The young man’s reserve of calm, which must be vast to deal with Alzheimer’s patients, has dissipated. “No way, man, that’s just wrong.”
He’s about to shut the door, but Harry half-elbows his way past him. “What’ya got for me, son?” he says, leaning in with what looks like keen interest. When he puts an arthritic hand on my shoulder and kisses me on the top of the head, I struggle not to flinch. I reach out and pat his shoulder twice, just like Harmon would, even in front of clients. As someone who grew up without a father, I looked at such shows of affection with uncomprehending awe.
The caretaker is glaring at me. But I sense he won’t do anything to upset Harry and so won’t abruptly separate him from his long-dead son. But how long before Harry’s deteriorating brain cuts the cord of this senescent delusion?
“Where’s the scavi, Pops?” I ask. “I’m looking for it.”
Harry tilts his head to the side like a bemused puppy.
“The scavi, Pops?”
Now Harry whimpers like that puppy, and I know I’ve lost him.
“You’ll have to leave or I’m going to call the cops, man,” the caretaker says. “You should be ashamed. What you’re doing is cruel.”
“Beverly Hills River,” Harry says. And then it becomes a whiny, geriatric Aeolian incantation—“Beverly Hills River, Beverly Hills River, Beverly Hills River, Beverly Hills River . . .” Mucous tears overflow his eyes.
“Forgive me,” I say to the young man. “Tell Sonja I’m sorry. It’s just this lawsuit, it’s made me . . . I’m sorry.”
The young man conveys through aggressive silence that he doesn’t forgive me at all. He takes hold of Harry’s shoulders and firmly but kindly turns him around and shuts the door.
Not until I get into Amber’s car and start the engine do I realize that Harry Cherry gave me exactly the answer I came for.
Normally, the drive from Palm Desert to Beverly Hills takes over two hours, but I make it in eighty-three minutes, thanks to my illegal use of the carpool lane. I park at a meter off Linden Avenue and “Little” Santa Monica Boulevard, get out of my car, and walk the four blocks to Macklin & Cherry’s old office building on Camden, passing the familiar Eddie Dalton’s Hair Salon and VIP Manicures by Antoinique, and a new women’s shoe store that didn’t exist when the firm broke up. I don’t think anyone’s following me. I enter my old building through a side door and hurry to the elevator, which I take down to the archives. The doors open to reveal Roland at his desk. He flinches when he sees me, reaches into his desk, pulls out a handgun, and aims it at me, his hand wavering with a fear-induced palsy. I hold up my hands and take a step back. “Whoa, Roland, it’s me.”
He lowers the gun, as relieved as I am. His fair cheeks splotch neon red, and his oil-drum chest deflates. “Jesus, Parker, you scared me shitless. Ever since those guys showed up people are supposed to call ahead.”
“I never knew you kept a gun down here.”
“I didn’t.” He looks around as if to make sure no one is listening, though I don’t see anyone else in the vicinity, “I’m not supposed to have it. But I’m not going to . . . you know.” He reaches behind his head and massages his neck. “Say, you weren’t followed this time, were you?”
“No. I made sure of it.” Actually, I’m not sure of anything.
“What can I do for you?”
“Do you know about my trial?”
“Can’t say that I do. Is it in the news? You had a lot of cases in the news. You know, the NBA season’s ending, hockey’s in full swing, MLB spring training . . . I don’t much like the news. Sports, talk radio are OK, but . . .” He shrugs his fat, sloping shoulders contritely.
That’s good. If he doesn’t know about the trial, he won’t recognize the danger.
“Roland, I have a favor. I need to get something from inside the M&C archives.”
“Go ahead. Your key should still work. I tried to get building management to change the locks after those assholes attacked me, but they didn’t want to spend the money, claimed it was a one-time thing.”
“I don’t want just to get into the archives. There’s this other room . . . I might need one of your keys.”
“Look, Parker, I’m not supposed to leave my desk.”
“Please, Roland. It’s important.”
He shakes his head.
“I can score some Lakers playoff tickets. They’re yours.”
“Lower level, center court?”
“Absolutely.” I’ll have to pay exorbitant broker’s prices, but I don’t care.
He reaches into his desk and takes out an old-fashioned jailer’s key ring with a dozen keys attached. He makes a labored attempt to stand.
