Hollywood Boulevard (21 page)

    I pulled the phone away from my ear and examined it for a second as if it might bite. "Fits? It's Ardennes. . . ."

    "The lady from the forest; how do, sugar poo?" I didn't say anything. "Funny, I was thinking about you this very morning, lying in bed. You know those are the best moments of the day; you leave the dream world and see yourself for a clear few seconds sans the accumulated lifetime of bullshit on top. Best time to figure things out. So there I was with you on my mind—"

    "Fits, listen—"

    "Not like that, baby. I was thinking, maybe Ardennes got it right walking away. This business is full of shit."

    "Well, there's plenty of that going around. Politicians, religious leaders . . ."

    "But in Hollywood it's systemic. 'What do you do? Me, I entertain.' It's a lousy charade, and you figured it out."

    "Not exactly," I said. "It's not like I became a brain surgeon in Rwanda, saving people. What's with the cowboy act, Fits? Have you been drinking?"

    "Certainly not! I'm gearing for a part. You couldn't tell? That's not good," he added, sotto voce.

    Oh, the hoops a good actor leaps through to get at a part. Even Fits, who rarely had the lead, prepared hard no matter how small the role. Too many actors were bums that way, doing the obvious, relying on eye- candy looks, playing at it; a charade, like Fits said. To prepare for
Separation and Rain
I stood outside in a rainstorm for twenty minutes in just my panties. My nipples hurt for a week after that, a wonder I didn't catch my death. It rains in nearly every scene in the film, and every character got to make a comment on the weather: classic Lucerne.

    "Interesting part?" I asked.

    "Not bad; an indie about a director who fakes his own death— comedy. Pay stinks, of course."

    Fits had seen my enchanted response in Mexico when I'd bought my first Day of the Dead Doll. I'd said to him, "This is the kind of ritual I could sink my teeth into: drama, emotion, fun, and death. How can you improve on that?" And Fits had shot back: "The gay Halloween parade in the Village?"

    "So, thanks for the bouquet."

    "What bouquet?"

    "C'mon, Fits, very funny."

    "Ard, baby, you lost me."

    "You didn't send me a bouquet of dead roses?"

    "Someone did?"

    "Hang on, Fits." I heard tapping on my door, brittle, like long fingernails. "Someone's at the door, I gotta go." The Detective, I guessed.

    "I didn't send any dead flowers," Fits said. He sounded like himself again, not the character he'd be playing. I said okay and hung up.

    I called out softly, "Detective?"

    The tapping came again, and I got up sneaky- like and tiptoed to the door. I looked out the peephole, and there stood Sylvia Vernon, Mucho tucked under her arm, his eyes staring like big black marbles.

    "Oh, Sylvia, give me a second," I said through the door. I had to hide the box of dead flowers the Detective told me not to touch. Never mind his telling me not to let anyone in. I moved the box very carefully over to the bed, shut the louvered blinds on either glass door and closed them tight. I trotted back to the front door, pulling my cotton sweater off partway, seemingly pulling it over my head as I opened the door. "Sorry, Sylvia, I overslept— you caught me off to a late start. Come in."

    She clacked her low- heeled slingbacks across the kitchen tiles and into the sitting room, where she planted herself on the couch, placing Mucho on the floor. The dog made a beeline for the bedroom doors. Watching Mucho, Sylvia said, "What? Ya have a man in there?"

    I laughed. "Two." I laughed again, forced this time. "The bed's not made."

    Sylvia smoothed her white capris, crossing her legs, and drew a cigarette pack out of a sweater pocket. From another pocket she located a black holder with a ring of rhinestones where the cigarette fit in. "I thought I heard Arturo," she said, fitting a cigarette into the holder. "I'm getting a late start myself this morning or I would have nabbed him. Something's going on with my fridge." She had a sultry kind of drawl I hadn't noticed in her speech before. I was thinking how to tell her it would be better if she didn't smoke, but she didn't light up. "I quit," she explained, "but only after the doctor held a gun to my head." She held the cigarette and holder in her left hand as if she were between puffs.

