Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER EIGHT

The hotel overlooked Gramercy Park, that trim private garden bordered in wrought iron at the end of Lexington Avenue.

The lobby of the place was all red and gold, with flecked fleur-de-lis wallpaper. Dozens of layers of paint coated the woodwork and the carpet smelled sour-sweet. One of the two elevators was broken-permanently, it seemed.

It was quiet as Rune waited for the elevator to descend to the ground floor. A woman in her fifties, wearing a green-and-gold dress, her face a smooth curve of foundation makeup, watched Rune from under jutting glossy eyelashes. A middle-aged musician with dirty brown hair sat with his foot up on a battered Ovation guitar case and read the Post.

Tommy Savorne's room was on the fourteenth floor, which, it occurred to Rune, was really the thirteenth, because when they built hotels in the thirties and forties they didn't label the thirteenth floor. That had a certain appeal for her. She felt that superstition was something people who were unliteral tended to believe in. And being too literal was a major sin in her bible.

She found the door and knocked.

Chains and latches jangled and the heavy door swung open. A man stood there, sunburned and cute-and looking, yeah, a bit like John Denver. More like a cowboy at a dude ranch. His face was somber. He wore blue jeans and a work shirt. He wore one crew sock; the other dangled from his hand. His hair was shaggy and blond. He was thin.

"Hi, what can I do for you?"

"You're Tommy Savorne?"

He nodded.

"I'm Rune. I knew Shelly. Nicole said you were in town and I just wanted to come by and say I was real sorry about what happened."

She hadn't been sure what she was going to say after that, but it didn't matter. Tommy gave a nod and motioned her inside.

The room was small, the walls off-white, the carpet gold. She got a whiff of a stale smell-what was it, old food? Aging plaster? Probably just the smell of a prewar hotel going to seed. But Tommy was burning incense- sandalwood-which helped. Two table lamps gave off a salmon glow. He'd been reading a cookbook, one of a dozen of them on the chipped brown-laminate desk.

"Sit down. You want something?" He looked around. "I don't have any liquor. Just soda. Mineral water. Oh, I have some babagounash."

"What's that, like sassafras? I had this ginseng cola one time. Yuck."

"It's eggplant dip. My own recipe." He held up a plastic container of brown-green mash.

Rune shook her head. "I just ate. But thanks. Nothing for me."

Savorne sat on the bed and Rune flopped into the Naugahyde chair with split sides; it bled dirty-white upholstery stuffing.

"You were Shelly's boyfriend?" Rune asked.

He was nodding, squinting slightly. Tommy said, "Shelly and I broke up over a year ago. But we were good friends. I still live in California where she and I used to live. I'm just in town now for a job."

" California," Rune mused. "I've never been. I'd like to go sometime. Sit under palm trees and watch movie stars all day long."

"I'm from the north. Monterey. It's about a hundred miles south of San Francisco. Hard to star-spot there. Except for Clint Eastwood."

"That's a pretty good exception."

Tommy was carefully pulling a sock over his large foot. Even his feet looked tanned and trim. She looked closely: Wild! He's got manicured toenails. She saw cowboy boots and several cowboy hats in the closet.

He sighed. "I can't believe it. I can't believe she's dead." He reached lethargically under the bed then snagged a black loafer. Slipped it on. Found the other one. It drooped in his hand. "How did you know her?"

"I was making a movie about her," Rune said.

Savorne said, "A movie?"

"A documentary."

"She didn't mention that."

"We just started the day she was killed. I was with her when it happened."

Savorne scanned her face. "That how you got those scratches?"

"I was outside when the bomb went off. It's nothing serious."

"You know, even though we weren't going out anymore we still talked a lot. I was thinking… That's something I won't be able to do anymore. Not ever again…"

"How long've you known her?"

"Five, six years. I used to…" He looked away. "Well, I used to be in her line of work. The films, I mean."

"An actor?"

He laughed wanly. "Not really built for that." Laughed again; his red face turned redder. "I'm talking about physique, not equipment."

Rune smiled. He continued. "No. I was a cameraman and director. Did some editing too. I'd was in film school at UCLA for a couple of years, but that wasn't for me. I knew how to handle a camera. I didn't need to sit in classes full of these nerds. So I borrowed some money, bought an old Bolex and opened my own production company. I was going to be the next George Lucas or Spielberg. I didn't get to first base. I went under in about three months. Then this guy I knew called and told me about a job shooting an adult film. I thought, Hey, watching beautiful women and getting paid for it? Why not? I gotta admit I thought maybe I'd get a little of the action myself. Everybody in the crew thinks that but it never works out that way. But they paid me a hundred cash for two hours' work and I decided that was going to be my career."

