X
Paula, the hippie make-up artist in Sage’s entourage, had been in nearly a dozen photos I’d found of Laura online. And had we had a little sparky sort of thing happening at the house that day? Well, whatever with that. I was investigating.
Her apartment building was just north of Beverly on a Sycamore-lined street in Hancock Park, where James Ellroy used to pull his adolescent B&Es. It was a two story faux-Tudor affair wrapped around a Moroccan tile pool. There was no security gate and I moseyed up to her door through the potent perfume of jasmine, dried leaves and a touch of purple haze clouding the building.
Paula answered the door with wet hair, leaving a trail of damp footprints on dark wide plank floors.
She was in loose-fitting yoga-style clothes and there was incense burning. “Hi,” I said. “Do you remember me? We met at Sage’s house…”
“Of course. What, uh, what are you… What’s up?”
I told her that I was looking for Laura. She invited me in for tea. I don’t drink tea but I accepted the invitation to discover that Paula, the hairstylist, does very well for herself, better than I could ever hope to scrounge from this life. The brushed aluminum appliances in her kitchen were all the latest and greatest models, built into their settings and even hidden slightly behind more of that dark wood cabinetry. The furniture was all museum-quality vintage fare from Denmark and maybe South America, and the rugs impeccably distressed Persian.
“Why are you looking for her?” Paula asked when we were both holding our mugs, sitting across the coffee table from one another — she on a sort of divan, and me perched on the edge of an invitingly deep overstuffed chocolate leather couch. “Are you doing a story or something?”
“I don’t know. I think it might be important to know where she is… and why.”
“Did Sage put you up to this?”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t make any sense. If anyone knows where she is, they know.”
“Who’s ‘they?’”
“And they will kill you if you write a word of it.”
I let the ring of this statement dissolve on my ears, waiting for a wink, for an irony or a lilt of jokiness that never came.
After a moment she wandered into the silence, filling it, nervously, exploring, sharing. “I guess you know that we… We were going to move to Mexico when she got back from the ranch.”
Ah, so I was mistaken about those sparks.
“But she just disappeared. I haven’t heard from her since.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“Like a week ago now.”
“What’s ‘the ranch?’”
“Natalie’s ranch. Or Sage’s, whatever. In Ojai.”
“What was she going up there for?”
“I don’t know.”
Nothing about that sounded believable. I let the silence weigh on her, which worked.
“I really don’t,” she said. “Well… She… She did say that we weren’t going to have to worry about anything anymore.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Really.”
“Money?”
“I don’t… I guess so.”
“You don’t have to let me help — ”
“She was… just paranoid. She was terrified of Natalie. She hated the way she treated Sage.”
“Why? Was she jealous?”
“Jealous?”
“She was an actress, right? Just as beautiful as Sage. Maybe more beautiful?”
“No, no, no.”
“She hated Natalie and hates Sage and she couldn’t be around them any more,” I said, realizing we were speaking in the past tense, and wondering who’d started that. “That’s why she wanted to run away with you to Mexico and then she decides that you would be too much of a reminder of all that and she has to run away from you too.”
Paula smiled at me the way one might at a kindergartner who has said something utterly ridiculous, but amusingly so. “No. She loved Sage. But I couldn’t stand it. It made me sick the way they all treated her, as if she was something less than them. The way they used her. Like Sage dressing her up as her twin to go to parties. She was always only a reflection of Sage. I wanted her to come away with me so I could have her all to myself.”
I’d pushed for it, but once I’d heard it, so nakedly, I was ashamed. “I’m sorry, Paula.” I set down the tea I hadn’t touched and stood. I may have even bowed. As I walked to the door I thought of something, though. “Paula,” I said, “where’d Laura live?”
Cut to me falling over a cement wall. Well, not falling, exactly… No, yeah, I tried to climb this thick girding wall and got caught on a wrought iron spike. I may have only knocked myself out for a second but it could have been weeks.
I woke to find myself in a 1920s courtyard. It was beautiful and haunting. The sight and sound of the cement fountain gave me shudders. I crept toward the unit Paula had given me and tried the windows, the doors. Everything was locked.
I sighed to myself, not really certain I was game for breaking and entering on this stupid lark of an assignment from an actress, but I put my face up to the window and peered through the shadow. What I saw was the reflection of a fire extinguisher coming down on the back of my head. And then I heard a distant ping.
