I opened the door of the rectory and looked along the hall toward the altar bright with jewels and silver and gold.
“How is it such a small church has such rich interiors?” I said. “The baptistry alone could finance a cardinal and elect a pope.”
“Once,” Father Kelly gazed into his empty glass, “I might have gladly consigned you to the fires of hell.”
The glass fell from his fingers. He did not move to pick up the pieces. “Goodbye,” I said.
I stepped out into sunlight.
Across two empty lots and a third, heading north from the back of the church, there were weeds and long grass and wild clover and late sunflowers nodding in a warm wind. Just beyond was a two-story white frame house with the name in unlit neon above: HOLLYHOCK HOUSE SANITARIUM.
I saw two ghosts on the path through the weeds. One woman leading another, going away.
“An actress,” Father Kelly had said. “I forget the name.”
The weeds blew down the path with a dry whisper.
One ghost woman came back on the path alone, weeping.
“Constance—?” I called out quietly.
62
I walked around down Gower and over to look in through the studio gate.
Hitler in his underground bunker in the last days of the Third Reich, I thought.
Rome burning and Nero in search of more torches.
Marcus Aurelius in his bath, slitting his wrists, letting his life drain.
Just because someone, somewhere, was yelling orders, hiring painters with too much paint, men with immense vacuum cleaners to snuff the suspicious dust.
Only one gate of the whole studio was open, with three guards standing alert to let the painters and cleaners in and out, checking the faces.
At which point Stanislau Groc roared up inside the gate in his bright red British Morgan, gunned the engine, and cried: “Out!”
“No, sir,” said the guard quietly. “Orders from upstairs. Nobody leaves the studio for the next two hours.”
“But I’m a citizen of the city of Los Angeles! not this damn duchy!”
“Does that mean,” I said through the grille, “if I come in, I can’t go out?”
The guard touched his cap visor and said my name. “You can come in, and out. Orders.”
“Strange,” I said. “Why me?”
“Dammit!” Groc started to get out of his car.
I stepped through the small door in the grille and opened the side door of Groc’s Morgan.
“Can you drop me at Maggie’s editing room? By the time you’re back they’ll probably let you out.”
“No. We’re trapped,” said Groc. “This ship’s been sinking all week, and no lifeboats. Run, before you drown, too!”
“Now, now,” said the guard quietly. “No paranoia.”
“Listen to him!” Groc’s face was chalk-pale. “The great studioguard psychiatrist! You, get in. It’s your last ride!”