Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (21 page)

"And then?"

"And then Tracy disappeared. The pain was searing, but it brought me
out of it. Surprisingly, what I found wasn't totally bad. At least I
was alive again. At least I could feel."

He turned to me, cupped my face in his hands, and conversation
became superfluous. Making love seemed to have a catalytic effect on
George's worry and pain, transforming it into a force that swept away
whatever residual guilt and
separateness I'd been feeling. Afterward I lay suspended in a warm
satiated state, perfectly secure, all but the most pleasant of senses
dulled.

Sometime after midnight the phone rang. George took the call in the
kitchen; when he came back, his step was lighter. "That was my
colleague," he said. "He's talked with Laura, and she's agreed to see
her therapist tomorrow."

I sat up, pushing my hair back off my face. "What about those phone
calls—does she still claim she received them?"

He crawled under the comforter, pulled me down beside him. "My
friend says yes."

"Then I'll proceed on the basis that Tracy is alive and has been
trying to meet with her mother."

For a moment I felt tension creeping back into his lean body; then
he turned me toward him. For a time we were able to ignore the fact
that a world where death and pain and loneliness are the rule, rather
than the exception, lurked just outside the circle of each other's arms.

At nine the next morning George had an appointment with someone from
Living Victims, the support group for relatives and friends of murder
victims, which he was assisting with grant writing. I asked if I might
stay at the house for a while to view some of the videos of Tracy's
performances; he pointed out the cabinet where they were stored and
went off looking reasonably cheerful.

Before I sat down to watch, I phoned Stan Gurski. The news from
officialdom was what I'd expected: Harbour and Emmons had not yet been
picked up; Larkey had released Mclntyre's dental records but declined
to assist, due to a prior commitment. When I phoned Larkey at his home,
however, he told me that he just hadn't been able to stomach viewing
the remains a second time. I assured him I sympathized with him, and
asked for the name and number of the talent agent he had introduced
Tracy to. I didn't address the issue of Jay's affair with Tracy, merely
set an appointment to talk face-to-face that afternoon.

The agent's name was Jane Stein. I called her office on Wilshire
Boulevard in L.A., and when I mentioned Larkey, was put right through
to her. Ms. Stein was confused when I asked if she had heard from Tracy
Kostakos since her disappearance, and surprised when I said I was
investigating the possibility she might be alive. Coincidentally, she
was about to leave for the airport, to fly to San Francisco for a
meeting with a client. Since she was going on to New York in the early
afternoon, she said, she planned to have lunch with the client at SFO.
Could I meet with her beforehand? She'd like to hear more about the
situation, and perhaps she could offer some insight that might help me.
I agreed to meet her in the main lobby bar at the United Airlines
terminal at eleven-thirty.

That left me with only two hours to spare. I decided to watch only
the tape containing the routine about the lesbian waitress, then go
home, change, and drive to the airport. The tape was still in the
machine. I rewound it and dragged over the least spine-punishing chair
in the room.

The tape had been recorded on extended play; it held six hours of
routines—thirty-some individual performances dating over the two-month
period before Tracy's disappearance. I looked briefly at each,
fast-forwarding through some, examining others with more interest.
After a while I became aware of a pattern that hadn't been apparent
from reading Tracy's sketchbook.

In most of the routines—the bewildered feminist, for example—it was
obvious Tracy was fond of the character she had created. Her wit was
sharp but affectionate; the fun she poked was gentle. But in
others—notably the lesbian waitress—her humor became caustic and
needling, as if she shared Larkey's opinion that comedy had to hurt to
be funny.

Her portrayal of Lisa Mclntyre held particularly malicious
undertones, and I could certainly understand why the waitress had been
enraged. Not only had she been sexually used by Tracy, but then
humiliated in front of the public and her coworkers. I suspected Tracy
might have handled her material that way in angry reaction to her own
guilt over what she'd done to Lisa, or perhaps because she blamed Lisa
for allowing herself to be used. Lisa couldn't have known that,
however, and I now wondered if her own rage had been strong enough to
provoke a violent confrontation.

