Manifesto for the Dead (9 page)

“Where do you want him?” Thompson was relieved, in a way, to get to the business of the story.

“Get him here. To Los Angeles. That's what
The Manifesto
is all about. The siren call.”

“I don't follow.”

“The voice inside the brain, Jimbo. The one that begs for murder, you know what I mean.”

It was the way Miracle worked, Thompson knew. In his films, the producer borrowed bits and pieces from the stories of real-life hoodlums, and from the lives of Hollywood celebrities, too, and merged them together on-screen.

“Well, your man in Texas, he hears that voice. He listens to it, and it leads him here. All the way to Los Angeles.”

“What happens then?”

Miracle leaned over the table.

“We've been through this. He's given a contract. For murder.”

“Who does he kill?”

“A Hollywood starlet,” said Miracle. “The third wheel, remember. The other girl in the triangle.”

Thompson felt a chill. The story Miracle described had a familiar resonance. The dead girl. Lombard. Michele Haze.

“The point here,” said Miracle, “is that the killer, he's not his own man. He's created by the people who need him. Me, you, the audience. It's a collaborative effort.”

Miracle eyes held an unruly light. On the surface, he seemed to be in control. He had a plan, and he was working it through. Except there was something wrong: a crooked line on the blueprint, a screwy bit of thinking. (It happened often enough, Thompson knew. People cracked. Maybe the screwiness wasn't in their heads, or had not been there to begin with anyway. Maybe it came from on high, from some boss somewhere, who in turn had another boss of his own, with another boss behind him. It made for a crazed look in the eye, trying to serve the wishes of some remote master, some invisible son-of-a-bitch.)

Maybe that's what had happened, Thompson figured. Miracle was getting pressure from his gangland buddy, and he'd gone over the edge.

Michele Haze left the bar now. Her consolers had done with her. They were satiated, filled with the smell of her, done patting and touching.

“Sit down, sweetie,” said Miracle.

She held herself with a certain elegance, glassy-eyed, serene in her grief. Since the other night, slumped in the town car, she had regained her composure.

The door behind them opened. Thompson turned.

Lussie Jones.

I shouldn't have chosen this place. Someplace else, maybe, not here.

He peered toward the door. Behind her, the late afternoon sun glowered over the broken rooftops, and the woman stood like a shadow in the light, a familiar figure, but he couldn't make out the features the way she stood, the light falling so harsh behind her. Then the door fell shut.

His heart beat more quickly. The woman standing there was not Lussie Jones. It was Alberta.

Dearest wife.

She stood poised in the doorway. She had dolled herself up, so standing there like she did, she looked pretty good.

Her gray hair was cut blunt. She had done her lips with a faint gloss and put a strand of pearls around her collar. Up close, he could see the freckles where her blouse opened, and he could smell too the blue lilac smell that she had possessed even when she was young and spread her legs for him on an oversprung mattress in a roadside joint somewhere in Nebraska.

“Why are you here?”

“Just getting out of the house.”

“How did you know where I'd be?”

“It doesn't take a genius. You came and got your suitcase?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Franny's out of town, and her place, in La Jolla, it's empty. I thought I'd go down and get some work done.”

“I see.”

At the table, the flowers for Lussie lay on the empty seat. He hustled the bouquet aside, but Alberta noticed, and her suspicions were aroused. She gave Michele Haze the old up and down, but he could see, too, that she did not think a movie star like her would have much to do with the likes of him.

“When are you going?” she asked.

Thompson shrugged, not wanting to talk about his future whereabouts in front of Miracle. Alberta went on regardless. “Jimmy's got himself a room down at the Aztec Hotel. He's always done that, ever since we were married. He gets an assignment and he's out of the house.”

Miracle nodded.

“Now, he's going down to LaJolla for a few days. To his sister's house. Though Lord knows, the car won't budge. And why he would need to wear his white suit coat, that's a question I can't answer.” Alberta laughed. She held her hand to her throat. “Or why, indeed, he would need flowers for the trip!”

“I bought them for you.”

