Hollywood Gothic

by Thomas Gifford

  “Oh, hello.” It was Morgan’s partner. “You came back.” She was thinking out loud. “The party’s over.”

  “I wondered if Morgan might still be here …”

  “Gosh, I’m just cleaning up. Morgan left me to do it all alone, wouldn’t you know.” She made a face. “She said she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “When did she go? Maybe I could catch her before she goes to bed.”

  “Say, you’re the man who came with her, aren’t you? And then you and Mr. Donovan had an … altercation? That’s a civilized word. What was going on?” She took the chain off, opened the door. “Would you like to come in? Eat the last of the canapés? Anchor Steam Beer?”

  “Thanks, but I have some business to do.”

  She looked at her watch. “Pretty late for business, isn’t it?”

  “Night work,” he said. He smiled at her. She had pigtails and freckles and bangs over bright, curious eyes.

  “Well, far be it from me to keep you from your appointed rounds,” she said. “Morgan left about an hour after you slugged Mr. Donovan. She really looked white and faint, to be fair to her.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “I don’t think so. I had the party to keep going, and the author got drunk and that was a trial. He started signing other writers’ names to his book … Raymond Chandler, Earl Derr Biggers, it was a problem. But it was understood that she was going home. I mean, she felt crummy.”

  “What did Donovan do?”

  “He left, too. Before she did. Stormed out, practically at a run, after he talked with Morgan a bit.”

  Challis thanked her, and with a wistful, middle-of-the-night smile she said it was a shame he didn’t have time for a frolic among the canapés.

  It was late, and there was no point in getting Morgan out of bed. He could do this alone. It was better to do it alone, anyway. He headed the Mustang out toward the Pacific Coast Highway. The night was dark. Anybody with a brain was home in bed.

  Was Donovan the murderer?

  He went back through the story Solomon Roth had told him, checking it out against what few facts he knew, what he’d been able to learn about Kay Roth from Goldie. It was the oldest of Hollywood stories, and there was no point in challenging it. Kay’s eccentricities, the disappearances, the comeback, her death. It all fit. And Goldie’s willingness to use it against her father fit, too. Everything Sol said rang true, and anyway, why would he lie? Insofar as Toby went, Sol still felt a loyalty and friendship; but the fact was, preserving the family’s dignity was more important. It wasn’t anything to argue about, it simply was. If Toby got caught in a squeeze, the family came first. Solomon Roth had his priorities.

  So that was a blind alley. But Donovan … Donovan fit perfectly into the pattern Sol had revealed. His greed had backed him into a corner: he’d taken the million dollars, yet Goldie expected him to carry out her plan to run the diaries. The million had been paid to stop that happening, but the million was no good if it didn’t stop Goldie. The whole thing had been so crazily thought out. The Roths had just panicked and run scared, buying their way out of it and making it Jack Donovan’s problem. Then Donovan had panicked: how to stop Goldie? He must have been aware that the Roths were counting on him … maybe he even thought the million was a payoff for shutting Goldie up for good. Why hadn’t Aaron or Solomon gone to Goldie themselves? Wouldn’t it have been worth one last try? But even as the thought crossed Challis’ mind, he knew it wouldn’t have done any good, wouldn’t have deflected Goldie from her target. And they all must have known that—Aaron, Solomon, Donovan. But Donovan had the million, and with it the responsibility to talk Goldie out of it. To keep the diaries from being published. And if he failed, Tully Hacker would be waiting to take him to the bridge.

  He took the Mustang up a winding canyon road and down the ocean side with the wind off the water turning the soft rain to spray against the windshield. Piles of mud encroached on the twisty road from time to time, and if he hadn’t been tired and anxious he’d have gone another, safer route. But he was tired and he was anxious, and he finally felt as if he was getting close to something like the truth. At the Pacific Coast Highway, his vision blurred and he sat for a moment with his eyes closed. Borrowed time. He was on borrowed time, and the events of the past two days were draped across his mind like clothes on furniture in a deserted room. Behind, beneath each cloth lurked a shape, unidentified and inevitably ominous. He waited for a pickup truck to pass, and turned out into the rain-slick empty highway. The surf roared off to his left, and the wind was pushing the car around.

