Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

  "And who might you be?" he said. His voice was the color of his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," Tammy said. "I shouldn't be here."

  "Please," he said gently, "let me be the judge of that." He drew on the cigarette again. The tobacco smelled more pungent than any cigarette she'd ever inhaled. "I'd still like your name."

  "Tammy Lauper. Like I said—"

  "You're sorry."

  "Yes."

  "You don't mean to be here."

  "No."

  "You got lost, I daresay. It's so easy, in the garden."

  "I was looking for Todd."

  "Ah," the stranger said, glancing away at the roof for a moment. The cigarette smoke was blue as it rose through the slivers of sun. "So you're with Mister Pickett's entourage."

  "Well no. Not exactly."

  "Meaning?"

  "I just. . . well, he knows me . . ."

  "But he doesn't know you're here."

  "That's right."

  The man's gaze returned to Tammy, and he assessed her, his gaze, though insistent, oddly polite. "What are you to our Mister Pickett?" he said. "A mistress of his, once?"

  Tammy couldn't help but smile at this. First, the very thought of it; then, the word itself. Mistress. Like the flick of his lighter, it was pleasantly old-fashioned. And rather flattering.

  "I don't think Todd Pickett would look twice at me," she said, feeling the need to be honest with this sad, gray man.

  "Then that would be his loss," the man replied, the compliment offered so lightly that even if it wasn't meant it was still beguiling. Out of nowhere she remembered a phrase her mother had used, to describe Jimmy MacKintosh, the man she'd eventually divorced Tammy's father to pursue. "He could charm the birds off of the trees, that one." She'd never met a man with that kind of charisma before, in the flesh. But this man had it. Though their exchange so far had been brief and shallow, she knew a bird-charmer when she met one.

  "May I ask . . ."

  "Ask away."

  ". . . who are you?"

  "By all means. One name deserves another. I'm Willem Zeffer."

  "I'm pleased to meet you," Tammy said. 'Again, I'm sorry." She made a half-hearted glance over her shoulder at the altar. "I shouldn't have come in here."

  "You weren't to know. It's easy to get lost in this. . . jungle. We should have it all cut back." He smiled thinly. "You just can't get the staff these days."

  "That woman," Tammy said. "The one in the mask?"

  "In the mask?" Zeffer said. "Oh. I see. Yes. In the mask."

  "Who is she?"

  He stepped to the side, in order to have a clear view of the altar and what was upon it. "She was an actress," he explained, "many, many moons ago."

  "I thought I recognized her."

  "Her name's Katya Lupi."

  "Yes?" The name rang a bell, but Tammy still couldn't name any of the movies this woman had been in.

  "Was she very famous?"

  "Very. She's up there with Pickford and Swanson and Theda Bara. Or she was."

  "She's dead?"

  "No, no. Just forgotten. At least that's my impression. I don't get out into the world anymore, but I sense that the name Katya Lupi doesn't mean very much."

  "You'd be right."

  "Well, she's lucky. She still has her little dominion here in Coldheart Canyon."

  "Coldheart?"

  "That's what they called the place. She was such a heart-breaker, you see. She took so many lovers—especially in the early years—and when she was done with them, she just threw them aside."

  "Were you one of them?"

  Zeffer smiled. "I shared her bed, a little, when I first brought her to America. But she got tired of me very quickly."

  "What then?"

  "I had other uses, so she kept me around. But a lot of the men who loved her took her rejection badly. Three committed suicide with bullets. A number of others with alcohol. Some of them stayed here, where they could be close to her. Including me. It's foolish really, because there's no way back into her affections."

  "Why would you want to be... back, I mean?" Tammy said. "She must be very old by now."

  "Oh time hasn't staled her infinite variety, as the Bard has it. She's still beautiful."

  Tammy didn't want to challenge the man, given that he was plainly besotted with this Lupi woman, but the idol of his heart must be approaching a hundred years of age by now. It was hard to imagine how any of her beauty remained.

  "Well, I guess I should be getting along," Tammy said.

