The Twenty-Year Death (26 page)

“You sure he’s not involved with this business?”

“Sturgeon? No. Sturgeon’s on good behavior. And he’s got reason to be. He had his last three productions fall apart in the middle of filming, and if he doesn’t prove he can finish something, he’s washed up here.”

I mulled it over. “That all?”

“It’s not enough?”

“Any old boyfriends that might be tailing her around?”

Knox said through his teeth, “Nobody’s tailing her.”

“Just for argument’s sake.”

Knox burst out laughing. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still treat every job like it’s a real case.”

“What am I supposed to do when someone’s paying me?”

“This is the picture business, boy. We all get paid for make-believe.”

“Silly me,” I said. “Always trying to do the right thing.”

“You didn’t learn anything when they threw you out of the department?”

“Sure, I learned that the law’s something they print in books.”

He held up his hands, palms out. “All right, all right. I’m not asking you to do anything that’ll compromise your precious sense of ethics. All I want is for you to sit down with our star, get her to tell you her story, make lots of notes, and then tell her she doesn’t need to worry. And then you can go get drunk in your car or sleep for all I care. It’s just for a few days until the picture is done.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like that what you need’s a bodyguard, but what you went and got is me. I don’t like a job that’s not really a job, looking for a man that may or may not exist just to make some actress feel better. Send her to a doctor.”

His face turned stormy. “I’ve already laid out our dirty laundry,”
he said, and opened his hands over his desk as though it were actually laid out there before us. “More than I ought to have said.”

“You didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t have learned in a movie magazine.”

“Come on, Foster. What’s wrong with you? This is easy money. I was scratching your back. You got so much work you can turn down fifty dollars a day? Since when?”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it, I just said I didn’t like it.”

I could see the muscles of his face relax. He smiled and nodded. He had to be careful, Knox. The littlest thing would give him a coronary someday.

He stood up, his chair rolling backwards as it was freed from his weight. “I did tell you a few things they don’t have in the glossies. And I’m sure you’ll find out others. If I didn’t know how discreet you are...”

And Knox did know. Back on the force, he would have lost his job more than once if it hadn’t been for how discreet I was.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s go meet your client.”

I stood too, but waited for Knox to come around the desk. “You’re my client, Al.”

He opened the door. “At least pretend that you’re excited to meet a movie star.”

The first time I saw her in person, it was at a distance and she was on a horse. From what I could make out, she had a small frame; like she weighed less than the saddle they had under her. They had her dressed in a tan leather jerkin with tassels over a blue gingham dress that made no effort to hide a pair of black maryjanes, which I assumed they would keep safely out of the shot. Much of the thick dark hair she was known for was hidden under a ten-gallon cowboy hat. She sat sidesaddle but held the reins like someone who was used to riding the conventional way. Her famous face could have been any pretty girl’s at that distance, just a canvas the makeup artist had painted on. Up close I knew she’d look the way I’d seen her dozens of times on posters and billboards and at the pictures. She wasn’t a woman, she was a star. Chloë Rose.

We parked the golf cart on the suburban side of the backlot street and walked over to the Old West. The standing set had been built on a stretch of dirt road not quite as long as a football field. There was a ragtag of wooden building fronts lining the street. Some had gotten paint and some hadn’t. Each building had a sign, to indicate which one was the saloon, which one was the chemist’s, and which one was the jail. It wasn’t a bad façade if you closed your eyes and used your imagination.

There were at least fifteen other people on the set—a horse handler, the director, the assistant director, makeup, electric, and some I couldn’t identify. As we approached, another woman
in a cowgirl costume and a man in a rumpled suit shouted at each other in the shade of the dry goods store. A child of eleven or twelve stood nearby, uninterested.

“You’d better not forget yourself,” the man said, “or who got you where you are.”

“A washed-up drunk who lives off his wife?”

“You’re living off my wife too, aren’t you?” That made him Shem Rosenkrantz. “We’re all living off of Clotilde on this damn set. I’m just asking for a little favor, that you watch him for a few hours. I’ve got to work.”

She shot her fists out behind her. “Mandy, do this. Mandy, do that. I’ve paid you back plenty already. Or are you dissatisfied with the service?”

