Where the Truth Lies (51 page)

And her front man, delivering the dirt she’d acquired in her various jobs and liaisons, had been Kef Ludlow, who used to leave the apartment at eightA .M. wearing sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat that hid the fact that he was venturing out without his toupee. He made his morning deliveries on Sundays through Thursdays because Moe Cohen’s column ran on Mondays through Fridays. No wonder he was whistling as he left the apartment. His betting tips as “the Swami” might have been written for a humble racing form, but he’d bragged to me that it was published by the majors; he’d had the connection to theMiami Sentinel that Maureen had lacked. When he’d shown his superiors the dirt he’d written in a wry and scathing voice (penned by the talented Maureen, who’d told Lanny she planned to go places), they’d given the column a shot … not realizing that this forty-six-year-old male hack was merely the front for Moe Cohn, the pen name of a promising if promiscuous young woman. She’d gained access to (and the confidence of) celebrities, financial players, and assorted hotshots, chatting with them across a table or a pillow, and what they didn’t tell her, she could overhear or see as she wheeled her way into their rooms with food and drink. After all, no one knows who’s been sleeping with whom in a hotel better than the person who brings them their breakfast in bed.

But after Maureen died, Kef Ludlow had nothing to report. His blind items became bland items, echoing local press handouts. His column was dropped by the end of the year. Losing whatever his cut was of the income that Moe Cohn had been generating, Kef had no choice but to bid a wrenching good-bye to his secondhand Buick LeSabre and dinner at the Embers. Painfully, he’d had to revert to the spare lifestyle that “the Swami” could afford, living off the meager salary from his dog-racing column, supplemented by the occasional winning streak at the track. And, of course, he’d lost Maureen. It was easy to imagine how she might have led him on in the beginning … and how she had really felt about Kef Ludlow.

My discovery gave the ring of truth to the entire document Lanny had sent me. I read it through carefully again, as if it were all Gospel, as if Lanny’s recountings were as accurate as he claimed, as accurate as the memory that had allowed him to remember intricate dialogue for comedy routines on live TV, to remember ninety-minute monologues for the one-man show he’d done on Broadway.

And I saw it. One fact after another tumbled in place … like four or five little patches of jigsaw puzzle, those mini-assemblages that you’ve kept sitting outside the rectangular frame of the Big Picture (because you believe they can’t be fromthis puzzle, that they must have been included by accident). Then suddenly you find a place for one—and look, this goes with this, and that’s part of the farmer’s tractor, and this is just the top of the haystack … and a huge section of the puzzle is suddenly complete.

The police love a suspect who’s a good talker. They’ll order him doughnuts and a BLT on white toast and send out for cigarettes and bring in fresh coffee and fresh cops to shoot the breeze with, anything to keep him talking. Because no one can talk forever without telling some bit of the truth, even if they have no idea they’re doing it.

Why Lanny would send this document to me now, I couldn’t begin to grasp.

But if I were to believe what he’d written, then he’d revealed much more to me than he’d realized when he’d floated these pages onto my lap.

Like Vince and me, maybe Lanny wasn’t quite as clever as he thought.

The ABC afternoon news concluded without mentioning Lanny’s demise. Vince’s funeral had been in the news several days earlier, though. Lanny had spoken, it was reported, both eloquently and affectionately.

Sally Santoro had attended the ceremony as well and afterward was seen to be openly weeping. Through his sobs, he announced that he would open the Salvatore Santoro Wing of a Pittsburgh hospital “in Vince’s honor.” When asked which hospital, he said he’d be announcing further details once he was inconsolable.Sic.

I wondered who had spoken at Maureen’s funeral. And as I thought of Maureen’s burial, I felt a cool bristling of the hair on my neck as it dawned on me that now, like Maureen, I knew far more than was healthy for a growing girl to know, especially if I hoped to grow older. I knew what was in this third “memoir” of Lanny’s. I had also divined how poor Maureen had been transported to New Jersey, a promiscuous princess lying in state on a bed of ice, surrounded by a court of condemned crustaceans. The knowledge stored in my brain was very dangerous to the liberty of Lanny Morris, and unfortunately, it is generally assumed that human brains do not retain their stored knowledge once death has occurred. If Lanny Morris was to get any inkling of how much I knew, I assumed he would be delighted to hear of (or arrange for) my immediate demise.