  She gently pressed past Zeffer, who put up no resistance, and stepped out of the cage onto the walkway. It was so quiet she could hear her stomach rumble. Her Westwood breakfast seemed very remote now; as did the little diner where she'd eaten it.

  Zeffer came after her, out into the open air, and she saw him clearly for the first time. He had been extremely handsome once, she thought; but his face was a mess. He looked as though he'd been attacked; punched repeatedly. Raw in places, pale and powdery in others, he had the appearance of a man who had suffered intensely, and kept the suffering inside, where it continued to take its toll. She couldn't make quite so hurried an attempt to abandon him now that she'd seen him plainly. He seemed to read her equivocation, and suggested that she stay.

  "Are you really in such a hurry?"

  He looked around him as he spoke; he seemed to be reading the peculiar stillness in the air.

  "Perhaps we could walk together a ways. It isn't always safe up here."

  Before she could ask him what he meant by this he turned his back to the door of the cage and picked up a large stick that was set there. The way he wielded it suggested he'd used it as a weapon in the past, and had some expectation of doing so again now.

  "Animals?" she said.

  He looked at her with those sorrowful gray eyes of his. "Sometimes animals, yes. Sometimes worse."

  "I don't understand."

  "Perhaps, with respect, it would be better not to try," he advised. The stillness seemed to be deepening around them, the absence of sound becoming heavier, if that were possible. She didn't need any further encouragement from Zeffer to stay close to him. Whatever this stillness hid, she didn't want to face it alone. "Just take it from me that Coldheart Canyon has some less-than-pretty occupants."

  Something behind the cages drew Zeffer's attention. Tammy followed the direction of his gaze. "What were the cages for?" she asked him.

  "Katya went through a phase of collecting exotic animals. We had a little zoo here. A white tiger from India, though he didn't live very long. Later, there was a rhinoceros. That also perished."

  "Wasn't that cruel? Keeping them here, I mean? The cages look so small."

  "Yes, of course it was cruel. She's a cruel woman, and I was cruel for doing her bidding. I have no doubt of that. I was probably unspeakably cruel, in my casual way. But it takes the experience of living like an animal"—he glanced back at the cage—"to realize the misery they must have suffered."

  Tammy watched him scrutinizing the shrubbery on the far side of the cages.

  "What's out there?" she said. "Is it animals that—"

  "Come here," Zeffer said, his voice suddenly dropping to an urgent whisper. "Quickly."

  Though she still saw nothing in the shrubbery, she did as she was told.

  As she did so, there was a blast of icy air down the narrow channel between the cages, and she saw several forms—human forms, but distorted, as though they were in a wind-tunnel, their mouths blown into a dark circle lined with needle teeth, their eyes squeezed into dots—come racing toward her.

  "Don't you dare!" she heard Zeffer yell at her side, and saw him raise his stick. If he landed a blow she didn't see it. The breath was knocked from her as two of her attackers threw themselves upon her.

  One of them put a hand over her face. A spasm of energy passed through her bone and brain, erupting behind her eyes. It was more than her mind could take. She saw a white light, like the light that floods a cinema
screen when the film breaks.

  The cold went away in the same instant: sounds and sights and all the feelings they composed, gone.

  The last thing she heard, dying away, was Willem Zeffer's voice yelling: "Damn you all!"

  Then he too was gone.

  In the passageway in front of Katya's long-abandoned menagerie, Willem Zeffer watched as the forces that had broken cover carried Tammy Lauper away into their own horrid corners of the Canyon, leaving him— as he had been left so often in this godless place—helpless and bereft.

  He threw the stick down on the ground, his eyes stinging with tears. Then the strength ran out of him completely, and he went down on his knees at the threshold of his hovel, cursing Katya. She wasn't the only one to blame, of course. He had his own part to play in this tragic melodrama, as he'd admitted moments before. But he still wanted Katya damned for what she'd done, as he was damned: for the death of tigers and rhinoceros, and the murder of innocent women.

