Authors: Ian R. MacLeod
He drove north. The queues were already lengthening outside the feelie houses for the matinee showings. Not just the stargazy types who never did anything else, but mothers with babies, and kids who should have been at school, and old ladies so withered and sour-faced they looked to be beyond such fantasies, and businessmen in button-downs, and secretaries in shiny black heels, and negro maids in starched caps, and pot-bellied shopkeepers still in their aprons.
Edendale was an area which had once been at the heart of the moving picture industry. Max Sennette and the Keystone Kops had tumbled down these hilly streets. Harold Lloyd could have hung from that post office clock. But that was back in the ancient times of the silents. The studios had moved west, and Edendale had been forgotten, just like MGM. Nothing in this city ever stayed still. Now, where the gods of a different era had once walked, there were only gas stations, parking lots and drive-in churches.
The roads off the main drag went steeply up into a slew of smart new whites-only housing developments. Clark followed one, and parked the Delahaye just before a turn.
Aurora Avenue was a wide crescent of well-spaced split-levels with white-painted wooden sidings. Birds sang. The air still smelled rainy up here from the lawn sprinklers. Everything was in its place, from the second car on the driveway to the wrought iron hummingbird feeders. It was like a front cover for
American Home
. But actual people seemed as rare here as they were in the more extravagant houses of Woodsville. There was nothing much to distinguish number 16 Aurora Avenue from any of the other properties, although there was no car, and the front lawn, which would have passed for pristine anywhere else, looked a touch ragged in comparison with the others. He paused and stooped down as if to tie up his shoelace, noticing as he glanced across that the windows were shut, the drapes were open, and that there had either been no mail or newspaper delivered this morning, or they had been taken in.
He walked on to the end of the crescent, then took an immediate right. They were still putting up new houses here, and the area was a cleared wasteland filled with foundation trenches, separated from the rear of Aurora Avenue’s gardens by nothing more than a chainlink fence. Trying to look as if he had a reason to be here—maybe he was a realtor or prospective purchaser—he strode across the mud and dust, then studied the back of the houses until he was sure he’d got the right one. He quickly climbed the fence and dropped down into number 16’s yard.
No yapping dogs or playing children. Just more birdsong. He could also hear the hiss of a sprinkler, but that came from a fair few houses up. All the drapes were open and all the windows were shut here, as at the front. Once again, there were neat borders, impressive blooms of fuchsia and bougainvillea and many other kinds of plant he didn’t recognize, although the turf was a little wilder and thicker than he’d expected.
He peered in the windows. Everything inside looked orderly, but there was no sign of occupancy. He checked the garbage bin, which was empty, and smelled clean. He nudged open the screen door, tried the inside handle, then looked through the keyhole to see if a key was still in the mortise lock; it wasn’t. Neither did this Doctor Losovic strike him as the sort who’d leave a key under the mat. Still, he felt in all the obvious places and found nothing. Then he searched the borders for a medium-sized stone, and gave the nearest of the windows a sharp rap. Using the tip of the Delahaye’s key, he worked out the putty from around the crack he’d made—with a house as new as this one, it was an easy job—until he could loosen and pry out the triangle of glass. Then he reached through to twist the handle, pulled the window open, and dropped inside.
Dining room furniture regarded him with the same cold surprise which the furniture in people’s houses always did when he broke in—no, if anything, it was far colder; everything here was so
clean
. There was an odd, moaning, flapping sound. It was followed by a loud hissing. Then the moaning and flapping started again. His skin chilled. Lifting the Colt from his pocket, he moved around the gleaming table and across the hall toward the sound’s source. He laughed out loud when he shoved the door open with the Colt’s barrel. A new Bendix washing machine squatted in the kitchen, suds and flaying arms of clothing sliding past its porthole. So
someone
had been here recently. Although what that told him, he wasn’t sure.
