The bloodstone, p.5
The Bloodstone, page 5
Good God, Ron thought, his eyes briefly sweeping the white Spanish-style house that stood utterly alone against the high cliff. Things had sure changed since the days of “Bulldog Drummond,” “Hercule Poirot,” and “The Thin Man.” No longer was the world that simple.
Nor was it that rich.
Like all the other gilded palaces of Bel Air and Beverly Hills built by the Zukors, the Goldwyns, the Mayers and other movie moguls, the building loomed as a constant reminder of better days, when money flowed like milk from a healthy bitch that had just given birth to a litter of pups. When mansions sprang up everywhere, built with money made from hundreds of “B” movies of yesteryear.
Ron had always pictured Hollywood and its surrounding areas as the epitome of glamor, money and beautiful men and women. It was only after he began his career as a theatrical agent that he became aware of the rundown rooming houses filled with young people without a prayer; with no money to speak of; people lost in the quiet pursuit of broken dreams.
Perhaps Chandal was right to return to New York and the legitimate stage. Hollywood was a rough, tough life. The motion picture industry tended to strip emotions bare, leaving one with little sleep, lunches and dinners never eaten, cold cups of instant coffee, Miltown, No-Doz and four-thirty A.M. wake-up calls.
Ron sighed and stepped out onto the pavement.
“He won’t bite!” boomed a voice off to the side at the sea-gate.
“That’s, uh, good,” Ron said, folding his arms across his chest and trying not to look the Doberman pinscher in the eye. Two things he knew about vicious dogs: Don’t dangle your hands and don’t look them in the eye.
The Doberman growled, saliva dripping from its jaws.
“Rusty, stop that!” The woman scowled, her voice shaded in fond annoyance. “Isn’t he a riot?” She smiled, holding the dog lightly by its collar. “He thinks he scares people when he does that.”
“A riot,” mumbled Ron.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m here to pick up a few things from Chandal Knight’s apartment.”
“Oh, and you’re...”
“Right. Ron Talon.”
“Nice to meet you, Ron. Lucille Stoner here,” said the woman, vigorous and quite attractive and no more than forty. Unconsciously she covered her wedding ring with her thumb. “If you don’t mind, go on inside the back way. I’ll come around to meet you.”
“Right,” Ron muttered neutrally and tried to take unhurried steps toward the indicated ground floor, which had its own private entrance by way of the garden path. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the woman’s hand slip casually from the dog’s collar as woman and dog disappeared inside the wire gate of the sea-wall.
His shaking hand found the screen door unlatched and he stepped into the deserted hallway. The inner door stood ajar. He strode forward, feeling as though he were an adventurer in a strange land following a blazed trail of open doors.
“Chandal mentioned you all the time,” the woman said, appearing suddenly from a side entrance minus the dog. “Now why haven’t I seen him, I used to say. That’s odd, how I haven’t seen him. Me, I see everybody. When you take care of a building, lord, you’re up and down stairs, here, there, everywhere, you see. So I said, why haven’t I seen this man, Chandal?” She paused, breathless, her eyes going over him inch by inch, taking in eye color, haircut, clothing.
“It is odd,” Ron said, not mentioning that Chandal seldom suggested he visit her Malibu apartment. Instead she had preferred to go to his small home in the Hollywood Hills.
The woman continued to eye him calmly.
Ron shrugged. “Chandal asked me to send a few things to her in New York.”
She held his gaze a moment longer. “I can let you in,” she said briskly. Her trustworthy air indicated that she had a built-in radar for burglars and impostors and that he had passed her secret standards of integrity. She led the way, as her eyes now frankly appraised his rather unusual dress of black-tie dinner clothes.
“I’m going to an awards dinner,” he found himself telling her, the information literally sucked out of him by the women’s magnetic curiosity. He watched her digest the tidbit, her appetite more whetted, however, than satiated.
“One of my clients got nominated for an award,” he went on, encouraged to see that the woman now held a key in her hand. “Sort of like an Emmy, only it’s behind the scenes. Closed door sort of thing.”
