Angel of the Abyss

14

In Boise, at the Knights of Columbus Lodge and, later, for the Elks, and the Masons, and the Buffaloes, little Gracie Baronsky sang, pirouetted, and acted out scenes from popular plays. She brandished an oversized lollipop at her thin audiences, serenaded them with Irving Berlin. Lifted her skirts to reveal plump bloomers in imitation of Gold Rush dancing girls, though she was only nine herself. She earned chortles and smatterings of applause. Aunt Eustace earned twenty dollars a week for her protégé’s efforts, when the week was good. And when a given week wasn’t so good, Eustace had other means for procuring Idahoan stages for her sister’s only child, her meal ticket. Everyone had to make sacrifices when the prospects looked so bright. The stage aunt lifted her skirts, too — and when that wouldn’t do, she waited in lobbies, worrying the fray of her shawl, while the starlet-to-be secured her place in another variety or benefit show in the balmy embraces of men who could determine her immediate future.

But Idaho, the elder woman knew, was peanuts. Nobody in Boise would have thought twice about the pictures when little Gracie was prancing around the lodges, but that was before the Empire Theatre opened its doors to reveal the wondrous spectacle that was Intolerance. Then they knew, Eustace and Gracie. They knew the heartland was dried up, a dustbowl. It was time to Go West.

It was time to make Grace Baronsky a real star.

Frank stood in the doorway in a threadbare seersucker suit with a wilting dandelion protruding from a buttonhole. He smiled abashedly, and Grace stifled a laugh by covering her mouth.

“I almost never wear it,” he said by way of apology. “My ma’s funeral was the last time, I guess. Only suit I ever owned.”

“I think you look delectable.”

“Is that a good thing to look like?”

His cheeks reddened. Grace shook her head, grabbed her bag, and went out to the walkway with him. When they reached the curb, she looked out at the half dozen cars parked on either side of the street and said, “Which one is yours?”

“None of ‘em,” Frank answered. “I walked here.”

“Nobody walks in Hollywood, Frank.”

“They do if they don’t have a car.”

“That’s what taxicabs are for.”

“I only earn so much, Grace — a taxicab would cut into our entertaining budget.”

“God almighty,” she said with a small chuckle. “You’re really not the Hollywood type, are you?”

“I’m just an apprentice electrician,” he said. “I’m no type at all.”

She squinted at his square face in the lean light of the street lamp and tried to find falsehood, a chink in his armor. When she found none, she swung her hip out and walked around him, due west.

“Come along then, Mr. Electrician. I know a grand place to walk to.”

Over roast lamb with currant jelly, the imminent star and the apprentice electrician looked to fellow diners like a lady and her valet, but neither of them noticed or cared. Frank devoured his meal with relish, as a man starved, while Graced picked at hers and asked pointed questions of her escort.

“Do you make it a habit,” she began, “to invite actresses to dinner in your racket?”

“I have a heap of habits,” said Frank, “but no, that ain’t one of them.”

“What led the charge then, Custer?”

“The truth?”

“Not one of the most seen habits in my racket, but sure — why not?”

“You seem lonesome,” he said, and he stabbed the second-to-last piece of his lamb into his mouth.

Grace knitted her brow and paused, stricken silent for a moment. When she recovered, she said, “I’ve heard it said that the bigger the city, the more lonesome its people.”

“You weren’t lonesome back east?”

“Boise is hardly back east…” she said, deflecting. “I guess I was. I guess everybody is, in their own way. Aren’t we all just kind of trapped up here?” She tapped her temple with her index finger. “There’s a lot of skin and bone between my brain and yours, and all those miscommunications and different perspectives, besides.”

“Why, Miss Baron. I didn’t know you were a philosopher, to boot.”

“I’m a clever old girl, all right.”

“A clever, lonesome girl.”

“We’re back to that.”

“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “I was only trying to be honest. Maybe it’s just the character. The girl you play in the movie, I mean. Seems like I sort of know her a bit better than I know you.”

“Poor Clara,” Grace lamented. “She is a lonely sort, isn’t she? But I’d hate to get confused with her.”

“You don’t come from any abyss,” he assured her. “An angel, maybe. But just the regular kind.”

“The kind that strums harps on clouds?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I never went in for all that Sunday school hocus pocus. Just the pretty kind, I suppose. The good kind.”

“I wouldn’t want to be any kind of angel,” Grace said. She poked at what remained of her supper, moving the pieces around the plate. “I thought angels were what used to be people. The good ones, sure. But, you know. Dead.”

“Like Clara.”

“Forget Clara. You’ve got Grace here with you, Frank. I’m real. Alive and real, and yes, a little lonesome. You can’t fix that, and I wouldn’t think there’s anyone who can, but we’re here together right now and this is a very lovely meal and for Christ’s sake let’s not talk about the damned picture.”

His eyes blinking, Frank sat up straight, knife and fork still in his hands, and sputtered for a few seconds before he ultimately erupted into a peal of throaty laughter. He laughed so hard that people at the adjacent tables started to pause their own conversations to have a look. When he finally began to catch his breath again, Frank laid his silverware down on the edges of the plate, wiped his mouth with the napkin in his lap, and said, “It’s a real horror, isn’t it?”

Grace’s mouth twitched, turned up into something like a smile.

“Oh, you noticed?”

“All I do is wire the lights, doll. I’m no critic. But I’ve worked a few shows so far and I’ve seen a mess of ‘em, and by God this one…”

“Jack Parson says he’s found the secret to turn it into art.”

Frank smirked.

He said, “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”

“Don’t you want to know the secret?”

“Tell me.”

“Darkness.”

“I don’t follow.”

She showed her palms and shrugged. “There you have it,” she said.

“A real horror,” Frank repeated.

A colored busboy swept the plates away like a phantom while a girl with a red bowtie appeared to inquire about dessert. Frank winked at Grace, letting her in on the code. He ordered a ginger ale, imported. Grace made it two. The girl returned shortly with two old-fashioneds.

“To your health,” Grace toasted.

“And may your star shine in Hollywood forever,” said Frank.

“Just keep the lights on me, baby.”

On the walk back, Grace hummed “Me and My Shadow” while Frank kept pace with her small, quick steps. His hands were stuffed in his trouser pockets and a cigarette smoldered between his grinning lips. Her bungalow was still four blocks off, as blocks in Hollywood went, when a hiss sounded between a nickel-and-dime store and a shuttered diner, in the narrow alley. Frank paused, peered into the shadows.

“That you, Petey?” he called out.

Grace stopped a few feet up, went silent and stared.

“Frank?”

“What’s the idea, Petey?”

Frank edged toward the alley and Grace stepped forward as a loud report split the air with a flash of bright white light. The flash only lasted a second but lingered, ghost-like, in Grace’s eyes. She screamed and Frank doubled over, rolling away from the alley and backing up against the front of the diner.

“Frank!”

“Get back,” he croaked. “Go home, Grace.”

“You chasing girls now, Frank?” a voice jeered from the darkness. “Oughtn’t be spending money on gashes when you’re in the red, boy.”

The alley oozed out a squat figure, a fireplug of a man whose face was obscured by the brim of his hat. In his hand was clutched a small revolver. Grace’s breath hitched in her breast as she shot her eyes from the gun back to Frank, who was fighting to produce one of his own from the inside pocket of his threadbare coat. The gunman saw Grace first, turned to her so that the revolver was aimed at her. Her neck flushed hot; the lamb and whiskey did somersaults in her gut.

“Don’t,” she squeaked.

The man Frank called Petey lurched forth, scanning the dark street around her. The shadows seemed to seize Grace by the temples, squeezing in on her like a vise. Then another shot rang out and the gunman grunted. He bent at the knees and threw his torso backward. The gun dropped from his fist and clattered on the sidewalk. The echo of the metal against stone crashed in Grace’s ears as loudly as the shot.

The hat fell from the man’s head and he stepped awkwardly to the side. His greasy brown hair spilled rivulets of blood down his brow like red ribbons. It ran into his eyes and his jaw fell open with a yawning groan before he collapsed and lay still. Behind him, Frank still held up his own weapon, a jet-black pistol. His free hand grasped his right side. Blood leaked between his fingers.

“Are you all right?” he said, his voice tremulous.

“God, Frank,” she said. “You’re shot.”

“Get home, Grace,” Frank said. “Get home. Now.”

There was muffled shouting in the middle distance. A dog barked. Grace took one last look at the dead man between her and Frank and spun on her two-inch heel to speed over the four blocks home.

She was behind a double locked door before she realized she must have left her bag at the scene, as it wasn’t with her now. Dropped it in her panic, she thought. Her breath came in short, spastic gusts. She didn’t dare switch on the lights.

It was the second killing Grace had ever witnessed, and it occurred to her that it didn’t get easier to see it.

15

“I need you to wake up, dude,” I said. I was trying to sound assertive. In response, all Graham did was beep — or at least that’s what all the sci-fi machinery he was plugged into did. “I’m supposed to be your wingman here. The sidekick. I’m Robin, for fuck’s sake.”

The one eye not mummified by all the bandaging encasing his head stayed closed and disturbingly bluish. I couldn’t tell if his chest was rising and falling at all, but it sure didn’t look like it was. But the machines kept on beeping and the oxygen pump kept on pumping. I didn’t figure they went to all that trouble for a corpse.

Florence Sommer was dead, her throat slashed. Graham was supposed to be dead too, but apparently he hadn’t gotten the memo. Somebody went to the trouble of putting a bullet in his head, and from what I gathered that usually got the job done. Not so here. By the time I’d arrived at Good Samaritan he’d been through the worst of it—it in this case being a bullet that split his skull and nicked his brain — but the stubborn son of a bitch forgot to die. I told him I loved him for that, and I added “no homo” for good measure when I realized one of the nurses was listening in.

That would have gotten a rise out of him if he’d heard me. He didn’t.

“Goddamnit, Graham.”

He didn’t like me much. Like a champ he acted like he did when he didn’t have to, but I knew better. I got on his nerves. I got on a lot of people’s nerves, and for the most part I couldn’t really care less. With Graham, I cared. I liked the guy, even if the feeling wasn’t mutual. My grandmother would have said he was a good egg, because that was what he was. Somehow, despite it all, I still considered him a friend. Probably the best I had. And here he was, in a coma with tubes in his nose and mouth and veins and head. One in his dick, too; a goddamn catheter. Maybe a vegetable. They didn’t know yet. I wanted to break something.

I finished out the old movie after he took off to catch lead with his noggin. It was incomplete, but still pretty long. I never made it a habit to watch movies with no sound, but this was important, so I paid attention. My general analysis was that it was a weird fucking movie. Not just because it was silent, though that added to the vibe. More of a Tarantino man, myself, Death Proof notwithstanding.

Anyway, all the sharp angles of the sets, the stark black and white of the costumes, and the performances — I was never one to put much stock into the hammy acting of silent-film actors, but with only their faces and bodies with which to transmit the characters, these people did some quality transmitting. When the girl got kidnapped, I felt her fear. And when they killed her…well, I jumped in my seat, honest to God. You get in a certain frame of mind watching movies that old, like you’re correcting for the times, for the severe content restrictions. Whoever was overseeing the censorship department for this baby was sleeping on the job that day. That shit was intense.

I got ushered out of the room by a nurse whose weight problem was overruled by her massive cans, a sight I would have loved to tell Graham all about. He would have rolled his eyes, told me I was a pig. He’d have been right. Christ, I was missing him already and he wasn’t even dead yet. I made my way past the bacon guarding the room to the elevator and slinked outside to track down a cab.

Since I didn’t have any biddies with more money than sense fitting the bill for my stay in L.A., I didn’t have the good digs Graham got set up with. I was staying at a no-tell motel six blocks southeast from Mann’s Chinese, which was more or less my old stomping grounds before the floor fell out from under me. With no place else to go, that’s where I had the cabbie take me. But before I went back to my room, I stopped off at the package store across the street to stock up on middle-shelf bourbon. The Egyptian clerk called me “boss.” I brought the bottle back to my room and sipped it from a Styrofoam cup in front of a late-night talk show where some lunatic pop star was trying to make her insipid record sound important. Nobody did anything important anymore, even I knew that.

In the next room, somebody was getting some action. I assumed it was bought, but I never begrudged anybody their vices. Hell, I was halfway thinking about calling up Pink Dot for some beer, hot dogs, and porno mags. Thinking about Graham in that terrible state at the hospital put the kibosh on that, but quick.

When the late show was over and the bottle was depleted by half, I was about ready to crash out had it not been for the knock at my door. I don’t know about anybody else, but anybody knocking on a motel room door is cause for alarm in my book, triply so at that hour. I didn’t have a peephole, so I cracked the filthy curtains and peered out the window. It was a ginger cop with a sour puss. He wasn’t in any kind of uniform, but the guy behind him was, and the redhead showed a badge to me through the glass.

“Detective Shea, Hollywood police,” he said, just like on TV. “Are you Jacob Maitland?”

I unlocked the guard chain and opened the door for him.

I said, “Hiya, Shea,” or something like it.

“Mr. Maitland,” he answered, putting his badge away. The uniform standing a few feet behind him eyeballed me like I was going to do something. I flashed a goofy grin at him.

“Deputy Pyle,” I said.

I don’t think he got it.

Shea pressed into the room, not waiting for an invitation. At least I knew he wasn’t a vampire.

A Three’s Company repeat was on the television. Shea switched it off.

“You like movies, don’t you, Maitland?”

I tipped my cup to my mouth, disappointed to find it already empty. As I refilled it with a few fingers, I said, “That’s kind of our game, Graham and me.”

Only half-true — Graham did actually make a living doing something film related. I sat at the front desk for a water company in Worchester writing screenplays that would never see the light of day. Kind of a game, still.

“Y’know how in the movies the cops always tell people to stay in town during an investigation?” Shea asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Well, for one thing, that’s bullshit. We can’t make you do anything like that. And another thing, I’m going to suggest — strike that, strongly suggest — that you go on home. First thing.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “I don’t recall ever seeing that in a movie.”

“Maybe you movie people should come talk to us more often.”

“You seem pretty busy as it is.”

“You can say that again,” Shea groused. He added: “I’m really sorry about your friend.”

“He’s not dead yet.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know you didn’t,” I said. “I’m a little drunk.”

“No law against it.”

“Used to be, you know,” I slurred. It’s hell feeling sober in your brain when your mouth and limbs don’t want to act like it. “Back when our girl Gracie shuffled off this mortal coil. You couldn’t drink back then, you know. Shit was illegal as hell.”

