*
At 11:01, the telephone rang. One of the Mexican servants picked it up, and said. ‘The Corliss residence. Who is this, please?’
A thin-sounding voice said, ‘This is Fox studios. I have an urgent call for Mr Anthony Seiden. Tell him it’s to do with the colour prints on his last rushes.’
‘Yes, sir. Hold on, please.’
The man set the receiver down on the table, and went quickly along the hallway and out to the back of the house. On the pool deck, the party was even louder and happier than before, and a few couples were dancing. The servant walked across to Anthony, who had been waylaid by two producers on his way to talk to Carl X. Chapman, and touched his sleeve.
‘Mr Seiden? I’m sorry. Sir, there’s a telephone call for you. Fox studios, he says.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ asked Anthony. ‘Tell them I’ll call back.’
‘The man says urgent, sir. Something to do with colour prints.’
Anthony sighed. ‘Okay. Will you gentlemen excuse me, please? It looks like the work of a movie director is never done.’
Dana, across by the hedge, had been watching him narrowly. As he put down his drink and started to walk towards the house, she broke off her conversation with a young actress and went over to intercept him. She linked arms, and said, ‘Anything wrong?’
‘It’s nothing. Just some damned stupid call from the studio.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.
Together, they went into the house. It was shadowy and cool, and the conversation and music outside could hardly be heard. Their footsteps sounded loud and echoing as they walked along the polished parquet hallway. ]
‘Did you talk to Carl Chapman yet?’ Dana asked.
‘I was just about to. Peter and Carlo got in first.’
They reached the telephone table. Anthony picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hello? This is Anthony Seiden.’ f
Dana took a cigarette out of her evening purse and lit it. She felt strangely empty and unreal. Now that the moment had actually arrived, everything seemed like a dream, in which the air was as glutinous as transparent syrup, making movement paralysingly slow, and magnifying everything to three times its usual size. She could see her hand reaching for the window-catch, and it seemed to take whole minutes to get there. She could j hear Anthony talking on the telephone, and his words came out as endless, incomprehensible blurts of swollen sound.
But then the window was open, and she pushed it with * her fingertips so that it swung wide. The sound of the band and the laughter of party guests wafted through the warm night air, and another limousine was just drawing up at the front of the house.
*
T.F. saw the window open, and Seiden’s wife step out of sight. Now he could see Seiden clearly, sitting by the table in his tuxedo, his head bent in conversation. He steadied the M-14, and took a bead on the back of Seiden’s skull. One gentle squeeze, and it was going to be brains sundae. It was 11.05 and eight seconds.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the limousine draw up. One of Adele Corliss’s servants opened the limousine’s door, and three or four women stepped out. They stood beside the car for a moment, and then they began to walk across the courtyard to the front of the house.
T.F. whispered, ‘Shit,’ under his breath. One by one, the women passed across his sights, dawdling as they walked, completely unaware that they were intersecting an invisible line that connected T.F.’s gunsights with Anthony Seiden’s head. One woman, a tall blonde in dark blue culottes, lingered longer than most in T.F.’s line of fire.
At last, the women had passed, and Seiden was still sitting at the telephone. T.F. held the rifle steady as a rock, and squeezed the trigger.
Twenty-Five
They arrived outside the Corliss house with a roar, and John pulled the motorcycle around on the gravel. The Mexican footman moved towards them with his hand raised, unsure if they were gatecrashers or guests. By the front door of the house, Hilary Nestor Hunter and her three girls turned around in surprise at the noise.
Perri, climbing off the back of the bike, called, ‘Hilary!’ in a high voice.
Hilary Nestor Hunter took one step back and that one step was enough. There was a loud crack like a branch breaking, and Hilary’s neck burst apart in a crimson spray. She twisted around, and fell to the ground with her face against the gravel.
John threw the motorcycle down, and reached Perri in two strides. He pulled her around behind the parked limousine and shouted, ‘Get down! And stay down!’
The Mexican footman dropped to the ground beside them, with his hands over his ears.
John could feel his pulse speeding up. He took the .38 revolver out of his pocket, and ran with a crouching run to the side of the E-shaped house. Then he sprinted around to the back, through he yuccas and the dragon trees, and suddenly found himself in the middle of a poolside party.