“Imagine that!” she beamed.
“It’s not that big a deal. To be strictly truthful, the industry gives these awards to almost everybody who hasn’t been winning Emmies lately. The ones it wants to keep happy, that is.”
They stopped in front of Chandal’s door and she fitted the key neatly into the lock.
“It sure would be interesting to know who wins,” she said wistfully.
“The next time I see you, I’ll let you know how it went,” he promised.
Swinging open the door, she proceeded him into the apartment, hit the light switch in the foyer, then advanced over the deep white carpet to the large glass doors on the far wall where she pulled the curtains to reveal a breathtaking view of the sun setting over the ocean. Clearly she enjoyed showing off the apartment as though it were her own.
“She has exquisite taste, don’t you think?” the woman said admiringly. Her eyes took in the antique seaman’s chest in the corner, the polished driftwood coffee table, the circular couch and comfortable low chairs. It was a large room, made even more open by an arched serving counter that Chandal had had cut between the kitchen and that portion of the wall closest to the double window. Beside the doorway that led to her spacious bedroom was a glass shelf filled with cocktail glasses and liquor bottles.
Ron forgot the woman for a moment as a wave of emotion passed over him. Chandal had put such a stamp of her bright personality on this room that it was almost as though he could see her standing there beside him, gazing out over the ocean, holding his wrist instead of his hand as she always did. This habit had made him ask her once teasingly, “What are you doing—testing my pulse to see if I’m alive?”
Smiling slightly she had replied, “In a way, maybe. It’s wonderful to feel the warmth of your skin, to feel your pulse beating away, so steady and real. It’s wonderful,” she repeated softly and he had said, “Not always so steady,” taking her into his arms.
“How can she leave all this?” Mrs. Stoner now wondered out loud.
“Well, she’s... Jesus, she’s coming back.”
“That’s what she told me,” said Mrs. Stoner. “But she won’t be back. You’ll see. She’ll pay her rent for a couple of months and then one day a moving van will come and that’ll be that. When you’ve had my job for a few years, you get to know these things. I knew just the way she said goodbye to me, that I was never going to see her again. And her plants.” The woman took a step toward the window. “She gave them all away, see? She gave me a cactus collection and the rest to her neighbors. She’ll never be back,” she said regretfully and cocked her head suddenly.
“Oh, God,” she squealed, “somebody’s calling me. I never get a minute’s peace. Listen, if I don’t get back...
“I know,” Ron said. “Just close the door. It locks automatically.”
“Right,” she said, trotting off.
Ron stood silently for a moment, heard Mrs. Stoner’s hurried footsteps retreating on the cement walkway outside and then down the stairs, until they became lost in the soft earth of the garden path below.
It wasn’t until he had closed the door that he actually found himself acknowledging the acute loneliness he now felt. Feel it, he willed himself. Face whatever you came here to face—loneliness, whatever the hell it is—and get done with it.
Then he sighed, and saw himself for the coward he was. He had come to face nothing. He wanted only to be closer to Chandal. To be surrounded by the apartment she loved, by the ocean she claimed had healed her.
His heart beat in painful, dull thuds and he felt his eyes burning. Almost a week without her, the separation made more acute by the undeniable fact that she hadn’t called on Thursday as she had promised, nor on Friday, nor today either and his pride had kept him from reaching for his own telephone.
Damn you, he told her fiercely, determined to be angry, to dispel the pain. Why didn’t you call me? What are you trying to prove, Chandal? But he couldn’t help thinking that perhaps she wasn’t trying to prove anything. That maybe she’d just forgotten to call, was too busy to call, that really he was more agent than lover to her and for that matter, maybe she had a hot-shot New York agent by now.
Decisively, he pushed away this sort of negative thinking and stared around the room for clues to the missing Chandal. He noted that the heavy sterling silver lighter from the coffee table was gone. It bothered him that she had taken the trouble to pack the lighter, as well as the picture of her mother that used to sit on top of the stereo.