Doctor Losovic had a liking for expensive new gadgets, and not much taste when it came to decoration. The gleam of a Presto pressure cooker and a streamline Electrolux fridge competed oddly with the gingham lamp shades and the pink rose wallpaper, at least as far as he was concerned. It was the same throughout the house. Wrought iron light sconces. Cellophane curtains. Chrome and jadeite electrical equipment and modern housewear set amid strews of cushions and floral rugs. The phonograph in the front lounge was especially ugly. A big “cathedral style” thing—more like a tombstone—of bakelite knobs, gleaming valves and zigzag marquetry. He checked the records stacked beside it. Churchy stuff, mostly. Masses and requiems. Those big German composers whose names generally began with B whom Peg had once told him were old hat. But at least some of the pictures on the walls—sepia reproductions of medieval religious paintings—made a kind of fit.
He moved upstairs as the Bendix began to rumble through another wash cycle, wondering as he did so what he’d been expecting to find. The links with Thrasis had seemed plain when he’d been talking to Barbara, but here…
Doctor Losovic favored straight, simple skirts and tops, and even simpler underwear. She used two different types of sanitary product, nothing fancier than Palmolive soap to wash herself, and her shoe size was on the large side at 8. The second bedroom was set out as a study, with pen and paper laid beneath the glass petals of a lily-shaped desklamp, and everything looking as if it had never been used. Facing the desk were a few framed newspaper cuttings. Yellowed photos of smiling kids, grinning pensioners. Even a bunch of dogs outside a new kennels. Headlines about how grateful everyone was. In each of the pictures, with her hands on the shoulders of the happy staff or holding the fluffiest puppy or kneeling with the kids, was the same tall woman with broad shoulders and shortish dark hair. The lace-topped bookcase behind the desk chair contained titles about the understanding of the mind, titles about the understanding of pain, titles about the understanding of dreams, and every one of them was pristine in its dustjacket. He eased one out, and flicked through pages filled with dizzying diagrams and Latin terms and cutaways of skulls. They should have seemed wildly out of place in this temple to modern America, but somehow they didn’t.
No holiday seashells. No love letters. No cellar stuffed with boxes in need of sorting. No human stains on those oh-so-clean sheets. Everything fitted, but somehow Doctor Penny Losovic didn’t seem to have much of a personal life, and it was hard not to feel sorry for the woman. Even her toothbrush looked barely used.
He found another picture of her on the telephone stand back down in the hall. She was looking up at the photographer from behind what he took to be her office desk. She had clear, Nordic eyes, a big jaw. They were features which might have been pretty on someone else, but she looked purposeful and severe. He set the picture back down beside the Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses which she’d left there with what by now seemed like uncharacteristic abandon, then slid open the small drawer beneath. Nothing but a slew of the usual business cards and we-called-when-you-were-out notes from meter readers for the utilities. He slid it shut, and stared once more at that photo—that almost smiling mouth—and then again at those Ray-Bans.
He worked the drawer open again. His fingers skidded through cards for telephone repairmen, cards for electricians, cards for plumbers, a card for RTS Taxis, and a card which said
Clark Gable, Private and Personal Research a Specialty
with a corner folded over and the phone number changed and crossed out. That infernal machine in the kitchen was still swooshing and groaning. He ran through to it and struggled with the porthole handle until it gave in a wet rush around his feet. Amid a spill of navy fabric, a badge proclaiming
GLADMONT SECURITIES
glittered through the suds.
H
E BACKED THE DELAHAYE AROUND
, slamming the rear fender against a tree. Gears skittered as he took the hills down from Edendale and through Silver Lake, dodging pedestrians, narrowly missing a farm truck at the junction with Alvarado. But there was one thing about where he was heading; he knew the way.
Palms flew overhead as he shot stoplights and overtook dallying drivers and raced south toward Culver City. There had been nightspots along these roads ten years ago—brazen as you like even at the height of Prohibition—with hat check girls and cigar girls and camera girls and girls who’d do pretty much whatever else you wanted. But the Green Mill and the Kings Tropical Inn and Fatty Arbuckle’s Plantation had all gone the same way as poor Fatty himself, and the hot places to be seen were along West Sunset. Or so he’d heard. Instead, he passed blimp fields and golf practice ranges and all the many building sites which endlessly swallowed up this city’s past and turned it into the all-consuming present. Then he hooked east toward the fringes of the Baldwin Hills, where a bent sign which no one had thought worth taking down or stealing still pointed in the direction of the old MGM Studios.