John dodged through the crowd, and into the open door at the back of the house. He paused, trying to get his bearings. The rough-plastered stairs were on his left. He cocked the .38 and climbed up as quickly as he could, into the darkness of the upstairs gallery. Behind him, the party guests were laughing and clapping as a portly movie producer demonstrated the rhumba.
John walked silently and quickly in the direction of the room he thought the shot had come from. He had only seen the black muzzle of a rifle, and a split-second flash. But it had come from one of these upstairs rooms, and he was going to find which room it was if it killed him. And it might.
It was very dark along the upstairs corridor, but he couldn’t find the light switches. He walked stealthily, the gun held high in front of him, until the came to the first bedroom door. He pressed his ear to it, held his breath, and listened. He listened for over half a minute, and there was no sound at all.
He crept along to the second door, and listened to that. Outside, he heard screams and shouts, and the music suddenly died away. The partygoers must have discovered what was happening. Someone was shouting, ‘Call the police! For Christ’s sake, call the police!’
John heard nothing at the door of the second bedroom. He was about to move on to the third when he heard a metallic rattling noise behind him. He turned, cold with fright, and the man was right there, right behind him, tall and dark, much taller than John had imagined, with a face as hard as a Maine winter.
‘Drop the gun,’ the man said.
John hesitated for a moment, but then he dropped it. It fell heavily on to the boarded floor.
‘Now,’ said the man, in a whispery voice, ‘you’re going to help me get out of here. You’re going to walk in front of me down the stairs, and out across the front of the house, and then we’re going to get in that limousine and leave. Do you understand?’
‘What’s to understand?’ John said.
The man raised his rifle a little higher. ‘Don’t talk back. Just do what you’re told.’
John could feel the sweat sliding down his armpits.
You killed my father, and you killed the girl I loved. I’m not doing anything for you,’ he said hoarsely.
The man smiled. ‘It’s up to you. If you don’t want to be hostage, then I’m sure I can find somebody else. After I’m finished with you.’
He took aim at John’s head, only three feet away. John could see the dark barrel, and the man’s unblinking eye at the other end of the sights.
‘What’s it to be?’ the man asked, dispassionately. ‘Now, or later?’
‘I want to know why you did it,’ John said. ‘I want to know why you killed them.’
The man sniffed. ‘I did it because I was told to. That’s all. Now, what’s it going to be?’
‘Who told you?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘It matters to me. I want to know who told you. I want to know who it really was.’
A different, rougher voice said, ‘Don’t answer that, T.F.’
T.F. turned. Halfway down the corridor, with an automatic in his ha
nd, stood Carl X. Chapman.
‘You made a goddamned mess of that, T.F.,’ said Chapman. ‘You made a mess and they’re going to catch you. Now, you know that I can’t let them do that.’
T.F. was trained to kill and Carl X. Chapman wasn’t.
Before Carl had even raised his hand, T.F. swung the rifle around on his hip and fired. Carl was kicked over backwards by the impact, and blood splashed out of him like someone kicking over a bucket of paint. T.F. lifted his rifle and fired again, and Carl’s head was blown into hair and slush and blood.
The flat, fierce sound of the rifle made the corridor ring. With his ears still deafened, John dropped to his knees, reached for his fallen revolver, and pointed it straight at T.F.’s lean and dark silhouette.
T.F. turned back towards him, But the M-i4’s barrel was pointing the other way, and like a geometrical problem he had to swing it around in an arc before it was pointing at John. In the seconds it took for T.F. to pivot on his hips, John pulled the trigger once, then again, then again.
T.F.’s rifle, his precious M-14, fell from his hands. He collapsed against the side of the corridor, choking and coughing. In the shadowy darkness, John fired again, a blaze of fire and noise, and T.F. slumped to the floor. There was a soft, hissing exhalation of breath, and then he lay still.
John stood up, trembling. The corridor was dense with blue, acrid smoke. He heard people running up the stairs, and somebody shouting.
*
They sat around the table at their apartment hotel in Hollywood, and made a meal of London broil and Mumm’s Cordon Rouge champagne. They didn’t talk much, but afterwards they took their champagne glasses and sat by the gas fire and stared at the flames. The heatwave was over, and it was growing colder now.
‘I’ve decided to go to Europe for a while,’ Perri said. ‘I think I need some time on my own. Somewhere away from all these memories.’
John nodded. He didn’t want her to go. Right now, he felt he needed her. But he knew what she felt, and he wasn’t going to try to talk her out of it. When she came back – and he knew that she would come back – then maybe they could get together again, without the trauma of the past to haunt them too vividly. One week, he thought. One week in which he had learned how to grieve for his father, grieve for Vicki, and kill a man to revenge them.
