Death in Eden

by Paul Heald

  She grabbed her pocketbook from the dresser, noticing with a frown that it did not quite match her dress and shoes. Stanley snuck up behind her and gave an approving squeeze. “I know who’s going to be the prettiest woman there.”

  “And I know who’ll be full of the most shit,” she laughed as they disengaged. “Do you think they’ll have a red carpet? Maybe we should have rented a limo.”

  “I don’t think it will be quite that extravagant,” he said doubtfully as he led her out the door and down to the elevator.

  But there was a red carpet, and she felt more than a little self-conscious stepping out of the rented Taurus first and waiting for her escort to make his way around the car. His face wore a huge grin as photographers’ cameras flashed in their faces, and he gave a confident wave as if he were a movie star attending a premiere. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” She whispered in his ear as they started down the carpet past the phalanx of cameras and microphones with logos from Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, VHI, Bravo, and the Playboy Channel. She shaded her eyes from the glare of the lights and slipped behind him as he strode toward the studio.

  “If anyone asks,” Stanley turned and whispered back, “I’m Long Dong Silver, scourge of Pleasure Island.” Two more steps and they slipped into the refuge of the studio lobby where they were met by a beaming man in a tuxedo.

  She watched him closely as he first took Stanley’s hand and then warmly pressed her own. Johansson looked pretty normal for a porn czar who had turned his back on the priesthood and now paid sweaty young men and women to roll around under klieg lights. His smile seemed genuine, and he made eye contact without sending shivers of sleaze into her soul. No wonder Stanley had been seduced so easily. There’s nothing more dangerous than a self-confident man.

  “Thank you for helping Stanley out with the book,” she offered graciously. “You’ve really saved the day.”

  “I doubt that,” he said, pressing her hand one more time before disengaging and turning back to her husband. “Oh, I’ve seated you with Layla DiBona and Kristy Page, who are your first two interviews tomorrow, plus a couple of my production assistants.” He gave them both a quick smile of dismissal and turned to face two beautiful women in sequined gowns who had just finished running the gauntlet of reporters.

  They followed a row of flowers in crystal vases topping mock Greek columns through an open door at the end of a short hallway. Beyond the doors, they found a large room with a polished concrete floor filled with round tables. Although the dining area had been festively decorated, the room itself still had the feel of a warehouse. A large dais had been set up at the far end of the room with a huge promotional poster for Toys in Babeland and a large podium. After giving their names to a young hostess in black pants and a white Eden Studio t-shirt, they were led to a table in the back.

  They were the last couple to arrive at the table. Two men wearing brightly colored jackets stood up, shook their hands and introduced their dates. Angela promptly forgot the men’s names, although she remembered that one was a major league baseball player and the other was a drummer in a rock band she had never heard of. The ball player was sitting next to Layla, a middle-aged blonde with short, thick hair who was wearing a tuxedo cut for a woman. Despite the lack of a shirt underneath the jacket, she managed to convey a surprisingly conservative demeanor. She smiled and waved at Stanley and Angela as they sat down. Kristy, a petite brunette in a low cut red dress, nodded and passed them a bottle of white wine. The production assistants, their identity obvious from their complete lack of glamour, were engrossed in conversation and barely noticed the new arrivals.

  The location was a perfect place to observe the festivities. With her back to the wall, she could watch the whole room with complete anonymity. She laid her napkin in her lap and accepted a generous glass of wine poured by her neighbor. She recognized the bottle and was impressed that Johansson would serve fifty dollar bottles of wine to such a large group. The appetizers that arrived shortly thereafter turned out to be as good as the wine, and she began to relax as she noticed many other couples dressed as conventionally as herself and her mate. There were some, however, who flaunted the attributes that made them top earners. A gorgeous blond wore a toga-like outfit that exposed one breast covered only by a small sequined fabric flower; the brunette next to her kept flopping out of her dress until she finally pulled the top down to her waist and then tugged it up in a vulgar attempt to solve the slippage problem.

  The mood at the long table set upon the dais was more subdued than that of the groundlings. Angela watched Johansson, seated next to the podium, sipping a glass of wine and surveying the room as the appetizers were cleared and the main course, lobster risotto and beef tenderloin, was carried out to the tables. She saw the star of the movie, listed as Jade Delilah on the poster, sitting next to him, picking at her food and ignoring his whispering in her ear. Her voluptuous figure was far from her only stunning feature. Her creamy olive complexion was even and unblemished. Jet black hair cascaded down her back and her bright eyes sparkled with intelligence and sensuality. Angela realized with a shock that she had been the star of Girls Will Be Girls.

  “What are you looking at?” Stanley asked.

  “I was just staring at this Jade woman next to Don. Is she on our interview schedule?”

  “I think we’ve got her the day after tomorrow.” He leaned back as the waiter put plates in front of everyone at the table. “I saw her for a second in Don’s office before I met him yesterday.”

  “I wonder how she got into this business,” she whispered so that only he could hear. “Just look at her. I’ll bet she can snap her fingers and get anything she wants. Can you see any employer interviewing her and turning her down?”

