Carrion Comfort (17 page)

Harod gradually relaxed the pressure. Her thoughts were a jumble, memories confused with dreams. Harod let her bend over the sink as he slid open the bolt.

“Seat belt sign is on, Tony.” Maria Chen’s thin form filled the door. “Yeah.”

“What?” said Kristen vacantly. Her eyes had not yet focused. “What?” She lowered her face to the steel basin and vomited quietly.

Maria stepped in and held the girl’s shoulders. When she was done, Maria dabbed at her face with a wet towel. Harod stood in the corridor, bracing himself against the door frame as the aircraft pitched like a small ship on a rough sea.

“What?” asked Kristen and looked blankly at Maria Chen. “I don’t . . . why am I . . . remember?”

Maria looked at Harod while she stroked the girl’s forehead. “You’d better go sit down, Tony. You’ll get in trouble for not having your seat belt fastened.”

Harod returned to his seat and pulled out the script he had been reading. Maria Chen joined him a moment later. The turbulence abated. Up front, Curt’s worried voice could be heard above the engines.

“I don’t know,” came Kristen’s dulled response. “I don’t know.” Harod ignored them and made notes in the margins of the manuscript. A few minutes later he looked up to see Maria Chen looking at him. He smiled, the muscles at the corners of his mouth twisting down. “I don’t like waiting for my second drink,” he said softly.

Maria Chen turned away and looked out at darkness and the blinking light pulsing red at the end of the wing.

Early the next morning Tony Harod drove to Willi’s house. The guard at the gate recognized Harod’s car from a distance and had the gate open by the time the red Ferrari rolled to a stop.

“Good morning, Chuck.”

“Morning, Mr. Harod. Not used to seeing you out here so early.”

“Me either, Chuck. Gotta go through more business papers. Trying to untangle the finances for some new projects Willi got us into. Especially a thing called
The White Slaver
.”

“Yessir, read about that in the trades.”

“Security staying on here, Chuck?”

“Yessir, at least until the auction next month.”

“McGuire paying you?”

“Yessir. Comes out of the estate.”

“Yeah. See you around, Chuck. Don’t take any wooden tokens.”

“You too, Mr. Harod.”

He pulled away with a satisfying rumble and accelerated up the long driveway. The morning sun created a stroboscope effect through the line of poplars along the drive. Harod swung the car around the dry fountain in front of the main entrance and parked near the west wing where Willi had his offices.

Bill Borden’s Bel Air home looked like a palace transported north from some banana republic. Acres of stucco and red tile and multi-paned windows caught the morning light. Gates opened into courtyards which were bordered by covered porches which abutted open, airy rooms, which were connected by tiled corridors to other courtyards. The house appeared to have been added onto for several generations rather than constructed in the hot summer of 1938 for a minor movie mogul who died three years later while watching daily rushes.

Harod used his key to let himself into the west wing. Venetian blinds sent yellow stripes across the carpet of the secretaries’ office. The room was neat, the typewriters covered, desktops cleared. Harod felt an unexpected twinge when he thought of the usual chaos of phone calls and office noise that had reigned there. Willi’s office was two doors down, past the conference room.

Harod pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and opened the safe. He placed the color-coded files and folded documents on the center of Willi’s wide, white desk. He unlocked the file cabinet and sighed. It would be a long morning.

Three hours later Harod stretched, yawned, and pushed the chair back from the cluttered desk. There was nothing in William Borden’s papers that would embarrass anyone except a few deadbeats and devotees of quality in the cinema. Harod stood and shadowboxed at the wall. His Adidas running shoes made him feel light and agile. He wore a light blue jogging suit, unzipped at the wrists and ankles. He was hungry. Moving lightly, his sneakers making a soft noise on tile, Harod went up the west wing corridor, across a courtyard with a fountain, down the length of a covered terrace large enough to host a Screen Actors’ Guild convention, and into the kitchen through the south door. There was still food in the refrigerator. He had uncorked a magnum of champagne and was spreading mayonnaise on a slice of French bread when he heard a noise. Still carrying the champagne bottle, he went through the huge dining room into the living room.

