by Jeff Klima
The driver, a long-hair with a clear meth history and scabby legs grins at us, his teeth a here and there wreck from grinding and neglect. “Welcome aboard,” he says.
“We’re dying to go,” Ramen puns at the man.
“You’ve gotta have guts to trust my driving,” the driver happily responds as if it is the first time someone has ever made a hammy remark to him.
Ramen insists we ride outside on such a beautiful day and so we climb the inside staircase up to the open-air roof seating. “Do you know how many people have been killed riding on the upper level of these tour buses?” he asks exuberantly as we settle into our seats, me closer to the outside.
“None that I’ve ever been called for,” I tell him.
“At least one,” he says, unfazed. Some kid was dancing on his seat and got taken out by an overpass on the 405. True story.”
“I’ll try to remember not to dance, then,” I say.
“Hey, sometimes you just got to let the rhythm take you.” He shrugs, turning to eyeball our fellow passengers who are settling in around us. “It looks like a good group today,” he says loudly, causing several people around to nod or smile in agreement. Most of them are chubby to fat, middle-aged and appearing to possess a midwestern look, if there is such a thing. I felt like I could pick out the tourists from the locals without even trying. A rail thin goth male settles into the seat in front of me, and his chubby equally goth girlfriend takes the seat in front of Ramen. Unabashedly, they begin making out, her leaning hard into his seat to do so. “I thought you people hated the sun,” Ramen says to them, delighted with the spectacle.
“You’re not going to be one of those people, are you?” the girl asks, breaking from the tonguing to fix Ramen with a sour gaze.
“Oh probably,” Ramen responds. “I am just . . . in awe of you getting your jollies off in front of me and the rest of the tour bus. So I might make comments about it, yeah. Right now you’re the best part of the tour.”
“It’s our anniversary, cut us some slack.”
“Anniversary of what? When you two died? Are you part of the tour?”
“Just ignore him, Sindal,” the male goth implores his husky companion. “He doesn’t have what we’ve got.”
“Overbearing Hot Topic debt?” Ramen continues to pester them. “Blood diseases from dirty needles? A freezer full of headless pigeons and Snickers bars that you trot out whenever you try in vain to summon the Devil during a blood orgy?” Finally, I swat him on the arm and he settles down.
Below us on the sidewalk, two confused Chinese tourists are being told the tour is “apparently oversold” and they can’t go. We took their spots, I guess. I don’t see the driver give them any money back either. It used to be that I wouldn’t have felt bad about a moment like this. I blame Ivy for the fact that I do.
The driver clambers into his seat down below and the bus fires up with the great belching reverberation of a diesel engine shuddering to life. “Welcome aboard Los Angeles Death Bus, the sightseer’s guide to the gruesome side of Los Angeles. Blood, guts, murder, and mayhem await you as we revisit horrors of Hollywood past, both real and cinematic. Whereas other death bus tours might try and cheat you out of the nightmares and horrifying secrets this city holds, we give you every last spleen and scream. Hold on to your hearts because you never know when a murderer might sneak up and stab you in them.”
I look at Ramen to convey the oddness of what we are in for, but I find he is obliviously lip-synching the driver’s speech from memory.
“How many times have you been on this tour?” I ask.
“At least once a month for the past five years.” He shrugs.
“The driver doesn’t seem like he knows you . . .”
“Roy? Roy’s a druggie—a real one. He’s done legendary amounts of meth. I’m impressed he remembers any details on the tour. I’ve used that same bullshit ‘dying to go’ line on him probably hundreds of times. He’s never picked up on it.”
Roy finishes his spiel and we rumble into the late-morning Hollywood traffic, heading west on Sunset.
“Where are we going first?” I ask Ramen.
“Well, the tour tends to change up, depending on what sort of mind-set Roy is in.” Ramen shrugs. “Hell, sometimes he just pulls random stops and makes up the stories. But if he’s on point today, we should be heading to Michael Jackson’s death house first.”
“Where’s that?” I ask.
“You’ll see.” Ramen laughs.
The bus cruises up Sunset and abruptly takes a hard right onto Carolwood Drive, stopping outside the high walls of the corner house: Mikey Echo’s mansion.
