Indigo by Loren D. Estleman

Author:Loren D. Estleman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

Overnight the wind shifted to the southwest, blowing the noxious clouds out over the Pacific. A freshly minted sun in a clear sky shone on pink stucco, yellow adobe, red ceramic tile, and swimming pools like bits of sparkling blue glass. It was one of those mornings the Chamber of Commerce chose to roust photographers from bed in order to take the postcard shot for the tourists. With no pressing issues awaiting him at work, Valentino took his toasted bagel and fresh-squeezed orange juice out onto the rear terrace to read the trades and spend the morning admiring Max Fink’s neighborhood: the place as it had looked in 1927, when the box-office baron broke ground on The Oracle.

Afterward, its new owner put on a pale blue shirt and his best summerweight suit. He debated with himself over whether to wear a necktie, then selected one of the handful he kept for excursions east. The old Hollywood and the new had different standards. He wanted to make a good impression.

Driving, he split his attention between the rearview mirror and the road, looking for black town cars with shuttered headlights. When none materialized, he relaxed. A steady diet of crime movies was bad for the imagination.

He drove among convertibles with their tops down, waving at clever-faced youths selling maps to the stars’ homes (the scuttlebutt they sometimes sold him was a good deal more reliable than the maps themselves, dozens of which crammed his glove compartment with their out-of-date information), entered Laurel Canyon, and pulled into a scooped-out parking area at the base of a stupendously long flight of flagstone steps. His watch read 12:45 P.M. He hoped he wouldn’t be late; he hadn’t counted on having to scale the Matterhorn.

The house was one of those stately sprawling old Spanish villas pegged to the side of the canyon, a fortunate survivor of the wildfires that visited the place almost annually. Heavy rain in the spring created lush undergrowth, to be turned into kindling when the Santa Ana winds blew hot and dry from Mexico; all that was required was a spark from a backyard grill or a carelessly flung cigarette butt or just a heated argument to turn the place into an inferno. (Broadhead: “Fires, hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes. God threw us out of Paradise once. When will we get the message?”)

The steps staggered up and up and up the geological ages, literally a stairway to the stars: When Beverly Hills ran out of room for private palaces, the glitterati had fled this direction. Climbing with the aid of an iron handrail, Valentino felt a niggling sense of déjà vu. He wondered where he’d seen the place before. He was sure this was a part of the canyon he’d never visited.

Then he remembered: It was the house where Ivy Lane had shot Cornel Wilde in Switchback. These were the very steps where Wilde had stumbled and then rolled down, tumbling end over end, bouncing off stone and iron, finally landing on his back in the street.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.