At that, Chloë Rose jerked her horse away from the handler, almost knocking the director over, and cantered to where the couple was fighting. They stopped and looked up at her. The young boy took a step back. “Can’t you at least pretend here?” she said in that famous French accent.

Rosenkrantz said something in reply, but Chloë Rose had already turned her horse and brought it almost to a gallop, not slowing until she reached the far end of the Old West set. Rosenkrantz chased after her, running through the cloud of dust her horse had kicked up. As he passed Sturgeon, the director gave him an angry look that was a step away from tears. Rosenkrantz made a placating motion with his hands, still hurrying through his wife’s wake.

Knox turned to me. “Wait here. This might not be a good time.”

“What makes you think that?” I said.

He started over to the assistant director, who had turned to say something to the director of photography, shaking his head.

I stood with the woman and the kid. She had auburn hair in waves that were too regular to be natural. Her face was angular, so that it was pretty from the front but not as much from the side. When it was angry, which it was just then, all the lines in her face turned sinewy, like she was stretched too tight and might snap at any moment. Knox had warned me off of asking questions, but it was an old habit with me. I said, “Miss Ehrhardt? I’m Dennis Foster. I’m looking into some reports of unusual activity on the set. You see any strange men about? Anyone who doesn’t belong? Or maybe he belongs, but not quite as much as he’s around.”

She didn’t turn to look at me while I said all this. She kept her hip cocked with one fist planted on it to show that she was angry. “With all these people around, who knows who any of them are?”

“So you didn’t notice anything?”

“Look around. Notice anything you’d like. I’m working.”

“I can see that.”

She looked at me then. “Was that a crack? You forgot to tell me when to laugh.”

“Now would do fine.”

She sneered. “Watch it, mister, or I might have to call security.”

I pointed to Al Knox, who was making large gestures as he talked, but seemed unable to distract the assistant director from his clipboard. “That’s the head of security there. I came with him. Or didn’t you notice?”

“I didn’t care.”

“You don’t notice anyone, do you?”

“Sure, today there’s been the mailman, the milkman, the iceman, the priest, a guy from the paper, and a talking cow.”

The boy beside her gave one short pant of amusement.

I looked at him, then back at her. “I get it,” I said. “You didn’t notice anything you feel like talking about. Or at least talking about with me.”

“You get paid for being so smart?”

“Not enough.”

“What’s this all about anyway? Is it because of Chloë?”

I said nothing.

“Chloë’s scared of her own shadow. Look at all the time we’re wasting now because something upset her fragile disposition.”

“I wonder what it could have been.”

“You know what? —— Chloë, and —— you too.”

“There are children present,” I said.

She crossed her arms over her breasts and turned her back to me. I noticed the kid staring at me. I smiled at him, but his face remained impassive. “You see any strange men around?” I said to him.

“I see you,” he said.

I nodded. I’d asked for that. I looked around for Knox.

He was on his way back towards me. When he saw me looking he shook his head, his lips pressed together, and waved me over with a swat of his hand. “No dice. They’re going to keep shooting now. Sturgeon’s only got the horse for another two hours.”

I fell in beside him. “I’ll meet her later.”

“I just would have liked to introduce you,” he said. “Smooth your way in.”

“I’ll manage,” I said. We were at the golf cart now.

He stepped up on the driver’s side. “Just remember, be discreet,” he said, and grunted as he pulled himself under the wheel. “We’re keeping this whole thing on the Q.T.”

“Mandy seemed to know about it. Says Chloë’s paranoid.”

“What were you talking to Mandy for? Didn’t I tell you not to ask questions?”

I ignored that. “The kid goes with Rosenkrantz?” I said.

“Yeah. By his first wife, I guess. Visiting from back east.”

“And how does Chloë feel about that?”

He began to answer but someone cried, “Quiet!” and he fell silent. He gestured for me to do the same. On the set, everyone had resumed their positions. The director was behind the camera and Chloë Rose was on her horse looking off into the distance. There was stillness as everyone waited, trying not to shuffle their feet or cough. Chloë’s lips moved, a beat went by, and then everyone else moved again.

