Incubus

by L. J. Greene

  Chapter 4

  It didn’t take me long to make myself at home. I wasn’t exaggerating about my dearth of worldly possessions, but more than that, the Chateau itself was homey. The staff made it their business to be friendly and helpful but distant, and no one ever bothered me unless I wanted them to. I got into a routine fast enough. I made myself dry toast for breakfast and then I’d write. I’d work through lunch in a frenzy. I didn’t know if what I was writing was any good, but there sure was a lot of it.

  By mid afternoon I’d be done, feeling wiped out like I’d gone ten rounds with Joe Louis. I’d head to the pool and watch starlets trying not to get their hair wet or their faces tanned. I heard a lot of gossip and forgot more.

  Sometimes, if I had less patience for the company of others, I’d lie out in the backyard of the bungalow on one of the loungers and take in the sun. The garden was a nice cozy size, and even had a patch for vegetables if the occupants had a whim, but I stayed clear of it despite my itching green thumb. It spoke too much to my unrestrained fantasies of domesticity with the man paying for my services. No point planting something if I was going to abandon it down the line.

  But damned if the Italian hadn’t been right about it: living with all my whims catered to meant I had more time to think, and more time to write. I’d been struck with inspiration after seeing a desperate-eyed dame get left at the dinner table by her date. She’d ducked her head but I saw a tear splash into her cocktail glass. When she pulled herself together and drank it down, it was like she was destroying the evidence. She sashayed out of the restaurant with her head held high, and I figured any girl with that kind of gumption deserved immortalizing in fiction. I never saw her again, but I’d found the model for my heroine. I still needed my hero—and a plot. I wanted something to do with money, and the getting of it.

  Yes, Chateau Marmont was everything I’d ever hoped for. It could even service my gambling needs. There was always an available pool of long-legged boys camped out at the foot of the hotel driveway on Sunset. Any one of them would take a nickel to run my pony picks down to Jimmy Wu’s front shop.

  “What name, sir?” the kid asked, the first time I did it. He didn’t even ask the address, so I figured it was a usual thing.

  “You tell him it’s from his old buddy, Coleridge Fox,” I said, and added grandly, “With compliments.”

  Later that evening the concierge, who only ever went by the name Monsieur Antoine, stopped me on my way through to the dining room and passed on a packet with my name on the front and James X. Wu, Esq. on the back in beautiful flowing script.

  Glad you haven’t given up on the horses or I might have had to use persuasion. Your custom is always welcome. Balance enclosed.

  Suggest Trixie Fair next Wednesday in the third.

  Your best pal in the whole world,

  Jimmy

  I didn’t like what I read into his lines about persuasion, and I groaned as I peeked at the dough he’d included. He’d only sent me a few sawbacks as my win, probably to offset my last big triumph. But what was I going to do, make a complaint? Jimmy Wu took whatever vig he liked, and if I didn’t like it, I could go elsewhere. But no one else put up the kind of odds Jimmy did.

  The concierge, looking at the potted plant in the corner, murmured, “If monsieur would enjoy access to ready cash, the Chateau will be delighted to arrange…” He got so low and burbly that I could barely make him out, but I did catch the familiar name of Walker in there somewhere.

  “No thanks,” I said at once. “We’re already acquainted, and I don’t think the Chateau would be so delighted to clean up after a meeting between the Walker Boys and me.”

  The Walker Boys were named for the master they served—my regular loan shark, Pete Walker. Jimmy Wu could be your best friend, wise uncle and Santa Claus all in one. If he had his men bust your nose over the capital you owed, you ended up disappointed in yourself for letting him down but grateful he’d let it slide so long.

  Pete Walker, on the other hand, brooked no defiance. It was pay up, on time, or get rolled: thank you kindly for your business.

  No, Pete Walker was not an option. Besides, I didn’t need him. Jimmy had come through with another tip, and I had plenty of ready income from Mancini. Things were looking up.