“But Jimmy, you didn't know I was coming here.”

He had no response.

Michele leaned into the conversation. Her lips were unnaturally red, her cheeks pale. She feathered the air with her hands as she spoke. “Jim was just saying, before you came. He meant to bring you flowers as a surprise.”

It was a lie, spoken softly. Michele glanced his way, and he saw her face as it had been the moment before she and Miracle had let him go, dropping him into the abyss. There was something else in her expression, though, a note of pleading—as if she needed something, wanted his help.

The moment ended, and the bartender strolled dutifully to their table.

“Phone call,” he said. “For Jim Thompson.”

“Hello?”

“Jim?”

“Yes.”

“This is Lucille.”

“Lussie?”

“Yes.”

Her voice was matter-of-fact as the kitchen table, a little bit sweet but nasal too, impossible to read. The perfect surface, you could not know what lay beneath it. Meanwhile Alberta watched from across the room.

“I would love to meet with you, but I'm tied up this evening. And Walter, my husband, he gets in day after tomorrow. There's this dance the following evening. The Dentistry Association Ball,” she laughed, self-deprecating, almost. He could not tell what that laughter might mean.

“I understand.” He turned his back on Alberta, but it did no good. “How much longer you going to be in town?”

“Till the end of the week.”

“I'd love to see you. Talk over old times.”

She laughed again.

“I have a place out near La Jolla. I'll be there tomorrow night.”

“Jim …”

“If you want to visit, just come. We can talk.”

“Will Alberta be there?”

He glanced toward his wife, but she had turned from him now, and was chatting nervously with Miracle and Haze.

“No. Alberta won't be there.”

She hesitated. “I'll try,” she said.

“You try.”

They talked a little longer. Then he gave her his sister's phone number, and got off the line.

“Who was that?” Alberta asked

“My agent,” he lied.

“Alberta was just telling us about your dad,” said Miracle. “He was a lawman, back in Oklahoma?”

“A long time ago.”

“Jimmy's still got the pistol, don't you honey?”

“Yes. Just a souvenir.”

“In fact, you brought it with you down to that hotel, didn't you? For protection.”

“It's good luck. That's why I keep it.” The conversation was going off in too many directions. “So our deal's still on,” he asked Miracle, “you want me to finish
The Manifesto
?”

“I don't see why not. We have a contract, don't we?”

“That's right. We have a contract.”

Later, Thompson held the door open for Alberta, and they went together out onto the street. She was wearing her heels, looking smart. It was dusk, and the boulevard had some of its old glamour, as if glitter were falling from the sky.

“You got yourself dressed up. Your white coat.”

“A man has to have some self-respect.”

“Especially when he means to surprise his wife.” Her voice held the slightest edge. “Bringing me flowers. How sweet!”

“That's right. Let me escort you home.”

He hailed a taxi and slid in beside her. It was only a few blocks, but Alberta did not like walking in Hollywood. Little things like this had run them broke. He didn't care. He liked riding above the sidewalk, like some kind of big shot. He sidled up close to her and put his hand on her leg, and he began to feel like it was 40 years ago, and she was just a young woman. Impressed with the young man who'd shown up on her porch, slouching and muttering and just the faintest bit drunk. He gave her a kiss in the backseat now (thinking of Lussie, that hillside long ago, the hotel room in New York), and Alberta kissed him a little too, putting her hands on his crotch. He was sixty-four years old, but he liked it, and imagined he always would. The taxi pulled up in front of the apartment, and suddenly he wanted up into that penthouse. He wanted to go up there with her. Alberta put a hand on his chest and pushed him back into the taxi.

“Not tonight, buddy.”

The taxi took him back down the street. He got off on Sunset, with an erection stirring in his pants.

He wondered why Alberta had come down to Musso's, only to push him way, but the answer wasn't hard to see. She was angry and she wasn't going to let him off the hook, not so easy, after all these years.

