Read Online Manifesto for the Dead by Domenic Stansberry - Free Book Online
Authors: Domenic Stansberry
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get,â said Detective Orville Mann of the Los Angeles Police. âNo one in Hollywood is beyond suspicion.â
On an inside page, the newspaper had run a picture of Lombardâs mansion. Thompson recognized the place immediately. He felt the dread rise inside him. All that glass, those steel rafters. Heâd woken up there this morning, on the lawn, under those huge and sightless windows.
SIXTEEN
Now Thompson studied himself in the reflection of the newsstand window: his wrinkled trousers and his ridiculous shirt and the oversized sneakers. His face was lined like the face of an old bluff that had been soaked by rain and carved up by some bitter wind. He tried to light a cigarette, but his hands shook. He couldnât get control. He stepped off the street, into a bar. It was a skid row place. Inside, old men like himself were already into it, heads bowed, nodding toward their glasses. Sometimes they mumbled, whether to one another or to the drinks they held in their hands, it was hard to tell. The sounds those lips made were incoherent, but such incoherence was the point. Failed marriages. Childhood beatings. Loved ones killed by accident or in homicidal rage. These things happened. If you were deemed guilty, you might get locked up for a while. You might get lobotomized, or incarcerated alongside a man who longed for nothing more than to fuck your ass three times a week, but sooner or later society forgot about you. There were other matters, other criminals to punish. Anyway, maybe you did the job better yourself. So they let you go, and you wandered free and you needed the potion of forgetfulness.
âA whiskey,â Thompson said.
The whiskey helped calm him. Iâm innocent, he thought. And for a minute, the whiskey still hot in his belly, he believed it was true. He hadnât been a lousy husband, a lousy father. (So lousy, in fact, that his two daughters, his son, hell, their faces vanished on him, and all that was left were their eyes, boring up out of the nothing, out of the dark, lingering around like a question someone had forgotten to answer.)
He thought of his sisterâs place in La Jolla. She and her husband were in Lincoln, the house empty. He saw himself there by the ocean, recuperating in the salt air, finishing his book. He would go, he decided. Rest. And think things through.
As he stood up, he glanced into the mirror over the bar. It was not unlike the mirror at Mussoâs, except the glass here had gone bad. The reflection was no good, the image smoky and dark. He could not see himself clearly, and it was as if he had slipped over some boundary. He remembered Billy Miracleâhis eyes in the rearview, his hands below the seat fiddling, then coming up with the drink. Miracle had been inside Micheleâs purse, Thompson realized. Then it occurred to him:
I was doped.
Thompson thought about the ride away from Sunset Plaza. Haze and Miracle dragging him into the darkness. Letting him fall.
They hired the Okie to kill the girl. They killed Lombard. And now theyâre trying to blame the whole business on me.
It was either that, or believe heâd gone over the edge himself.
SEVENTEEN
On the corner, near the old Roosevelt Hotel, a clean-up crew was going at it, young men on their hands and knees, polishing those Hollywood stars embedded in the walkway. It was late morning, and the T-shirt shops and the pizza stands were just opening. A bouncer from one of the sex palaces hosed the walk nearby. The pigeons cooed, and the air was redolent with the smell of burned tomatoes and beer gone flat
Thompson thought about the girl in the Cadillac, and how her ringlets fell so sweetly over the bruised cheeks. He headed up Grace Avenue toward the Ardmore. His plan was to grab the keys to the Ford, then be on his way, to the coast.
He reached Franklin. All he had to do was go around the corner, and he would be home. He glanced up the hill toward Whitley Terrace, wondering if the
On an inside page, the newspaper had run a picture of Lombardâs mansion. Thompson recognized the place immediately. He felt the dread rise inside him. All that glass, those steel rafters. Heâd woken up there this morning, on the lawn, under those huge and sightless windows.
SIXTEEN
Now Thompson studied himself in the reflection of the newsstand window: his wrinkled trousers and his ridiculous shirt and the oversized sneakers. His face was lined like the face of an old bluff that had been soaked by rain and carved up by some bitter wind. He tried to light a cigarette, but his hands shook. He couldnât get control. He stepped off the street, into a bar. It was a skid row place. Inside, old men like himself were already into it, heads bowed, nodding toward their glasses. Sometimes they mumbled, whether to one another or to the drinks they held in their hands, it was hard to tell. The sounds those lips made were incoherent, but such incoherence was the point. Failed marriages. Childhood beatings. Loved ones killed by accident or in homicidal rage. These things happened. If you were deemed guilty, you might get locked up for a while. You might get lobotomized, or incarcerated alongside a man who longed for nothing more than to fuck your ass three times a week, but sooner or later society forgot about you. There were other matters, other criminals to punish. Anyway, maybe you did the job better yourself. So they let you go, and you wandered free and you needed the potion of forgetfulness.
âA whiskey,â Thompson said.
The whiskey helped calm him. Iâm innocent, he thought. And for a minute, the whiskey still hot in his belly, he believed it was true. He hadnât been a lousy husband, a lousy father. (So lousy, in fact, that his two daughters, his son, hell, their faces vanished on him, and all that was left were their eyes, boring up out of the nothing, out of the dark, lingering around like a question someone had forgotten to answer.)
He thought of his sisterâs place in La Jolla. She and her husband were in Lincoln, the house empty. He saw himself there by the ocean, recuperating in the salt air, finishing his book. He would go, he decided. Rest. And think things through.
As he stood up, he glanced into the mirror over the bar. It was not unlike the mirror at Mussoâs, except the glass here had gone bad. The reflection was no good, the image smoky and dark. He could not see himself clearly, and it was as if he had slipped over some boundary. He remembered Billy Miracleâhis eyes in the rearview, his hands below the seat fiddling, then coming up with the drink. Miracle had been inside Micheleâs purse, Thompson realized. Then it occurred to him:
I was doped.
Thompson thought about the ride away from Sunset Plaza. Haze and Miracle dragging him into the darkness. Letting him fall.
They hired the Okie to kill the girl. They killed Lombard. And now theyâre trying to blame the whole business on me.
It was either that, or believe heâd gone over the edge himself.
SEVENTEEN
On the corner, near the old Roosevelt Hotel, a clean-up crew was going at it, young men on their hands and knees, polishing those Hollywood stars embedded in the walkway. It was late morning, and the T-shirt shops and the pizza stands were just opening. A bouncer from one of the sex palaces hosed the walk nearby. The pigeons cooed, and the air was redolent with the smell of burned tomatoes and beer gone flat
Thompson thought about the girl in the Cadillac, and how her ringlets fell so sweetly over the bruised cheeks. He headed up Grace Avenue toward the Ardmore. His plan was to grab the keys to the Ford, then be on his way, to the coast.
He reached Franklin. All he had to do was go around the corner, and he would be home. He glanced up the hill toward Whitley Terrace, wondering if the
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