Hollywood Gothic (38 page)

“The letter tells the whole story, and it says if anything happened to him, it was Aaron who did it. The funny thing was, Morty wrote that if he let a punk like Aaron kill him, he deserved to die! And he told me about the twenty-five thousand in a safe-deposit box in Santa Monica. So I went and got it and lived on it for as long as I could, set myself up in my little shop, but eventually it began to run out … so I worked up my courage and went to Kay Roth.

“She was such an
artiste,
such a sensitive lady, she was calm and understanding. She heard me out and then took my hand in hers—Kay Roth!—and she asked me if she could help me in any way. There was never any hint of blackmail, not a hint.” She brushed mist away from her face, rings gleaming. Challis put his arm around Morgan and held her back out of the rain, which was blowing harder again. Tully Hacker’s face was streaming wet, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Priscilla Morpeth.

“I asked her if she could find me a job, I’d have done anything, domestic work—Herbert could have given me lessons, you know—or maybe something at the studio, but she wouldn’t hear of anything like that. She said I had my own calling … do you know what kind of woman Kay Roth was? She said she would rather invest in my little shop, as a sort of silent partner, and she explained some tax aspects, and … well, she decided to do that her own way, sending me checks, and, well, I insisted on at least doing her charts. And when Mrs. Roth died, I went to her daughter, Goldie, the one that got murdered, poor thing, by her husband it was, and she was a strange one … she was so interested in everything, was always asking me questions about Morty and the letter, and I never could understand it exactly, but she was like her mother, they both just sort of accepted what Aaron had done to Morty. I couldn’t fathom it at first, but then I saw it the way Morty did, the way they did, it was just a part of
our
lives, it was all in our family and was nobody else’s business.” Her eyes flashed at them, head cocked, in a world of her own. But it was the world they all belonged in, and it all made sense. “But in the end, Goldie got murdered … and the thing was, she’d told me about Mr. Donovan and his magazine, she thought I could maybe write an astrology column for his magazine, and he said okay, I was doing some columns—that was why you saw me in his office—and I was doing his charts, too, and I told him he was surrounded by death and danger, I
saw
it, and now he’s dead and I don’t suppose I’ll be writing the column now … but I’ll survive, I have my regular clientele now, I’ll be all right, I don’t need a lot of money … I never have.”

She turned away, leaning against the wall, staring out over the domain she had just been at such pains to describe. From the look of her head, the angle of the thick, caped form, it was obvious that they had been dismissed, that she was communing again as if they had never been there. Challis looked at Morgan, then at Tully. The story was registering, but the reactions were masked. Even his own reaction to the fact that Aaron had murdered Morty Morpeth was imprecise, confused. His brain was trying to tie up the connections, read the final report, but there was precious data missing. …

They began to descend the clinging stairway. The shelter ended and the rain was driving again. Then they heard her call, and when Challis looked back, she was pointing at him—an eerie, dramatic gesture from an old movie.

“You,” she called, “whoever you are, be careful … I tell you what I told Jack Donovan—you heard what I said. Death, it’s all around you, past, present, future, it’s part of you.”

Then she whirled away and moved out of sight around the curve of the white building.

C
HALLIS HAD NEVER SEEN HERBERT
Graydon flustered, but he was somewhat the worse for wear when he bustled into the foyer, drawn by the sound of Tully Hacker’s key in the lock. Herbert slid his hand through the straight gray hair usually flattened against his huge skull and left it spiked off in all directions. He was pale, and the worry in his eyes was real. He wanted to know what was going on, and Tully suggested that he tell them what, indeed, was going on.

“Aaron got home a while ago, he’d had an accident out on the Pacific Coast Highway, ran the Corniche into a barricade at one of the mudslides—he said he skidded on the wet. Weed’s attending to the car, but Aaron hit the steering wheel with his head … blood all over his forehead from a cut, a bloody nose, glasses all bent … he came in acting like a madman, crying and staggering—shock, I suppose it must be shock …” His voice trailed off.

“Where is he now, Herbert?” Tully said.

“He and Solomon are in the billiard room—no, there’s no use trying to get in, they’ve locked the door and we have no keys.” He looked at Challis and Morgan. “What’s happening, what—”

“We’ve just seen Priscilla,” Challis said. “We’ve had a very busy day.”