“Seems like I heard about that. Mind if I smoke in here?”

I grimaced, said, “Yes, I do. Sorry, copper. One nice thing about Graham being down and out is I don’t have to breathe that filth anymore. Don’t you get started, too.”

“No harm, no foul,” said Shea.

“No foul, no harm,” I stammered. I swallowed down the contents of my cup, made a face and hissed.

“You’re hitting that sauce pretty hard,” Shea said. “I’d like to talk to you some more, but it doesn’t seem much prudent now. Are you leaving tomorrow, like I suggested? I could interview you by phone, no problem.”

“Maybe I’m a suspect,” I said stupidly. “You’d want to keep a suspect around, wouldn’t you?”

“All right, go ahead and shut up now. I mean it. You don’t want to get yourself in trouble, kid.”

“I’m thirty-two.”

“I’m just telling you.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

I filled my cup again. Shea sighed. The uniform lingering outside the open door looked ready for anything. I sneered at him.

“We’re going before you dig a hole you can’t get out of,” Shea said. He dug a card out of his pocket and laid it gingerly on top of the television he’d turned off. I wondered what shenanigans Jack Tripper was up to by now. “My info. Call me when you’re not falling down drunk, would you? For your buddy.”

“For my buddy,” I toasted, and that shot went down hot, too. My stomach roiled.

The detective said, “Christ, take it easy.”

“Free country, Kojak,” was what I said back.

I’m a terrible drunk. Shit, I admit it.

I woke up with a monster headache and no intention to return home whatsoever. It was fifteen past noon and after chugging a cup of gas station coffee I found a place that sold breakfast greasy enough to take off the edge so I could decide what was next. I wasn’t about to leave Graham half-dead in the hospital with Christ-knew-who gunning for his ass just to go back to my shitty job in Massachusetts like none of this nightmare ever happened. I may have felt a little arrogant for having considered it, but as far as I was concerned this was my problem now. Angel of the Abyss and Grace Baron and why nice old ladies had to die because of them.

And my friend with a chunk of skull missing for our trouble.

I was a long sight far from ready, but more than fucking able. I swallowed a pound of eggs, bacon, and pancakes like they were the medicine of the gods and stepped back out onto Hollywood Boulevard like a man reborn, ready for anything. This was my game, now. If only I knew the damn rules.

I paid for my meal, left a chintzy tip. Went outside. I wanted a drink and planned on having one. There were a dozen bars within spitting distance, just like I remembered the old neighborhood. I’d ask the bartender for gin, because gin was my thinking drink. After all, I had some thinking to do. About how to help my friend Graham, who didn’t deserve everything that had happened to him.

And the main thing I thought of to help him was finding his ex-wife, Helen.

That one was going to require a few rounds.

16

“Right before the turn of the century, just a couple years into this crazy game, the state of Maine enacted the first law censoring motion pictures in this country,” Jack Parson said, tugging on his bottom lip.

Grace stood behind him, looking at the back of his head with her arms crossed beneath her breasts. She had gone to his temporary office housed in the lot’s hinterlands to ask about the apprentice electrician — in the vaguest terms possible — and found her director mesmerized. In front of him, a makeshift screen made from a white sheet flickered brightly and silently as bloody mayhem unfolded atop the staircase ashore of the dreadnought Potemkin.

“It was prizefight pictures they had a problem with. A couple of fellows pummeling the sense out of one another, the oldest sport in history. Too violent, they said. And violence, as anyone knows, begets violence.”

Lines of riflemen in white tunics marched down the steps, firing indiscriminately into a fleeing crowd of hundreds. Cripples vied to avoid the running feet while a small boy was trampled underneath them to the horror of his screaming mother.

“But those were merely exhibitions,” Jack continued as the blood flowed down the Odessa steps. “The real strike came around ’15 when Ohio put together a board of censors with the power to arrest anybody who showed a picture they didn’t approve of. You know what the court said? They said that pictures ‘may be used for evil.’ Evil, Gracie. Out here in Movieland, most folks didn’t like the sound of that. So Mutual Film Corp. sued. And they lost. Because pictures are commerce, not art. That was the Supreme Court’s ruling by the way. Pictures aren’t art. Now it’s not just far-flung Ohio. Now it’s the whole of America. And here in Hollywood, we’ve got that Puritan son of a bitch Will Hayes stirring up the pot. Making sure we aren’t inciting loose morals. Mad sex. Murder and the like.”

A pretty young woman covered her infant in its perambulator with her body, panicked and faced with the marching horde. The tsar’s men shot her down and the pram went rolling crazily down the steps as an old woman in pince-nez spectacles ran to the scene, desperate to save the child. She was too late: a soldier drew his sword and smashed the blade across her face, leaving a gruesome jumble of broken glass, flowing blood, impotent shrieks.

Grace’s gorge rose in her throat, the memory of a man called Petey dead on the street still fresh in her mind. She shut her eyes for a moment and felt the sweat bead on her brow.

“There!” Jack cried, jabbing his finger toward the screen. “Did you see it? Did you see that, Gracie? That is the essence of humanity. That is the difference between entertainment and art. It shows you something, it holds up a mirror to your own ugliness. The darkness, Gracie. The art is in the darkness.”

“It’s ghastly, Jack. Shut it off.”

He went rigid for a moment, then slowly turned in his chair to look at her for the first time since she entered. His eyebrows were drawn together in a bunch; his upper lip curled into a sneer.

“Haven’t you been listening to me?” he said, his voice without inflection. “Don’t you understand? What, you’d rather be a chorus girl? Tied to the railroad tracks for Tom Mix to come rescue? Maybe when sound arrives, you’ll just sing some idiotic song?”

“I sang idiotic songs on the circuit for years, Jack. It’s where I got my chops, and I paid for it dearly.” A tiny shudder worked its way up her spine. She shook it out. “I’ve worked my tail to the bone since I was old enough to flash a little leg at a room full of slavering Shriners and I did it so I could be here, batting my goddamn eyes at a camera and not digging potatoes out of the cold ground like my mother till the arthritis turned her hands into claws.”

“You won’t be batting your eyes at my camera,” he said gravely. “That’s not the picture I’m making. It wasn’t before, and it certainly isn’t now.”

“Now that you’ve decided you’re the Da Vinci of the movies?”

“I’ll be the Bosch of the movies. The Dürer of the movies. I’ll open up the mouth of Hell and show it to everyone in America. Then we’ll see what’s commerce and what’s art, won’t we?”

He nodded curtly and turned back toward the screen. The mutineers were preparing the dreadnought’s massive guns against the approaching admiral’s ships.

“Take your place, Ms. Baron,” he said loudly over the clicking of the projector. “We shoot at nine.”

She left for the set without another word.

Frank was nowhere to be seen.

Across the table at FitzGerald’s on Sunset sat Eustace and Joe, preening over one another like a pair of kids, while Grace studied her aunt’s face and thought about killers. Joe Sommer made cheap comments about how Eustace looked a decade younger than her years and Eustace tried to force a girlish blush. Grace squinted her eyes and imagined her aunt when she was ten years younger, with a knife handle in her fist and the blade sunk deep in Billy Francis’ gut.

That was Idaho Falls, 1916. A week before Christmas, as she recalled it, where the local Elks put the woman and her young niece up in a hotel packed with all the other performers for the fraternity’s annual Christmas variety. There were whites and coloreds, aged Jewish comics and children younger than Grace with blonde ringlets and bleeding feet from the ballet shoes that maimed them. The hallway was a mad circus, replete with dogs and a shrieking rhesus monkey called Charley, which Grace knew because its owner screamed its name as he chased the animal up and down the stairs.

And in the middle of it all were Eustace and Little Gracie Baronsky, the Prodigy of Boise, fifteen years old but billed as ten, which absolutely nobody believed for a second. The plan was to work their way east, earning as much as they could from town to town until at last they’d land in New York, where the real action was. Eustace had a letter she kept like an invaluable relic from an agent who wanted to see Gracie for himself. There was talk of Ziegfield’s Follies, who could always use a premium child act — if she was good enough. Auntie Eustace meant to make sure her disciple was better than that. The road to New York was to be the starlet’s trial by fire, and if she didn’t have ‘em on their feet by the end of her every performance, Gracie knew perfectly well how much a switch would sting her rear end in the room after.

To ensure a positive reaction, it was Gracie’s own idea to capitalize upon the patriotic fervor of a country edging toward war abroad. To that end, she carefully tested the waters among locals in taverns and diners the afternoon before a show to see how they felt about America’s involvement in Europe. If they were predominantly for it, her song that night would be “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag,” the popular British war song. If, however, she found the rubes in favor of isolation, Gracie had a backup song of her own composition at the ready: “Stay Home, Johnny Boy, Stay Home.” She even managed to weep real tears at the song’s finale, where she begged her paramour to take care of her rather than a bunch of foreign strangers half a world away. (Her secret was an unhinged pin in her corset that she furtively jabbed into her flesh at the right moment.) If she played her cards right, either one could bring down the house.

The trouble in Idaho City, Gracie found, was that reactions to her innocent inquiries appeared to be split right down the middle. She couldn’t decide which song would earn her ovations and which a chorus of boos — and a whipping. To that end, in a state of near panic, Eustace brought the Elk responsible for their booking to their room to confer. The audience would be filled with his brethren, after all, so who better to give them the scoop?

Billy Francis was a big bear of a man, his perpetually slick bald pate unconvincingly swept over with a length of greasy yellow hair he’d grown long on the side. He habitually patted his round belly when he spoke, and his awkward familiarity with Aunt Eustace struck Little Gracie as the ink on the contract that secured them the show. He bounded into the room, shut the door behind him, and immediately sat down on the edge of the narrow trundle bed beside Eustace where he planted a hand at the small of her back.

“The fellows have talked a lot about this,” said Billy, his words hidden in a rum-soaked mist. “Fact is, our eldest brother is seventy-two and well remembers the big war in the last century. Brother Jim reminds us that we’ve bled enough on our own dirt and don’t have any need to go traipsing around the globe to bleed on anybody else’s.”

“Our feelings exactly, Mr. Francis,” said Eustace with an eye toward Gracie, who lingered awkwardly by the bureau. “That is quite the sentiment of my little Gracie’s performance this evening, so we are relieved to know we are all in agreement.”

“It’s good to see eye to eye with one’s friends,” he said, now moving his hand up and down Eustace’s back. “I can see we’re to be such good friends, all of us. How’s about a drink?”

Billy produced a large steel flask from his coat, which he uncapped before taking a deep pull. He said, “Good for what ails you.” He handed the flask to Eustace, who also drank with a sour, pinched face.

Taking it back, Billy stood and extended the flask to Gracie. Eustace moved to press down his arm, saying, “Now, Mr. Francis. My Gracie has a performance shortly, and after all she’s only a child.”

He brushed her hand away like he was shooing a fly, keeping his rheumy eyes on Grace.

“Aw, mother hens always think their fillies are still little children, even when they’re budding right well like this one here.”

Grace recoiled, her arms instinctively wrapping up around her chest.

Eustace protested, “I said she’s only a child.”

“No one believes this gal is ten years old, Eustie,” Billy said with a chortle. “Hell, even if she was, I’m just a man — who am I to argue with old Mother Nature?”

With a lumbering step, he lunged for Gracie with a rubbery grin and reaching hands. Grace let out a wheezy sigh, sidestepping the man’s advance, which only made him laugh. It was a game, and one she was terrified of playing. She squeaked, “Auntie,” backed into a corner of the room from which she could not escape. Billy Francis bore down on her, winding a thick arm around her waist and grotesquely tickling her ribs with his other hand.

“Coochie, coochie,” he belched.

“Auntie!”

Eustace barked, “Mr. Francis, you’d better stop that.”

In lieu of reply, he pressed his rummy mouth against Grace’s, pulling her tight to his enormous abdomen. The room seemed to darken around her. All she could do was fight to keep her mouth closed against the probing tongue that worked to part her lips. She didn’t know what to make of it when his tongue withdrew and his mouth went slack with a startled shout. Billy’s hands flew away from her waist and ribs, went up to the back of his neck as he twirled around, black-red blood spilling down the back of his coat.

“You bitch,” he cried, his hands slick with blood. Eustace stood crouched before him, a five-inch blade jutting from her hand. She’d slashed his neck. “For chrissakes, you crazy bitch.”

Billy swayed, moaning, and fell into a stumble toward Eustace. The older woman did not hesitate. As soon as he was within reach, she met him halfway and drove the blade deep into his prodigious belly, all the way to the handle.

“You killed me,” he croaked. “Holy Jesus, you fucking killed me.”

By then Gracie was sobbing, sunk down to the floor and hugging her knees. Eustace appeared frozen, a photograph, one hand supported on Billy’s shoulder while the other remained against his gut. When she finally let go, the wooden handle stuck out of him like a branch on a fat tree, sticky and red. He grabbed at it, howling when the blade moved inside him, and whirled toward the bed. The tiny trundle collapsed beneath his weight. He landed with a floor-shaking thud on his stomach and lay still.

Eustace trembled, her eyes fixed to where the body lay. Her lips moved rapidly, but she made no sound. Gracie wiped her eyes and, with no little effort, rose to her feet.

“Is he dead?” she whispered.

Eustace rasped, “We have to get rid of him. Hurry — you’re on stage in a couple hours, Gracie.”

Joe Sommer erupted in a peal of laughter, snapping Grace back to the present with a small intake of breath.

“Isn’t he a card?” her aunt said.

Grace agreed, quietly, that he was. Eustace patted her knee and smiled, a genuine smile as broad as it could go, that seemed to say we’re doing all right now, Gracie. Just follow my lead.

She always did.

17

Two things I didn’t have were Graham’s cell phone and his wallet. The phone was in an evidence locker somewhere and the wallet was probably still in his hospital room. Neither was any use to me in my quest to find Helen. I couldn’t even remember her last name, though I knew Graham must have told me a few times. I’d met her in Boston once or twice and she hadn’t made much of an impression on me. Whenever Graham brought her up, I just tuned him out. I wished I hadn’t.

One thing I did remember was the number of his hotel room. He’d been staying in room 325, which I happened to notice because it was the same number of the Holiday Inn room I’d lost my virginity in when I was fifteen. I didn’t mention it to Graham because I knew he wouldn’t find it half as amusing as I did. But hey, it stuck.

It was a long shot, but I hoofed it to the hotel on the off chance that they’d kept his room. I wasn’t sure if the police would have notified them as to what happened yet, but I walked up to the front desk like I owned the place and said, “Hi, I’m Graham Woodard, I’m in room 325? I’m afraid I’ve misplaced my room key.”

