Murder Plays House

by Ayelet Waldman

  Eleven

  THE next day, after the usual Monday-morning horror—why am I constitutionally incapable of remembering to buy lunch-making materials when I’m at the grocery store?—I dropped the kids off at their respective schools and made my way to Silver Lake. I’d left a message for Spike Stevens, the director of the Left Coast Players. I hadn’t imagined that I’d reach him early on a Monday morning, but Moira had given me his home address, and I wanted at least to give him warning that I was on my way.

  Spike lived near the “lake” for which his neighborhood is named, a reservoir strangely denuded of trees and surrounded by a high fence. His apartment building was a typical LA dingbat, an early-sixties multi-unit monstrosity, mostly carport, with an overhanging second floor and an outdoor staircase. Generally the only time people outside of our fair city see those buildings is in the wake of an earthquake, when the rubble of crushed cars and piles of cement is broadcast on the news. Al met me out in front of the building. He hadn’t thought much of my idea to interview Spike—he didn’t think much of any part of the case, frankly, but Brodsky was too important to us for Al just to ignore what was going on. And it wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

  I rang Spike’s bell, to no avail. While I was writing a note to put in his mailbox, Al pushed open the wrought iron gate that passed for a security system. The lock was rusted open.

  “Al!” I said, but he was already halfway up the stairs. Spike lived on the second floor, behind a steel door painted a noxious shade of ultramarine. I tried to avoid looking at it. I’d remained true to my promise that morning and had had no coffee. The combination of caffeine deprivation and the assault on my senses of that garish color was enough to rekindle my morning sickness.

  After a few minutes of pounding, a middle-aged man attired solely in pajama bottoms answered the door. His skin was colored an unnatural orange, with streaks along the side of his bulging waist, and I recognized the inexpert application of tanning cream from my own ill-fated exploration of the product. His belly spilled over the waistband of his pants, despite his immediate effort to suck it in. His swift inhalation served only to expand his narrow chest and push his double chin to the fore.

  “Can I help you?” he muttered, pushing his lank hair out of his eyes with one hand.

  “Spike?” I asked.

  “Yeah?” he said suspiciously, rubbing his eyes. He glanced at the flecks of sleep on his fingers and flicked them away. I flinched, trying not to leap out of the way of what Isaac and Ruby so accurately called “eye boogers.”

  “I’m Juliet Applebaum. I left you a message?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is my partner, Al Hockey. We’re investigators. We work for Alicia Felix’s family.”

  “Oh, wow. Bummer. You guys want to come in?” He backed away from the door and held it open for me. I walked through the doorway, and for one, brief, nightmare-Sumo moment our bellies rubbed against each other. I blushed, and I think Spike might have too, but it was hard to tell, given the sickly orange hue of his skin.

  The room was a small, white-painted box with pale grey indoor-outdoor carpeting and furniture straight out of the Ikea sale aisle. Al and I sat down on a pressed wood and canvas couch that was probably named something like the “Fjärk.” Spike settled into a “Snügens” sling-chair and leaned back with a groan.

  “Sorry. Up late last night,” he said.

  “Improv practice?”

  “I wish. Catering gig. Premiere at Fox.”

  “Good movie?”

  “Hell if I know. They don’t let the help into the screening room. We’re supposed to pass the hors d’oeuvres, pour the champagne, and disappear into the woodwork.” His tone was matter-of-fact; almost entirely devoid of bitterness.

  I nodded sympathetically and said, “You’re the director of the Left Coast Players?”

  “I am.”

  “Have you been doing it long?”

  He groaned. “Long enough. Twenty-two years.”

  I stifled my own groan. How could he stand it? How could any of them? Struggling along on the fringes of Hollywood, waiting tables, acting in comedy troupes and television commercials and desperately hoping for a break. It was enough to make a person crazy, or suicidal. Was it enough to drive someone to murder?

  Al said, “What can you tell us about Bingie McPurge?”

  “Julia Brennan’s character? From New York Live?” He asked, disingenuously.

