The gun clattered to the floor. David’s fist crashed down on the crown of my head and fireworks exploded in my brain. I released his balls but bit down harder still. He screamed and grabbed a handful of my shirt, lifted me off the ground. Next thing there was another shot and I squeezed my eyes shut, certain beyond a doubt that I’d caught a bullet and just didn’t feel it yet. I gave a good fight. Did the best I could. I was only sorry I never really found Helen for Graham and that Barbara was probably the next to go.
You can’t win all the time.
What a goddamned clusterfuck.
I opened my eyes and waited for the pain or, failing that, the end. Instead David fell into a heap beside me and lay still. His hair was a matted mess dribbling red. A few feet away, Barbara Tilitson stood trembling with the dead man’s pistol shaking in both hands. Her eyes streamed tears and her mouth jabbered silently, senselessly.
Behind her, bent over the Queen Anne chair, Lou said, “Oh, fuck.”
I scrambled for the phone and dialed 911.
Looked to me like Lou’s idea about withdrawing the money worked, to an extent. And to enormous cost, too.
She was still swearing at the paramedics when they rushed in to work on her. They tried to look at my head too, but I brushed them off. Lou was loaded up on a gurney and taken downstairs to the ambulance waiting in the street with dizzying lights.
She was dead before she reached the hospital.
I was weeping like a baby when I found out, sitting in the sterile waiting room with a bevy of cops around me. The police were not moved by my feelings and started into me right away. I said I wanted a lawyer and that I wanted to talk to Detective Shea. As luck had it, he was already in the hospital. When he finally made it down to see me, I learned why.
“Your buddy’s awake,” he told me. “Lucky son of a bitch. He’s going to be all right.”
I sighed with relief, but I was still crying. Poor Lou. I never bought her story about why she did it, why she came along with me. I never was going to find out. One last adventure for a lost soul, I guessed. It was going to have to do.
“What about the guy who killed Louise?” I asked.
“Dead, but I guess you knew that. It’s quite a trail of bodies you and your pal leave behind you, isn’t it?”
“And all over a damn silent movie.”
“About that,” Shea said, fishing a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and putting them on. He squinted at his notepad and continued, “I’ve been digging around a lot, looking into that movie. The Internet’s a hell of a thing, don’t know how we ever got by without it.”
I raised my brows and waited for him to get to the point.
He said, “You’re the movie buff. Ever heard of Jack Parson?”
“No,” I said. “That old stuff is Graham’s department. Bores me to tears.”
“He’s the fella who directed your Angel of the Abyss back in the day. Turns out his son was a bigwig in the biz, too. Bigger than his old man. Exec type, money guy. Made a run for Congress, lost by a wide margin.”
“I don’t know any of this, Detective.”
“Well, Junior’s gone to his reward, too, but he married a young woman who appears to still be kicking around, though she’s older than dirt now if she is. Name of Cora. But it looks like you wouldn’t know about her, either.”
I swallowed hard. “Holy shit.”
“Something coming to mind?”
“The old woman…”
“Mrs. Tilitson said something about an old woman. She’s pretty out of it, though. What was she talking about?”
“Jesus — the guy who shot Louise, the one Barbara killed — he came with another guy and an old woman. And Barbara knew her. She called her Mrs. Parson.”
Detective Shea cocked his head to one side and said, “And Bingo was his name-o.”
PART THREE: GRAHAM
26
Saul Veritek’s heart attack happened on a Sunday. The press reported he was home alone at the time, preparing for bed, when the attack struck. People in the know were well aware that he was in the company of a pair of aspiring actresses, without whom he would never have survived. All of this information came to Grace’s ears that Monday morning, when she arrived at the lot for the day’s shooting. Someone suggested a moment of silent prayer for Saul’s full recovery, and though few likely prayed in earnest, everyone remained quiet for a few minutes before Jack took up his bullhorn to address the company.
“We will continue our work,” he told the sullen group of two dozen cast and crew. “Saul would have another heart attack if he thought we were wasting time here. There are only about twenty-five pages left to film, and I think we can do it before the end of the week. In fact, I know we can, and we will. That’s all. Let’s get to work.”
He set the bullhorn on his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. Grace approached, script in hand. He smiled awkwardly, and she wondered if it was her imagination or if he looked a little jittery.
“I’d like to tell you I’m sorry for that mess at March’s,” he said, sounding genuine. “You know I hadn’t any horse in that race, I just wanted to help facilitate your next step.”
“No Frank, no deal,” she said with a half-hearted shrug. “That’s no kind of picture I want to work on, anyhow. All it amounts to is a wasted afternoon.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from the old Red himself?”
“No, and I’d tell you if I had. After March’s driver took me home, my car was waiting right there in front, just like Frank said it would be. My guess is he finally skipped town. That Joe Sommer seems to have it out for him and bad.”
“Joe’s a bit of a bulldog, all right. Used to be a Pinkerton man, way I hear it. Helped the major studios get their footing out here, away from all that labor craziness back east.”
“Well, I won’t be used — not by Joe, Frank, or anybody else. I’ll make the pictures I want to make, the right kind, and not so some Red chaser can make a point to people I don’t even know.”
“That’s fair enough, Grace,” said Jack.
She maintained a hard face, a face designed to express her general distaste for liars and conmen, despite the hurt Frank had caused her. In all the time Grace had spent in Los Angeles she had yet to find a single person she could honestly call a friend. Not a colleague, not someone who could help propel her career or who wanted her to lift up theirs, but a sincere human connection. For a time she thought Frank was going to be that person. Now that she knew different, the sting of disappointment was difficult to mask.
“Say, Jack,” she said, eager to get off the subject of Frank Faehnrich. “Before we get started, a question about your little speech a moment ago.”
“What’s that?”
She flipped through the dog-eared script in her hands, knitting her brow at the dull blue mimeographed pages. “You said we’ve got twenty-five more pages to shoot. By my count there are only nineteen.”
“That’s because I mean to do a little reshooting. Not much, just a few scenes I wasn’t happy with when we were looking them over in March’s projection room.”
“Oh? Which scenes?”
Jack laughed softly and tussled her hair. “Don’t worry, we’ll get around to it. Keep your mind on Billy Goat Gruff over there for now, will you?”
He stabbed his thumb at the graveyard set, where Bob Scaife was being fitted with a grotesque goat’s head. Grace gritted her teeth.
Living death, for Clara, does not come cheap. She may roam the earth, and she may seek her vengeance, but not for free. The same entity to whom she was sacrificed demands recompense for her second iteration, the New Clara, and for this she must now return to the scene of her death, and the scene of her resurrection.