He parked the Delahaye off along a sidestreet of boarded-up shops which were seemingly awaiting redevelopment, like this whole area. The only billboard now beside the MGM lot was a realtor’s sign, and the long external expanse of once gleaming white wall was a territory across which the city’s many billposters, graffiti scrawlers and outdoor urinators had marked their identities.
That Grecian-pillared entrance remained, although the barrier had long gone, and rusted girders poked through where the plaster had fallen away. He looked around the familiar and yet desolate landscape beyond, trying to think what Barbara would have done. Most likely, she’d have phoned that number on the receipt for RTS Taxis from the library payphone, spoken to the guy in the office, then called for one of their cabs to take her here to ask the divers about what they remembered about their fares for last Wednesday. But her presence seemed as distant as that guy called Walter or Willy who’d once saluted him here. Taking the gun from his pocket, thumbing the safety off, he walked through the stretching shadows toward the giant rows of soundstages.
The gutters were falling. The concrete was weed-grown. Peering through gaps in boarded-up entrances, it was easy to imagine the residues of old get-rich-quick schemes, miracle cosmetics and pyramid-sale encyclopedias inside. Some of the buildings, victims of age and earthquake, had slumped into piles of rubble, asbestos and iron. A few bore business signs.
Fine Antiques
. Some business called
Adbel Acoustics
. Piles of teachests and rusted-out trucks.
Soundstage 1A was the biggest of them all, and looked to be more intact than most of the others, although its vast main doors were closed. The car parked out front—a black Mercury sedan—looked bizarrely out of place in this wasteland. It had a yellow
For Hire
light on its roof, and badged signs with a logo for RTS Taxis on its front doors. He gripped the Colt in both hands now with his finger hooked around the trigger. His heart was hammering.
He hunch-ran to the shadowed alley beside the soundstage in search of a side entrance. Which talkie had he shot here? Was it
A Free Soul
or
The Secret Six
? Which laughing starlet had he drawn into this very alley after the post-shoot party? He found a rusty sidedoor. There was no sign of a lock or bolt. It swung creakingly open when he gave it a shove.
Near darkness. If a setup called RTS Taxis really worked out of here, they did a good job of not showing it. He stood and waited. All he could hear was the thump of his heart. All he could see, as his swimming gaze slowly adjusted, was a stretch of deep woodland. Giant oaks canted their huge limbs. Some of them lay sideways. Others were fallen and torn. They gave off that once-familiar smell of dust and paint and canvas. He looked up and saw the dim gleam of chains, pulleys and lighting rigs overhead.
He moved on through changing landscapes. A stone dragon reared from Chinese hills. He passed Venetian gondolas, ornate gardens, primeval swamps. There were buildings within buildings. Signs for Makeup and Accounts. Long lines of beautiful frocks collapsed like cobwebs to the brush of his hands. The racks of uniforms were somewhat tougher, and gave off a smell of unlaundered sweat which he remembered from his own spear-carrier days. At their far end there was a mirror. Stacked against it were what he took for a moment to be shields. In fact, they were shields, but not of the kind which any cinematic soldier would carry into battle. Two bore the coat of arms of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Others were for a company called Orkin Pest Control. There were shields for the US Postal Service, shields for a variety of County Police Departments, shields for the Bell Telephone Company and shields for Gladmont Securities. All matched in size, and had the same small screwholes which would allow them to be fixed and removed from the sides of a car. Down beside them was what looked to be the blue dome of a police light. There was also an open toolbox with a screwdriver and a good quality hand drill. He was bending to look at it when he heard a faint
phut
and the back of his neck suddenly stung. Reaching around, his fingers encountered something stiff and glassy. He was trying to pull the thing out as his sense of where and who he was slid rapidly away.
H
E WAS SITTING AT THE EDGE
of some kind of stage-set surrounded by constellations of lighting rigs and masses of film and sound and feelie equipment. High up ahead of him was a dusty backdrop of the view across what he took to be the city of LA. But the Klieg lights were strong and the individual features and buildings—the teeming streets, City Hall, Griffith Park, the Hollywoodland sign—were hard to make out in the glare from the flaking, fading paint.