Incubus

by L. J. Greene

  “Look here,” Mancini said, and stopped for a moment. He went for the bluff, drawing on that old-world attitude he did so well, and trying to run roughshod over me. “Look here, old sport, we have a deal, and I don’t pay you to run around doing puff pieces on foreigners.”

  “No. You don’t pay me for that.” I stared him in the eye.

  He said coolly, “As it happens, I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about our arrangement. I’ve heard tales of you making nice with some of the other guests here.”

  I would’ve bet anything it was that fake Frog concierge who told on me. “I can’t help it if Monty Clift likes my face,” I said. “And I’ll have you know he invited me to dinner, but I turned him down.”

  It was mostly true. When I’d chatted him up in the lobby, Clift had suggested I join his party for dinner one night, and I’d told him I’d think about it. It hadn’t felt quite right, and it wasn’t only because of Mancini’s money. It was because of the man himself. I was feeling something for him beyond what I’d planned. I hadn’t fronted up at Clift’s dinner table yet, but I’d been considering it, if only to shake off the spell Mancini had cast on me.

  “Monty Clift has enough on his plate without adding you as a side dish,” Mancini said stiffly, and I couldn’t help the radiating satisfaction that warmed my insides. Was that jealousy I detected?

  “What is this, anyhow?” I asked. “It doesn’t make a lick of sense, that they’d be following me. It’s you who matters to them, whoever they are. Whoever you are. And I’m no coward; if trouble’s coming, I’d rather look it in the face.” That last bit was bravado, but I meant it at the time.

  “Cole,” he said, quiet and clear. He rarely called me by my Christian name. “I don’t ask for much from you, but I’m asking you this. Don’t go out, not for a few days. Stay in here, please. Turn down that job. Don’t I give you everything you need, everything you ask for? Stay away from Lord Cresswickham.”

  The name was a spurt of sibilants with a hum at the end. Aha, I thought. Lord Crosspatch. Cressick-’um. Seemed about right.

  “How do you know his name?”

  His eyelids flickered. “There are only so many émigré aristocrats in this city.”

  I shook my head. “No dice, Mancini.”

  “It’s better for all of us if you stay away. Come, now. I’m asking politely.”

  Better for all of us. Who was he including, I wondered. Not both of us, but all of us.

  I sank the last of my bourbon and shrugged. “Alright,” I said. “If it’ll make things easier for you. I can see you’re wound up.”

  “Will you ease my mind fully, and call your agent now, tell him you can’t do the job? Just so I don’t have to worry.”

  Eyeing him, I walked to the phone. I made sure he couldn’t see my finger holding down the hook so the call wouldn’t connect. I was lucky I didn’t have to go through the concierge to get an outside line. “Hello, there, Joanie. Is Fred in? Oh…I see…no, I needed to get a message to him, that’s all…listen, tell him from me, will you, I can’t do that interview he set me up for? Tell him I’m sorry, but something’s come up. He’ll have to send someone else…No, no need for him to call back. Thanks, Joan.” I replaced the receiver and turned around again. “There. See? Now you can be sure of me.”

  He thanked me, and then he took me to bed and thanked me again. He rocked into my body more gentle than he’d ever been before, taking his sweet time and making me grateful I’d obeyed. He was training me, and I knew it, but damn if I didn’t like it.

  It wasn’t until later that evening after he left that I started to feel like a louse about my lie. There was no way I was letting this interview go, not now. I intended to visit this Lord Cresswickham and maybe even drop my mysterious patron’s name, just to see what would happen.

  Stupid? Yes, it was stupid. But there’s one trait I share with real reporters and cats: curiosity. Mine was roused, and anyway, I didn’t like the idea of being confined to my quarters. A gilded cage is still a cage.

  I played it straight, though. Fred King was as good as his word, and the details came through the next morning to the front desk. The interview was set for three days later. I made a show of reading the note in front of the concierge and ripping it up, just in case I was right about Monsieur Antoine, that he was on Mancini’s payroll. “The Marquess of Holford, Lord Reginald Cress-wick-ham,” I read out, making sure I pronounced it as it was spelled. I shook my head. “Ain’t that a dilly of a name. Anyhow, change of plans for me. Got a better offer.” I handed him the shreds, even as I was mentally repeating the Bel-Air address so I’d remember it. “Trash this for me, will you?”

