by David Gordon
“After that we lost touch for awhile. He was in Paris or somewhere and I was mainly on tour in South America, where we were always a smash for some reason, they couldn’t even understand the lyrics, or else we were staying up at my husband’s castle.”
“The Baron?”
“No, darling the Baron was quite penniless. This was my second husband, Manfred. His record went quintuple platinum or something absurd like this and he bought a small island off the coast of Scotland. Technically he was the king of it I suppose. Quite fun really. We had our own money printed that we’d hand out to visitors, though of course you couldn’t do much with it but buy a pint at the pub we set up in the basement. Zed came once to visit, brought along these two Chinese girls, I believe. The rumor was they were sisters but I don’t think so. Cousins, maybe. Anyway, he was the perfect guest, the only one there who could actually ride and shoot and all that. Giant feasts at that long table, a boar stuffed with pigeons and wine in five-hundred-year-old goblets. Terribly decadent. Though far too chilly for a proper orgy. We played cards mostly. And drank Scotch of course. This was ages before I got sober. Then, much later, I met his wife, the widow, in Cannes. I was there with my husband, a different one, a record producer, and she was just there I suppose. Bit of a mess, I’m afraid. Always drunk or high on something and crying for no reason in the loo. But a lovely girl. Just his sort, I saw immediately. Small, dark, with spooky eyes. She reminded me of poor Maxi. He always had marvelous taste in girls.”
39
DAEMONICA PUT ME IN TOUCH with Garreth Barke, the male lead from Ladbroke Grove, and we met at the Slug & Sword, a pub in Santa Monica that catered to the UK expat community. That afternoon, there was a knot of angry red-faced men in shorts and one scary drunk woman crowded at the end of the bar, watching rugby from some former colony. I found Garreth in the back as he’d said, but I wouldn’t have known him. The slender, pretty lad from Ladbroke had grown into a head-butting barroom baritone, slow-roasted into mellow middle age. His hands were scarred lumps. His nose bore a delicate filigree of fine red tendrils, blooming over his cheeks. His faded blond glory receded over a sun-scorched dome. His eyes were small and icy blue.
“He was a clever old bastard, I’ll give him that. Saw that right off when I met him, back in London, in another age. Had a way with the ladies, too. Of course, back then we thought it was grand to prance about like Tinkerbell in a scarf, pink trousers, and pointy boots. I’d see him round the pubs. A great drinker and great talker, so he was all right by me. A lot of real talkers don’t like anyone else to share the limelight, but I say, a man’s got to drink sometime, hasn’t he? Plus he was the type to spend his last quid on a pint for himself and a friend, then put the change in the fruit machine and let it spin. I saw him pull that trick and win in the Drowned Fox, a scalawag’s pub in Earl’s Court, catering to the finest pimps, pushers, and pickpockets. He spent the whole takings right then, standing the house to drinks. Every villain in the place loved him. Pure class! He was untouchable from then on, safe anywhere in London.
“He was a painter when we met and I hung about more in the music world, played a bit of guitar and sang, but we chased the same girls, and so when he asked me to be in his movie, I said, why the fuck not? I had the idea I was playing a secret assassin like, and it turned into I know not what, but no bother, I had a grand time. Free rent and whiskey in a house with two pretty, mostly nude girls, right? Still, the movie never came out, some trouble with the taxman I recall, and it all came to dust in the end. Then I heard he left town, and the next time our paths crossed was when fortune brought me to this sunny shore, where a poor lad with a golden voice and the gift of gab could eke out a pittance playing gangsters and drunks on cop shows and in the movies.”
