Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

  Then, when her heart had recovered something approximating its natural rhythm, she headed toward Katya Lupi's dream palace.

  Eppstadt was in the hallway, looking down the stairwell. It was dark at the bottom, but he thought he saw a motion in the darkness; like motes of pale dust, spiraling around.

  "Joe?" he called. "Are you there? Answer me, will you?"

  The sound from below had died away: the din of beasts was now barely audible. All that remained was the sound of the wind, which was remarkably consistent, lending credence to the notion that what he was hearing was a soundtrack, not reality. But where the hell had Joe got to? It was fully five minutes since he'd disappeared down the stairs to close the slamming door.

  "I wouldn't go down there if I were you."

  Eppstadt glanced over his shoulder to see that Brahms had forsaken his place at the window, and had come into the hallway.

  "He doesn't answer me," Eppstadt said. "I thought perhaps he'd fallen, or ... I don't know. The door's still slamming. Hear it?"

  "Of course."

  "I don't suppose you want to go down there and close it for me?"

  "You're big on delegation, aren't you? Do they teach you that in business school?"

  "It's just a door."

  "So close it yourself."

  Eppstadt threw Brahms a sour look. "Or don't. Leave him down there if that's what your instincts are telling you."

  "And if I do?"

  "Put it this way: the longer you wait, the less chance there is you'll ever see him again."

  "I should never have sent him down there," Eppstadt said.

  "Huh. I never thought I'd hear that from you."

  "Hear what?"

  "Regret. This place is changing you. Even you. I'm impressed."

  Eppstadt didn't reply. He simply stared down the long curve of the stairway, still hoping he'd see Joe's well-made face emerging from the shadows. But the only motion down there was the dust stirred up by the wind, circling on itself.

  "Joe!" he yelled.

  There wasn't even an echo from below. The bowels of the house seemed to consume the shouted syllable.

  "I'm going upstairs," Jerry said, "to see if there's anybody up there."

  "Is Maxine still out back?"

  "I assume so. And if I remember from previous quakes she'll stay out there a while. She doesn't like being under anything, even a table, during a 'quake. She'll come in when she's ready."

  "Thanks."

  "You're welcome."

  "You don't like me, do you?" Eppstadt said out of nowhere.

  Jerry shrugged. "Hollywood's always had its share of little Caligulas."

  So saying, he left Eppstadt to his dilemma, and went on up the stairs. He knew the geography of the house pretty well. There were three doors that led off the top landing. One went to a short passageway, which led in turn to a large bedroom, with en suite bathroom, which had been occupied, until his death, by Marco Caputo. One was a small writing room. And one was the master bedroom, with its astonishing view, its immense closet and sumptuous, if somewhat over-wrought, bathroom.

  Jerry had only been in the master bedroom two or three times; but it held fond memories for him. Memories of being a young man (what had he been, twelve, thirteen at the most?) invited in by Katya. Oh, she'd been beautiful that night; it had been like lying in the bed of a goddess. He'd been too frightened to touch her at first, but she'd gently persuaded him out of his fears.

  As his life had turned out, she'd been the only woman he'd ever slept with. In his early twenties he was certain his queerness was a result of that night. No other woman, he would tell himself, could possibly be the equal of Katya Lupi. But that was just self-justification. He'd been born queer, and Katya was his one grand exception to the rule.

  As he reached the door of the master bedroom, there was an aftershock. A short jolt, no more; but enough to set the antiquated chandelier that hung in the turret gently swaying and tinkling again. Jerry waited for a few moments, holding on to the banister, waiting to see if there were going to be any more shocks coming immediately upon the heels of this one. But there were none.

  He glanced down the stairwell. No one was in view. Then he tried the bedroom door. It was locked from the inside. There was only one thing to construe from this: the room had an occupant, or occupants. He glanced down at the shiny boards at his feet, and saw that there were a few droplets of water on the polished timber.