  For two days I prowled the Chateau, keeping clear of the front entrance as much as possible, and spending most of my time writing or lying by the pool. I saw my platinum-haired neighbor once again, and nodded her way, but she ignored me after a first fearful stare. I watched her coming and going sometimes through the slats of my blinds, which I kept down in accordance with Mancini’s wishes. She always wore white and that absurd hat, so I took to thinking of her as the Magnolia Girl.

  Mancini came by on Wednesday night, earlier than usual. His affection had increased as time went by, and I could feel myself responding to it. We were getting used to each other, finding what piqued each other’s interest, what made us smile, our likes and dislikes. Not just in the sack, either; he brought me diamond cufflinks one day and told me they were a talking point for the next time I ran into a famous author.

  It was a dangerous game for a gigolo and his distraction to be playing, and sometimes I wasn’t even sure which of us was which. I knew there was no hope of it lasting. I didn’t even know how long he’d stay in LA, and didn’t ask. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Chateau Marmont and going back to my old life, even just a few weeks after I’d left it.

  Come Thursday, I had to make my final decision about the interview. It was too late to back out, anyway, I reasoned. I’d promised Fred King I’d go, and the Englishman was expecting me. I’d been curtailed in my research on him thanks to Mancini putting the kibosh on me leaving the Marmont grounds, but there were a few mentions in the national papers, as well as the local rags that the hotel brought in every day.

  The Marquess of Holford, Lord Reginald Cresswickham, was a collector. Exactly what he collected was not made clear, but he was attending quite a few antiques auctions. There were blurry pictures of him here and there with a man and a woman the paper called his companions. But once I hadn’t even recognized my own mother in the social pages, and these photographs were indistinct and gave no impression other than austerity and English traditionalism. I was surprised he’d found anything to suit his fancy in Hollywood.

  I took the private exit from the bungalow, just in case the concierge tried to stop me. I walked around to Sunset and down to Schwab’s, where I flagged a taxi and gave him the address in Bel-Air.

  My God, the houses out there were something, and even for a native like me they seemed too much. Ostentatious and glamorous and nauseating.

  “Come back for me in an hour,” I told the cab driver. “There’ll be something extra for you in it.” I wanted to make sure I had my escape route planned, just in case things went south. I wasn’t expecting trouble—if anything, I thought Mancini was overselling the danger. What would an English peer be doing mixed up in criminal activities, after all? But something was clearly afoot, and I wanted my bases covered.

  The cab dropped me at the bottom of the steep driveway, so I had some thinking time as I strolled up towards the house, a white monstrosity of Neoclassicism. It was fringed with greenery so that the windows looked like eyes flirting from behind a verdant fan. The lush surroundings did little to dull the imposing façade of the portico, flanked as it was by stern ionic columns that looked to my active imagination like bared teeth. Nor did the pond in the center of the circle drive, fountained by blank-eyed spouting dolphins, make it seem any more welcoming. I stopped to jot dow
n a quick description of it in my notebook, and to catch my breath.

  Then I saw it, parked off to the side of the house in front of the long garage: the very same town car I’d seen on Sunset, the one Fred King had kicked in the midst of an argument. I stopped dead, staring at the familiar number plate. Did it mean something? Maybe it was chance; maybe the car had stopped to ask for directions, and King had lost his temper…but that wouldn’t do. King wouldn’t lose his rag without a reason, and it was far too coincidental to really be coincidence.

  I resolved to call King when I got back to the bungalow. There was nothing I could do about it now, only chalk it up as a line of investigation. No one seemed to be about, so I walked straight up to the front door, bold as brass, and pushed the doorbell.

  I heard it chiming through the house; quick footsteps and the lock being drawn back; and when the door opened I found myself staring into the furious eyes of Leo Mancini.

  Part II

  The Third Man

  Chapter 6

  We stood stock-still, staring at each other until a call from deep within the house disturbed our reverie.