  PART FOUR

  Life After Fame

  ONE

  Three days after Tammy had pursued Marco Caputo up Sunset Boulevard and into the mysterious arms of Coldheart Canyon was Oscar Night: the Night of Nights, the Show of Shows, when billions of people across the world turned their eyes on Tinseltown and Tinseltown did a pirouette and a curtsy and pretended it was a lady not a five-buck whore.

  Todd had known from the start that there was no chance of his attending the ceremony. Though he could now see that his wounded face was indeed healing properly, it was plain that he was in no condition to step into the limelight anytime soon. He had briefly considered hiring one of the great makeup men of the city to disguise the worst of the discoloration, but Maxine quickly dissuaded him. Such a plan would require them to share their secret with somebody else (this in itself was risky: makeup personnel were legendary gossips) and there was always the chance that, however good the cover-up was, the illusion of perfection would be spoiled under the blaze of so many lights. All it required was one lucky photographer to catch a crack in the painted mask, and all their hard work would be undone. The rumor-mill would grind into motion again.

  "Anyway," she reminded him, "you loathe the Oscars."

  This was indeed true. The spectacle of self-congratulation had always sickened him. The ghastly parade of nervous smiles as everyone traipsed into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the shrill laughter, the sweaty glances. Then, once everyone was inside, the circus itself. The lame jokes, the gushing speeches, the tears, the ego. There was always a minute or two of choreographed mawkishness, when the Academy carted out some antiquated star and gave him a last chance to flicker. Occasionally, when the taste level plummeted further than usual, the Academy chose some poor soul who'd already been stricken by a stroke or was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. There'd be a selection of clips from the poor victim's great pictures, then, fumbling and bewildered, he or she would be led out to stand alone on the stage while the audience rose to applaud them, and you could see in their eyes that this was some kind of Hell: to have their finest moments thrown up on a screen—their faces strong and shining—and then have the spotlight show the world what age and disease had done to them.

  "You're right," he'd said to Maxine. "I don't want to be there."

  So why, if he truly didn't want to be there, was he sitting at his bedroom window tonight, staring down the length of the Canyon toward the city, feeling so damn sorry for himself? Why had he started drinking, and drinking hard, at noon, and by two-thirty—when he knew the first limousines were beginning to roll up to the Pavilion—was he in the depths of despair?

  Why, he asked himself, would he want to keep company with those hollow, sour people? He'd fought the battle to get to the top of the Hollywood Hill long ago, and he'd won it. He'd had his face plastered up on ten thousand billboards across America, across the world. He'd been called the Handsomest Man in the World, and believed it. He'd walked into rooms the size of football fields and known that every eye was turned in his direction, and every heart beat a little faster because he'd appeared. Just how much more adulation did a man need?

  The truth?

  Another hundred rooms filled with people stupefied by worship would not be enough to satisfy the hunger in him; nor another hundred hundred. He needed his face plastered on every wall he passed, his movies lauded to the skies, his arms so filled with Oscars he couldn't hold them all.

  It was a sickness in him, but what was he to do? There was no cure for this emptiness but love; love in boundless amounts; the kind of love God Himself would be hard-pressed to deliver.

  As the cloudless sky darkened toward night he started to pick out the Klieg lights raking the clouds: not from the Pavilion itself (that lay to the west, and was not visible from the Canyon), but from the many locations around the city where his peers, both prize-winners and losers, would in a few hours come to revel. Members of the press were already assembling at these sacred sites—Morton's, Spago's, the Roosevelt Hotel—ready to turn their cameras on the slick and the stylishly unkempt alike. A smile, a witticism, a look of glee from those burdened with victory. They'd have it all in the morning editions.

  Picturing the scene was too much for him. He got up and went down to the kitchen to fix himself another drink. By now he was on the second cycle of intoxication; having drunk himself past the point of nausea by mid-afternoon, he was moving inexorably toward a deep luxurious drunkenness; the kind that flirted with oblivion. He'd suffer for it for whatever part of tomorrow he saw, of course, and probably the day after that. He was no longer young enough or resilient enough to shrug off the effects of a binge like this. But right now he didn't give a rat's ass. He simply wanted to be insulated from the pain he was feeling.

