Coldheart Canyon (52 page)

She got herself a cup of milk from the refrigerator to calm her stomach, which always troubled her when, as now, she was unsettled for some reason or another. Then she went through the house, taking her time passing from one room to another, and as she came to the front door she heard the sound of a car coming up the street. She stepped outside, and walked along the front path until she reached the pool of light from the car’s headlights.

“Is that you, Jerry?”

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A car door opened.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said. “Was I expected?”

“You were.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

She went to the little gate, and stepped out onto the narrow sidewalk.

Jerry had got out of the car. He had a barely-suppressed look of shock on his face, seeing her step beyond the bounds of her little dominion for the first time.

“Are we actually
going somewhere
?” he asked her.

“I certainly hope so,” she said, playing it off lightly. She could not completely conceal her unease, however. It was there in her eyes. But there was also something else in her glance, besides the unease: something far more remarkable. A kind of sweetness, even innocence. She looked like a girl out on her first Prom Night, tiptoeing to the edge of womanhood.

Amazing, Jerry thought. Knowing all that he did about Katya—all that she’d done and caused to have done—to be able to find that look in her memory banks, and put it up there on her face, so that it looked as real as it did;
that
was a performance.

“Where will I be taking you tonight, ma’am?” Jerry asked her.

“I’m not exactly sure. You see, we’re going to be looking for somebody.”

“Are we indeed? And may I take a guess at who?”

Katya smiled. “Too easy,” she said.

“We’ll find him for you. Don’t you worry.”

“You were the one who got him to come up here in the first place, Jerry.

So you’re the match-maker. And thank you. From both of us, thank you.

It’s been quite a remarkable time for me, Jerry. I never thought I’d ever fall in love again. And with an
actor
.” She laughed. “You’d think I’d have learned by now.”

“I hope it’s a happy mistake.”

“Oh it is, Jerry. It’s perfect.
He’s
perfect.”

“Is he?”

“For me. Yes. Perfect for me.”

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“So will you be joining him somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not exactly sure
where
?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m going to hazard a guess and say he’s at Maxine’s, because I know she’s having a big bash tonight. Do you want me to call her, and ask her if he’s there? Maybe tell her I’m bringing a special guest?”

“No, I think it’s best we just do this quietly, don’t you?”

“However you prefer. Tonight’s your night.”

“I don’t want any big hoopla,” Katya said. “
I just want to find him
.”

For a moment the illusion disappeared completely, and reality showed itself: the desperate hunger of a woman who needed to find the love of her life. Not tomorrow, or the day after, but
tonight
. She had no time to waste, this woman; no time for error or procrastination.

“Shall we go?” she said.

“Ready when you are.”

She went to the car and started to fumble with the doorhandle.

“Please,” Jerry said. “Allow me.” He came round to the passenger side and opened the door.

“Thank you, Jerry. How nice. Old-fashioned manners,” she said. She got into the car in one elegant movement. Jerry closed the door and went to the driver’s side. She was
trembling
, he saw; just the slightest tremor.

“It’s going to be all right,” he reassured her when he was settled in beside her.

“Is it?” she said, with a smile too tentative to survive more than a breath.

“Yes. It’s going to be fine.”

“He’s the one, Jerry. Todd is the one. If he were to turn me down—”

“He’s
not
going to do that, now is he?” Jerry said. “He’d be a fool to say no to you. And whatever else Todd is, he’s no fool.”

“So find him for me. Will you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then I can start to live again.”

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S I X

It had taken Todd a few minutes to get used to sitting behind the wheel of the old Lincoln sedan which Marco had chosen, many years before, as the vehicle in which he preferred to anonymously chauffeur Todd around.

Sitting in the seat adjusted for Marco’s huge frame made him realize—for the first time in the chaotic sequence of dramas that had unraveled since Marco’s sudden death—how much he would miss the man.

Marco had been a stabilizing influence in a world that was showing signs of becoming more unstable by the hour. But more than that: he’d been Todd’s friend. He’d had a good nose for bullshit, and he’d never been afraid of speaking his mind, especially when it came to protecting his boss.

There would come a time, Todd had promised himself, when he would sit down and think of something to do that would honor Caputo’s name.

He’d been no intellectual, so the founding of a library, or the funding of the Caputo Prize for Scholastic Achievement, wouldn’t really be perti-nent: it would need some serious thought to create a project that reflected and honored the complexity of the man.

“You’re thinking about Marco Caputo,” Tammy said as she watched Todd adjust to the spatial arrangements of the driver’s seat.

“The way you said that, it didn’t sound as though you liked him very much.”

“He was rude to me on a couple of occasions,” Tammy said, making light of it now. “It was no big deal.”

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replied. “And I’m only now realizing how much I took him for granted.

Christ. First I lose my dog, then my best buddy—”

“Dempsey?”

“Yeah. He died of cancer in February.”

“I’m sorry.”

Todd turned on the ignition. His thoughts were still with Marco. “You know what I think?” he said.

“What?”

“I think that the night he got killed he wasn’t just drunk. He was panicked and drunk.”

“You mean he’d seen something?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. He’d seen something up at the house and was running away.” He drew a loud breath through his nose. “Okay.

Enough of the detective work. We can do some more of that when all this is over. Right now, we’re heading for Malibu.”

On the way down to the ocean, Todd provided Tammy with a little portrait of where they were going. She knew about the Colony, of course—the guarded community of superstars who lived in houses filled with Picassos and Mirós and Monets, with the ever-unpredictable Pacific a few yards from their back doors, and—just a jump across the Pacific Coast Highway—the Malibu Hills, which had been the scene of countless wildfires in the hot season, and mud-slides in the wet. What she didn’t know was just how exclusive it was, even for those who were powerful enough to write their own rules in any other circumstances.

