Love Bites (16 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Peter dropped me off and I went straight into Thomas’s office. I needed something the cops could identify as belonging to Thomas: his business card or a sheet of letterhead or something. Something to further incriminate Smooch as the Cinema Slayer. Thomas’s robe was monogrammed, but Maral had brought it to my office the day before, and she’s not a good liar; I didn’t want to risk the cops questioning her about it.

I found the perfect item in Thomas’s bathroom drawer, hidden under a dog collar and some silk scarves. Leave it to Thomas to keep his sex toys close at hand. I’m surprised he even bothered to hide it.

It was a sterling silver cock ring with the initials
TDW
carved on it. Thomas DeWitte.

Absolutely perfect.

I found something else in his wastebasket in the closed cabinet under his sink. Something I didn’t understand. The room had been cleaned since he was killed and no one should have been using it, especially not opening cabinet drawers to dispose of anything. It looked like part of the figure of a man. It was the broken half of a burnt, greenish yellow candle. The word
and
was cut into the wax, but it was almost obliterated by pinpricks. Whatever word had preceded it was on the missing half, and the candle had been burned down past the word that followed. It looked like more of Maral’s hoodoo workings, but why was she leaving anything in Thomas’s room?

I walked out of his office and into mine. Tyrone Power was sitting there. If I’d been human, my heart would have stopped. I palmed the cock ring out of his sight and stared at him. He looked just as gorgeous as he had before he staged his death on the set of
Solomon and Sheba
in Madrid in 1958. I never understood why he felt he had to “die” after I turned him or why he didn’t wait to have me turn him until after he’d finished that film. He was enjoying working with Gina Lollobrigida and George Sanders. He could have insisted King Vidor get all his scenes in the can first and save the crowd scenes for last so they wouldn’t have had to replace him, but he didn’t. He begged me to do it in the middle of the shoot. Yul Brynner looked good in the role, but come on, he wasn’t Ty Power—even with hair. King said later, “With Power, it would have been a marvelous picture. Without him, it turned out to be an unimportant, nothing sort of film.” All Ty’s ever said about it is that after doing
Nightmare Alley
and
The Eddie Duchin Story
and
Witness for the Prosecution,
he got on the set of
Solomon and Sheba
and couldn’t face another costume epic.

It would be fun to screen the film for Peter sometime, to see if he could find Ty in the long shots they’d managed to keep.

He was wearing a black cashmere sweater and black slacks. His lashes were so thick that he might have been wearing black mascara, but I knew that wasn’t the case. Tyrone Power was a man’s man, and contrary to what you’d expect, he wasn’t terribly vain. He wasn’t wearing his hair slicked back with the left side part any longer, either. It was tousled and a little curly, just as thick as it had been the last time I’d seen him. He looked good.

“Chatelaine,” he said, rising from the chair to kiss me on both cheeks. “You look stunning.” He was right; I’d gone all out that morning, knowing the press was going to be at that art performance. The red Hervé Léger was worth the thirty-four hundred dollars I’d paid for it, even if it felt like I was wearing a full-body girdle.

“As do you, Ty. How did you get in here? You didn’t just walk in, did you? The girls downstairs would have recognized you.”

“They did. Indeed they did. One of them—Ilona, is it?—thought I was my son, and the other thought I was that good-looking actor on
Lost.
Nestor Carbonell. I hate to admit it, but there are times when a fan is so sure I’m Nestor, I’ve signed his name on torn pieces of paper. Took me months to get the spelling right.”

“Well, at least they’re not fainting because they think they’ve seen your ghost. What are you doing here, Ty?” I hadn’t seen him for years. Not since he came to ask permission to turn Roddy McDowall. “You have someone you want to turn? Let me guess—Sophia Loren.”

“No. Not at all. Why on earth would you expect me to turn Sophia?”

“Well, you talked about her nonstop in the sixties and seventies. And she’s always said you were her ideal man. . . .” I stopped and stared at him, waiting for some juicy bit of gossip.

