Chapter Sixteen
By the time he reached Hartford’s place, it was almost three. Vish, who was compulsively early by nature, was furious with himself for underestimating how long it would take to get there. He’d given himself an ample cushion of time, he thought, but the journey had sucked up his afternoon. A bus to downtown, a subway to Hollywood, and then on foot into the hills, hiking up twisting roads that snaked in all directions and ended without warning. His map led him astray. He was parched and sweaty by the time he reached the mansion.
He rang a buzzer beside the front gate, which swung open and allowed him access. He walked up a cobblestone circular driveway to a pair of enormous doors flanked by white concrete pillars. Only a single story tall, the mansion sprawled over enough space for four or five more modestly-sized houses. The exterior was painted flat yellow, the color of buttercups, and had a low white concrete porch. The huge windows on either side of the door had no curtains; Vish could see straight through the house, all the way through the sliding doors against the back wall to the swimming pool in the backyard.
Lon Hartford answered the door. He might’ve been in his seventies, maybe even older, but his deeply-tanned skin was tight and smooth, and his swept-back hair was dark and glistening. In one hand he held a tall glass filled with mint leaves and what could be tea or bourbon. “You must be Vish. Come in, come in. Call me Lon.”
Lon ushered him into the house. He clapped Vish on the shoulder, like they’d known each other for years. “I’m sitting out by the pool. Join me for a drink.” He wore a pale yellow golf shirt and white linen pants. He was barefoot, and it looked like he’d had a recent pedicure.
Just beyond the front entrance was a dining area. Bare walls and pale wood floors, an enormous white marble dining table surrounded by eight high-backed white leather chairs arranged at evenly-spaced intervals. The dining area connected to the living room with little indication to show where one started and one ended, all part of the same open space.
The living room featured a sofa and two vast armchairs upholstered in a sickly yellow suede, like gigantic pats of warm margarine. A shaggy white rug enveloped the floor. He should’ve taken his shoes off by the door, followed Lon’s lead and gone barefoot, because there was no way he’d be able to walk across that rug without tracking dust from the canyon roads.
Unlike the dining area, the walls in the living room weren’t bare. Vish wished they were. Eight oil paintings in total, huge unframed canvases hanging high on the walls, done in vivid pinks and roses and beiges and browns. Headless naked women were featured in all of them, bulging breasts and tiny waists and long, long legs, entwined in erotic positions with each other. The heads looked like they’d been severed just under the chin, a glimpse of cut bone and sawed flesh at the top of the neck stumps.
It was seriously creepy.
Lon glanced at him sideways as they passed, gauging his reaction. Vish kept his face neutral. “Amazing work, isn’t it?” Lon said. He raised his glass and saluted the paintings. “Local artist. Talented fellow, divinely gifted. He worships the female form.”
Though not the female face. Vish made some noise of polite acknowledgement.
They moved on through the sliding doors to the backyard. The pool glittered in the sunlight, blue and clear. It’d been overcast by the beach; here in the hills, it was sunny and stark, the low sun and cloudless sky conspiring to make Vish feel exposed.
A teenaged girl in a gold-and-green bikini sprawled on her stomach in a lounge chair, eyes closed, the fingertips of one hand stroking the pavement. She glanced up and saw Lon and Vish, then stood and, without a word, moved to a small mobile wet bar set up in the shade by the house. She picked up a set of tongs and flicked ice cubes from a teak bucket into a tall glass. She splashed something from a pitcher over the ice, then padded over and thrust the glass at Vish.
“Ah… thank you,” Vish said, but she padded off without acknowledging him. She slipped inside the sliding door and yanked it shut behind her, leaving Vish alone with Lon.
“Sit. Please.” Lon gestured toward one of the teak recliners surrounding the pool. He smiled, his teeth flashing white against his tan.
Vish sat on the edge of the recliner. He took a tentative sip of his drink. Iced tea, strong and sticky-sweet, a chemical blast of peach flavoring. Lon pulled around a chair to face him, then sat and beamed at him. “So I hear you’re looking for Sparky.”
“Yes, sir,” Vish said. “I met him at a party a while ago, and he offered to read a book I’ve written, but I don’t have any way to contact him.”
Lon nodded. “So you’re a writer. Good, good. Work on anything I’ve heard of?”
“I’m currently writing for Interstellar Boys,” Vish said. Sort of the truth, more of a lie.
Lon kept nodding. “Good show. Good stuff.” Another smile. The skin around his mouth pulled tightly over his chin and cheeks, lending his face a skeletal appearance. He sat back in his chair. “I’ve known Sparky for an awfully long time. He’s got a good eye for talent. If he’s interested in you, it probably means you know your craft.”
“I don’t know that much about him,” Vish said. “But he seemed like a pretty cool guy.”
The smile twisted a bit. Almost a grimace, and then it relaxed. “He’s quite a fellow.”
“Did he work with you?” Vish asked.
“He took over from me.” Another tight smile. “Took my clients. What the hell. It was time I retire anyway, huh?”
“What does he do, exactly?” Vish asked. “Is he an agent, or a manager, or...?”
“He runs things.” Lon looked out over the pool and shook his head. “Runs pretty much everything in this industry, really. If there ever was a man behind the curtain, that’s Sparky. He does a hell of a job of it, too. Better than I could, then or now.”
“There’s so little information about him out there,” Vish said.
Lon nodded. “He likes it that way. He controls the flow. It adds to his legend, I suppose.”
He was still staring at the pool, his expression distant. Just as Vish wondered if he should say something to fill the void, Lon returned to the present and faced him again.
“Kelsey Kirkpatrick’s party. Was he there to see you?”
It took Vish a moment to follow him. “Ah… No. I saw him at the party, but I barely got a chance to talk to him. I first met him about a month before that.”
He wasn’t sure Lon was even listening to him. “He wanted to go to that party. He asked for my invitation. I wondered why, but it’s not the sort of thing I could ask him.”
“Why not?” Vish asked. “Wouldn’t he have told you?”
“He probably would have. And that’s the problem. The more Sparky tells you about his life, the worse off you are.” He gestured at Vish with his drink. “Which is why I’m not asking for your story, son. You’ve got your reasons for finding him, and if he wants to see you, he’ll see you, but I don’t need to know about it.”
Lon took a long drink of his tea, then appeared to reach some conclusion. He nodded to himself.
“He moves his offices a lot. I don’t know his current number, if he even has a phone right now, but he’s set himself up in the Beverly Center these days. You want to see him, try there.”
“The Beverly Center?” Vish frowned. “Are there offices there?”
“That’s irrelevant to Sparky. He wants to set up in a place, he’ll do it, and the place will adapt to his needs.” Lon set his empty glass on the cement beside his chair. “Ask around. Someone should be able to point you in the right direction.”
Vish nodded. “Okay. Thank you,” he said. He rose.
Lon got to his feet as well. He extended a hand; Vish shook it. Lon’s hand was dry and withered, as light as a pile of twigs, and his grip had no power behind it.
“Tell him I helped you,” Lon said. His tone was light, but Vish thought he detected something sneaking out behind the words, something tense and almost frantic. “Mention my
name, will you? Let him know it was me.”
“Of course.”
Lon smiled and patted him on the shoulder. He walked with him back into the house, through the living room with the creepy paintings, and out the front door. The gate stood wide open, and just the sight of the road beyond it made Vish feel relieved. This was the kind of place where someone could disappear forever.
When he was safely on the road, ready to retrace his meandering journey back home, he glanced back at the house. Lon was still standing barefoot on the concrete porch and staring after him. Lon waved his glass at him in farewell. Vish returned the wave. His hand trembled.
Wrong City Page 16