The Perfect Ghost (32 page)

A time to hold my tongue, a time to speak, and a time to act.

Hamlet,
Act III, scene 2.

’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on.

CHAPTER

fifty-one

Ghosts are silent; ghosts are quick. I stole lightly across the undulating hills, a flashlight my guide over choppy clumps of crabgrass and sandy turf. The gravel parking lot slowed my stride to cautious tiptoed steps. In the vast and deserted Old Barn, I borrowed a floppy hat and a trench coat from the costume rack, spent time trying on wigs, rejecting the dark blunt-cut Claire had worn for her clinic appointment, choosing soft blond locks instead. Appearance duly altered, I set out across the hills. Because the shoreline approach would definitely be under surveillance now, with McKenna alerted recently and anonymously, via his gossip Web site, to the likelihood that Brooklyn Pierce was staying at the beach shack.

Fact: Claire and Pierce costarred in
Red Shot
, and Claire must have gotten pregnant during the shoot. I matched the rhythm of my thoughts to my steps. Fact: Malcolm never worked with Brooklyn Pierce again. Fact: The successful Ben Justice franchise came to a screeching halt at the apex of its popularity. Fact: When Pierce drank and had nowhere else to go, Malcolm took him in, gave him shelter. Pierce might or might not have a sexual thing going with James Foley. It wouldn’t rule Pierce out as Jenna’s father; his affairs with assorted actresses and models were notorious.

The wind swept the dunes and rustled through the beach grass, murmuring my name. A slender fingernail of moon ducked behind the fleeting clouds, then reappeared, silvering the waves.

The descent from the high dunes to the beach was precarious in the darkness. Flashlight extinguished, muscles tensed, wary of falling, I wound up crawling backward down the slope, twining my hands into the tall beach grass. The sand, when I finally reached it, felt gritty and cool. I felt my way up the steps with little difficulty. The trivial lock would have been no challenge, but I chose not to tamper with it. I knocked instead, waited, then knocked louder. Malcolm had assured me Pierce had moved on, but I took that for what it was worth.

“‘
Doubt truth to be a liar.’
” He’d quoted Hamlet’s love poem and stared into my eyes.
“But never doubt I love.”

“My lord, I have remembrances of yours,

That I have long longed to redeliver.”

So speaks Ophelia. Act Three, scene 1.

But Hamlet denies her.
“I never gave you aught.”

“What? Huh? Who is it?” A lamp flared in the window.

In the doorway, sheltered from wind and cameras, I peeled off the blond wig and stowed it in my bag. Knocked again, louder.

Feet lurched unevenly to the door and hands cracked it open. Brooklyn Pierce blinked red-veined eyes and expelled foul breath into the salty air. I’d prepared a tale about returning the missing tape, asking more questions.

“Hey, great, Jamie send you over? What’s your name, baby? Hey, c’mon in and have a drink.”

“Hey.” I didn’t need a tale because the movie star, reeling drunk, supplied his own backstory. Because he didn’t recognize me, and why on earth had I expected that he would? I ducked my head so he wouldn’t see the angry flush rise in my cheeks.

“C’mon in, honey. Jamie’s the man, a fuckin’ prince.” His words were slurred. He leered at me, hands poised to grab, but then he halted abruptly, perhaps questioning my mousy, wig-mashed hair, lack of bosom, and blotchy, flushed face.

“What the fuck’s Jamie playing at?” he muttered.

He was no treat, either. I’d admired his naked body when he ran into the waves, but that was a long-distance, panning shot. In close-up, it was hard to believe this drunken wreck had ever been a movie star.

“I don’t know anything about Jamie,” I said. “They sent me down from the Big House. To clean up.” The pungent stink of vomit hung in the air, and the role of maid suited me better than interviewer or author. Maid became me better than lover, fiancée, or hooker hired by a pal for an hour’s entertainment. If I hadn’t been the victim of temporary blindness, a kind of self-regarding insanity, I’d have appreciated my true worth sooner. I stepped briskly through the portal.

“Clean up? This late?” He rubbed his red eyes, sniffed, and shook his head like a weary dog.

“If that’s okay?”

Puzzled, he retreated before my energetic onslaught. “What the hell kinda hours you work?”

I shrugged as I flipped on the overhead light. “Sorry if I’m bothering you. I can come back some other time.”

Blinking, he gazed at the disordered room, sink mounded in filthy dishes, floor littered with greasy take-out wrappers. After the fresh air he’d inhaled at the door, the indoor fug would be newly offensive.

He ran a hand through his hair and yawned. “I suppose it’s okay. Long as you don’t use any damned machines, nothing makes a damned noise. You got a mop? I think there’s one in the closet. A couple things might’ve got busted.” He leaned against a wall, yawned again, then slumped into a chair.

Since I was the maid, he didn’t comment when I donned plastic gloves. I doubt he noticed them as I diligently emptied the ashtrays and swept the wooden floorboards, leaving his empty bottles in situ, adding my own touches as I progressed, setting the stage, dressing the set. As I placed the lighter from Malcolm’s desk drawer next to Pierce’s packet of Camels, I could almost see the movie and hear the tape recording in my head, Teddy, and the two combined to form an instructional video. I could hear your patient voice and Sylvie Duchaine’s accented, enthusiastic response:

TB:
Remember the arson sequence in
Blue Flame
?

SD:
… he’d had such fun learning about fire that he thought the audience would like an education, a break in the middle of a tight action film for a little schooling on arson methods. He totally obsessed about the fire-starters, the alarm clocks the terrorists rigged to delay ignition. I used a few quick cuts, close-ups, the wooden floorboards, the damaged propane tank, the flaring lighter. He played with the sound, too, the long hiss of the escaping gas, the striking of the lighter.

