There is a short introduction before the narrative proper begins. Frank introduces himself. His real name is Paco, but his professional name is Frank Soutelo, ‘Soutelo’ after the name of his father’s village in Galicia. He is nicknamed ‘Big Frank’ because of his physique. His father left Galicia in 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, and travelled to America via France and Mexico. He soon joined the New York Police Department as a foot patrol officer and was a popular figure around town. He married a woman whose family was from Muros, also in Galicia. Frank also joined the police force, but preferred to relocate to Los Angeles because of the climate and the proximity to Hollywood. He left the police force after a while and became a private detective. His favourite restaurant is The Peirao, run by a friend of his, Beni, whose family is from Cambados and who learned how to cook in Galicia. Frank is a minor celebrity, and a book of his memoirs, ghost-written and detailing aspects of his cases, has been published.
Hollywood boasts that it has as many stars in the ground as there are in the sky. For this reason, it seems there is a lucrative business in obtaining famous cadavers. A special squad has been set up in Los Angeles, the cadaver collectors’ centre of operations, to stop this trafficking in dead bodies. They have been involved in some high-profile cases, for example stopping a cell of sentimental radicals returning the corpse of Eva Perón to Argentina in pursuit of their political ambitions, or foiling a plan to sell Lenin’s mummy to an oil boss in Africa. One of the places these traffickers like to steal bodies is Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, because of the film stars that are buried there.
Frank receives a visit in his office from a chauffeur named Boris, who takes him in a spanking white Rolls Royce to see an elderly lady named Tara Colbert. Tara was friends with Marilyn Monroe and one of the few people to receive a phone call from her on the night of her death and also to attend her funeral. She promised to look after her grave, to keep it tidy and to stock it with flowers, but it turns out that Marilyn’s body has gone missing and she wants Frank to find it. She pays him $25,000 in advance.
Tara’s true intention is to get hold of Marilyn’s corpse for herself. Her stepfather was a gravedigger and used to abuse the corpses in his home town, and also Tara herself. When her stepfather died, she abandoned her mother and moved to Hollywood, where she lived off the attraction of her body, occasionally visited cemeteries herself, started acting in movies and married a film producer by the name of Colbert. When he died, she inherited a large fortune, which enabled her to collect famous corpses, but the one she really wanted – Marilyn’s – had so far eluded her. Frank was a means to an end, nothing more.
Frank’s first action is to visit Marilyn’s grave in Westwood Memorial Park. He takes out his penknife to see if the slab on top of the grave has been tampered with, but is interrupted by someone who claims to be a watchman by the name of Tabasco. Frank poses as a freelance journalist investigating the life of Joe DiMaggio, the baseball player and Marilyn’s second husband. He notices that the plaque on Marilyn’s grave has been moved. Frank meets up with an old colleague from the police force and invites him to lunch at The Peirao. The colleague hands him a large file on necrophiliacs and advises him to focus on three of these ‘high-class loonies’, two of whom are easy to locate, while for the third there is very little current information. Frank works out that the third is Tara Colbert and decides to investigate the first two names on the list.
Frank visits the first name on the list, Bruce De Bont, a theatre actor and film producer who lives in a mansion on the Pacific coast. He poses as a wealthy editor of expensive books and claims to be publishing a monograph on James Dean, whose corpse Bruce De Bont was reputed to have stolen. It turns out he and James Dean had been good friends and, when he heard James Dean’s corpse had been stolen, he did what he could to get it back and ended up being accused of the theft. Frank decides to rule him out for the time being.
Tabasco is a Latino, the son of Mexican immigrants, and feels nostalgia for the celebrations for the Mexican Day of the Dead when he walks around the cemetery. He is suspicious of Frank and doesn’t believe his story about being a journalist. He resolves to get to the bottom of the matter and find out what he really wants. Frank visits the second name on the list, Sugar Jones, a wealthy undertaker. He professes to be a private detective working for a client who would like to acquire the body of Rudolph Valentino. He says he feels distaste for these collectors of dead bodies, but is in it for the money. Sugar Jones expresses admiration for people who have a delicate preference for lifeless bodies and are prepared to look after corpses in the privacy of their homes. Frank goes to visit Tabasco in the cemetery. They arrange to have lunch together, so they can share information.
Sugar Jones attended various elite private schools in Louisiana, at the last of which he acquired an interest in the cult of the dead and in preparing corpses. As a child, he practised on insects, mice and dogs, which he would kill in order to prepare them for burial in the back garden of his family’s estate. He had to stop when the local residents became suspicious. He eventually moved to Hollywood to set up a funeral parlour where select cadavers would be given the treatment he felt they deserved. He wants to know how Frank knew to come to him and why he had brought up the business of Valentino, so he sends a couple of thugs to keep an eye on him.
