The Disappearing Act(77)

Marla’s car begins to slow ahead of me. She pulls in at the side of the road behind a string of darkened cars, and I pull up behind her as she kills her engine.

Outside in darkness the few far-flung streetlights offer only pools of half-light and shadows. In the distance behind us I see the twinkle of the city’s lights over the treetops.

I turn off my engine and slip Nick’s gun from my bag, checking the safety before plunging it into the pocket of a jacket from the backseat. I root out my phone and pop it into my other pocket then stop myself. I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it earlier but I slip it out again and open the Voice Memos app, press record, and drop it back into my pocket. It can’t hurt to follow Emily’s own example. Just in case.

I watch Marla exit her vehicle in front of me and wonder what on earth could connect her and me, what could connect all of us? I guess I’ll find out.

I pop my door and take in the street around me for the first time. Emily could be in any one of the darkened houses lining this rough track road. It’s after one a.m. on a Tuesday; the inhabitants of all of them are most likely fast asleep in their beds. I get a sudden pang for home: for my pokey Clapton flat and my saggy bed with its soft brushed-cotton bedsheets.

Marla gestures, motioning up the road. We need to keep going on foot from here.

She wouldn’t tell me where she’s leading me but from the satnav it looked like we were heading up toward the distant edges of Griffith Park. As we make our way farther up the road, though, I see we’ve come to a dead end; we must be going into one of the houses.

Marla crosses the road and waits for me, leaning on a locked jade-hued oxidized gate. I cannot see the house beyond her but this must be it. I jog to catch up but as I reach her she turns from the gate and continues along the blank white wall toward the dead end. I turn back to the green gate, confused, and when I look back to Marla she is gone. Only the whitewashed wall stares back at me. I pause for a moment unsure what to do when suddenly her head pokes out, seemingly through the white wall itself. Taken aback, I approach slowly to discover that there is a narrow, staggered opening in the wall, with a rough-trodden path leading up into Griffith Park.

A hidden entrance. No guard, no gate, just an opening in a wall.

“Keep up,” Marla says, her voice brusque, as she strides away up the sharply inclining path. We head into the darkness, branches scratching at our legs and hands. After we spend an indiscernible amount of time climbing the path, it seems to open up ahead, a single streetlight visible. As we rejoin a tarmacked path, I look up and see it for the first time, looming on the hillside directly above us, massive and inescapable, bone white in the light of the moon. Its letters forty-five feet high spelling out: HOLLYWOOD.

I stop in my tracks and stare, hairs on end. It gives me the creeps. The world’s biggest tombstones jutting up into the night sky. I have never seen it this close up before. I’ve never even seen a photograph of it this close up. Our tour certainly didn’t come this close. I remember the guide telling us about the string of protests at the sign over the last few weeks. The broken fences, the vandalized cameras. Perhaps that’s why we’re meeting Emily here: no cameras.

A hushed call from Marla snaps me out of my reverie. She gestures emphatically ahead along the road—we need to keep moving, keep going up a tarmac road leading away from the sign. It’s with some relief I realize that it is not our final destination.

I catch up with Marla, allowing myself some space to hang back just in case. The streetlight behind us melts away and darkness swallows us again. My senses heighten as we ascend; every sound around us is amplified. I finger the cool metal of the Sig Sauer in my pocket and remind myself that if something happens, I’ll need to act fast. I try to settle my breath to counteract the fizz of adrenaline coursing through my body as we pound on up.

Then in the distance, I see lights. High up, a bright-red beacon pulsing, the kind you’d find on a signal tower. What looks like a relay tower or some kind of electrical station hoves into view at the end of the road. Fences circle it high with barbed wire, official signs, and security lights. Is this where Emily is?

There are no cars on the road, no signs of life.

Perhaps we will be meeting her here. I let my mind run with the idea. There’s a chance she’s fine, just in hiding, and this is the only way she agreed to meet. Perhaps she has been working with the police all along to bring down a whole ring of Ben Cohans. I let my mind color in the picture with bright and hopeful colors. Perhaps Emily decided to expose everything. But there my mind and I splutter to a halt.

“I’m not going any farther until you tell me what the hell we’re doing here, Marla.”

She turns quickly. “Shush, Jesus Christ. You need to keep it down.” She marches back to me and grabs my wrist. “This way,” she insists, gently tugging me off the road and down another steep bank toward one of the fences. Then I see it. The whole of LA spread out before us, glittering like an earthbound constellation, the sight of it taking my breath away. I realize we’ve come full circle and now we stand directly behind the giant letters of the sign, their towering metalwork climbing straight up into the clear night sky. I feel dizzy as I look up, my warm breath clouding in the night air.

Marla has continued along the metal fence to a jagged opening, the wire caging curling back on itself, the ground around it and beyond littered with empty cans and bottles—the detritus left from the recent influx of protestors. There’s no one here now, though, just us and the metallic jangle of the fence as Marla steadies herself against it. She throws me a look before stooping down and edging through onto the hillside of the sign.