Angel of the Abyss

by Ed Kurtz

  “Listen,” I began, keeping an eye on that handbag. “I can see you want to give it to Ray, and that’s cool. But if you burn this place, you’re going to take out a bunch of others that don’t have anything to do with you or him. And that’s definitely not cool.”

  “What’s it to you, asshole?”

  Nice.

  “Hey, if it was my office next door, I wouldn’t want you to obliterate my livelihood just because you’re pissed at some prick I didn’t even know.”

  “You don’t even know what that fucker did to me.”

  “I can guess.”

  “He a friend of yours? Is that it?”

  “No friend of mine. I’m just looking for somebody. He wasn’t keen to help, so I helped myself.”

  “If you got what you need, go ahead and get the fuck out of here, then. You don’t want to be here when the place goes up.”

  She sloshed some more gasoline around.

  I said, “Tell you what—don’t strike that match. Come along with me, and tell me about it. Maybe I can help you, and I think maybe you help me back. Symbiotic, like.”

  “Why the hell should I help you?” she barked.

  “Quid pro quo.”

  “Talk English.”

  “I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I’m not a creep like Ray, I’m just trying to help a friend in need here.”

  “What friend?”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “Then how the fuck could I help?”

  “You might know his ex-wife. I’m looking for her.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s missing. He’s been shot in the head. There’s some shit going down.”

  “Sounds like something I really want to get mixed up with.”

  “I don’t want to mix you up in anything. I just want you to stop what you’re doing and tell me if you know anything about Helen Bryan.”

  “Holy fuckballs,” she suddenly boomed. “Helen’s missing?”

  She set the can down on the floor in a puddle of yellow gas.

  20

  Hollywood, 1926

  Frank lived in a rooming house in the Valley that was raided on a Sunday. He wasn’t there, and all of his belongings were gone. Word spread quickly around the set on Monday morning, owing largely to how surprised everyone was that such a quiet, unassuming man like Frank not only had apparent underworld connections, but that he’d shot and killed someone. No one knew that Grace had witnessed the whole grisly spectacle, and she had no intention of putting that forward. She expressed as much shock as everyone else, while remaining largely aloof from anyone with an interest in discussing the matter.

  When filming got underway, Jack was a firebrand. They were finishing up a ninth-reel sequence in which Clara, Grace’s alter ego, faced down one of the men responsible for her murder. Horace, the chief electrician and light man, kept a shimmering lamp on her face with a warped sheet of cellophane to create a ghostly effect. The heat burned her skin, but she worked through it, with it, and stared larger and more menacingly than Theda Bara ever could. Jack was elated, but equally disappointed in her target’s level of projected fear. Against Saul’s wishes, he reshot the actor’s reaction twice before telling the cameraman to keep rolling while he strolled over to the would-be murderer and slapped him hard across the face. As the actor shook from the pain and bewilderment of the thing, Jack called action and got the take he wanted.

  Privately, Grace resolved to strike back should the director ever elect to slap a reaction out of her.

  After the day’s shooting, talk re-erupted of Frank laced with baseless speculations of what sort of trouble he’d gotten himself into. No one had a clue, but everyone had a theory. Grace escaped the studio as though it were on fire, desperate to avoid the nonsense.

  On her way out, she was stopped by Horace, a stooped older man with a deeply lined face turned dry and craggy by the Southern California sun.

  “Ms. Baron?” he called to her.

  “Hello, Horace.”

  “Don’t listen to ‘em, what they’re saying about Frank. He’s a good sort of fellow, I know he is.”

  “I hope everything turns out all right for him,” she said, noncommittally.

  “I know you’re friends, you and Frank,” Horace said. Grace broke eye contact and smiled nervously. “I don’t know what he’s got himself into, but I’m sure it’s all a mistake. Frank couldn’t do what they said he done.”

  You’re wrong there, Pops, she thought but didn’t say.

  “Thank you, Horace.”

  “Good night, Ms. Baron.”

  “Good night.”

  She walked on, to the automobile Saul Veritek provided for her every morning and afternoon, and climbed into the back without a word to the sullen driver. He navigated the short drive back to her bungalow slowly, carefully, depositing her safely at the walk where she exited and pressed her key into the lock beneath the knob. She did not notice the broken window beside the door, partially obscured by a tangle of bougainvillea, but the glass on the floor was the first thing she saw when she got inside. It sparkled like diamonds in the failing sunlight, and for a moment Grace decided that Jack had finally crossed the line.

  But Jack Parson was still at the set when she left; he couldn’t possibly have beaten her home. She pursed her mouth and closed the door, scanning the open space for missing items or whoever was harassing her lately.

  That was when she noticed the thin smear of red on the floor, forming a sort of arrow pointing vaguely at the washroom. She followed the smear and upon reaching her bed, saw the bag she’d dropped in the street sitting on top of the blankets. She knew then it was Frank even before she pushed the door open to find him passed out in the clawfooted tub, his right eye swollen shut and his shoulder a bloody mess of red and black.

  “Christ’s sake,” she told the insensate man. “Couldn’t you have found yourself a doctor, Frank?”