  I did wonder for a moment how the concierge might have come to guess about my troubles, but I figured the name Jimmy Wu would have been enough of a clue. I tipped Monsieur Antoine for his trouble, and went on through to the restaurant.

  The Marmont restaurant was where I ate most nights, or else I got room service. My choice depended on how drunk I was, although as the days went by I found myself drinking less. Mancini was absent more often than not, but breezed in any old time it pleased him, without warning and with a fresh bottle of bourbon each time, even though I’d slowed up on it. The writing was more important to me than the hooch, and that was maybe the biggest surprise.

  Mancini was attentive when he was there, and read my pages with an intensity I hadn’t ever seen in my agent. “These are good,” he’d say, and frown.

  “What’s the matter?” I’d laugh. “You’re my patron; shouldn’t you be happy your investment’s paying off?” He’d put me off asking questions by taking me to bed, having me however he wanted, as many times as he wanted. Some nights he was insatiable, kept me up until dawn, left me aching and exhausted, and those times I had to skip the pool and make up my writing time in the afternoon.

  The man was an accomplished lover, though, I’ll give him that. He never made much noise, like he was holding himself back—only a small sigh when he finished, but he just about made me sing. In fact, I resolved to keep quieter after a run-in with my erstwhile neighbor one afternoon as I was heading back from the pool. I figured maybe it was the noise she objected to, because she sure objected to something about me.

  She was coming down the path from her bungalow, and jumped out of her skin at the sight of me. I had a towel slung around my neck and my bathing shorts on, so I was decent, but the way her hand fluttered to her throat you’d’ve thought I was as God made me.

  “Hullo, neighbor,” I said in a cheery sort of way. She was a real beauty, even under the immense hat and the sunglasses that took up half her face. She always wore that sunhat around the Chateau grounds, crownless so her hair was on display, the brim white and billowing around her shoulders like an upside-down magnolia. She reminded me of a flower herself: tall and reed-thin, her body the stem for her flowering headdress. Her skin was smooth, and her lips were full, made for kissing. She wore her fashionably platinum hair coiled in an elaborate braided bun on the top of her head.

  I hadn’t been with a woman for a while, and I can’t deny she made me miss it. I gave her my most charming smile, but she looked away from me.

  “Lo siento, no hablo inglés,” she muttered, and took off down the path.

  Twenty years ago Harry Cohn, king of the casting couch, had told his contracted stars that if they were going to get into trouble, they should do it at Chateau Marmont. My observations around the place told me that the sentiment still held, so this dame might have been an actress, but I couldn’t place her if she was.

  But whatever else she was, she sure seemed to be in trouble.

  I took a moment to appreciate her quickly-retreating figure before I continued on to my bungalow. My bungalow. That was how I was thinking of it now. Mancini kept a few changes of clothes there and some magazines and a shaving kit, but the place was filling up with me now. My books, my papers. My new clothes, too; part of our arrangement was a liberal weekly stipend, which I was happily putting to use. Yellow envelopes stuffed with cash appeared with regularity on my writing desk, as though putting them where I worked made it all above board. I was even able to send a tidy sum off to my Ma. After my father died, Ma’d moved to Iowa to live with my sister Katie and her corn-farmer husband. I didn’t like to think of Ma wanting for anything, and helping her made me feel good inside, like I was finally becoming the re
spectable son she’d always deserved.

  Thanks to my parents, I’d worked in the film industry most of my life: I grew up on set because my folks used to take me with them when they worked bit-parts. My first job was bringing coffee and newspapers for the stars on early morning shoots, and my first paid job was running script changes back and forth between the studio and the set. I got quick and agile on my feet, used to dodging around the big stars at top speed. I got a dime a day for my fast legs, and a chance to watch the writers at work. The actors were only background noise to me, because I knew the real power wasn’t in front of the camera but behind it.

  But somehow, being at the Chateau I found myself falling for that Los Angeles glamor even though I knew about the writhing underbelly of the industry. One night I fell in love with Marilyn Monroe while I watched her across the restaurant dining room, and the next I couldn’t help myself making eyes at Montgomery Clift while he waited in the lobby for his car to be brought round. In the dim light I’d taken him for Mancini, a serendipity that led to a dinner invitation from him. Kim Novak let me light her cigarette by the pool one day, and the look she gave me kept my heartstrings humming all weekend.