  “Our understanding is that Alicia Felix created the character,” I said.

  He sighed.

  “Did she?”

  “I’ve gotta have some coffee,” he said, leaping to his feet. “You guys want some?”

  “Sure.”

  Twenty minutes later we were sitting at a table in the Starbucks on the corner of his block. Spike had tried to make us coffee, but had been out of filters, milk, and sugar. And coffee.

  “Bingie McPurge,” I said, once he’d taken his first sip of the coffee he so clearly needed. “Was she Alicia’s creation? Did Julia steal her?”

  He smacked his lips and moaned ostentatiously, “Ah, the royal bean. Nectar of the gods.”

  “Spike,” Al said sharply.

  “Oh, all right. Don’t get your panties in a twist. Yes, Alicia had a similar character as one of her Left Coast characters.”

  “One of them?” I said.

  “Okay, her only character. But as I see it, Julia has improved significantly on the idea. Really developed it.”

  “But it was Alicia’s to begin with?”

  He nodded. “Alicia inspired the character. Birthed her, if you will. But Julia has made Bingie her own.”

  I took a gulp of coffee and exhaled with relief as the caffeine rushed to my head and chased my headache away. “Alicia didn’t give Julia permission to ‘make Bingie her own,’ though, did she?”

  He waved his hand. “Permission? Since when does an artist need permission? Art is about taking risks, about gobbling up life. The artist is a selfish being, in thrall to his own creative muse. Who can say from where inspiration will spring?”

  I was surprised that Al managed to keep the coffee from spraying out of his nose; his snort of derision was that loud.

  Poor Alicia. How frustrating, how miserable it must have been to create something, only to have someone steal it away; and not only that, but to become so successful with it.

  “Alicia was planning on suing Julia, wasn’t she?”

  Spike sighed heavily. “Poor Alicia. She just didn’t have a good understanding of the creative muse. She made herself quite unpleasant around this issue.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Julia told me that Alicia tried to contact her a number of times. Called her. Wrote her letters. I finally had to step in.”

  “You?”

  He nodded. “Julia asked me to. To, you know, see if I could calm Alicia down. Explain how things were. Let her know the steps Julia would have to take should she continue with her harassment.”

  “Harassment? Alicia was harassing Julia?” Al said.

  He winced. “No, that’s the wrong word. Forgive me. Julia just asked me to try to calm Alicia down.”

  “And did you?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yes, I think I did. Look, Alicia was never going to be happy about the whole Bingie McPurge thing. But even she came to recognize that there was nothing she could do about it.”

  “She gave up her idea of suing Julia?”

  He smiled with a certain self-satisfaction. “She seemed, after our conversation, to understand that it would be a bad idea.”

  “I take it you and Julia are still close. It sounds like she relies on you.”

  He nodded. “Of course. We’re all friends at the Left Coast Players. In fact,” he said modestly, “I’ll probably be joining Julia in New York soon. I just have to set things up here. You know, find someone who is willing to take over the troupe.”

  “Oh really? Is Julia helping you get an audition at New York
Live?”

  He shook his head. “She’s a doll, and I’m sure she’ll put a word in, but this has been in the works for quite some time.”

  Sure. Sure it had. There was something in Spike’s eyes that let me know that he recognized my doubt full well, and, in fact, possessed plenty of his own. Still, I wasn’t likely to convince this man to say anything negative about the woman upon whom his future might or might not lie. I was going to have to do the legwork on my own.

  “Do you happen to have a video tape of the Left Coast Players? One with Alicia on it?” Al asked.

  Spike wrinkled his brow. “I don’t, but a few of the players did an appearance on Talking Pictures a few years ago. You might try them. They might keep tapes of old shows.”

  “Talking Pictures?” I said.

  “It’s a public access TV show out of the Valley. Hosted by Candy Gerard. You probably remember her, she used to have a series on CBS back in the mid-seventies, Mary Jane and Rodolpho in Space?”