A young woman with cornrows smiled and set to clacking her fingernails across her keyboard. After a few seconds she glanced up at me and said, “Date of birth?”

“July fifth,” I said. I couldn’t recall the year so I left it out. She screwed her mouth up to one side for a moment.

“All right, Mr. Woodard, just one moment.”

She vanished into the back for a minute, and when she came back, she handed me a credit-card-sized envelope with a key inside. A real key.

“Here you go,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to charge your account ten dollars for the loss of the previous key, though.”

“My fault entirely,” I said.

The room was exactly as we’d left it on our way to Franco’s theater to watch those reels. Neither of us had been back since. I hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob and shut the door.

Graham’s suitcase lay open on the unmade bed, his clothes half folded and half hanging out like multicolored tongues. I saw that he’d brought a tie and sports jacket, and wondered what for. He was a casual kind of a cat; I’d never even seen him wear a tie. Just being prepared, I thought. Behind the suitcase on the side of the bed nearest the window was his laptop bag. I unzipped it, brought out the computer, and booted it up. First thing up it asked me for the login password. I tried half a dozen guesses from the title of that dumb movie he wrote to his own name, but I was denied entry every time. I shut it off and returned it to the bag, 0 for 1.

On a more desperate note, I went through the pockets of his extra pair of jeans. There was a receipt for a pack of cigarettes and two squares of nicotine gum in one and a book of matches from the hotel bar in the other. The back pockets were empty. Then I thought of the sports jacket again, and I wondered when was the last time Graham wore the thing. I got an idea about that and hoped to Christ my luck might hold up. It did.

In the inside pocket of the jacket was a single sheet of paper, folded into a small square. I unfolded it and started to read what amounted to the final decree of divorce between Graham Wallace Woodard (Wallace—I had to laugh) and Helen Morgan Bryan. I’d guessed he hadn’t worn the jacket since he celebrated the finalization of his severance from Helen, and I was right. Hell, I’d been with him that night. Go, Jake, go.

Stuffing the decree in my wallet on the off chance I managed to forget this hard-earned evidence, I picked up the room phone and had the hotel operator connect me with information. An appropriately nasal voice snapped at me to give her the name and city. I told her I wasn’t sure about the city, but I needed the number for a Helen Morgan Bryan in Los Angeles County. There were, of course, nine of them. I thanked her anyway and hung up.

1 for 3.

I whispered to myself, “Where are you, Helen?”

My mind clicked. I went back to the laptop, booted it up again, and tried a few iterations of Graham’s ex-wife’s name. “HelenMorganWoodard” ended up being the golden ticket. That sad bastard.

Now that I was online, I got to searching. I’d done my fair share of ex-stalking in my time so my Google-Fu in that regard wasn’t too shabby. It took me about ten minutes to discover that the former Mrs. Woodard had an outstanding warrant for three unpaid traffic tickets, and another five minutes to find not only her name but also her picture on a skeezy-looking site called modelwarehouse.com. Her page contained six photos, semi-professional, featuring my friend’s ex-wife in various stages of undress. She wasn’t completely nude in any of them except the last, where she was strategically covering the offending parts while looking dumbly at the camera. Behind her was a dilapidated shed with a pair of rusty rakes leaned up against the side. White-trash chic. Most of the other models seemed to use obvious stage names, but not Helen. Misplaced pride, I suspected. I wrote down the email address and phone number for the company on a sheet of hotel stationery and continued my search, hoping in vain for an address. I didn’t get one.

With my two new documents in tow, I wandered back down to the lobby and found myself back in the hotel bar, where the bartender was thankfully a stranger to me so I could charge my drinks to Graham’s room. I sipped Dewar’s and worked out a plan of attack. All I had to go on was this dubious modeling agency, so halfway through my second drink I decided it was time to go looking for a model.

18

She dreamed of shootings and stabbings, of white, bloated bodies and staircases flowing with rivers of blood. In between sleep and wakefulness, the occasional automobile engine or barking dog alerted her to the real world outside of her violent imaginings, which was somehow even worse. Out there, fearsome memories abounded, dancing perilously close to the ominous portents of her immediate future.

Of art and death, buried bodies and those left to bleed out on the street. She rose hours before dawn, a ghost, resurrected but only halfway — the better parts of her left behind, in the cold ground.

19

The guy behind the desk was jacked in the arms but with a stomach that wasn’t necessarily winning its battle against the buttons of his Oxford shirt. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing “tribal” tattoos and barbed wire armbands, the type of tats every frat guy in Boston seemed to have these days, with a greasy black faux-hawk to match. He was pounding an energy drink, his overly caffeinated eyes flitting from me to his computer screen to the framed pictures of half-naked girls that covered his office’s walls. This was Ray Warren, CEO of Model Warehouse, and I was sitting across from him in the form of a potential client.

“Tell me about your project,” he said, his voice a raspy East Coast drawl. “But listen — no sex stuff, you un’nerstand? Simulated’s fine, depending, but I don’t do porn.”

“No porn,” I assured him, playing this by ear. The cat made me a little nervous; those tree trunk arms of his could make quick work of a skinny little puke like me. “What I want is like extras, for an indie film shoot.”

Ray chortled and leaned back in his squeaky office chair.

“My girls aren’t exactly thespians,” he said. “Sure, a few of them have ambitions, but their sizzle reels are only good for the T and A quotient, you know?”

“That’s all I’d really need them for. It’s sort of a crazy party scene,” I improvised. “Eye candy, that sort of thing.”

“A movie, huh?” He mulled it over, scratching at the back of his massive neck. “What’s it called?”

“Angel of the Abyss,” I said, almost immediately regretting it.

“Sounds artsy fartsy,” Ray said.

“A little bit arsty, a little bit fartsy. I only really need one girl, to be honest. I’m looking for a type.”

“I got all types,” he boasted, going for the keyboard. “I even got an amputee, if that’s your flavor.”

“I’ve been over your website,” I said, watching the sweat gleaming on his forehead. He killed off his energy drink and I hoped to get what I needed before his heart exploded in his chest. “The one I’d really like to hire is Helen Bryan.”

Ray’s hands retracted from the keyboard and his eyebrows raised, crinkling his forehead.

“Kind of a strange first choice, ain’t she?”

“I don’t think so. She’s perfect for what I need.”

“Plain girl,” he said. “Nice bust, but not that pretty in the face. I got much better than that.”

“I appreciate the suggestion, but if she’s available, she’s the one I want.”

“She’s not,” he said quickly. “I don’t even know why she’s still on the site. I need to have her taken off. Helen isn’t really with the agency anymore. Sorry, bro.”

He shrugged and waved his hands, half-apologetically and half-this-conversation-is-done. I wondered.

“That’s a shame,” I said. “She’s really got the look I’m going for. If she’s still in town, I’d sure like to get in touch with her. It’s a paying gig, of course. I’d make it worth her while.”

“Like I said, she’s not one of mine anymore,” Ray said, forcefully. “I got models I can hire out to you, anybody else isn’t my problem. That one isn’t my problem, and I can’t help with that. Now, you want to look at another girl, we can talk turkey. Otherwise, I’d say we’re done here, wouldn’t you?”

I told him I’d think it over and check out some of the profiles on the site, and I thanked him for his time. He watched me cagily as I left the office.

I came back just after seven that evening, hoping to find the place vacant but the light was still on in Ray’s office. The sky was darkening to a dull purple and the parking lot was mostly empty. I parked behind a green Dumpster, killed the lights and engine, and listened to a classic rock station at low volume while I watched the window in the office and wished I’d bought something to snack on. It was my first stakeout and I hoped my last. It took a little over an hour for the window to go dark, at which point I switched off the radio and slid down in my seat. I felt like a perfect fool, playing at Junior Detective like I was in some movie, but what else could I do? My only lead to help Graham out was Helen, and Ray was my only way to her.

He came out of the shadows that draped the three covered spots at the other end of the lot and walked over to a late-model Taurus, apparently the ride of choice for bottom-feeder agents that preyed on would-be ingénues with stars in their eyes. I waited for another fifteen minutes after he drove away, watching the lot, the street, and the dark second-story window all at the same time. Satisfied that nobody was going to come around wanting to know what the hell I was doing, I got out of Graham’s rental and crossed over to where Ray had come out. I found the back door there, a dented steel rectangle with no handle. Exit only.

“Great,” I whispered to myself.

Of the three spots under the concrete awning, only the one closest to the door was vacant. The spot on the far right contained a late-model sedan and in the middle sat a tan Impala from around the time I was born. I took one look at the relic and decided the thing I loved most about cars from the seventies was their length — the monster was sticking out three feet, forming a perfect stairway to the top of the awning, which stopped right beside Ray Warren’s office window.

So I climbed. Maitland-Man, does whatever a Maitland can.

I was completely prepared to bash the window in, but I found it unlatched. All I had to do was push it up and sweep the blinds aside to crawl right in. I didn’t know if it was still considered a B & E if no actual B was involved, but I was counting on it. In my head I told Graham he’d damn well better appreciate the lengths I was going to here when he woke up. Maybe he could even bring me a cake with a file in it when they locked me up for this shit.

Instead of the overhead lights he had on when I was legally visiting, I switched on a little lamp on the desk for minimum illumination. I then sat down behind the desk and gave the monitor a glance when something even better caught my eye: Ray’s little black book.

“You marvelous Luddite,” I said.

If I was at all surprised by how gross his marginal notes in the book were, I was only barely surprised. There was no rhyme or reason to how the names were ordered, just pages and pages of them paired with pseudonyms, phone numbers, addresses, and emails; and every so often, a note to remind himself that he’d already bedded this one or that one. The old casting couch routine, a trick older than Hollywood itself. I cursed the scumbag and got to flipping pages, searching for Helen’s name. I was relieved when I found it and there was no corresponding note, though I don’t know why I cared. She’d already cheated on Graham twice that I knew of, so what difference would it make? I let it go and tore the page out.

And while I was folding it to stuff in my pocket, a key crunched into the lock in the door.

Shit.

I dropped into a crouch behind the desk, chiefly because I panicked and got stupid in a hurry. There was a perfectly good open window directly behind me, but it was too late to worry about it when the door opened and the ceiling lights flickered on. Through the slats on the other side of the desk I could see a pair of legs in black stockings pass by, the heels at the end of the pins click-clacking across the tiles. I wouldn’t have held it against Ray if that was his thing, but the legs were much too slender to belong to him. A tattoo of a rose encased in barbed wire peeked out through the nylon on her ankle. I watched it like it was an astronomical event and tried not to breathe.

Of course I had to suck in some air anyway, which I did as slowly and quietly as I could, and when I did, I was assaulted by the unmistakable odor of gasoline.

Double shit.

The legs crossed over to the far corner of the cramped office where the gas started to splash. The odor grew stronger and the woman started to grumble in a smoky voice.

“Son of a bitch — fuck you, Ray. Fuck you and fuck your fucking office.”

I decided then and there that I didn’t much want to be burned alive, so I leapt up to my feet and made for the window. The clatter of the blinds brought the woman out of her hateful reverie and she growled, “Hold it!”

I stopped and looked over my shoulder. She had a red gas can dangling from one hand and a pistol in the other. It was pointed at me.

She was a peroxide blonde with rockabilly curls, a gleaming stud in her lip, and drawn-on eyebrows. Her lips were a deep twilight purple and there were sleeves of tattoos on both of her arms. She was beautiful, in a crazy kind of way. She was also crying.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked.

I said, “I was just leaving.”

“Stick around,” she said. “Watch the fucking fireworks.”

She sure had a mouth on her. I held on to the blinds, let the smoggy evening air from outside wash the gas smell out of my nostrils.

“Would you mind pointing that thing somewhere else?” I asked her. “I got no beef with you and guns make me nervous.”

I wasn’t lying. I hated the damn things.

She lowered the pistol and narrowed her eyes at me, obscuring the steel gray irises.

“I’m going to burn this place to the ground,” she said matter-of-factly. “You can do whatever the hell you want.”

With that, she returned the gun to her small handbag and resumed soaking the walls and furniture with gas. I started back out the window, but paused again. We were in an office building that housed a number of other suites in addition to Ray’s. There was no telling what — or who — this lady was going to destroy with her little revenge mission. I didn’t want to get involved, not after breaking and entering to steal information in the first place, but my conscience was nagging at me. Go figure.

“Listen,” I began, keeping an eye on that handbag. “I can see you want to give it to Ray, and that’s cool. But if you burn this place, you’re going to take out a bunch of others that don’t have anything to do with you or him. And that’s definitely not cool.”

“What’s it to you, asshole?”

Nice.

“Hey, if it was my office next door, I wouldn’t want you to obliterate my livelihood just because you’re pissed at some prick I didn’t even know.”

“You don’t even know what that fucker did to me.”

“I can guess.”

“He a friend of yours? Is that it?”

“No friend of mine. I’m just looking for somebody. He wasn’t keen to help, so I helped myself.”

“If you got what you need, go ahead and get the fuck out of here, then. You don’t want to be here when the place goes up.”

She sloshed some more gasoline around.

I said, “Tell you what — don’t strike that match. Come along with me, and tell me about it. Maybe I can help you, and I think maybe you help me back. Symbiotic, like.”

“Why the hell should I help you?” she barked.

“Quid pro quo.”

“Talk English.”

“I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I’m not a creep like Ray, I’m just trying to help a friend in need here.”

“What friend?”

“You don’t know him.”

“Then how the fuck could I help?”

“You might know his ex-wife. I’m looking for her.”

“Why?”

“She’s missing. He’s been shot in the head. There’s some shit going down.”

“Sounds like something I really want to get mixed up with.”

“I don’t want to mix you up in anything. I just want you to stop what you’re doing and tell me if you know anything about Helen Bryan.”

“Holy fuckballs,” she suddenly boomed. “Helen’s missing?”

She set the can down on the floor in a puddle of yellow gas.

20

Frank lived in a rooming house in the Valley that was raided on a Sunday. He wasn’t there, and all of his belongings were gone. Word spread quickly around the set on Monday morning, owing largely to how surprised everyone was that such a quiet, unassuming man like Frank not only had apparent underworld connections, but that he’d shot and killed someone. No one knew that Grace had witnessed the whole grisly spectacle, and she had no intention of putting that forward. She expressed as much shock as everyone else, while remaining largely aloof from anyone with an interest in discussing the matter.