“Her acting, Ovsanna. I talked about her acting. She’s a brilliant actress. For years I thought she was one of us. She’s as mesmerizing on-screen as you are, or Theda. And she managed to overcome the stigma of her beauty and be recognized for her talent, something I spent my entire career trying to achieve. But no, I’m not interested in turning her. She’s had a remarkable life; we should leave it at that. Not all of us revel in being what we are, like you do.”

“Are you sorry I turned you, Tyrone?” I’d never heard him talk like this before. It’s been difficult for some of my clan to give up their celebrity, even though they might not have achieved stardom at all had they not been turned at an early age. Still, having to live in the shadows after you’ve blossomed in the spotlight is a big adjustment.

“No, Chatelaine. I’m not sorry. I miss interacting with my children and I wish I could know my grandchildren, but I’m not sorry. When your father dies in your arms at a young age and then someone offers you the opportunity to live forever . . . no, I’m not sorry.”

“Well, you didn’t just drop by for a chat about old times. Why are you here, Ty? What can I help you with? Would you like to sit?” I motioned to the sofa and moved to my desk and sat down. Ty stayed standing.

“No, thank you, Ovsanna. I’m here because I want to talk to you about Thomas’s job. I’d like you to consider me for the position.”

That came as a complete surprise. Ty had been living in Baja for many years; he owns a matador school there. I remembered he said his students were always amazed at how quickly he healed if a bull got too close. “Thomas’s job? You want to work for me in development? Why?”

“Because I think I’d be good at it. Remember, I produced several of the movies I starred in, even though I didn’t take a credit. And it would give me the opportunity to help actors I think deserve to be seen. And truthfully, it might be a way for me to spend time with my children. If I can find a project Romina or Ty Jr. is right for, I could cast them.”

“Oh, that’s taking a huge risk, Ty. It’s one thing for my receptionists or people on the street to mistake you for someone else, but your own children? They’ve spent their lives surrounded by pictures of you, watching your films. You’ve barely aged in the last fifty years. Believe me, you still look like their father. There’s no way you could make it work. I think you need to wait many more years before you come back to Hollywood again. Either that or find some way to completely disguise yourself.”

“Like this?” he said, anger creeping into his voice. And before I could respond, he’d pulled off his sweater and shifted into a panther.

Wouldn’t you know he’d become a beautiful, black-haired creature.

But . . . he looked ridiculous with his pants halfway down his haunches and his paws standing in his huaraches. I kicked him in the ribs and held his muzzle closed with both hands while I commanded him to stop screwing around and get himself under control. Actors are children, I don’t care how many hundreds of years old they are. Myself included—sometimes.

He shifted back, apologized, and adjusted his clothing. I didn’t mind seeing him without the sweater.

“I’m sorry, Ty,” I said, handing it to him. “It’s not going to work. Once again, you’re a victim of that gorgeous face.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

It didn’t take me long to get the warrant for Smooch’s home address. The Captain knew a judge who owed him a favor.

Cyril “Smooch” Sinclair had a loft in Koreatown. The top floor of a four-story building. One big open space, about sixty by one hundred feet. The manager of the building ran the flower shop on the ground floor. He used his spare key to let me in.

It was a great space for a photographer. The ceiling had to have been eighteen feet high at least, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on the north and south walls to let in plenty of natural light. One of those big rolls of white backdrop paper hung from a rod in front of the east wall, with black, red, and blue rolls stacked on the floor behind it. Someone had created an interior room by using cedar planks to wall off a ten-by-ten-foot space in the southwest corner. The cedar gave off a great smell. A naked red lightbulb jutted out from a fixture attached to the door. Smooch had his own darkroom.

