Manifesto for the Dead (12 page)

It was the same up and down the Strip. Desire turned backwards, so the thing which was desired did the consuming. He could see it in the eyes of that fat kid up ahead, lounging between the corners of Argyle and Vine. Or that woman in black leather. Or that blind man in the dead neon of the Brown Derby. Emptiness everywhere. Lounging about. Ambling. Stumbling. Eyes like broken windows. Mouths filled with the sound of Harley Davidsons. Zippers opening. A man's chest tattooed with tits big as the moon.

We're in the same boat, you and me, Thompson thought. Background characters. Nobodies. In the end we die hard deaths, exigencies of the plot.

Thompson stepped into the lobby of the Aztec Hotel. Behind the desk, the bell clerk sat upright, smoking a cigarette.

“Anybody for me?”

“No.”

The kid looked pleased. His eyes glimmered, ratlike. Halfway up the stairs, Thompson turned for another look. The kid smiled. They exchanged pleasantries.

“Fuck you, kid.”

“Fuck you, too, Mister.”

Upstairs, Thompson found his door ajar. His room lay in shambles.

The place had been torn apart, his papers scattered, his suitcase unpacked, clothes tossed on the floor. The mattress had been pushed off the bed, the pillowcases unstuffed. The drawers hung open, the closet off its hinge.

He'd been robbed, but it didn't make sense, because he kept little of value here, and the only thing missing, so far as he could tell, was his father's Retriever. The old six-shooter was useless except as something to hang on the wall.

Thompson wondered if the bartender at the Satellite had stalled him deliberately, so someone could take apart his room. He shuffled downstairs over the worn carpet. Hands in pocket, lilting, a caterpillar walk.

“Someone ransacked my room.”

“That's a shame,” said the kid.

“Did you see anyone?”

“Not that I remember. But maybe I was sleeping. Or off taking a whiz. You know how it is. The help these days.”

“You're a swell one, kid.”

“Glad to help out.”

The kid grinned malevolently, and Thompson thought maybe the boy had wrecked the room himself, to get him back for the business with the cigarette—but he could not be sure. He went back upstairs, and the telephone was ringing in his room now. He let it go a long time before picking up.

“Yeah?”

“Jim, is that you?”

Thompson recognized the voice. His agent, Matt Roach.

“Listen, I've got good news.”

Thompson found it hard to believe.

“Julius Lars, over at Countdown Productions—he wants to buy
The Manifesto.
He's picking up the option. Be there tomorrow. Get yourself down to the lot. He's got some papers.”

He felt a flutter in his head.

“It's been cooking for awhile. I didn't want to say anything till I was sure. I know how you've been through so many disappointments.”

“What time tomorrow?”

“Ten-thirty. On the Countdown lot.”

“All right.”

“Meantime, courier him over the old contract, the one you signed with Miracle. There's some details to be ironed.” Roach went on. Twenty grand for the story. Another fifty grand for the screenplay. Guaranteed. “You'll get it whether or not they go into production, no matter who gets the final screen credit. I put my foot down on this one.”

Thompson felt his breath go out of him.

I've done it.
And for a second he felt an elation so severe he all but sobbed. They could stay in the penthouse, he and Alberta. They wouldn't have to move.

He dialed Alberta and told her the news. The doubt crept over him, but he shrugged it away.

“How much?” she asked.

“Seventy thousand.”

“That's a lot of money.”

“Cancel the movers.”

“It's too late. They're coming tomorrow. And I've already given notice to the landlord.”

“Stall him.”

“I can't.”

“Yes, you can. Don't you see, honey? We've got it made.”

“All right.”

“I want you to go with me to the studio.”

“You don't want me there, not while you're signing the papers.”

“The Countdown lot is clear the other side of town.”

It took some talking, but she agreed; she would pick him up in the morning. As soon as he was off the phone, though, he thought of the Mexican border, and Lussie Jones.

Her husband would be in town now. Tomorrow evening there was that dance, in the old Crystal Ballroom, not far from the Château. I'll go, Thompson thought.