“You mean this house . . . ?”
Ramen nods, pleased.
Roy intones the necessary details about the grim end for the pop legend through the speakers beside the bus seats. Everyone takes pictures except for Ramen and myself and the goth couple who are still playing tonsil tennis. “Show some respect,” Ramen hisses at them sarcastically.
“Sometimes I just hop off the tour here.” Ramen smiles. “It gets people excited. They think I’m crazy when I go inside. Next we should be heading to where Whitney Houston died, the Beverly Hilton on Wilshire. I remember when they added that stop.”
“Wait a minute? So we just go to buildings where stuff once happened? And people take pictures of a building? And they pay to see this stuff? You pay for this?”
“Yeah, these death bus companies make a mint doing this shit and people eat it up. What? You thought we got to see murders take place?”
“You know, I don’t know what I thought. It just seems kinda anticlimactic.”
“For you, maybe,” Ramen clucks. “You live this shit. For most of us turds, this is as close as we get. Though maybe it isn’t as interesting AS SATAN,” Ramen elevates his voice to turn it into a stinging condemnation of the two goths.
“Do you think Esteban Morales will end up on this tour?”
“Tom, look at you, all detective and interrogative. Remind me to make a note of that for your character.”
“What happened to him? Is he still alive?”
“Tom, you can’t keep pulling this shit. It will irritate Mikey. Like that stunt you pulled yesterday with Brandon. Yes, Mikey knows about that.”
“I’m not asking Mikey, I’m asking you.”
Ramen sighs, now cagey and feeling trapped. “It’s just one of those things.”
“One of what things?”
Ramen makes a low buzzing sort of noise as if he’s debating within himself whether to talk. “You know I like you, right, Tom?”
“I know you want me to think you like me. I don’t really know though.”
“Look, I’m genuine—to a fault. I want us to be best friends. I like the way you look at the world. But if I tell you stuff, there has to be a mutual trust. You know what kind of person Mikey seems to be, you know what he’s capable of. I want to be able to talk with you about Mikey because he’s so fucking insane and I can’t talk to anyone else about him. You’re literally the only person that I can come to and say, ‘This guy is a psychopath.’ But in order for me to talk to you, I’ve gotta know that it won’t get back to Mikey. That’s the problem with psychopaths—they don’t have limits if they think you betrayed them. So you CAN’T tell him shit like that thing the other day that I thought he’d murder me. That’s the kind of shit that gives him ideas . . . he internalizes that stuff. I’m willing to tell you about Esteban, but you’ve got to keep it just between you and me. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say, pausing first to give my reply the proper gravity Ramen is looking for.
“Esteban got the ‘Mulholland Falls’ treatment.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s this section of road on Mulholland Drive where the cliff is so steep, cars can’t be recovered. If they go off the road, they just get lost down in the canyon forever. There are all sorts of skeletons down there, just stuck behind the wheel of luxury automobiles that went down, lost fo
rever. They call it Mulholland Falls. Crozier handles the dirty work. I don’t know the specifics, but I imagine Crozier forcefully took him from his home, put him in the trunk of his own car, and sent it over the edge, never to be seen again.”
If the goths are hearing any of this, it doesn’t distract them from their date.
“Whew, I gotta say. It feels good to get that off my chest.” Ramen laughs after a while as the bus makes its way up into the hills to visit the house where Sons of Anarchy actor Johnny Lewis murdered an old woman and her cat before throwing himself off a balcony to his own death. Roy tells us a haunting version of the events through his crackling loudspeaker, about how Johnny was high on bath salts. I just remember how hard it was to get the stains out of the bedroom; I ended up taking out patches of drywall.
“Why did Esteban Morales have to die? Was it because of what happened with me?”
Ramen sighs. “That was just one thing in a long line of issues between Mikey and him. So don’t feel like it was your fault in the least. Esteban just had a long overdue date with the Reaper. I don’t agree with how Mikey—”
“Why aren’t you on IMDB?” I interrupt. “Your name—your real name isn’t listed anywhere on the site. I thought Mikey had it wiped, but now I don’t know what to think.”
