Back from the Dead - Hardcover

Petit, Chris

 
9780679451273: Back from the Dead
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0679451277 ISBN 13: 9780679451273
Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Youselli is a cynical, disillusioned city cop painfully aware of the downward spiral he's on. McMahon is a fading but still profligate rock star who has begun receiving letters signed in the name of a girl who died fifteen years ago, when he was at the height of his fame. McMahon is desperate to know who's writing them. Youselli is reluctant - the privileged decadence and celebrity games of McMahon's life both irritate and attract him - but he agrees to investigate.
Almost immediately Youselli is pulled into the eerie mystery of the letters - their combination of anger and yearning, their fierce sexuality, their seeming authenticity in the face of their obvious fabrication and, especially, their strange fatalism.
And though the letters are addressed to McMahon, Youselli begins to feel more and more implicated by them himself. He senses that they are somehow tainting the lives of those who read them - especially Edith Weber, the psychiatrist he has enlisted to help him understand the mind behind the letters (and who might help him understand his mind as well) - but he grows increasingly blind to the effect they are having on his own life. Finally, he too appears to be malfated: following the deadly inner logic of obsession, he becomes both detective and fate's agent, the "solution" to the puzzle of the letters leading him toward his undoing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor


Chris Petit is a filmmaker and writer. He lives in North London.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One

-Did you close my eyes? I often wonder what happened. Was it you who found me and was I still beautiful? I do not know how it came to this. But here we are, after all, and I cannot tell if I am loving you or hating you. Both, I guess. What happened to Paolo? He must be grown by now and gone to college. You know I never stopped loving you, that is why I am writing. Some love never fades.

You must be surprised reading this. I can see your face as clear as ever, and your first reaction-it can't be, not her. Did you say a prayer for me in all those years, think of me just a little bit? I am different now from how you remember, but not so much. Then you do not look the same either, short hair. I saw you in a magazine. You have haunted my dreams for so long, now it is my turn.

On the good days my love for you overflows. Other times love is so cruel and I think, wait a minute, when I remember what you did, you should suffer too. Into each life some rain must fall. I cut out your picture. I am looking at it now. There's a sorrow in your eyes. Is that because of me or do you never think of me at all? Am I just the past to you? And if you are thinking, "She can't come back," do not bet on it. One of these days you will find out-Love to love you, Leah

Did you ever see a big star cry? This one did when he read what she wrote. "How can I get a letter from a dead person?" he asked Youselli.

Like a lot of famous people the man had a big head, physically as well as in the mental sense, Youselli noticed. They were standing in a fancy panelled library out in the man's Long Island residence, a second or even third home that would cost Youselli several working lifetimes of his cop's salary.

Till he saw the man cry Youselli had never thought about how songs were always full of crying-not just this man's songs, everyone's. To be fair, he was not really crying after reading the letter but there were tears in his eyes, and Youselli thought, It sure has spoiled your party. He remembered the old song, "It's My Party (And I'll Cry If I Want To)."

In the background servants came and went. The man's wife had told him there would be a lot of celebrities, as though he had never done security before. Recently the hiring of cops for celebrity security had become such a fashion accessory that his captain turned a blind eye because it gave the department access to a wealthy address list for fund-raisers.

What he could not figure was why the wife had shown McMahon the letter at all after the fuss she had made on the phone that morning about keeping it secret. "I don't want him upset. Just find out who's sending them," she had said, like they were coming from around the corner instead of Los Angeles. Youselli had wondered then if the wife was insecure. Face to face, he was less sure. In the flesh she was something else, as snazzy as an Italian contessa. He had heard she and McMahon led pretty much separate lives, she in Manhattan while he partied out at the house. Close up, Youselli could see that the hard living was taking its toll on McMahon despite the work of orthodontists and clinics. He was still star skinny and had all his hair but Youselli wondered about face lifts.

McMahon read the letter again while Youselli looked at the envelope, an everyday brand and self-adhesive, which meant no saliva trace. As for getting hold of where McMahon lived, the internet was full of listings of famous addresses. The typeface was a regular font, almost certainly from a standard computer.

McMahon made a helpless gesture with his hand and said, "I don't understand, it makes no sense." Youselli's impression was that McMahon was a phony, using pauses like an actor. Maybe he had played too many big stages and that made it hard for him to do close-up work without resorting to exaggerated mannerisms, like the way he raked his hand through his shampoo-commercial hair to signal bafflement. Youselli had never seen such silky hair not on a girl.

McMahon finished the letter and appeared so upset that it took him several attempts to produce a coherent summary of the letter's meaning. It referred, he finally said, to an incident that had taken place in France fifteen years earlier, when a teenage American girl named Leah had died in an accident while looking after the young son of a fellow band member, now also deceased.

"What kind of accident?" Youselli asked.

"She died in a fall at Mickey's house. Mickey and Astrid were with me and when they got back she was lying at the bottom of the stairs."

Youselli thought the story sounded conveniently vague. "Who was the girl?"

"She came to look after Mickey's kid, Paolo." McMahon spoke like he was issuing a press release. The band had been renting French chateaux that summer, gypsying round Europe to avoid British tax. Youselli watched the wife watching her husband and thought, he is not going to say anything in front of her. He wondered if big stars jerked off.

Big party, rich man's party, rich man's house, Youselli thought as he watched the chauffeured limousines arrive. Trees high as the house screened off the world outside, their dusky green in smoky contrast to the brash lit-up rectangle of azure, the rich man's pool. The rich were so predictable, he thought. He could bust them for the load of fancy dope they were pretending wasn't in the back room. Youselli stuck his hands in his pockets and gave a smile to the wife that went unreturned while McMahon charged around, suddenly energized. Youselli told himself it was another night for the three wise monkeys: see nothing, say nothing, do nothing, and play the dumb cop.

Youselli had made sure security was tight. He had men on the gate and on the grounds with walkie-talkies. His base was the secure room under the stairs, which amounted to a closet big enough to sit in. It was like the inside of a large safe, steel-lined, with a fax and phone-the last line of retreat from whatever unimaginable horrors the famous lived in fear of. Youselli had a man in there checking the CCTV monitors that screened the exteriors. Youselli spent the early part of the evening watching the guests arrive on the screens, like they were on regular TV. A lot of names, a lot of faces and a lot of people dressed like pirates, too many tall women for his taste, and a couple of celebrity photographers snapping away. It was like the seventies never went away, Youselli thought, plus he had not realized there were still so many smokers.

The catering staff were dressed as slaves and the prettiest waitress rolled her eyes at him whenever she passed. A steady flow of guests-but only the elite-kept disappearing into the room Youselli wasn't supposed to know about and came back out animated. The door was guarded by private security. Youselli asked the wife about the extra muscle. She told him it was the standard arrangement for her people to mind the cloakroom. Youselli could not resist a grin, trying to decide which of the impossibly well-heeled guests was going to run off with a bunch of coats. The wife shot him a snooty look that said he was insubordinate.

Before the party got too wild she made a pretty speech about all the great things her husband was about to do, including write his book. The book involved the biggest deal ever signed for any star's memoirs, she proudly told her guests, and it would be the one that pulled no punches, she assured them, written by the man himself and not one of those as-told-to jobs. Youselli thought McMahon looked less than happy at the prospect. Maybe he was one of those musicians whose brains had been fried by drugs. Maybe he would be needing a ghost after all.

After the speech Youselli checked the grounds. He took O'Dowd, who complained his shoes pinched.

"You...

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Verlag
Alfred a Knopf Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0679451277
ISBN 13 
9780679451273
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
257
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