I'll cut in. I'll steal her away.

He looked down. His papers lay scattered all over the floor, and his doubt returned. He gathered the manuscript up. In these pages, his book imitated the scene at the Hillcrest Arms. There was confusion at the pay-off point. Pops vanished, the corpse too. The killer wandered the city, looking for his money. Life and fiction overlapped. The events in
The Manifesto,
and the events of the last few days were converging. Who was Wicks? And where had he gone? Thompson went into the closet. In the far back, wedged into a dark corner, he found a paper sack his visitor had missed. Soon as he felt the bag, he remembered. The dead girl's sweater. He had taken it from the Cadillac, then misplaced it in his room.

He pulled it out of the bag. It was an expensive sweater, otherwise unremarkable, except for one thing he hadn't noticed up on the hill: a single initial embroidered across the breast.

C
.

The Young Lovely, what was her real name? Anna, or Amanda, or Annabelle—something like that, he couldn't be sure.

And her last name?

Thompson didn't know. He paced the room. Maybe I am wrong about the initials, he thought, and wrong about other things as well, and he wondered if he should call Michele Haze and tell her what had happened at the Satellite. He wondered too if the Cadillac had been discovered.

Then he lay back and told himself none of that mattered. He had hit the big time. People in the big time, guys like me, they always escape in the end. Then he told himself the same thing again, one more time, just to be sure.

TWENTY-NINE

The next morning, Alberta picked him up in Mrs. Myers' sedan. She drove with a skeptical demeanor, her hands high on the wheel, gripping tightly, like a woman taking a jalopy through a town she had not seen before, and did not much like. She wore a polka dot dress and a string of pearls. Her face had a hard beauty.

“Is this on the level?”

“Matt says so.”

“He's been wrong before.”

“I know.”

“I'm just wondering.”

“We struck a gusher, honey. It's that simple.”

Alberta yanked the sedan up to the curb.

“I'll wait here.”

“Come inside with me.”

“This is your moment.”

“I want you with me. At least wait in the office.”

“No.”

Thompson climbed out. A restaurant stood at the corner, a half-block away, and his eyes caught movement in the window, or maybe it was the premonition of movement, and he had the feeling you get at crowded terminals sometimes, far from home, as if maybe you will cross paths with someone you know, here in this unexpected place. The street stood empty.

Thompson went through the studio gate. Julius Lars had his office at the far end of the lot, but it was nothing special, just a trailer up on blocks. That was the way Countdown ran things. He found Julius at the rear of the trailer with his shirt sleeves rolled up, in front of a Formica desk. They had met before.

“Good to see you, Julius.”

“You too, Jim.”

Julius wore a white shirt open at the collar. He was a friendly enough guy usually, with a broad smile and a bulbous nose, but his expression at the moment was grim. He had a wild shock of hair, and he ran his fingers through it now as if all that hair belonged to someone else.

“Your agent talk to you?”

“Yeah.”

“This morning?”

“Last night. What's up?”

“The paperwork.”

“Well, I'm sure we can work it out.”

“I don't know.”

Julius slid the paper across the desk. It was the contract Thompson had signed for Miracle that day in Musso's, the offending parts highlighted now in yellow.

“You signed the rights away.”

“What?”

“The story doesn't belong to you.”

“But Lombard canceled the deal. He never signed with Miracle.”

“It doesn't matter. Your deal—it's with Miracle.”

“Jesus.”

“I'm sorry, Jim.”

Julius put his hand on Thompson's shoulder. “Maybe we can work on another project together, later. This one, if we were to do it, would have to go through Billy.” Julius kept talking, but Thompson wasn't listening anymore. The man guided him through the trailer, into the lot. Future possibilities, he said. This project. That. Together, you and me. Thompson smiled, nodded. Something shifted inside him. Ten steps, twelve. He found himself outside the studio gate, alone, dizzy. His gut hurt bad, as if the air'd been punched out. Alberta glanced his way. Flowing out of the car in her polka dot dress. Guessing how it was with him, figuring the whole business. He loped towards her, bent over at the shoulder, swinging one arm—and he felt something lurch within him now. A stroke, he feared, his arm going numb. Then, lifting his head, squinting, he caught a man emerging from the cafe. Running down the sidewalk. A flash of metal.