  “Leo, darling, who is it?”

  A female voice.

  As I watched him, Mancini cloaked himself in a new persona. His eyes were wider, his brows somehow less heavy—even his voice, as he called a reply, had a different timbre.

  “It’s the reporter, darling,” he called behind him. Gone were the soft consonants and tender vowels I was used to; his accent was formal and clipped. He turned on his heel. “Come,” was the only command he gave, and my feet followed him.

  I didn’t get much of a look at the place until we made it to the next room, because I was staring so hard at the back of his head I wonder his hair didn’t catch on fire. His hair was different, too—slicked into strict discipline with pomade and shining under the overhead chandelier. Was he running around town impersonating an English lord? I had a thousand questions, but I bit them all back.

  I didn’t want to chance blowing his cover, or mine.

  My only other impression of the foyer was that it housed a grand double staircase, trickling down the left and right walls like a gleaming marble waterfall around a wide archway. I followed Mancini through the archway into the room beyond. This area was bright and feminine, decorated in shades of cream and pearl-pink. It suited the occupant, a cool Hitchcock blonde dressed in full-skirted dove gray couture and seated on a silk-covered Georgian sofa. She had an aristocratic composure pulled round her like a mink stole.

  So much for the bunions and adenoids. I could see anyone getting dizzy over this dame. In the pit of my stomach something twisted, and it wasn’t due to skipping lunch. She came towards me in a cloud of French perfume, a smile lighting up her lovely face, and I was drawn to her, leaving Mancini in the archway.

  “This is Mr. Fox,” Mancini said. He sounded completely foreign to me.

  Beauty smiled upon me, and I was dazzled. Belatedly, I pulled off my hat. She said: “How nice to meet you, Mr. Fox. I’m Alice Cresswickham.” No name had ever sounded lovelier, spoken in her modulated English accent.

  I coughed out my hellos somehow, but I could feel Mancini behind me radiating nervous energy. Even she noticed it, based on the look she gave him.

  “I’ll fetch Reggie,” he said abruptly when I turned to look at him, and with that he was gone.

  I looked back to the blonde, and tried to play off the tension. “What’s eating him?” I asked with a grin.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “I must apologize. Leo—Mr. Mancini, that is, has had a rather trying day. He’s our…” She touched her fingers to her lips and looked away.

  “Your what, Mrs. Cresswickham? Or are you a Lady?” I was as confused as all get-out, trying to make sense of the situation, trying to stay ahead of the game. Fat chance.

  She was still looking after Mancini with a perturbed expression, but at my question she laughed. “Well, I am titled, though I do my best to avoid acting like a lady unless I have to,” she told me, her eyes merry. “In any case, please call me Alice. America is so charmingly egalitarian; and when in Rome.”

  “Alright. Alice.” The name suited her. She had an otherworldly air about her, like someone who might go chasing a rabbit down a dark hole just for kicks. She led me to the sofa but I stayed standing as she sat on the smaller love seat. “And you were saying about Mr. Mancini?”

  “You’re damned nosy.” Already on edge, I startled at the interruption. I hadn’t noticed the figure in the darkest corner, hunched in a chair. He had thinning sandy hair and a scowl, and an accent that belonged a few rungs down the English social ladder from Alice. But she smiled at him as he came forward.

  “Oh, but that’s his job, Betts, to be nosy and ask questions. Let him alone. Take his hat and coat, won’t you?”

  He sniffed, but he did it, and strode off with them to stow them in the foyer.

  I tried again with Alice while Betts was out of the room. “So Mr. Mancini is…?”

  The answer came from behind me, sudden like the crack of a whip. “Mr. Mancini is an old friend of mine.” I turned and came face to face with the man I presumed was Lord Reginald Cresswickham. He was attractive in a reptilian sort of way, intense and pale. He was like a watercolor except for his hair: a lush Titian red that seemed to contradict his glacial gray eyes. He sported a whip-thin moustache and his stiff posture made me stand a little taller myself. He looked me head to toe, and continued: “You must be the newspaper fellow. Mr. Mancini told me not to expect you. That the interview had been called off. And yet…here you are.”

