Coldheart Canyon (24 page)

Todd had known from the start that there was no chance of his attending the ceremony. Though he could now see that his wounded face was indeed healing properly, it was plain that he was in no condition to step into the limelight anytime soon. He had briefly considered hiring one of the great makeup men of the city to disguise the worst of the discoloration, but Maxine quickly dissuaded him. Such a plan would require them to share their secret with somebody else (this in itself was risky: makeup personnel were legendary gossips) and there was always the chance that, however good the cover-up was, the illusion of perfection would be spoiled under the blaze of so many lights. All it required was one lucky photographer to catch a crack in the painted mask, and all their hard work would be undone. The rumor-mill would grind into motion again.

“Anyway,” she reminded him, “you loathe the Oscars.”

This was indeed true. The spectacle of self-congratulation had always sickened him. The ghastly parade of nervous smiles as everyone traipsed into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the shrill laughter, the sweaty glances. Then, once everyone was inside, the circus itself. The lame jokes, the gushing speeches, the tears, the ego. There was always a minute or CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 178

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two of choreographed mawkishness, when the Academy carted out some antiquated star and gave him a last chance to flicker. Occasionally, when the taste level plummeted further than usual, the Academy chose some poor soul who’d already been stricken by a stroke or was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. There’d be a selection of clips from the poor victim’s great pictures, then, fumbling and bewildered, he or she would be led out to stand alone on the stage while the audience rose to applaud them, and you could see in their eyes that this was some kind of Hell: to have their finest moments thrown up on a screen—their faces strong and shining—and then have the spotlight show the world what age and disease had done to them.

“You’re right,” he’d said to Maxine. “I don’t want to be there.”

So why, if he truly didn’t want to be there, was he sitting at his bedroom window tonight, staring down the length of the Canyon toward the city, feeling so damn sorry for himself ? Why had he started drinking, and drinking hard, at noon, and by two-thirty—when he knew the first lim-ousines were beginning to roll up to the Pavilion—was he in the depths of despair?

Why, he asked himself, would he want to keep company with those hollow, sour people? He’d fought the battle to get to the top of the Hollywood Hill long ago, and he’d won it. He’d had his face plastered up on ten thousand billboards across America, across the world. He’d been called the Handsomest Man in the World, and believed it. He’d walked into rooms the size of football fields and known that every eye was turned in his direction, and every heart beat a little faster because he’d appeared.

Just how much more adulation did a man
need
?

The truth?

Another hundred rooms filled with people stupefied by worship would not be enough to satisfy the hunger in him; nor another hundred hundred.

He needed his face plastered on every wall he passed, his movies lauded to the skies, his arms so filled with Oscars he couldn’t hold them all.

It was a sickness in him, but what was he to do? There was no cure for CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 179

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this emptiness but love; love in boundless amounts; the kind of love God Himself would be hard-pressed to deliver.

As the cloudless sky darkened toward night he started to pick out the Klieg lights raking the clouds: not from the Pavilion itself (that lay to the west, and was not visible from the Canyon), but from the many locations around the city where his peers, both prize-winners and losers, would in a few hours come to revel. Members of the press were already assembling at these sacred sites—Morton’s, Spago’s, the Roosevelt Hotel—ready to turn their cameras on the slick and the stylishly unkempt alike. A smile, a witticism, a look of glee from those burdened with victory. They’d have it all in the morning editions.

Picturing the scene was too much for him. He got up and went down to the kitchen to fix himself another drink. By now he was on the second cycle of intoxication; having drunk himself past the point of nausea by mid-afternoon, he was moving inexorably toward a deep luxurious drunkenness; the kind that flirted with oblivion. He’d suffer for it for whatever part of tomorrow he saw, of course, and probably the day after that. He was no longer young enough or resilient enough to shrug off the effects of a binge like this. But right now he didn’t give a rat’s ass. He simply wanted to be insulated from the pain he was feeling.

As he opened the immense fridge to get himself ice, he heard, or thought he heard, somebody, a woman, say his name.

He stopped digging for the ice and looked around. The kitchen was empty. He left the fridge open and went back to the door. The turret was also deserted, and the dining room dark, the empty table and chairs silhouetted against the window. He walked on through it into the living room, calling for Marco. He flipped on the light. The fifty-lamp chandelier blazed, illuminating an empty room. There were several boxes of his belongings sitting there, still unopened. Moved from Bel Air but still unpacked. But that was all.

He was about to go back to the kitchen, assuming the voice he’d heard was alcohol-induced, when he heard his name called a second time. He looked back into the dining room. Was he going crazy?

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“Marco?” he yelled.

There was a long, empty moment. Somewhere in the darkness of the Canyon a solitary coyote was yelping. Then came the sound of a door opening, and he heard Marco’s familiar voice: “Yes, boss?”

“I heard somebody calling.”

“In the house?”

“Yeah. I thought so. A woman’s voice.”

Marco appeared on the stairs now, looking down at his employer with an expression of concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I just got unnerved, is all.”

“You want me to go check around?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t even know where it was coming from. But I heard somebody. I swear.”

Marco, who’d emerged from his bedroom in his boxers, headed back upstairs to get dressed. Todd went back to the kitchen, feeling a little stupid. There wasn’t going to be anybody here, inside the house or out.

Every stalker, every voyeur, every obsessive was canvassing the crowds around the Pavilion, looking for a way to slide past the security guards, under the velvet rope, and into the company of their idols. They weren’t wasting their time stumbling around in the darkness hoping for a glance of Todd Pickett, all fucked up. Nobody even knew he was here, for Christ’s sake. Worse; nobody cared.

As he returned to the business of making his drink, he heard Marco coming down back the stairs, and was half tempted to tell him to forget it.