  But there was something wrong about it, something he couldn’t quite remember … the shred of memory flapping, drawing attention to itself, but always ducking away as you took a step toward it, a mug’s game. Gregory Peck in Spellbound—he couldn’t quite remember why herringbone patterns drove him nuts, why the marks on a fork’s tines made on a tablecloth would set him off. Well, this was like that … he kept thinking he saw who killed Goldie, saw the figure on the porch.

  He pushed himself back into the past as the Mustang hurtled along beside the ocean exploding against the beach. He’d done it so many times before, yet he never seemed to increase the sum total of his memory. It was always the same, indelible: seeing the dark blood matted in her hair, the smeared base of the Oscar with some kind of matter clotted in the blood, the smell of the salty ocean coming from the beach … How long had he stood there? What had he been waiting for? Why would he simply stand still over her body, frozen? Waiting … the waiting had made him guilty, had cost him his freedom. He’d been waiting like a fool, and the police had found him, the Oscar in his hand. But why?

  There was something funny going on, something wrong with the time frame, a distortion for which he had no explanation. In the beginning, he hadn’t realized how long he’d stood there; that came later. At first he’d thought the police had arrived only minutes behind him, but that was an illusion: at least that much became clear without his having to be told. He knew he’d waited.

  The sand. There had been sand on the floor, dry sand, wet sand. How had it gotten there? He hadn’t walked through any sand. But he stood watching the sand, footprints, bare feet down the hallway, a trail of sand, Goldie dead … a noise on the porch, a figure moving … Had there been a scream? Had he heard someone scream? Or had the scream been his own voice? He could still feel the weight of the Oscar in his hand, the heavy marble base he’d had it set upon, heavy enough to crack a skull. …

  Suddenly he found himself plummeting into a dense fog bank, fear gnawing at his chest, remembering the plane going down through the veil of snow. He stepped on the brakes, slowed to a crawl with great solid gouts of fog nestling against the car, clinging. He’d lost the view of the highway entirely, seemed to float in the clouds. Somebody had called him a man in the fog—was it Ollie Kreisler? Only yesterday. It seemed ages ago. Nobody would miss a man in the fog, he could be killed and no one would miss him because no one knew where he was. What would his life have meant? Would anyone be changed by his not being there anymore? He couldn’t imagine whom. Morgan Dyer? They’d barely made contact. For her, surely, he was nothing more than a peculiar adventure. She had no stake in him. If he never came back from this night’s work, it would be nothing more than an odd dream for her. He was an unnecessary man, no ties, no place in anyone else’s life, and there really wasn’t any other side to it.

  What if Donovan was the murderer?

  What might he do with Challis sweeping down on him by night, pursuing him, threatening him? Killing Challis could conceivably be construed as a public service … at the least, justifiable homicide, self-defense.

  So why wasn’t he afraid?

  Because there didn’t seem to be anything to lose: perhaps that was it. Everybody just wanted him to go away. No one cared if he’d killed Goldie in the first place. That was last year’s show, gone and forgotten, canceled. Just go away, Toby, stop bothering us, don’t become a bore who han
gs around when the party’s over. Goldie’s dead, so beat it, whether you killed her or not. Just have the common decency and grace to go away, we’ve got problems of our own.

  Hell, they had all just let him go to prison, had forgotten about him. And then he was back, the man who fell from the sky … the man in the fog who had no business being anywhere. Tired, running on empty, or on nervous energy: curiosity pushing him along, time running out, more and more people knowing he’s loose. Ahead of him the billowing fog seemed to become a thick scum trying to suck him under. There was nobody there to say good-bye.

  He checked a map at an all-night service station.

  “You’re about half an hour away,” the attendant said. He was drinking coffee from a dirty plastic cup and smoking a cigarette. Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” was coming from a transistor radio. “Half an hour in this fog, anyway. Watch close for the turnoff, or you’ll miss it.” He took a drag on the butt. “Ain’t gonna be nothin’ open at this hour.” The thought seemed to sadden him.

  “That’s all right,” Challis said. “Makes no difference to me.”

