"Don't forget what happened to Sasha."
"That too."
"Say you're right, Wyatt. What about the videotapes to Sasha and me? What's their point? How come he gets to send messages from hell?"
"I haven't figured that out yet. Maybe he's telling the truth; maybe he has been given one last shot at redemption through someone he loved.
"But I wouldn't trust anything now. The part of Dr. Faustus I liked most was watching how cleverly the Devil lured the man. He didn't grab him by the foot and drag him away. They had these fascinating conversations where he told Faustus not to sell his soul because Hell's a terrible place. Faustus almost had to convince him to take it. You think that wasn't planned? You think evil comes looking for us? Just the opposite. We run after evil until it catches us. There's no question of that."
Before I tell you what happened when we got to his house, I must tell you about Rainer Artus.
Although he had the reputation for being one of the best sound men in Hollywood, he had great difficulty getting work because he was so exacting and persnickety. He didn't check things twice, he checked them five times. He didn't want the best equipment, he wanted two of the best in case something wasn't just so with the original. He liked to tell the story of the pianist Keith Jarrett, who apparently demands two special pianos be made available when he's doing concerts – just in case.
Hollywood will put up all day with the bullshit demands of star actors, but it has little patience for the whims of technicians. When a Rainer Artus demands two Nagra tape recorders – just in case – you can be sure several important people are going to yell. So the man worked, but not as often as he should have.
But Phil used him for all the Midnight films, because he knew how good Artus was and because sound is one of the most important elements in a horror film. The two of them were comfortable with each other.
I'd worked with Rainer on one film but found him too aloof, too authoritarian, and always secretly wondered if he had been a Nazi in his time. Phil said no, but I wasn't so sure. I did know that Artus had had a very difficult childhood in Germany with a mother straight out of some Freudian study. She was so anal retentive she put two kinds of towels in the family bathroom – one to dry the "up" side of the body, one to dry the "down." If the kids were ever caught using one towel for both areas, she gave them a beating. It wasn't hard to see where her son got his finicky neatness. Rainer's world was all order and no dust. His car was one long shine and nothing in the ashtrays, although he smoked heavily. His house was the same. Phil said the man meditated by vacuuming the living room. That was one of the things I remembered about visiting him years before: In a closet was one of the most remarkable vacuum cleaners I'd ever seen. Yes, I peeked. The machine was immense, so enchased with buttons and switches that if someone had told me it was a Russian space probe I'd have believed it.
He lived on a sleepy dead-end street in one of those semi-"Mission"-style houses that were built by the blockful at one time in California. When Wyatt pulled up in front, the Doors' "Light My Fire" was blaring out of the house onto the street.
"Is that coming from his house?"
"I think so. But Rainer hates rock and roll music."
Wyatt gestured at the noise. "Guess he changed his mind."
"Rainer never changed his mind about anything. Let's go."
We walked across a browning lawn full of bald patches and healthy weeds. Rainer liked to garden. The last time I'd been to the house, this lawn had looked like a prizewinner. Now it looked like a skin disease.
On the porch the screen door was wide open and a number of black flies buzzed lazily in and out of the house.
"Reminds me of Flakey Foont's house in Zap Comix."
"Or Tobacco Road." I rang the bell. Over the crashing music inside, someone yelled for us to come in.
"Rainer?" I went in slowly.
"Yeah?"
"Rainer, it's Weber Gregston. Where are you?"
"Back here. Just keep coming."
We walked through a house that was not just dirty, it was . . . unclean. Smelling thickly fetid and disturbing, it gave you the feeling something might be dead here. Moving slowly, I felt Finky Linky take hold of one of the belt loops on the back of my jeans. He whispered, "You don't mind, do you?" I smiled and shook my head. "Good, because I wasn't going to let go anyway."
"Rainer, where the hell are you?"
"Back here. Keep coming."
We came upon what I suppose was his bedroom. At least there was a mattress on the floor with Rainer on it.
"Weber, how are you? And Finky Linky!" He was propped against the wall wearing nothing more than a pair of underpants and black socks. His hair was long and stringy, dirty. It was almost like seeing another person, because part of Rainer's Hessian image had always been steel-gray hair cut almost to the skull.
"What're you two doing here?"
"We came to talk about Phil."
"Phil?"
"Phil Strayhorn."
He squinted, trying to remember the name of the man he'd made four films with. "Phil Strayhorn? Oh, yeah, sure. Phil. He's dead. You know that? Phil's dead."
"Yes, we know that. What's the matter, Rainer? You look like hell."
He smiled. "I do? I feel good. Don't know why I look like hell 'cause I feel good."
"Are you high?"
"High? No, Finky, you know I don't do drugs. Don't even drink. Just feel good." He got up slowly, helping himself with a hand hard against the wall behind him. "I'm on vacation for a while. Takin' it easy and listening to some music." His head dropped back and closing his eyes, he began swaying slowly to the Doors' next song.
"Can I turn it down a little while we talk?" Without waiting for an answer, Wyatt walked over to the large stereo unit in a corner and turned it off. "That's better. You want something to eat, Rainer? Or something to drink?"
"No, I'm fine. Sit down, guys. Ask me whatever you want."
The next half hour was a strange experience. The man looked like Rainer, talked like him most of the time, and knew things only he could know, but neither Wyatt nor I could say for sure if it was him. The man we knew wasn't completely there – only parts. Recognizable parts, certainly, but not one hundred percent Rainer Artus. Wyatt agreed when I said later it was like those flies buzzing around the front door – they kept coming and going from the house. Only here, our man kept coming and going from the strange person we were talking with.
I asked him questions about the film we'd made together – small questions, unimportant ones, that only a person who'd been on the set would have remembered. He knew everything and laughed at some of the memories. It was Rainer. No. No, it wasn't.
"Listen, please. This is an important question. Remember when you shot that sequence in Midnight Kills when Bloodstone did his monologue? I guess it was the only time he ever said anything."
"Sure. What do you want to know about it?"
"Do you know where the film is? It seems that section has kind of disappeared."
"You check with the studio?"
"We checked with the studio, the lab, Sasha Makrianes, everyone. The whole piece is gone."
"That's mysterious." He said the word, but his tone of voice said he wasn't interested in this mystery at all.