"How'd you meet Shelly?"

"I moved to San Francisco and started making my own films. Shelly was auditioning at the theaters in North Beach -the legit theaters. Actually I picked her up in a bar is how we met. We started going out. When I told her what I did, well, most girls'd go, I'm outa here. But Shelly was interested. Something about it really turned her on. Something about the power… She was reluctant, sure, but since her theater career was going nowhere I talked her into working for me."

Or she let youthink you talked her into it? Rune asked silently. Just how well did you know your girlfriend? She couldn't imagine talking Shelly into anything.

"I saw one of her films," Rune said. "I was surprised. She was good."

"Good? Man, forget about it! What it was, she was real. I mean, real. She played an eighteen-year-old cheerleader, man, she was a cheerleader. She played a thirty-five-year-old businesswoman, you believed her."

"Yeah, but with those kinds of movies, do the audiences care?" Rune asked.

"That's a good question. I didn't think so. But Shelly did. And that's all that mattered. We got into some wild fights over it. She'd insist on rehearsing. Christ, we'd shoot a film a day. There's no dialogue; there's a couple-page treatment is all. What's this rehearsal bullshit? Then she'd insist on setting up the lighting just right. I lost money on her. Cost overruns, missed delivery dates to the distributors… But she was right, I guess-in some kind of artistic sense. The films she made, some of them are fabulous. And a hell of a lot more erotic than anything else you'll see.

"See, her theory is that an artist has to know what the audience wants and give it to them, even if they don'tknow they want it. 'You make the movie for the audience, not yourself.' Shelly said that a million times."

"You're not in the business anymore?"

Tommy shook his head. "Nope. Porn used to be a classier crowd. And a smarter crowd. Real people. It was fun. Now, there's too many drugs. I started to lose friends to overdoses and AIDS. I said, Time for me to move on. I wanted Shelly to come with me but…" Another faint smile. "I couldn't exactly see her working for my new company."

"Which does what?"

"Health food how-to videos." He nodded at the baba-gounash. "You ever hear of infomercials?"

"Nope."

"You buy a half hour-usually on cable-and make it look like a real program, something informative. But you also sell the product it's about. They're fun."

"How's business?"

"Oh, not great compared with pom, but I'm not embarrassed to tell people what I do." His voice faded. He stood up and walked over to the window, pulled aside a stained orange drape. "Shelly," he whispered. "She'd still be alive if she'd quit too. But she didn't listen to me. So pigheaded."

Rune flashed back to her fiery blue eyes.

Tommy's lips were trembling. His thick, sunburned fingers rose to his face. He started to speak but his breath caught and he lowered his head for a moment in silent tears. Rune looked away.

Finally he calmed, shook his head.

Rune said, "She was quite a person. A lot of people'll miss her. I just met her and I do."

It was hard to watch him, a big man, a healthy, cheerful man overcome by grief.

But at least it answered the first of Rune's two questions: Tommy Savorne probably wasn't Shelly's killer. He didn't seem to be that good an actor.

So, Rune asked the second: "Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?"

Savorne looked up, a frown of curiosity on his face. "This religious group…"

"Assuming this Sword of Jesus doesn't exist."

"You think?"

"I don't know. Just consider it."

At first he shook his head at the foolishness of the question, at the craziness of anyone's wanting to hurt Shelly. But then he stopped. "Well, I wouldn't make much out of it… but there was somebody. A guy she worked for."

"Danny Traub?"

"How did you know?"

"Let me tell you, and I mean this sincerely, that I loved Shelly Lowe. I loved her as an artist and I loved her as a human being."

Danny Traub was short and thin, but muscular thin, tendony. His face was round and his hair was a cap of tight brown curls. He had jowl lines that enclosed his mouth like parentheses. He was wearing baggy black slacks, a white sweatshirt with a design like semaphores. His jewelry was heavy and gold: two chains, a bracelet, a ring with a sapphire in it and a Rolex Oyster Perpetual.

That watch cost more than my parents' first house, Rune guessed.

Traub continually looked around him as if there were a crowd of people nearby, an audience. An insincere smile kept curling into his face and he gestured constantly and arched his eyebrows. The phrasedoss clown came to mind.