    The full- time residences aren't entitled to maid service, though the owners are obliged to keep up maintenance. I'd heard a rumor the family who owned the property was looking to sell the thirteen- acre Muse parcel. Quarrels among the heirs, Sharif had let it be known. I brought that up, asking Sylvia if she knew the place might be sold, and would that be a problem for her.

    "Renter laws are pretty protective in Los Angeles. They'd have trouble kicking us all out. They're not letting anyone else in, I can tell you that. Next to and above me are locked up empty, downstairs too. Only you and me on this floor, and that film fellow at the other end of the landing. Plans are to renovate, but why bother if you're selling?"

    "Don't they lose money having them sit empty?"

    "They're losing anyhow. The restaurant's in trouble, hardly any patrons some nights."

    I was stalling before pouncing on what I wanted to know: Lucille and the fire and what Sylvia knew. "I was just putting up a pot of tea. Care for some?"

    " Never touch the stuff. If you have coffee I'd be tempted."

    "I have," I said. I went around the corner to make some, figuring I'd join Sylvia in a cup. I thought I heard her moving. She said something, and I turned the water off. "Did you say something, Sylvia?"

    "I was just telling Mucho to leave off the bedroom."

    "Oh." I glanced around the corner just in time to see Sylvia sit back down.

    I brought out the coffees, skim milk, sugar and a couple of croissants from the lobby breakfast I'd stuck in the freezer, they micro- waved soft in a hurry. I had packets of the hotel cherry jam too, napkins; a nice little setup.

    " These from below? They don't let us in on those goodies either," Sylvia said, eyeing the croissants. She helped herself, smearing each bite with jam.

    "Sylvia, did you know . . . I heard there'd been a fire next door— years ago — and I think an actress died."

    "What of it?"

    "Just curious." I went for nonchalance.

    "I watched a couple of your films the other day," she said, changing the subject. "You weren't bad." She didn't look at me while paying the compliment.

    "So they say."

    "Mucho, come here!" The dog was not letting go of the bedroom doors, sniffing at the carpeted threshold like he was on to a bag of bones. He did not obey his mistress but began to dig at the carpet. Sylvia took a hard pull on her unlit cigarette. " There was a fire all right," she said, as if she hadn't just shifted topics. "I stayed with Lucille sometimes when I came in from Vegas. That was the actress who died, Lucille Trevor. We first hooked up when she came out to the casino for a film, a revue number. I coached the gals how to dance in pasties and boas. She was the lead dancer but only a bit part in the movie."

    "So she could still dance?"

    Sylvia's eyes met mine, hers silvery blue and cold as ice. I lowered mine to the floor. I was caught red- handed, and stupid to boot.

"Then you already knew about Lucille? Why ask me?"

    Let's see if I could act my way out of this one. Play it cool, hold her gaze, steady, calm. I forced my eyes to stay on hers. They burned, and I fought not to blink. "I'm working on a book, well, researching one, about Hollywood actresses." I glanced at the dog still sniffing the bedroom doors. "Not the famous ones . . . more, what about all those girls who come out here with a dream only to end badly?"

    "Plenty of dreams don't make it, probably most. What happened to yours?"

    I was beginning to see the brassy side of Sylvia Vernon. I glanced up at the clock on top of the TV cabinet. The Detective would be here soon. I had to get rid of her. "Mustn't have been all that interesting," I said, going for I- couldn' t- care- less.

    "And Lucille's was?" She tossed me that icy stare again.

    I stood up. "Sylvia, I have an appointment. . . . I'm sorry to cut this short. . . ." (What a rotten exit line: an appointment?)

    Sylvia stood too and Mucho came running. She bent down to pick him up. "No worries. You should stop by, visit the scene of the— accident. If you stand in the closet with the door closed tight, you can faintly smell smoke still stuck in the walls." She angled her head back, looking up at me, watching my face. I turned and walked to the door.

    "She was a beauty," Sylvia said, stopping in the doorway. "Thanks for the hospitality," she added, her tone more snarl than farewell.

    I closed the door quietly behind her. Oh, boy, did I blow it. "Dammit, Ardennes!" I quickly gathered the coffee cups and plates and loaded them into the sink. I ran to the bedroom to carry the box of dead roses back into the sitting room. My cell phone rang and I left the white box on the bed to find the phone on the dining table. I dropped the brown mailing carton on a chair as I said hello.

