Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

'Do you care?'

'It's funny. It used not to hurt. In fact, I used to positively wallow in being people's worst nightmare. But that was when Todd was still alive ...' She let the thought go unfinished. 'What's the use?' she said at last, getting up from beside the bed. 'We can't control any of this stuff. They'll write whatever they want to write, and people will believe what they want to believe.' She leaned in and kissed Tammy on the cheek. 'You take care of yourself. Doctor Zondel—is that it, Zondel?'

'I think so.'

'Sounds like a cheap white wine. Well, anyway, he thinks you're remarkable. And I said to him: 'this we knew.''

Tammy caught hold of her hand. 'Thank you for everything.'

'Nothing to thank me for,' Maxine said. 'We survivors have got to stick together. I'll see you tomorrow. And by the way, now that you're compos mentis—I warn you—there's a chance you're going to have nursing staff coming in to ask you questions. Then selling your answers. So say nothing. However nice people are to you, assume they're fakes.'

Maxine came every day, often with more magazines to show. But on Wednesday—three weeks and a day after Tammy had returned to consciousness—she had something weightier to place on her bed.

'Remember our own Norman Mailer?'

'Detective Rooney?'

'Ex-Detective Martin Ray Rooney. The same. Behold, he did labor mightily and his gutter publishers saw that it was publishable and they did a mighty thing, and put it in print in less than three weeks.'

'No!'

'Here it is. In all its shoddy glory.'

It wasn't a big book—a mere two hundred and ninety-six pages—but what it lacked in length it made up for in sheer bravura. The copy described it as a story too horrific for Hollywood to tell. On the cover was a photograph of the house in Coldheart Canyon, with the image of a glowering demon superimposed on the clouds overhead.

'He says you, I and a woman called Katya Lupescu were in it together. Like the three witches in Macbeth.'

'You mean you actually read it?'

'Well, I skimmed. It's not the worst thing I've read. He spells all our names right, most of the time, but the rest? Oh God in Heaven! I don't know where to begin. It's a big sticky mess of Hollywood myths and

Manson references and completely asinine pieces of detective work. Basically, he's convinced everyone is in on this massive conspiracy—'

'To do what?'

'Well. . . that's the thing. He's not really sure. He claims Todd found out about it, so he was murdered. Same with Joe. Same with Gary Eppstadt, though of course everybody in Hollywood had a reason to murder Gary Eppstadt.'

'I didn't know books could be published so fast.'

'Well it's just hack-work. It'll be off the shelves in a month. But Rooney got a quarter of a million dollars' advance for it. Can you believe that?'

Tammy picked up the book—which was called Hell's Canyon—and flicked through it.

'Did he interview Arnie?'

'Well I didn't read it that closely, but I didn't see his name.'

'Oh, there's pictures,' Tammy said, coming to the eight-page section in the middle of the book. To give him his due, Rooney—or somebody working on his behalf—had done a little research. He'd turned up two photographs from the archives of some silent-movie enthusiast. One was a picture of Katya Lupi, dressed in a gown so sheer it looked as though it had been painted on, the other a much more informal photograph which showed Katya, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Theda Bara, Ramon Navarro and a host of other luminaries at a picnic in the shadow of the dream palace in Coldheart Canyon. At the back of the crowd—separated from Katya by several rows of smiling, famous faces—was Willem Zeffer. Tammy closed the book.

'Don't want to see any more?'

'I don't think so. Not today.'

'I've been thinking . . . Doctor Zinfandel'—Tammy laughed at Maxine's perfectly deliberate error—'has told me you'll be out of here in a week, ten days at the most. I don't want you going back to Rio Linda, at least not yet. I want you to come and stay with me at the house in Malibu, if it doesn't have too many distressing memories.'

Tammy had been worrying about how she'd cope when she was released from the hospital; the offer made her burst with tears of relief.

'Oh Christ, I hadn't realized you hated the place that much!'

Laughter appeared through the tears. 'No, no, I'd love to come.'

'Good. Then I'm going to send Danielle—she's my new assistant—to Sacramento and have her pick up some of your things, if that's okay with you.'

'That would be perfect.'

Nine days later, Tammy moved out of Cedars-Sinai and Maxine ferried her down to the beach-house. It looked much smaller by day; and somehow more ordinary without the twinkle lights in the trees, and the cars driving up, full of the great and the good. Perhaps it was simply that she'd come to know Maxine so well in the past few weeks (and how strange was that—to have become so fond of this woman she'd despised for years, and to have her sentiments so sweetly returned?), that the house didn't seem at all alien to her. It was very far from her taste of course (or more correctly, far from her pocketbook) but it was modestly stylish, and the objects on the shelves were elegant and pretty. Sitting on the patio on the second or third evening, sipping a Virgin Mary, the wind warm off the Pacific, she asked Maxine if she'd decorated the place herself, or had it done professionally.

'Oh I'd love to say I chose every object in the house, but it was all done for me. Actually Jerry selected the paintings. He's got a good eye for art. It's a gay thing.'

Tammy spluttered into her drink.

'He's flying back to California next weekend, to see a friend in the hospital. So I said he should call in. That's all right, yes? If you don't feel up to it, you don't have to see him.'

'I'm fine, Maxine,' Tammy said. 'Believe me, I'm fine.'

TWO

As it turned out, the following Saturday, when Jerry came to visit, Tammy was feeling anything but fine. Doctor Zondel had warned her that there would be some days when she felt weaker than others, and this was certainly one of those. She only had herself to blame. The previous day she had decided to take a walk along the beach and, as the day was so sunny, and the air so fresh, she'd completely lost track of time. What she'd planned as a twenty-minute stroll turned into an hour-and-a-quarter trek, which had not only exhausted her, but made her bones and muscles ache. She was consequently feeling frail and tender when Jerry came by the following day, and in no mood for intensive conversation. It didn't matter. Jerry had plenty to talk about without need of prompting: mainly his new and improved state of health.

'I'm trying not to be too much of a Pollyanna about it all in case something goes horribly wrong and the tumor comes back. But I don't think it's going to. I'm fine. And you, honey?'

'I have good days and bad days,' Tammy said.

'Today's a bad day,' Maxine said, chucking Tammy under the chin to get a smile.

'Look at you, Maxine. If I didn't know better I'd say you had a gay gene in you someplace.'

Maxine gave him a supercilious smile. 'Well if I did I certainly wouldn't tell you about it.'

'Are you implying I gossip?'

'It was not an implication,' Maxine dead-panned. 'It is a fact of life.'