Life to Life

by Don Pendleton

  Chapter Fifteen: To Dream Like An Angel

  Francois absolutely closed the book on that photo album and refused further comment on that period of his life. He was like a man stunned and bemused, wanting only to be left alone. I did elicit from him the information that Annie would have to spend at least the night in jail; the judge had set over until the next day the question of bail and apparently the attorneys had exhausted every avenue in the attempt to gain her immediate release.

  So I began to wonder about the D.A.'s case and how much more was there beyond the meager chain of circumstantial evidence sketched for me by Paul Stewart. It seemed to me that there had to be some hard core of a case to establish some reasonable presumption of guilt if Mirabel's legal clout could not shake her loose.

  I tried to impress upon Francois—without coming right out and saying it—the strong possibility that he himself could be in mortal danger, but he was entirely noncommittal and apparently consumed by his own thoughts so I went away and left him with them. And since I could not get to the lady directly, I decided to go for an indirect approach to the truth about Annie.

  It was frenzy time on the L.A. freeway scene so I struck a surface path through the hills via Beverly Glen and chugged over to Van Nuys the hard way. The twenty-mile drive consumed most of an hour—which was okay because I needed the thinking time and did not know for sure just what I hoped to find over there anyway.

  I went on past the Church of Light Center and found the neighborhood where Annie began her life with George Farrel, her latest late husband. It was one of those typical Southern California tracts that were built on the GI Bill during the fifties to house the burgeoning postwar population and now kindly referred to by realtors as mature neighborhoods. Nothing pretentious about these homes but by and large they came on roomier lots than those produced by the land booms of the sixties and seventies when developers could not resist the temptation to squeeze a hundred homes onto a plot better fitted to seventy. That whole big valley had been mostly farmlands just a few decades back. Now it was endless bedrooms stretching the city into infinity and perpetuating its sprawl through the natural activities therein.

  This particular collection of bedrooms, though—mature for sure—had no doubt largely ceased to figure into the population explosion, the natural activities now chiefly confined to sleeping. I cruised it once slowly just to get the feel then circled back and pulled into the driveway of the Farrel homestead. It was that soft time of the evening when the declining sun is providing more light than heat, when the denizens are cycling down their air conditioners and opening windows and patio doors and beginning to feel neighborly.

  One of those was eyeing me openly from the next yard as I stepped out of the Maserati. She had cotton-puff hair and deeply tanned skin, wore faded denim cutoffs and a wrinkled T-shirt with no bra beneath, held a small gardening tool in each hand. About sixty, give or take a few years; a plank- owner, no doubt, in this neighborhood. I noticed a Neighborhood Watch sign in a window, and she was dutifully checking me out.

  So I showed her a friendly smile and called over, "Hi, Phyllis."

  She took about two steps forward before advising me, "I'm not Phyllis. I'm Helen."

  I made an apologetic face and said, "Oh!—right!—Helen!—sorry—but it's been awhile, hasn't it. How've you been?"

  I was already walking away which was okay with Helen because she couldn't place me anyway. I shot a glance over the shoulder as I turned the corner of the garage; she had given up already and was attacking a flower bed at the property line. I was in luck because the garage shielded Farrel's front door from Helen's view and that door proved a bit more resistant than Clara's had been. Took me nearly a minute to get inside.

  It was uncomfortably warm and close in there with the windows and draperies all closed and the air conditioner turned off. I opened the place up and let in some fresh air then just prowled the rooms and opened myself up to whatever might be waiting there for me.

  It was a nice home—expensively furnished and tastefully decorated—three bedrooms and den, two baths, nice modem kitchen that obviously had recently been remodeled and updated, fairly large living room with a dining ell. Had a baby grand piano, large-screen TV and VCR, nice stereo system. Several framed eight-by-ten photos on the piano showed Annie with a kindly looking white-haired man; these were wedding pictures and both appeared very happy about that.