After a while Tracy's routines stopped being funny to me. Now that I
knew how she had gone about creating them, they seemed trivial compared
to the suffering they had undoubtedly brought many of the women they
were patterned on. I shut off the VCR and stood at the front window for
a bit, staring out at the misted lagoon across the street, then wrote a
brief note to George—lover's nonsense that didn't really fit my
mood—and went home to change.

There were five messages on my answering machine, four of them
personal and one from the contractor, reminding me supplies were due to
be delivered that afternoon so he could start work on the back porch
the next morning. I swore softly, readjusting my mental schedule to
make time for that. Watney waited for me in the kitchen, howling
indignantly about my protracted absence. When I fed him, he turned up
his nose at his favorite chicken-and-liver; I sent him outside, telling
him to catch some mice, if he thought they were so much better.

For my meeting with a genuine Hollywood personage (and with the idea
in the back of my mind that it might be novel for George to see me in a
grownup person's outfit for a change), I put on a black knit
skirt-and-tunic outfit and tied a colorful silk scarf around my neck.
As I spiffed my hair, I examined the gray streak that had been in it
since my teens, wondering if I ought to start dying it. Once it had
looked exotic among the black, but I was old enough now that it merely
seemed as if it was supposed to be there. Then I thought, Why should I
dye it? Men consider their gray hair distinguished; I think mine is,
too. Cheered by the thought, I went off to the airport.

Jane Stein was a pleasant surprise. With the typical snobbery of
northern Californians for Tinseltown, I'd been anticipating someone
flashy, a trifle tacky, perhaps loud. The dark-haired, conservatively
dressed woman seated at a window table in the airport bar was none of
those. Her manner was reserved, her firm handshake and low voice were
quietly confident, and she was even sipping coffee rather than the
wicked dark drink that I'd imagined. She invited me to sit down and
dispatched the waitress for my iced tea with a minimum of fuss, then
leaned forward, regarding me with keen brown eyes.

"It's a pleasure to meet a real private investigator, rather than
those cinematic horrors we're always creating down south," she said.

"I'm glad you feel the way I do. I can't watch those shows or films.
I like most mystery novels, but the way we've been portrayed on the
screen…"

Stein leaned back in her chair, seeming satisfied with the rapport
we'd established. "Well now," she said, "tell me what this is about
Tracy Kostakos being alive."

I outlined my case to date, leaving out the sleazier side of Tracy's
behavior. Stein listened thoughtfully. When I concluded, she said,
"It's quite bizarre, but I've seen enough things in this business that
nothing truly surprises me. I assume it's the same for you."

I nodded, moving my arm so the waitress could set down my tea.

"You know, I wonder…" Stein paused, her gaze on the other side of
the room. "Let me tell you about my last meeting with Tracy."

"When was that?"

"Monday, two weeks before she died… disappeared, whatever. We were
here in this very bar. I frequently meet with my San Francisco clients
at the airport when I'm on my way to New York. There's enough time
between connections for a couple of conferences, and it saves me an
extra trip north." She smiled. "Most of my clients up here aren't at
the point in their careers yet that they can easily afford to fly down
to see me. Anyway, I'd met Tracy only twice before— once when I caught
her act at Café Comedie, and again when she and Jay made a trip to
L.A."

"You knew they were lovers?"

"Oh yes. Jay made that clear; he was proud of it, you see. He's had
his rough times in recent years: his career waning, substantial
financial losses. He needed a pretty young woman like Tracy in his life
as much as she needed him." She shook her head. "What he didn't need
was to lose her the way he did."

"Why did you meet with Tracy that last time?"

"She'd called me, said she needed to talk. It seemed she wanted to
get away from San Francisco and hoped I could book her into a club in
L.A. I had the impression things were going badly in her personal life.
Perhaps she'd tired of Jay, or there was someone else, and she wanted
to break it off. At any rate, she said she needed a change. I pointed
out that she'd just signed a very lucrative contract with Jay; I
doubted he
would let her out of it, and I didn't feel it would be ethical to try
to break it."

"How did she react to that?"

"Petulantly—but I'm used to that in my clients. We also talked about
the possibility of film or TV work. I felt she wasn't ready for either
yet and counseled her to be patient. She showed me a new approach she'd
been working on for her routines, and I felt that with some more
development and practice she might have a good thing there."

