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.
I zip up my jacket pockets containing the phone and Nick’s gun then warily duck through the wire and out onto the steep dusty slope beyond.
Marla has descended the slope as far as the base of the letters and is making her way briskly along to the end of the sign. I carefully scramble down, struggling to keep up as I watch her disappear out of sight behind the final letter. It’s funny how the mind adjusts in order to normalize situations: back in the 101 Coffee Shop I hadn’t thought for a second I would be doing this now. But I am and my mind is slowly and inexorably coming around to the idea that at the end of our hike I might see Emily, but Emily won’t see me.
I stumble on the loose dirt, snatch in a breath, and catch myself on an outcrop of grass, a tumble of loose earth scattering off down the dark slope beneath me. I look up to see Marla’s head reappear around the final letter. She’s waiting. I get my bearings, recheck my pockets, and get moving.
I come to a halt beside her at the giant D at the end of HOLLYWOOD.
“How are you with heights?” she asks, looking up at the letter.
She can’t be serious. I follow her gaze up and about a yard above our heads a ladder begins. I see now as I look along the staggered line: each letter has its own white ladder beginning about ten feet from the ground and leading all the way up.
“You’re joking,” I erupt.
She looks at me calmly. “It’s fine, kids go up it all the time, it’s just a service ladder. It’s perfectly safe.” She cranes her neck up into the night again. “We need to get up there. You see the platform at the top. I’ll go first if you like?”
She goes to move farther up the slope but I stop her. “You told me we were meeting Emily. Emily’s not here, is she?” I demand, urgency clear in my tone.
She looks down at my hand on her arm, and when she looks up her eyes sparkle with tears in the moonlight. “No. No, she’s not here,” she says, a deep weariness seeming to crack open inside her as she stares out at the twinkle of LA beyond the sign. “I needed to get you to come here with me. I needed to tell you what happened, Mia. I need to tell someone what they did. What they did to her. I’m sorry I dragged you into this, but I promise you, you were already involved. I knew you’d never come if I told you.” I feel my stomach lurch. Emily is dead. They killed her. Marla tricked me into coming here and Emily is dead. Her heartbroken eyes find mine. “I miss her so much, she was my friend, Mia. A real friend, we went through a lot. And she never let anything get her down. I’ve never known anyone like that before.” She swipes at her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater and looks up at me. “Will you come up with me? I need to show someone, someone else needs to know what happened, you can see her from up there.”
Oh God. I shudder at her words. An image of the broken body of the actress who jumped from the sign flashes through my mind. I’m not really sure I want to see Emily anymore.
“How am I involved, Marla? You need to tell me.”
“You know who killed her. Emily,” she says, simply. “It’s someone you’ve met, someone you know.”
The hairs along the back of my neck rise. Does she mean herself; did she kill her only friend? She can’t mean that, she means someone else. My thoughts race through the new faces I’ve met this past week. Ben Cohan leaps instantly to mind. Ben Cohan and Mike. But I haven’t even met Mike. I scramble for other options, and then my blood runs cold. Does she mean Nick? Is Nick connected to all of this?
Nick who I met years ago and forgot. Nick the producer. Nick who was so pleased to see me that first day when I thought I’d lost Emily. Nick who knows everyone in this town and has worked with everyone. Nick who lives in Bel Air. Nick whose house I just came from and whose gun lies snug in my pocket.