  Two of the bedrooms had obviously not been used for anything but overflow storage for quite a while. Beds in each were made up with only a spread over the bare mattress—not even any pillows—and odds and ends of stuff were stacked about in open boxes.

  The other bedroom was as obviously Annie's and George's but did not show much more use than the others except that the closet was stuffed with clothing—both men's and women's—and the bed was rather carelessly made and piled with pillows. But that room was speaking to me and the feeling was rather sad.

  I shook back a shiver and went on into the master bath. The tub in which George had suffered his fatal fall was glass-enclosed and had handrails built into the wall above it. I stayed in there for about thirty seconds, just getting the feel, then I returned and sat on Annie's bed for maybe a minute and gazed back through the open doorway into the bath, inviting the flow. Nothing flowed so I went to the kitchen and got a drink of water, stared mindlessly out the window onto the backyard for a while until I felt something begin to move me.

  I just stood back and let it happen. It moved me to the backdoor and into the yard. A concrete-block wall made it private and someone had once obviously enjoyed working back here. It was showing neglect now but the flower beds had been well planned and artistically planted, woven very nicely among a dozen or so dwarf fruit trees that were now heavily laden with oranges and lemons.

  It moved me to one of the dwarf oranges. It knelt me down and dug my fingers into the earth and put a frown on my face at what was encountered there, then it picked an orange and peeled it and popped a section into my mouth. The orange was sweet and juicy though a bit pulpy; I found myself making a mental note to talk to the gardener about the soil as I went back inside and washed my hands at the kitchen sink.

  Then I heard music and realized that Ann was playing the piano. I went quietly to the door and listened from a distance so I would not disturb her at play; she was doing "Ebbtide," my favorite, and putting in the special little wave ripples that I loved so with the left hand. God, she was so beautiful and especially at the piano; I stood there for several minutes watching and listening. There was a lump in my throat and an ache in the heart as I turned away and went to the bedroom and undressed. I felt very sad and terribly depressed but I was not sure why. It was time for my bath but I did not want to disturb Ann at play so I went on alone and closed the bathroom door tightly so she would not hear the water and leave the piano.

  I got the water adjusted just right and sprinkled in the salts, then went back into the bedroom for another quick listen because I could not hear her with the water running and the door closed. She had moved from "Ebbtide" into "Autumn Leaves" and so beautifully, but "Autumn Leaves" always made me sad so I did not linger but returned quickly to my bath and stepped into the tub.

  The damned glass doors—they were great for showering but too damned confining during a comforting soak in the tub. I stood there debating for a moment whether to slide the door closed or leave it open but I began to feel dizzy and wondered if maybe I should just get back out and forget the bath for now.

  I turned off the water and heard Ann calling me and I knew that something was terribly wrong. I could not turn around to get out of the tub. Something was terribly wrong and Ann was calling.

  Ann... God!... Ann honey! Everything was black. I was plunging through space. Then something hit my head and the pain was sickening, nauseating. I was losing consciousness. Ann—dear God—Ann...!

  I came out of it sitting on the edge of Annie's bed stark naked. I could hear water running in the bathroom. I strug
gled to my feet and went in there to turn it off. Just in time, too, because the tub was almost overflowing.

  For a confused moment, there, I expected to hear "Autumn Leaves" coming from the living room...but of course there was nobody there now to play that piano.

  I put on my clothes, closed that house back the way I'd found it, and quickly went away from there.

  Maybe I had found no truth about Annie.

  But I knew like all the angels in heaven that George Farrel had adored her.

  Chapter Sixteen: In a Different Light

  She was born Ann Marie Mathison. Father Tony was an expert horseman, movie stuntman, and sometimes actor who was killed by one of his stunts during the filming of a western when she was only two months old.

  Mother Maybelle was known professionally as Maizey McCall (maiden name) and was respected in the industry as a daring stuntwoman. If you have ever seen a forties-vintage western in which a runaway buckboard or covered wagon driven by a female character flipped over or rolled down an embankment or plunged off a cliff into a river, then you might have seen Maizey at work. She and Tony had been married for twelve years and had given up the idea of having kids until Ann Marie came along.

