CHAPTER
35
He showed up two days later at the funeral, arriving late, wheeled across the rolling lawn of the cemetery by Nova. Conspicuous in a white suit and shirt and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He stayed well back from Lucy and Ken as a minister on call to the mortuary recited a dispirited prayer. Once, Nova’s eyes met mine and tried to hook me into a staring contest. One of her hands touched a breast. I turned my attention back to the service.
The cemetery was one of those hundred-acre things yearning to be a theme park: offices in a colonial mansion, bulldozed hillocks of golf turf, replicas of Michelangelo’s statuary cropping up in odd places. Instead of gravestones, brass plaques were set flush with the ground. Ken had bought Peter’s strip of perpetuity yesterday, after Milo’d helped speed release of the body.
I’d spent a good part of the past forty-eight hours at the house on Rockingham. Ken and Lucy had been nearly inert, eating little, resting a lot, barely capable of speech.
I’d experienced some inertia myself, not following up on Curtis App or doing anything else about Karen Best. Sherrell Best had phoned once, and I’d had my service call him back to say I’d get to him in a couple of days. The grief of the moment loomed so huge, it seemed to have blotted out the dream. I wasn’t sure when—or if—Lucy would ever return to it. Still, as I stood there among all that barbered green, it chewed at me.
A few feet behind me, two laborers waited under a tree.
The minister said something about the puzzles of life and God’s will. Then he shot a glance at the laborers and they came over. One of them activated a motor attached to thick cloth straps that supported the gray lacquered coffin. The straps loosened very slowly and descended. As it hit bottom, it made a resonant, almost musical sound, and Lucy let out a high, agonized wail. Ken held her and rocked her as she cried into her hands.
Behind them, Buck said something to Nova.
The laborers began shoveling dirt on the coffin.
Each clump made Lucy cry out. Ken’s face looked ready to crumple.
Buck shook his head, and Nova wheeled him away.
The chair bumped its way over the grass, catching a couple of times and forcing Nova to free its wheels. Finally, she got it to the curb of the swooping drive where the hearse sat and worked a long time getting Lowell out of the chair and into the Jeep. Folding the chair and stowing it in back, she sped off.
I dropped Milo off at the West L.A. station and drove back to Malibu. Shooting the Curl was still closed.
Had I flushed the prey too well?
I stopped off at the Malibu civic center and killed an hour locating a business license for the surf shop.
When the original papers had been filed, the Sheas had been living on the land side, up Rambla Pacifica. Three years later, they’d moved to the 20000 block of Pacific Coast Highway.
I drove back south and found the place: a one-story Cape Cod, white board and green shutters, squeezed between two bigger stucco edifices. Probably one of the original beach structures of the twenties and thirties, reminiscent of a quieter, simpler Malibu. Sometimes big storms washed the old places out to sea.
I rang the bell. No answer. The knocker was a bronze sea lion patinaed with salt. I used it to drum the green wooden door a couple of times. Still nothing. Neither Gwen’s customized van nor Tom’s BMW was in sight. But no mail in the box, not even throwaways.
I went home and called the Producers Guild and learned that Curtis App was president of New Times Productions in Century City.
A call to New Times got me a voice mail system that required an engineering degree to understand. I pushed 6 to speak with Mr. App and got cut off.
It was just after noon.
I drove into the city, heading straight for the university library.
The computer held a dozen references to App, the most recent being five-year-old reviews of a movie he’d produced called Camp Hatchet II.
Bomb review. Maybe that was his spiritual link with Lowell. The next seven citations were more of the same. Then I found a thirteen-year-old article in American Film entitled APP ON THE DEFENSE: TEEN PIX PRODUCER SAYS HE KEEPS KIDS OUT OF TROUBLE.
The magazine hadn’t been microfilmed, but it was in the stacks. The article was an interview in which App acknowledged the dreadful critical notices he’d received on each of the nine soft-sex blood-and-gore flicks he’d produced and admitted that “my pictures aren’t Dostoyevsky, they’re popcorn for the head. But no pubic hair or nipples. Kids watch them, space out, and have a good time in the drive-in. When they’re there, they’re off the streets, so think of it as public service programming. As a parent, I’d rather have my kid watch Janey Makes the Squad or Red Moon Over Camp Hatchet than a lot of the garbage that’s on network TV.”