Ramen’s emotions shift quickly across his face as he processes this blindsiding of information. “You saw that, huh?” he asks finally. “Tom, you’re pretty sharp, so I guess I should have known you would. I haven’t been entirely truthful with you—and I know I said I would be, but this hasn’t exactly come up as something I’ve needed to be honest about. I’m a producer in this town like most of the people are.” He hangs his head. “I work for Mikey; I dress the part, I look the part, I get to drive around in his kick-ass car, but technically I don’t produce anything. Not yet, at least. That’s maybe why I’m so ingrained with Mikey—he’s kinda giving me my break. I mean, I went to film school, but I’m not fully legit just yet. Right now, I’m more like a . . . personal assistant.”
“That makes a lot more sense.” I nod.
“I promise—I’ll level with you if anything like that comes up going forward. I just wanted to be a big shot, you know?”
“I get that. This town is all about appearances, right?”
“So you won’t rat me out if we’re, say, hanging out somewhere and I call myself a producer to impress the ladies?”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I promise, earning me a sort of small hug from the man, who perks right back up.
“You know what I don’t like about this tour? It skips Wonderland,” Ramen says after a beat, annoyed. “I’ve brought it up to Roy several times, but he’s done dick about it. Skipping it is a real injustice.”
“What’s Wonderland?”
“Oh, Tom, man, you have got to learn some appreciation for your craft. Wonderland is one of the all-time great murder scenes in Hollywood lore. You know John Holmes at least, yeah?”
“Porn star? Big dick?” I ask.
“Huge dick. HUGE. It looked like a boa constrictor trying to swallow a peach. Lucky bastard. Well, he was also a notorious Roy-style druggie who was always posting freebies off people. Not an uncommon attitude for actors in this town. But back in ’81, Holmes was hanging out with a crew at a house on Wonderland Avenue, up in the hills. And he tells them about this house they can rob to get more money for drugs. So they rob the house, which belonged to this shady nightclub owner—a guy named Eddie Nash. Well, the story goes that Nash figured out scumbag John Holmes was involved, right? So he gets Holmes to leave the gate open at the Wonderland house and then Nash’s people went in and killed everyone there. John Holmes totally skated on the whole thing. But it’s an epic story and that it’s not a part of this tour is a goddamn tragedy.”
It’s an odd spectacle—the tour. In addition to looking at buildings and locations where death scenes happened, we also make several stops at places where the infamous buildings no longer exist. We see the spot where Brittany Murphy’s condo used to be, where O.J. Simpson’s house once was . . . I understand people have a fascination with death, but this shit is more in line with closing your eyes and picturing all the cavemen who might’ve died where you were standing. More incredulous were the people who actually took pictures of the dirt on the hillside where Brittany Murphy’s condo once was . . . imagine being stuck watching that slide show.
I finally decide to press the issue a little bit. “What would it take for you to help me with this Mikey issue?”
“What do you mean ‘help you’?” he asks, furtive.
“I need someone who has evidence of Mikey’s crimes—something that we can use against him.”
“But what could you possibly do to Mikey? You gonna make the public care? He’s too savvy. He’d find a way around it. Guys like him don’t go down that easily. Or are you gonna kill him like you did what’s-his-name? Andy?”
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do yet. But he’s gotta go down. And I can’t do it without your help. I was trying not to involve you—that’s why I went to Brandon Craig. But you’re in Mikey’s inner circle and I feel like you’re the only one I can trust.”
“You trust me?” Ramen says, seeming genuinely touched.
“I didn’t trust people—ever. But Ivy wormed her way in there and I guess you’re starting to as well.”
“Best death bus ride ever,” he exclaims loudly and several nearby people, minus the goths, cheer as well.
