by Ed Kurtz
“Here’s one in Mission Hills,” Jake said, his mouth half-full of syrupy pancakes. “Not sure it’s spelled right.”
He turned his smart-phone around to show me the screen: a site called Find 411 listed a Barbara Tilitson between blocks of ads in Mission Hills, in the San Fernando Valley.
“Is there an address?” I asked him. “Or a number?”
“You have to pay. These things are scams.”
I grunted. The waitress swung by to refill our coffee cups. I’d barely touched my omelet, but Jack was nearly through devouring his breakfast.
He found me in the hotel lobby, poring over an old-school phone book lent to me by the desk clerk, who was herself astonished to discover they actually had one. I was squinting at the sundry Tilitsons around Hollywood, none of them Barbaras, when Jack appeared at my shoulder with an offer to front me breakfast if I gave him the lowdown on the shooting. I obliged, we wandered a few blocks up to a greasy spoon, and now that I’d told him what little there was to tell, he was attempting to help me track Barbara down.
“Why don’t we go to that office? You know, the knitting club.”
“Crime scene, my man,” I explained.
“Probably find a Rolodex in there or something. Worth a look.”
I ended up paying the tab.
* * *
The hall looked like something straight out of a television show, replete with flickering ceiling light and yellow police tape crisscrossing the door to the late Leslie Wheeler’s office. When we’d exited the cab, we saw no police cars, no cops on guard duty. Up on the second floor it was just as vacant. Jack went directly to the taped-up door and I followed closely behind. He tried the knob. It was locked.
“Better wipe your prints off that,” I said.
He snorted. “Yeah, all right, Columbo.”
He did it anyway, looking a little embarrassed.
“Pascal’s wager,” he said.
He shrugged and I grinned at his misuse of the phrase, and then we headed back for the stairs when the door clacked behind us and squealed open. Jake flattened against the wall like it somehow made him invisible, but I stepped forward and narrowed my eyes at the doorway. Barbara Tilitson poked her gray head out into the hall and raised her eyebrows at me. Her eyes were pink and swollen. She’d clearly been crying.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Woodard,” she rasped. “I thought I heard someone try to open the door.”
“You did,” I said. “We didn’t expect anyone to be inside.”
“No one is supposed to be. Not even me.”
By then Jake had overcome his terror of the woman and slinked back up behind me. I stepped aside and said, “This is Jake Maitland.”
“Barbara Tilitson,” she said, limply shaking his hand. “Forgive the state of me. I really shouldn’t be here. I was going through old newsletters, if you can believe it. The police took so much, but they left the newsletters. I didn’t think anyone would mind. Of course, we do it all by email now. But Leslie handled all of that. I’m not very good with computers, Mr. Woodard. Not very good at all. With Leslie gone, I really don’t know…”
She trailed off, hiccupped, and covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes welled up and she turned so that I couldn’t see her face. I touched her shoulder, softly, and waited for her to compose herself.
“Good Lord,” she said with a breathless laugh. “The state of me. I swear.”
“Is there still tea inside?” I asked, a bit impulsively.
Barbara nodded while wiping her eyes with her fingers. “And a kettle. Nothing criminally suspicious about all that, I suppose.”
“Come on, then,” I said. “Let’s sit down in the office. I’ll make the tea this time.”
Again she nodded and waddled back through the tape, barely disturbing it with her small frame. I made it through with almost as much ease, but Jake tore it down entirely. I shot him a look, which he ignored. To my surprise, Barbara sat down in the chair we found Leslie Wheeler in the previous morning. She sat nervously, her knees together and back hunched, like a school kid waiting to be scolded by the principal. At her feet on the bare floor—the rug was gone now—about a dozen crude newsletters were fanned out. The paper was yellow and crinkled, a hand-drawn legend photocopied at the top of each one: The Silent Film Appreciation Society. The issue on top, featuring a fuzzy publicity photo of Rudolph Valentino, was from Fall/Winter 1989. I decided she and Leslie must have been at this for quite some time.