  It wasn't hard to put the pieces of this puzzle together; nor to imagine the scene on the other side of the locked door. Todd and Katya had survived their brush with the Pacific. They were alive; sleeping, no doubt, in the great bed. The voyeur in him would have liked very much to slide through the closed door and spy on the lovers as they slept; both naked, Todd lying face up on the bed, Katya pressed to his side. She was probably snoring, as he'd heard her do several times when she'd cat-napped in his presence.

  He didn't blame Katya for her covetousness one iota. If being hungry for life meant being hungry for an eternity of nights wrapped in the arms of a man who loved you, then that was an entirely understandable appetite.

  And there was just a little part of him which thought that if he stayed loyal to her long enough—if he played his part—then she would let him have a piece of her eternity. That she would show him how the years could be made to melt away.

  He retreated from the door and headed downstairs, leaving the sleepers to their secret slumber.

  When he got to the mid-level landing Eppstadt had gone. Apparently, he'd made the decision to go downstairs and search for Joe. Jerry looked over the balcony. There was no sound from below. The wind had died away to nothing. The door was no longer slamming.

  He went from the stairs to the front door, which stood ajar.

  Perhaps this was his moment to depart. He had nothing more to contribute here. Katya had her man; Todd had found some measure of peace after his own disappointments. What else was there for Jerry to do but make his silent farewells and slip away?

  He stood at the front door for two or three minutes, unable to make the final break. Eventually, he convinced himself to linger here just a little longer, simply to see the look on Maxine's face when she realized Todd was still alive. He went back into the kitchen, and sat down, waiting—like anyone who'd spent his time watching other lives rather than having one of his own—to see what happened next.

  Eppstadt had been two steps from the bottom of the stairs when the aftershock hit. He was by no means an agile man, but he leapt the last two steps without a stumble. There were ominous growlings in the walls, as though several hungry tigers had been sealed up in them. This was, he knew, one of the most foolish places to be caught in an earthquake, especially if (as was perfectly possible) the aftershock turned out not to be an aftershock at all, but a warm-up for something bigger. It would be more sensible—much more sensible—to ascend the stairs again and wait until the tigers had quieted down. But he wasn't going to do that. He'd been sensible for most of his life; always taking the safe road, the conservative route. For once, he wanted to play life a little dangerously, and take the consequences.

  That said, he didn't have to be suicidal. There was a door-lintel up ahead. He'd be safer under there than he was in the open passageway. He made a dash for the spot, and as he did so, the aftershock abruptly ceased.

  He took a deep breath.

  Then he glanced over his shoulder into the room behind him. Presumably this was the place Joe had disappeared into; there was nowhere else for him to go.

  He went to the door. Looked inside. He could see nothing at first, just undivided gloom. He reached in, as many had done before him, to fumble for a light switch, and failing to find one, allowed a little surge of curiosity to take hold of him. Hadn't he said to himself he wanted to live a little more riskily? Well, here was his opportunity. Stepping into this strange room at the bottom of this lunatic house was probably the most foolish thing he'd ever done, and he knew it.

  A c
old wind came to greet him. It caught hold of his elbow, and drew him over the threshold into the world—yes, it was a world—inside. He looked up at the heavens; at that three-quarter-blinded sun, at the high herringbone clouds that he remembered puzzling over as a child, wondering what it was that laid them out so carefully, so prettily. A star fell earthward, and he followed its arc with his eyes, until it burned itself out, somewhere over the trees.

  Far off, many miles beyond the dark mass of the forest, he could see the sea, glittering. This was not the Pacific, he could see. The ships that moved upon it were like something from an Errol Flynn flick, The Sea Hawk or some such. He'd loved those movies as a kid; and the ships in them. Especially the ships.

  It was twenty-six seconds since the man from Paramount, who'd spent his professional life keeping the dreamy, superstitious child in him silenced by pretending a fine, high-minded superiority to all things that smelled of grease-paint and midnight hokum, had entered the Devil's Country; and had lost himself in it.

  "Come on, don't be afraid," the wind from the sea whispered in his ear.

  And in he went, all cynicism wiped from his mind by the memory of wheeling ships beneath a painted sky, still young enough to believe he might grow up a hero.