“Herbert,” Morgan said, “you didn’t tell us about the letter.”

“Letter? I don’t understand, miss.”

“The letter Morty gave you to give Priscilla.”

“My goodness, the letter! I haven’t thought about it … why, there was so much going on, identifying the body, taking care of Prissy … I completely forgot about the letter. But what difference does it make?”

“A big difference,” Tully said, heading across the foyer toward the hallway. “The television room,” he said. “Come on.”

They followed him to the door two past Herbert’s. Tully unlocked it and they went in. The small room was windowless, filled with a faint blue glow and a console of five twelve-inch television screens mounted in the wall above a flatbed of controls. Tully bent over the switches and dials. Challis sank onto a small chair. Screen number one—all were black and white—showed the front door through which they had just come: the camera lens was shooting through a plate of glass that was rain-spattered. Nothing was happening at the front door. Screen number two: the hot tub at the bottom of the terraces, lifeless, with steam visibly rising like ghosts from the shifting surface of the water. Screen number three: the long room with the glass wall and the fire burning in the huge fireplace, casting the only light in the empty room. Screen number four: another outdoor camera, this one panning slowly along the edges of the property; as Challis watched, the dinosaurs, standing stock-still as if listening for a peculiar, unexpected sound to come again, came into view. Challis blinked the tension out of his eyes. Screen number five: the upstairs library, where Daffodil Roth lay sprawled on a couch reading a thick book and sipping what looked like straight bourbon from a tall glass. There was a bottle of Wild Turkey on the table at her side. She looked soft in a white robe, a little drunk, her bare foot tapping the arm of the couch. Challis couldn’t look at her without feeling a pang, a note of desire, a wish to have it all go back the way it had been, however bad it had been.

“Sound,” Tully muttered to himself. Suddenly they heard Tom Waits’ recording of “Grapefruit Moon.” “That’s the library,” he said. “Every night she listens to that guy, hour after hour.” He punched another button, and the image of the front door disappeared, replaced by what was obviously the billiard room. “Okay,” he said to himself, “now for some sound …”

The camera took in the entire room from one end, and there, in a sharp black-and-white picture, were Sol and Aaron. They were standing by the billiard table in the foreground. In the middle distance there was a leather couch, a couple of leather club chairs, and beyond that yet another fireplace. Aaron was disheveled, dabbing at his nose. There was a streak of blood on his forehead, and his entire face looked like a piece of bruised fruit. His tie hung loose, like a dead animal, and his shirt was blotched. In contrast, Solomon Roth was wearing a dinner jacket, looked immaculate, as unlike the maundering old man at the studio that afternoon as possible.

“My God,” Challis said. “Sol’s a new man.”

“Yeah,” Tully said, “that’s the work of Dr. Feelgood … when the old man starts to run down, really run down like you saw him this afternoon, the good doctor pumps him full of snake oil, and presto chango, what you see before you …”

Sol stroked the ball, and they heard the clicks as it made its rounds. Aaron sighed, head down. His shoulders quivered. The camera panning the perimeters of the property was on a time lock and had stopped at the dinosaurs, who stood, like the four people in the control room, for the next act to begin. Daffy sipped, turned the page. She was reading the Modern Library edition of
The Red and the Black.

“Shame on you, Aaron,” Sol said, carefully lining up his next shot. “You have lied to me, Aaron”—click-click-click—“and I am deeply unhappy that you would do that. But, but, but … I understand why you did it. And as for me, I was blind, or insensitive, or self-deceiving, or all three, and I avoided the truth with all my power …” Click-click. Aaron’s dabbing had stopped, and one eye was watching his father from behind the crumpled, bloody handkerchief. “Yes, I refused to see what was going on around me, I couldn’t believe I could be touched by all the rot and corruption I saw out there.” Click-click.

“Father, what in the name of God are you talking about?” The round spectacles sat crookedly on the hooked nose. Aaron’s face seemed to be working its way around the pain and the words in an attempt to hold itself together. It was a near thing. If the last bits of composure went, Challis had the feeling that Aaron would go too. “Look at me, look what’s happened to me … what are you going on about? We’ve got to do something about
me.”

