Fade to Black (25 page)

“ ‘C. Jarrett,’ ” Stacey read the stenciled lettering on the first door they came to. “Is this the place?”

“Uh huh,” Marilyn said, noticing a note folded in the crack of the door. She pulled it out and unfolded it, reading, “ ‘Developing prints in darkroom. Come in.’ ”

“I don’t like it, I tell you,” Stacey said.

“Oh, stop being such a wet blanket,” Marilyn answered, trying the door. It was also open. They stepped into a lavish reception area, well-furnished and containing a wall lined with portrait samples and a few thousand dollars’ worth of other decoration.

“Wow,” Stacey exclaimed reluctantly, “what a layout. Maybe this guy’s legit after all.”

“Of course he is,” Marilyn insisted. “All these high-pressure types sleep all day and work all night. Do I look all right?”

“Yeah, you look great,” Stacey said, going back to the door. “I’ll pick you up later. Don’t want him to think we were suspicious or anything.”

Marilyn was suddenly anxious. She looked at her reflection in one of the hanging pictures. She’d made herself up to look like Marilyn Monroe around the time of
Bus Stop.
“Do you have to go now? Can’t you stay a minute?”

“You’ll be all right.”

Marilyn took a deep breath.

“Okay. Thanks for the lift. Bye.”

“Bye,” Stacey said, winking. “Good luck.”

“I’ll need it,” Marilyn said, laughing nervously.

Once she was alone, she stood looking at the other models pictured on the wall, tapping her toe nervously on the floor. Unable to stand still, she finally walked past the reception area and down the inside hallway.

Coming to the open door of the first studio on her right, she looked in and gasped.

A flashbulb exploded, dazzling her eyes.

Eric peered at her from over the top of a mounted antique camera, smiling triumphantly. He was dressed in a light green outfit with an embroidered vest and epaulets, of questionable origin but obviously meant for some sort of royalty. His hair was neatly combed and he wore tall black boots.

“How do you do?” he said, his voice distinguished, like Count Dracula without the fangs. “So good of you to come on such short notice, Miss Marina.”

“My name’s Marilyn O’Connor,” she said, recognizing Eric and smiling demurely. “Who are you?

“I am the Regent of Carpathia,” Eric said succinctly, with a short, noble bow. “Prince of Hungary.”

“What?” Marilyn giggled, enthralled. She didn’t understand it at all, but she found herself happy to see Eric again, especially in the wake of what had happened with David. She was about to apologize for their thwarted date when he stepped around the camera and came toward her.

“No cause for alarm, my dear,” he said elegantly. “For tonight we shall recreate
The Prince and the Showgirl,
if not your best performance, then certainly your most endearing. You starred in it with Sir Laurence Olivier, and he directed you as well.” He took her hand and kissed it gently. “I am at your service . . . and you mine.”

“Hmmmm?”

“It is a love story,” Eric told her, continuing to hold her hand as he stepped closer to her so that their eyes and lips were but inches apart.

“Tender,” he whispered, “touching. My sweet Marilyn.”

CHAPTER •
31

For almost seventy years, the sturdy brownstone building at the corner of Main and Ryder had housed the United Pentecostal Church, drawing full houses on Sundays and tending to the spiritual needs of a loyal congregation. Two years ago, however, the Lord and his earthly surrogates had moved to the high-rent district closer to the Marina, leaving the brownstone to the heathens. Reopened as Venice de Menice, the only trace left of the previous habitation were the biblical motifs of the stained glass windows—now covered by steel mesh to guard against vandalism—and the outlines of pews on the old oak floor. The altar had been turned into a bandstand, drinks were poured in the sacristy, and punk gangs did the Slam in the aisles when the spirit moved them.

Moriarty stood at the bar, watching Drew Cantrell and the Canals wrap up their first set of the evening. He sipped on a dark Heineken as he watched the band, nodding his head and tapping his finger on his knee in time to Franco’s drum playing. The juvenile, glistening with sweat under a spotlight, pounded furiously at the drums, his face flushed with excitement.

At the microphone, Drew Cantrell, dark-eyed son of a journeyman bricklayer, slapped a pair of hollowed gourds against his thighs as he sang starkly:

Things were getting worse;

I wrote a suicide note;

I put it in her purse,

And then I slit her throat.