When filming got underway, Jack was a firebrand. They were finishing up a ninth-reel sequence in which Clara, Grace’s alter ego, faced down one of the men responsible for her murder. Horace, the chief electrician and light man, kept a shimmering lamp on her face with a warped sheet of cellophane to create a ghostly effect. The heat burned her skin, but she worked through it, with it, and stared larger and more menacingly than Theda Bara ever could. Jack was elated, but equally disappointed in her target’s level of projected fear. Against Saul’s wishes, he reshot the actor’s reaction twice before telling the cameraman to keep rolling while he strolled over to the would-be murderer and slapped him hard across the face. As the actor shook from the pain and bewilderment of the thing, Jack called action and got the take he wanted.

Privately, Grace resolved to strike back should the director ever elect to slap a reaction out of her.

After the day’s shooting, talk re-erupted of Frank laced with baseless speculations of what sort of trouble he’d gotten himself into. No one had a clue, but everyone had a theory. Grace escaped the studio as though it were on fire, desperate to avoid the nonsense.

On her way out, she was stopped by Horace, a stooped older man with a deeply lined face turned dry and craggy by the Southern California sun.

“Ms. Baron?” he called to her.

“Hello, Horace.”

“Don’t listen to ‘em, what they’re saying about Frank. He’s a good sort of fellow, I know he is.”

“I hope everything turns out all right for him,” she said, noncommittally.

“I know you’re friends, you and Frank,” Horace said. Grace broke eye contact and smiled nervously. “I don’t know what he’s got himself into, but I’m sure it’s all a mistake. Frank couldn’t do what they said he done.”

You’re wrong there, Pops, she thought but didn’t say.

“Thank you, Horace.”

“Good night, Ms. Baron.”

“Good night.”

She walked on, to the automobile Saul Veritek provided for her every morning and afternoon, and climbed into the back without a word to the sullen driver. He navigated the short drive back to her bungalow slowly, carefully, depositing her safely at the walk where she exited and pressed her key into the lock beneath the knob. She did not notice the broken window beside the door, partially obscured by a tangle of bougainvillea, but the glass on the floor was the first thing she saw when she got inside. It sparkled like diamonds in the failing sunlight, and for a moment Grace decided that Jack had finally crossed the line.

But Jack Parson was still at the set when she left; he couldn’t possibly have beaten her home. She pursed her mouth and closed the door, scanning the open space for missing items or whoever was harassing her lately.

That was when she noticed the thin smear of red on the floor, forming a sort of arrow pointing vaguely at the washroom. She followed the smear and upon reaching her bed, saw the bag she’d dropped in the street sitting on top of the blankets. She knew then it was Frank even before she pushed the door open to find him passed out in the clawfooted tub, his right eye swollen shut and his shoulder a bloody mess of red and black.

“Christ’s sake,” she told the insensate man. “Couldn’t you have found yourself a doctor, Frank?”

She kicked off her heels and opened up the medicine cabinet for iodine and a fresh washcloth. Nurse Gracie to the rescue.

He came in and out of a sweating coma through the evening and into the night, occasionally shouting out before dropping back into the pitch. The wound in his shoulder was badly infected — scabrous and ringed with yellow crust. The bullet seemed to have passed clean through without hitting bone though, so Grace simply applied liberal amounts of iodine to either side every hour or so with a fresh bandage. And while Frank slept, she tended to him, daubing his brow with a cool, damp cloth and keeping a close eye on his temperature.

It was past noon the next day before he came fully to for the first time. His dark lashes fluttered before opening completely to let the punishing light in. He shielded his face with his hand, whereupon Grace rushed to pull the drapes closed.

“What day is it?” he croaked.

“Tuesday,” she answered. “Quarter past noon, or thereabouts.”

“Shouldn’t you be on set?”

“I phoned the studio and had them tell Saul I’m having trouble with the menses. That’ll shut any man up, and quick.”

Frank half-grinned, and it looked like it took some effort.

He said, “Thank you, Grace. I mean it.”

“Here I came to Old Californy to be the next Mary Pickford and instead you turn me into Florence Nightingale. What do you take me for, anyway?”

“A friend,” Frank said. “The best one I got, too.”

“If your friends are the type to go shooting at you in the street like it’s Dodge City, I can see why. I’m going to put some coffee on the stove, and then how’s about you tell your best friend where you’ve been and what in the name of Wild Bill Hickok happened back there?”

“I’ve been hiding out,” he explained over his coffee, which he took black. “Shacked up with an old pal out in Pomona, but the heat made him nervous so he gave me the short shrift and I ended up in a damn railyard, like a hobo.”

“A railyard! Frank, why didn’t you come to me if there was no one else?”

“I didn’t want to bring that heat down on you, either. You’ve been through too much with me already. I never meant for any of that mess to happen, Grace — honest, I didn’t. You’re such a swell gal, I didn’t even have any intentions. Just a nice night, you know. And then that rotten bastard…”

“Petey.”

“That’s him. God, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“You were defending yourself.”

“I never did anything like that before. Shoot a man, I mean. I promise you that, Grace.”

“It’s all right. I believe you.”

“It’s not all right,” Frank countered, setting his cup down on the table. His hand shook and he spilled some on the floor. “I stumbled into this gig with Horace, but it was supposed to be my way out. I’m supposed to be done with all that.”

“With all what?”

“These guys, these fellas I used to run around with. Los Angeles is all tinsel and silver for you folks, you Hollywood people, but it’s a pretty rough town, besides. All those flappers and F. Scott Fitzgerald types you read about are having a grand old time in the cities, but then there’s a million guys like me with hardly a red cent to our name. It gets hard, real hard. And sometimes when an opportunity comes along, your heart and soul tells you it’s the wrong thing but you do it anyway because goddamnit, you’re hungry and tired of humping it around town with holes in your shoes and not enough in your pocket for a short beer. So you try to be a good Indian, to do everything the right way, the way you’d be proud to tell your mama all about, but what to do when there’s nothing left? When it’s the bread line or business through the barrel of a .38?”

Grace made a flat, straight line of her mouth and regarded her coffee for a moment. She then set it down beside Frank’s, lighted a cigarette, and said evenly, “What did you do for these fellows, Frank?”

“I never hurt nobody, Grace. That’s the first thing and it’s the truth.”

“Okay, what’s the rest of it?”

“Dope,” he said flatly.

“What, grass?”

“Horse.”

“Jesus.”

Frank hung his head.

“I never did it and I never sold it. I moved it, and I mean lots of it. Me and another guy, named Jimmy, we’d pick it up in Tijuana and drive it back over the border with a false bottom in the car.”

“That’s serious, Frank,” Grace said. “That’s serious time in the pen.”

“If you get caught, sure. I never did.”

“And you didn’t talk?”

“Never.”

“Then why Petey? What was his stink?”

“Started back in September. We were picking up a load…”

“You and this Jimmy?”

“That’s right. Got the car all rigged up and ready to head back to the Land of the Free. We made it across the border fine, just like always, but along these crummy backcountry roads to San Diego we got hijacked.”

“Hijacked! By whom?”

“Never found out, and I don’t guess it matters much now. Point is, these guys — two Mex and a colored fellow — ran us off the road and put the guns to us. I was ripe to give it over, because who wants a belly full of holes? Jimmy figured different. That old kid kept a shooter under his seat, and once he got a hold of it he came up shooting. I went down to the floor, I’m no dummy, and by the time the smoke cleared there were four corpses where there used to be five guys. I was the last one standing, or cowering if you like. Jimmy took care of those bastards, but it cost him his life.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Grace said with some caution. Neither of them was paying the slightest attention to their coffees, but both of them smoked like chimneys.

“No, it wasn’t. What happened next was a different jug of hooch. I got out of there, of course, and I hate to tell you but I left poor old Jimmy with the men he’d killed.”

“Right there on the road?”

Frank nodded soberly.

“I veered away from San Diego proper, made it fast as I could to a wide-open field in the Little Landers where I burned the car — horse and all.”

“There it is,” said Grace. She understood now.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Probably five grand worth, up in smoke along with a swell Bearcat, too. I didn’t have too many friends after that.”

“Why didn’t you leave town, Frank? Head east or someplace safe?”

“I’ve got cheese for brains, for one. And where’s safe, when they’re all connected up? The fellas in Los Angeles are linked up with the fellas who run every other town between here and New York. All it takes is a telephone call to set the ball rolling and I’m Public Enemy Number One.”

“But they must have been gunning for you all this time.”

“They weren’t, which is how I got so sloppy. The way I see it now, I must have been watched ever since, to see if I kept onto that heroin. When they finally decided I didn’t have it, the order came down to finish me off. It just happened to be the night we were out together. God almighty, Grace, I’m so sorry for that.”

Grace sucked in a ragged breath and brought her cup to her lips. She sipped and made a face — cold. Shaking that off, she sat up ramrod straight and said, “The answer to our dilemma seems quite obvious then.”

“It’s obvious to me, too,” Frank said. “I got to get the hell out of here. You’ve been a regular peach taking care of me, and I’ll never forget it, but you don’t need this hell. I was plain stupid to think I could hide in plain sight from this mess and the last thing I want is to get you mixed up in it any more than you already are. Just let me get a fresh dressing on this shoulder and I’m gone, Grace.”

“You are stupid,” she said, “so you should listen to a clever girl for a change. I happen to earn a damned enviable wage acting in this picture, you know. Five grand isn’t exactly chicken feed to me, but I can swing it. We’re going to pay off these gangsters so they leave you be for the rest of your long, marvelous life.”

“You’re crazy,” he protested, gingerly touching his aching shoulder.

“That’s probably the truth, too. And you know, if that Bearcat was theirs, we’ll have to cover that, too. Make it seven thousand. I can have that in cash inside a week.”

“No, definitely not. I wouldn’t allow it.”

“Who’s asking permission?”

“This would ruin you.”

“What, you think this is my last picture? I’m just getting started, Frankie baby. This crummy bungalow will be a distant memory by this time next year. And these rotten gangsters you’ve been so worried about? Completely forgotten.”

“They won’t accept it.”

“How do you know? Have you tried?”

“These men kill people, Grace. Reason isn’t quite among their stronger virtues.”

“It’s worth a try, Sonny Jim. We have to try.”

“You don’t owe me a thing.”

“I take care of my friends. We’re friends, aren’t we, Frank?”

“You know we are, Grace. I’ve never known a better friend than you.”

She rose to her feet and pranced elfishly to the larder, where she found a decent vintage of pre-Prohibition wine and came dancing back with the bottle and a corkscrew.

“That Carrie Nation was still soiling her bloomers about hooch when this was bottled,” she said with a devilish grin. “What say we celebrate the end to your little problem?”

“Little is a relative word if I’ve ever heard one.”

Grace popped the cork and filled the coffee cups.

She said, “Salud!”

21

Her name was Louise, but in Ray Warren’s little black book she was listed at Lou-Lou Vanderbilt. I remembered the pseudonym, because it was one of those with a notation beside it from Mr. Charm himself. That alone told me half her story. She told me the rest over burned coffee that tasted like lead at Mel’s on Sunset.

“I came out here from fucking Little Rock to be an actress. It’s easy to think you can do that shit when you’re from nowhere. I wasn’t here a month before I found out I’d kidded myself into a goddamned pipe dream. I was waiting tables at a titty bar in Venice and doing two auditions a day. No callbacks, no nothing. Maybe I didn’t have it. Or maybe I’m just a small fish in a big sea.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Ray discovered you at the titty bar.”

“Easy guess, but you’re right. I had to deal with plenty of fucking creeps, but at least I was dressed. Well, mostly. Ray told me I had class and a lot of it. He wasn’t even interested in the girls on stage. The son of a bitch gave me his card, told me he had a system. He’d made careers for girls like me. He even said I could go ahead and give notice right then and there. I wasn’t going to need no damn job anymore.”

“Did you?”

“Not that night, but inside a week I did. I made more doing four shoots a week for Ray than six nights a week at the club ever netted me. And nobody touched my ass.”

“Not even Ray?”

“Not at first. I know he looks like a total frat bro, but he can charm the panties right off a chick. I’m a fucking retard, but I’m hardly the only one. Besides, I thought I was going to be famous and shit.”

“Famous for what?”

“What do you think?”

I raised my eyebrows and sipped my coffee.

“He says he’s not in the porn business,” she continued, “but that’s complete bullshit. It’s his bread and butter. I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with it, but he grooms girls to trick them into it.”

“Did he do that to Helen?”

“Nah, she never went in for that. Christ knows he tried, but she wouldn’t have it. She was only in the game for the drugs, anyway. Half the photographers provide it for free to any model who wants it. I never did, but that Helen was a goddamn Hoover.”

“Why’d he ditch her? Because she wouldn’t do the porn stuff?”

“That’s part of it. That, and she was just too fucked up all the time. Meaner than hell, too.”

I chuckled softly, and she read my mind.

“You think I’ve got an attitude?” she asked me. “You definitely haven’t met Helen Bryan.”

“Maybe not the real her, no,” I said, and remembered the page I’d taken from Ray’s book. I pulled it out and flattened it on the table. Louise snatched it up and scrutinized it.

“Yeah, she don’t live in Glendale anymore. Good thing you ran into me.”

“You know where she lives?”

“I was at her place a few weeks ago. Her and that gorilla she lives with.”

“Well, that cinches it,” I said, killing off the coffee and making a face appropriate to the flavor or lack thereof. “I’m going tonight. Would you write the address down for me?”

“Don’t remember it. But I can get you there.”

I stalled. Riding around with a pyromaniac I didn’t know from Eve wasn’t my first choice for the evening’s festivities. I signaled for the check.

“Well?” Louise prompted me, planting her palms on the table.

I sighed — inwardly.

“All right,” I relented. “Let’s go find her.”

The building was right in the heart of Hollywood, right off La Brea between Hollywood and Sunset, spitting distance from Hollywood High. I parked Graham’s rental car underneath a towering palm on the street and walked up to the front of the ugly structure with Louise in my wake.

“This is where you went?” I asked.

“About two and a half weeks ago, yeah.”

I advanced to the door, which was locked. Beside it an intercom was mounted with two rows of names on handwritten slips. BRYAN was 6C. I pressed the button, and it buzzed obnoxiously. There was no answer, and I didn’t really expect one.

“What now, chief?” Louise piped up. “You gonna bust in like you did at Ray’s?”

I groaned and said, “Yep.”

She grinned. I mashed the buttons, as many as I could. When at last someone answered with a drowsy, “Yeah?” I muttered something about a pizza in a goofy fake accent.

The door buzzed and unlocked. I pulled it open and gestured for Louise to go ahead of me.

