by Joe Keenan
Twenty-five
THEY DID NOT ARRIVE ALONE BUT were attended by six cohorts, an assortment of dark-suited men so stern and judgmental of mien as to resemble the male ensemble from a musical version of The Crucible. Rusty swaggered to his desk and seated himself. Hank took a chair next to it and the Menfolk of Salem clustered grimly around the poker table.
“For those of you I haven’t met, I’m Rusty Grimes. I believe most of you have spoken to my brother, Detective Hank Grimes, LAPD.” He introduced his deputies, whose names and titles need not concern us, then asked us to state our names and occupations for the record. As we did he tried to project a solemnity appropriate to his office and the occasion, but his glee at having us at his mercy was uncontainable and a bratty half smile kept leaking through the gravitas.
These preliminaries concluded, Stephen and Moira unmuzzled their lawyers, who bayed at length over Rusty’s scandalous mistreatment of their clients. He had, they hotly maintained, blackmailed them into coming here, promising discretion only to orchestrate a media ambush in a deliberate and malicious attempt to damage their reputations and scar their fragile psyches. They demanded that Grimes apologize at once, then see them safely out through some secure and private exit. Should he fail to do so they would sue him into the ground, dig him up, burn the remains, and sue the ashes.
Grimes took this all in with a smug patient air, being, like Moira, long inured to his victims’ impotent bluster. When their wrath was spent he declared coyly that he had no idea who’d alerted the press and that the tattletale, when found, would be properly spanked. His eyes scanned the room, then he turned to me.
“Where’s your pal Monty? And what’s her name”— he consulted a paper—“Claire Simmons?”
As I was saying I didn’t know, the door opened and Claire and Monty were escorted in by a fish-faced functionary who briefly ogled Gina’s cleavage, then withdrew.
“You’re late,” scolded Rusty.
“Sorry, milady,” said Monty. “We had trouble getting past the welcoming committee you so thoughtfully arranged.”
“Are you sure you called everyone?” asked Claire. “Because I didn’t see Al-Jazeera down there.”
It was hard for me to read this salvo. While her cheekiness suggested confidence and was thus a hopeful sign, her expression was more grim than cocky, which was not. I shot her an imploring look, hoping for some heartening sign, a discreet thumbs-up perhaps or an ace poking cheerfully from her sleeve. All I got was a maddeningly inscrutable nod. They found seats and Rusty resumed.
“I don’t need to tell you people why you’re here. It’s our intention to question you separately and alone about charges ranging from pandering to extortion. But before we split up there are a few things I’d like to say to all of you.
“For a while now we’ve been asking you about all this and you’ve been lying to us. Stonewalling.” He smiled and shrugged. “It’s understandable. People who break the law or hire hustlers aren’t in any rush to admit it. But playtime’s over, kids. We have two witnesses who say they either paid or were paid for gay sex in the treatment rooms at Ms. Finch’s spa.”
“Witnesses!” scoffed Moira’s lawyer. “Do you really think a jury’s going to believe a Z-list talk show host and an employee Miss Finch fired for drug use?”
Rusty smirked and shrugged again. “Who knows? People like a good story. And stories don’t come any better than Rex’s.” He proceeded to outline Rex’s woefully accurate account of Monty’s porno disk, who’d filmed it and why, and how it had fallen into Monty’s hands. He then produced a document bound with brass brads and tossed it to Monty, who failed to catch it, prompting manly chuckles from Hank and the Salem Six.
“Rex also told us how you used that disk to make Stephen cough up half a million bucks for that.”
“What is it?” inquired Lily.
“It’s your screenplay, dear.”
“What’s he doing with it?” she demanded haughtily.
“He wanted to read it.”
Lily addressed Rusty. “I’ll have you know that screenplay’s copyrighted so if you were thinking of stealing my idea you can just think again!”
“Steal it?” snorted Grimes. “That’s a good one. Who’d even want to sit through a moldy, stupid piece of crap like—”
“How dare you!” roared Lily, rising in majestic indignation. “So, now you’re a film critic, are you? Amelia Flies Again! is a soulful and thrilling work of cinematic art! Philip and I can see that, as can my nephew, who knows a damned sight more about movies than you do! I’m not surprised that its poetry eluded a philistine like you, but that hardly means Stephen was forced to buy it!”