So in that great tradition of idiocy that was rapidly becoming my permanentmodus operandi, I tried to figure out how I could speak with Lanny as soon as possible.

I had no phone number for him. All my dealings had been through his attorney’s office. The message I had for Lanny, concerning what I now knew and why he might want me dead, was not one I was likely to leave with a third party. I had to contact him in person. Luckily, being a seasoned journalist, I knew how to obtain such clandestine information as his home address. I drove to the Sunset Strip, where there’s always this guy standing in traffic, from whom I bought a Map of the Homes of the Stars.

Off North Beverly Glen Boulevard, there is actually a street called Scenario Lane. The end of the lane overlooks the Stone Canyon Reservoir, and Lanny lived there in a brick Gothic manor patterned after Toad Hall from Walt Disney’sWind in the Willows (a book that at one time had been written by Kenneth Grahame). I pulled up to its black iron gates and pushed the button on an intercom similar to the one at Vince’s home.

A woman’s voice answered. “Yes?”

“Delivery for Mr. Morris,” I informed her.

“You can leave it in the mailbox.”

“Sorry, it’s too big,” I countered. “And it requires his signature.”

“Mr. Morris left for New York City an hour ago. He won’t be back until Monday. I can sign for it if you want, I’m his housekeeper. But if it has to be his signature, he won’t be back until Monday.”

“Can you tell me where in New York he’s staying? Maybe we can forward it to him.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t give out that information,” she told me.

That was all right. I was certain I knew where to find him.

THIRTY-ONE

I knocked on the door to 2302 at the Plaza hotel.

You can rest assured I’d confirmed that Lanny was at his usual suite at the Plaza before I made another transcontinental flight for no good reason. Yesterday, I’d hung up as soon as the operator had rung Mr. Merwin’s room and I’d heard Reuben’s voice answering the phone.

Now Reuben opened the door to Lanny’s suite. He was dressed in one of his white houseboy jackets. The golden glow of his face beamed a little brighter when he saw me.

“Oh, Miss Trout!” His pleasant greeting faded as a concerned look came over him and he signaled to me with his eyes, indicating that Lanny was seated at a table, having breakfast with a woman. I could only see the back of her head, but her suit was trimly fitted and well made.

“Hello,” said Lanny, looking up from a cup of coffee. “How are you?”

I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t act surprised to see me. In the taxi on the way up from Beejay’s, I had somewhat savored the mini-melodrama of my reappearance at the scene of his crime of passion.

I set my portfolio down on a coffee table as if I’d been invited to stay. “Well, I have a publisher ready to kill me for not getting more on tape from Vince Collins than I did, and the same publisher equally ready to pay any price under the sun for anything that might salvage my book about him … but no amount of money is going to bring him back, right?”

I moved to get a better look at this woman, his latest Plaza Sweet. Good luck to you, sugar, I thought. I took a few more steps and felt foolish (and, foolishly, relieved) when I saw that his breakfast companion was old enough to be his mother. Very nicely groomed, with expensive jewelry, but unless Lanny was into a level of kinkiness he’d not displayed with me, this septuagenarian was probably not his latest playmate. Although who knew with the boys. Then I remembered that the plural didn’t fit anymore. Now there was only “the boy.” Lanny asked if I wanted some breakfast.

“No thanks. I’m not a big breakfast person,” I said. “I just like to wake up, stretch a little, remember where I am, and be told by the maid that I have to leave.”

Lanny’s companion gave me a bewildered smile. Reuben had been moving the breakfast things onto the cart from room service, and he cast me a sympathetic glance.

Lanny said, “Do me a favor, Reuben, would you move the cart to the service room by the elevators? I hate dirty dishes sitting outside my door and I have people coming in later. And then I’m going to need some privacy for a little while, okay?”

“Certainly,” said Reuben. He spoke to Lanny but looked at me as he said, “I’ll be just down the hall in 2307 if you need me.”

The door closed behind him. Lanny did the honors. “This lovely lady is Dorothy Vanderheuvel, she does an absolutely incredible job raising funds for my charity. Dorothy, this is …” He looked bewildered. “I’m sorry, what name are you using today?”

