Manifesto for the Dead

by Domenic Stansberry

  Alberta didn’t take him with her back to their place at the Ardmore. If he had asked, maybe, but she had her pride.

  She pulled over on Hollywood Boulevard, not far from the Aztec. Lussie had not shown up at his sister’s place, Michele Haze wanted him to find Sydney Wicks at the Satellite Bar, his book was unfinished. Still, he couldn’t care about those things now. He reached over to kiss his wife. She responded, almost. He put his hand on her belt, where the white blouse disappeared into her skirt, and placed his lips on her cheeks. She closed her eyes and let him have the corner of her lips.

  He considered giving her the money inside the envelope. Like she said, though, it wasn’t enough, and he still had a vision of himself snaking away, leaving this all behind, slipping over the border into some foreign country where volcanoes rumbled up out of nothing and the senoritas danced in the shadows, naked, voluptuous, full of piss, full of life.

  TWENTY-SIX

  She dropped him at the corner, a block from the hotel. It was a long block, a hard bit of sidewalk. He walked with the manuscript tucked underneath one arm, his suitcase under the other, all the time worrying it would slip from his fingers. The feeling in his arm hadn’t come back all the way, not yet.

  An old son of a bitch spat on the street in front of him. A whore farted and belched, mocking Thompson as he passed. Across the way two long-haired idiots passed a pipe back and forth, and a young woman clutched at herself, teeth clattering, hands shaking, as if she were about to jump out of her skin.

  This is it. Where I belong, he thought. Walking the blind alleys where there’s a song of gloom behind every eyelid. In the good old days, I was a hophead with the best of them. Vitamin shots and transfusions and anything else that a gave a jolt to the nervous system. These days he settled for the simple stuff. Bought himself a bottle at the corner and went inside the hotel.

  … into a dark room where the shades were drawn and the only light was that which fell in a harsh slant through the blinds. In that light I didn’t see him as well as I might have, or it could be his looks had changed. Guys like him, their looks were always changing. Or maybe I just confused one with the next, all my mother’s men and those ex-cons and this one in front of me now. In my head, they were all the same man. They were all Pops. When I saw him, the story of what happened came streaming out of me.

  I’ll help you, son. But you got a lesson to learn.

  At his touch, I broke into a grotesque river of tears. I thought he would mock me, but no.

  You’re part way home, boy. Do as I say, you’ll be okay. You’ll make the transformation. Disappear into the walls. Into the landscape, the air and dirt. You’ll be the high singing of the wires, and whatever you’ve lost, Christ, you’ll find it again. I’ll see to it. I have friends. Connections.

  He could talk like that, Pops could. He could lull you to sleep with his words. The way those words washed over me, it wasn’t like they came out of the darkness, but like they were the darkness, and I was sleeping inside them.

  What it got down to was this. There was a young woman, and there was this movie star who wanted her dead.

  It was an easy job, Pops said, it paid well, and once it was done, he would help me out of this mess.

  I did what he told me. I knocked on her door. I got the wire around her neck and looked into her eyes. She reminded me of all the women I had ever known. Gloria most of all. It was her fault. If she hadn’t been so sweet, I would have done it simple. I would have swindled her father and been on my way. Belle never would have discovered my past. None of this would have happened.

  But it did happen. So I pulled tight, looking into her eyes. Then I put her corpse in the trunk of car and drove to the address Pops had given me.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Late that afternoon, Thompson made his way down a narrow side street. The Hollywood Freeway ran under an escarpment nearby, and its sound rattled the buildings. In the center of all that noise was the Satellite Bar, an ugly joint, lime green, squatting between two abandoned storefronts. Its paint was peeling, the stucco crumbling, exposing the chicken wire underneath.

  Find Wicks for me, Michele Haze had told him, and I will set you free.

  Inside, the Satellite Bar was empty except for the man behind the counter and the sound of the freeway. The man was as big a man as Thompson had ever seen.