They were in Traub's Greenwich Village town house. It was a duplex, done in blond wood and off-white walls and loaded with small trees and plants. "Like a jungle," she said when she'd arrived. He had her leave the Betacam and the battery packs in the front hall and walked her through the place. He showed her his collection of Indonesian fertility gods and sculpture. One, Rune loved: a four-foot-high rabbit with a mysterious smile on his face. "Hey, you're great!" she'd said, walking right up to it.

"Oh, she could have dicks and boobs butshe wants to talk to the rabbit," Traub had said to his invisible audience, glancing over his shoulder.

They'd walked past blotchy paintings, glass and metal sculpture, huge stone pots, Indian baskets, brass Bud-dhas, more plants (the smell was heavy-duty greenhouse). Upstairs, one door was partially open. As they'd walked past, Traub'd shut it quickly, but not fast enough to keep Rune from seeing an assembly of sleeping limbs. There were at least three arms and she was pretty sure she saw two blonde hairdos.

The back of the apartment opened onto a courtyard around a green bronze fountain. This is where they were sitting when Rune told him that she was doing a film about Shelly Lowe.

And Danny Traub had looked to the side-into the eyes of his portable audience-and delivered his line about really, truly, loving Shelly Lowe.

He was stationary when he offered this, but he didn't stay still for long. As he talked about Shelly he bounced up, radiating energy, and rocked on his feet, swinging his arms back and forth. He dropped into the chair again and continued to shift positions and stretch out until he was nearly horizontal, then swung his legs over the arm.

"I was, the word that comes to mind is, devastated. I mean, like, fucking devastated about what happened. She and me were best buddies on the set. I'm not saying we didn't disagree-we both have strong personalities. But we were a team, we were. An example, always better if you have examples. Now, it's cheapest and most efficient to shoot direct to video."

"Betacam or Ikegami running one-inch tape through an Ampex."

Traub grinned and pointed Rune out to the audience. "Do we have a sharp kid or what? Yessir, ladies and gentlemen." Back to Rune. "Anyway, Shelly wanted to shoot on thirty-five millimeter fuckingfilm. I mean, forget it. Your budget is ten thousand for the wholeflick. How can you spend eight on film and processing alone-and even that's Jewing down the price at one of the labs. Then forget about postproduction… Well, finally I get Shelly to agree no thirty-five millimeter. But right away she starts up on sixteen millimeter. It looks better, so can I argue?… Anyway, that was typical. Creative disputes, you know. But we respected each other."

"Who won? About the film, I mean?"

"I always win. Well, most of the time. A couple films we shot on sixteen. 'Course that was the one that got the AAAF Picture of the Year Award." He pointed to an Oscar-like statue on his mantel.

"What does a producer do exactly?"

"Hey, this kid is just like Mike Wallace-question, question, question… Okay, a producer in this business? He tries out the actresses. Hey, just kidding. I do what all producers do. I finance a film, hire the cast and crew, contract with a postpro house. The business side, you know. I happen to direct some too. I'm pretty good at it."

"Can I tape you talking about Shelly?"

The smile flickered for a moment before it returned. "Tape? Me? I don't know."

"Or maybe you could recommend somebody else. I just need to talk to somebody who's pretty high up in the business. Somebody successful. So if you know anybody…"

Rune thought this was way too obvious but Traub snagged the bait greedily.

"Okay? She wonders if I've been successful… I've done fucking astronomical. I've got a Ferrari sitting not thirty feet away from us right this moment. In my own garage. In New York. My own fucking garage."

"Wow."

" 'Wow,' she says. Yeah, wow. I own this town house and I could eat in any restaurant in Manhattan every night of the year, I wanted to. I own-not a share-Iown a house in Killington. You like to ski? No? I could teach you."

"You own Lame Duck?"

"A controlling percentage. There are some other people involved."

"The Mafia?" Rune asked.

The smile stayed on Danny Traub's face. He said slowly, "You don't want to say that. Let's just say they're silent partners."

"You think they might have anything to do with the bombing?"

Again the fake smile. "Some calls were made. Some questions were asked. Nobody from… over the river, let's say, had anything to do with it. That information's gold."

She supposed that meant Brooklyn or New Jersey, headquarters of organized crime.

"So, yeah, I'll talk to you. I'll tell you my whole life story. I've been in the business for about eight, nine years. I started as a cameraman, and I did my share of acting too. You wanta see some tapes?"

"That's okay. I-"

"I'll give you one to take home."

A blonde woman-maybe last night's entertainment-appeared, groggy and sniffling. She was dressed in a red silk jumpsuit, unzipped to the navel. Traub raised his fingers as if he were signaling a waiter. The woman hesitated, then walked toward them, combing her long hair-it tumbled to her mid-back-with her fingers. Rune stared at the hair, a platinum-gold color. Neither God nor Nature could take credit for a shade like that.

