by Ed Kurtz
“Did he do that to Helen?”
“Nah, she never went in for that. Christ knows he tried, but she wouldn’t have it. She was only in the game for the drugs, anyway. Half the photographers provide it for free to any model who wants it. I never did, but that Helen was a goddamn Hoover.”
“Why’d he ditch her? Because she wouldn’t do the porn stuff?”
“That’s part of it. That, and she was just too fucked up all the time. Meaner than hell, too.”
I chuckled softly, and she read my mind.
“You think I’ve got an attitude?” she asked me. “You definitely haven’t met Helen Bryan.”
“Maybe not the real her, no,” I said, and remembered the page I’d taken from Ray’s book. I pulled it out and flattened it on the table. Louise snatched it up and scrutinized it.
“Yeah, she don’t live in Glendale anymore. Good thing you ran into me.”
“You know where she lives?”
“I was at her place a few weeks ago. Her and that gorilla she lives with.”
“Well, that cinches it,” I said, killing off the coffee and making a face appropriate to the flavor or lack thereof. “I’m going tonight. Would you write the address down for me?”
“Don’t remember it. But I can get you there.”
I stalled. Riding around with a pyromaniac I didn’t know from Eve wasn’t my first choice for the evening’s festivities. I signaled for the check.
“Well?” Louise prompted me, planting her palms on the table.
I sighed—inwardly.
“All right,” I relented. “Let’s go find her.”
* * *
The building was right in the heart of Hollywood, right off La Brea between Hollywood and Sunset, spitting distance from Hollywood High. I parked Graham’s rental car underneath a towering palm on the street and walked up to the front of the ugly structure with Louise in my wake.
“This is where you went?” I asked.
“About two and a half weeks ago, yeah.”
I advanced to the door, which was locked. Beside it an intercom was mounted with two rows of names on handwritten slips. BRYAN was 6C. I pressed the button, and it buzzed obnoxiously. There was no answer, and I didn’t really expect one.
“What now, chief?” Louise piped up. “You gonna bust in like you did at Ray’s?”
I groaned and said, “Yep.”
She grinned. I mashed the buttons, as many as I could. When at last someone answered with a drowsy, “Yeah?” I muttered something about a pizza in a goofy fake accent.
The door buzzed and unlocked. I pulled it open and gestured for Louise to go ahead of me.
“What a fucking gentleman,” she commented.
“You’re fucking welcome,” I said. When in Rome.
We rode the elevator up to the sixth floor. The floors were bare up there, the carpet stripped off, probably awaiting replacement. The concrete was webbed with deep cracks, terrifying remnants of the Northridge quake in ’94. I was still feeling the tremors when I moved out there a few years later. I never got used to them.
“6C,” Louise reminded me. I nodded and we made our way down to the end of the hall where it turned right and kept going. The next length brought us to the door in question, a big green door with no peephole or bell. Louise rose her fist to knock but I held her wrist before she could.
“Element of surprise?” I suggested.
She shot me a bemused look. I didn’t blame her.
I knocked. The surprise was on me when the door actually opened.
Now I faced a rotund Mexican whose belly bulged over his belt buckle. He regarded me with indifferent eyes and clutched a spackle knife with a sticky white dollop clinging to it. Behind him, every light was on and the place was a shambles. Cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere, half of them overflowing with all manner of junk. Another man was painting a wall opposite the one I supposed the first guy was working on, judging by all the holes that needed fixing.
He said, “Wrong place, man. Nobody lives here now.”
“Looks like somebody’s still moving out,” I said, pointing to the boxes.
“Left behind. They split. You want to look at the place, it’ll be ready Monday. Make an appointment.”
He started to close the door, but I pressed into the crack.
“Hold up a minute,” I said. “I know the people used to live here. I’m trying to get in touch with them.”
“Really not my problem, hermano,” he said. “Unless you’re a cop with a warrant, I can’t you let you in here.”
“That’s just the issue,” Louise suddenly added, stepping up to the plate. “The woman who lived here is my sister, and she’s missing. The cops don’t even care, sir. They’re barely looking, and I’m scared to death for her.”
I had to admit I was impressed—not just with her quick thinking, but by her ability to say twenty-five words in a row and none of them “fuck.” I didn’t think she was up for it.
“Mierda,” the workman sighed. “That’s rough, lady.”
“Please,” she begged, “just let us have a quick look around. Anything to help us find her and make sure she’s safe.”
The man screwed up his mouth and glanced back at his partner, who seemed oblivious to our presence. When he returned his gaze to Louise, he groaned out a long breath and nodded his head.
“Okay,” he said. “Be quick though, eh? I’m really not supposed to let people up in here.”
“Lickety-split,” said Louise.
He went back to spackling across from his buddy the painter, and I went first into the big bedroom with Louise. One of the guys switched on a radio playing Tejano, all trumpets and accordions and strident Spanish voices in harmony. We stood in the middle of the room and surveyed the task in front of us. It was Mrs. Sommer’s storage unit all over again, a comparison that made the hair prick up on my neck when I recalled what had become of Mrs. Sommer.