  “What can I do you?”

  “A whiskey,” Thompson said. “And a beer back.”

  The man stepped into the back room to get Thompson his beer, then splashed some whiskey into a glass. He wasn’t exactly polite about it. He pushed the whiskey over, watched Thompson drink like a guard watches a prisoner.

  “Who sent you?”

  “I’m looking for Sydney Wicks.”

  “What’s your name?”

  Thompson told him.

  “Who sent you?”

  “She … I don’t know if I should get into details. If you …”

  The man cut him short. “Who sent you?”

  “A client.”

  The guy gave him a brutish look.

  “My client wants to meet with Mr. Wicks. And clear up an obligation.”

  “I’ll make the call, but it’s going to cost you a hundred bucks. She tell you that part too, this client? I don’t do my work for free.”

  Thompson went into his envelope and counted out the money. The man stuffed the bills into his pants pocket.

  “No guarantees.”

  The bartender stepped into a little room behind the bar. Thompson could see him through the door, hunched over the phone in a room so small it seemed barely able to contain him—and Thompson suddenly couldn’t help but question the wisdom of being here. He wondered if Michele would keep her promise.

  The bartender hung up and shouldered his way back towards Thompson.

  “They’ll call back. Meantime, you wait here.”

  The bartender poured himself a gin, and positioned himself at the other end of the bar, between Thompson and the door. The noise of the freeway grew louder, and a piece of stucco tumbled from an outside wall into the street. The phone rang.

  “Yeah?” The bartender breathed heavily into the mouthpiece, listening. Then he hung up.

  “You’ll have to wait a bit longer.”

  “How about another round?”

  The bartender splashed him a whiskey.

  “And a beer to go with it?”

  “I have to go to the back to get it.”

  “All right.”

  The man went into the back room. Something wasn’t right. Thompson decided to leave. He stepped toward the front, but managed only a few paces before the voice boomed out.

  “It’s not time for you to go.”

  “I was just stretching.”

  “You can stretch sitting down.”

  It was a long time before the phone rang again. An eon. Three eons. The sun collapsed and was born again and every living thing turned to dust. Then it started all over, the creatures creeping up out of the big nothing, tigers with fish gills, birds with snake eyes, the whole ugly business. The jungle roared and squealed. The freeway thundered.

  Finally, the call came. The conversation was as brief as before. Briefer.

  “You can go now,” said the bartender.

  “What do you mean? What about Wicks?”

  “There’s no such man as Sydney Wicks. Your woman friend, she made a mistake.”

  Thompson decided not to argue.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Thompson walked down The Strip, hands in pockets. He had to keep them there, they shook so badly. With everything that had happened, he could not help being spooked. The visit to the Satellite had changed nothing. Demons were loosed on the streets. His own demons, someone else’s, it didn’t matter, a little sip no longer kept things under control. The abyss was triumphant, one mean son-of-a-bitch. He tried to concentrate on events of recent days, thinking he could find in them the secret that would help him escape. No. He took out his flask. As he raised it, he
saw something from the corner of his eyes. He wheeled around. Nothing. He drank. Maybe he had been wrong about everything. Though the liquid ran down his throat, following the rules of gravity, he had the opposite sensation. He felt as if his own self, his essence, were rising into the flask.

  It was the same up and down the Strip. Desire turned backwards, so the thing which was desired did the consuming. He could see it in the eyes of that fat kid up ahead, lounging between the corners of Argyle and Vine. Or that woman in black leather. Or that blind man in the dead neon of the Brown Derby. Emptiness everywhere. Lounging about. Ambling. Stumbling. Eyes like broken windows. Mouths filled with the sound of Harley Davidsons. Zippers opening. A man’s chest tattooed with tits big as the moon.

  We’re in the same boat, you and me, Thompson thought. Background characters. Nobodies. In the end we die hard deaths, exigencies of the plot.

