Manifesto for the Dead

by Domenic Stansberry

  “What do you mean?”

  “The important thing isn’t the picture. The important thing is Jack and I. Our relationship.”

  She gave Thompson a blunt look.

  “We’re getting back together.”

  Michele leaned back in the booth. Something in her manner suggested she did not quite believe her own words. She lifted her head, tracking something behind him. He heard footsteps, then felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, Jimbo, how’re you doing?”

  It was Billy Miracle. He lowered himself into the booth next to Michele.

  “We gotta deal. We’re going to make a movie.”

  Miracle’s tongue wandered across his lips. His skin was tanned, his hair sleek. He looked confident as hell, too confident. There’s something out of whack, Thompson thought. Then Miracle sniffed, running a finger across his nostrils. Thompson was an old man, maybe, but he’d been around. He was wise. The rumors were true. Miracle had his nose in the powder.

  Michele Haze, meanwhile, repositioned herself under the light, and he could no longer see the fine lines that feathered out from her eyes. Only blonde hair and high cheek bones and a face that looked as if it had been sculpted out of expensive stone.

  “You have a deal?” Thompson asked.

  “We got a handshake, don’t we?” Miracle glanced in Michele’s direction. “Isn’t that right, baby?”

  “There was a handshake, yes.”

  “Lombard?”

  “That’s right. Lombard.”

  Miracle slid some papers across the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “Contract. We want you to do the book, Jack and I. We’d like that.”

  Thompson picked up the contract. He made a show of reading, but there was more action behind him.

  Michele Haze stood up.

  “Jack,” she said softly, her voice full of aspiration.

  It was old home week, it seemed, all the players circling into position. Lombard had returned. He seemed more delicate than he had the other night, though—thin and rakish, yes, but standing about with a skittishness that suggested he did not altogether want to be here.

  Michele slid past Billy, out of the booth, and went to him. She stumbled and leaned into his chest. They kissed, but lightly. Lombard pulled away. She stuck with him, and they went together towards the bar. Billy Miracle, meanwhile, watched with concern. Lombard had not so much as nodded in his direction.

  “Of course, there are still some details to work out,” he said.

  “What about Lombard’s girl friend?” asked Thompson. “I thought she wouldn’t let you through.”

  “She and Jack, they had some kind of quarrel. The Young Lovely, she was getting ready to go out of town, a trip home. Then she found out about our meeting. About Michele and I—and the picture. She went through the roof. Left town in a tizzy, a couple days back. No one’s seen her since.”

  A suspicion rose in Thompson’s mind, the sensation there was something beneath the surface, something he should grasp. He’d had the sensation before, events unfolding, moving towards one another, then away—like head lamps careening through a dark intersection on Wilshire, almost colliding, then vanishing into the city.

  “Where did you say she went, The Young Lovely?”

  “Home. A cornfield, I believe. In Iowa. Or maybe it was Ohio. No matter, she was wearing a gingham dress.”

  “She’ll be back?”

  The producer pushed the contract toward him once again. There was a check attached. A thousand dollars. Thompson faltered. He knew he should send the contract to his agent first. In the meantime, though, the deal might disintegrate. He could lose the money in front of him now. Be patient, he told himself. Wait.

  He signed.

  “We should celebrate,” said Miracle. “Take a toast.”

  “In a minute.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to get some air. I’ll be right back.” In truth, Thompson wanted to get to the bank. He had made a mistake, maybe, signing the contract, but he still meant to get the check cashed.

  “Don’t be gone long. Jack’s coming over to the table any minute. We’ll drink to our success.”

  The opposite appeared to be true. Michele and Lombard were separating at the bar.

  Miracle rose to his feet.

  “Jack,” he called. “Jack!”