  He managed a glance up at the dais without drooling. “Not a chance.”

  For the next hour, they tucked into their food and savored wonderfully crisp glasses of Côtes du Rhone that were replenished as soon as they were half-emptied. To Angela’s surprise, the conversation around the table seldom lagged. Everybody seemed interested in the book project, and Stanley’s questions prompted a round of scandalous storytelling from Layla, Christie, and the production assistants. I’m partying with porn stars, Angela mused. When Nanci hears this, she’ll never believe it.

  An hour later, the dinner plates were cleared and dessert arrived. Angela looked up at the dais and was surprised to see that no one had yet approached the podium to begin the scheduled after dinner speech. The guests of honor were talking to each other and casting concerned glances in the direction of Don’s and Jade’s empty seats. As the invitees finished their sweets and moved on to their coffee, they began to get more impatient, and a trickle of guests began leaving to continue the party elsewhere. After fifteen minutes of growing restlessness, a middle-aged man in a tuxedo approached the podium and began to speak.

  “I’m Trent Holmes, associate producer of Toys in Babeland. First of all, I know that Don would want me to thank you for coming. I’m sure he’ll be here in a moment, but let me take this time to—” An ear-splitting shriek from the hall doorway stopped his impromptu speech in mid-sentence. The entire room turned to see a young woman in a yellow spandex minidress scream again, fall to the floor with a wild sob, and then throw up all over the concrete floor.

  VI.

  A HARD-BOILED DICK

  Detective Stuart McCaffrey walked up the red carpet and scowled at the camera crew who dogged his steps until he reached the yellow tape that declared the Eden Studio Building to be a crime scene. As he opened the door, he flicked a cigar butt at the feet of a reporter and nodded at the sergeant who had initially responded to the call that a dead woman had been found in the office of Donald Johansson, aka Richard Ramrod, owner of Eden Studio. The sergeant led him down the corridor to the office. More yellow tape stretched across the entrance to the murder scene, and while the sergeant ducked underneath, McCaffrey lingered outside to check for fingerprint dust on the door frame. He saw none. The i
diot local cops had taped over the most likely place a perpetrator would have rested his hands before entering the room.

  The detective entered and surveyed the room from left to right, ignoring the body that lay crumpled on an expensive Persian rug. It was several minutes before he spoke to the sergeant. “What has been moved or touched since the body was discovered?”

  “The woman who discovered the body,” he looked in a small spiral notebook, “a Miss Lanie Watts, says she opened the door looking for a bathroom, took a couple of steps in, saw the body, and then ran right back out. Security heard her screaming and came immediately. They checked the body for signs of life and sealed off the room. It’s lucky that we didn’t have a bunch of partygoers rushing in to see if they could help.”

  McCaffrey walked onto the carpet and took a close look at the body. A young woman in a purple silk dress lay in an ocean of blood. The left side of her face was completely caved in, eyeball hanging onto the cheek, teeth glistening in the back of her throat. He had not seen such destruction to a human face since he had stopped working traffic twenty years earlier. He looked up and found spatters of blood and tissue on the wall and curtains behind her.

  “The security guards say this is her,” the sergeant finally dared to interject. He pointed to the picture behind the large teak desk. “Her name is Jade Delilah.”

  McCaffrey studied the picture. “Nice.”

  The sergeant worked his way carefully around to the sofa, and pointed down. “We think this might be the murder weapon.” On the floor between a heavy glass coffee table and the sofa lay a cricket bat emblazoned with the Greek letters for Alpha and Omicron. The upper half of the bat was smeared with blood.

  McCaffrey bent down and scrutinized the long flat club without touching it. “Wouldn’t it be nice to get some clear prints off of that bat handle, Sergeant?”

  “I think we will, Detective.”

  He straightened up and gave the sergeant a curious look. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well,” he said, cracking a smile for the first time, “when the security guards got here, they found the owner of the studio passed out on the sofa. He was flat on his back with his left hand draped right over the murder weapon. After the guards checked to see whether the girl was still alive, they took him down to the security office.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “No. He’s been taken to the station for processing.”

  “Photogs been through?”

  “Yup.”

  “What about the Medical Examiner?”

  “She’s waiting for you to finish up,” said an impatient voice directly behind the detective. “And I wouldn’t mind getting to the body before she goes stone cold.”

  The detective turned around and saw his ex-wife, Ellen, standing with her hands on her hips, equipment bag hanging loosely from her left shoulder. Fifty years old and still looking nice. He met her eyes and was rewarded with a frown. Bitchy, but nice. The divorce was two years past, but the pain resurfaced every time he saw her, an all too frequent event given their respective jobs. “There ya go,” he said, “violating the anti-stalking order again.”

  She gave him with a thin smile. “Do you mind if I look at her while you poke around?”

  “Have at it,” he said. “Maybe you can establish a time of death for us.”

  “No problem there,” the Sergeant interrupted. “There was a big party in the studio tonight, bunch of tables set up, catered dinner, the whole nine yards. The victim was seated at the head table along with the suspect. We’ve only just begun our questioning, but everybody agrees that Johansson left the table around nine, and Delilah left around nine-thirty or so. Her body was discovered half an hour after that.”