"What was it?"

Stein signaled for more coffee. "Very improvisational. She would
take the daily newspaper and open it at random to a feature article—or
ask a member of the audience to do so—then create a routine based on
the piece. It's nothing that hasn't been done before, but you have to
think extremely well on your feet to pull it off. I felt she had that
ability."

"She actually demonstrated it to you?"

"Yes. When I said I was wondering about something . . „ well, I'll
lay it out for you, and you tell me if you think it's relevant." Stein
waited until the waitress had poured her refill before continuing.

"I had that morning's L.A. Times with me. She turned to the feature
section and did a very funny sketch about a woman who had built a
twenty-thousand-dollar doghouse for her seven Dalmatians and was trying
to persuade her neighbors not to take her to court for zoning
violations. It was rough in spots, but I was quite impressed. Then an
odd thing happened."

I waited as Stein sipped coffee before going on.

"Let's see if I can get this as accurately as possible," she said.
"We talked some more, and I made some notes. While I was writing, Tracy
paged through the newspaper. I looked up a few minutes later and…
something wasn't right. Her face was very pale and—on later reflection,
I decided—a little frightened. I asked her what was wrong, but she
shrugged it
off, said nothing, that she'd just gotten an idea."

"And she wouldn't elaborate on it?"

"No. We discussed a few other things—contractual matters—and then it
was time for my New York flight."

"And that's it?"

"Except for one thing that didn't strike me until today. She asked
me if she could have my copy of the Times. Given what you've told me, I
can't help but wonder if it wasn't something she saw in the paper that
frightened her. Something that has bearing on her disappearance."

"Did you notice which section she was looking at?"

"Sorry, no."

"But it was definitely that morning's paper?"

"Yes. Monday, February… whatever it was that year."

"And it was the edition for L.A. proper?"

She nodded.

I sipped iced tea and looked out at the runway where an L1011 was
landing. What Stein had told me could mean a great deal—or absolutely
nothing. Her recollections of the meeting were nearly two years old,
and her perceptions were bound to have been colored by the intervening
events.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"I'm glad you told me about it. I'll check that issue of the Times."
I rested my forearms on the table, toying with my cocktail napkin as I
phrased my next question. "Ms. Stein, would you mind giving me your
personal impression of Tracy Kostakos?"

"I'll be glad to." She paused, considering. "She was… a type we
frequently see in the business. Narcissistic in the extreme."

She was beginning to sound like George. Was everyone a psychologist
these days? "Would you explain that?"

"Tracy had an overdeveloped ego. Naturally in show business a
healthy ego is a necessity; there's no way to survive
without one. But Tracy's wasn't healthy; she was a bundle of
contradictions. On the one hand, she was very insecure and needed
constant praise and reassurance; on the other, she felt superior and
entitled to special treatment. She felt the rules simply didn't apply
to her, and she was very insensitive to other people's feelings."

"No one's pointed out her insecurity before."

Stein smiled. "She did her best to hide it, but that sort of thing
quickly becomes apparent to an agent. She was by no means the most
poorly adjusted client I've had. I was willing to put up with her
shortcomings because she was extremely gifted. She lived for her work.
When she denied other people their rights or disregarded their
feelings, it was usually because they came between her and her art."

Perhaps Stein was right, I thought, but she had viewed Tracy from a
purely professional standpoint. There was another component of her
character that had gradually communicated itself to me as I'd watched
the videotape earlier. The way she moved, spoke, and interacted with
the audience told me Tracy was a total sensualist, and not just in the
sexual interpretation of the term. As Rob Soriano had commented, she
wanted every experience, to taste the whole flavor of life. Her art
gave her the opportunity to indulge her fascination with the inner
workings of other people's lives, and so long as she'd only observed
and recorded she'd been fine. But eventually she'd overstepped the
boundary between observation and actual participation in life-styles
that were foreign to her own: the woman who slept with black men, the
lesbian. It was then—when her behavior had exceeded what was acceptable
not only in the upper-class world where she'd been raised, but also in
the subculture of the comedy clubs—that she'd gotten into trouble.