Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

SIX

The call from Rooney stirred Maxine up. She contacted her lawyer, Lester Peltzer, as she said she would, and organized a conference call with several other lawyers in town whom she respected, so that everyone could give her the benefit of their very expensive opinion. Unfortunately, they all agreed on one thing: she didn't have a hope in hell of stopping Rooney from going ahead. When the book was written and being set for publication, that was a different matter, one of the lawyers pointed out. If he wrote something libelous, then they could go after him, and if it was obvious that he'd got access to police files then LAPD Internal Affairs might get riled up and take him to court. But there was no guarantee. The LAPD had a lousy record when it came to policing themselves.

"So right now he's free to say whatever he wants to say?" Maxine raged. "Just for profit?"

"It's the Constitution," one of the lawyers pointed out.

"It's not against the law," Maxine's lawyer pointed out lightly. "You've made a good deal of money yourself over the years."

"But I didn't lie to do it, Lester."

"All right, Maxine, don't get your blood pressure up. I'm merely pointing out that this is America. We live and die by the rule of Mammon." He drew a deep breath; put on his most rational tone. "Maxine, ask yourself whether taking this guy to court over some book that'll be off the shelves in two, three months is worth your time and temper. You may end up giving him more publicity by suing him than he would ever have got if you hadn't. You'll make an issue of it and suddenly everybody's buying his damn book. I've seen it happen so many times . . ."

"So you're saying I should let him do it?" Maxine said. "Let him write some shit about Todd—"

"Wait, wait," Lester said. "In the first place, you don't know he's going to write shit. Maybe he'll be respectful. Todd was a very popular actor. An American icon for a while."

"So was Elvis," Maxine pointed out. "It doesn't mean some sonofabitch didn't write about every dirty little secret Elvis ever had. I know, because I read the book."

"So what are you afraid of?"

"That the same will happen to Todd. People will write bullshit, and in the end it'll be the bullshit that's remembered, not the work."

Lester was usually quick with an answer, but this silenced him. Finally, he said: "Okay, let me ask you something. Do you think there's anything Rooney knows—as a matter of fact—which could be really destructive to Todd's long-term reputation?"

"Yes. I do. I think—"

"Don't," Lester said. "Please. Don't tell me. Right now, I think it might be simpler for everyone if I didn't know."

"All right."

"Let's all go away and think about this, Maxine. And you do the same thing. I can see your concern. You've got a legacy here you want to protect. I think the question is—do you do that best by drawing attention to Rooney with a lawsuit, or by letting him publish and be damned?"

The phrase caught Maxine's attention. She'd heard it before, of course. But now it had new gravity, new meaning. She pictured Rooney publishing his book, and then having his soul dragged away to the Devil's Country for his troubles.

"Publish and be damned?" she said. "You know, that I could maybe live with."

Tammy hadn't seen a human face, real or televised, in four days; not even heard a voice. The Jacksons, her next-door neighbors, had gone off for a long weekend the previous Thursday, noisily departing with the kids yelling and car doors being slammed. Now it was Sunday. The street was always quiet on Sunday, but today it was particularly quiet. She couldn't even hear the buzzing of a lawn-mower. It was as though the outside world had disappeared.

She sat in the darkness, and let the images that had been haunting her for so long tumble over and over in her head, like filthy clothes in a washing machine, over and over, in a gruel of gray-grimy water; the madness she'd seen and heard and smelled; over and over. The trouble was, the more she turned it all over, the dirtier the washing became, as if the water had steadily turned from gray to black, and now when she got up to go to the bathroom, or to climb the stairs, she could hear it sloshing around between her ears, the muck of these terrible memories, darkening with repetition.

So this was what it was like to be crazy, she thought. Sitting in the darkness, listening to the silence while you turned things over in your mind, going to the kitchen sometimes and staring into the fridge until she'd seen everything that was in there, the rotted things and the unrotted things, then closing it again without cleaning it out; and going upstairs and washing the bathroom floor, then going to lie down and sleeping ten, twelve, fourteen hours straight through, not even waking to empty your bladder. This is what it was. And if it didn't go away soon, she was going to be a permanent part of the madness; just another rag turning in the darkness, indistinguishable from the things she'd worn.

