Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

'You've got his genes, so listen for once, will you? He was a good-looking man, your father, till he was about thirty-four, thirty-five. Now, granted he didn't take care of himself and you do—I mean he smoked and he drank a lot more than was good for him. But his looks went practically overnight.'

'Overnight? That's ridiculous. Nobody's looks go—'

'All right, it wasn't overnight. But I was there. I saw. Believe me, it was quick. Five, six months and all his looks had gone.'

Even though this was an absurd exaggeration, there was an element of truth in what Patricia Pickett was saying. Todd's father had indeed lost his looks with remarkable speed. It would not have been the kind of thing a son would have noticed, necessarily, but Todd had a second point-of-view on his father's sudden deterioration: his best friend Danny had been raised by a single mother who'd several times made her feelings for Merrick Pickett known to her son. The rumors had reached Todd, of course. Indeed they'd become practically weekly reports, as Danny's mother's plans to seduce the unwitting subject of her desires were laid (and failed) and re-laid.

All this came back to Todd as his mother went on chatting. Eventually, he said, 'Mom, I've got to go. I've got to make some decisions about the cremation.'

'Oh, Lord, I hope you're keeping this quiet. The media would have a party with this: you and your dog.'

'Well all the more reason for you to clam up about it,' he warned. 'If anybody calls, saying they want a quote.'

'I know nothing.'

'You know nothing.'

'I know the routine by now, honey. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me.'

'Don't even tell the neighbors.'

'Fine! I won't.'

'Bye, Mom.'

'I'm sorry about Brewster.'

'Dempsey.'

'Whatever.'

It was true, when Todd gave the subject some serious thought: Merrick Pickett had indeed lost his looks with startling speed. One day he'd been the best-looking insurance agent in the city of Cincinnati, the next (it seemed) Danny's mother wouldn't look twice at him. Suppose this was hereditary? Suppose fifty percent of it was hereditary?

He called Eppstadt's office. It took the sonofabitch forty-eight minutes to return the call and when he did his manner was brusque.

'I hope this isn't about Warrior?'

'It isn't.'

'We're not going to do it, Todd.'

'I get it, Gary. Is your assistant listening in on this conversation?'

'No. What do you want?'

'When we had lunch you recommended a guy who'd done some work for a few famous names.'

'Bruce Burrows?'

'How do I get hold of him? He's not in the book.'

'Don't worry. I'll hook you up.'

'Thanks.'

'You're making a good call, Todd. I hope we can get back in business as soon as you're healed.'

Once he had the number, Todd didn't leave himself further room for hesitation. He called Burrows, booked the consultation, and tentatively chatted over some dates for the operation.

There was one piece of outstanding business before he could move on: the disposal of Dempsey's ashes. Despite the reassurances of Robert Louis Stevenson, Todd did not have any clear idea as to the permanence of any soul, whether animal or human. He only knew that he wanted Dempsey's mortal remains to be placed where the dog had been most happy. There was no doubt about where that was: the backyard of the Bel Air house, which had been, since his puppyhood, Dempsey's unchallenged territory: his stalking ground, his school-yard when it came to learning new tricks. And it was there, the evening before Todd put himself into the hands of Bruce Burrows, that he took the bronzed plastic urn provided by the cremation company out into the yard. The urn contained a plastic bag, which in turn contained Dempsey's ashes. There were a lot of them; but then he'd been a big dog.

Todd sat down in the middle of the yard, where he and Dempsey had so often sat and watched the sky together, and poured some of the ashes into the palm of his hand. What part of this gray sand was his tail, he wondered, and which his snout? Which part the place behind his ear he'd love you forever if you rubbed? Or didn't it matter? Was that the point about scattering ashes: that in the end they looked the same? Not just the snout and the tail, but a dog's ashes and a man's ashes. All reducible, with the addition of a little flame, to this mottled dust? He put his lips to it, once, to kiss him good-bye. In his head he could hear his mother telling him that it was a gross, unhealthy thing to do, so he kissed it again, just to spite her. Then he stood up and cast Dempsey's ashes around, like a farmer sowing seeds. There was no wind. The ash fell where he threw it, evenly distributed over the mutt's dominion.

'See you, dog,' he said, and went back into the house to get himself a large bourbon.

PART THREE

A Darker Time

ONE

For four months, in the summer of his seventeenth year, Todd had worked at the Sunset Home for the Elderly on the outskirts of Orlando, where he'd got a job through his Uncle Frank, who worked as an accountant for Sunset Homes Incorporated. The place was little more than a repository for the nearly-dead; working there had been the most depressing experience of his young life. Most of his duties did not involve the patients—he had no training as a nurse, nor did he intend to get any. But the care of one of the older occupants, a man by the name of Duncan McFarlane, was given over to him because McFarlane was prone to unruliness when he was being bathed by the female nurses. McFarlane was no great trouble to Todd. He was just a sour sonofabitch who wasn't going to make anybody's life one jot easier if he could possibly avoid it. The ritual of giving a bed-bath to his patient was Todd's particular horror; the sight of his own body awoke a profound self-disgust in the old man. Asking around, Todd had discovered that McFarlane had been an athlete in his prime. But now—at the age of eighty-three—there was no trace of the strength or the beauty his body had once possessed. He was a pallid sack of shit and resentment, revolted by the sight of himself.

Look at me, he would say when Todd uncovered him, Christ, look at me, Christ, look at me. Every time it was the same murmured horror. Look at me, Christ, look at me.

To this day, the image of McFarlane's nakedness remained with Todd in all its grotesque particulars. The little beard of dirty white hair that hung from the old man's scrotum; the constellation of heavy, dark warts above his left nipple; the wrinkled folds of pale, spotted flesh that hung under his arms. Todd felt guilty about his disgust, and kept it to himself, until one day it had been the subject of discussion in the day-room, and he'd discovered that his feelings were shared, especially by the male members of the nursing staff. The female nurses seemed to have more compassion, perhaps; or were simply indifferent to the facts of creeping senility. But the other men on the staff—there were four of them besides Todd—were afterward constantly remarking on the foulness of their charges. One of the quartet—a black guy from New Orleans called Austin Harper—was particularly eloquent on the subject.

'I ain't endin' up like any o' these ol' fucks,' he remarked on more than one occasion, 'I'd blow my fuckin'