  I’d been tossed in among a candy-mix of Hollywood stars and I was enjoying myself thoroughly. This was it, I thought—this was everything I had ever been meant for, and all I had to do was keep Mancini happy and write like the devil.

  It occurred to me one afternoon that I hadn’t been to Schwab’s for a while, so I strolled down Sunset Boulevard and went in there to buy a packet of cigarettes and a newspaper. The Examiner was still pushing the Incubus killer without any new information, and the other papers had grudgingly picked it up, though they were avoiding the nickname. The Examiner had a new photograph of the latest victim, white-blonde and buxom and pouting into a microphone, but she looked awkward somehow. Her eyes were full of uncertainty. Lynette Rochelle, her name was. Funny, I hadn’t noticed her name before. Sounded like a put-on to me, but then a man named Coleridge can’t talk. I shrugged and skipped to page two.

  I was greeted by some industry acquaintances who remarked on how well I was looking—particularly for someone on the outs with the studio. I just tapped the side of my nose, grinned at their curiosity, and turned to the pony results to see if I’d won anything. Nada. But it didn’t bite like it used to, not now I had a safety net.

  I was seated at the counter and halfway through a muddy cup of joe, bolstered with a little extra from my hipflask, when someone clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Fox, you bastard. Where’ve you disappeared to?”

  When you’ve become accustomed to fending off demands for payment, like I was then, you don’t take kindly to claps on the shoulder. Especially not when I had Walker on my mind already. I whipped around. “The hell do you want?” I snarled. “Oh, it’s just you, King.”

  “That’s no way to greet a mate,” he said, injured. Fred King’s Antipodean accent attracted attention wherever he went, and every head at the counter swiveled to look at us. He’d once told me he stowed away on an American sub after the war, but I never knew if it was the God’s honest truth or not. I wouldn’t have put it past him.

  “A mate, eh? Is that what you are?” But I shuffled over a bit to give him room to sit.

  “Don’t be like that,” he wheedled. “I’ve been looking for you. I told you I might have something coming up. Well, it’s come up alright. The Examiner wants you to do an interview.” He ordered a glass of milk, put his hat on the counter, and took one of my cigarettes without asking.

  I pushed away the dregs of my coffee. I was used to something smoother now at the Chateau, and even the splash of bourbon I’d added to it couldn’t save it. “Sorry, Fred, I found something of my own.”

  He gave me a friendly smile, but there was a vein throbbing away under his left eye. “Aw, don’t say that. Come on, you know you need the work.”

  “I’m telling the truth, Freddie. Found myself a post. Can’t you tell?” I nodded down at my shoes, brand new and bought only yesterday. They shone like lightbulbs on the end of my toes.

  “Huh,” he said, looking down. He fiddled with his cigarette and got quiet.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked at last.

  He looked past my shoulder, and then at my left wrist. “I was just hoping to send you to this interview. You seemed like the right fit. They wanted something…Gatsbian.”

  “Gatsbian?” I was intrigued and, I’ll admit it, flattered. “As in, The Great?”

  King nodded emphatically and drank off his milk in one go. “That’s what they said, and I thought of you.” He wiped away his milk-mustache with the back of his hand.

  “What’s the job?”

  “Some English toff, Lord Crosspatch. Here, I’ll write it down for you.”

  He scribbled it on a napkin and I read it out loud. “Lord—what is it, Cress-wick-ham?”

  “They say it different than how it’s spelled,” King said with a shrug. “Swallow down all the syllables. Anyhow, they want a piece on him—what’s he like, what’s he spent his money on, how much debauchery goes on in his house, that sort of thing. Colorful, faintly disapproving; you know the tone they like. And the paper asked for you, specific-like. Said they’d read your other stuff and it would suit the piece.” He could see me about to demur again, so he put the boot in. “You’d be doing me a favor if you took it. I could use the commission.”

