The Man Who Lived by Night (16 page)

Hoag:
Tris beat you?

Tulip:
Tris was often violent when he was on smack. Broke my nose once.
Skullbuggery
stayed at number one for something like five months. Then they put out
Nasty, Nasty,
and it was nearly as big. That’s when they had to cool out somewhere for tax reasons.

Hoag:
Tris moved to L.A.

Tulip:
And Rory and Derek to Italy. I stayed here and tried to get myself somewhat back together. Got off drugs. Went to Italy and got off Rory. Then I flew to L.A. to see Tris. He was living in a rented mansion in Malibu, and much, much closer to the edge. Shooting up. Drinking too much tequila. Hanging out with problem children like Moon, and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Dennis he’d gotten to be friendly with after the ’68 tour, when Dennis was living on Sunset. Both of those two are dead now. The night before I got there the police caught Tris going a hundred and fifty miles per hour on Pacific Coast Highway in his Porsche—with a suspended license. I had to bail him out of jail. He’d changed for the worse. He was so absolutely full of anger. Hate.

Hoag:
Do you know why?

Tulip:
You’d have to ask him. He wouldn’t open up to me. That’s why I left him—that and the smack. It wasn’t until Jack and Derek moved out there and got hold of him that he started getting himself together again. When he did, I took him back. Had Violet. Then we split again, for good … All of it’s such a blur now. I can’t even remember most of the faces. I have my photo album, of course, but I haven’t been able to look at that for years now. Freaks me out too much. I took a lot of the pictures myself, actually.

Hoag:
I’d love to see it.

Tulip:
I actually fancied I’d be a photographer one day. David Bailey said I was quite good. I never followed through, though. Never followed through on anything, except falling apart. If I hadn’t found the Lord, I’d be dead just like Rory. Poor, poor Rory …

Hoag:
I really would love to see it.

Tulip:
Hmm? Oh, it’s somewhere … I had to put it away when I found Violet pawing through it. Pawing through my past. I’ll dig it up for you. Come back tomorrow

Hoag:
Thank you. I will.

Tulip:
All I ever did was model. Not that that’s anything. You’re just a slab of beef.

Hoag:
How do you feel about Violet following in your footsteps?

Tulip:
It’s her life.

Hoag:
And T. S.?

Tulip:
What about him?

Hoag:
How do you feel about him?

Tulip:
I don’t feel anything about him anymore.

(end tape)

L
ULU WAS GETTING SOFT.

Too much of Merilee’s cooking and too little physical activity had dulled her razor-sharp huntress instincts. She was slow to react when I let myself into the mews house. In fact, she didn’t react at all.

I knelt and scratched her ears. She sniffed at my fingers with the cool reserve she usually shows roach exterminators and federal census takers. I hadn’t visited her on her bed of pain for two whole days. I was getting the treatment for it.

“This has gone far enough,” I told her firmly. “I’ve already apologized numerous times for what happened. And you
know
I can’t be here with you all the time.”

I reached down to hoist her out of her bed. She resisted me, grunting unappreciatively. I’m bigger. I lifted her up and held her. Usually, she likes to nestle into me and put her head on my shoulder like a dance partner. Not now. Now she squirmed in my arms, and wanted to be put down. I obliged her.

“Okay, be a martyr,” I said, as I headed for the phone. “See what it gets you.”

Tris was still asleep and not taking any calls. I told Pamela I’d be late for work the next evening because I wanted to look through Tulip’s photo album. She said she’d pass the news on to Mr. Scarr. She also said she’d quite enjoyed transcribing our last couple of tapes.

“I really do hear him now, Hoagy.”

“Glad you think so,” I said, pleased she’d noticed a difference. I
was
getting him now. If only I was getting closer to figuring out who’d shot at me, too. Then I’d be making real progress.

I had just enough time to soak in a hot tub with a Laphroaig—it
wasn’t
too smoky for me—before it was time to watch part ten of
Giant Worms of the Sea.
I was very into this series now I wasn’t sure why. Two possibilities came to mind. Either it was an acquired taste or I’d been in England too long.

When the show was over, I put my new suit on over a black cashmere turtleneck and spooned out a can of mackerel for Lulu. She glowered at it like it was Alpo beef chunks. Still, I said good-bye fondly, hoping she’d feel guilty over the way she’d been treating me. I’m sure she didn’t.

