Lullaby Town

CHAPTER FOUR

Pat Kyle and I walked back to the Kapstone offices where someone had set up a Sony Betamax VCR along with several yellow legal pads and sharpened pencils for the taking of notes. There was a check for four thousand dollars in an envelope taped to a Beta cassette on top of the VCR, along with a fresh pot of coffee on a side table with a tray of bagels and cream cheese and lox and sliced tomatoes and red onions. Pat said, "Would you like company?"

"Sure."

Pat turned on the machine and inserted the cassette and we watched as nineteen-year-old Karen Shipley Nelsen walked into an empty room and stood next to a stool. She wasn't made up like the waitress now. Now she was wearing faded jeans and an airy white top and red boots and she looked tanned and outdoorsy. The brown hair was cut in a sort of fluffy shag and the eyes were hazel. No makeup.

She looked at someone behind the camera and said, "What do you want me to do?" The sound coming out of the television was hollow and sort of tinny. Even with that her voice was light and girlish. She giggled.

Peter Nelsen's voice came from where she looked. "Give us the left and the right and the back. Try not to giggle."

She showed her left profile, and then her back, and then her right. She said it as she did it, and when she moved she sort of squiggled and swayed and bounced, the way fifteen-year-old girls do when they're acting grown-up and people are watching. 'This is my left side, and this is my back, and this is my right." And then she giggled. "Hee hee hee."

Pat Kyle said, "Oh, God."

"She's not impressing you with her talents?"

Pat smiled sympathetically. "I get tapes like this every week. Young women and young men come into my office and read for me, and they want you to like them so badly that you can feel them ache, but they aren't any better than this and they never will be any better than this."

"Then you suspect she has not pursued acting as a vocation?"

She made an I-hope-not shrug.

The shot changed abruptly into a tight close-up. Closer, Karen's eyes showed an absence of line or character. She was talking about herself and trying to look serious. "… think my strengths lie in comedy, but I can also do drama. I think I'd make a really good ingénue."

Peter's voice cut in sharply. "You sound like an idiot in a malt shop, 'really good ingénue.' If you're an ingénue, just say it. Say 'I'm a perfect ingénue."'

Karen looked unhappy and said, "Oh, Peter, do I havta?" When she addressed Peter, she looked off camera. When she was acting, she looked directly out of the screen.

Peter's voice said, "Why am I wasting my fucking time?"

Karen looked unhappy some more, then made a little smile and stared back into the lens and made herself serious and said it. Then she giggled.

It went on like that, cutting from bit to bit. Most of the bits were just fragments, five seconds of this, eight seconds of that, and many of them were repetitious. Peter would ask her a question or tell her to do something and she would answer or do it. There was something hopeful and naive to her manner, maybe because she was nineteen. She tried hard even when she looked unhappy.

My stomach grumbled and I kept looking at the lox and bagels. I had to keep reminding myself that lunch at Lucy's was only moments away.

At one point, Peter walked into the picture and handed her a couple of script pages. He was wearing an orange Marine Corps T-shirt with a couple of stains on the back. They wouldn't take me because of this hip thing. He was young and skinny and built exactly as he was now, all wide butt and coat-hanger shoulders and intense eyes. His hair stuck out in a tremendous natural that, within the small confines of the TV monitor, seemed to be a full three feet across. Karen cleared her throat and read the speech from Rocky that Talia Shire says to Sylvester Stallone to give him the courage to go on. She didn't read it well. She giggled when she finished and asked Peter if that was okay. He said no.

The tape lasted twenty-two minutes. Karen Shipley never once mentioned her family or her friends or her hometown. She giggled sixty-three times. I counted. Giggling is not one of my favorite things.

When the tape ended, Pat Kyle turned off the monitor and we went to lunch. Kapstone Pictures paid.

One hour and ten minutes later, full of pork burrito and Dos Equis beer, Pat Kyle resumed work and so did I.