  I nodded my head. I vaguely remembered the series from my childhood. It had something to do with a love affair between a girl from the Bronx and an Italian space robot.

  “Anyway, Alicia and some of the other players went on the show.”

  “Was Julia Brennan there?”

  “God no. Public Access? Julia was never that desperate. Neither was I, for that matter. Alicia did the show with a couple of the guys. You should call Candy. She might have a tape.”

  I jotted the name of the show in my notebook, and then asked Spike, “Did Alicia’s death come as a surprise to you?”

  He wrinkled his brow. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, were you shocked? Or weren’t you?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “Frankly, I wasn’t surprised. Don’t get me wrong, it never occurred to me that someone would kill her. But Alicia didn’t seem like someone who would live to a ripe old age.”

  “How so?”

  He sighed. “Did you ever meet her?”

  I flashed on the image of Alicia’s brutalized body lying in her bathtub. “No,” I said. My voice came out a hollow croak, and I cleared my throat. Al glanced at me, and I smiled reassuringly.

  He shook his head. “Well, let’s just say that a character with an eating disorder wasn’t too great a stretch for Alicia Felix. In all the years I knew the woman, I don’t think I ever saw her eat more than a single leaf of lettuce. She was so thin. I mean, they’re all thin, all the baby actresses, but she seemed thinner than most. Sometimes she looked positively cadaverous.”

  I couldn’t help but remember, as clearly as if I was holding before me a coroner’s photograph, Alicia’s sharp ribs, concave belly, and the hollow cup of her pelvis. “She was anorexic,” I said.

  He nodded. “Of course. I mean, she never said anything, but she had to be.”

  Here finally was someone who was willing to say what everybody else surely knew. It struck me, without knowing him too well, that Spike was that kind of guy. For all his Hollywood shtick, he seemed like someone who called things like he saw them. Even his self-aggrandizing puffery had just a trace of self-mockery to it. It was as if he was wordlessly letting me know that he was fully aware how ridiculous it was for a man of his age still to be engaged in the miserable rat race that was the quest for stardom. I liked him, orange skin, bloated belly, and all.

  “If you told me that Alicia had starved to death, I probably wouldn’t have keeled over in shock,” Spike said. He took a large gulp of coffee, and looked about to launch into another homily to the speedy brew.

  I spoke before he could. “But were you surprised that she was murdered?”

  He licked away the pale brown mustache the coffee had left on his upper lip. “That’s something else. I mean, who expects anybody to be murdered?”

  Al interrupted. “Did she have any enemies?”

  He laughed. “Enemies? Honey, this is LA. Everyone has enemies. Hell, your dry cleaner has enemies.”

  I leaned back in my chair and put a hand to the small of my back where it had suddenly begun to ache. I wondered if other interrogators had to deal with these same indignities—backache, swollen ankles, stretch marks. I shifted in my seat and asked my follow-up question. “Do you know who some of her enemies might be? Would Julia Brennan be one of Alicia’s enemies?”

  He rolled his eyes at me as if he’d never heard anything so stupid. “Hardly. Now, if you were investigating Julia’s murder, that would be a different story. Then it might have made sense to wonder about Alicia’s feelings toward her. But I promise you, Julia Brennan didn’t consider Alicia an enemy. In fact, I doubt she thought much about her at all.”

  “And was there anyone else?”

  Spike narrowed his eyes, and it was brought home to me, once again, that this was a man far more insightful and intelligent than he allowed himself to seem. “You want to know if I know anyone who would like to see Alicia dead?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned back in his chair, tented his fingers over his belly, and said, “Alicia was not a particularly nice woman. Don’t get me wrong. She could be very charming and friendly, when it suited her purpose. And she did have friends; Moira Sarsfield, for one. But Alicia was ambitious. She was more ambitious than she was talented, I think, but then that’s true of most of us. She wanted success, she wanted adoration, she wanted the kind of things stardom brings you. Again, we all want that to a certain degree, but Alicia’s desire was more . . . what? Palpable, I guess, than, say, mine. So did she make enemies? Sure. I’m sure she did. But I couldn’t tell you who, and it’s something of a mystery to me why someone would want to kill her.”