The mini was still out of service, so I was using the Peugeot diesel wagon. It went from zero to sixty in a day and a half, and had no fridge, but driving it made me nostalgic. I’d had a diesel just like it the year I lived in the Perigord Valley, subsisting on goose liver pâté and chilled Monbazillac while I struggled with the first draft of
Our Family Enterprise.
Ah, youth.

I parked near the theater and waited for Merilee at the performer’s entrance like a stage-door Johnny, flowers and all. A dapper older gent was also waiting there for a cast member, though I think it likely the fluffy blond object of his affections was named Steve.

She came out wearing her long, treasured Perry Ellis tweed suit—she’d wept when he died. A high-throated white silk blouse, alligator belt and shoes went with it. Her eyes got soft when I handed her the flowers.

Fans at the curb pushed autograph books at her. Flashbulbs popped. It was, possibly, indiscreet for the two of us to be seen together like this. But we’d decided it would be tawdry if we behaved like we had something to hide. We had never been tawdry, and didn’t intend to start now

“How’s T. S.?” she asked, as I steered her toward the car.

“I’m actually starting to respect him a little,” I replied. “Not that he’s a very nice guy—guys who make a commitment to being the best seldom are. He knows he hurt people. But he was willing to pay that price. You don’t meet many people anymore who care that much about their art.
And
have talent.”

She squeezed my arm. “Ever think you’d find yourself identifying with a rock star?”

“Who’s identifying with a rock star?”

“Sorry, darling. I must have misunderstood.”

Merilee had something on her mind. She sat with her back stiff as we rode to the restaurant, and kept wringing her hands in her lap. I kept up a line of polite chatter and waited her out. I waited a long time. She held it in all the way to the Grange, which is a very fine eating place on King Street in Covent Garden. She held it in through the martinis, complete with extra olives. She held it in while we destroyed their beef Wellington and two of their most amusing bottles of Haut-Médoc. It was only after the table had been cleared and the coffee poured that she spilled it:

“Zack wants to come over.”

I tugged at my ear. “For how long?”

“A-A few days. He said he feels like we’re drifting apart. He wants to—”

“Have it out?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Any idea when he’s planning to come?”

She swallowed and examined her coffee cup. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

I pushed my coffee away and called for a Calvados. Then I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Sometimes,” she offered, “things aren’t as neat as one would like.”

“Things are never that neat.”

“Zack is my husband, darling. While he’s in London he expects me to be his wife.”

“And what do you expect?”

“I expect nothing anymore,” she replied bitterly. “I feel like a cigarette.”

“You don’t smoke. You’ve never smoked.”

“You’re right. I’m being actressy. Sorry.” She swept her hair back. “I’m going to be a good wife to him while he’s here. I’m going to be the best damned wife I know how to be, even though I am being torn apart at the seams. And I’m very, very sorry about this. For you and for me. I’ve been so happy the past few—”

“Don’t. Don’t be sorry. I’ll take my things with me in the morning. Call me when you can, okay?”

She looked at me quizzically. “You’re being awfully damned understanding.”

“You were once very understanding.”

Her glance flickered south of my equator. “I tried to be.”

I drained my Calvados. “Good thing I’ve got the station wagon. I can put Lulu right in the back, bed and all.”

Merilee cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I still think she should stay with me.”

“Merilee, she’s my dog—even if she doesn’t happen to be speaking to me right now.”

“She’s
our
dog.”

“She’s
my
dog. I told you before—we’re a package. If I go, she goes with me.”

“I know, I know. Only, I still think she’s safer with me.”

“No.”

“You may still be in danger.”

“No!”

“You could stop by anytime and visit her. Keep the key.”

“Merilee, you’re asking me to give her up.”

“Just temporarily.” She put her hand over mine. “I need her, darling. Don’t you see? If she’s there, you’re there. Holding on to her is the only way I’ll make it through this. Please, darling. Please?”

It’s a good thing Merilee Nash doesn’t have a diabolical nature. I’d assassinate a head of state for her, if she asked me like that. “And what about afterward?”

“We agreed we wouldn’t talk about afterward.”

“To hell with what we agreed, Merilee.”

“Very well. What do you want?”

“I think that’s pretty obvious.”