If Pierce hadn’t been so drunk, I might have inquired about you, for curiosity’s sake. Asked if you’d known his favorite liquor, encouraged his confidences with a bottle or two, bribing an alcoholic with his poison of choice. You were such a naughty boy, Teddy.

I’d taken a bottle from the shelf in Malcolm’s office, Johnny Walker Black, expensive stuff, but I hadn’t found anything cheaper. By now, Pierce was snoring and that became the soundtrack as I pried open the Scotch and splashed a few shots across the floorboards. I refilled the actor’s half-empty glass, added crushed Xanax, and placed it near his outstretched hand, so he wouldn’t need to move if he woke and wanted refreshment. I downed a shot of my own, unadulterated, for courage. The alarm clock came from the office, too, the wire from a shelf in the Old Barn, the fuse cord from the backstage pyrotechnic box. As the warmth of the liquor hit my gut, I carefully unwound the cord. There was enough to easily reach the propane tank and the old grill stored under the shack. I used the movie star’s own cell phone to text McKenna at the number he’d given me in case of emergency, twenty-four/seven.

The Ghost made her preparations, fully awake, alive, and yet in a kind of trance, almost a dream state. The sequence of events seemed predetermined, inevitable, done, the metal jaws of the trap already snapped shut. I had thought the waiting time would be the hardest, but it wasn’t because I knew he would come. One of my step-fathers, a stern and bitter man, made me watch while he baited mousetraps with treats, peanut butter, cheese, and chewing gum, made me watch while the mice came to the traps. He called it an experiment, but I saw his eyes when the traps did their job, and they were shining.

When McKenna came, we sat on the moonlit steps and I filled his ears till his eyes shone as well, till they glittered. Filled his ears with tittle-tattle that he accepted uncritically, every dubious morsel lapped up as eagerly as a dog laps blood. I filled his ears with gossip and his mouth with whiskey, and I kept one eye on my watch. He didn’t seem to notice the bitterness of the drink, and the Ghost thought only of fire. Fire, the cleanser; fire, the eraser; fire, the god, and it seemed good, the anticipated unleashing of inferno. By the time McKenna, at the Ghost’s urging, at
my
urging, climbed the stairs, his steps were heavy and his eyes half-closed.

They were sleeping fitfully, snoring in their chairs, mouths agape, when I left a few minutes later.

Malcolm was sleeping, too, later that night when the fire broke out.

CHAPTER

fifty-two

Tape 128

Brooklyn Pierce

April 4, 2010

Teddy Blake:
Go on, Brook. Hey, don’t fall asleep on me, buddy. You were telling me a story.

Brooklyn Pierce:
Yeah, right, a story. But come on, don’t you think I’d have done a good one? One for the ages? Like Burton and Branagh?

TB:
No hope of Hamlet, huh?

BP:
No hope. Pour me another one, okay? A stiff one. I’m gonna quit tomorrow. Cold turkey, I swear, that’s the only way to go.

TB:
And nothing doing with a Ben Justice revival?

BP:
I told you the damned story, what he sees when he looks at me. Didn’t I already tell you? Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

TB:
But that’s all there is? Christ, then he doesn’t know. You said you don’t even know whether—

BP:
Not for sure and, hey, I don’t wanna know. Jamie’s the one wants to make trouble, test everybody’s DNA, but what the hell? I don’t want screen credit, you know what I mean? Christ, I shouldn’t let Jamie talk me into this kinda shit. Is your glass empty? Fill it up. C’mon, I’m not drinking alone.

TB:
You’re just an agreeable guy.

BP:
Right, that’s me, whatever, I roll with it.

TB:
But you did do it, you and Claire?

BP:
Hey, man, I rolled with it. I mean, we coulda done the turkey-baster thing, but we figured we’re grown-ups and Mal’s puttin’ it to her, too. I mean, they didn’t quit screwing, so Jenna could be his kid, for all I know. It’s not like docs are never wrong.

TB:
And with the screenplay, you weren’t worried about the legality, about the police?

BP:
I let Jamie do the worrying. And he said first off, Mal would never call the cops on us. Hell, call the cops, he might as well call
People
magazine—

TB:
But when did you tell Jamie? If he’d known when the old man was alive—

BP:
Christ, I don’t remember, musta been pretty recent. This visit. I don’t remember telling him, honest, but I must’ve, huh? I oughta lay off this stuff, quit it cold. Anyhow, what was I saying? Yeah, yeah, second thing: We can’t get in legal trouble ’cause none of it’s fuckin’ true. I mean, hey, it’s a screenplay, piece of fiction, made-up shit. Right? Claire didn’t come on to me like that, like in what we wrote. Asked me, as a friend, as a favor. Christ, I musta been pissed.

TB:
Drunk?

BP:
Pissed off, angry, and hell, drinking again, too. Telling Jamie. I mean, I didn’t think screwing Claire would fuck up my life, you know? I was so young, and she was so damn beautiful. I guess I wasn’t thinking at all much, but I figured we’d still work together, Malcolm and me, but it was like, after that, every time he looked at me, you know, he musta sensed it. He’s lookin’ at me, but he’s seeing a man who fucked his wife and I blame Claire, which is shitty ’cause she’s gone. But she had no business telling, threatening him when she left. Mal was always gonna get screen credit for Jenna. That was the deal.

BP:
And the property passed to her.

TB:
But that’s got nothing to do with it, never did. No, really, Mal loves her, and I barely know her. I mean, I went to parties with her when she was on the Coast. Jamie wanted me to come on to her, marry her, you know? Get the land back for him. That was a little too weird for me, I’m telling you. Plus, she was practically jailbait and when Mal found out she dated me, he damn near threw her out of the country.

TB:
So she doesn’t know?