  I sighed. “Damn it, Freddie.”

  “Good man.” He grinned with hard relief. “I’ll send over the details. Where are you living now, anyway? Finally get evicted from your rat hole? I’ve been trying you there and here all week.” He scooped up his hat and replaced it on his head, jamming it down.

  I walked with him to the door. “You can leave it at Chateau Marmont.”

  He whistled and stopped dead outside. “You weren’t kidding about a new post. How’d you swing that?”

  I settled my hat at an angle and winked at him. “Just send the details, Fred. I’ll get you your commission.”

  I set off back to the Marmont and got a block down before I remembered I’d left my cigarettes on the counter. I wheeled back around to collect them, but when I reached Schwab’s, I saw Fred King a little way down the street, arguing with someone in a town car. The windows were reflecting lights, and I couldn’t see much more than a faint silhouette inside. I’d rarely seen King lose his temper—he was an easy-going fellow and enjoyed his life to the full—but there he was, gesticulating and waving his hat around.

  Curious, I slipped into a doorway and made myself inconspicuous. The argument ended seconds later when King kicked the front tire. The car screeched off, heading away from me down Sunset. King watched it go, his shoulders slumped. Eventually, he replaced his hat and shuffled off down a side alley.

  I collected my cigarettes and made my way back to the Chateau, wondering. But by the time I arrived at the bungalow I was whistling again. Fred King’s problems, after all, were not mine.

  Chapter 5

  That night I was yanked out of my writing stupor when I heard the bungalow door smash open. I wandered out of the study in a daze to see Mancini across the room, glaring at me from beneath his brows.

  There was no Hello, friend this time. He stalked his big cat stalk across to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Where were you today? I called. There was no answer.”

  “Hey, stop that. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  He gripped me a mite harder before letting me go and wiping the sweat from his upper lip. He was in disarray, for him at least: his hair flopping forward and his shirt unbuttoned at the throat under a loosened tie. It had some school crest on it I didn’t recognize. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “That was ungentlemanly of me.”

  “That’s a fine thing to say for someone who’s spent himself on my face,” I said spitefully, and he gave me a pained glance.

  “There’s no need to be vulgar.”

  “It’s no more vulgar to say
it than it is to do it. What’s biting you, anyway? Why should it matter where I’ve been today?”

  He poured us both a bourbon, and thrust mine into my hand, waiting until I’d drunk it half down before sipping his own. “Have you seen any familiar faces today? Here at the hotel, or on the streets? Maybe someone you’ve seen before once or twice?”

  “Not so’s I’ve noticed, no.” I accepted a top-up to my drink and thought better of telling him I’d been down at Schwab’s. “What’s going on? Tell me straight.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, sweeping it back from his formidable brows. He was pale, his dark features standing out like charcoal smudges on paper.

  I thought I’d caught on. “Has your wife found out? Is that it? She’s hired a private dick to follow us around?”

  “Wife?” He stared at me.

  “You mentioned her once, that first time. Alice.”

  He gave an impatient shake of the head. “Alice has nothing to do with this. But yes, I think you might be being followed. I have—” He hesitated, and then: “—associates who would have an interest in doing so.”

  I sat down on one sofa and he sat on the other, hunched over and worried.

  “You telling me you’ve got…Family connections?”

  There it was again, that look, like I was a gelding on its first run and he was calculating my odds. “Let’s just say,” he said slowly, “that I think it would be best if you don’t go out for a few days. Not into town. Stay here at the Chateau.”

  “Nix on that,” I said at once. “A man’s got to be free to come and go.” I’ve always rankled at people giving me orders. Made life difficult as a lowly scriptwriter, I can tell you. “Besides, a job’s come in.”

  Mancini chewed on his bottom lip. “Job? What job?”

  “Interview for a daily paper. They asked for me. Want a story on some rich English blueblood, and I said I’d get it for ’em. So that’s what I plan to do.”