The Star Stalker Read online

  HOLLYWOOD.

  COLOSSAL.

  COMPELLING.

  CORRUPT.

  Where the only sin is “not making it” . . . where beautiful people do very ugly things to get to the top . . . where desperate men and women plummet overnight from the peak of power to the lethal valley of the dolls:

  DAWN—The superstarlet with a child’s face and a woman’s passions—ready for fame, ripe for corruption.

  HARKER—The great director, internationally praised, universally feared. A genius on the set—a monster in the bedroom.

  TOMMY—He stands apart from their deadly games—until he suddenly wakes to find himself trapped in the 24-hour nightmare called Hollywood.

  THE STAR STALKER is a searing, no-holds-barred novel that tells it the way it really is.

  THE SICK-SWEET

  SMELL OF SUCCESS

  I pushed my way through hundreds of very loud, very drunk people to find Lois sitting quietly by herself. I’d learned a lot in the last few months; enough to know that here was a true aristocrat: perfect poise, finely chiselled features, almost prim mouth. Lois Payne—a real star, a real lady.

  “I’m . . . I’m Tommy Post,” I stuttered. “I know,” she smiled, setting down the drink I’d handed her. “I’m sorry,” she half-laughed, “but I really don’t drink.”

  I sat down next to her. “Cigarette?” I offered. “Sorry,” she was almost blushing, “I don’t smoke either. I’m afraid I’m not much of a partygoer.” And I could see why: this was a face from an old-fashioned valentine, out of place in these raucous surroundings. “Arch Taylor said you were depressed,” I continued.

  “Did he,” she sighed. “Well, if I am, it’s his fault. Your friend Arch Taylor is a lousy lay.”

  THE STAR STALKER

  A PYRAMID BOOK

  First printing September, 1968

  This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein and any person, living or dead; any such resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1968 by Robert Bloch

  All Rights Reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  PYRAMID BOOKS are published by Pyramid Publications, Inc., 444 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, U.S.A.

  This one is for Ellie

  from—me.

  REEL ONE:

  Once Upon a Time—

  SOMEHOW the sun always seems to be directly overhead at Hollywood and Vine—even at night, when the neon creates its own illusion of high noon.

  That’s why the shadow always seemed conspicuous there; the walking shadow of the tall, stoop-shouldered man with the ebony cane. In his black suit and wide-brimmed hat he moved against the sunlight like an animated silhouette and always he moved in silence.

  In a way he was a symbol of silence. I’ve heard it said that he never saw a talking picture, but that’s just one of those legends. Hundreds of such legends once centered around Theodore Harker.

  You’ve heard the name, haven’t you? Even if you’re only twenty, you must have heard the name. It’s one of the handful that survived and will survive as long as motion pictures are made. Griffith, DeMille, Stroheim, Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks, Valentino, Garbo, and Harker. There’s a street called Harker out here, and the inevitable canyon. No one has ever forgotten the name, even though the man himself became a shadow.

  I don’t pretend to know all he did during the last year of his life. He stalked the boulevard by day and at night he went back to the big house in the hills; they say he used to sit and stare out at the distant lights of Hollywood from a darkened room. Perhaps he did, but I don’t believe he saw anything. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing left to see.

  His pictures, the great pictures of the twelve fabulous years, are still shown at the Museum of Modern Art today. Perhaps that’s what he was doing at night in his unlighted room—running those pictures over and over again in the secret projection booth inside his skull.

  When he died the whole industry turned out for his funeral; there was almost a half-ton of flowers, and a man from the Academy made a speech. It could have been a spectacle, but it lacked the Harker touch.

  Harker would have made a real production out of it. He’d make sure that Lozoff would be there, clicking his heels before the coffin and bowing from the waist. He’d want a moment spared for little Jackie Keeley, clutching his oversized cap as he scooted stiff-legged around a corner. He’d insist upon a shot of Dawn Powers’ curls capturing the sunlight and Karl Druse’s eyes mirroring midnight. It might have been a great show if Theodore Harker could have been there to direct it.