  “Just thought I’d tell you.” He looked off into the middle distance, didn’t seem to notice Challis’ departure.

  He found the turnoff, and as the narrow road dipped toward the ocean, he burrowed in under the fog, where the rain blew lightly, and below him a scattering of yachts lay tethered to half a dozen old piers pointing out toward the center of Castle Moon Bay. The harbor curved like a horseshoe, with abrupt hills sheltering in on the north and south. The slope eastward was gentler, and at the bottom on the flats there was a small gathering of plain buildings forming a community whose sole purpose was to serve the yacht people. It wasn’t a marina in the Los Angeles sense: no English pubs, discos, high-rise condo towers; just eight or nine large, old-fashioned pleasure craft sidling up to weather-beaten docks with thick pilings and ropes the size of your arm. All but one were dark, wrapped in cocoons of canvas, tied down. Challis had been there once before a long time ago, and someone had told him: “Nobody ever goes to Castle Moon Bay by mistake. If you’re not headed there, you don’t go. Which is why people who like it, like it. Privacy.”

  Challis parked the car under an immense Morton Bay fig tree and looked out at the yachts. He sat opposite the one with the light coming from somewhere inside: it was the only one with any sign of life. There were several cars parked along the street. They looked as if they hadn’t been moved in days. An Olympia beer sign burned in the window of a shut-down tavern. Nothing moved but the streetlights and the rain whispering in the branches overhead. There was no point in just sitting there, so he pulled the raincoat close around him, turned up the collar, and hurried across the wide street. The wind caught him full in the face, whistled off the water. Hulls bumped solidly against the wet wood of the docks. Windswept waves lapped sibilantly at the pilings. He saw the mailbox as he reached the dock. Donovan. And the light was still there, yellow through the rain. The night smelled salty, the way it had when he stood still watching the blood seeping from Goldie’s head. …

  He blinked his eyes, shook his head to clear the memory away, and held onto the handrail as he crossed the narrow walkway, stepped down onto the wet afterdeck. He put the yacht at eighty feet or so, lots of shining brass under cover, much polished wood, and probably dating from before World War II. The rain tapped overhead. A charcoal grill gave off warmth. Beneath ash, red embers glowed. The doorway to the cabin was closed, but the light came through the small window at eye level. Through the window he saw only the narrow corridor paneled like a lawyer’s office, leading past a couple of the doorways, the galley, to a dark wooden door at the end. Light in the hallway came from a couple of sconces high enough on the walls so you wouldn’t bump your head. The wind whipped at the canvas flaps guarding the afterdeck; a linen napkin fell to the floor from the table where someone had eaten a steak and left the dishes.

  Challis opened the doorway and stepped into the corridor, leaning against the wall, feeling the boat roll in its moorings. He listened, heard nothing but the odd creak, the lapping waves, the wind. Christ, what was he doing on Donovan’s boat in the middle of the night? But that was the question, the anxiety of a normal man prowling around in someone else’s private life. He was no longer a normal man with a place to go. A man in his position was an intruder anywhere, and he might as well get used to it. He went on down the corridor and rapped softly on the dark door, waited. He tried the knob, which turned. He swallowed hard and opened it.

  Donovan was sitting at his desk, one eye open, fixed on the doorway. The desk chair was turned slightly, and Donovan had assumed a somewhat sprawled position, as if he’d been thrown into the chair and had chosen to remain as he landed. The eye was unfocused. The other eye, indeed the other side of his face and skull, was gone altogether, exposing edges of bone and gristle and runny matter which had until recently been held in place by skin. Challis felt his stomach turn over, smelled something acrid which must have lingered from the gunshot, smelling spoiling meat and blood. His body quaked with a fit of shivering which ran from his jaw, down his spine, to his legs, which were going weak. He made himself cross the open space to the deck. Papers were smeared across the desk, a cup of coffee had been overturned, leaving damp brown splotches, and two drawers of the desk lay on the floor beside the desk, empty. A set of Indian clubs stood against the wall, a touch of the 1920s. A small Sony transistor radio was playing Brubeck, the same station he’d heard less than an hour before. The boat moved against the dock, and the leather chair swiveled. Challis heard himself shout wordlessly as Jack Donovan seemed to lurch toward him, alive. But it was only the rocking of the waves, and Donovan hung more to one side. Challis looked away from the insides of the man’s head. Blood and refuse speckled the wall behind Donovan’s chair. Blood had stained the sailing shirt of broad blue and white stripes. He went gingerly around the desk: there was no gun on the floor or dangling from the dead hand. Back he went to the front of the desk, unable to stop watching Donovan, the distortion of the downward-drooping mouth, the hair clotted in the wound. It was hot in the room, and he felt lightheaded. He was going to a porthold when he knew there was someone behind him. Maybe it was a footfall or the rustle of clothing or a stifled breath, but he wasn’t alone, and as he turned the tall figure flew at him, coat billowing, one arm extended over its head, a huge club whistling down at him.

