If you've seen Midnight Too you know about Browns Mills, New Jersey. Only in the film Phil called the town Levrett, after the dormitory we lived in at Harvard.
Why would he want to go back there with the child? There are singular events in life that shift or determine our direction forever. I'm not only talking about marriage or the loss of loved ones. In Strayhorn's case, it was the death of two strangers that did it. Both happened the summer he was ten in Browns Mills.
His family rented a cabin by the lake there. Because the town was near an army base, lots of military families lived nearby. Phil became friendly with the children of one and they all hung around together.
Their father was a military policeman. One day when all the kids were sitting around listening to the radio, a news bulletin came on and said two M.P.s had been shot to death by an unknown assailant. When they gave the names and the father of his friends was one of them, Phil snapped. For some reason, he started screaming 'Rock and Roll! Rock and Roll!' They took him to the hospital and put him under observation.
That would have been enough for one summer, but a few weeks later he was down at the lake with another friend throwing rocks into the water, and one of them hit something. It turned out to be a girl's body. Strayhorn stood on the shore and watched his friend drag her in. Then he ran away, screaming 'Rock and Roll did it!'
For years afterward, he was haunted by this "Rock and Roll" monster. Whenever anything bad happened he was sure who did it. If he woke in the night gasping and sweaty from some lunar struggle, he knew who must have caused it. We all have our demons, but Phil's was linked to real death and one real body.
Even when we were at Harvard he sometimes had screaming Rock and Roll dreams. He told me their origin and how over the years the thing had taken on a face and body that he later used as the basis for Bloodstone.
When I got off the phone with Danny my head felt like it was going to spout steam: Sasha, Pinsleepe, Strayhorn (alive or dead), angels, devils, Browns Mills. . . .
What the fuck was he doing with Pinsleepe in Browns Mills, New Jersey?
He'd been seen at El Coyote, so we went there and asked questions: nothing. He'd been seen in the valley at a gay bar called Jack's, so we went there: nothing. He was seen on Rodeo Drive. . . . We asked for – days before turning up anything. I had repeatedly gone back to the videotapes to see if anything new would appear, but it didn't. Both Wyatt and I called people we knew and then people they knew until our ears were red and bored. There are so many stories and counter stories in Los Angeles that we were constantly comparing notes to see if we already had certain information or if it ran counter to what we'd learned.
What emerged was this: A man who looked and sounded like Philip Strayhorn was going around town in Porsche sunglasses, a black silk suit and shirt, and alligator shoes saying Ha-ha, it was all a big publicity joke: Here I am, and rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
The problem with this description was Strayhorn was one of the most unfashionable men I knew, unlike Mr. Alligator Shoes.
Phil bought clothes the way some people buy whatever's nearest when they're hungry. When his underwear got holey, he went down to Thrifty Drugs on La Brea (a favorite Strayhorn hangout) and bought – six-packs of plain BVD white underpants. While there, he might go on a shopping spree, which meant including some white T-shirts and cotton basketball socks. Top that off with sneakers and jeans, and you had the well-dressed Strayhorn.
Besides that, he almost never went out. Chic restaurants and "in" places made him nervous and uncomfortable. His idea of a good time was to stay at home and talk to Sasha or play with the dog. His house was one of the coziest I knew.
I called my friend Dominic Scanlan in the Los Angeles Police Department and described what was going on. He said he'd look into it. Two hours later he called back and said to meet him at an address downtown. When Wyatt and I got there, a small yellow house was partially roped off by Police Investigation tapes. Dominic pulled up a few minutes later.
"The kids in these neighborhoods tear down our tapes so fast. We got a call a couple of days ago from the next-door neighbor saying something fishy was going on in there. Strange loud noises, crashes and bangs, that sort of thing. There are a lot of crack houses around here, so we thought maybe some dealers were having a party.
"Fuck us and our premonitions. Nothin' is ever simple, huh? The first cop goes inside, takes one look, and calls back to his partner, 'Hey, come here! We got 'Ripley's Believe It or Not.'" Dominic took a manila envelope from under his arm and opened it. Sliding out some pictures, he handed them over.
"Holy God!"
"James Penn, ex-out-of-work actor, ex-waiter at Jack's –"
"Ex-human being!"
"You got it, Finky. The guys in pathology are still trying to figure out what happened to him."
"What was the cause of death?"
"Electrocution, blood loss . . . shit, I don't know. Everything. Ha! That's one for you – guy died of everything!"
"And this is the same man who went around pretending to be Strayhorn?"
"Look at the other pictures."
There were some of Penn alive and smiling. He did look like Phil, and it was easy to see how some might have mistaken him for the other.
Something ball-shriveling came to me. I looked at Dominic.
"It's a scene from Midnight Always Comes!"
He nodded. "You got it. The ultimate Hollywood crime: Guy goes around impersonating Philip Strayhorn, then ends up getting killed the way Bloodstone did a guy in one of his movies. Cinematic justice. Other places you got poetic justice, out here we got cinematic justice!"
"Can we go inside?"
"Speak for yourself, Weber, I'm not going in there."
"Yeah, you can go in, but don't touch anything, huh? They're still checking the place out. I'll stay here with Finky. I want to ask him a couple of questions about the old show. I got this great Finky Linky T-shirt at home. Wish I'd brought it with me so you could sign it. Here's the key, Weber."
There was a brick path up to the front porch. The lawn smelled fresh-cut. Two of the steps creaked when I put pressure on them. I thought about walking up to Rainer Artus's house a few days before. Inside his place had been a vague madness; inside this one was the bitterest kind of death.
I unlocked the door and stepped in.
Eerily, everything was in perfect order. Clean wooden floors, a smell in the air of some kind of pine disinfectant. Spotless, ordered. When he was technical adviser on one of my films, Dominic had taken me to other murder scenes. They'd reflected the chaos of the act – blood, scatter, curtains torn from windows in the desperation of the soon-dead. Not here. James Penn's house appeared ready for a party to arrive any moment.
I walked into the living room and saw Pinsleepe sitting on a blue couch eating a red ice-cream cone.
"Hi, Weber."
"How long have you been here?"
"I don't know. I've been waiting for you. I just finished cleaning up."
"Did you know this man?"
"James Penn? No. But it's another part of the Phil thing."
"Penn was killed the same way Bloodstone killed someone."
"That's right. It's what I told you: When Phil did that scene, everything bad got loose."
"You mean Bloodstone's alive?"
She smiled and licked a corner of her cone. "No. Phil thought up that scene, not Bloodstone. All the Midnights are Phil."
"He's alive?"
"No. He's dead. But what he was is still alive. Do you get it? If we could put all the children we have been across the sky, we'd understand ourselves a lot better.