The accompanying color photo showed App sitting in the driver’s seat of a long-snouted red Ferrari convertible, a satisfied smile on his face, a perfect sky and palm trees in the background.
From the narrowness of his shoulders, a small man. Thin face with ratlike features and an extremely pointed chin.
Gray hair, Caesar cut, white tennis shirt, red sweater that matched the Ferrari. Great tan.
No mention of his ever optioning Lowell’s book, so either I’d guessed wrong about that or it was something he wanted to forget.
Scrolling back, I came across nothing on him for the next nine years, then a piece in The Wall Street Journal entitled RETAIL FOOD A GROWTH MARKET.
It turned out to be one of those center-of-the-front-page lightweight articles the Journal runs in order to amuse nervous businessmen. The full title read Retail Food a Growth Market If Consumers’ Special Needs Are Met: Curtis App Likes Sprouts and Jicama.
Back in those days—three years before the Sanctum party—App had been a financial analyst for an investors’ group specializing in supermarket chains, vending machines, coin-op laundries, and fast-food outlets. In the article he predicted that retailers were going to have to cater to ethnic and special needs to be successful in an increasingly competitive market.
A photoengraving showed the same pointy face with full dark Beatle-length hair.
From groceries to slasher flicks? An association with Lowell must have seemed the next step toward High Art.
I left the library and stopped at an instant-print place in Westwood. No other customers in the store, and it took exactly twenty-three minutes to obtain fifty business cards.
Good paper, ecru shade, classy embossed script.
Below that, a phony post office box in Beverly Hills and a phone number I’d used ten years ago while in private practice. Putting three cards in my wallet and the rest in the trunk of the Seville, I headed for Century City.
New Times Productions was located in a twenty-story black tower on Avenue of the Stars. A hit movie a few years ago had featured a building just like it, under siege by terrorists. In the film, a rogue cop had vanquished the bad guys using guile and machismo. Most of the actual occupants of the real-life building were attorneys and film outfits. In real life, the terrorists would have been offered a deal.
The production company took up almost all of the top floor, the exception one office belonging to an outfit named Advent Ventures.
The New Times entry was two huge glass doors. I pushed one of them, and it opened silently on a skylit waiting room. The floor was black granite, the furniture Lucite, white leather, and iron, powder-coated deep blue. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter were piled up on tables. Big frameless black-and-white paintings hung on gray wool walls.
A girl who looked about eighteen, in a white T-shirt and second-skin jeans tucked into spurred black-and-white cowskin boots, sat behind a deskette. Her long straight hair was buttercup streaked with ebony. A diamond was set into one nostril. Despite bad skin, she had a great face. I stood there awhile before she looked up from her cuticles.
“Uh-huh?”
“I’m here for Mr. App.”
“Name.”
“Sandy Del Ware.”
“Are you the chiropractor? I thought you were tomorrow.”
I handed her a card.
She wasn’t impressed. The place was silent; no one else seemed to be around.
“Do you—uh—have an appointment?”
“I think Mr. App would like to see me. It’s about Sanctum.”
Her lips rotated a couple of times, as if spreading lipstick. If there’d been a pencil on her desk, she might have chewed it.
“I’ve only been here a couple of weeks.… He’s in a meeting.”
“At least ask him,” I said. “Sanctum. Buck Lowell, Terry Trafficant, Denton Mellors.”
She agonized, then punched two numbers on a see-through Lucite phone.
“It’s some producer. About Santa and Dylan—uh—Miller.… I’m … What?… Oh, okay, sorry.”
She put the phone down, looked at it, blinked hard.
“He’s in a meeting.”
“No problem, I can wait.”
“I don’t think he wants to see you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he was pretty bent about being interrupted.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. The meeting must be with somebody important.”
“No, he’s all by—” She touched her mouth. Frowned. “Yeah, it’s important.”
“Is a big star in there with him?”
She went back to her cuticles.
To her left was a hall. I strode past her desk and went for it.
“Hey!” she said, but she didn’t come after me. Just as I rounded the corner, I heard buttons being punched.
I passed gray wool doors and movie posters depicting gun-toting huge-busted women of the receptionist’s age, and leathered, four-day-bearded, male-model types pretending to be bikers and soldiers of fortune. The films had names like Sacrifice Alley and Hot Blood, Hot Pants, and several had recent release dates.