“Do you have a flashlight in there?” I ask.
He slowly lowers himself back into the chair, takes a long aluminum flashlight out of the bottom drawer, and stands up again.
“And bring your weapon,” I say.
He rolls his eyes to the ceiling as if looking for divine guidance, lets out a snuffling belly sigh, and retrieves the gun.
I insist that we walk down the hall side by side. If he’s behind me and gets startled I worry that he’ll shoot me; if he’s ahead of me and gets startled I fear he’ll turn around and shoot me. I open the door to the archives and we go inside. The room smells moldier than ever, like the underside of a freeway bridge after a rain. We pass the massive file shelves and go back toward the alcove that has the computer on which Brenda found the Hildy Gish file with a cast list for The Boatman. The dirty industrial curtain still conceals the back wall—and the hidden door that saved Brenda and me from Bishop’s henchman.
“What the . . . ?” Roland says.
“A secret cave.” That’s what Deanna called it that night we had sex in there. “But I’m interested in what’s behind the far door.”
There’s a light switch, but when I flip it on, nothing happens. No surprise—I doubt anyone has come in here in years other than Brenda and me, and we weren’t about to change the light bulb. Roland turns on his flashlight. We walk to the end of the room, where there’s another door. I try it, but as I suspected, it’s locked. I try my office key, but it doesn’t fit.
Roland hands me the flashlight and the gun, which shakes as much in my hand as it did in his. He starts trying different keys. It’s quiet except for the jingling of metal on metal and the rush of flowing water, the same sound I heard when Brenda and I were hiding. This is what Harry Cherry had to mean when he kept repeating “Beverly Hills River.”
The door unlocks on the eighth try. Roland pulls it open gingerly, and I shine the flashlight inside, revealing a decayed, water-stained staircase—undoubtedly riddled with termites—leading downward.
“Those steps aren’t going to hold you, much less a big guy like me,” Roland says.
I hand him his gun. “This might take a while, so don’t wait for me. I’ll need your flashlight and the keys.”
He hands them over and wastes no time leaving the room.
I shine the flashlight down the stairway again. Eleven steps. I will myself to stay feathery on my feet, curse all the scones and muffins and puffed pastries that I’ve sampled at The Barrista over the years. The first three steps creak but hold, but the fourth cracks when I place my left foot down. There’s no railing, so I steady myself by bracing my right hand against the concrete wall. I take a long stride to the next step without testing it and then say “screw it” and skip every other step. They hold—all but the last, which shatters from the rot, injecting sharp splinters into my leg. I shine the flashlight on my shin and pull out the large ones, ignoring the blood that’s running into my shoe.
The flashlight beam reveals a small rectangular room with file cabinets on two sides. The room is damper than the humid main archives. I stop and listen—the sound of flowing water is louder, but I still don’t know if it really comes from underground streams or the building pipes or the city sewer system. It doesn’t matter. This has to be Harry Cherry’s scavi—the trut
h of Paula Felicity McGrath must be entombed here.
Fortunately, the file cabinets are marked alphabetically, the ink fading but still legible. I try the file drawer marked A–B, looking for Bishop or Boatman. I riffle through the files, but there’s nothing I care about, just old original contracts between long-shuttered production companies and former megastars whom few people under sixty-five remember. The only hopeful sign is that all these files involve sensitive transactions that either Harry or Harmon Cherry handled. This room belonged to them. None of us at the law firm had any idea.
I go to the M cabinet, looking for McGrath. Again, nothing. The same with P for Parapet Studios. Why was I so sure? Harry Cherry’s mind isn’t right. I consider starting with the first cabinet again and going through every file, but that would far exceed the battery life of this flashlight, might take me past Monday’s court hearing—assuming Bishop’s goons didn’t find me here first. Then on impulse, I open the cabinet marked T–U–V, and there they are, filed under T—two sealed files marked Highly Confidential—H. Cherry’s Eyes Only stuffed into a fraying red accordion file labeled The Boatman.
I leave the office building and go back to my car, carrying the file under my arm like a running back afraid to fumble. People on the street keep staring at me, glancing down, and I’m sure they’re focusing on the files, that Bishop’s goons are following me, biding their time. Then I realize that they’re looking at my torn dress slacks and bloody shin. I make it to my car and drive back to my condo, catching every red light between Beverly Hills and Marina del Rey. The drive in late-afternoon traffic takes thirty minutes, but it feels three times longer.