“Hey, what the fuck are you doing?” shouted Harod. Twenty-five feet away, a man was bent over rummaging through the shelves where Willi kept his videotape library. The man stood up quickly, his upper torso throwing a shadow on the twelve-foot screen in the corner.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Harod. The young man was one of Willi’s boyfriends whom Harod and Tom McGuire had chased off a few days earlier. He was very young, very blond, and sported the kind of perfect tan which very few people in the world could afford to maintain. The boy was over six feet tall and wore only tight cutoffs and sneakers. His bare upper body rippled with muscle. The deltoids and pectorals alone testified to hundreds of hours spent pressing weights and wrestling with a Universal machine. His stomach looked to Harod like someone smashed rocks on it regularly.

“Yeah, it’s me.” Harod thought that the kid’s voice sounded more like that of a marine D.I. than a Malibu beach fairy. “Wanta make something out of it?”

Harod sighed tiredly and took a long pull of champagne. He wiped his mouth. “Get the hell out of here, kid. You’re trespassing.”

The tanned-Cupid face curled into a pout. “Oh yeah, who says? Bill was a good friend of mine.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I have a right to be here. We shared a meaningful relationship.”

“Yeah, that and a jar of K-Y jelly,” said Harod. “Now get the fuck out of here before you get thrown out.”

“Yeah, who’s gonna throw me out?”

“Me,” said Harod. “You and who else?” The boy rose to his full height and rippled his muscles. Harod couldn’t tell if he was seeing biceps or triceps; they all seemed to flow together like gerbils humping under a tight tarp.

“Me and the cops,” Harod said and crossed to a desk phone near the sectional.

“Oh yeah?” The kid pulled the receiver out of Harod’s left hand and then jerked the cord out of the phone. Not content with that, he grunted and ripped the fifteen-foot cord out of the wall.

Harod shrugged and set down the champagne bottle. “Calm down, Brucie. They’re more phones. Willi had lots and lots of phones.”

The boy took three quick steps and was in front of Harod, blocking him. “Not so fast, motherfucker.”

“Motherfucker? Jeez, I haven’t heard that since I graduated from Evanston High School. Got any others like that, Brucie?”

“Don’t call me Brucie, shithead.”

“Now that one I’ve heard,” said Harod and went to step around him. The boy set three fingers against Harod’s chest and shoved. Harod bounced off the arm of the sectional. The kid jumped back and went into a crouch, arms at odd angles. “Karate?” said Harod. “Hey, there’s no need to get physical here.” There was the slightest hint of a quaver in his voice.

“Shithead,” said the kid. “Asshole motherfucker.”

“Uh-oh, repeating yourself. Sign of age,” said Harod and turned to run. The boy jumped forward. Harod completed his turn, the magnum of champagne suddenly in his hand again. The bottle made a heavy arc which terminated on the kid’s left temple. The bottle did not break. There was a dull thwump sounding like nothing so much as a large bell being struck by a dead cat and the boy went down on his right knee, head hanging. Harod stepped forward and made a field goal attempt with the imaginary ball contacted directly under the point of the kid’s heavy jaw.

“Argh!” yelled Tony Harod and grabbed at his Adidas running shoe. He hopped on his left foot while the boy levitated backward, bounced off the thick cushions of the sectional, and landed on both knees in front of Harod like a penitent sinner. Harold swung a heavy Mexican lamp off the end table into the handsome face. Unlike the bottle, the lamp shattered quite satisfactorily. So did the boy’s nose and other less prominent structures. He went over sideways into the thick carpet like a scuba diver going off a raft.

Harod stepped over him and went to a kitchen phone. “Chuck? This is Tony Harod. Put Leonard on the front gate and bring your car up to the house, will you? Willi left some garbage here that has to be taken out to the dump.”

Later, after Willi’s boyfriend had been driven away to the emergency room and Harod had finished his second helping of champagne and paté on French bread, he wandered back to Willi’s video library. There were more than three hundred tapes shelved there. Some were copies of Willi’s early triumphs— such cinema masterpieces as
Three On a Swing, Beach Party Creature
, and
Paris Memories
. Shelved nearby were the eight films which Harod had coproduced with Willi, including
Prom Massacre, The Children Died
, and two of the
Walpurgis Night
sequels. Also on the shelves were old favorites from the late show screen tests, outtakes, a pilot, and three episodes of Willi’s abortive entry into TV sitcoms—“His and Hers”— a complete collection of Jerry Damiano X-rated films, some new studio releases, and a miscellaneous collection of other cassettes. The boyfriend had pulled out several tapes and Harod kneeled to look at these. The first one was labeled only
A&B
. Harod switched on the projection unit and popped the cassette into the VCR. Computer-lettered titles read: “Alexander and Byron 4/23.”