A quick glance into the hall closet revealed that she had probably worn her fur coat and that she had also taken her trench coat. Shoes and handbags were gone. She had packed thoroughly and yet, on the other hand, there was evidence of a split-second decision. Ashes still in an ashtray, two bottles of nail polish still sitting on the coffee table, records still stacked on the record player. Uncharacteristic of a chronically neat Chandal.
Ron nodded dumbly. He still could not shake the dull, persistent sensation that something was wrong. He couldn’t get the thought out of his mind, nor could he free himself of his concern with Chandal’s sudden departure. Something wasn’t right, damn it.
Nervously he flipped on the record player. A record dropped into place, the arm swung into position and jazz began to fill the room at a very low volume. He stood in the dimmest part of the apartment now, himself merely a shadow. Only his eyes flashed visibly, restless, uncertain.
What the hell did he expect to find here? That he would come upon something that would prove him right? That Chandal was in trouble? Was he losing his senses? What, in fact, had he hoped to gain by coming here?
He needed more time to think. Everything seemed to be moving too fast. Chilled, he ran his hand over his arm and realized that it was wet. He had been sweating and he hadn’t noticed.
He turned quickly and moved into Chandal’s bedroom. It was cold, gray and still. The blinds on the windows were tightly drawn, blocking out the sunlight. He flicked on the bedside lamp and felt a slight pang. There under the lamp was his own picture in a small gold frame.
Gazing vacantly, he found his life story replaying itself in his mind like an MGM film. Ron Talon, who had had some pretty grandiose visions for a simple kid from Encino, who had majored in film at UCLA, who had gotten so far as to direct a few low-budget documentaries—which was more than the majority of his classmates had ever done.
The Ron Talon Story moved into the meaty part—starvation for the better part of five years. Heavy stuff, starvation. He smiled, remembering how he’d awakened one morning to see the world with fresh eyes. In the background of his mind a curtain went up and the MGM tap-dancers came out. This was a good old Hollywood movie. Where the hero finds that starving is out of character for him. He simply didn’t want to wake up at fifty and be penniless. He had friends who were prepared to do that and he envied them in a way, but truth was truth. Being a theatrical agent—first an assistant in a large agency, then a full-fledged agent for the same organization, then manning his own agency—had been the white line down the middle of the road. But he was honest-to-God good at it and he found himself enjoying the work. Then boy met girl and the happy ending seemed sure to happen. Then...
“Then,” he muttered out loud, “girl loses mind.”
Now he began to open drawers, finding them completely empty, lined with white paper, still smelling faintly of lilac. As he closed the last drawer, he heard something bump against the wood. A small article, some piece of forgotten jewelry, probably, he thought, and reached into the far recesses of the empty drawer.
Even before he looked at it, he was surprised by the weight of the object. The thought came into his mind that perhaps it was an oddly shaped belt buckle, but then women didn’t tend to own such things.
He whistled as speculation ceased, his eyes fixed on what was without a doubt a very valuable silver crucifix. It was no more than three inches long and odd in design. The tormented figure on the cross had been carved in agonizing detail, the artist seeming to suggest by the sharp downthrust of the head, the screaming lips and the twisted limbs, the degree of pain actually involved in crucifixion.
Ron stared at the object in distaste. He had sensed immediately that in some sadistic and medieval way the artist had enjoyed his work. And that no one, especially Chandal, could find the crucifix attractive.
Still, it was strange. Why would she leave such a valuable piece of... jewelry? He weighed the crucifix in the palm of his hand for a moment.
Worn around the neck? He examined it closer. No. The cross had a small silver ring through which a chain might be passed. But the ring was fixed at the wrong end of the cross—at the bottom. If the crucifix had been worn around Chandal’s neck, it would have hung upside down.
In any case, Chandal had never mentioned coming from a Catholic background. There once had been a discussion about religion but she had quickly changed the subject.
Now, using the index finger of his left hand, he began to trace the outline of Christ’s body, starting at the feet and working his way slowly up to the face, where the down thrust shadows of Christ’s hair and nose cast long, dark streaks down his cheeks and chin so that it seemed as if his face assumed a grotesque mask.