“What a fucking gentleman,” she commented.

“You’re fucking welcome,” I said. When in Rome.

We rode the elevator up to the sixth floor. The floors were bare up there, the carpet stripped off, probably awaiting replacement. The concrete was webbed with deep cracks, terrifying remnants of the Northridge quake in ’94. I was still feeling the tremors when I moved out there a few years later. I never got used to them.

“6C,” Louise reminded me. I nodded and we made our way down to the end of the hall where it turned right and kept going. The next length brought us to the door in question, a big green door with no peephole or bell. Louise rose her fist to knock but I held her wrist before she could.

“Element of surprise?” I suggested.

She shot me a bemused look. I didn’t blame her.

I knocked. The surprise was on me when the door actually opened.

Now I faced a rotund Mexican whose belly bulged over his belt buckle. He regarded me with indifferent eyes and clutched a spackle knife with a sticky white dollop clinging to it. Behind him, every light was on and the place was a shambles. Cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere, half of them overflowing with all manner of junk. Another man was painting a wall opposite the one I supposed the first guy was working on, judging by all the holes that needed fixing.

He said, “Wrong place, man. Nobody lives here now.”

“Looks like somebody’s still moving out,” I said, pointing to the boxes.

“Left behind. They split. You want to look at the place, it’ll be ready Monday. Make an appointment.”

He started to close the door, but I pressed into the crack.

“Hold up a minute,” I said. “I know the people used to live here. I’m trying to get in touch with them.”

“Really not my problem, hermano,” he said. “Unless you’re a cop with a warrant, I can’t you let you in here.”

“That’s just the issue,” Louise suddenly added, stepping up to the plate. “The woman who lived here is my sister, and she’s missing. The cops don’t even care, sir. They’re barely looking, and I’m scared to death for her.”

I had to admit I was impressed — not just with her quick thinking, but by her ability to say twenty-five words in a row and none of them “fuck.” I didn’t think she was up for it.

“Mierda,” the workman sighed. “That’s rough, lady.”

“Please,” she begged, “just let us have a quick look around. Anything to help us find her and make sure she’s safe.”

The man screwed up his mouth and glanced back at his partner, who seemed oblivious to our presence. When he returned his gaze to Louise, he groaned out a long breath and nodded his head.

“Okay,” he said. “Be quick though, eh? I’m really not supposed to let people up in here.”

“Lickety-split,” said Louise.

He went back to spackling across from his buddy the painter, and I went first into the big bedroom with Louise. One of the guys switched on a radio playing Tejano, all trumpets and accordions and strident Spanish voices in harmony. We stood in the middle of the room and surveyed the task in front of us. It was Mrs. Sommer’s storage unit all over again, a comparison that made the hair prick up on my neck when I recalled what had become of Mrs. Sommer.

“So we’re looking for a cokehead with a fidelity problem,” Louise said, her hands on her hips. “Most addicts I know keep their connections tighter than a fucking drum, but our girl doesn’t seem the type to much care what happens to anybody else, am I right?”

“I thought you knew her better than me,” I said.

“I don’t think anybody knows Helen as much as they might like to,” she said. “Least of all Helen her own damn self.”

“So, what — we’re looking for another black book, like Ray’s?”

“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. “Seems like it depends on whether she left in a hurry, or of her own free will. That would make the difference in what she left behind.”

“You’re good,” I said. She winked, sardonically, and dug into one of two dozen boxes scattered around the cluttered room. I followed her lead and opened one of my own. Louise found stuffed animals and trinkets; I came upon an unorganized mountain of old photos. Graham was in a lot of them.

“That your buddy?” Louise asked over my shoulder.

“Yeah. He’s in the hospital right now, out cold. Shot in the head and Helen knows something about it.”

“Jesus Christ, Jake,” she said.

“It’s a doozy of a story,” I said.

She stood up, looked me over like a sideshow freak for a moment, then sniffed.

“Why don’t you tell it while we look through this shit? I’d like to know how deep I’m getting into this fuckup of yours.”

We kept on through the boxes and I told it, all of it, from meeting up with Graham at Bukowski’s in Boston to nearly getting barbequed in a low-rent pornographer’s office by Louise herself. By then we’d found piles of clothes, dog-eared fantasy paperbacks, a trunk full of tame sex toys, a shoe box packed tight with sales receipts, none of which post-dated Boston. The woman was a packrat, but we weren’t any closer to our goal.

Once we’d finished with the bedroom, we sat down on the naked mattress and took stock of the situation so far.

“Here’s my take on it,” Louise said, twirling her lip ring. “If I didn’t know better, I’d want to look into Ray to see if he had anything to do with Helen vanishing on us. I say that because guys like that are total fuck-wits, real scum-nuts, and they go into ‘entertainment’ to take advantage of chicks like that. I don’t really think he has anything to do with it — I know the guy, he’s a creep, but this isn’t on him — but I do think we need a two-prong attack, here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean while we’re looking for Helen, we should be looking into whoever made that fucking movie, the old one that got your ass out here to start with.”

“It’s just an old movie, though,” I said. “Anybody remotely involved with it has died of old age by now.”

“Except for the star.”

“Except for her,” I agreed.

“Think about it,” she went on, “something happened to that girl back in the day, right? We don’t know what, but something did. And that shit got fucking buried, and it was serious enough that all this time later somebody’s out there shooting motherfuckers to keep it that way. Am I on target so far, chief?”

“So far, so good.”

“Then you start at the beginning. Keep trying to find Helen — fuck, everybody else is already dead or in a fucking coma — but at the same time get back to the good old days and see who made that thing, that Angel of the Whatever.”

“Angel of the Abyss.”

“Right, and you said you actually have the movie, didn’t you?”

“Most of it, in reels.”

“Let’s give it a watch while we’re at it, you and me. You might see something on the second pass, and an extra set of eyes couldn’t hurt.”

I said, “I don’t want to waste any more time. She’s out there somewhere, and the quicker I find her, the closer I am to helping Graham.”

“You really dig that guy, huh?”

I knitted my brow, not really up to explaining how a one-way friendship worked. I did dig the guy, even if he wasn’t really all that fond of me. I wasn’t really all that fond of myself, so I didn’t really blame him.

“We’ll help your friend,” Lou said after a moment. “Whatever we got to do.”

“This is great and all,” I said, giving her a bewildered look, “but why are you so invested? I mean, I appreciate the hell out of everything you’ve already done, Louise…”

“Lou, please. Just Lou.”

“…but you don’t know me, or Graham, or any of us. You’ve got no stake in this crap.”

“The truth? Helen was a fuckup and a bit of a cunt, but I liked the bitch. She stood up to Ray when nobody else would, and I respected that shit.”

“Well, that makes one of us.”

“And I know a bastard when I see one, too. I’ve got plenty of practice. You’re no bastard.”

“Thanks?”

“Don’t get any fucking ideas, now,” she added with a black-lacquered fingernail in my face. “It ain’t like that.”

“10-4.”

“Come on, let’s go check the boxes in the living room.”

I followed her, more astounded than ever.

Sandwiched between the two workers, we pored through the remaining boxes, clawing our way through Helen’s collection of completely useless ephemera while the painter sang along to each and every song on the radio. The guy had a memory like a steel trap; I couldn’t even remember the words to my favorite songs.

In my last box, I found a small but respectable collection of porn on DVD. I slowed to admire her taste when Louise said, “Hey, get a look at this.”

She was kneeling over her last box, which was stuffed with cooking magazines and a jumble of mail. In her hand was an open envelope, from which she’d taken the contents and now handed to me. It was a paystub from the Royal Blue Theater on Tremont in Fairfax. Helen M. Bryan was identified as a concession associate at the paltry rate of $9.75 an hour.

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “She got herself a day gig.”

“That’s a revival house,” Lou informed me. “As in, they only play old movies.”

She waggled her penciled brows at me while I took a minute for it to sink in. When it did, I gasped.

“Holy crap,” I said. “Now we know how Helen knew Leslie Wheeler, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do,” she agreed with a toothy smile. “Ain’t detecting fucking fun?”

“Can you guys get the hell out now?” the burly workman interrupted. “If we get fired, it’s your asses.”

I pocketed the paystub and we got the hell out.

22

The pair watched Ronald Colman as Beau Geste at the Arcade on Broadway, though neither of them paid the slightest attention to the picture. Rather, they smoked one cigarette after another, slumped in their seats, and waited for the afternoon to drag by as the organ player punched out the musical accompaniment in the least graceful way possible. Grace and Frank had an appointment to keep, and that appointment was with Junior Bassof, a rough customer who might or might not find their terms—her terms — acceptable enough to let Frank go on living.

They ate deviled eggs and sipped fountain pops, and when the picture was done, they emerged back into the sunlight to light cigarettes and get serious about their rendezvous with destiny. Destiny was billed to come in the form of Junior, Frank’s erstwhile boss, who agreed to meet him and his supposed moll at a Jewish delicatessen on Fairfax for the trade-off. They sauntered that way, just a block and a half from the Arcade, with hardly a word between them.

Upon arriving, Frank gestured with his chin at a pair of men seated opposite one another in a corner booth by the window.

“Those are Junior’s stooges,” he whispered.

“Then let’s go say hello,” suggested Grace.

“Give me the package,” he said. “Let me take care of this. You go on home. No sense in us both ending up in the ground if this thing goes south.”

“The ground?” Grace gasped. “Don’t be dramatic. Come along.”

He seized her arm and gave her a bewildered look. Grace just smiled.

“I’ve dealt with plenty of lowlifes over the years, real low characters on the circuit and elsewhere. These goons don’t scare me.”

With a wry smirk, she sauntered over the greasy tiles to the booth, where she slid in beside the shorter of the pair like she belonged there. The men glanced her over with appraising leers while Frank lingered several feet away, his face a mask of astonishment.

“You Frank’s girl?” asked the man seated across from Grace. His smooth face betrayed a youth he clearly tried to hide behind a put-upon demeanor.

“I thought we were seeing Mr. Bassof,” she said.

“You’re seeing us.”

“All right,” she said, beckoning Frank with her hand. He came over slowly and sat down beside the taller one.

“Hi, Frank,” the tall youth said. “Petey sends his regards from the morgue.”

Frank put his hand on his wounded shoulder. “He shot me. I shot back.”

“Guess you’re the better shot, then.”

“Guess I am.”

“So what’s it going to be?” Grace put in. “I trust you gentlemen know the terms. We cover the expenses of the car and the — the shipment—and we call this whole cowboy game off. So what is it?”

The short man beside her laced his fingers together on the table and exchanged a meaningful look with Frank. Grace caught this, but didn’t understand what it meant when Frank pushed out a sigh and said, “The shipment in the car. We’re willing to pay for it all, don’t you see that?”

The thug said, “All right, sure. The car, the shipment, and Petey.”

“What about Petey?” Frank asked.

“You knocked him off. That’ll cost you, too.”

“That was no knock-off,” Frank protested. “That was self-defense.”

“Either way he’s dead, isn’t he? So it’s another grand on top. No discussion.”

“That’s garbage,” Frank said, making to stand. Grace reached over the table, touched his hand and shook her head.

“We accept that,” she said, her eyes boring deep into Frank’s.

“Grace…”

“You have it now?” Shorty said.

“I have it,” she answered.

“The extra thousand?”

“It’s here.”

She withdrew the fat package from her bag and handed it to Shorty under the table. He glanced around, making sure he didn’t have an audience, and then got to counting. While he did that, the tall one said, “This is contingent on a couple other things.”

“What is?” Frank asked.

“Your life, so listen up. You don’t talk. To anybody. Ever. If you do, we’ll know about it and the deal’s off — your head’s back on the block.”

“He won’t talk,” Grace said.

“She your mouthpiece, Frank?”

“I won’t talk,” said Frank. “What’s the other thing?”

“You don’t live in L.A. anymore. As of today. You can go anywhere you please that isn’t here. And you’re never coming back.”

“That’s too much,” Grace said.

Ignoring her, Frank said, “That’s fine. Are we done here?”

The tall man looked to Shorty, who finished counting, stashed the bills in his coat, and nodded.

“We’re done.”

The short one said to Grace, “You never saw us in your life, that clear?”

She scooted out to let him pass. “It’s clear.”

Outside, Frank and Grace found a taxi and climbed into the back. Grace gave her own address and the driver sputtered off in that direction.

Grace said, “Then that’s it.”

“I’ll pay you back, someday. I don’t know how, but I will.”

“Just do it legitimate like.”

“It’s all legitimate for me, from here on out.”

She smiled. “It’s been interesting, Frank. I’ll miss you.”

“Miss me? I’m not going anyplace. I still have to help light that soon-to-be-famous face of yours, don’t I?”

“But that’s….no, Frank. You have to leave. You promised.”

“You say that like I’m lying to my poor old grandmother. I promised a couple of gangsters, darling. Crooks. Who cares what I say to them? As far as they’re concerned, I’m already gone. It’s finished, all of it. Thanks to you.”

He showed his teeth in a broad grin and kissed her on the cheek. The driver looked at them through the rearview mirror for a moment, until Grace met his gaze. She sat still for a moment, her mouth open, before blinking rapidly and asking the driver if she could smoke in the taxi.

“Help yourself,” the driver said.

She helped herself. And while she smoked, she thought about the eighty-five hundred dollars she’d just wasted on a life she knew she couldn’t really save.

23

The Royal Blue was in a wretched state of disrepair. The marquee didn’t look safe to stand under, the concrete façade was crumbling, and the window to the box office was boarded up with a handwritten sign bidding customers to buy their tickets inside. Even the sidewalk was cracked and overrun with tall green weeds. The theater looked like it should be condemned, but sure enough they were in the middle of a late-night revival of The Elephant Man. According to the tattered ad pasted to the front door, tomorrow began their three-day Howard Hawks retrospective, only five bucks per show. Slightly worried that the roof was going to fall on me before we were done, I pulled the door open and let Lou walk in ahead of me.

The inside was somehow worse. I felt like I was in one of those 42nd Street grindhouses from the eighties, with the mildewed carpet torn to ribbons and the musty curtains on the walls festooned with cobwebs and thick dust. We went across the lobby, past ripped posters for forthcoming features of past years, to the concession stand, where a languid teenager with ironic horn-rimmed glasses raised his substantial eyebrows at me. Below him stood a glass cage filled with stale, radioactive-yellow popcorn. My stomach tightened.

“Is the manager in?”

“I’m the assistant manager.”

Lou and I exchanged a look.

She said, “Does Helen Bryan work here?”