The opening shots were of Willi’s large swimming pool. The camera panned right, past the waterfall to the open door of Willi’s bedroom. A thin young man in red bikini trunks bounced out into the light. He waved at the camera in the best home-movie style and stood uncomfortably by poolside, looking a bit, Harod thought, like an anemic, flat-chested version of Venus on the Half Shell. Suddenly the muscled boyfriend emerged from the shadows. He was wearing even briefer red trunks and he immediately went into a series of muscleman poses. The slim youth— Alexander?—mimed his appreciation. Harod knew that Willi had owned a good microphone system for his home video outfit, but this particular excursion into cinema verité was as silent as an early Chaplin two-reeler.

The boyfriend finished his demonstration with a torso-twisting finale. Alexander was on his knees by this time, a worshiper at the feet of Adonis. As Adonis held his final pose, the worshiper reached up and pulled down his deity’s bikini pants. The kid’s tan
was
perfect. Harod switched off the VCR.

“Byron?” muttered Harod. “Jesus.” He walked back to the wall of shelves. It took fifteen minutes, but Harod finally found what he was looking for. Labeled “In the Event of My Death,” it had been filed between
In Cold Blood
and
In the Heat of the Night
. Harod sat on an ottoman and turned the cassette over and over in his hands. There was an emptiness in his gut and he had the urge to go straight out the door and drive away. He set the cassette in place, hit the play button, and leaned forward.

“Hello, Tony,” said Willi, “greetings from the grave.” His image was larger than life-size. He was sitting in a webbed chair near his pool. Palm leaves stirred to the breeze behind him, but no one else, not even a servant, was visible in the shot. Willi’s white hair was combed forward, but Harod could see the sunburn on the bald spots. The old man was wearing a loose, flowered Hawaiian shirt and baggy green shorts. His knees were white. Harod’s heart hammered at his ribs. “If you’ve found this tape,” said Willi’s image, “then I must assume that some unfortunate event has taken me from you. I trust that you, Tony, are the first to find this . . . mmm . . . final testament and that you are watching alone.”

Harod made a tight fist. He could not tell precisely when the tape had been made, but it looked recent.

“I trust you have taken care of any unfinished business we might have had,” said Willi. “I know that the production company will be in good hands. Relax, my friend, if you have had the will read already, do not worry. There are no surprise codas in this tape. The house is yours. This is a friendly visit between two old friends,
ja
?”

“Fuck,” hissed Harod. There were goose bumps rising along his arms. “. . . enjoy the house,” Willi was saying. “I know that you never especially admired it, but it should be easily convertible to investment capital should the need arise. Maybe you could use it for our little
White Slaver
project, no?”

The tape was
very
recent. Harod shivered in spite of the warm day. “Tony, I have very little to say to you. You would agree that I have treated you like a son,
nicht wahr?
Well, if not a son, then perhaps a favorite nephew. This is despite the fact that you have not always been as honest with me as you could have been. You have friends that you have not told me about . . . is this not true? Ah, well, no friendship is perfect, Tony. Perhaps I have not told you everything there is to know about my friends. We must live our own lives, yes?”

Harod sat upright, very still, scarcely breathing. “It does not matter now,” said Willi and looked away from the camera to squint at the motes of light dancing on the pool. “If you are seeing this tape, I must be gone. No one lives forever, Tony. You will understand this when you reach my age . . .” Willi looked back into the camera lens. “
If
you reach my age.” He smiled. The dentures were perfect. “Just three more things I want to say, Tony. First, I regret that you never learned to play chess. You know how much it meant to me. It is more than a game, my friend.
Ja
, it is much more than a game. You once said that you had no time for such games when you had a life to lead. Well, there is always time to learn, Tony. Even a dead man could help you learn.
Zweitens
, second, I must tell you that I have always detested the name Willi. Should we meet in the afterlife, Tony, I would ask that you address me differently. Herr von Borchert would be acceptable. Or Der Meister. Do you
believe
in an afterlife, Tony? I do. I am sure that one exists. How do you picture such a place, eh? I have always imagined paradise as a wonderful island on which all of one’s needs are met, where there are many interesting people to converse with, and where one could Hunt to his heart’s content. A pleasant picture, no?”