed. ‘Oh, shit, I forgot. I have to go talk to Feinstein.’

  Vallance drove out of the garage, unaware that the smiling, bowing valet had given his car a thorough going-over. He was on his way now to play Prince Charming to Verna Montgomery, to get his rent money out of her. She had to be sixty years old, though she insisted she was no more than forty-four
. He hadn’t even bothered to rearrange the white wisps of his hair because he knew that if Nathan’s videos ever got out any last shred of hope he had of resurrecting his career was gone. As he drove onto Sunset he was crying, his white hair blowing in the wind – Raymond Vallance, the most beautiful man in the world.

  CHAPTER 9

  DECKER GO’I Lorraine an appointment with Feinstein almost immediately. His address in Century City was certainly impressive, on one of the smartest blocks of the Avenue of the Stars. The building had only recently been opened, and Lorraine had to concede that it was a truly handsome piece of modern architecture, a soaring tower of golden granite and blue glass that seemed to cut the sky.

  Lorraine went up the steps and into a lobby whose sheer moneyed lustre exceeded anything she had seen, even in Los Angeles. The commissionaire directed her to the forty-third floor, and she made her way to the bank of elevators.

  She emerged from the elevator car into another lobby bathed in light, streaming in through semi-transparent blinds of fine white cloth. Feinstein’s receptionist was a beautiful, long-limbed girl, wearing a straight tunic dress in mint green crêpe-de-chine and a pair of transparent plastic court shoes, whose four-inch heels made her well over six feet tall. She introduced herself as Pamela, with a charming smile, and asked her if she would mind waiting a moment. Lorraine sat down in one of four low armchairs with curving black backs and white leather upholstery ranged round a table of quaking-leaf fern.

  Feinstein kept Lorraine waiting only a minute, then she was shown into an enormous office carpeted in a smooth silver grey like whaleskin, full of beautifully crafted wooden furniture whose dignity and majestic scale jarred with the bald, weasel-like lawyer. He only bothered to rise a couple of inches from his chair and motioned Lorraine to a lower seat placed in front of his huge desk. She began to thank him for seeing her, but his intercom blinked and his voice rasped loudly, making her jump: she had not noticed the transparent plastic speaker plugged into his right ear or the mouthpiece at the corner of his lips.