His first look at Eagle’s Roost came when the F-A limo rounded the last twist in the private road that led up off Mulholland Drive. McAllister Fain immediately hated the place.
The house was gray stone, three stories tall. It was a humorless house with towers and arches and parapets and dark, sullen windows. A perfect setting for a low-budget horror movie, thought Fain. In fact, the exterior had been used in several such productions. Warner Echols reeled off the titles of several screamers from the sixties and seventies. Fain was not impressed.
The interior of the house made him feel a little better. At least half of the forty or so rooms had been sensibly sealed off. Once you were past the vast entry hall, which was furnished in Frankenstein Gothic for atmosphere’s sake, the rest of the house was done in a comfortable contemporary style. Fain decided he could live with that.
He perked up considerably when a van brought his recliner from the Echo Park apartment along with a few of his books and familiar things. He found a downstairs room into which they fit nicely, and it was there he spent most of his time.
As the days passed, Fain felt himself gradually growing into the house. Victoria Clifford was most helpful; she proved that her talents were not limited to secretarial tasks. With his upgraded wardrobe and a plentiful stock of good food and liquor, he began to feel like a true lord of the manor.
And he was kept busy. Warner Echols, using the resources of Federated Artists, had him on a full schedule of personal appearances, local talk shows, meetings with studio chiefs, and sessions with a team of writers who were preparing a biography. He was already booked for the Today show, and talks with Johnny Carson’s people were under way.
At least three producers were bidding for an option on his life story. Robert De Niro was being mentioned for the lead. Fain saw himself as more the Clint Eastwood type, but De Niro was not chopped liver.
There was a steady stream of visitors to Eagle’s Roost, all carefully screened by a private security force hired by Federated Artists. Armed guards prowled the grounds and manned the gate on the private road. Nobody who could not further McAllister Fain’s career in some way was allowed in his presence. There were times, in spite of Echols’s busy schedule and Victoria’s recreational ideas, that he felt a little lonely.
One morning a week after they moved in, Warner Echols stomped into the house, brandishing a rolled-up newspaper like the Olympic torch.
“Damn it,” he said, “this kind of thing isn’t going to do us a bit of good. Did you know what she was up to?”
“Who? What?” Fain stuttered. It was the first time he had seen the unflappable Echols not in full control.
“This!” The agent thrust the paper on him.
Fain unrolled the tabloid to see the familiar masthead of the L.A. Insider. From page one his own face peered back at him. It was one of the photos Olney Zeno had taken in the first session at his Echo Park place. Not a bad shot, Fain thought.
He looked up at Echols. “Publicity?”
“Yes, but not ours. Read on.”
The headline said, “Crystal Gazer to Christ Figure — the Miraculous Rise of McAllister Fain.”
Christ figure?
The byline was Ivy Hurlbut’s. A box indicated that this was the first of a two-part story. Fain scanned the article quickly. Although Ivy had exaggerated some events in his life and written the whole thing in the florid style of the tabloid, he found nothing libelous or patently untrue. If she made him sound a little freaky, he could not really blame Ivy. After all, he had not been completely fair with her.
“So what’s the problem?” he asked.
“The problem,” Warner Echols said patiently, “is that this rag is ripping us off. This … this” — he snatched back the tabloid — “this Ivy Hurlbut is using you without paying us a dime. You’re a commodity, Mac. We don’t give you away any more than Kellogg’s gives away cornflakes.”
“A flattering analogy,” Fain said.
“You know what I mean. I’ve already got Nolan Dix on it. We’ll come down on these pirates with more lawsuits than they can shake a stick at. We’ll break this sheet and send Ivy Hurlbut back to writing copy for dildo catalogs.”
“No lawsuit,” Fain said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. I don’t want any lawsuit.”
“Hey, Mac, did you read that junk?”
“Ivy only used the stuff I gave her, with a little journalistic license. The pictures I posed for. They’re kind of flattering, actually. No reason to sue anybody.”
“An article in one of these rags isn’t going to do the image any good.”
“Let Jesse worry about my image. I can’t see where this story can do me any damage.”
“That’s not the only problem. If we let this go by, next thing you know somebody will put you on a Mac Fain T-shirt, without any royalties to us.”
“When the T-shirts hit the streets, you can sue,” Fain said. “But I want you to leave Ivy Hurlbut alone.”
Echols threw up his hands. “If you insist, but I think you’re making a mistake.”
“It won’t be the first, and I’ve survived before.”