Over and over and—

The telephone rang. Its noise was so loud she jumped up from the chair in which she was sitting and tears sprang into her eyes. Absurd, to be made to weep by the sudden sound of a telephone! But the tears came pouring down, whether she thought she was ridiculous for shedding them or not.

She had unplugged the answering machine a while ago (there'd been too many messages, mostly from journalists), so now the phone just kept on ringing. Eventually she picked it up, more to stop the din than because she really wanted to speak to anyone. She didn't. In fact she was perfectly ready to pick up the receiver and just put it straight down again, but she caught the sound of the woman at the other end of the line, saying her name. She hesitated. Put the receiver up to her ear, a little tentatively.

"Tammy, are you there?" a voice said. Still Tammy didn't break her silence. "I know there's somebody on the line," the woman went on. "Will you just tell me, is this Tammy Lauper's house?"

"No," Tammy said, surprised at the sound her own voice made when it finally came out. Then she put the receiver down.

It would ring again, she knew. It was Maxine Frizelle, and Maxine wasn't the kind of woman who gave up easily.

Tammy stared at the phone, trying to will the damn thing from ringing. For a few seconds she thought she'd succeeded. Then the ringing started again.

"Go away," Tammy said, without picking up the receiver. The syllables sounded like gravel being shaken in a coarse sieve. The telephone continued to ring. "Please go away," she said.

She closed her eyes and tried to think of the order in which she would need to put the words if she were to pick up the receiver and speak to Maxine, but her mind was too much of a mess. It was better not to even risk the conversation, if all Maxine was going to hear in Tammy's replies was the darkness churning around in her washing-machine of a head.

All she had to do was to wait a while, for God's sake. The telephone would stop its din eventually. Maybe five more rings. Maybe four. Maybe three—

At the last moment some deep-seated instinct for self-preservation made her reach down and pick up the receiver.

"Hello," she said.

"Tammy? That is you, isn't it?"

"Maxine. Yes. It's me."

"Good God. You sound terrible. Are you sick?"

"I've had the flu. Really badly. I still haven't got rid of it."

"Was that you when I called two minutes ago? I called two minutes ago. It was you, wasn't it?"

"Yes it was. I'm sorry. I'd just woken up and as I say, I've been so sick.. ."

"Well you sound it," Maxine said, in her matter-of-fact manner. "Look. I need to talk to you urgently."

"Not today. I can't. I'm sorry, Maxine."

"This really can't wait, Tammy. All you have to do is listen. The flu didn't make you deaf, did it?"

This drew a silent smile from Tammy; her first in days. Same old Maxine: subtle as a sledgehammer. "Okay," Tammy said, "I'm listening."

She was surprised at how much easier it was to talk once you got started. And she had the comfort that she was talking to Maxine. All she'd have to do, as Maxine had said, was listen.

"Do you remember that asshole, Rooney?"

"Vaguely."

"You don't sound very sure. He was the Detective we talked to when we first went to the police. You remember him now? Round face, no hair. Wore too much cologne."

For some peculiar reason it was the memory of the cologne, which had been sickly-sweet, which brought Rooney to mind.

"Now I remember," she said.

"Well he's been on to me. Did he call you?"

"No."

"Sonofabitch."

"Why's he a sonofabitch?"

"Because the fuckhead's got me all stirred up, just when I was beginning to put my thoughts in order."

Much to Tammy's surprise, she heard a measure of desperation in Maxine's voice. She knew what it was because it was an echo of the very thing she heard in herself, night and day, awake and dreaming. Could it be that she actually had something in common with this woman, whom she'd despised for so many years? That was a surprise, to say the least.

"What did the sonofabitch want?" she found herself asking. There was a second surprise here. Her mouth put the words in a perfectly sensible order without her having to labor over it.

"He claims he's writing a book. Can you believe the audacity of the creep—"

"You know, I did know about this," Tammy said.

"So he talked to you."

"He didn't, but Jerry Brahms did." The conversation with Jerry came back to her remotely, as though it had happened several months ago.

"Oh good," Maxine said, "so you're up to speed. I've got a bunch of lawyers together to find out if he can do this, and it turns out—guess what?—he can. He can write what the hell he likes about any of us. We can sue of course but that'll just—"

"—give him more publicity."

"That's exactly what Peltzer said. He said the book would last two months on the shelves, three at the outside, then it would be forgotten."