“So we’re looking for a cokehead with a fidelity problem,” Louise said, her hands on her hips. “Most addicts I know keep their connections tighter than a fucking drum, but our girl doesn’t seem the type to much care what happens to anybody else, am I right?”
“I thought you knew her better than me,” I said.
“I don’t think anybody knows Helen as much as they might like to,” she said. “Least of all Helen her own damn self.”
“So, what—we’re looking for another black book, like Ray’s?”
“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. “Seems like it depends on whether she left in a hurry, or of her own free will. That would make the difference in what she left behind.”
“You’re good,” I said. She winked, sardonically, and dug into one of two dozen boxes scattered around the cluttered room. I followed her lead and opened one of my own. Louise found stuffed animals and trinkets; I came upon an unorganized mountain of old photos. Graham was in a lot of them.
“That your buddy?” Louise asked over my shoulder.
“Yeah. He’s in the hospital right now, out cold. Shot in the head and Helen knows something about it.”
“Jesus Christ, Jake,” she said.
“It’s a doozy of a story,” I said.
She stood up, looked me over like a sideshow freak for a moment, then sniffed.
“Why don’t you tell it while we look through this shit? I’d like to know how deep I’m getting into this fuckup of yours.”
We kept on through the boxes and I told it, all of it, from meeting up with Graham at Bukowski’s in Boston to nearly getting barbequed in a low-rent pornographer’s office by Louise herself. By then we’d found piles of clothes, dog-eared fantasy paperbacks, a trunk full of tame sex toys, a shoe box packed tight with sales receipts, none of which post-dated Boston. The woman was a packrat, but we weren’t any closer to our goal.
Once we’d finished with the bedroom, we sat down on the naked mattress and took stock of the situation so far.
“Here’s my take on it,” Louise said, twirli
ng her lip ring. “If I didn’t know better, I’d want to look into Ray to see if he had anything to do with Helen vanishing on us. I say that because guys like that are total fuck-wits, real scum-nuts, and they go into ‘entertainment’ to take advantage of chicks like that. I don’t really think he has anything to do with it—I know the guy, he’s a creep, but this isn’t on him—but I do think we need a two-prong attack, here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean while we’re looking for Helen, we should be looking into whoever made that fucking movie, the old one that got your ass out here to start with.”
“It’s just an old movie, though,” I said. “Anybody remotely involved with it has died of old age by now.”
“Except for the star.”
“Except for her,” I agreed.
“Think about it,” she went on, “something happened to that girl back in the day, right? We don’t know what, but something did. And that shit got fucking buried, and it was serious enough that all this time later somebody’s out there shooting motherfuckers to keep it that way. Am I on target so far, chief?”
“So far, so good.”
“Then you start at the beginning. Keep trying to find Helen—fuck, everybody else is already dead or in a fucking coma—but at the same time get back to the good old days and see who made that thing, that Angel of the Whatever.”
“Angel of the Abyss.”
“Right, and you said you actually have the movie, didn’t you?”
“Most of it, in reels.”
“Let’s give it a watch while we’re at it, you and me. You might see something on the second pass, and an extra set of eyes couldn’t hurt.”
I said, “I don’t want to waste any more time. She’s out there somewhere, and the quicker I find her, the closer I am to helping Graham.”
“You really dig that guy, huh?”
I knitted my brow, not really up to explaining how a one-way friendship worked. I did dig the guy, even if he wasn’t really all that fond of me. I wasn’t really all that fond of myself, so I didn’t really blame him.
“We’ll help your friend,” Lou said after a moment. “Whatever we got to do.”
“This is great and all,” I said, giving her a bewildered look, “but why are you so invested? I mean, I appreciate the hell out of everything you’ve already done, Louise…”
“Lou, please. Just Lou.”
“…but you don’t know me, or Graham, or any of us. You’ve got no stake in this crap.”
“The truth? Helen was a fuckup and a bit of a cunt, but I liked the bitch. She stood up to Ray when nobody else would, and I respected that shit.”
“Well, that makes one of us.”
“And I know a bastard when I see one, too. I’ve got plenty of practice. You’re no bastard.”
“Thanks?”
“Don’t get any fucking ideas, now,” she added with a black-lacquered fingernail in my face. “It ain’t like that.”
“10-4.”
“Come on, let’s go check the boxes in the living room.”
I followed her, more astounded than ever.
* * *
Sandwiched between the two workers, we pored through the remaining boxes, clawing our way through Helen’s collection of completely useless ephemera while the painter sang along to each and every song on the radio. The guy had a memory like a steel trap; I couldn’t even remember the words to my favorite songs.
In my last box, I found a small but respectable collection of porn on DVD. I slowed to admire her taste when Louise said, “Hey, get a look at this.”
She was kneeling over her last box, which was stuffed with cooking magazines and a jumble of mail. In her hand was an open envelope, from which she’d taken the contents and now handed to me. It was a paystub from the Royal Blue Theater on Tremont in Fairfax. Helen M. Bryan was identified as a concession associate at the paltry rate of $9.75 an hour.
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “She got herself a day gig.”
“That’s a revival house,” Lou informed me. “As in, they only play old movies.”
