Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation by A.W. Hill Read Free Book Online Page B

back into town was distinguished by just one thing, which
occurred only at this time of year or in the rare event of a Santa Ana
condition. At a certain point along the northbound Harbor Freeway, if the
clouds had lifted and the smog had flown, the San Gabriel Mountains rose up,
bushy and wild and capped with the virgin snow that was L.A.’s only natural water
source (not counting the current deluge). They were all the more epic for their
nearness to a big city, and when they appeared, Raszer’s spirit soared up to
the ragged summits and returned as clean as freshly laundered white linen.
Today, however, he was not to be graced. The downpour had stopped for just long
enough to ease his worries about Brigit’s flight, but was now back with renewed
intensity. He couldn’t even make out the Hollywood Hills. And so he exited the
101 at Gower and headed up Beachwood Canyon Drive in a surly mood, more than
ready for Hildegarde’s ministrations.
         Beachwood
Canyon was L.A.’s richest redoubt of Hollywoodland history, and maybe its
best-kept secret. Other enclaves in the hills had their own cloistered charms,
but only Beachwood remained as the mad barons of old Hollywood had designed it.
The notorious Madame Blavatsky, nineteenth-century doyenne of the occult arts,
had built her Xanadu there, as had Charlie Chaplin, and no less a connoisseur
of the transcendent than Aldous Huxley had chosen to end his years in a home
beneath the H ollywood sign, his bloodstream surging with a farewell dose of pharmaceutical LSD.
         The
whole length of Beachwood Drive was the town at its most alluring, alchemical
and absurd. The flats at the bottom, where it spilled onto Franklin Avenue,
were still resolutely tawdry, despite the city’s recent cleanup campaign.
Shopping-cart people and saucer-eyed waifs shared the sidewalk with aged
B-movie actresses who, when they ventured out, still wore red lipstick and
dressed like vamps. A few blocks up, you saw them as they had been, coming out
of stilt-legged apartment buildings with names like the Casbah or La Paloma,
late for their auditions: would-be starlets with ironed hair and a willingness
to ruin their reputations in order to make them. It was on a cul-de-sac just
off Beachwood that Jack Warner was rumored to have kept a “dormitory” for his
studio’s stable of nubile talent. Nearby were the allegedly haunted barracks in
which the blacklisted Hollywood Ten had held their clandestine meetings.
         The
style of the architecture was equal parts Barcelona, Tangier, and Mitteleuropa,
and with the steep ascent, the houses became grander and stranger, though not
ostentatious. Raszer’s pulse still throbbed with the climb, for this causeway
of eager flesh and yearning spirit, leading to nowhere but the neverland of Old
Mulholland Drive, was his Hollywood, a place as indecipherable as a code in
cuneiform.
         Hildegarde
leased office space in an ersatz Tudor building adjacent to the Annie Besant
Lodge, a tiny, whitewashed chapel dedicated to the memory of old Hollywood’s
patron theosophist. She claimed that her proximity to the shrine was conducive
to the sort of therapy she offered, which was basically Jungian depth psychology
with a pinch of mandrake root and eye of newt. She greeted Raszer with a hug
and a once-over.
         “Good
morning, Stephan,” she said, a trace of German still evident in the Good . “I don’t often see you at this
time of day. You look . . . foggy.”
         “It’s the
rain,” he said, taking his familiar chair near the casement window. “I can’t
seem to wake up.”
         She
carried over an embroidered ottoman, set it down in front of him, and parked
herself near enough that they were almost knee to knee. Hildegarde was not one
for clinical detachment. She was a handsome woman of about fifty, with
ash-blond hair and a Nordic build. She was not Raszer’s physical type, which
had kept him on the safe side of the