    Detective Collins was on the other end. "I'll be there in ten minutes," he said.

    "You remember the gate combination?"

    "Of course."

    I put the phone down on the side table and saw Sylvia's rhinestone cigarette holder, almost hidden behind the vase of lilies. One of the long white petals had fallen off. The cigarette was gone. I remembered her placing it on the saucer, wasting a perfectly good smoke. I ran to the bedroom and dropped the holder into the desk drawer. Then I ran to the kitchen to wash the dishes to be rid of any trace of Sylvia's visit. I'd disobeyed the Detective by letting her in. Curiosity— Lucille— had killed that cat. The last of the crumbs was wiped away when the Detective tapped lightly on the door.

    The same thing happened when I opened the door to Detective Collins as the last time: the size and presence of the man caught me. He wasn't
that
big; there was just that . . . je ne sais quoi. I smiled and waved him in, thanking him again for coming.

    He looked around. I guess cops do that automatically, like thieves who can't help casing any room they enter. "You have company?"

    "What?"

    "That stink's not your perfume."

    "Oh. The maid must have sprayed something." Now I was lying to him. That would be the maid he'd told me not to have in. "Yesterday, I mean."

    " Uh- huh. So, where's this package got you all hopped up?"

    It was on the rumpled bed I'd lingered in, exposed now like an invitation to random lust. "I'll bring it here," I said, moving quickly to the bedroom.

    "No, you will not," he said, following me just as fast. He lightly pushed me aside and leaned over the box and the tangled bed. The lid was only resting, not all the way closed. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves picked out of his pocket and gingerly lifted the lid, which he placed next to the box. He fished around carefully inside. Dried petals fell at the slightest touch. He felt beneath the green florist's paper. "No note?"

    I shook my head. " Watch the thorns." A couple more petals fell away as he lifted one of the Day of the Dead dolls. "I sort of collect those," I volunteered.

    He gave me a hard look and replaced the doll. "No name on the box. This how it was delivered?"

    "No, it was mailed. That box is on the chair." I indicated the dining chair by the balcony door.

    The Detective nodded. He walked over to the mailing carton with me following like a nervous cat. "Any return address?"

    I was close enough to him to feel his body heat. "Nothing familiar." There was a Los Angeles postmark, but the last digit was blurry. The return address was from down toward San Diego, Corona Del Mar.

    "Probably fake," the Detective said of the address. "Unless you know anyone from there?" I did not. He took out a pad and pen and copied the post office numbers and return address.

    "What about fingerprints?" I asked.

    The Detective removed the latex gloves and put them back into his pocket. "Too many people touched things to bother. And, look, anonymously sent dead flowers don't constitute a crime." He paused as if to punctuate what came next. "Okay, here's the deal: I talked to my boss—" My brows went together; I made a gesture, a pushing- something- away motion with my hands. "Just hear me for a second." There was a slight eagerness in his tone, just a fragment. "He caught on before I did: Sure, it was Harry Machin's death brought you to Beverly Hills precinct, but you're— were— an actor and felt safer talking to a cop you'd already had dealings with—"

    "I thought you said there was no crime. Eddie was nothing, the phone calls are nothing, and maybe my husband sent the flowers!" I was speaking way too loud.

    " Could he have?"

    
"No!"

    "What you need is discretion and to feel safe, and I've got the okay to do that."

    "You've got the okay from your captain to make me feel safe? What does that mean?"

    "You're afraid."

    "I am
not
afraid." But that wasn't true. I was, right down to my knees, into my skin, my DNA, and he knew it before I did. I felt a case of the hiccups coming on. I suddenly wanted to talk to Joe. I wanted his suspicions of the system, wanted him to tell me what did I expect from the vicious world I'd chosen; why was I even talking to the cops? Fits had just said it: a business full of phonies, and now someone was sending me dead flowers and hanging up on me and who knew what with Eddie . . . Harry dead like that! It wasn't until the Detective was standing next to me holding up a paper napkin from the table that I realized tears were streaming down my face. This must be what they call weeping. I hiccupped. "I'm sorry," I whispered. I took the napkin and blew my nose and shook my head. "I'm sorry," I said again. Apparently that was all I could think of to say.