And then I walked right out the door;

I walked right out the door.

The instrumentals had changed course abruptly halfway through the last verse, on cue with “and then I slit her throat,” translating the verbalized violence into its musical complement. The group members all turned and started playing against one another, all the time raising the tempo of a frenzied beat punctuated by Franco’s jackhammer slapping at his snare.

Moriarty watched the crowd, astounded at the way the music generated the crowd into a frenzy all its own. People who only moments before had been sitting elbow to elbow at the round tables scattered along the walls had suddenly risen to their feet, joining the coagulated mass of bodies on the dance floor. It was a twisted variation of the implosion principle. The tighter the crowd converged upon itself, the more aroused it became. A few of the shrieks leaping out from the packed maze of limbs sounded more pained than joyous.

Entranced by the phenomena, Moriarty found himself tensing against an anticipated outburst of violence. Split seconds before that point was reached, the music stopped in midnote. The group, without missing a beat, lapsed into an acappella chorus of “Leader of the Pack,” clapping their hands and hopping up and down like Mousketeers.

The timing and effect were incredible. The pent-up tension drained out more like a balloon untied than one popped. The crowd ate it up, joining in clapping and then turning it into applause at the end of the song.

“To the edge and back,” Drew muttered into the microphone. “We’ll be back in ten.”

Taped music took over and the house lights went up slightly as the band climbed out and away from their instruments and made their way over to the bar. Franco walked over to Moriarty.

“Whatcha think?” he asked.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, Franco,” Moriarty said, “Closest I can think of was a couple of Doors concerts back in sixty-eight, sixty-nine.”

“That good, huh?”

Moriarty nodded, “I think you’re all out of your fucking gourds, pardon the pun, but I have to admit it’s great stuff. I’m glad Drew’s in a group and not behind a pulpit.”

“Depends on how you look at it,” Franco said. “By the way, I’m going by Jism these days.”

“Say what?”

“Jism. My new stage name,” the drummer said proudly.

“Jism. That’s an, uh, interesting choice.”

“Sounds better than Sperm, doesn’t it?”

They both laughed.

“Moriarty! Jerry?”

Anne was halfway through the crowd, waving her hands above her head.

Moriarty finished his drink and got up, turning to the drummer.

“I gotta go. You keep it up, though, okay? The better you look, the better I look, and the better off we’ll both be. Don’t forget that, okay?”

“You got it, shrink,” Franco Jism said.

Moriarty pried his way through the crowd and escorted Anne outside, where there was a line of people waiting to get in, almost all of them young and identical-looking in their attempts to look outrageously different.

“I tell you, Anne, there’s times when I think at heart I’m still a snot-nosed little teenager. But after an hour of that,” he said, jerking his head back toward Venice de Menice, “I’m glad I snapped out of it.”

“Something else, isn’t it?”

“It’s like an incubator for droogies, I swear,” Moriarty said. “Now I see why Franco used a paring knife. There’s not enough room for a machete.”

They walked down to the end of the block and turned the corner, getting into Anne’s patrol car. She was out of uniform.

“How’s he doing?” she asked, starting up the car and turning onto Main Street.

“I think he’s going to pull through fine,” Moriarty said, “so long as the parole board doesn’t drop in on one of his sets.”

“Well, I’ve got an eye-opener for you,” Anne said, cruising north toward Santa Monica.

“They got Binford?”

Anne shook her head. “I think half the force is out on the prowl for him, though. We did turn up something that’s right down your alley.”

“What’s that?”

“As near as we can figure it, his first victim was a Stella Binford. She supposedly fell down a flight of stairs in a wheelchair about a month ago, just before the whore got eighty-sixed. It was her room that had been cleared out.”

Moriarty stroked his chin.

“How does that qualify as being right down my alley?”

“That’s only part of it, Jerry. This Stella Binford was supposedly Eric’s aunt, only it turns out she was actually his mother.”

Moriarty shook his head. “You’re right. I know a lot of people that are going to have a field day with that one. Why the charade?”

“She was a fledgling dancer before Eric was born, just starting on her way up. She never married, so when she got knocked up, she apparently didn’t want a scandal on her hands, so she came up with this angle. Gallagher figures the guy who did it was in a position to help out her career as long as word about him didn’t get out. Her career never panned out, and when she was paralyzed in a car accident when Eric was four, she just kinda withdrew from the world . . .”