Ron drew a deep breath, the atmosphere of the room suddenly assaulted by the heavy smell of old dust, the incense odor of cheap perfume. With his eyes still fixed on Christ’s face, he began to feel a strange sensation. As if he had fallen away, back into another time, himself part of a divine allegory. This room could, with very little imagination, have been a crypt or a tomb, himself the unwilling spectator of a heinous act of brutality—a part of the darkness.
And he found himself thinking of old legends and stories he had read when a boy—floating in a fluid past.
In the next instant he let the crucifix slip casually into the pocket of his tuxedo.
Turning off the bedroom light, he retraced his steps into the living room where he sat down in a chrome-based rocking chair. He was exhausted. He could hardly bring himself to leave the apartment. It seemed as though to leave would be a kind of farewell to something.
Outside, the vast canopy of blue sky blended far off with the blazing sun in a shimmering horizon of fire. A motionless seagull sat on a stone, looking more like a statue cast in bronze than like a living creature.
For a moment the room fell hushed. The waves roared, mellowed, then lulled him in their persistence, as they washed his thoughts out to sea. Chandal became a shadow in his mind, weightless, formless, until he sighed, as if to release the last of her essence.
“Damn,” he said, and realized just how much he was dreading this evening. In fact, he was ready to do almost anything to get out of it.
He glanced at his wristwatch, noted it was twenty minutes after six, and that while he could be late for drinks and hors d’oeuvres at seven, he could not be late for dinner at eight.
He reached for the telephone on a small table to his right and found it still connected. He took pleasure in the fact that Chandal still had a functioning phone in L. A. Why it pleased him, he wasn’t sure. But it did. Later he could phone this number and have the cold comfort of hearing it ring.
By God, you’ve got it bad, he told himself grimly and heard his assistant, Mimi Halpern, say hello.
“Mimi?”
“Ron?” she moaned warily, her tone a reminder that he had absolutely promised her a free Saturday.
“Got a hot date tonight, you cute thing?” he asked.
“Yes, I have, you treacherous....”
“Treacherous? Have I ever asked you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself?”
“What is it you want me to do?”
“Something I can’t do myself,” he admitted, and held the phone from his ear as she screamed.
“Not tonight!” she said furiously. “I can’t help you out. It’s my first date with the guy. He looks like Dustin Hoffman. He’s darling.”
“You want to impress the shit out of the boy? Take him to the dinner tonight. The invitation’s for two.”
“The awards dinner? Ron, you can’t be serious. It’s six-thirty, for God’s sake. I don’t even know if he has a tuxedo.”
“If he doesn’t own a tuxedo,” Ron said firmly, “he has nowhere near enough class for you. It’s best you break the whole thing off right now.”
“I’ll kill you for this.”
“Mimi,” he said and dropped the façade, “I’m out of it. I just can’t handle that dinner tonight. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
A pause and then he heard her sigh.
“Get some rest, Ron, baby,” she said. “I want you to be in really good health when I shoot you on Monday.”
“Thanks, Mimi.”
He hung up, an invisible weight lifted from his shoulders. It was a luxury, he thought, to be able to suffer alone. And he reminded himself that Mimi had just earned herself another raise.
Silence. Ron let his body slide further down into the chair, let his arms rest comfortably against his chest. He was still unable to understand completely his motives for coming here today, to say nothing of Chandal’s motives in going to New York. Carefully he said to himself: You’re on thin ice here. To Chandal he would say... what? After a few moments, he allowed his eyes to close, relaxing completely, until his head dropped to his chest and he slept.
His face, inclined downward, seemed to contemplate the roar of the ocean as if he pondered the depth of it, as if he might wish to jump headfirst into it and find it absolutely bottomless. Images swam in his mind. Chandal drifted toward him, her face white against a dark background. Her eyes were on him now, her lips smiling. Suddenly he felt himself overcome by a desire so intense that he was able to control it only with difficulty. He whispered uncertainly, “I love you, Chandal.” But he wasn’t sure that was an answer to anything.