“It’s still amazing to me how small these sets are when they look so big in the cinema,” Knox said.

Mandy Ehrhardt was coming our way with the boy trailing behind her. She was moving as though a bee had stung her.

“Maybe they’re done after all,” Knox said, and leaned out of the cart, “Mandy, hey, Mandy, are they finishing?”

“No,” Mandy said without stopping. “But I’m supposed to get the kid a candy bar in the commissary, because co-star apparently means gofer.”

“You could get one for me too,” Knox called after her.

She held up her hand with only one finger raised. The boy skipped a few steps to keep up with her.

“Too bad she didn’t wait,” Knox said, letting out the clutch on the cart. “We could have given her a ride.”

The cart’s engine made a buzzing sound as Knox made a U-turn. We were suddenly in Springfield or Livingston or any of a thousand other towns in the U.S. The street sign even said Main Street. That lasted about fifty yards before we were
coursing down a Chicago city street, and after that a dirt road outside a medieval castle.

“So, what’s really going on here, Knox? How about coming clean?”

The folds in his face deepened to show insult. “Why wouldn’t I be honest with you?”

“I don’t know. Why would the studio need to hire a private dick when it has its own security force?”

“Force? That’s a laugh. It’s me, two retirees, and a couple of kids that don’t shave yet. And we’re here for the lot, not to be round-the-clock protection for one actress.”

“Is it protection I’m supposed to be offering or comfort? I forget which.”

“Ah, nuts to you. Just cash the checks and be glad.”

“That’s fine if you’re right and Rose has gotten spooked for no reason. But if she
is
being followed and something happens to her on my watch...”

Knox waved his right hand at me in dismissal. Nothing was going to happen. Didn’t I know that?

I wondered why I was being so hard on him. There was no shame in working for the studios. It’s not like my other clients never lied to me.

But there was something about an old friend handing out the lies that I just didn’t like.

We were nearing the front of the studio lot, driving along with regular traffic now, limousines, delivery trucks, bicycles. The traffic noise out on the Boulevard wasn’t kept off the lot by the gatehouse or the high wall.

After a time, Knox said, staring straight ahead, “Just go to the Rosenkrantz house this evening. I’ll show you where on the map. She knows to expect you.”

I nodded, and we rode along for a while more.

“That Mandy was really angry, wasn’t she?” Knox said, shooting me a tentative grin. He wanted to show we were friends again, no hard feelings. “And that lover’s spat with Rosenkrantz? His wife right there, too.”

“You know these creative types. They’re creative in everything they do.”

“Of course Sturgeon seemed a little liberal with where his hands were too. Positioning her on the horse.”

We pulled up to the security office, and I got out of the cart. “Now you’re just being a gossip,” I said.

The cart bounced on its shocks as Knox got out. He reached into his pocket and pulled out five twenty-dollar bills. My retainer.

I took the money. “Who’s the male lead in the picture?” I said. “I didn’t see an actor on the set.”

“John Stark. They didn’t need him today. He’s probably out on his boat. Why?”

“Thought it might be worth getting his perspective on what’s going on.”

Knox’s brow turned stormy again. “You’re not asking anyone any questions. This isn’t an investigation, it’s a show. You understand what I’m saying to you? Look pretty for the camera.”

“Okey.”

That didn’t seem to ease his concern. “I can trust you on this, Foster, right?”

I nodded and smiled and handed his lie right back to him. “Yeah,” I said. “You can trust me.”

I had a few free hours on my hands, so I retrieved my car, and drove west on Sommerset. I left the windows open and the wind buffeted me, causing my shirt to flutter and my tie to dance. When the houses started to have enough acreage to farm on, I turned south on Montgomery, following it down the hill to the area San Angelinos called Soso, what the real estate men called Harper’s Promise. Despite the ambivalent name this was a fine neighborhood with good-sized Victorian-style houses that a previous generation of movie stars had bought as starter homes before moving up in size and elevation. The only surprising thing was that Chloë Rose and her writer husband hadn’t moved up themselves in the years since she’d displaced champagne as America’s favorite French import.