LITMIR.BIZ

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screen and watched a succession of images of other people’s pain–houses gone, families divided – dreamily wondering if any of them would exchange their misery for his. Every now and then a memory of the visage he’d seen in the mirror–vaguely resembling somebody he’d known, but horribly wounded, filled with pus and blood – would swim up before him, and he’d take another pill, or two or three, and wash it down with a shot of single malt, and wait for the opiates to drive the horror off a little distance.

      The new dressings Burrows had put on, though as promised they indeed left his eyes uncovered, were still oppressive, and more than once Todd’s hands went up to his face unbidden, and would have ripped the bandages off had he not governed himself in time. He felt grotesque, like something from a late-night horror movie, his face – which had been his glory – become some horrible secret, festering away beneath the bandages. He asked Maxine what movie it was – some Rock Hudson weepie – in which a man was covered up this way. She didn’t know.

      ‘And stop thinking about yourself for a while,’ she said. ‘Think about something else.’

      Easily said; the trouble was thinking about himself came naturally to him. In fact, it had become second-nature to him over the years to put all other considerations out of sight: to care only about Todd Pickett, and (on occasion) Dempsey. Not to have done so would have meant a diminution of his power in the world. After all, he’d been playing a game which only the truly self-obsessed had a chance of victory. All others were bound to fall by the wayside. Now, when it would have been healthier to direct his attention elsewhere, he’d simply lost the knack. And he had no dog by his side to love him for being the boss, whatever the hell he looked like.

      Late in the day Maxine came back from her visit to the Hideaway, as she had now dubbed it, with some good news. The house in the hills was just as Jerry Brahms had advertised.

      ‘It’s the only house in the Canyon,’ she said.

      ‘Which Canyon?’

      ‘I don’t even think it’s got a name.’

      ‘They’ve all got names, for God’s sake.’

      ‘All I can tell you is that it’s somewhere between Cold-water and Laurel. To be perfectly honest I got a little lost following Jerry up there. He drives like the Devil. And you know my sense of geography.’

      ‘What is the house like?’

      ‘Right now it’s practically empty. There’s some old stuff in there – looks like it goes back to the fifties, maybe earlier – but nothing you’d want to use. I’ll have Marco choose some furniture from the Bel Air house and move it over. Get you comfortable. But really it’s ideal for what we need right now. By the way, Ms Bosch has been calling my office. She got quite pushy with Sawyer. She’s absolutely certain you’re in Hawaii screwing some starlet.’

      ‘If that’s what she wants to think.’

      ‘You don’t care?’

      ‘Not right now.’

      ‘You’re certain you don’t want to see her?’

      ‘Christ. See her? No, Maxine. I do not want to see her.’

      ‘She was pretty upset.’

      ‘That’s because she wanted a part in Warrior, and she thought I’d get it for her.’

      ‘Okay. End of discussion. If she calls again –?’

      ‘Tell her she’s right. I’m in Hawaii fucking the ass off anyone you care to name. Manipulative little bitch.’

      ‘So here,’ Maxine said. She proffered an envelope.

      ‘What’s this?’

      ‘They’re the pictures I took of the Hideaway.’

      He took the envelope. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said before he’d even looked at the photographs.

      ‘You might be there for a few weeks. I want you to be comfortable.’

      Todd pulled out the photographs.

      ‘They’re not the best, I’m afraid,’ Maxine said. ‘It’s one of those throwaway cameras. And it was raining. But you get the idea.’

      ‘It looks big.’

      ‘According to Jerry they used to call them dream palaces. All the rich stars had them. It’s hokey, but it’s got a lot of atmosphere. There’s a huge master-bedroom with a view straight down the Canyon. You can see Century City; probably the ocean on a clear day. And the living room’s as big as a ballroom. Whoever built it put a lot of love into it. All the mouldings, the door-handles, everything is top of the line. Of course it gets campy. There’s a fresco on the ceiling of the turret. All these faces leaning over looking down at you. Famous movie stars, Jerry said. I didn’t recognize any of ’em but I guess they were from silent movies.’ She paused, waiting for judgment. Todd just kept looking at the pictures. ‘Well?’ Maxine finally said. ‘Too Old Hollywood for you?’

      ‘No. It’s fine. Anyway, isn’t that what I am now?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Old Hollywood.’

      Chapter 5

      Jerry Brahms had been a child-actor in the late thirties, but his career hadn’t lasted into puberty. He’d been at his ‘most picturesque’, as he liked to put it, at the age of nine or ten, after which it had all been downhill. Todd had always thought of Brahms as being slightly ridiculous: with his overly-coiffed silver hair, his mock-English diction, and his unforgiving bitchiness about the profession to which he’d once aspired.

      But Jerry knew his Hollywood, there was no doubt of that. He lived and breathed the place: its scandals, its triumphs. He was most informed about the Golden Age of Tinseltown, which coincided, naturally enough, with the years of his employment. In matters relating to this period his knowledge was encyclopaedic, as he’d proved three years before, when Todd had been looking for a new house. Jerry had volunteered his services as a location scout, and after a week or two had taken Todd and Maxine on a grand tour of properties he thought might be suitable. Todd had not wanted to go; he found Jerry’s chatter grating. But Maxine had insisted. ‘He’ll be heartbroken if you don’t go,’ she’d said. ‘You know how he idolizes you. Besides, he might have found something you like.’

      So Todd had gone along; and it had turned out to be quite a trip. Jerry had organized the tour as though he was entertaining royalty (which perhaps, as far as he was concerned, he was). He’d hired a stretch, supplied a champagne-and-caviar hamper from Greenblatt’s in case they wanted to picnic along the way, and a map of the city, on which he’d meticulously marked their route. They went down to the Colony in Malibu, they wound their way through Bel Air and Beverly Hills; they looked at Hancock Park and Brentwood, their route plotted by Jerry so that he could show off his knowledge of where the luminaries of Hollywood had lived and died. They passed by Falcon Lair on Bella Drive, which Valentino had built at the height of his fame. They went to the Benedict Canyon Drive home where Harold Lloyd had spent much of his life, and past Jayne Mansfield’s Pink Palace, which was as gaudy as ever, and the house where Marilyn and DiMaggio had briefly lived in wedded bliss. They visited homes occupied, at one time or another, by John Barrymore (‘It still smells of liquor,’ Jerry had remarked), Ronald Colman, Hearst’s widow, Marion Davies, Clara Bow, Lucille Ball and Mae West. Not all the houses were for sale, nor open for inspection; in some cases Jerry’s research had simply turned up a property close by, or one that resembled the house in which some luminary had lived. Other properties were located in areas that had become shadows of their glamorous selves, but Jerry didn’t seem to care, or perhaps even notice. The fact that stars whose faces had become legendary – whose names evoked lives of elegance and luxury – had lived in these homes blinded him to the fact that there was often decay around them. They were like sacred sites, and he a pilgrim. Todd had found the tenderness with which

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