Death of a Blue Movie Star Read online

  Nicole blew her red nose with a paper towel. "That was her acting coach."

  "Acting coach?"

  "The movies we did, they paid the rent. But she loved real plays most of all. It was kind of a hobby of hers. Going to auditions. Doing small parts. But she never got any big roles. As soon as they found out what she did for a living it was, Don't call us, we'll call you. Come here...." Nicole motioned Rune back into the living room and over to the bookcases. Her neck crooked sideways, Rune read some of the titles. They were all about acting. Balinese theater, Stanislavsky, Shakespeare, dialects, playwriting, history of theater. Nicole's hand strayed to a book. The astonishingly red nails tapped the spine. "That was the only time Shelly was happy. When she was rehearsing or reading about the theater."

  "Yeah," Rune said, remembering something that Shelly'd told her. "She said she had some real parts. She made a little money at it." Rune pulled a book off the shelf. It was written by someone named Antonin Artaud. The Theater and Its Double. It was dog-eared and battered. A lot of it was underlined. One chapter had an asterisk next to it. It was headed, "The Theater of Cruelty."

  "Sometimes she'd take time off and do summer stock around the country. She said that regional theater was where most of the creative playwrights were being showcased. It was all very brainy stuff. I tried to read some of the scripts. Gosh, I tell you, I can follow lines like, 'And then they take their clothes off and fuck.' "Nicole laughed. "But this stuff Shelly was interested in was way, way beyond me."

  Rune put the book back on the shelf. She jotted Tucker's name next to Andy Llewellyn's.

  "Shelly said what made her decide to do the film was that she had a fight with somebody she worked with. You know who that was?"

  Nicole paused. "No."

  Rune had seen Nicole in Lusty Cousins. She was a bad actress then and she was a bad actress now.

  "Come on, Nicole."

  "Well, don't make too much out of it--"

  "I won't."

  "It's just, I don't want to get anybody in trouble."

  "Tell me. Who?"

  "Guy who runs the company."

  "Lame Duck?" Rune asked.

  "Yeah. Danny Traub. But him and Shelly fought all the time. They have since she's been working for them. A couple of years."

  "What do they fight about?"

  "Everything. Danny's, like, your nightmare boss."

  Into the notebook. "Okay. Anybody else?"

  "Nobody she worked with."

  "But maybe somebody she didn't?"

  "Well, there's this guy ... Tommy Savorne. He was her ex."

  "Husband?"

  "Boyfriend. They lived together in California for a couple years."

  "He still lives there?"

  "He does, yeah. Only he's been in town for the past couple weeks. But I know he didn't have anything to do with the bomb. He's the sweetest guy you'd ever want to meet. He looks kind of like John Denver."

  "What happened with them? Did they break up because of her business?"

  "She didn't talk about Tommy much. He used to make porn. Did a ton of drugs too. Hey, who doesn't, right? But then he cleaned up his act. Got out of the business, dried out at some fancy clinic like Betty Ford, did the twelve steps or something. Then he started doing legit videos--exercise tapes, something like that. I think Shelly resented that he went legit. Kind of a slap at her. I think he kept needling her to leave the business, but she couldn't afford to. Finally she left him. I don't know why she wouldn't go back. He's cute. And he makes good money."

  "And they were fighting?"

  "Oh, not recently. They didn't have much contact. But they used to fight a lot. I heard her on the phone sometimes. He kept wanting to get back together and she kept saying she couldn't. One of those conversations--ex-boyfriend thing. You know, you've had those a hundred times."

  Rune, whose romantic life had been nonexistent since Richard had left--and pretty damn bleak before him too--nodded with phony female conspiracy. "Hundreds, thousands."

  "But that was months ago," Nicole added. "I'm sure he couldn't have hurt her. I see him from time to time. He's really sweet. And they were good friends. Seeing them together--there's no way he could look at Shelly and hurt a hair on her head."

  "Why don't you tell me where he's staying anyway."

  Hearing in her memory Sam Healy's voice: I've been in ordnance disposal for fifteen years. The thing about explosives is that they're not like guns. You don't have to look the person in the eyes when you kill them. You don't have to be anywhere near.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The hotel overlooked Gramercy Park, that trim private garden bordered in wrought iron at the end of Lexington Avenue.

