Page 70
JS & DP. Double red dots.
Kiki. A black heart.
One name catches my eye. Danny Gentry. He was a friend of Stein’s and just a notch below him in the billing for Murdering Mouth. With no other clues and nothing better to do, I dial the phone number.
After a few rings, someone picks up. When they don’t say anything I say, “I’m looking for Daniel Gentry.”
“Who are you?”
Judging from his voice, he was asleep. By the way he slurs his words, he might have been sleeping one off.
“I’m a friend of Chris Stein’s.”
“Who?”
“Chris Stein. The actor.”
“I know who you’re talking about. I just haven’t heard from anyone who knew him in twenty years. What do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
I hear a low grumbling sound; either he’s moaning or he fell back to sleep.
“Gentry?”
“Look,” he says slowly and deliberately. “I’ve talked to the cops. I’ve talked to the papers. I’ve talked to his friends. I don’t have anything else to say abo
ut Chris.”
“What if I don’t ask questions? What if you just reminisce for an hour?”
“Forget it.”
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”
“Two hundred,” he shoots back.
“For two I get to ask questions.”
“Prick. Fine.”
He gives me the address and it’s the same one in the address book. He’s been in one place for a long time.
“When can we meet?”
“You think I have a busy schedule?”
“I’ll be over in an hour. Be there.”
“Where else am I going to be?”
I shower, try to beat the worst of the dirt out of my coat, and have a few cups of coffee before getting on the Hog.
Gentry lives in the Kiernan Arms on a side street at the edge of Burbank. The Arms was kind of famous in the days of the old studios. They put up writers and young performers not big enough yet to move closer into Hollywood. But the building looks like it hasn’t been maintained since Fatty Arbuckle was the king of comedy. It used to be kind of elegant, but these days it’s a dingy fortress. An anti-junkie electric gate to get into an outer area with a dry fountain. There’s another buzzer on the door to get into the building. Barbed wire on top of the metal fence out front. The neighborhood isn’t quite what it once was.
If the outside is bad, inside, the Arms is a pile of junk. Half the doors on the mailboxes along the lobby wall have been torn off. The elevator is out of service. There are shaky banisters on the stairways where someone painted right over the splintered wood. Each floor features at least one unlit side corridor. Gentry is on the fourth floor. That can’t be an easy walk for a guy in his seventies.
Each apartment has a little suburban-style doorbell. I ring Gentry’s a couple of times because the apartment next door is blasting some kind of teeth-grinding country pop loud enough to make the hall light fixtures shake. It takes Gentry a couple of minutes to open the door. When he does, he gets one look at my face and says, “Christ. It’s Lon Chaney.”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70 (Reading here)
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169