I introduced myself with my real name. Dorothy Vanderheuvel, sensing all was not serene, said she had to be at the Gulf and Western building by ten. Lanny nodded. “Go get ’em, Tiger,” he laughed as he showed her to the door.

We were alone. But I’d made sure to tell Beejay where I was going, and asked her to ring Lanny’s room and demand to speak to me if I hadn’t called her at the vice principal’s office by noon. I thought it would be a good idea to let Lanny know this in advance, so I told him what I’d done. I also pointed out that Mickey the elevator operator had seen me walk in, and Reuben knew I was there. “And Bob down at the front desk remembered me from last time, which astounded me since there must be so many women going in and out of this place,” I commented tartly. “Is that why you rent a two-bedroom suite? Four beds, no waiting?”

I had meant to get to business with him but found myself unable to stay off the topic of my past humiliation. I walked over to the bedroom that we hadn’t visited on my previous visit and opened the door. It was clearly unused, although there was quite a bit of luggage about the room.

Lanny shrugged. “I don’t like the room where I sleep to be cluttered with bags and files and work. I use the second bedroom as a storage room. And—look, I’m no psychiatrist, but for a number of years, Vince and I always shared a two-bedroom suite. I think if I were in a one-bedroom setup, I’d feel lonely.” He grimaced a bit and went to shut the door to the second bedroom. “As for the traffic in and out of here, I think you flatter me a little. Let’s get this straight. I got laid all I needed to get laid in the fifties. But I’m not the person I was then. Oh sure, I can put on ‘Lanny’ …”

Remarkably, he did just that; without him even speaking, “Lanny” flickered on and off his face.

“… but that’s just a character I play. Over the years, the character and I have grown farther and farther apart, just as Vince and I did. One of these days, not too long from now, I look forward to breaking up the team of Lanny and Lanny.”

He went to the window. Outside, you could see all of Central Park. How it hadn’t been sold off and made into apartments and parking lots over the centuries was one of the great miracles of modern times.

“So,” he said, taking in the view, “here you are again. What can I do for you? I assume it has something to do with Vince’s death. You’re pretty much up a creek there, aren’t you?”

I stared at him, but he said no more. He was waiting for me.

I began, “I have some wonderful material that I was able to draw out of Vince, about his early years, almost up to the time he met you. It’s not really enough to make a book out of, but it would be nice if this warm, funny side of Vince could reach the reading public, especially in light of the way he died.”

He came back over to me. “That’s swell that you care so much how Vince is remembered. Seeing as it was your project that turned the screws on his psyche. You remember the day when I was going to see you and him—when your ‘brother’ died? He’d called me after years of not talking, simply because he was scared out of his mind. Scared he’d say the wrong thing.”

“What was he scared of saying, Lanny?”

Lanny glared at me. “I don’t know. That’s the answer I’m giving you and anyone else who asks me why he killed himself. I don’t know.”

I thought, Ah but you do, Lanny. I said, “Fine. But why I came here, with the full approval of Neuman and Newberry, is to propose that the material I have on Vince, along with all my extensive research and notes, be joined up with your own book. Clearly, Neuman and Newberry would love to publish the result, but if you don’t wish that, some sort of co-publishing structure could be arranged. I think these chapters on Vince would make a marvelous preamble to your own story.”

Lanny looked at me suspiciously.

I added, “Obviously, I wouldn’t be looking to take any share of the writing credit for any of your story, Lanny. A secondary, smaller credit on the title page would be appropriate. My name wouldn’t be on the spine. Basically, I just hate the thought of this material not having a life. Can I ask how much of your own book you’ve written?”

“Not a lot,” he said, still watching me as if I might be carrying a concealed weapon.

“How much is not a lot? Assuming that the chapter I read at John Hillman’s offices was a chapter—which was very entertaining, by the way—how many chapters? Eight, twelve … ?”

“No, not that many.”

“Well, do you have a sense of when you might be finishing it?” I asked in the most casual of tones. “Just so that we could—”

“It’s not going to be finished. I’ve abandoned it.”

“Of course you have,” I said. “Of course you’ve abandoned it.”

He looked down at me. “What does that mean?” he asked.