Stephen Leather - Once bitten

The door opened before I could press the doorbell and Hardy was there looking disgustingly healthy in a red and green track suit and brand new Reeboks. He became something of a health nut a couple of years back and worked out every day at one of LA's more serious gyms, where you actually went to work up a sweat rather than hit on out-of-work actresses.

With him was a balding man with blue-tinted glasses who was as wide as Hardy was tall. He had an expensive-looking Italian suit that looked as if it had been bought for the price-tag rather than the style, and he was wearing shoes made from the hide of some animal that Greenpeace was probably fighting to save from extinction. He flashed me a gleaming smile and pumped my arm up and down enthusiastically when Hardy introduced us. His name was Archie Hemmings and from what Hardy had told me earlier he represented some real heavy-hitters.

"You're the first vampire hunter I've ever met, Jamie. It's a pleasure, a real pleasure."

I gave Hardy a pained look and he shrugged.

"Pete tells me you're on a case right now," Archie continued, unabashed. "So where's the stake and the holy water?" He punched me on the shoulder and I thought about suing for whiplash. "Just kidding, Jamie. You wanna drink?"

"Bit early for me," I said.

"How about a Bloody Mary?" he giggled.

I shook my head and he asked Hardy what he wanted.

"A fucking gin and tonic," said Hardy.

Archie looked shocked and Hardy laughed at his discomfort.

"It's a joke, Archie. A Bloody Mary. A fucking gin and tonic. Get it?"

Archie finally got it and laughed. "Yeah. English humour, right? God, you Brits kill me. That Fawlty Towers. Great comedy. You Brits." He was shaking his head as he went to pour Hardy's drink and I wondered if he really had got the joke.

We walked together into Archie's viewing room, the size of a small cinema but containing only a couple of dozen chairs, each as big as a seat in the first class cabin of a 747 jet, complete with footrests and a place to put your drink, and upholstered in the skin of another endangered species.

The seats were facing a screen and there were noises from a small hole behind us where the projector was. Archie waited until Hardy and I had sat down before he killed the lights.

"You mind if I watch, Pete?" he asked.

"Of course not, Archie. Make yourself at home."

Archie laughed. "Right. Make myself at home. You guys." He took a large cigar out of the inside pocket of his suit, bit off the end and spat it into a waste paper basket by his seat. His cigarette lighter flared and a few seconds later the air was filled with cloying smoke. The screen flickered and the titles came up. Lilac Time.

It was black and white, naturally, but I was surprised to see that it was a silent movie with the dialogue coming up on the screen with a twee little border around it. I'd forgotten how recent sound was in the grand scheme of things. When had it been made? Early thirties, I suppose. I couldn't remember when sound had first come in, though I half-remembered that Al Johnson was in the first one. I couldn't remember when colour had come in either, though that was largely because Ted Turner's plan to colourise every old film he could tended to play tricks with my memory. I mean, there's a whole generation out there who think that Casablanca was filmed in colour and that Bogart wore a shitty brown suit.

The story was simple enough: a country doctor, played by Greig Turner, was blamed for a murder he didn't commit, and the only witness was a small girl who was so shocked by what she'd seen that she retreated into herself. The doctor was only saved by a schoolteacher who got the child to open up after a nail-biting courtroom scheme. It was quite gripping, I had to admit, though the lack of sound took a bit of getting used to. There was no doubt about the fact that Turner had charisma. The camera really loved him. There was something about the girl who played the schoolteacher, too. Something I couldn't place until about half way through the film and then it suddenly hit me. She was the spitting image of Terry, facially anyway. She had the same mouth, the same dark eyes and long lashes, and the body was similar, too. This girl, though, was a blonde.

I watched her closely for the rest of the film and by the time the film flickered to a close and the doctor hugged the teacher and the jury stood and cheered and the judge banged his gavel I was pretty sure that she must be related to Terry in some way.

I stood up as the film ended and walked closer to the screen so that I could get a good look at the credits. The girl who'd played the schoolteacher was called Lisa Sinopoli. I wrote it down on a scrap of paper.

"What's up?" Hardy asked.

"The girl looks familiar. Lisa Sinopoli. You ever heard of her?"

He shook his head. "Sounds Italian," he said.

"Thanks Peter. You're a big help. What about Greig Turner? You turn up anything about him?"

Archie pulled himself out of his chair and switched on the lights.

"He was a minor star during the Thirties. Four or five films then he just vanished," said Hardy.

"What happened?"

Hardy shrugged and pulled a face that said he didn't know. Archie lit another cigar, took a deep pull, and then jabbed it in my direction.

"Sound killed him," said Archie. "He was one of those guys who looked great but whose voice let him down. Body of an Adonis but the voice of Donald Duck, know what I mean? When audiences heard him speak, they couldn't take him seriously as a leading man. He wasn't the only one, dozens of top stars went belly up when talkies came in." He took another pull on the cigar.

"You know him?" asked Hardy, obviously surprised.

Archie practically glowed with pride. "I know everybody in this town," he drawled.

"Yeah, but Archie, that film was made in 1932. You weren't even a twinkle in your father's eye when it was being made."

"You guys," said Archie, waving his cigar. Ash spilled over the trousers of his seat and he brushed it away with a hand studded with gold rings. "He made a minor comeback in the late Sixties. Character parts in made-for-TV movies. Nothing spectacular, but he was in work for a few years."

"Did you manage him?" I asked.

"Give me a break, Jamie," said Archie, almost savagely. "He was strictly minor league. I think he was handled by one of the smaller agencies. If a talent isn't getting seven figures a throw, it's not worth my while getting out of bed. You hear what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, Archie. I get your drift. Do you think you could me a favour? Do you think you could find out who his last agents were?"

"Sure, no problem. Hey, come on, how often does a guy get to help out a vampire hunter?

Come on, let's go get a drink."

I had a vodka and tonic this time and while I drank it I asked Hardy if he knew that James Dean had a cat.

"I didn't know that," he said, which surprised me because he devoured movie trivia like a vacuum cleaner sucks in dust, partly because it helped him when it came to writing showbiz features but mainly because he'd been a movie buff since he was a kid. You'd be hard pushed to name a movie he hadn't seen or a star he hadn't written about, and he had a near-photographic memory.

"A Siamese cat," I said.

"News to me," he said.

"Elizabeth Taylor gave it to him. He took it round to his neighbour's house the day before he died," I said.

Hardy frowned. "I thought I knew everything about James Dean," he mused. "Where did you read that?"

"I didn't read it, someone told me."

"Somebody who knew him?"

"Hardly. She's far too young for that."

"You been cradle-snatching again?"

"I'm not sure who's being snatched at the moment," I said.

Archie and Hardy asked me if I fancied going out for a meal with them to a new Thai place but I said no, I had work to do.