But he decided against it. No harm in letting one of them feel useful tonight. He dropped a handful of ice-cubes into his glass, and filled it up with scotch. Took a mouthful. Topped it up. Took another mouthful—

And the voice came again.

If there had been some doubt in his head as to whether he’d actually heard the call or simply imagined it, there was now none. Somebody was here in the house, calling to him.

It seemed to be coming from the other side of the hallway. He set his CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 181

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drink down on the counter and quietly crossed the kitchen. The turret was deserted. There was nobody on the stairs either above or below.

He took the short passageway down to what Marco had dubbed the Casino, an immense wood-paneled room, lit by a number of low-slung lights, which indeed looked as though it had been designed to house a roulette wheel and half a dozen poker tables. Judging by the distance of the voice it seemed the likeliest place for whoever had spoken to be lurking. As he walked down the passageway it briefly occurred to him that to make this investigation without Marco at his side was foolishness. But the drink made him bold. Besides, it was only a woman he’d heard. He could deal with a woman.

The door of the Casino stood open. He peered in. The windows were undraped; a few soft panels of gray light slid through them, illuminating the enormity of the place. He could see no sign of an intruder. But some instinct instructed him not to believe the evidence of his eyes. He wasn’t alone here. The skin of his palms pricked. So, curiously, did the flesh beneath his bandages, as though it were especially susceptible in its new-born state.

“Who’s there?” he said, his voice less confident than he’d intended.

At the far end of the room one of the pools of light fluttered. Something passed through it, raising the dust.

“Who’s there?” he said again, his hand straying to the light switch.

He resisted the temptation to turn it on, however. Instead he waited, and watched. Whoever this trespasser was, she was too far from him to do any harm.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said gently. “You do know that, don’t you?”

Again, that subtle motion at the other end of the room. But he still couldn’t make out a figure; the darkness beyond the pool of light was too impenetrable.

“Why don’t you step out where I can see you?” he suggested.

This time he got an answer.

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“I will . . .” she told him. “In a minute.”

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Katya.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Through the door, like everybody else,” she said. Her tone was one of gentle amusement. It would have annoyed Todd if there hadn’t also been a certain sweetness there. He was curious to see what she looked like. But the more he pressed her, he thought, the more she’d resist. So he kept the conversation off the subject, and casually wandered across the immaculately laid and polished floor as he talked.

“It must have been hard to find me,” he said.

“Not at all,” she said. “I heard you were coming from Jerry.”

“You know Jerry?”

“Oh, yes. We go way back. He used to come up here when he was a child. You made a good choice with him, Todd. He keeps secrets.”

“Really? I always thought he was a bit of a gossip.”

“It depends if it’s important or not. He never mentioned me to you, did he?”

“No.”

“You see? Oh yes, and he’s dying. I suppose he didn’t mention that either.”

“No he didn’t.”

“Well he is. He has cancer. Inoperable.”

“He never said a thing,” Todd said, thinking not only of Jerry but of sick, silent Dempsey.

“Well why would he? To you of all people. He idolizes you.”

Her familiarity with Jerry, and her knowledge of his sickness, only added to the puzzle of her presence.

“Did he
send
you up here?” Todd said.

“No, silly,” the woman replied. “He sent
you
. I’ve been here all the time.”

“You have? Where?”

“Oh, I mostly stay in the guest-house.”

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She spoke so confidently, he almost believed her. But then surely if she
were
occupying the guest-house, Brahms would have warned Maxine? He knew how important Todd’s security was. Why would he let Maxine see the property, and not mention the fact that there was somebody else living in the Canyon?

He was about halfway across the room now, and he could see his visitor’s outline in the darkness. Her voice had not misled him. She was a young woman; elegantly dressed in a long, silver gown, highlighted with sinuous designs in gold thread. It shimmered, as though it possessed a subtle life of its own.

“How long have you been staying here?” he said to her.

“A lot longer than you,” she replied.

“Really?”

“Well, of course. When I first met Jerry, I’d been here . . . twenty, twenty-five years.”

This was an absurd invention, of course. Even without seeing her clearly, it was obvious to him that she was less than thirty; probably considerably less.

“But you said Jerry was a boy when you met him?” Todd said, thinking he’d quickly catch the woman in her lie.

“He was.”

“So you can’t have known him . . .”

“I know it doesn’t seem very likely. But things are different here in the Canyon. You’ll see. If you stay, that is. And I hope you will.”

“You mean buy the house?”

“No. I mean
stay
.”

“Why would I do that?” he said.

There was a moment’s pause; then, finally, she stepped into the light.

“Because I want you to,” she replied.

It was a moment from a movie; timed to perfection. The pause, the move, the line.

And the face, that was from a movie too, in its luxury, in its perfection.

Her eyes were large and luminous, green flecked with lilac. Their bright-

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ness was enhanced by the darkness of her eyeshadow, and the thickness of her lashes. Neither her nose nor her mouth was delicate; her lips were full, her chin robust, her cheekbones high; almost Slavic. Her hair was black, and fell straight down, framing her face. She wore plenty of jewelry, and it was all exquisite. One necklace lay tightly in the valley of her throat, another—much, much looser—fell between her breasts. Her earrings were gold; her bracelets—several on each wrist—all elaborately wrought.

Yet she carried all this effortlessly, as though she’d been wearing a queen’s ransom in jewelry all her life.

“I’m sure you could find plenty of company besides me,” Todd said.

“I’m sure I could,” she replied. “But I don’t want plenty of company. I want you.”

Todd was totally bewildered now. No part of this puzzle fitted with any other. The woman looked so poised, so exquisite, but she spoke nonsense.

She didn’t know him. She hadn’t chosen him. He’d come up here of his own free will, to hide himself away. Yet she seemed to insinuate that he was here at her behest, and that somehow she intended to make him stay.