The drive-in circuit or instant video.
At the end of the hall was a big tooled brass door, wide open. Standing in the doorway was App.
He was around sixty, five-six, maybe a hundred and twenty. His Caesar cut had been reduced to a few white wisps tickling a deep tan forehead. He wore a custard-colored cashmere cardigan over a lemon-yellow knit shirt, knife edge-pressed black slacks, and brown crocodile loafers.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said, in a calm big-man’s voice, “or I’ll have your fucking ass thrown out.”
I stopped.
He said, “Turn yourself the fuck around.”
“Mr. App—”
He cut the air with both hands, like an umpire calling a runner safe. “I’ve already called Security, you fucking jerk. Reverse yourself, and you just might avoid getting arrested and your fucking paper sued from here to kingdom come.”
“I’m not with any paper,” I said. “I’m a freelancer writing a biography of Buck Lowell.”
I put a card in his face. He snatched it and held it at arm’s length, then gave it back to me.
“So?”
“Your name came up in my research, Mr. App. I’d just like a few minutes of your time.”
“You think you can pop in here like some fucking salesman?”
“If I’d called would I have been able to get an appointment?”
“Hell, no. And you’re not getting one now.” He pointed to the door.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll just write it up the way I see it. Your optioning Command: Shed the Light. Bankrolling Sanctum only to see it collapse a year later.”
“That’s business,” he said. “Ups and downs.”
“Pretty big down,” I said. “Especially on Lowell’s part. He took your money and funded guys like Terry Trafficant and Denton Mellors.”
“Denny Mellors.” He laughed without opening his mouth. “She said something about Santa Claus and Dylan Miller. You know who Dylan Miller is?”
I shook my head.
“Grand prize asshole—and that asswipe rag he works for. Every other week we’ve got droves of assholes just like him, fucking paparazzi creeping around the building like roaches, looking for stars. The other day Julia Roberts was on the twelfth floor for a meeting and they were sweeping the bastards out with brooms. There’s no end to it.”
“Maybe you need better security,” I said.
He stared at me. This time his laughter came with a flash of capped teeth.
Pulling up the left cuff of his cardigan, he peered at a watch so thin it looked like a platinum tattoo.
I heard footsteps behind me. App looked over my shoulder, then leaned against the doorframe.
Turning, I saw a big, heavy Samoan security guard. The name on his tag was long and unpronounceable.
“Some kind of problem, Mr. App?” he said in a tuba voice that made App’s sound prepubescent.
App moved his eyes back to me and studied my face the way a casting director would. Smiling, he put a hand on my shoulder. “No, Mr.—Del Rey and I were just having a little chat.”
“Delondra called down.”
“A misunderstanding. We’re going to take a meeting, Clem. Sorry to bother you.”
I smiled at the guard. He sucked his teeth and left.
App called out, “Delondra!”
The receptionist came over, taking Geisha steps in her skin-tight jeans.
“What, Mr. App?”
App reached into his pocket and drew out a wad of bills clamped by a sterling silver monkey paw. Peeling off five, he held them out to the girl. Hundreds.
“Thanks, Mr. App, what’s this for?”
“Severance pay. You no longer work here.”
Her mouth opened. A small smooth hand closed around the bills.
App turned his back on her and said, “Come on in—was it Sandy? Let’s hear what’s on your mind. Maybe we can conceptualize it for film.”
Two walls of his office were windows; the other two, bleached maple burl. The windows showed off L.A. County the way a hawk would see it just before it swooped. The wood showcased a Warhol silkscreen of a smiling Marilyn Monroe and transparent plastic shelves full of bound scripts. Some of the screenplays had titles hand-lettered on their spines, others were blank.
App took a seat behind a blue, triangular marble desk, with nothing on it but a blue marble phone, and offered me the only other chair in the room, an unupholstered, black, straight-backed thing. At his feet was a large marble wastebasket full of more scripts.
“So,” he said. “What else have you done besides this book?”
“Journalism.” I threw out the names of a few magazines, betting he didn’t read much.
“What made you want to write about Buck?”
“Fall from grace. The whole notion of genius gone bad.”
