Part 46 (2/2)

Tesla heard something drop in the bathroom.

”Raul?” she said.

There was no answer.

”Raul? Are you all right?”

Fearing the worst she went quickly, knife in hand. The door was closed but not locked.

”Are you there?” she said. When she received no reply a third time she opened the door. A b.l.o.o.d.y towel had been dropped on the floor, or fallen, carrying a number of toiletry items with it: the noise she'd heard. But Raul was not there.

”s.h.i.+t!”

She turned off the faucet, which was still gus.h.i.+ng, and about-faced, calling his name again, then going through the apartment, dreading with every turn she was going to find him prey to the same horror that had claimed Mary. But there was no sign of him; nor of any further Lix. Finally, steeling herself for the sight on the sheets, she opened her bedroom door. He was not there either.

Standing at the door brought back to Tesla the look of horror on his face when he'd seen Mary's corpse. Had that simply been too much for him? She shut off the sight of the body on the bed and went to the front door. It was ajar, the way she'd left it when they'd first come in. Leaving it that way she started down the stairs and along the side of the building, calling after him as she went, the certainty growing in her that he'd simply decided he could stand no more of this madness and had taken to the streets of West Hollywood. If he had he was exchanging one madness for another, but that was his choice and she couldn't be responsible for the consequences.

He wasn't in the street when she reached it. In the porch of the house opposite two young men were sitting enjoying the last light of the afternoon. She knew the names of neither, but she crossed to them and said: ”Have you seen a man?” which raised eyebrows and smiles from both.

”Recently?” one of them said.

”Just now. Ran out of the building opposite?”

”We just came out here,” said the other. ”Sorry.”

”What'd he do?” the first said, looking at the knife in Tesla's hand. ”Too much or not enough?”

”Not enough,” Tesla said.

”f.u.c.k him,” came the reply. ”There's plenty more.”

”Not like him,” she replied. ”Trust me. Not like him. Thanks anyhow.”

”What did he look like?” came the question as she re-crossed the street.

A little vengeful part of Tesla, one she wasn't much proud of but which always came to the fore when someone did the dirty on her like this, replied: ”Like a f.u.c.king monkey,” in a voice that must have been heard halfway down Santa Monica and Melrose. ”He looked like a f.u.c.king monkey.”

So, Tesla babe, what now?

She poured herself a Tequila, sat herself down, and reviewed the overall picture. Raul gone; Kissoon in league with the Iad; Mary Muralles dead in the bedroom. Not a lot to take comfort from. She poured herself a second Tequila, not unaware that drunkenness, like sleep, might put her closer to Kissoon than she'd strictly like to be, but needing the burn of it in her throat and belly.

There was no purpose in staying in the apartment. The real action was back in Palomo Grove.

She put a call through to Grillo. He was not at the hotel. She asked the hotel operator to put her through to the front desk and enquired there if anyone knew where he was. n.o.body did. He'd gone out in the middle of the afternoon she was told. It was now four-twenty-five. They estimated he'd been gone an hour at least. To the party on the Hill she guessed.

With nothing to detain her at North Huntley Drive but mourning her sudden loss of allies, her best move now, she decided, was to go find Grillo, before circ.u.mstance took him from her too.

VIII.

Grillo hadn't come to the Grove with garb appropriate for the gathering up at Coney Eye, but this being California, where sneakers and jeans were formal dress, he thought he wouldn't be conspicuous in his casual gear. That was the first of the afternoon's many errors. Even the guards at the front gate were wearing tuxedos and black ties. But he had the invitation, on which he'd inscribed a false name (Jon Swift), and it was not questioned.