“All right, Mac. I’ll go call off Dix, and then I want to talk some business with you.”
“Anytime,” Fain said agreeably.
On his way out, Echols passed Victoria Clifford coming in. She wore a maroon velour top and tight silvery pants. Her rich brown hair was tossed into a carefully windblown arrangement. She gave Echols a look, then came on toward Fain.
“Something bugging Warner?” she asked.
“He wanted to sue somebody, and I didn’t agree.”
“Warner usually knows what he’s doing.”
“Good for him. I just thought it was time I made a decision about something. I don’t even get to buy my own clothes anymore.”
Victoria stepped close and kissed him on the lips. She tasted of cinnamon. “Macho man,” she murmured against his mouth.
“Go ahead,” he told her. “Make my day.”
“Love to,” she said, then took a half step back. “How about a little brunch? I make a sensational omelet.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Fain told her, loosening up the Clint Eastwood squint, “but I’m not hungry.”
“How about something to jog your appetite? I’m good at that, too.”
“Yes, I know, but not right now.” He showed her the copy of the Insider. “I want to read about myself.”
“Maybe later, then,” Victoria said. “You know where to find me.”
“Sure.”
Fain watched her walk away, the fine high buttocks rolling nicely under the silver stretch pants. He sighed and wandered into the stone-cold entrance hall, its vaulted ceiling lost in the shadows high above. Muddy oil paintings of people long dead hung on the walls. He avoided the tall straight-back chairs, which must have been built for some purpose other than sitting in.
“It reminds me of mine castle back in Transylvania,” he said in a bad Bela Lugosi impression.
“Balls.” He walked to one of the tall leaded windows and gazed out at the small clearing in front and the thick scrub pine that pushed up to the edge of the road.
Feeling depressed, he walked back into his personal room and sat in his recliner to read Ivy Hurlbut’s story thoroughly. He also read about the feud between two female stars of the top nighttime soap. He read about a lamb born outside Butte, Montana, with a perfect image of the Christ child in its wool. He read about a woman in Hartford who cooked her husband’s beagle and served it to his poker cronies. He read about the miracle diet that kept half of Hollywood’s glamour queens looking good. He started to read about an African tribe that worshiped toads, but that was too much, and he tossed the paper aside. “Balls.”
McAllister Fain, sensation of the tabloids, sought after by talk shows, possible subject of a biography in Brentano’s window, about to be portrayed on the screen by Robert De Niro, was bored and lonely. How would that look in one of the tabloids?
But it was true. Despite the comforting presence of Victoria, he missed Jillian Pappas and their little personal jokes, their small fights and large reconciliations. He had called her half a dozen times since moving into Eagle’s Roost but had gotten only the recording. He had left messages, but there had been no return of his calls. Now that he was finally on the brink of making it, he didn’t have anybody to share it with.
“Balls.”
To hell with this line of maudlin self-pity, he decided. He levered himself out of the recliner and started for the grand marble stairway that led to the bedrooms and Victoria Clifford. He was halfway up when Warner Echols called to him from down in the entrance hall.
“Hey, Mac, are you ready to go to work?”
“What’s up?”
Echols held up a handful of envelopes in assorted sizes and colors, most of them hand-addressed. “You had a lot of mail at the F-A office. I brought some of the more promising applications for your services. Thought we might go through them and select one or two lucky winners.”
Echols led the way into a large sitting room with twelve-foot sofas and a deep spongy carpet. They sat side by side, and the agent spread the mail out on a massive coffee table.
The letters were addressed to Fain in care of local radio and television stations where he had appeared. Some had been sent to his old address.
“There will probably be a bundle more mailed to Insider,” Echols said, “but I don’t suppose we’ll get a look at those.”
Fain chose several of the letters at random and scanned the contents. He looked up at Echols. “These are from people who want me to bring somebody back from the dead.”
“Sure they are. That’s your shtick, isn’t it?”
“I thought you didn’t want me doing it again.”
“We don’t. I mean, not the whole routine. But we need something right now to keep you from cooling off. If we announce you’re going to animate another corpse, we get your name back in the papers, and your price goes up.”
“What do you mean, ‘announce’?”
“You’re not actually going through with it, of course. But we pick some deserving person, get you together for the cameras; then you tell them you’re sorry but for one reason or another you can’t do it this time.”
“I see. What reasons did you have in mind?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Bad vibes. Planets in the wrong conjunction. The moon’s out of phase. You’re the master of the occult; you should be able to think of something.”