“No kidding. Giving him money wasn’t one of the brighter things I’ve done. You can write that.”
“What led you to option poetry?”
“Soft heart,” he said. “Everything was collapsing around the bastard.” He touched his chest. “Got a soft spot for creative types.”
“Same reason you financed Sanctum?”
“Yeah. Helping young artists. What could be more fucking important, right?—don’t put ‘fucking’ in—hey, aren’t you going to take notes?”
“Didn’t bring anything,” I said. “I figured I’d have enough trouble getting through the door without a tape recorder and a notepad.”
“See?” More capped teeth. “Never know. You caught me on a good day. I’m Mother Fucking Teresa.”
There must have been a drawer in the marble desk, because he pulled a piece of paper out of it and waved it at me.
New Times stationery.
“Here,” he said, retrieving a bound script from the wastebasket. “Write on this. Do I need to give you a fucking pen, too?”
I pulled out a ballpoint.
“Five minutes,” he said. “All you can eat during that time, and then vamoose.” Putting his arms behind his head, he sat back.
“So you liked the concept of Sanctum,” I said. “What about Lowell’s choice of fellows?”
“Terry? Terry was a talented guy, actually. Personal problems, but who doesn’t.”
“So you never saw him act violent.”
“Not to me. He used to put on this Mr. Macho thing, walking around without a shirt, all these tattoos of naked girls. But he had talent.”
“Whatever happened to him?”
“Hell if I know. Idiot had all sorts of good stuff coming to him. I coulda had deals for him, and he just split.”
“Do you think Lowell knows where he went?”
“I always figured he did, but he never admitted it. That was the final straw between us. After all I did for the bastard, I figured I had some honesty coming. You meet him yet?”
“Just briefly.”
“Sick, isn’t it? Guy’s rolling in money and he lives like a pig.”
“If he’s rich, how come he needed to come to you for financing?”
He slid his arms from behind his head and placed them on the desk. “Because I was a jackass. Didn’t know he was rich, never checked him out. And I used to be a fucking financial analyst, no excuse.” Tapping the marble. “Hey, that’s showbiz.”
Another glance at the platinum watch.
I said, “So you have no idea about what happened to Trafficant?”
“No, but if you find out, let me know. Asshole owes me a script.” Shaking his head. “Stupid mudfuck. He coulda made a living. Great ear for dialogue, he knew how to conceptualize in terms of scenes. Now, Denny Mellors was another story—wooden ear, thought he was some fucking Ivy League literati-type. And no fucking boy scout, either. He never got the bad PR Terry got, but he was antisocial from day one, nasty temper. Not that I have anything against black people—not that he was even that black. I think his mother was white, or something. He talked like a white. But the guy …”
Waving disgustedly, he put his feet up on the desk. The soles of his shoes were shiny black, unmarked.
“What did he do?” I said.
He looked out the window. The San Gabriel Mountains were capped with brown air. “You know, my friend, talking to you is giving me ideas. Any film interest in your book yet?”
“Some.”
“You have any experience in film?”
“Not really.”
“Then don’t jump into anything. People are going to tell you they can do all sorts of things for you; meanwhile they’ve got a thumb in the Vaseline, ready to yank down your jockeys. I’ve been in the industry for twenty years, can get things done. And this book of yours is flashing concept lights. Like you said, fall from grace. And did you know the place used to be a nudist colony? How’s that for a premise? Writers and artists and nudists. They get thrown together and shit happens.”
“Violent shit?” I said.
“All kinds of shit. You’d have to change things around, of course. For legal purposes. Maybe make Lowell a musician—a cellist. Yeah, I like that. It’s a music retreat—nudists and musicians, rock types and classical types, all thrown together—seductive, right?”
“Interesting. So who’s the bad guy, Mellors? That’s not too PC.”
“So we make him white—he was mostly white anyway. Blond hair, little yellow mustache. Big, strong buck … nasty.”
“Nasty how?”
“Nasty temper. Talked all the time about hurting things—hurting women. I’m not saying he actually did anything, but you talk like that long enough, who knows?”
“See what you mean,” I said. “I’ve read about the grand opening party for Sanctum. Sounds like a wild affair—a love-in. That might be a good place for the shit to happen.”