Meantime, he was bulging at the seams, or close enough, anyway, for a man of his years. He touched himself in the street, keeping the hard-on alive, then walked into Hollywood Liquors for a pint. He shoved the pint in his front hip pocket, right there next to his erection, and sauntered on home. In the old days, these streets had been full of cream-skinned beauties and movie palaces, and the air had smelled of desert sage. Maybe, but it wasn't true anymore. The streets were full of hopheads and pot smokers and gutter trash from around the world. He wouldn't have looked at them twice—the latest fashion in riff-raff, scum of the moment, pigs du jour—except he feared what might emerge from the crowd. The Oklahoman. That son-of-bitch who had dropped that Cadillac outside his apartment, with the dead girl in the trunk.

Pops, I want to talk to you.

His erection faded. Some kids hooted at him, laughing just because he was old. He knew how he must look out here in the hard light, under the neon. The ugliness of his face, the savage wrinkles, the puckered mouth. He lit a cigarette, and felt the smoke curl from his lips. Hideous smoke, it tasted like crap. I am ugly, all right, and for an instant he was proud of his ugliness, then he began to cough, hacking, and the cough dredged up the yellow scum in his lungs and he spat the scum onto the sidewalk. Even the whores looked at him in disgust. No wonder my wife won't touch me, he thought, but it isn't my fault. A person gets uglier, and more disgusting, just walking down these streets.

Inside the hotel, the clerk sat behind the front desk, fast asleep in his faded monkey outfit. He leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, his hands folded together, like a Cossack sleeping at his post.

Thompson sat awhile in the lobby, watching the kid sleep. He took a drink, then another, and felt himself getting angry. Ignoramus, he thought. You don't know what's out there waiting for you, kiddo. Clever business associates. A wife that won't touch you. A corpse on every corner—and an old man's cock that swells up when you're not looking, and disappears as soon as you touch it.

Thompson stood close. The desk clerk didn't mind him. He slept like a baby. Little fuck. Innocent little bastard. I knew a kid like you once.

Thompson sucked on his Pall Mall. On the spur of the moment, overcome by meanness, he put the cigarette on the boy's uniform, where the arms made a cradle, and watched it roll, disappearing into the thick folds. In a minute or two it would burn through the coat, burn the fuck out of the boy, but by that time Thompson would be upstairs and the kid wouldn't know what hit him.

TWENTY-ONE

That night, Thompson woke up coughing. In his dreams, he had seen his father. Big Jim Thompson, gunslinger, wildcat oil man, friend of W. D. Harding and every racketeer in the West. All of those things were true about his father, more or less. In his heyday, Big Jim had been sheriff of Anadarko, in the badlands of Oklahoma. He'd been a popular sheriff, a back-slapper, a preserver of the common interest and enemy of hooligans. Or that's the way it had seemed until he was forced to resign over financial shortages at the jail.

The old man turned to wildcatting. In his letters home there was always the promise of money, a big strike any day now.

Soon, it was the son's turn to be Big Jim Thompson, to ride his thumb into the oil fields and find himself a job. He sent money home to his mom and his sister, but the fields wore him down. He tried college. He met Alberta. After he was married, mom and sis moved in. Later, he moved the whole bunch out to California. Meanwhile, his father drifted the Midwest. The circle of the old man's wandering grew smaller and smaller, until he paced the yard of an old folks home in Nebraska, and then one day word came that Big Jim had choked to death on the excelsior from his mattress.

Thompson coughed. He poured himself a drink. He plunged into a black sleep in which it was impossible to tell the difference between himself and his father, between the life he imagined and the one he had lived. The world got blacker with every step, round a corner of brick and slanted light, down an alley where every side door had its lamp burned out and behind those doors were alleys where the air was darker still.

A woman leaned toward him. Her tongue inside his mouth was rough and papery.

“More,” she whispered.

He couldn't see her face. He tried to pull away, but she held him fast, and he put his hand against her throat.

“More,” she insisted.

She pushed him away, pulled him close, both at the same time. The blackness grew yet blacker. He could not move.

He awoke. For a moment, his arms would not respond, nor his legs. Finally, he staggered up, his arm was numb, there was blood on his pillow. He looked in the mirror, and there was more blood on his face.