He hoisted his glass and gazed through the amber into the distance. “LA, you’re a bitch goddess. Half slut, half princess, and all whore.” I wanted to ask about the finer differences between the various terms, but you don’t stop a true bullshit artist on a roll. “Mate, I’ve played paupers, princes, pirates, and poets. I tangled wits with Columbo and got kicked in the nuts by Rockford. In my sweetest memory, the one I’ll savor on me deathbed, Angie Dickinson herself kissed me and slapped me, the first on camera, the second later on in her trailer. But still, even the golden calf’s tits run out of milk and honey sometimes, and around nineteen hundred and ninety-five, I found myself on the bum, trying to buy a sandwich at Mrs. Gooch’s, that overpriced bloody grocery in Beverly Hills. Now, old Zed was a cocksman of note, and…” He smacked his lips, as if tasting his own spicy tale, and thirsty at the memory of his dry days, raised his glass, only to find it empty. He looked at in surprise, then at me.
“Please, allow me,” I said. On cue, the waiter brought him a lager and took my money. “God bless,” he said and took a deep swallow. “Now where was I?”
“You were telling me about Zed in LA.”
“Ah, yes. Exactly. O cruel bandit time! First it takes your friends, then your enemies, and at last your memories of them all.” He drank again. “As I was saying, old Zed was a cocksman of note, and just as I was scraping up my last pennies, along he comes swooping like Errol Flynn in a jeep, dressed in khakis like the great white hunter himself, and on each arm a dark young beauty. I tell you the girls were finer, and younger, than some bottles of Scotch I’ve known.”
“‘Zed,’ I said, ‘me long lost brother!’ Well, he recognized me right off, gave me a great hug. I told him my troubles and, Bob’s your uncle, I was in that contraption of his, bouncing up the hill. Now in those days old Zed had a big place up Laurel Canyon, built by who knows, some porn merchant, a real plaster castle with the works, grand dining hall, black-bottom pool, snooker parlor. He’d acquired it cheaply because a mudslide took the road out and the land was too steep for city pipes. But what does a man want with civilization when he’s got a sweet young Mrs. and a concubine to boot? He had his own water tank and septic, a generator for light. And you needed a four-wheel drive. I felt like Indy Jones heading around those turns or over the plank bridge. Now and again a drunk visitor would roll into the woods and they’d haul him out with a winch.” He poured most of the glass down his gullet and blinked at me as if he’d just woken up. “Where was I?”
“You were going to tell me about his wife,” I prompted, worried he’d get too drunk to remember.
“Ah yes, sweet Mona. The child bride, Princess of Castle Naught! A soul like a wishing well, over which one longed to yearn, casting one’s heart into the deeps of those eyes. Her mother was a great courtesan. An actress-singer-dancer, scorchingly sexy but without a drop of talent. Lucky for her, she got pregnant by a famous man, and in exchange for not bugging him, he set her up with a house and enough to get by.”
“Who was the father?”
“Good question. As far as I know, Mother kept shtum, even with her daughter. Meanwhile, she was determined to make a star of little Mona, music lessons, dance, elocution. She was smart as whip, too smart, actually. By fourteen she’d had it. Told mom to stuff it and went on a tear with the other Hollywood brats of the day. That’s when Zed met her. She moved into the castle with Mum’s blessing, I heard. She could’ve done worse. Zed made her read, at least, since she dropped school, serious books he piled up by the pool. He took her to museums and showed films in the house. I remember, he made both girls study, and quizzed them over dinner. It was rather sweet really, in a depraved sort of way.”
“What was the deal with this other girl?”
“Ah, well, there we have to dig a bit deeper into old Zed’s skull. The man was a great aficionado of the ménage à trois. I mean, we’ve all done it of course, after a few too many, or just enough, eh?”
I nodded and barked out a laugh.
“But for Zed it was more. Some kind of primal drama. He and the wife were always on the hunt, bringing girls back to the castle. I was living there too, you see, for a few months, as a kind of court jester. So I got used to seeing them come and go. But this on
e girl stayed. She was different, special. Her name escapes me. She was Mexican, they’d met her working a club, coat check or go-go dancer or something. She’d come up rough as I recall, beatings, booze, the lot. She was the same age as Mona but already hustling, working as a taxi-dancer downtown, waltzing and fox-trotting with the Asian suits, no doubt giving hand jobs round back as well.”
