Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (10 page)

“It doesn’t really fit. A nutcase would have killed her on the spot and left her there … wherever that was. She was lured outside by a phone call. And then driven back into the city. Besides, someone stole a car to do this.”

“And her sister has no guesses at all?”

“The two were basically strangers.”

“Did she know that her sister was turning tricks out at the airport?”

“Well, technically speaking, I don’t know that either.”

Julia shrugged. “Assume the worst. Especially where sex is involved. You can always amend it later.” Julia hunkered down to her fish and chips. Her drink arrived. I had stalled on my turkey club. I set my elbows on the table and was stabbing at the remains of my sandwich with one of the little plastic swords, over and over. Julia looked up from her feast.

“Is it dead yet?”

“Huh?”

“Your sandwich. It stopped gobbling ten minutes ago.”

I jabbed the plastic sword into the coleslaw.

“Sword in the slaw,” Julia observed, reaching over and pulling it out. “I’m queen.” When I didn’t react to her joke, she frowned. “What’s wrong, Hitch?”

“I’m just thinking about these damn people. Here you’ve got a woman who was a stripper plus who knows what else. She has a couple of kids. No father for either of them. And now, right in her footsteps, there’s a daughter who was more than likely hustling herself out at the airport.”

“So what does the other one do for a living? The way you’re talking, I’m ready to hear you say she’s a porn star. Damn Hitch, it’s nothing but sex, sex, sex with you, isn’t it.”

“I don’t know what Vickie does for a living,” I said.

“That’s her name? Vickie?”

“Vickie Waggoner.”

Julia had just started to tuck a French fry into her mouth. She froze.

“
Vickie Wagner
is her name?”

I corrected her pronunciation. “Waggoner. There’s sort of an extra half syllable.”

Julia’s eyes had gone wide. “Christ. I know who Victoria Wagner is, Hitch. I guess it could be ‘Waggoner.’ But
I
know who she is. I
do
know what she does for a living.”

“You do?”

Julia was holding the fry like it was a very limp pointer. “Uh-huh. Victoria Wagner. Jesus Christ, Hitch. She
is
a porn star.”

T
he waiter cleared our table. I ordered a second bottle of beer. The waiter told me that they were all out of the kind I had just had. I told him—calmly—that I really didn’t care a whole hell of a lot
what
kind of beer it was, I simply wanted a bottle to hold on to. He brought me one. I thanked him. He left. I counted to ten. Well … to five.

“
What?!”

“Victoria Wagner,” Julia said calmly.

“Waggoner!”

“Whatever. Dirty movies, Hitch. I kid you not. As God is my witness.”

I reached over and took a sip of Julia’s drink. “Okay, give it to me. Plainly and simply, if you can. First off, it’s not that peculiar a name. And maybe not even the same name. It could just be a coincidence. What does your Victoria Waggoner, or
Wagner
, look like?”

“Hitch, she’s not
my
Victoria Wagner. I just—”

“Eyes.”

“I don’t know. Who looks at eyes?”

“Hair.”

“At the time I’m talking about, extremely blond. Fresh from the bottle.”

“Vickie Waggoner is a brunette.”

“Come on, Hitch, some women change their hair color as often as they change their minds.”

“So this Victoria Wagner of yours. Does she have a pronounced widow’s peak? A distinct vee?”

“Hitch, I don’t know about widow’s peaks. Come on. I’m supposed to notice these things?”

“You’re an artist.”

“I didn’t paint the damn girl.”

“Okay, okay. But essentially you’ve told me nothing.”

“Fine. Don’t get upset with me. You told me the name, I told you I know the name.”

“You told me a little more than that. Okay. Let’s hear the rest of it.”

Julia took a long sip of her drink. She poked at her hair and got herself comfortable in her seat. She knew the foreplay was killing me.

“Ready?”

“Please. Squirm and primp as long as you want. I’ve got all day.”

“Okay. So. Do you remember this guy who was following me around for awhile, right after you and I divorced?”

I started counting off on my fingers. “Jeff, Raoul, Clay, Rick—”

“Funny. His name was Terry. Terry Haden.”

“Mr. Flak Jacket? The filmmaker? Sure, I remember that guy.”

“Right. The few times you ran into him you kept asking, ‘Where’s the war?’ You thought you were being so clever.”

“No I didn’t. I knew I was being obnoxious.”