Fain read through one of the letters. It was written in a shaky hand, the lines drooping toward the right side of the page. When he was finished, he looked up at Echols.
“Here’s one with a damn good reason for not trying. The lady wants Henry, whoever he is, brought back to life. The trouble is, Henry died in 1935. He’d be nothing but a pile of bones, for Christ’s sake.”
“No, you’re right about that,” Echols said. “I should have screened that one out.”
Fain picked up another. “And this one … the guy died only a couple of days ago, but he was ninety-one years old.”
“So what?”
“Warner, that man was ready to die. I don’t try to bring back anybody who belongs dead.”
Echols looked at him oddly for a moment. “I see. Uh, how do you decide, Mac, who should stay dead and who comes back?”
Fain studied the agent. “You don’t think I can do it, do you, Warner?”
“Let’s just say there are a lot of things I don’t understand. Whether I believe or don’t believe is not important. My job is to make you rich and famous.”
Fain nodded slowly. “I really can, you know. Don’t ask me how, or why it should be me and not somebody else, but I can do it. I can make dead people live again. This all started out as a scam, but I’ve tried it twice now, and twice it’s worked. It’s no scam.”
“Of course not. Nobody said it was.” Echols slapped his well-tailored thighs and stood up. “I have some details to talk over with Victoria. Why don’t you look through the letters and pick one where we can put on a good show.”
“Good show,” Fain repeated.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll look them over.”
With a smile that didn’t quite make it, Echols walked out of the room. Fain riffled through the letters, giving only a few seconds to each.
A shop worker in Torrance had been caught in a conveyer belt and ripped in half before the machinery was stopped. His wife hoped Fain could restore her man to life. Maybe he could, Fain thought, but he doubted the woman would want the mangled remains shuffling around the house.
A twenty-three-year-old suicide victim in Burbank was a possibility, but he passed over the parents’ plea. The decision to end your own life should be final.
A four-year-old girl was run over by her father’s car. Fain winced at the man’s pain, but the child had been buried for a year now. Too long.
And so it went. The victims were too old or too torn up or had been dead too long. Or maybe Fain just felt they were not right. How he felt this, he could not say, but he knew as surely as he knew his name that he must reject all of the applications before him.
In an effort to relax, he moved to the recliner, kicked back, and thumbed on the television set with the remotecontrol unit. A blow-dried newscaster he remembered from an earlier interview was winding up a cutesy feature on a baby parade in Norwalk. The camera moved in then, and the newsman shifted his handsome features into a solemn expression.
“Tragedy struck today in the gymnasium of North Compton High School.”
A yearbook picture of a smiling black youth filled the screen.
“Kevin Jackson, honor student and member of the North Compton basketball team, collapsed during a pickup game with other students.”
The newsman’s face reappeared.
“When school officials and paramedics were unable to revive him at the scene, Kevin was taken to Martin Luther King Hospital, where he died less than an hour ago.”
Fain levered the chair upright and leaned forward, staring at the television screen.
“Now here’s Cindy with a report from Santa Monica where landlords and tenants clashed in a council meeting over changes in the rent-control ordinance …”
Fain killed the television picture and jogged out of the room. He took the stairs two at a time and found Warner Echols and Victoria going over a computer readout in the second-floor room that served as an office.
“I’ve got him,” Fain said, bursting in on them.
Echols looked up, startled. “What? Got who?”
“Our candidate. A high school basketball player collapsed on the gym floor. He just died at Martin Luther King Hospital. Let’s get over there.”
“That wasn’t one of the letters.”
“It was on TV just now,” Fain said. “We’ve got to hurry.”
“Basketball player,” Echols said. “Is he black?”
“Yes, yes; now can we get going? The longer we delay, the harder it’s going to be.”
“Black is good,” Echols said. “I’ll need time to clear it with the office. Get the wheels turning, contact the media. Want to be sure we get the right kind of coverage.”
“Come on!”
“What if the kid’s parents don’t want you to try anything?”
“Simple — then I don’t do it.”
Echols looked deep into Fain’s pale gray eyes. What he saw there made him speak more softly than was his habit. He said, “Mac, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Hell no. It’s a feeling, that’s all.”
“You’re not going to rush into this and blow everything we’re working for?”
Fain answered slowly and distinctly. “Warner, until now this has been your show. And you’ve run it well. Now it’s my turn. You just leave this part of the action to me.”
“Okay, Mac,” Echols said softly. “Victoria, will you take care of the details?”
She nodded and was already on the phone as the two men headed down the stairs and out.