  The lobby of the place was all red and gold, with flecked fleur-de-lis wallpaper. Dozens of layers of paint coated the woodwork and the carpet smelled sour-sweet. One of the two elevators was broken--permanently, it seemed.

  It was quiet as Rune waited for the elevator to descend to the ground floor. A woman in her fifties, wearing a green-and-gold dress, her face a smooth curve of foundation makeup, watched Rune from under jutting glossy eyelashes. A middle-aged musician with dirty brown hair sat with his foot up on a battered Ovation guitar case and read the Post.

  Tommy Savorne's room was on the fourteenth floor, which, it occurred to Rune, was really the thirteenth, because when they built hotels in the thirties and forties they didn't label the thirteenth floor. That had a certain appeal for her. She felt that superstition was something people who were unliteral tended to believe in. And being too literal was a major sin in her bible.

  She found the door and knocked.

  Chains and latches jangled and the heavy door swung open. A man stood there, sunburned and cute--and looking, yeah, a bit like John Denver. More like a cowboy at a dude ranch. His face was somber. He wore blue jeans and a work shirt. He wore one crew sock; the other dangled from his hand. His hair was shaggy and blond. He was thin.

  "Hi, what can I do for you?"

  "You're Tommy Savorne?"

  He nodded.

  "I'm Rune. I knew Shelly. Nicole said you were in town and I just wanted to come by and say I was real sorry about what happened."

  She hadn't been sure what she was going to say after that, but it didn't matter. Tommy gave a nod and motioned her inside.

  The room was small, the walls off-white, the carpet gold. She got a whiff of a stale smell--what was it, old food? Aging plaster? Probably just the smell of a prewar hotel going to seed. But Tommy was burning incense--sandalwood--which helped. Two table lamps gave off a salmon glow. He'd been reading a cookbook, one of a dozen of them on the chipped brown-laminate desk.

  "Sit down. You want something?" He looked around. "I don't have any liquor. Just soda. Mineral water. Oh, I have some babagounash."

  "What's that, like sassafras? I had this ginseng cola one time. Yuck."

  "It's eggplant dip. My own recipe." He held up a plastic container of brown-green mash.

  Rune shook her head. "I just ate. But thanks. Nothing for me."

  Savorne sat on the bed and Rune flopped into the Naugahyde chair with split sides; it bled dirty-white upholstery stuffing.

  "You were Shelly's boyfriend?" Rune asked.

  He was nodding, squinting slightly. Tommy said, "Shelly and I broke up over a year ago. But we were good friends. I still live in California where she and I used to live. I'm just in town now for a job."

  "California," Rune mused. "I've never been. I'd like to go sometime. Sit under palm trees and watch movie stars all day long."

  "I'm from the north. Monterey. It's about a hundred miles south of San Francisco. Hard to star-spot there. Except for Clint Eastwood."

  "That's a pretty good exception."

  Tommy was carefully pulling a sock over his large foot. Even his feet looked tanned and trim. She looked closely: Wild! He's got manicured toenails. She saw cowboy boots and several cowboy hats in the closet.

  He sighed. "I can't believe it. I can't beli
eve she's dead." He reached lethargically under the bed then snagged a black loafer. Slipped it on. Found the other one. It drooped in his hand. "How did you know her?"

  "I was making a movie about her," Rune said.

  Savorne said, "A movie?"

  "A documentary."

  "She didn't mention that."

  "We just started the day she was killed. I was with her when it happened."

  Savorne scanned her face. "That how you got those scratches?"

  "I was outside when the bomb went off. It's nothing serious."

  "You know, even though we weren't going out anymore we still talked a lot. I was thinking.... That's something I won't be able to do anymore. Not ever again ..."

  "How long've you known her?"

  "Five, six years. I used to ..." He looked away. "Well, I used to be in her line of work. The films, I mean."

  "An actor?"

  He laughed wanly. "Not really built for that." Laughed again; his red face turned redder. "I'm talking about physique, not equipment."