  Miracle caught the other man at the rear door, on the other side of the restaurant. The two men stood close, but it was easy to see Lombard’s discomfort. Miracle put a hand on his shoulder. Lombard shrugged it off. He said something then, Lombard did. Thompson was too far to hear the words, but the expression on the man’s face was one of disgust. His glance took in not just Billy but Michele too, all in white, eyes downcast. She tugged at her blouse.

  Lombard pushed his way through the door.

  Miracle rocked back on his heels, stunned, then he too gave Michele a dirty glance—and bulled out into the rear lot, looking to save his deal.

  ELEVEN

  Thompson made his exit through the front door. Miracle’s check had been drafted on an account at Security Bank, across from Graumann’s Chinese. The way things were unraveling, he did not trust the deal to hold.

  “You wish to deposit this in your account, sir?”

  “No. I want cash.”

  “Identification?”

  Thompson laid out his driver’s license and his Guild Card on the counter.

  “Could you put the money in an envelope, please?”

  The teller did as he was asked. Thompson didn’t want to go back to Musso’s, nor to the Aztec Hotel. He thought of Lussie, over at the Château, but he was not ready for her either. He lingered on Highland Avenue, in the shadow of the Revlon building, where inside a beautician tinkered with an old woman’s hair.

  At the intersection, two cars all but collided. The drivers cursed and yelled. A prostitute strutted by. Two friends slapped hands on the corner, hipsters in dirty jeans. The drivers went on cursing. Mid-block, across the way, the prostitute found her mark: a nobody with a light in his eyes.

  It was rush hour and things were happening. Accidents. Chance meetings. Heavenly bodies colliding.

  What had the Okie been doing with Michele Haze?

  There had been another address on the back side of that paper, he remembered.

  Thompson went up Orange Street, which had been true to its name once upon a time, all those sweet trees blossoming between farmhouses out here in the desert nothing. Now the road was lined with parking lots and the back entrances to hotels that sagged and crumpled and smelled vaguely of starlets who’d been screwed on the casting couch a couple million times but never got the job.

  Thompson felt sorry for the dead woman.

  He crossed Franklin, skittering up the street to the Hillcrest Arms. Inside, he found the paper still on the mantle.

  The El Rancho, 87 Palm Avenue, #4.

  On the other side of the paper was the address of the Hillcrest apartment, written in the same hand. Thompson hesitated. It’s not my job to investigate things. I’m an old man. Then he thought of the dead girl, her body curled in the back of the trunk. Once again it were as if he were hovering over her, studying her bruised corpse, clutching the key in his hand.

  Old busybody, old fool.

  He called himself a cab.

  The El Rancho was a wartime motel, built on the cheap, that sat in a neighborhood of two-door bungalows, on the edge of Echo Park. Overhead a flickering sign gave off a light resembling the sun at dusk.

  Thompson paid the driver to wait, and got out of the cab.

  The Okie had come for a pay-off, Thompson figured. He’d killed the girl, and he’d come to Hillcrest to deliver the corpse, to show he’d done the job he was supposed to do. There’d been a screw-up, though. The Okie was no professional, and he’d taken the corpse to the wrong address.

  The Okie was supposed to have come here, to the El Rancho.

  But what was my a
ddress doing on the other side of the paper? Thompson wondered. And who was Sydney Wicks?

  Meanwhile, the desk lady saw him coming. She was about fifty, dyed blonde. Maybe she had been a charmer once, but she’d spent too much time standing behind that desk, watching clients check in, check out. All that in-and-out had given her a sour look.

  “You want a room?”

  “No. I was supposed to meet someone. A man named Sydney Wicks.”

  “Not tonight. We’ve got no one by that name.”

  “Could you check last Monday?”

  “Why for? Monday’s come and gone.”

  “I lost my appointment book, and I can’t remember whether I was supposed to meet him last Monday, or today. He’s a client and I’m afraid maybe I missed him. Could you check?”

  The woman smirked. The look on her face said she knew he was lying, but she flipped back through the registry anyway, running her ugly fingers down the page.