  THREE

  Todd stirred from a state closer to a stupor than a sleep. He was lying on the immense bed of the master bedroom in the house in Coldheart Canyon. Katya was lying beside him, her little body gathered into a tight knot, pressed close to him. One arm was beneath him, the other on top, as though she'd never let go of him again. She was snoring in her sleep, as she had been that day he'd found her in her bedroom at the guest-house. The human touch. It was more eloquent now than ever, given what they'd gone through together.

  There had been some terrifying moments for them both in the last few hours; fragments of them played in Todd's head as he slowly extricated himself from her embrace, and slid slowly out of the bed. First, there'd been that breath-snatching moment when he'd turned his back on the Malibu house and headed out into the dark waters of the Pacific with Katya. He'd never been so frightened in his life. But then she'd squeezed his hand, and looked around at him, her hair blowing back from her face, showing off the glory of her bones, and he'd thought: even if I die now, I will have been the luckiest man in creation. I will have had this woman by my side at the end. Who could ask for more than that?

  It hadn't been quite so easy to hold on to those feelings of gratitude in the chaotic minutes that followed. Once they were out of their depth, and in the grip of the great Pacific, the bitter-sweet joy of what they were doing became a shared, instinctive attempt to survive in the dark, bruising waters. Fifty yards out, and the big waves, the surfers' waves, started to pick them up and drop them down again into their lightless troughs. It was so dark he could barely see Katya's face, but he heard her choking on seawater, coughing like a frightened little girl.

  And suddenly the idea of just dying out here, beaten to death by the waves, didn't seem so attractive. Why not try to live? he found himself thinking. Not the kind of life he'd had before (he wouldn't want that again, ever) but some other kind of life. Traveling around the world, perhaps, incognito; just the two of them. That wouldn't be so bad, would it? And when they were bored with travel they could find some sunny beach down in Costa Rica and spend every day there drunk among the parrots. There they could wait out the years until the big, glossy world he'd once given a shit for had forgotten he even existed.

  All these thoughts came in flashes, none of them really coherent. The only thought that took any real shape was the means by which they could escape this dark water alive.

  "We're going to dive!" he yelled to Katya. "Take a deep breath."

  He heard her do so; then, before another pulverizing wave could come along and knock them out, he drove them both into a teetering wall of water, diving deep into the placid heart of the wave. They must have done this half a hundred times; diving down, rising up again gasping, then watching for the next monstrous wall to be almost upon them before diving again. It was a desperate trick, but it worked.

  It was clearly preventing them from getting a terrible beating, but it was steadily taking its toll on their energies. He knew they couldn't continue to defy the violence of the water for very much longer. Their muscles were aching, their senses were becoming unreliable. It would only be a matter of time before the force of the water got the better of them, and they sank together, defeated by sheer fatigue.

  But they had counted without the benign collusion of the tide, which all this time had been slowly bearing them south, and—as it did so—had also been ushering them back toward the shore. The tumult of waters around them began to die down, and after a few minutes their toes began to brush some of the taller coral towers. A few minutes later they had solid ground beneath their feet, and shortly after that they were stumbling ashore at Venice.

  For five minutes or so they lay on the dark sand together, spitting up water and coughing, and then eventually finding it in them to laugh, and catch each other's hands.

  Against all the odds, they'd survived.

  "I guess we . . . we weren't ready ... to die," Todd gasped.

  "I suppose so," Katya said. She dragged her head over the sand, to put her lips in reach of his. It wasn't a kiss, so much as a sharing of breath. They lay there, mouth to mouth, until Katya's teeth began to chatter.

  "We have to get you back to the Canyon," he said, hauling himself to his knees. The lights of the Venice boardwalk seemed impossibly remote.

  "I can't," she said.

  "Yes you can. We're going home. We're going back to the Canyon. You'll feel stronger and warmer once we're walking. I promise."