I wheeled around to see a minuscule old lady staggering backward toward the fountain on the force of the recoil.
“Ow,” I said. “Jesus, Cookie. Cookie, come on.” I went to collect her so that her momentum didn’t carry her into the water.
But once she was stable she raised her arms, reaching to about my chest, and again swung the bludgeon at me.
“Who the hell is Cookie and who the hell are you, you pigfucker?”
“Jesus. Pigfucker? Jesus, Cookie. Stop.” I was holding her off the way you would an ewok. “Stop,” I said, affecting authority. “I’m a friend of Laura’s. I’m a friend of Laura’s!” I ducked another wild swing of the canister. “I’m looking for her. She’s missing.”
“No shit, schmuckfucker,” Cookie said — her name was probably not Cookie, but I’d recently rewatched Mulholland Drive and the little old landlady in that is named Cookie, so ‘Cookie’ I called her. “You must be an incredible detective.”
“No… Jesus, Cookie. Schmuckfucker? No. I’m just a friend. I wanted to drop by to see if — ”
“You’re not a boyfriend.”
“No. No, I’m not — ”
“‘Cause I know little Laura was one of them lesbianas. She’d wanted nothing to do with you.”
“Well, yes, yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“Who sent you?”
“Well… uh…”
“Who sent you here, pigfucker? You a pop’razzi?”
“No, no, no. Actually. Actually Paula sent me. Paula, Laura’s girlfriend.”
“Paula did?”
“Yes. She’s really worried.”
“I bet. She’s missing that sweet little ass.”
“Ma’am. Ma’am.”
“Don’t you ma’am me, pigfucker. I’m giving you five minutes. Only ’cause of Paula. Then I’m calling in my muscle queens to come get you.” She turned toward the door with her keys out and let me inside.
“Well, thank you,” I said, dazed. “That’s very generous of you.”
Inside, the apartment looked like a hideout for a very haute bohemian separatist movement, or super chic squatters. The person who lived here was a live wire, childish, messy, impulsive — designer clothes were scattered hither and thither, along with books, butts and stoner ephemera. It was probably fair to assume, as I did, that Laura hadn’t paid for all this on her acting income.
On her desk I found pictures of Laura and Sage dressed up as twins. They looked even more alike than I remembered. Come to mention it, there were pictures of Sage everywhere. Like one would have of their lover. Though maybe some of those were actually pictures of Laura dressed up as Sage? I was beginning to doubt my ability to differentiate between the two.
On the wall, posters from Hollywood’s Golden Age; In the closet, thousands upon thousands of dollars of clothes; On the coffee table, a pile of trade magazines, fashion and gossip glossies, an ashtray overflowing with butts, and a copy of The Black Dahlia. Ooph.
I meandered into the kitchen — OK, this girl didn’t cook.
And just then I felt a light pass over me and looked up to find myself locking eyes with Laura. Before I could register the oddity even she bolted. Finally, at long last, I gathered myself enough to run after her.
Rounding the corner in front of the building I ran right into the cop I’d had the good fortune to meet at City Hall, in Missing Persons. “Oh, here you are, maricón,” he said. “You still tryin’ to hug me?” I’d climbed back up onto a knee to see that he had a partner with him, and to whom he now spoke. “See I was telling you we’d find him walking the streets of boys’ town late at night.”
Laura had gone, maybe forever. As had my belief in a just god.
From his conversation with his partner I gathered the cop’s name to be Hector. Hector was clearly hip to my location, sent directly to where I was, where someone knew I would be, and now greeted me, as they say, with extreme prejudice. He tapped his billy club in his open hand.
“Ooh, there it is,” I said, climbing to my feet. “I knew it. I could tell just by looking at you that you had a big — ” I was interrupted by the first strike from the club, which doubled me over and forced up bloody coughs.
“I forgot to tell you today how much I hate faggots,” Hector said. Charmer.
“You know? I did too,” I said, and spat out fresh blood. “But I work in Hollywood and I figure, if you can’t lick ’em, fuck ‘em.”
The next swing of the bat brought deepest darkest night. In my dreams I heard Hector say, “A lot of girls go missing in this town, dude, don’t worry too much about it.”