  She kicked off her heels and opened up the medicine cabinet for iodine and a fresh washcloth. Nurse Gracie to the rescue.

  * * *

  He came in and out of a sweating coma through the evening and into the night, occasionally shouting out before dropping back into the pitch. The wound in his shoulder was badly infected—scabrous and ringed with yellow crust. The bullet seemed to have passed clean through without hitting bone though, so Grace simply applied liberal amounts of iodine to either side every hour or so with a fresh bandage. And while Frank slept, she tended to him, daubing his brow with a cool, damp cloth and keeping a close eye on his temperature.

  It was past noon the next day before he came fully to for the first time. His dark lashes fluttered before opening completely to let the punishing light in. He shielded his face with his hand, whereupon Grace rushed to pull the drapes closed.

  “What day is it?” he croaked.

  “Tuesday,” she answered. “Quarter past noon, or thereabouts.”

  “Shouldn’t you be on set?”

  “I phoned the studio and had them tell Saul I’m having trouble with the menses. That’ll shut any man up, and quick.”

  Frank half-grinned, and it looked like it took some effort.

  He said, “Thank you, Grace. I mean it.”

  “Here I came to Old Californy to be the next Mary Pickford and instead you turn me into Florence Nightingale. What do you take me for, anyway?”

  “A friend,” Frank said. “The best one I got, too.”

  “If your friends are the type to go shooting at you in the street like it’s Dodge City, I can see why. I’m going to put some coffee on the stove, and then how’s about you tell your best friend where you’ve been and what in the name of Wild Bill Hickok happened back there?”

  * * *

  “I’ve been hiding out,” he explained over his coffee, which he took black. “Shacked up with an old pal out in Pomona, but the heat made him nervous so he gave me the short shrift and I ended up in a damn railyard, like a hobo.”

  “A railyard! Frank, why did
n’t you come to me if there was no one else?”

  “I didn’t want to bring that heat down on you, either. You’ve been through too much with me already. I never meant for any of that mess to happen, Grace—honest, I didn’t. You’re such a swell gal, I didn’t even have any intentions. Just a nice night, you know. And then that rotten bastard…”

  “Petey.”

  “That’s him. God, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “You were defending yourself.”

  “I never did anything like that before. Shoot a man, I mean. I promise you that, Grace.”

  “It’s all right. I believe you.”

  “It’s not all right,” Frank countered, setting his cup down on the table. His hand shook and he spilled some on the floor. “I stumbled into this gig with Horace, but it was supposed to be my way out. I’m supposed to be done with all that.”

  “With all what?”

  “These guys, these fellas I used to run around with. Los Angeles is all tinsel and silver for you folks, you Hollywood people, but it’s a pretty rough town, besides. All those flappers and F. Scott Fitzgerald types you read about are having a grand old time in the cities, but then there’s a million guys like me with hardly a red cent to our name. It gets hard, real hard. And sometimes when an opportunity comes along, your heart and soul tells you it’s the wrong thing but you do it anyway because goddamnit, you’re hungry and tired of humping it around town with holes in your shoes and not enough in your pocket for a short beer. So you try to be a good Indian, to do everything the right way, the way you’d be proud to tell your mama all about, but what to do when there’s nothing left? When it’s the bread line or business through the barrel of a .38?”

  Grace made a flat, straight line of her mouth and regarded her coffee for a moment. She then set it down beside Frank’s, lighted a cigarette, and said evenly, “What did you do for these fellows, Frank?”

  “I never hurt nobody, Grace. That’s the first thing and it’s the truth.”

  “Okay, what’s the rest of it?”

  “Dope,” he said flatly.

  “What, grass?”

  “Horse.”

  “Jesus.”

  Frank hung his head.

  “I never did it and I never sold it. I moved it, and I mean lots of it. Me and another guy, named Jimmy, we’d pick it up in Tijuana and drive it back over the border with a false bottom in the car.”

  “That’s serious, Frank,” Grace said. “That’s serious time in the pen.”

  “If you get caught, sure. I never did.”

  “And you didn’t talk?”

  “Never.”

  “Then why Petey? What was his stink?”

  “Started back in September. We were picking up a load…”

  “You and this Jimmy?”

  “That’s right. Got the car all rigged up and ready to head back to the Land of the Free. We made it across the border fine, just like always, but along these crummy backcountry roads to San Diego we got hijacked.”

  “Hijacked! By whom?”

  “Never found out, and I don’t guess it matters much now. Point is, these guys—two Mex and a colored fellow—ran us off the road and put the guns to us. I was ripe to give it over, because who wants a belly full of holes? Jimmy figured different. That old kid kept a shooter under his seat, and once he got a hold of it he came up shooting. I went down to the floor, I’m no dummy, and by the time the smoke cleared there were four corpses where there used to be five guys. I was the last one standing, or cowering if you like. Jimmy took care of those bastards, but it cost him his life.”

  “That wasn’t your fault,” Grace said with some caution. Neither of them was paying the slightest attention to their coffees, but both of them smoked like chimneys.