  Rune smiled. He continued. "No. I was a cameraman and director. Did some editing too. I'd was in film school at UCLA for a couple of years, but that wasn't for me. I knew how to handle a camera. I didn't need to sit in classes full of these nerds. So I borrowed some money, bought an old Bolex and opened my own production company. I was going to be the next George Lucas or Spielberg. I didn't get to first base. I went under in about three months. Then this guy I knew called and told me about a job shooting an adult film. I thought, Hey, watching beautiful women and getting paid for it? Why not? I gotta admit I thought maybe I'd get a little of the action myself. Everybody in the crew thinks that but it never works out that way. But they paid me a hundred cash for two hours' work and I decided that was going to be my career."

  "How'd you meet Shelly?"

  "I moved to San Francisco and started making my own films. Shelly was auditioning at the theaters in North Beach--the legit theaters. Actually I picked her up in a bar is how we met. We started going out. When I told her what I did, well, most girls'd go, I'm outa here. But Shelly was interested. Something about it really turned her on. Something about the power ... She was reluctant, sure, but since her theater career was going nowhere I talked her into working for me."

  Or she let you think you talked her into it? Rune asked silently. Just how well did you know your girlfriend? She couldn't imagine talking Shelly into anything.

  "I saw one of her films," Rune said. "I was surprised. She was good."

  "Good? Man, forget about it! What it was, she was real. I mean, real. She played an eighteen-year-old cheerleader, man, she was a cheerleader. She played a thirty-five-year-old businesswoman, you believed her."

  "Yeah, but with those kinds of movies, do the audiences care?" Rune asked.

  "That's a good question. I didn't think so. But Shelly did. And that's all that mattered. We got into some wild fights over it. She'd insist on rehearsing. Christ, we'd shoot a film a day. There's no dialogue; there's a couple-page treatment is all. What's this rehearsal bullshit? Then she'd insist on setting up the lighting just right. I lost money on her. Cost overruns, missed delivery dates to the distributors ... But she was right, I guess--in some kind of artistic sense. The films she made, some of them are fabulous. And a hell of a lot more erotic than anything else you'll see.

  "See, her theory is that an artist has to know what the audience wants and give it to them, even if they don't know they want it. 'You make the movie for the audience, not yourself.' Shelly said that a million times."

  "You're not in the business anymore?"

  Tommy shook his head. "Nope. Porn used to be a classier crowd. And a smarter crowd. Real people. It was fun. Now, there's too many drugs. I started to lose friends to overdoses and AIDS. I said, Time for me to move on. I wanted Shelly to come with me but ..." Another faint smile. "I couldn't exactly see her working for my new company."

  "Which does what?"

  "Health food how-to videos." He nodded at the babagounash. "You ever hear of infomercials?"

  "Nope."

  "You buy a half hour--usually on cable--and make it look like a real program, something informative. But you also sell the product it's about. They're fun."

  "How's business?"

  "Oh, not great compared with porn, but I'm not embarrassed to tell people what I do." His voice faded. He stood up and walked over to the window, pulled aside a stained orange drape. "Shelly," he whispered. "She'd still be alive if she'd quit too. But she didn't listen to me. So pigheaded."

  Rune flashed back to her fiery blue eyes.

  Tommy's lips were trembling. His thick, sunburned fingers rose to his face. He started to speak but his breath caught and he lowered his head for a moment in silent tears. Rune looked away.

  Finally he calmed, shook his head.

  Rune said, "She was quite a person. A lot of people'll miss her. I just met her and I do."

  It was hard to watch him, a big man, a healthy, cheerful man overcome by grief.

  But at least it answered the first of Rune's two questions: Tommy Savorne probably wasn't Shelly's killer. He didn't seem to be that good an actor.

  So, Rune asked the second: "Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?"

  Savorne looked up, a frown of curiosity on his face. "This religious group ..."

  "Assuming this Sword of Jesus doesn't exist."

  "You think?"

  "I don't know. Just consider it."

  At first he shook his head at the foolishness of the question, at the craziness of anyone's wanting to hurt Shelly. But then he stopped. "Well, I wouldn't make much out of it ... but there was somebody. A guy she worked for."

  "Danny Traub?"

  "How did you know?"

  "Let me tell you, and I mean this sincerely, that I loved Shelly Lowe. I loved her as an artist and I loved her as a human being."