  Maybe he’s directing that show now, far beneath the synthetic surface of Forest Lawn. For the rest of the cast has joined him there through the passing years.

  Wherever they are, I’m sure they’re together once more, with Harker in command. Perhaps he’s calling frantically for an extra spot to hit that halo over Dawn’s head; maybe he’s screaming for a hotter flame to flood Druse’s face. But whether it be in Heaven, Hell or Hollywood, Harker remains a great director. He directed all of us, directed our destinies and our dreams.

  Now that he’s gone, he and the others, there’s no one who can be harmed by the truth. And that means I can finally tell the story . . .

  ONE

  SHORTLY before nine o’clock on the morning of December 1, 1922, I got off a streetcar and moved into the scented shade of the pepper trees lining Hollywood Boulevard.

  The first sightseeing bus of the day was just swinging around the intersection at Sunset and I could hear the megaphone-magnified voice of the tour guide.

  “Annow folks, here onyer left, we’re just passing the entrance of Coronet Studios, home of such fillum favorites as Maybelle Manners, Emerson Craig, Dude Williams, Karl Druse—”

  And Tommy Post.

  He didn’t bother to add my name but I was there, smiling up at the busload of tourists who stared through me and past me toward the studio gates.

  Someday, I thought. Someday—

  But right now I was just a tall nonentity of nineteen; I didn’t really expect to be famous for another two years yet. After all, I was still on my first job—toting scripts for Theodore Harker’s production unit at $12 a week. The big thing was to be able to get past the gates, to have the guard say hello to me, and to know that I was in the movies.

  In the movies. Free to wander the back lot, to move from set to set as directors uttered the Word that created Life—and, out of sputtering kleig lights, sleazy canvas, painted cardboard, brought new worlds into being.

  With my own eyes I had seen the topless towers of Ilium rise against the sun, and watched the fall of the Bastille; witnessed the birth of a Gold Rush boom town and seen its death, a week later, when the set was struck. And there was more than just illusion to enchant me.

  Hadn’t I seen Wallace Reid, in the flesh? And Mary Miles Minter, and Larry Semon? Once I’d even eaten lunch down the street, sharing the same table with Dorothy Gish! And our regular contract players were all over the lot.

  Just last week, Dude Williams called me over to his dressing room. “Tommy,” he said, “I reckon I’m clean out of fixin’s. How’s for you takin’ a run over to the drugstore and gettin’ me a sack of Bull Durham? Here, keep the change.”

  A real cowboy star who talked like a real cowboy, and he called me by my first name! If I had to choose between Hollywood and heaven, it was no contest.

  Heaven never held an angel to equal Maybelle Manners, even though she never called me “Tommy.” I doubted if she was even aware of my existence, but it was enough that I was aware of hers. I’d edge onto the set when she was working and stare at that Mona Lisa mask framed by the dark glory of her hair; to look into her eyes was
to gaze into the living depths of dreams.

  But you wouldn’t know about such things unless you were nineteen, and in the movies.

  This morning I silently celebrated the end of my sixth month on the job as I headed past the main offices and across the open quadrangle to a small building at the left. The windows were lighted and that meant Arch Taylor and Miss Glint were already there.

  “Hi, Tommy,” Taylor smiled at me when I came in and I had no trouble smiling back. He was a junior scenarist, or as much of a scenarist as anybody could be who worked on a Harker picture. Harker usually wrote his own treatments and frequently he shot “off the cuff,” improvising as he went along. But Arch Taylor got screen credit; he was a writer, and I was duly impressed. With his curved pipe, waxed mustache and snappy plus-fours he represented all the sophistication and maturity I hoped to attain when I reached twenty-four.

  Miss Glint glanced up briefly from her desk and nodded. “Hello, Post.” As far as she was concerned, that’s all I was—“Post.” As in wooden, or pillar-to-.