“I don’t think I have to answer that. Are you cops?”

“We’re friends of hers,” I said.

“Then you know she don’t work here anymore.”

“Was she fired?” Lou asked.

“She quit.”

I said, “Did she quit, or just stop showing up?”

The kid scrunched up his face.

“You know so much, how come you’re asking the questions?”

“I was guessing,” I said. “Which was it?”

“Look, man, that girl was trouble. I’m not trying to talk about your friend, but she had problems, all right? So when she didn’t show, nobody was really all that bugged by it, you know what I mean?”

“When was that?” Lou asked.

“Her last shift, you mean? Thursday, I think. No — Wednesday. About a week ago now. Norm figured he’d let her know she didn’t have a job no more when she came in for her last check, only she never came in. Far as I know it’s still sitting in his office.”

“Nobody thought that was cause for concern?” I said.

“What, she’s our problem now? Places like this, we got a high turnover, man. I been here nine months and I’m an old veteran.”

“You just like all the old movies, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“How about silents?”

“Sometimes. Some of the European ones were okay.”

“Ever heard of Angel of the Abyss?”

“What about it?” the kid asked. He was losing his patience with me, if there was much there to begin with.

“It’s a lost film from the twenties,” I said.

“I know what it is — why’re you asking about it?”

“I thought maybe Helen had an interest in it.”

“I don’t think she would’ve known about that. She wasn’t really all that into film.”

“She worked at a theater, didn’t she?”

“I used to work at a filling station and I don’t give a shit about gas.”

“Doesn’t everybody like movies?”

“Sure, whatever’s new and popular. Something like that, though? Takes a special breed of film geek to have even heard of it.”

“Like the Silent Film Appreciation Society?”

“I don’t know what that is, but sure.”

“Couple of ladies Helen knows, as it turns out.”

“Hey, I said she worked here but I never said we were best friends. Maybe she was into old silent films, what do I know? She just never struck me as the type, that’s all.”

“You never saw her talk to a nice old lady? Leslie Wheeler?”

“How old? There was some really old broad used to come in here to talk to her. Figured she was her grandma. Seventies, maybe eighties.”

“This lady was in her fifties,” I said.

“Then I don’t know. Helen sold Ju Ju Beans and Cokes to a lot of nice old ladies. Some of them were chatty. Best I can give you.”

“All right,” Lou said, “don’t get your panties in a twist. We’re just concerned friends, you understand?”

“I hope you find her and I hope she’s okay,” the kid said, “but that’s the end of what I know. She wasn’t here long, and then she wasn’t here at all. Like I told you, she didn’t even pick up her last check — or her street clothes, for that matter.”

“Come again?”

“She’d change into her uniform when she got here.” He tugged at his dorky red suspenders. “I don’t choose to wear this crap, you know.”

“And when she left the last time, she was still in uniform?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

Lou said, “Can we get a look at those clothes?”

The kid grimaced.

“Come on, man.”

I said, “It might help.”

“Sure, but I can’t just let you poke around the chick’s clothes, can I? That’s weird.”

Lou shrugged her shoulders. I reluctantly took a twenty from my wallet and laid it on the glass counter. The kid snorted.

“Are you kidding?” he said.

“Kids these days,” Lou snarked.

I dropped another Hamilton. The kid swiped them both and said, “Right this way, sir.”

So hard to find good help.

Helen came to work on what would be her last day in a small lime green T-shirt and ripped blue jeans. I presumed she kept on her underwear and socks, because that was all she’d left in a locker that didn’t lock outside the manager’s office behind the concession stand. With the kid looming nearby, I turned the shirt inside out while Lou went through the pants. A second later, she said, “Wallet.”

I dropped the shirt. Lou opened the wallet.

Inside was a Massachusetts driver’s license, a debit card, thirteen bucks, Ray Warren’s business card, and a folded-up piece of scrap paper. Lou handed me the wallet and unfolded the scrap. On it was written the name Tim in a childish scrawl, beneath which was a phone number. Lou didn’t miss a beat; she whipped out her mobile in a hurry and dialed the number.

“I’m looking for Tim?” she asked in a falsely meek voice when someone picked up. “No one there called Tim? All right, sorry to bother you.”

She clicked off and peered at the scrap.

“Maybe it’s supposed to say Tom,” I offered.

Lou smiled, said, “I think I got it. Come on.”

The kid pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “Wait, you’re just going to take her wallet?”

Lou said, “Yep.”

The kid shrugged.

Around the corner from Canter’s on Fairfax Avenue, Lou stopped in front of an ATM, where she stopped and shoved Helen’s debit card into the slot.

“Good plan,” I said. “Clean out her account and she’ll have to come back from wherever she is.”

“Not exactly,” Lou said, adding, “Fucko.”

The display prompted her and she opened up the scrap of paper. I chuckled softly, realizing right away what she was up to.

“I have a pretty terrible memory,” she said, plugging in the last four digits of “Tim’s” telephone number. “I keep a little list just like this for PIN numbers and shit like that, disguised as phone numbers in case anybody gets a hold of it. It’s not a new trick, and since Tim seems to be bullshit—abrafuckingcadabra, Blackstone.”

The PIN worked. Lou grinned at me with pride.

“Impressive,” I said. “Now what?”

“Let’s see what she’s got in there.”

She navigated a few options until the machine spat out a statement on a small receipt. Lou yanked it out and said, “Holy shitballs.”

I looked over her shoulder at the tally at the bottom and said, “You can say that again.”

Helen Bryan had three-quarters of a million dollars sitting in her savings account.

24

Looking upon herself in the washroom mirror, Grace beheld the perfect model of the “New Woman”: black bob, pixie face of alabaster, small bust and boyish figure. The new Colleen Moore. Tomorrow’s in-girl. Perhaps even the first new star of the forthcoming talking pictures revolution — why not? Her voice wasn’t bad. She had what it took and she had the scars to prove it, though none to show on camera. All of Grace’s scars were scored inside, raked deep by the circuit, by the blood she’d seen, by that relentless impulse to conquer the world she was never sure was her own. But she would survive Angel of the Abyss, just as she’d survived the vaudeville circuit, and her afternoon meeting with Famous Players people was going to be her first step into a bright new future.

She was to see Joseph March, the director, and Alan Rivers, the Famous Players representative, at March’s home on a sprawling, remote strip of Malibu beach. No script had been sent, not even a description of the picture at stake, but by telegram Grace read that March was shown footage from Angel by none other than the great Jack Parson himself and was, in his own words, “positively mesmerized.”

The trouble, of course, was Frank. He maintained his cloistered presence in her bungalow, forbidden to go out unless absolutely necessary and going stir-crazy day by day. He wanted to go back to work, to buy cigarettes and drink merrily with her at speakeasies as they’d done before. Grace wouldn’t have any of it.

“You might as well be a wanted man,” she tried to explain. “You’ll be killed the moment one of those awful men sees you or hears word you’re still in Los Angeles.”

“That’s all bluster,” he countered. “You have to understand it’s costly to kill a man for thugs like them. You can’t just go around gunning for whomever you please, or else half the town would be bleeding in the streets. It’s a calculated thing, and I’m just not worth it.”

“Are you willing to stake your life on that?”

“Beats being crammed in a cage,” Frank complained.

“Or mine?”

He sighed heavily. “Grace, darling — I wouldn’t dare pull you down into something like that, not even on a longshot. What’s the percentage in hurting you?”

“I’ve seen them. I know who they are.”

“Practically everybody does. These guys aren’t ghosts. They’re practically famous in their own right — like you’re going to be.”

“Oh, no,” said Grace, flitting about the bungalow in search of her pearls for the meeting. “I’ll be famous, all right — but not like them.”

“You know what I mean. And trust me, you’re safe as a babe in her crib. We both are.”

“Trust,” she parroted, rolling her tongue over the word and its meaning. “If that’s all I’ve got to go on, I might as well drop the rest of my vanishing fortune on the races.”

She regretted saying it immediately. Frank’s mouth tightened, wrinkled. He averted his eyes and rose to pour himself a brandy from Grace’s bar.

“Look,” she said, “I’ve got to go to this meeting now. I’ve lost all faith in Jack Parson and his ridiculous little film, but there’s still a chance for me in this business and it starts here. Please don’t go anywhere. Take a nap if you want, drink everything in the house, just stay put, will you?”

“I have a better idea,” Frank said after a belt of his drink. Grace scrunched up her face, waiting for it. “How about I drive you?”

“Are you crazy?” Grace boomed. “Listen, Frank — I’ve a condition letting you stay in my place and that means staying put.”

“It’s either that, or I hit the nearest speakeasy and take my chances. Your choice, doll.”

“I — you…”

Grace stammered, then stamped her foot.

“You’re impossible!” she cried.

Frank said, “I’ll get my coat.”

It might not have been Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ Pickfair, but Joseph March’s “little house on the beach” remained a sight to behold. Great marble columns supported the roof over the sprawling front porch, which wrapped around one side of the house and became a path to the enormous swimming pool sparkling within view of the Pacific.

“They build the pools first,” Frank said as he pulled the car up on the circular drive. “Then they figure out how much space is left for the house.”

“What a spread,” Grace said.

Frank stopped the automobile in front of a wide set of six marble steps leading up to the front door, which was festooned with stone grapes on the vine. He whistled and killed the motor.

“Now you be a good boy and sit in the car,” she said as she opened the door. “That’s what drivers do and you, my friend, are a driver. Just as you said.”

“Just as I said,” Frank repeated with a knowing grin. “Go on. Get famous.”

“I very nearly am,” she said, and stepped out of the automobile, resplendent in a white silk gown with ruffled sleeves, a string of pearls, and a rosy-pink cloche hat atop her head.

Grace climbed the steps and was met at the top by a tuxedoed colored man who held open the front door and lowered his eyes when she entered the vestibule. She gave him a sharp nod and walked into a white wonderland of stone and glass, twinkling chandeliers and fresh, fragrant flowers in elegant vases. The door shut behind her and the servant vanished from sight just as Jack Parson materialized and exclaimed, “Grace, my dear!”

Jack appeared more refined than ever in a proper suit and tie, and more astonishing yet, he was grinning ear to ear. He stepped lightly over the marble floor to meet her and embraced his starlet with vigor.

“I feel as though I’m about to marry off my own daughter,” he said close to her ear. “A proud papa I am, though. Terribly proud.”

“I’m here to meet a director,” she said with a small laugh, pulling away from his arms. “No one’s brought out the blotter yet, Jack.”

“You don’t know how thrilled he is—thrilled, Gracie — with what he’s seen of our picture. And to be perfectly honest, I’m thrilled myself. Now that I’ve cracked it, I feel more alive than I ever have. I can’t believe I ever doubted it. Angel will never be topped, not by me, anyhow.”

“Why, Jack,” she said with batting eyes, “you sound almost…human.”

“A heartbreaker is what you are. Come, they’re in the projection room.”

“Projection room?”

“This house is a monstrosity. Pagodas, a sundeck — a pipe organ! And the swimming pool you saw from the drive is only one of two. Pictures pay, pretty baby. Just you wait.”

“I’m sick of waiting. Let’s go meet the gang.”

“You said it,” he said with an arm extended for her to follow. “Come on.”

She hooked her arm in his and together they crossed over to the farthest door from the front, their steps echoing hollowly throughout the grand marble vestibule. Behind the door was a narrow hallway that ended at another door. And behind that door was Joseph March’s projection room.

Two raised rows of four red chairs faced the doorway, in which three men sat in the dark with white faces reflecting the flickering screen before them.

“Hold it,” said one among them. “Hold the picture, I said.”

The smoky light emanating from the window above them petered out and the lights came on to fully reveal the movie men. From the trio advanced a short man in a tweed suit who squinted at Grace as he offered her his hand.

“Joseph March,” he said. “Damn glad to know you, Ms. Baron.”

From March’s right, a bald man in round spectacles half-bowed and said, “Alan Rivers. That’s some picture you and Jack are putting together. I can’t say I completely understand it, not with so much left to do I suppose, but it’s a corker.”

“We were just discussing your eyes,” March explained. “One grows so tired of the Pickford model, the ‘Papa, what is beer?’ ingénue. That’s out—”

“—Bow and Bara have proven that much,” Rivers put in.

“Yes, and Louise Brooks. And bankably, reliably, more to the point. This is an industry, after all, and a businessman likes to know what he’s getting himself into.”

“Naturally,” Grace demurred.

Jack cleared his throat and shifted his weight.

“Our boy Jack mightn’t agree,” March said with a chuckle. “Yes, now of course we’re artists in our way, old boy. Don’t pop your collar.”

“They’re a million miles ahead of us in Europe,” said Jack. “The Reds, too.”

March straightened up and shot a look at Rivers, who pursed his mouth and cleared his throat.

“The Reds,” March said. “Well, we’ll get to that.”

“We still produce eighty percent of the world’s pictures,” said Rivers. “Right here in Southern California. There must be a reason for that.”

“Of course there is,” Jack said. “We can shoot three hundred days a year, fourteen hours a day. You can’t do that in Moscow. And the land is cheap as dirt. Any man with a nest egg can start a fledgling studio out here if he’s got half a brain.”

“That’s changing,” said the third man, lighting a cigar and bouncing on his heels. “We have a system in place here, and we intend to solidify it in such a way that American pictures aren’t being made by every Tom, Dick, and Harry — or Vladimir, if you prefer — with access to a motion picture camera.”

“Permit me to introduce our favorite distributor,” Rivers announced, stepping aside to let Grace and Jack see him fully for the first time. “Joe Sommer.”

“Why, Joe!” Grace exclaimed, rushing forward to take his hand. “I didn’t know you’d be here today.”

“Hullo, Gracie.”

“Joe here has a hell of a foothold in the hinterlands,” Rivers said to Jack. “He could play Birth of a Nation to a theater full of Negroes in Michigan and probably fill every seat.”

“I leave the high ideals to fellas like Jack and Joseph here,” said Joe, smiling down at Grace. “You make the pictures better, and I’ll make sure every townie and hick from here to the Catskills gives ‘em a gander — and a dime.”

“Now that we’re all acquainted,” said March with a booming clap of his hands, “I suggest we retire poolside for cocktails and negotiation.”

Over a crumpled copy of Spicy Detective, Frank chain-smoked in the driver’s seat and occasionally glanced up at the white crests of the Pacific barely visible over the slight hill before him. Gulls screamed over the water and a mild breeze picked up, floating pleasantly through the car. Movement to his right caught his attention, and as he tossed his spent end out of the window he glanced over at a well-dressed fivesome settling in a semicircle on the side porch, overlooking the pool. Fine suits and tuxedoes, big cigars and lifted glasses of cut crystal, toasting the day, their success, the brilliant future. Angel of the Abyss and beyond, into permanent memory, beyond even death.

