The Ticket Out (11 page)

I asked if the murder rumor was ever confirmed in print. Mark said no, it never was. He also said he couldn't do any more work for me—Barry's orders. He'd gone in to ask about the guest list and Barry got pissed. Barry claimed there wasn't any written list and pressured Mark to tell him what we knew. Mark appeased him with a few scraps, but he was finished as my researcher. I was supposed to call Barry ASAP. He told Mark to remind me that
Lockwood was due Tuesday.

Mark hung up and I sat in the car thinking.

Why had Abadi's death barely made the papers? One: it was a congenital heart defect. Two: it was murder. Either Abadi's family or CAA put a lid on publicity, or the killing went unsolved. There were a lot of murders in L.A. The dailies only wrote up the crime, the arrest, and the conviction—unless it involved a celebrity or some baroque circumstance. If there was nothing else in the archives, it probably meant they'd never made an arrest.

I started the car and headed out for Malibu. I used one hand to drive and dialed my phone with the other.

I punched in the Palm Springs area code and sweet-talked an operator with hints about multiple murder and police bungling. I got her to give me the names of every hotel and motel in Desert Hot Springs. There were a ton—it was a resort town. The drive took an hour, and I scribbled names and numbers the whole time. I
had
to talk to Neil John Phillips.

Finding Edward Abadi's address was no problem. His former house sat on the beach, on a side road just off the coast highway. I parked opposite the house and ran across the street.

The house was protected by a stockade fence. There was a door, a mail slot, and an illuminated bell set in the fence. I leaned on the bell and waited. I leaned on it again: nobody. I jumped in the air, but I wasn't tall enough to see over. I debated, checked around for neighbors, and thought, Fuck it.

Backing up, I ran at the fence, jumped, grabbed the top, and pulled myself up. I swung my legs over and dropped down to the patio.

The house sat north-south, perpendicular to the beach. It was a weather-worn, shingled job perched on pylons sunk in the sand. I reached into the mailbox and pulled out bills and liberal junk mail for Hannah Silverman and Arnold Tolback. I put the mail back, checked the garage, and found a shiny black Humvee. I wrote the license number on my hand.

I knocked at the front door. Nobody answered. I tried the knob; the door was locked. I pressed my face against a window. I could see straight through the house—the whole back wall was glass. I held very still. There was no sound or movement inside.

A sloping stone path led to the beach. I followed it out to the sand. A sundeck jutted off the back of the house, high over my head. I stood behind a pylon and checked both directions. There were people way down on the public beach; nobody close.

I took the wooden stairs up to the deck. The main floor had sliding glass doors; one was unlocked. She must be home, I thought. I slid the door open and called Hannah Silverman's name. No one answered. I waited, listened, looked both ways again, and slipped inside. I stood there a second to slow my breathing down. I was feeling some nerves.

The rooms were big and flowed together to show off the ocean view. The furnishings were designed and coordinated down to the last lamp shade. I found the one bedroom by process of elimination. It was a pigsty. There was an open Vuitton suitcase on the bed, and women's clothes thrown everywhere, like someone had been packing in a fit. I checked a few labels: pricey stuff.

An office adjoined the bedroom, and it was a pigsty, too. Drawers stood open; the desk was covered with messy junk. On the floor I found a half dozen framed photographs. The glass had been smashed to slivers.

The pictures showed the same loving couple posed in trendy locales. I recognized Bali and the waterfront at Cannes. The woman was too thin, and she had a snotty way of standing with her chin in the air. Hannah Silverman. Her companion was shorter, younger, and clearly having a better time. He looked like a fraternity boy; she looked like a prime neurotic.

I glanced around and saw bare nails sticking out of the walls. Only one photograph was still hanging and intact. Hannah Silverman stood beside an exotically handsome, Arab-type man in what looked like a hotel ballroom. They both wore business suits and she held a folder that said
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL.
There was a marquise diamond on the third finger of her left hand.

The fraternity boy had to be Arnold Tolback. The Arab-type man had to be Edward Abadi. Like Tolback, Abadi looked ten years younger than Silverman. He held a cell phone and stared past her as if he'd spotted his next deal coming through the lobby. I studied the picture up close. Abadi and Stenholm would have made a spectacular pair.