  Once upon a time Miss Glint had written titles at another studio, and there was an unverified rumor that she had been responsible for the immortal “Came the dawn . . .” If so, her contribution to the literature of the cinema went unrecognized; here at Coronet she was merely a script girl, and I was her flunky. Neither of us ever forgot it. She saw to that.

  “Come on, let’s get to work,” she snapped, both chins jutting in double determination. “Sort these dupes out. They’re shooting the arena footage.”

  I took off my jacket, hung it up, then walked over to the desk and began to smudge my fingers as I separated carbon copies from original pages.

  Taylor walked over to the window and stared out as he lit his pipe. “Morris is here,” he said. “Just walked into the front office.”

  Miss Glint frowned. “Maybe I better turn off the light. Him and his economy! Head of the studio and worrying about a penny’s worth of electricity. But then they’re all alike, aren’t they?”

  “Who’s all alike?”

  “Them. You know.” She frowned again.

  “I don’t know.” Taylor drew on his pipe. “And I’ve never heard Sol Morris complain about expenses. Have you, Tommy?”

  I shook my head.

  Miss Glint sniffed. “Take my word for it, I know what they are. After all, wasn’t I married to one for nearly two years? All I got was complaints—the gas bill, the rent, everything. Money, that’s the only thing they ever think about.”

  The chins were quivering now, and Taylor took a deep breath. “Lay off, Maggie. Come on, let’s catch some coffee before the old man arrives.”

  Miss Glint gasped and gulped. The gasp was for the familiarity of the “Maggie” and the gulp for the sacrilegious reference to Theodore Harker. Then she turned her back on us both.

  “Okay.” Taylor winked at me. “How about you joining me, Tommy? Or do you have a previous engagement with Mr. Laemmle?”

  “That peasant? I wouldn’t sit at the same table with him,” I said. “Or William Fox, either.” I spread the sorted pages on the desk and straightened them out in neat piles, then reached for my jacket. “But you I like.”

  “Be sure you’re back in fifteen minutes!” the Glint called after us.

  Taylor nodded casually and we stepped out, strolling across the quadrangle to our right.

  “I never knew her name was Maggie,” I said. “And what was she talking about just now?

  “Sad story.” Taylor pocketed his pipe as we walked. “She married a guy named Bronstein right after the war, I guess he was a bum—anyway, he just up and disappeared one day, cleaning out the savings account before he left. Ever since then she’s had it in for the whole human race, with particular emphasis on a certain section.”

  “So that’s why she’s such a sourball!”

  “One thing you’ll learn, Tommy. There’s always a reason why people act the way they do. And remember, it is an act. Glint got a raw deal from one man, so she tries to take it out on everybody, but she’s the same as you and I underneath. She wants to be loved.”

  I nodded, staring across at the barn. That’s right, the barn. It was still standing at the corner of the lot—the original barn, the original home of Coronet Pictures.

  Sol Morris had bought it in 1913, the same year that Lasky and DeMille rented their barn and started making movies in Hollywood. Since that time Coronet had been spreading and sprawling its way across adjoining acreage, and Messrs. Lasky and DeMille hadn’t done too badly, either.

  Now the barn served as a prop warehouse, and a small portion near the door had been given over to a coffee canteen. Taylor and I stepped up to the counter and ordered. I gazed past him into the dark interior of the old structure.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” I said. “Only eight years since Mr. Morris started here, and look where he is today. This big studio—thirty features a year, and all the two-reelers. Millions and millions of dollars, and it all began in a stable.”

  “So did Christ,” Taylor grinned.

  “Quite a cynic, aren’t you?”

  “Sure. It’s my act.” The counterman pushed the coffee mugs toward us and Taylor handed one to me. “Speaking of acts, what’s yours?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  He gave me a long stare. “Maybe it’s time you developed one.”

  “Why? I’m doing all right just being myself.”

  “Are you?” Taylor took a gulp of coffee, then set his mug down on the counter. “How much do you earn a week? Never mind, I know. I started the same way, in the same job, over at the old Sunrise studio just before the war. And I’d be there yet if I hadn’t learned. You have to have an act if you want to get ahead out here. What’s the matter, didn’t your folks teach you anything?”