  Thompson stepped into the lobby of the Aztec Hotel. Behind the desk, the bell clerk sat upright, smoking a cigarette.

  “Anybody for me?”

  “No.”

  The kid looked pleased. His eyes glimmered, ratlike. Halfway up the stairs, Thompson turned for another look. The kid smiled. They exchanged pleasantries.

  “Fuck you, kid.”

  “Fuck you, too, Mister.”

  Upstairs, Thompson found his door ajar. His room lay in shambles.

  The place had been torn apart, his papers scattered, his suitcase unpacked, clothes tossed on the floor. The mattress had been pushed off the bed, the pillowcases unstuffed. The drawers hung open, the closet off its hinge.

  He’d been robbed, but it didn’t make sense, because he kept little of value here, and the only thing missing, so far as he could tell, was his father’s Retriever. The old six-shooter was useless except as something to hang on the wall.

  Thompson wondered if the bartender at the Satellite had stalled him deliberately, so someone could take apart his room. He shuffled downstairs over the worn carpet. Hands in pocket, lilting, a caterpillar walk.

  “Someone ransacked my room.”

  “That’s a shame,” said the kid.

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “Not that I remember. But maybe I was sleeping. Or off taking a whiz. You know how it is. The help these days.”

  “You’re a swell one, kid.”

  “Glad to help out.”

  The kid grinned malevolently, and Thompson thought maybe the boy had wrecked the room himself, to get him back for the business with the cigarette—but he could not be sure. He went back upstairs, and the telephone was ringing in his room now. He let it go a long time before picking up.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jim, is that you?”

  Thompson recognized the voice. His agent, Matt Roach.

  “Listen, I’ve got good news.”

  Thompson found it hard to believe.

  “Julius Lars, over at Countdown Productions—he wants to buy The Manifesto. He’s picking up the option. Be there tomorrow. Get yourself down to the lot. He’s got some papers.”

  He felt a flutter in his head.

  “It’s been cooking for awhile. I didn’t want to say anything till I was sure. I know how you’ve been through so many disappointments.”

  “What time tomorrow?”

  “Ten-thirty. On the Countdown lot.”

  “All right.”

  “Meantime, courier him over the old contract, the one you signed with Miracle. There’s some details to be ironed.” Roach went on. Twenty grand for the story. Another fifty grand for the screenplay. Guaranteed. “You’ll get it whether or not they go into production, no matter who gets the final screen credit. I put my foot down on this one.”

  Thompson felt his breath go out of him.

  I’ve done it. And for a second he felt an elation so severe he all but sobbed. They could stay in the penthouse, he and Alberta. They wouldn’t have to move.

  He dialed Alberta and told her the news. The doubt crept over him, but he shrugged it away.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Seventy thousand.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Cancel the movers.”

  “It’s too late. They’re coming tomorrow. And I’ve already given notice to the landlord.”

  “Stall him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Don’t you see, honey? We’ve got it made.”

  “All right.”

  “I want you to go with me to the studio.”

  “You don’t want me there, not while you’re signing the papers.”

  “The Countdown lot is clear the other side of town.”

  It took some talking, but she agreed; she would pick him up in the morning. As soon as he was off the phone, though, he thought of the Mexican border, and Lussie Jones.

  Her husband would be in town now. Tomorrow evening there was that dance, in the old Crystal Ballroom, not far from the Château. I’ll go, Thompson thought.

  I’ll cut in. I’ll steal her away.

  He looked down. His papers lay scattered all over the floor, and his doubt returned. He gathered the manuscript up. In these pages, his book imitated the scene at the Hillcrest Arms. There was confusion at the pay-off point. Pops vanished, the corpse too. The killer wandered the city, looking for his money. Life and fiction overlapped. The events in The Manifesto, and the events of the last few days were converging. Who was Wicks? And where had he gone? Thompson went into the closet. In the far back, wedged into a dark corner, he found a paper sack his visitor had missed. Soon as he felt the bag, he remembered. The dead girl’s sweater. He had taken it from the Cadillac, then misplaced it in his room.