He sighed and dropped the magazine on the seat. He had told a ludicrous pack of lies to Grace, a story concocted straight from the pulp pages he was reading and half a dozen regurgitated gangster shows from the movies. Mexico and heroin and fedora-topped badmen. Frank almost had to laugh. He didn’t have it in him.

Sliding down in the seat, he peered over the opposite car door at the merry group, hoping Parson didn’t recognize him, and angling to see if he recognized any of the others. Two of the other men were strangers to him, but not Joe Sommer. A sharp intake of breath startled him and he realized it was his own. The hell is that pig doing here?

It was rapidly becoming evident that his tall tales of Frank the Mule were soon to crack apart.

“As a veteran imbiber,” Joseph March said in lieu of a toast, “I happen to love the Volstead Act. We pickled purveyors of spirits and such have never had it better.”

With that he downed his glass of brandy in one go and, groaning with satisfaction, snapped his fingers at the colored servant lingering nearby, who trotted over to refill the director’s glass.

“The picture,” Rivers said, sipping his in a considerably more gentlemanly fashion.

“Of course,” said March. “The business at hand. Never give a producer a second to think you’re having a good time, boys.”

Rivers shook his head, but smiled.

“Now Lasky runs things different than Veritek, you understand,” March began. “Saul’s a grand old son, he truly is, but the independents are floundering. It’s the majors where you want to be — both of you.” He pointed first at Jack, then at Grace. “To an outfit like Saul’s, it’s about the business, like Ford and his automobiles. That’s fine. We think that’s about right, too. But as Jack here can tell us, it’s about the art of the thing, too. Why, you’ve got to have something to say, and the right way to say it. To film it. And Christ knows, here in the next year or two, to say it out loud, am I right?”

“And there’s a third thing,” said Joe Sommer.

“Yes,” March went on. “And Joe here brought this to our attention. We want to help change the way people see the pictures. What they’re all about. Some of them are all for a laugh, or the wonder of something big. That’s entertainment, you understand. Or you take Jack’s picture, Angel of the Abyss, and that’s a little something more, which is jake. It’s like looking at a complex painting instead of the Sunday funny papers. Both have their place, and both are fine.”

“Let me get to the point,” Joe Sommer said, edging forward on his chair. “Before the majors started incorporating out here, this business was spread out all over the country. New York mostly, but there were folks making pictures everyplace from Dubuque to Mobile, and a great many of them were doing it in a dangerous sort of way.”

“Dangerous?” Grace said. “In what way?”

“Let me put it this way,” Sommer said. “Another great reason the movies set up so well out here is the weakness of the labor unions. They’re disorganized here in Los Angeles, and the state simply hasn’t got their back. Other places, the Midwest in particular, that’s just not so. Out there, especially in the teens, there were — and still are — a lot of dangerous types churning out little pictures seeking to undermine the way we do business in this country. Red types, if you catch my meaning.”

“Like Jack’s favorite ar-teest in Russia,” Rivers jeered.

“There’s a socialist fire spreading in a lot of quarters of industry,” Sommer said gravely. “Rabble-rousers like Debs and Darrow are fanning the flames, and some of the pictures that got a little attention in the last decade and picking up steam in this one. One way to combat that is to control distribution.”

“That’s where the majors come in,” said Rivers.

“Right,” Sommer agreed. “They’re stringing their own theaters across the country, theaters that show their own productions. But as any good distributor knows, that doesn’t quite edge out the smaller outfits, some of which get cajoled into showing these socialist movies, garbage like A Martyr To His Cause and What Is To Be Done. Pictures that rile people up. Pictures that don’t do us here in sunny California any favors when we’re trying to build a goddamn empire here, pardon my French.”

“We want to make a picture that helps put the old kibosh on that nonsense, Ms. Baron,” said March. “A tragicomedy, if you like. A picture that takes the Sinclair Lewis type, the Clarence Darrow, and exposes them for the frauds they are. A capitalist picture.”

“An American picture,” Rivers said.

Grace finished her drink, sighed, and then let loose a raucous laugh.

“Gentlemen, you’re not talking to Elizabeth Stanton here. I’m an actress, always have been, and nothing besides. Politics are swell and all, but I’m only here to make pictures.”

“And pictures you shall make, my dear,” Joe Sommer said, touching her knee. “This one in particular, we hope. It’ll pay you plenty—”

“—get you out of that lousy bungalow for certain,” Jack muttered.

“—and boy will it be a sensation,” Sommer finished.

Grace held up her glass and March’s servant filled it from a decanter before slinking off again. “As we used to say back on the old homestead, let’s talk turkey, gents.”

“There’s just one thing,” Rivers announced.

“Spill it.”

Rivers looked to Jack, who sucked in a deep breath and sat up straight.

“It’s about Frank Faehnrich,” said Jack.

“Who?” Grace lied.

Alan Rivers arched an eyebrow at her.

“Why don’t you ask your driver to come out of that car and join us, Ms. Baron.”

“My driver? Why, I don’t—”

“Now Grace,” Jack said, leaning close. “You’re not in any sort of trouble. Neither of you are. But I know you made nice friends with Frank, and I also know he’s gotten himself into a terrible spot with those old pals of his…”

“We want to offer him an opportunity,” Joe Sommer said.

“He’ll help us, and in return we’ll help him right back,” said Rivers.

“But…he’s an electrician, and only an apprentice one at that. What help could he possibly be?”

“Electrician,” Sommer scoffed.

“Weren’t you there when that Red stooge plugged him?” Rivers said bluntly.

“Hey, what is this?” Grace set down her drink, splashing some on the table, and stood up from her chair. “I came here to talk about my career, about making a movie, not Frank Faehnrich.”

“We are talking about your next picture,” Joseph March said. “Please, sit down, Ms. Baron. Let me be more clear.”

“You had better. This is much too odd, Mr. March. I don’t like where this has gone in the least.”

Jack Parson eased her, forcefully, back down to her chair. She furrowed her brow and waited for an explanation.

“Ms. Baron,” Rivers started off, “do you know why your friend Frank was shot at that night?”

She shot a look at Joe Sommer, who said, “It’s all right, Gracie. These gentlemen and I want to help Frank. I promise we do.”

“Why can’t you just leave him alone? He’s reformed. He doesn’t want anything to do with those gangsters anymore.”

“Gangsters!” Rivers shouted.

Sommer said, “Is that what he told you?”

“I met them myself. I paid them off to let Frank alone.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Rivers lamented.

“To be fair,” Sommer said, “they’re gangsters of a kind, just not the underworld sort. Grace, Frank was a sort of spy, for the labor people. Now we don’t know whether or not he intended to sabotage your picture, but he helped set fire to a set last year after the crew tried to organize and hold the studio hostage for higher wages.”

“A couple of people died in that fire,” March told her. “A woman and a child, a young boy. There was a small house — a shack, really — near to where they were filming, and they got caught in the blaze. Burned to death.”

“Because of your pal Frank,” Sommer added.

“And that’s why…?” she asked, trailing off.

The sun tossed a broad swatch of light across her face as she recalled the gruesome scene from the street that night. The man Frank shot — Petey — had said something about being in the red. She had taken that at face value at the time, that Frank owed money just as he eventually said he did, but now she turned the phrase over in her mind. Grace wondered now if it wasn’t a sort of pun.

“His cronies ordered him out of town,” said Rivers. “He wouldn’t go, and he wouldn’t stick with them. Got a conscience at the last minute, I suppose. A conscience that was a liability to the men he’d been running around with.”

“You mean there were no drugs, no smuggling operation?”

“The closest that boy probably ever got to any drugs is quinine,” Sommer said. “He fed you a story, and a ridiculous one from the sound of it.”

“And it sounds like his old pals in the labor racket used it to squeeze some funds out of you, too,” Rivers added.

“This is crazy,” she muttered. “Why, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s the truth, Gracie,” Sommer told her. “Frank isn’t anything more than a union thug, the sort who wants to ruin everything we’ve worked for out here to make a picture business that the people want. To entertain a troubled country. To make a star out of a little country girl like Grace Baronsky.”

Lighting a cigarette with a trembling hand, she turned her head until the car was in her field of vision. Frank remained inside, behind the wheel, though curiously slumped in his seat.

“I don’t believe he meant to hurt anyone,” said Alan Rivers. “That was an accident, and the reason he got out of it. We want to take that newfound conscience of his to its logical end — we want to put Frank in the picture.”

“You’re kidding,” she said, snapping her head back.

“Not in the least,” said March with a grin. “I know he’s no actor, but the labor crooks know him, and when they see him make a turnaround, to come around to the right way of thinking right there on the silver screen…”

“You want to make an example out of him.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and envisioned herself standing up, walking calmly from there to the automobile in the drive, climbing inside, and telling Frank to get them both the hell out of there. Which, she instantly knew, would signal the end of her career in pictures before it ever got the chance to start. Her first picture still unfinished, she’d never make another. The boozy businessmen around her would undoubtedly turn the tables on Frank, turn him in for his part in the set fire. She could go with him, back to Idaho or farther still — she’d already changed her name once, why not again? Go back into the vaudeville circuit. He could be her manager. Grow a beard, perhaps. Never set foot in California again…

But he lied to her. Took advantage of her charity, her friendship. All the while a Red thug who sought to destroy the very thing she loved most, needed most. Her very livelihood, her dreams, her destiny.

Petey crumpled on the street, soaking the ground with blood…

The knife in Billy Francis’ gut, leaking blood…

Blood on the Odessa steps…

Blood, blood, blood…

Grace emitted a small sound as she stood up again, the cigarette falling from her fingers. She didn’t notice.

“What about the other men?” she said breathlessly. “The ones I paid off? They said they’d kill him if he didn’t leave town.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Rivers answered, picking up her smoke and tamping it out in the ashtray. “I know the Assistant D.A. personally. All Frank has to do is write down their names and they’ll never be able to touch him. They’ll be too busy pacing in their cells.”

“You’d do that for him?”

“If he agrees to our terms, absolutely.”

“Go get him, Gracie,” Sommer said, gently. “Everybody wins.”

She paused, stalling. Joe Sommer grinned up at her. Rivers checked his wristwatch.

“All right,” she said at length. “All right.”

With a deep breath she left the four men on the veranda and went round the house, to the front, where she descended the marble steps to the drive. Frank peered up at her from his slumped position behind the steering wheel. When she was near enough, he hissed, “What in God’s name is going on over there, Grace?”

“A meeting,” she said. “And they want to talk to you.”

“Christ,” he growled. “Come on, get in. We’ve got to go.”

“It’s not like that, Frank. They want to help you. They told me everything. I’m sore, I won’t lie to you, but it’s going to work in everyone’s favor, including yours.”

“Do you even know who Joe Sommer is?” he shot back. “That muckamuck — that goddamn fink.”

“He happens to be a friend of my aunt’s, if you must know…”

“He’s a strike-breaker, or used to be. Cracked skulls for some of the production outfits when the crews wouldn’t work. Got on swell with those boys, protecting the profits and all. Guess now he rides high with the tuxedo brigade.”

“God, Frank — none of that means a thing to me. I’m just trying to help you, and so are they, Joe included. They want to offer you a chance to dig yourself out of this grave you got yourself into.”

“Grave nothing. I believed in worker’s rights at one time. In fact, I still do, just not the way we were doing it. I care a lot about pictures, Grace, which is why I wanted to see them work the way every industry ought to work. And this one so new, it had a chance, but that chance is shot. It’s lost. I’m done with all that, but a guy like Joe Sommer wouldn’t ever let me forget it. A better company man never lived, and he’s got it out for the little man and baby, I’m as little as they come.”

“You’re not so small,” she said. “And besides, all they want to do is talk. I can’t say it isn’t a strange proposition, but it’s sure an interesting one.”

“I’ve heard a lot of propositions from finks like Sommer. I don’t want to hear another one. I’ll be straight with you, Grace — get in or don’t, but I’m leaving and I mean right now.”

She stood still as a statue, her face without expression. Behind her, the men on the veranda watched in silence.

“They’re using you,” Frank said. “Or at least trying to. Can’t you see that? They couldn’t care less what happens to you. There’s always another girl with feet just as bloody as yours from the circuit stages to take your place.”

“That’s some cynical way to look at things,” she said.

“You should try it,” he replied. “Open your eyes a little. See what’s going on around you. You’re a commodity. I’m the enemy. Nobody has our best interests in mind but ourselves, and it’s about time you realized that. Now are you coming or shall I leave the car in front of your place?”

“You lied to me,” she said sharply.

“I thought I had to. To protect you.”

“From what?”

“From thinking the wrong thing about me.”

“I think the right thing now. And it’s still wrong.”

Frank narrowed his eyes and started the motor. The automobile shuddered, rumbled to life. Back at the house, Joe Sommer stood up quickly.

“It’s time, Grace,” Frank said.

She reached in through the window, retrieved her bag on the backseat, and turned back for the veranda. While she climbed back up the steps, the car rolled away, sputtering into the distance as Frank drove.

Joe came running toward her, panting, “What happened?”

“He rejected your offer,” she said matter-of-factly as she rejoined the group. “I, however, would like to do what I came here to do: talk about my next picture.”

25

“The solution,” Lou said over coffee across Fairfax from the ATM, “is as fucking easy as A-B-C, my friend.”

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

“We make a withdrawal. A big one.”

“You mean steal Helen’s money?”

“Temporarily. Most banks only let you take so much out at a time, and there’s no way we can con a teller into giving us anything, so my plan is to hit as many ATMs as we can in as short a time as possible and take out the maximum every fucking time.”

“Okay, so we start a rip-off spree until the bank catches on and freezes the account…”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe—maybe—get, what? A few thousand bucks?”

“If we’re lucky.”

“And then what?”

“Wait.”

“Wait?”

“Fucking wait.”

“For what?”

“For her — or somebody—to come to us.”

“Brilliant.”

Lou brightened. “You think so?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. I think it’s stupid. And probably dangerous.”

“Since when was any of this not dangerous?”

“You have a point, but I still don’t see the use. There’s three-quarters of a mil in that account. Who’s going to notice a couple thousand right away?”

“Whoever has access to the account. The bank is going to call them and fucking quick. ‘Somebody’s jacked your card and they’re stealing your fucking funds, bitch.’”