  “Do you have the names of everyone who was at the party?”

  “Yes, sir. We checked I.D. on everyone before they left.”

  McCaffrey walked slowly around the room. He was leery of any murder that looked like an open-and-shut case, but if the handle of the fraternity paddle bore Donald Johansson’s fingerprints, then there would be little left to discover except a motive for the killing. He took another look at the victim’s picture hanging behind the desk and remembered the film noir adage that where a beautiful woman was concerned, there was usually no shortage of motives.

  He looked at the desk and decided to go through it after the room had been swept for prints, fibers, and hair. Ellen was kneeling down over the body, finishing up her initial inspection. “Is the cause of death what it appears to be?”

  “You never know until the tox work is done, but there seems little doubt that this is a blunt trauma death. We’ll do an autopsy tomorrow and get you a report as quick as we can.” She zipped up her bag and stood up. “Is there anything else?”

  “No. I think we can leave and let the good Sergeant oversee the transportation of the body to the morgue and deal with the techies.” He closed his notepad and walked toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She followed him out of the office and down the hall to the lobby where several uniformed officers were still speaking to a security guard. An impatient member of the forensics team checked his watch and then dialed his cell phone. McCaffrey held open the door and they walked out into the warm night. A single camera crew remained, but it was occupied interviewing another security guard about half a block away. “Lemme walk you to your car,” he said.

  They walked silently to a station wagon emblazoned with the logo of the Office of the Medical Examiner for Los Angeles County. “You wanna get a cup of coffee?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “Not tonight.” She slipped her key into the door and sat down in the driver’s seat. She looked up with a blank face before she shut the door. “Not a good idea.”

  McCaffrey made good time to the local police substation where the suspect in the murder was being held. He parked in the spot reserved for the Captain next to the entrance, walked into a brightly lit lobby, and asked a burly officer behind the front desk where he could find Johansson.

  “I’ll take you down to him. He was pretty fucked up when he got here, but he’s coming around now.”

  “Has anybody talked to him?”

  “No, sir. We were waiting for you or the Sergeant.”

  “Good.” The officer stopped at the end of the hall and motioned toward a gray metal door on the right. Through the interrogation room window, McCaffrey saw a middle-aged man in a tuxedo, slumped forward on a metal chair, resting his forehead on the table in front of him. “What do you mean, he was ‘fucked up’? Have you ordered blood work?”

  “Yes, sir.” The officer jerked his thumb at the detainee and pulled a prescription pill bottle out of his pocket. “We found this in his jacket. He was extremely disoriented. Wanted to know why we were taking him here. When some smart ass told him he had just killed a porn star, he totally lost his shit.”

  “Totally lost his shit?” The detective had long grown impatient with his colleagues’ inability to get beyond common vulgarity in describing simple events.

  “I mean, he fell down. He was sobbing, ‘no, no,’ struggling with his restraints. That sort of thing.”

  “Thank you, officer.” He waited for the young man to unlock the deadbolt. “Now let me have a word with our suspect. And bring us some coffee.”

  The detective looked down at the figure before him. Johansson looked like he had not slept for weeks, but when he was reread his Miranda rights, he sat up. Both his tie and cummerbund had been removed.

  “Could you give me your name, age, and address?”

  “My name is Donald Johansson. I’m thirty-six years old, and I live at 457 Deerfield Terrace in Santa Monica.”

  “Nice neighborhood,” the detective commented. “Own or rent?”

  “I’m renting it.” He took a deep breath and pushed the hair out of his eyes with his cuffed hands. “Could you please tell me what’s going on? The other officers weren’t very helpful.”

  “I’ll be happy to tell you,” McCaff
rey said cheerfully, “but first I need you to tell me everything you’ve done this evening.” He looked up at the small green light in the corner of the room to make sure their conversation was being recorded. The prisoner looked for a moment like he was going to object, but then he closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Would you like an aspirin and some coffee?”

  “Yes, please.” McCaffrey knocked on the window and relayed the order. He then leaned back in his chair and watched the suspect. He had learned long before that silence was the most useful tool in interrogations. Conversations initiated by prisoners were almost always fruitful, but Johansson said nothing. He sat with his eyes shut and his hands in his lap until the door opened and a styrofoam cup and a small packet containing two Tylenol were set down before him. He thanked the guard and fumbled to open the foil packet with trembling hands. It dropped to the floor and McCaffrey reached down and opened it for him. He took the pills with a sip of coffee and then started to talk.

  “Tonight we had a big party at the studio. We had just closed the biggest contract in our history and I invited about two hundred people to celebrate.” He paused for a moment, as if he were having trouble remembering. “I was seated at the head table on the dais . . . I was supposed to give a speech. I wanted to thank everyone who had made the movie such a success.”

  “This is a porn movie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you make the speech?”

  The prisoner thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so.” His voice faded and he started fiddling with one of his buttons. McCaffrey searched for another way to jog his memory.