  Maizey lost her taste for stunts when her husband was killed. She decided that her child deserved a mother with a somewhat safer life-style so she worked when she could as a stand-in or extra while also continuing to operate the stables and riding school that she and Tony had established in the foothill community of Azusa several years earlier.

  When Ann Marie was three, Maizey got a break with a supporting role in a television series—a western, naturally. She had never thought of herself as an actress but she was still quite beautiful and looked much younger than her forty years, and I guess the role was not too demanding; she still worked primarily with horses. That only lasted a couple of seasons, though, and there ensued a period of several years during which Maizey apparently worked at nothing. She sold the horse ranch in Azusa and moved into a Hollywood apartment with Ann Marie where they lived until her marriage to Wilson Turner, an insurance broker, when Ann Marie was ten.

  Turner was a widower and about ten years older than Maizey. Mother and daughter moved to his fashionable home in the Los Feliz section of Hollywood where they lived until Turner died eight years later. It turned out that he had been living beyond his means and was deeply in debt. Even the house was heavily burdened with mortgages that left very little equity. The upshot was that Maizey was left virtually penniless. She and her daughter moved to modest quarters in a rundown section of Hollywood for several months pending Ann's graduation from high school, after which Maizey—now in her fifties—found a live-in job at a boarding stable near San Fernando. Ann Marie married Hollywood High classmate Nathan Sturgis and the newlyweds moved in with his parents.

  That marriage was apparently an immediate disaster and ended very quickly. Ann Marie went on with her young life, though, and Maizey seemed content with her own lot for the next few years. But mother and daughter became estranged and were not reconciled until shortly before Maizey's death by asphyxiation at the age of seventy-two.

  I get all this history not from Annie or Francois or the cops but from the screenwriter who was present at Church of the Light on the night Herman Milhaul dramatically took his own life. His name is Arnold Tostermann. He is a handsome and distinguished gentleman of sixty-eight years and has worked in the industry for more than four decades. Writers get around and they tend to know all the ins and outs and ups and downs of this very interesting community; what is better, they have an innate curiosity and a strong dramatic sense so they are usually alert to the pulse of the business and the personalities that drive it. They are really the very heart of Hollywood. Forget all that ego stuff from the directors; the writers are where it is at—and they are even there before the it. “In the beginning was the word...” and it's still like that. It all begins with a script, and from that script the entire industry finds its sustenance—actors, directors, producers, cameramen, set designers, soundmen, makeup artists and costumers, all the technical crafts and even the typists and secretaries, publicity people, accountants, studio executives, agents; everyone who works in this town feeds from the hand of the writer, and they all know it.

  But there is something even more special about Arnold Tostermann. This is the guy who introduced Maizey McCall to young Francois Mirabel.

  It is ten o'clock and the night is unusually balmy so we are seated on the garden patio of Tostermann's hillside home in Laurel Canyon. This house has been here awhile, but then so has Arnold. He bought it for a song in 1950 and has watched the property appreciate "about a thousand percent" but never saw any reason to sell. I doubt that you could pry him out of there with a crowbar. He has the look of a self-satisfied man, a guy who has carried the fire and found it comfortable, and you just sort of know that this sense of satisfaction permeates the personal life, as well.

  His wife is at least thirty years younger than he, maybe more—very pretty and shapely, poised, pleasant. Her name is Joan and she carries herself like a dancer. Joan has not joined us on the patio but she is back and forth a lot, very attentive, pushing food and drink at us.

  We are bathed in the reflected dancing lights of a Mexican fountain that dominates this garden. The lights are submerged in the pool of the fountain and set to beam vertically onto the tiered bowls and falling streams; there are six of them, each a different color and sequenced to flash on and off in rhythmic patterns of dancing light. So as I look at my host I see him in constantly changing hues and sparkling patterns; the effect is sometimes weird.