Traub said to Rune, "So what would you like? Coke? I mean the real thing, of course." He held up a saltshaker. Rune shook her head.

The audience heard: "She's a Puritan. Oh, my God." Traub glanced back at Rune. "Scotch?"

Rune wrinkled her nose. "Tastes like Duz."

"Hey, I'm talking single-malt, aged twenty-one years."

"Old soap isn't any better than new soap."

"Well, just name your poison. Bourbon? Beer?"

Rune stared at the woman's hair. "A martini." It was the first thing that came into her mind.

Traub said, "Two martinis. Chop-chop."

The blonde wrinkled her tiny nose. "I'm not, like, a waitress."

"That's true," Traub said to Rune, who had apparently joined his audience. "She's notlike a waitress at all. Waitresses are smart and efficient and they don't sleep until noon." He turned back to the woman. "What you're like is a lazy slut."

She stiffened. "Hey-"

He barked, "Just get the fucking drinks."

Rune shifted. "That's okay. I don't-"

Traub gave her a cool smile, the creases cut deep into his face. "You're a guest. It's no problem."

The blonde twisted her face in anemic protest and shuffled off to the kitchen. She muttered a few words Rune couldn't hear.

Traub's smile fell. He called, "You say something?"

But the woman was gone.

He turned back to Rune. "You buy them dinner, you buy them presents, you bring them home. They still don't behave."

Rune said coldly, "People just don't read Emily Post anymore."

He missed the dig completely. "You mean like the flier? Wasn't she the one tried to fly around the world? I did a movie about an airplane once. We called itLove Plane. Sort of a takeoff onThe Love Boat -I loved that show, you ever see it? No? We rented a charter 737 for the day. Fucking expensive and a pain in the ass to shoot in. I mean, we're in this hangar in March, everybody's blue. You don't realize how small a plane is until you try to get three, four couples spread out on the seats. I'm talking wide-angle lenses. I mean, almost fish-eyes. Didn't work out too good. It looked like all the guys had dicks about an inch long and three inches wide."

The blonde returned. Rune said to Traub, "My film. Will you help me out? Please. Just a few minutes about Shelly."

He was hesitating. The blonde handed out the drinks and put an unopened jar of olives on the thick glass coffee table. Traub started to grimace. She turned to him and looked like she was going to cry. "I couldn't get it open!"

Traub's face softened. He rolled his eyes. "Hey, hey, honey, come here. Gimme a hug. Come on."

She hesitated and then bent down. He kissed her cheek.

"You got any?" she whined.

"Say please."

"Come on, Danny."

"Please," he prompted.

She said, "Please."

He fished into his pants pocket, then handed her the saltshaker-filled with coke, Rune assumed. She took it, then walked sullenly off.

She hadn't said one word to Rune, who asked Traub, "She's an actress?"

"Uh-huh. She wants to be a model. So does everyone else in this city. She'll make some movies for us. Get married, get divorced, have a breakdown, get married again and it'll take and she'll be out in Jersey in ten years, working for AT &T or Ciba-Geigy."

Rune felt Traub's eyes on her. The feeling reminded her of the time her first boyfriend, age ten, had put a big snail down the back of her blouse. Traub said, "There's something, I dunno, refreshing about you, you know. I see all these women all day long-beautiful blondes and redheads to die for. Stunning, tall…"

Oooo, watch the tall, mister.

"… big tits. But, hey, you're different."

She sighed.

"I mean that sincerely. You want to come down to Atlantic City with me? Meet some wild people?"

"I don't think so."

"One thing I am is talented. In the sack, you know."

"I'm sure."

"Plenty of recreational pharmaceuticals."

"Thanks anyway."

He looked at his watch. "Okay, tell you what, Uncle Danny'll help you out. You want to shoot me, so to speak, go ahead. But let's hurry. I got a busy day."

In ten minutes Rune had the equipment set up. She slipped a new tape into the camera. Traub sat back, popped his knuckles and grinned. He looked completely at ease.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Anything that comes to mind. Tell me about Shelly."

He glanced sideways, then looked into the camera and smiled sadly. "The first thing I have to say, and I mean this sincerely, is that I was wholly devastated by Shelly Lowe's death." The smile faded and his eyes went dull. "When she died, I lost more than my star actress. I lost one of my very dearest friends."

From somewhere, Rune had no idea where, Danny Traub produced what might pass for a tear.