Inside, the Paragon was one enormous room with a gleaming hardwood floor that must have been sixty years old, blistered and peeling floral wallpaper, and three sets of metal stairs leading to a catwalk that ran along the upper half of the building: a vantage point for the tangle-footed who wanted to watch the dancers. A bandstand, bare plywood set on metal risers, stood against the far wall. The place smelled as though the doors hadn’t been opened in years, a clogged, generic odor of disuse, like damp newsprint or pressed flowers. Three carpenters wearing T-shirts, cutoffs, and bandannas, as though they’d been costumed by the contractor, purposefully banged hammers against the plywood of the stage, and a man with an apron full of tools stood on a rickety, wheeled metal tower in the center of the floor, hanging lights from the beams below the ceiling. The most glamorous venue in Hollywood it wasn’t.
“The man hisself.” It was Henry, dressed to spar with Sylvester Stallone in gold boxing trunks and a sky-blue sleeveless formfit T-shirt that made him look even blacker. He had a pen tucked into the hair above his ear. “Ferris been pulling his hair out with both hands.”
“Anxiety’s good for him. It raises the pulse rate.”
“He thinks the fountain might oughta go over there,” Henry said, pointing to the corner of the room directly right of the stage.
Ferris’s holy water. “Up to him.”
“And close off the gallery up there. Keep everybody down on the floor. Put a couple of our helpers on the catwalk to keep an eye on folks.”
“How many helpers have we got?”
“Many as you want.”
“Two should do it up there. No need to be conspicuous. Where is he?”
“I sent him home. He was driving everybody crazy. We moved the stage three times already.”
“So walk me through it.”
He wrapped a big hand around my arm, making me feel like a toddler, and towed me to the door. “People come in here, which I’m sure is no surprise. Two guys here, handing out tickets for the drawing and identifying everybody they can. Valet parking outside-Ferris wants to control the cars. Hell, Ferris wants to control everything. He was all upset this morning that daylight savings was over, wondering who he could call about it. He’s trying to get the street turned one-way for the evening. Okay, they come into the room and head for the bar-”
“Where?”
“Left wall. It’s got the plumbing outlets. Bar’ll go in this afternoon. Four bartenders, white wine, five kinds of bubble water, fruit juice for the fanatics. Eight of Ferris’s actors dressed like Roman slaves, whatever that means, moving around with trays of what Ferris calls finger foods, fried fingers or something. There’s a kitchen in the back, but it’s pretty dire, just pounds of rat shit in the ovens. Food’s being brought in already cooked from Hugo’s Hankerings. We’ll scrub down the counters, nuke ’em good and cover them with butcher paper, just use them to hold the food before it goes on the trays. Four people there, shoveling the stuff whenever the slaves run out. They going to be costumed like French maids.”
“A touch of class.”
“You say so. One monitor-good word, huh? — over by that door to keep an eye on the bathroom, like you wanted. Make sure everyone who goes in comes back out.”
“That’s twenty-one so far, not counting the parking attendants.”
“They stay outside.”
“You know all these people by sight?”
“Ferris does. Like I say, a lot of them are going to be his boys. Then there’s the band, the Silverlake Flyers.”
“Bar band?”
“Old hits.” Henry grimaced. “Disco, Jay and the Americans, Barry Manilow. The neighbors got any taste, we’re in trouble.”
“Invite them.”
He pulled a small pad of paper from the elastic waistband of his trunks, retrieved the pen, and made a note. “I’ll photocopy the ad, put it under doors and stuff.”
“You’re good at this, Henry.”
“What’s to be good at? You and Ferris thought of everything already. I just run around and check shit off.”
“Other exits?”
He lifted his chin in the direction of the door leading to the bathrooms. “Fire door back there. We’ll have a walkie-talkie outside.”
“That makes twenty-two, not counting the stage crew. Good thing Ferris is rich.”
“Ho.” Henry’s voice was flat. “Also, scoff, scoff. He’s promoting the food and all the drinks except the wine. The waiters are working for free. Ballroom cost six fifty, band goes for scale. He’s got a source in Lourdes for the holy water. He says. Maybe a couple thou all together. Don’t you know about rich folks? They never spend money.”
“The dog tags.”
“Yeah, well-” Henry leaned toward me. “They going to be plated. Ferris is really pissed at-” He looked past me, toward the door. “Speak of the devil.”
“Henry,” Joel Farfman said. “Simeon.” He gazed darkly around the room. The eye with the punctured pupil lazily followed the good one. “To quote Bette Davis, ‘What a dump.’ ”
“Little glitter,” Henry said impassively, “some bunting, turn down the lights and fill it with people. Gonna look great.”
“You have a genuinely fervid imagination,” Farfman said. “Where’s John Beresford Tipton?”
“Having his nap,” Henry said. “He got up early this morning, maybe ten. Hard on an old man, specially when he don’t go to sleep until nine.”
“I should have half his energy,” Farfman said. “You can’t believe the number of times he’s called today.”
“You have no idea what I’d believe,” Henry said. “I live with the man.”
“And you seem so untouched.” Farfman held up a manila folder and waved it in my direction. “Here’s your stuff.”
“I got things to do,” Henry said tactfully. “Some of these water pipes as clogged as Ferris’s arteries.” He trudged away across the floor, pausing briefly to assess the work of the man hanging the lights, and disappeared through the door into the kitchen.
I took advantage of a lull in the hammering. “Why was Hanks calling?”
“Staying on top of things, heek, heek,” Farfman squeaked, sounding enough like Hanks to unnerve me. “I made the mistake of telling him, the first time he phoned, that we’d been getting calls all morning. Since then, it’s been every twenty minutes. Who’s called? How many? Do they sound excited? Should we have put his name in the ad? How many photographers are we going to send? Will they be in costume? I told him they’d be dressed as photographers, and it seemed to satisfy him. For about fifteen seconds. Should he pitch the television stations? What about radio? Has anyone called People or Us or Back Fence? He’s asked about everything except movie rights.”
“He’s probably sold them already.”
“And you probably think that’s funny. I’m sure he’s already cast himself. Maybe John Forsythe.”
“Too old,” I said. “Not tall enough.”
“Hey, can we get through here?” Someone prodded me on the shoulder, and I turned to see four beefy individuals crowded into the doorway. Behind them was a massive mahogany bar half the size of my living room. It was shaped like Florida.
“Left wall,” I said. Mr. Official. “Careful of the floor.”
“I don’t know who you are,” said the man who had tapped me. He wore a leather butcher’s apron and a tie-dyed T-shirt, and he was bigger than both members of a wrestling tag team, but his voice was a rusty squeak. “I’m Mickey Snell, and I manage this place.”
“Well,” I said, following Farfman toward the stage, “it’s a swell floor.”
“Built in 1937,” Mickey Snell cheeped at my back. “All old oak from a nineteenth-century sailing ship. Of course, it was saturated with-”
“Hey, Mickey,” one of the bruisers said. “Can we cut the history and move the fucking bar?” Mickey Snell didn’t even draw a breath. He was telling the air how the salt had been leached out of the wood as the bruisers shoved the bar through the door, making an unsettling squealing noise on the swell floor.
Farfman’s folder held seven articles on the murders. The one on top had been written after the killing of the third man, the first of the New Orleans victims. It was on fax paper, and when I glanced up at Farfman, he reached over and slid a finger over its slick surface. He’d been inking his hands again.