  He tried to move sideways, but he seemed stuck in slow motion, was able only to twist and bump into the desk as the club bounced off his shoulder. He grabbed the arm and threw his weight against the figure, both of them careening off balance and falling to the floor. His face was buried in the raincoat, but he hoisted himself atop his assailant, pinning the arms down. “Goddammit,” he shouted, adrenaline overloading, “god damn you!” The words meant nothing, came out of the red fury in his head, the fear, the frustration: suddenly there was somebody to take it out on. His eyes were clenched tight, afraid, not wanting to identify but only to hurt, to get rid of it all on whoever had killed Donovan. He reached for the face, the throat, as he straddled the body, felt his fingers digging into the flesh … soft flesh … a woman …

  And then he looked, loosening his grip.

  Gasping, choking, she turned her head away and lay still. Her cheeks were wet with tears. She coughed, slowly looked up at him.

  “You killed him,” she said, whispered, her blond hair plastered in points across her forehead. “Why did you have to kill him … and you were going to kill me.”

  “Morgan …” he said.

  19

  DONOVAN’S SIGHTLESS, CYCLOPEAN EYE STARED at them. With the shifting of the water his chair creaked, complementing the moaning of the wind. Side by side, Challis and Morgan Dyer sat on the quilted leather sofa, waiting to catch their breath, staring before them like zombies in an Antonioni movie. Challis was fighting to calm his mind, fighting to stifle the frustration building in the path of her two accusations. It was as if he were reliving the frustr
ation of the night in Malibu. Why did you kill her? What do you mean … what’s going on? Why did you kill her, why, why, why? His mind had tripped then, slid off the wire. It couldn’t be happening again, not with Morgan. His hands worked at one another, sweaty. His eyes burned and he tried not to look at what was left of Jack Donovan. Beside him she was shaking, clearing her throat, wiping tears from her face with a tight white knuckle.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he said slowly. “And I figured you were the murderer. I turned around and there was this thing coming at me with a club, or a knife …”

  She looked at him from the corners of her eyes. Somehow she had made her long body small, had drawn in around herself like a bird folding its wings protectively. Her white face nestled down in her scarf and trench-coat collar. She was shivering, and it was hot in the cabin. The quality of trust was noticeably absent from the flat plane of her face. She looked at him from behind a shield.

  “Christ, you’re the one with the motive to kill Donovan,” he said. “I come out here in the middle of the night to talk with Donovan, find him dead, and you come around the corner with your goddamn club … and he’s the man who ruined your father—and you think I killed him. My God, where’s the logic in that?”

  She spoke. “I’d have killed him a long time ago if I’d wanted to revenge my father … and I’ve never killed anyone for misbehaving at one of my parties. But you … well, I’ve never been convicted of murder, either.” But her face softened, ashamed, and she spoke with a dying fall. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that quite that way.” She looked him in the eyes, no longer shivering. But the distance was still there.

  “Well, I don’t have any motive.”

  She was way ahead of him, made him blink. “If he killed Goldie, you do.”

  “What are you …? Well, that’s what the cops will say, I guess.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, you’re not thinking clearly. They’ll say you killed Goldie because she was having an affair with Donovan. And that you killed Donovan when you got loose, and for the same reason. That’s what they’ll think, that’s the way they think.”