  He helped her get to her knees and then practically lifted her to her feet. Arms around one another they stumbled toward the boardwalk, where the usual tourist-trap entertainments were still going on, despite the lateness of the hour. They wove between the people, unrecognized, and in a back street Todd found a kid with a beaten-up Pinto to whom he offered three hundred waterlogged bucks if he'd take them back home, and another three hundred, dry, if he promised not to mention what he'd done and where he'd been, to anyone.

  "I know who you are," the kid said.

  "No you don't," Todd said, snatching the three hundred back from the kid's hand.

  "Okay, okay. I don't," the kid replied, gently reclaiming the money. "You gotta deal."

  Todd knew that there wasn't much chance that the driver's promise would last very long, but they had no choice in the matter. They made their makeshift chauffeur close all the windows and turn up the heating, and they clung together in the back of the car trying to get some warmth back into their blood. Todd got him to drive as fast as the vehicle was capable of going, and twenty minutes later he was directing the kid up the winding road into Coldheart Canyon.

  "I've never been up here before," the kid said when they were outside the house.

  Katya leaned in and stared at him.

  "No," she said. "And you never will again."

  Something about the way she said it made the kid feel very nervous.

  "Okay, okay," he said. "Just give me the rest of the money."

  Todd went inside for another three hundred dollars in dry bills, and a few minutes later the guy drove off, six hundred bucks the richer and none the wiser, while Todd and Katya dragged themselves up the turret stairs to the master bedroom, sloughing off their cold damp clothes as they crept toward the bed they'd thought they'd never see again.

  It took Todd a long time to get across the bedroom to the closet: his body ached to his marrow, and his thoughts were as sluggish as his body. Only as he was pulling on a clean pair of jeans did he realize there were voices in the house.

  "Shit . . ." he murmured to himself.

  He decided not to wake Katya. Instead he would try to get rid of these people himself, without unleashing her righteous fury on them.

  He went back into the bedroom. Despite the hullabaloo fr
om below Katya showed no sign of waking. This was all to the good. She was obviously healing the hurts of recent days. He lingered at the bed-side, studying her peaceful features. The seawater had washed every trace of rouge or mascara from her face; she could have been a fifteen-year-old, lying there, dreaming innocent dreams.

  Of course that innocence was an illusion. He knew what she was capable of; and there was a corner of his brain that never completely ceased warning him of that fact. But then hadn't she come to the beach to save him? Who else would have done that, except perhaps for Tammy? All anybody had ever done for him was use him, and as soon as they'd got what they'd needed, they'd moved on. But Katya had proved she was made of more loyal stuff. She'd been ready to go all the way with him; to death if necessary.

  So what if she was cruel? What if she had committed crimes that would have her behind bars if anybody knew about them? Her sins mattered very little to him right now. What mattered was how she'd taken his hand as they'd turned their back on the lights of the beach and faced the dark waters of the Pacific; and how hard she'd struggled to keep holding on to it, however much the tide had conspired to divorce them.

  The voices below had quieted.

  He pulled on a white T-shirt, and went to the door. As he did so there was a small earthquake. The door rattled in its frame. It was a short jolt, and he guessed it was probably an aftershock. If so, then perhaps what had woken him in the first place was the big shaker. Why else would he have woken? He was still very much in need of sleep, God knows. Nothing would have given him more pleasure than to strip off his jeans and T-shirt and crawl back into bed beside Katya for another three or four hours of blissful slumber.

  But he could scarcely do that with a search party in the house. He heard Eppstadt's voice among the exchanges. Fuck him! It was typical that the little prick would get his nose in their business sooner or later. Todd had hoped that he and Katya would get some quiet time together to plan their next move: to search the house (and of course the Pool House) for incriminating evidence of scandal, and destroy it; then to hide in the depths of the Canyon until the investigators were satisfied that there was nothing here worth investigating, and left, taking Eppstadt and whoever the hell else was here (Maxine, no doubt) back with them. But Eppstadt had ruined that hope. Before these interlopers left they were going to search every damn room, no doubt of that: the master bedroom included. He was going to need to find a way to spirit Katya and himself out of the house and away before they came looking.