“Well said, my dear.”
“Thank you, Monty. The very idea!”
Grimes turned to Moira with a skeptical smile. “So you liked the script?”
“ Adored it. I mean Stephen and I felt it could use a wee polish, but the story was just gripping.”
Stephen emphatically seconded this opinion. “You don’t like it, that’s your privilege, but no one here’s blackmailing anyone!”
This assertion led to an even pricklier discussion of Stephen’s decision to cast his seventy-five-year-old aunt as the film’s heroine at a salary of five million dollars. Stephen’s slightly red-faced contention that his aunt’s “ageless beauty” would make her fully credible as a woman of forty-seven drew rude sniggers from the lawmen, which sent Lily into a sputtering rage.
“Get up, Monty! We’re leaving! I refuse to spend one more minute being insulted by this cherry-faced fool! So now you’re a beauty expert too? Buy yourself a mirror why don’t you and take a good look at that beet-stained lump of cauliflower you call a nose! And shave your ears while you’re at it, you insufferable gargoyle!”
Eventually Monty succeeded in calming Lily and persuaded her to stay if only to help defend her costar against still more grievous accusations.
“So,” said Grimes, “where were we before I offended Miss Teen America here? Oh, right, Rex. As all of you know, Rex didn’t just watch Monty’s home movie. No, he’s a resourceful guy, Rex, and he secretly recorded it so he could break the story on his show. Let’s give that tape a listen, shall we?”
Noting that it was pretty raw stuff, he gallantly offered the ladies the option of sitting out the risqué portion in the anteroom with Dottie. Sophie’s choice if you asked me, but Gina promptly took him up on it and flounced melodramatically out of the room.
“Mom...?” hinted Stephen, his eyes pleading.
“I want to know what we’re facing,” replied Diana, every inch the tragedienne. He didn’t even bother asking Lily, whose wide eager eyes made clear her determination to hear every racy minute.
Having watched the film some nine thousand times I knew the dialogue by heart and could understand why Stephen was writhing at the thought of the assembled hearing the sweet nothings he’d cooed to Oscar. He’d have writhed even more had he known as I did that this furtively recorded version included Rex’s ribald running commentary, making it sound like the director’s track on the Criterion Collection edition of Assbusters III.
Rusty produced a Walkman and pressed play. An electronic hiss filled the room, followed by some slapping noises and moans. After a moment we heard a giggle and Rex’s high, inebriated voice.
“Ooh—Miss Stephen likes that! Miss Stephen likes that a lot!”
This and many similar remarks from Rex may actually have helped Stephen, who, determined to declare the recording a forgery, was striving to maintain a look at once outraged and mystified as though to say, “Who can this skilled impersonator be?” Every time Rex piped in with a “Lordy, lordy!” or “Ain’t she in heaven!” this outrage came more easily to him. When we reached the point where Stephen was loudly exhorting Oscar not to stint on the pistons, he decided mere grimaces weren’t enough to sell his innocence and began exclaiming, “Who the fuck is this guy?! ’Cause it sure ain’t me!”
“If you say so,” stage-wh
ispered Lily, “but you must admit it sounds awfully like you.”
“Quiet!” snapped Diana. “It’s clearly not Stephen!”
“Harder! Yeah, pound that ass, gold boy! Yeah!! ”
“My mistake, dear. Nothing like him!”
After a few more excruciating minutes we heard the knock on the door and Gina calling, “Stephen?” This prompted drunken gales of laughter from Rex.
“Oops!! Oscar interruptus! ”
Grimes paused the tape and asked that Gina be brought back in.
“I’m sorry, Miss Beach, but I’ll have to ask you to listen to this next portion.”
You may recall that most of the après-Oscar conversation had centered on Diana’s boozy skirmish with Lily, who was venomously disparaged by both her niece and sister. Lily’s response to these calumnies did little to bolster claims that the recording was fraudulent.