When I reach my complex, I avoid the reporters by pulling into my security garage and hurrying up the stairs. My shin throbs with every step and stings when the ocean breeze hits the exposed wound. I go inside my condo and rip open the first manila envelope. It’s a videocassette tape with a faded label that says The Boatman. So someone kept a copy after all. I open the second package—another cassette tape, but this one unlabeled.
The last time I used my antiquated videotape player was two years ago, when Lovely wanted to watch a Parky Gerald movie and I had an anxiety attack when I saw Sanctified Assembly founder Bradley Kelly appear on screen. I’m surprised that the machine turns on when I hit the power button. I take the tapes out of the Redweld folder, insert the one labeled The Boatman into the player, and reach for the play button, but I can’t bring myself to press it. My finger remains suspended over the device, poised in horrible equilibrium by the opposing forces of curiosity and fear. Is it the anticipation? A primal, superstitious belief in that old movie curse? The unwillingness to bring this game to an end? My hand begins to tremble, and I feel as though I’ve entered a courtroom unmedicated and unprepared. I take a deep breath and press play.
There’s a black screen but no credits, so this is a rough cut, not a finished film. Music starts playing. Beethoven’s second movement of his Piano Concerto no. 4, also called Orpheus in Hades. I’m partial to alternative rock, but Harmon Cherry liked classical music and made us listen to it because he thought it helped our analytical skills.
Dissolve into the sleazy bar where Hildy Gish as Eurydice Jones is in the restroom, shooting up smack over a toilet. Gish is dark-skinned and sexy, a remarkable casting choice for the still-bigoted Hollywood of the seventies. She was either a superb actress or, as Nate Ettinger testified, injected actual drugs. She makes the act of getting strung out erotic, harrowing, heart-wrenching. She’s one of the cast members who disappeared. Where is she?
On my high-definition monitor, the old analogue picture is elongated, warped, infused with a pixilated fuzziness that can’t live up to the capabilities of my state-of-the-art LED screen. Despite the limitations of the analogue medium transplanted to a hi-def screen, it’s obvious that the movie is beautifully filmed, shot predominately in muted blues and grays, deep-focus clarity, so though the film is in color, the viewer has the crisp, noir feeling of black and white. The director has immense talent.
Eurydice returns to the bar to speak with a forlorn Miles Boatman, who’s playing piano—William Bishop in his mid-thirties, but playing younger and getting away with it. And over the next eighty-seven minutes, the movie plays out just as Ettinger and Ed Diamond’s sources said it did—Boatman’s love of Eurydice goes unreciprocated, so he embarks on a journey to the far side of the universe, becomes a prophet, returns, and rescues Eurydice from hell.
The masterful writing and direction makes the film profoundly disturbing. I want to puke when Bradley Kelly comes on the screen as the corrupt priest, delivering every line in the smarmy, overly dramatic style that made him a pretty-faced hack on the movie screen but a modern-day Mesmer to his real-life devotees. Kelly proved that religious charlatans don’t have to be particularly good actors. The movie’s proselytizing for the Church of the Sanctified Assembly increases my angst—I well know the Assembly’s tenets, and The Boatman is a gospel for Kelly’s nascent religious movement. That didn’t stop the film from depicting rampant drug use and graphic sex. Eurydice shoots heroin in three separate scenes. In another scene Miles Boatman—Bishop—snorts what’s supposed to be cocaine. I had a small part as the child of a prostitute, virtually abandoned to the bar patrons and fawned over by Eurydice. In a shocking scene, especially for 1979, a drunk, distraught Boatman and the dissolute priest played by Kelly kiss passionately on the lips. So much for Bishop’s well-publicized opposition to gay marriage and Kelly’s tenet that homosexuality is a curable result of cellular contamination.
Later, Bishop and Gish appear in a lurid scene involving full-frontal nudity and passionate coupling. Bishop has an erection, actual, not prosthetic—reason enough for him to later suppress the film, which would have destroyed his newly minted image as a defender of family and conservative values. Still, Ettinger’s testimony that the film depicted hardcore sex isn’t quite accurate—it’s unclear whether the love scenes are real or simulated, a testament to the director’s skill.