Las Palmas above Santa Monica Boulevard is a community of flat, faceless costume-rental shops and film-editing outfits and little single-story houses with signs that said things like flotation therapy. Women in flowered tops pushed baby carriages and men who looked like they wanted day work stood outside little markets and kids on skateboards practiced jumping curbs.

I stopped in a 7-Eleven on Fountain just past La Brea, bought two dollars' worth of quarters, and ran outside to beat two fat guys to the pay phone on the side of the building. One of the fat guys was in a hurry and the other wasn't. The one who was in the hurry made a face like he had bowel trouble and said Ah, shit, when I got to the phone first. The one who wasn't leaned against the grill of a white window-repair truck and sipped at a Miller High Life. Did Mike Hammer use a 7-Eleven as an office?

I fed in a quarter and called a woman I know who works for the phone company and asked her if they had a listed or unlisted number for either Karen Shipley or Karen Nelsen anywhere within the state of California. She said she would have to get back to me, but it probably wouldn't be before tomorrow. I asked if she needed my number. She laughed and told me she's had my number for years. It's something I've been told before.

When I hung up, the fat guy in the hurry started forward. When I fed in another quarter, he raised his hands, rolled his eyes, and went back to the truck. Guess it wasn't a good day. His friend had a little more of the Miller and belched. When he belched, he covered his mouth with two fingers and said excuse me. Polite.

I called another woman I know who works the credit-verification department at Bank of America and asked if she would run a credit check on both Karen Shipley and Karen Nelsen, those names being either primary account names or maiden names listed to another unknown name. She said she would if I took her to a Lakers game. I told her to think of something else because I was going to take her to a Lakers game anyway. She made a little swooning sound, told me she'd get back to me tomorrow, and hung up. Some charmer, huh?

The fat guy was leaning past his truck like Carl Lewis set to come out of the starter's blocks, glaring at me. I showed him another quarter and fed it into the phone. His face went white, he slapped the fender of the truck, and then stormed the long way around the truck and into the 7-Eleven. His friend sipped a little more Miller and shook his head. "He's asking for a thrombo."

I said, "Get him into yoga. That'll help him relax."

The friend shook his head, looking sort of sleepy and tired, and made a little shrug like they'd been through it a thousand times. "You can't talk to him."

I dialed the North Hollywood P.D. and got a gruff male voice that said, "Detectives."

"Elvis Cole for Lou Poitras."

"Wait one."

The phone got put down on something hard. There were voices in the background and the heavy laughter of men, and then the voice came back. "I'm putting you on hold. He's gonna take it in his office."

I got put on hold, then Lou Poitras came on. The laughter and the male sounds were still there, but now they were muted and farther away. Poitras said, "I got my ass chewed good for trying to fix your last ticket. Don't ask me again."

"Lou. One might think that our entire relationship is me asking favors of you."

"So what do you want?"

"A small favor."

"Shit."

The fat guy in the hurry came out of the 7-Eleven with a Miller High Life of his own. He leaned against the truck next to his fat friend and looked tired. They drank. If you can't beat'm, join'm.

I said, "I need to know if you have anything on a woman named Karen Shipley or Karen Nelsen. And I need you to go back ten years on the search."

Lou Poitras said, "Anything else?"

I said that should do it.

"You at the office?"

I told him where I was.

You could see him shake his head. "Some big-time private op, working in a parking lot."

"Beats sucking off the taxpayers."

He said he'd get back to me tomorrow and hung up.

Everybody was going to get back to me tomorrow. Maybe there was something going on today that I didn't know about. Maybe that's why the fat guy was in such a hurry. Maybe he knew who to call to find out where the action was, and upon making the call, he and his buddy were going to whatever it was that I didn't know about. Maybe I could go with them.

I hung up the phone, looked at the fat guy in the hurry, and said, "It's all yours."

He sipped more Miller and didn't move, giving me who cares? His friend looked at him, then me, and shrugged. Go figure. Some guys are never happy.