"He's probably right. Anyway, Rooney's not going to get any help from me."

"That's not going to stop him, of course."

"I know," Tammy said, "but frankly—"

"You don't give a damn."

"Right."

There was a pause. It seemed the conversation was almost at an end. Then, rather quietly, Maxine said: "Have you had any thoughts at all about going back up to the Canyon?"

There was a second pause, twice, three times the length of the first, at the end of which Tammy suddenly found herself saying: "Of course."

It felt more like an admission of guilt than a straight-forward reply. And what was more, it wasn't something she'd consciously been thinking about. But apparently somewhere in the recesses of her churned-up head she'd actually contemplated returning to the house.

"I have too," Maxine confessed. "I know it's ridiculous. After everything that happened up there."

"Yes. .. it's ridiculous."

"But it feels like . . ."

"Unfinished business," Tammy prompted.

"Yes. Precisely. Jesus, why didn't I have the wit to call you earlier? I knew you'd understand. Unfinished business. That's exactly what it is."

The real meat of this exchange suddenly became clear to Tammy. She wasn't the only one who was having a bad time. So was Maxine. Of all people, Maxine, who'd always struck Tammy as one of the most capable, self-confident and unspookable women in America. It was profoundly reassuring.

"The thing is," Maxine went on, "I don't particularly want to go up there alone."

"I'm not even sure I'm ready."

"Me neither. But frankly, the longer we leave it the worse it's going to get. And it's bad, isn't it?"

"Yes . . ." Tammy said, finally letting her own despair flood into her words. "It's worse than bad. It's terrible, Maxine. It's just . . . words can't describe it."

"You sound the way I look," Maxine replied. "I'm seeing a therapist four times a week and I'm drinking like a fish, but none of it's doing any good."

"I'm just avoiding everybody."

"Does that help?" Maxine wanted to know.

"No. Not really."

"So we're both in a bad way. What do we do about it? I realize we're not at all alike, Tammy. God knows I can be a bitch. Then when I met Katya— when I saw what kind of woman I could turn into—that frightened me. I thought: fuck, that could be me."

"You were protecting him. You know, in a way, we both were."

"I suppose that's right. The question is: have we finished, or is there more to do?"

Tammy let out a low moan. "Do you mean what I think you mean?" she said.

"That depends what you think I mean."

"That you think he's still up there in the Canyon? Lost."

"Christ, I don't know. All I know is I can't get him out of my head." She drew a deep breath, then let the whole, bitter truth out. "For some stupid reason I think he still needs us."

"Don't say that."

"Maybe it's not us," Maxine said. "Maybe it's you. He had a lot of feeling for you, you know."

"If that's you trying to talk me into going back to the Canyon, it's not going to work."

"So I take it you won't come?"

"I didn't say that."

"Well make up your mind one way or another," Maxine replied, exhibiting a little of the impatience which had been happily absent from their exchange thus far. "Do you want to come with me or not?"

The conversation was making Tammy a little weary now. She hadn't spoken to anybody at such length for several weeks, and the chat—welcome as it was—was taking its toll.

Did she want to go back to the Canyon or not? The question was plain enough. But the answer was a minefield. On the one hand, she could think of scarcely any place on earth she wanted to go less. She'd been jubilant when she'd driven away from it with Maxine and Jerry; she'd felt as though she'd escaped a death-sentence by a hair's-breadth. Why in God's name would it make any sense to go back there now?

On the other hand, there was the issue she herself had raised: that of unfinished business. If there was something up there that remained to be done then maybe it was best to get up there and do it. She'd been hiding away from that knowledge for the last several weeks, churning her fears over and over, trying to pretend it was all over. But Maxine had called her bluff. Maybe they'd called each other's: admitted together what they could not have confessed to apart.

"All right," she said finally.

"All right, what?"

"I'll go with you."

Maxine breathed an audible sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God for that. I was afraid you were going to freak out on me and I was going to have to go up there on my own."

"When were you planning to do this?"

"Is tomorrow too soon?" Maxine said. "You come to my office and we'll go from there?"

"Are you going to ask Jerry to come with us?"

"He's gone," Maxine replied.

"Jerry's dead?"

"No, Key West. He's sold his apartment and moved, all in a week. Life's too short, he said."

"So it's just the two of us."

"It's just the two of us. And whatever we find up there."