  I put out my hand, and he took it after giving it a look.

  “Coleridge Fox. But call me Cole, why dontcha.”

  “Lord Cresswickham. But I suppose I must suggest you call me Reginald, since my dear sister insists on throwing away all sense of propriety.”

  Alice smiled again, but there was an uncertainty to it this time. “Don’t be cross with me, Reggie.”

  He went to her and dropped a kiss on her radiant blonde head. “Of course I’m not cross with you, dearest. Have you called for drinks yet?”

  “No, I—I wasn’t sure how long you would be.” She wouldn’t look at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  Cresswickham was a little under my height, and much thinner. His eerie, pale eyes roamed constantly until they lit on an object or a face, at which point he’d stare, fixated, as though seeking out dangers—or vulnerabilities. He scrutinized me then, and I felt like a dry butterfly pinned to a backboard and ready for cataloging. “Leo, old boy,” he said quietly, and I blinked.

  Mancini appeared in a doorway to the right.

  “Fix us a round of drinks, there’s a good chap. God knows we’ll be waiting forever if we call for the staff.”

  It was a curious thing to see the man I knew as demanding, intense and autocratic reduced to mixing drinks at the bar in the corner. He poured out three highballs of soda and vermouth, colored rich ruby with Campari, and one bourbon on the rocks. Nothing for Betts, I noticed, though the sandy-haired shadow had returned to the room by then.

  Alice clapped her hands when Mancini served her. “Americanos! How divine. Thank you, Leo.”

  Cresswickham raised an eyebrow at my bourbon. “Good God, Leo. Cocktails, I meant, not hard liquor.”

  Mancini hesitated, his arm half-extended towards me. The ice made a tinkling sound against the crystal as his hand shook. I jumped up and grabbed it. “I’m afraid your friend here knows the American weakness, being American himself. We prefer our drinks hard, day and night.”

  Mancini hadn’t looked me in the eye since I entered the joint, but he looked at me then, and I saw relief in his face.

  “As you wish,” Cresswickham said, losing interest. “Now, shall we begin?”

  I hastily took out my notebook and flicked through it to find my scrawled notes and questions. “How’re you finding the good old U.S. of A. so far, Lord Cress—Reginald?” I made my tone deliberately jocular, and
I got nothing but frost back.

  “Neither good, nor old. However, since your countrymen have managed to spirit away quite a collection of European antiques, here I find myself. For the time being.”

  It took some time to thaw the ice with him, and even then he was never what I’d call toasty warm. The others in the room didn’t help—they were stiff as boards, even Betts, like they were holding their collective breath. Mancini had situated himself directly behind Alice’s armchair, one hand gripping the back of it like a substitute for her shoulder, the other hand occupied with a cigarette. Beyond him, I could see a shepherdess figurine in a display case, bending her golden head to gaze sweetly at a white lamb. She reminded me of Alice, with her fragile, breakable beauty.

  Cresswickham sat directly opposite me, leaning forward and fixing me with his intense stare once more. I was nervous, and sometimes when I’m nervous I can’t seem to stop up my mouth. I established his genealogy in minute detail before moving on to his preferred collection periods, and his plans for renovations of his ancestral home in England, Holford Hall. He’d stayed in New York for several months before moving to the west coast—did I have that right? I did. And how long had he been in LA? Half a year or so. And what did he enjoy doing here? Not much, it turned out.

  “Sorry to hear the city’s so unpleasant for you. We Angelenos do manage to have ourselves a good time,” I told him. “Although I’m sure a gentleman like yourself wouldn’t have the same idea of fun.”

  He put his drink down and flicked a finger. Mancini sprang forward and collected our glasses. While he refilled them, Cresswickham sat back in his seat and smiled. It was a smile that put a shiver down my spine, and I wished he’d stayed solemn instead. “Indeed?”

  Mancini handed me another bourbon, his back to Cresswickham, and gave me a pleading look. “Oh,” I said. “Well. I’m talking about lower sorts of entertainment. I wouldn’t like to say in front of the lady.”