“Look, no argument from me. Terry Haden was a jerk,” Julia said. “Though he did sort of have that rugged thing going. But he also had that hustler vibe. One of those guys who has a dozen things popping at once. On the move, on the make.

I recalled a guy who looked like a cross between Che Guervara in that poster and Al Pacino in
Serpico
. Lots of nervous energy. Never stopped moving. Like a shark. I had no memory of anything he actually ever said, only that he never stopped talking.

Julia continued. “Anyway, do you remember how I met him? The Maryland Institute was having me back for a show?” She laughed. “I like that, ‘having me back.’ All I ever did was sneak in and finagle supplies and some studio space. I never paid tuition.”

“But then you went on to become such a big shot.”

“Exactly. So now they air kiss my fanny whenever they get a chance.”

“Cute.”

“So you remember this? I was teaching a master class, I juried the senior show. All that stuff? I was hanging out again at the Mount Royal Tavern holding out my hem for the kids to kiss.”

“Sure, I remember. You were in profound denial over our marriage dissolving and so you threw yourself into this distraction in a desperate attempt to keep yourself one step ahead of the dogs of depression.”

“Oh yes, definitely. I could barely function. So anyway, I met Terry Haden while I was doing my MIA thing. He’d drop into the Mount Royal Tavern on a regular basis in that guerilla filmaker getup of his, trolling for girls in berets. I think it took him all of a minute after meeting me before he was going on about being a big-shot filmmaker. A real Von Stroheim in his own mind. He had done some work on a few of the early John Waters films, and he made sure he told me all about that and about everything else he ever did. It wasn’t terribly long before he was suggesting we go back to his place so he could show me his lenses.”

“You know, pumpkin, I don’t really need to hear all the details. Compelling as I’m sure they are—”

“No. I already told you. I threw this fish back without a second thought. Self-absorbed photographers in flak jackets don’t exactly top my list. Besides, like I said, there was something creepy about him. He was pretty insistent for awhile there, once he realized that I was big cheese.

“You mean he was after your panties
and
your fame?”

“I was just starting to get worried that this guy might turn out to be a stalker, but then he cooled off. Guys like Haden don’t really have much patience. Once he saw that his hustle really wasn’t going to work on me, he had plenty of easier fish in the barrel he could shoot at.”

“Victoria?”

“Not yet. What happened was, Haden started showing up at the Institute. He announced to everyone who would listen that he was shooting a movie. Correction. An ‘art’ film. Quote unquote. Now, here’s Terry Haden’s idea of what makes a film an art film. Are you ready?”

I took a firm grip on the edge of the table. Julia leaned forward.

“You put art into it.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s right. Literally. Art. Sculptures. Ceramic pots. You name it.” She laughed. “The guy was literally auditioning
art works
at the Institute! Can you believe it? What a joke it was. He’d come around with a clipboard and a couple of Polaroid cameras hanging off his neck like some war correspondent and stalk around the place taking snapshots of different pieces, then he’d jot down the artist’s name and phone number and all the rest. He took pictures of the artists themselves too. See, if you
really
want an art film, you also fill the thing up with real, live bonafide
artists.
”

“Tell me this is all a joke.”

“Of course it’s a joke. And most of the kids at the Institute were smart enough to laugh the guy off. But there are always enough insecure wanna-bes who can get caught up in this kind of nonsense. You know how it is. Here’s this guy who tells them he’s worked on a couple John Waters films, and now he’s trolling around looking not only to put them in a movie, but their
art
as well. Maybe he’s the next Waters, right? Or Barry Levinson. Local boy makes good. Hollywood calling. Big bags of money and all that? To some of these kids it was actually enticing. Terry Haden brought his scam to the right place, and he knew it. I’m sure you can imagine the rap. It’s all guerrilla filmmaking. Independent. No professional actors. All part of the rawness and honesty. Just real people.”

“Freebies.”

“Exactly. I mean, it was ridiculous. He wasn’t even showing anybody a damn script. He was making it up as he went along. But you know, technically, that’s how these art house train wrecks happen in the first place. You set up your camera and hope that the muses will show up and save your ass. When they don’t, you edit like crazy then slap on a bunch of Phillip Glass.”

The waiter came over to check on us. We each pulled our drinks protectively to our chests. Can anybody guess that we’ve known each other for years? I tapped my watch.