The rest of the space had minimal, modern furniture. A queen-size mattress on a frame, no box springs, no headboard, covered in a white duvet with a wide black stripe across the center. Black shams on the pillows. A freestanding claw-foot tub—I thought that was sort of sexy—a black vanity under the sink, and a tall white Pottery Barn cupboard next to it. One of those rolling clothes racks held Smooch’s wardrobe, and behind it, a black-and-red shoji screen blocked the toilet from view. A black leather and chrome sofa, a small flat-screen TV on a glass coffee table in front of it. The kitchen took up the northeast corner. Smooch must have liked to cook; he had some pretty fancy gear on the counters—copper pots, a wok, an indoor grill. The table was only big enough for two.

Photography equipment was scattered all over the place, but the only other furniture was one long, freestanding bookshelf made out of the same cedar as the darkroom. It took me a minute to realize Smooch had all his books alphabetized and categorized: biography, history, photography, and . . . wolves.

Lots of books about wolves. The guy definitely had a fetish.
I Danced with a Werewolf; Werewolves Wear Heels; What You Always Wanted to Know About Werewolves and Couldn’t Find Anyone to Ask.
Maybe I should borrow that one.
The Complete Unabridged and Unadulterated Encyclopedic Compendium of Werewolves.
That could come in handy, too.
The Werewolves’ Wine Companion. Confessions of a Recovering Werewolf. Werewolves on the Wagon.
Cyril Sinclair had more than a fetish; he had a problem. He even had books about Hitler’s werewolves, the guerrilla force Himmler organized to assassinate German collaborators. And the Wolfenstein video games. Those he kept in the history section.

I could see already how he was going to make my story for the Captain believable. Recovering alcoholic, addicted to gaming, decides he’s a werewolf and attacks Ovsanna in a delirious rage.

There were photos of wolves on the walls. And photos of him with a woman. His girlfriend, from the looks of the poses. She had on jeans and a fur coat. Looked like rabbit. They were cuddling in the woods.

The phone rang. It was an old handheld with an answering machine in the base and no caller ID. I heard Cyril’s recorded voice telling the caller to leave a number if he wanted his call returned, and then a woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Hey, sweetie, did you have a good time last night? I’ll bet you did.” Her voice was rough and gravelly. If this was the woman in the pictures, she sure didn’t sound like she looked. The woman in the pictures was a good-looking blond, all-American cheerleader type, twenty years past her prime. The woman on the phone sounded like Kathleen Turner with a sinus infection. “Did you do what I told you? Maybe you don’t remember. Well . . . I haven’t seen anything in the papers yet, so . . . I want to see you, find out what happened. Meet me at the lair at nine thirty. Call me back if you can’t.”

Shit. It would have been so easy if she’d just left her number on the machine. Now I was going to have to spend time getting another warrant to dump his phone. If this chick wanted to meet him at their lair, it sounds like she’s another one who’s using magic to change into one of those—what had Ovsanna called them?—boxenwolves? Fuck me a duck.

And how in hell do I find their lair?

I called Del at the office to get him started working on an AMA dump of Smooch’s phone. I needed the list of all incoming calls. Hopefully, Ms. All-American Wolf Girl had called him from her cell. Once I had her number, I ought to be able to track her. Then I called Ovsanna to tell her what I’d found at the boxenwolf’s loft. She told me she’d found something in Thomas DeWitte’s office I could use to tie him to Smooch. A sterling silver cock ring. The evidence techs will love it.

“I’ve got to go back to Steady Eddie,” I said, “find out if he knows where this lair is that this woman is talking about. He may not remember tracking you, but maybe he remembers where his pack hangs out.”

“Wait a minute. What were her exact words? Did she say I’ll meet you at The Lair?”

“Yeah. Nine thirty. I suppose they wait until dark to do their changing.”

“I know The Lair, Peter. It’s not a wolves’ den, it’s a bar. Down on Rowena in Silver Lake. It’s where the paparazzi hang out. She was telling Smooch to meet her at the bar.”

“You’re amazing. And you don’t even drink.”

“Well, not anything they serve by the glass at The Lair. Would you like me to show you where it is tonight? If this woman shows up and I can get close enough to her, I can at least tell you if she’s human or not.”

“You can? How?”

“Oh, Peter . . . don’t you know you all smell alike?”