She waggled her penciled brows at me while I took a minute for it to sink in. When it did, I gasped.
“Holy crap,” I said. “Now we know how Helen knew Leslie Wheeler, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do,” she agreed with a toothy smile. “Ain’t detecting fucking fun?”
“Can you guys get the hell out now?” the burly workman interrupted. “If we get fired, it’s your asses.”
I pocketed the paystub and we got the hell out.
22
Hollywood, 1926
The pair watched Ronald Colman as Beau Geste at the Arcade on Broadway, though neither of them paid the slightest attention to the picture. Rather, they smoked one cigarette after another, slumped in their seats, and waited for the afternoon to drag by as the organ player punched out the musical accompaniment in the least graceful way possible. Grace and Frank had an appointment to keep, and that appointment was with Junior Bassof, a rough customer who might or might not find their terms—her terms—acceptable enough to let Frank go on living.
They ate deviled eggs and sipped fountain pops, and when the picture was done, they emerged back into the sunlight to light cigarettes and get serious about their rendezvous with destiny. Destiny was billed to come in the form of Junior, Frank’s erstwhile boss, who agreed to meet him and his supposed moll at a Jewish delicatessen on Fairfax for the trade-off. They sauntered that way, just a block and a half from the Arcade, with hardly a word between them.
Upon arriving, Frank gestured with his chin at a pair of men seated opposite one another in a corner booth by the window.
“Those are Junior’s stooges,” he whispered.
“Then let’s go say hello,” suggested Grace.
“Give me the package,” he said. “Let me take care of this. You go on home. No sense in us both ending up in the ground if this thing goes south.”
“The ground?” Grace gasped. “Don’t be dramatic. Come along.”
He seized her arm and gave her a bewildered look. Grace just smiled.
“I’ve dealt with plenty of lowlifes over the years, real low characters on the circuit and elsewhere. These goons don’t scare me.”
With a wry smirk, she sauntered over the greasy tiles to the booth, where she slid in beside the shorter of the pair like she belonged there. The men glanced her over with appraising leers while Frank lingered several feet away, his face a mask of astonishment.
“You Frank’s girl?” asked the man seated across from Grace. His smooth face betrayed a youth he clearly tried to hide behind a put-upon demeanor.
“I thought we were seeing Mr. Bassof,” she said.
“You’re seeing us.”
“All right,” she said, beckoning Frank with her hand. He came over slowly and sat down beside the taller one.
“Hi, Frank,” the tall youth said. “Petey sends his regards from the morgue.”
Frank put his hand on his wounded shoulder. “He shot me. I shot back.”
“Guess you’re the better shot, then.”
“Guess I am.”
“So what’s it going to be?” Grace put in. “I trust you gentlemen know the terms. We cover the expenses of the car and the—the shipment—and we call this whole cowboy game off. So what is it?”
The short man beside her laced his fingers together on the table and exchanged a meaningful look with Frank. Grace caught this, but didn’t understand what it meant when Frank pushed out a sigh and said, “The shipment in the car. We’re willing to pay for it all, don’t you see that?”
The thug said, “All right, sure. The car, the shipment, and Petey.”
“What about Petey?” Frank asked.
“You knocked him off. That’ll cost you, too.”
“That was no knock-off,” Frank protested. “That was self-defense.”
“Either way he’s dead, isn’t he? So it’s another grand on top. No discussion.”
&n
bsp; “That’s garbage,” Frank said, making to stand. Grace reached over the table, touched his hand and shook her head.
“We accept that,” she said, her eyes boring deep into Frank’s.
“Grace…”
“You have it now?” Shorty said.
“I have it,” she answered.
“The extra thousand?”
“It’s here.”
She withdrew the fat package from her bag and handed it to Shorty under the table. He glanced around, making sure he didn’t have an audience, and then got to counting. While he did that, the tall one said, “This is contingent on a couple other things.”
“What is?” Frank asked.
“Your life, so listen up. You don’t talk. To anybody. Ever. If you do, we’ll know about it and the deal’s off—your head’s back on the block.”
“He won’t talk,” Grace said.
“She your mouthpiece, Frank?”
“I won’t talk,” said Frank. “What’s the other thing?”
“You don’t live in L.A. anymore. As of today. You can go anywhere you please that isn’t here. And you’re never coming back.”
“That’s too much,” Grace said.
Ignoring her, Frank said, “That’s fine. Are we done here?”
The tall man looked to Shorty, who finished counting, stashed the bills in his coat, and nodded.
“We’re done.”
The short one said to Grace, “You never saw us in your life, that clear?”
She scooted out to let him pass. “It’s clear.”
Outside, Frank and Grace found a taxi and climbed into the back. Grace gave her own address and the driver sputtered off in that direction.
Grace said, “Then that’s it.”
“I’ll pay you back, someday. I don’t know how, but I will.”
“Just do it legitimate like.”
“It’s all legitimate for me, from here on out.”
She smiled. “It’s been interesting, Frank. I’ll miss you.”
“Miss me? I’m not going anyplace. I still have to help light that soon-to-be-famous face of yours, don’t I?”