“Try making it a little more obvious, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. What happens at the end of
The Philadelphia Story?”

“The curtain comes down.”

“Before that.”

Merilee flushed. “I-I get married to my first husband again.”

“Suggest anything to you?”

She sighed. “Happy endings are for plays, darling. And very, very old ones at that.”

“I kind of like happy endings.”

“I always thought you preferred the tragic, deep kind.”

“Not when I’m in the cast.”

Her forehead creased. It does that when she’s trying not to cry. “God, you look good in black, Mr. Hoagy.”

“You look good in everything, but I suppose you already know that.”

“A gal only knows it if her guy says so.”

“Am I your guy?”

“I wish I knew, darling,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I cupped her chin in my palm and got lost in her green eyes for a second. “You’re still mine for one more night.”

London’s vacant-stare district that season was King’s Road, Chelsea. Zonked, translucent punks shuffled along the sidewalk in black leather, their hair dyed a spectrum of repulsive colors. The wandering victims. They looked like they had framed eight-by-ten glossies of Sid Vicious hanging over their beds of nails.

I still didn’t know whether punk was a posture or a statement. More important, I didn’t care. I had enough problems of my own. I’d just said good-bye to Merilee and to Lulu, and I didn’t know when I’d see either one of them again. The Irish oatmeal Merilee had made me eat before I left still sat in my stomach like a bucket of ready-mixed joint compound. My head ached.

I left the Peugeot at the curb outside of Tulip’s building. I was about to buzz her flat when I noticed the street door had been jimmied open with a pry bar. The frame was smashed and splintered, the door ajar. I looked around. No one on the street seemed to be paying any attention to the ruined door, or to me, or to anything. I went in.

Tulip’s flat was on the second floor in the front, and her hall door matched the one downstairs. Splintered and open. I hesitated there at the top of the stairs. This looked like a job for somebody else. Somebody with guts and a pit bull.

I listened at her door, mouth dry. My heart started to pound. Silence. I knocked and called out her name. More silence. I took a deep breath. Then I pushed open the door and went in.

The closet in her entry hall had been ransacked. Its contents—scarves, shoulder bags, an old fringe buckskin jacket, an even older clear plastic rain slicker adorned with psychedelic flowers—were scattered on the floor.

I called out her name.

There had been a television and a cheap stereo sitting in a wall unit in the dingy parlor. They were gone now. Their outline remained in the dust there on the bare shelves. Lots of dust. I couldn’t imagine what it looked like under her bed. I hoped I wouldn’t have to find out.

I called out her name.

Dresser drawers had been yanked open in the bedroom. Underwear, socks, T-shirts were strewn everywhere. The jewelry box on her dressing table had been emptied and overturned. The bedroom closet had been tossed.

Dresses were heaped on the floor, shoe boxes dumped open upon them.

I called out her name.

The medicine chest over the bathroom sink had been pawed through. Open pill bottles were scattered in the sink, their contents dissolving in brightly colored smears under the dripping tap.

I called out her name.

Then I turned and banged into her.

Tulip was standing right there behind me in the doorway to the kitchen, her still-beautiful eyes open very wide, her face pale. She was pointing in the general direction of the parlor, and she was trying to say something to me but there was this unfortunate matter of the boning knife that someone had plunged into her stomach. All she could get out was a gurgling noise as she staggered toward me. I started to reach for her but not before she pitched forward into me. She was not a feather. We both went down, she directly on top of me—and if you think that doesn’t still give me nightmares, guess again. I pushed her off of me and over onto her back as gently as I could. But there was no need for me to be gentle. She was dead now.

Whoever did it to her had been thorough. He’d taken the silver cross from around her neck, too.

The British press handled the murder of Tulip, the once-famous Mod Bod, as a kind of sad postscript to the sixties and Swinging London. Her old glamour shots were pulled out and splashed over the front pages, along with the recollections of those who’d been there. Or claimed to have been there. A revolution, Derek had called it. The staid newspapers indulged in sober discussion of the early burnout and death that had overtaken so many of the youthful Carnaby Street luminaries—Brian, Puppy, Hendrix, Moon. The tabloids went straight for the low road, with gleeful stories about her weight, and how it had ballooned. Stories about how shed taken to spending her time at a storefront halfway-house mission called the Church of Life. Stories about how she’d lived, and died, in total squalor.