“What happened to her, do you know?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? When poor old Zed punched his ticket, she disappeared, maybe back to Mexico. I was well out of it by then. Got a bit dark for me. I like a drink now and again, and a toke as well, and I did plenty of acid back in the day, and I’ve been known to sniff a bit of coke if you’re offering, but still, I’m a creature of the light, and Zed was a dark prince up on his hill. I got a job touring with a revival of My Fair Lady and was in Miami when I heard. I never saw sweet Mona again. And the other girl, poof! But I remember she was a beauty, too. Funny, they looked a bit alike. People used to mistake them for sisters, which gave Zed a thrill. Still, it was more than fun and games for her. It was love.”
“With Zed?”
“Perhaps in fatherly way. But I think it was Mona she truly loved.”
40
I CALLED SOLAR LATE at night. He’d been released into his mother’s care, on condition that he agree to drop our “case,” and wanted to hear my reports when he could sit on the phone without disturbance or suspicious ears. It was hard to imagine many eager spies: my evidence consisted of rambling anecdotes gleaned from vague sources and a few obscure, forgotten movies. And my dreams. He insisted on detailed reports of my dreams along with any associations I might have to aid in interpretation. This, he assured me, was where the really choice nuggets were hidden, the clues I discovered without knowing I had found them, which my interlocutors had revealed without intending to, or withheld without even knowing they knew.
In the meantime, my place had become a clubhouse, with empty beers marshaled on the coffee table and dishes stacked in the sink. The idea was that Milo and MJ were looking after me, but in practice it was a holiday for them, eating my ice cream, sprawled in front of Come Drink with Me (1966), King Hu’s kung fu masterpiece. Milo brought over his ancient, dusty VCR to watch Succubi!, but after we plugged it in and made popcorn, we found another tape already jammed inside. So it remained there, blinking 12:00 forever, while we poked it occasionally with a butter knife. If Lala came back now, she’d divorce me immediately.
“How’s Detective Whacko?” Milo said as I hung up the phone. MJ snoozed as the movie played lushly, swift bodies in the bamboo forest at night. I reached for the ice cream and he handed me the empty container.
“The whole quart?” I asked.
“It was about to melt. MJ ate most of it, anyway.”
“Right.” I flopped down on the couch with her between us. “He’s fine. He’s not so whacko.”
“They lock him in at night.”
“He’s home at his mom’s now.”
“That’s sweet. How old is he, fifty?” He opened a beer and tossed the cap toward the empty ice cream quart. It ricocheted across the room. “Hey, don’t misunderstand me. This is the best job you ever had. I’m jealous.”
“Well, we can’t all handle the life-and-death pressures you deal with. Speaking of which, did you fix the VCR?”
Looking deeply hurt, Milo made a show of pushing the buttons a few times. He banged the top with a beer bottle. Then he gave up.
“The thing is,” I told him, “I am kind of fascinated with these people, Mona and Zed. I feel like that’s the life I originally set out for, artists wandering the earth and all. Somehow I ended up like this instead, a boring, pathetic loser.”
“The only thing pathetic and boring about your life is you.”
“Thanks. I feel a lot better.”
“Seriously. It’s like the deadly art of Zen. You see the glass as half empty,” he said, setting his bottle on the table before us.
“It’s totally empty.”
“Ah, but that’s your perception, my child.” With a flourish, he inverted the bottle. A few drops fell on my rug. “I see it as full… of air.”
“Or shit. What’s your point?”
“Yes, that chick and her old man were cool, interesting, fascinating people who had wild, kinky sex, traveled everywhere, and made awesome art while you’ve done none of those things. But they’re dead. Because that’s what happens. The cool die off. The boring and pathetic go on forever. Now get the bong. We’ve got a movie to finish.”
As it happens, Milo snored through the end of Come Drink with Me. I too slept deep that night, and woke up late, confused by dreams in which Lala and Mona, both dead, were sending me annoying emails from the beyond. Although I felt foolish, I couldn’t help going to my dusty office to see. There was nothing besides a message from Dr. Parker that had arrived early that morning. It said he had something urgent to discuss with me and would be grateful if I could stop by and see him as soon as possible. He’d be in his office at Green Haven.
