“Here are some valid reasons,” I offered. “It’s damned dangerous. It’s also illegal.”
“His clients all did a variety of illegal stuff,” Bud countered. “So basically I’m just punishing evildoers.”
“Still a mistake, a big one.”
He produced one of his wheezy chuckles. “I’ll invite you to the wedding when Marina and I get married,” he promised.
He didn’t get around to that.
I never saw Bud alive again. For that matter, I never saw him dead, since there was a closed coffin at his wake. He did phone me a couple of times, so I have a fair idea of what actually happened to him. Of course, quite a bit of what I think went on is based on conjecture.
Bud’s ads in the Hollywood trades began appearing the day after I ran into him on the Strip. Since he was an artist, they were nicely laid out and the typography was excellent. But a week later, they’d produced no positive results at all. Three different actresses of about the same age as Marina contacted him at his Hubris Productions e-mail address to suggest they could handle any role as well as she could and they had the advantage of being immediately available.
The prestigious private-investigation agency had made no progress toward locating her, though they assured Bud that they expected results in a very short time.
My wife and I make it a rule to play tennis at least twice a week at the country club in the beach town where we now reside. So when Bud called me the first time, I wasn’t at home. After listening to the voice mail, I meant to call him back but we were expecting some people for dinner and I never got around to it.
Bud sounded dejected. “This is costing a stewpot of money. And I’m not any closer to finding her. But I know Marina and I are going to get together, so I sure as hell am not going to give up hope.”
In my view, something that hadn’t happened in twenty-five years wasn’t likely to happen at all. That’s what I would’ve told him if I hadn’t been distracted by helping my wife get the house ready for guests that night.
Bud’s final call came about a week later, in the late afternoon. That one I was home for. “Success at last,” he announced, wheezing slightly with excitement.
“Great. You found Marina?”
“Almost.”
“Meaning?”
“It turns out Marina has a very good reason for lying low all these years.”
“And it is?”
“That I don’t know as yet, buddy, but it’s something pretty big,” he told me. “But she — and this really cheered me up — wants very much to see me again. Truth is, as might have been expected, she misses me, too, and is sorry we ever broke up.”
“Who told you this?”
“A very close friend of hers,” he said. “I’m going to meet this woman tonight and, if I can prove I really am Bud Hebberd, then she’s going to take me to Marina’s hideaway. I’m really excited about—”
“Where are you meeting this woman?”
“A secluded spot.”
“Specifically where?”
“Well, don’t mention this to anybody, especially the press,” he requested. “It’s that deserted amusement park down in San Amaro, place called Beachside Funland. In the parking lot in back of the place, you know, right along the water.”
I sighed. “Bud, have you been carrying on Gil’s blackmail sideline?”
After a few silent seconds, he said, “Yeah, I’ve had to, buddy. You know, to finance my quest.”
“Seems to me if one of your disgruntled clients wanted to get you alone at an out-of-the-way—”
“C’mon, don’t be paranoid,” he told me. “This is completely legit.”
“All right, let’s hope so,” I said. “And good luck.”
“Good luck I’m already having,” he assured me, and hung up.
They found him early the next morning, just as the day was starting, dressed in tennis shoes, a pair of chinos, and a blue pullover. Bud was sprawled facedown on the running path that stretched alongside the ocean. He was less than a quarter mile from the beachfront amusement park’s parking lot.
There were some unexplained bruises on his face. But there was no doubt that he’d suffered a massive heart attack.
Bud had never done anything resembling exercise in his entire life. He sure as hell hadn’t decided to start that night.
One of the people he’d been blackmailing, knowing about his obsession with Marina, had lured him to that quiet spot and tried to persuade him to tell where he’d stashed Gil Jacobs’s blackmail files.
Bud had managed to break loose and start running along the beach. Before they caught up with him, he suffered his heart attack.
They left him there alongside the ocean. They took his keys — none were found on the body — and went to his place in Pasadena to hunt for the blackmail material. They must have found it, since nothing like that was among his effects.
That’s what I think actually happened.
Bud’s ads in the Hollywood trade papers had some posthumous success. For one thing, they got assorted media people thinking about Marina Bowen again. Three different studios contacted her agent to inquire if she’d be interested in an assortment of maternal roles, two outfits that staged nostalgia conventions wanted to sign her up, and both Entertainment Tonight and 60 Minutes wanted to do segments about her and where she’d been all these years.
As it turned out, her surviving agent did know where she was. But Marina had long ago instructed him not to divulge her whereabouts to anyone. No exceptions. Even the detective agency Bud hired couldn’t get it out of him.
Back in 1991 Marina had had what was most likely a serious breakdown. She managed to get herself to an out-of-the-way corner of Wyoming. When she recovered she decided she didn’t want anything to do with show business ever again. She changed her name and devoted her life to watercolor painting and a modest bit of community service. Nobody in that particular remote corner recognized her. She had a considerable amount of money to finance her anonymity. However, when her agent contacted her to tell her about the renewed interest in her, Marina decided it was possibly time for a comeback. After a decade or more of dabbling in watercolors of Wyoming scenes, she felt it was maybe time to try Hollywood again.
I encountered her, by chance, at our country club on an overcast afternoon a month and a half after Bud had been laid to rest at a cemetery out in Glendale. She was about ten pounds heavier and had a few wrinkles. Her hair she’d been able to keep the same shade of auburn and, all things considered, she still looked pretty good.
I noticed her sitting at an outdoor table with two young and successful screenwriters, one of each sex, and a plump young woman who was an agent. Years ago I’d met her when she did some endorsement print ads for the agency. I crossed to the table and introduced myself. Then I said, “I was a friend of Bud Hebberd.”
Marina touched at her hair with slender fingers. She frowned thoughtfully. “Bud Hebberd?”
“As I understand it, you and he shared a home together about twenty-five years ago.”
The frown gradually faded. “Yes, that’s right,” she said finally. “I’d quite forgotten.”
Copyright © 2006 Ron Goulart
Baba’s Bites
by Chris Simms
After traveling throughout the world, Chris Simms settled near Manchester, England. He works as a freelance copywriter while also turning out psycho-logical thrillers that have earned him comparison to Ruth Rendell and Mo Hayder. His novels to date are Outside the White Lines, Pecking Order, Killing the Beasts, and Shifting Skin, the latter scheduled for publication by Orion U.K. in July 2006.