An Inconvenient Woman

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Authors: Dominick Dunne
Tags: Mystery
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sleep had been disturbed, came to the telephone. “This is outrageous, Joel. I need my rest. I didn’t close the club last night until four.”
    “Have you heard about Hector Paradiso, Manning?” asked Joel.
    “Oh, my God. AIDS?”
    “No, Manning. Shot five times.”
    “What?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Dead?”
    “Of course dead.”
    “Oh, my God. You don’t think that Lonny … oh, my God. Is it on the news?”
    “No, not a word so far.”
    “How’d you hear?”
    “A sometime trick of mine was working on the ambulance. He called me.”
    “Oh, my God.”
    “You said ‘oh, my God’ three times now, Manning. You better get your ass in gear and get over to the place and destroy any records or phone numbers you have of hustlers and Johns or you’re going to be in deep shit.”
    “That fucking Lonny,” said Manning Einsdorf.
    “What was that lousy singer’s name with the buckteeth?”
    “Marvene McQueen.”
    “Tell Marvene she didn’t see Hector Paradiso in your place last night. And Zane too.”
    “Don’t worry about Zane,” said Manning.

    Flo’s Tape #4
    “
Jules used to say that if you could visualize yourself as something, you could become it. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me when he said it. You see, I always thought I would be famous, only I never could visualize what I would be famous at. He knew, he always knew, he told me, that he would become an important person, and he certainly did
.
    “
When I visualized myself as famous, it wasn’t this kind of fame
.”

5
    L ater that day, Philip Quennell returned to the Chateau Marmont, an apartment hotel on that part of Sunset Boulevard known as the Strip that was frequented by the movie and art crowd. Casper Stieglitz’s secretary, Bettye, had booked him a room, or, as Bettye described it, a junior suite. A junior suite, Philip discovered, was a bedroom and sitting room in one.
    “Perfect for your writing,” Bettye had told Philip when she called him in New York to confirm his reservation. “All the writers who come out from New York stay there.” Philip, who was not a chatterer on the telephone, even with a full-time chatterer like Bettye, said the arrangement sounded fine, but Bettye sensed a dissatisfaction, where there was none, and added, as a further enhancement of the charms of his future lodging, “It’s the place where John Belushi OD’d.”
    “Oh, right,” Philip had added.
    “But that was in one of the bungalows. Not the room where you will be.”
    “Right,” said Philip.
    The lost luggage had been returned by the airline to the hotel, and Philip showered again and changed the clothes he had worn since the morning before when he boarded the plane in New York, and had then worn to the Mendelsons’ party the night before, and on the mission that morning to Humming Bird Way to identify the body of Hector Paradiso, and then back to Clouds at the top of the mountain to deliver Camilla Ebury into the comforting hands of Pauline Mendelson.
    That time no butler or maid opened the door to receive them. Pauline herself was standing in the open door waiting for them when Philip drove his rented car into the courtyard.She walked to Camilla’s side of the car and opened the door. When Camilla got out, the two women embraced.
    “So awful,” said Pauline.
    “Poor Hector,” answered Camilla. “What a good friend you were to Hector, Pauline. He adored you.”
    “And I him. I’m livid with myself that I didn’t let him stay on last night after everyone left. He wanted to talk over the party, and I said no.”
    “Oh, Pauline, it’s not your fault,” said Camilla. “Anyway, I heard that Kippie was back, and of course you wanted to be with him.”
    Pauline smiled distantly in acknowledgment of the mention of her son’s name, but did not reply.
    Camilla continued. “How is he?”
    “Oh, coming along,” said Pauline. In the short silence that followed, the sound of a tennis ball being hit with great force

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