  “Yeah. Checked in Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “I should remember? He’s your client.”

  “We only met once.”

  “You a cop?”

  “Do I look like a cop?”

  She eyed him up and down. “No. You don’t look like anything.” Her glance was obscene. She drummed those fingers on the counter, ran them through her hair. Smiled.

  “Did you see him?”

  “No. I wasn’t working the desk that day.”

  “Who was?”

  “Julie.”

  “How can I find her?”

  “She’s history. Made the big connection.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Honeymoon. A sudden thing. You know how it is with the young. They fall so quickly in love.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “She quit. No forwarding address.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “A regular shame. A fool for love, that girl. To leave a job like this.”

  She gave him the look again, like she’d seen one too many of his kind—and wanted to take it out on the next man available, spending the next ten years with him in a cramped apartment, serving him dinner in her nightgown.

  “Well—thanks, anyway,” he said

  “Sure, buster. My pleasure.”

  Outside, the traffic was thick. In the back of the taxi, he took some money from the bank envelope and transferred it into his wallet. Then he noticed something else. His identification was missing.

  He’d left it at the bank, at the teller’s cage when he cashed Miracle’s check.

  It had been a bad couple days

  Finally, the traffic let loose. He had the taxi let him off on Hollywood and Argyle, not far from the Aztec. There was action on the avenue. Long legs and leather pants. Dayglo skirts and the sound of engines, a line of lights idling slowspeed under the palms. The sky was red. He went into the bar on the corner and had a whiskey, up raw, no ice. In that first sip he tasted the glow of the evening, the blackness descending. He loved that taste, he told himself, and he drank until it was gone from the glass.

  TWELVE

  An hour later, Thompson walked out under the hanging neon into the street. Darkness had descended, but the city was lit up, hazy as could be. The sky overhead was gray-black, smudged with yellow. Some drunks nearby hollered like animals. Thompson kept moving. A woman sat on the corner, coughing blood. Outside the Aztec Hotel, a pink town car was parked at the curb, facing the wrong direction, into traffic.

  The driver’s door swung open.

  “Get in, Jim”

  He tried to object, but it was too late. Miracle twisted his arm.

  “We’ve got some celebrating to do, remember?”

  “I need to get to work. The book.”

  “Don’t be a spoilsport.”

  Miracle nudged him into the back, and Thompson saw Michele in the passenger’s seat, slumped low. No reason to be afraid, he told himself.

  “Did you talk to Jack?”

  “Sure,” said Miracle. “I talked to him.”

  Miracle reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a bottle, a glass. He fumbled about with them for quite awhile, clumsying around on the seat.

  “Lean back, Jim. Relax. I’ll fix you a drink.”

  Thompson did as he was told, and eventually Miracle passed him a drink.

  “We’re going to paint the town, us three.”

  “You can me drop me off,” Michele said. “I’ve got to be up early.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  Miracle careened into traffic, and Thompson sipped the whiskey. It had a metallic afterbite—the cheap stuff.

  “What happened with Jack?” Thompson asked.

  No one answered, and Thompson suspected things had gone badly. The movie deal had exploded.

  “What happened after I left?” he asked again.

  “Jack left,” Michele said. Miracle shot her a look that said be quiet, don’t say a goddamn word—but she went on. “Then Billy went after him.”

  “And?”

  “Then Billy came back.”

  “Don’t worry about the details, Jimbo,” Miracle interrupted. “Things are coming together. Lombard’s high on this project. We’re all high.”

  Thompson caught a glimpse of Michele in the rear view mirror. Her face was a mess. She dabbed at her compact. Her eyes had the same dark sheen as always, maybe darker, shimmering absently in the passing light. Her head wobbled. She had been drinking, but it was not just that. Those eyes, they were not the eyes of a drunk.

  He thought about the faint slur that was always there, even in the movies. The way she clutched her purse.

  Valium, he thought. The old heart stopper. A starlet’s best friend.