The film ends abruptly, as if Howard Bishop shut down the film just before the director could splice in the end credits. And without the credits, how can I prove that Felicity McGrath directed this? Still, I now understand why someone would want to shut this film down. It blasphemes the Catholic Church. It makes Bishop look like a fraud and hypocrite. His getting a hard-on in that love scene would be enough to make him a laughingstock. Not to mention his kiss with Bradley Kelly. The Boatman truly would’ve destroyed Bishop’s reputation.
I eject The Boatman and insert the second cassette. The leader runs for so long I conclude that the tape is blank and reach over to hit stop. But then there’s the main title—Satan’s Boatman—A Film by Paula F. McGrath—followed by the same Beethoven theme from the first movie.
The scene fades in to Felicity McGrath—not the 1979 version, but older, the age at which she appeared in her last film, Meadows of Deceit. She’s wearing a floppy hat and Jackie-O shades and is sitting with her legs curled up in a lounger. The scene takes place on a deserted stretch of beach. Was this what Boardwalk Freddy saw her filming in Venice?
“Hello, I’m Paula,” she says. “I’m a filmmaker. I was an actress until it all went awry. But I was really something once.” The camera cuts to a still photo of her from Fragile Palace. Just like when I watched her earlier films, her voice sounds eerily familiar, aural déjà vu. Even after this bit of dialogue, you know this woman is in control, one step ahead. If this is the real Felicity McGrath, she’s nothing like the ingenue gone wrong in Fragile Palace or the English virgin in Meadows of Deceit, or the sexy, wise-cracking skank in Poniard’s video game.
“I grew up in Springfield, Illinois,” she says. “I ran away to Hollywood when I was fifteen, escaped my food-stamp mom and her crack and her boyfriends. I met a man who said he could get me into modeling. I was a fool to trust him with all the creeps out here, but I was like a lot of young girls, naive and stupid. The joke is, he was legit. I was modeling at fifteen, d
oing TV and movies a year later. I had to lie about my age, of course, and some said the movies were porn, even investigated the producers for having me engage in underage sex, but it wasn’t true. I’ve always been an actress, not a slut.” Her full lips are slightly asymmetrical when she smiles. She takes off her glasses and stands. The camera moves backward as she walks forward. “Be forewarned—what you’re about to see, what you’re seeing now, what you’ve already seen, is artifice, a ruse perpetrated on you, the audience. Deceit is the essence of art—the very word artifice comes from the Latin to craft art. I’m a craftsman—well, craftswoman. Our role is to deceive and in that way to expose deceit—and to always be truthful.” It’s a melodramatic Orson Welles–style radio intro, cheesy and old-fashioned even in the 1980s, but it works because of McGrath’s passionate delivery, her candid beauty; she’s not wearing makeup, or maybe the stage makeup makes it seem that way. “This is my film. I’ve operated the camera, set up the lighting, edited the raw footage, written the lines, directed the action. So, if you don’t like our particular truth, blame me.” She relaxes, slumps her shoulders, and says in an almost bored voice, “Cut and print it, e—” Her last words are cut off when the scene shifts.
I press the pause button and rewind. McGrath was probably saying effect when she was cut off, a broadcast term. When I hit play again, my suspicion is confirmed—the opening scene transitions by overlapping with the next—a wipe effect, it’s called.
The first scene from The Boatman from the earlier tape comes on. Or so it appears. But then I notice the differences. In certain scenes Bishop overplays the part, seems smarmy where in the first version he seemed sincere. Hildy Gish is stronger, less a victim than someone striving to heroically change her life. There’s an additional brutal and troubling scene where Bishop forces himself on Eurydice. It’s then that I understand that McGrath reshot and reedited the film to make it not a tribute to Bradley Kelly but an attack on him, an exposé revealing him to be a fraud—not a prophet, but Satan’s Messenger, a devious predator who relies on deception and violence to get what he wants. McGrath was shooting this the very year that Kelly announced the formation of his Church of the Sanctified Assembly. McGrath made Eurydice braver, the victim turned heroine. Former hero Miles Boatman became the villain.
Reckless Disregard Page 29