“Lies! All lies!!” cried Lily, rehearsing for the courtroom. “I was sober as a judge that night!”
“Be quiet!” pleaded Diana. “That’s not even us!”
“Don’t play innocent! I remember it clear as a bell. You were drunk and belligerent! Caused a hideous scene!”
“Shut the fuck up!” suggested an attorney.
Grimes was naturally quick to pounce on this. If the tape was a malicious fiction, why did Lily recall its events so clearly? There was a brief flummoxed silence, then Gilbert, that prince of prevaricators, leaped into the fray.
“Honestly! You call yourselves detectives? You couldn’t detect a skunk in a perfume shop!” He pointed out that Diana and Lily’s spat at the spa had been no whispered exchange of hostilities but a noisy, flat-out brawl that could easily have been overheard by any number of guests. And who happened to be on hand that very night?
“Rex Bajour!” I exclaimed.
“Precisely!” cried Gilbert, all but tucking his thumbs into imaginary suspenders. “When Rex came to make his defamatory tape he decided to incorporate the squabble, knowing that adding the expertly mimicked voices of Diana and Gina would help him pass it off as authentic. We don’t, of course, know who Rex hired to portray the stars or what has since become of them. We can only speculate on the fate of those who’ve outlived their usefulness to Rex Bajour.”
This last flourish was a bit over the top but Stephen and Gina endorsed the theory and their lawyers vowed to produce experts who’d testify that the tape was a sham. Rusty, unfazed, said he’d match them expert for expert, and lest we forget, Rex had not merely heard Monty’s sex disk, he’d seen it. He then poked his intercom and said, “Send Rex in.”
The office had a second door that gave onto a conference room. This door now opened and Rex entered. I had never in my twenty-nine years as a gay man seen someone actually sashay. I did now as Rex paraded in, employing the sort of gait one only excuses in tall, strikingly beautiful women wearing large feathered headdresses. It was clear from his face that our day of dark reckoning was for him some combination of Mardi Gras and Christmas morning. How it must have thrilled him to see the clamoring press outside and know he’d soon bask in its full ravenous attention. Never a Star, he would finally find glory as a Star Witness, all thanks to Stephen, on whom he bestowed a curdled smile of triumph.
Grimes asked if he could identify the man he’d seen on film having sex with a Les Étoiles masseur and a man costumed to resemble an Oscar.
“It was him! Stephen Donato! ” he cried, thrusting a righteous finger at the accused.
“Oh, dial it down, Tallulah,” said Monty.
At Rusty’s prompting Rex proceeded to identify me, Gina, Diana, and Claire as the other players in the film Monty had shown him.
“Before you go, Mr. Bajour, tell us — did a man dressed as a police officer and claiming to be Detective Hank Grimes visit your apartment this week and confiscate a voice recorder from you?”
“He most certainly did!” harrumphed Rex.
“Is that man in this room?” asked Rusty, and Rex, still miffed at having been duped, gloatingly fingered Gilbert, adding that I’d served as his accomplice.
“What utter rubbish!” cried Gilbert. “I’ve never laid eyes on this man! And as we’ve established that he’s a liar and expert forger—”
“Let’s have Mrs. Popov,” said Grimes to his intercom.
A lumpy beak-nosed woman in a floral housedress was escorted in. I stared a moment, bewildered. Then I placed her and blanched, overcome by that abrupt chagrin Wile E. Coyote feels when he glances down and finds that he parted company with the mesa several strides ago.
Rex giggled. “I see you remember my neighbor.”
She identified Gilbert and me as the faux Hank and his confederate. Then she and Rex were thanked and escorted out, Rex blowing a kiss to Stephen as his witty parting gesture.
“Two witnesses, boys. Looks like you’ll be bunking with us tonight.”
“WHAT!!” shrieked Gilbert, who could at least find speech. The best I could manage was a high-pitched wheeze like an off-key concertina. I turned frantically to Claire, whose eyes met mine. They brimmed with sympathy, but sympathy was not what I wanted. I wanted a chopper on the roof and a suitcase full of Krugerrands and I wanted them now.
Grimes, his smile broadening, turned to Moira.