“There are Typhoo bags in the cupboard above the hot plate, Mr. Woodard.”
I found them, looked over to Jake, who shook his head no. While I heated the kettle on the hot plate, I glanced over at a corkboard on the wall beside an old plastic telephone. On it several notes were tacked, containing movie titles, event reminders. A program from a Lillian Gish retrospective at the Cinémathèque. And a few photographs of Barbara and Leslie that looked to span a great many years. In each of them the two women held on to one another in a tight embrace, grinning broadly or looking at each other. I began to better comprehend Barbara’s grief.
The kettle squealed and I poured two cups that I brought out to the front room. Barbara took hers with a pained smile. I sat at the table, next to Jake.
Barbara sipped cautiously from her cup and said, “I’m surprised you’re still here. In Los Angeles, that is. I’m afraid you can’t help us anymore.”
“I’d still like to try,” I said. “You see, Ms. Tilitson—”
“Barbara. Please.”
“Barbara, we came around here hoping to find a way to get in touch with you. I hate to alarm you, but somebody tried to kill me last night.”
“Kill you? Good God, that’s terrible.”
“You’re telling him,” Jake piped up.
Barbara said, “This damned town. Forgive my language, but really.”
“I don’t think it’s just this town, and frankly the police don’t seem to, either. I think it has something to do with what happened to Leslie. And with Angel of the Abyss.”
She seemed to hold her breath for a moment, her eyes focusing on something invisible in the center of the room like cats sometimes do. When she snapped out of it, she shivered slightly and heaved a deep sigh. Her face was drawn. Though only a day older than the last time I saw her, she seemed as though she’d aged significantly since then.
“Forgive me if I sound accusatory, Barbara,” I said, followed by a protracted silence in the room, “but is there something you’re not telling me? Something I should know?”
“Mr. Woodard,” she began. “Graham. How much do you know about Grace Baron?”
“Not much,” I confessed. “Whatever the available bios and websites have to say. It’s not a lot. I don’t gather anyone really knows that much about her.”
“Some people do,” Barbara countered. “Leslie did. She knew quite a great deal about Grace. And of course as long as she remained a distant memory and her only film remained lost, no one could really be bothered by anything she knew.”
I pursed my mouth and breathed through my nose, frustrated and confused. It was the same aggravating question posed over and over again: how could something so old have riled up so many people?
“You’re waiting for me to tell you everything,” Barbara went on at last. “But I’m afraid I can’t. We were close, Leslie and I. But she didn’t tell me everything. In fact, ever since she came into possession of that damned reel—me and my mouth again, I’m so sorry. Honestly, I never talk like this…”
“What about the reel?” I said, cutting her off.
“It’s just like she…closed off, I guess you could say. Shut me out, to some extent. That reel, and the promise of the rest of them, seemed to mean more to Leslie than anything else in the world.”
“More than just her love of old movies?” Jake asked. I’d nearly forgotten he was there, but it was a good question.
“Oh, yes. Heavens, yes. We’d been involved with a few terrifically exciting projects over the years, and by God it was something
we shared together. We found Losers Weepers together, at an estate sale in Sawtelle back in ’92.” She laughed girlishly at the memory. “It was our bond, our glue. Not this time. Not with the Grace Baron picture. That Leslie kept all to herself. She didn’t really want me anywhere near the thing, or at least that’s how I felt.”
“And she brought me into it because of my remoteness from it all,” I mused aloud. “From it, and the both of you. From Los Angeles.”
“Apparently so, yes. I don’t know why anyone would want to harm you over this, Graham. I really don’t. But I’m sorry about it and I want you to believe me, Leslie would never have asked you out here if she’d have thought for a second something like that could happen.”
I nodded solemnly and sipped at my tea. It was going cold.
“Did you ever meet this Mrs. Sommer?” I asked her.
“You mean the woman from whom Leslie got the footage in the first place? Yes, I met her once, quite briefly. It was when Leslie picked the reel up—I went with her, though she tried like hell to put me off.”