“ . . . taking Eric hostage,” Moriarty finished as they approached Rose Avenue. He suddenly slammed his fist on the dashboard and shouted, “Anne, take a right!”

“Wha—?”

“A right. Here!”

Anne screeched her brakes as she swerved around the corner.

“What is it, Jerry?”

“Marilyn O’Connor,” he exclaimed. “Jesus Christ! Why the hell didn’t I think of it before?”

“I’m still half a step behind you, Jerry,” Anne said, following Moriarty’s directions to Marilyn’s house.

“You will when you take a look at her,” Moriarty said as they got out of the car.

The porch light was on, as well as an indoor lamp, but no one answered Jerry’s knock.

“Damn it!” Moriarty cried, frustrated. “If I would have been thinking . . .”

“Thinking about what?” Anne asked as they started back down the steps. “Jerry, would you please tell me what it is—”

The front door opened behind them. Moriarty turned around and bounded up the steps to find David standing on the other side of the screen door.

“What is it, Doc?” David asked demurely, opening the door. “Come in.”

Moriarty stepped inside. Anne followed close behind.

“I’m looking for Marilyn,” Moriarty said, noticing a red-haired woman sitting on the living room couch.

“You and me both, Doc,” David said. “Oh, Dr. Moriarty, this is my sister-in-law, Kay Allman. Kay, this is Dr. Moriarty and . . .”

Anne introduced herself.

“Kay works for the Price Agency,” David explained. “They handle a lot of commercial talent, a few up and comers in television. I was going to surprise Marilyn with a chance to do a reading, but things sort of backfired.” He dabbed the scratch marks on his cheek. “We’ve been waiting for her to show up for the past hour or so, but—”

“And you have no idea where she might be,” Moriarty asked.

David shook his head.

Anne looked into the bedroom just past the front hallway and frowned, bending over to pick something off the floor.

“Jerry,” she said, standing back up. “Were you about to tell me Marilyn O’Connor looks a lot like Marilyn Monroe?”

“Yeah, how did you . . .”

Anne showed him the flier Marilyn had taken from the sandwich board earlier in the day. Cody Jarrett’s name was there. So was the address of Blow Up studios.

“Oh my god,” Moriarty murmured.

“What is it?” David demanded.

“Where’s the phone here?” Moriarty asked. He spotted it on the coffee table in front of Kay and picked it up, dialing the number on the card. The line was busy. He hung up and called again.

After two rings, a recorded message came over the line.

It was Eric’s voice.

“This is Cody Jarrett. The Marilyn Monroe lookalike has already been selected. Thank you for calling. This is Cody Jarrett . . .”

“Outpost Drive,” Anne read off the card. “I know where that is.”

“What’s going on here?” David cried.

“There’s no time to explain,” Moriarty said as he and Anne rushed out the door. “If Marilyn shows up, you keep her here and stay with her, do you understand?”

“Yes, but . . .”

Moriarty and Anne charged down the sidewalk to the patrol car and drove off. She reached for the microphone of her police radio. Moriarty grabbed her wrist and pulled it away.

“No, Anne. Please. I want to get to him first.”

“Jerry, I can’t—”

“You have to!”

Anne turned onto Lincoln and raced to the entrance ramp leading to the Santa Monica Freeway, heading east toward Hollywood.

CHAPTER •
32

Eric had spent all day and all his money preparing for this evening. He’d never felt better in his life.

Watching Marilyn sitting before the mirror, he smiled warmly. We’re doing it, he thought to himself. Everything according to plan.

He opened the champagne, watching the top shoot up against the studio ceiling and roll across the floor. He raised the bottle to his lips and drank down the foaming overflow until it subsided, then poured the effervescent liquid into separate crystal glasses.

Into one of the glasses he dropped two white pills. They dissolved immediately.

He walked over to Marilyn and gave her the doctored drink. Her hair was tousled now, her lips a sparkling crimson. She was dressed in white silk, her neck and arms dripping with synthetic diamonds. She watched herself in the mirror. She liked what she saw and toasted herself, looking up into Eric’s reflection, standing over her shoulder.