“I think we’ll be making room for you too, Miss Finch.”
“Oh?” said Moira blandly.
“On what charge?” howled her outraged counsel.
“Well, we got two witnesses who say she’s the new Hollywood madam, so I guess we’ll start there.”
Moira yawned showily. “Do you honestly think you can win this on what you’ve got?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But we will on what we’ll get. This case has been a tough one to crack ’cause your staff and la-di-da customers have kept their traps shut. But once they see people going down they’ll get nervous. And when people get nervous they talk. Just ask Rex.
“So,” he concluded, leering in triumph, “I guess we’re about done here. But before we split up I’m gonna give you folks one last chance to come clean. Stevie, old pal, level with me — is that your voice on that tape?”
His lawyers strongly advised Stephen to answer no further questions. Ignoring them, he shot Grimes a contemptuous look and said, “Absolutely not.” Grimes went down the line, asking us if we’d admit those were our voices, and we all denied it, clinging to our tattered forgery defense. All, that is, except Claire, the last in order of appearance and the last to be asked.
“How about you, Miss Simmons?” he asked, his tone pro forma, expecting another frosty denial.
“You really want to know?” asked Claire.
Grimes, thrown, regarded her quizzically.
“Since you ask, yeah, I kinda would.”
“Well, then,” said Claire, “I’ll tell you. On one condition.”
“You’re giving me conditions?” asked Grimes with a snide laugh.
“Yes, I am. You can take them or leave them but I won’t answer your question unless they’re met.”
The lawyers leaped frantically to their feet.
“I must advise Miss Simmons that —!”
“Shut up! She’s not your client. What do you want, Claire? Because if it’s immunity, I’ll tell you right now—”
“No, nothing like that. All I ask is that there be no officers present except you and your brother. No lawyers either. Send them away, then we’ll talk.”
The lawyers, of course, argued vociferously against this. But Rusty, though clearly loath to take orders from a pushy lady screenwriter, did seem intrigued.
“Any particular reason?” he asked.
“If you agree my reasons will be clear soon enough. And of course nothing will prevent you or anyone here from sharing my comments with your colleagues or attorneys later.”
Rusty seemed literally to chew on this, twisting his lips like a stumped sommelier.
“What the hell,” he said finally. “I’m willing to humor her. If the rest of you don’t mind.
”
Moira said she had no objection, then stared pointedly at Stephen, clearly advising him to agree. Stephen, thoroughly confused, looked to Claire.
“You know it’s for the best,” she said earnestly. Stephen, who knew nothing of the sort, turned his questioning gaze to me. I nodded vigorously, my imploring eyes conveying that, if there was to be any hope for us at all, it was time to let Claire be Claire. He hesitated briefly, then asked his counsel to leave.
“That way, please,” said Claire, indicating the conference room from which Rex had entered. There was much balking and stern admonitions, but eventually the disgruntled lawyers and lawmen filed out, heads cocked defiantly with the frayed dignity of the banished.
When they’d gone Grimes made a mock courtly gesture and said, “I believe the floor is yours, Miss Simmons.”
“Thank you,” said Claire, rising. “To begin with the obvious, you have absolutely no case.”
“I’m not interested in your legal analysis.”
“Well, you’re going to get it. You have no case whatsoever against Moira, Monty, or Lily. You have, alas, an excellent case against these two,” she added, indicating me and Officer Selwyn. “They did something extraordinarily foolish and illegal. But they did it for a good cause and when we’re done I don’t think you’ll care to press charges.” This gave the Grimes boys their heartiest laugh so far.
“Oh, you don’t?” hooted Hank.
“No,” she replied serenely, “I don’t. But we’ll get back to that. Let’s start with Moira. You have two witnesses against her —a drug-abusing hustler and Rex. You have his tape too, of course, but you fail to see how worthless it is.”
“Worthless, is it? If you’re still peddling that forgery line —”
“What I mean,” said Claire, “is that all you have is the audio and no one’s word save Rex’s for what’s actually going on. As his slurred diction makes amply clear, the man’s blind drunk start to finish. How can a jury possibly credit his subsequent claims of what he thinks he remembers seeing?”