Broken Heart (53 page)

‘I’ve maybe got a year,’ Hosterlitz said. ‘No more than two.’

I watched Cramer, the colours on the film twitching as he moved closer to Hosterlitz. He’d been as culpable as Zeller, as culpable as Hosterlitz, in covering up the truth about what had happened to Életke Kerekes, and had destroyed his friend’s life in order to save his own. Yet, despite everything, it was hard not to feel something for him. Not sympathy exactly, but a sense that – like Hosterlitz – he’d never been able to bury his shame. He’d never been able to forget.

He knew he was guilty.

‘I’m so sorry, Bobby.’

Hosterlitz turned to face Cramer, unsteady on his feet. ‘I need you to tell me your part in what happened,’ he said, his words slurred. He took another step closer to Cramer. ‘I need you to tell me what Zeller did that night.’

A sudden cut to another driveway.

The shift disorientated me for a moment. The camera had been left in the same sort of place, next to a tree midway
across a garden. A yellow Lamborghini Countach was parked in front of a pale cream Spanish-style house. Beyond the roof, the lights of the city twinkled in the dark. This was Mulholland Drive.

The engine of the Lamborghini was still running and, for the first time, I could see two people inside. Zeller was one of them. He switched off the engine and got out. He was in his late fifties, lean and fit, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeve button-up shirt. He was carrying a pile of papers – scripts maybe, or forms.

Billy Egan was the passenger. He was seventeen or eighteen. He opened his door, looking similar to the person I’d known, except for a covering of brown hair. He was thickset, muscly, intimidating. As he climbed out, in a shirt and a pair of jeans, he didn’t say anything.

‘Hello, Saul.’

Both of them jolted, Zeller almost dropping the papers, Egan spinning on his heel to face the shadows at the double garage adjacent to the house. Zeller pushed the door of the Countach shut, looking around for the source of the voice, when Hosterlitz stepped out of the blackness. He was acting again: he stumbled slightly, came around the rear of the car and placed a hand on it for support.

‘
Bobby?
’

‘I need to talk to you,’ Hosterlitz said, looking from Zeller to Egan. He seemed thrown by Egan being there. ‘I thought you would be alone.’

Egan’s appraisal of Hosterlitz was odd. He seemed to know exactly who he was, without the need for an introduction. He wasn’t shocked by him being there or the fact that he was drunk. He came around the Countach at the front, on the opposite side to Hosterlitz, and then perched himself
on the bonnet, watching the two men, as if he was waiting for something to play out.
Because Zeller had already told him everything
. Zeller handed his son the pile of papers, which he took.

‘What the hell are you doing here, Bobby?’

‘I’m dying, Saul.’

Zeller’s first reaction couldn’t have been more different from Cramer’s. He glanced out into the road, looking for passers-by, for neighbours, for anyone who may have been able to place Hosterlitz at the house, and then came around the back of his car. ‘What the fuck are you doing in LA?’ he spat.

‘I’ve got cancer.’

‘So?’

Hosterlitz looked at Zeller; blinked. He glanced at Egan too, who gave no reaction to the news either. Hosterlitz seemed genuinely thrown by their lack of pity.

‘So?
’ Zeller said again. ‘So what? Lots of people get cancer, Bobby. What I want to know is why you’re back in LA. Because I’m praying you’re not here as part of some final attempt to confess your sins.’ He looked out again at the road, as if expecting to see a police car there, as if expecting to be under surveillance. ‘Is that what this is, Bobby? Have you come back to talk to the LAPD? Have you come back to get a few things off your chest before they put you in a box?’

Egan pushed himself off the bonnet and walked up the driveway. He looked up and down the road – once, twice, a third time – and then turned back to Zeller and shook his head. He was saying,
There’s no one around
.

‘Saul,’ Hosterlitz said, using the Lamborghini for support. ‘I need you to admit to what you did.’

‘Get your hands off my fucking car.’

Hosterlitz didn’t move.

Zeller ripped his fingers away and pushed Hosterlitz back against one of the garage doors. It chimed against his weight. Shadows formed around them. Hosterlitz seemed to realize that he and Zeller weren’t going to be visible, so he pushed back at Zeller and stumbled after him, the two of them hitting the car with a dull thud.

In a flash, Zeller had thrown him to the ground.

‘Don’t touch me, you fucking prick!’

‘I want to hear you say it!’ Hosterlitz shouted up at him.

