Vallance fell silent. He got up again and straightened one of her prints without looking at her. ‘Not really. Kendall didn’t get along with anyone.’ He seemed disinclined to say any more. The changes in his mood were rapid: sometimes he seemed to want to talk, then something he didn’t like would come up and he would sink into silence.
‘But would you say she was another of those self-absorbed, selfish sort of women Harry seemed to go for?’ Lorraine asked, pretending sympathy with Vallance’s point of view.
‘Was she ever,’ Vallance said, with a scornful laugh, rising to the bait. ‘Have you seen Kendall lately? All set up in her fancy art gallery, with her fancy friends and her fancy clothes and her fancy voice? Kendall was her maiden name before she married Harry. Her real first name is Darken. Doesn’t play quite so well, does it? She came to LA as just another little piece of white trash and got a job as a secretary to some decorator, and then it was an antique dealer, and the next thing Sonja — God, she was dumb — gave her a job in the gallery. I guess she thought Harry would never look twice at her — she wasn’t his type and she looked like shit. Big hair and big shoulders and these terrible tacky little suits, but my, that little lady was quite some operator.’
Clearly there was no love lost between the two of them, and Lorraine rapidly revised her theory of Kendall and Vallance acting together to get rid of Nathan and Cindy. ‘You mean in a business sense?’ she asked, deliberately misunderstanding him.
‘You could say that. Kendall has been in business since she was in diapers — the business of promoting Darken Kendall Nathan. She acted at first like she worshipped Sonja, studied her clothes, copied the way she talked, and, of course, she changed her name just as soon as she could, said it was because Sonja used to call her by her surname, like as a pet name, when they were working together. Kendall started to play up all this great artist garbage too, and Sonja’d lost the plot anyway, by this stage — her hormones had curdled, I reckon, over this whole no-kids stuff.’ He gave a sigh of irritation with these unsavoury feminine preoccupations.
‘Sonja said she had to start working again so she locked herself in the studio for about a year and Kendall just waved her hankie and said bye-bye. She took over the gallery, of course, and worked her ass off there until she was running it. Gradually she took over Harry too.’ Clearly this turn of events had not suited Vallance.
‘Of course, Harry’s mother,’ Vallance continued, well into his stride now — Lorraine had been waiting for them to get to old Mrs Nathan — ‘hated Sonja’s guts, and she rammed Kendall down his throat. Kendall started sweet-talking the old lady, and Abigail thought she was just the sweetest girl, and so maternal. Every time Sonja went out of town, Kendall would just suggest to Harry that he invite his mother, so diplomatic’
‘How long did this go on?’ Lorraine asked.
‘Well, they had a thing behind Sonja’s back for a long time, but Harry wouldn’t leave Sonja until Kendall announced she was pregnant. He had to tell her then.’
‘How did she take it?’
Vallance dug his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘I don’t know. She just left. All I knew was she flew to New York, and she never came back. She tried to claim some share in the gallery, but his lawyers made such a fucking production out of the whole thing that she backed down. That was the way Sonja was. If she didn’t get what she wanted immediately she just walked away.’
A full two minutes passed. Then Lorraine asked, ‘So he remained at the house, Sonja went to New York, and they started divorce proceedings?’
‘Yes. Harry and Kendall got married and had their kid, but the kid died and Harry was losing money. He changed. He was never the same again.’
‘Why did you hang on?’ Lorraine asked.
‘Jesus Christ... you want me to spell it out?’
‘I guess so.’
He sighed and looked at a point above Lorraine’s head, then back to her. His wide-set eyes were like a sick dog’s.
‘I loved him, and when he didn’t need me any more I let him use me. When he ditched Kendall for Cindy, I went through it all again. He used me, just as much as he used Cindy, used everyone he ever knew. But I still loved him.’
Loved him enough not to want anyone else to have him? Lorraine wondered suddenly whether Vallance could have killed Harry. In a way, he had loved Nathan longer than anyone else, had been obsessed by him and, in his own mind, been betrayed by him too.
‘Anyway,’ Vallance said, seeming to drag himself with an effort back into the present, ‘I guess I’d better go.’ Lorraine stood up to walk to the door with him, sorry for him in spite of her revulsion. He had walked in like a movie star, and was walking out so weak and jaded.
‘Can I just ask you one final thing?’ she said, as she opened the door and Vallance fumbled with his shades. ‘Were you at home last night?’
He knew at once that she was asking him if he had an alibi for the time at which Cindy Nathan had died, and he was not so emotionally battered that he could not reply at once.
‘Yes, I was,’ he said. ‘A number of my friends called, as it happens.’
He had put on the dark glasses now, and Lorraine could not see his eyes. ‘Okay,’ she said. She walked with him past Decker’s desk, and showed him out. He left without a smile or a handshake, and without looking back.
Lorraine raised one eyebrow at Decker. ‘Well, guess who the most beautiful man in the world wanted to shove his dick up?’
‘Jesus Christ, you can be so fucking crude,’ Decker said huffily.
Lorraine leaned on his desk, and grinned. ‘He was in love with Harry Nathan himself Then she gestured towards her office. ‘Come in and chat to me. I want to discuss a few things that came up this morning.’
Decker collected his notebook, and asked her whether she was doing all this work pro bono or if they were going to be paid.
Lorraine sighed. ‘Oh, shit, I forgot. I have to go talk to Feinstein.’
Vallance drove out of the garage, unaware that the smiling, bowing valet had given his car a thorough going-over. He was on his way now to play Prince Charming to Verna Montgomery, to get his rent money out of her. She had to be sixty years old, though she insisted she was no more than forty-four. He hadn’t even bothered to rearrange the white wisps of his hair because he knew that if Nathan’s videos ever got out any last shred of hope he had of resurrecting his career was gone. As he drove onto Sunset he was crying, his white hair blowing in the wind — Raymond Vallance, the most beautiful man in the world.
Chapter 9
Decker got Lorraine an appointment with Feinstein almost immediately. His address in Century City was certainly impressive, on one of the smartest blocks of the Avenue of the Stars. The building had only recently been opened, and Lorraine had to concede that it was a truly handsome piece of modern architecture, a soaring tower of golden granite and blue glass that seemed to cut the sky.
Lorraine went up the steps and into a lobby whose sheer moneyed lustre exceeded anything she had seen, even in Los Angeles. The commissionaire directed her to the forty-third floor, and she made her way to the bank of elevators.
She emerged from the elevator car into another lobby bathed in light, streaming in through semi-transparent blinds of fine white cloth. Feinstein’s receptionist was a beautiful, long-limbed girl, wearing a straight tunic dress in mint green crêpe-de-chine and a pair of transparent plastic court shoes, whose four-inch heels made her well over six feet tall. She introduced herself as Pamela, with a charming smile, and asked her if she would mind waiting a moment. Lorraine sat down in one of four low armchairs with curving black backs and white leather upholstery ranged round a table of quaking-leaf fern.