“What was she like? How did she end up with it?”
“Mrs. Sommer was fairly ordinary, I suppose. A bit awkward, socially. She told us the reel had belonged to her father, who died and left behind a small estate that included it.”
“Did she know what she had?”
“Not at all. In fact she held on to it for more than a year before she stumbled upon a magazine article that mentioned Angel and she remembered it gathering dust someplace. After a little research, she realized she had a treasure and ended up finding us—well, Leslie—by our little website.”
“I wonder,” Jake muttered. I turned to him and raised my eyebrows. He lowered his and went on: “I was just wondering whether the cops have a lead on this lady. Maybe she decided the footage was too valuable and wanted it back? Like, real bad.”
“Did you or Leslie pay her anything for it?” I asked Barbara.
“Not that I’m aware of. She agreed to let us take care of preserving it. I’m sure Leslie would have been quite clear that the reel would remain her property.”
“What about the rest of the picture? I was told there might be more reels, in time.”
“My impression was that Mrs. Sommer hadn’t yet catalogued the entire estate. There were some other films—nothing rare or valuable—but the notion was there could still be more, maybe even other parts of Angel. Of course, that was all between her and Leslie. I had very little to do with it, I’m sorry to say.”
She crinkled her eyes and touched her mouth. The moment passed as quickly as it came on.
I said: “Do you remember where this Sommer woman lived, Barbara? I think I’d like to pay her a visit.”
“It was in the Valley. Sherman Oaks. I remember.”
I made another couple cups of tea, but I didn’t touch mine. We were all quiet for a while, but I still had one more question for Barbara.
“Do you know a woman named Helen Bryan?”
She canted her head to one side, thinking it over.
“No…no, I don’t think. Who is she?”
“His worst mistake,” Jake offered.
“My ex-wife,” I specified. “She was the one who dropped my name to Leslie. I never quite got how they were acquainted.”
“I’m sorry, but this is the first I’ve heard of her. Like I’ve said, Leslie kept me in the dark a lot over all of this. It doesn’t sound like you’re on very good terms with her, but perhaps she would be the one to ask?”
“Probably so,” I said, “but she appears to be missing.”
“What?” Jake crowed. “You didn’t tell me that, Graham.”
“Slipped my mind,” I lied. His mouth hung open. “Later,” I said.
I told Barbara that I was sorry to have bothered her so much, and she said it was no trouble, though she looked mighty troubled to me. I offered her a hug, a bit out of character for me, which she accepted. I noticed she was clutching a small, crumpled photo in her left hand. It was of Leslie Wheeler, smiling toothily and wearing a pair of dark sunglasses. We had both loved and lost, I thought, but her loss was a hell of a lot worse than mine.
10
The Valley, 1926
Eustace piloted a 1918 Olds, a touring car, that sputtered as though it was dying all the way from Hollywood where she collected her niece. They were heading to the Valley, where Eustace now manipulated the contraption along narrow, winding roads with gloved hands and squinted eyes.
It was the crummiest automobile Grace Baronsky had ever ridden in, an enormous step down from the Twombley back in Idaho or the car Saul sent for her every workday morning.
“It is absolutely divine to see how well you’re doing, Gracie,” Eustace hollered above the wind and the motor. “Divine. And you look terrific. Better than I’ve ever seen you. To think what a skinny child you were before I whisked you away from nowhere. A transformation. A meta—what is it?”
“Metamorphosis,” Grace said.
“You’re a butterfly,” replied her aunt.
The sun hung white and hazy, low in the sky but above the hills that surrounded the San Fernando like sentinels. Houses and bungalows were springing up all around, with filling stations and clothing boutiques and minor movie palaces to service the people who would live in them. Los Angeles never stopped spreading, growing. Grace felt like the whole of the country was spilling into the city and its environs, as if America had been upended by some great, massive god and all the people were helplessly rolling west. How many of them came in search of fame and fortune? How few were as fortunate as she, discovered within a few short years and primed to take the world by storm?