  “You mean Uncle Andy and Aunt Minnie?”

  “No, your real folks—your parents.”

  I stared down at the counter. “I never had any. I lived in an orphanage back East until I was out of school.”

  He hesitated. “Did they die, or—?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” I talked to the coffee mug instead of looking at Taylor; that made it easier to continue. “I guess they just left me there after I was born. I didn’t even think I had any relatives until Uncle Andy and Aunt Minnie showed up and took me West with them.”

  The coffee mug didn’t comment, and neither did Taylor, so I was able to go on. “Aunt Minnie’s my real aunt, my mother’s sister, and she and Uncle Andy never had any kids of their own. And when my mother did, and then ran off and left me, it made Aunt Minnie feel guilty. That’s what I figure—she won’t even talk to me about it.”

  “Why didn’t she take you in right away?”

  “Because she and Uncle Andy were on the road all the time, in vaudeville. But when they moved out here and settled down, they came after me. Gave me a room of my own, got me this job. I owe them a lot. It’s almost like having folks of your own.”

  “But not quite.” Taylor reached for his pipe. “What you need is a father. The kind of guy you can go to when you want to talk about your troubles, or your future.”

  He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. It was a big hand, long and thin, but the fingers were strong. “What about your future, Tommy? What do you want out of life, anyhow?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to shut out everything except the way his hand felt; trying to imagine that it was my father’s hand, my real father’s hand, warm and friendly and waiting to guide me forward. Then, all at once, I could talk.

  “I want to be like you,” I said. “I want to be a movie writer and have people buy my dreams and pay money to see them. Then maybe, some day if I ever get married and have a kid of my own I’ll be proud of myself and want the kid to know about it instead of sneaking off and leaving him in—”

  That last sentence just slipped out because I didn’t know it was coming until I said it, and I stopped and waited for Taylor to laugh.

 
; He didn’t. He just looked at me and took his hand away and said, in a very firm voice, “Well, why in hell don’t you write something, then? Stuff you can show me, so that maybe I can give you a few pointers?”

  “Would you?”

  “Sure. You get busy and show me what you can do. Meanwhile, figure out an act.”

  I frowned. He waved his pipe at me.

  “Look, kid. You’ve got to impress people. The right people. And who are the right people on this lot, for you? Just two. Theodore Harker—your boss. And Sol Morris—Harker’s boss. Your assignment for today is to figure out a way to get them to notice you.”

  Taylor turned away and I followed him across the quadrangle. “I did it,” he said. “Everyone does it out here. That’s what’s so great about the flicker business—it’s all an act. Every day they’re turning water into wine, celluloid into gold. Think it over, Tommy. Movies are magic. And miracles are performed by gods.”

  He swung off toward the gate beyond the main office. “And speaking of gods, methinks I detect the coming of the Lord. Prepare to meet your Maker!”

  I didn’t take his advice. I was much too interested in watching the arrival of Theodore Harker.

  TWO

  SOME gods come in a fiery chariot. Theodore Harker arrived in a black Rolls-Royce. Some gods appear in shining garments. Theodore Harker wore a midnight hue. Some gods shield their countenances from men. Theodore Harker moved with chin outthrust, his bold features pallidly prominent against their background of black.

  Taki the chauffeur slid out from behind the wheel, padded around to the curbside and opened the door. As Harker stepped out, the Japanese handed him an ebony cane. For a moment Harker leaned on it, a white-faced shadow; black fedora hat pulled down over his long black hair, black collar rising about the choking knot of his black string tie, black suit cloaking his bony body, black shoes planted squarely beneath him. It was theatricalism incarnate, but who had a better right to affect the theatrical? Even his face was the mask of an old-style Shakespearean player—the mobile mouth, thin-lipped but pliant; the long, jutting nose flared by pride; the sable accent of eyebrows echoing the darkness of his garb; and finally, the eyes. The eyes that were blacker than black.