“I was planning to buy this house next door to Maxine’s place, way back,” Todd told her, “but my lawyer—who was this wily old fart called Lester Mayfield—said: ‘You’re going to want to rip out that concrete deck and take off the old shingle roof, aren’t you?’ And I said: ‘You betcha.’ And he said: ‘Well, dream on, buster, ’cause they won’t let you. You’ll spend the next ten years fighting with the Colony Committee to change the color of your toilet seat.’

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then. I guess somebody must have pointed out that they were preserving some pieces of utter shit.”

“Who ended up buying the house next door to Maxine?”

“Oh . . . he was a producer, had a deal with Paramount. Made some very successful movies for them. Then the IRS taps him on the shoulder and asks why he hasn’t paid his taxes for six years. He ended up going to jail, and the house stood empty.”

“Nobody else bought it?”

“No. He wanted to be back making movies when he got out of the slammer. Which is what he did. Went straight back into the business.

Made six more huge movies. And he still snorts coke from between the tits of loose women. Bob Graydon’s his name.”

“Isn’t he the one who had an artificial septum put in his nose because he’d had the real thing eaten away by cocaine?”

“That’s Bob. Where’d you hear that?”

“Oh, the
National Enquirer
probably. I buy them all in case there’s something about you. Not that I believe everything I read—” she added hurriedly.

“Just the juicy bits.”

“Well after a time you get a
feeling
about what’s true and what’s not true.”

“Care to give me an example?”

“No.”

“Go on.”

“That’s not fair. I’m screwed whatever I say. No! Wait! Here’s one!

About two years ago they said you were going into a private hospital in Montreal to have your ding-a-ling enlarged.”

“My
ding
-
a
-
ling
?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do you say ding-a-ling to Arnie? It
is
Arnie, isn’t it?”

“Yes it’s Arnie and no I don’t say ding-a-ling.”

“Tell me about him.”

“There isn’t much to tell.”

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“Why’d you marry him? Tell me that.”

“Well it wasn’t because of the size of his dick.”

“Dick! That’s what you call it: dick.”

“I guess I do,” Tammy said, amused, a little embarrassed to have let this slip. “Anyway, back to the story in
The Enquirer
. They said you were in Montreal getting your thingie—your dick—made bigger. Except I knew that wasn’t true.”

“How come?”

“It just didn’t make any sense. Not after the articles I’d read about you.”

“Go on,” Todd said, fascinated.

“Well . . . you know I read everything that’s ever been written about you? Everything in English. And then if there’s a really important interview in, say,
Paris Match
or
Stern
, I get it translated.”

“Jesus. Really? What for?”

“So I can keep up with your opinions. And . . . sometimes in the foreign magazines they write the kind of things you wouldn’t read in an American magazine. One of them did a piece about your love-life. About all the ladies you’d dated, and the things they’d said about you—”

“My acting?”

“No. Your . . . other performances.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I thought you knew about these things. I thought you probably signed off on them.”

“If I read every article in every magazine—”

“You’d never make another movie.”

“Exactly. So, go back to the article. The ladies, talking about me. What does that have to do with the story in
The Enquirer
?”

“Oh just that here were all these women talking about you in bed—and a few of them were not exactly happy with the way you treated them—but none of them said, even vaguely intimated that . . .”

“I had a small dick.”

“Right.”

“So I thought, there’s no way he’s gone to Montreal to have his ding-a-

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ling enlarged because it’s just fine as it is. Now. Can we move on, or shall I throw myself out of the window from sheer embarrassment?”

Todd laughed. “You are an education, do you know that?”

“I am?”

“You are.”

“In a good way?”

“Oh yeah, it’s all good. It’s all fine.”

“You realize, of course, that there’s stuff being written about you right now, a lot of people upset and worried.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody knows what happened to you. There are plenty of people, fans of yours, like me, who think of you practically as a member of the family. Todd did this. Todd did that. And now, suddenly, Todd’s missing. And nobody knows where he’s gone. They start to fret. They start to make up all kinds of ridiculous reasons. I know I did. It’s not that they’re crazy—”

“No, look. I don’t think you, or any of them, are crazy. Or if you are, it’s a good crazy. I mean, what you did last night . . . none of my family would have done.”

“You’d be surprised how many people love you.”

“They love
something
but I don’t think it’s
me
, Tammy.”

“Why not?”

“Well for one thing, if you could get inside here, in my head with Todd Pickett, you wouldn’t find much worth idolizing. You really wouldn’t. I am painfully, excruciatingly, ordinary. My brother, Donnie, on the other hand: he’s worth admiring. He’s smart. He’s honest. I was just the one with this.” He turned on his smile as he drove and gave her the benefit of its luminosity. Then, just as easily, he turned it off. “See, you learn to do that,” he went on. “It’s like a faucet. You turn the smile on, and people bathe in it for a while, then you turn it off and you go home and wonder what all the fuckin’ fuss was about. It’s not like I
deserve
the adulation of millions. I can’t act. And I’ve got the reviews to prove it.” He chuckled at his self-deprecation. “That’s not mine,” he said, “it was Victor Mature.”

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“Okay, so you’re not the best actor in Hollywood. You’re not the worst either.”

“No. I grant you, there’s worse.”

“A lot worse.”

“All right, a lot worse. Still doesn’t make me a good actor.”

He obviously wasn’t going to be moved on the subject, so Tammy left it where it was. They drove on in silence for a while. Then he swung the mirror round, and checked out his face. “You know I’m nervous?”

“Why?”