  "I don't know, Ash—okay to call you Ash?—sometimes I don't know what the future holds for young people in this town. Don't get me wrong; it's a very dynamic industry and the new technologies make it all the more exciting—you know, like subscription TV and the videocassette markets—all very hungry right now—but it's not the same business I started in forty-odd years ago."

  He smiles, sips at his wine, looks to see how I'm doing with mine.

  "I don't know, I guess it was just a closer community then. More of a sense of community, I guess. I mean the days of Zanuck and Goldwyn and...you know. Nowadays a young writer may never even meet a studio head, never mind dining with him."

  He chuckles.

  "In fact, if he doesn't read the trades every day he probably won't know who's heading the studio at any given moment. We have become conglomerated, taken over by accountants and corporate climbers who measure artistic value nowhere but in the quarterly reports."

  Another chuckle.

  "What in the world would one of those guys find to discuss over dinner with a writer?"

  "Francois doesn't fall into that category?"

  "More and more, now, I guess he does; yes. But with a difference. He came to this town with love and fascination, and I mean he loved every aspect of it. Never met a man with more enthusiasm, more sense of adventure, more delight in tackling something new. He got into all our heads. I mean writers, directors, actors, all of us. He was a charming guy. You know, it's strange for this town but I don't think I know anybody who really dislikes Francois Mirabel. He's just..."

  "Know what you mean, yeah."

  "Exactly. Even stumbling around with the language the way he does... I think it adds to the charm."

  I am thinking about dissimulation but I nod my head and agree.

  "Of course, between you and me., Ash, he uses that to his own advantage. Like my Mexican gardener. Been coming here once a week for at least the past ten years. Can't understand a damned thing I want to tell him but he has no problem whatever when it comes to a discussion of his monthly bill for services."

  I sip the wine and watch sparkling jewels of light play across my host's face and I am thinking about a different Hollywood, a young Hollywood still filled with the excitement of its own magic and the romance of its possibilities as I say to Tostermann, "So it was you more than anyone else who helped Francois get his feet d
own and find his way in this town."

  I get a surprised blink of the eyes.. "Did I say that?"

  He did not, but I smile and reply, "Didn't you?"

  "Never really thought of it like that but I suppose that could be true." His face is cast in blue now, and the silvery hair sparkles with ruby highlights. "Drove him out to Malibu his first week in town; he bought Sol Hirsch's house the next day. Gorgeous place, cost a bundle. And I introduced him to Ed North and several other top writers. Ed had just done The Day the Earth Stood Still for Fox, and Francois was very impressed by that piece of work. Introduced him to Robert Wise, too, director of that film. Yes uh, guess you could say I helped him find his way around. Didn't take long, though, until the town started coming to his door."

  "The women too, I take it."

  "Well now don't get the idea he was a womanizer because he was not, or at least not openly so. Face it, though—this guy was young, he was handsome and charming, he was French, and he was filthy rich. I have found that to be a combination guaranteed to discourage lonely nights." He chuckles. "Especially in this town."

  “His wife...?”

  He gives me a green grimace. "Sickly, I think—or, at least, very delicate health. She wouldn't travel, stuck close to Paris, wouldn't even go to Cannes. So Francois would be over here for sometimes two or three months running. He did not womanize, let me say that. But he did not have many lonely nights, either, I'd have to say."

  "So his relationship with Maizey McCall was..."

  "Oh, well—no—that changed everything. He was crazy about Maizey, if you'll pardon the poetry. But that's a good way to describe their early relationship...pure poetry. They were very much in love. But Francois was not the kind of man to divorce an ailing wife. And Maizey was not the kind of woman to be kept by a man forever. And she had this kid. So...very sad." A ruby smile, then: "But of course I was not writing that script, otherwise the wife would have conveniently died ten years earlier than she did, and I would fade out with the two lovers walking hand in hand into the sunset."