Zeller, teeth gritted, muscles taut, grabbed Hosterlitz by his coat, checked with Egan that the coast was still clear, and then started dragging Hosterlitz across the driveway and on to the manicured lawn. They were ten feet away from the camera, but on the edge of the shot. Again, Hosterlitz seemed to be aware of it: he rolled left and Zeller went after him. Now they were perfectly framed.

Come on, Zeller. Admit to what you did.

Say something I can use
.

Zeller glanced out into the road again and then leaned over Hosterlitz. ‘What are you doing in LA, you drunken sack of shit?’ He’d whispered the words, but his proximity to the camera, to the mic, made them sound noisy and vicious.

‘I want you to admit to what you did, Saul.’

Zeller flicked a look out into the road again, then back to Egan, who was perched on the bonnet of the Countach, a half-smile on his face. ‘Do everyone a favour,’ Zeller said to Hosterlitz, ‘crawl away and fucking die.’

‘We killed Életke Kerekes.’

Zeller didn’t reply.

‘
You
killed her – and we framed her son.’

Zeller slapped Hosterlitz hard across the face, and then – just as Hosterlitz was recovering from that – he kicked him in the stomach. I glanced at Egan, still expecting a reaction from him, some response to what was happening, to the idea that his father had sent a kid his age to death row for a crime he hadn’t committed. But there was nothing.

Egan just watched, impassive.

‘The world needs to know the truth, Saul,’ Hosterlitz wheezed, lying on the grass in a foetal position at Zeller’s feet – small, pathetic, subdued.

The film cut again – back to Cramer.

It picked up at some unspecified time after Cramer had found Hosterlitz at his house. They were still at the gates, a brief silence passing between them.

‘I’m so sorry, Bobby,’ Cramer said quietly.

There was a tremor in his voice. This was nothing like the angry, drunken confrontation that he’d described to me. It had never played out like that. That account had all been a lie; a construct invented by him – or, more likely, Zeller. It just became another script to Cramer; more lines he had to learn.

‘I’m sorry for what we did to Elaine.’

Hosterlitz didn’t say anything.

‘For what we did to Martin.’ Cramer swallowed, the name like chalk in his mouth. ‘For what we did to you. If I could take it all back …’

‘I believe you, Glen,’ Hosterlitz said, no indistinctness to his words any more. He seemed to have forgotten he was supposed to be drunk – and Cramer, emotional, exhausted even then at having to keep such a secret, had stopped noticing.

‘I need Saul to confess,’ Hosterlitz said.

‘Why?’

‘I want to hear him admit to what he did.’

‘You know he killed Elaine – what difference does it make?’

Hosterlitz glanced in the vague direction of the camera.

‘It makes all the difference in the world.’

The movie cut back to Zeller’s front lawn.

Hosterlitz had stumbled to his feet. He was unsteady, and not because he was putting it on. Zeller was at his right, watching him, eyes narrowed, as if trying to work out what was going on inside Hosterlitz’s head.

‘Everything you’ve built at AKI is based on a lie,’ Hosterlitz said.

He sounded groggy – not drunk now, but ill.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Bobby,’ Zeller said, prodding a finger into Hosterlitz’s temple. ‘It’s the sickness – it’s screwed with your brain.’

‘You shouldn’t have been around,’ Hosterlitz mumbled. It was hard to tell whether he was acting or just dazed. ‘You shouldn’t have been around to build the company into what it is now. You shouldn’t have had this house, this car, this
life
. We should have been in prison. We should have taken the fall for what we –’

‘ “We, we, we” – what’s this “we”, Bobby? Huh?’ Zeller glanced at his son, who was looking faintly amused on the bonnet of the Lamborghini. Egan’s silence seemed to massage Zeller’s performance, his ego. He became even more aggressive. ‘
You
were the one who pushed that whore against –’

‘Don’t call her that.’

‘You pushed that whore against the wardrobe. You knocked her out.’

‘You made me believe I killed her.’

‘You believed what you wanted to believe.’

‘If people knew what you’d done –’

‘But they don’t, do they?’

‘You killed her, Saul!’

Zeller didn’t reply.

Come on. Admit it.

‘We sent Martin to prison!’

Zeller looked out into the road, then grabbed hold of Hosterlitz’s arm, just above the elbow. Hosterlitz flinched. There was an almost mesmeric moment when the two men stared at each other.