Thompson had known about the contract, or he should have known, if he'd bothered to think it through, just as he'd known that sooner or later this man would find him on the street. How he had come to be here, whether by design or coincidence, Thompson didn't know. It didn't matter. The street was no longer empty. The Okie brushed past Alberta, grabbed Thompson by the collar.

“It's you, old man. I saw you from the restaurant window. ‘Howdy-doody.' I said to myself. Son of a bitch.” The Okie shook with a horrible excitement, then pressed a gun into Thompson's gut. “Where's my car? Who you working for?”

It no longer mattered if the history he'd invented for this man were real or imagined. The Okie looked at him hard, then the man's eyes went soft and watery, otherworldly, just as they had done back at the Hillcrest apartment, before the cops sent him running. The dead girl had seen this look too, no doubt, the swimming in the eyes, in the instant before he strangled her. Alberta called out. The Okie turned his head, shifted his balance, and Alberta came around with her purse. Thompson fell, hitting the ground, rolling to his side, clutching his gut, hearing Alberta yell out as if from a great distance, “Jim! Jim!” but he was plummeting through the darkness once more, forever, it seemed, past the sound of receding footsteps, soles slapping on the pavement, to a depth where there were no more sounds, no words, nothing left to say.

THIRTY

Thompson woke up in the emergency ward, underground, in the cellar of the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. Alberta sat in a metal chair nearby, not looking at Thompson, though, but at the ruddy-faced resident, all in white, who sat in the chair beside her.

“I managed to get in touch with Doctor Rufus, your husband's regular physician. He tells me there's a history of alcoholism?”

“Yes,” said Alberta. “But I don't know if this is related. You see, like I said, a man attacked us on the street. He had a gun. I knocked it loose. He gathered it up, and ran.”

“I understand. The good news, though, is that there are no signs of injury. No external trauma.”

“Did he have a stroke?”

“I've seen it happen. An older person gets mugged, their house burns down, something like that, it triggers a stroke. But my feeling, what we have here is nervous exhaustion. Complicated by the alcoholism. Doctor Rufus suspects other underlying problems as well. Ulcerated stomach. Pulmonary deterioration—and these may be related to the collapse.”

“I see.”

“Dr. Rufus thinks it may be time to get your husband into a treatment center. He suggests Mr. Thompson stay overnight for observation. In the morning, we'll do a thorough check-up. If he's strong enough—if there isn't an immediate medical problem—then your husband should go to a sanitarium.”

Thompson didn't like the idea. He tried to speak. The resident hovered over him, a blur of white, and Thompson got a glimpse of the man's hand reaching out to adjust the i-v. The resident was still talking, and Alberta said something in response, but their voices sounded far away now, then farther, as if they were talking outside the door, down the hall, the next county over, and pretty soon he no longer heard them at all.

He awoke later in another room, higher up in the building, the curtains drawn, the light around their edges bright and important. Mid-afternoon. Alberta and the resident gone, i-v disconnected. A chair empty by the closed door.

He slept.

The sun crept around the other side of the building. The room went gray and murky. He woke again and stared up into that murk for a long time, then turned his head to the door.

Lieutenant Orville Mann sat in the chair. The atmosphere of the room, the state of his own mind, were both such that Thompson assumed Mann was not actually there. I am dreaming, he thought, moving from one state of consciousness to another.

“They told me I could have a few minutes.”

Thompson touched himself. The way the resident had been talking earlier, he worried he had gone over the edge, into delirium. He'd seen the Okie, though, he was sure of that. Mann, he decided now, was real.

“What happened out on the sidewalk?”

“I don't know.”

“You have enemies? You know the man who attacked you?”

“No,” Thompson lied.

“We had your wife look through some mug shots. There's a half dozen strong-arm artists work the streets down in that area.”