How lucky…
“Just how did you meet this Joe?” she asked, eager to disrupt her own musing.
“Joe, Joe,” Eustace sang. “Good, good Joe. The man is a prince, my child. Not too rich—not yet, anyway—but none too poor, either. And he knows everyone worth knowing. Well, everyone apart from you, of course. But aren’t we just about to change that?”
Grace smiled, barely.
“He sells pictures all over the country; to theaters that want to show them, see. A lot of them are all connected up to the studios, but there are tons that aren’t, and my Joe writes them and works it out. So if your old ma sees your picture at the Boise Century, it might very well be Joe Sommer who got it there.”
Her throat constricted slightly at the thought of her mother watching Angel of the Abyss—watching little Gracie die and come back, murder and flaunt and fornicate. It was far from the first time this waking nightmare stirred horror in her breast, but it had yet to relent in its intensity.
“Matter of fact,” her aunt continued, “I might even bet on that. You see Joe knows Mr. Veritek, dearheart. Not extraordinarily well, mind you, but Veritek is an independent and Joe says the independents represent the prepon—prepolder…”
“Preponderance.”
“Of his business, yes.”
“This one may be a tough sell in the heartland,” Grace said low.
“What’s that, Gracie?”
“Never mind. Are we nearly there? The motor is jangling my nerves.”
“Spitting distance!”
“Grand.”
The bungalow sat low and squat at the bottom of a gradually declining hill, surrounded by equally squat palms and crawling vines that struggled toward the windows. Eustace almost flooded the Olds easing the thing down to the bottom, where she guttered it and clapped her gloves together with an awkward squeal.
A stone path curved between the palms toward the front door, above which an open transom window coughed up a thin rail of pungent cigar smoke. Grace wrinkled her nose. Eustace knocked gingerly.
The man who opened the door revealed himself to be tall, a bit round around the middle, gray at the temples. He wore a thin black mustache just above his upper lip, which tightened around the end of his cigar. His eyes were gray, friendly but lingering. Grace felt blood fill her cheeks as her aunt planted a ha
nd at the small of her back and pushed her forward.
“Mr. Sommer,” she said. “Allow me to present my niece, the picture star Grace Baron.”
“Oh, she’s not a star yet,” Joe Sommer said, spreading his lips to show short, squarish teeth. “But I reckon she will be. You can wager that.”
“A gentleman of the highest order!” Eustace declared. Joe took Grace by the hand, a bit roughly, and brushed his mouth across the back of it.
“Champagne on the lanai,” he said. “Olives and cheese. I have the cheese delivered.”
“La-nai,” Eustace mouthed to Grace.
They all went inside.
* * *
The bottle popped like a gunshot, causing Grace to flinch. Joe’s mouth stretched into a lupine grin and he laughed at her.
“Let’s see those glasses, ladies,” he said.
They sat in slat-backed chairs on a concrete patio behind the bungalow—Joe’s lanai—which was surrounded by more ratty palms and a new white fence. The sky looked like the ocean and a mild breeze picked up from the west. Eustace kicked off her shoes and giggled. Grace drank her champagne quietly.
“Saul Veritek,” Joe said at some length, his mouth full of half-chewed olives, “is a friend of mine. He may be a small fry compared to the big boys, Paramount and United Artists and what have you, but the man’s got a solid head on that flabby neck of his. You can trust me when I tell you if Saul Veritek says he’s going to make a star out of you, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Grace’s ears burned. Her aunt tittered and shook all over, sloshing her champagne around in the glass.
“Good God, Gracie,” she said. “You’re a long way from Idaho now.”
“I suppose I trust Saul,” Grace said with some caution. “It’s Jack Parson I’m worried about. He’s missed days, you know. And when I went home the other night, he was in my place waiting for me. You’d have thought he was drunk as a lord, but he really doesn’t drink much. He’s getting a little, I don’t know…crazy.”