  “Remember that book of yours,” said Miracle, “where the hero kills his sweetheart? Then blames it on some fool passing by. Remember that?”

  Thompson finished the whiskey. He felt black-headed. Miracle was jumbling things up, as usual, but still, things like that happened in his books. A dumb slob screwed by happenstance, over and over. Maybe the slob wasn’t altogether innocent, but the punishment, well, it made you wonder.

  Miracle went on. “The fool takes it in the shorts, if I remember right. Gets blamed for the whole business.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Tell me, Jim, there’s always a place in your stories, things just go haywire. I can’t tell what the hell’s happening.”

  It was true. Events got skewed. Characters stumbled into the abyss.

  “What’s your point?” asked Thompson.

  “Jack Lombard and I, we had things in common. Men of vision. Different visions, maybe—but still, you get the drift. Successful men are like gangsters. In control. Powerful. Ruthless. You, Jimbo, on the other hand, you.”

  The blackness was overcoming him. It wasn’t his usual blackness, but something more powerful. They were way out Sunset now. Miracle still driving, but his voice close by, somehow, hissing in his ear. “Lombard expressed some concerns, Jim. Said you have no control. Just down and down you go. Then out. You never make it back.”

  Thompson tried to shake Miracle’s voice from his head.

  They stopped at a light. Near Sunset Plaza—a corner joint, tables on the sidewalk. The kind of place tourists went to watch movie stars, and ended up watching the traffic instead. He grabbed at the door handle.

  “Hey, where you going? Jim?”

  Thompson lurched onto the street. He heard Miracle coming after him. Horns blared.

  “Come on, Jim. Let’s get back into the car.”

  “Fuck you,” Thompson said. “Fuck Lombard!” He bellowed, thrashing among the tables. He slipped, and he threw his arm out to catch his balance. A table tipped. A chair fell over. Thompson leaned against a lamppost and slid.

  “What’s the matter with him?” someone asked, a bystander.

  The noise from the horns was wild now. Footsteps, voices rising among the horns. People
gathering to see the problem. Miracle shooing them off.

  “No, no. Not to worry. Just too much to drink, huh Jimbo. We’ll give this boy a ride home. Come on, Michele. Give me a hand.”

  Billy Miracle crouched on one side of him, Michele Haze on the other. They cooed and cajoled and promised to take him home and Thompson did not have the legs to resist. He stood in the center, an arm draped over each of them. They helped him along and for a moment it wasn’t so bad. Thompson leaned his head towards the movie star, catching the heavy smell of her perfume, burying his head in her platinum hair. She grunted under his weight, surprisingly strong, then his feet buckled, wobbling, and for a minute it seemed he would pitch forward onto the asphalt. Somehow they maneuvered him back to the car.

  “Take me home.”

  “Sure, Jim, sure.”

  They gave him a push, and Thompson slumped into the back seat. The horns fell quiet. He surrendered to that blackness, and for a minute he was way down in it, then he struggled back up, pressing his head to the window. They were rounding a corner, up into Beverly Hills. He wanted to protest, but he couldn’t. It was like there was something stuffed inside his mouth. He heard a voice, small as hell, way down there, somewhere in the dark. Thompson tried answering and heard himself mumbling, and it was the same voice he mumbled as he read over and over the typewritten words on the page, when he was on the cusp of two worlds. Now he was back up above the blackness and he heard Miracle and Haze arguing. Thompson could not make out the words. He listened for them, but it was a like viper language, way down in there, and he was pursing it, plummeting towards that darkness, and then they were helping him walk again, one on either side. He buried his face in Michele’s blouse. He looked up and saw in her face the intense beauty of someone carried along by an evil she could not control. Their eyes met. He reached for her. In that instant she let him loose, her and Miracle both, letting him fall hard into the darkness, through it, disappearing, plummeting toward the black earth.

  THIRTEEN