A second room led off the office. I walked in and found a combination gym and sex playpen.

Twin stair-step machines faced a ceiling-high entertainment center. The center featured a massive TV set, a smaller set, a DVD player, a VCR, a tuner, a six-CD player, and a pair of speakers taller than me. Bookcases lined another wall. They held videos, DVDs, CDs, magazines, free weights, mats, towels, yoga props, Evian vaporizers ... and bondage paraphernalia.

There were whips and leather masks, collars, leashes, and padded handcuffs—all looking brand-new and sitting in plain sight. Mirrors covered one entire wall. A video camera stood on a tripod in one corner. A big hook was screwed into the ceiling, with chains dangling off. The effect was so corny and antiseptic that I had to laugh.

An unlabeled tape was sticking out of the VCR. I pushed it in and turned on the small TV.

An image jumped onto the screen. I caught a vignette in progress.

The scene was set in a brick cellar. A small window was inset high in the back wall, and a harsh light glared down from the ceiling. A ratty curtain partly hid an iron cot. A fake-platinum blond was parading around in Gestapo drag. She pointed a toy pistol at a naked young guy who was kneeling by the cot. He wrapped his arms around her ankles and pressed his face into her leather boots. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

I hit the volume.

He was sobbing, “Oh, please, spare my life! I'll do anything you want, only spare my life!”

The she-wolf leered at him. He crawled up her jodhpur leg and revealed a hardening penis. He stroked it to a full erection.

The she-wolf slapped him. She said, “It iss zo zmall,” in a silly accent. “It muss be ffery larch to mekk pleashure to Helga.”

The guy sobbed and stroked his dick. It was plenty large in my opinion, but Helga had different standards. She snarled and pressed her pistol into his neck.

I burst out laughing.

A voice shot from the front of the house. “Is that you, Arnie, you faithless son of a bitch?!”

Hannah Silverman.

I recognized her from the answering machine. The front door slammed; keys jingled. She yelled, “I turned you in to the cops yesterday! Ask me if that felt good!”

I lunged for the sliding door, ran out to the deck, and took the stairs two at a time. I hit the sand hard and tripped forward on my face.

The voice came closer.
“Arnie, you bastard!”

I rolled under the deck out of sight. Jumping up, I raced for the path, up to the street, and threw myself over the front fence. I landed off balance and almost fell into traffic.

I looked over my shoulder. Hannah Silverman was nowhere. I dodged across the road and ducked behind my car. I was panting. I peeked around the bumper.

The front gate opened and Silverman stuck her head out. The look on her face was hilarious: a snarl worthy of Helga.

I said, “Dilettante perverts,” and laughed again.

 

S
ILVERMAN TOOK
off while I was hiding behind my car. I tailed her along the coast road and lost her at a light. I wandered around Malibu, saw no black Humvees, gave up, and drove back into Hollywood.

I parked in an alley by Greta Stenholm's and walked to the Chinese Theater. Hollywood Boulevard was the usual zoo—a cleaned-up zoo since the big rehab and new subway. The tourists were out in force like always, but the street freaks had been displaced by hip and happening locals.

I'd shelved Neil John Phillips and Arnold Tolback for the moment.

I'd called hotels in Desert Hot Springs on my way in from Malibu. I didn't find Phillips. I'd also dropped by the Chateau Marmont: Tolback wasn't around. But I did a lot of interviews at the Marmont and knew the desk staff there. The guy on duty said that Tolback checked in the week before. I made a note of the date: August 23. I promised him twenty bucks if he'd call me the minute Tolback showed up. He said he'd rather have a tape of my interview with Clive Owen. I said fine.

Hannah Silverman was not shelved. I didn't know which movie she won the Oscar for; I didn't remember ever hearing her name. A world-class witch, Penny Proft had said—with a thing for younger men and corny discipline games. And the third party in two love triangles, if Proft's gossip was reliable. Stenholm had slept with Edward Abadi
and
Arnold Tolback. That was more than coincidence; it looked deliberate. But why would Stenholm want to mess with Silverman?