  He pulled it out of the bag. It was an expensive sweater, otherwise unremarkable, except for one thing he hadn’t noticed up on the hill: a single initial embroidered across the breast.

  C.

  The Young Lovely, what was her real name? Anna, or Amanda, or Annabelle—something like that, he couldn’t be sure.

  And her last name?

  Thompson didn’t know. He paced the room. Maybe I am wrong about the initials, he thought, and wrong about other things as well, and he wondered if he should call Michele Haze and tell her what had happened at the Satellite. He wondered too if the Cadillac had been discovered.

  Then he lay back and told himself none of that mattered. He had hit the big time. People in the big time, guys like me, they always escape in the end. Then he told himself the same thing again, one more time, just to be sure.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The next morning, Alberta picked him up in Mrs. Myers’ sedan. She drove with a skeptical demeanor, her hands high on the wheel, gripping tightly, like a woman taking a jalopy through a town she had not seen before, and did not much like. She wore a polka dot dress and a string of pearls. Her face had a hard beauty.

  “Is this on the level?”

  “Matt says so.”

  “He’s been wrong before.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m just wondering.”

  “We struck a gusher, honey. It’s that simple.”

  Alberta yanked the sedan up to the curb.

  “I’ll wait here.”

  “Come inside with me.”

  “This is your moment.”

  “I want you with me. At least wait in the office.”

  “No.”

  Thompson climbed out. A restaurant stood at the corner, a half-block away, and his eyes caught movement in the window, or maybe it was the premonition of movement, and he had the feeling you get at crowded terminals sometimes, far from home, as if maybe you will cross paths with someone you know, here in this unexpected place. The street stood empty.

  Thompson went through the studio gate. Julius Lars had his office at the far end of the lot, but it was nothing special, just a trailer up on blocks. That was the way Countdown ran things. He found Julius at the rear of the trailer with his shirt sleeves rolled up, in front of a Formica desk. They had met before.

&n
bsp; “Good to see you, Julius.”

  “You too, Jim.”

  Julius wore a white shirt open at the collar. He was a friendly enough guy usually, with a broad smile and a bulbous nose, but his expression at the moment was grim. He had a wild shock of hair, and he ran his fingers through it now as if all that hair belonged to someone else.

  “Your agent talk to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This morning?”

  “Last night. What’s up?”

  “The paperwork.”

  “Well, I’m sure we can work it out.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Julius slid the paper across the desk. It was the contract Thompson had signed for Miracle that day in Musso’s, the offending parts highlighted now in yellow.

  “You signed the rights away.”

  “What?”

  “The story doesn’t belong to you.”

  “But Lombard canceled the deal. He never signed with Miracle.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Your deal—it’s with Miracle.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m sorry, Jim.”

  Julius put his hand on Thompson’s shoulder. “Maybe we can work on another project together, later. This one, if we were to do it, would have to go through Billy.” Julius kept talking, but Thompson wasn’t listening anymore. The man guided him through the trailer, into the lot. Future possibilities, he said. This project. That. Together, you and me. Thompson smiled, nodded. Something shifted inside him. Ten steps, twelve. He found himself outside the studio gate, alone, dizzy. His gut hurt bad, as if the air’d been punched out. Alberta glanced his way. Flowing out of the car in her polka dot dress. Guessing how it was with him, figuring the whole business. He loped towards her, bent over at the shoulder, swinging one arm—and he felt something lurch within him now. A stroke, he feared, his arm going numb. Then, lifting his head, squinting, he caught a man emerging from the cafe. Running down the sidewalk. A flash of metal.

  Thompson had known about the contract, or he should have known, if he’d bothered to think it through, just as he’d known that sooner or later this man would find him on the street. How he had come to be here, whether by design or coincidence, Thompson didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The street was no longer empty. The Okie brushed past Alberta, grabbed Thompson by the collar.