“Julia, are we inching closer to the point? I’ve got plans for Memorial Day.”

“Funny. I’m getting to it. I just wanted to give you some background.”

“Fine. Can we move on to the foreground,
s’il vous plait
?”

“
Oui oui, mon petit fromage.
” She finished off her drink and dropped the empty glass into her purse. “So. Anyway. Haden took one more shot at me. He tried to convince me to let him put some of my paintings in his so-called film. It was pathetically clear that he just wanted to exploit my good name. I turned him down. I told him that my agent would insist on a contract, a fee for each painting that he used, a percentage of the box office, all that.”

“You don’t have an agent.”

“I know. It didn’t matter. At the first mention of pay, he dropped the idea. In fact, he backed off from me completely. I guess it got through to him that I was on to his game. Haden wasn’t making any goddamn art film. That was all a pretense. I mean, who knows, maybe it started out that way. A way to get himself snaking around the Institute. But basically that was the lure. What he was looking for was freewheeling artsy kids who’d be willing to toss off their clothes and have a nice little orgy while Senior Von Stroheim rolled the camera.”

“Great way to meet chicks.”

“Exactly. The art house hustler. Some of these kids were like ten years younger than him. And it worked. I’m telling you, Hitch, I really don’t know what it is about guys with cameras. Some of the unlikeliest women will fling off their knickers at the drop of a lens cap. It’s perverse. Anyway, this is where Victoria Wagner comes in. Or
Waggoner
, as you put it.”

“So soon?”

“She was one of the models they used for the life drawing class. She was clearly new at it. Couldn’t have been more than nineteen. I had seen her posing. She couldn’t sit still for very long. She really couldn’t hold a pose. But she must have figured it was an easy way to pick up some cash. Her body was a knockout, no question about it. She wasn’t one of those big bucket, small breasted types they seem to prefer in life drawing. There’s a big push to steer clear of the conventional hourglass figure. All about so-called realism. It’s so silly. Well, this woman—this girl—was voluptuous. Seemed real enough to me.” Julia paused and unfurled one of her deliberately taunting smiles. “Is
your
Vickie voluptuous?”

“The word might apply.”

“Well Terry Haden certainly picked up on it. I guess he must have spotted her during one of his reconnaissance visits.”

“So what you’re telling me is that Mr. Flak Jacket Von Stroheim got this Victoria Wagner to act in his silly movie, along with the boys and girls of the Maryland Institute of Art. Is that the chase you’re refusing to cut to?”

“You really don’t like my foreplay, do you?”

“I thought I did. I’m reconsidering.”

“You’re the one who started me down memory lane.”

“Please. Hit the gas, lady.”

“Okay, okay. Yes. Haden put her in his silly movie. Not only that, he starred her in his silly movie. He became fixated on her. He fashioned the whole damn thing around ‘his discovery.’ I remember he actually used those words. Hitch, I’m telling you, it was amateur hour. Victoria Wagner basically became Terry Haden’s muse. Actually, she became more than that. They became lovers. They moved in together.”

“It just gets uglier and uglier, doesn’t it.”

“Actually, it does. But here’s the perverse thing, though. Haden was right. I mean, he didn’t just shove her in front of the camera so that he could sleep with her. She really
was
the real deal. In a sense anyway. She certainly left those MIA beatniks in the dust. With that cheap blond hair and that body, she did have a sort of trashy Marilyn Monroe thing going on. The camera drank her up. It loved her. Haden even paid her, for Christ’s sake. That tells you something right there. This wasn’t just another silly art student anxious to hop into a project. This was a paid model. A working girl.”

“But you said Victoria Wagner was, and I quote, a porn star. All you’re really telling me is that this huckster shot her in a naughty movie. One step up from a student film, from the sound of it.”

“You’re right. And Haden didn’t even finish it. He closed up shop halfway through. He knew he had a silly pretentious flop on his hands. A bunch of so-so paintings and a bunch of sub–so-so actors. But he had his big discovery. His star. Those two were as thick as thieves, Hitch. Right from the start. You could see it. She wasn’t being exploited. It was the March of the Opportunists. You know those cartoons where the big, bad wolf looks at the little pigs and all he sees is a full course ham dinner on a plate? Well, that’s how those two looked at each other, as far as I could tell. They were each other’s meal ticket.”