This was not the first time he'd slipped into a gathering under an a.s.sumed ident.i.ty. Back in his days as an investigative reporter (as opposed to his present role as muckraker) he'd attended a neo-n.a.z.is' revival meeting in Detroit as a distant relation of Goebbels, several faith-healing sessions by a defrocked priest whose scam he'd later uncovered in a series of pieces that had earned him a Pulitzer nomination, and, most memorably, a gathering of sado-m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts, his account of which had been smothered by the senator he'd seen chained up eating dog food. In those various companies he'd felt like a just man in dangerous company, going in search of truth: Philip Marlowe with a pen. Here he simply felt nauseous. A beggar sickened at the feast. From Ellen's account of the party he'd expected to see famous faces; what he hadn't antic.i.p.ated was the strange authority they'd had over him, quite out of proportion to their skills. Gathered under Buddy Vance's roof were dozens of the most well-known faces in the world; legends, idols, style-makers. Around them, faces he couldn't have put names to but he recognized from copies of Variety and Hollywood Reporter. The potentates of the industry-agents, lawyers and studio executives. Tesla, in her frequent railings against the New Hollywood, saved the sourest venom for these, the business-school types who'd superseded the old-style studio bosses, Warner, Selznick, Goldwyn and their clan, to rule the dream factories with their demographics and their calculators. These were the men and women who chose next year's deities, and put their names on audiences' lips around the world. It didn't always work of course. The public was fickle, sometimes positively perverse, deciding to deify an unknown against all expectation. But the system was prepared for such anomalies. The rank outsider would be drawn into the pantheon-at startling speed, and everyone would claim how they'd known all along the man was a star.

There were several such stars among this gathering, young actors who could not have known Buddy Vance personally but were presumably here because this was the Party of the Week; the place to be seen, and the company to be seen in.

He caught sight of Roch.e.l.le across the room, but she was engaged in being flattered-a whole gamut of admirers gathered around her, feeding on her beauty. She didn't look Grillo's way. Even if she had he doubted she would have recognized him. She had the distracted, dreamy air of one high on something other than admiration. Besides which, experience had taught him that his face was interchangeable with many others. There was a blandness about him which he'd put down to being so much a mongrel. Swedish, Russian, Lithuanian, Jewish and English trails could be found in his blood. They effectively cancelled each other out. He was everything and nothing. In such circ.u.mstances as these it gave him a strange confidence. He could pa.s.s himself off as any number of characters and not be called on it unless he made a major faux pas, and even then he could usually extricate himself.

Accepting a gla.s.s of champagne from one of the waiters he mingled with the crowd, mentally noting the names of faces he recognized; and the names of the company they kept. Though n.o.body in the room, other than Roch.e.l.le, had the slightest idea who he was he garnered nods from almost everyone whose eyes he met, and even a wave or two from individuals who were presumably scoring points among their circle as to how many of this dazzling congregation they were acquainted with. He fuelled the fiction, nodding when he was nodded at, waving when he was waved at, so that by the time he'd crossed the room his credentials were firmly established: he was one of the boys. This in turn led to an approach by a woman in her late fifties, who b.u.t.tonholed him with a glance and a sharp: ”So who are you?”

He hadn't prepared a detailed alter-ego, as he had with the neo-n.a.z.is and the faith-healer, so he simply said: ”Swift. Jonathan.”

She nodded, almost as though she knew.

”I'm Evelyn Quayle,” she said. ”Please call me Eve. Everyone does.”

”Eve it is.”

”What do people call you?”

”Swift,” he said.

”Fine,” she said. ”Would you catch that waiter and get me a fresh gla.s.s of champagne? They move so d.a.m.n fast.”

It was not the last she drank. She knew a great deal about the company they were keeping, which she furnished in greater detail the more gla.s.ses of champagne and compliments Grillo provided, one of the latter quite genuine. He'd guessed Eve to be in her mid-fifties. In fact she admitted to seventy-one.

”You don't look anything like that.”

”Control, my dear,” she said. ”I have every vice, but none to excess. Would you reach for another of those gla.s.ses before they slip by?”

She was the perfect gossip: beneficent in her b.i.t.c.hery. There was scarcely a man or woman in the room she couldn't supply some dirt about. The anorexic in scarlet, for instance, was the twin sister of Annie Kristol, darling of the celebrity game shows. She was wasting away at a rate that would prove fatal, Eve opined, within three months. By contrast, Merv Turner, one of the recently sacked board of Universal, had put on so much weight since exiting the Black Tower his wife refused to have s.e.x with him. As for Liza Andreatta, poor child, she'd been hospitalized for three weeks after the birth of her second child having been persuaded by her therapist that in nature the mother always ate the placenta. She'd eaten her own and been so traumatized she'd almost orphaned her child before it had seen its mother's face.

”Madness,” she said, smiling from ear to ear, ”isn't it?”

Grillo had to agree.

”A wonderful madness,” she went on. ”I've been part of it all my life and it's as wild now as it ever was. I'm getting rather warm; shall we step outside for a while?”

”Sure.”

She took Grillo's arm. ”You listen well,” she said as they stepped out into the garden. ”Which is unusual in this kind of company.”

”Really?” said Grillo.

”What are you: a writer?”

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