‘Do you think anything’s going to happen? To Sweetman, I mean? Or anyone else who’s involved in it?’’ Mel asked.
John shrugged. ‘It depends on the police, I guess – what evidence they find. I’ve told them everything that we found out. I’m still not sure we did the right things for the right reasons, but at least we did the right things.’
The telephone rang. Perri said, ‘I’ll answer it,’ and got up from the settee.
She said, ‘Who is this?’ Then, ‘Yes. Yes, I see. Hold on a moment.’
She put her hand over the receiver, and said, ‘John, it’s a woman called Mrs Benduzzi. She’s been trying to get in touch with you all week, and she’s just found out you’re living here. She says could you walk Ricardo Monday morning? And maybe wax the car?’
John looked up. It seemed like the whole week had vanished into nowhere at all, as if it hadn’t existed. He looked at Mel, and said, ‘Do you hear that? That’s reality, come to get us back.’
Epilogue
No prosecutions were ever brought in connection with the Sweetman Curve. Professor Aaron Sweetman was interviewed by police and FBI, and his computer records examined, but nothing of an incriminating nature could be found. Kenneth Irwin, unemployed, of Seattle, was at Palm Springs police headquarters for two days before being released for lack of anything but highly circumstantial evidence.
The coroner decided that Senator Carl X. Chapman, the senior senator from the state of Minnesota, had been fatally wounded by a rifle bullet fired by Terence Faust, unemployed, of Venice, Los Angeles, as had Hilary Nestor Hunter; and that Terence Faust, in his turn, had been shot dead by John Cullen. The coroner complimented Mr Cullen for his quick-thinking, but admonished him for carrying an unlicenced weapon.
The FBI, after a three-week investigation, concluded that Terence Faust was a political fanatic and sexual odd-ball with a psychotic grudge against right-wing politicians. He was probably the Freeway Fruitcake, although not all of the freeway killings could indisputably be laid at his door. The FBI dismissed any idea that Faust’s actual target was Anthony Seiden, despite Mr Cullen’s claims. The only irrefutable evidence of what had happened, they pointed out, was the two bodies of Senator Chapman and Ms Hilary Nestor Hunter. Everything else was supposition.
Vicki Wallace was interred at her home town of Oxnard, California, on the following Wednesday, at a sad and simple ceremony. Hilary Nestor Hunter was buried at Forest Lawn two days after that. Her largest wreath was of white roses, and bore the cryptic message ‘Goodbye Angola.’ Senator Carl X. Chapman was flown to Minneapolis, and cremated at a quiet private funeral. His widow Elspeth did not weep.
A month later, Dana Seiden left her husband for the second time, and sought a petition for divorce on the grounds of cruelty. A settlement was eventually reached for nine million dollars. Anthony Seiden’s new movie was christened Night Of Revenge, and received mixed reviews.
Adele Corliss, in a television interview, said that her frightening experience had given her ‘new insight into human depravity, but also into human greatness.’ She paid for Mark, her chauffeur, to have cosmetic surgery on his nose.
Detective Morello was assigned to the case of the L.A. Strangler, but after having arrested three suspects, all of whom were later released, he was moved onto the Orange Grove Avenue homicide, which was so complex and unsolvable that it was like being sent to Siberia to unravel Balaclava helmets for the rest of his life.
John Cullen and Mel Walters occasionally go fishing together weekends. But most weekdays, John Cullen can still be seen waxing cars, or talking to Yolande in Mrs Benduzzi’s garden, or walking dogs around the sloping scented byways of Bel-Air, in his T-shirt and his worn-out jeans. Some days, he gets letters with French’ or German stamps on them, and he sits on a bench with the dog leash tied to his ankle, and reads them.
Henry Ullerstam, the oil millionaire, has hinted that he is considering backing a new Republican Presidential candidate for 1980, and that his candidate is ‘almost sure to win.’
All this happened not very long ago, in the land of the free.
About the author
Graham Masterton trained as a newspaper reporter before beginning his career as an author. Graham’s credits as a writer include the bestselling horror novel The Manitou, which was adapted into a film starring Tony Curtis. He is also the author of the Katie Maguire crime series, which became a top-ten bestseller in 2012. Visit grahammasterton.com
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