  Danny Traub was short and thin, but muscular thin, tendony. His face was round and his hair was a cap of tight brown curls. He had jowl lines that enclosed his mouth like parentheses. He was wearing baggy black slacks, a white sweatshirt with a design like semaphores. His jewelry was heavy and gold: two chains, a bracelet, a ring with a sapphire in it and a Rolex Oyster Perpetual.

  That watch cost more than my parents' first house, Rune guessed.

  Traub continually looked around him as if there were a crowd of people nearby, an audience. An insincere smile kept curling into his face and he gestured constantly and arched his eyebrows. The phrase class clown came to mind.

  They were in Traub's Greenwich Village town house. It was a duplex, done in blond wood and off-white walls and loaded with small trees and plants. "Like a jungle," she said when she'd arrived. He had her leave the Betacam and the battery packs in the front hall and walked her through the place. He showed her his collection of Indonesian fertility gods and sculpture. One, Rune loved: a four-foot-high rabbit with a mysterious smile on his face. "Hey, you're great!" she'd said, walking right up to it.

  "Oh, she could have dicks and boobs but she wants to talk to the rabbit," Traub had said to his invisible audience, glancing over his shoulder.

  They'd walked past blotchy paintings, glass and metal sculpture, huge stone pots, Indian baskets, brass Buddhas, more plants (the smell was heavy-duty greenhouse). Upstairs, one door was partially open. As they'd walked past, Traub'd shut it quickly, but not fast enough to keep Rune from seeing an assembly of sleeping limbs. There were at least three arms and she was pretty sure she saw two blonde hairdos.

  The back of the apartment opened onto a courtyard around a green bronze fountain. This is where they were sitting when Rune told him that she was doing a film about Shelly Lowe.

  And Danny Traub had looked to the side--into the eyes of his portable audience--and delivered his line about really, truly, loving Shelly Lowe.

  He was stationary when he offered this, but he didn't stay still for long. As he talked about Shelly he bounced up, radiating energy, and rocked on
his feet, swinging his arms back and forth. He dropped into the chair again and continued to shift positions and stretch out until he was nearly horizontal, then swung his legs over the arm.

  "I was, the word that comes to mind is, devastated. I mean, like, fucking devastated about what happened. She and me were best buddies on the set. I'm not saying we didn't disagree--we both have strong personalities. But we were a team, we were. An example, always better if you have examples. Now, it's cheapest and most efficient to shoot direct to video."

  "Betacam or Ikegami running one-inch tape through an Ampex."

  Traub grinned and pointed Rune out to the audience. "Do we have a sharp kid or what? Yessir, ladies and gentlemen." Back to Rune. "Anyway, Shelly wanted to shoot on thirty-five millimeter fucking film. I mean, forget it. Your budget is ten thousand for the whole flick. How can you spend eight on film and processing alone--and even that's Jewing down the price at one of the labs. Then forget about postproduction.... Well, finally I get Shelly to agree no thirty-five millimeter. But right away she starts up on sixteen millimeter. It looks better, so can I argue? ... Anyway, that was typical. Creative disputes, you know. But we respected each other."

  "Who won? About the film, I mean?"

  "I always win. Well, most of the time. A couple films we shot on sixteen. 'Course that was the one that got the AAAF Picture of the Year Award." He pointed to an Oscarlike statue on his mantel.

  "What does a producer do exactly?"

  "Hey, this kid is just like Mike Wallace--question, question, question.... Okay, a producer in this business? He tries out the actresses. Hey, just kidding. I do what all producers do. I finance a film, hire the cast and crew, contract with a postpro house. The business side, you know. I happen to direct some too. I'm pretty good at it."

  "Can I tape you talking about Shelly?"

  The smile flickered for a moment before it returned. "Tape? Me? I don't know."

  "Or maybe you could recommend somebody else. I just need to talk to somebody who's pretty high up in the business. Somebody successful. So if you know anybody ..."

  Rune thought this was way too obvious but Traub snagged the bait greedily.

  "Okay? She wonders if I've been successful.... I've done fucking astronomical. I've got a Ferrari sitting not thirty feet away from us right this moment. In my own garage. In New York. My own fucking garage."