  As he opened the immense fridge to get himself ice, he heard, or thought he heard, somebody, a woman, say his name.

  He stopped digging for the ice and looked around. The kitchen was empty. He left the fridge open and went back to the door. The turret was also deserted, and the dining room dark, the empty table and chairs silhouetted against the window. He walked on through it into the living room, calling for Marco. He flipped on the light. The fifty-lamp chandelier blazed, illuminating an empty room. There were several boxes of his belongings sitting there, still unopened. Moved from Bel Air but still unpacked. But that was all.

  He was about to go back to the kitchen, assuming the voice he'd heard was alcohol-induced, when he heard his name called a second time. He looked back into the dining room. Was he going crazy?

  "Marco?" he yelled.

  There was a long, empty moment. Somewhere in the darkness of the Canyon a solitary coyote was yelping. Then came the sound of a door opening, and he heard Marco's familiar voice: "Yes, boss?"

  "I heard somebody calling."

  "In the house?"

  "Yeah. I thought so. A woman's voice."

  Marco appeared on the stairs now, looking down at his employer with an expression of concern. "You okay?"

  "Yeah. I just got unnerved, is all."

  "You want me to go check around?"

  "Yeah, I guess so. I don't even know where it was coming from. But I heard somebody. I swear."

  Marco, who'd emerged from his bedroom in his boxers, headed back upstairs to get dressed. Todd went back to the kitchen, feeling a little stupid. There wasn't going to be anybody here, inside the house or out. Every stalker, every voyeur, every obsessive was canvassing the crowds around the Pavilion, looking for a way to slide past the security guards, under the velvet rope, and into the company of their idols. They weren't wasting their time stumbling around in the darkness hoping for a glance of Todd Pickett, all fucked up. Nobody even knew he was here, for Christ's sake. Worse; nobody cared.

  As he returned to the business of making his drink, he heard Marco coming down back the stairs, and was half tempted to tell him to forget it. But he decided against it. No harm in letting one of them feel useful tonight. He dropped a handful of ice-cubes into his glass, and filled it up wi
th scotch. Took a mouthful. Topped it up. Took another mouthful—

  And the voice came again.

  If there had been some doubt in his head as to whether he'd actually heard the call or simply imagined it, there was now none. Somebody was here in the house, calling to him.

  It seemed to be coming from the other side of the hallway. He set his drink down on the counter and quietly crossed the kitchen. The turret was deserted. There was nobody on the stairs either above or below.

  He took the short passageway down to what Marco had dubbed the Casino, an immense wood-paneled room, lit by a number of low-slung lights, which indeed looked as though it had been designed to house a roulette wheel and half a dozen poker tables. Judging by the distance of the voice it seemed the likeliest place for whoever had spoken to be lurking. As he walked down the passageway it briefly occurred to him that to make this investigation without Marco at his side was foolishness. But the drink made him bold. Besides, it was only a woman he'd heard. He could deal with a woman.

  The door of the Casino stood open. He peered in. The windows were undraped; a few soft panels of gray light slid through them, illuminating the enormity of the place. He could see no sign of an intruder. But some instinct instructed him not to believe the evidence of his eyes. He wasn't alone here. The skin of his palms pricked. So, curiously, did the flesh beneath his bandages, as though it were especially susceptible in its newborn state.

  "Who's there?" he said, his voice less confident than he'd intended.

  At the far end of the room one of the pools of light fluttered. Something passed through it, raising the dust.

  "Who's there?" he said again, his hand straying to the light switch.

  He resisted the temptation to turn it on, however. Instead he waited, and watched. Whoever this trespasser was, she was too far from him to do any harm.

  "You shouldn't be in here," he said gently. "You do know that, don't you?"

  Again, that subtle motion at the other end of the room. But he still couldn't make out a figure; the darkness beyond the pool of light was too impenetrable.