“What do you think he wants?” I asked Milo, who was in the same spot on the couch as the prior evening only now he was sipping coffee instead of beer. MJ, I dimly recalled, had woken up and left in the night after an angry text from the wife.
“The Doc? He’s probably pissed. He found out you were helping Inspector Coo-Coo stir up trouble like he warned you not to, going around and talking to all those weirdos and playing investigator.”
“You’re probably right.” I poured coffee and looked for milk in the fridge, foolishly. “But he will have to wait. I’m having tea with a warlock today.”
41
ANYWAY, THAT’S WHAT JERRY called him, I didn’t actually address him as such. I called him Kevin. He had designed the costumes and sets for Zed Naught’s last, Satanically inspired films and had been a witness to the antics up at the haunted house. He lived now in a cottage in West Hollywood, a little gingerbread confection—crooked porch, paned elvish windows, lumpy, shingled roof—tucked, on its patch of green, between a newly ugly apartment building and a pet supply megastore. He answered the door in a kimono. His longish gray hair was cut straight across the brow in a kind of Klingon do and his fingers were ringed in large stones. A hunk of amber hung on a chain around his neck.
“Hello,” he said. “You must be Samuel.” I shook the long, elegant hand, and the rocks rolled between our fingers. “Come in. Come in out of that terrible sun.”
“Thanks.” The tiny room was crammed with a lifetime of clutter, an amazing profusion of framed photos, tarnished mirrors, sculptures, collages, and other wondrous objects: a bearskin rug, a gold leaf table, a grandfather clock with a doll head on a skeleton inside its belly, an antique chest of drawers painted pink and covered with glitter, an upright piano topped by a deer antler candelabra. Against one wall leaned a giant timber cross, upside down and strung with Christmas lights. It was like an art installation designed by a team of moody thirteen-year-old girls.
“Sit, sit,” he called, waving at a low white couch heaped with silk pillows. I squatted. A tray of tea things and cookies was already set on a coffee table that consisted of a crawling marble boy with a glass plate on his back. He sat, legs crossed, in a high-backed chair and made the tea, my eyes level with his knees. “Now then. Jerry tells me you are writing a book about Zed Naught?”
“Possibly. Did you know him well?”
“Indeed. We were quite close at one time. Quite close. As I recall, he first came to a series of lectures I copresented on Aleister Crowley. Then he asked me to work on a film he was planning. I design costumes and scenery.” He swept his ringed hand over the room like a magician’s assistant. “I also do interiors. I feel they are sets for the drama of life.”
“I see. Was he serious about the occult?”
“Mmm. As you can imagine, there are always dilettantes about, particularly in Hollywood. Yet I suppose only a somewhat jaded sensibility would seek to slake its spiritual thirst in these extremes
, these high mountain streams and deep dark wells. It is the glare of the spotlight that drives us to explore the shadows. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so very glad,” he said and, leaning across the table, touched the back of my hand with a long, bony finger before pouring the tea. That one nail alone was painted black.
“Sugar? Cream?” He smiled expectantly.
“No thanks.”
He leaned back, recrossing his long, oddly hairless white thighs, flashing a subliminal glimpse of what I thought were lace panties. He sipped his tea and I sniffed mine. It had an odd perfume.
He smiled warmly. “Do you like it? It’s my own blend. I find it soothing.” I didn’t. He was a warlock after all. I didn’t want to turn into a toad. I set the cup down.
“You were saying, about Zed’s interest in the occult?”
“Yes. He proposed a series of films drawing their inspiration from the Black Mass. He’d done a lot of reading. Crowley and LaVey of course, but also Fraser, Bodin, Huysmans. He’d even studied very early parodies of the Catholic Mass, dating from the Middle Ages. They called them the Feasts of Asses.”
“I think I’ve been to a few of those.”
He smiled thinly, unamused, and I tried to redeem myself. “I’m familiar with Huysmans,” I said, dimly recalling his nineteenth-century novels.
