The Fame Thief Read Online Free PDF Page A

a woman’s face in satiny black and white, shot from every imaginable angle and lighted by the same masters who made the Hollywood black-and-white films of the thirties some of the world’s most beautiful dream-images.
    It was quite a face. The eyes, with long, heavy upper lids that continuously threatened to close, were wide-set and obviously a very light blue that photographed a dreamy translucent gray and gave me the illusion I could look through them into the mind of the woman who owned them; the nose was straight and delicate, a faint seashell-whorl defining the nostrils; and the mouth had enough lower lip for two lesser and more forgettable mouths. And all of it was framed by a luxurious waterfall of dark, wavy hair that brushed her neck and shoulders with aneasy familiarity that gave me a pang of envy, and set off the flawless skin so the face seemed to leap out of the photo. I had the sense that if I were to close my eyes and slide my hand over the surface of the image, I would feel the contours of the woman’s features. The last picture was the
Life
cover. The most striking thing about it—the thing that made it a plausible representation of the most beautiful woman in the world—was the fact that the subject of the portrait seemed to be laughing at the whole situation: the camera, the lights, the photographer, herself.
    “Don’t dawdle,” the amplified voice said again. “Bring him
in
, Anna.”
    I didn’t see Anna, but it was only a few feet more before the hallway emptied into a living room the size of an Olympic pool, ringed with spiky, asymmetrical Art Deco windows, windows so good my palms itched with the urge to steal them right out of the walls. The ones that looked east framed the vertical glitter of downtown. The furniture was all white, glaring against the ebony floor like unmelted pockets of snow floating on dark water. Five groupings of chairs and tables barely filled the place. They rose above the liquid darkness of the floor like extremely comfortable islands, each group gathered in a circle of yellowish light cast by a standing lamp with stained-glass shades that could have been Tiffany. I’d have to get closer to the lamps to look for the confetti glass or the silvery lead or the turn-paddle on-off switch, or any of the other genuine Tiffany giveaways.
    “Ah, the patron saint of lost causes,” said the woman at the far end of the room. Three pinspots set into the ceiling converged on her, making the place where she sat the brightest spot in the room.
    She was enormous, nearly wide enough to fill the three-cushion sofa on which she sat. The hair was still dark—or dark again—and the face, perhaps because it was so plump, seemedalmost unwrinkled. She wore a shapeless black gown or dress or muu-muu or something very loose, just a parachute of dark cloth with an opening for her neck and long, draping sleeves. As I got closer, it sparkled at me, and I saw it had jet beads sewn to it.
    “Is the cause lost?” I pulled the nearest armchair back a foot or two, just to give her some space, and sat. Up close, she could still be recognized as the woman in the photographs, but much bigger and decades older.
    “It’s been sixty years,” she said. A little earpiece-and-microphone thing stretched from her ear to her mouth, and I could hear her voice twice, once up close and then echoing from the hall. “Most of the people who had anything to do with it are dead.”
    “Dressler doesn’t seem to regard death as an obstacle.”
    She shook her head, but not in disagreement. Jet earrings swung back and forth with a little chittering noise. From this distance I could see a fine line of snow-white hair at her scalp and the impasto of makeup, artfully applied but definitely not for daylight. Her eyebrows looked tattooed on. Even on Hollywood Boulevard, where dogs sometimes ride bicycles, she’d have drawn stares. Still, the bone structure was perfect and clearly visible, even beneath the extra