Lockwood knew why.

I'd called from Malibu and caught him at the station. He didn't like it that I knew about Edward Abadi. He confirmed that Abadi had been shot, but wouldn't expand or explain. I asked him straight out: why would Greta Stenholm want to mess with Hannah Silverman? Lockwood said he'd meet me at my place later, named a time, and hung up. He hadn't gotten my messages and didn't give me a chance to mention them.

I walked into the forecourt of the Chinese, glad I hadn't agreed to his one-way “cooperation” deal. I would have known exactly nothing right now.

The forecourt was jammed with people. They were pouring out the theater exits, lined up behind velvet ropes, and taking pictures of the footprints in cement.

I stopped to remind myself why I'd come.

Last Friday, four days before she died, Greta Stenholm spent a chunk of time seeing movies on the Boulevard.

I was filling in the blank week in her calendar. On Thursday she went to the library and read about herself in the
Hollywood Reporter.
She saw movies all day Friday and vandalized candy machines on Saturday.

The question was: Why would Stenholm come
here?
Maybe she still lived in the area; the movies she saw, except the documentary at the Cinematheque, were playing citywide.

Was it another way to celebrate the sale of her script? Was she saying good-bye to five years of failure? Was it an act of triumph and revenge, like defacing the
Reporter
piece? Or was she a fan of movie history like her ex-partner Phillips? The El Capitan was a landmark. The Cinematheque was in the Egyptian Theater. The Egyptian was Sid Grauman's first theme palace in Hollywood, the Chinese was his second, and both theaters had been restored to their kitschy '20s splendor.

I didn't know the history of the Vine, but she went to see a Steven Spielberg double feature there.

Where did she get the cash to buy tickets? She was bouncing checks and stealing from candy machines, and she died broke. Did she spend her last dime on
movies?

I walked up to the main doors of the Chinese, flagged down an usher, and asked him to get the manager. The kid ducked into the lobby and came back with a frazzled-looking man. I showed him my press card. I said I was doing a piece on Hollywood hopefuls and trying to locate Greta Stenholm. He didn't register the name, so I showed him the
Reporter
photograph.

He smiled when he saw it. She was a regular at their discount matinees, he said. “A lovely young lady, crazy for movies and very bright.” The day shift loved her and wished her luck with the new screenplay. He hadn't seen her last Friday, but he knew one of her haunts: a pizza place across from the Egyptian.

I walked east and found the pizza place. It was a biker hangout with brown Naugahyde booths, but it was clean and it smelled good. I showed my Stenholm picture to the guy at the counter. He identified her right off. He knew her first name and said she was a longtime customer.

According to him she'd talked about nothing but her script for the past month. She'd also looked more and more ragged because the studio negotiation was driving her nuts. She'd made calls from the pay phone, and gotten calls back—from her agent, she'd said. And she'd eaten there every day for the past two weeks. The counterman admitted he was feeding her for free. He couldn't let her starve, he said, when her script was going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He saw her last on Monday, the night of Barry's party. She'd made a few calls, eaten a calzone, and gone to a movie down the street.

I ran back to my car and drove down to the Vine Theater. There was no place to park, so I left the car in a loading zone. I bypassed the box office and asked an usher to get her boss for me. The usher wanted to know why; she was busy. I told her my “Hollywood hopefuls” story and showed her the picture of Stenholm.

The usher turned to a shaggy surfer boy who was working the concession stand. He wore a beaded choker with his uniform. She called, “Yo, Harrison! She's got your
girlfriend
here!”

The usher giggled at the look on the surfer kid's face. He left his popcorn popper and came over.

He said, “Hi, can I help you?” His face was tight. I steered him away from the giggly usher.

I said, “It's about Greta Stenholm.”

His face changed. He whispered, “But I talked to the cops yesterday. Is this going to start again?”

“Is what going to start again?”

He shook his head and clamped his lips together. I showed him my press card. “I'm not the police.”

The kid just shook his head. I said, “She saw a movie here last Monday and I know for a fact she was broke.”

The kid sagged against the wall. “Oh, man. I'm going to get fired this time—I'm going to get fired.”