  “No, it wasn’t. What happened next was a different jug of hooch. I got out of there, of course, and I hate to tell you but I left poor old Jimmy with the men he’d killed.”

  “Right there on the road?”

  Frank nodded soberly.

  “I veered away from San Diego proper, made it fast as I could to a wide-open field in the Little Landers where I burned the car—horse and all.”

  “There it is,” said Grace. She understood now.

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “Probably five grand worth, up in smoke along with a swell Bearcat, too. I didn’t have too many friends after that.”

  “Why didn’t you leave town, Frank? Head east or someplace safe?”

  “I’ve got cheese for brains, for one. And where’s safe, when they’re all connected up? The fellas in Los Angeles are linked up with the fellas who run every other town between here and New York. All it takes is a telephone call to set the ball rolling and I’m Public Enemy Number One.”

  “But they must have been gunning for you all this time.”

  “They weren’t, which is how I got so sloppy. The way I see it now, I must have been watched ever since, to see if I kept onto that heroin. When they finally decided I didn’t have it, the order came down to finish me off. It just happened to be the night we were out together. God almighty, Grace, I’m so sorry for that.”

  Grace sucked in a ragged breath and brought her cup to her lips. She sipped and made a face—cold. Shaking that off, she sat up ramrod straight and said, “The answer to our dilemma seems quite obvious then.”

  “It’s obvious to me, too,” Frank said. “I got to get the hell out of here. You’ve been a regular peach taking care of me, and I’ll never forget it, but you don’t need this hell. I was plain stupid to think I could hide in plain sight from this mess and the last thing I want is to get you mixed up in it any more than you already are. Just let me get a fresh dressing on this shoulder and I’m gone, Grace.”

  “You are stupid,” she said, “so you should listen to a clever girl for a change. I happen to earn a damned enviable wage acting in this picture, you know. Five grand isn’t exactly chicken feed to me, but I can swing it. We’re going to pay off these gangsters so they leave you be for the rest of your long, marvelous life.”

  “You’re crazy,” he protested, gingerly touching his aching shoulder.

  “That’s probably the truth, too. And you know, if that Bearcat was theirs, we’ll have to cover that, too. Make it seven thousand. I can have that in cash inside a week.”

  “No, definitely not. I wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Who’s asking permission?”

  “This would ruin you.”

  “What, you think this is my last picture? I’m just getting started, Frankie baby. This crummy bungalow will be a distant memory by this time next year. And these rotten gangsters you’ve been so worried about? Completely forgotten.”

  “They won’t accept it.”

  “How do you know? Have you tried?”

  “These men kill people, Grace. Reason isn’t quite among their stronger virtues.”

  “It’s worth a try, Sonny Jim. We have to try.”

  “You don’t owe me a thing.”

  “I take care of my friends. We’re friends, aren’t we, Frank?”

  “You know we are, Grace. I’ve never known a better friend than you.”

  She rose to her feet and pranced elfishly to the larder, where she found a decent vintage of pre-Prohibition wine and came dancing back with the bottle and a corkscrew.

  “That Carrie Nation was still soiling her bloomers about hooch when this was bottled,” she said with a devilish grin. “What say we celebrate the end to your little problem?”

  “Little is a relative word if I’ve ever heard one.”

  Grace popped the cork and filled the coffee cups.

  She said, “Salud!”

  21

  L.A., 2013

  Her name was Louise, but in Ray Warren’s little black book she was listed at Lou-Lou Vanderbilt. I remembered the pseudonym, because it was one of those with a notation beside it from Mr. Charm himself. That alone told me half her story. She told me the rest over burned coffee that tasted like lead at Mel’s o
n Sunset.

  “I came out here from fucking Little Rock to be an actress. It’s easy to think you can do that shit when you’re from nowhere. I wasn’t here a month before I found out I’d kidded myself into a goddamned pipe dream. I was waiting tables at a titty bar in Venice and doing two auditions a day. No callbacks, no nothing. Maybe I didn’t have it. Or maybe I’m just a small fish in a big sea.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Ray discovered you at the titty bar.”

  “Easy guess, but you’re right. I had to deal with plenty of fucking creeps, but at least I was dressed. Well, mostly. Ray told me I had class and a lot of it. He wasn’t even interested in the girls on stage. The son of a bitch gave me his card, told me he had a system. He’d made careers for girls like me. He even said I could go ahead and give notice right then and there. I wasn’t going to need no damn job anymore.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not that night, but inside a week I did. I made more doing four shoots a week for Ray than six nights a week at the club ever netted me. And nobody touched my ass.”

  “Not even Ray?”

  “Not at first. I know he looks like a total frat bro, but he can charm the panties right off a chick. I’m a fucking retard, but I’m hardly the only one. Besides, I thought I was going to be famous and shit.”

  “Famous for what?”

  “What do you think?”

  I raised my eyebrows and sipped my coffee.

  “He says he’s not in the porn business,” she continued, “but that’s complete bullshit. It’s his bread and butter. I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with it, but he grooms girls to trick them into it.”