And then Zeller’s expression changed and he suddenly started laughing. ‘Oh, I get it,’ he said, and then glanced back at Egan. ‘I get it. You think you were – what? Some sort of surrogate
father
to that kid? Is that what this is all about? Is that why you can’t forget him?’

‘He was just a boy. We sent his one-year-old sister to the orphanage!’

Hosterlitz sounded tearful now.

‘You thought you were some sort of father figure to them – is that it? You weren’t any
father
figure, Bobby. You’re a chickenshit. If you’d been any sort of man, you would have realized what I did for you. You would have sucked it down and gone back to work and made a hundred movies.’ He shoved Hosterlitz away. ‘You could have been the most successful director in history. You could have made millions if you’d had any balls. You could have had a house like this. Instead, look at the state of you. You’re an old drunk making films no one gives a shit about. You’re a fucking disgrace, Bobby. The world’s better off without you.’

Hosterlitz was looking down at the floor, motionless except for his hands. At his side, his fingers were rolling into balls, opening and closing, forming fists.

Zeller noticed. ‘What, you gonna hit me, Bobby?’

He’s trying not to react
.

He knows he’s almost got it on tape
.

‘You gonna hit me, big man?’

Zeller pushed Hosterlitz hard. He stumbled out of shot and then returned again – not to attack Zeller or defend himself, but to put himself back in frame.

‘You know something?’ Zeller said, dizzy with adrenalin now, swaggering in front of the boy he’d go on to mould and shape.

It was a vile, angry display of machismo, but it was exactly what Hosterlitz wanted. At first, he may have been thrown by Egan being there that night – but he’d realized, by this point, that Egan was going to be Zeller’s undoing.

‘You know
something
?’ Zeller said again. ‘You got nothing on me, and you never will. Someone else got sent down for that murder. That fucking boy of hers …’ Zeller shook his head and leaned right into Hosterlitz, his eyes checking the road again, checking Egan was watching. He dropped his bottom lip in a depiction of someone blubbing. ‘ “I didn’t do this. I didn’t kill my mommy.” ’

His words silenced the entire scene, as if every noise in the city had died at once. Hosterlitz closed his eyes.

Beyond them both, Egan moved for the first time, sliding off the bonnet of the Countach on to his feet, as if realizing Zeller might be about to go too far.

‘ “I didn’t kill my mommy, I didn’t kill my mommy.” ’

‘Dad,’ Egan said.

‘ “Why would I kill my mommy, Detective Callson? Why would I drink all this whisky and take all these pills? Don’t send me to the gas chamber,
please
.” ’

‘Dad, stop.’

‘ “I didn’t chop off her legs! I didn’t!” ’

‘
Dad
.’

The scene was quiet for a moment, Zeller and Hosterlitz opposite each other, like boxers in their corners. Hosterlitz was still looking at the floor, fists squeezed shut. Zeller was opposite him, his breathing slowing, his gaze fixed on the man whose career he’d ruined and whose life he’d changed for ever.

‘I did what I had to do,’ he said finally.

‘You set up Martin.’

‘Yeah.’

Hosterlitz looked up. ‘And you killed Elaine.’

‘Yeah, I did.’

A long, funereal silence.

‘It’s been thirty years,’ Zeller said, calmer, back in control of himself. ‘It’s time to forget her now. It’s time for you to go home and die, Bobby.’

Everything went black.

The film was over.

79

‘Mr Raker?’

Startled, I turned in my seat.

The annex was quickly filling with cops, each of them with a torch and a baton. I’d been so absorbed in the film, in the confession, I hadn’t realized they’d actually found me. One of them, a huge bear of a man in his forties, grabbed my arm and lifted me out of the chair. The
Ring of Roses
script slid off my lap, thumping against the floor of the room.

‘Are you deaf?’ the cop said.

He meant they’d called my name and I hadn’t responded. As he pulled me away, I glanced back at the picture viewer. There was nothing showing now. There were no credits, no music. It had just ceased.

Zeller’s confession – and then nothing.

I tried to imagine why Hosterlitz hadn’t taken the film of Zeller and Cramer to the police in the four years before he died; why he’d placed it inside the angel instead, sat on it, hidden it. But then I remembered his letter to Korin:
A part of me needed to confess, because I knew it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t want what we had to be over … I was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea … I tried to tell you and I tried not to tell you; I wanted to and I didn’t want to.