We’re paused outside more tall gates, these are protecting the shuttered fortress where Phil Spector killed Lana Clarkson, and Ramen turns to me. “You asked me about the Mikey Echo issue—how can you stop him?” He points at the jailed music producer’s Alhambra castle-like structure that we could peer at through our heightened vantage point atop the bus. “I say, you don’t have to. This is what happens to people like Mikey Echo, the crazy-powerful. Eventually time marches on and they just don’t matter anymore. They stop being all-powerful and just become forgotten celebrities. It’s then that they get taken down by their own megalomaniac’s view of the world. Phil Spector was a has-been who shot a never-was because he thought he could. Once upon a time he could have gotten away with murder. Now is a different story. In twenty years, Mikey Echo won’t be getting away with murder. In twenty years, Mikey is going to crash down upon the hard reality he has managed to live above his whole life. And he’s gonna die in a prison cell, shocked and confused about where and when it all changed. When he stopped being a demigod and started being a mortal.”
“Twenty years is too long for a guy like Mikey,” I say, clenching my fingers into a fist. “There won’t be anyone left in Hollywood for him to murder.”
“Sounds like you’re definitely doing this, then,” Ramen says frankly.
“I am. It all stops here. Going forward is you’re with me or you’re against me. No more playing both sides, Ragdesh. I’m going to take down Mikey Echo. Will you help me or not?”
Ramen smiles, as if bemused by the whole crazy idea of it. “Take down my boss? Usurp his throne? That’s how legends are minted in this town. Besides, I’m likely next on his chopping block anyhow. Fuck, let’s do it—let’s take down Mikey Echo.”
Chapter 14
Ivy is still sullen when I get home, as she has been the last two days. Even after I’d attempted to surprise her at the office, she’d pretty much come home, crawled into bed and stayed there for the rest of the night. I find her back in bed, watching Three Men and a Baby. “This is a nice change from the crime shows,” I try, sitting at the edge of the bed.
“I’m bored of crime right now,” she says, listless. “I just want to laugh.”
“You want to hear a joke?” I ask.
“You know a joke?” she says, actually lifting her head off the pillow to glimpse at me.
“Ramen just told me one today, actually. So there’s this guy . . .” I start, joke-telling not my strong suit, but at this point I’ll do anything to make her less mel
ancholy. “He’s tired of screwin’ his wife . . . so his friend says to him, ‘Hey, why don’t you do it like the Chinese do?’ So he says, ‘How do the Chinese do it?’ And the guy says, ‘Well, the Chinese, first they screw a little bit, then they stop, then they go and read a little Confucius, come back, screw a little bit more, then they stop again, go and they screw a little bit . . . then they go back and they screw a little bit more and then they go out and they contemplate the moon or something like that. Makes it more exciting.’ So now, the guy goes home and he starts screwin’ his own wife, see. So he screws her for a little bit and then he stops, and he goes out of the room and reads the TV Guide. Then he goes back in, he starts screwin’ again. He says, ‘Excuse me for a minute, honey.’ He goes out and he smokes a cigarette. Now his wife is gettin’ sore as hell. He comes back in the room, he starts screwin’ again. He gets up to start to leave again to go look at the moon. She looks at him and says, ‘Hey, what’s the matter with ya? You’re screwin’ just like a Chinaman!’”
Once my attempt at a joke is completed, Ivy merely drops her head back down on the pillow and resumes watching her show.
“What’s this really about?” I demand, standing up to block the TV.
“I want to meet your parents,” she repeats, flat.
“Where is this coming from?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying,” I say and though I don’t want it to, the anger is leaking out of me.
“I’ve decided it’s what’s going to make me happy now. It’s the only thing that’s gonna make me happy right now. That should be enough.”
“You don’t understand how they treated me . . . what they did . . .”
“They disowned you because you drunkenly killed a little girl. I think I understand perfectly well. Did you ever consider them in all of this? Maybe it was just too hard to process at the time? Maybe they couldn’t deal with visiting you in prison and that was the easiest way to make the separation? Right now, for me to not be upset every second I’m in the same room with you, I need you to go stand on your parents’ doorstep, reach out to them, and have them shut you down cold. Because maybe they don’t? Maybe they’ve softened or come to terms? Maybe they want to be a whole family again.” Ivy is up in the bed now, full of heated emotion to match mine. “I can understand that you’re scared and that you’re reluctant. But I need to see that you have it in you to try and be a human being. I need to see you be vulnerable. If they shoot you down, so be it. If they spit in your eye, I can accept that. But do you care enough about me? That’s what I want to know.”