“Now, now, calm yourself, that’s just what we’re going to do. But I’ve got to get clear about this lying business … you lied to me about your poor wife’s diaries, Kay’s diaries. You told me that they told the whole sordid truth about Kay … and now what do I discover? That they tell the truth about you, what you did to her, what you drove the poor woman to—”

“Oh, for the love of God, make sense! What difference do the diaries make to anybody now?” Aaron was losing the struggle: he was squeezing the edge of the ornately carved billiard table like a man hanging from a twentieth-floor window ledge.

“To begin with, my son, a million dollars’ worth of difference … to save your neck, not to save us from the publication of Kay’s calamitous indiscretions.” He was surveying the table, looking from side to side in search of the right shot, refusing to look at Aaron, whose voice was growing increasingly strident.

“You’re a crazy old man,” Aaron shouted, his voice catching helplessly in his collapsed nasal passages.

“Careful,” Solomon Roth said. Sol stroked the ball again and watched the result, which was out of camera range.

He stood the cue on the floor before himself, and leaned on it with a fraction of his weight. The crocodile smile lay in wait for Aaron. Towser looked up from the far end of the room, stared at the scene. “You see, you convinced me that not only was Kay reaching from beyond the grave to dirty our lives, but that your daughter was just like her … two of a kind, filthy, depraved sluts, an insult to everything my life has stood for, everything I wanted Maximus to be. Kay was dead, and we could buy Donovan off for a million … but I knew we couldn’t trust Goldie—she’d never keep her part of the bargain, not for a million, not for anything … she hated you that much …. but what you had me believing was a lie, Goldie didn’t hate you
blindly,
it wasn’t in her blood … she
knew
what you had done to her mother, she had
read
the diaries, and unlike old Solomon Roth, she wasn’t operating on the basis of hearsay, of your lies. … What I’m trying to make clear to you, Aaron, is this—if I’d known the truth you kept from me, I would have looked at Goldie differently … I would have gone to Malibu that night to talk with her …
not to kill her!
”

For an instant Challis thought he was going to faint; he held on to the metal flatbed, closed his eyes: he was standing in the beach house, Goldie was dead at his feet, there was sand on the floor … something moved somewhere, a shape … he heard footsteps outside, saw a shadow—Solomon Roth. Morgan stood beside him, he felt her, smelled her, and he pressed the side of his face against her. But he couldn’t keep his eyes from the monitor.

Aaron’s mouth was open, gulping like a fish. He staggered back as if he’d received a physical blow. He couldn’t stop the blood running from his nose. The handkerchief was dark with it.

“You,” Aaron croaked. “You … and all the time I thought it was Toby! Yes, I really did, and I didn’t blame him for killing her.” He was almost talking to himself. “One too many beach boys, and Toby got a bellyful and hit her with the Oscar.” He looked at Sol, squinting. “You …”

Sol turned his broad back on him, and measured another shot, drew the cue back slowly, and slid it through. Click-click. Challis heard Tully’s breathing. Herbert bit a fingernail. Nobody moved.

“Please, Father, stop that.” Aaron moved forward jerkily, as if his physiology was coming undone. His voice slipped on the scale, wavered upward, like a drunken whore in high heels. “Don’t you understand what’s happening tonight? Listen to me, god damn you …
listen to me!
”

Sol sighted along the trajectory of another shot.

Aaron suddenly flew at his father, fingers curled in a pathetic, birdlike attack, a high-pitched howl sounding tinny. The fingers were raking the black dinner jacket weakly and uselessly, when Sol turned slowly, raised the cue deliberately, impassively, and smashed it across Aaron’s arm and chest. The shock cut his cry in midair, killed it, and the round spectacles smashed on the edge of the table. Aaron clutched his arm, weaved backward.

“Don’t ever touch me again, or come near me, or speak my name.” The words hit him like slugs, each one driving him away from the camera. Towser pricked his ears. Aaron groped behind him, reached the couch in the center of the room. “You made me go to Malibu that night … you have no respect for life, for decency, for anything that matters.” He took a few heavy strides toward his son. Glass from Aaron’s spectacles crackled underfoot. Aaron stumbled, slipped, fell backward onto the couch. The television console gave off a slight whirring sound, a dry claustrophobic warmth mingling with the heat of their bodies. Challis’ face felt greasy with perspiration. His stomach turned as he watched Solomon Roth’s broad back as he advanced toward what was left of his son.