He looked up at the ceiling. Cheap acoustical tiles. “Maybe, yeah. Like a Felliniesque thing. Dolce Vita with acid, pot—kind of a sixties/seventies thing. That’s coming back, you know.”
“Were you at the party?”
“In the beginning,” he said. “Then it got too loud, and my wife made me take her home.”
“Did you see Mellors or Trafficant?”
“Nah,” he said. “Too many people, noise, mess, all sorts of shit. One of those situations where you see everyone but you don’t see anyone, know what I mean?”
“La Dolce Vita meets The Trip.”
“Exactly.” He moved his eyes from the ceiling to me. “You know how to conceptualize. Have an agent?”
“Still looking for one.”
“You got a book deal without one?”
“Contacts from journalism.”
“Who’s your editor?”
I made up a name.
He nodded. “Well, get yourself an agent or talk to me directly, and we just might work something out. Let’s say an eighteen-month option with first rights to renew.”
“What kind of option money are we talking about?”
“Hey,” he said, grinning. “Maybe you don’t need an agent. What kind of money? The usual. Assuming we get a network interested. But I’ve got to have everything tied up before I go to them. Nowadays, they’re more cautious than a virgin on horseback—you weren’t thinking big screen, were you?”
“Actually—”
“Forget it, Sammy. TV’s the only way to go. They’re taking chances the studios won’t, and even though syndication’s not the honeymoon it used to be, it’s still a serious game. Think you can write me up a treatment—one or two pages? Let’s say by next Tuesday?”
“Sure,” I said, “but I want to discuss some story elements with you first, make sure we’re talking the same language.”
“Story,” he said dismissively. “You’re the writer. Give me good and evil, some conflict, resolution—maybe some martial arts. Networks are ripe for martial arts, nothing decent since Kung Fu. Musicians and nudists and evil. ’Course they couldn’t be shown nude, but you’ll find some way to let everyone know they’re buck naked. Like a sly wink, know what I mean? But respectful of the human body. Something women can get behind. Good and evil. The characters arc, but they maintain their basic good-bad nature. The more I think about it, the better I like it.”
He rubbed his hands together and stood. “You got thirteen fucking minutes for the price of five, Sam.”
“You see Mellors as the evil lead?” I said.
“If you make him white.”
“Can you tell me anything more about him that would flesh out the character?”
“Nasty piece of work. Like I said, he hated women, called them manipulative bitches. I took him in, after Sanctum closed. Gave him a job because I felt sorry for him. He was working on a book, couldn’t finish it.”
“Writer’s block?”
“Money block. Writer’s block was Lowell’s game. Talk about big talk, no action. Anyway, Denny came to me begging because he knew I was a soft touch. Broke—he’d depended on Lowell. He was writing this novel, gonna be the greatest thing since Moby Dick if he could only finish it. Being a liberal do-gooder, I gave him a job with my company in return for first refusal on the manuscript.”
“What kind of job?”
“Idiot work. Business Affairs office. Writing memos, filing contracts, xeroxing. The idea was to free him up to write. Then one day he waltzes in, announces no more book, it’s a screenplay now. The story lends itself to that form. Fine, makes my life that much easier. I wait six months, then six more.”
He walked to the bookcase. Eyeing the shelves for a second, he pulled a thin unmarked volume out of the middle, opened it, put it back, and removed another one, even thinner.
“This is what he gives me.”
I took the folder. Bound in brown, marbled cardboard. The title page said:
THE BRIDE
A Screenplay by Denton W. Mellors
“Take it home,” said App. “I like you, but you’re outa here. Got a meeting.”
I folded my notes and put them away. App tossed the script I’d used for a writing board back into the trash. We walked to the door.
“I haven’t been able to locate Mellors,” I said. “Any idea what happened to him?”
“Who the fuck knows? After I told him I couldn’t use that piece of shit you’re holding, he cursed me out, threw a chair—broke some pre-Columbian pieces—and left. Last I saw of him, thank God. Scared the shit out of me. First time I hired a bodyguard.”
We left the office and walked down the postered hall past the empty reception desk. He opened a glass door and held it.
“Nice meeting you, Sammy—what makes you run, ha ha. Let’s both of us do some serious thinking about what we want out of this, write something up, and then we can break some bread. Let’s say Wednesdayish. Lunch?”