“I’m sure that will be their words exactly.”

“I’m serious, Jake. If it’s Helen’s money, she’ll get the call and want to find out what the fuck’s going on.”

“And if it’s somebody else’s?”

“Same deal, and hopefully they’ll lead us to her.”

“And what do we do, advertise in the L.A. Weekly?”

“That would take too long,” she said, completely missing my sarcasm.

A chick from Lou’s school of fashion came around to ask if we wanted another round of joe. Lou said we did, and a pair of crullers to match.

“It’s on him,” she added, gesturing toward me.

“I’m not rich, you know,” I said as the waitress sauntered off.

“Here’s an idea,” Lou said, ignoring that. “We only know of two places that Helen is associated with, right?”

“The apartment and Ray’s office.”

“Right.”

“But she doesn’t live there anymore and Ray fired her.”

“Oh,” Lou said. “Right.”

The coffee and crullers came, and after the waitress vanished again I said, “Okay, let me go back to the beginning here. Here’s what we know: when Helen was working at the theater, she met Leslie Wheeler and got well enough acquainted with her to suggest Graham for the Angel restoration.”

“Yep.”

“Graham — and I — came out here for that, whereupon Leslie ended up dead, Helen missing, and Graham shot at twice, the second time successfully, or semi-successfully.”

“Don’t forget that other lady, too.”

“Yeah, Florence Sommer. Also dead.”

“That’s pretty much everybody involved in this clusterfuck except one…”

“The Wheeler lady’s friend.”

“Right. Barbara Tilitson.”

“So how does she figure in?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t think of anything else to go on. Assuming she hasn’t been knocked off too, I say we look in her direction.”

“And forget about the money?”

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with this yet, but I wouldn’t discount it. I’m suggesting a bit of both plans — we make the withdrawals like you said, then track down this Tilitson woman and see if anything comes together.”

“Vague hunch, Kojak.”

“You got something better?”

She took a huge bite of her cruller and shrugged.

With her mouth full, she said, “Let’s make it happen, Cap’n.”

We were locked out after our third withdrawal. Each ATM yielded a max of three hundred, so we managed nine hundred before our fourth attempt went south. The screen politely informed us that the account was unavailable, pending inquiries, and to contact the branch manager as soon as possible. The fact that each machine came equipped with a surveillance camera that transmitted our pictures back to whatever security agency the bank used was on my mind, but the least of my worries. We took the nine Cs and went directly back to Hollywood, to the office of the Silent Film Appreciation Society, where this whole shindig got underway.

And there, we found Barbara Tilitson, who was three sheets to the wind, which is to say piss drunk.

The office was mostly picked up from the last time I saw it, with Graham, and the yellow police tape was gone, informing me that the cops were done with the place. We found the door open a crack and when I knocked, Barbara hollered something unintelligible that I choose to interpret as an invitation to come inside. So we went inside. And there was that nice old tea-sipping lady sitting on the floor with her legs splayed and a mostly empty bottle of crème de menthe between them.

“We’re not open,” she slurred, “but if you’ve got something to drink, you’re welcome to join me.”

“You’re in a state,” Lou said.

“And you’ve got metal in your face,” Barbara came back with a throaty laugh. “Sit down. Get a cup from the kitchen or drink straight from the bottle, I don’t care.”

“Do you remember me, Ms. Tilitson?” I tried.

“Sure, sure,” she said. “That boy from Boston.”

“One of ‘em. I’m Jake.”

“Sure, Jake. And Graham? The other one’s Graham.”

“That’s right. He’s in the hospital. In a bad way, actually. He was shot in the head, Ms. Tilitson.”

Her eyebrows shot up near her hairline, though her eyelids remained drunkenly droopy.

“Oh, oh, my. That was bound to happen, I expect. Yes, that was bound to happen.”

Lou said, “Why do you say that?”

Barbara Tilitson chuckled darkly.

“When you kick a tiger in the balls, it’s bound to bite you, sweetheart.”

I felt my neck get hot and struggled to contain myself. “What tiger, Ms. Tilitson?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, call me Barbara. I’m not your grandmother…”

“Fine,” I said. “Barbara. What tiger are we talking about here?”

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” she recited, “in the forests of the night…”

Lou moved for the kitchenette, said, “I’ll make some coffee.”

“Better Irish that up, dear,” Barbara said.

I thought, This is going to be a long night.

Barbara insisted on finishing her crème de menthe before she’d touch the coffee Lou made. Neither of us argued. After we managed to get a couple cups in her, she lolled on the chair Leslie Wheeler died in, looking gray and defeated. After a while she drowsed for thirty or forty-five minutes and we let her. When she came back to, she seemed more than a little confused that we were there. I poured her another cup and Lou started some oatmeal she found in the cupboard to fill the old gal’s stomach.

“Lord, I never do this,” Barbara mewled after a few bites of the oatmeal. “The bottle was just there, a celebratory sort of thing. I’m sure Leslie must have bought it. I never go in liquor stores, God knows.”

“No judgment here,” Lou assured her.

“I don’t even…I don’t even know what day it is,” Barbara said with a choked laugh. The laughter descended quickly into small, heaving sobs. I was paralyzed. Lou hurried to her side and held her close. I was terribly grateful and not a little impressed.

I stayed quiet and still, waiting for Barbara to calm down a bit. There were a couple of near-misses, but she eventually stopped crying and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater. She then took a deep breath and said evenly, “I just miss her so much.”

“I know,” Lou said. I was dumbstruck by how genuinely sweet she was being. With me it was all toughness and swear words. I decided it wasn’t the mystery I was going to solve this time out.

“Barbara, what did you mean when you said Graham was bound to be shot?”

Her face flushed. “Oh,” she said, “I did say that, didn’t I?”

“We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this,” Lou told her, pulling her in for a sideways hug on the chair. “Before anybody else gets hurt.”

“Good God,” Barbara said, shaking her head. “We were just so excited, finding that reel. Leslie and I, I mean. I’d never had imagined in a hundred years all the trouble it’s brought. She might have, but not me.”

“Why?” I asked. “What did Leslie know that would make her think that?”

“That woman…”

“Who? What woman?”

“That awful old…” She cut herself off before she was forced to swear again. Quite the contrast with Lou, I realized.

And it was Lou who got the lightbulb over her head. She said, “Wait — didn’t that kid at the theater say something about an old woman? He thought she might’a been Helen’s grandma, remember?”

I hadn’t made anything of that. But Lou tucked it away, the clever girl.

“I didn’t tell the police,” Barbara went on, stretching it out painfully. “I suppose I’ll get in trouble for that. But Leslie, my dear Leslie…she didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Know what, Barbara?”

She wrinkled her nose and covered her mouth. I was losing what little patience I had left. I said, “Look, we’ve been running all over the county trying to find Graham’s ex-wife, thinking she might lead us to the end of this bullshit, and you’re dangling the carrot right in front of us.”

“I’m starting to think we wasted our time taking that damn money,” Lou said.

“Money?” Barbara said, looking up with wet eyes at Lou. “What money?”

“Helen Bryan’s money — that’s Graham’s ex. It’s kind of a complicated mess, didn’t really go anywhere…”

“Oh, no,” Barbara whispered. “Oh, Jesus…you didn’t.”

“It’s not like we robbed her,” Lou said in defense. “The idea was to lure her out, like.”

“Listen to me,” Barbara said between harsh breaths, “Helen Bryan is probably dead by now. That’s how she works, how that terrible…listen to me. That isn’t her money. It belongs to some people, awful people, and when they find out you’ve taken it—”

“Wait a minute,” I barked. “What the hell do you mean, Helen’s dead? How would you even know that?”

“Leslie shouldn’t have involved her. She shouldn’t have involved any of you.”

“Hey, I’m just along for the ride,” Lou said.

Barbara was getting manic, starting to hyperventilate. I wondered if I should look for a paper bag she could breathe into — wasn’t that what you’re supposed to do? — when a thin, papery voice startled me from behind.

“Ah, you must be the two who went around town stealing from me this evening.”

Barbara muttered, “Mrs. Parson…”

I turned around quickly to see an old woman, deeply wrinkled and white as a sheet, her silver hair done up in a large old-fashioned bun. She was leaning on one of those canes with four legs and peering through hazy gray eyes. I guessed she was pushing eighty and there were a pair of mean-looking dudes flanking her right and left.

The old woman rasped, “Did you put these hoodlums up to it, Barbara?”

Barbara could only stare. The woman hissed a weak laugh.

“How about this one?” she asked, waggling an arthritic finger at Lou. “Your new conquest, I suppose? A bit young for you, isn’t she? But I don’t suppose your kind have much in the way of limits.”

“Watch it,” I growled at her. I wasn’t above putting an elderly homophobe in her place, never mind the heavies she brought with her. That is, until the one on her left moved his jacket to show me the gun in his waistband.

Lou stood up slowly and showed her palms. I wished she hadn’t. I remembered the little pistol in her purse, but I guessed the shock of the moment made her forget. She’d been hell-bent for leather to do some damage that night, but now was when we really needed her verve.

“Barbara didn’t have anything to do with it,” she said calmly. “We’re just trying to find a friend, not steal anything.”

I balked at her use of the term “friend,” not to mention the fact that these were very likely the people who killed Helen, if what Barbara said was true. But I stayed quiet, frozen. And I wondered if I’d survive a bullet to the dome the same way Graham had. Maybe they’d put me in the next bed over and we could be coma buddies. It almost sounded relaxing.

Lou dug out the money, nine hundred dollars, and reached it out as far as she could without stepping forward.

“Take it,” she said. “It was a stupid fucking idea, anyway.”

“It certainly was,” the woman Barbara called Mrs. Parson said. Then: “David.”

The guy with the gun had it out of his pants and aimed across the room quicker than my eye could follow. It was sleek and silver and it looked heavy, especially when it kicked and belched fire, sending a bullet spinning inches from my shoulder and directly into Lou’s chest. She made a high-pitched squealing sound, like a kitten, and bared her teeth as she spun awkwardly toward Barbara. The money went flying, fluttering like nine tiny green kites in the smoky air between her and the gunman.

If I expected a lot of blood, I was surprised not to see any at all. Just a small black hole in her top, right between her breasts, which she touched with a look of sad astonishment as she collapsed on top of Barbara. I think I must have yelled. I heard a yell, and my throat felt raw, but everything seemed to be happening apart from me, like an out-of-body experience. Barbara was crying again and the gun was still out, though the other man was now helping the old woman out of the office and into the shadows of the musty hallway. She called back, “Take care of it, David. Make sure.”

Lou was down and Barbara was more or less incapacitated, so the barrel bore down on me next. In that fraction of a second it occurred to me that for Graham to have survived a gunshot to the head was so statistically improbable it ranked as miraculous. There just wasn’t any way that was going to happen twice in a row, probably from the same gun. So I went limp the way kids do sometimes when you pick them up, like a marionette whose puppeteer dropped the strings, and fell to the floor the moment David squeezed the trigger. Glass shattered behind me at the same time the gun barked, one of those framed movie posters they had on the walls, and I rolled away from it, toward David’s legs. The gun followed my movement. I bit down on his ankle as hard as I could. He roared and the gun went up. He fired it at the ceiling. I hoped no one above us caught the bullet and reached up to grab the bastard’s beanbag, which I squeezed as hard as I was biting the ankle.

The gun clattered to the floor. David’s fist crashed down on the crown of my head and fireworks exploded in my brain. I released his balls but bit down harder still. He screamed and grabbed a handful of my shirt, lifted me off the ground. Next thing there was another shot and I squeezed my eyes shut, certain beyond a doubt that I’d caught a bullet and just didn’t feel it yet. I gave a good fight. Did the best I could. I was only sorry I never really found Helen for Graham and that Barbara was probably the next to go.

You can’t win all the time.

What a goddamned clusterfuck.

I opened my eyes and waited for the pain or, failing that, the end. Instead David fell into a heap beside me and lay still. His hair was a matted mess dribbling red. A few feet away, Barbara Tilitson stood trembling with the dead man’s pistol shaking in both hands. Her eyes streamed tears and her mouth jabbered silently, senselessly.

Behind her, bent over the Queen Anne chair, Lou said, “Oh, fuck.”

I scrambled for the phone and dialed 911.

Looked to me like Lou’s idea about withdrawing the money worked, to an extent. And to enormous cost, too.

She was still swearing at the paramedics when they rushed in to work on her. They tried to look at my head too, but I brushed them off. Lou was loaded up on a gurney and taken downstairs to the ambulance waiting in the street with dizzying lights.

She was dead before she reached the hospital.

I was weeping like a baby when I found out, sitting in the sterile waiting room with a bevy of cops around me. The police were not moved by my feelings and started into me right away. I said I wanted a lawyer and that I wanted to talk to Detective Shea. As luck had it, he was already in the hospital. When he finally made it down to see me, I learned why.

“Your buddy’s awake,” he told me. “Lucky son of a bitch. He’s going to be all right.”

I sighed with relief, but I was still crying. Poor Lou. I never bought her story about why she did it, why she came along with me. I never was going to find out. One last adventure for a lost soul, I guessed. It was going to have to do.

“What about the guy who killed Louise?” I asked.

“Dead, but I guess you knew that. It’s quite a trail of bodies you and your pal leave behind you, isn’t it?”

“And all over a damn silent movie.”

“About that,” Shea said, fishing a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and putting them on. He squinted at his notepad and continued, “I’ve been digging around a lot, looking into that movie. The Internet’s a hell of a thing, don’t know how we ever got by without it.”

I raised my brows and waited for him to get to the point.

He said, “You’re the movie buff. Ever heard of Jack Parson?”

“No,” I said. “That old stuff is Graham’s department. Bores me to tears.”

“He’s the fella who directed your Angel of the Abyss back in the day. Turns out his son was a bigwig in the biz, too. Bigger than his old man. Exec type, money guy. Made a run for Congress, lost by a wide margin.”

“I don’t know any of this, Detective.”

“Well, Junior’s gone to his reward, too, but he married a young woman who appears to still be kicking around, though she’s older than dirt now if she is. Name of Cora. But it looks like you wouldn’t know about her, either.”

I swallowed hard. “Holy shit.”

“Something coming to mind?”

“The old woman…”

“Mrs. Tilitson said something about an old woman. She’s pretty out of it, though. What was she talking about?”

“Jesus — the guy who shot Louise, the one Barbara killed — he came with another guy and an old woman. And Barbara knew her. She called her Mrs. Parson.”

Detective Shea cocked his head to one side and said, “And Bingo was his name-o.”