  “Why? If she was so ambitious, doesn’t it stand to reason that she might have trampled on the wrong person?”

  He leaned forward again, grabbing his cup of coffee and shaking his head at what he clearly considered my dense lack of understanding. “Alicia never attained any success to speak of. She couldn’t have inspired any real envy. That can’t be the reason for her murder. You’ll have to find the motive somewhere else, my dear.”

  There was more than a kernel of truth to the man’s word. Alicia may have done more than her share of professional trampling, but it surely hadn’t resulted in much.

  I couldn’t resist asking one final question. “Spike’s not your real name, is it?”

  He pushed his coffee cup away and waggled a finger at me. “Trade secret, my girl.”

  “No, really.”

  He winked. “Oh, what the hell. Larry Finkelman, at your service.” He extended his hand to me, and I shook it.

  “Thanks for your help, Larry.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said. “And call me Spike.”

  Twelve

  CANDY Gerard’s talk show was filmed in a long, grey building in a strip mall out in Studio City. There was an Arab grocery store flying a large American flag and advertising Jordanian olives and Israeli newspapers on one side of the studio, and a Vietnamese nail salon on the other. I imagined for a minute soaking my feet in hot paraffin, having my nails painted vermillion, rather than looking for tapes of Alicia Felix. The indulgence of a pedicure was far more attractive, but I doubted that Harvey Brodsky would hire Al and me based on the loveliness of my toes. I had to figure out who killed Alicia Felix, and while I wasn’t sure I was going to get any closer to the solution to the crime by watching her appearances on public access TV, it wasn’t like I was exactly inundated with better ideas.

  I dragged open the heavy metal door of the unmarked studio and walked in. Maybe it was the hypersensitivity of my pregnant nose, but the place stank to high heaven. It smelled like old socks and onions, with a whiff of cheap perfume. It smelled like a tenement just after the hookers and the smack-addicts had been rousted out, and just before the place was demolished. And it didn’t look any better. The walls were cement blocks, and exposed pipes trailing filthy streamers of shredded duct-tape sagged from the ceiling. Two young women in short skirts and high heels were lounging on a fa
ded purple couch pushed up against the wall. One of the girls leaned against a broken armrest, her long legs draped across the other’s lap. The second girl was holding a tiny mirror and studiously popping the pimples on her forehead.

  “Is this where they shoot Talking Pictures?” I asked.

  The long-legged girl, who had dyed black hair and severely cut bangs, pointed in the direction of a closed door marked “Do Not Enter When Light Is On.” There was a large red signal light above the door. She snapped her gum loudly, and the other girl, who had finished ravaging her forehead and was now carefully painting her collagen-enhanced lips a noxious shade of plum that contrasted strangely with her platinum-blond hair, giggled.

  “Are you two on the show?”

  This reduced both of them to heaps of intense laughter. The black-haired girl actually had to press one long-finger-nailed hand to her inflated chest to quell her hysterics.

  “We work over there,” she said, finally, pointing to the far end of the hall. A large poster decorated with a silhouette of a naked woman and the words “Man-Eater Productions” marked a set of double doors. Another red signal light glowed over the top of the doors.

  “Are you actresses?”

  The blond smiled. “Actresses? Sure, that’s what we are. Right, Toni?”

  “You’d better believe it,” her friend said, emphatically. “I’m acting every minute of every working day.”

  “We’re fluffers,” the blond said, and winked.

  Before I had a chance to inquire just what a fluffer might be, or even to decide if I really wanted to know, the light over the Man-Eater door went out, and a heavyset man wearing a beret and a Sundance Film Festival T-shirt stuck his head out. “Girls, time to get busy,” he said.

  The two leapt to their feet, dragging their tiny skirts down over their rear ends, and tottered through the door on their impossibly high heels.

  “Bye!” the blond called over her shoulder.