Death of a Blue Movie Star

" California," Rune mused. "I've never been. I'd like to go sometime. Sit under palm trees and watch movie stars all day long."

"I'm from the north. Monterey. It's about a hundred miles south of San Francisco. Hard to star-spot there. Except for Clint Eastwood."

"That's a pretty good exception."

Tommy was carefully pulling a sock over his large foot. Even his feet looked ta

He sighed. "I can't believe it. I can't believe she's dead." He reached lethargically under the bed then snagged a black loafer. Slipped it on. Found the other one. It drooped in his hand. "How did you know her?"

"I was making a movie about her," Rune said.

Savorne said, "A movie?"

"A documentary."

"She didn't mention that."

"We just started the day she was killed. I was with her when it happened."

Savorne sca

"I was outside when the bomb went off. It's nothing serious."

"You know, even though we weren't going out anymore we still talked a lot. I was thinking… That's something I won't be able to do anymore. Not ever again…"

"How long've you known her?"

"Five, six years. I used to…" He looked away. "Well, I used to be in her line of work. The films, I mean."

"An actor?"

He laughed wanly. "Not really built for that." Laughed again; his red face turned redder. "I'm talking about physique, not equipment."

Rune smiled. He continued. "No. I was a cameraman and director. Did some editing too. I'd was in film school at UCLA for a couple of years, but that wasn't for me. I knew how to handle a camera. I didn't need to sit in classes full of these nerds. So I borrowed some money, bought an old Bolex and opened my own production company. I was going to be the next George Lucas or Spielberg. I didn't get to first base. I went under in about three months. Then this guy I knew called and told me about a job shooting an adult film. I thought, Hey, watching beautiful women and getting paid for it? Why not? I gotta admit I thought maybe I'd get a little of the action myself. Everybody in the crew thinks that but it never works out that way. But they paid me a hundred cash for two hours' work and I decided that was going to be my career."

"How'd you meet Shelly?"

"I moved to San Francisco and started making my own films. Shelly was auditioning at the theaters in North Beach -the legit theaters. Actually I picked her up in a bar is how we met. We started going out. When I told her what I did, well, most girls'd go, I'm outa here. But Shelly was interested. Something about it really turned her on. Something about the power… She was reluctant, sure, but since her theater career was going nowhere I talked her into working for me."

Or she let youthink you talked her into it? Rune asked silently. Just how well did you know your girlfriend? She couldn't imagine talking Shelly into anything.

"I saw one of her films," Rune said. "I was surprised. She was good."

"Good? Man, forget about it! What it was, she was real. I mean, real. She played an eighteen-year-old cheerleader, man, she was a cheerleader. She played a thirty-five-year-old businesswoman, you believed her."

"Yeah, but with those kinds of movies, do the audiences care?" Rune asked.

"That's a good question. I didn't think so. But Shelly did. And that's all that mattered. We got into some wild fights over it. She'd insist on rehearsing. Christ, we'd shoot a film a day. There's no dialogue; there's a couple-page treatment is all. What's this rehearsal bullshit? Then she'd insist on setting up the lighting just right. 1 lost money on her. Cost overruns, missed delivery dates to the distributors… But she was right, I guess-in some kind of artistic sense. The films she made, some of them are fabulous. And a hell of a lot more erotic than anything else you'll see.

"See, her theory is that an artist has to know what the audience wants and give it to them, even if they don'tknow they want it. 'You make the movie for the audience, not yourself.' Shelly said that a million times."

"You're not in the business anymore?"

Tommy shook his head. "Nope. Porn used to be a classier crowd. And a smarter crowd. Real people. It was fun. Now, there's too many drugs. I started to lose friends to overdoses and AIDS. I said, Time for me to move on. I wanted Shelly to come with me but…" Another faint smile. "I couldn't exactly see her working for my new company."

"Which does what?"

"Health food how-to videos." He nodded at the baba-gounash. "You ever hear of infomercials?"

"Nope."

"You buy a half hour-usually on cable-and make it look like a real program, something informative. But you also sell the product it's about. They're fun."

"How's business?"

"Oh, not great compared with pom, but I'm not embarrassed to tell people what I do." His voice faded. He stood up and walked over to the window, pulled aside a stained orange drape. "Shelly," he whispered. "She'd still be alive if she'd quit too. But she didn't listen to me. So pigheaded."

Rune flashed back to her fiery blue eyes.

Tommy's lips were trembling. His thick, sunburned fingers rose to his face. He started to speak but his breath caught and he lowered his head for a moment in silent tears. Rune looked away.

Finally he calmed, shook his head.

Rune said, "She was quite a person. A lot of people'll miss her. I just met her and I do."

It was hard to watch him, a big man, a healthy, cheerful man overcome by grief.

But at least it answered the first of Rune's two questions: Tommy Savorne probably wasn't Shelly's killer. He didn't seem to be that good an actor.

So, Rune asked the second: "Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?"

Savorne looked up, a frown of curiosity on his face. "This religious group…"

"Assuming this Sword of Jesus doesn't exist."

"You think?"

"I don't know. Just consider it."

At first he shook his head at the foolishness of the question, at the craziness of anyone's wanting to hurt Shelly. But then he stopped. "Well, I wouldn't make much out of it… but there was somebody. A guy she worked for."

"Da

"How did you know?"

"Let me tell you, and I mean this sincerely, that I loved Shelly Lowe. I loved her as an artist and I loved her as a human being."

Da

That watch cost more than my parents' first house, Rune guessed.

Traub continually looked around him as if there were a crowd of people nearby, an audience. An insincere smile kept curling into his face and he gestured constantly and arched his eyebrows. The phrasedoss clown came to mind.

They were in Traub's Greenwich Village town house. It was a duplex, done in blond wood and off-white walls and loaded with small trees and plants. "Like a jungle," she said when she'd arrived. He had her leave the Betacam and the battery packs in the front hall and walked her through the place. He showed her his collection of Indonesian fertility gods and sculpture. One, Rune loved: a four-foot-high rabbit with a mysterious smile on his face. "Hey, you're great!" she'd said, walking right up to it.

"Oh, she could have dicks and boobs butshe wants to talk to the rabbit," Traub had said to his invisible audience, glancing over his shoulder.

They'd walked past blotchy paintings, glass and metal sculpture, huge stone pots, Indian baskets, brass Bud-dhas, more plants (the smell was heavy-duty greenhouse). Upstairs, one door was partially open. As they'd walked past, Traub'd shut it quickly, but not fast enough to keep Rune from seeing an assembly of sleeping limbs. There were at least three arms and she was pretty sure she saw two blonde hairdos.